A Grand Illusion

Fouad Ajami in the Wall Street Journal:

The curtain has come down on what can best be described as a brief un-American moment in our history. That moment began in the fall of 2008, with the great financial panic, and gave rise to the Barack Obama phenomenon.

The nation’s faith in institutions and time-honored ways had cracked. In a little-known senator from Illinois millions of Americans came to see a savior who would deliver the nation out of its troubles. Gone was the empiricism in political life that had marked the American temper in politics.

Right. An election fairly won, concern for Americans and preoccupation with governance are really un-American values. Not like Tea Parties, Death Panels and mindless obstructionism.

We’ve asked before on AGI. Why do they hate America?

New York Times has a frightening story about a man, Omar Hammami, who grew up in Alabama and by all accounts was completely Americanized but still ended up fighting with the Islamist insurgency in Somalia.

From the New York Times Magazine:

Sometimes months would pass with no word from Hammami. When he reached out through Facebook in early September, he told Dena that he hoped his infamy would prompt people to ask, “How did this guy become that?”

“They can’t blame it on poverty or any of that stuff,” he continued. “They will have to realize that it’s an ideology and it’s a way of life that makes people change. They will also have to realize that their political agendas need to be fixed.”

It’s things like these that give more credence to Hitchens and the like who believe that this really is a fight between ideologies.

The story doesn’t have an incredible amount of details about his actual rise through the ranks of the insurgency (although it seems he has achieved a considerable amount of power within the group, the article doesn’t give many details) but what is truly fascinating is how it depicts the duality of this person.

He is by all accounts a die hard believer but still has many American tics:

[Hammami] understood how strange it might seem to “fight for beliefs,” especially as he had once been a liberal (under the influence, he wrote, of the teacher he still referred to as “Mrs. Hirsch”). But he had come to the realization that “we don’t live in a utopian society.”

“When I came here I saw that firsthand,” he wrote. “There are villages that live in a constant state of war between rival tribes. There are roads that people cannot pass except with fear of being robbed or raped.”

He and his fellow fighters, he wrote, are helping those people. “Regardless of what the media says,” he added, “we do not kill innocents.”

Throughout the exchange, Hammami seemed to slide back and forth between the boy from Daphne and the jihadi propagandist. He asked his sister for news about his grandmother in Perdido (“Maw Maw,” he called her) and signed off “later tater” and “I love you.”

Frightening and incomprehensible.

Nate Silver takes an interesting look:

“Obama also used the term “business” or “businesses” unusually often during last night’s speech. In about half of these cases, “business” was prefaced by the term “small” as in “small businesses” — the term “small business” almost always polls well in focus groups.

Obama also used the term “tax” or “taxes” as often as any president since Reagan in 1982, mostly to point out (as I’ve argued was long overdue) that the stimulus package contained an enormous volume of tax cuts. Another obsession of the White House speechwriting department is the use of the terms “investing” and “investment”, which Obama used very heavily last night as well as in his 2009 address.”

Memo on Health Care:

“It is imperative for the country, the economy, the party, and the Obama presidency that Democrats resist the temptation to let this rare opportunity slip by. The most effective path forward is also the most obvious: the House should approve the legislation that has already passed the Senate, and the Senate should extend assurances to the House on pursuing improvements through the budget reconciliation process.

…

The reasons that made health care reform an absolute necessity two weeks ago were not changed by a narrow majority of special-election voters in Massachusetts — many of whose Republican and independent voters support their own state’s version of what congressional Democrats seek to do.

For all the media interest in political strategies, polls, and attack ads, the health care system remains badly broken. The reform package approved in December by the Senate would not only be the most important domestic policy breakthrough in decades, it would quite literally save American lives.

The silly caricature — “death panels” and the threat of a “government takeover” — is obviously wrong to those who are fully engaged in the details, but has nevertheless gained a foothold among much of the public. What’s important to remember, though, is that there’s ample evidence that public perceptions can change fairly quickly.”

The memo focuses a lot on the positive effect this will have on the public public perception of Democrats. The memo again makes the obvious point (not so to some, apparently) that the elections results will be worse for Democrats if the bill is defeated rather than if it’s successful.

George Packer in the New Yorker:

A letter to Democrats:

“With the loss of Edward Kennedy’s Senate seat, Democrats no longer enjoy a filibuster-proof Senate majority, though they still enjoy the largest Senate majority any party has achieved in the past generation. The loss of this one vote does not require Congress or the President to abandon Senator Kennedy’s life work of health care reform. A year of political infighting, misleading debates about death panels and socialized medicine, and sheer inaction has left Americans exhausted, confused, and disgruntled. Americans are also bearing the severe consequences of deep recession and unemployment. Still, a majority of Americans support the elements of the Senate bill.

…

Alternatively, Congress can abandon this effort at this critical moment, leaving millions more Americans to become uninsured in the coming years as health care becomes ever less affordable. Abandoning health care reform—the signature political issue of this administration—would send a message that Democrats are incapable of governing and lead to massive losses in the 2010 election, possibly even in 2012. Such a retreat would also abandon the chance to achieve reforms that millions of Americans across the political spectrum desperately need in these difficult times. Now is the moment for calm and resolute leadership, pressing on toward the goal now within sight.”

Krugman, who I don’t often agree with said this another way. Democrats in both houses already voted for this. It’s too late to avoid the ignominy of voting for supposed socialist health care. If you scrap this project now you look impotent, your constituents get none of the benefits they would if the bill passes and Republicans can still say you support a “government takeover of health-care” or some other such nonsense, which they will do either way. House Democrats, vote for the senate version.

Pass the damn thing!

Talal Al-Zahrani:

“They snatched my seventeen-year-old son for a bounty payment … They took him to Guantánamo and held him prisoner for five years. They tortured him. Then they killed him and returned him to me in a box, cut up.”

Read the full story at Harper’s.

NY Times:

“WASHINGTON (AP) — Three Guantanamo Bay detainees whose deaths were ruled a suicide in 2006 apparently had been transported from their cells hours before their deaths to a secret site on the island, an article in Harper’s magazine asserts.

The account released Monday raises serious questions about whether the three detainees actually died by hanging themselves in their cells and suggests the U.S. government is covering up details of what precisely happened in the hours before the deaths on the night of June 9, 2006.

In response to the magazine article, the Justice Department said Monday that it had thoroughly reviewed the allegations and found no evidence of wrongdoing.

Harper’s reported that the deaths of the three detainees, or the events that led directly to their deaths, most likely occurred at a previously undisclosed facility a mile or so from the main Guantanamo Bay prison complex.

…

After the terror attacks on U.S. soil on Sept. 11, 2001, the CIA set up a number of so-called ”black” sites around the world, where harsh interrogations of terrorism-era suspects took place. The Harper’s article suggested such a site at Guantanamo Bay may have belonged to the CIA or to the U.S. military’s Joint Special Operations Command.”

Two things to note: 1. The silence in most of the mainstream press (New York Times used an AP feed which I dare you to find on their website without the search feature) 2. The press still wants to call it harsh interrogations. If “harsh” interrogations can lead to three deaths than we should start calling lethal injections anti-eupnea vaccines.

Via The Daily Dish:

It must be all that efficiency created by private enterprise…

Easiest way to donate is to text the word “Haiti” to the number 90999. It will charge your phone bill a donation of $10 that will be given automatically to the Red Cross to help with relief efforts. For more info check the State Department.

We’ve been gone for a while here at AGI and for that I apologize. The three A’s have been somewhat busy but hopefully the blog will get back to form soon.

This post on Haiti drew me back:

“Tengo una deuda vieja con Haití. Todos la tenemos. Haití es la matriz primera, el lugar desde el cual nos nació el Caribe, es el Africa de adentro, el dolor innombrable, la cicatriz.
Fue el primer pais de América en donde un negro se atrevió a pensarse libre, a pensarse lider de pueblos (Toussaint L’ouverture). Ese descaro, Haití lo ha pagado caro. Todavía se lo cobran. No se lo perdona el Antiguo Imperio que crió una revolución (Liberté, Fraternité, Eglité) para todo Occidente, menos para ellos. No se lo perdona su propia estirpe, que convirtió en micos y parodias (Henry Christophe, Duvalier, Aristide) aquel sueño inicial de libertad, fraternidad e igualdad.
Y ahora esto; Haití es este montón de piedras que se derrumban. ¿Qué crimen ancestral no terminamos de pagar? ¿Por qué la tierra nos odia tanto (Le Damnées de la Terre, siempre, les damnées de la terre)? ¿Cómo nos levantamos ahora? Porque el Caribe entero no puede caminar sin Haití. Tropieza , trastabilla, muerde polvo. No puede seguir soñando el sueño que lo originó. No puede seguir intentando (egalité, fraternité, liberté) convertirlo en realidad.
Haití se derrumba, otra vez.
Y nosotros caemos. No podemos avanzar.
Sin Haití no se puede. Sin Haití caemos todos.”

It’s from a Puerto Rican blogger. You can go here to read it in English on Global Voices Online, which is also a good source for eye witness information from local Haitian bloggers.

Iranian Student leader Majid Tavakoli:

“I have spent ten exhausting days on the road with more than 100 hours of driving and now I have to leave for Tehran. Looking at my mother’s tearful eyes and father’s anxious glances and despite all the difficulties only the true wish for freedom can maintain my drive and steadfastness. And so once again I welcome and accept all the dangers, standing next to my friends with whom I am honoured and proud to be on 16 Azar shoulder to shoulder we will shout against tyranny. For Freedom.”

James Fallows takes the media to task (well mostly The Washington Post) on their aversion to taking a stance.

This is good stuff that he has touched upon earlier. More people should be speaking out against the CNN-ization of journalism in general; give a platform to the right, give a platform to the left and then say nothing. No real information given, no news work done.

Also at the Atlantic, Marc Ambinder rips apart the laughable Sarah palin op-ed.