In the clearing stands a boxer ... somewhere

Willaim Greider (whom I have enjoyed reading since he wrote in the '80's for Rolling Stone) nails it again here.

Given the election results, the question Barack Obama has to decide for himself is whether he really wants to be president in the fullest sense. Not a moderator for earnest policy discussions. Not the national cheerleader for hope. Not the worthy visionary describing a distant future. Those qualities are elements in any successful presidency, and Obama applies them with admirable skill and seriousness.

What's missing with this president is power — a strong grasp of the powers he possesses and the willingness to govern the country with them. During the past two years, this missing quality has been consistently obvious in his rhetoric and substantive policy positions. There is a cloying Boy Scout quality in his style of leadership — the troop leader urging boys to work together on their merit badges — and none of the pigheaded stubbornness of his "I am the decider" predecessor, nor the hard steel of Lyndon Johnson or the guile of Richard Nixon.

I have never seen this fighter. I have never seen Obama respond to a challenge with a battler's mentality. During his debates with John McCain, I bemoaned to all those watching around me that he would not punch back.

Republicans, who are masters of deceptive marketing, seized on Obama's most appealing qualities and turned them upside down. Their propaganda cast him not as soft but as a power-mad (black) leftist, destroying democracy with socialist schemes. The portrait was so ludicrous and mendacious, the president's party hardly bothered to respond. Egged on by the Republican Party and Fox News, right-wing frothers conjured sicko fantasies and extreme accusations: the president is not only a black man (bad enough for the party of the white South); he is not even American. The vindictive GOP strategy is racial McCarthyism, demonizing this honorable man as an alien threat, just as cold war Republicans depicted left-liberal Democrats as commie sympathizers.

Even Obama supporters began to ask, Where is the fight in the man? Some critics blame a lack of courage, but that neglects the extraordinary nerve Obama displayed in his rise to the White House — a young black man with an unusual name and limited experience who triumphed through his audacity. Obama's governing style is a function of his biography — a man who grew up always in the middle, both black and white. He succeeded by learning rare skills, the ability to bridge different worlds comfortably and draw people together across racial, political and intellectual divides. He learned to charm and disarm, not to smash and conquer.

For the first time in his life, those qualities seem to have failed him. Indeed, he may have been misled by his high regard for his own talents. This is really his first encounter with devastating political defeat. The question now is, What will he learn from his "shellacking"? Possibly not much, since it is always very hard to rethink and adjust in midstream. But remember, this man is an unusually observant politician with a great thirst for self-reflection. One can reasonably hope that as he absorbs the hard knocks, he will make calculated changes in how he governs.

But those around him continue to kowtow and cave in, crawfish and backpedal. Does this reflect their own weakness or just their counsel to him, or the president's own view? Or is this just more of the confusion coming out of the White House right now?

Bluntly put, Obama needs to learn hardball. People saw this in him when he fired Gen. Stanley McChrystal, and many of us yearn to see more. If he absorbs the lesson of power, he will accept that sometimes in politics you can't split the difference or round off sharp edges. He has to push back aggressively and stand his ground, more like those ruthless opponents trying to bury him. If Congress won't act, the president will. But first he has to switch from cheerleading to honest talk. Tell people what the nation really needs, what Republicans intend to sabotage. In a political street fight, you've got to hit back.

Only Obama can decide this about himself, but others can influence the outcome by surrounding him with tough love and new circumstances created by their own direct actions. It does not help Obama to keep telling him he did great but the people misunderstood him. He did lousy, not great, and in many governing dimensions people understood his failures clearly enough. They knew he gave tons of money to bankers and demanded nothing in return. They knew he thought the economy was in recovery. They couldn't believe this intelligent man was that clueless.

Popular forces can blow away the fuzziness. They can mobilize to demonstrate visible support for the president's loftier goals and to warn him off the temptation to pursue a Clintonesque appeasement of the right. Given the fragile status of his presidency, Obama needs to know that caving in is sure to encourage enemies and drive off disheartened supporters. People should, likewise, call out the president's enemies and attack them with the harshness that's out of character for him. The racial McCarthyism of the GOP establishment is a good place to start.

People who still have great hope for Obama can help revive his presidency, but only if they toughen up themselves. Stop holding his hand (he's an adult) and start building a people's agenda that compels the president to change his. Obama won't like this at first—his own supporters talking back—but he can learn to draw strength from their courage. If people fail to step up with their own message, the president will likely fail with his.

2012 is literally going to be won or lost by Obama, entirely through his own action or lack thereof, in the next few weeks. Will he fight against renewing the Bush tax cuts for millionaires with a lame-duck Congress and Speaker? Will he pick up the gauntlet thrown at his feet by Mitch McConnell?

How badly does he want to be re-elected in 2012, and help Democrats down the ballot get elected as well? We'll find out soon enough.

Petraeus

After listening to Keith Olbermann and Lawrence Wilkinson last night advocate for McChrystal remaining in his post, I determined that would be both the shrewdest course of action and something Obama would not do. And sure enough ...

President Obama removed Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal as commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan on Wednesday, moving quickly to restore the unity of his administration's war effort after the general and his top aides in biting remarks in an explosive magazine article.

Obama named Gen. David H. Petraeus, the former commander of U.S. forces in Iraq and currently the head of the U.S. Central Command, to replace McChrystal and urged the Senate to confirm him promptly.

But Obama reaffirmed in blunt terms the counterinsurgency strategy he ordered last year, and he said that "war is bigger than any one man or woman, whether a private, a general or a president."

This move actually makes slightly more sense, blunting conservative criticism by tapping their Iraq hero for the job. As Laurence Lewis posted:

Conservative critics of President Obama long have derided him as weak. Intellectual, reserved, unemotional. When the BP oil gusher exploded, they criticized him for not taking aggressive enough action. Despite otherwise being critics of federal government. And then when he took decisive action by shutting down deepwater drilling and forcing BP to set aside $20 billion as a beginning of their debt repayment, they criticized him for overreaching and being a thug.

With the removal of General Stanley McChrystal from command of Afghan military operations, you can be certain that we will hear more right wing criticism. No matter what the President does, the right will criticize him. But those like McChrystal and his supporters who might have thought the President was weak now have their answer. He's the Commander-in-Chief, in a government that has civilian rule over the military. There is a chain of command. He knows it, and they that dared flout it now know it.

Let the critics come. Who looks weak now?

And of course this change maintains continuity of command and the strategy in Afghanistan and all that blahblahblah. July 2011 remains the withdrawal start date, and frankly it can't come soon enough.

Now back to the Gulf oil catastrophe, the economy, the multiple reform legislation battles ...

McChrystal: what should be the penalty?

So should he be fired? The military details several responses for insubordination, including loss of rank.

The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan has been summoned to Washington to explain derogatory comments about President Barack Obama and his colleagues, administration officials said Tuesday.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who publicly apologized Tuesday for using "poor judgment" in an interview in Rolling Stone magazine (.pdf), has been ordered to attend the monthly White House meeting on Afghanistan and Pakistan in person Wednesday rather than over a secure video teleconference, according to officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. He'll be expected to explain his comments to Obama and top Pentagon officials, these officials said.

Obama has the authority to fire McChrystal. His predecessor, Gen. David McKiernan, was sacked on grounds that the military needed "new thinking and new approaches" in Afghanistan.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen has told McChrystal of his "deep disappointment" over the article, a spokesman said.

Though McChrystal has not, as far as we know (isn't that phrase simply the most devastating, backhanded insinuation, by the way?), disobeyed a direct order -- that is both the military's as well as the corporate definition of 'insubordination' -- some punishment more severe than harsh language seems in order.

Should he just be chastised? Or relieved of command? Busted back to colonel? Placed before a firing squad? (That would be my preference, based only on past history.)

Allowed to retire in disgrace?

And in the wake of the fact that Afghanistan has now become America's longest war ever, still with no end in sight, with McChrystal's own officers questioning his strategy, is another new general going to make any difference anyway?

Are we in Afghanistan at this point so that we can mine their mineral deposits? Then let the corporations hire the mercenaries to fight there.

Update: Barbara Morrill notes that the Uniform Code of Military Justice defines insubordination as including "contemptuous words".  There's also a poll at that link that currently indicates 80% of more than 7,000 respondents think McChrystal should be cashiered (I voted 'unsure').

Update II: It's not the general; it's the war.

A war that can't be won, in support of an Afghan government that can't govern, and an Afghan military that can't fight? And the Afghan people just continue to suffer.

Happy Day Before T-Bird Day

-- If you are considering putting something besides the swollen, roasted carcass of a domesticated animal in the middle of your table tomorrow, Grist has some options. One of them -- not the Tofurkey but the Quorn -- sounds like it might even taste good. (We'll be hitting the scrumptious buffet at the Elegante' in Beaumont ourselves.) I also drooled over this recipe for turning your leftovers into turkey gumbo. I'm going to do this the next time I buy a rotisserie chicken that I can't seem to finish before it goes bad in the fridge.

-- The incessant "Black Friday" bargains on teevee -- and I'm not talking about the commercials, I'm talking about the CNN and the network breakfast talking heads -- drive me nuts. The 'get out there and buy something in order to save the economy' message is so out of touch with what's happening for so many families across the country that it makes me nauseous. We're going to maintain our new tradition of spending the day at the Texas Renaissance Festival on Friday. If I'm going to put myself in a throng with thousands of freaky people it might as well be with a turkey leg in my hand.

-- Not as sad a story as you might initially think. This part is best ...

He thought about the "Five Remembrances" that some Buddhist monks chant each day: I will lose my youth, my health, my loved ones, everything I hold dear and, finally, life itself by the very nature of being human. Smith said those remembrances told him that the transient nature of life does not mean people should love others less but more.

Read it and don't weep. (Or go ahead if you'd rather.)

-- Barack Obama is about to be a war president. He's taking ownership of Afghanistan, which to my thinking is the greatest mistake of his presidency yet. Only time and circumstances somewhat outside of his control will tell if he pays a political price for it. With everything on his plate, he has no room left for error anywhere. And if something unforeseen happens -- another Ft. Hood, another economic belch, some international incident, an earthquake, a hurricane, anything -- he, and us, are going to teeter a little farther over the abyss.

-- I find the idea of a war surtax entirely appropriate at this time.

Dubbed the “Share the Sacrifice Act,” the six-page bill exempts anyone who has served in Iraq or Afghanistan since the 2001 terrorist attacks as well as families who have lost an immediate relative in the fighting. But middle-class households earning between $30,000 and $150,000 would be asked to pay 1% on top of their tax liability today ...

Read the details. I'm convinced it will never pass, but the discussion compels the conservatives in both parties to go on the record "supporting the troops" with money they say we don't have for health care. Let's have that debate and have that vote, Speaker Pelosi.

The fact that there will be fewer than 75000 soldiers and reservists as an immediately-available national defense force after this surge in Afghanistan also disturbs me greatly.

If President Obama orders an additional 30,000 to 40,000 troops to Afghanistan, he will be deploying practically every available U.S. Army brigade to war, leaving few units in reserve in case of an unforeseen emergency and further stressing a force that has seen repeated combat deployments since 2002.

According to information compiled by the U.S. Army for The Washington Independent about the deployment status of active-duty and National Guard Army brigades, as of December 2009, there will be about 50,600 active-duty soldiers, serving in 14 combat brigades, and as many as 24,000 National Guard soldiers available for deployment. All other soldiers and National Guardsmen will either be deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan already or ineligible to deploy while they rest from a previous deployment.

Do you remember how loudly Republicans were whining in the mid-'90's about our "broken military" because of the Clinton administration's missions in Bosnia and Kosovo? Neither do they.

Jim Hightower reminds us that Stanley McChrystal is being duplicitous and dishonest about Afghanistan. A historical parallel exists between McArthur and Truman; I wonder when Obama will fire him and bring our army home. 2011? 2012?

-- And just so I don't leave this post with you feeling a little grim ...

Spurred by an administration he believes to be guilty of numerous transgressions, self-described American patriot Kyle Mortensen, 47, is a vehement defender of ideas he seems to think are enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and principles that brave men have fought and died for solely in his head.

Kyle Mortensen would gladly give his life to protect what he says is the Constitution's very clear stance against birth control.

"Our very way of life is under siege," said Mortensen, whose understanding of the Constitution derives not from a close reading of the document but from talk-show pundits, books by television personalities, and the limitless expanse of his own colorful imagination. "It's time for true Americans to stand up and protect the values that make us who we are."

According to Mortensen—an otherwise mild-mannered husband, father, and small-business owner—the most serious threat to his fanciful version of the 222-year-old Constitution is the attempt by far-left "traitors" to strip it of its religious foundation.

"Right there in the preamble, the authors make their priorities clear: 'one nation under God,'" said Mortensen, attributing to the Constitution a line from the Pledge of Allegiance, which itself did not include any reference to a deity until 1954. "Well, there's a reason they put that right at the top."

Read the whole thing; it's another Onion classic.

"Efforts to reach Cheney through relatives and associates were unsuccessful."

That's the most surprising news in the article, frankly:

The Central Intelligence Agency withheld information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress for eight years on direct orders from former Vice President Dick Cheney, the agency’s director, Leon E. Panetta, has told the Senate and House intelligence committees, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said Saturday.

The report that Cheney was behind the decision to conceal the still-unidentified program from Congress deepened the mystery surrounding it, suggesting that the Bush administration had put a high priority on the program and its secrecy.

Panetta, who ended the program when he first learned of its existence from subordinates on June 23, briefed the two intelligence committees about it in separate closed sessions the next day.

Recall that Seymour Hersh was the guy who reported on Cheney's death squads, commanded by Stanley McChrystal, that allegedly took out Benazir Bhutto and the Lebanese prime minister and so on and so on. Obviously that's not information Cheney would want Congress to find out about directly from the CIA.

What would the Republicans in Congress do if the Justice Department chose to prosecute the former veep? Oh, right ...

McChrystal and Pelosi (and Obama and Tillman and torture and Afghanistan)

First an introduction if you haven't met:

Lt. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the ascetic who is set to become the new top American commander in Afghanistan, usually eats just one meal a day, in the evening, to avoid sluggishness.

He is known for operating on a few hours’ sleep and for running to and from work while listening to audio books on an iPod. In Iraq, where he oversaw secret commando operations for five years, former intelligence officials say that he had an encyclopedic, even obsessive, knowledge about the lives of terrorists, and that he pushed his ranks aggressively to kill as many of them as possible.

But General McChrystal has also moved easily from the dark world to the light. Fellow officers on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, where he is director, and former colleagues at the Council on Foreign Relations describe him as a warrior-scholar, comfortable with diplomats, politicians and the military man who would help promote him to his new job.

(snip)

Most of what General McChrystal has done over a 33-year career remains classified, including service between 2003 and 2008 as commander of the Joint Special Operations Command, an elite unit so clandestine that the Pentagon for years refused to acknowledge its existence. But former C.I.A. officials say that General McChrystal was among those who, with the C.I.A., pushed hard for a secret joint operation in the tribal region of Pakistan in 2005 aimed at capturing or killing Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden’s deputy.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld canceled the operation at the last minute, saying it was too risky and was based on what he considered questionable intelligence, a move that former intelligence officials say General McChrystal found maddening.

When General McChrystal took over the Joint Special Operations Command in 2003, he inherited an insular, shadowy commando force with a reputation for spurning partnerships with other military and intelligence organizations. But over the next five years he worked hard, his colleagues say, to build close relationships with the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. He won praise from C.I.A. officers, many of whom had stormy relationships with commanders running the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. ...

As head of the command, which oversees the elite Delta Force and units of the Navy Seals, General McChrystal was based at Fort Bragg, N.C. But he spent much of his time in Iraq commanding secret missions. Most of his operations were conducted at night, but General McChrystal, described nearly universally as a driven workaholic, was up for most of the day as well.

Now from another fellow named Stan:

That was a P-4 ("personal for") Memo from General McChrystal passing along to POTUS (President of the United States) that the phony-baloney story about the circumstances of Pat Tillman's death could not hold up. The memo was sent less than a week after Pat was killed; and when you read it carefully -- if you can understand this bastardized legal-military-publicity-speak -- it says not only that the author had been involved in the concealment of the circumstances, that he had himself participated in the fraud as one of the approving-signatories for a Silver Star award with demonstrably false statements about the incident.

(snip)

Obama has his sights on Pakistan -- nuclear Cambodia, for Vietnam-analogy fans -- and the nomination of McChrystal means that Special Operations will run the show (as they did in the early phases of Vietnam).

(snip)

McChrystal ran Task Force 6-26, which became temporarily famous after the killing of Abu Masab al-Zarqawi, a boogyman figure cultivated by the US military and media complex. What made TF 6-26 infamous was their activity in Camp Nama, Iraq: torture. Massive, systematic, sustained torture, by special operators, under the supervision of Stanley McChrystal, this deceptively soft-spoken officer.

The camp in Baghdad was used almost exclusively for the torture of detainees. The torture went on before, during, and after the scandal at Abu Ghraib. Detainees were killed by their torturers, members of the most elite units in the US armed forces. Almost in celebration of the activity of the camp, placards were hung that said, "No Blood, No Foul," meaning if you don't make them bleed, you can't be charged with the crimes you are committing.

What's this about Camp Nama?

... This was Camp Nama, the home of Task Force 121, the Special Ops team that chased Osama bin Laden and caught Saddam Hussein and would ultimately locate and kill Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the self-described leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq. It was Rumsfeld's baby, the Platonic ideal of his fast and mobile army. From its size to its mission, everything about it was and remains an official secret. Except for the concertina wire, Camp Nama was a nondescript cluster of buildings.

The only thing Jeff knew about Camp Nama was that he'd be able to wear civilian clothes and interrogate "high value" prisoners. In order to get to the second step, he had to go through hours of psychological tests to ensure his fitness for the job.

Nama, it is said, stood for Nasty Ass Military Area. Jeff says there was a maverick, high-speed feeling to the place. Some of the interrogators had beards and long hair and everyone used only first names, even the officers. "When you ask somebody their name, they don't offer up the last name," Jeff says. "When they gave you their name it probably wasn't their real name anyway." ...

It was a point of pride that the Red Cross would never be allowed in the door, Jeff says. This is important because it defied the Geneva Conventions, which require that the Red Cross have access to military prisons. "Once, somebody brought it up with the colonel. 'Will they ever be allowed in here?' And he said absolutely not. He had this directly from General McChrystal and the Pentagon that there's no way that the Red Cross could get in — they won't have access and they never will. This facility was completely closed off to anybody investigating, even Army investigators."

Note the date on that article. Here's a bit from Andrew Sullivan. Keep in mind -- if you have read more than just the excerpts I have posted -- that both Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld were big fans of Stan McChrystal and TF 6-26 and 121 and the rest.

Its motto: "If you don't make them bleed, they can't prosecute for it." McChrystal appears to be the anti-Petraeus. No wonder Cheney loves him. But why then did Obama pick him for Afghanistan? In the wake of horrifying news of unintended civilian casualties, in a war where the US is already intensely unpopular, Obama has picked a leader who can be directly linked to the worst images and incidents of prisoner torture and abuse under Bush.

And one can't help but wonder at the same time: is McChrystal the reason for the sudden volte-face on the abuse photos?

Let's wrap this up with the moneyshot from Stan Goff ...

Impunity. McChrystal represents a culture of impunity.

Pelosi does, too. Be honest.

(snip)

Obama's support for McChrystal will be matched by Pelosi's support for McChrystal, and they will be mixed up in all this, seeking non-accountability as relentlessly as any Rumsfeld or McChrystal.

Stanley McChrystal is mixed up in all this, and not necessarily as a proselytizer. He's just mixed up in it, because this tendency in the military and his personal career happen to correspond in time and space. What both of them are is killers. They have made professional careers out of killing, and their units were not the little Special Forces A-Detachments with their peculiar linguists and trainers. These guys -- Boykin, McChrystal -- worked in "direct action" units. Rangers. Delta. JSOC. Direct action is another euphemism. It means destroying something, someone, someones.

Now it seems we are training a generation of people to torture; and I wonder if the crazy ideas are leading people to torture others, or if torturing others is the perverted origin of the penchant for male death-cult thinking.

The practice in question here, finally, is torture.

That's where Boykin and McChrystal collaborated in Iraq. A torture camp.

That's what has Pelosi on the spot now, too. Or the CIA. Or both.

Torture.

What does torture say about us; and what does what we say about torture say about us?

I already know the answer to that question, and so does Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama. The real question is why don't they give a damn.

And the answer to that is: impunity.

"A near universal lack of recall"

Must be the Ambien:

A "striking lack of recollection" by White House and military officials prevented congressional investigators from determining who was responsible for misinformation spread after the friendly fire death of Army Ranger Pat Tillman, a House committee said Monday.

Although military investigators determined within days that the onetime NFL player was killed by his own troops in Afghanistan following an enemy ambush, five weeks passed before the circumstances of his death were made public. During that time, the Army claimed Tillman was killed by enemy fire.

Also:

The committee says that in their quest to find out when officials first knew about the possibility that Tillman's death was not due to enemy fire, they were "frustrated by a near universal lack of recall," according to the report.

The committee interviewed several senior White House officials including former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, communications director Dan Bartlett, former Press Secretary Scott McClellan, and chief speech writer Michael Gerson.

"Not a single one could recall when he learned about the fratricide or what he did in response," says the report.

Perhaps a large public outcry could result in their firings. Oh, right.

Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard Myers told the committee that he learned by the end of April that Tillman's death was possibly due to friendly fire, but that he could not remember whether or not he passed that information to Rumsfeld.

Members of Tillman's platoon, however, knew "almost immediately" that Tillman had been killed accidentally by fellow Rangers, according to the report. Within days of his death, Colonel Craig Nixon, a top officer in Tillman's battalion, passed on that information to the commander of the joint task force in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChyrstal, who in turn sent a message to top generals, including General John Abizaid, commander of CENTCOM. ...

"I felt that it was essential that you received this information as soon as we detected it in order to preclude any unknowing statements by our country's leaders which might cause public embarrassment if the circumstances of Corporal Tillman's death become public," McChrystal wrote on April 29th, 2004.

A deputy commander of SOCOM told the committee that as soon as McChrystal's message was received, Tillman's family should have been notified.

Yet on the same day that McChrystal sent his memo warning that officials may be making erroneous statements, Tillman was posthumously awarded the Silver Star medal for "gallantry in action against an enemy of the United States".

Damned erroneous statements. Not just Tillman, either:

The committee also examined the circumstances surrounding the misinformation that was released following the capture and rescue of Private Jessica Lynch in Iraq in 2003. Sensational media reports attributed to military officials erroneously said that Private Lynch had engaged insurgents before her capture, firing until she ran out of ammunition. But as in the Tillman investigation, the committee said that it was hampered due to a "pervasive lack of recollection" about how that misleading information got released.

This is that "fog of war" thing, isn't it?

Person Jessica Lynch

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