Ya think?

Two stories came out of Washington, DC this week, sort of.

The first is the trial of 4 conspirators who are said to be the men who planned and paid for the 9/11 attacks, now set for New York City next door to the hole that once was the World Trade Center.

The other was the story President Obama is still thinking about what to do with Afghanistan and won't be rushed.

Driving home I now listen to Sean Hannity, which is usually good for a laugh and I heard someone who sounded particularly vacuous and shrill and she turned out to be Ann Coulter, who predictably enough, thought trying the 9/11 crew was a bad idea. As far as I could figure, she thought it was a bad idea primarily because it was an idea which came out of the Obama administration, so ipso facto,it has to be a bad idea. The other problem seemed to be it was not her idea.

Later, I heard David Brooks on Jim Lehrer's News Hour say it is a bad idea. He actually had some reasons: 1/ It is a bad idea because the accused just might be found innocent and/or set free 2/ It puts New York City at risk from more terrorist crazies (as if NYC is no longer a target for crazies and if we are very very quiet maybe they'll forget all about NYC even being there.) 3/ It portrays the act of the 9/11 attack as being a crime rather than an act of war.

As for the first two points, they are hardly worth refuting on almost any level, but just to make it very clear to the very slow child which has emerged as David Brooks on TV: Yes, a trial is supposed to not be fore ordained, and if we've got the wrong guys maybe it would be a good idea to know about it; on the other hand, the chances of these guys getting set free by a New York jury if there is any doubt they may have been involved, are slim and less than nil.

Putting New York City at new or special risk? The place is the center of the world, the coolest city on earth and for that reason it continues to be in the cross hairs of all those envious loonies from around the world who want to aggrandize themselves by trying to destroy something which is so much more important and greater than themselves.

As for the last problem, the attack on the World Trade Center, from the point of view of the terrorists, was an act of war. Those Palestinians who were dancing in the streets and handing out free candy following the attacks were not celebrating what they saw as a crime but what they saw as a legitimate act of war, on their behalf. Those Nazi big wigs, wearing their uniforms in the docket at Nuremberg called themselves soldiers and thought of their murderous acts as acts of war, against the children at Dachau and against the civilians in London air raids. But part of the humiliation of those miscreants was putting them on trial like common criminals, which is exactly as they ought to be remembered. Just losers who murdered people and were hanged for it.

One of those guys, the fat one, Hermann Goering I think, managed to swallow cyanide to "Cheat the hangman" because hanging is a pretty demeaning and undignified way to die.

So we ought to insist on trying these guys as common criminals. David Brooks is afraid they will stand up in court and speechify and have a forum for their own propaganda, but that can be managed. They can be housed in a glass cage and their microphones turned off if they become too annoying.

No, being put on trial for murder can be quite humiliating and can make you look really bad, and if the thing is staged managed properly, it can be a real great show for a public looking for revenge.

What the conservatives might be worried about, if they were capable of cool headed reflection, is what a huge statement about his own toughness, about his faith in our own system and ultimately about his cool toughness and courage, this trial could be for President Obama.

Yes, we are not afraid of putting these guys on trial. We are not afraid of losing the trial. We are not afraid of terrorist bombings during the trial. We are not afraid of putting these moral monsters to death, possibly by a public hanging at ground zero.


Then there is Afghanistan, the other non news story. The President is taking his time. He has every right to take his time.

The hard part is the decision. How do you look resolute and determined without looking to the Afghan government like a free lunch and without looking to the Afghan people like just another invader?

The answer is: We announce the time has come for us to phase out. The President says, "I said Iraq was the wrong war and Afghanistan was the right war. Well, Afghanistan was the right war, when the Taliban was in power, when Osama Bin Laden had free and open life there. But now, for the moment at least, the Taliban has been sent packing to Pakistan and is not in power. It may come back, but then we can always come back if we see a reinstated Taliban in Afghanistan as a threat.

Our main goal in invading Afghanistan was to protect ourselves and to attack those who attacked us. We now have other ways to protect ourselves. We realize the whole notion of denying Al Qaeda sanctuaries is preposterous because they do not need Afghanistan or Somolia or Indonesia or any special plot of turf or geography for home bases. All they need is an apartment in Germany or in New York or Miami and an internet connection.

So we will continue to fight Al Qaeda with Special OPs and with our own intelligence but we do not need boots on the ground anymore. We do not need to provide either the Taliban or Al Qaeda with convenient targets in the form of our young men and women of the armed services.

These American warriors have served valiantly and effectively but now their leaders need to be as brave as they have been and worthy of being their leaders and it is time to redeploy, to use our armed forces in a more intelligent way than simply consigning them to becoming an occupation force or a police force.

We never intended to stay in Afghanistan for a hundred years.

We can continue to advise any Afghanies who want to listen, but given the realities of that government and that culture, we cannot continue to spend precious American lives trying to impose order and morality on that land.

So tomorrow, we will withdraw our troops to fortified locations and begin to effect an orderly draw down of forces. If we are attacked, we can respond with all the force we deem necessary, but our plan is to leave Afghanistan to the Afghanies.

If we see reason to return to protect ourselves, we will be just over the horizon. "

That's the speech President Obama can give.

As Richard Russell, one of the few people Lyndon Johnson really trusted, once told Johnson, when Johnson asked Russell what he as President should do about Viet Nam, Russell said, "Well, Mr. President, the thing is, we are going to go home eventually."

"Yep, that's true," Johnson said.

"And they know that."

"Yep. They probably do."

"So there's no reason for them to give up. 'Cause they know they're gonna still be there after we're gone."

Johnson, unfortunately, having heard truth spoken to power did not act upon this insight. Hopefully, Obama will be smarter.

An Open and Shut Case

A recent case from Iowa ought to be a good test for the Phantom's unscientific, empirical theory of the Supreme Court.

The case stems from an Iowa murder conviction, and as I understand it, certain "facts" are agreed as matter of stipulation, to wit: A high school senior, a black youth (a promising young man, who was being recruited to play football at Yale,) was arrested and convicted of the murder of a white man on the testimony of another teenager.

The teenager who provided the incriminating testimony got nearly everything wrong when police and prosecutors first interrogated him: the wrong location for the murder he supposedly had witnessed, the wrong weapon (a handgun vs a shotgun) and utimately, even the state of Iowa, or at least the appelate courts agreed the witness was simply not to be believed and there was evidence the prosecutors coached him relentlessly until he had a story which would hold water in court.

The prosecutors, by most if not by all accounts, knew their witness was a phony, but they used his testimony to get a conviction.

Assertions were later made about the reasons the prosecutors were so determined to convict the defendant--the defedant was African American and would be tried by an all white jury; the alternative suspect was well connected in the community. The reasons the prosecutors proceeded with evidence which was clearly a fabrication are not agreed upon, but the falsity of the testimony is not in dispute, nor, as far as I can tell is the awareness on the part of the prosecutors about the falsity.

After 25 years in jail, the defendant managed to get himself exonerated through the appelate process and then sued the prosecutors who knowingly falsely accused him.

The prosecutors have argued not that they were convinced they had the right man but simply that even if they knew the testimony was specious they cannot be held accountable for their actions because as officers of the state, as prosecutors, they are immune from such suits under a law which protects them from personal liability as a result of their work as prosecutors. They argue, and I think I actually have this right, they argue the process of preparing a witness for his false testimony is part of and inseparable from the actual trial and the clear legal precedent is no prosecutor can be sued for what he says during the trial, in court.

So if suborning perjury occurs as part of this process, they are still immune because it was all part and parcel of the trial. That, as far as I can tell, is their actual argument.

They are saying,in effect, it was the jury's duty to determine whether or not to believe the false witness the prosecutors' witness had presented during trial.

You do not need three years in law school to figure out how to rule in this case, you might say.

But, if the Phantom's theory of the Supreme Court is correct, then the four justices who vote for those in power will, in this astonishing case, manage to find a reason to rule in favor of the prosecutors, who, after all, are the guys in power. Justices Scalia, Thomas, Alito and Roberts will all somehow find a way to find for the the authority figures, just as they found a way to find in favor of the high school principal who stomped across the street to destroy the "Bong Hits for Jesus" sign displayed off school property at a parade.

That this young man, who had such a promising future was so wronged by the government's men, that his life and prospects were ruined, that the real culprit was allowed to go free because the prosecutors chose to prosecute the wrong man will matter not at all.

All that will matter is the ex convict is suing the government officials, the little guy is trying to bring down the powerful.

If the justices vote as the Phantom predicts, can there be any doubt having a law degree, having been a judge or a lawyer, having been judged "Qualified" by the American Bar Association is all hogwash.

If they find for the prosecutors, there is no law here, only social agenda. And if social agenda is what drives Supreme Court decisions, why do you need a law degree? Why should we not have a few scientists, police, doctors on the Supreme Court, to balance all the "legal" thinkers.

Stay tuned.

Obama, Fox News, Louis Menand, Anger & George Carlin

Louis Menand, distinguish professor of English at Harvard, advises President Obama to avoid criticizing Fox News directly. "The state may, and should, rebut opinions that if finds obnoxious, but it should not single out speakers for the purpose of intimidating them," he writes in the New Yorker. "At the end of the day, you do not want your opponents to be able to say that they could not be heard."

Can you imagine Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, Bill O'Reilly ever claiming they could not be heard? Part of the cant of the loud-mouth right is the paranoid style, it is true, but they never claim they cannot be heard, because that might undermine their self importance. These guys all claim they have audiences of millions, silent masses raptly hanging on their every word, while the forces of darkness are always trying to prevent the truth from getting out, but never succeeding because Rush, Glen and Bill are so bravely unintimadatable.

Menand does cite an interesting number: Half of Fox "News" Channel is over sixty-three years old. "Contact your doctor if you have rage lasting more than four hours," Menand says--his best line.

Menand says Obama's attacks on Fox have left Obama's fans "dispirited."

Just the opposite, of course, is true.

What is dispiriting is watching the playground bully beat up on the fat kid who will not or cannot throw a counter punch.

Menand may speak for a group of Obama well wishers, perhaps people with whom Menand has dinner, a crowd which might be characterized as "effete." That is a loaded word, of course, harkening back to the days when Republicans began chiding Democrats as flaccid girly men who lacked backbone. Democrats are wusses who lack nerve, courage, testosterone, passion, all the things leaders ought to have in abundance.

But I speak for Obama well wishers who become frustrated and distraught by our President's disinclination to throw a punch at those who richly deserve it.

I would like to see more fire from the President for the emotional satisfaction of seeing him score points I cannot score because I am not onstage. It felt good to see Lloyd Benson's withering disdain for Daniel Qualye zinging him with that "Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Let me tell you, you're no Jack Kennedy."

This is why men watch football, prize fights--they get vicarious pleasure out of seeing someone tag a deserving target.

On the other hand, there is a question of style.

Until recently, I did not get Dana Carvey's characatur, "The Angry Old Man." I never realized some men get cranky when they get old. I just thought those old geezer were always cranky.

But watching George Carlin over the years, it is amazing to watch him get cranky as he aged. His wonderful, restrained, understated rifts on Muhammad Ali and the government's tactic of saying, "No, no, if you won't kill them, we won't let you beat them up," as he described the government saying if Ali refuses to be drafted to kill people, the government would not let Ali fight in the ring, was a wonderful jab. Contrast that to his latter day observations about the anti abortion crowd, "Did you ever notice the people who are against abortion are people you wouldn't want to f..k in the first place?" which is essentially a non sequetor.

Carlin was still funny in his cranky old man phase, but not as funny as he was in his mellow phase. He sucked you in in his mellow phase. He trusted you to see the essential absurdity in the government's argument, and in so many things about the Church. The Church granting dispensations, allowing you to eat meat on Friday if your group came in first in the scrap metal drive. Then the undoing of eating meat on Friday as a sin--completely reversing a doctrine during his lifetime--so he could remember those unfortunate souls doing eternity in Hell for the sin of eating a hot dog on Friday.

So maybe Obama is trying to be the early Carlin, zinging them better by zinging them softly. If that is what he's trying, I can tell you it isn't working.

At least not for me.

Not that zinging Rush Limbaugh is easy. To do this, you first have to listen to him and that takes a strong stomach. Even when I listen, trying to figure out what it is he is saying, there is not enough substance there to really reposite.

Listening to Limbaugh takes time--he will carry on with a lengthy imagining of Bill and Hillary Clinton having sex and the essence of this is they are both very overweight and the difficulties this would create and what the bed would sound like, groaning under their weight. This, you have to remember is coming from Rush Limbaugh, not exactly a waif himself.

But how do you respond to that "criticism?"

Or, another time, he listed each expense for the transportation of President Clinton on a trip to Chicago. He went on in excrutiating detail about the cost of transporting by airplane the armour limousine, the cost of the gas for the airplane, the salaries of the pilots down to the penny, all in a mock rage, incredulous laughter, with many asides to the effcct, "Can you imagine if the world only knew about this, how quickly they would throw this clown out of office?"

But, of course, lost in this half hour tirade about the waste of money was the underlying point whenever a President chooses to leave the White House, it costs money. So what was Limbaugh saying? The President should never leave the White House? It's too expensive?

And if the President followed this advice can you imagine Mr. Limbaugh's umbrage at the thought of an out of touch President who never deigns to connect with the common man, with the salt of the earth in the heartland?

But I'm dating myself. I am recalling a tirade from the last time I was trapped in a car long enough to listen to an extended Limbaugh rant. And that was the Clinton administration. Since then I've been unable to keep my fingers away from the button which silences Mr. Limbaugh.

This is a problem I will work on. Trying to fashion a response to knuckle draggers.

Stay tuned.

Fox News and President Obama

David Carr, in a New York Times tried to give President Obama a little motherly advice about not responding to provocations from various Fox News sources.

Don't respond to these attacks, Mr. Carr advised Mr. Obama. Your great strength is your ability to exude "a certain cool confidence."

It's like being on a basketball court and your opponents are trash talking and everyone knows these trash talkers "Would not find much space for rent in Mr. Obama's head."

Cute imagery, but wrong.

On the basketball court, you can answer, with your own actions, by scoring and smiling wordlessly, so everyone in the arena can hear it: Take that sucker.

"Mr. Obama has also shown a consistent ability to disarm or at least engage his critics."

Actually, not.

The real history is Mr. Obama did not have to engage or disarm his critics during the campaign. He knew this. He did not respond and he leaned back against the ropes like Muhammad Ali, and let his opponents wail away at him and become arm weary. He did not have to throw a punch because George Bush had already handed him the election before any of the arguments began.

"I got this," Mr. Obama reassured his supporters who urged him to throw some counter punches.

Mr. Obama could real a poll. He could see the economy tanking and he knew it didn't matter how much Sarah Palin taunted him. People were not listening to her or to John McCain. They were looking at their accounts and their mortgage payments.

But those factors which are external to all arguments are no longer working in Mr. Obama's favor.

Now it's his economy and his budget and his financial crisis and his healthcare program.

He cannot win with Rope a Dope any more.

Now he has to show he can fight for what he believes in.

Truth is, Fox News is no more partisan than newspapers in the early years of our Republic, which were the voice of one political party or another. There was a Federalist press which attacked Jefferson relentlessly, portraying him as a rum soaked anarchist. Democratic papers savaged Abraham Lincoln.

The whole notion of a dispassionate, objective news organization with no axe to grind, a neutral reporter of the Truth, is actually fairly new.

I'm no historian, but I suspect the current ideal of a neutral press dates back only to Walter Cronkite, who appeared to report the news from Viet Nam with great neutrality. Of course, CBS news ran nightly videos of American soldiers expressing their disgust at the whole idea of even being in Viet Nam. But it was not CBS News saying those things. It was the soldiers.

The pretense of "objectivity" is, of course, a basic form of dishonesty.

At least if you let your listener know what your bias is, the listener can say to himself, "Okay, I'll hear this point of view and I'll look elsewhere for the other side."

If President Obama fails, it is more likely he'll fail because he could not man up and say, "I think I'm right about this and this is what we are going to do."

As dismal a Presidency as Ronald Reagan's at least had the virtue of leadership--leadership in the wrong direction. But at least you knew where he stood. "The nine scariest words in the world, 'I'm from the government, and I'm here to help.'" That's what Reagan said. He was the anti-government, government can't do anything well President. And under his governing practice, he proved his point.

Mr. Obama was a savvy candidate. He knew all he had to do was say nothing and ride the waves of discontentment to the Presidency.

But now he has govern.

For my money, that means not putting Olympia Snow in charge of your health care plan. That means saying, "The Republicans are in the pocket of the insurance industry. They do not want any change to their cozy, privileged world. We've tried to include them in the process of change but their only desire is to obstruct and prevent change. So much for bipartisanship. We tried that. Now we are going to do what we were elected to do. If we are wrong, then vote us out."

And while he's at it, he ought to say over and over, "The Republicans tried to kill Social Security under President Bush. They called it 'Privatization,' and what they meant was taking your safe money out of the government coffers and giving it to the stock market. And they fought Medicare. Now they are fighting health care. Why? Because they care more about money and keeping money for their friends and for themselves than they care about you. I'm sorry to have to say it, but that's the truth."

And while he's at it, he ought to single out John Boehner and that nut from South Carolina and Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, not necessarily by their names but by quoting them, for special ridicule.

Why should this be left to Jon Stewart?

If he could do that, he could energize his supporters and put those right wingers on the defensive.

Those who oppose health care changes are either ignorant and frightened or simply selfish and satisfied and President Obama ought to be the one saying that. He ought to be throwing the punches, not relying others to do it and playing the nice guy.

We need more than a nice guy right now.

He cannot depend on me to say it.

Nobody reads my blog, anyway.

But he's got an open mike. He has to use it, not just hum along.

Paul Pillar, One Eye in the Land of the Blind

(Edward Hopper)



Watching TV, the various Americans touted as wise men can be seen testifying before Congress, at the Brookings Institution, on Jim Lehrer's New Hour, I feel, momentarily transported back to the city of my birth and longtime home, but things look so different from the land where I have immigrated, New Hampshire.

From up here, where so many are simply trying to figure out how to pay the mortgage, pay their taxes (such as they have taxes in New Hampshire) and send their kids to school or, more often up here, send their kids out into the work world, the whole issue of Afghanistan and Iraq looks different.

There are two perspectives up here: 1/ How does this war effort affect me personally? 2/ If it doesn't affect me personally, what makes sense for the country in these overseas efforts?

About half of the people I meet every day consider the military efforts from the point of view of employment. It affects them because the military is often one of the most viable options for employment for their kids, after high school. They mix that in with a little talk of "Patriotism" but the parents are looking at potentially losing their kids forever and so they get past the patriotism stuff pretty quickly. One attraction of the military is it's a reasonably secure job without much prospect of getting laid off and it does remove the worry about supporting your kid financially. When you've got five or more kids and you are making a living at the Portsmouth boatyard, that can be a pretty attractive prospect.

If your kids are not likely to need that option, then you tend to think in more general, almost academic terms, with the intellectual remove of the academic. Not that this means you think originally. Many of my fellow townsmen fall back into patterns of thought acquired during their youth--America should not "Cut and Run." America should "honor its obligations," or countries like Iran will disrespect us and make more trouble for us down the line.

That "Disrespect" argument is actually pretty interesting. It's a motivating force for all sorts of crazy actions you see in inner city culture. You can read about it in the novels of the inner city by George Pelecanos (Washington, DC) or you can see it in The Wire (Baltimore.) Presumably these writers base their depictions on what they actually knew about the culture of the inner city, where a fourteen year old boy is shot to death because he "Disrespected" someone with a gun, for the grave offense of making a disparaging comment about the shooter's sneakers.

How much more sophisticated, restrained and smart are those who argue the USA cannot withdraw from Afghanistan because Iran or Somali or Yemen or North Korea will see that and conclude we are too cowardly to defend ourselves? We got to shoot that Afghanie because if we countenance disrespect, we open ourselves to loss of fear from our enemies.

Watching Paul Pillar, the Georgetown professor, former CIA analyst, answer this argument, calmly, is quite amazing. He says, actually, that's not what happens in the world beyond our shores: If we withdraw from Afghanistan that doesn't guarantee a chain reaction of testing attacks from our enemies. Just as Russia's antagonists in countries it had under its thumb did not immediately rise up and attack Russia when it withdrew from Afghanistan, we are unlikely to face any emboldened enemies. Others watching a big power withdraw simply conclude Afghanistan didn't mean enough to America for America to bother with it.

Our enemies are at least that sophisticated.

We got out Somalia and the entire continent of Africa did not rise up to test us.

We got out of Viet Nam and all the dominoes of South East Asia did not fall.

As for allowing safe havens, Pillar calmly pointed out the 9/11 attackers did not have safe havens in Afghanistan or Somalia or Yemen. Their save havens were in apartments in Germany and hotel rooms in Florida and Portland, Maine.

Pillar notes quietly Al Qaeda does not need geography, it does not need a land base or an aircraft carrier. All it needs is the internet. It needs a credit card, a cell phone or maybe a boat or a ton of fertilizer, or a stolen nuclear bomb. But safe havens, forts, flags, factories to stitch together uniforms, not so much.

But nobody in those Congressional hearings seemed to hear Professor. He didn't have any punchy or memorable lines to quote. His lines were all understatement and unemotional reason. Sitting next to him in the hearing room were much more colorful advocates of bringing the fight to Al Qaeda, of "Fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them in the streets over here," of not falling into the weak kneed posture of submissiveness, of "Cut and Run" policies.

Even at the Brookings Institution, where he sat on panel with a Congresswoman and a couple of Brookings Institution gurus who also worked for some high power sounding institutes of policy analysis or centers for strategic studies or something equally grand sounding, Pillar was politely given time to say his piece and ignored.

He was ignored in Washington, but I heard him up here in New Hampshire.

Trouble is, I'm not sure how many other people in New Hampshire, or elsewhere across our continental sized nation, were tuned in.

All The Answers

The Supreme Court currently dominated by Justice Antonin Scalia and his like minded enthusiasts, Thomas, Roberts and Alito have given the phrase "Strict Constructionists" new meaning.

For me, this idea has an old meaning going back to an old black man I used to see sitting in a park. He held in his hand a very worn, leather bound Bible, and he would page through it, stopping at various passages and tell passers by that "All the answers," were contained in this book.

"All the answers to what?"
"All the answers."
"You mean all the answers to life's big mysteries? Who are we? Where do we come from? Why are we here? Where are we going?"
"Those and everything else."
"You mean, like: Should we legalize prostitution? Should we legalize marijuana? Is homosexuality a sin? Is divorce okay? Should we cut down the forests? Should we drill for oil or build more nuclear reactors? Should we allow corporations to promote candidates? Should we allow a teenager to hold up a sign, Bong Hits for Jesus?"
"All the questions, all the answers, right here," he would say, shaking his head at the enormity of it. Right here in this book. If only we are smart enough to read it. Read it properly...and understand."
"What about answers like how to make a vaccine against AIDS?"
"All the answers," he'd say. "All the answers, right here."

Now one thing you can say about absolutists: They are consistent. They do not get caught up in the contradictions which arise when presented with specific cases.

So his utter faith, his belief in that book held a certain charm and reassurance. There is one God, and he speaks through one book and all we have to do is look to that one source and--here's the rub--interpret it and we'll know the Truth.

Having learned in school about evolution, and having absorbed the idea a "Plan" a divine "intention" may take a rather free flowing form, I had my doubts the Bible could point the way to a vaccine against AIDS. Even if it was written by men under the guidance of God, I doubted it covered every problem.

As dreary as many of my courses in science had been, they had at least inculcated a dim awareness there are more questions than answers and each new instance requires a temporary answer which works for while until it is found inadequate and set aside for a new answer to take its place. The immutability of an "answer," loses its impact the more you study nature.

So we learn about microbes. Then we learn about antibiotics which kill microbes. But then we learn microbes have DNA which can mutate and make them invulnerable to those antibiotics until you can design a new antibiotic to kill them in a new way their DNA hasn't adapted to, yet.

The Bible, as far as I know, does not really guide you much there.
But then again, I cannot call myself much of a student of the Bible.
Maybe I'm just ignorant.

All this is a way to say, I cannot really buy the idea of a sacred text which contains all the answers, especially as new problems arise, as DNA mutates and presents new problems.

So it is with me and our Constitution as a sacred text.

Again, I admit I'm ignorant. I really should have learned more about the framers, about Jefferson and Madison and Washington and Franklin and Adams and all those guys and what they knew and what they were thinking.

But I do know, they lived in the eighteenth century, before the human voice could be amplified, before television could bring a politician's image to millions, before the Internet, before automatic weapons and telescopic lenses could transform a single citizen into a killing machine who can kill a President or wipe out a classroom, before corporations could drill for oil, despoil vast prairies, before airplanes could fly from Africa bringing passengers infected with Ebola virus to our shores, before terrorists could steal an atomic weapon and blow up whole cities, before terrorists could steal airplanes and attack cities, before cities, actually, in the modern sense of a New York City, before skyscrapers, before tunnels and suspension bridges.

Having read just a little about Jefferson and his contemporaries, I do have the sense he had insight into his own limitations. I may be wrong, but I think the men who wrote then amended the Constitution had some sense of humility about what they were doing. Maybe I'm wrong, but they seemed to be a little humble about sailing uncharted seas, about creating a form of government which had not been tried in any vast way (except by a few Greek Villagers and some Roman senators in some nascent form) and they were somewhat tentative.

If Jefferson said he thought a little revolution every now and then was necessary for Democracy, I don't think he was thinking about rolling out a guillotine, but about changing course, with an election, maybe even with a Supreme Court ruling, although I gather he would be rather startled by the power and reach of our current Supreme Court.

The writers of the Constitution were men of their times, and in their times slavery was a fact of life and they included slaves in the head count of the population and even mentioned a formula for how to apportion representatives to Congress to account for the number of slaves living in their territory. But, if I understand what these men were like, they did not look into the future thinking they could predict all the problems their creation would encounter, so they built in a lot of flexibility so the government they created could morph and change to face future problems--could accommodate a little revolution now and then.

If they were geniuses, it was in their recognition they did not have all the answers for all times and for all problems. All they were doing was positing a way future problem might be discussed and resolved without resort to civil wars. Smart men, seems to me, would have not attempted to write a document with all the answers. They would have said, you guys solve your own problems which arise in your own times. Don't look to us for all the answers.

They were, in other words, fathers who refused to have all the answers, who refused to play the role of God, who said to their progeny: You're on your own now. Don't look to me or to my writings to solve all your problems for you.

Of course, as Lincoln discovered, the Constitution and the government those men devised did not work to solve every problem.

When you got down to the problem of whether or not a man could be considered property, you got the Dred Scott case, which found in the sacred text an answer that if "Other persons" who counted 2/3 of a white male person had been mentioned, then slavery was enshrined in the Constitution and was all right with the founding fathers.

Until a war changed what the founding fathers said, and a couple of amendments to the Constitution got added. There's a not so little revolution, of the sort Jefferson would probably preferred to avoid.

So when you have Antonin Scalia saying all the answers are in the Constitution, and the Supreme Court cannot do anything but hew to the ideas of those eighteenth century authors, he is missing the very point of the authors, who, I am imagining now, if they were as smart as I suspect they were, knew they did not have all the answers and would be only too glad to believe their government was flexible enough to allow the Supreme Court to write a Brown vs the Board of Education and to begin the process of ending the life of the mutant child of slavery, Jim Crow.

There are people, who for whatever reasons, want to think of the world as an orderly creation, the idea of a single force or God, which becomes disorderly and needs to be brought back into conformity with a single will. And what could be more orderly than a single source?

Well, actually, two sources, the Constitution and the Bible.

Just look there and you do not have to think any further.

Of course, you may not get a polio vaccine, a heart lung machine for heart surgery, airplanes, atomic bombs, computers, cell phones, automatic teller machines. But,you'll have order.

I look at those four justices who believe in strict construction and I cannot help but wonder when they will start wearing powdered wigs.

I do miss those stripes Chief Justice Renquist sewed on his sleeves to show he was the grand master. Those black robes are pretty impressive get ups. But they are so unadorned. The priests I see on TV all have doo dads on their robes--crosses, little symbols of big mysteries, stripes of course, and colors, wow the colors. The Supreme Court justices could use a little of the pizazz of the television preachers. Maybe some shoulder boards with stars on their shoulders. They might take a look at the dazzle on the coats of the generals who really have a sense of color and the possibilities of adornment.

Heaven forbid justices of the Supreme Court should become "Activist" judges, making up new laws the Congress never passed. Of course, what makes you an activist is actually when you make up a new law which offends the sensibility of Justice Scalia. It's okay to make up a law which says a teenager cannot hold up a sign across the street from a school parade which offends the principal and the justices who don't know what it means but they know they don't like the word "Bong." That's just being a strict constructionist.

The guys who wrote the Constitution were clearly against Bong Hits for Jesus.

It's all right there,in the Constitution, along with all the rest of the answers.

The Sunshine Makers

As Afghanistan swirls into a whirlpool, it all looks so familiar: American soldiers, strangers in a strange land, a war with no borders and no geographic objectives, no capital to capture, no uniformed army to defeat, no more mission other than to "pacify" a whole civilization, to wins hearts and minds of people whose language, culture, hopes and fears are foreign.

The big difference is supposed to be that this time the people we are attacking are supposed to have been the source of the 9/11 attack, and, we are told, will be again. We've got to get them before they strike us again, is the line. And if we leave them alone, they'll have "sanctuaries," as if they do not already have sanctuaries.

It all reminds me of a very strange and haunting cartoon which every male of my generation remembers distinctly, "The Sunshine Makers," about a group of tiny elf like men who skulked around singing, "We're happy when we're sad." One of these black clad gnomes fires off an arrow at the white clad happy guys, who bombard these black guys into happiness.

It was an unsettling notion, even to a seven year old, the idea one group could bombard another into happiness, could by warfare convert them to love, could win their hearts and minds by bottled sunshine. Even as a child, the idea somewhere, deep down was disquieting. I had the feeling, "Get Real." I knew I didn't know much about the world, but I knew that cartoon felt not just bogus but dangerous.

There is an old saw about medical interns: The most dangerous intern is not the intern who does not know--it's the intern who does not know he does not know.

What I don't know about Afghanistan is titanic. I cannot even picture the place. It is a country of millions, I read, but the only images I've seen of it are dusty little villages with mud for streets. I've read about the poppy farmers and the drug trade which feeds the Taliban and Al Qaeda. I've read about their "elections." And I've read about Richard Holbrooke riding around the place, trying to apply the lessons he learned in Viet Nam.

But Mr. Holbrooke does not appear to have learned the big lesson of Viet Nam.

It may be we have to fight Al Qaeda, but sending in uniformed American troops looks to me like a show for the folks back home watching on their T.V.'s.

It is a continuation of the Bush era idea of strutting onto main street with guns slung low and looking for someone to shoot it out with.

Trouble is, Al Qaeda is too smart to strut down main street.

How do I know this? I can only guess. What would I do, if I were in the position of Al Qaeda or the Taliban? Would I expose myself? Or would I hid under a rock until I had a clear shot, maybe with a roadside improvised explosive device.

That I am woefully ignorant of Afghanistan does not necessarily mean I am wrong.
Richard Holbrooke can base his conclusions on experience talking to Americans and Afghanies on the ground. But that does not mean he is correct in thinking we can "win" a war of pacification there.

I am so ignorant, in fact, I have to rely on a fictional account of how an indigenous underclass deals with a more powerful ruling armed force--as in The Wire, which was fictional only in form, not in understanding.

The fact is, no occupation force, whether it is made of soldiers or police can pacify a local population unless the people living in the territory have very good reason to want to help.

What would I do?

I think I'd get all the uniformed soldiers out of the country. Then I'd send in the guys who can collect information, who can blend in, who can listen in, if we have enough of those guys. And when Osama, and the Taliban peep their heads up, maybe then we'll have a shot at them. It's the difference between listening on the wire, understanding what the mopes are thinking and planning and being very patient, not breaking down doors until you have the top guys. Whenever I see stacks of cocaine or heroin in front of top brass displaying the haul, which they always say has a "Street Value," of a billion dollars, I think of The Wire and know we are being sold and manipulated. It's not the stuff you pick up on the street that means anything. It's the people you don't see behind it who mean something.

Another analogy is medical: what you see on the skin is what catches your eye, but if you don't dig down to the real source of the problem, you are just amusing yourself and deceiving the patient into thinking you have cured him when all you've done is strut.

Of course, if the President did remove the troops, the frat boy Republicans would howl about how he's caved in and when there's another attack, it'll be all his fault and he'll lose the election.

So it's not likely we'll see the soldiers coming home any time soon.

But that's democracy. Your President can only be as good as the people who elect him will allow.

As Tommy Carcetti once said, "Tomorrow, I'll wake up in Baltimore and the election will be over. And I'll still be white."

Which is to say, you can't change deeply rooted biases of the electorate, even with reasoned arguments.