The incompetence of Bush and Cheney's detainee polices

Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, has been an invaluable voice for exposing the truth of our detainee policies for the last seven years. I am reminded of the famous quotation, "It's worse than a crime; it's a mistake." It would be one thing if Bush and Cheney ordered people to break laws and had actually protected our country in doing so, but we know that all this torture was pointless and unproductive, and damaged our reputation more than anything since Jim Crow. Similarly, it would be one thing if they did it in an ordered, competent way. But it was done seat-of-the-pants style, with little to no forethought or strategy.

Wilkerson elaborates, in a guest post at the Washington Note:

The first of these [aspects of the Gitmo debate largely overlooked by the media] is the utter incompetence of the battlefield vetting in Afghanistan during the early stages of the U.S. operations there. Simply stated, no meaningful attempt at discrimination was made in-country by competent officials, civilian or military, as to who we were transporting to Cuba for detention and interrogation.

But wait, there's more:

Another unknown, a part of the fabric of the foregoing four, was the sheer incompetence involved in cataloging and maintaining the pertinent factors surrounding the detainees that might be relevant in any eventual legal proceedings, whether in an established court system or even in a kangaroo court that pretended to at least a few of the essentials, such as evidence.

Simply stated, even for those two dozen or so of the detainees who might well be hardcore terrorists, there was virtually no chain of custody, no disciplined handling of evidence, and no attention to the details that almost any court system would demand. Falling back on "sources and methods" and "intelligence secrets" became the Bush administration's modus operandi to camouflage this grievous failing.

Cheney has some nerve telling John King that Obama is making our country more vulnerable to terrorism after the incompetent shenanigans he pulled.

The AIG bonus debacle

One can argue whether the $165 million in bonuses that AIG doled out to its senior executives the other day were justified, unjustified, or deserving of the "Nobel Prize for Evil," but two things are clear. First, the AIG brass was either stupid or greedy or both for failing to foresee the firestorm this action would incur. Second, as Jim Manzi points out:

Just as the GM restructuring "plan" was a clarifying illustration of why industrial policy rarely works very well, the current outrage over the AIG $165 million bonus payout illustrates why having the federal government run companies usually doesn't work very well either...

In the end, what I think this highlights is the need to get the government out of the business of managing risk capital as rapidly as is feasible.

The important question is: just how rapidly is that?

"How a tiny West African country became the world's first narco state"

It can be easy for us in the United States to forget that, for much of the world, the threat of Islamist terrorism is only an afterthought; they have other concerns. Check out this article from the Guardian on how Columbian drug cartels have essentially taken over the West African country of Guinea-Bissau over the last three years. Money quote:

Among the destitute locals are scores of wealthy, gaudy Colombian drug barons in their immodest cars, flaunting their hi-tech luxury lifestyle, with beautiful women on their arms. Outside Bissau city are exclusive Hispanic-style haciendas with wide verandahs, turquoise swimming pools and gates patrolled by armed guards.

By day, Guinea-Bissau looks like the impoverished country it is. Most people cannot afford a bus fare, never mind a four-wheel drive. There is no mains electricity. Water supplies are restricted to the wealthy few, and landmark buildings such as the presidential palace remain wrecked nine years after the end of the war. But this wreck of a country is what the UN - which declared war last week on celebrity cocaine culture - calls the continent's 'first narco-state'. West Africa has become the hub of a flow of cocaine from South America into Europe, now that other routes have become tough for the traffickers.

A final word on Freeman, with an apology

In retrospect, I was a bit harsh in my descriptions of Chas Freeman. I learned that the quote about Tiananmen Square was probably taken out of context (and I should have done a better job of checking this first), and his statement about Mao could be interpreted in a less damaging light. I still find him highly misinformed on the subject of Israel, and I think he has some troubling views on dictatorships like Saudi Arabia and China, but perhaps such views would not have had a significant effect on US foreign policy. On balance, I am glad he will not serve as chair of the National Intelligence Council, but I probably overstated the dangers of his getting the post.

The troubling aspect of this whole debate is not so much Freeman per se, but the character of the debate itself. Many Freeman critics went far beyond my heated language and started throwing around terms like "anti-Semite." While I disagree with Freeman strongly, I see no evidence that he hates Jews. Pro-Israel pundits should absolutely show more circumspection and judiciousness before making the most serious of accusations. And they should certainly not take quotes out of context to smear a candidate.

On the other hand, the pro-Freeman crowd displayed such a paranoid and aggressive attitude toward anyone who opposed Freeman that open dialogue on his nomination was impossible from the start. Few supporters of Freeman defended him on his merits or pointed out where his critics were misrepresenting his record. Instead, they immediately launched withering ad hominem attacks on the critics themselves--impugning their motives, their honesty, and even their loyalty to the United States above Israel. Pro-Israel pundits and politicians were branded as uniquely disloyal and subversive, and uniquely undeserving of any time on the soap box, among all other interest groups. Furthermore, almost every pundit who supported Freeman claimed that the opposing viewpoint was a "lobby"--that is, when five or ten journalists, one senator, and a handful or NGOs feel a certain way, they immediately constitute a lobby and must be secretly coordinating with each other. Now, AIPAC certainly is a lobby, but to use the term as an umbrella for anyone with pro-Israel views is to spin conspiracy theories.

I've written before that what we need here is less heat, more sobriety. I'll make a supplemental point: too often we descend into a sort of meta-discussion, where one or both sides of debate stop discussing the issue and start discussing the debate itself, usually claiming that their side is being victimized in some way. You'll notice that people like Walt and Mearshimer spend much less time proposing new policy ideas for the US in the Middle East than they do claiming that people like them are being victimized by a vast Israel Lobby. Such writers should spend less time complaining about the bullies, and more time expressing their own views on policy. The invincible Israel Lobby did not stop Walt and Mearshimer from securing a lucrative book deal and capturing more media coverage in the last three years than ever before in their lives.

That's the lesson: more policy discussion, less meta-discussion. Meta-discussion is merely a door to conspiracy theories, character assassination, and mudslinging. No one benefits, and no one ever wins the argument.

When has a debate over who is less American led to good public policy?

(Check out David Rothkopf's final post on the matter here. He was one of the few to straddle this debate from the start. You may also want to hear Freeman's side of the story, in his recent interview with Fareed Zakaria.)

From the annals of interesting translations

Bruce Willis as John McClane in Die Hard.
(Photo credit: IMDB.com)

According to IMDB.com, the Hungarian title of Die Hard is "Give your life expensive," Die Hard 2 is called "Your life is more expensive," Die Hard: With a Vengeance is called "The life is always expensive," and Live Free or Die Hard is called "Die Hard: Dearest Life." At least the translations didn't come out as a vulgar slang for female genitalia.

Ron Paul vs. Stephen Baldwin on marijuana legalization

This wasn't exactly a fair fight...

Some hope for the banking industry?

Warren Buffet is optimistic for our banking industry. He gave a three-hour appearance on CNBC this past Tuesday, and his central argument was summed up by a blogger at The New Yorker:

The key to understanding Buffett's less-than-apocalyptic take on the banks is the idea of the spread: the gap between the interest rate banks can charge for the loans they make and the interest rate they have to pay for the money they borrow -- from depositors or other lenders. When the Federal Reserve slashes interest rates, particularly when they slash them as aggressively as they have in the past year, spreads widen, so that every loan a bank issues becomes more profitable. And that's especially true today, because the risk aversion of investors and financial institutions has meant that the interest rates on loans have fallen less than they normally would have, given the steep decline in the fed funds rate.

Buffet argues that, given this profitable spread, and given the tiny amount of dividend payments that the banks are currently paying out, banks should be able to recapitalize themselves by hunkering down and waiting. Here's hoping he's right. The next few months may answer the question.

Is Western Civilizaiton on Israel's shoulders?

Brendan O'Neill, writing in the American Conservative, has an interesting article criticizing the many people who reduce Israel to a pawn in a grand, and dangerously simplistic, war against militant Islam. Sone key points:

A new band of writers is continually infusing the squalid wars in the Middle East with a historic, end-of-days momentum. Where many of us recognize that the Israeli-Palestinian clash is a hangover from the national conflicts of the Cold War era, and one that has been exacerbated by the partitionist, divisive politics of the “peace process” instituted by Washington, the Israel-as-Enlightenment lobby sees it as a civilizational war in which Western values might be crushed by the enemies of progress...

It is of course true that Jews have contributed enormously to history, literature, and culture. Yet as Richard S. Levy argues in his book Anti-Semitism: A Historical Encyclopaedia of Prejudice and Persecution, simple philosemitism, like anti-Semitism, also treats the Jews as "radically different or exceptional." Only in this instance, they are looked upon as the saviors of mankind, the lone defenders of civilization rather than as society’s destroyers. Where anti-Semites project their frustrations with the world and their naked prejudices onto the Jews, and frequently onto Israel, too, the new philosemites project their desperation for political answers, for some clarity, for a return to Enlightenment values onto Israel and the Jews. Neither is a burden that the Jewish people can, or should, be expected to bear.

Although he downplays some of the threats to Israel (Hizballah is much stronger than he gives them credit for, and Iran could destroy Israel were it to get nukes), and he ignores the simpler moral arguments for supporting Israel, his central thesis is strong. From the simplistic perspective of the "War on Terror," all the world can be split into two camps (recall Bush's "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists,"), all of the fighting is a simple one-dimensional war, and Israel is the tip of the Western spear. To someone who appreciates the nuances of international affairs and the complexities within the world of Islam, this is nonsense.

It also causes many to criticize Israel's policies either too little or too much. For those pro-Israel types who view the country as fighting on the side of angels, it becomes nearly impossible to criticize the state. To do so would destroy the illusion that, as O'Neill writes, Israel and the Jews are "radically different or exceptional" and "the saviors of mankind." It would be like poking the Greek Titan Atlas in the eye as he held the Firmament on his shoulders.

This Israel-as-savior view causes some other Westerners, on the other hand, to hold Israel to a much higher standard than any other country. These people view Israel through the lens of everything they think the West should be, and are often appalled when what they see doesn't match their ideals. This helps explain why some Westerners write of Israeli war crimes in Gaza, but they rarely accuse the US of committing war crimes when we do something like bomb a wedding party in Afghanistan, or inflict 75% civilian casualties in the 1999 Kosovo War. (To be fair, I must in large part cite Tom Friedman's From Beirut to Jerusalem for this idea.)

Not surprisingly, these two camps generally reflect the broader divide between those who focus on the evil of our enemies and those who focus on our faults at home. For a middle ground between these extremes in American thought, I recommend Peter Beinart's The Good Fight.

"Counterinsurgency" vs. the "War on Terror"

Ganesh Sitaraman of Harvard Law School has written an excellent legal article on our approach to fighting global terrorism, emphasizing the need to craft our policies as a global counterinsurgency campaign rather than a "war on terror," or global counterterrorism campaign. I couldn't agree more. Although Sitaraman is not the first to push for this strategy, his is the first analysis I have read with such a robust legal foundation. Here's the summary:

Since the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, military strategists, historians, soldiers, and policymakers have made counterinsurgency's principles and paradoxes second nature, and they now expect that counterinsurgency operations will be the likely wars of the future. Yet despite counterinsurgency's ubiquity in military and policy circles, legal scholars have almost completely ignored it. This Article evaluates the laws of war in light of modern counterinsurgency strategy. It shows that the laws of war are premised on a kill-capture strategic foundation that does not apply in counterinsurgency, which follows a win-the-population strategy. The result is that the laws of war are disconnected from military realities in multiple areas - from the use of non-lethal weapons to occupation law. It also argues that the war on terror legal debate has been myopic and misplaced. The shift from a kill-capture to win-the-population strategy not only expands the set of topics legal scholars interested in contemporary conflict must address but also requires incorporating the strategic foundations of counterinsurgency when considering familiar topics in the war on terror legal debates.

In addition to the central argument that we should shift from counterterrorism to counterinsurgency, Sitaraman makes a corollary that we should "disaggregate" our foreign policy--not try to lump all of our adversaries together, using a single approach for different problems. Interestingly, this leads him into a discussion of our detention polices, where he asserts that the Bush administration's approach of "globalizing detention"--treating suspects from disparate countries and backgrounds as essentially the same, by classifying them all as enemy combattants and sending them to Guantanmo--is incompatible with a foreign policy based on a waging a global counterinsurgency campaign. Money quote:

Disaggregation thus has two components: At the global level, it suggests de-linking conflict, grievances, and resources in order to contain insurgent operations to particular states or regions. Within each state or region, it suggests a robust counterinsurgency strategy of winning the population.

Disaggregation implies that the globalization of detention was and remains a misguided approach. In place of globalized detention, disaggregation suggests that detainees should be detained and tried in the state in which they are captured...[This policy] decentralizes the grievances from the global counterinsurgent state and limits their ability to link to the global insurgency. Shifting the emphasis to particular states allows for the insurgency to be treated at a local, rather than global, level.

In addition to preventing the spread of insurgent grievances, disaggregating detention forces nations to develop their own legal structures for detention, thereby strengthening the rule of law around the world. The best way for the U.S. to support counterinsurgency and state-building in Afghanistan is not to outsource Afghan detainees and legal problems to American prisons and courts, but instead to help Afghans develop their own detention and legal systems to confront their particular challenges.

This is great stuff, and I'd like to see more. As Sitaraman concludes,

It is not too late for legal scholars to join the fray and understand the relationship between counterinsurgency and the law. Counterinsurgency is the warfare of the age. Lawyers and legal scholars should not ignore it.

Try to at least get through the intro and conclusion.

A Little Light Reading

The difference between the world inherited by Bush in 2000 and the scene that Obama faces today is astounding. With simultaneous crises in Palestine, Iraq, Iran, Arfghanistan, and Pakistan, the new president certainly has a lot on his plate. Harvey Sicherman of the Foreign Policy Research Institute has a good overview of two of the hottest issues--Israel/Palestine and Afghanistan/Pakistan/India--and the beginnings of Obama administration policy toward each.

Think Tanks Around the World

Here's an interesting review of the global phenomenon of think tanks, with a survey of the most influential ones around the world.

More on Chas Freeman's twisted morals

I've written about Chas Freeman's troubling views on Israel, Saudi Arabia, and China, but the truth keeps getting stranger. Matt Welch (a libertarian) takes on some of Freeman's post-9/11 fawning over Saudi Arabia thusly:

It is possible to believe fervently that America should not exert its will onto the rest of the world, without crossing into a fantasy land wherein a country with no real press freedom, no elections, and no legal culture even allowing for anything resembling "introspection" is held up as an intellectual example from which the United States needs to learn. This is the definition of clientitis; it exhibits not a "startling propensity to speak truth to power" but rather a startling propensity to lob bouquets at dictators.

As much as I've written about Freeman's instinctive hostility toward Israel and deference toward the Saudis, his views on China are just as troubling. Freeman writes glowingly of China's role in the Tiananmen Square Massacre, but the real kicker is his soft spot for Mao. That's Mao Zedong. You know, the guy who killed more people than anyone in the history of humanity? That Mao. Read Freeman's measured words on that great, misunderstood soul:

Mao Zedong had a force and energy which none but men of equally great spiritual conviction could withstand. His animal appetites, we now know, matched his intellectual vigor. He was an object of adulation to his subjects and of mingled admiration and dread to his subordinates and intimates. While Mao lived, the brilliance of his personality illuminated the farthest corners of his country and inspired many would-be revolutionaries and romantics beyond it.

Few indeed loved Chairman Mao's style of governance, but all but a few of those who despised it most loved the People's Republic he had founded more and hated him less than they feared him.

Like Freeman's supporters, I too hope for a new approach to the Israel-Palestine question under the Obama Administration, but there are plenty of qualified individuals to lead the National Intelligence Council who don't display such a warped moral outlook as Chas Freeman. Even Human Rights Watch, no shill for Israel, agrees that Freeman's views are out of touch with America's mission abroad:

"A capacity to make moral distinctions may not be a prerequisite for being a good intelligence analyst," [HRW's Washington advocacy directory] Tom Malinowski said. "But for such a high-profile appointment, it would still be wise for President Obama to weigh the message sent by choosing someone who has so consistently defended and worked for the clenched fists the president so eloquently challenged in his inaugural address."

Chas Freeman doesn't know much about history

Andrew Sullivan has been arguing that Chas Freeman merely displays healthy criticism of Israel. But when Freeman has shown such a glaring ignorance of history when it comes to Israeli-Arab relations (a subject in which he should be an expert), consistently condemning Israel for nonexistent faults and denying its virtues and accomplishments, I have to say that his behavior looks more like instinctive hostility than healthy or honest criticism.

I'll cite two examples of Freeman's troubling tendency to lie, or come very close to lying, on the subject of Israel. In 2006 Freeman presented the following analysis of the root causes of 9/11:

We have paid heavily and often in treasure for our unflinching support and unstinting subsidies of Israel's approach to managing its relations with the Arabs. Five years ago, we began to pay with the blood of our citizens here at home.

Now, basically everyone else who has studied this issue has come to the opposite conclusion: Israel is a tertiary issue for the Bin Ladens of the world, who care much more about America's support for hated secular Arab regimes like Saudi Arabia, of whom Freeman considers himself a "friend." Richard Clarke said the following, in an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg:

If you look at Al Qaeda's own writing and their public statements, Israel was not a major theme. What they say is pretty clear. They want to eliminate the presence of the 'far enemy'--us--from the Islamic world, because the far enemy props up the 'near enemy,' the moderate Arab states. If they increase the pain on us, they believe that they can topple the Arab regimes. If Israel didn't exist, they'd be doing the same thing.

This is the consensus view on Al Qaeda's ideology. Among serious scholars, Freeman's Israel-centric theory finds almost no support.

Second are Freeman's views on the nature of Arab-Israeli peace agreements. In defense of Freeman, Andrew Sullivan writes that Freeman doesn't "ignore peace treaties," as though this represents some baseline of historical honesty, but the statement by Freeman that Sullivan then admiringly quotes is not much better:

For almost forty years, Israel has had land beyond its previously established borders to trade for peace. It has been unable to make this exchange except when a deal was crafted for it by the United States, imposed on it by American pressure, and sustained at American taxpayer expense.

Never mind that such a statement only makes logical sense if you first assume Israel must be to blame for the existence of the Arab-Israeli conflict (because otherwise the statement could just as easily be a condemnation of the Arabs for their unwillingness to make peace without American hand-holding), the statement is not even true. Israel had made three famous peace agreements with its neighbors: with Egypt (1978-79), with the PLO (1993), and with Jordan (1994). In the first two cases, the US inserted itself into peace talks that were already going on, for the benefit of American prestige in the region. On the heels of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Henry Kissinger actually prevented Israel and Egypt from coming to an agreement until he could get there and "facilitate" it. In the lead up to the 1993 Oslo Accords between Israel and the PLO, Norway had a far more important role to play than the US did, mediating between the Israeli government and the PLO for years before America has any word of such contacts. (I suggest Ken Stein's Heroic Diplomacy on the Israel-Egypt talks and David Makovsky's Making Peace with the PLO on the Oslo Accords.)

This is the hostility toward Israel that Jeff Goldberg describes--Freeman's view of history is warped against Israel to the point that, although he doesn't deny the occurrence of famous events, he does twist those events until they are unrecognizable as the truth. Statements like "Demonstrably, Israel excels at war; sadly, it has shown no talent for peace" are worthy, perhaps, of an essayist or a moral philosopher. They are not the words of a man who should be America's chief intelligence analyst.

Israel's radiocative governing coalition

Yossi Klein Halevi has some great analysis of Israel's political situation following last month's elections. Now is not the time for a weak and unstable governing coalition, but unfortunately it looks like that's exactly what Israel is going to get.

Bargaining with Russia

Finally, we have a president who doesn't see hard-nosed international diplomacy as a form of moral relativism or surrender. Check out this article about a secret letter Obama wrote to the Russian government to help coax them into helping us out with Iran's nuclear program.

Even if this diplomatic initiative doesn't succeed in the short run, it's important that America show that the olive branch is really our preferred approach. That message got lost in all the blustering machismo of the Bush administration. I don't think our image would have improved much under a President John "We Are All Georgians" McCain, either.

"Nuance" is well on its way toward no longer being a dirty word.

The critics of Chas Freeman, and their critics

Chas Freeman has been tapped to chair the National Intelligence Council, and his appointment has generated great concern over his financial background and his political leanings. To wit, Freeman served as US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, heads the Saudi-funded think tank the Middle East Policy Council, sits on the board of a Chinese-government-owned oil company with major investments in Sudan and Iran, and has expressed sympathy for Chinese repression surrounding the Tienanmen Square Massacre. Such criticism has quickly ignited the argument over the power and influence of the "Israel lobby," which in this case seems to consist of five or ten (mostly Jewish) journalists. If the counter-critics spent a little more energy addressing the legitimate concerns of Freeman's critics, instead of attacking their motives, we might have a more productive conversation.

While the counter-critics talk about the intellectual dishonesty of those criticizing Freeman, they are in fact the ones making ad hominem attacks and ducking the true issue of whether Freeman is right for the post. Stephen Walt described the criticism of Freeman as a "despicable smear campaign" with "McCarthy-like overtones;" Matthew Yglesias called it a "politically motivated neocon hit job;" Robert Dreyfus says that it is a "thunderous, coordinated assault." (Coordinated? Really?) M.J. Rosenberg goes so far as to dismiss the arguments of one Jewish journalist because he has on "ethnic blinders." Instead of addressing the substance of the criticisms, these writers have instead attacked the honesty and motivations of the anti-Freeman critics themselves. Yglesias at least admits that, hey, these people may actually be right! For Yglesias, however, the truth of Freeman's critics is still less important than the fact that they are "persecuting Freeman in bad faith."

When pro-Israel writers make an argument, it's a "coordinated assault" and a "neocon hit job." Does that make Walt and his crew a nefarious pro-Saudi lobby? Walt claims that all his opponents are dishonest, conspiratorial, and divided in their loyalties, but that he is in fact the unvarnished voice of reason. He is free to write whatever he wants, but when his opponents do the same, they are trying to "smear people and stifle debate." And of course, anyone who agrees with him, no matter his financial connections to foreign dictatorships, must be incorruptible and unassailable as well. Anyone see a problem with this line of reasoning?

In addition to dismissing the Freeman critics out of hand with ad hominem attacks, people like Walt and Yglesias have been misrepresenting the legitimate criticism and knocking down straw-men in a further attempt to dodge the issue. They brand everyone who criticizes Freeman as applying an extremely narrow litmus test--in Walt's words, "thou shalt not criticize Israeli policy nor question America's 'special relationship' with Israel"--but this really is not the case. Israel is an issue, yes, but so are his support for the Saudis, his support for Chinese repression, and his potential financial complications. And there's a deeper point: if it's not okay for someone to come straight out of AIPAC (which, by the way, receives no funding from a foreign government) to head the NIC, then why is it okay for someone to come straight out of a Saudi-funded NGO to assume that post? We're looking for a temperate, even-handed analyst. That should exclude both people who mindlessly support Israel, and those who mindlessly oppose it. It should also exclude those who mindlessly support Saudi Arabia.

(To be fair, David Rothkopf addresses the issue honestly and still supports the Freeman pick, but he remains the exception. Jeffrey Goldberg's response to Rothkopf is here.)

It really doesn't matter what the deeper motivations of the critics are. The important question is: is what they are saying right? Given Freeman's past financial connections to, and expressions of affinity for, odious dictatorships, I'd have to say that they are. Attacking the critics for their motivations is just a way of ducking the real issue.

When the usual pro-Israel crowd rears its ugly head, Walt and his allies are apoplectic. It doesn't really matter what is actually being said, just who is saying it.

The Ballad of Turtle and Tomato

I'm not sure how, but box turtles manage to be really darn cute sometimes.

Rush Limbaugh, cont.

Ross Douthat puts Rush Limbaugh's status in perspective:

I don't think Limbaugh is a less serious voice for conservatism than Keith Olbermann is for liberalism. But that's because I don't think either of them should be taken all that seriously - because they're media personalities whose primary loyalty is to their image and their audience, and whose primary purpose is to provoke and get attention...

Just imagine, for a moment, how conservatives would react if four months after the worst defeat liberalism had suffered in a generation, an Olbermann (or a Moyers or a Michael Moore or a Bill Maher or whomever) showed up to deliver the keynote address at a liberal equivalent of CPAC, and during the course of his speech he blasted every Democrat who disagrees with him as a miserable sell-out, suggested that conservatives are fascists and conservatism a psychosis, lectured the crowd on the irrelevance of policy ideas to liberalism's political prospects, and insisted that the only blueprint liberals need to win elections is the one that Lyndon Johnson used to rout Barry Goldwater. And then further imagine that both before and after this speech, a series of left-of-center politicians ventured criticisms of Olbermann, only to beat a hasty and apologetic retreat as soon as he turned his fire on them. Conservatives would be chortling - and rightly so! Not because liberalism needs to purge or marginalize its Keith Olbermanns, or because impassioned liberal entertainers don't have a place in left-of-center discourse - but because when your political persuasion faces a leadership vacuum, you don't want to have it filled by someone who appeals to an impassioned but narrow range of voters, and whose central incentive is to maximize his own ratings.

Déjà vu from the Bush administration

An Argentinian newspaper describes how then-Attorney-General Alberto Gonzales defended his "torture memos" in a conversation with Argentine Interior Minister Anibal Fernandez in 2007:

Fernandez said that Argentina's cooperation [in the war on terror] had a limit: he mentioned explicitly Gonzales' famous memos and explained to him the goverment's disagreement with their substance...Gonzales's amazing response was that those memos had not been conceived with public consumption in mind. [Partial translation here.]

Former Bush administration lawyer John Yoo defends his "torture memos" in an interview with the Orange County Register yesterday:

These memos I wrote were not for public consumption. They lack a certain polish, I think.

Album Pan of the Day

This may be the best pan of a rock album I've ever read. From Robert Christgau's review of White Zombie's 1987 album Soul Crusher:

People consent to fascism because they think fascism will be more fun than this. They could be right.