When you hear the number 300 what comes to mind. In the past maybe a car but now that military history has been made into a movie once again we think of the 300 Spartans who led the defense of the pass at Thermopylae. Of course the movie did as all movies about history and grossly oversimplified. There is no fault in telling a good story and the key to this story on screen is the bravery and convictions of the men who stood there. In truth it is more complex, but the historical perspective is far more dramatic. Greece is considered the cradle of Western civilization. Athens was the birthplace of democracy. It was in fact Alexander who spread the culture and shaped the world. He was a brilliant conqueror who took an entirely different approach to empire, a politically savvy approach. None of this would have been possible without stopping the massive Persian assault. The truly dramatic aspect of the 300 men from Sparta is that they forever changed the world.
One of the things that makes any culture great is to look back into it’s history and learn the lessons of the great failures and successes. We are forever infatuated with legends. I don’t recall learning about men walking barefoot in the revolutionary war and civil war and leaving a trail of blood, but I recall being moved upon learning of it as an adult. Today there are those seeking to create their own legends with history. Today there is a new 300 and it is all the buzz being repeated on all the news shows by all the talking heads.
The 300 I am talking about though are not men of honor, at least not according to our principles. In congressional hearings attorney general Eric Holder told senator Kyl that there were 300 terror convictions in the Bush administration. It seems it went like this, 300 were caught, tried and all convicted and you will never get that kind of success in military tribunals. After all even the president and AG both assured us that after a fair trial KSM would be convicted and executed. That has to show how just we are. There’s just one small problem. Senator Kyl asked for a list of these supposed 300 convictions. Holder agreed to provide it, shined it on and eventually said they could not legally provide the information. Wow! Handy!
You see one of the things that the administration says is they are doing exactly what the Bush administration did. They mention the shoe bomber in 2001. Compared to the underwear bomber he was from the US but it turns out there is a lot more going on. He was arrested months after 9/11 and Bush tried to have him sent to a military tribunal by executive order. The ACLU and others went ballistic and it went to the supreme court which said he could not be sent to a military tribunal. That was not possible until 2006 when congress finally hashed it all out, which is why KSM hasn’t been tried yet. I happened to catch O’Reilly today when he had Ann Coulter on talking about how the legal resistance on the left had forced the shoe bomber to have no other option but civilian court.
I’m not going to take a position on the legality of the shoe bomber case. Whatever we may think it is clear that we should not abuse or legal system to get a result and we must abide the decision of the court. What I have a problem with is pretty much everything coming out of the Obama administration on this. First of all why aren’t the left upset if he wants to do what Bush did? Wasn’t Bush the devil incarnate? Second of all is “he did it” ever an adult answer for why you make a given decision? Finally, if people like your attorney general were working to thwart military tribunals and defend terrorists in their civilian business is it right to claim that what you forced someone to do was their idea? The real toxin here seems to be the lie about success and failure in civilian and military courts. Who are these 300 and why has the military option been so very difficult to execute?
I would not deny that Obama has has some notable successes in the war on terror. He has been doing a good job killing them, a lessor job capturing them and a horrible job extracting intelligence from them. One could argue many points and directions pro or con so I will offer some simple observations. For one if you got everything you needed to know in 50 minutes and now you are getting more does that qualify as too much information? For another if you disband CIA interrogation and set up a new program and six months later that program isn’t available isn’t that a problem? Finally if you have an AG calling the shots and not consulting anyone else involved with national security then really why the hell do you have anybody in your administration working national security?
Obama became famous in a 2004 speech where he said there is no red or blue America but we are all Americans. Certainly in the realm of the security and safety of our people it should not be politicized. We should put aside our differences and work together. I ask you, if at the heart of the administration there is an attorney general playing fast and loose with the truth and operating in a political manner and the talking points are all structured to revise history how we accomplish that. If even a right wing ideologue like Sean Hannity is letting these talking points pass as he yammers his narrow view then I guess the administration can claim a small victory.
In ancient times the military loss by a group of city states led by 300 brave men turned to a political victory as it set the stage for occupation to be too expensive. Those 300 men forever changed the world. Today the fiction of 300 convictions is taking the same brave hedge against the weight of a nation seething for a popular revolt at the ballot box. A political victory here would come at the cost of honesty, decency and the common understanding of the war we are in and the word forbidden to use for fear we upset those intent on murdering all of us… jihadists. I have more trust in the truth of a thousands of years old mythology than the mythology being spun now about the new 300.
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, February 16th, 2010 at 10:39 PM and is filed under social commentary.
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300
When you hear the number 300 what comes to mind. In the past maybe a car but now that military history has been made into a movie once again we think of the 300 Spartans who led the defense of the pass at Thermopylae. Of course the movie did as all movies about history and grossly oversimplified. There is no fault in telling a good story and the key to this story on screen is the bravery and convictions of the men who stood there. In truth it is more complex, but the historical perspective is far more dramatic. Greece is considered the cradle of Western civilization. Athens was the birthplace of democracy. It was in fact Alexander who spread the culture and shaped the world. He was a brilliant conqueror who took an entirely different approach to empire, a politically savvy approach. None of this would have been possible without stopping the massive Persian assault. The truly dramatic aspect of the 300 men from Sparta is that they forever changed the world.
One of the things that makes any culture great is to look back into it’s history and learn the lessons of the great failures and successes. We are forever infatuated with legends. I don’t recall learning about men walking barefoot in the revolutionary war and civil war and leaving a trail of blood, but I recall being moved upon learning of it as an adult. Today there are those seeking to create their own legends with history. Today there is a new 300 and it is all the buzz being repeated on all the news shows by all the talking heads.
The 300 I am talking about though are not men of honor, at least not according to our principles. In congressional hearings attorney general Eric Holder told senator Kyl that there were 300 terror convictions in the Bush administration. It seems it went like this, 300 were caught, tried and all convicted and you will never get that kind of success in military tribunals. After all even the president and AG both assured us that after a fair trial KSM would be convicted and executed. That has to show how just we are. There’s just one small problem. Senator Kyl asked for a list of these supposed 300 convictions. Holder agreed to provide it, shined it on and eventually said they could not legally provide the information. Wow! Handy!
You see one of the things that the administration says is they are doing exactly what the Bush administration did. They mention the shoe bomber in 2001. Compared to the underwear bomber he was from the US but it turns out there is a lot more going on. He was arrested months after 9/11 and Bush tried to have him sent to a military tribunal by executive order. The ACLU and others went ballistic and it went to the supreme court which said he could not be sent to a military tribunal. That was not possible until 2006 when congress finally hashed it all out, which is why KSM hasn’t been tried yet. I happened to catch O’Reilly today when he had Ann Coulter on talking about how the legal resistance on the left had forced the shoe bomber to have no other option but civilian court.
I’m not going to take a position on the legality of the shoe bomber case. Whatever we may think it is clear that we should not abuse or legal system to get a result and we must abide the decision of the court. What I have a problem with is pretty much everything coming out of the Obama administration on this. First of all why aren’t the left upset if he wants to do what Bush did? Wasn’t Bush the devil incarnate? Second of all is “he did it” ever an adult answer for why you make a given decision? Finally, if people like your attorney general were working to thwart military tribunals and defend terrorists in their civilian business is it right to claim that what you forced someone to do was their idea? The real toxin here seems to be the lie about success and failure in civilian and military courts. Who are these 300 and why has the military option been so very difficult to execute?
I would not deny that Obama has has some notable successes in the war on terror. He has been doing a good job killing them, a lessor job capturing them and a horrible job extracting intelligence from them. One could argue many points and directions pro or con so I will offer some simple observations. For one if you got everything you needed to know in 50 minutes and now you are getting more does that qualify as too much information? For another if you disband CIA interrogation and set up a new program and six months later that program isn’t available isn’t that a problem? Finally if you have an AG calling the shots and not consulting anyone else involved with national security then really why the hell do you have anybody in your administration working national security?
Obama became famous in a 2004 speech where he said there is no red or blue America but we are all Americans. Certainly in the realm of the security and safety of our people it should not be politicized. We should put aside our differences and work together. I ask you, if at the heart of the administration there is an attorney general playing fast and loose with the truth and operating in a political manner and the talking points are all structured to revise history how we accomplish that. If even a right wing ideologue like Sean Hannity is letting these talking points pass as he yammers his narrow view then I guess the administration can claim a small victory.
In ancient times the military loss by a group of city states led by 300 brave men turned to a political victory as it set the stage for occupation to be too expensive. Those 300 men forever changed the world. Today the fiction of 300 convictions is taking the same brave hedge against the weight of a nation seething for a popular revolt at the ballot box. A political victory here would come at the cost of honesty, decency and the common understanding of the war we are in and the word forbidden to use for fear we upset those intent on murdering all of us… jihadists. I have more trust in the truth of a thousands of years old mythology than the mythology being spun now about the new 300.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 16th, 2010 at 10:39 PM and is filed under social commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.