Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Oscar

Thought For The Day

2009-11-14T16:00:00.000-08:00

Our mind rebels at the notion that our fates are not guided by a greater purpose as much as the are constrained by the dictates of Murphy's Law.

Obama to allow the kangaroos to put on a show in the Big Apple

2009-11-14T13:35:00.000-08:00

There are times a bleeding heart defender of rule of the law can only weep. This is one of them. Team Obama is going to follow the script laid down by Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney in their numerous movies: they are going to put on a show!

Granted this little bit of theater won’t be as hideous as the ones put up by Joe Stalin but any resemblance to legitimate and fair trial is purely accidental. Exactly where in the Big Apple will they managed to find twelve unbiased jurors?

Oh and let us not forget in times past no self-respecting judge would have allowed this trail to take place at all. The government’s case is poisoned by the massive misconduct of the Bush-Cheney administration. Talk all you please about “aggressive interrogation techniques” the accused were tortured and abused.

That core bit of prosecutorial misconduct can not be ignored. The massive violations of the norms of law have contaminated any and all evidence the government may have gathered. There is no fact that has escaped the taint of the corruption. Any courtroom following the long established norms of our legal system would have no choice but to dismiss the government’s case with extreme prejudice.

Thus the Administration will be forced to create some new “court” that can conveniently ignore the massive violations of basic human rights that were inflicted on the suspects. Call it a tribunal or a court of special purpose or whatever what makes one happy, it is the spiritual heir of the Court of the Star Chamber that our founders despised.

The only reason for this little charade is that Obama and his Administration can not release the defendants on their own recognacense. Not in a month of Sundays can that happen because adhering to the demands of the rule of law would doom Obama’s Presidency. Plus there is also the unfortunate likelihood that the defendants are every inch the evil bastards the government claims to them to be.

But that used to be one of the more impressive bits of our legal system: even evil bastards were accorded the full protection of our Constitution. They were shielded by the Forth and Fifth Amendments. They were guaranteed a speedy trial by a jury of their peers. But 9/11 changed all that didn’t it? Bush-Cheney was blind-sided by OBL’s box-cutter wielding nihilists and went into CYA overdrive. In the rush to prevent another oops-awe-shit failure of the “Bin Laden determined to hit the United States” variety they trampled the protections of the Constitution. In their flop-sweat determination to gather “intelligence” on Al Qaeda they not only violated both Federal and international norms and laws but also common sense and decency.

Thanks to the epic incompetence of Bush-Cheney there is no good end result to this affair. It is a pity that we could not find some shark infested atoll to dump these lads on and be done with it. As it stands there is no way to put this put this legal Humpty Dumpty back together again. Obama and his team are attempting to find the least distasteful end to this situation but that brings little cheer. Let’s be real, there is no way this trail does not do further damage to our standing.

Once More With Feeling; The Great War Ends.

2009-11-12T16:19:00.000-08:00

In considering WW1 and its aftermath it is important to understand why that war was so destructive. In many ways the horror of the Great War was an oddity of historical timing. Had the war began earlier or later than it had the results would have been much different.

WW1 was such a horrific war because it was fought in an odd cusp of military history. It was fought in a time where the defensive in military strategy had the upper hand. Most times in history the side that had the advantage of movement was the side that had the military victory. This is why the Huns, Mongols, Magyars and other people of the steppes were able to roll over their more settled opponents. Time and time again the mobile shock troops of “barbarian” horsemen were able to make short work of the entrenched defenses of their more settled and “civilized” opponents.

WW1 was different. Trenches, barbed wire, artillery fire, and machine guns tilted the tactical advantage to the defenders. Once the Germans exhausted themselves in the initial push of the Scheflin plan both sides had no more bright ideas. The front was stabilized and the attempt of both sides to outflank each other (the “race to the sea”) quickly failed because of geographic constraints.

Both sides now found themselves in a war of attrition. It was a situation that no one was really prepared for. The only historical references either side had was the US Civil war. As this war was far away in both time and geography it was treated as a curiosity by the Continental military schools if it were treated at all.

Thus all the combatants were left with the strategy of the “big push.” Armies would attempt near suicidal assaults for pitiful gains. The meat-grinder strategies and tactics left both military and general history with the name of battles that are by-words for futility.

As the war ground on and on the weaker political entities started to unravel. The first to show the strain was Russia. Russia in WW1 is the best example of the difference between power in theory and power in actuality. Russia looked absolutely awesome on paper. It had superfluity of men under arms. All those Russian Divisions looked terrifying to a military planner on the opposing side. In reality it was a totally different story. It is next to impossible to find a more incompetent political-military structure in history than the one that “lead” the Russians in WW1.

The Russian rot started right at the top. The Czar of all the Russians was the wrong man at the wrong time. In another time, in another social-political structure Nikolay Alexandrovich Romanov, Czar and Autocrat of all the Russian, would have been a fine constitutional monarch. Nicholas II was a man of impeccable breeding and the finest of manners. He was a devoted family man and a deeply religious person. His effortless charm would be perfect for the daily routine that modern monarchs find themselves employed with: opening public buildings, making small talk with the unwashed masses, planting symbolic trees, visiting the odd school yard, meeting artistic types, and so forth. In short, he would be perfect for a position that did not require him to actually govern.

Alas for Nicky, he found himself in a position that he had neither the wit, nor the intelligence, nor the luck to manage. Not only was the man hopelessly incompetent, he was cursed. No matter which decision he made it was always the wrong one. His last words were both typical and pathetic. Informed of his immanent execution it is claimed that his last words where “what, what?” just before the bullets flew.

Placed under the unrelenting pressure that is a war of attrition Russia shattered. The implosion began in the Battle of Tannenburg and never stopped until near the end of the Russian Revolution. Only the ruthless actions of Trotsky and his Red Army finally stabilized the situation.

Russia was not the only country to come unraveled by the pressures of the Great War. The Hapsburg dominions also did not survive the stress. By the end of the conflict not only were ethnic grouping spinning away from Vienna forming their own political entities but the army was no longer under control of the Empire. The Germans, disgusted with the inefficient and inept leadership that the dual monarchy was providing had taken over the running of the Austro-Hungarian forces.

While the Germans were reorganizing their allies affairs they also decided to reorganized their own affairs. The Prussian generals who were running the war made one of the more rational decisions of the war: they consigned their monarch to the dust bin of history. The generals had a war to win and the German Keizer was a hopeless leader.

Wilhelm II was a constantly distracted and peripatetic leader. He was man bursting with an excess of ideas and catastrophic lack of follow through. His over-reliance on his personal relations with his fellow monarchs was one of the major caused of the move toward war. He never understood how his own government worked and how his elites had stolen the march on him. In this cluelessness he was matched by his good friend and fellow monarch “Nicky.”

Equally out of sorts was the leader of the Dual Monarchy Franz Joseph I. The Octogenarian Monarch lost control of the ship of state and let his fragile nation be lead into a war that it could not possibly survive. The pressures of the War to End All Wars allowed the centripetal forces always working underneath the grand façade of the empire to rip apart the Hapsburg dominions into its constituent and sub-constituent parts. The only way Austria-Hungary would have survived WW1 was to never get involved in the first place. The irony is that it was Vienna’s insistence in the extermination of Serbia that cause the obliteration of the Empire.

At the core of the disaster of the First World War were the machinations of the great Empires and the crass calculations of political power. Those calculations caused great nation states to come to blows over ephemera. The rise of Serbia in the Balkans was never an existential threat to the Hapsburg position in Europe. The Dual Monarchy was a solid, if shabby, fourth place power in the pecking order of the day. Serbia, at best, barely rated being a fly in the ointment for the Austrians. It was Austria’s insistence of using a sledgehammer on the gnat of Serbia that caused the situation to get out of hand.

The alliance structure of the time and the time-tables of the involved militaries caused an unstoppable momentum of their own. Plans that had been on the drawing boards for a generation took on a life and an awful logic of their own. With each “logical” step dictated by the last, the European powers found themselves in a conflict that none of monarchs actually wanted. The nations involved found themselves in a nightmare war of attrition that had no good end for any of them.

The Western front became a vast charnel house because neither side had any other option other than tossing more men into the gaping maw of trench warfare. As the losses mounted up each side was that much more unwilling to accept any other result than full victory. The stalemate was only broken by two things, the development of the tank and the entry of the United States. The tank finally allowed a war of movement and the US Doughboys weight of numbers wrenched the scales of war in favor of the allied governments.

Unfortunately for the great Colonial European powers by the time the hostilities had ended they had managed to thoroughly discredit the prewar status quo. The rule of the prewar elites was prefaced by the claim that they had superior knowledge and abilities to ordinary people. The obvious disaster of WW1 belied such claims. The highly bred, highly trained, “natural leaders” managed to drive their respective nations off a cliff. Instead of brilliant performance, the status quo power structures had delivered breathtaking incompetence. A mountain of young mens' deaths had achieved a mole hill of results. The long twilight struggle of attritional warfare either destroyed the great powers of Europe or hollowed them out to the point that they were walking corpses. As noted before, the leadership that somehow managed not to get themselves killed in the trenches, a very small cohort, had lost all legitimacy with base population; the ordinary citizens had lost all enthusiasm for dying for king and country in obscure parts of the world. The ordinary citizen was no longer interested in glory unless it could be purchased on the cheap.

If there is one thing that stands out from WW1 more than anything else is how conventional thinking by the “right kind of people” can place blinders on people and nations. The nostrums of great power politics in 1917, the calculus of power, lead to results that were catastrophic. Bismarck saw this all too clearly and moved heaven and earth to make sure that Germany did not get involved in some “damn fool thing in the Balkans.” He correctly surmised that the entire area was not "worth the bones of one Pomeranian grenadier.” With his departure Europe was soon to be buried in the bones of millions of men. The awful illogic of preserving the power and prestige of the various participatory Empires quickly drowned out any still small voices pleading for reason.

Thus in order to prevent a decline of their relative power and position in the grand game of European statecraft the participants of the Great War managed to not only totally erase that power but themselves too. It is a harsh warning to our times : by trying to maintain global leadership you can actually managed to completely undermine one’s leadership position.

Cross Posted at History Isn't What It Used To Be

The Eleventh Hour Of The Eleventh Day Of Eleventh Month

2009-11-12T00:35:00.000-08:00

This is no ordinary fall day it is quite special. In the United States it is Veterans Day. In Europe, today is more properly called Memorial Day or Remembrance Day. What is being remembered is the end of one of the greater disasters of history. The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh day of 1918 is when the armistice of WW I was signed.

World War One was the great game changers of history. At the beginning of the “War to end all Wars” there were five empires in Europe. There was Austria-Hungary, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and the Ottomans. After the war Austria-Hungary had shattered, Germany became a republic, the Ottomans were in the process of becoming Turkey and Russia had turned Communist. The only empire left standing was the U.K.

Looking at a map the British Empire looked to be the big winner. It had expanded into what it called the Near East. It controlled either directly or indirectly all of the Ottoman areas between Anatolia (Asia Minor) to Egypt. The French, not nearly so fortunate, manage to grab Syria and Lebanon as a consolation prize. But looks were entirely deceiving.

The U.K. was a shell of its former self and the new acquisitions only added to a colonial burden that the British could no longer support. Looking back with hindsight we now know that Colonialism was dealt a mortal blow by the Great War. Canada, New Zealand and Australia had national awakenings that began their journey to independence. In other parts of the Empire native peoples began to stir. The legitimacy of the Colonial governments, always suspect in the best of times, became null and void as local elites abandoned their subservience to distant, detached, foreign masters.

Those foreign masters and foreign elites no longer had their previous gumption and will to power. Large portions of those elites had died in the trenches and survivors had lost their claim to leadership. By leading their nations into the meat grinder that was WW 1 they had evaporated any claims of superior ability or superior knowledge.

The cat was out of the bag as far as aristocratic power went. WW1 started in Europe because two great nation-states had laid dynastic eggs. If Germany or Russia was lead by even the standard mediocrities that crop up all too often in monarchies the Great War would never have happened or at least taken a different course. But the nations were lead by two epic historical incompetents: Willy and Nicky. Neither the German Kaiser nor the Autocrat of all the Russians had the innate ability to lead a Cub Scout troop never mind great and powerful empires.

Europe entered a butcher shop of horrors because the conventional wisdom and the status quo of Power Politics lead it there. If there is a lesson to be gained from this date it is to be constantly wary of people who blithely try to explain why we must spend lives and treasures in obscure parts of the world for supposed grand strategic designs. Often the best and the brightest are the most ignorant of people.

Cross Posted at History Isn't What It Used To Be

A little too much enthusiasm

2009-11-11T09:55:00.000-08:00

Noisy sex woman loses appeal bid

Caroline and Steve Cartwright’s love-making was described as “murder” and “unnatural” at Newcastle Crown Court.

Neighbours, the local postman and a woman taking her child to school complained about the noise.
Mrs Cartwright, 48, from Washington on Wearside, lost the appeal against a conviction for breaching a noise abatement notice.

Recorder Jeremy Freedman, sitting with two magistrates, rejected her claim that she could not help making the loud noise during sex.

He said: “We are in no doubt whatsoever about the level of noise that can be heard in neighbouring properties, in the street and in the back lane.

“It certainly was intrusive and constituted a statutory nuisance. It was clearly of a very disturbing nature and it was also compounded by the duration – this was not a one-off, it went on for hours at a time.
“It is further compounded by the frequency of the episode, virtually every night.”
Mrs Cartwright was appealing against the abatement notice, which was imposed in November 2007, and a subsequent Asbo, banning the couple from “shouting, screaming or vocalisation at such a level as to be a statutory nuisance”.

She has since been accused of three counts of breaching the Asbo, but has denied the charges and will stand trial at Newcastle Crown Court on 14 December.

Snip

This is a definite case of far too much gusto. Still a nearly fifty year old woman “enjoying” herself “nearly every night.” sometimes for “hours at a time” is very impressive.

Lawyers Guns And Money

2009-11-07T00:50:00.000-08:00

Money quote from Bloomburg ( http://bit.ly/1HZtzT ) about the Fort Hood Shooting “General Will Grimsley, deputy commander of III Corps, said Hasan fired only one weapon, a Belgian-make semi-automatic machine pistol with an extended magazine. He said Hasan reloaded and fired more than 100 rounds. Investigators are still finding shell casings, he said.
Hasan also carried a .357 magnum handgun but apparently didn’t fire it, Grimsley said.
Weapon Ownership
Rossi, at his press conference last night, said the weapons weren’t issued by the military. They were owned by Hasan and bought locally.”
This tragedy got a big assist from our gun-crazy culture. A culture that can not ask the common sense question “why would anyone ‘need’ a semi-automatic machine pistol?” or “exactly what is the point of a civilian having that kind of fire-power?” The good doctor was casually allowed to purchase an offensive weapon. The only screening for the purchase was “cash or charge?”

All Trick No Treat

2009-10-31T10:28:00.000-07:00

Quentin Patrick, 22, an ex-convict in Sumter, South Carolina shot and killed a trick-or-treater T.J. Darrisaw who came to his home on Halloween — spraying nearly 30 rounds with an assault rifle from inside his home after hearing a knock on the door. T.J.’s 9-year-old brother, Ahmadre Darrisaw, and their father, Freddie Grinnell, were injured but were released after being treated at a hospital.
T.J.’s 9-year-old brother, Ahmadre Darrisaw, and their father, Freddie Grinnell, were injured but were released after being treated at a hospital.
Patrick left his porch light on — a general signal for kids that the house was open for trick and treating. The boy’s mother and toddler sibling were in the car.
Patrick emptied the AK-47 — shooting at least 29 times through his front door, walls and windows after hearing the knock. He said that he had been previously robbed. That may be so, but it is unclear what an ex-con was doing with a gun, let alone an AK-47.

http://jonathanturley.org/2008/11/02/south-carolina-man-shoots-and-kills-12-year-old-trick-or-treater/

Dude, you do understand the concept of "Haunted House," Right?

2009-10-31T10:21:00.000-07:00

ESSEX, Md. - An off-duty Baltimore city police officer delivered the fright of a lifetime to a haunted house employee, pulling a gun on the chain-saw-wielding man at the end of his act, authorities said Monday.

Sgt. Eric Janik, 37, was charged with assault and reckless endangerment for pointing his service handgun at the worker, who was dressed as Leatherface, the killer from "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," Baltimore County police said.

The employee, Mike Morrison, followed Janik and several other people up a staircase Sunday night at the end of the haunted house tour in a bid to get "one last scream" out of them, police said.

Story continues below ↓

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When the group exited into a parking lot, Janik pulled his gun and pointed it at Morrison from less than 10 feet away, according to police and Morrison, who said he dropped the chain saw, put his hands up and backed away. The saw had no chain.

Only then did Janik identify himself as a police officer, said Morrison, who retreated into the building.

Yup, nothing but good christian family values here

2009-10-30T17:52:00.000-07:00

Relations between the former US vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin and Levi Johnston, the teenager who almost became her son-in-law, have deteriorated to the point that a court battle is now inevitable, he has told the Guardian.

The dispute is over Tripp, his infant son by Palin's eldest daughter, Bristol: he claims Palin is preventing him from seeing the child.

"I'm up to the point where I can't see my kid again. I'm done. I'm sure we'll end up in court. We're definitely going to court," Johnston, 19, said in an interview in Anchorage, Alaska's largest city.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/audio/2009/oct/30/levi-johnston-sarah-palin

Johnston said there had been times when he had been allowed to see Tripp about once a week, but there had also been periods when he had had virtually no access. He said: "They started letting me see him and everything was fine. But everything got bad again. So I said screw them."
Johnston said his relationship with the Palin family was entering another bad phase where his calls were not being returned, even though he said he was now paying child support.

Johnston said he recognised that taking the legal road would be hard. "It's going to be a tough battle. Basically, it's down to who has the better lawyer. I can just imagine all the cameras that are going to be there – it's going to be crazy," he said.
Palin has responded to Johnston's recent criticisms by using the American media to accuse him of peddling flat-out lies and exaggerations, adding it was unfortunate that he chose to exploit his former relationship with Bristol than care for the wellbeing of their child.
Sarah Palin's lawyer, Thomas Van Flein, said: "Other than noting that Tripp's father is always welcome to visit his son, we are unable to respond to these allegations as it is inappropriate to discuss child custody matters publicly."

Lady This Is The United States, Just File For Divorce.

2009-10-30T15:38:00.000-07:00

NEW YORK — A devout Muslim woman forced by her newlywed husband to eat pork, wear short skirts and drink alcohol slashed his neck with a kitchen knife as he slept, according to a statement she gave to police.

Rabia Sarwar, 37, pleaded not guilty to attempted murder and was freed on $25,000 bail. She told police in a written statement that she was emotionally abused by her husband, Seikh Naseem, and forced to violate her religious beliefs.

"He made me do so many things that are against Islam," she wrote in a statement to police.

"I did all that just to make him happy but inside me there was a war," she continued.

Naseem suffered cuts to his neck, cheek and hand early Wednesday before fighting Sarwar off and dialing 911 from his Staten Island home, authorities said.

"I did my best to cut his throat," Rabia Sarwar wrote. "But the next moment he jumped on me and grabbed me."

Sarwar's attorney, Joe Licitra, said she had previously been treated for depression. Her husband told the New York Post that Sarwar, a native of Pakistan, was having a hard time adjusting to American culture.

Snip

Having a hard time adjusting to the U.S. is an understatement. Here you are not allowed to knife your husband for going off the rails. OK, maybe in Texas but that hardly counts.

Does The Obama Administration Have ANY Learning Curve What So Ever?

2009-10-21T00:42:00.000-07:00

Israel is close to reaching a deal with the United States that will accommodate the so-called "natural growth" of settlements in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories, the Israeli ambassador to Washington has told Al Jazeera.

Michael Oren said on Tuesday that the US had agreed with Israel to a temporary halt to settlement building activity in the Palestinian West Bank and East Jerusalem, rather than a total freeze.

"The agreement was a time-limited halt - or a pause, if you will - to the settlement construction, that would allow for a certain amount of what we would call 'certain life growth' in the territories," Oren said.

Snip

Sometimes the only option for Analysis viz the Mid East is total despair. To limit a Likud government to "natural growth" viz the settlement is to impose no limits at all. This is a favorite con of Likud governments going all the way back to Menachem Begin. It is a loophole that the Israeli government will drive untold number of moving vans through. Sweet Baby Jesus on a Pogo Stick what is Obama thinking?

Lost in Translation-- Gates Foolishly Tries to Read Japan The Riot Act.

2009-10-21T00:23:00.000-07:00

The US defence secretary has called on Japan to honour existing agreements on military bases in country.

Speaking in Tokyo after talks with his Japanese counterpart, Robert Gates said it was "time to move on" and implement a deal on a realignment of US forces based in Japan.

"This may not be the perfect alternative for anyone, but it is the best alternative for
Everyone," he said.

Three years ago US defence officials agreed a broad plan with the then Japanese government to reorganise US forces based in the country.

But in August a landslide election win swept a new government to power in Tokyo led by Yukio Hatomaya, the new prime minister.Hatomaya has said he wants to revise the US-Japan alliance, making for a more equal partnership with Washington and making Japan less dependent on the US.

Some members of his cabinet have gone a step further, demanding that all troops leave the country.

Central to the 2006 deal is a plan to shift the US Marine air base at Futenma on the southern island of Okinawa to a less crowded part of the island.

Hatoyama has said he wants the base moved off the island, but the US has ruled that out, saying that would undermine broader security arrangements that took more than a decade to negotiate.

Source Al Jazeera

Snip

Please, please, please dear god or goddess let the stance of Gates be only a negotiation tactic and not policy. Please let there be some wiggle room here. Elections have consequences and the people of Japan just signaled that the old ways of doing business are over.

Gates, Hillary Clinton and the President are big-footing around some very delicate toes. Japan can not be pushed around or brow-beaten by the United States. The new Japanese administration has no obligation to adhere to a deal worked out by the previous LDP Administration. Washington can not dictate terms to Tokyo and should not even try. If Gates and others continue this tone-deaf policy, Japan may just tell us to leave and take our toys with us.

Musings On the "Graveyard Of Empires"

2009-10-20T16:10:00.000-07:00

The more one looks at Afghanistan the more the jarring similarities with our effort in South-East Asia occur. Case in point: the farcical election result just voided out in our client state.

Granted Karzai is not yet as hopeless as the Thieu-Ky government that ran the operatically corrupt South Vietnamese government in the last days of that nations existence. But Karzai is starting to look a lot like Ngô Đình Diệm without Madam Nhu. Karzai is so incompetent he can't even properly steal an election.

Granted his opponent had his own special problems starting with his unimaginative parents. One wonders if the twice named Abdulla has the chops to run the epic mess that is Afghanistan.

One wonders if Obama is on a fool’s mission. The Bush Administrations neglect of Afghanistan to pursue its Neoconservative dreams in Iraq may have left the U.S. in a no-win position. It may be too late for any kind of successful operation in Afghanistan.

Our failure in South-East Asia began with a very sensible middle-road approach to the conflict, choosing neither to fully escalate nor get out of Vietnam. Johnson especially died the death of a thousand cuts because he could never decide to fish or cut bait. LBJ proved that the only thing one finds in the middle of the road is squished armadillos.

There is a way to "win" in Afghanistan. It is to really take the ideas of Petraeus to heart and go all in. It means a commitment of five hundred million troops for ten to twenty years to fully pacify Afghanistan. That is the Petraeus math. This is what is required to really and fully do it right. This is the real cost of Nation Building and security in Afghanistan.

We are dealing with the detritus of Bush Jr's attempt to one up his dad. We are dealing with the results of Bush Jr's go-it-alone foreign policy. The comparison to Poppy Bush's Coalition in the First Gulf War to the Son's Coalition in the Second speaks volumes about the Son's recklessness and incompetence. Poppy Bush would have easily gathered the forces required to run down Bin Laden and Mullah Omar. Poppy Bush would have probably scotched the original 9/11 plot before it occurred.

For his own reasons Obama has decided to attempt to salvage the Afghanistan situation. Maybe he really does believe that Afghanistan is still the "good war." Maybe he is pursuing more cynical Realpolitik goals. Maybe he mainly fears the Domestic political blow-back if he pulls the plug on Afghanistan.

Ever since Carter flubbed the Desert One rescue Democrats have been branded as weak on defense. Conventional wisdom has decreed that Democrats have to prove their mettle and must be properly belligerent in their foreign dealings. Hillary Clinton has definitely taken this particular idea to heart. The former first lady's reputation as a hawk may have cost her the nomination during the primaries.

Not to be too dire but we are dealing with an epically failed state that has been in a state of constant war for thirty years and counting. Mullah Omar and his grumpy cast of characters were able to seize the reigns of power because the populous of Afghanistan wanted order imposed in the worst possible way. Little did they know that they would get just that--order imposed in the worst possible way. The Taliban tried to impose a reactionary Islamic theocracy on the land. No need to delineate how badly that worked out for the people of Afghanistan.

Whatever our policy ends up being we must realize two things. One is that the Taliban and other aspects on the ground in Afghanistan are merely symptoms of a people and culture that are profoundly broken. The second thing we must realize is there are limits to what we can do to make the Afghans whole.

Bras In Somila "Deceptive" and "Unislamic"

2009-10-18T23:15:00.000-07:00

A hardline Islamist group in Somalia has begun publicly whipping women for wearing bras that they claim violate Islam as they are 'deceptive'.

The insurgent group Al Shabaab has sent gunmen into the streets of Mogadishu to round up any women who appear to have a firm bust, residents claimed yesterday.

The women are then inspected to see if the firmness is natural, or if it is the result of wearing a bra.

If they are found wearing a bra, they are ordered to remove it and shake their breasts, residents said.

Al Shabaab, which seeks to impose a strict interpretation of Sharia law over all Somalia, also amputated a foot and a hand each from two young men accused of robbery earlier this month.

They have also banned movies, musical ringtones, dancing at wedding ceremonies and playing or watching soccer.

'Al Shabaab forced us to wear their type of full veil and now they order us to shake our breasts,' a resident, Halima, told Reuters, adding that her daughters had been whipped on Thursday.

'They are now saying that breasts should be firm naturally, or just flat.'

Officials of Al Shabaab, which Washington says is Al Qaeda's proxy in the failed Horn of Africa state, declined to comment.

Snip

The question here is how much of this bit of insanity is due to Salafaist "thinking" and how much of this is cause by 25 years of Somali Chaos. More to the point exactly where is the Hadith or Koranic verse covering bras?

Still it is more than weird that ultra-reactionary theocrats have come to the same conclusion that radical feminist from the 70's did: burn them bras.

To Serve, Protect and Occasionaly Run Over

2009-10-16T10:03:00.001-07:00

The Invasion Of Poland 1939

2009-10-15T17:33:00.001-07:00

Another milestone quietly passed by. It is more than a bit ironic because seventy years ago, most Americans were not paying much attention to far away Europe and its conflicts. The USA was still in the grip of the Great Depression and the disillusionment with the participation in the “War to end all Wars” left the nation profoundly isolationist. The more things change, the more they remain the same.

It is informative with our present hyper ventilations over domestic policies to remember how real fascists behaved almost four generations ago. Hitler’s Germany battered and brutalized Poland via the Blitzkrieg. Real cities got bombed, real people, mostly civilians, were killed. While no country in Europe was untouched by World War Two, Poland, more than most countries, was singled out for martyrdom. One third of all Poles would be dead by the time the war ended.

Poland got brutally squeezed by two authoritarian states during the war. At first, it was a cooperative effort by both the Germans and the Russians. The two nations conspired to erase the liberation of Poland during the Great War. Germany swallowed its portion and

Russia

swallowed its share. Germany allowed a farcical rump client state to operate in its area of control but this supposed independent entity was nothing more than a cruel joke.

Russia was a little more direct in its oppression of the Polish and their elites. The Red Army waded waste-deep in the blood of the Polish elite with the Katyn Massacre. When people these days talk about death lists and death panels they directly trivialize the 20,000 deaths the Poles suffered in the forests of

Russia

. Stalin drew up real death orders with real death panels (the NKVD) butchering real people.

The butchering of Poland was only a warm up though. Hitler, the failed Viennese postcard painter, drew up a death-list that targeted all of European Jewry. A little more than one year after the invasion of Poland, Hitler added the Russian people to the list of “sub-humans” to be erased from the face of the earth.

It is on days like the 5^th of September that we remember the true actors of history and their actions. In the swirl of present day partisan and political bickering, it serves us well to truly remember the events that happened seventy years ago. It is critical because the last of the participants are fading from view. The “Greatest Generation” is now in its upper eighties and mid 90’s. Even the children of that great and cataclysmic event are now in their 70’s.

There is a very good chance then that when commentators claim a politician or world leader is akin to Hitler those commentators are talking nonsense. No politician, no world leader has been able to hijack a major industrial power and bend it toward evil and annihilation the way Hitler did in the mid twentieth century. No one has been able to combine the toxic witch’s brew of authoritarianism, bigotry, fanaticism, grievance, nationalism, anti-intellectualism, myth, kitsch, and vulgarity the way Hitler did. No one has had the charisma and the monomaniacal / megalomaniacal will to power that Hitler displayed. Despite the best efforts of some, no one has been able to sell a facile, vicious and ultimately “final” solution the way that Hitler did.

Hitlerism and fascism are more than pejoratives to be lightly tossed about by glib commentators. Totalitarian political movements have a mongrel pedigree of their own. Totalitarian states have a modus operandi of their own. It is critical that we understand the real fascist

Italy

and the real Nazi Germany and how they operated not some fun-house mirror reflection of the historical truth we picked up by watching a movie.

We must truly comprehend the end results of demonizing a sub-section of humanity, of letting our hatreds drowning out the better angles of our natures. This type of eliminationist thinking, the type extolled by Gobles and the rest of the Nazi hierarchy, leads to an extra-ordinary criminal mindset. It turns an entire nation into a band of ravening thugs capable of the vilest behavior. The ancient Mongol hordes would blush to be compared to the depravity of the Nazi war machine; the Visigoths would be insulted to be mentioned in the same breath.

It is hard to understand our cultures need to trivialize just about everything. We seem to be constitutionally unable to keep anything sacrosanct. Gravitas escapes us. We either slip into maudlin hagiography or ridiculous over-reach. We stand rightly accused of intellectual laziness, incuriousness and emotionalism. Our political conversations have devolved into so many ad hominine abusive attacks. We level charges that even the most cursory reading of the facts would disprove.

Nazism, Hitlerism, Fascism, Authoritarianism, Communism and Socialism have very long histories. The last two movements also have very long and very dense intellectual underpinnings. Marx spent his entire adult life as an ink-stained wretch scribbling grand and impenetrable prose. The academics who followed him only added to the logorrheic miasma. You could sink an aircraft carrier by dropping the collected published academic works of and about Communism on top of the vessel. The “Socialism” bandied about by TV commentators in the employ of Fox News bears no resemblance to the movement founded in the fires of the French Revolution.

If the Glenn Becks and the tea-partiers of the world have a very vague idea about what Socialism really is, they have even less of a notion about how Nazism really worked. The Nazis had real death lists and acted on them in the most brutal fashion. Poland was subjected to a very real reign of terror. Real tanks rolled over real land and real people. Real bombs fell on real buildings and real people. Real artillery smashed into real earth and vaporized real victims. The destruction of Poland was the real beginning of a real hell on earth. After the conquest, real Jews and real Poles were rounded up and shipped off to real concentration camps never to return.

The mechanism for these real acts was out there for all to see. The hardware was in plain sight, the troopers were marching down the street. The whole structure of the Nazi regime was and is well documented; no detail is too obscure. We have the technical specifications for the ovens. We have the train schedules. We have the lists of the people eliminated. We have the flotsam and jetsam of the personal possessions of the victims. On what was once the Eastern Front, we still have the fields of bones bleaching in the sun. We have the writings of the people who belonged to Hitler’s movement. We even have Hitler’s writings on various subjects. While the writings of the Nazis lack the intellectual rigor of Marx, Lenin or Mao, they have a ferocious, reptilian appeal of their own. What Nazi writings lack in logic and coherence they more than make up in bile and hate.

History does not lack documentation of who the Nazis were nor does it have a deficit in outlining the excesses of the Soviet state. The political and personal excesses of Mao are also well documented. We know the arc of the stories of Hitler, Stalin and Mao. We comprehend the political systems they created. Seventy years ago, the martyrdom not only of Poland began but also six million Jews and millions of Roma and Russians too. Whole nations walked the Via Dolorosa. Russia lost the most in people and property; Poland lost the most by percentage. All of Europe and most of Asia suffered cruelly. No family was spared loss. Many lost everything. That loss, that tragedy of aggressive war began in September of 1939.

The tragic tales of the people who suffered under these leaders should be constant reminder of excesses of absolute power. It should not be turned to facile way to score cheap political points. It should not be trivialized by blowhards trying to rile-up unthinking partisan anger. Is it too much to ask that we honor the memory of those who found themselves in harms way seventy years ago? In these hyper-ironic, uber-secular times is it too much to ask that we still have holy martyrs? Is it too much to ask that the memory of those men, women and children be sacrosanct?

The SoS Gets Real In Sri Lanka

2009-10-14T17:58:00.000-07:00

AFP) – Oct 3, 2009

COLOMBO — Sri Lanka lodged a protest over US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's remarks that rape had been used as a war tactic on the island, officials said Saturday.

Colombo's displeasure over a statement by Clinton to the United Nations Security Council was conveyed to US diplomats in the Sri Lankan capital, a foreign ministry official said.

"We have given a note of protest" to the US embassy, the official, who asked not to be identified, said.
In a statement to the Security Council, Clinton last Wednesday made a passing reference to Sri Lanka.
"We've seen rape used as a tactic of war before in Bosnia, Burma and Sri Lanka and elsewhere," Clinton said during a resolution calling for an end to sexual violence in armed conflict.

The remark was contained in a transcript of the statement Clinton made to the UN Security Council that was given to AFP in Colombo by the US embassy.

The state-run Daily News in Colombo reported that Clinton had suggested that Sri Lankan security forces used rape in their battle against Tamil rebels.

The US embassy would not comment on the newspaper's allegations.

Sri Lanka's defence spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella said it was the first time that the island was accused of using rape as a tool of war against Tamil Tiger rebels who were crushed in May after decades of fighting.
"We vehemently reject and condemn the irresponsible statement made by US State Secretary Hillary Clinton," Rambukwella was quoted as saying in the state-run newspaper.

Sri Lanka faced condemnation for its handling of the final stages of the war against Tiger rebels and managed to stave off a Security Council resolution calling for war crimes investigations thanks to the vetoes of China and Russia.

The UN has said that over 7,000 civilians perished in the first four months of intense fighting this year.

Snip

One hopes that Hillary was wearing her asbestoes lined pant-suite when she made the remarks.

Japan Sails Away From Uncle Sam

2009-10-14T17:22:00.000-07:00

Japan begins to shake off US foreign policy influence

New government’s efforts to break free from decades of subservience, starting with withdrawal of ships from Afghanistan campaign, raise potential for discord with US.

Japan’s confirmation today that its refuelling ships will be withdrawn from the Indian Ocean in January is the first real sign that the new Tokyo administration is honouring its election pledge to break free from decades of subservience to US foreign policy.

The announcement had been expected for weeks after heavy hints from the prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, and other senior officials that Japan would seek other ways to contribute to peace in Afghanistan.
Since 2001 Japanese vessels have provided fuel and water to US and allied warships in support of the war effort. Hatoyama, whose Democratic party of Japan (DPJ) has consistently opposed the mission, will instead attempt to ease US concerns with a raft of humanitarian measures. He hopes to have a comprehensive plan in place before Barack Obama arrives in Tokyo on 12 November for a two-day visit.

Snip

Support ships are not as sexy as the other big gray things that float. They don’t have any kind of boom big or small. Most are not even US Naval Ships but belong to the Military Sealift Command or are contracted out by MSC. But these “beans and bullets” vessels are a critical part of power projection.

They are a critical part of the very long logistical tail of our military might. The departure of the Japanese ships means that our merchant mariners and the merchant mariners of our allies will have to suck up the difference. As these ship spend a majority of their time at sea there is little wiggle room for rejiggering the deployment schedules of the support ships. The worms eye view is more and longer deployments for the merchant mariners.

The big picture is not looking that rosy either. Granted this move by Japan is long overdue. The strains caused by our overseas bases in Japan is a little remarked upon fact, at least on this side of the Pacific.

In the land of the rising sun our bases have caused much ill-will and friction with Japanese. The Okinawans wanted us gone sometime in the 1970’s. It does not help when Sailors and Marines do epically stupid things like beat-up and rape school-aged girls. A small number of our service members have been terrible guest to our Japanese hosts.

But even if all of our service members were perfect guests it does not change the fact that Japan is now all grown up. Japan is becoming Japan again, not a client state of the United States. Only the dead hand of the LDP prevented this from happening earlier. One wonders how our lady of the tastefully appointed pant-suit will handle the new facts on the ground. Muscular Diplomacy ain’t going to cut it with the Japanese.
Japan lies on the ring of fire and a tectonic shift has occurred in the relation between the US and Japan. Ms Clinton and the President will need all the intelligence and tact at their disposal to make sure that this stays a minor temblor and not a 9.0 on the Diplomatic Richter scale.

Who Knew That Progessive Democrats Have A Branch Office In Gaza?

2009-10-14T16:24:00.000-07:00

Palestinian political leaders have expressed acute disappointment in the Obama administration, saying their hopes that it could bring peace to the Middle East have "evaporated" and accusing the White House of giving in to Israeli pressure.

The unusually frank comments come in an internal memo from the Fatah party, led by the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, but reflect a broader frustration among Palestinian politicians that Washington's very public push for peace in the Middle East has yet to produce even a restarting of peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians.

"All hopes placed in the new US administration and President Obama have evaporated," said the document, which was leaked to the Associated Press news agency.

Snip

The Democratic wing of the Democratic Party is not exactly in peroxisms of joy with Obama's Domestic or Foreign Polices.

The Verry Definition of "Politically Incorrect"

2009-10-14T16:16:00.000-07:00

French Vogue has never been one to tiptoe around controversy. Recently it has published photos of supposedly pregnant models puffing cigarettes and leather-clad glamazons kissing with blood pouring from their mouths.
Now, though, the magazine may have gone too far for even the most dedicated followers of fashion. Its October edition features pictures of Dutch model Lara Stone in which the naturally pale-skinned blonde's face and body are painted black. The photo shoot, styled by the magazine's long-time editor, Carine Roitfeld, provoked outrage today as its subject spread through internet forums and fashion websites. The US blog Jezebel criticised the decision of Roitfeld and photographer Steven Klein to alter the model's skin colour, accusing them of cultural insensitivity.
"What Klein and Roitfeld should know … is that painting white people black for the entertainment of other white people is offensive in ways that stand entirely apart from cultural context," it said. "France and Australia may not have the United States' particular history of minstrel shows … but something about the act of portraying a white woman as black ought to sound an alarm, somewhere."
Dominique Sopo, president of the French organisation SOS Racisme, said that even if the shoot was not racist in intention it was certainly "tactless".
"If the aim was artistic, and not to pass off the model as a black girl, the fact that it produces such reactions shows that the world of images – advertising, fashion, whatever – is now paying for its long tradition of not allowing black people to show their bodies in public."

Rule Britania

2009-10-14T16:04:00.000-07:00

The far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders intends to travel to London next week after an immigration tribunal ruling overturned a ban on visiting Britain.
The Home Office said it was disappointed after the tribunal rejected its claim that his presence could "inflame community tensions and lead to inter-faith violence".
The Freedom party leader immediately announced his intention to meet Ukip's Lord Pearson of Rannoch to discuss a showing of his anti-Islamic film Fitna later this month in the House of Lords.
Judge CMG Ockelton, who chaired the tribunal, said that Wilders's opinions were expressed strongly and in a way that was bound to cause offence but that the right of freedom of expression was important in a democratic society.

Snip

London got it right, a free society only stays free by allowing free speech. It is of no import that Mr Wilders is Islamophoic jerk. He has a right to speak his ill-informed and bigoted opinion.

Criminal Master-mind....NOT!

2009-10-14T15:55:00.000-07:00

Some people take to becoming a fugitive like a duck to water. They lay low, go out only in disguise, even create whole new identities. Others, it would appear, do not.
Take the case of Maxi Sopo, a 26-year-old criminal in hiding in Mexico who not only used his Facebook status to tell all and sundry what a good time he was having, but also made the somewhat elementary error of adding a former justice department official to his list of friends.
In status updates from Cancun, where the Cameroon-born fugitive was on the run from charges of bank fraud in Seattle, he said he was "living in paradise" and "loving it".
Michael Scoville, the assistant US attorney who helped find the fugitive, described how Sopo's updates described his lazy days on the beach and wild nights on the town. "He was making posts about how beautiful life is and how he was having a good time with his buddies," Scoville said. "He was definitely not living the way we wanted him to be living, given the charges he was facing."

Snip

Yet another dumb criminal who ran afoul of Net 2.0

The Burning Season Arrives

2009-08-31T20:31:00.000-07:00

Raging wildfire threatens to engulf 12,000 homes near Los Angeles

The Guardian, Tuesday 1 September 2009

A firefighter crew made up of prison inmates clears brush from the path of the fire as it burns in the hills above Acton, California. Photograph: Dan Steinberg/AP

A huge wildfire was threatening to engulf 12,000 homes in the Los Angeles area today along a 20 mile (32km) front that was also advancing on a mountain top broadcasting complex and historic observatory.
At least 6,600 homes were under mandatory evacuation orders and more than 2,500 firefighters were battling the flames. Two firefighters were killed at the weekend on the blaze's north-western front when they lost control of their vehicle.

The fire had already burned at least 18 homes and 134 square miles of brush and trees and was moving north, south and east through the foothills north-east of the city. It was only 5% contained and was feeding on dry brush that had not burned for 40 years, fire officials said.

"It's burning everywhere," US forest service spokeswoman Dianne Cahir said. "When it gets into canyons that haven't burned in numerous years, it takes off. If you have any insight into the good Lord upstairs, put in a request."

Five people who refused to evacuate threatened areas reported they were trapped at a ranch near Gold Creek, Los Angeles County sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore said. A sheriff's helicopter was unable to immediately reach them because of intense fire activity, Whitmore said. Over the weekend, three people who refused to evacuate were badly burned when they were overrun by flames, including a couple who had sought refuge in a hot tub, authorities said.

More than 20 helicopters and air tankers were preparing to dump water and retardant over the flames.
With flames only a half a mile (800m) away from the communications and astronomy centres on Mount Wilson, crews planned to set more backfires and planes dropped fire retardant around the complex, which holds transmitters for scores of television stations, radio stations and mobile phone providers.

Snip

With a super wet February followed by a long dry summer much of California is set up for an epically rotten wildfire season. Did we mention the Golden State is so broke that it can't pay attention?

STS 128

2009-08-31T19:56:00.000-07:00

Beauty in the Night

Billows of smoke and steam rise above Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida alongside space shuttle Discovery as it races toward space on the STS-128 mission.

The STS-128 mission is the 30th International Space Station assembly flight and the 128th space shuttle flight. The 13-day mission will deliver more than 7 tons of supplies, science racks and equipment, as well as additional environmental hardware to sustain six crew members on the International Space Station. The equipment includes a freezer to store research samples, a new sleeping compartment and the Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill (COLBERT).

Image Credit: NASA/Sandra Joseph and Kevin O'Connell

Snip

Full geek alert! A NASA night launch of the space shuttle. If a regular launch is dramatic night launches are even more so. Props to NASA honoring Mr. Colbert in such a tongue-in-cheek way.

The Lion Sleeps Tonight

2009-08-27T16:38:00.000-07:00

Edward Moore Kennedy (February 22, 1932 – August 25, 2009)

Lyndon Johnson is quoted as saying that in the Senate there are show horses and work horses. What he never noted is that sometime an individual senator could shift between the two types.

Ted Kennedy started out as the very definition of a light weight. His only seeming qualification being that he was the baby brother of the President of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy. As the Kennedys were running the state of Massachusetts as their personal fiefdom, this was sufficient for Teddy to win his brother’s seat.

In the early sixties, the Kennedy brothers formed a triple political threat. By the end of the decade, only the baby brother remained. First JFK, then RFK, were gunned down by marginal characters in an almost offhand manner. The nation has never come to grips the way both Kennedys lost their lives. The nation avoids the essential fact that our politicians are easy targets for lone wolves bearing a grudge and who have access to small arms.

After 1968 Ted found himself the Pater Familias of the Kennedy clan. He took on the responsibility for raising both JFK’s and RFK’s small children. He also took on the political legacy of his dead brothers. It was a heavy burden and Ted Kennedy struggled very publicly with it. One year after RFK’s death, Ted showed the darker side of the Kennedy gene pool’s legacy. He proved himself every bit as reckless as his brother Jack by piloting his limo off the Chappaquiddick Bridge. In that car was a young woman Mary Jo Kopechne. The details of that accident were never adequately explained by Ted Kennedy nor by his lawyers. The only agreed on facts is that the car ended up in the water along with a very dead Mary Jo. It is also agreed that Ted’s reporting of the accident was seriously delayed by at least ten hours. There is a small cottage industry that speculates on what “really” happened at Chappaquiddick: the specific relationship of Ted to Mary Jo, why Ted decided to lawyer up before confessing to the accident, and what kind of condition then Junior Senator might have been in on that night. Legally, Ted plead to leaving the scene of an accident. Personally and politically the liability was much, much larger. Mary Jo’s incorporeal frame followed Edward Moore Kennedy to the grave and beyond. Her name is forever linked to his.

In a way, the rest of Kennedy’s career can be seen as a type of penance for his carelessness on that night. He became a more serious political personality after Chappaquiddick. Still the full transformation required one more act of political self-flagellation. That is the best way to view Ted’s manic run against Jimmy Carter.

The campaign against Carter positively invites amateur psychoanalysis. It started out as a train wreck and ended in self-immolation. Ted started out with a disastrous interview on CBS and went downhill from there. Ted only hit his stride when his chances for the nomination had evaporated. He won some meaningless late primaries and then went to the convention with the crackpot plan of separating the President of the United States from his pledged delegates. Carter’s team easily quashed Ted’s quixotic plan with ruthless efficiency. Still Ted’s petulant behavior at the convention added further disarray to an already fractured party.

Ted sat out the election licking his wounds and Carter failed to live up to his initials of J.C. by being unable to provide the political miracle that his candidacy required. Enter Ronald Wilson Regan and the long dark night for liberalism. For the next thirty years Ted Kennedy was fighting a rear-guard action.

For twelve years Ted Kennedy did battle against Regan-Bush and the forces of reaction. He became the consummate insider, working the angles, finding allies in the oddest of places, pulling off minor and major miracles in the era of “Government is the Problem” like SCHIP. Even with the election of a Democratic President Ted Kennedy still had an up-hill struggle; the ideology of Regan still ruled D.C. While Bill Clinton claimed to be a “New Democrat” he actually more resembled a much older type of Democrat from the Gilded Age: the “Bourbon Democrat.” Bill Clinton’s term of office had more in common with Grover Cleveland than FDR. The parallels between Clinton’s and Cleveland’s second term are especially unnerving.

If the “Big Dog” was a bit smaller than advertised Kennedy had his hands full with dealing with the un-dynamic duo of George W. Bush and Richard Bruce Cheney. Bush was the consummate ideological reactionary. Bush’s mission was nothing less than the full dismantling not only of the legacy of the 60’s but also of the New Deal. Along the way Bush shredded the 4^th Amendment, the separation of church and state, and our nation’s long-standing moral guiding principles.

Once again Kennedy was the road-block, the voice of Liberal consciousness calling out in the wilderness. He was spot on about the error of the Iraq war and much else. Still his leadership example was ignored by his more timorous Democratic colleges. John Kerry, John Edwards and Hillary Clinton all voted for the Iraq War. Any one of those future candidates had to do was read the unedited CIA report to discover that Bush’s Cassis Belli was supported by a swamp of lies. One can not prove that Kerry, Clinton and Edward were looking at Bush’s stratospheric approval ratings or listening to the clamorous din of the Corporate Media advocating a rating-boosting conflict but one would have good reason to suspect. Kennedy was having none of it.

It is, however, Ted’s last political act that will be the most controversial. Ted Kennedy’s full-throated support of Barack Obama is the most perilous legacy that the Liberal Lion leaves behind. Hard core, dead ender, PUMA, Clintonistas are still furious about Ted’s support of the Junior Senator from Illinois’ run. Some are still muttering about how this was Kennedy’s revenge for Hillary’s supposed slight of JFK’s contribution to the passage of the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The discussion of that particular bit US History is best left to another place and time. In a primary process that was only decided by some one hundred delegates, it is impossible to really determine what pushed Obama over the top. What effect if any did Kennedy’s support have in the critical month of February? Who really did Hillary in? A “back-stabbing” Ted Kennedy or an incompetent Mark Penn? One thing for sure political scientists and historians not yet born will be making their bones on these questions and others for decades to come.

For good or ill Ted Kennedy’s final legacy is now linked to the legacy of Barack Obama. If Obama turns out to be nothing more than a very clever technocrat that exploited the justified revulsion against Bush-Cheney’s eight years of incompetence and misrule, then Ted Kennedy turns into just another person who had the wool pulled over their eyes. Is Obama nothing more than yet another iteration of a Blue Dog Democrat, the spiritual heirs of the Bourbon Democrats? Is Obama in short a fraud? Or is Obama one of those rare politicians who spring up every forty years or so; a man who changes the very rules of the political game? The answer to that question will determine the final coda of Edward Moore Kennedy’s legacy.

In the long view though Kennedy’s legacy is secure, his near half century of public service will be a beacon shining out long after lesser lights have faded. The rise, fall and subsequent rise of Ted Kennedy is a story we will tell ourselves for generations yet to come. Each generation will add to the myth, each generation will find its own meaning to this uniquely American life. The story of Edward Moore Kennedy has not ended; it has barely begun.