The Victorious Opposition

As I’ve said before, you really can’t expect the corrupt to be punished under our Mickey Mouse criminal justice system.  Maybe this mistrial is just a setback, but we’ll see:

They were close. After three weeks of respectful but increasingly tense deliberations, 11 jurors were ready to convict Rod Blagojevich of what prosecutors called a “political corruption crime spree” that would have sent yet another former Illinois governor to prison.
Not close enough. On vote after vote, the jury kept coming up one juror short — a lone holdout who wouldn’t budge and would agree only that Blagojevich lied to the FBI.

Patrick Fitzgerald seems to do a pretty good job of successfully prosecuting people for lying during investigations without actually managing to get the defendants for any of the crimes that prompted the investigations, but I digress.

I’m a big believer in jury nullification, seeing it as a counterbalance against possible prosecutorial abuse.  Under many circumstances, I could be sympathetic to a juror who refuses to convict but, not this time.  I can’t go so far as to say that there was any wrongdoing on the holdout-juror’s part because there is no evidence of it nor can I claim to know what motivated her to dig in her heels over this.  However, I’m pretty sure something is wrong with this person and 2 + 2 does not make 4 with the whole situation.  Keep in mind that Blagojevich was impeached and removed from office when both houses of the Illinois legislature unanimously decided to do so, not counting one House member who voted “present” who may have only been making some sort of Obama-related joke.

To say that this guy was not guilty in spite of the evidence is insane.  It’s unfortunate that this juror felt the need to go rogue on his behalf.  Unless there’s a book deal in it for her, I guess we’ll never know why it was done.  Hopefully, the next jury will be of better quality.

Pretty ugly, if true:

The victims are scarcely even recognizable as human beings. Turkish-Kurdish human rights activists believe the people in the photos are eight members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) underground movement, who are thought to have been killed in September 2009.

In March, the activists gave the photos to a German human rights delegation comprised of Turkey experts, journalists and politicians from the far-left Left Party, as SPIEGEL reported at the end of July. Now Hans Baumann, a German expert on photo forgeries has confirmed the authenticity of the photos, and a forensics report released by the Hamburg University Hospital has backed the initial suspicion, saying that it is highly probable that the eight Kurds died “due to the use of chemical substances.”

Did the Turkish army in fact use chemical weapons and, by doing so, violate the Chemical Weapons Convention it had ratified?

...

The Turkish Foreign Ministry has rejected the accusations, according to the Berlin daily newspaper Die Tageszeitung, which reported on the case Thursday. Turkey is a signatory to the Chemical Weapons Convention, and its armed forces do not possess any biological or chemical weapons, the ministry reportedly said.

This is being pushed by a lot of left-wing activists and Kurdish sympathizers, so you can take it as you will.  The international media can certainly be fooled by the claims of militant groups and have been plenty of times before.  Hell, the US Military is routinely hit with false accusations.  So did the Turks use chemical weapons against the Kurds a la Saddam Hussein?

Hard to say.  It’s true that the Turks have made border incursions into Iraq to get at the PKK in the past few years and will probably do so even more after we have left that country.  Clearly, they’re not shy about little niceties such as international borders when it comes to fighting their own terrorist problem.  There were also accusations back in 1988 that they used chemical weapons on the Kurds. 

On the other hand, there’s zero evidence that Turkey currently stores any chemical weapons at all.  Who to believe?  If a NATO ally actually did use chemical weapons against the Kurds, I’d say it’s high time we reconsidered that relationship.  The Turkish stunt with the “peace flotilla” was quite bad enough.  It may be getting to the point that the US and Turkey no longer have enough common interests to justify staying friends.

All that said, I don’t think that the Turks did use chemical weapons against the Kurds this time, based on the lack of proof that they had any gas to use.  Still, the Turkey vs PKK issue is not going to go away and not going to get any nicer.  It bears watching.

Last fall we discussed whether the legislation that defunded ACORN was an unconstitutional Bill of Attainder. ACORN was granted a preliminary injunction in District court, and the DoJ appealed. Yesterday the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against ACORN (PDF file). T. David Kopel at The Volokh Conspiracy wrote a really good summary of the decision; I’m recommending you go read it rather than trying to do my own summary.

One interesting point was the government trying to argue that ACORN didn’t have standing (we’ve debated the issue of standing on more than one occasion). The Circuit Court appears to me to have said “the bloody law names them explicitly; in what context do you think that doesn’t grant standing in and of itself?”, which seems eminently logical (so it’s probably wrong ).

The analysis of the issues related to Bill of Attainder seems quite thorough to me, distinguishing this case from the precedent cited by the District Court.

At this point, the case is being remanded back to the District Court for proceedings on ACORN’s First Amendment and Due Process claims, but the Bill of Attainder issue appears to be dead, unless ACORN tries for an en banc appeal or certiorari to the SCOTUS.

We’ve been having a lengthy and challenging discussion about America’s Navy; what it’s strategy, goals, and arsenal should include being major themes.  Gradually, I’ve been pushing the notion that we’re only using aircraft carriers because they work well for the types of military interventions that we engage in but using them in a major war would be a disaster.

This isn’t an attempt to continue that discussion but more of an attempt to gauge where everyone stands on what that “major war” should or shouldn’t be.  Note that I don’t consider Iraq or Afghanistan to fall under that heading.  I’m talking about a war in which our vital interests are at stake, we mobilize our full strength, the enemy commands a modern state, and the war has more of a global or hemispheric rather than a simply regional nature.  That’s just some of the criteria and there could be others.

Would you support total war in any of these circumstances:

1. China attempting to overrun Taiwan?
2. Iran detonating a nuclear weapon in Israel?
3. North Korea sinking an American vessel (something small like a frigate) with a submarine?
4. Russia invading any ex-Soviet republic NATO member nation in the same way it did to Georgia?

With Taiwan, I am completely against intervening in a forceful reunification attempt by China, partly because China won’t loan us money to wage a war against them and partly because I don’t believe that it would benefit our national interest in the slightest while it would probably result in millions dead.

An Iranian/Israeli nuclear exchange is another story.  On one hand, we’ve never directly intervened on Israel’s side in any conventional war and I’m not aware of any agreement we have obligating us to help them.  However, would the Iranians use of nuclear weapons be too much and convince you that the regime needs to be put down for good?  On this one, I’d be willing to see the US commit to war.

#3 is the only one that involves a direct attack on the US.  NK is nuclear-armed and has a large army, of course, so would you be willing to jump into WWIII with them over a sunken ship?  In this one, I would probably push for the NK’s to hand over the sub crew for prosecution as war criminals and pay reparations first.  Failing that, I can see us going at it and it will probably have wide public support.

Finally, if the Russians attack a NATO country, we’re obligated to go to war but should we?  I’ve long opposed the expansion of NATO and would even prefer to see it dissolved.  Even though this scenario is the one we’re most likely to go to war over, I think it would be the hardest to build public support for since we have zero interests in the old Soviet republics that we stupidly brought into NATO.

If you hate these scenarios, tell me who and under what circumstances you can see WWIII being fought over. 

As for nation-building interventions, I’m done.  I want to be done with Afghanistan and I don’t care what happens to Iraq when the last US soldier gets on the last helicopter (and no, I don’t want to discuss it in the thread).  What would threaten our vital interests enough to bring on total war and would you support it?

This story broke this week:

This was a “network,” a “deadly pipeline,” said Attorney General Eric Holder as he unsealed four terrorism indictments against 14 people, most of them of Somali descent, including several American citizens, charging them with funneling funds and fighters to the Somali terrorist group, Al Shabab.

Now, a couple of months ago, I had the good fortune to attend a seminar dealing with Islamic terrorism from a historical perspective of political violence.  It was presented by the US Attorney’s Office and the speakers included a West Point Academy Instructor who detailed the development of Islamic extremism, the sheriff’s deputy who stumbled onto the Hezbollah operation that was financing terrorism through the sales of contraband cigarettes, a Pakistani professor who shared an extensive knowledge of the real situation in Afghanistan, and notably, a former US diplomat who was one of our foremost experts on Somalia.  Unfortunately, I haven’t gotten back my program guide back from a friend who wanted to review some of the educational material in it so I can’t remember what his name was.

We’ll get back to that.  First, see that Holder made this point:

And they also show the importance, as Eric Holder also noted today, of cooperation from Muslim-Americans who are outraged and frightened by the wave of radicalization that has overtaken so many young people of their faith.

Holder thanked in particular, the Muslim community of Minnesota, without whom the conspiracy might not have been discovered.

Rush Limbaugh took Holder to task for this on his show yesterday:

So here’s a press conference to announce that they’ve charged 14 American citizens with providing aid and support to a Somali terror group called al-Shabaab and Holder thinks his major thrust, major point here is to praise “the American Muslim community [who] have been strong partners in fighting this emerging threat.”

I rarely disagree with Rush and I despise Eric Holder, but Rush is completely wrong on this.  What I learned from that seminar is that the Somalis absolutely hate the al-Qaeda affiliated al-Shabaab.  Frequently, they wind up sending money to them to ransom family members who are kidnapped, brainwashed, and set loose as suicide bombers.  In 2009, they convinced a group of radicalized American Somalis to come out and join them, some of whom have since carried out suicide bombings.   It was the Somali Muslim community that came forward and begged the FBI to help, giving them the information to begin the search and warning them that the missing men might be preparing to commit violent acts.  The support of Muslim communities in investigating terrorism is essential and Holder is right to praise and encourage it.

An interesting aspect to the Somalis is that they move into areas as a group, network among each other extensively, and send wealth home to support their families, clans, and tribes or bring them into the US.  What’s left of Somalia’s economy absolutely depends on this money and the Somalis are committed to not seeing it disrupted.  One fear is that al-Shabaab might decide to target the US on American soil but it is probable that the Somalis living here will recognize the economic damage this will do in their home country and inform the FBI to prevent it. 

It’s not political correctness, Rush.  It’s simply good community policing.  You can’t treat the community as the enemy and expect them to help you expose and capture the criminals hidden within it.  Many of the problems that police departments have in dealing with the black community suffer from this lack of trust and everyone is worse off for it.

The real fear I have of this “Victory Mosque” thing is that it’s going to boost suspicion against Muslims, leave them feeling alienated, and make them less willing to cooperate with authorities.  Some would like to run wiretaps all the way through that thing.  Personally, I’d rather give the imam the opportunity to prove his good intentions by letting me know when one of the members of his congregation starts showing dangerous signs of radicalism or up and travels to Pakistan on short notice, wouldn’t you?

Could General Petreaus turn the tide yet again?  This is a positive development:

As a result of findings during a review commissioned by Gen. David Petraeus, it has been made clear that troops are allowed to request airstrikes and artillery strikes against insurgents hiding in dilapidated buildings or other abandoned structures. Commanders conducting the review said they found some junior commanders had misinterpreted the rules to mean they weren’t allowed to fire on such places.

It was a great victory for the Taliban when they tricked us into giving up our airstrike ability on the grounds that we were blowing up so many supposed “wedding parties” that had the uncanny misfortune of firing at our aircraft.  It took hundreds of Stinger missiles for the mujahideen to neutralize Soviet airpower while we are stopped by nothing more than bad PR and misinformation.  Small wonder that bin Laden believed us to be the weaker of the two superpowers.

I am glad for this change.  Of course, the political leaders and wrongheaded military commanders who established this policy will moan about how these restrictive ROE have saved Afghan lives but ignore how deadly they’ve been for our troops.  Indeed, we’ve taken more casualties in Afghanistan in the first year and a half of the Obama Administration than we did in all the years combined for both of Bush’s terms.  I’m disgusted that “junior commanders” were blamed for the misinterpretation and I don’t believe it.  General McChrystal approved of these rules and knew what was going on.  The senior military and political leadership are being given cover, as often happens with high-level studies.  They don’t deserve it.  Those stupid ROE killed too many of our troops and endangered the entire mission for too long.

Maybe we’ll win after all.

I’m a big fan of Petreaus and supported the Iraq Surge from the beginning, because I saw what his plan was and understood it.  Similarly, I’ve been against the Afghan Surge since before it began and grew to oppose the war there when I started learning more about it, particularly with regard to the rules of engagement (ROE) put in place by McChrystal.

I’ve never thought that simply adding more troops were the answer in Afghanistan or even in Iraq.  The types of troops, the manner in which they’re deployed, and the tactics they use are what counts combined with political efforts on the civilian side.  In Iraq, everything came together when the Sunnis realized that al-Qaeda in Iraq was worse than the Americans, who might stack them up into naked pyramids but not drill holes into their kneecaps, ban cigarettes, and force their daughters to marry their fighters.  It was that we affirmed our committment to the Sunnis and other Iraqis that we were not going to leave and were going to stay as long as it took that convinced them to throw in their lot on our side.  In Iraq, we had well-defined political objectives in the form of Congress’ benchmarks and the only concern was to kill or capture as many AQI’s as humanly possible, not to avoid combat.

None of this is true in Afghanistan.  The Karzai government is corrupt and hated by the people and even stole the last election.  We look stupid and evil because we let them do it.  There isn’t going to be an “Awakening” unless its that the overwhelming majority of the people wakes up and decides to pick up rifles and drive us and our asshole puppet government out.  Our solution has been to send in more troops and tell them not to fight.  We’re not protecting the Afghan people and we’re not killing our enemies.  Worse, we have told the Afghan people and our enemies when we’re going to start leaving.  Does anyone here doubt that they’ll just wait us out?

Worse, we don’t have any political objectives in Afghanistan worth mentioning and its not clear what we consider to be progress.  The Obama Administration embraced this surge just because they were afraid that they’d look weak on terrorism if they didn’t.  This is surprising, because the drone attacks in Pakistan are an extremely bold, even ballsy move. 

Instead of fighting a cheaper, more effective war that is focused on killing our enemies, we see our troops sent out in huge numbers to be IED and ambush magnets who are ordered not to hunt them.  We don’t know what they’re supposed to accomplish by doing this, won’t know when they’re done, and even if it succeeds it will all fall apart after next year.

I hope General Petreaus is successful, but I’m afraid that he is going to try to do what worked in Iraq again in a place where it simply will not.  He has to get firm political objectives from the President and Congress, have the cooperation of US diplomats, get rid of the arbitrary withdrawal deadline, and get rid of those asinine ROE (that have probably killed more American troops in Afghanistan in the past year than AQ has in Iraq).

Petreaus is the best possible man for this job but if he is going to keep doing it the way it has been done under McChrystal, it’s not going to be good enough.  Obama needs to either fight this thing like it matters or get out immediately.

UPDATE: Ah, fuck.

Now, I’m not going to get too much into the things General McChrystal and his aides have been saying.  You know, the sheer amount of shit they’ve been talking on the civilian leadership.  You can read about that anywhere. 

No, I’m interested in what got buried near the back of the article.  It’s what the troops think about McChrystal’s strategy (previously criticized here) and how they think it’s going:

“One soldier shows me the list of new regulations the platoon was given. “Patrol only in areas that you are reasonably certain that you will not have to defend yourselves with lethal force,” the laminated card reads. For a soldier who has traveled halfway around the world to fight, that’s like telling a cop he should only patrol in areas where he knows he won’t have to make arrests. “Does that make any fucking sense?” asks Pfc. Jared Pautsch. “We should just drop a fucking bomb on this place. You sit and ask yourself: What are we doing here?”

What indeed.

During the question-and-answer period, the frustration boils over. The soldiers complain about not being allowed to use lethal force, about watching insurgents they detain be freed for lack of evidence. They want to be able to fight – like they did in Iraq, like they had in Afghanistan before McChrystal.

...

Winning hearts and minds in COIN is a coldblooded thing,” McChrystal says, citing an oft-repeated maxim that you can’t kill your way out of Afghanistan. “The Russians killed 1 million Afghans, and that didn’t work.”

“I’m not saying go out and kill everybody, sir,” the soldier persists. “You say we’ve stopped the momentum of the insurgency. I don’t believe that’s true in this area. The more we pull back, the more we restrain ourselves, the stronger it’s getting.”

There’s a lot more of that in the article.  As I see it, McChrystal is a failing general and has now handed Obama the sword with which to chop off his own head.  For the sake of the troops over there, I hope Obama swings.  With McChrystal personally discredited, maybe we can trash his grand strategy too and fight a war with the right goals and methods that can actually be won.

I’ve made it pretty clear from my comments in a couple of the most recent threads that I’m opposed to the Afghanistan War.

Now, I haven’t bought into any Michael Moore-style arguments about it being a war for corporate interests nor am I weeping for the Afghan children.  I’ll leave all that to the stinking hippies.  It doesn’t have anything to do with the current occupant of the White House either.  I haven’t considered Afghanistan to be the important theatre since we invaded Iraq so I wasn’t too concerned about what we were doing there.  In 2008, while Bush was still president, I started to have doubts about the Afghan mission as it became clear that we finally won in Iraq.

I’m also not being so stupid as to claim that the enemy can beat us militarily; not like how people in 2006 gravely announced the US Military absolutely could not overcome that insidious superweapon: the roadside bomb.

No, the problem is that we accomplished everything we set out to do in Afghanistan once every living, active member of al-Qaeda’s leadership headed for Pakistan in 2002 and pretty much stayed there while the Taliban ran for the hills.  We pulled it off with massive airpower and a few thousand ground troops.  Fast forward to today and look at some of the political objectives we have, according to the State Department:

Reconstruction and Development

Improving Governance

Rule of Law

Advancing the Rights of Afghan Women

These are not strategic reasons to commit any nation to war.  Especially ours. What does any of that shit really have to do with why we’re in Afghanistan?  Does anyone really believe that we can improve governance and establish the rule of law in a country that applies the death penalty for converting from Islam to another religion?  And then there’s the bullshit about the rights of women.  Do we need to also start invading and occupying other countries if they don’t have domestic violence laws as strong as ours?  Is this a war on terror or a war on misogyny?  Are we going to drop a bunker buster on some Third World shithole just because the head of the secret police forgot to put the toilet seat down?

Turning Afghanistan into whatever-the-hell we’re trying to turn it into isn’t our business.  The only reason we should be there is to kill terrorists.  That’s what we’re doing in Pakistan and last time I checked, we’re using a few CIA Predator drones to handle it.  We don’t need 80,000 troops for that and such a large number of troops is counterproductive anyway. 

In most conservative circles, being anti-war on Afghanistan is heretical.  I don’t mind catching hell for it since it’s generally considered to be the War That Pretty Much Everybody Agrees On (Out Of Habit).  It’s not that I’m being defeatist—I’m not that.  It’s that our political objectives are fucking ridiculous at this point and any gains we make are going to be temporary since Obama already put an expiration date on this surge before it began.  If we reorient our strategy to focus more on the killing of the jihadis and less on the improvement of the rights of the ladies and the plowing of the opium, I’ll come back on board.

This is hard for the Democrats in charge right now.  I think they would really like to break free of this war but don’t feel like they can handle the political fallout from the Republicans.  That’s too bad.  They’re letting themselves get pushed into disaster by investing more money, men, and effort into a struggle without realistic objectives or even worthwhile goals.  The courageous thing to do would be to reduce our troops to the minimum we need to control some bases for executing rapid attacks wherever we find al-Qaeda and its affiliates.  Instead, Obama talks tough and sends more troops in for a cause he clearly doesn’t believe in.

Every time a serviceman dies for the sake of propping up a corrupt ingrate like Karzai and trying to turn that medieval backwards hellhole into a virtual Switzerland, it further affirms my conviction that we’ve turned the right war—a just war of necessity—into the wrong one.  A wasteful joke.

I originally posted this as a comment in Thrill’s post about the Times Square bomber, but it deserves a top post. Just like with the crotch bomber last December, many members of the GOP and various other right-wing pundits are all over the Obama administration for Mirandizing the suspect. While it might be debatable that crotch bomber didn’t warrant Miranda (a position I disagree with), Times Square Guy is a US citizen. We have Rep. Peter King spouting nonsense like this:

“Did they Mirandize him? I know he’s an American citizen but still,” King said.

As I noted in the other thread - Morionis Ipsa Loquitur, which is Latin for “the moron speaks for itself”.

Never one to be left behind, Sen. John McCain jumped on the “no Miranda for terrorists” bandwagon, along with his pal Sen. Joe Lieberman. This isn’t surprising; Lieberman is co-sponsor on McCain’s egregious bill to change detention policies, which includes applying the “enemy combatant” label, and treatment, to US citizens captured on US soil - this goes so far that Sen. Lindsey Graham, co-author with McCain (and retired Senator John Warner) of the Military Commissions Act, is having nothing to do with it.

You know things are topsy-turvy when it’s Glenn Beck who gets it right. My complete lack of respect for Glenn Beck is well documented, but I will state unequivocally that he is on the right side of this one,  and I give him props for it.

Lieberman, though, doesn’t think even this goes far enough. He wants to ratchet it up to a whole new level:

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) is planning to introduce a bill that would allow the government to take away citizenship from Americans who join foreign terrorist organizations.

The proposal would amend current law that bars American citizens from fighting for foreign armies at the price of losing their citizenship.

“I think it’s time for us to look at whether we want to amend that law to apply it to American citizens who choose to become affiliated with foreign terrorist organizations, whether they should not also be deprived automatically of their citizenship and therefore be deprived of rights that come with that citizenship when they are apprehended and charged with a terrorist act,” Lieberman, who helms the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said on Fox News.

Now, I do think that those who take up arms against our country do so at the risk of their citizenship. The problem with Lieberman’s proposal is the Constitution already takes care of this:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court. The Congress shall have power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.

The Framers created this section explicitly because it was so easy (relatively speaking) to strip an Englishman of his citizenship. They wanted to make it hard.

We have a system, Joe. It’s called “trial by jury for treason as defined in the Constitution”. Try them in absentia if necessary. And stripping them of their citizenship for a conviction is absolutely appropriate.

But shove this “guilty until proven innocent - oh, wait, you don’t get a chance to prove your innocence” nonsense where the sun doesn’t shine. Stop trying to look tough. It’s not working. You just look foolish.

UPDATE: Here is the text of the bill as submitted today: Terrorist Expatriation Act (PDF file). “TEA”. Hmm. Coincidence? I’d be surprised. Way to rile up the troops. This bill adds new paragraphs to 8 U.S.C. 1481. There are two major problems with this bill as presented.

First, all of the items already listed in that section of the US code are quite explicit (e.g. explicit renunciation) or required to be proven before a competent tribunal, while the new “aiding & abetting terrorists” language is quite soft, and not required to be proven before a competent tribunal. In fact, the draft bill is silent on how any of these supposed activities is to be proven.

Second, as I noted above, the Constitution already covers this, and that section of the US code already covers this:

(7) committing any act of treason against, or attempting by force to overthrow, or bearing arms against, the United States, violating or conspiring to violate any of the provisions of section 2383 of title 18, or willfully performing any act in violation of section 2385 of title 18, or violating section 2384 of title 18 by engaging in a conspiracy to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, if and when he is convicted thereof by a court martial or by a court of competent jurisdiction.

That language already covers the stuff in this “new” legislation - but it actually requires it to be proven, while the new language doesn’t.

This is headline-making nonsense. Dangerous, stupid, headline-making nonsense.

Well, this is certainly apropos of the discussion we’ve been having in rich’s thread about retirement savings. Social Security just went into the red:

This year, the system will pay out more in benefits than it receives in payroll taxes, an important threshold it was not expected to cross until at least 2016, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

...

Mr. Goss said Social Security’s annual report last year projected revenue would more than cover payouts until at least 2016 because economists expected a quicker, stronger recovery from the crisis. Officials foresaw an average unemployment rate of 8.2 percent in 2009 and 8.8 percent this year, though unemployment is hovering at nearly 10 percent.

The trustees did foresee, in late 2008, that the recession would be severe enough to deplete Social Security’s funds more quickly than previously projected. They moved the year of reckoning forward, to 2037 from 2041. Mr. Goss declined to reveal the contents of the forthcoming annual report, but said people should not expect the date to lurch forward again.

As I mentioned in rich’s thread, we do all of our retirement planning with an assumption that we’ll get no money from Social Security. Under these projections, we’d likely get a few years worth (less than 10). You young’uns, however, are completely screwed.

There are lots and lots of ideas of how to fix Social Security, but almost none of them actually address the root cause of the problem (Rep. Ryan’s “Roadmap For America’s Future” does address it). That’s because the root cause is politically sensitive (some might say suicidal): Social Security’s eligibility age of 65 was selected, back in 1933, because that was the life expectancy of ~50% of the population (i.e. half the population died before they could get any money out of the system). Today, somewhere around 75% of men and 80% of women live past the age of 65. Which means the percentage of the population that takes money from Social Security has become larger and larger compared to the percentage of people paying into the system. Not to mention that they are taking funds from the system for much, much longer. I believe that in 1933 it was an average of ~5-10 years of benefits for those that made it to getting benefits, compared with 20+ years these days.

In other words, the root cause of Social Security’s problems, and the fatal flaw in the design of the system, is that it is tied to age, not average life expectancy, which is what the original design intent was. No amount of bandaid, private investment accounts, tax accounting changes, etc is going to fix this. Privatization will help wean some people off the public dole, and that’s good on its face, so should be supported. But the only way to “fix” Social Security is to train the population to treat it the way it was intended to be - a very short end-of-life safety blanket for the 50% of the population (or less) that reaches a very old age.

With AARP and other groups, even mentioning this in public is guaranteed political suicide. So I have no real expectation that it will ever get fixed, and all the FICA taxes I’ve paid for 25+ years and will continue to pay for another 20-25 years, are going to be pissed straight down the drain. But I would really like to hear the people in charge actually acknowledge how and why the system is so completely broken. Rep. Ryan did, and good on him for doing so (as I mentioned in my post about the roadmap). We need more people to do so.

Following up on Thrill’s earlier thread on Obama’s use of military commissions and my thread on the draft McCain bill, I ran across this NYTimes post this morning:

Former counterterrorism officials are warning that the political debate has lost touch with the pragmatic advantages of keeping both the civilian and military systems available.

“This rush to military commissions is based on premises that are not true,” said John B. Bellinger III, a top legal adviser to the National Security Council and the State Department under President George W. Bush. “I think it is neither appropriate nor necessary to limit terrorism cases to either military commissions alone or federal trials alone.”

...

Kenneth L. Wainstein, who was assistant attorney general for national security in the Bush administration, said, “Denying yourself access to one system in favor of the other could be counterproductive.”

“I see the benefit of having both systems available,” Mr. Wainstein said. “That’s why I applauded the Obama administration when, despite expectations to the contrary, they decided to retain military commissions. It’s good to have flexibility.”

In last week’s discussion of the Obama administration and military tribunals, Thrill mentioned this new piece of legislation, S.3081, introduced by John McCain, with Joe Leiberman and others as co-sponsors - but tellingly, Linsdsey Graham, one of McCain’s co-authors on the Military Commissions Act, expressed reservations:

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., expressed reservations about the bill, saying he “understands what John and Joe are trying to do.” But the former military lawyer added, “I just don’t feel comfortable with it. There is a role for the civilian courts to play.”

The bill’s text still isn’t available via GovTrack or Thomas (which is a bit unusual), but I found a copy of the draft (12 page PDF file) from another source. You folk know where I stand on these issues, so I hope you’ll agree that I’m not some reactionary on these issues, and when I say that this is a bad piece of legislation that needs a ton of changes if it’s to be passed, you’ll give that due consideration.

This bill is clearly a political reaction to the crotch bomber. Without an iota of explanation of why crotch-bomber is different from shoe-bomber, we’re going to pass an egregious piece of legislation to solve a problem that isn’t even a problem. “Egregious” is a strong word; it fits, though. Let’s look at some of what’s in this bill:

I must say, this really surprised me. I knew very little about Switzerland (nice skiing, great tasting chocolate) and always assumed that their fighting instinct was one notch above the French.

Although the fact that they invented fondue should be reason alone for total invasion and annihilation, the ubiquity of all those Sig 550’s within grabbing distance of your average Swiss citizen, and the mandatory basic military training for all its male citizens provides the world with a nation that can easily defend itself at the drop of a hat.

Switzerland is a country in many respects like the U.S.

There are three main governing bodies on the federal level:[33] the bicameral parliament (legislative), the Federal Council (executive) and the Federal Court (judicial).

And, instead of a country made up of individual states:

The Swiss Confederation consists of 26 cantons

It seems that the term “A well regulated militia” takes on a whole in meaning there.

The Swiss army has long been a militia trained and structured to rapidly respond against foreign aggression. Swiss males grow up expecting to undergo basic military training, usually at age 20 in the Rekrutenschule (German for “recruit school”), the initial boot camp, after which Swiss men remain part of the “militia” in reserve capacity until age 30 (age 34 for officers). Each such individual is required to keep his army-issued personal weapon (the 5.56x45mm Sig 550 rifle for enlisted personnel or the SIG 510 rifle and/or the 9mm SIG-Sauer P220 semi-automatic pistol for officers, medical and postal personnel) at home with a specified personal retention quantity of government-issued personal ammunition (50 rounds 5.56 mm / 48 rounds 9mm), which is sealed and inspected regularly to ensure that no unauthorized use takes place.

When their period of service has ended, militiamen have the choice of keeping their personal weapon and other selected items of their equipment. In this case of retention, the rifle is sent to the weapons factory where the fully automatic function is removed; the rifle is then returned to the discharged owner. The rifle is then a semi-automatic or self-loading rifle.

At an effective range of 400 meters, auto/semi-auto, it makes little difference, and no assault weapons ban for them.

This whole concept makes a lot of sense, on a number of levels. First off, the population as a whole learns a healthy respect and a working education for firearms, their limitations and safety procedures. The basic principle of survival, the protection of one’s self and family, and the preservation of one’s property ( a man’s home really is his castle) is codified and sanctioned. The crime rate (property crimes-burglary, robbery, home invasions) are reduced improving not only the quality of life but the reliance of a police force that may not be there when you need them. And, a healthy nationalistic pride in one’s country is fostered, with an understanding that each citizen is the protector and defender of mother country.

“The key to freedom is the ability to defend yourself”, yep, and there is no greater despair than knowing that your life is not within your control.

His “Holocaust” analogy was also apt. To resist, to struggle, to at least put up a fight is seminal in our basic instincts.

A short story, my first year on the job working West Hollywood, I get called to an apartment to take a stolen auto report. This old couple greets me at the door and welcomes me in. The living room is adorned in old style European architecture. As they tell me the story of their recalcitrant son, hooked on drugs, out of control, and just drove off with their only car without permission, I notice a series of numbers tattooed on the inside forearms of the couple. With Jewish accoutrement adorning the room, it took about 2 seconds to figure out what those tattoos signified. I will never forget that night.

H/T: iowntheworld

By now, you’re aware of the plane crash in Austin, almost certainly directed at the IRS.  Other sites have been swearing that this is the pilot’s suicide e-note, so I’m going to run with it.

Take a few moments and read it.  Note: the FBI had gotten the original message on Stack’s website removed by the server (talk about feeding into the paranoia).  I’ve changed the link.

What a scathing indictment of our entire political/economic system.  Reading this guy’s story and how he just got left feeling fucked over and had to do something drastic to settle the score was the heaviest experience I’ve had in months.  This paragraph really got me:

I remember reading about the stock market crash before the “great” depression and how there were wealthy bankers and businessmen jumping out of windows when they realized they screwed up and lost everything.  Isn’t it ironic how far we’ve come in 60 years in this country that they now know how to fix that little economic problem; they just steal from the middle class (who doesn’t have any say in it, elections are a joke) to cover their asses and it’s “business-as-usual”.  Now when the wealthy fuck up, the poor get to die for the mistakes… isn’t that a clever, tidy solution.

I read the whole note carefully, looking for signs that this guy was some kind of evil lunatic and couldn’t find any.  We want to assume that a person who does something like this is irredeemable but all I see is a regular guy who got pushed too far and didn’t know what else to do.  He was hurting and wanted to make other people hurt too.  I’m not sure why burning down his own house with his family inside was something he felt he had to do but it is easy for me to see how someone who felt completely helpless could be driven to this, particularly at the IRS.  Even though Stack bitterly criticized the Bush Administration, I don’t see anything really political or ideological in the note.  He felt like he was getting fucked by Big Government and Big Business, Wall Street and Pennsylvania Avenue all the same.  Reading his story, I really wanted to sympathize.

Maybe it makes me a bad person, but when I heard in early reports that he had slammed the plane into an FBI building, my first reaction was, “Oh, no!”  When I saw it corrected to say that it was an IRS building, I was actually relieved and thought, “Yeah, no surprise there” before realizing how fucked up that was. I was even disturbed by my own initial reaction.

To me, what this all comes down to is that millions of Americans are really hurting right now, they’re very frustrated at what business and government are doing, it’s probably going to get worse, and there are probably a lot more Joe Stack’s running around.  No, he’s not a hero and nobody should make him out to be one.  Killing yourself and others while putting your family in danger and making them homeless at the same time is the very apex of douchebaggery.  Stack also should not be used by any political side to score points against another one.  If you can say anything nice about the man, you can admit that he was non-partisan and independent at the bitter end.

Again, I am not saying that Stack is any sort of hero and if anyone deserves sympathy, it’s his family, his victims, and their families.  Nonetheless, I just have to wonder if we really have created an “American nightmare” that we’re pretending doesn’t exist; that drove a working, self-employed middle-class man to a desperate terrorist act.  Stack’s note has, more than anything, has left me feeling worried.