War Handwavium

A former Blackwater employee in a sworn statement alleged that CEO Erik Prince “views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe,” and that Prince’s companies “encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life.”

The allegations also include Blackwater killing Iraqis cooperating with a State Department investigation into Blackwater, weapon smuggling, and use of weapons outlawed by the Geneva Convention.

The US government should never have outsourced its war to a mercenary corporation. And the reason is demonstrated in Blackwater’s behaviour in Iraq.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090817/scahill

Liz Cheney pushed her father’s version of reality in the Wall Street Journal today. Dick Cheney is a crazy neocon paranoid moonbat, so it isn’t too surprising to see that Liz is also crazy.

The spark for her shpeel is that she didn’t like a speech Obama gave in Russia recently because it wasn’t sufficiently full of nonsensical black/white delineations between the USSR and USA during the Cold War.

Liz Cheney says:

The truth, of course, is that the Soviets ran a brutal, authoritarian regime. The KGB killed their opponents or dragged them off to the Gulag. There was no free press, no freedom of speech, no freedom of worship, no freedom of any kind.

One wonders how Liz could possibly have managed to miss the fact that her father, as Vice President of the United States, spread lies to invade Iraq under false pretenses. Could Liz possibly not know that her father approved a torture program that dragged people off to black site Gulags (Guantanamo, Bagram, and Abu Graib) without due process and tortured them for months and sometimes years. Could Liz possibly not know that her own father was behind the massive wiretapping scheme that violated the civil rights of innocent Americans?

Later on, Liz says:

America was an unmatched force for good in the world during the Cold War.

Could Liz possibly not be aware of America’s hand in “Operation Ajax” during the Cold War? Does she not know the CIA was behind overthrowing the democratically elected government of Iran in 1953 and installing the brutal dictator, the Shah, who had his own secret police and Gulags? Is she ignorant of how America kept the Shah in power for a quarter century, until 1979, even as the Shah expanded his torture prisons?

Is she completely clueless? Or is she willfully ignoring the facts? Or is she totally aware of the facts and yet manages to believe a black-and-white version of reality that only exists in the insane minds of neocon nutjobs?

Liz then finishes her article with an interesting strawman. She portrays Obama’s approach as nothing more than an attempt to make America appear meek and mild and inoffensive to our enemies. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

What Obama is doing is applying a little honesty to history and to international relationships. America has clearly NOT been the white knight who does no wrong, while America’s enemies such as the USSR during the cold war are purely black hearted devils.

No, what Liz can’t seem to wrap her mind around is that an honest reporting of history means that she must give up her America-is-perfect-and-everyone-else-is-evil-incarnate version of history. And what Liz has done is argue that the world should continue her fantasy, black and white, version of history, and to portray anything that represents the realities of history as the shades of grey that they are as making America “weak” and bowing to our enemies to make ourselves look “inoffensive”.

There is no weakness in honesty. There is great weakness in dishonesty.

And in that, Liz and her father are some of the weakest individuals in America.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124744075427029805.html

The former speaker of the US House of Representatives has said that the US should “sabotage” Iran’s oil and gas infrastructure as part of its efforts to bring down the government.

Apparently, to Newt, the overthrow of the democratic government of Iran in 1953 didn’t cause quite enough backlash in the form of the Iranian Revolution of 1979. No, Newt wants the US to meddle with Iran even more to make sure we angered every man, woman, and child in that country.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2009/07/200971023542914638.html

April 7, a Department of Homeland Security report suggests that right-wing extremism may be on rise.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/04/14/extremism.report/

The right did not like that at all.

Michelle Malkin whined that “it’s no small coincidence that Napolitano’s agency disseminated the assessment just a week before the nationwide April 15 Tax Day Tea Party protests.” and that the report was specifically and politically motivated to “demonize” the tea-bagging tax protests.

RNC chair Michael Steele said that the report was intended “to segment out Americans who dissent from this administration, to segment out conservatives in this country who have a different philosophy or view from this administration, and labeling them as terrorists”

Instead of pointing out possible acts of terrorism being generated internally by Americans against Americans, what did Steele want? Where our government needs to be is on that border securing the border. Where our government needs to be is overseas and in the back halls and rooms of the Middle East to make sure that we’re not suffering another terrorist attack here at home.

For you see, according to the Republican Party, the only threat is from ferrriners, the only threat is from overseas, the only threat is from across our border. The heart of the Republican Party is xenophobia.

April 16, the heat from the right wing whining eventually caused Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to issue a public apology.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103171936

June 1, an abortion doctor, George Tiller, was murdered while he handed out bulletins at his church. The man currently in custody for his murder is Scott Roeder.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/01/us/01tiller.html?_r=1&hp

Roeder’s ex-wife said his extreme anti-government beliefs contributed to the breakup of their marriage more than a decade ago. “The anti-tax stuff came first, and then it grew and grew. He became very anti-abortion.” Roeder moved out of their home after he became involved with the Freemen movement, an anti-government group that discouraged the paying of taxes. A decade ago, Roeder subscribed to the quarterly magazine “Prayer and Action News” which said “justifiable homicide” against abortion providers can be supported.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_abortion_shooting_suspect

This is an act of terrorism, committed by a right wing extremist.

I patiently await the apology of Michelle Malkin and Republican party chair Michael Steele for dismissing the Department of Homeland Security’s report as nothing but political slandering.

I say “patiently”, because I doubt any of these cowards have the guts.