War Handwavium

Saturday, January 8, 2011, Representative Gabrielle Giffords, an Arizona Democrat, and 17 other people were shot by a gunman during a meet and greet she was holding outside a supermarket. Six of the victims have died. The gunman, Jared Lee Loughner, was captured, wrestled to the ground by people on the scene, and arrested. Authorities say that Giffords was the primary target of the gunman’s rampage. More details here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/us/politics/09giffords.html

Since then there’s been a lot of talk about the violent rhetoric espoused by the political Right and the Right has been pulling out all the smoke and mirrors it can find to redirect that talk away from them. So first some historical facts about the Right and violence:

Palin tells people, “if you see an Obama bumper sticker, stop the driver”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8CYThB_EtY&feature=related

A teabagger attacks a man and rams his car for having an “Obama” bumper sticker:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5pdwTQ4xA8

John Boener tells Democrat Steve Drehouse who voted “yes” on healthcare reform, “you may be a dead man”. Palin says she wants people in Minnesota to be “armed and dangerous”. RNC chairman Steele says he’s getting Nancy Pelosi “ready for the firing line”. Republican George Peterson (Republican) at a political rally reads the defintion of “revolution” as “forcable overthrow”.

The video lists a number of democrat politicians who recieved death threats, including Giffords. A pair of Tea party members posted what they thought was the address of Congressman Perriello’s address, encouraging tea party members to “drop by”. The Congressman’s gas line was severed after that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nr-0088ZLno

Tea Party candidate Sharron Angle discussing “second ammendment remedies” and “taking Harry Reid out”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQPBtFJzhnU

Tea Party candidate Sharon Angle on whether there will be a violent revolution says “anything is possible”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwPEULV0qco

Rep Steve Cohen during an interview says Tea Party is violent and dangerous. To prove him wrong, he recieves a number of death threats from Tea Party defenders. The FBI investigated.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZ2lFIH3wE4&feature=related

Senator Murry was threatened by a man “there’s a target on your back now. … Now that you’ve passed health care bill, let the violence begin”. and “I want to fucking kill you”. Man was arrested for death threats.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZ2lFIH3wE4&feature=related

Rick Barber candidate for Congress runs an ad showing him talking to the Foundingn Fathers and ends with Jefferson saying “gather your armies”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iQ7ZDUutU4

Palin also had a political map with crosshairs on pictures of political opponents. The people targeted included Gabrielle Giffords. This map has been taken down since Giffords shooting.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/24/sarah-palins-pac-puts-gun_n_511433.html

The Right have recently shown a willingness to both spew violent rhetoric and to act on that rhetoric.

Teabaggers may respond to accusations of violence or violent rhetoric in one of several ways. Here are suggestions for how to respond.

Teabagger: It’s just words. We may have posted images of crosshairs on Giffords, but we didn’t pull the trigger.

Response: You’re a teabagging teabagger and you should be teabagged.

When they get upset, tell them it’s just words.

If they call “Teabaggers” hate speech, mock them for equating a name insult with actual violence and calls for violence.

Teabagger philosophy in short: We can call for violence, but don’t call us names.

Teabaggers response: “The Democrats have done it too”. This will often be followed by paraphrasings of things Democrats said. Paraphrased instead of actual quotes so as to allow for “artistic license” to further dramatize what was done.

Response: First, demand quotes and links. Second, check the quotes from a reputable site to confirm. Third look for false equivalences.

Sharon Angle saying people will seek “seconnd ammendment solutions” and suggesting that someone might “take Harry Reid out” is in no way, shape, or form, on par with Obama saying the Republicans are holding some bill “hostage”. One is a metaphor. One is a literal call for murder.

Separate turns of speech from literal calls for violence. Obama said “if they bring a knife, we bring a gun” during a speech. Most sane people would acknowledge that he wasn’t advocating people carry weapons at all. Teabaggers posted the address of a politician they didn’t like, suggested someone should “drop by”, and someone cut the gas line.

Turns of speech like “bringing a gun to a knife fight” is not the same as “here is Rep John Doe’s address” and then cutting the gas line to his house.

Distinguish between groups that show responsibility for their rhetoric and take it down as inappropriate and groups that are taking down violent rhetoric because right now its bad press but in a couple months when people have forgotten this shooting, the violent rhetoric and violence itself will be back.

Distinguish between parties where members self-police their own party, criticize their own party, allow others to criticize their party. Versus parties that can admit no wrongdoing, refuse to allow others to criticize their party, and do everything in their power to shift the attention and blame away from their party and towards anything else.

I have yet to see a Teabagger criticize the violent rhetoric of any of its party members or party leaders.

Teabagger: You can’t criticize the violent rhetoric because the result will be totalitarian cencorship of free speech.

Response: explain to them the concept of Slippery Slope. Hopefully they will grasp it. THough my experience in the last couple days is they will rehash Slippery Slope into many different insane forms.

Tell them that you want the Teabagger party and its leaders to show they take responsibility for their words, that they wouldn’t want someone like Loughner to take their rhetoric literally and go murder some politician.

At this point, they may argue that Loughner wasn’t inspired by Right wing violent rhetoric. Explain to them that this is irrelevant because the idea is to stop the rhetoric of murder before someone is actually murdered.

Teabagger response: Loughner was not inspired by Right Wing Rhetoric to murder, therefore it is OK for right wing rhetoric to advocate for murder.

The best response to this is to get them to state that philosophy directly: It is acceptable to use violent rhetoric, includiing calling for a politicians murder, in political discussions. More likely, they will dance around this idea but will try to avoid voicing it in such blunt terms. Get them to say it bluntly. Their refusal will reveal their hypocricy.

The point is not whether or not Loughner was inspired directly by violent right wing rhetoric. The point is whether or not the Right is willing to admit that it is POSSIBLE that someone might take their rhetoric as a call to action and commit murder. And does the Right care if someone is murdered because of their rhetoric.

This mosque business is little more than a bunch of morons trying to say “My god is better than your god.” And then a bunch of gutless politicians chasing the mob saying “Wait! I can lead you there!”

Jon Stewart pretty much sums up all the idiocy here.

Favorite bit: Should Catholics build a church next to a school ground?

Really, I do think it’s too soon.

First, the background from Glenn Greenwald:

Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian citizen and British resident, was arrested in Pakistan in 2002 and then “rendered” by the U.S. to multiple countries (such as Morocco); held incommunicado (no access to lawyers, the International Red Cross or anyone else) and interrogated by U.S. agents until 2004; and then shipped off to Guantanamo, where he has remained ever since.

In May, 2008, Mohamed was accused in a Guantanamo military commission with various acts of Terrorism that carry the death penalty if he’s convicted. The key evidence against him are the confessions the U.S. obtained during that 2002-2004 time period. After charging him, the U.S. Government refused to provide his lawyers with documents and other evidence that would enable Mohamed to prove that those confessions were obtained via torture.

Both the Bush administration and the Obama administration leaned on the British government to stop the publication of documents that showed the US tortured Mohamed. Right wingers claimed that releasing this information would result in fire and brimstone falling from the sky, cats and dogs sleeping together, the end of the world as we know it.

But on 10 February 2010, the British courts ruled the documents must be released, that the fact that the US tortured Mohamed must be made public.

Now, I grant you that it’s only been a week, but it would appear that the world hasn’t come to an end. Though, my cat and my dog have been getting along better than usual.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/02/19/exceptionalism/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/10/law-binyam-mohamed-case

For those failing to grasp the situation in Afghanistan, sometimes it helps to try to describe it as plainly as possible, and sometimes it helps to describe it metaphorically using something you’re already familiar with.

Plain explanation: The central government in Afghanistan is corrupt. The president stole the last election. His brother may be on CIA payroll while dealing drugs and guns. The central government provides no benefits for those in the tribal regions. And to get anything done in the bureacracy, one has to resort to bribes at every level. The local warlords see no benefit to supporting the central government, and many see it as nothing more than an American puppet, just like it was a Soviet puppet in the 80′s.

Metaphorical explanation: Seperatists and survivalists in America distrust the Federal Government. They view it as corrupt, they view it as wanting to take their power away, they view it as a threat. America now has a number of private militias who are heavily armed and don’t like the federal government.

Clear so far?

In Afghanistan, American forces have occasionally fired on and killed Afghan civilians. American Predator drones have attacked wedding parties, destroyed houses with children in them, and while the generals talk loudly about the al-queda leaders they’ve killed, they don’t talk so loud about the civilians they’ve killed to get to these leaders.

What’s the metaphorical equivalent for this?

I’m starting to think that maybe the best way to describe this is to equate it to the incident at Ruby Ridge in 1992.

The basic version of Ruby Ridge: The federal government charged Randy Weaver with a weapons violation (alleging he had sold an informant an illegal sawed-off shotgun). The courts sent Weaver a letter informing of his court date, but the letter had the wrong date on it, telling Weaver he was supposed to be in court in March, when the real date was February. When Weaver failed to show up in February, the courts issued a warrant for Weaver’s arrest. Weaver believed there was a conspiracy against him and refused to leave his cabin. Marshall’s tried to talk him out but he refused.

By August, Federal marshalls approached the property at night to install cameras to observe the cabin in preparation for a raid. Weaver’s dogs started barking. Kevin Harris (a friend of Weaver) and Weaver’s son, 14 year old Daniel, came out of the cabin with rifles. The marshall’s retreated for a while, but then set up defensive positions. The exact order isn’t clear, but by the time it was over, a dog, a marshall, and Daniel were all dead.

The next day, the Federal government sent in snipers and armored personel carriers, and the rules of engagement were given as shoot-on-sight any adult with a weapon. A federal sniper shot Randy Weaver in the back and then fired a second shot through a closed door, which ended up striking the wife, Vicki Weaver, in the head killing her, and hitting Randy Weaver in the chest. Vicki was holding a baby when she was shot dead.

Within a few days, the rules of engagement were changed and shoot-on-sight was revoked. Civilian negotiators eventually got the Weavers to surrender by August 30.

The Weaver family filed a wrongful death suit. To avoid trial and a possibly higher settlement, the federal government awarded Randy Weaver a $100,000 settlement and his three daughters $1 million each in August 1995. FBI director Louis Freeh disciplined a number of FBI employees and told a senate hearing “law enforcement overreacted at Ruby Ridge”.

So, now it’s been established that the central government is corrupt and goes around murdering people. At least according to the local tribes.

And what happens as a result?

19 April 1995, Timothy McVeigh and a bunch of armed, right-wing extremists bomb the federal building in Oklahoma, killing 168 innocent people. The attack came on the second anniversary of the Waco Seige, but McVeigh also cited Ruby Ridge as a justification for his attack as well.

Now, expand this to a much larger scale, make the central government completely corrupt and ineffective, turn the local armed militias into warlords and their own private armies, and you have something on par with Afghanistan.

The United States is not going to stop right wing extremists in America by creating more Ruby Ridge type incidents or by creating more Waco type incidents.

And the US isn’t going to achieve any kind of real peace in Afghanistan by bombing wedding parties and killing bystanders.

To stamp out the McVeigh’s in America, the government must operate with the most extreme care to make sure they don’t create more innocent deaths and give some paranoid angry nutjob a warped justification to murder more people.

In Afghanistan, America must operate with extreme care to make sure that we don’t kill civilians and create recruiting posters for the Taliban and Al Queda. But more importantly, and more problematically, America must at some point realize that its very presence as a foreign occupying army is a recruiting poster.

Apparently, the Weekly Standard doesn’t like America very much. They don’t like what America stands for, America’s committments, or any of that stuff. About all the Weekly Standard likes is the dirt within the boundaries of the nation, but they hate the principles upon which the nation was founded.

Principles like due process, trial by jury, protection from cruel and unusual punishment, stuff like that.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2009/11/18/weekly_standard/index.html

Glenn Greenwald has an interesting post highlighting how Jewish and Christian extremists are viewed differently from Muslim extremists.

One muslim extremist is condemnation of an entire religion and proof that all its followers are terrorists. One Jewish or Christian extremist is portrayed as either a misguided individual among the sane religious followers or as an individual hero among the cowardly religious followers.

The Professional Moron, Joe Lieberman, has called for an investigation into why Islamic extremists are allowed to remain in the US military. Yet “Tail Gunner Joe” hasn’t called for a similar investigation into why the US military is recruiting neonazis and white-supremicists. Blackwater CEO Erik Prince views himself as a Christian fighting a holy war against Islam.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2009/11/12/terrorism/index.html

Dick Cheney can’t remember a damn thing about Valerie Plame.

Now that we’ve gotten the “amnesia episode” out of the way, we’re still waiting for the “Evil Twin” episode, and the “Dream Sequence” episode. Dick Cheney, after all, is a soap opera.

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2009/10/22-things-dick-cheney-cant-remember-about-plame-case

This is how Fox “News” works. One of the Fox “opinionators” expresses outrage at something the Democrats did. Then Fox “News” people report that “Some have expressed outrage at this thing that Democrats did”, without mentioning that the Vinn Diagram of that “some” is the set of people who are opinionators at Fox networks.

Seccessionists in Texas hate America.

In March 2009, Texas Governor Rick Perry, a republican, came out publicly in support of a resolution affirming Texas sovereignty. “We think it’s time to draw a line in the sand and tell Washington that no longer are we going to accept their oppressive hand in the state of Texas.”

In August 2009, right wing extremists protested that Perry should make good on his promise. A couple of them are trying to run for governor of Texas.

“We hate the United States! Get out of our lives! Get off our backs!” — Larry Kilgore (running for governor of Texas)

“We are aware that stepping off into seccession may in fact be a bloody war. We are aware. We understand that the tree of freedom is occaissionally watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots.” — Debra Medina (running for governor of Texas)

I’m not sure what “oppressive hand” they’re talking about. Way, way, way back in April of 2009, Governor Perry accepted 17 Billion dollars of federal money from Obama’s stimulus package. I think if Texas wants to put an end to this sort of “oppressive” behaviour, then it could start by demanding that the governor return the 17 billion dollars in federal money. After that, they can discuss the merits of seccession from the US of A.

As a side note, protestors at the rally were carrying signs of Obama with Joker makeup and the word “Socialist” underneath. At one point, a counter protester shouted “Healthcare for anyone who can’t pay for it.” To which a protester with a Obama-Joker poster walked up to him and said “Health care? You know… Get a job! Just get a job! Get a job!”

Which I think is an interesting insight into why some people really oppose any kind of health care reform: They’re afraid that any attempt at helping their fellow man will do nothing but enable the lazy to live off their hard earned money. Well, Texas, I want my 17 billion dollars of hard earned federal money back from you lazy bunch of no-good slackers.

Put up or shut up. Return the 17 billion of “oppressive” federal money, get a job, and stimulate your own damn economy, or shut your ignorant pie hole.

Oh, and just as a side note to all the right wing insane nut jobs out there who have suddenly taken a shine to quoting Thomas Jefferson and that whole tree of liberty getting watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots: Jefferson was a signer of the US Constitution. He was an architect of the federal government. Nowadays, people quote this line from Jefferson and forget everything else Jefferson stood for. Nowadays, it’s people like Timothy McVeigh who wear tshirts with this quote while being arrested for bombing the federal building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people, including 19 children. Nowadays, when people shout about “spilling the blood of tyrants and patriots” they’re talking about the blood from people like that. Nowadays, when people actually spill blood, it’s people like Timothy McVeigh.

http://www.theeagle.com/PrinterFriendly/Governor-accepts-stimulus-

A man was carrying an AR-15 (a semi-automatic version of the military M-16) outside the convention center where President Barack Obama was giving a speech in Pheonix. The man said he was doing it because he can.

No laws were broken, according to Phoenix police. Arizona is an “open-carry” state, which means anyone legally allowed to have a firearm can carry it in public as long as it’s visible.

During Obama’s health care town hall in Portsmouth, N.H., a man carrying a sign reading “It is time to water the tree of liberty” stood outside with a pistol strapped to his leg.

A reference to a quote by Thomas Jefferson “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

And why are right wing extremists making open threats against the president’s life? Because he’s is trying to reform healthcare. Because he’s trying to make sure people who have insurance don’t get thrown under the bus by an insurance company who decides you’re no longer profitable and people who do not have insurance can get some.

Seriously, people? This is what you’re going to go to war over? You’re going to murder a president and wage a revolution against your own government because you don’t want everyone to have health care? Because you want insurance companies to keep the right to ditch patients if they cost too much? Of all the evils in the world, this is what you decide to stand up against? Will you be expanding your war to include Medicare too? Will you kill your fellow Americans to stop food programs that help feed Americans who are starving? Will you murder to put an end to unemployment benefits?

The mind boggles at the murders people are willing to commit to prevent anyone from helping their fellow man.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090817/ap_on_re_us/us_obama_protesters_guns