By Michael J.W. StickingsSee, this is why Chief Justice Roberts’s recent little hissy fit over being challenged by President Obama was so ridiculous. (Well, it’s one of the reasons why. Basically, Roberts should grow a spine.)According to Roberts, Obam…

The U.S. is rarely at peace. It doesn’t matter which party or which politician is in power: American military forces will be on the move,…

I spoke to Andeisha Farid yesterday in Washington yesterday, who was pleased to have just met Michelle Obama. Hillary Clinton then spoke about her in…

If we are to avoid the kind of victory that is a disservice to those who fought for it, we must rein in the excesses of Afghanistan’s increasingly undemocratic President.

In my last post I noted that Xe Services (formerly Blackwater) is very much in the running to win a contract potentially worth as much…

Tom Engelhardt writes Premature Withdrawal: Washington’s Cult of Narcissism and Iraq:

We’ve now been at war with, or in, Iraq for almost 20 years, and intermittently at war in Afghanistan for 30 years.  Think of it as nearly half a century of experience, all bad.  And what is it that Washington seems to have concluded?  In Afghanistan, where one disaster after another has occurred, that we Americans can finally do more of the same, somewhat differently calibrated, and so much better.  In Iraq, where we had, it seemed, decided that enough was enough and we should simply depart, the calls from a familiar crew for us to stay are growing louder by the week.    

The Iraqis, so the argument goes, need us.  After all, who would leave them alone, trusting them not to do what they’ve done best in recent years: cut one another’s throats?    

Modesty in Washington?  Humility?  The ability to draw new lessons from long-term experience?  None of the above is evidently appropriate for “the indispensable nation,” as former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright once called the United States, and to whose leaders she attributed the ability to “see further into the future.”  None of the above is part of the American arsenal, not when Washington’s weapon of choice, repeatedly consigned to the scrapheap of history and repeatedly rescued, remains a deep conviction that nothing is going to go anything but truly, deeply, madly badly without us, even if, as in Iraq, things have for years gone truly, deeply, madly badly with us.

An expanding crew of Washington-based opiners are now calling for the Obama administration to alter its plans, negotiated in the last months of the Bush administration, for the departure of all American troops from Iraq by the end of 2011.  They seem to have taken Albright’s belief in American foresight — even prophesy — to heart and so are basing their arguments on their ability to divine the future.

The problem, it seems, is that, whatever may be happening in the present, Iraq’s future prospects are terrifying, making leaving, if not inconceivable, then as massively irresponsible (as former Washington Post correspondent and bestselling author Tom Ricks wrote recently in a New York Times op-ed) as invading in the first place.  Without the U.S. military on hand, we’re told, the Iraqis will almost certainly deep-six democracy, while devolving into major civil violence and ethnic bloodletting, possibly of the sort that convulsed their country in 2005-2006 when, by the way, the U.S. military was present in force. …

In Iraq, only one thing is really known: after our invasion and with U.S. and allied troops occupying the country in significant numbers, the Iraqis did descend into the charnel house of history, into a monumental bloodbath.  It happened in our presence, on our watch, and in significant part thanks to us.

But why should the historical record — the only thing we can, in part, rely on — be taken into account when our pundits and strategists have such privileged access to an otherwise unknown future?  In the year to come, based on what we’re seeing now, such arguments may intensify.  Terrible prophesies about Iraq’s future without us may multiply.  And make no mistake, terrible things could indeed happen in Iraq.  They could happen while we are there.  They could happen with us gone.  But history delivers its surprises more regularly than we imagine — even in Iraq.

In the meantime, it’s worth keeping in mind that not even Americans can occupy the future.  It belongs to no one.

• • • • •

At Daily Kos on this date in 2006:

Until recently, Claude Allen was the Assistant to the President of the United States for Domestic Policy. Allen is, or was, one of the darlings of the religious right led by the likes of James Dobson and his Focus on the Family. Allen was a big abstinence only crusader and led several assaults on AIDS service organizations as well. This paragon of moral values was recruited by Karl Rove. A couple of days ago, Claude Allen was arrested in connection with a massive shoplifter and refund operation.

Most of the opposition to U.S. detention policy since 9/11 has focused on the detention camp at Guantánamo Bay. But for nearly as long, the United States has been operating a prison in Afghanistan that has been, in many ways, Guantánamo’s uglier twin. Stories of abuse and mistreatment at the Bagram facility have been all too common. At least two detainees were killed by guards at Bagram, the consequence of repeated beatings and shackling in stress positions.

Unlike prisoners at Guantánamo, however, whose habeas rights were restored by the Supreme Court in 2008, Bagram prisoners have never had a meaningful and adequate process to challenge their detention. Yet many Bagram prisoners have been held for years, without charge, without access to courts, without access to lawyers, and without even being told why they are being held. And according to official government investigations, reports by nongovernmental organizations, and interviews with former Bagram detainees and their families, many of the detainees at Bagram have never engaged in or been a part of groups engaged in hostilities against the United States. Many were instead originally picked up in the course of night raids, neighborhood sweeps, and cordon-and-search operations. Others were picked up by military forces acting on the basis of flimsy intelligence like anonymous tips from local rivals or business competitors. The risk that people at Bagram are erroneously detained is very high. It is therefore crucial that the people detained there have prompt access to a court or, at the very least, a fair, independent and impartial tribunal that can order their release. Just as with people held at Guantánamo, those imprisoned at Bagram must not be falsely imprisoned for years without charge.

Last week the ACLU filed habeas petitions on behalf of four people detained at Bagram. One petition is on behalf of two brothers: a 24-year-old Afghan who, until his capture by U.S. forces nearly 20 months ago, served as a translator for the U.S. military for four years, and a 25-year-old customer service representative for an Afghan Internet service provider, who has been imprisoned for nearly two years. The second petition is on behalf of a 61-year-old Afghan government employee, and his 27-year-old nephew, who have been imprisoned at Bagram for more than one year after U.S. forces seized them from their homes. Even though they have already been locked up at Bagram for well over a year (and for some, almost two), the government has never informed our clients of the reasons why they are being detained. Neither do our clients’ families have any idea why their relatives are in prison. In fact, it was months after our clients’ arrest before their families learned what had become of them.

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The problem is not the population of Marja, or it’s strategic significance. As long as we continue using military force and propping up a corrupt, illegitimate government, we will continue to fail.

I love it when America takes popular beliefs about the liberal and conservative agenda, throws those platforms on their heads, and then leaves it up to the Supreme Court to makes sense of the resulting mess.

This fall, SCOTUS will try to restore a sense of order to our national infighting when it tackles Snyder v. Phelps. The case revolves around anti-gay protesters who have been showing up at military funerals to cheer the deaths of American soldiers who “defend homosexuality.”

That’s right, because when I think of a flamboyant institution that is the tool of the gay agenda, I naturally think of the Marines. The Huffington Post explains:

The funeral for Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder in Westminster, Md., was among many that have been picketed by members of the fundamentalist Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas. Westboro pastor Fred Phelps and other members have used the funeral protests to spread their belief that U.S. deaths in the Iraq war are punishment for the nation’s tolerance of homosexuality. One of the signs at Snyder’s funeral combined the U.S. Marine Corps motto with a slur against gay men.

Other signs carred by members of the Topeka, Kan.-based church said, “America is Doomed,” “God Hates the USA/Thank God for 9/11,” “Priests Rape Boys” and “Thank God for IEDs,” a reference to the roadside bombs that have killed many U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

So, if I’m a liberal that loves the First amendment and gays, what am I supposed to do? If I’m a conservative who loves the military but thinks that the missionary position is God’s will, whom do I punish? Oh dear, it’s so confusing.

Thankfully, we have a body of nine people who are not swayed by such base political leanings, right?

SCOTUSblog explains the procedural history that brought this case to the high court:

The funeral picketing case (Snyder v. Phelps, et al., 09-751) focuses on a significant question of First Amendment law: the degree of constitutional protection given to private remarks made about a private person, occurring in a largely private setting. The family of the dead soldier had won a verdict before a jury, but that was overturned by the Fourth Circuit Court, finding that the signs displayed at the funeral in western Maryland and later comments on an anti-gay website were protected speech. The petition for review seeks the Court’s protection for families attending a funeral from “unwanted” remarks or displays by protesters.

Wow, take a look at SCOTUS wading into a hot-button issue about gays. I wonder if the Court will be as willing to grant cert when gay marriage is ripe for judicial consideration?

Still, doesn’t this case have 9-0 written all over it? We’re in for either “free speech means protecting that which I would spend a life opposing,” or it’s a whole bottle of “keep your big mouth OUT of private affairs.”

It just makes “the law” so much nicer when hot-button issues don’t break down along party lines — especially when the party lines are kind of blurred.

Westboro Church Protests Head To Supreme Court [Huffington Post]
Court to rule on funeral pickets [SCOTUSblog]

Westboro Baptist Church – Supreme Court – Fred Phelps – United States – Hate

In all the wrong ways.

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