Author: Greg Saunders

Josh Marshall nails it here :

This whole endeavor, from the very start, has been about taking tawdry, cheap acts and dressing them up in a papier-mache grandeur — phony victory celebrations, ersatz democratization, reconstruction headed up by toadies, con artists and grifters. And this is no different. Hanging Saddam is easy. It’s a job, for once, that these folks can actually see through to completion. So this execution, ironically and pathetically, becomes a stand-in for the failures, incompetence and general betrayal of country on every other front that President Bush has brought us.

Try to dress this up as an Iraqi trial and it doesn’t come close to cutting it — the Iraqis only take possession of him for the final act, sort of like the Church always left execution itself to the ‘secular arm’. Try pretending it’s a war crimes trial but it’s just more of the pretend mumbojumbo that makes this out to be World War IX or whatever number it is they’re up to now.
. . .
These jokers are being dragged kicking and screaming to the realization that the whole thing’s a mess and that they’re going to be remembered for it — defined by it — for decades and centuries. But before we go, we can hang Saddam. Quite a bit of this was about the president’s issues with his dad and the hang-ups he had about finishing Saddam off — so before we go, we can hang the guy as some big cosmic ‘So There!’

Marx might say that this was not tragedy but farce. But I think we need to get way beyond options one and two even to get close to this one — claptrap justice meted out to the former dictator in some puffed-up act of self-justification as the country itself collapses in the hands of the occupying army.

What strikes me about all this is that Saddam’s guilty sentence (and to a lesser extent his punishment) were probably foregone conclusions, so the challenge to the Iraqi Government (read: the Americans pulling their strings) was to find the best method to try Saddam Hussein. They could have handed Saddam over to the International Criminal Court or postpone the trial until the American occupation is over, but that would have robbed them of the well-choreographed marketing campaign that the trial and execution of Saddam Hussein has become. It was a sham trial that didn’t have to be, and the decision to micromanage Saddam’s fate has probably been made at the expense of America’s image throughout the world. Again.

Like any member of the left in good standing, I despise religious people with a passion. At least, that’s what conservatives would have you believe about liberals any time one dares to suggest that government and religion shouldn’t mix. With that in mind, I’ve been confused this week to see two strongholds of “sensible liberalism” run hit pieces on Mitt Romney for the crime of being outspoken about his faith, but not being a mainstream or evangelical Protestant. From Slate :

Objecting to someone because of his religious beliefs is not the same thing as prejudice based on religious heritage, race, or gender. Not applying a religious test for public office, means that people of all faiths are allowed to run—not that views about God, creation, and the moral order are inadmissible for political debate. In George W. Bush’s case, the public paid far too little attention to the role of religion in his thinking. Many voters failed to appreciate that while Bush’s religious beliefs may be moderate Methodist ones, he was someone who relied on his faith immoderately, as an alternative to rational understanding of complex issues.

Nor is it chauvinistic to say that certain religious views should be deal breakers in and of themselves. There are millions of religious Americans who would never vote for an atheist for president, because they believe that faith is necessary to lead the country. Others, myself included, would not, under most imaginable circumstances, vote for a fanatic or fundamentalist—a Hassidic Jew who regards Rabbi Menachem Schneerson as the Messiah, a Christian literalist who thinks that the Earth is less than 7,000 years old, or a Scientologist who thinks it is haunted by the souls of space aliens sent by the evil lord Xenu. Such views are disqualifying because they’re dogmatic, irrational, and absurd. By holding them, someone indicates a basic failure to think for himself or see the world as it is.

By the same token, I wouldn’t vote for someone who truly believed in the founding whoppers of Mormonism. The LDS church holds that Joseph Smith, directed by the angel Moroni, unearthed a book of golden plates buried in a hillside in Western New York in 1827. The plates were inscribed in “reformed” Egyptian hieroglyphics—a nonexistent version of the ancient language that had yet to be decoded. If you don’t know the story, it’s worth spending some time with Fawn Brodie’s wonderful biography No Man Knows My History. Smith was able to dictate his “translation” of the Book of Mormon first by looking through diamond-encrusted decoder glasses and then by burying his face in a hat with a brown rock at the bottom of it. He was an obvious con man. Romney has every right to believe in con men, but I want to know if he does, and if so, I don’t want him running the country.

While I largely agree with the sentiments in the Slate and New Republic articles, I can’t help but remember all the times these same publications have bashed the left for making the exact same points about evangelical politicians. Needless to say, I think we’re going to see a lot more of this over the next couple of years as more and more pundits find new ways to make the argument that “Yeah, religious appeals by politicians are okay, but Mormons are weird.”

Hypocrites.

To commemorate the passing of Gerald Ford, here’s a repost of my favorite political ad of all time :

And while we’re talking about Ford’s legacy, let me echo what Atrios said :

As we all know, because everybody on the teevee will keep repeating it, Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon was perhaps the wisest and awesomest thing anyone has ever done in the history of presidenting. Never mind that it wasn’t popular at the time. Never mind that it set an awful precedent which led to the pardoning of the Iran Contra figures and transformed corrupt Nixonites into distinguished elder statesmen and Bush administration officials.

We are told again and again that what they nation needed was “to heal.” That “the turmoil” needed to be over. That it was necessary to move on.

Ford’s presidency began by pardoning a criminal scumbag. It wasn’t “closure”, it was driving the getaway car. And while it may be impolite to point out Ford’s complicity in this shameful nadir in our nation’s history, it could be worse. When Bill Clinton dies, every obituary will contain the name “Lewinsky”.

Over at TPM, M.J. Rosenberg is giving me a serious case of deja vu :

I just watched Hillary Clinton on “the View.” And I realized something. Every time she lets go a little (like when she jogged into the room), she is very appealing.

Yeah, I remember thinking the exact same thing about Gore in 200 and Kerry in 2004. I’ve heard Republicans also say similar things about Dole in 1996. Which leads me to ask when are the Washington elite going to realize that Americans want a human being to lead them, not some talking-points shitting android who looks uncomfortable in his/her own skin?

On a related subject…

Robots could one day demand the same citizen’s rights as humans, according to a study by the British government.
. . .
The paper which addresses Robo-rights, titled Utopian dream or rise of the machines? examines the developments in artificial intelligence and how this may impact on law and politics.

The paper says a “monumental shift” could occur if robots develop to the point where they can reproduce, improve themselves or develop artificial intelligence.

The research suggests that at some point in the next 20 to 50 years robots could be granted rights.

If this happened, the report says, the robots would have certain responsibilities such as voting, the obligation to pay taxes, and perhaps serving compulsory military service.

Personally, I think this is far-fetched. Not just for the standard “where the hell is my flying car?” reasons, but the fact that i don’t see artificial intelligence ever getting to that point. Unless specifically programmed, artificially intelligent machines will lack human traits such as greed, lust, jealousy, compassion, fear, sadness, and joy that motivate our actions much more than intelligence. The idea that AI’s evolution will evolve to the point where “sentient” machines would have the same needs and desires as human beings is fanciful. If anything, as AI evolves towards more human-like behaviors, we’ll probably just cross into the uncanny valley and never return. That is, unless some AI genius decides it’s a good idea to program their robots to bitch about their taxes and have crappy taste in music. In which case, I say we tax the hell out of those rusty, metallic welfare queens. Get a job, IG-88!