Is It Three Strikes Yet?

I know that this may come as a shock to some who have long ago gotten used to the idea that the Administration's ideas all turn to crap uniformly, but HOW THE HELL did they screw THIS puppy? Are there NO real Conservatives left in the Executive Branch? Aren't there any people there who can get the job done in spite of Our Glorious Leader?

U.S. may have botched training of Iraqis - Yahoo! News: "'If the administration had been serious and competent about establishing a functioning democracy in Iraq, it would have seen the need for a trustworthy criminal justice system in which all Iraqis could have confidence,' Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (news, bio, voting record), D-Vt., said in prepared remarks."

Of all the things I was in confident expectation of the Right comprehending intuitively and getting right is the need for law and order. This is such a staple of US Conservatism that it should shock the Midwest about as much as it shocks me. You cannot have a functional society of any kind without law enforcement, reliable courts and open marketplaces. On these three things hang ALL the law, and the Profits.

According to the report, co-authored by Hamilton and former Attorney General Edwin Meese, the U.S. erred by first assigning the task of shaping the judicial system in a largely lawless country to the State Department and private contractors who "did not have the expertise or the manpower to get the job done."

In 2004, the mission was assigned to the Defense Department, which devoted more money to the task. But department officials also were insufficiently trained for the job, Hamilton and Meese said.

As a result, Iraq has little if any on-the-street law enforcement personnel or a functioning judicial system free of corruption, they said.

Justice Department officials, they said, should lead the work of transforming the system. Police executives and supervisors should replace the military police personnel now assigned.

And the FBI should expand its investigative and forensic training in Iraq, Hamilton and Meese told the panel.

The recommendations about the Iraqi judicial system were included in the Iraq Study Group's report last year, but got little attention. Hamilton and Meese said Wednesday that unless the U.S. helps create a capable, trained professional police force and functioning criminal justice system, "ordinary Iraqis will not live in peace and will not have confidence in their new government."

This makes NZBear's call for mindless allegience to the President and his Praetorians particularly insulting, as the Pentagon has had three years to get this right, or get someone to get it right. I said it wass what Teddy Roosevelt referred to as being Morally Treasonable.
but I'll go a step further. This is a demand from 20% of the population to the 70% who can add, subtract and read between the lines that we cater to their stupid leader fetish, to validate their poor post-9/11 judgment at any cost.

At the time, I expected some thrashing about and I was resigned to the necessity of catering to that proportion of our population, both Left and Right, who wear ideological adult diapers of various brands. I expected there would be some time before the American people could be led back to sanity. But in my wildest nightmares, I never expected the adoption of the cold, wet diaper as the uniform of the Right.

Well, yes, I suppose it IS traumatic to have Daddy hauled off to jail after getting stoned on crack and beating up mommy for the seventeenth time. But what Baby doesn't understand is that crackheads do not make good fathers.

Meanwhile, there is no Law and Order Fairy; those of us in the Reality Based Universe know that keeping both Law and Order requires the hard work and dedication of skilled officers of the law and a reliable, effective system of justice. And as much as I, as an anti authoritarian, distrust officers of the law, it's in proportion to my concern that that particular officer of the Law is really just another street gang member with a carry permit.

But apparently we have not achieved even that degree of order.

I'm thinking that this Administration has used up all of it's three strikes about three times over, and needs to be retired. This is not tee-ball, the bats we swing are NOT plastic, and we have to get back to playing by grown-up rules.

As I wrote earlier in the week:

This "war on terror" has been prosecuted in such a way as to ensure failure from the first. What if that is the goal?

It would certainly be yet another impeachable offense. Indeed, if there is such a conspiracy, it would be a treasonable conspiracy. But as I argue, there's little point in wondering why at this point. What we, as citizens, need to realize is that we do indeed have the power to take away their toys and send them to a time-out room. Preferably a federal medium-security timeout.

Boot, Don't Spatter.

Truer words were never spoken.

Once Upon a Time...: "it is worse than futile to try to solve the problem discussed by Atrios and Sullivan (or any similar problem) in isolation, disregarding this much more fundamental issue. If we're in charge, if we call the shots, then do it -- and be prepared to accept all the consequences. We don't get to choose just those consequences that are 'acceptable,' or that will not be too bloody or too horrifying. If we're going to be occupiers, then be occupiers. If we want to destroy the country in order to save it, then do it, and be judged accordingly.

Otherwise, get the hell out."

I'm not "anti-war" = that's as silly as being anti-rain. I am against being rained upon. Likewise, I have a great aversion to being warred upon. Nonetheless, there are some situations in which one must turn up one's collar, turn one's umbrella into the wind and dare the elements to do their worst.

And this is also the case when the human weather is inclement, such as, say, during the Battle of Britain, or subsequent to Pearl Harbor, when there was really no choice but to put on one's welliles and slog through the mud and the blood.

But in this case, we are the inclement weather, and we are the ones being met with dignity and fortitude. One cannot "win" such a war.

And if someone tells you that, by the Lord Harry, we CAN, ask them what non-abstract provable improvement in life will accrue as a result?

Further ask them, what are they willing to lose to ensure that victory?

For as Silber points out, there is only one way forward to an incontestable victory - and that is to pile up skulls until the memory of the Assyrian Empire is buried beneath them, until the streets run as red as the steps of an Aztec temple, until, in short, everyone in the entire middle east with the will to resist us is dead, or broken beneath the wheels of our chariots.

That, of course, would be what we would need to sacrifice in order to "win." We would have to sacrifice our humanity.

Faced with that choice, I think we need to consider the example of one who may come to be known as the greatest single hero of this conflict.

Iraq War, War Resistance, Impeach,