Category Archives: Republicans

Updated: The Politics Of Torture

America, Barack Obama, Bush, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Homeland Security, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Neoconservatism, Republicans, Terrorism

When I think of a libertarian-leaning patriotic warrior, I think of Michael Scheuer. The chief of the CIA’s Osama bin Laden unit from 1996 to 1999, Scheuer is also the man behind the enhanced interrogation methods, which the hard-left and their friends on the libertarian left would have you believe are as heinous as the war crime at Hiroshima.

Like myself, Scheuer opposed the invasion of Iraq, opposes the occupation of Afghanistan, the presence of permanent troops across the world, and the nation-building farce. Scheuer, like this classical liberal writer, has excoriated Bush as much as he has Obama (adjusted for time in office).

Scheuer told Glenn Beck (May 21) that the Clinton administration practiced exactly the same interrogation methods with terrorists—including rendition and water boarding — methods he had a hand in devising. Both Republicans and Democrats, said Scheuer, are playing politics with the security of Americans, and that includes Mr. Hannity’s hero: Dick Cheney.

I wrote this about the hysteria: “The two parties are exchanging fusillades over ten interrogation techniques deployed with fourteen ‘high value al-Qaida detainees,’ three of whom endured the most controversial method of all, because they were purported to possess ‘credible intelligence of an imminent terrorist attack,’ as well as ‘actionable intelligence’ to ‘prevent, disrupt or delay an attack.’ …
there is a vigorless, extinction-courting quality to those who squeal about placing a bug in the bug-phobic Abu Zubaydah’s ‘confinement box.’ These are just the type of insects the likes of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed would delight in squashing.”

Scheuer nails it in a Washington Post op-ed: This “episode of political theater [is] another major step in the bipartisan dismantling of America’s defenses based on the requirements of presidential ideology. George W. Bush’s democracy-spreading philosophy yielded the invasion of Iraq and set the United States at war with much of the Muslim world. Bush’s worldview thereby produced an enemy that quickly outpaced the limited but proven threat-containing capacities of the major U.S. counterterrorism programs — rendition, interrogation and unmanned aerial vehicle attacks.”

And this important insight as to the self-righteous, reality averse Utopianism which unites neoconservatives, liberals and libertarians:

“Obama now stands alongside Bush as a genuine American Jacobin, both of them seeing the world as they want it to be, not as it is. Whereas Bush saw a world of Muslims yearning to betray their God for Western secularism, Obama gazes upon a globe that he regards as largely carnivore-free and believes that remaining threats can be defused by semantic warfare; just stop saying ‘War on Terror’ and give talks in Turkey and on al-Arabiyah television, for example.”

“Incorrigibly anti-American” all.

Update (May 23): Andrew C. McCarthy (via reader Robert Glisson) raises a perfectly good point about ex post facto prosecutions, which the Constitution prohibits for obvious reasons.
The point about the Democrats conducting a political fishing expedition is true too. For, the invasion of Iraq, as I’ve said, repeatedly, not the dunking of the unlovely KSM and Abu Zubaydah, is the real issue here. You’re following the wrong scent, and I have no idea why:
“The torture kerfuffle is secondary to—and subsumed within—the broader category of an unjust war, waged by George Bush with Democratic assent.”
Given that the jack-ass Democrats welcomed the opportunity to “lug an army across the ocean to occupy a third-world country that was no danger to us and had not threatened us,” it behooves them to focus on bubkiss, minutia.
That our friend Myron is following the scent of the females and pacifists is, well, baffling. The greatest sin of all is pacifism.
I’d trust the patriotic and moral Scheuer, who knew a thing or two about the capabilities of al-Qaida, to protect me, over the Pussy Brigade (PB).
If someone suggests prosecuting Bush and the gang for invading Iraq, they’ll get my full attention. Until such an unlikely day, please spare me the self-righteous fussing over what the PB decries as torture and the loss of Our Values (what values?).

Updated: Arnold Issuing IOUs

Classical Liberalism, Debt, Economy, Federalism, Government, Inflation, Political Economy, Republicans, The State

For a long time, “moderate” Republicans considered California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger a member of the “saner” Republican guard. Arnold drove his state to insolvency, and insolvency, you see, can shore up a moderate’s credentials.

Schwarzenegger has pumped up his state’s bloated bureaucracy and ballooning parasitical class. Now, in a referendum, California voters have rejected milquetoast measures that would allow The Terminator to continue to hobble along with his $21 billion deficit.

The Republican governor made sure he was out of town during the vote. “He was not the public face of the effort,” reports the New York Times. But rather, Arnold “let teachers and firefighters do his talking for him in advertisements, and indeed was not even in the state the day of the vote.”

“Representative democracy,” wrote Ludwig von Mises in Bureaucracy, “cannot subsist if a great part of the voters are on the government pay roll. If the members of parliament no longer consider themselves mandatories of the taxpayers but deputies of those receiving salaries, wages, subsidies, doles, and other benefits from the treasury, democracy is done for.”

One of the causes of inflation and debt is the public sector—with its capacity to hire while the public sector must fire—and award its members with inflated wages and benefits, the kind we can only dream of.

Update (May 20): Arnold gave it a bash; he tried to peddle a “package of budget-balancing measures that he promised would temporarily fix the state’s financial crisis.”

MSNBC: “Schwarzenegger said the state’s residents have had to sell off motorcycles, second cars and hold garage sales to make ends meet in recent months. Now, they’re telling state officials that the government has to shrink, too.

“Don’t come to us for extra help. That was the message.”

Me: Moocher-in-chief, however, knows how to try and prolong the party, with some leverage against the moochers he governs:

“Still, Schwarzenegger said the budget cuts to come may be more painful than California voters realize. While they may not want to pay more for services, they can’t say specifically which services they would pare, he said.

He said cuts will certainly come in education, health care and in prisons by transferring undocumented immigrants to federal facilities and transferring more non-violent offenders to local jails. He plans to meet with state lawmakers in the afternoon to discuss the state’s options.”

Updated: ‘He One Holy Roller’

Constitution, Democrats, Ethics, Federalism, Individual Rights, Iraq, Law, Morality, Neoconservatism, Political Philosophy, Republicans

Another of my archaic titles (it hails from the Beatles’ “Come Together“).

Speaking at Notre Dame, “America’s leading Roman Catholic university,” President Obama called on the factions warring over abortion to come together and find common grounds.

“So let’s work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions by reducing unintended pregnancies, and making adoption more available, and providing care and support for women who do carry their child to term.”

I agree. In their lyrics, the Beatles exhorted, “Come Together Right Now Over Me.” Make it, “Come Together Right Now Over the Constitution.”

There is no warrant in the constitution for or against abortion, adultery, homo-or hetero marriage, etc.

Quaint, I know, but to the federal government were delegated only limited and enumerated powers (Article I, Section 8):

The Tenth Amendment to the Constitution states:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Yet pro-life advocates want to force their way on the rest through a constitutional amendment. And pro-choice agitators wish to compel the country—and their countrymen who oppose the procedure—to pay for abortions.

Obama is no constitutional scholar although he is touted as one. But he should know that the Constitution proscribes his meddling and prescribes, via the brilliant Tenth Amendment, a perfectly good solution: Leave it to the states and the individuals concerned (and let them pay out-of pocket).

Would that pro-life types fussed as much over fully formed, innocent human beings (such as those who’ve perished in Iraq) as they do over fetuses. Republicans sure showed their contempt for life in their enthusiasim for the carnage visited on Iraqis.

Come to think of it, the culture of life never seems to extend beyond a claim of dominion over another human being’s body.

Update (May 19): I’ve posted this Iraq notice before, but judging from the letters received, retention is non-existent. So here goes again:

A note to the neoconservatives who frequent this site, and post their ill-formulated fulminations vis-a-vis the war on Iraq: That war is not going to be adjudicated again here, not ever. I chronicled the invasion of Iraq at great length, applying fact and every ounce of reason in my possession to repudiate and denounce that war crime. The case is closed! Neoconservative ideologues stand in the dock for aiding and abetting a war crime. The lazy neoconservative can read my archive on the topic. While I can imagine these ideologues urgently need to make peace with their maker, or consciences, for their role in a crime of such moral and material magnitude, they will not do so on my private property!

Rudderless Republicans: An “All-Male Version of the View”

Federal Reserve Bank, Liberty, Political Philosophy, Republicans, Ron Paul

The Southern Avenger, AKA Jack Hunter of Taki’s Magazine, is consistently fabulous. An added bonus is that he narrates his column in a lovely Southern lilt. Here, The Southern Avenger talks about how rudderless Republicans are flailing about to find “something” with which to beat the Democrats. For instance, the gem Jeb Bush has offered up: “It’s time to leave Reagan behind,” and, “You can’t beat something with nothing. The other side has something. I don’t like it, but they have it, and we have to be mindful and respectful of that.” Want this wombat in power?