The WaPo’s Love Note To Shrub
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The Washington Post wants for the world to realign itself to 2002. Back then they could just write up the White House b.s. and shovel it on the populace, while the editorial department of the paper banged the drums of war louder than even the traditional conservative press. What other reason but nostalgia can explain this ridiculous “analysis” story they’re peddling today?
By challenging Congress to immediately give the administration authority to try notorious al-Qaeda figures such as Khalid Sheik Mohammed by military commissions, he shifted the argument with Democratic critics of national security policies and competence. As Bush framed the choice, anyone against his proposal would be denying him necessary tools to protect American security.
As president, Bush has a bully pulpit, but the idea that his two speeches have done anything to change reality is something only the Bush cultists and the Washington Post can swallow. For so long the press and the opposition party have simply accepted the terms of Bush’s framing, working within his verbal tricks. But America just isn’t buying it. They quite simply are not going to believe the man who says we’re defeating Al Qaeda when you can’t even bring hair gel on an airplane without causing an international incident. The guy who says Iraq is the central front on terror at the same time Afghanistan slides into madness is the same joker who proclaimed a “heck of a job” as Louisiana and Mississippi drowned.
Perhaps within the well-polished halls of power at the Washington Post, or at the posh Georgetown parties that are the stock in trade of the Beltway set, has George Bush done any sort of framing of the debate in terms favorable to his own spin. But out in the real world, in the reality where our terrorist enemies are winning their five year-long war against us and the powerful America can’t even create something resembling order in one decrepit middle eastern country, there is no such framing of the debate.
Does the Post really need to curry so much favor that they’re willing to turn tricks as Pravda on the Potomac?
17 Responses to “The WaPo’s Love Note To Shrub”
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© 2000-2011 Oliver Willis
This is even more incoherent that your usual.
What do you propose we should do with folks like Khalid Sheik Mohammed?
How about giving them a fair trial and then locking them up and throwing away the key?
How about giving them the same rights as the Nazis at Nuremberg? A fair trial, and then a punishment based on evidence and rules. We did have an enlightenment, after all, Farmer. Maybe if you had paid more attention when you learned basic civics, you would understand our civilization’s values a bit better.
Rhetorical question from the ‘Democrat Party has No Plan’ memo: What do you propose we should do with folks like Khalid Sheik Mohammed?
The same as was done with Timothy McVeigh.
Timothy McViegh was an American citizen. Last time I checked, the legal process for American citizens was pretty well uderstood.
Khalid Sheik Mohammed is not an American citizen. He was not captured on American soil, and his alleged crime is a crime of conspiracy; as far as I know, we have no proof that he actually “pulled the trigger” himself and personally committed a terrorist act that killed Americans.
By trying to compare him to McVeigh, you are comparing apples to bulldozers.
And therein lies the problem: how do we ensure a “fair trial” for foreigners captured on foreign soil and charged only with conspiracy?
Get them deported from said foreign soil to be tried under US law. Or better still, get him tried under UN auspices.
“…how do we ensure a “fair trial” for foreigners captured on foreign soil and charged only with conspiracy?”
Um, did the principles of fairness and justice just vanish from right wing brains on 9-11? It should patently obvious how to ensure a fair trial: the right to an attorney, the right to know the charges against you, the right to corss examination, the right to now the evidence against you and to challenge that evidence, the right of appeal, etc., etc.
Now I recognize that security issues need to be taken into account in some of these circumstances — as when the evidence against someone is also classified — but surely the government can muster enough strong, traight forward evidence that can be presented in public. These are terrorist masterminds afterall.
Of course the administration has already fucked up one of the most bedrock principles of a fair trial: that evidence obtained through torture is inadmissable in court. Not sure how to unpollute that well.
That leads to the real problem that this administration has: It cannot see the immense political value in upholding our principles as we prosecute this war. Instead it chucked those principles out the door first in exchange for an illusory quick fix.
Now right wingers seem unable to remember what those principles were. How do we ensure a fair trial, indeed. Idiots.
What’s this “fair trial” crap?
Is that what Nick Berg faced?
“You wanna kill me? I squeeze the blood out of you to give up your brothers and then “humanely” put a bullet in yer frackin’ brain.”
Oh look, another deadender.
We don’t treat people the way Nick Berg was treated because we are better than they are.
And Nimrod wins! Let’s take America’s enemies and hand them over to the feckless UN. Why not throw in a global test?
Oh, shut up, Captain Gays-Have-The-Same-Rights-As-Me-I-Can’t-Marry-Guys-Either-LOLZER. Why should I or anyone take you seriously?
“What’s this “fair trial” crap?”
Yay! Let’s be just like the terrorists! Nothing says “We Support Democracy” like torture and summary execution.
Is it lost on the Right that you can’t go around preaching the value of constitutional democracy and human rights when you don’t believe in those things yourself? It might work for people here for whom hypocrisy = democracy, but the rest of the world doesn’t buy it.
“What’s this “fair trial” crap?”
Excellent. It’s all going just as we planned.
Let the conservatives abolish that “fair trial crap” and then President for Life Hillary can put them all in prison camps and institute a world-wide govenment!
I agree, why give a fair hearing and a trial to brown people from some place else when we can just execute them and be done with it? Why reserve our American justice system for non-americans? We certainly wouldn’t expect any sort of justice for one of our people held overseas. Better that they should be summarily tried and executed by a kangaroo court as we are proposing here. What’s more, by simply dragging our enemies out and executing them, we show the world how fair and just we are as a nation, and that goes a long way toward building strong international relationships and cementing our place in the hearts and minds of people like the iraqis.
Plus the fact we can then hang them from lamp posts as a warning to others who might take up arms against us.
Bonus!
Get out.