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The Commentariat -- March 23
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love.
-- William Butler Yeats, from "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death," cited by a Libyan Foreign Ministry official to the four captured New York Times journalists
New York Times journalists Anthony Shadid, Lynsey Addario, Stephen Farrell & Tyler Hicks describe their brutal days in Libyan captivity "under the protection of the state." ...
... Ben Smith: how Reagan (brilliantly) handled Congress (& why Sen. Dick Lugar supported Reagan's plan to assassinate Gaddafi but is not supporting Obama's more limited goals) From an e-mail to Politico by Mark Helmke, an advisor to Lugar:
Reagan was much different than Obama. Reagan invited the bipartisan leadership to the White House – Lugar as SFRC Chair – and told them planes were on their way to Libya for the sole mission of taking out Gadhafi, because of the intelligence that he had personally ordered the murder on a US soldier at a Berlin bar. Reagan said if anyone objected, he would order the planes turned around. No one, including Byrd, objected. ...
... Massimo Calabresi of Time: President "Obama is interpreting U.N. resolution 1973, which authorized the intervention, to stop short of green-lighting Gaddafi's removal. He believes it only allows military action to protect civilians. Therefore, he explained yesterday, 'when it comes to our military action, we are doing so in support of U.N. Security Resolution 1973. That specifically talks about humanitarian efforts. And we are going to make sure that we stick to that mandate.' ... The administration will have to defend the ideas guiding this war: that the power to prevent atrocities is important and that ... there are limits on how our troops use force abroad. Indeed the only way the administration can defend the specific limits it is choosing to adhere to in Libya is by defending the ideas behind them." ...
... Elisabeth Bumiller of the New York Times: "An American pilot and a weapons officer were safely rescued in Libya on Tuesday after their warplane crashed near Benghazi, but the United States Marine Corps dropped two 500-pound bombs during the recovery and faced questions about whether Marines had fired on villagers." ...
... Secretary Clinton speaks to ABC News' Diane Sawyer about the U.N. resolution:
... Huma Kahn of ABC News: "People close to Libya's embattled leader Moammar Gadhafi are reaching out to allies around the world exploring their 'options,' Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told ABC News' Diane Sawyer today, and the U.S. government has gotten unconfirmed reports that at least one of Gadhafi's sons has been killed." ...
... Gene Robinson: "Anyone looking for principle and logic in the attack on Moammar Gaddafi’s tyrannical regime will be disappointed. President Obama and his advisers should acknowledge the obvious truth: They are reacting to the revolutionary fervor in the Arab world with the arbitrary 'realism' that is a superpower’s prerogative."
... Glenn Greenwald rants against the various hypocrises perpetrated by advocates for the action against Gaddafi. ...
... Dana Milbank: whether deserved or not, President Obama falls victim to "the tyranny of the news cycle," not to mention the comedy routines of Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty & that Alaska woman, who have traded in their "Obama is a tyrant" for "Obama is a weakling." ...
... John Dickerson of Slate: "The GOP's cartoon image of President Obama is that he's slow, indecisive, and deferential to foreigners, so there is much snickering in the Republican ranks over the president's Libya policy. He allowed the French—the French!—to lead the international campaign against Qaddafi.... As a specific foreign policy critique, though, the political upside of these Republican attacks is small.... There's no Republican challenger whose foreign policy credentials are so sterling that this moment provides a rationale for their candidacy." ...
... Hear, Hear! Garance Franke-Ruta of The Atlantic "on the idiocy of framing the Libya intervention as a battle of the sexes." For some of the idiocy, see Maureen Dowd. CW: my comment on Dowd is here (#2).
... David Roberts in Grist: Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) wades into the fog of "hesitant, incoherent, poll-driven mishmash. In other words, vintage Democratic messaging" to tell an inconvenient truth: "We become less vulnerable by using less oil." You can read Bingaman's full speech here.
Norihiko Shirouzu & Peter Landers of the Wall Street Journal: "Japanese regulators discussed in recent months the use of new cooling technologies at nuclear plants that could have lessened or prevented the disaster that struck this month when a tsunami wiped out the electricity at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi power facility. However, they chose to ignore the vulnerability at existing reactors and instead focused on fixing the issue in future ones, government and corporate documents show."
CW: I missed this New York Times op-ed by history Prof. William Cronon of the University of Wisconsin -- Madison, but Cronon does a nice job of showing how out-of-step with the history of his progressive state and of his own party Gov. Scott Walker really is. Cronon see in Walker shades of the odious Joe McCarthy: "their aggressiveness, their self-certainty, their seeming indifference to contrary views -- that may help explain the extreme partisan reactions they triggered."
Laugh du Jour. Reader Diane F. sent me word of the publication by The University of Chicago Magazine of contest results for David Brooks parodies. Brooks himself picked the winners & introduces them with quite a funny commentary of his own. The winner really captures Brooks. I'm not sure if the runners-up do. But then Brooks is not too good at seeing himself as others see him, & he probably missed the parodies that did him real justice. If only Driftglass had entered (but how likely is it that David Fucking Brooks would choose an obscenity-laced version of Himself?).
Right Wing World
The Amnesiac. Justin Elliott of Salon: in an interview with CBS News, Sen. John McCain forgets his own ovations to Moammar Gaddafi (made just two years ago) & boasts about arming the mujahedeen in Afghanistan, among them Osama bin Laden, in the 1980s. Of course McCain didn't mention bin Laden by name. (Maybe he forgot.) Includes video. ...
... Jason Linkins weighs in with a post titled "John McCain was in favor of supplying military aid to Gaddafi before he was for supplying military aid to the forces looking to topple Gaddafi."
CNN Correspondent Nic Robertson goes off on Fox "News":
... Steve Benen comments, "Here's hoping Steve Harrigan [the Fox 'News reporter'] was able to watch the exchange from his comfortable hotel room."
... Benen gets a kick out of Tim Pawlenty's "overwrought, overdramatic" exploratory kickoff video:
... BUT Benen kind of wishes we had been treated to Pawlenty's fake Southern accent. From a New York Times story:
... at the Statehouse, the talk among several Republicans was that it seemed he had suddenly developed a Southern accent as he tried connecting to voters by speaking louder and with more energy.
The political blog of Radio Iowa heard it too and noted, 'Pawlenty seems to be adopting a Southern accent as he talks about his record as governor.' As he spoke of the country’s challenges, he dropped the letter G, saying: 'It ain’t gonna be easy. This is about plowin’ ahead and gettin’ the job done.'
... Right Wing World is of Course White Wing World. Chris Good of The Atlantic says of the Pawlenty production: "Alongside the many caucasian handshakes, minorities appear a total of three or four times. (Pawlenty greets one man who looks possibly Latino.) A camera pans by a smiling Asian girl (0:45) and an African-American family standing on a front porch (1:05). As a Democratic source points out, both clips come from [stock] Getty Images."
Mitt Romney simultaneously supports the attack on Libyan but not President Obama's handling of it. Greg Sargent calls Romney's pretzel "the comically phony Tea Party pander of the day." Romney's take "is so canned and riddled with buzzwords designed to pander to the right wing base that it feels like he subjected his language to a dozen Tea Party focus groups before daring to open his mouth.... He somehow manages to slip in references to Obama’s alleged non-belief in American exceptionalism and his alleged apologizing for America (neither of which exist in the real world) before wrapping up with an absurdly heavy-handed suggestion that Arabs are dictating American foreign policy."
Family Values: Rand Paul Vows Not to Run for President against His Father. BUT. Stephanie Condon & Brian Montopoli of CBS News: "Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, fresh off his Tea Party-backed 2010 Senate victory, is traveling to various key primary states to test the waters for a potential presidential bid. The only sure thing that would keep him out of the race would be his father's [Rep. Ron Paul's] candidacy." CW: "The I-Can't-Handle-Rachel-Maddow-but-I'm-Smart-Enough-to-Be-President candidacy."
News Ledes
AFP: "Three journalists who were arrested in last weekend by forces loyal to Col. arrived in Tunisia on Wednesday after being released overnight. Dave Clark and Roberto Schmidt, who work for Agence France-Presse, and Joe Raedle from Getty Images crossed the border at Ras Ajdir shortly after noon and were driving to Tunis, the capital, about 370 miles to the north. They were released early on Wednesday morning after an appeal by Agence France-Presse." ...
... New York Times: in a letter to President Obama, "the House speaker, John A. Boehner, on Wednesday pressed President Obama to clarify what the administration hoped to achieve through military intervention in Libya, as top Senate Democrats defended the president’s handling of the crisis." ...
... New York Times: "President Obama worked to bridge differences among allies about how to manage the military campaign in Libya, as airstrikes continued to rock Tripoli early on Wednesday. Forces loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, however, showed no sign of ending their sieges of rebel-held cities as the international effort to contain them entered its fifth day." ...
... Washington Post: "Four days of allied strikes have battered Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi’s air force and largely destroyed his long-range air defense systems, a top U.S. commander said Tuesday. But there was little evidence that the attacks had stopped regime forces from killing civilians or shifted the balance of power in favor of the rebels."
Reuters: "Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Socrates said on Wednesday he has submitted his resignation to the president after parliament earlier rejected his minority Socialist government's latest austerity measures in a vote."
New York Times: "An Army soldier facing a court-martial here on Wednesday admitted to killing three Afghan civilians as part of a conspiracy to kill for sport. 'The plan was to kill people, sir,' the soldier, Specialist Jeremy N. Morlock, told a military judge at this base south of Seattle."
Haaretz: "A bomb exploded Wednesday at a crowded bus stop outside the International Convention Center in Jerusalem, just opposite the central bus station. A 59-year-old woman was killed and at least 30 people were wounded in the incident, three of them seriously."
Washington Post: "Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh on Tuesday threatened government opponents with civil war and appealed to them to begin a national dialogue in conflicting statements that did not stop calls for his immediate resignation." ...
Washington Post: "The State Department announced Tuesday that it will give $20 million to Tunisia to help build its new democracy, boosting to more than $170 million the total in assistance for Arab countries that recently overthrew authoritarian leaders."
AP: "New violence in a restive southern Syrian city [of Daraa] killed as many as six people Wednesday, making it the deadliest single day since anti-government protests inspired by uprisings across the Arab world reached this country last week, an activist said."
Reuters: "Japan estimated the cost of the damage from its devastating earthquake and tsunami could top $300 billion.... As concern grew over the risk to food safety of radiation from the damaged Fukushima power plant, 250 km (150 miles) north of the Japanese capital, the United States became the first nation to block some food imports from the disaster zone." ...
... AP: "A spike in radiation levels in Tokyo tap water spurred new fears about food safety Wednesday as rising black smoke forced another evacuation of workers trying to stabilize Japan's radiation-leaking nuclear plant."
New York Times: Google's "plan to digitize every book ever published and make them widely available was derailed on Tuesday when a federal judge in New York rejected a sweeping $125 million legal settlement the company had worked out with groups representing authors and publishers.... Citing copyright, antitrust and other concerns, Judge Denny Chin said that the settlement went too far. He said it would have granted Google a “de facto monopoly” and the right to profit from books without the permission of copyright owners."
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