Benghazi, Beirut or 9/11

 

“The Trump administration is not refusing to share power with an opposing party. It is refusing to follow the constitutional limits of a government that its own party controls completely,” @jonathanchait argues. https://t.co/BLf6KSSlSs pic.twitter.com/wPtTTdgW2i

— The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) February 11, 2025

I know there's good reason to just reminisce about when bipartisan shit was possible, but my biggest problem with this Trump infestation is the epistemic closure--the failure to have any light that lets in the darkness that is absofuckinglutely going to happen. You can disobey the laws of man--but not gravity.

So, the Bush folks felt ecstatic when they got the White House--finally! In 2001. After two long terms of the Bubbas! The grown-ups were in charge! And they pretended the little thing with the missing "W"'s was a big old riot of Democrat malfeasing--

And they didn't have their eye on the ball about the PDB that said Bin Laden was planning an attack on our soil. 

We Felt Our Mortality

 

We are a young country, the US, in some ways, and ride on the idea of our strength and sense of purpose as a leader among nations. The first country among equals (except we're not) as one might say "primus inter pares." The memorial logos, the sigils, the swag, often just show the World Trade Towers themselves, draped in flag-wrap. The buildings were not the tragedy--the loss of lives was.  We lost great people that day. We lost parents and children, leaders and caregivers, sinners and saints. All kinds of people. Office workers, police, firefighters, medics. 

But the pictures of the victims themselves is too haunting: and yet we see them, forever in our minds. And they get reposted on social media. 

We are losing them even today--people who inhaled too much of whatever makes buildings and are dying too young of what they breathed in. We are losing them even now, people who were there or their loved one was there and now it's 22 years out, and we lose people all the time. The narrative memory of what happened will fade. Except in what has been committed to print, video, etc.--but that memory is always a little short. 

Tragedies amortize. Tragedies fade. We said "Never again" but we don't step into the same river twice, or face the same sort of history as Memorex: just an echo. 

Feeling Petty About Ramaswamy

 

What Vivek Ramaswamy said last night regarding his quotes to the Atlantic about 9/11 compared with the audio that disproves his claim that he was misquoted. pic.twitter.com/FXNJjRovJ8

— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) August 23, 2023

So anyway, last night, our lad was like "Caitlin, Caitlin, Caitlin" about being called out for being a regular humbug.  Just a total condescending, deflecting, argumentative self-justifier. He went on to call her a "petulant teenager" for calling him out when she had performed a act of journalism on him.  Which is fun and sexist and totally for the bros and everything, but I think I know what he reminded me of:

He could stand to grow up a little if he wants to do this politics thing. Maybe he could try not even thinking he should start from the top. Maybe run for mayor of Uphisass City. Population, himself.

Also speaking about his being a CEO did you know he was getting sued?  I think the Trump Handbook says you are supposed to claim "election interference" as a defense, but I don't know if that is a real thing. 

I Feel Bad for Fatima Devolder

 

I don't know much about George Santos' mother other than what fact-checkers have had to debunk. Above, I posted a screenshot of two Tweets from George Santos about his mother's passing: that her life was claimed by 9/11 and that she had died in 2016. This doesn't strike me as so necessarily conflicted--of course, people who were near Ground Zero succumbed, even years later, due to disease from the toxic fallout of the rubble. If she contracted cancer from that, however later, it is just as much a case of 9/11 claiming her life as if she had passed when the Towers fell. 

Only--Santos says she was an executive working at a major financial institution, and it appears she was actually a domestic worker or home health aide. So how was she even there? Was she?

We can question whether his need for assistance with the burial matches his bio--and I will say, I believe he had financial problems.  I can see with my own eyes the struggle was real. But why did he have to lie so much about his mother? 

He concocted from nothing at all a story about her family and variously said she was from Belgium, or that her ancestors were Ukrainian Jews with the family name "Zabrovsky". He said his mother fled socialism in Belgium (which is not a socialist country) and also that his Ukrainian Jewish forebears fled the Holocaust because of socialism (because the whole "First they came for the socialists" thing is entirely lost on people whose life of the mind is entirely constructed of fables). 

George Santos, Caucasian, Jew-ish and Black (because he claims Angolan ancestry via his father) never seems to think his own story is good enough. Or that his own mother's story was good enough. He name-checks the Holocaust, 9/11 and even fabricated employees that died in the Pulse shooting as if only major events give meaning to one's life. 

His actual story, as a first-generation American who had a loving mother who protected him even though he was a check-stealing shit back in Rio de Janeiro, was not enough. That he now pretends he made a fortune just a minute ago in something he refers to as "capital introduction" can only make us wonder who introduced this ne'er-do-well to the kind of capital that finances a successful congressional campaign--and investigators are gonna be on it. (I always suspect Russians but Dark Money is a real thing, too.)

His lies about who he is and who she was fall around her--unable to say one word because she isn't alive to say her piece.  But I think she deserved better. Who she actually was should have been enough. 

UPDATE: Is he a chronic liar because he had a brain tumor or did he have a brain tumor because he's a chronic liar? 

3 years ago, he claimed he had a brain tumour and received chemo… pic.twitter.com/fBclHQjrps

— Ravin Boodram (@rvbdrm) December 29, 2022

How the whole hell?  I mean, how the whole hell? 

 

Climate Change is Terror

 

I have never seen climate carnage on the scale of the floods here in Pakistan.

As our planet continues to warm, all countries will increasingly suffer losses and damage from climate beyond their capacity to adapt.

This is a global crisis. It demands a global response. pic.twitter.com/5nqcJIMoIA

— António Guterres (@antonioguterres) September 10, 2022

 I know this is a hell of a message to send on the 21st anniversary of 9/11, but I can't hear the skirling bagpipes deliver "Amazing Grace" one more time without thinking about the future pressures of what colonialism and global commodification of the planet will mean for future generations. We've been looking at the war on terror as about a lot of things, but about oil and water, not so much--maybe we should. About self-determination, and the world corporations would leave us to--not so much. Maybe we should.  We were lost, but will we be found? We were blind, but will we see? 

We tend to want to put a face on our terrors and consider the villain as "the other". Nature, in its raw power and inexorableness, seems to us to act in ways so removed from our capability to harness it--but we harnessed the atom. We can make use of the energies of water and wind and even capture lightning in a bottle and the sun in a mirror. I think we should be able to understand that over 30 million people are displaced and maybe thousands have died or will, and a third of a large country is under water, destroying crops and homes and livelihoods, because for over a hundred years, we, humanity, did something to the atmosphere that made storms more potent and the future more uncertain. 

President Biden Has Not Forgotten

 

One of the most significant figures behind the 9/11 attacks, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has been taken out by way of drone while hanging out on a balcony in Afghanistan, at a safe house where he was hosted by Sirajuddin Haqqani. 

So, a couple of things--this demonstrates that we did not still need to be at war in Afghanistan for our principal counterterrorism mission to be continued. If someone wants to bring up the Doha accords, I'm just echoing what has already been established, the Taliban never renounced al-Qaeda. Not attacking our troops as we were pulling out was the bare minimum. Just as with the Osama bin Laden operation, this demonstrated the resolve of the United States to follow through in the pursuit of terrorists--where we cannot receive full justice, we will avenge. 

I would not be fully in character if I did not take the opportunity to backhand the twice-impeached one-term wonder who hosted the KSA-backed LIV golf tournament at his Bedminster property and dissembled that "we" never got to the bottom of 9/11. He too, could have gone after al-Zawahiri, but apparently did not know who that was. As to Trump's "successful" attacks of his own, I have never been persuaded he fully knew what he was doing. I mean really, I think he was clueless, you guys. We can pretend al-Baghdadi was a bigger get for a whole moment of stony silence in Trump's honor, if he likes. And I think he really would. 

I'm not short on memory. I think a lot of us consider the savaging of Trump at the 2011 WHCD followed by Obama's announcement that the US got bin Laden both scared Trump off of running in 2012 and began his supervillain origin story to become the only president to plan an attack on the US homeland himself. 

That should not be forgotten, either. 

Behind the First Tee at Bedminster

 

I'm committing this here, just because when something niggles at my brain, I have to blog about it to get it out of my system because otherwise no further blogging will ensue. There is an air of tragedy about being buried behind the first tee at one's second husband's favorite self-owned golf course. The site is but the first of what is intended as a family plot, graced with a low-profile and simple stone--far simpler than what I imagine Ivana Trump would have wanted for herself and lacking even the least personalization--only her name and dates of birth and death. Not "beloved mother and grandmother". Just the absolute starkness of her having existed. 

I can shudder at the likelihood that this is her final resting place because her second husband gets a tax break from his Bedminster property being a cemetery as well as a working farm (it has goats!) (I'm not joking about the tax break--the property is also proofed against tax sales in the event of bankruptcy.) And I still can't cast the idea (described as #staircasecancer on Twitter) of something dodgy about her death having taken place, out of my mind. 

Imagine her friends or non-Trump family who want to pay their respects having to go through Trump's business to visit her grave? I imagine it. It's hard to think of Trump joining her there, although I balk at the idea of this country letting the president of the insurrectionists rest at Arlington. I find it too easy to see him, also, at Bedminster--but in something much more elaborate.  Subordinating her in death by having a nice mausoleum erected. 

This is the same property where Trump welcomed the Saudi-backed LIV golf tournament, to the dismay of 9/11 survivor families and colleagues of slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi alike. Suddenly Trump, who once was certain that KSA was responsible for 9/11, insists that no one ever really "got to the bottom" of that tragedy. We most certainly have gotten to the bottom of that one, but has anyone ever gotten to the bottom of Trump's greed, or is it bottomless?

I thought we were never supposed to forget what happened there, although Trump's memory has often been selective. 

The result being that the tickets were on sale for $1-3 on StubHub as crowds stayed away in droves. That's sad, especially since Trump graced this even with the prestige of the presidential seal, which the former president is still using despite having no authority to do so. As if putting the US government's seal of approval over the sports-washing of a murderous regime. 

It's unsavory, unethical, illegal, and to the world outside of Trump World, it looks bad--although it does seem par for the course. 

The Eternal Question: Lying or Stupid?

 

GOP Rep. McClain falsely claimed that Trump caught Osama bin Laden. The Al Qaeda leader was killed during the first Obama administration, when Trump was still hosting a game show. https://t.co/1urcAsB7S7

— Insider News (@InsiderNews) April 3, 2022

See, I want to believe that every adult American person alive in 2011 remembers that President Obama announced that there was a successful mission to kill or capture Osama Bin Laden. It would be really difficult for me to believe that Rep. McClain is anaware of this. It could be that she was thinking about Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who she mentions an entire breath later, but whose name she couldn't come up with right away--but it's still inexcusable. It's also possible she entirely meant "inflation", not "unemployment", when she declared that unemployment was at a 40 year high (when it is actually at a 50 year low). 

But it's the old eternal question isn't it? Lying or Stupid. If it's a lie, it's terrible, and if it's sheer stupidity--yes that is also news. Why would we be ok with elected figures who are just dumb as hell about what are basically current events? And yet it seems like people accept a certain degree of lying from Republicans and are almost embarrassed to call them out as stupid.

I've mentioned just recently the problem we have with taking polls for how people feel about facts (they don't always agree with'em!) when some people are just contrarian or hopelessly misinformed. What does a poll mean when it shows that a high number of people are out of touch with actual facts? Like, for example--who won the 2020 presidential election? A good portion of the media doesn't see the problem of, say, people not understanding that Biden has been responsible for a jobs boom as a media problem, but as a "Democrats in disarray" problem.

Anyway--if Democrats are responsible for cleaning up the information mess, it's important to challenge the outright lying, and not making excuses for the stupidity of dissembling Republicans. I don't assume even GOP "mistakes" are honest. So rip them on the apparent lying, and make them look stupid back-pedaling. 

9/11: Over the Horizon

 

The final act of the U.S. war in Afghanistan was a drone strike in Kabul that killed 10 people. Our latest investigation shows how a man the military saw as an "imminent threat" and "ISIS facilitator" was actually an aid worker returning to his family: https://t.co/eUX5WSImrD

— Evan Hill (@evanhill) September 10, 2021

There just isn't anything more apt to round out our 20 year misadventure in the War on Terror, than by this--a misguided drone strike that showed how far we had come, that we could be wrong from farther away instead of having to be wrong face to face and street by street. 

The memorial of 9/11 has been fraught for some time with me because of the cant and formulaic expressions of remembrance and the truisms that just strike me as false. "We came together that day." Tell it to visibly brown Muslim or Central Asian people who experienced discrimination, and find a kernel of what people came together to be. We needed to be unified to move forward, but we didn't need to do all we moved forward to do. 

The 9/11 fallen, those who died that day, and also their survivors, and the ones who have died of assorted toxins breathed in from working near or on the pile since and their survivors--they deserve every respect and support. But they were also used to sell an open-ended global war that was misguided in many ways. These ill-conceived decisions, occurring in part because short-sighted people didn't want to know any better and acted on what felt "right" politically, did more harm than good.  

Walking Away from Forever War

 

President Biden: "I will not send another generation of Americans to war in Afghanistan with no reasonable expectation to achieve a different outcome. The United States cannot afford to remain tethered to policies created in response to a world as it was 20 years ago." pic.twitter.com/JB0bYSFf1B

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 8, 2021

There's a pretty obvious saying about doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results. The initial crisis of 9/11 that sent the US into Afghanistan was about defeating the terrorists that caused that tragedy--yet, we are only leaving ten years after Bin Laden, the mastermind of that event, was killed. A lot has happened in the meanwhile, but what hasn't and won't happen is an end to terror: tactics used by people in conflict, not an entity with a given identity. We haven't reached the end of extremism or militancy. We haven't come to the end of war, just this twenty-years-old war.

The Taliban remain, but Biden has pledged to help relocate and protect the Afghan interpreters who assisted the US military.  That much is entirely correct. The answer to the question "What was achieved?" has to be balanced against the stark realities of what was achievable. If violence occurs in the wake of the US military's pullout, the tension between Taliban and non-Taliban political forces existed before the war. That tension has to be resolved by them; we are in no position to cause a diplomatic resolution, there. 

It's anti-climatic, I guess. Climaxes happen in dramas and this is real life. 

The Throughline

 Paul Krugman made a mistake on Twitter today in suggesting that the US did not panic after 9/11--we entirely did. It might not have looked like an instantaneous paroxysm of broken glass and flaming mosques all over the US, but it happened, sporadically, over the course of years. People who were visibly different, like Sikhs, were certainly attacked for their cultural difference without regard to whether they had any culpability. And after so many years, the damage accumulated. 

The Patriot Act got passed and ushered in an era of surveillance and profiling of people based on their origins and affiliations. We sanctified a shakedown of people not based on their activity, but their identity. People like Michelle Malkin, who advocated internment, and Pamela Geller, an eliminationist,  became mildly lionized. 

So, let's try and think about how Geller leads to an Anders Breivik, right?  How this has ripples towards Christchurch and Squirrel Hill? Because it ascertained that "foreign" is bad because some foreigners believe their religion a bit different than you do. And related that difference as being the reason behind murders based on--bigotry related to religious difference. 

There's a throughline. 

Or He Could Just Be Batshit

“I was down there also, but I’m not considering myself a first responder,” ⁦@realDonaldTrump⁩ tells people who rushed to help at the Twin Towers on #911. pic.twitter.com/HI2N7ffJOL

— Jeff Mason (@jeffmason1) July 29, 2019

There wasn't a whole heck of a lot I had to say about Trump's messy, racist, Twittering weekend, which still wasn't apparently over as of this morning. I disagree with the opinion that this is strategy, though, based on things like the above comment Trump just made regarding what he was doing on 9/11--which is definitely contentious, let's stop pretending this is strategy. He's a narcissist.

He wants people to only say good things about him. He lashes out when people say bad things about him. He'll say good things about himself whether they are true or not. Rep. Cummings got Trump "in his feels" as the kids say these days because he's actually doing his congressionally-mandated job of oversight. Trump went on a Twitter-rampage to self-soothe. It just comes off as if Trump is trying to engineer a race war because 1) Trump watches a lot of Fox News and 2) is pretty racist, but let's not overthink it.

He could just be batshit.

Roy Moore Won The AL Senate Primary Despite Trump's Strange Endorsement

It's easy to look at the picture of Roy Moore, above, and just see a man with a big flag, a tiny gun, and a middling hat. But he is a genuinely fascinating creature in that he seems to be entirely the worst of old-fashioned Bible-banging demagoguery. He's virulently anti-gay.  He seems confused about geography, current events, religion, and law, despite once upon a time being a judge.  He's of course anti-choice when it comes to women's reproductive choices, and he's also a creationist who even considers the teaching of evolution incompatible with the Constitution.  He is mostly known as the judge who took on the "Establishment clause" regarding religious speech to the effect of basically offering himself up in service to a graven image, which sort of cluster-fuckedly makes a mockery of both the First Commandment and the First Amendment. He thinks the 9/11 attacks were a punishment from God (which I think would align quite nicely with what Osama Bin Laden thought, too.) And he has nice words for Vladimir Putin. 

He's almost a parody of fringe right-wing whackadoodledom, and was endorsed by Ben Carson, Steve Bannon, Sarah Palin, and not by the actual US President, Donald Trump, who gave a rally for "Big Luther" Strange.

I don't pretend I know what this means. This is Alabama, which is not my neck of the woods at all. But if Moore's genuine unfitness* for anything at all could be adequately articulated, I'm thinking this culture war grudge-vote against the "DC establishment" might have maybe made a Doug Jones win vaguely possible? He's a civil rights lawyer and seems like a real stand-up guy.

*No, I am serious, this guy should not be a Senator.

UPDATE: Trump is purging Tweets about his support for Strange like a sad loser-baby:

UPDATE ALSO, TOO: Roy Moore was also a Birther, just so we can fully take in his up-fuckedness.  But that, at least, he has in common with Trump.

The Survivor Tree

Sixteen years after the day, with violence and terror so much a part of our world, there is a hopeful and strong message in a living memorial, whose seedlings have been planted around the world.

How Not to Do Legislating

For years, Republicans have decided they had no interest in the US joining in the ICC. President Obama has established a relationship with it, but the general objection to this international covenant is that it could result in individuals working on behalf of government interests being held liable in a court of law for actions carried out in some version of the "national interest". Regarding the recent override of President Obama's veto of a 9/11 law that enables families of 9/11 victims to take their case to court against the government of Saudi Arabia, President Obama warned that this could certainly have unintended legal consequences. As it could, as the long-standing issues with the ICC would suggest.

And the Congress not just passed his legislation over Obama's protest, but overrode his veto as well. And then decided maybe he has a point after all. 

Well, yeah you guys, while suing Saudi Arabia might be very satisfying, it does set up an uncomfortable precedent that we know could get ugly. Is it really possible that people in Congress kind of lost the plot just because they felt like "Who is Obama and when does he make sense?"

(Except for most of the time?)

Yeah. It looks dumb.

Hillary Clinton is Tough as We Need Her to Be

There's something to be said for the rumors about Hillary Clinton's poor health--they have been greatly exaggerated. After all, Clinton tried to maintain the grueling schedule required of a presidential candidate with a case of walking pneumonia, which I myself had during finals week my senior year at college--and let me tell you, while one is still pretty capable (I aced my tests, BTW) it is definitely not fun. Being sweaty-hot and then having chills for no especial reason while producing pints of lung-lather is not really an occasion of fun and joy. And yet Hillary Clinton kept her condition on the DL and attended the 9/11 memorial only to leave early and a bit unsteady, prompting further gossip (which is what you call that thing where you think you have a story based on what things "look like") about her physical fitness.

I would have ditched my finals if make-ups were even a possibility--and I was 21 and at the absolute peak of my health historically. She's not 21 and maybe at that age not at the peak of her physical fitness, but she felt obliged to go. Because there is such a thing as duty. Now, some people who never believe Clinton is up-front and transparent enough for them might complain about how she didn't just make a brief of her diagnosis on Friday when she got it to keep reporters in the loop.

Profiles in Chickenshit

Today was like watching an amazing case of "follow the leader", where state governor after state governor decided to Make! A! Political! Statement! that they would no-way, no-how, be accepting any Syrian refugees in their state. AL Gov. Bentley managed to combine his statement refusing to accept any Syrian refugees (which his state as of to date hasn't done) with a prayer for "those who have suffered loss." Nice. Syrian refugees have lost family, neighbors, their homes. He'll pray for them--but by the way, they can fuck off. A slew of other governors followed on this small-hearted and shallow-souled wake. (One even signifying on a Louie "Terror Babies" Gohmert level of ridiculousness.)

It's obscene that the Paris attacks, mostly carried out by people already French or Belgian citizens, are causing a problem for Syrian refugees, who did not do this. The one case where a Syrian passport was found near a suicide bomber (which was cited by TX Gov. Abbott, because of course a person can blow themselves up and their passport survives, and who doesn't take their passport to a suicide bombing?) it was very probably a fake.

And why would anyone do that? Because Daesh wants Westerners to reject Syrian refugees. They want to drive a wedge between people, polarizing them, eliminating the middle. Imagine, for example, what happens when Syrian people are turned away from a place to shelter. They are facing the possibility of returning home to die, because there are a lot of ways to die in Syria right now. They knew, depending upon the length and path of their route that they might be facing death anyway--and that this would be especially hard on children.

So in this great and generous, and some would even claim, Christian nation--what are these elected officials doing? Pretending to send people who are most likely no threat at all, and who are themselves under terrible threat, away from people in their states who they would like to convince they just did a wonderful brave thing for--because they are chickenshits. And they would rather fake leadership by making this basically annoying stand,  because the alternative is learning stuff and being decent and showing actual courage and compassion--and who even has time for that?

Because the people who make these mouth noises about how we can't really know who's who? Apparently have no clue that refugee application involves multi-agency inspections and can take 18-24 months to process. The US has only taken about 2000 people to date since 2012, and here's the scorecard on who is actually dangerous to our fellow Americans. Counting 9/11 as basically sui generis, you've got a lot of homegrown horrorshows. And here's my point--toddlers have, in any given year but 2001, killed more Americans than terrorists have. Take, like, any four American school-shooters, and you'd have an event that rivals the Paris attacks. The actual risk of a Syrian refugee actually turning out to be a Daesh operative is seriously low. It's ridiculous to angst over--

And in the meanwhile--think about the generation of Syrian youth who just got the message that we considered them disposable. Is that not radicalizing?

It's chickenshit. It's leading by following uninformed opinion. It's pants-pissing xenophobia and nationalistic signifying.

And Mike Huckabee wants Paul Ryan to step down if he doesn't stop the refugees from slowly dribbling in as they've been doing. And Ted Cruz wants to ensure that Syrian Muslims, specifically, are barred from entry. I can't imagine responses that would make Daesh happier, honestly. They couldn't be playing into what Daesh wants more if they tried. Are they that stupid? That pandering?

And what about the Authorization of Force against ISIL/Daesh Obama requested?

Right. Chickenshit.

"We'll See What Happens"

Dr. Ben Carson recently gave an interview on foreign policy where he suggested he'd be fine with the US shooting down a Russian plane. When questioned about the possible aftermath of that decision, he replied:

"If they violate it, we will, in fact, enforce it. We'll see what happens. For us to always be backing down because we're afraid of a conflict, that's not how we became a great nation, Chris," he said.

We'll see what happens.  Yes, two nuclear-armed states potting each others' planes over Syria. We'll see what happens.  That doesn't seem to me to be how responsible people think. But what else did he say?

"My point being that if we get out there and we really lead and it appears that we're making progress, that all of the Arab states and even the non-Arab states who are, I think, beginning to recognize that the jihad movement is global" will join, Carson said.

"Beginning to recognize that the jihad movement is global"? This isn't new to the rest of the world--this is only new to Carson. And the "really lead" stuff: please for the love of anything, Google "US-led coalition" and get back to us.

Now, I'm not going to pretend that Dr. Carson is uniquely unqualified on foreign policy--after all, Senator Marco Rubio is throwing around some "clash of civilizations" crap that is specifically unhelpful (I'd say it makes more sense to consider Daesh "anti-civilization"), and Jeb Bush, whose brother did not keep us safe, seems to think that we should only take in Christian refugees. (Senator Cruz says that, too, but wouldn't he? Really?) And then there's Governor Huckabee, who doesn't seem to know that Iran is at war with Daesh, also.

Yes, guys, let's be idiots and make this about Christians versus Muslims, exactly how the terrorists want us to behave.

These Republican candidates are just awful. Are they so warped by the need to appeal to the lowest common denominator of their base that they can not articulate even one reasonable response? (Yes, that was rhetorical.)

Update:  You know, parse this statement from Sen. Cruz's website:

“Such steps, however, are defensive reactions to an enemy that will continue to try to attack us until they succeed once again. We must immediately recognize that our enemy is not ‘violent extremism.’ It is the radical Islamism that has declared jihad against the west. It will not be appeased by outreach or declarations of tolerance. It will not be deterred by targeted airstrikes with zero tolerance for civilian casualties, when the terrorists have such utter disregard for innocent life. We must make it crystal clear that affiliation with ISIS and related terrorist groups brings with it the undying enmity of America—that it is, in effect, signing your own death warrant.”

 So, because Daesh has indiscriminate disregard for life, we should tolerate civilian casualties just like they do to show that anyone associated with them (like the people they kidnap, capture, oppress, sell) should die? I don't think that helps. I really don't.

The Bush Family Drama

It seems like a little bit of family business worked its way out in public as some of the senior Bush's opinions have been related by Jon Meacham in his biography of George H. W. Bush. It seems that "41" had a bit of criticism for Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, as well as a little criticism for "43".  The elder Bush described his son as having been badly served by Rumsfeld, and described Dick Cheney as becoming a more hardline and "iron ass" guy (possibly with the encouragement of his wife Lynn, and daughter, Liz). Bush "43", for his part, sticks up for those who served in his Administration. Say what you like about W.--he's loyal to a fault or a hundred.

There's nothing in that necessarily that makes me go "OMG!" about either what was said, not the source and direction of the opinion. I got a good enough sense that "43" didn't seek his father's advice when he said as much himself; when asked if he sought his father's counsel on things, he said he had a "higher father" that he relied on. This kind of statement, when it was not signifying theocratic holy war scary-times, was in line with the idea W. projected of being "the Decider". Nevertheless, in the midst of making claims about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, programs to build same, and relationships between Saddam Hussein and terrorists that couldn't possibly have made sense, the one thing I thought rang true was when Bush justified his invasion with "This was the guy who tried to kill my dad that one time."  This was family drama as war. Unless Bush's real reason was some crazy End-times shit--we will never really know, right?

Now, presuming that Jon Meacham is a Beltway remora and Poppy Bush still has his wits about him, that particular message slamming Don Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney has a couple of familial interests behind it. Knowing that Number 2 son is in need of distancing himself from the foreign policy disasters of Number 1 son, he establishes a narrative of distance by setting out that the reason for the disaster was a Team Effort, giving Number 1 son opportunity for plausible deniability and Number 2 son running room. He was trying to do a mitzvah for his boys like they understood how this worked. I guess he never told them though, or didn't think he had to.

43 hugged Dick Cheney like they were still testifying behind closed doors for like an hour that one time in front of the 9/11 commission. And Jeb, like the stunning political performer he is, also totally sided with Team Cheney. This is the guy we last saw being lashed by Donald Trump with his brother's foreign policy, and then like a mook stood in front of a mirror and straightened out the knots.

When 83-year old reptilian Donald Rumsfeld was warmed up enough by the sun, he mentioned that GHWB was "getting up in years" but that W. made his own decisions. He sure did. I'm not saying I'd make any kind of president, but after the Abu Ghraib revelations, I'd have been asking for Rumsfeld's resignation the first damn thing to show I treated this stuff as a top-down disaster.

But the insinuation that Bush "41" isn't still mentally sharp is a lie. He is. He was jumping out of planes when folks his age couldn't jump out of bed. Sharp as he ever was. The people around him, though, are only sharp as they ever were, too.

Trump vs. Bush: 9/11

How pathetic for @realdonaldtrump to criticize the president for 9/11. We were attacked & my brother kept us safe.

— Jeb Bush (@JebBush) October 16, 2015

Donald Trump just crossed what has been something of a political red-line in acknowledging that George W. Bush was president during 9/11 and maybe could have seen the attack coming and didn't keep us safe. (He also pointed out that a hurricane nearly wiped a major city away--again, American people weren't "kept safe"--there was a tragedy, then a slow, grinding, and not necessarily efficient response.)

Jeb Bush's response is to call this "pathetic" and insist his brother "kept us safe".

Kept who safe?

I think Trump is bombastic and have a problem accepting his seriousness. I don't know to what extent he understands the ins-and-outs of public service, and given that he would've left afflicted doctors who contracted ebola behind, well, he's not a model of overflowing selfless compassion--but do I think the Bushes, as a clan, are singularly incapable of understanding that you specifically address a problem and solve it and you do not find another thing to do and then flog it because you don't know how in the hell to fix the problem you ignored until it became tragic. Giving medals to Jerry Bremer, George Tenant, and saying "Heckuva job, Brownie" all kind of suggested someone who would nod at the fuck-ups to the extent that they protected number one--Bush himself.

Jeb Bush can't admit that George Bush's style of management is a big part of why the "War on Terror" became a campaign against an idea with a raft of tactics attached, not an approach to a problem that started with recognizing the terrorism threat in the first place and followed up with a strategy to combat terrorism based on and building on successful strategies in the past.

Donald Trump knew to go there. He crossed that line and is not in a place where criticizing GWB will hurt him. It won't. He criticized John McCain's "heroism". We know he has discovered a different way of campaigning based on giving no fucks. But the thing of it is, Jeb Bush was certain that "his brother kept us safe" would really sound right. Sure, it was said on the right for the longest time. It never was really true. But believing it would never be challenged left him with a half-hearted response. You can't say these things unless you believe them. How do you do that? It's not so.

And Jeb is still surrounded by his brother's continent of broken foreign policy advisors. An island of misfit political toys.

The house of Bush delenda est.