Over at Cesca’s place, Steven Weber asks the right question:
Do Republicans actually like Democracy?
Really. Their strategy seems to be one of complete disdain for the last 200 or so years of that defining American civil exercise. They are behaving as though they’ve discarded all pretense of caring or participation. Weird.
I’d say Joe Lieberman is the Democrat that proves this hypothesis. In case you weren’t watching, here was Joe Lieberman (?-CT) on Meet the Press today:
“We are at war,” Lieberman said. “We were attacked on 9/11. And I think when you’re at war, even though this is a different kind of war, people you capture, enemies who are aiming to attack or have in fact attacked you, ought to be tried according to the rules of war.”
That concise summation of neocon evangelism is utter nonsense. Someone, somewhere, please ask Joe to explain how the underpants bomber fits with this theory. Abdulmutallab is cooperating with the FBI today because instead of threatening his family, the United States brought his family from Africa to see him.
The problem with the Global War on Terrors™ hypothesis is that it flies in the face of all current empirical evidence. To date, almost all successes in the War That Shall Not Be Mentioned (WTSNBM, codename WITSENBAUM) have been the result of (1) law enforcement actions and (2) drone strikes.
But think about it: Lieberman is basically complaining that a president would follow the constitution in time of “war.” The only problem with this idea is that neocons were promising a very long war from the very beginning. We must suspend the Constitution in order to save it, and we don’t know how long it will take — maybe a hundred years. Wars against states are quick; wars against things are invariably endless and expensive. Exhibit A: drugs. Exhibit B: guns.
Guns are at least physical things; terror is a feeling. A war on terror makes as much sense as a war on happiness. Insofar as America remains mired in military conflict, it is because we forgot this and pursued the imperial energy ambitions of two Texas oilmen.
There have been seven years of needless waste in pursuit of Rome. This is not Rome, and our founders did not want America to be that sort of empire. Commercial empire? Certainly. But more importantly, they relied on that body of empirical evidence called “history.”
About which the Becks of the world know nothing. More on that tomorrow.
