You know, I’m sure the Republicans think that morality is a very important issue in politics. That they stand full force against moral relativism (which is the incorrect word they use when they mean “amoralism”).

So how come is it that when confronted with one of the biggest moral issues of our time — whether or not to torture prisoners because they might be terrorists — the supposed moral stalwarts fall behind weasel words and euphemisms (“enhanced interrogation techniques”), moral equivalence (“Al-Quaeda doesn’t observe the Geneva convention!”), fantasy (“We need Jack Bauer!”) and rationalization (“ticking time bomb”).

Why is that the only people who define a bright moral line against torture are the RINO and the Libertarian.

Cato takes apart the idea of redeploying to Kurdistan. I’ve always felt this was something being tossed off by ignorami as a way to withdraw without withdrawing.

Another reason that this commentary misses is strategic. Kurdistan is land-locked. If Iraq turns ugly, the only way to get out is through Turkey. And I’m sure they’d be delighted to have tens of thousands of troops and thousands or armored vehicles marching through their country.

No, that’s not a mis-spelling.

One of the tragic aspects of the Iraqi debacle is that it didn’t have to be this way. Iraq descended into chaos because of incompetent leadership (Rumsfeld and Bremmer, in particular) compounded by the utter refusal of the Administration to admit to any problems.

One of the people who comes off quite well in Cobra II is General David Petraeus, then commander of the 101st Airborne (from whose motto comes the title of this post). Petraeus, more than anyone, recognized the difficulties of governing post-war Iraq. Assigned to pacify the Sunni city of Mosul, he took off his body armor and met personally with tribal leaders to keep the city calm. It became a model for the region.

Had we had more men like David Petraeus and fewer like Don Rumsfeld, things might have gone differently.

So it comes as no surprise to me that he has spoken out against torture. From a general in the field, this is about as iconoclastic as it gets. And if you read between the lines, he’s not just addressing his men — but all the people who think torture is justified and/or effective.

He is absolutely right, not only in his moral stance but in his understanding of what needs to be done to win Iraq. I just don’t know that he’s going to get through to the rock-heads in the White House or the Right Wing Echosphere.

It just so happens that I recently watched Band of Brothers again. What is it about the 101st (and the 82nd!) that produces such fine men? They can bring both terror to the enemy and hope to the oppressed.

I’ve heard a lot of arguments like this lately.

Now, I know, I know: we face a dedicated, determined threat that’s so deadly, (so “existential,” man) that dangerous distractions like the Constitution and critical thinking must be suspended for the duration while we duct tape ourselves to our recliners and dutifully watch Fox News. But I can’t help thinking the Fort Dix plot is part of a pattern: that a good many of the players on Team Jihad just don’t seem all that bright.

Well, blowing yourself up is, by definition, not a terribly bright thing to do. But I have to disagree with esteemed Healey for several reasons:

To be honest, I’m shocked we haven’t had more terrorist incididents in this country — in particular the more mundane and easily planned and executed shooting sprees and bombs they have used so often in Israel. We are, and hopefully always will be, an open and trusting people. You would think terrorists would be like wolves among sheep, especially if the Right is right on the “wussification” thing.

Of course, it’s easier to bomb a country that’s only a few minutes’ walk away than one that’s across an ocean. But I keep wondering if the terrorist are coming over here to blow things up or shoot people and then losing the inclination. I wonder if after a few months or years or American TV and American food and American cars and American girls in American miniskirts, they’re deciding they’d rather just be Americans, in action if not in law.

So how long is it going to be until some Right-Wing pundit gives Bush’s excesses credit for busting the Fort Dix plot.

Keep in mind throught the Memestorm to follow: it was busted by an average American being alerted, not by tapping random phones and taking immigrants’ DNA; the investigators would have, given the evidence presented, had no problems acquiring warrants and phone taps to investigate these goons.

Also, how stupid do you have to be to a) plan to attack an army base in a country filled with unprotected targets; b) give someone a video of your preparations to convert to DVD?

CNN discovers, after months of debate, that leaving Iraq might be a bad thing. I guess it’s better than discovering it after we leave.

Yeah, right.

Well, Giuliani just lost my vote.

“I listen a little to the Democrats and if one of them gets elected, we are going on defense,” Giuliani continued. “We will wave the white flag on Iraq. We will cut back on the Patriot Act, electronic surveillance, interrogation and we will be back to our pre-Sept. 11 attitude of defense.”

Let’s see, accuse the Democrats of appeasing terrorists. Check. Support the intrusive useless Patriot Act. Check. Support torture. Check. Warrantless wiretaps. Check.

Asshole.

I am still a Man Without a Party.

Sullivan makes an absolutely brilliant point about the VT killings:

Imagine that this kind of massacre happened every day. Imagine a police force that was far too small to even respond to most of them. Imagine this occurring repeatedly for years until the perpetrators and their accomplices became the de facto power-brokers throughout the land. Imagine the shootings also being accompanied by the brutal torture of victims. Imagine families never having finality on whether their own siblings or parents or children have been murdered or not.

This is Iraq today. Now think of the justified rage many feel at the VT campus police chief and university president for misjudgments. Now imagine them presiding over several more massacres in the same place. Ask yourself: why do we not feel as enraged by those responsible for security in Iraq? Are those victims not human beings too? Are they not children and mothers and fathers and sons? Are we not ultimately responsible for them, having destroyed the institutions of order in their country? Now go watch John Bolton tell the victims to go help themselves.

Our society has a very strong commitment to law and order — perhaps a bit too strong, given the explosion of violent raids in the last decade. We weep for events like VT because they are so rare. But we are now seeing in Iraq that such violence is the natural state of man in the absence of law and order.

I’m a libertarian. One the common slurs hurled against libertarians is that we are anarchists. But we aren’t. Every real libertarian knows that the most important aspect of government is that it establish law and order. Because without law and order, all the rest — freedom, property rights, wealth — mean nothing. Even a broken and bent law and order is better than chaos. Which would you rather have — the horrid dictatorship of Venezuela or Iran or pre-war Iraq? Or the awful chaos of Haiti? That’s why libertarians support things like martial law in emergency situations. Because law and order is the first and primary duty of government.

A couple of weeks ago, Sullivan posted an article that disputed the leftist assertion that natural man is not violent, but peaceful. I would say that Iraq has illuminated a similar delusion on the theocon right. All they had to do was create democracy and peaceful westernized society would flow from it. But democracy is not a source of law and order — it’s a check on it. It’s not a way of running government, it’s a way of holding government accountable for its actions. You have to build a lawful society first. Then you put in the mechanisms to keep it under control.

Our foreign policy — hell, our entire nation — is being run by dorm room bullshit session. It’s being run by a bunch of guys sitting around talking up great ideas of how society could be run (abstinence only education, democratization of the Middle East, ramped up drug war, massive spending) rather than the complex reality of how society is — the complexity that tells libertarians and federalist to screw big ideas and just establish law, order and freedom. And the tragedy is that they have tried these big idea on a multi-ethnic nation with devastating results.

It could be worse. The last people with grand ideas for running society were the Maoists. But there was a better way. And hopefully in January 2009, we’ll start looking for it.

As we recover from the most deadly shooting in American history, let’s be grateful these things are so rare, that we live in a society that is relatively peaceful and lawful. And let’s make sure we keep it that way.

One of the common talking points for Bush’s supporters — his few remaining supporters — is to drag out letters from soldiers in Iraq. The soldiers are determined to win, so we should stay, goes the argument.

I have no doubt that this sentiment is common and genuine. But that is always the case with soldiers, even in disaster. When General Pickett’s shattered division returned to Robert E. Lee, many wanted to try again. They were sure they could do it. They did not want to have failed him, to have failed the Cause or, most importantly, to have failed their fellow soldiers.

Lee had to be smarter and he was. He had to see the army in the cold analytical terms that a ground soldier can’t — that a dead soldier is a sunk cost. That killing the living will in no way justify the fallen.

I’m not saying we need to pull of Iraq or that we have had a calamity even approaching Pickett’s charge. Hell, Picket lost twice as many men that day as we’ve lost in the entire war. No, what I’m saying is that our soldiers’ desire to stay in Iraq does not automatically mean we should. They always want to win, they always think they can. That’s what makes them better people than, well, shitheads with blogs.

But the President needs to decide his strategy based on the situation, not their sentiment. If you want us to stay in Iraq, you need to make a legitimate argument, not cower behind the courage of our soldiers.