Think Humanely

Your President has decided that you deserve to be killed; consequently, he is going to send a drone/special forces/mercenaries to come assassinate you – not arrest you, detain you, or even ship you over to one of our black sites to be tortured indefinitely. You’ll simply be murdered. I’m using the plural version of ‘you’ (although I’m not sure if this should make you more or less frightened) since our President has granted himself the authority to assassinate any and all American citizens. There will be no trial. There will be no warrant. There will be no judge, prosecutor and certainly no defense attorney. There will be his word. He will be the Alpha and Omega, and you will be dead.

This isn’t the insane hypothetical of Glenn Beck, all worked up about what the secretly-Muslim/socialist/Marxist/racist Obama wants to do to White America. This is what Obama has actually argued he has the right to do, and it is what he is actively attempting to do to an American citizen. Please see here for a detailed analysis of the particular case in question. The illegality of such a craven, despotic power is not in question (not by reasonable, moral people at least – and certainly not by those familiar with the actual laws in question). Yet it is a power that as of yet remains unchecked. This hasn’t worked its way up to the Supreme Court (and it’s not yet clear if any court will even allow a challenge to this at all), and the media and most political pundits haven’t done much of anything to denounce it. There is, however, one important exception: Dennis Kucinich, a man who is often ridiculed for, of all things, his appearance, as well as the audacity he shows whenever he “foolishly” runs for President.

On July 30, Kucinich introduced HR 6010 “to prohibit the extrajudicial killing of United States citizens, and for other purposes.” Let’s pause for just a moment and bask in how immensely ludicrous it is that I am writing an article praising a politician sworn to uphold the Constitution for introducing a bill saying that assassinating American citizens – without anything even remotely resembling a trial – should be illegal…I feel a little nauseas. Moving on: below is a brief excerpt from the bill.

(1) On January 27, 2010, The Washington Post revealed that United States citizens have been included on lists maintained by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) to be assassinated.

(2) The January 27 Washington Post article reported that the JSOC and CIA maintain lists of individuals deemed ‘High Value Targets’ and ‘High Value Individuals’, whom they seek to kill or capture, that the lists currently include United States citizens, and that the President has authorized military operations with the express understanding that a United States citizen may be killed.

(3) Admiral Dennis C. Blair, then the Director of National Intelligence, in testimony before the House Select Committee on Intelligence on February 3, 2010, confirmed the policy of including United States citizens on such lists, stating that ‘a decision to use lethal force against a U.S. citizen must get special permission’ before the targeting of a United States citizen can be granted and that ‘being a U.S. citizen will not spare an American from getting assassinated by military or intelligence operatives overseas if the individual is working with terrorists and planning to attack fellow Americans.’

(4) The Obama administration has publicly authorized the extrajudicial killing of Anwar Al-Awlaki, a United States citizen born in New Mexico who is accused of involvement in terrorist organizations abroad, the first confirmed United States citizen to be added to a CIA list of targets for capture or killing.

(5) According to an article published in The Nation in November 2009, the private security contractor Blackwater Worldwide, now Xe Services, is intimately involved with the targeted assassination programs run by the CIA and JSOC in Pakistan.

(6) Department of Defense Instruction 1100.22, issued on April 12, 2010, states that ‘security is inherently governmental’ and that the ‘U.S. Government has exclusive responsibility for discretionary decisions concerning the appropriate, measured use of combat power, including the offensive use of destructive or deadly force on behalf of the United States’, particularly in operations that have virtually no transparency, accountability, or oversight.

(7) United States Attorney General Eric J. Holder recognized that the Department of Justice has successfully prosecuted many terrorism defendants in Federal courts, stating on Friday, November 13, 2009, that ‘for over two hundred years, our nation has relied on a faithful adherence to the rule of law to bring criminals to justice . . . Once again we will ask our legal system to rise to that challenge, and I am confident it will answer the call with fairness and justice’.

(8) Executive Order 12333 (46 Fed. Reg. 59941; relating to United States intelligence activities), issued by President Ronald Reagan in 1981, stated, ‘No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination’.

(9) Executive Order 11905 (41 Fed. Reg. 7703; relating to United States foreign intelligence activities), issued by President Gerald Ford in 1976, stated, ‘No employee of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, political assassination’.

While the above is plenty disturbing in and of itself, section two of the bill opens with this statement: “due process of law is a fundamental principle in the United States Constitution, the United States has a commitment to the principles included in the Bill of Rights, and no United States citizen, regardless of location, can be ‘deprived of life, liberty, property, without due process of law’, as stated in Article XIV of the Constitution.” The fact that this has to be stated in the actual bill is mind-boggling. What is even worse, however, is that it will likely fall on deaf ears. Due process, the Bill of Rights, these are just words to be disregarded and misrepresented. What matters are to our current crop of politicians and the ignorant Americans who support them are outcomes, and the government has decided that the outcome it wants is one in which it has the authority to kill Americans by fiat. And this is the outcome that both the majority of politicians and the majority of the media, either directly or indirectly, are supporting. The bill has a whopping six co-sponsors, all of whom are Democrats (which is slightly surprising, as you’d think some of those Republicans who fancy themselves libertarians would get on board): John Conyers, Keith Ellison, Bob Filner, Raul Grijalva, Jesse Jackson, and Pete Stark. There are 435 members in the House of Representatives.

The bill has been sent to the House Armed Services Committee, but if you go to Govtrack.us, you’ll find this lovely annotation: “This bill is in the first step in the legislative process. Introduced bills and resolutions first go to committees that deliberate, investigate, and revise them before they go to general debate. The majority of bills and resolutions never make it out of committee.”

There are those who proudly support such a policy, citing their trust in the President to decide who is worthy of life, who is worthy of a criminal trial, and who is worthy of being killed without any legal proceedings whatsoever. This is all perfectly insane, of course, but these people exist nonetheless. Illegality aside, think about the practicality of allowing such a policy.

192 people have been released from prison thanks to DNA testing. This is a staggeringly high number for many reasons. One, DNA is not widely used to help determine whether or not someone in prison is in fact guilty or innocent of the crime that they’ve spent years behind bars for, so the fact that it has been used relatively infrequently has nevertheless lead to this many people being proven falsely convicted is rather astonishing. Two, the vast majority of these innocent people went through a jury trial before a judge and twelve of their peers. They had, at the very least, a public defender. Yet the public defender was unable to establish their innocence. The twelve jurors were confident enough that they harbored no reasonable doubts as to their guilt. The judge found nothing worth setting the verdict aside for, either immediately or on appeal. Yet these men were completely innocent. Three, this figure only includes inmates from the year 2000 and onward.

Now imagine how unbelievably broken a system would be in which all of the above safe guards have been completely removed. There is no defense attorney. There is no judge. There is no jury of one’s peers required to find proof beyond a reasonable doubt. There is only one man – and he makes his decision behind closed doors with absolutely no accountability. There is no appeals process. No hope. If he decides to label you a terrorist/enemy combatant/latest euphemism designed to subvert international and domestic law/scary word, then you have been sentenced to death in absentia. And, according to this man, according to the government he runs, there is absolutely nothing that you or anyone else can do about it. The clock is ticking, and the full force of the American military is ready to rain down upon you. If that many innocent people, despite going through the elaborate process of a police investigation, the district attorney’s office, a grand jury, a jury trial, an appeals process, a governor review, can still be wrongly convicted, how in the hell can we possibly delude ourselves into thinking that an even greater percentage of innocent people won’t just be falsely convicted but murdered under this insane policy?

Perhaps we should ask the other 429 members of the House of Representatives that question.

Chris Hedges recently wrote a piece entitled, “Liberals are Useless.” I certainly have issues with Hedges and believe that he is prone to some pretty irrational thinking (see, for example, this debate with Sam Harris), but this article describes the deterioration of the so-called Left very well. Below are some excerpts from his article :

They [liberals] talk about peace and do nothing to challenge our permanent war economy. They claim to support the working class, and vote for candidates that glibly defend the North American Free Trade Agreement. They insist they believe in welfare, the right to organize, universal health care and a host of other socially progressive causes, and will not risk stepping out of the mainstream to fight for them.
. . .
Anyone who says he or she cares about the working class in this country should have walked out on the Democratic Party in 1994 with the passage of NAFTA. And it has only been downhill since. If welfare reform, the 1999 Financial Services Modernization Act, which gutted the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act—designed to prevent the kind of banking crisis we are now undergoing—and the craven decision by the Democratic Congress to continue to fund and expand our imperial wars were not enough to make you revolt, how about the refusal to restore habeas corpus, end torture in our offshore penal colonies, abolish George W. Bush’s secrecy laws or halt the warrantless wiretapping and monitoring of American citizens? The imperial projects and the corporate state have not altered under Obama. The state kills as ruthlessly and indiscriminately in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan as it did under Bush. It steals from the U.S. treasury as rapaciously to enrich the corporate elite. It, too, bows before the conservative Israel lobby, refuses to enact serious environmental or health care reform, regulate Wall Street, end our relationship with private mercenary contractors or stop handing obscene sums of money, some $1 trillion a year, to the military and arms industry.

This is a relatively well-reasoned argument, yes? Hedges makes a series of claims (e.g., liberals support anti-working class agendas and capitulate to Wall Street) and supports them with specific evidence. Apparently such intellectually honest argumentation has riled the feathers of one notable blogger, Blue Texan over at Firedoglake. In a classic example of a red herring, Blue Texan ignores all of the substantive points that Hedges makes and instead singles out and argues against a small point that has little to nothing to do with Hedges overall argument. Near the beginning of Hedge’s article, he writes that he voted for Nader and would have considered voting for Cynthia McKinney, two individuals whose progressive bona fides are far more established and legitimate than Obama’s. In response, Blue Texan writes

The notion that voting for Ralph Nader or an even more ridiculous figure like Cynthia McKinney is an effective strategy to move the country in a more progressive direction was thoroughly discredited by the 2000 election. The idea that Gore and Bush were pretty much the same was a common meme in lefty circles, and it turned out to be deeply misguided, to say the least.
Does Hedges really believe the country would look no different today if the Supreme Court hadn’t appointed Bush in 2000? Because I think he’s wrong.

Similarly, does anyone think John McCain would have overturned the Bush policy on stem cells, acknowledged the seriousness of climate change, spent a huge amount of political capital trying to reform health care, reversed Bush’s policies on labor, on the environment, or endangered species? Does anyone think John McCain would’ve nominated Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court or signed the stimulus bill?

This is not to suggest that Obama’s unwillingness to confront the Pentagon and Wall Street haven’t been a disappointment. They have.

Just don’t tell me that a vote for Nader in ‘08, which was a vote for Palin, was the way to get a more progressive country.

Where does one begin? I’ll largely ignore the fact that the writer apparently thinks that Nader and McKinney are “ridiculous figures” – despite offering no rational for the ad hominem – and focus instead on the straw man he sets up when he writes, “Does Hedges really believe the country would look no different today if the Supreme Court hadn’t appointed Bush in 2000?” Does Hedges ever make that claim? No. Hedges is arguing that liberals preach one thing, but support something that is diametrically opposed to their supposed values. The fact that Obama isn’t as bad as McCain or that Gore wouldn’t have been as bad as Bush has no bearing on what Hedges wrote. Yes, it is likely that the country is better served with Obama as President rather than McCain. It is also likely that the country would be better served if a genuine liberal was President rather than Obama.

Now let’s look at some of the “accomplishments” that Blue Texan ascribes to Obama, as if these examples also disprove Hedges’ thesis.

‘Obama has acknowledged the seriousness of climate change.’ Wow! He doesn’t claim that the vast majority of the world’s scientists are wrong. That’s so amazing!. . . What has Obama done about it? Nothing significant.

‘Obama has spent political capital trying to reform health care.’ Right, because neither Nader nor McKinney would have tried this. And let’s not forget that the so-called reform that has been crafted under Obama’s leadership and the Democratic control of Congress is largely a corrupt, watered down bill that doesn’t do nearly enough to help the citizens of this country. Is it better than nothing? Yes. But it’s also a cash-cow for private insurance companies at the expense of Americans. It makes it arguably impossible for women to receive abortions. See my posts here , here , and here for more information on why this “reform” is nothing to be proud of.

Blue Texan points to Obama reversing some of Bush’s policies on the environment, labor, and endangered species. These are all fair points; however, it still isn’t clear how this refutes anything that Hedges writes. Is the barometer for what is and is not progressive and liberal simply not being as horrible as one of the worst presidents in the history of this country? If so, then I think that Blue Texan just proved Hedges right.

In fact, Blue Texan appears to represent the very condition that Glenn Greenwald wrote about earlier today. In his “My Friend the President” post, Greenwald argues that

What’s most striking about these valiant defenses of Obama is how utterly devoid they are of any substantive points and how, instead, suffuse with weird, even inappropriate, emotional attachments they are. These objections are grounded almost exclusively in (a) a deep-seated conviction that President Obama is a good and just man who means well; (b) their own rather intense upset at seeing him criticized; and (c) a spitting ad hominem fury of the type long directed by Bush followers at any critics of their leader, and generally typical of authoritarian attacks on out-groups critics.

Liberalism, and by this I mean the liberalism that is represented by the Democratic party, President Obama, and a wide range of pundits and writers, deserves Hedges scorn, disillusionment, and much more. Deriding those who shun Democrats in favor of voting for someone, who both in speech and in action, more accurately reflects his political values, Hedges is doing what any good citizen should: honestly expressing his vote. If enough “liberals” were to do this, it’s reasonable to assume that genuine progressives would find themselves in power, and the Democratic establishment would realize that they can no longer get away with being Republican-lite. But I guess this is just “ridiculous” and we should all be grateful that slightly less shitty politicians are in power. Yay democracy.

As many already know, Obama is escalating (not “surging”) the war in Afghanistan. While Christopher Hitchens and others who see Islam as the Devil are clearly overjoyed, as are staunch Bush defenders who understandably feel that this war and Bush’s decision to start it has now been legitimized by the Great Liberal Hope, Americans should remember that we are not a benevelent superpower. We are not angels descending on a backwards nation in order to bring them the gift of Enlightenment. We are not Promethean in nature or action.

Many so-called liberals and progressives, desperate to find a way to rationalize the growing similarities between Obama and Bush – the former President who liberals clamored to be impeached for, amongst many things, the very actions that Obama has now undertaken himself – tell themselves that we are there for the poor women in Afghanistan. We’re bombing their country and killing their family members and friends so that they can be free. As Glenn Greenwald points out, anyone who actually listened to Obama (or history) knows this to be demonstrably false:

He [Obama] made explicitly clear that we are in Afghanistan to serve our own interests (as he perceives them), not to build a better nation for Afghans. Nation-building, he said, goes “beyond … what we need to achieve to secure our interests” and “go beyond our responsibility.” We’re there to serve our interests and do nothing else. That should throw cold water on all on the preening fantasies of all but the blindest and most naive “liberal war supporters” that we’re there to help the Afghan people.

Independent of motive, it is also quite unlikely that helping Afghans will be the unintended result of our ongoing war there. Just as was true in Iraq — where we bribed and befriended religious extremists and others we spent years demonizing as “Terrorists,” and now protect a government that is extremely oppressive to women, Christians and gays, and brutally violative of human rights in general — we will do whatever benefits us and serves our interests in Afghanistan, even if that means empowering brutal, oppressive and misogynistic fanatics as long as they are willing to carry out our geopolitical directives. Many of the warlords and other local religious extremists on whom we’re already relying and will now use even more are hardly distinguishable from the Taliban on human rights issues. We’re not there on a charity mission but are there to advance what we think are our interests. That’s why some of the most oppressive governments in the Middle East will continue to be our most stalwart allies.

For those who also cling to the notion that this is only a momentary escalation, a necessary evil so that we can finally bring the troops home in 18 months, I suggest you try listening to Defense Secretary Gates:

Speaking before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Gates said that there are “no deadlines in terms of when our troops will all be out.” Gates also said a US withdrawal would probably take two to three years whenever it begins. Meanwhile, the top US commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, appeared before Afghan lawmakers in Kabul.

Or perhaps Secretary of State Clinton is more to your liking: “‘we’re not going to be walking away from Afghanistan again. We did that before. It didn’t turn out very well.’”

I think we should all take a moment to pause and reflect on how grateful we should be that we have an anti-war party to help act as a check on the belligerent Republicans.

Chris Mooney is co-author of the 2009 book Unscientific America: How Scientific Literacy Threatens Our Future. Below is an excerpt from the first chapter, followed by the first in a series of clips featuring a discussion with Mooney. To watch the entire lecture, click on the “Watch Full Program” icon in the bottom right corner of the video.

“The United States features a massive infrastructure for science, supported by well over $100 billion annually in federal funding and sporting a vast network of government laboratories and agencies, the finest universities in the world, and innovative corporations that conduct extensive research. Thanks to such investments, Americans built the bomb, reached the moon, decoded the genome, and created the Internet. And yet today this country is also home to a populace that, to an alarming extent, ignores scientific advances or outright rejects scientific principles. A distressingly large number of Americans refuse to accept either the fact or the theory of evolution, the scientifically undisputed explanation of the origin of our species and the diversity of life on Earth. An influential sector of the populace is in dangerous retreat from the standard use of childhood vaccinations, one of medicine’s greatest and most successful advances […] The nation itself has become politically divided over the nature of reality, such that college-educated Democrats are now more than twice as likely as college-educated Republicans to believe that global warming is real and is caused by human activities. Meanwhile, the United States stands on the verge of falling behind other nations such as India and China in the race to lead the world in scientific endeavor in the twenty-first century.”

When I first learned of the Orwellian news that Barack Obama had been voted the best choice in the world to be given the Nobel Peace award, I quickly wrote this post in an attempt to express my utter dismay. I’m not happy with the way that particular post turned out, mostly because I was still too stunned, I think, to properly articulate my anger and disgust – although the pictures in the post still say more than I ever could. Hopefully I’ll be better able to express myself in this piece.

I’m not criticizing Obama for “failing to stop” the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That little bit of linguistic jujitsu completely reframes the issue in a way that makes the President of the United States into a victim of the American War Machine, trying but ultimately unable to stop all the evil forces working against him in his quest. Give me a goddamn break. I, along with numerous other writers, am criticizing him not for what he has failed to do but for what he has and continues to actively and intentionally do. Both these wars are his. He owns them now. He could call a meeting today, gather all the major media outlets and declare to both the American people and the international community that these wars will end as soon as humanly possible. He could tell us that they are immoral and illegal wars that have killed untold amounts of innocent civilians. He could tell us that they are unjust and that such heinous actions will never be taken again as long as he’s president. Yet he has shown no serious interest in ending either war. As I noted in my previous post, Obama, despite his hollow rhetoric pledging to draw down the troops in Iraq, wants a permanent military presence there. He is allowing the establishment of at least fourteen permanent military bases in the country. In short, he is admitting that he will help occupy a sovereign nation for generations to come. But I’m sure his occupying intentions are noble. After all, as Orwell said, War is Peace.

The case of Afghanistan is even worse. There’s not even the pretense of ending our war there. Instead there is the likelihood of an escalation, an increase of troops. To wit:

Hours after winning a Nobel Peace Prize, President Barack Obama assembled his war council in the White House basement to talk about how many troops might be needed to right the 8-year-old Afghanistan conflict that military commanders are pressing him to escalate.

The president and his top national security advisers huddled for three hours in the Situation Room to hear top military officials make their case for tens of thousands of additional troops to target al-Qaida. The session marked the first time Obama has questioned his inner circle specifically about troop levels and military commitments needed for the war that has languished in progress and popularity.
[…]
[General Stanley] McChrystal is believed to have presented Obama with a range of options, from adding as few as 10,000 troops to as many as 40,000.

Literally only a few hours after being informed that he had been given the prestigious Nobel award for peace, Obama met to discuss taking an already barbaric war to an even more intense and thus more gruesome level. One might hope that this award would shame him into taking the ethical course of action – but I guess that’s not going to happen.

There are those who clamor to defend the President, ardent Obama supporters and Democrats who pledge allegiance to their party and all of its infallibility. These people undoubtedly trust their Dear Leader to do the right thing in Afghanistan. Many, I’m sure, also think that our military campaign is actually to the benefit of Afghans, in the same way that the GOP constantly parroted the line about how we freed all those ungrateful Iraqis from the tyrannical reach of Hussein. These same individuals are now comparing people who don’t think Obama deserves this to terrorists. The DNC communications director went so far as to tell POLITICO, “The Republican Party has thrown in its lot with the terrorists – the Taliban and Hamas this morning – in criticizing the President for receiving the Nobel Peace prize.” The GOP deserves a great deal of condemnation, but saying that Obama does not deserve this does not even remotely equate to terrorism. So to such limited, small-minded people I say, Look at the images of the innocents maimed and murdered. Look at the utter anguish on the faces of those who have lost loved ones to bombs made by Boeing and Northrop Grumman. And watch this, a clip from Rethink Afghanistan:

Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine, said the following in an interview on DemocracyNow!:

It’s very significant and disappointing, [a] cheapening of the Nobel Prize. And, you know, it’s been cheapened before, and it will cheapen again—be cheapened again.
[…]
This is supposed to be a prize that rewards concrete behavior, concrete action. And there are many people out there in the world who were under consideration for this prize, who every day perform acts that are taken at enormous risk for concrete benefit. I mean, I think that one of the people—one of the names under consideration this year was Dr. Mukwege in the Congo, in the DRC. This is somebody who is under personal threat because he is saving the lives of women every day who have been violently raped. And giving the prize to Dr. Mukwege—and I’m just giving one example—would have been such a concrete victory and encouragement for that action. It would have put pressure on the United States to take action, on the international community to take action, for the women of the Congo. And instead of that, we have this very, very political decision, and in many ways it’s like a pat on the head for good behavior or the hope of good behavior, because actually we’ve seen a lot of bad behavior.

Klein is, of course, correct and she deserves praise for pointing to someone who actually is deserving of the Nobel. The first recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize was Henry Dunant, who in addition to founding the Red Cross was also a prominent pacifist. The Nobel website notes, “In addition to humanitarian efforts and peace movements, the Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded for work in a wide range of fields including advocacy of human rights, mediation of international conflicts, and arms control.” After reading this criteria and then reminding oneself that they decided to give it to Obama, one has to wonder how many bottles of Black Velvet the committee managed to go through before blacking out and waking up in a pile of their own collective vomit. Obama is willfully fighting two wars of aggression. He refuses to prosecute torture or ensure that it is never used again by American forces. He has yet to close Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib. He has yet to do anything meaningful to dismantle our absurdly extensive nuclear arsenal or even bother to encourage Israel to dismantle theirs. He’s threatened to invade and attack Pakistan. A war with Iran would shock absolutely no one who has been following the news. He has yet to do anything significant to ensure that lesbian, gay, transsexual and bisexual Americans are treated as equals and accorded the same rights as their heterosexual peers. Perhaps the committee knew that they could get away with this one by counting on people like Joan Walsh, Editor-in-Chief of Salon.com. Walsh posted a brief piece in which she somehow managed, despite reality, to argue the exact opposite of Klein:

In recent years the Nobel Peace Prize has more often honored promise and encouraged progress than it marked concrete, permanent achievements in the realm of world peace. So the prize went to President Carter’s ultimately unsuccessful 1978 Middle East peace drive; and to the same still uncompleted effort by Yassir Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin in 1994. In 1991, Aung San Suu Kyi won the prize in her jail cell, but the point was to support democracy in Burma (and 18 years later, she is still under house arrest).Thinking about the Northern Ireland Catholic and Protestant “Peace Mothers” who won the award in 1976, years before real peace accords, I suddenly saw Obama’s win as strangely humble, and personal: One man trying to reverse the bloody tide of recent American history.

What the fuck is she talking about? Those examples aren’t even remotely analogous to Obama and the legitimate criticism that he has received from those who are antiwar even when Democrats are in power. The examples she cites are of people who have either made genuine attempts to bring about peace or who, because of their peaceful, moral, and humanitarian principles, became victims of tyranny. Neither scenario describes Obama, arguably the most powerful person in the world. What humanitarian principle has landed him in jail for almost two decades? How many years has he dedicated to establishing peace anywhere, let alone between Palestine and Israel? Most notably, she chooses to argue that Obama is trying to “reverse the bloody tide of recent American history.” All aspiring propagandists take note: if you want to learn how to get away with spewing utter bullshit, remain vague and never, no matter what, cite examples – especially when there isn’t any that support your point.

Then, as if she is now trying to convince herself of Obama’s Nobel worthiness, Walsh writes, “about mid-day on Friday I abandoned my head-shaking, and instead held my head high.” Well congratulations. I’m so glad that the suffering of hundreds of thousands of innocent people is no more than a minor concern of yours, one that you can blithely acknowledge and then dismiss in order to feel good about the man who is in charge of said suffering. How incredibly foul. And how incredibly common.

At best, the Nobel committee was trying to spur Obama into doing something good for the world. At worst, they’ve turned a blind eye to the collective, systematic slaughter of innocent life.

UPDATE: (continue reading…)