1 Boring Old Man

We all seem to be struggling with what to say about Congress passing a bill that broadly suspends the right of habeas corpus and supports torture. The bill also puts an enormous amount of decision power in the hands of the President and absolves government officials for crimes already committed. There may be a few Congressmen who believe this is a necessary measure, but most were voting either along party lines or were afraid of being portrayed as ‘soft on Terror.’ The latter reason is absurd. The Democrats are going to be portrayed as soft on Terror, no matter what they do, no matter how they vote.

The really hard part for me is that the War on Terror and the War in Iraq are still equated in every speech. Today, it was, "Five years after 9/11, the worst attack on the American homeland in our history, Democrats offer nothing but criticism and obstruction and endless second-guessing. The party of FDR and the party of Harry Truman has become the party of cut and run." In spite of having to admit that going to war with Iraq had nothing to do with the 911 attack, these things are equated in every speech – every single speech, including the one where the admission was made. In spite of knowing that there is no longer any way to connect 911 with the War in Iraq, they keep saying it. In spite of N.I,E. that says the war is fueling the Terrorists’ growth and going very badly, they keep telling us it’s a good idea.

I don’t even know if the Administration even believes in this bill that Congress just passed – that detainees should have no rights to trial and should be tortured. For all we know, this may simply be a ploy to look "tough" on the bad guys. I don’t know if they believe that the War in Iraq is fighting Terror or if they are just defending the biggest f__k-up in American military history. So it’s hard to lament this War, or this bill, based on their misguided motives. I’m not really sure they have motives, just political strategies to try to look good.

So that may be the biggest tragedy of all in this bill. They’re throwing out a piece of the Constitution that’s the only Right mentioned in the body of the document, and they may be doing it just for show. I wonder if Bush even knows what he’s doing to the Constitution. Remember this:

The biggest tragedy is that this whole debacle, from the ignoring the warnings about al Qaeda, to the deception to get us into war with Iraq, to the "outing" of Valerie Plame, to the unwarranted N.S.A. domestic surveillance, to this obviously un-necessary and un-Constitutional bill is that it’s being done with almost no thought. All they seem to know how to do is spin things to make them happen, to leverage political power in their favor,. But the things they do are ill-conceived, and frequently solutions to their last mistake – things that are sure to lead to the next one [next mistake].

So, that’s why it’s so hard to know what to say about things like this. It’s just another meaningless marker on a road to nowhere. Torturing detainees, keeping them imprisoned forever, "staying the course," ignoring the Constitution – just more markers on a road to nowhere…