re: JOhn McCreery's post quoting Hunter ----"a color-coded system of
enforced national panic"
That's the truth. My daughter made the error of leaving her grandmother's
house in Canada this morning to return to university in Georgia. She has
been caught at the Buffalo border for the last four hours. Apparently the
documentation she used the last several times she visited Canada is no
longer sufficient to prove that she isn't a threat. I can't communicate
with her now because cell phones are forbidden the holding areas. The
waiting to hear is distressing.
I'm glad that my dog and I crossedf the border last weekend.
Helen A Wishart
I've been staying out of the Omar vs Phil, Eric, Lawrence debate largely because it has long since fallen into the "dance of anger" pattern familiar to marriage counselors, in which both sides frame the debate in black and white terms that admit of no compromise. Labels are bandied about and the only possible resolutions exhaustion, mutual silence, or murder.
In forlorn hope of disrupting this pattern, I offer two examples of strong and sensible answers to Phil's question, "What would you have us do?" that demand neither genocide nor waiting like an abused wife for the terrorists to strike again.
Here is Hunter, whose diary was frontpaged on dailyKos today.
"Although we do not yet know the scope or details of today's announced counterterrorism bust, it's generally worth noting that the British are a hell of a lot more competent in wrapping potential terrorism up than we seem to be, and that the British have accomplished this via normal law enforcement techniques coupled with apparently excellent human and signals intelligence. It's also worth noting that at present, foreign involvement with the plot seems at this early stage to be primarily Pakistani in origin -- one of those countries that has unambiguous ties to terrorism, as opposed to oh, say... Iraq.
"That seems to be one big difference between U.S. and U.K. efforts in the War on Terror. Despite the obvious political and strategic bungles of the Blair government, the U.K. is beginning to show a history of wrapping up terror plots and arresting those involved, and seems even to have managed to have done so within the context of law.
"The rather less serious and competent U.S. response, on the other hand, seems to be to reduced to making sure that from now on, nobody can take bottled water onto airplanes.
"In the U.S., we have spent the last five years deciding the rule of law is insufficient; we engage in kidnappings and illegal renditions; we promote and practice torture; we invent a color-coded system of enforced national panic; we declare that presidential authority has no boundaries in wartime, or in anything that any administration figure might construe as being wartime; we engage in an overscoped, unprecedentedly broad explosion of espionage against American citizens that has created the world's largest and least successful haystack; we entered into a preemptive war with a country that had no meaningful ties whatsoever to the actual war on terrorism. (OK, the British definitely did that last one too.)
"At the same time, our human intelligence efforts are nearly nil, port security continues to be ignored, our military services are tossing out fluent Arabic translators for the transgression of being gay, and the funding of meaningful "homeland security" efforts is being treated like it was a carnival game by the Republican congress, which cannot fundamentally distinguish between security efforts and required "pork" patronage.
"I don't feel safer, today. And I didn't need the color-coded Rainbow of Terror, which has been even further debased by being hauled out like the world's most transparent political fear-o-meter during every election season, to tell me that."
The rest of Hunter's remarks can be found at,
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/8/10/164332/285
Next, here is a statement by RayH, writing on the Raising Kaine blog (http://raisingkaine.com/frontPage.do) in support of James Webb for U.S. Senator from Virginia.
"Jim Webb has had experience as a journalist on the ground in Lebanon, as Secretary of the Navy, as a soldier in Vietnam. His understanding of these issues surpasses Allen's, and he's right to criticize policies that undermine our nation's security. I like the Webb philosophy of holding back on the use of military force, using the threat of force as a deterrant and negotiating tool, and resorting to violence as a LAST resort. Allen and Bush rush to violence before considering other options."
These are people whose remarks I am inclined to take seriously as suggestions for rational courses of action.
John
-- John McCreery The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
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