Wingnuts: WATB Edition

QOTD, Glenn Greenwald:

This is literally true: the Right's reaction to yesterday's announcement -- we're too afraid to allow trials and due process in our country -- is the textbook definition of "surrendering to terrorists." It's the same fear they've been spewing for years. As always, the Right's tough-guy leaders wallow in a combination of pitiful fear and cynical manipulation of the fear of their followers. Indeed, it's hard to find any group of people on the globe who exude this sort of weakness and fear more than the American Right.

Paul Krugman posted this video this morning. Paul Krugman was in a very silly mood: "From this day on, the official language of this blog will be Swedish."

DougJ: I wonder who would publish this economist’s opinion piece

I love stuff like this:

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and an assortment of national business groups opposed to President Obama’s health-care reform effort are collecting money to finance an economic study that could be used to portray the legislation as a job killer and threat to the nation’s economy, according to an e-mail solicitation from a top Chamber official.

The e-mail, written by the Chamber’s senior health policy manager and obtained by The Washington Post, proposes spending $50,000 to hire a “respected economist” to study the impact of health-care legislation, which is expected to come to the Senate floor this week, would have on jobs and the economy.

Step two, according to the e-mail, appears to assume the outcome of the economic review: “The economist will then circulate a sign-on letter to hundreds of other economists saying that the bill will kill jobs and hurt the economy. We will then be able to use this open letter to produce advertisements, and as a powerful lobbying and grass-roots document.”

Tristero: What Glenn Said

Greenwald:

This is literally true: the Right's reaction to yesterday's announcement -- we're too afraid to allow trials and due process in our country -- is the textbook definition of "surrendering to terrorists." It's the same fear they've been spewing for years. As always, the Right's tough-guy leaders wallow in a combination of pitiful fear and cynical manipulation of the fear of their followers. Indeed, it's hard to find any group of people on the globe who exude this sort of weakness and fear more than the American Right.

People in capitals all over the world have hosted trials of high-level terrorist suspects using their normal justice system. They didn't allow fear to drive them to build island-prisons or create special commissions to depart from their rules of justice. Spain held an open trial in Madrid for the individuals accused of that country's 2004 train bombings. The British put those accused of perpetrating the London subway bombings on trial right in their normal courthouse in London. Indonesia gave public trials using standard court procedures to the individuals who bombed a nightclub in Bali. India used a Mumbai courtroom to try the sole surviving terrorist who participated in the 2008 massacre of hundreds of residents. In Argentina, the Israelis captured Adolf Eichmann, one of the most notorious Nazi war criminals, and brought him to Jerusalem to stand trial for his crimes.

It's only America's Right that is too scared of the Terrorists -- or which exploits the fears of their followers -- to insist that no regular trials can be held and that "the safety and security of the American people" mean that we cannot even have them in our country to give them trials. As usual, it's the weakest and most frightened among us who rely on the most flamboyant, theatrical displays of "strength" and "courage" to hide what they really are.

This has been another addition of What Glenn Said.

Makes you wonder, why a blogger is first out the gate on this patently obvious response to the craven cowards - sorry, I meant the Republicans. You'd think a top Democrat would have smacked them down immediately. But that would entail a Democratic political leadership that actually felt comfortable about winning elections and leading the country.

Answering some questions:

"But what if the terrorists attack New York again?"

You think they won't if we don't hold trials?

Reality-check, people: Whether it is from the rightwing lunatics who consider bin Laden reality-based or the rightwing lunatics who consider Beck, Palin, et al. reality-based - or some other demented nuts who hate Americans - there will be another terrorist attack, and more Americans will die. The only questions are when, where, and whether it could have been prevented. (In fact, contrary to conventional wisdom, this country has seen some dreadful terrorist attacks since 9/11: the anthrax mailings, probably an attack on LAX on July 4, 2002, and the assassination of Dr. Tiller, for example )

"But politically, another attack would give Republicans a perfect 'I told you so' moment. Why court - literally- such possibilities?"

Whether or not there's a trial, an unambiguous and spectacular attack like 9/11 won't stop Republicans from immediately demanding Obama's resignation. And I mean immediately, as in, "Obama must go now, he failed to keep us safe. Oh, right, I suppose that terrorist attack thingy was not fun for some people. But there's a silver lining to every cloud 'cause now we really have a perfect opportunity to get rid of that commie/nazi you-know-what-I'm-talking-about-wink-wink-but-it's-not-racism-that's-unfair."

TPM Headline:

Giuliani: 9/11 Trials Give Edge To Terrorists, Endanger NYC

Yglesias: Criminals and Warriors

Alongside the various nonsensical efforts to convince people that KSM is too scary to be put in trial, the right objects to bringing him to justice on the grounds that this represents a problematic “law enforcement” approach to terrorism. I think it’s pretty clear that international terrorism has some dimensions that go well-beyond ordinary law enforcement, but if you have to put the whole thing in either the “crime” box or the “war” box, there’s a pretty strong case for erring on the side of crime.

In political terms, the right likes the war idea because it involves taking terrorism more “seriously.” But in doing so, you partake of way too much of the terrorists’ narrative about themselves. It’s their conceit, after all, that blowing up a bomb in a train station and killing a few hundred random commuters is an act of war. And war is a socially sanctioned form of activity, generally held to be a legally and morally acceptable framework in which to kill people. What we want to say, however, is that this sporadic commuter-killing isn’t a kind of war, it’s an act of murder. To be sure, not an ordinary murder—a mass murder—but nonetheless murder. It’s true that if al-Qaeda were something like the “blowing up train stations” arm of a major country with which we were otherwise at war, it might make the most sense to think of al-Qaeda as fitting in with spies and saboteurs; criminal adjuncts to a warrior enterprise.

After all, do we really want to send the message to the world that a self-starting spree killer like Nidal Malik Hasan is actually engaged in some kind of act of holy war? It seems to me that we don’t. A lot of people in the world are interested in glory, and willing to take serious risks with their lives for its sake. Insofar as possible, we want to drain anti-American violence of the aura of glory. And that means by-and-large treating its perpetrators like criminals.

John Cole: Something I Don’t Understand

One of the things I don’t understand about the reaction to trying KSM and others is why people on the right are reacting the way they are. After 9/11, the general attitude was one of defiance- “we’re gonna rebuild the World Trade Center bigger than it was before.” I remember people suggesting we should build the new WTC in the shape of a middle finger to show the terrorists we won’t take it:

And who can forget Michelle Malkin’s ridiculous I am John Doe Manifesto? That was just a couple years ago. What happened to the right wing swagger? When did they turn into such a bunch of scared wimps? When did they go from standing there in the rubble with George Bush and his megaphone to hiding under Dick Cheney’s desk cowering in fear?

Personally, I can’t think of anything more defiant than taking KSM, frog-marching him through Manhattan, giving him a fair trial, and then sending him to prison forever or executing him. That is how you show the terrorists that we aren’t going to be fazed.

For goodness sakes, right wingers. Man up for a change. I honestly think I liked the belligerent cowboy right-wingers better than the diaper-clad bed-wetters we have now.

Attaturk (FDL): Explains so much

Well, this seems ridiculous, though hardly surprising.

But in her new memoir, Going Rogue, Palin apparently writes that she doesn’t believe in evolution. New York Times reviewer Michiko Kakutani writes:

Elsewhere in this volume, she talks about creationism, saying she “didn’t believe in the theory that human beings — thinking, loving beings — originated from fish that sprouted legs and crawled out of the sea” or from “monkeys who eventually swung down from the trees.”

Palin’s not the only Republican with this ignorant viewpoint. By 2012, it will probably be the espoused viewpoint of every GOP candidate for President.

How is such ignorance tolerated in the body politic?

Ask David Broder:

It is evident from the length of this deliberative process and from the flood of leaks that have emerged from Kabul and Washington that the perfect course of action does not exist. Given that reality, the urgent necessity is to make a decision — whether or not it is right.

One of the two major parties, aided and abetted by the establishment media is decrying actually thinking about things. A-W-E-S-O-M-E!