Fareed Zakaria
Leslie Gelb
"As health care reform nears the finish line, there is much wailing and rending of garments among conservatives. And I’m not just talking about the tea partiers." - Paul Krugman
"The purpose of terrorism is to provoke an overreaction. Its real aim is not to kill the hundreds of people directly targeted but to sow fear in the rest of the population. " - Fareed Zakaria
"Not a week goes by, it seems, without Muslims blowing up other Muslims, and often themselves in the process." - Leslie Gelb
something is rotten in Kost...
"Since the devastating explosion at Chapman, statements of vengeance have been coming out of CIA mouths - of a kind that, when offered by the Taliban or al-Qaeda, we consider typical of a backward, "tribal" society."
I've been bothered by something ever since learning about the suicide bomber who killed eight people at a CIA outpost in Afghanistan. Simply put, what in the hell is the CIA doing running the Afghan War? They have bunches of similar outposts dotted all over the country, separate from the military operations, creating their own web of informants and rarely sharing information. Plus, they are using mercenaries as assassins, and Afghan tribes as their camp guards. Its assumed that when we send in 30,000 soldiers, there will also be a surge of 56,000 private contracted mercenaries... And with the surge of drones and their killing of hundreds of civilians by mistake, none of it is accountable or reviewable by Congress or even the Pentagon. And it creates the opposite of the intended effects of counterinsurgency strategy: "Today, in Afghanistan, a militarized mix of CIA operatives and ex-military mercenaries as well as native recruits and robot aircraft is fighting a war "in the shadows" (as they used to say in the Cold War). This is no longer "intelligence" as anyone imagines it, nor is it "military" as military was once defined, not when US operations have gone mercenary and native in such a big way. This is pure "lord of the flies" stuff - beyond oversight, beyond any law, including the laws of war. And worse yet, from all available evidence, despite claims that the drone war is knocking off mid-level enemies, it seems remarkably ineffective. All it may be doing is spreading the war farther and digging it in deeper." In the end, we may win the skirmish with the tribal Talibans, but forever lose the hearts and minds of the population. It truly is a different kind of war than took place in Iraq...
And to show that there's no hard feelings, we are generously letting the Afghan military take over and run the shiny new $60 million detention facility we have just finished building at Bagram Air Force Base. Similar to Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and several Federal facilities in New York, prisoners are often kept for years without being charged with any crime.
Two significant events happened today: Sarah Palin signed on as a commentator for Fox News, and North Korea asked for a formal peace treaty with the US before going into talks over nuclear non-proliferation. COINCIDENCE? I think not...
North Korea is following up the suggestion planted by our last envoy when he recently visited: "After years of unsuccessful talks with Washington, North Korea said it concluded that all agreements were bound to collapse unless the two sides built mutual “trust.” To build such confidence, the statement said, “It is essential to conclude a peace treaty for terminating the state of war, a root cause of the hostile relations.” The statement reiterated North Korea’s contention that it would not have built nuclear weapons if the United States had assured it of peace." Ever since the Korean War, North Korea has been paranoid about the US invading, it became an obsession with Kim Jong Il and his mini me. But we know the real reason that they are stepping up to the plate is to avoid any scathing remarks that Sarah would make on Fox. although she won't have any regular show, they will trudge her out whenever they want to legitimize any tea party news, or to counter-attack whenever Keith Olbermann make a special comment on his show at MSNBC...
"This convention is $550 dollars. How grassroots is that?" - Robin Stublen
Tea Party Patriots, which helped put together a September rally that drew tens of thousands to Washington, view the confab -- which is being held at Nashville's swank Opryland Gaylord hotel -- as the "usurpation of a grassroots movement," according to Mark Meckler, a leader of the group. "Most people in our movement can't afford anything like that," Meckler told TPMmuckraker, referring to the price tag. "So it's really not aimed at the average grassroots person."
This is going to be the problem with any activity that will bear the tea party name. We have many people who are angry and want to protest for many different reasons, all with a mistrust of anyone who wants to organize them into a real political movement. There are some organizers who want to make money off of the movement and make a name for themselves. And then you have Michelle Bachmann, who seems to get her politics from her local Amway distributor... hey, I've read Texe Marrs, too.
By charging so much money to attend the National Tea Party Convention, the organizers are going to shoot themselves in the foot, or have it done for them when they end up being protested by real tea partyers. Besides, I just don't think that this movement will take off, it is too anarchistic and can't escalate past standing around in a crowd with slogans on signs that everyone got off of an organizer's website...
“If the Confederacy fails, there should be written on its tombstone: Died of a Theory.” - Jefferson Davis
America was founded on individual liberty and local government no more than one day’s horseback ride from the governed, without defined leaders. It can work again. The 19th century Democrat was the staunch defender of state’s rights, which, under Federalists, Whigs and Republicans was assigned the role of slavery’s justifiers. The civil war cost us local government, the laws affecting behavior rising to the states and then the Federal government, way outside the one-day horseback distance rule that worked so well. The vigilante movements in the West and South were remnants of local home rule, where citizens concerned with the way they were governed took action to right the wrongs. The Tea Party Movement is another example of citizen participation against the governing elite centered far, far from the folks. It demonstrates the founding ideals of America are still the dominant tradition. The 20th century Democrats have declared war on Tea Parties as vigilantes and on America’s founding traditions, as cited in THE CHANGING FACE OF DEMOCRATS, Our Lost Libertarian Roots on claysamerica.com.
ReplyDeleteHi Clay,
ReplyDeleteYou have some interesting theories on history, which I don't exactly agree with, especially about vigilante movements. It seems like you are trying to make a justification for a righteous popular uprising. The analogy between vigilantes might be more accurate to say that the rich landowner organized the vigilantes among his poorer neighbors to have them become incensed and carry out his version of justice, then, yes, there maybe parallels.
But saying that there are further parallels between the founding fathers and the current tea party movement is romantic balderdash, made up as bad public relations. As a citizen here in the Springs, I have a soft spot for Libertarianism, which was founded here, but it is a fringe element, or as we say, God, Guns, and Ganja, not necessarily in that order.