The Commentariat -- March 25

Grassley Gaffe. Sometimes Republicans step out of Right Wing World & tell the truth. Michael Shear of the New York Times: "Senator Chuck Grassley, Republican of Iowa, offered a blunt, no-nonsense assessment of the potential Republican field of candidates for president. He said only two or three of them would be qualified to hold the highest office in the land. And then he refused to say which ones they were." CW: whadda ya bet newbie Sen. & self-certified opthamologist Rand Paul is not on Chuck's shortlist? Now, Sen. Grassley, time to get back to those "death panel" stories.

News to Enrage You. David Kocieniewski of the New York Times: "General Electric, the nation’s largest corporation, had a very good year in 2010. The company reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1 billion of the total came from its operations in the United States. Its American tax bill? None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.... The company has been cutting the percentage of its American profits paid to the Internal Revenue Service for years, resulting in a far lower rate than at most multinational companies.... President Obama ...has designated G.E.’s chief executive, Jeffrey R. Immelt, as ... chairman of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.... One of the most striking advantages of General Electric is its ability to lobby for, win and take advantage of tax breaks." CW: I've been boycotting GE for awhile now; I'm sure going to keep it up.

Prof. William Cronon. Via TPM.McCarthyism 2.0. CW: the Wisconsin union story will not die, & Wisconsin Republicans are doing their bit to keep it going. A few days ago, I linked a New York Times op-ed by UW-Madison history Prof. Bill Cronon, which details how Republicans in the state had veered from a long tradition of Republican progressivism. Josh Marshall of TPM reports that Cronon's op-ed riled the state GOP, which responded with an open-records request to UW for Cronon's personal e-mails. As Marshall points out, Cronon is a state employee, but he is not in any sense a public official. Cronon argues in a long blogpost that the GOP request is an attempt to intimidate him & is a direct attack on academic freedom. I agree. It's the same sort of crap Joe "No Decency" McCarthy pulled in the 1950s.

Impeachment is a process. That’s not going happen.
-- Dennis Kucinich, slightly walking back his earlier call for President Obama's impeachment

Steven Myers & David Kirkpatrick of New York Times: "... the inchoate coalition attacking Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s forces remains divided over the ultimate goal — and exit strategy — of what officials acknowledged Thursday would be a military campaign that could last for weeks. The United States has all but called for Colonel Qaddafi’s overthrow from within — with American commanders on Thursday openly calling on the Libyan military to stop following orders — even as administration officials insist that is not the explicit objective of the bombing, and that their immediate goal is more narrowly defined. France has gone further, recognizing the Libyan rebels as the country’s legitimate representatives, but other allies, even those opposed to Colonel Qaddafi’s erratic and authoritarian rule, have balked." ...

... Speaking of the French, I missed this post by Karen Garcia on an intriguing ménage à trois: Hillary, Nick & Carla. Garcia's photo "proofs" are excellent, too. Here's Carla Bruni commenting on l'amour:

     ... (An English translation of Bruni's lyrics, which I haven't take the time to verify, is here.)

... Tim Egan of the New York Times: "... despite a largely incoherent chorus of second-guessers, [President] Obama has settled into a groove of reflective dithering before making his decisions. For the most part, it has served him well." With video. ...

... Gene Robinson: "... the goal must be to prevent the bloodbath, not just reschedule it. Even after his forces have been pummeled by U.S., French and British airstrikes, Gaddafi has his ragtag opponents outmanned and outgunned. Unless we explicitly take the side of the rebels — providing air support for their advances, for example — it is hard to imagine how they will ever be able to take much ground."

... Juan Cole lists the top ten accomplishments of the U.N. no-fly zone. ...

... Glenn Greenwald discovers the leak & publication of a "classified secret"; he doesn't think the Obama Administration will pursue & prosecute the leaker. ...

... Jamison Foser of Media Matters: CNN contributor Erick Erickson claims that President Obama "manufactured" the Libyan crisis to help his re-election bid; in addition, Erickson makes extended comments denigrating women. Foser asks, "I wonder how long someone who claimed in March of 2003 that President Bush had manufactured the Iraq war in order to win re-election would have remained employed as a CNN contributor?" and adds, "Remember: CNN hired this third-rate Limbaugh-wannabe to be a contributor, and used him as an analyst for its State of the Union coverage." Am I going to have to move CNN to Right Wing World?

** New Rules. Evan Perez of the Wall Street Journal: "New rules allow investigators to hold domestic-terror suspects longer than others without giving them a Miranda warning, significantly expanding exceptions to the instructions that have governed the handling of criminal suspects for more than four decades. The move is one of the Obama administration's most significant revisions to rules governing the investigation of terror suspects in the U.S. And it potentially opens a new political tussle over national security policy, as the administration marks another step back from pre-election criticism of unorthodox counterterror methods." Charlie Savage of the New York Times has more. AND here's the text of the memorandum. ...

     ... Marcy Wheeler weighs in: "It was bad enough for the Obama Administration, headed by the supposed and so called 'Constitutional scholar' Barack Obama, to propose inappropriate and unconstitutional legislation to restrict criminal suspects’ Constitution based Miranda rights, but it is an egregious step beyond to simply arrogate to themselves the unitary and unilateral power to do it by DOJ memorandum fiat.... Miranda is a Constitutional based rule, and confirmed by Supreme Court precedent, and it cannot be amended or overruled by act of Congress. And it sure as heck cannot be overruled or amended by administrative fiat via a FBI memorandum." ...

     ... Bill Otis of Crime & Consequences with a little history. Let's see: first AG Eric Holder was against Miranda, then he was for it, now he's against it -- none of which should matter, because it's not his prerogative to rewrite the damned law.

Paul Krugman: "These days, you’re not considered serious in Washington unless you profess allegiance to the same doctrine that’s failing so dismally in Europe."

Julian Assange Is a Bad Houseguest. Since this is a true story, I'm not relegating it to Infotainment, where I realize it belongs. The creator of the video and one of the narrators, Allison Silverman, is a former "Colbert Report" writer:

Right Wing World *

If you could employ an associate who pretends to be sympathetic to the unions’ cause to physically attack you (or even use a firearm against you), you could discredit the unions. -- Carlos Lam, Indiana Deputy Prosector, in an e-mail to Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker ...

... Kate Golden of Wisconsin Watch: Carlos Lam, "an Indiana deputy prosecutor and Republican activist, resigned Thursday after the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism uncovered an email to Gov. Scott Walker in which he suggested a fake attack on the governor to discredit union protesters." His resignation came after telling a reporter, "I am flabbergasted and would never advocate for something like this, and would like everyone to be sure that that’s just not me." Golden adds, "Lam is the second Indiana prosecutor to resign over suggestions to use violence in Wisconsin. He sent this email the same Saturday on which another Indiana law-enforcement figure, state Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Cox, tweeted that riot police should 'use live ammunition' to clear the Capitol of protesters. Cox was fired Feb. 23 after Mother Jones magazine published the suggestion from his private Twitter account."

Steve Benen on Michele Bachmann's likely plans to form a presidential exploratory committtee: "It's probably fair to say that most reasonable political observers, regardless of party or ideology, would agree that Michele Bachmann is stark raving mad.... But that doesn't mean her candidacy, if it exists, won't matter.... Bachmann could prove competitive in Iowa, where radically-conservative activists tend to dominate.... If Bachmann runs, she'll be a sad, cringe-worthy sideshow, making a circus of the entire nominating process. But much to her competitors' chagrin, that's unlikely to stop her." ...

... Adam Sorenson of Time on Bachmann 2012: "It is pure gold for the writers' room at Saturday Night Live. But for the Republican party? A headache, pure and simple." ...

... Benen cites this article by Ed Kilgore of The New Republic, who compares Bachmann to Sarah Palin. "... when you put Palin and Bachmann side by side, it is striking how much broader and deeper—in a word, more seriously committed—the Minnesotan’s involvement with right-wing causes has actually been.... Even if Bachmann doesn’t win a state outright, she could wreak havoc on the field." A good, scary read. ...

... Alex Pareene of Salon: "While [Bachmann's] every idiotic statement shoots across the Internet at lightning speed, no one has seriously examined her gradual shift from anti-gay small-town bigot evangelical Christian social-con to national Tea Partying Constitution-studying Ron Paul acolyte. And maybe someone at a debate (Newt?) will bring up the fact that Bachmann once belonged to a church that literally considers the pope to be the Antichrist. That'd be good for a laugh."

Igor Volsky of Think Progress: Mitt Romney's repeated claim that the Affordable Care Act is a one-size-fits-all program is "self-serving and dead wrong.... While the ACA lays out a certain framework states have to follow..., it still provides governors with a great deal of flexibility in how they implement reform, allowing each state an opportunity to develop a somewhat unique solution."

CW: if, like me, you didn't know Bill Clinton's Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick was "tied to 9/11," it's because (a) you don't follow Fox "News" and associates, and (b) oh, because she wasn't. Media Matters has the story. NPR reports President Obama is considering Gorelick to replace Robert Mueller as FBI director.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning PolitiFact welcomes Tim Pawlenty to the almost-presidential candidate race with three ratings on their truth-o-meter: Pants on Fire, False & Full Flipflop. Nice work, Tim! ...

... Ed Kilgore of The New Republic on why Pawlenty is a longshot.

* The parallel world which Republicans and teabaggers reinvent daily. It bears little relation to the factual world.

News Ledes

Ottawa Citizen: "Prime Minister Stephen Harper will visit the Governor General on Saturday to dissolve Parliament, setting the stage for a federal election in early May. The Harper government was defeated in the House of Commons on Friday on a non-confidence motion declaring the government in contempt of Parliament. It is the first time in Canadian history that a government has been found in contempt."

Politico: "President Barack Obama told congressional leaders there are no plans to use the U.S. military to assassinate Libyan strongman Muammar Qadhafi — despite the administration’s policy of seeking regime change in the North African country — according to sources familiar with a Friday White House Situation Room briefing." ...

... New York Times: "President Obama plans to talk about the military operation in Libya on Monday evening in a nationally televised speech at the National Defense University, the White House said, offering his first formal explanation of the goals of this increasingly complex and dangerous mission. Mr. Obama has come under criticism from Republicans in Congress for failing to provide a coherent explanation of the operation...." ...

... AP: "France declared Libya's airspace 'under control' on Friday, after NATO agreed to take command of the no-fly zone in a compromise that appeared to set up dual command centers. Moammar Gadhafi drew a rare rebuke from the African Union, which called for a transitional government and elections. Coalition warplanes struck Gadhafi's forces outside the strategic city of Ajdabiya, the gateway to the rebel-held east, hitting an artillery battery and armored vehicles."

Washington Post: "Pressure is building, seemingly from every corner of Yemen, for [President Ali Abdullah] Saleh to step down immediately, even as the United States and its allies appear to favor a more gradual transition of power in a fragile nation beset by multiple emergencies, including a potent al-Qaeda presence."

AP: "Thousands of Syrians took to the streets [of Daraa] Friday demanding reforms and mourning dozens of protesters who were killed during a violent, weeklong crackdown that has brought extraordinary pressure on the country's autocratic regime. There were no immediate reports of serious violence."

New York Times: "Japanese officials on Friday began quietly encouraging people to evacuate a larger swath of territory around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, a sign that they hold little hope that the crippled facility will soon be brought under control." AP story here. Related Washington Post story here.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "The fight over a new collective bargaining law now sits squarely before the state Supreme Court.... An appeals panel said Thursday that the high court should take up the case because of conflicting past decisions."

The Commentariat -- March 24

** Nicholas Kristof: "This is ... one of the few times in history when outside forces have intervened militarily to save the lives of citizens from their government.... In 2005, the United Nations approved a new doctrine called the 'responsibility to protect,' nicknamed R2P, declaring that world powers have the right and obligation to intervene when a dictator devours his people. The Libyan intervention is putting teeth into that fledgling concept, and here’s one definition of progress: The world took three-and-a-half years to respond forcefully to the slaughter in Bosnia, and about three-and-a-half weeks to respond in Libya." ...

... Glenn Thrush & Abby Phillip of Politico highlight four unanswered questions about the Libya mission "whose answers will likely determine whether Libya is a foreign policy success or failure for Obama." ...

... Fareed Zakaria has the Time cover story on the Libyan campaign: "Call it the Goldilocks military plan: Not too much, not too little, not too unilateral, not too American. The operation against Muammar Gaddafi's regime in Libya mirrors the moderate temperament of its architect, Barack Obama."

Sen. Barack Obama in 2007 on genocide in Darfur and elsewhere:

... Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post has a terrific mini-history of the "Darfur issue," which has not gone away.

Christina Romer, out from under the thumbs of Larry & Timmy, says what she really thinks:

I frankly don’t understand why policy makers aren’t more worried about the suffering of real families. I think there are tools we have tools we have that we can use, and I think it’s shameful that we’re not using them. If I have a complaint about policy these days, it’s that we’re not doing enough. And that goes all the way up to the Federal Reserve, [which] could be taking more aggressive action. It goes to the Congress and the Administration – there are fiscal policy actions they could be taking.... We need to realize that there is still a lot of devastation out there. The 8.9% unemployment rate is an absolute crisis. -- Christina Romer, former Chair, Council of Economic Advisors

Libertarian Dave Weigel of Slate rewrites CNN's headline on the Affordable Health Act. Weigel's version: "Most favor healthcare law or wish it was more liberal." Weigel notes that "... 50 percent of voters are either fine with the law or want a more liberal bill, to 46 percent who want it gone because it's too socialistic." ...

I don’t represent the hide-under-the-desk wing of the Democratic Party. I believe we’ve got to lean into this fight. -- Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY)

... Dana Milbank: Anthony Weiner takes on Republicans for "overtly lying" about the Affordable Care Act. While he's at it, Weiner bludgeons Democrats for not standing up for the reform bill. And the Supreme Court (“a corporate-dominated wing of the Republican Party”). And the CBO ("propeller-heads").

PolitiFact looks at the rogues' gallery of liars about the Affordable Care Act & reprises the ten top lies. They come from both sides of the aisle, but by far the most come from ACA critics.

Zaid Jilani of Think Progress: a group of House Republicans is sponsoring a bill that will "cut off all food stamp benefits to any family where one adult member is engaging in a strike against an employer."

Prof. Robert Darnton of Harvard University Library in a New York Times op-ed: "We should build a digital public library, which would provide these digital copies free of charge to readers. Yes, many problems — legal, financial, technological, political — stand in the way. All can be solved."

Speaking of CREW, as I do in Right Wing World below, the AP reports that "Members of [Wisconsin] Republican Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald’s staff bounced ideas off one another and the Legislature’s attorneys for days about how to penalize the Senate Democrats for leaving and pressure them to return, according to records released Wednesday by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington [CREW].... Everything from taking away computers to denying a year of service in the state retirement system was considered to punish the 14 Wisconsin Democrats who fled to Illinois for three weeks to block passage of a bill taking away union bargaining rights, [the] newly released emails show."

Liz Goodwin of Yahoo News: "Ninety-five-year-old Leeland Davidson discovered recently that he's not considered a U.S. citizen, despite living nearly 100 years in the country and serving in the U.S. Navy during WWII.... Davidson was born in British Columbia in 1916, but his parents didn't register the birth with the U.S. government to ensure they knew he was a citizen." CW: surely we can find a Republican coalition of the willing to kick this brazen illegal alien out of the country.

Right Wing World *

One fabulous takedown of presidential non-candidate Tim Pawlenty:

... OR, you can read the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor party's assessment of Pawlenty's performance as governor. Not as fun as Colbert, but even more devastating: "Tim Pawlenty left our state facing the largest deficit in Minnesota's 152-year history, drove up property taxes and fees on middle-class families and small businesses alike, all while making draconian cuts to education that forced some schools into 4-day weeks."

David Corn of Mother Jones: Karl Rove's "dark-money group, Crossroads GPS, gets into the transparency game. Seriously?" Corn cites one of the group's touted "scoops": Elizabeth Warren dines with Corn. Only the dinner never happened, the Crossroads GPS site didn't show the "proof," the site spokesman couldn't find the "incriminating" document that was the basis for the "scoop," & when he did find it some while later, the "proof" of Warren's "dinner date" with Corn was a note on Warren's schedule that read, "Interview with David Corn." Shocking! ...

... Too be fair, libertarian Dave Weigel loves the Crossroads GPS concept even though he thinks it might be a mistake to introduce the project with a story that isn't remotely true. What Weigel does point out is that two of GPS Crossroads' critics -- CREW, which won't reveal its donors -- and Anonymous P. Democrat are stunning hypocrites themselves. CW: in the interest of full disclosure, my anonymous funding comes from my husband.

The Affordable Healthcare Law had its first anniversary yesterday. Teabagger & multimillionaire Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson writes what Steve Benen aptly calls "an ugly screed" in the Wall Street Journal in which Johnson claims that his adult daughter probably would have died if "Obamacare" had been in effect when the daughter's heart defect was discovered. Do read all of Benen's posts here and here to get a flavor of how low the right will go. They just lie, lie and lie again with the purpose of not just misinforming but also frightening vulnerable people. Speaking of Johnson's op-ed drivel, Benen writes, for instance,

I hesitate to even call this garbage an 'argument,' since it isn't even that. The dim-witted rookie senator isn't actually criticizing the law so much as he's imagining a fabricated nightmare based on nothing but his own ignorance.

... Igor Volsky of Think Progress explains why "The ACA wouldn’t have killed Johnson’s daughter, but thousands of other uninsured babies would have died without it." ...

... Jon Chait of The New Republic: "... asking someone like [Johnson] to actually take into consideration the actual needs of the tens of millions of Americans without health insurance, as against the completely imaginary threat to his only family, is asking far too much of Johnson's intellect or moral reasoning." ...

... Brian Beutler of TPM calls Johnson's fearmongering bullshit "a new, retroactive twist on the 'death panels' hoax, which has been broadly debunked, but never seems to go away." ...

... Meanwhile, Mitt Romney, who signed "Romneycare" -- a state-level version of the ACA -- into law in Massachusetts, is trying to think of new ways to distance himself from his own record. To that end, he wrote an op-ed in the right-wing National Review -- a favored teabagger rag -- explaining how he'd let states opt out of Obamacare the first day he was in office. As Steve Benen points out, that's already in the law, you jerk. ...

... AND Does Obamacare Cover Forked Tongue Syndrome? Greg Sargent -- who remembers Mitt's history better than Mitt does -- reminds us that "The problem for Romney, however, is that he has explicitly suggested that Romneycare should serve as a model for efforts to reform our health system on the federal level...." In a 2009 CNN interview, Romney said,

I think there are a number of features in the Massachusetts plan that could inform Washington on ways to improve health care for all Americans. The fact that we were able to get people insured without a government option is a model I think they can learn from.

What about Forked Tongue Syndrome Complicated by ADD & Short-term Amnesia? George Zornick of Think Progress: Newt "Gingrich criticized Obama for not intervening in Libya, but now criticizes him for intervening in Libya." 

Exercise a no-fly zone this evening. … We don’t need to have the United Nations. All we have to say is that we think that slaughtering your own citizens is unacceptable and that we’re intervening.... This is a moment to get rid of [Gaddafi]. Do it. Get it over with. -- Newt Gingrich, March 7, 2011

It is impossible to make sense of the standard for intervention in Libya except opportunism and news media publicity.... I would not have intervened. -- Newt Gingrich, March 22-23, 2011 

     ... Dave Weigel has the video of two interviews, taken 16 days apart, in which Gingrich expresses completely opposing views. Weigel calls Zornick's post a "direct hit," and says of Gingrich: "Anyone want to try and reconcile these two interviews? It's not just the flip-flop on intervention -- the flip-flip on whether humanitarian needs make the intervention justified or not is breathtaking." ...

     ... Ha ha. Newt tries to explain why contradictory statements are really consistent. He fails utterly. That schmuck doesn't care WTF he says, as long as it's against President Obama. People are going to vote for this clown for president. They really are.

... AND A Mural of Laborers in -- of All Places -- the Labor Department Has to Go. Maine's loony new governor, Paul LePage has ordered the removal of a mural in the state’s Department of Labor building. Why? The mural, which depicts "scenes of Maine workers, including colonial-era shoemaking apprentices, lumberjacks, a 'Rosie the Riveter' ... and a 1986 paper mill strike...," and LePage says the scenes are too pro-union. Steven Greenhouse of the New York Times reports. ...

     ... Bill Trotter of the Bangor Daily News: Meanwhile, LePage is planning to knee-cap the state's public workers. ...

     ... Digby becomes an art critic.

* The parallel world which Republicans and teabaggers reinvent daily. It bears little relation to the factual world.

News Ledes

Washington Post: "Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) is likely to form a presidential exploratory committee, two advisers said Thursday. The committee could be formed as soon as May but no later than June."

Washington Post: "NATO moved toward assuming command of Western military intervention in Libya on Thursday after days of wrangling, and French warplanes destroyed a Libyan plane and bombed an air base on the sixth day of allied attacks on forces loyal to Moammar Gaddafi." ...

     ... Al Jazeera Update: "NATO countries have agreed to enforce a no-fly zone in Libya 'to protect civilians' against Muammar Gaddafi's forces, Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told reporters. He said the military alliance's mandate did not go beyond the no-fly zone but NATO could also act in self-defence." ...

... Al Jazeera: "Western warplanes have hit Libya for a fifth night, but have so far failed to stop Muammar Gaddafi's tanks from shelling opposition-held towns. A loud explosion was heard in Tripoli, the capital, early on Thursday, and smoke could be seen rising from an area where a military base is situated."

New York Times: "Japanese authorities are considering a plan to import bottled water from overseas, a government official said Thursday morning, a day after spreading contamination from a crippled nuclear plant led to a panicked rush to buy water in Tokyo."

AP: "A U.S. soldier who pleaded guilty Wednesday to the murders of three Afghan civilians was sentenced to 24 years in prison after saying 'the plan was to kill people' in a conspiracy with four fellow soldiers. Military judge Lt. Col. Kwasi Hawks said he initially intended to sentence Spc. Jeremy Morlock, of Wasilla, Alaska, to life in prison with possibility of parole but was bound by the plea deal."

Washington Post: "The control tower at Reagan National Airport went silent early Wednesday, forcing the pilots of two airliners carrying a total of 165 passengers and crew members to land on their own. The tower, which normally is staffed by one air-traffic controller from midnight to 6 a.m., did not respond to pilot requests for landing assistance or to phone calls from controllers elsewhere in the region, who also used a 'shout line,' which pipes into a loudspeaker in the tower, internal records show.... Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said late Wednesday he is instructing the agency to increase controller staffing at the airport during the late shift." You can listen to an audio transmission here. ...

     ... Update: "The air traffic control supervisor who apparently fell asleep on duty on the job at Reagan National Airport early Wednesday has been drug-tested by federal officials, a step usually reserved for controllers involved in plane crashes."

AP: "Buyers of new homes plunged in February to the fewest on records dating back nearly half a century, a dismal sign for an already-weak housing market.New-home sales fell 16.9 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 250,000 homes, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. It’s the third straight monthly decline and far below the 700,000-a-year pace that economists view as healthy."

Washington Post: "A sizable majority of all Americans — and nearly half of Republicans — say the best way to slice the federal budget deficit is by cutting spending and increasing taxes, according to last week’s Washington Post-ABC News poll."

Washington Post: "The U.S. Postal Service on Thursday is expected to detail how it plans to cut about 7,500 administrative positions — the first time it’s issued pink slips in at least a decade. The job cuts are expected to impact about 2,000 postmasters — the folks who manage individual post offices — and another 5,500 supervisors and administrative staffers. Cutting postmasters is especially noteworthy, because it will likely prompt USPS to close the post offices they operate."

Sometimes My Librul Knee Don't Jerk

Tom Friedman rests today's column on a central ethnic truth of the Middle East: that there are "two kinds of states...:

'real countries' with long histories in their territory and strong national identities (Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Iran); and those that might be called 'tribes with flags,' or more artificial states with boundaries drawn ... by ... colonial powers that have trapped inside their borders myriad tribes and sects who not only never volunteered to live together but have never fully melded into a unified family of citizens. They are Libya, Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Bahrain, Yemen, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. The tribes and sects that make up these more artificial states have long been held together by the iron fist of colonial powers, kings or military dictators.

Friedman then cites an article, which I linked yesterday, by David Kirkpatrick, that examines whether or not the Libyan revolt is a bid for democracy or old-fashioned tribal warfare. Friedman sides with the tribal warfare hypothesis, so he omits the balance Kirkpatrick brought to his writing. The Times moderators axed my comment, so here it is. With an addition.

In your attempt to make your point, you conveniently left out half of those Kirkpatrick posed. Right at the top of his article, Kirkpatrick writes,

[The rebels'] governing council is composed of secular-minded professionals — lawyers, academics, businesspeople — who talk about democracy, transparency, human rights and the rule of law. But their commitment to those principles is just now being tested....

Kirkpatrick goes on to address the modernization of Libya that may mitigate tribalism:

But the legacy of such tribal rivalries in Libya may in fact be fading, thanks in part to the enormous changes that Colonel Qaddafi — a modernizer, in his idiosyncratic way — helped bring about. Coming to power just before the oil boom, he tapped Libya’s new wealth to provide schools, hospitals and other benefits for Libya’s desperately poor, semi-nomadic population.

He adds,

Libya became overwhelmingly urban, with about 85 percent of its populations clustered around its two main urban centers — Tripoli and Benghazi. Though many of the people who flocked to the growing cities continued to identify closely by tribe, they now live mixed together.

Moreover, there is in Libya, "a rising cohort of affluent, English-speaking young Libyans educated abroad...."

Kirkpatrick includes a good deal of evidence that supports Friedman's argument, too: that the rebels are overwhelmingly from groups always hostile to Gaddafi, that their "peaceful" demonstrations were effectively the result of not having access to arms & that they are no better truth-tellers than is Gaddafi.

I don't pretend to know how all this will shake out. I'm a realist, so I think it's quite possible the worst-case scenarios Friedman -- and to a greater extent, anti-interventionist liberals -- envision. Where Friedman sees intransigent tribalism, many liberals see a protracted, U.S.-led war against Gaddafi. They might be right.

Friedman skews his argument by omitting the inconvenient, but others on the left do worse. Today Glenn Greenwald writes a shrill column equating the attack on Libya with Dubya's Iraq War. Gaddafi, Greenwald argues, is just like Saddam Hussein -- a brutal dictator who murders his own people. This is a facile argument that glosses over history as neatly as Friedman skips Kirkpatrick's mitigating observations. Yes, Saddam brutalized his people, but he wasn't particularly doing so at the moment Bush decided to remove him. Gaddafi, on the other hand, was strafing unarmed demonstrators. And he promised to go door-to-door, yanking rebels & their sympathizers from their homes & killing them. An assertion that the situation in Libya is "just like" the situation in Iraq 2003 is, well, a lie.

Another common leftist argument is that if we were consistent, we would be ousting our dictator buddies in other Middle Eastern countries, too. Really? As I see it, the U.S. and the other countries of the coalition are taking advantage of a unique situation -- everybody hates Gaddafi. While I agree with those who say we can't be "the policemen of the world," we most certainly can, in my opinion, participate in a police action against a murdering terrorist dictator when we have world opinion with us.

A final liberal point -- which I've seen both Michael Moore & David Sirota tweet -- is that each Tomahawk missile fired on Libya would build 20 schools in the U.S. While Moore and Sirota's arithmetic may be correct, their algebra is not. Do you think House Republicans would vote out Tomahawks & vote in an equivalent investment in education? Never. Going. To. Happen. Yes, not lobbing missiles at Libya would save some money, but the money saved would not build a single school.

The attack on Libya is a gamble. It may be a long-shot gamble. But it is not the unwarranted, irresponsible gamble of the left's characterization. I'd really like to see the shrieking left at least incorporate a little nuance into their arguments. Some are. Many are not.