It appears that in some cases the primary qualification to be a "Progressive" on this list is to stand up to the most egregious of this adminitration's policies or actions. John McCain is a hard core conservative who bucks the administration only enough to maintain a reputation as a maverick. I serously doubt that John Murtha would feel comfortable calling himself a progressive in even the loosest sense.

I agree that Wilkerson's comments and actions are VERY important. I just don't think that he should be considered a "hero" or great man just because he has decided to come out and tell the truth NOW THAT HE NO LONGER HAS ANYTHING TO LOSE and is now profiting on the lecture cicuit. The bottom line is that he is a weak human being who did not step up when he actually could have really helped this country and help salvage (or at least stop the bleeding) [the ongoing erosion of] America's reputation, when he had something to lose. There are three words to describe folks like this--selfish greedy chickenshits.

Wilkerson is the most valuable progressive in the same sense that Sammy the Bull Gravano was the most valuable FBI agent.

Murtha, Wilkerson, McCain and Fitzgerald are now "progressives"? Who knew? What a stupid tag for "people who we like because they are in some way against some policies of the Bush administration or can be used as such".

McCain? McCain??? Did he object when Pentagon undermined his anti-torture amendment with an addendum to the interrogation field manual? No, he'd already squeezed his maverick points from that kabuki performance. Now he's pandering to creationists; "let the student decide" on evolution vs ID. Some progressive.

I also think it's stupid to run around claiming people like Fitzgerald and Earle are part of your team, when they themselves try to be meticulously nonpartisan and professional. Why give more ammunition to Tom DeLay's defense?

This dilutes the whole progressive brand to meaningless pap. I would expect better from Nation. Sure, these people can be worked with, possibly, but they are not progressives.

Alopex -- I pretty much agree with you. Those who happen to be centrist -- or just doing their duty in a non-partisan way -- are not progressives and calling them such may undermine the "appearance" though not the substance of their integrity -- but I do think it is good of liberals and conservatives to applaud decent behavior and sacrifice by those who are helping to get our country back on a good track.

Thanks for the good posts all,

Steve Clemons

When the Nation was extremely quiet about the Ohio vote debacle, I cancelled my subscription. Like so many of our so called "opposition party", their actual "opposition" to Bush policy has been fairly limpwristed across the board. Seeing McCain on this list is laughable. I guess we now know who the Nation will support on the 2008 ticket.

I must have skimmed over this comment:

"Wilkerson is a conservative with a conscience and with a profound sense of duty and obligation to the nation..."

As I agreed above, Wilkerson is a very important man for many reasons, some of which you pointed out. However, someone who possesses a "conscience" and a "profound sense of duty and obligation to the nation" would have spoken up immediately, and not waited until after the damage had been done ten times over to open his or her mouth. Mr. Wilkerson definitely has a profound sense of duty and obligation, but he has shown it is to himself and not to his country. He does have a conscience as he is now apparently trying to rectify his wrongs. We should embrace this most definitely. But claims that his duty and obligation was to the nation is way off base.

There is something self-serving and inaccurate using the progressive label for those named.

I want to applaud those whose public voice makes a difference. Be it Wilkerson, Fitzgrald or Murtha they made a difference in moving the public conversation.

damn, after all this Wilkerson bashing, I'm almost motivated to come to his defense.

But only "almost". :)

damn, after all this Wilkerson bashing, I'm almost motivated to come to his defense.

But only "almost". :)

Posted by p.lukasiak

Well, when one considers Powell's recent endorsement of the illegal NSA wiretaps, I guess we should be grateful when people like Wilkerson apologise for being accessories to the worst foreign policy decision and deception in our nation's history.

(Oops, sorry, I don't think I have HEARD an apology from him.)

I can't shake the feeling that Wilkerson's efforts are primarily self serving, and are just the tip of the ice-berg of what he COULD offer us if he was truly motivated by patriotic urges. Really, what he seems to offer is an overview of his IMPRESSION of the posture and leadership techniques of a "cabal" within the White House, but he is not offering us specific examples of illegal acts, which one has to believe he has knowledge of. To try to tell us that both he and Powell were "victims" of "faulty intelligence" is LUDICROUS. Both Powell and Wilkerson KNEW that the American public was being fed lies in the build up for war, and both of them chose to be party to those lies. One inescapable FACT is that no matter how "clean" Wilkerson comes with America, every dead soldier that comes home from Iraq does so in no small part because of the role that he and Powell played in LYING this nation into a war.

Very Sweet!

Congratulations to Mr. Wilkerson! He's earned it.

Interesting that the "progressive" or "liberal" values of The Nation are so precisely congruent with the "conservative" values of Wilkerson.

The politics, positions, and approach of many supposed liberals is very often motivated by a Constitutional conservatism. And a profound Christian faith.

There's a lot of shared ground between 'left' and 'right' -- and when I say "between," I'm NOT talking about the supposed "centrism" of the DLC crowd, nor that of McCain. When (& if) the 'responsible' middle can carry off sound policy, while STILL sticking to shared, core, defining American principles, that's great. When it can't do either, which is too often, it's wise to keep a close eye on who they're demonizing or marginalizing.

Once again, congrats to Wilkerson -- and to the Nation!

& thanks to Steve for the Bolton Watch. Should be entertaining...

Lawrence Wilkerson is catagorized as a "progressive" for speaking truth? Well then, one must include George Bush, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Pat Roberts, Kindasleezy Rice, Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, and a host of government ne'er-do-wells that said they were speaking the truth. Bush and company were speaking the truth, weren't they? They said they were speaking the truth. Really, they did. I remember they all said they were speaking the truth.
I get it, truth has taken on different meanings dependent on who is doing the telling. Or have I missed something in the translation here.

I've subscribed to The Nation off and on over the
years. I've had a subscription since Dear Leader
was appointed to office. Sadly I have to confess
that frequently the part of the magazine that I
like the most are the book reviews. The Nation has
this sort of tired leftist feel to it. In contrast,
Mother Jones is almost always good. The last issue
was stellar, with good articles on the Middle East
and other topics. Mother Jones somehow manages to
be "hip", while The Nation is just tedious. They
still publish Alexander Cockburn, which pretty
much sums it up.

To include John McCain in any list of people
who take a stand on anything is simply misguided.
I am sorry to say this, but John McCain is a whore
for power. He has few principles and when push
comes to shove, he has always supported Bush and
his policies. McCain always has an eye to the
Republican Party and he will only go so far
rather than truely becoming a conservative
maverick.

Ian

Progressive? I have to agree with the other commentators here that these comments are misplaced.

One can pay honour to the man without calling him progressive.

Wilkerson is, at best, substantively non-delusional. Can we redivide the American spectrum? Fascist Lunatics vs People who Live in the Real World?

While I admire the principled positions/actions of many on the list (And a lot of them are not progressives), they left out the most principled progressive in Congress, Barbara Lee, the only one who voted against giving Bush power to use force in Iraq. Barbara Boxer is the only one who asked Condi any really difficult questions in hearings. What the Democratic party needs are more progressives like Paul Wellstone and Barbara Jordan.

i'm with bubba (and other like like linda as well) - where the f*ck was wilkerson before the election last year? i am very greatful for wilkerson stepping up to the plate at your urging steve - but... it really is after the fact 10's of thousand of iraqi's are dead - untold thousands more are scarred for life - and the likelyhood that we have created many new osama bin ladens is high - as well as a training ground for them.

i think wilkerson and anyone who supported the war in iraq (many on the left included) a few short years ago owe the world an apology.

wilkerson's flim-flam on democracy now about the coup in haiti really hurt his credibility in my eyes.

McCain is probably a lot more conservative than Bush---he's really a whackjob. Calling him progressive is nuts!

I am supremely disappointed that The Nation chose to use the label "Progressive" for the people on this list. By what definition could John McCain be remotely considered 'progressive'?

For a list to include both Lawrence Wilkerson and Patrick Fitzgerald and be headed "Progressives" makes zero sense.

I would have expected better from The Nation but it seems that they have also crashed into the 'semantic iceberg' that Robert Fisk discusses in this article:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/122705S.shtml

What happened to calling a spade a spade? Lawrence Wilkerson appears by common consent to be an old style 'conservative' who has for reasons best known to him decided to speak out long after the events he criticizes took place.

Patrick Fitzgerald appears to be fulfilling his responsibilities as an independent prosecutor. That makes him "Progressive"?

The FreeDictionary defines a 'progressive' as "a person who favors a political philosophy of progress and reform and the protection of civil liberties".

Are any of the people on this list actually known to subscribe to this philosophy?

It's a sad list, for precisely the reasons noted by the other commentors: very few of the MVP's are actually progressives.

It's sad because simply being somewhat sane, and simply doing one's job honestly and competently, seems to be enough to get you reviled by non-progressives, and therefore makes you 'progressive' by default, these days.

Dear Mr. Clemons,

I'm active duty Marines, and my buddies and I read your writings frequently.

You have one of the most interesting blogs on the net, and we who have been on the front line of America's actions in Iraq and Afghanistan don't feel that it is wrong to ask the kind of questions you do. We have to fight and perhaps die for our country, but we desperately need brave intellectuals like yourself and your wide net of friends to challenge our government to make sure that we are not dying on a fool's quest.

I wanted to personally thank you for your dedication to this country and for making sure that people like me who have been to Iraq and will be going back again aren't sacrificing our lives for the likes of Ahmed Chalabi.

You are a hero to many of us, and I just wanted to thank you.

Have a great new year and please keep up your work. You have more fans in the ranks than you might ever guess.

A.M.

Dear ArizonaMarine:

I would like to both thank you for your service
to our country and for posting that note.

As I am sure you are aware, the Bush administration
is trotting out the old Vietnam era line that any
criticism of them, their policies and the war in
general weakens our troops. In fact, that
such criticism is little less than an attack on
the men and women in uniform.

This is a corrupt line of reasoning and at its
core it goes against the principles of American
democracy. I am glad that at least some members
of the armed services understand that an attack
on Bush, the Iraq war and its justification is
in no way an attack on them.

There are a lot of people who post here who
despise Bush and his policies. But I think that
it is safe to say that almost everyone of us
supports you and is grateful for your service.

There are a number of ex-service people who are
running as Democrats in the coming elections.
I feel the winds of change coming and I am hopeful
for the new year.

Ian

Yo ArizonaMarine et al...

The Fighting Dem phenomenon spreads
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/12/28/131019/38

More than 30 Iraq and Persian Gulf War veterans have entered congressional races across the country as Democrats, hoping to capitalize on their military experience to topple the incumbent Republican majority [...]

IMO the Dems need to take control of the House in Nov 2006 to set tone and control policy or else this country will be in severe dire straits.

Wow, this thread had me going. The Nation calling John McCain a "progressive"? So I did what, evidently, almost nobody else in this comment thread did, and actually clicked through to the article.

Guess what. There's no actual "roster"; our host abstracted that list from a work of prose. Here's the sum total of what John Nichols' article says about McCain:

"Arizona Republican John McCain merits praise for forcing the administration to back down from its pro-torture stance"

--before going on to say that "there's no question that Wisconsin Democrat Russ Feingold was the essential senator of 2005."

Quite a difference from having a set of finalists and winners, which is what several pissed-off posters in this thread seem to have been assuming. And quite different from calling McCain a "progressive," a bizarre statement which, it turns out, Nichols never made.

Patrick, when McCain shows up in an article entitled "The Most Valuable Progressives of 2005," in a paragraph headed "MVP - US Senate," it's perhaps not beyond the pale for readers to conclude that Nichols was giving him an honorable mention in the category. Imagine that the article had been "Best Films of 2005" and the author provided a number of categories identifying a winner and mentioning other films; would you argue that the films mentioned weren't contenders that were dismissed in favor of the winner? It seems to me that "a set of finalists and winners" was pretty much exactly what Nichols offered.

I like Nichols and it's difficult to believe he actually thinks of McCain as a progressive, but that's certainly the strong implication.

Quite a difference from having a set of finalists and winners, which is what several pissed-off posters in this thread seem to have been assuming. And quite different from calling McCain a "progressive," a bizarre statement which, it turns out, Nichols never made.

Sorry Patrick, but the subject of the Nichols column was the Most Valuable Progressives -- McCain (and the other conservatives whose presence has been noted in the comments) simply does not deserve to be mentioned as a "runner-up" on that list, because he's by no means a "progressive."

Maybe he should have called it "Best of the Progressives....and Best of the Rest" or something.

(And I think that if Nichols had not tried to include these conservatives who are taking principled stands as if they were "progressives", we'd see a whole lot less bashing of McCain and Wilkerson in this comments section. Real progressives have been opposed from the Iraq War from the get-go, and its kind of an insult for me to be asked to share the "progressive" label with someone like Wilkerson, simply because three years and 10s of thousands of deaths later, Wilkerson is finally seeing the light.

I have no use for McCain and I agree with the people who think Wilkerson would be a lot more impressive if he'd pitched his fit back when it could have accomplished anything, but I think both of you are clinging to a ridiculous misreading of the plain text of what Nichols wrote.

And quite different from calling McCain a "progressive," a bizarre statement which, it turns out, Nichols never made.

Indeed, it would be a bizarre statement. And he doesn't explicitly make it.

But the plain literary conceit of Nichols's essay is that he is picking "most valuable progressives" in several categories. And then for some of the categories, he first makes a show of running through a few competitors for the title before settling on a "winner".

And there is no question that he does classify Wilkerson as the "most valuable progressive" in the executive branch category. But that's just as bizarre as calling McCain a progressive.

That's is no knock of Wilkerson. But mainstream Republicans who happen to stand up to the Bush administration do not automatically thereby become "progressives". So I really don't know what Nichols is up to. Perhaps the most charitable reading is that the people selected are not necessarily the "most valuable progressives" but instead the "individuals who have been of most value to progressives, even if they themselves are not progressives."

After 9/11 Western civilization and America, which is the epitome and the custodian of this civilization, has been pushed by the terrorists into the threshold of Dante's Inferno. A nation that must stare in the eye such a mortal threat, whose reality is even accepted by Wilkerson himself, when he states that "if something comes along that is truly serious...something like a nuclear weapon going off", has no option but to take swift hard measures that can prevent such a catastrophe from occuring. In such a crisis, a country must rally behind its strong political leadership, that has the nous and moral fortitude to confront such a formidable fanatic enemy by using against him the most awesome military power it has at its disposal. Within such a context, the critics of the war as a chorus of doomsayers, not as creative, imaginative thinkers, are playing a sorrowful lamentable role in opening an extensive fissure in the unity of the country that is so vital for the defeat of the enemy.

Wilkerson is obviously very proud of his role as a doomsayer of the country's course under the Bush administration, and in exposing "the dark secrets of the Bush/Cheney interregnum", the Cheney/Rumsfeld cabal, the "ineptitude" of the Administration, and the "exceptionally dangerous direction" that the country was heading. What is astonishing, and makes one "flummoxed" by the whole thing, is that Wilkerson made his dire exposure of the Bush adminstration only after his departure from the State Department in January 2005. One would expect a person "with a conscience and with a profound sense of duty and obligation to the nation", as Clemons describes him, would have rendered his resignation on the spot in a demonstration of protest against the Administration, and not acquiesce in the "ineptitude of this government... that will take you back to the Declaration of Independence". Yet Nichols has the chutzpah to crown Wilkerson for this fawning sycophancy to the conspiratorial cabal of the Administration, as one of the "most valuable progressives".

The so called progressives do not realize that the war against global terror is a two-front war, i.e., that one has also to fight the rogue states that support the terrorists, if one is serious in defeating them. To declaim as Wilkerson does, that "we have courted disaster in Iraq...", is to foreordain like a prophet of doom the war as a failure. There are propitious signs however, that the winners of the recent elections, the Shiítes and the Kurds will accommodate the Sunnis in the new impending government, whose accommodation will lead to the isolation of the insurgents and will expedite their defeat. Tragically however, this historic task of the Bush administration could not have been achieved without political and military errors-in all wars errors are made-nor without the loss of American and Iraqi blood.

Mr. C. G-K:

Your criticism of Wilkerson mirrors the points made by many commenters on this thread, myself included.

However, you appear to base your other points on the notion that 'the war on terror' (you didn't actually use this term) trumps everything as far as national policy is concerned.

I think that there is an increasing divide among honest thinkers as to whether this focus on "terror" is actually justified.

For myself, I reject this national and world view. For a start, the U.S. could start thinking seriously about what it could do to actually reduce the threat of terrorist attacks rather than continually taking actions that one would think were consciously designed to inflame anti-American feeling.

"Within such a context, the critics of the war as a chorus of doomsayers, not as creative, imaginative thinkers, are playing a sorrowful lamentable role in opening an extensive fissure in the unity of the country that is so vital for the defeat of the enemy."

This is the kind of bullshit that REEEEEALLY pisses me off. The writer must not be living on the same planet that the Iraq clusterfuck is unfolding on. Sorry for the extreme derision, but I have no patience for such breaks from reality, offered under the guise of intellectual accuity and honest patriotism. Whoever penned those words either lives in the separate reality of insanity, is a purposeful liar, or, if he actually believes that crap, is a dangerous fanatic.

Con-George Kokobatsis writes:

>After 9/11 Western civilization and America, which is the epitome and the custodian of this civilization,

Huh? I'd have to dispute that America is the custodian and epitome of Western civilization. I think the world is a bit more pluralistic than that.

>has been pushed by the terrorists into the threshold of Dante's Inferno.

Well, I'll give marks for purple prose shading into the ultraviolet. But that's certainly overstating the case.

9/11 was a bunch of jerks getting lucky because America as a country had the worst air security in the civilized world, outside of Greece. And they got lucky because the Bush administration dropped Al Quaeda off its radar because they had better things to do... or so they thought.

>A nation that must stare in the eye such a mortal threat, whose reality is even accepted by Wilkerson himself, when he states that "if something comes along that is truly serious...something like a nuclear weapon going off", has no option but to take swift hard measures that can prevent such a catastrophe from occuring.

By invading countries which don't have wmd's? By going cheap at Tora Bora and letting Osama get away? By abandoning alliances and treaties and decreasing international cooperation? Yeah, so how's that working so far?

>In such a crisis, a country must rally behind its strong political leadership, that has the nous and moral fortitude to confront such a formidable fanatic enemy by using against him the most awesome military power it has at its disposal.

Hmmm. That could work. Yes. Or such a country could run around screaming like a ninny frightened by a mouse, engage in dramatic but completely ineffective show gestures, spend its money and power futilely, and otherwise flounder around like a drunk drowning in a bathtub.

How to tell the difference between the two approaches? Well, I suppose one works, and the other doesn't.

So... that's why Osama's been tucked away in a federal lockup since 2002 awaiting trial for crimes against humanity???

Oops, my mistake. Wrong universe. I was temporarily in the one that worked.

>Within such a context, the critics of the war as a chorus of doomsayers, not as creative, imaginative thinkers, are playing a sorrowful lamentable role in opening an extensive fissure in the unity of the country that is so vital for the defeat of the enemy.

What enemy? Al Quaeda? Face it, the invasion of Iraq laid not a finger on Al Quaeda. If anything, they're bigger, badder and better than ever before.

As for Iraq, the enemy are a bunch of people who want you out of their country. Guess what. They're going to succeed. You've screwed it up way too badly, and there are no 'do overs' like in Video games.

>Wilkerson is obviously very proud of his role as a doomsayer of the country's course under the Bush administration, and in exposing "the dark secrets of the Bush/Cheney interregnum", the Cheney/Rumsfeld cabal, the "ineptitude" of the Administration, and the "exceptionally dangerous direction" that the country was heading.

Gosh. He must have some wacky idea that Americans are entitled to know how their government is working.

Where do people get these crazy ideas.

>What is astonishing, and makes one "flummoxed" by the whole thing, is that Wilkerson made his dire exposure of the Bush adminstration only after his departure from the State Department in January 2005. One would expect a person "with a conscience and with a profound sense of duty and obligation to the nation", as Clemons describes him, would have rendered his resignation on the spot in a demonstration of protest against the Administration, and not acquiesce in the "ineptitude of this government... that will take you back to the Declaration of Independence".

Well, he's got a point there.

>The so called progressives do not realize that the war against global terror is a two-front war, i.e., that one has also to fight the rogue states that support the terrorists, if one is serious in defeating them.

What a crock of shit. For years, we've heard 'rogue state this,' and 'rogue state that'.

Reality check: The first ever warrant for the arrest of Osama Bin Laden was issued not by the United States, but by Libya. Libya's Quadaffi has spoken out loudly and frequently against Islamic fundamentalism. Syria actually killed thousands of fundamentalists in a civil uprising. Saddam Hussein never had a connection to Al Quaeda, and in his spider hole was urging his followers not to have anything to do with fundamentalists. Iran is a Shiite state, and the fundamentalist Sunni's of Al Quaeda and related groups consider them subhuman. Sudan actually kicked out Osama. North Korea has no connection to Islamic terrorism at all, they do not fund or support such organizations.

In short, the bona fides of 'rogue states' supporting terrorists don't hold up under scrutiny. So the assertion is either stupid or dishonest.

Rather, instead of rogue states, what we get supporting or sheltering terrorists are failed states, like Afghanistan, or failing states, like Pakistan. Or states which turn a blind eye, like Saudi Arabia with Al Quaeda, or like the USA with the IRA or the Contras.

The war on 'rogue states' is simply errant nonsense. Failed states and 'blind eye' states require different responses.

>To declaim as Wilkerson does, that "we have courted disaster in Iraq...", is to foreordain like a prophet of doom the war as a failure.

Uhm no. It is a failure. America's lost that one. There's nothing left to do but rack up the body count before you acknowledge reality.

> There are propitious signs however, that the winners of the recent elections, the Shiítes and the Kurds will accommodate the Sunnis in the new impending government, whose accommodation will lead to the isolation of the insurgents and will expedite their defeat.

Mm hmmm. And then Santa Claus will come down and give everyone a colour television set.

>Tragically however, this historic task of the Bush administration could not have been achieved without political and military errors-in all wars errors are made-nor without the loss of American and Iraqi blood.

At the last count, this amounts to 150,000 dead Iraqi's, in three years, which is about half of Saddam's lifetime 30 year 300,000 total. It also seems to involve pushing the countries infrastructure back to the 1920's.

But you know the saying: You can't make an omelet without murdering a few tens of thousands of people.

Isn't it wonderful, considering the exemplary job the Bush Administration has done, that they are rearranging America's mechanism to defend itself??

Chiefs demoted in Pentagon succession line

WASHINGTON (AP) — The three military service chiefs have been dropped in the Bush administration's doomsday line of Pentagon succession, pushed beneath three civilian undersecretaries in Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's inner circle.

continues at....

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-12-28-pentagon-succession_x.htm

It occurs to me that criticism of Wilkerson for not coming out when it counted may be misplaced.

The Bush administration by this time has shown a pretty clear record of disinterest in Osama and Al Quaeda. Osama's continued freedom and his ease in participating in the last American election is proof of that. Al Quaeda is clearly unimpaired in the last three years, and has been pulling off trademark stunts with clockwork regularity. The Bush administration has shown no particular interest in protecting homeland security, as witnessed by the series of 'F's awarded by the 9/11 commission, and as witnessed by New Orleans.

But one thing that the Bush administration puts a lot of priority on, and seems to be quite good at, is revenge.

Wilkerson's departure out of principle at the time would have probably ended any potential influence by Colin Powell, or by moderates in the state department. Wilkerson would have been the target of an administration and right wing vendetta which could well have involved the release or use of classified information in order to damage him personally and smear anyone associated with him....

Valerie Plame, anyone?

And there would have been a wild campaign by the more extremists calling for Wilkerson to be indicted for treason, or in fact, calling obliquely for some patriotic citizen to pick up a gun and do something about him.

The Bush administration has a long record of threats and vindictiveness against anyone who steps out of line. Wilkerson's conduct should be viewed in light of that terrifying penchant for bloody revenge at all costs.

Con George-Kotzabasis gives us an entertaining post. I would encourage everyone to look at his weblog for more entertainments of the same nature. At first, I thought the post was just a 21st century parody of the pretentious and cultured authoritarianism of the late romantic period, and of the extravagant and melodramatic gasbags whose weakness for epic grandeur and stark Manichean imagery prepared the way for 20th-century fascism.

But the posts on the weblog are a bit too elabarate, and their production too obviously time-consuming, to have been idle literary diversions. So I gather he is in earnest. Yet the elemental proto-fascist themes are all there:

1. We face a moment of dire crisis, a rupture in the usual course of history. The times are desperate and require desperate measures.

2. Western civilization is in decline, and is poised on the precipice of total ruin and collapse. Only the titanic exertions of its last remaining heroes can save it.

3. The enemy is no mere enemy, but an uncultured barbarian. Even the ancient intellectual and artistic riches of his own culture are unintelligible to him.

4. The enemy is Satanic, and worships Death above all other gods. The heroes worship Life. In the battle between Life and Death, there can be no compromise, no settlement, no truce and no ambiguous result. There are only Triumph and Defeat.

5. The war against this enemy must be global, total and remorseless. In this Armageddon, there can be only two sides. Every man is either an ally of the hero, or an ally of the enemy.

6. We are besieged by the enemy. They are many in numbe, and they are everywhere. They are a swelling tide, a spreading pestilence, a gathering storm, a raging fire, a rapidly multiplying infestation. These barbarians are at the gate, and in many cases are already inside the gate. We are being attacked from without and within.

7. Our decadent traditions of liberality and tolerance have dangerously weakened us. Instead of subduing and expelling the internal enemy, we tolerate him and his corrupting power, and give him a home. We practice a misguided respect for the beliefs of his people, which are in reality only the fanatical and uncouth ravings of untutored madmen.

8. They enemy prospers by fecundity, so we must do something to control his birth rates.

9. It is necessary to rally in this emergency around a strong leader, one who must be granted emergency powers that go beyond those possessed by ordianry leaders in ordinary times.

10. Fortunately we have been blessed with a great leader of uncommon vision and valor, who is attended by a handful of loyal and equally valorous companions.

11. Disunity is weakness, and weakness is defeat. The poisonous forces of criticism, irony and doubt - especially when directed toward the Leader - produce disunity.

12. The liberal intellectuals, talkers and scribblers have betrayed us. Whether through ignorance or malevolence, they are in league with the enemy. With their base, prosaic and flippant outlook, they are incapable of grasping the cosmic import of the Leader's lofty vision. Their moral shallowness and spiritual emptiness are cancerous to what is left of our once-exalted civilization.

13. Since the war is total, those in league with the enemy, whether by accident or intention, are in grave peril. Those who escape the ruthless judgment of their heroic contemporaries will face the judgment of History and eternal ignominy.

But while G-K's roamntic epic is high on poetry and vison, it is rather short on empirical evidence for its sublime and soaring assertions. Here, by the way, is my favorite line from the posts on the weblog:

The cardinal question therefore is, how to sterilize and make barren the breeding grounds of terrorism that are ensconced in the cities of the West, whose deadly offsprings are the enemy within.

Booyah! There's nothing like a vigourous little sterilization of the barbarian breeding grounds to pull the old civilization back together, and draw it back from it's dangerous stare into the pit of Dante's Inferno.

"The Bush administration has a long record of threats and vindictiveness against anyone who steps out of line. Wilkerson's conduct should be viewed in light of that terrifying penchant for bloody revenge at all costs."
Posted by Den Valdron

No. Fucking. Excuse. And most above are not necessarily knocking Wilkerson, he did what he did, but instead we object to the labels being placed upon him as being a hero, or having a well toned conscience, or possessing a profound sense of duty to country, etc. If he was any of those or had any of that he would not have waited until after he was out and had nothing to lose (and $$$ to gain) to speak out.

Speaking of revenge, I have a little journalistic proposal for you, Steve. Have you ever thought of calling up John D'iulio and finding out what happened that made him go from calling the Bush flacks "Mayberry Machiavellis" to effusively praising them in, as I recall, less then 24 hours?
Backtracks like this have been the signature of this administration---we even may have just seen it when Powell went from implicitly calling for hearings on the NSA to saying that everyone understood that Bush's surveillance was necessary.

Steve, you really have a relish for looking at the seamier side of Bush politics. I strongly recommend that you make a few phone calls, have a few discreet interviews, and tell your readers exactly what kind of horses' heads the Bush family has been using to silence its critics.
It would be time well spent if you could figure out this puzzle.

I'll give you one clue that I can find: it seems that O'Neill changed his tune---or at least muted his criticism (which definitely happened)---after he was threated with some sort of espionage charges for releasing classified material in his book. Of course, in reality all of the documents in his book had been reviewed by the White House; nevertheless, the sequence of events in which he was threatened with charges and then became quiet in his criticism, seems to have occurred.

I disagree Bubba. It. Is. A. Fucking. Excuse.

Wilkerson ain't a hero.

Joe Wilson is a hero.

Wilkerson is a guy who saw what happened to Wilson and decided to keep his mouth shut. Then when the crap had calmed down, and he was safe and sound, and the big bad was bleeding, he screwed up his nerve to come out and give it a kick. Well, good for him.

He ain't a hero. But it is what it is, for what its worth. And its going to take some heroes and a lot of little yellow piranha guys like him to take down the big bads.

Or of course, we can be cynical and suggest that what Wilkerson was really doing was firing off Colin Powell's carefully timed counterattack against his enemies, thus embarrassing the Bush administration, wounding the neocons, and rehabilitating Powell's reputation as the 'honourable old warrior' leaving Powell with the plausible deniability to look good and stay on speaking terms with everyone.

In which case, Wilkerson isn't a hero, he isn't a cowardly little piranha guy, and he isn't even a playa. He's just a pawn moving around in an invisible chess game.

You be the judge.

But let's keep in mind that the Bush administration is very good at revenge, even if they're not good at anything else.

Dan Kervick,

Dub your interlocutor a proto-fascist and you win the argument hands down. The ghostly figures of fascism will overshadow all facts based on reality. And subterfuge will replace all logic and argument. Also, a little subtle distortion will make it easier for you to cross the winning line. Your use of the above means speak a lot about your intellectual credentials.

First, to your distortions. I'm not talking about a "leader's lofty vision" as you assert. I merely aver to the "empirical evidence" throughout history, that in critical times it's astute and resolute LEADERSHIP (in the plural)that counts. Also, when I use the metaphor "to sterilize", I'm referring to the breeding grounds of terrorism, i.e., the mosques and the madrassas where fundamentalists do their preaching. Do you deny that it's these two institutions that spread terrorism among their followers? And do you consider it to be a "romantic epic" to state that the event of 9/11 poses a mortal threat to America and to western civilization which only the United States can defeat? Finally, do you have to be a "'hero'to worship life".

With such intellectual credentials, Plato would never allow you to enter his Academy.

Gee, Kokobasis, you sure got a pretty mouth.

Not much sense, though.

9/11 does not pose a mortal threat to america. That's patently absurd. The major threats to U.S. security are economic, in the form of the massive US debt; second, a possible nuclear strike in the US itself. Even a single nuclear bomb going off in the US would not cause annihilation, as Japan can attest. The Bush administration has measurably increased the threat of a nuclear attack in several ways, of which here are a few:
their diplomatic failures in North Korea have led to the likely production of several atomic weapons there; the network of A.Q. Khan was allowed to operate far longer than necessary, and insufficient punishment has been extracted from Pakistan, both because Bush needs Musharraf in the "war on terror"---which somehow does not include safeguarding the world from nuclear attack; the final reason I offer may be the worst---this is the abject failure to expeditiously round up stray radioactive (for dirty bombs) and fissile material from the FSU, by accelerating the pace of the Nunn-Lugar program.

By your own standards, Bush is a horrible failure. We have spent $300 billion to attack a nation that was AT BEST tangentially related to the so-called mortal threat you mention; at worst, we actually removed an ally against Islamic Radicalism---a horrible ally, of course, but in Realpolitik terms my point is irrefutable.

Dub your interlocutor a proto-fascist and you win the argument hands down. The ghostly figures of fascism will overshadow all facts based on reality. And subterfuge will replace all logic and argument. Also, a little subtle distortion will make it easier for you to cross the winning line. Your use of the above means speak a lot about your intellectual credentials.

First, to your distortions. I'm not talking about a "leader's lofty vision" as you assert. I merely aver to the "empirical evidence" throughout history, that in critical times it's astute and resolute LEADERSHIP (in the plural)that counts. Also, when I use the metaphor "to sterilize", I'm referring to the breeding grounds of terrorism, i.e., the mosques and the madrassas where fundamentalists do their preaching. Do you deny that it's these two institutions that spread terrorism among their followers? And do you consider it to be a "romantic epic" to state that the event of 9/11 poses a mortal threat to America and to western civilization which only the United States can defeat? Finally, do you have to be a "'hero'to worship life".

With such intellectual credentials, Plato would never allow you to enter his Academy."

Posted by Con George-Kotzabasis ......

What a buncha horseshit.

And do you consider it to be a "romantic epic" to state that the event of 9/11 poses a mortal threat to America and to western civilization which only the United States can defeat?

I consider it worse than a romantic epic; but rather something more like the raving paranoid gibberish of a hysteric. I deny without reservation that the event of 9/11 poses a mortal threat either to America individually or Western Civilization collectively. The event of 9/11 killed about 3000 people, which is about 1 thousandth of one percent of the US population. On the other hand, more than twice that number die each year in the United States from the use of non-steroidal, anti-inflammatory drugs. But where is the global war on aspirin and ibuprofen? The 9/11 event was frightening, because the victims' deaths were spectacular, and occurred all at once. But the event hardly amounts to a mortal threat to America.

On the other hand, the terrorists did knock down two rather important buildings, and caused a wave of panic that did some damage to our economy and our liberty. Nevertheless, I do not think our Civilization, taken as a whole, experienced more than a passing shudder from the fall. And I suspect Americans will eventually learn to live with the fear, and reckon the odd terrorist attack as one of the costs of doing business in our modern world with its endless social and political strifes.

I suspect that when you say the event of 9/11 posed or poses a mortal threat to America and Western Civilization, you mean not the event itself, but some larger catastrophe of which that event is a shadow and relatively small foreshock. But here is where I think the lack of empirical evidence comes in. We do know that there is some relatively small number of radical militants in the world who would be willing to visit such a catastrophe on us. But there is little evidence at this point to suggest that they possess collectively the means to do truly great damage. I think you would have to admit that if they never advance beyond the capability of knocking off a few thousand people every 5 to 10 years, then Civilization has little to fear.

The United States faced a similar attack in 1920, when the Wall Street bombing helped intensify a wave of nationalist rage and hyteria, and paranoia over the "red menace". Again, it was argued that civilization itself was on the brink of ruin. Some suggested arresting all radicals and sending them to a penal colony in Guam, or lining them all up and shooting them. But we got over it - sort of.

I don't regret the proto-fascism charge. I don't use it very often, but there are some genuine fascists and proto-fascists out there. And based on the writings on your weblog, you are one of them. Budding fascists never seem to recognize that that is what they are, or have become.

Cross-posted on my blog:
My only complaint: The Nation's "Most Valuable Progressives" list left off Chuck Hagel in the Senate. Progressiveness isn't purely a Democratic phenomenon, and Hagel is about the best thing going in the GOP, particularly his honesty on Iraq (which predates Jack Murtha's...)

Dan

Your naivety is incorrigible. Do you think that if they succeed to launch a nuclear attack they will stop only with one? And will you wait for "forensic" empirical evidence, in regards to their ability to commit "great damage", from the netherworld of the terrorists before you take action?

Your naivety is incorrigible. Do you think that if they succeed to launch a nuclear attack they will stop only with one? And will you wait for "forensic" empirical evidence, in regards to their ability to commit "great damage", from the netherworld of the terrorists before you take action?

No surely they will not stop at one, if they have more than one. But at this point, there is no reason to believe that they possess even as much as one. You're confusing the inherent malevolence of the aspiring perpetrators with the level of threat they actually pose.

And of course we should take action Con. I'm thoroughly in favor of the effort to identify terrorist cells around the world, and to disrupt their activities by whatever means necessary, including killing them if need be. But our need to take action need not be based on the outlandish hypothesis that Western Civilization itself is in mortal peril. It's a threat, and threats need to be dealt with. But as long as there are such things as nuclear weapons and other WMD's around, there are likely to be more threats of this kind. If it isn't Islamist terrorists, it's will be some other group of dangerous militants. As is the case now, these groups will probably not possess the means to end America's existence, or the existence of Western Civilization as we know it. But they will posess the means to do great damage. There's no reason to run around screaming about the mortal threat to America or the West, and about how we can't afford to criticize the President or his chosen tactics. It's just a question of taking care of business. And this is business we can handle through the usual democractic processes.

Since these threats will always be with us, we don't want to treat them as a condition of perpetual and total Great War, from now until Doomsday; and the reason is that those of us who actually live in America don't want the President to cease being a regular President, subject to the usual criticism and from his various opponents, and become instead the Permanent Commander in Chief of the Permanent Apocalytic War, who should be shielded from criticism lest that criticism result in disunity. If that happens, then indeed American civilization as we know it will end.

I grew up during the Cold War. Thousands of nuclear ICBM's pointed right at us - now there was some mortal peril! A miscalculation, and America could indeed have come to an end. Compared to that existential threat, the scheming of a bunch of terrorists who might wish they had even one nuclear weapon, but probably don't, just doesn't measure up. Presidents during the Cold War did attempt to seize all sorts of powers, and crush dissent from time to time. But Americans generally fought off such attempts, and were determined to carry on with democracy-as-usual in the face of these threats. And there was plenty of disagreement and derision and disunity. So what. That's the great thing about America. We all argue with each other, and pound our leaders with criticism, and yet the country goes on.

>Your naivety is incorrigible. Do you think that if they succeed to launch a nuclear attack they will stop only with one? And will you wait for "forensic" empirical evidence, in regards to their ability to commit "great damage", from the netherworld of the terrorists before you take action?

Yes, and after we've defeated the terrorists, we'll go on to defeat their allies, the space aliens and the christmas elves.

To even talk about a nuclear attack shows an incorrigible lack of understanding of the nature of nuclear weapons, their technological difficulties and the actual operations of terrorism.

The 9/11 attack was carried out by 19 relatively unskilled guys with box cutters, a few of whom had minimal flight simulator training. Total cost of the operation? Maybe $250,000. Total impact 3000 dead and a half a trillion in damage.

That's how its done: Cost effectively. Simple and low tech, because simple and low tech works, its accessible, its harder to screw up, and because you can do a lot of simple and low tech operations.

People who imagine that Osama Bin Laden is tucked away in a secret mountain hideaway, feverishly masterminding the construction of an ICBM to carry a nuclear payload, have not only watched too many James Bond films, they're actively delusional.

Despite all the readers digest articles about how easy it is to construct a nuclear weapon, or even a dirty bomb, it is simply not so. Such a weapon requires a huge investment of time and money, highly skilled persons, and infrastructure... not to mention very easily identified quantities of fissionable materials.

The notion that some group of terrorists are going to make that investment, even if they had the resources to invest, when they can get considerably cheaper and easier payoffs with other sorts of low tech operations is laughable.

By the same token, the notion that any state would risk retaliation and utter destruction by handing off some of its hard earned weapons to non-state actors is laughable. The only circumstance where that could possibly come about is a catastrophically failed state, a situation which the US explicitly refuses to address.

Terrorism poses genuine and quantifiable threats which must be, and can be, dealt with by appropriate measures.

The hysteria based approach by Con-George Kobatsis however, is useless and counterproductive. First, it completely misgages the problem and the extent of the problem by wallowing in an orgy of fearmongering. Second, because it calls for responses which are ineffective and whose harm is far greater than the problem it seeks to remedy.