Look No Further Than the End of Your Nose

Trey Smith

The United States needs protection from the people protecting it, always has, and always will. The character of the president isn't the issue. Neither are the individuals running the FBI, CIA, NSA, JSOC, or the Department of Homeland Security. It wouldn't matter if the national-security state was staffed from top to bottom with people I could hand select based on my esteem for their character.

Letting them operate in secret would still be dangerous.

That conclusion isn't something I've derived in the abstract from political philosophy. The best reason to mistrust the national-security state is its track record. Abuses at the FBI, CIA, and NSA go back a long way, as any student of the J. Edgar Hoover era or the Church Committee report can attest in shocking detail. There's no reason to think that generation was more prone to misbehave than ours. But one needn't look to past generations to find good reasons for mistrust.

The War on Terrorism is full of them.
~ from Why Does Anyone Trust the National-Security State? by Conor Friedersdorf ~

There is another reason not to trust the national-security state and each of us can ascertain this reason by looking no further than the end of our nose. When we ourselves operate in secret, are we paragons of virtue?

The answer is almost always NO, not even close.

It is a human penchant to try to get away with as much as we think we can get away with. A person, group or entity can get away with a heck of a lot when operating in secret. When nobody knows what we're up to, it's like a green light to be up to more things than you can shake a stick at. So, it is illogical to think that government leaders and their minions would behave any differently.

This is why many of our laws (mores too) involve varying degrees of constraint or outright prohibition. Left to our own devices, most humans would run roughshod over everyone else. In order to live together in relative peace and harmony, we have created [imperfect] rules to constrain each other from non-harmonious behavior. Those who operate outside of the rules in secret are the most dangerous. History attests to this fact over and over and over again.

The Partially Lifted Shroud

Trey Smith

President Truman created the NSA with the stroke of a pen at the bottom of a classified 7-page memorandum. Even the name was initially classified. Decades later, the memorandum that acted as the agency's charter remained secret. Reflect on that for a moment. In a representative democracy, the executive branch secretly created a new federal agency and vested it with extraordinary powers. Even the document setting forth those powers was suppressed.

AND

In a representative democracy with a bicameral legislature, Congress was surprised to find that a federal intelligence agency they'd scarcely heard of was bigger and more powerful than one that they'd created. Even after post-Vietnam cutbacks, the NSA counted 68,203 staffers in 1978, making it bigger than all other intelligence agencies combined.
~ from The Secret Story of How the NSA Began by Conor Friedersdorf ~

Over the last few months, the public has begun to learn more about America's most secretive agency. As Friedersdorf makes clear, the recent revelations have been eye-opening even to many of the power brokers. The fact that it has taken this long to learn only the most basic information about the NSA should trouble EVERY American.

Imagine if there had been no Edward Snowden. Imagine if the headlines these past months made only a passing mention of the NSA. Imagine if the NSA still operated in virtual secrecy. Would you feel safer?

Just because we now know of some of the NSA's questionable activities does not mean those activities have come to a halt. But the NSA knows that people are watching them and this offers a degree of constraint, even if only momentarily. An entity that operates in the dark is not constrained by anything. The very fact that the NSA feels constrained at all today is because of the courage and conviction of Edward Snowden as well as journalists like Glenn Greenwald who bravely spoke truth to power.

We owe them our undying gratitude!

Voyeurs of Voyeurs

Trey Smith

Let's think through the troubling implications of the latest surveillance-state news. "The National Security Agency has been gathering records of online sexual activity and evidence of visits to pornographic websites as part of a proposed plan to harm the reputations of those whom the agency believes are radicalizing others through incendiary speeches," Glenn Greenwald, Ryan Gallagher, and Ryan Grim report.

NSA apologists would have us believe that only terrorists have cause to be worried. A surveillance-state spokesperson told the Huffington Post, "without discussing specific individuals, it should not be surprising that the US Government uses all of the lawful tools at our disposal to impede the efforts of valid terrorist targets who seek to harm the nation and radicalize others to violence."

As the story notes, however, the targets are not necessarily terrorists. The term the NSA uses for them is "radicalizes," and if you're thinking of fiery orators urging people to strap on dynamite vests, know that the NSA chart accompanying the story includes one target who is a "well known media celebrity," and whose offense is arguing that "the U.S. perpetrated the 9/11 attacks." It makes one wonder if the NSA believes it would be justified in targeting any 9/11 truther. The chart* shows another target whose "writings appear on numerous jihadi websites" (it doesn't specify whether the writings were produced for those websites or merely posted there), and whose offending argument is that "the U.S. brought the 9/11 attacks upon itself." That could be a crude description of what the Reverend Jeremiah Wright or Ron Paul thinks about 9/11.
~ from The NSA's Porn-Surveillance Program: Not Safe For Democracy by Conor Friedersdorf ~

You know, if we could be confident that government spooks were gathering this sort of information for the sole purpose of preventing heinous acts, we might grant them a bit of leeway. But there is no reason to be confident in this regard. History has shown that our spy agencies collect this type of information on those individuals who are viewed as ANY kind of threat to policymakers or the elite.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., was never viewed as the type of person who would foment violence against the government or corporations, yet the FBI was very interested in the man's sexual proclivities. They were interested because of his influence on public opinion and how this influence might force the hand of policymakers.

That's one prominent example among hundreds (or thousands) of other examples. This type of surveillance tends to be used on domestic persons of interest who pose a nonviolent threat to the powers that be.

Does anyone really think that a bona fide terrorist organization would recall one of their agents or provocateurs simply because the fellow liked to view porn on the internet?

"An Alternative World"

Trey Smith

When I read a rundown of military assets being sent to rescue survivors and deliver supplies, I feel grateful for the logistics officers marshaling their expertise, but also struck by the fact that the tools we're using were designed to fight wars and are being temporarily repurposed. I wonder what a fleet as well-funded as the U.S. military's would look like if it were optimized for natural disaster response.

How many victims would have been reached already?

The stories about inaccessible areas of the Philippines, where authorities haven't yet seen the damage — let alone helped the survivors — makes me reflect on the global drone fleet, and imagine an alternative world where it was optimized and expanded to spot victims rather than insurgents, delivering drinking water rather than Hellfire missiles.

I don't mean to go all John Lennon on you. This isn't a naive call to eliminate the U.S. military and spend its entire budget augmenting the International Red Cross.

But given how predictable it is that there will be deadly storms, catastrophic earthquakes, and other natural disasters besides, you'd think we'd spend more on preemptive measures that would help lower the death toll and speed help to survivors. Alas, our psychology as individuals and nations is to dig into our pockets only after the fact, when the descriptions of mass graves and hunger reach us.

It is good to act then. It would be better to act sooner.
~ from Is This the Best Humanity Can Do for the Philippines? by Conor Friedersdorf ~

If asked to sum up in brief the primary reason I started this blog in January 2005, it would be because of my desire to imagine "an alternative world", one aptly expressed through the eyes of Laozi and Zhuangzi. As far back as when they (or others) wrote their famous tracts, humanity has wrestled with cultures fixated on satisfying the egoic desires of the elite. In "an alternative world", ALL of this planet's creatures and life forms would be valued and war would have no purpose.

A report is out that survivors in typhoon-ravaged central Philippines stormed a government owned rice warehouse because...they were starving. It is a sad commentary that there are people in this world who starve everyday despite the fact that enough food is produced to feed everyone. Though there is enough fresh water, there are folks who die of thirst. There are people who are born into grinding poverty and, when death comes (sooner than it should), have never had the opportunity to escape its grip.

I don't understand how ANYONE could be satisfied with the kind of world we have created. It is a world of a few mega winners and a wide swath of mega losers. To sit by silently is, to me, the greatest sin of all.

If You Thought You Could Get Away With It

Trey Smith

Conor Friedersdorf has an interesting column about the potential for utilizing data gathered from NSA spying to impact the political process. As so many pundits do, he writes that President Obama is above suspicion in this regard, but a future president might not be so ethical.

I don't know why Obama should be given a free pass. When it comes to these pervasive surveillance programs, he and his minions haven't been all that truthful in their official utterances. This president maintains a secret kill list that we wouldn't know about except for a leak. In fact, as many commentators have noted -- including Friedersdorf himself -- we haven't witnessed such a secretive president since Nixon!

From what I can discern, the rationale most often employed by the NSA under Obama (and Bush too) is that anything goes as long as nobody finds out. No idea is too far-fetched as long as they think that they can get away with it. If not for Edward Snowden, all of the programs that have been revealed recently would have stayed hidden and no one would be talking seriously about reining in this rogue agency.

For all we know, the NSA or one of its many contractors has impacted political races already. Since they are hoovering up EVERYBODY'S data, this would include current officeholders and candidates running for office. Not only could the NSA or a contractor use this ill-gotten data and information to swing an election to one candidate or the other, they could just as easily utilize some embarrassing information uncovered to try to intimidate certain lawmakers to vote a particular way.

More than anything else, it would be absolutely shocking to discover that this has never been done to date!

Somebody's Grandmother, Somebody's Mother

Trey Smith

I offer the following two snippets without comment (because they speak for themselves).

An eight-year-old girl provided Amnesty International with the quote that leads its latest report on targeted killing in Pakistan's tribal regions. A drone strike killed the girl's 68-year-old grandmother as the old woman gathered vegetables last autumn. "I wasn't scared of drones before," the little girl said, "but now when they fly overhead I wonder, will I be next?"

Her uncertainty is understandable. An elderly matriarch's death is inevitably tragic for her grandchild. Her survivors are made to bear an even greater burden when the death is cloaked in mystery. Was the strike a murder? A terrible mistake? Did the grandmother inadvertently do something to make the drone pilot suspicious? How can other innocents avoid her fate? The U.S. doesn't just refuse to explain its actions (or to compensate the families of innocent people it wrongfully kills). Our government cloaks the killings in extreme secrecy, refusing even to acknowledge its role. Of course little eight-year-old girls wonder if they're next. What would you think if a Hellfire missile arbitrarily blew up your grandma? I wonder if an eight-year-old girl is next too. It would make no more or less sense.
~ from 8-Year-Old Girl on Drones: 'When They Fly Overhead I Wonder, Will I Be Next?' by Conor Friedersdorf ~

The last time I saw my mother, Momina Bibi, was the evening before Eid al-Adha. She was preparing my children's clothing and showing them how to make sewaiyaan, a traditional sweet made of milk. She always used to say: the joy of Eid is the excitement it brings to the children.

Last year, she never had that experience. The next day, 24 October 2012, she was dead, killed by a US drone that rained fire down upon her as she tended her garden.

Nobody has ever told me why my mother was targeted that day. The media reported that the attack was on a car, but there is no road alongside my mother's house. Several reported the attack was on a house. But the missiles hit a nearby field, not a house. All reported that five militants were killed. Only one person was killed – a 67-year-old grandmother of nine.

My three children – 13-year-old Zubair, nine-year-old Nabila and five-year-old Asma – were playing nearby when their grandmother was killed. All of them were injured and rushed to hospitals. Were these children the "militants" the news reports spoke of? Or perhaps, it was my brother's children? They, too, were there. They are aged three, seven, 12, 14, 15 and 17 years old. The eldest four had just returned from a day at school, not long before the missile struck.

But the United States and its citizens probably do not know this. No one ever asked us who was killed or injured that day. Not the United States or my own government. Nobody has come to investigate nor has anyone been held accountable. Quite simply, nobody seems to care.

I care, though. And so does my family and my community. We want to understand why a 67-year-old grandmother posed a threat to one of the most powerful countries in the world. We want to understand how nine children, some playing in the field, some just returned from school, could possibly have threatened the safety of those living a continent and an ocean away.

Most importantly, we want to understand why President Obama, when asked whom drones are killing, says they are killing terrorists. My mother was not a terrorist. My children are not terrorists. Nobody in our family is a terrorist.
~ from Please Tell Me, Mr. President, Why a US Drone Assassinated My Mother by Rafiq ur Rehman ~

I Am (Sort Of) God

Trey Smith

On January 20, 2017, a new president takes office. She is knowledgeable about foreign affairs, has experience making tough decisions under pressure, and has a more finely tuned moral compass than the average commander-in-chief. But most striking is a unique ability she possesses: the power to secretly kill any individual simply by closing her eyes, concentrating for ten minutes, and willing it. Ayman al-Zawahiri? Dead on inauguration day -- a heart attack, by outward appearances. Somali pirates on a ship in the Gulf of Aden? Six killed, and not even the freed hostages can explain why they just kept dropping dead, one by one.

That night, after the new president goes to sleep, it transpires that you alone, among all the people on earth, learn of her power: that she can direct it with total precision, but cannot, for some reason, target anyone inside the U.S. Then you are given a choice. Snap your fingers that moment and anonymously strip her of the power to kill in secret -- or do nothing, in which case you'll lose all knowledge of her ability. For 8 years, she'll use it in secret, or not, as she sees fit.

What would you do?

Most people I confront with this question briefly flirt with what the world might be like if a benevolent force quietly killed all the murderous tyrants and terrorists. Then they shudder at the amount of unchecked power the president I described would possess, see the huge risks, ponder human nature, and say they'd snap. History teaches that humans are made of crooked timber. Deep down, we know that no one who'd exercise the power to kill in secret can be trusted with it.
~ from Why the U.S. Needs to Stop Shrouding Its Drone Program in Secrecy by Conor Friedersdorf ~

From the standpoint of the human ego -- yours, mine and everyone else's -- it is god. The way it views and filters the world is they way things are...or so it tells itself. If it views up as down and left as right, any evidence to the contrary will not dissuade it. Its perspective is supreme. The entire cosmos rotates around and through it.

However, though the human ego believes that the world was created for its benefit and its benefit only, it does understand that it alone does not control [enough] aspects of life. Sometimes, shit happens and, though the human ego tries its darnedest to make the shit stop, it seems the shit has a mind of its own too! I guess we could say that the human ego views itself as a god, not the god.

It is for this reason that we are damn lucky that no one possesses the attribute that Friedersdorf describes above. Any human ego that possessed such a power would abuse it by default and it would do so without a second thought. Sure, this particular human ego would tell itself that it used this power judiciously, but subjectivity has a way of impeding justice and fairness. The human ego views its own needs and desires as more important than any others.

All Few Signs Point To GO

Trey Smith

What I'd like is if news accounts on pressure to intervene in Syria made it clear that the "growing calls ... for forceful action" aren't coming from the people, or Congressional majorities, or an expert consensus. The pressure is being applied by a tiny, insular elite that mostly lives in Washington, D.C., and isn't bothered by the idea of committing America to military action that most Americans oppose. Nor are they bothered by the president launching a war of choice without Congressional approval, even though Obama declared as a candidate that such a step would be illegal. Some of them haven't even thought through the implications of the pressure they're applying.

Why is their pro-war pressure legitimized as the prevailing story line, despite the fact that they hold a minority position, even as pressure against intervention -- that is to say, the majority position -- is all but ignored? Consider a variation on the "pressure" story that isn't written, though it would be accurate:

President Obama Faces Mounting Pressure to Stay Out of Syria

With his credibility seen increasingly on the line, President Barack Obama today faced growing calls at home and abroad to stay out of the conflict in Syria, despite the presence of chemical weapons and his former declarations that their use would be a red line.

Various Syria experts warned that intervention could touch off a regional conflict, do more to harm than help Syrian civilians, and draw the United States into a more costly, protracted war than anyone wants. Anti-war group Code Pink used their Facebook page to organize a rally against missile strikes. A subset of conservatives warned that intervening on the side of rebels could empower Islamist extremists. Deficit hawks argued that America can't afford costly military strikes at this time in a conflict with little relation to our national interests, and Obama's 2007 statements about the illegality of a president going to war without Congress absent an immediate threat to American security risks making him look like a hypocrite if he unilaterally intervenes. An inability to get UN approval would also arguably make the conflict illegal under international law. And Obama's Nobel Peace Prize would seem to hem him in further.

A story like that would never be written. The political press unconsciously treats hawkish positions as if they're more serious and legitimate, in part because they've thoughtlessly bought into the frame that experts can control geopolitics.
~ from How an Insular Beltway Elite Makes Wars of Choice More Likely by Conor Friedersdorf ~

If not for British lawmakers, the attack against the Syrian government might already be underway. Just as in the US, it is the British executive that is so gung-ho. Move away from the Prime Minister's office and there are A LOT of people who question this strategy.

Here in the US, as Friedersdorf makes clear, there only is small minority that favors any type of military attack on Syria and yet that seems to be the de facto decision. While I think that most rational people would agree that a president shouldn't lead simply by what opinion polls indicate, a president should take into account the democratic will when it overwhelming takes a position. In this case, almost every sector of American society is against the launching of a military attack.

But we no longer live in an actual democracy. More and more, the Executive Branch does whatever the hell it wants to. And so, I won't be surprised at all to learn that the small minority gets what it wants: a military action.

A Darn Good Analogy

Trey Smith

In my writings on this blog, I frequently make use of the analogy (A form of logical inference or an instance of it, based on the assumption that if two things are known to be alike in some respects, then they must be alike in other respects). I tend to use analogies to explain a principle ripped from the headlines and then insert it into our everyday lives.

Conor Friedersdorf decided to use this vehicle as well in explaining the underlying issues in regards to the spying on Americans by the NSA. The characters in his analogy are Barack and Michelle Obama.

Barack snuck into Michelle's closet one day, dug through her belongings until he found her diary, and photocopied it. Then he replaced the original, locked the copy in his desk, and didn't think about it much until she found out months later and furiously confronted him.

"What? You stole my diary?"

"No Michelle, I didn't 'steal' it. But I am going to find a cage for whoever told you that I photocopied it."

"I can't believe you took it and made a copy -- you invaded my privacy."

"Listen, Michelle. I did not invade your privacy. I have no interest in reading your diary. I merely set aside a copy in case I have a legitimate reason for reading it at some undetermined point in the future."

"That's still outrageous! And how do I know you haven't read it?"

"That's unfair. You have no evidence that I read it. This conversation needs to be a little bit more informed and responsible."

"And who knows who might get a hold of it now that you've stashed a copy somewhere!"

"There are very strict safeguards around who can get into my desk, Michelle, you know that."

"What about when it's Joe's desk, or Hillary's? Eww, what if Bill reads my diary. I can't believe you did this. And what if you get tempted to read it yourself a year from now, if you haven't already?"

"You just have to trust me, Michelle. This is for your own good. Ultimately, I'm the decider."

"Oh my God, you're even starting to sound like him."

Abuse Is Endemic In a Secretive Government

Trey Smith

It is naive -- in fact, it is absurd -- to imagine that the scores or hundreds of NSA analysts given access to these databases will never commit abuses. There are bad apples in every human enterprise. Agencies that operate under the cover of secrecy are that much more vulnerable to abuses. U.S. surveillance agencies have a particularly sordid history of abusing the power given them. Illegal, warrantless spying on Americans was secretly conducted as recently as the Bush years, and the people responsible for the illegal abuses were granted retroactive immunity. Edward Snowden himself demonstrated that the NSA cannot predict when one of its own might suddenly abscond with top secret information that no one planned to be made public.
~ from The High Likelihood That Future NSA Abuses Will Occur by Conor Friedersdorf ~

While I certainly do not dispute Friedersdorf's thesis, we don't have to look into the future to prove it. It is happening right now! Just take a look at two recent news reports that clearly show that powers meant to thwart terrorism are being used for purposes that have nothing to do with it.

Story #1: Secret US Drug Agency Unit Passing Surveillance Information to Authorities
A secretive US Drug Enforcement Administration unit is funneling information from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records to authorities across the nation to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans.

Although these cases rarely involve national security issues, documents reviewed by Reuters show that law enforcement agents have been directed to conceal how such investigations truly begin – not only from defense lawyers but also sometimes from prosecutors and judges.

The undated documents show that federal agents are trained to "recreate" the investigative trail to effectively cover up where the information originated, a practice that some experts say violates a defendant's constitutional right to a fair trial. If defendants don't know how an investigation began, they cannot know to ask to review potential sources of exculpatory evidence – information that could reveal entrapment, mistakes or biased witnesses.

Story #2: IRS Manual Detailed DEA's Use of Hidden Intel Evidence
Details of a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration program that feeds tips to federal agents and then instructs them to alter the investigative trail were published in a manual used by agents of the Internal Revenue Service for two years.

The practice of recreating the investigative trail, highly criticized by former prosecutors and defense lawyers after Reuters reported it this week, is now under review by the Justice Department. Two high-profile Republicans have also raised questions about the procedure.

A 350-word entry in the Internal Revenue Manual instructed agents of the U.S. tax agency to omit any reference to tips supplied by the DEA's Special Operations Division, especially from affidavits, court proceedings or investigative files.

People in Washington DC keep telling us that these expansive powers are not being used on Americans and to suggest such a thing is irresponsible. Yet it is their own documents that indicate otherwise.

You see, when the government operates in the dark, they can do whatever they damn well please. As these various revelations keep coming to light, it is more than evident that they damn well please to ignore the basic safeguards housed in the US Constitution.

Very Strange Bedfellows

Trey Smith

If you pay any attention to the news, you know that John Boehner, Michele Bachmann, Eric Cantor, Darrell Issa and Paul Ryan are leading Republican congresspeople who rarely, if ever, have a good thing to say about President Barack Obama. On so many issues, these members of the GOP and others deride the president for being out-of-touch or out-of-step with the American people.  Some of them have even hinted that Obama is a socialist or, at least, a typical tax-and-spend liberal.

Yes, these leading conservatives are completely unable to find common ground with this nation's first black president...except when it comes to war and spying.  Bring up those two issues and you can find the aforementioned Republicans sitting around a campfire with Barack singing Kumbaya!

As has been noted before in this space, President Obama had to look to the leadership of -- not his own party -- but the Republicans to beat back an attempt to place some constraints on one NSA spying program.  Only 40 percent of the members of his own party sided with him, while his policy position was successful due to nearly 60 percent of Republicans backing up him up. 

Did you ever think the day would come when Michele Bachmann would be lauding the president?  (Me neither.)

But that wasn't the only telling aspect of this historic vote.  Jan Schakowsky of Illinois -- considered by many to be one of the most progressive members of Congress -- cast her vote to allow the NSA to continue to spy on Americans suspected of no wrongdoing.  So too did Marcy Kaptur, the woman who defeated Dennis Kucinich during 2012 in a race between two liberal Democrats forced to face off in a gerrymandered district primary.

When it comes to violating the constitutional rights of the people they ostensibly serve, we increasingly are seeing very, very strange political bedfellows.

~

Conor Friedersdorf has some advice in terms of this vote.  If you consider yourself a progressive, I hope you take it!

Is it appropriate in a free society for government to hoover up and store as much information on everyone as possible? Or should government only spy on Americans reasonably suspected of wrongdoing? Thanks to Tuesday's vote, which wouldn't have happened without Edward Snowden's leaks, voters now have their elected representatives on record about where they stand.

That is a vital thing in a democracy! Don't like the position they've taken? The next election is coming up in 2014. Personally, I'd like to see every last elected official who voted against this attempted reform ousted from office. I don't care if they're beat by primary challengers or in a general election. It seems to me that the American people should send a message to the NSA apologists: The U.S. has managed to flourish for decades without spying on all its citizens, and it should continue to do so. (emphasis mine)

Two Peas in a Pod

Trey Smith

One wouldn't think you could find much in common between Dick Cheney and Barack Obama. Cheney is a white conservative Republican from Nebraska who served as the Secretary of Defense under Bush, Sr. and Vice President under Bush, Jr. Obama is a black centrist Democrat from Hawaii who served less than one term as a US Senator before being elected US President. But as Conor Friedersdorf explains, these two disparate men share at least one important thing in common.

For all their substantial differences, Dick Cheney and Barack Obama share one leadership trait: they trust their own judgment so thoroughly, and value it so highly, that they recklessly undermine all institutional and prudential restraints on their ability to exercise it whenever they see fit. Indeed, like Kobe Bryant at the end of a playoff game, they both harbor a barely suppressed, supremely arrogant belief that behaving in this way is their responsibility, or even their burden.

Yes, arrogance! Both of them are way too full of themselves.

There is a fine line between self-confidence and arrogance. You can possess the former without lording it over others. In general, people like to be around individuals who exude confidence because it often rubs off. If your leader believes that something is possible, it helps to make others feel it is possible too.

But arrogance is a different animal altogether. Most people bristle at having to spend time with those individuals who feel they inherently are smarter, wiser or better than everyone else. When it comes to group morale and cohesion, arrogance is a real downer! It is particularly irksome when an arrogant person demands trust from others without actually earning it.

Of course, it is not just Dick Cheney and Barack Obama who share this trait. While it can be found in people from all walks of life, there seems to be a heavy concentration of arrogance in Washington, DC. This is one explanation for why Congress rarely pays attention to the will of their constituents. Why should they? They "know" better than we do!

A few weeks ago my brother and I were discussing this overall topic. We both agreed that almost EVERY person who desires to be the US President is, by definition, arrogant. How else can you explain that an individual desires to occupy the most powerful position in the country? You have to believe that you possess the brains, cunning and wisdom to know what is best for everyone else. If that isn't the epitome of arrogance, then I don't know what is!

Mao, Stalin and Bicycle Nazis

Trey Smith

Wall Street Journal editorial-board member Dorothy Rabinowitz is the object of deserved mockery this week after arguing that New York City's new bike share program is evidence of an "autocratic" mayor with a "totalitarian" mindset who has "begrimed" the best neighborhoods in the city.

If only she weren't representative of a larger trend.

There is no one in America who objects more consistently than me to Mayor Michael Bloomberg's initiatives: This is a man who favors stop-and-frisk, racially profiling and spying on innocent Muslims, restricting the size of soda New Yorkers can buy, salt limits, a trans-fat ban, and a pervasive surveillance state. Left up to me, no one like Bloomberg would ever exercise political power. My disdain for his paternalism and disregard for civil liberties is what inclines me to defend his bike initiative. It is the least "totalitarian" major initiative that Bloomberg has undertaken, yet is denounced with some of the strongest language. If the critics were merely expressing their personal displeasure at the prospect of cities better suited to bike travel (or doubts about the efficacy of a particular policy aimed at making cities more bike friendly) that would be fine. Instead they co-opt the language of freedom and oppression, as if orienting cities toward automobiles is natural and libertarian, while bike shares and bike lanes are harbingers of tyranny.

That is vapid, paranoid, philosophically incoherent nonsense. By frivolously trafficking in it, I fear that Rabinowitz and friends will diminish all warnings about liberty and government overreach. Even the boy who cried wolf was invoking the specter of an actually frightening creature.

Rabinowitz is crying bicycle.
~ from The Paranoid Style in Bicycle Politics: A Bicoastal Freak-Out by Conor Friedersdorf ~

Ah yes, the "totalitarianism" of bicycle riding! Mao, Stalin and Hitler too are shaking their fists from the grave.

I have news for people. Cars and highways aren't mentioned in the Holy Bible. None of us has been blessed with a God-given right to pollute our planet at will.

~

In a nation plagued by obesity, it seems sort of natural that fat asses would object to any strategy that encourages physical activity! Too many of the powers that be like having a fat and lazy electorate. They want us to eat and drive, not exercise and think. Do too much of the latter and, maybe, we might get wise to the games they are playing with our lives.

~

I know first hand of the all too common reticence of the establishment to promoting the use of bicycles as an alternate form of transportation. During my first year in South Bend, I tried to interest our Mayor and City Council on working to gain for South Bend recognition as a "Bicycle Friendly" community. We needed to take a few steps and it wouldn't have cost that much money, but these people reacted as if I had suggested that we paint all public property purple!

Not One, Not Two, Not Three

Trey Smith

Attorney General Eric Holder has just sent a truly incredible letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee. In it, he acknowledges that the U.S. has killed four of its own citizens in drone strikes. Casual news consumers may find that confusing. Hasn't there already been an extremely public debate about the killing of American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman? Indeed, everyone knows that, despite the 5th Amendment, the Obama Administration believes it can target and kill American citizens without due process, and that it has done so.

But that hasn't stopped Team Obama from keeping what everyone knows officially classified, permitting them to broach the subject when convenient and to dodge it when inconvenient. Wednesday's revelation, first reported by the indispensable Charlie Savage of the New York Times, is therefore a good thing. Team Obama has dispensed with the absurd pretense that targeting Americans is a secret, and admitted that they've killed a total of 4 Americans with drones.

It's actually three other features of the letter that are incredible.

1) While a total of four Americans have been killed in drone strikes, the Obama Administration says that it was only targeting one of them. This is an important fact to remember the next time you're told that their drone campaign is one of "targeted killing" or "surgical precision," or that drones can linger in the air for hours to make sure that only the intended targets are being blown up. Critics of the drone war have long pointed out that lots of people die by American-fired Hellfire missile who were never targeted, and whose identities aren't known at the time of their death. What a powerful, irrefutable reminder of those facts. It is a discredit to the Obama Administration that they are just now going on the record with this powerful information.

2) While the letter notes that three of four Americans weren't specifically targeted, including a 16-year-old, the letter offers no explanation of why young Abdulrahman was in fact killed, and gives no indication that his death is problematic. The American people are owed a full explanation of how he wound up dead. "We weren't trying to kill the 16-year-old American we blew up" isn't sufficient explanation, its an admission that a thorough, transparent investigation is needed.

3) In a letter that makes long overdue disclosures about facts that have long been public, and that could've been acknowledged months and months ago without doing any damage to national security, Holder has the chutzpah to write as if Team Obama is an enlightened model of transparency.
~ from The Audacity of Eric Holder's Letter Admitting Team Obama Killed 4 Americans by Conor Friedersdorf ~

Of all the recent revelations, this letter should invoke the biggest scandal of all! It could easily be grounds for impeachment. But I will be surprised if it gains very much traction in Washington because the GOP actually favors this aspect of the Obama administration and Democrats certainly won't move to impeach their own guy. Conservatives will bitch and moan for weeks about Benghazi and the IRS situation, but you won't hear much complaint about this President intimidating the media OR killing American citizens without due process.

If the President can kill American citizens -- some by accident -- without it causing a furor in Congress, the mainstream media or with the general public, what can't a President and his administration get away with? Oh yeah, I forgot. They can't get away with dragging their feet a bit before granting tax-exempt status for conservative political groups!

Let Me Add Another

Trey Smith

Prior to the Iraq War, the war in Libya, and any intervention we may or may not undertake in Syria, some hawks insistently argue(d) that there is a humanitarian imperative to step into the breach.

Their arguments can be powerful.

Innocent people are dying at the hands of a tyrant. We have the most powerful military on earth. If we do nothing, the slaughter will continue. And don't most of us agree that some military interventions, like the one that stopped the Holocaust, would've been justified on purely humanitarian grounds, even if stopping the death camps wasn't the rationale for WWII at the time?

There are many non-interventionist counterarguments. One is that even in situations where death is guaranteed absent intervention, it is still possible to unwittingly make a terrible situation worse.

Another is that war is very costly in U.S. lives and treasure.

And isn't it unfair to order people who joined the military to defend their country to risk their lives for a different cause, however noble?

While open to interventions in the most extreme cases, I'm generally a non-interventionist, and although there are several reasons I feel that way, one in particular seems to be missing from the national debate: Almost every time someone calls for a war to be entered on humanitarian grounds, there's a way to save more lives more cheaply and reliably with philanthropic spending.
~ from The Flaw in Many Humanitarian Arguments for War by Conor Friedersdorf ~

Let me add my own counterargument: If the US genuinely promoted peace, justice and human rights in our foreign policy -- as well as within our own borders -- a lot of these situations wouldn't develop in the first place. Most of the nations that receive our interventions are those in which we have spent numerous years propping up their dictators. As long as these thugs do our bidding and/or allow us to steal their citizens' natural resources, we overlook their despotic tendencies and hold them close to our bosom. Consequently, the support of our elites often is a precipitating cause of unrest among their own people.

Rather than ramming "democracy" down people's throat with the barrel of a gun, I think we could do a lot more good if we modeled real democracy in the way our nation conducts itself in all it does. Like the old saying goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure!

It's a Bird...It's a Plane...It's a Drone?

Trey Smith

In a Massachusetts town where no one has ever died in a drone strike and no one is likely to for the foreseeable future, it is nevertheless unnerving to hear an unidentified aircraft buzzing overhead.

Just ask the residents.

The mysterious plane that's flying over Quincy on starlit nights is frightening some of them, the local CBS affiliate reports. "It's not the state or local police doing the flying, and the FAA is giving out little information, even to city officials," reporter Bill Shield states in the writeup. He goes on to cite sources who indicated "that the aircraft is not a drone, that it is manned. FAA spokesman Jim Peters would only say, 'We have to be very careful this time' concerning information."

One resident described it as "this strong humming sound" that gets louder and fainter as the plane flies to and fro in the middle of the night. Local leaders are getting inundated with phone calls, some from people complaining that they can't sleep, but haven't been given any information.
~ from A Buzzing Sound in the Massachusetts Sky Evokes Drone Fears by Conor Friedersdorf ~

As a general rule, when a government official refuses to divulge information EXCEPT in the form of a specific denial, you should expect that whatever they tell you is patently untrue is, of course, true. In this specific instance, about the ONLY thing local residents have been told is that the aircraft is not a drone, so it most likely is!

However, in this specific case, it doesn't really matter if it is a drone or it isn't. Why? Because the day is coming -- if it is not already here -- that drones flying over America's towns, cities and countryside will be a common happenstance. My guess is that there may be so many domestic drones in our skies that it won't be uncommon for them to crash into each other! There will be FBI and CIA drones. There may be some from Homeland Security. The state police will employ a few as will county and local police departments. Maybe Corporate America and the mainstream media will get into the act too!

It will be at the point that domestic drones are so commonplace when we will see how Americans REALLY feel about drones. As long as they buzz solely over the heads of Muslims in faraway places, most Americans don't give drones a second thought. But will they show the same degree of disinterest when drones are buzzing above their own heads?

What do you think?  (You only get one guess.)

If It Moves, Shoot It

Trey Smith

Can anyone read the McClatchy Newspapers summary of top-secret intelligence reports and continue to deny it? Set aside the morality and effectiveness of the CIA's targeted-killing program. Isn't it important for Congress and the people to know the truth about the War on Terrorism? Many Americans remain furious that the Bush Administration gave Iraq War speeches that elided inconvenient truths and implied facts that turned out to be fictions. Is the objection merely that the Iraq War turned out badly? Or is misleading Congress and the public itself problematic, especially when the subject is as serious as killing people in foreign countries?

To justify frequent drone strikes that regularly kill innocent people, risk serving as a terrorist recruiting tool, and terrorize whole communities understandably averse to drones buzzing above their homes, Obama Administration officials give the impression that al-Qaeda terrorists are the main targets. As it turns out, they haven't just helped hide the fact that the Bush Administration kicked off America's drone campaign in Pakistan by killing someone at the request of Pakistan's government -- as Jonathan S. Landay explains, Obama officials have misled us about their own behavior. "Contrary to assurances it has deployed U.S. drones only against known senior leaders of al Qaida and allied groups, the Obama administration has targeted and killed hundreds of suspected lower-level Afghan, Pakistani and unidentified 'other' militants in scores of strikes in Pakistan's rugged tribal area, classified U.S. intelligence reports show," he reports.

The misleading rhetoric includes words spoken by President Obama himself:

The administration has said that strikes by the CIA's missile-firing Predator and Reaper drones are authorized only against "specific senior operational leaders of al Qaida and associated forces" involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks who are plotting "imminent" violent attacks on Americans. "It has to be a threat that is serious and not speculative," President Barack Obama said in a Sept. 6, 2012, interview with CNN. "It has to be a situation in which we can't capture the individual before they move forward on some sort of operational plot against the United States." Copies of the top-secret U.S. intelligence reports reviewed by McClatchy, however, show that drone strikes in Pakistan over a four-year period didn't adhere to those standards.

In fact, the documents "show that drone operators weren't always certain who they were killing." Under what legal theory does the Obama Administration justify that behavior? It won't tell us.
~ from New Evidence That Team Obama Misled Us About the Drone War by Conor Friedersdorf ~

I don't know about you, but this revelation doesn't shock me at all. As soon as I learned that Team Obama defined a "terrorist" as ANY male above a certain age, it became apparent that our drones fire on people randomly. You don't craft such a broad and nebulous definition if you genuinely are targeting specific individuals.

It reminds me of hunters who accidentally shoot other people, domestic animals or cows. They tromp out into the woods all ginned up for a trophy kill and, with their adrenalin pumping like mad, they look for something to shoot. Without actually eyeballing and scrutinizing a specific target, they fire at the first thing that moves. Afterward, they fall all over themselves trying to explain how they somehow mistook a 5 foot tall woman for a deer or a golden retriever for a bear! In too many of these cases, I bet the sad truth is that they had no idea what they fired at. Something moved, so they pulled the trigger.

When people chastise me for refusing to vote for the supposed lesser evil -- in the last two presidential elections, that has been Barack Obama -- I wonder how these same people can look themselves in the mirror! By supporting Obama, you are supporting the trivialization of lives in faraway places. You are saying that, while it may make you a bit squeamish, you support a hunter who shoots blindly. You are okay with a hunter who shoots random people as long as he tells you that he was convinced that these folks were deer or bears.

Not me. I don't abide by that. Not. One. Bit.

Not Even Close

Trey Smith

What I am saying is that Obama has done things that, while not comparable to a historic evil like chattel slavery, go far beyond my moral comfort zone. Everyone must define their own deal-breakers. Doing so is no easy task in this broken world. But this year isn't a close call for me.

I find Obama likable when I see him on TV. He is a caring husband and father, a thoughtful speaker, and possessed of an inspirational biography. On stage, as he smiles into the camera, using words to evoke some of the best sentiments within us, it's hard to believe certain facts about him:

1. Obama terrorizes innocent Pakistanis on an almost daily basis. The drone war he is waging in North Waziristan isn't "precise" or "surgical" as he would have Americans believe. It kills hundreds of innocents, including children. And for thousands of more innocents who live in the targeted communities, the drone war makes their lives into a nightmare worthy of dystopian novels. People are always afraid. Women cower in their homes. Children are kept out of school. The stress they endure gives them psychiatric disorders. Men are driven crazy by an inability to sleep as drones buzz overhead 24 hours a day, a deadly strike possible at any moment. At worst, this policy creates more terrorists than it kills; at best, America is ruining the lives of thousands of innocent people and killing hundreds of innocents for a small increase in safety from terrorists. It is a cowardly, immoral, and illegal policy, deliberately cloaked in opportunistic secrecy. And Democrats who believe that it is the most moral of all responsible policy alternatives are as misinformed and blinded by partisanship as any conservative ideologue.

2. Obama established one of the most reckless precedents imaginable: that any president can secretly order and oversee the extrajudicial killing of American citizens. Obama's kill list transgresses against the Constitution as egregiously as anything George W. Bush ever did. It is as radical an invocation of executive power as anything Dick Cheney championed. The fact that the Democrats rebelled against those men before enthusiastically supporting Obama is hackery every bit as blatant and shameful as anything any talk radio host has done.

3. Contrary to his own previously stated understanding of what the Constitution and the War Powers Resolution demand, President Obama committed U.S. forces to war in Libya without Congressional approval, despite the lack of anything like an imminent threat to national security.

In different ways, each of these transgressions run contrary to candidate Obama's 2008 campaign. (To cite just one more example among many, Obama has done more than any modern executive to wage war on whistleblowers. In fact, under Obama, Bush-era lawbreakers, including literal torturers, have been subject to fewer and less draconian attempts at punishment them than some of the people who conscientiously came forward to report on their misdeeds.) Obama ran in the proud American tradition of reformers taking office when wartime excesses threatened to permanently change the nature of the country. But instead of ending those excesses, protecting civil liberties, rolling back executive power, and reasserting core American values, Obama acted contrary to his mandate. The particulars of his actions are disqualifying in themselves. But taken together, they put us on a course where policies Democrats once viewed as radical post-9/11 excesses are made permanent parts of American life.

~ from Why I Refuse to Vote for Barack Obama by Conor Friedersdorf ~

I realize and understand that most of you who have/will vote for Obama will not be swayed by the litany of articles I have shared that deal with the many nefarious aspects of his nearly 4 years in the Oval Office.

So, why do I keep sharing them? Because I want to put it on record here.

I want you to be able to refer back to these articles over the next four years, regardless of which candidate wins the presidential election. If Obama wins and we continue down this dark road we're on, then you can return here to see how we got on this road to begin with. If Romney wins, the same thing goes.

Obama, like Bush before him, has established precedents that will be enshrined in the office. It's just a good idea to show who made this enshrinement possible.