In Infamy

Yesterday marked the 67th anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The day after the surprise strike, President Franklin Roosevelt addressed Congress and asked for a declaration of war, describing December 7, 1941 as "a date which will live in infamy."

But what exactly was so infamous about this Japanese attack on military targets? This article on Truthout.org explains it simply:

President Roosevelt used the word "infamy" because the raid was an act of military aggression. Until that moment Japan and the United States were not at war, although their conflicting interests had been threatening to boil over. The attack turned a dispute into a war; Pearl Harbor was a crime because the Japanese struck first.

What we once considered a crime was molded into official US policy 60 years later. It's called The Bush Doctrine, and it's the illegitimate policy of preventive war. It was a bad idea in 1941, and it's still a bad idea now.

But at least we haven't recycled every bad idea of that era. In the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001, the Immigration and Naturalization Service commissioner, James Ziglar, pushed back against a "roundup" of Arabs and Muslims stating "We do have this thing called the Constitution." That's a stark contrast and blunt repudiation to Roosevelt's authorization of the internment of Japanese Americans...

The internment of Japanese Americans was probably the most shocking thing I ever learned in a high school history class. Well, when I say "learn" I mean read about in a short sidebar in our history textbook. Even back then I realized that the brevity of the lesson indicated a national shame over our actions. But I was also left with a curiosity about life inside the camps. Only recently did I find this little piece of the answer...

Here is a complete scan of a 1944 internment camp high school year book. Between normal pictures of student councils and proms there are poems about "Hope out of Gloom" and drawings that include barracks and barbed wire fences. I found this page particularly poignant.

I'm left wondering how textbooks 10 years from now will document the Bush legacy. Can they relegate every single crime and immoral act into a tiny sidebar or footnote? What else would be left to write about?

Bush Seven Years Ago Today

On September 20, 2001, Bush addressed members of Congress and the American people for the first time since the attacks on September 11. The speech introduced the principles of the Bush Doctrine, and today reads like a collection of Bush's greatest hits:

the war on terror
either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists
they hate our freedoms
I ask your continued participation and confidence in the American economy

Also, he did a little name dropping with Iraq. He was not yet implying an Iraqi link with the attacks, but he would get to that in time. In fact, it only took a few months of innuendo to deceive the American people. The Christian Science Monitor reported on the shift in public opinion:

Polling data show that right after Sept. 11, 2001, when Americans were asked open-ended questions about who was behind the attacks, only 3 percent mentioned Iraq or Hussein. But by January of this year, attitudes had been transformed. In a Knight Ridder poll, 44 percent of Americans reported that either "most" or "some" of the Sept. 11 hijackers were Iraqi citizens. The answer is zero.

By August 2003, the misconception was widespread. A Washington Post poll indicated that about 70% of Americans believed Saddam Hussein was involved in the attacks. Sadly, in 2008, an important VP candidate is still spreading these lies for political gain.

She also holds the childish belief that terrorists hate us for our freedom, when in reality, they hate us for our airstrikes (if video doesn't show, click here):

More About the Bush Doctrine

After Sarah Palin's dismal response to Charlie Gibson's question about the Bush Doctrine, I can't get the issue out of my head. So many people are brushing off her lack of knowledge saying, "well, she'll only be VP." However, Glenn Greenwald sums up why we should indeed be scared:

To see why that matters, look at this excerpt today from a new book by The Washington Post's Barton Gellman, which details how Dick Cheney's office exerted virtually exclusive control over large numbers of key U.S. programs, and specifically over the illegal warrantless eavesdropping program -- facts that Gellman had previously documented. There is every reason to believe that Palin, too, would wield very substantial power as Vice President.

In general, the White House is now far and away the most powerful branch of our government -- state power is centralized there to an unprecedented degree. The presidency is so powerful that it's almost impossible for a President not to share substantial responsibility with the Vice President. Moreover, if McCain wins, he is quite likely to perceive -- accurately -- that his victory was due in large part to Palin and the enthusiasm she generated. Independently, her immense political popularity among key GOP factions will empower her. The fact that McCain seems completely uninterested in any issues other than fighting and starting wars and his petty fixation on earmarks -- underscored by his acute indifference to domestic policy -- will leave vast areas for her to manage. His advanced age and previous health problems makes it far more likely than usual that the Vice President will become President.

And so we'll have a powerful VP with no clearly-defined positions on many issues. Palin hasn't studied these policies or thought them through. And yet, without knowing the subject matter, her instinct was to embrace whatever this Bush Doctrine thing is.

What's doubly disturbing is that Gibson asked the same Bush Doctrine question to all the Republican and Democratic candidates during the primary debates, and all candidates were able to answer the question satisfactorily. So that leaves me wondering... wasn't Palin even watching the debates?

But here is the really big question: do we want a president who will continue the Bush Doctrine?

McCain clearly supports it (if video doesn't show, click here):



Barack Obama says that the Bush Doctrine is flawed, but it seems he hasn't rejected it completely:

OBAMA: And that's the flaw of the Bush doctrine. It wasn't that he went after those who attacked America. It was that he went after those who didn't.

And as a consequence, we have been bogged down, paid extraordinary -- an extraordinary price in blood and treasure, and we have fanned the anti-American sentiment that actually makes it more difficult for us to act in Pakistan.

Just one more point I want to make on this, Charlie. I think it is absolutely true that we have to, as much as possible, get Pakistan's agreement before we act. And that's always going to be the case.

At least, maybe, Palin (the moose caught in the headlights) has woken up the public to a foreign policy issue they should have been paying attention to all along.

Moose in the Headlights

Charlie Gibson has now vetted Sarah Palin more thoroughly than McCain's people ever did. In ABC's exclusive interview with Governor Palin, she often looks like a moose caught in the headlights. The most revealing and critically important excerpts reveal her lack of foreign policy experience:

GIBSON: We talk on the anniversary of 9/11. Why do you think those hijackers attacked? Why did they want to hurt us?

PALIN: You know, there is a very small percentage of Islamic believers who are extreme and they are violent and they do not believe in American ideals, and they attacked us and now we are at a point here seven years later, on the anniversary, in this post-9/11 world, where we're able to commit to never again. They see that the only option for them is to become a suicide bomber, to get caught up in this evil, in this terror. They need to be provided the hope that all Americans have instilled in us, because we're a democratic, we are a free, and we are a free-thinking society.

GIBSON: Do you agree with the Bush doctrine?

PALIN: In what respect, Charlie?

GIBSON: The Bush -- well, what do you -- what do you interpret it to be?

PALIN: His world view.

GIBSON: No, the Bush doctrine, enunciated September 2002, before the Iraq war.

PALIN: I believe that what President Bush has attempted to do is rid this world of Islamic extremism, terrorists who are hell bent on destroying our nation. There have been blunders along the way, though. There have been mistakes made. And with new leadership, and that's the beauty of American elections, of course, and democracy, is with new leadership comes opportunity to do things better.

(read the rest here or watch the video here.)

Oh shit. She really is NOT fit to be VP or, god forbid, president. She doesn't understand -- or is even aware of -- the biggest foreign policy shift (and failure) this country has had in decades. Here is where Palin and Gibson both get it wrong:

Actually, it's preventive war, not pre-emptive. There's a key difference: Pre-emptive war is a long-accepted, noncontroversial practice—if an enemy is clearly massing and about to attack you, you get to strike them pre-emptively. Imagine on the playground the class bully (who has beaten up your friends already) comes up to you, repeatedly threatens to hit you, and then cocks his fist. It's straight self-defense and is a basic tenet of international law.

But the Bush Doctrine is one of preventive war: Attacking another country in order to prevent them from becoming a threat at some nebulous point down the line. To return to the playground analogy, it's as if you hauled off and socked someone because they looked at you funny—that odd look could be a signal that at some point in the future they're going to hit you. Better safe than sorry. But now you're the bully.

Pre-emptive war is generally accepted. The Bush Doctrine of preventive war was controversial and revolutionary. While Bush and his cronies repeatedly conflated the two concepts by referring to his new scheme as "pre-emptive" rather than "preventive," they are not the same.

Palin made another gross mistake that boiled my blood. She linked Iraq with the attacks on September 11, 2001. This ignorance is sickening. I thought these lies were revealed years ago? There was no link between Iraq and the attacks on September 11. There was no link between Iraq and al-Qaeda... And more importantly, doesn't she read my blog?

What scares me more -- and this applies to both Palin and John McCain -- is this obsession with making decisions in the blink of an eye. I'm sorry, but is knowing stuff out of style? What about weighing consequences? What about rationality and expertise? Negotiations?

What's going to happen when McCain and Palin find themselves in the middle of The Next Cuban Missile Crisis?

It's obvious that Sarah Palin crammed for this interview, but she failed. Charlie Gibson's questions were good, but Palin's answers were really really bad!