An Open And Shut Case To An Open And Shut Mind



In his 2010 book No Apology: The Case for American Greatness, Mitt Romney accused President Obama of continually apologizing for the nation.  Now shamelessly exploiting the recent attack on our consulate in Benghazi, Romney on September 11 told reporters "I think it's a terrible course for America to stand in apology for our values, that instead when our grounds are being attacked and being breached, that the first response of the United States must be outrage at the breach of the sovereignty of our nation.  An apology for America's values is never the right course." At the second presidential debate, the Repub candidate claimed "the president's policies throughout the Middle East began with an apology tour and pursue a strategy of leading from behind, and this strategy is unraveling before our very eyes."

Romney's claim at Hofstra that "it took the president 14 days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror," as well as the "apology tour" he imagines, have been thoroughly debunked, the latter even by Politifact.   His contention, however, that "the administration indicated this was a reaction to a video and was a spontaneous reaction," is not completely ludicrous, given that there were conflicting statements from administration officials in the weeks following the attack.

But the charges that all the violence there was assiduously planned, and that the Administration therefore did not with one voice immediately and consistently label it as nothing more than a terrorist plot for nefarious political purposes, are way over the top.      David D. Kirkpatrick of The New York Times reports

To Libyans who witnessed the assault and know the attackers, there is little doubt what occurred: a well-known group of local Islamist militants struck the United States Mission without any warning or protest, and they did it in retaliation for the video. That is what the fighters said at the time, speaking emotionally of their anger at the video without mentioning Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden or the terrorist strikes of 11 years earlier. And it is an explanation that tracks with their history as members of a local militant group determined to protect Libya from Western influence.

“It was the Ansar al-Shariah people,” said Mohamed Bishari, 20, a neighbor of the compound who watched the assault and described the brigade he saw leading the attack. “There was no protest or anything of that sort.”

To the simplistic Republican mind (but I repeat myself), angry Muslims were involved, and any suggestion of spontaneity is tantamount to apologizing for America.   But the Muslim world- especially- Islamists but including the 'Arab street'- have complaints (legitimate or otherwise) against the U.S.A., including the Iraq War, U.S. support for Israel, and the Administration's extensive use of drone attacks, causes Mitt Romney is hardly critical of.

Arguably, the attack was of a terrorist nature but precipitated by the video; unarguably, intelligence was imperfect. Initial intelligence reports suggested the likelihood that the militants had reacted to the distasteful and offensive anti-Muslim video.  But counter-terrorism veteran extraordinaire Richard Clarke cautions

I dealt with scores of incidents and military operations over 30 years in the Pentagon, State Department and White House. I never saw a case where there was initial and accurate clarity about what happened.

In the case of TWA 800, the FBI thought for months that it had been shot down by a missile, only to learn much later that it was a maintenance problem that caused the fuel tank to explode. When the destroyer Cole was attacked in Yemen, it took the CIA director weeks to decide that the attackers were from Al Qaeda . The Iranian hand in the attack on the U.S. Air Force barracks at Khobar, Saudi Arabia, did not emerge for months.

News media and members of Congress may want instant answers when something explodes, when Americans die, but national security professionals know that “first reports are always wrong.” That is why, when pressed by reporters to say what had happened, UN Ambassador Susan Rice qualified her response by saying that the investigation was ongoing. She then said what the intelligence community had reported to her at that time.

The Washington Post's David Ignatius writes

“Talking points” prepared by the CIA on Sept. 15, the same day that Rice taped three television appearances, support her description of the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate as a reaction to Arab anger about an anti-Muslim video prepared in the United States. According to the CIA account, “The currently available information suggests that the demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the U.S. Consulate and subsequently its annex. There are indications that extremists participated in the violent demonstrations.”

It would never occur to Mitt Romney, who blasts the Administration for not definitively and consistently laying the blame entirely on "terrorism," to question the nation's primary agency responsible for gathering intelligence, upon which the Administration relied.   Its head, tellingly, is David Petraeus, and one never is to question the sainted General.

The Times' Kirkpatrick concludes

United States intelligence officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, have said they intercepted boastful phone calls after the fact from attackers at the mission to individuals affiliated with Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. But they have also said that so far they had found no evidence of planning or instigation by the group. James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, described the participation of individuals “linked to groups affiliated with or sympathetic with Al Qaeda” — acknowledging, at best, a tenuous or indirect link.

“It is a promiscuous use of ‘Al Qaeda,’ ” Michael Hanna, a researcher at the Century Foundation, said of those charging that Al Qaeda was behind this attack. “It can mean anything or nothing at all.”

The Cold War, with the United States on one side and the Soviet Union, is over, a situation little understood by Mitt Romney, who maintains that Russia and not terrorism, Iran, or nuclear proliferation is the greatest threat to world peace.    Contemporary world affairs is complicated and confusing to a lot of us, but we don't have the temerity to present ourselves as fit to be leader of the Free World.





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The Republican Media- No. 25

"It’s a hard thing to be honest about and I think we’ve had a good discussion on this for everybody," Chris Matthews said today on "The Chris Matthews Show."

Maybe honest but a good discussion, no.

Nicole Belle of Crooks and Liars posted a transcript of the discussion Chris Matthews led Sunday morning pertaining to National Public Radio in light of the edited video created by criminal offender James O'Keefe. The participants included Kelly O'Donnell of NBC, Katty Kay of the BBC, David Ignatius of The Washington Post, and The New York Times' David Brooks. Yet, no one, Belle points out, saw fit to mention that the scam was hatched by O'Keefe. O'Keefe is the fellow who fabricated the ACORN video; tried to tamper with the phone lines in Senator Mary Landrieu's office; attempted to lure CNN correspondent Abbie Boudreau onto a boat and seduce her to ruin CNN's reputation; and attended a 2006 conference on "Race and Conservatism" that featured leading white nationalists.

There has been severely limited analysis of the video produced by O'Keefe, especially as it is playing a prominent role in GOP efforts to defund NPR. Oddly, one of the few critics has been that of Glenn Becks's website, The Blaze. There, Editor-in-Chief Scott Baker reported that the site's video analyst, Pam Key, evaluated the audio and video and found considerable editing. Baker broke it down into five sections which he termed: Muslim Brotherhood connections; Does Ron Schiller react to Sharia misstatement with amusement?; How does Schiller describe Republicans?; Are liberals more educated than conservatives?; Does NPR need federal funding?

My favorite video clip comparison (below) appears to demonstrate that the "racist, gun toting" description of tea party members came not initially from Ron Schiller (though he apparently agrees with it) but from two Republicans, an ambassador and a big donor.

It might behoove someone in the "liberal" media to delve around a little to determine who these two Republicans are. It's highly likely an investigative reporter would find that the views of these two do not represent an outlier, that many mainstream conservative members of the Republican party find the tea party outrageous. And we might find quite a few Repub politicians intimidated by a movement that, far from its portrayal by the mainstream media as populist, is little more than a subsidiary of corporate America.

This would be very, very bad for the GOP, which would anger some people. Guys like Chris Matthews and David Ignatius, generally enamored of Barack Obama, are widely misunderstood. Their preferences are for Barack Obama, the man, rather than for liberal policies. (Matthews especially peddles the myth that Obama is personally beloved while his policies are unpopular.) And protecting, consciously or unconsciously, the Republican Party is one way they can avoid- they hope- being smeared by conservatives as part of that evil "liberal media."

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Article Of The Week

It's a curious case of populism, that which the media claims finds its voice in the likes of Michelle Bachmann, Sarah Palin, and Glenn Beck, three of the leading voices of corporate privilege in the U.S.A.

Recently, it had the Washington Post columnist David Ignatius columnist in "Why is Congress protecting a tax code that benefits the rich?" lamenting the "pro-billionaire version of populism (which) seems to have won big in the midterm elections." He cites

the demise of a congressional effort to strike down one of the most outrageous provisions of our messed-up tax code, which is the special treatment of "carried-interest" compensation that's paid to many investment fund managers.

This loophole is so unfair that it gets criticized even by some of the tycoons who have benefited from it, such as former Treasury secretary Robert Rubin and other prominent investors I've queried. Basically, it taxes the money paid to managers of private-equity funds and similar partnerships at 15 percent, as if it were risk capital, rather than at ordinary income rates of 35 percent.

The carried-interest break survives as do other policies which benefit big business

by invoking small business. It's argued that if congressional reformers have their way, they will gut compensation for all the little mom-and-pop partnerships that depend on carried interest....

A similar illogic leads many people to believe you are attacking Main Street if you suggest withdrawing the Bush-era tax cuts to people making more than $250,000.

Ignatius, normally a supporter of President Obama, notes "the politically enfeebled Obama administration has caved to extending the tax cuts." He misses (slightly) only when he suggests that support of tax cuts for individuals so wealthy most Americans never will know anyone they benefit may be "part of the American ethos that we all think we're rich."

Most Americans do not believe they themselves are rich, instead believing, no matter how stratospheric their income or privileged their lifestyle, that they are "middle class." They do believe, consciously or otherwise, no matter how unrealistically, that they may become rich. This fantasy, though long held in this nation, has been fueled in recent years by the ever-spreading practice of legalized gambling- and the mainstream media's glee in reporting, in words and pictures, every big winner. They are so normal and average, we see, just like we are. And if I can just land that one big lottery ticket or the catch the right slot machine....

But Ignatius is right on target (my Sharron Angle language) when he concludes

fixing the carried-interest loophole is probably dead, for this Congress and the next. It was hard enough to beat the big guys. But once they successfully hid under the cover of the little guys, it was impossible.

That political legerdemain is making America more unequal every year, and the polls show people are mad as hell at Wall Street and Washington, both. And yet the popular chorus continues: Save the tax breaks for the rich.

"People are mad as hell at Wall Street and Washington" while "the popular chorus continues: save the tax breaks for the rich." It brings to mind a favorite passage, one I've previously quoted, from page 249 of Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas? which shows, as Frank argued, that Kansans are similar to other Americans:

The state watches impotently as its culture, beamed in from the coasts, becomes coarser and more offensive by the year. Kansas aches for revenge. Kansas gloats when celebrities says stupid things; it cheers when movie stars go to jail. And when two female rock stars exchange a lascivious kiss on national TV, Kansas goes haywire. Kansas screams for the heads of the liberal elite. Kansas comes running to the polling place. And Kansas cuts those rock stars' taxes.

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