If you're conservative, you've got to keep people scared of something. Conservative Gordon Howie is trying to bring back the Red Scare, but in logic that can only come from the far right wing, the real bogeyman is not Vladimir Putin; it's Barack Obama.
Howie yields the blog floor to our friend Sam Kephart, who contends that FDR provoked the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor by waging economic warfare on Japan. (Wait a minute: if Kephart can say America brought Pearl Harbor on itself with bad foreign policy from a Democratic President, am I allowed to say we brought the al-Qaeda attacks on ourselves with military adventurism by Republican Presidents?) Kephart then says President Obama is doing the same thing to Russia:
Just like Roosevelt goaded Japan into making the Pearl Harbor Attack, Obama and the Neo Cons are now goading (squeezing) Putin into war mode with a similar pre-war ramp-up in the current Ukraine situation and the oil price manipulation going on.
A pitiful and disgusting litany of historic perpetrations on Americans and citizens elsewhere [Sam Kephart, "The Real Reasons for the Pearl Harbor Attack," The Right Side, 2014.12.08].
Ah, yes. President Obama must be in cahoots with his Muslim brethren in Saudi Arabia. It all fits together.
And when Obama gets Russia or the jihadis or some other bogeyman to attack America, we'll be justified in using any and all means to secure the homeland, right? Gordon Howie's opaque natterer Brad Ford wanders into the Pearl Harbor discussion and pustulates a vile, racist Dr. Seuss cartoon and a justification of our World War II internment camps:
The Dr. Seuss cartoon perhaps reveals some of the panic that Americans felt when it was thought that an invasion was imminent. Internment camps upset lives and caused inconvenience, but the protection of Japanese-Americans was also a motive. Peacetime Americans today may disapprove in retrospect, but countries facing homeland attacks won’t think twice about such ethnic profiling [Brad Ford, "General Recalls US West Coast Confusion after Pearl Harbor Attack," The Right Side, 2014.12.09].
It's no wonder Brad Ford hides in the shadows; I wouldn't want to be publicly associated with such words, either. The internment camps were for Japanese citizens' own good—that's an unconscionable rationalization. Such fear and racism lead us to make immoral, counterproductive decisions, like torturing prisoners in the name of national security. America should be better than that.
But I guess in Gordon Howie's world, Vladimir Putin and jihadis are about to attack, and it's Barack Obama's fault! Be vigilant, and get ready to round up your Russian and Arab neighbors!
And to think, these people are one president away from total control, scary times ahead.
Correct Tim, Voters across the land banded together to put the band back together for more romping on people's rights. We look at torture and spit in its eye and say only the weal kneed would be disturbed that America the beautiful tortures people including our own. Does not matter that the president, his looney vice and several henchmen (shades of Germany in the 30's and 40's) all signed off on it with loving approval. Thanks republicans for showing us who we really are and what we really stand for, not much in your eyes.
Sammy boy should also note that the poor Japanese he praises for being pushed into the war by those mean ole Democrats would not have invaded all of those colonial colonies of the European empires had it not been for FDR as well. That he would have conveniently left out China, Manchuria and Korea in his push towards Benghazi is a mystery. I am kind of surprised that he did not blame it all on the Jews. I guess the day is still young though.
Manchuria was invaded and conquered by the Japanese in 1931. FDR was elected in November of 1932 so he came into office in January of 1933. I am a public school graduate and my math tells me that 1931 is about 2 years before the mean ole FDR took office. So my brain tells me that Japanese hegemony had already begun prior to FDR and under a republican president by the name of Hoover. Sammy and Gordo need to hit the history books to come up with another sham. Stick with the Old Testament to fill your coffers boys, it scares the hell out of the nitwits.
Jerry, in reading about the report on the CIA torture program, I noticed that the architect, Darth Cheyney, the evil warlord, was never mentioned. It was his plan. He made the CIA into his own, private army. Stories described how the CIA deteriorated, becoming more militant and conducting militaristic operations. Yeah, that was part of Cheyney's deliberate plan. But the name of the evil warlord never appeared. Makes my skin feel creepy, crawly, icky.
That the torture report doesn't mention Cheney takes some of the wind out of the accusation that the report is a partisan document. Again, Republicans are crying foul only because reality is against them, not because we're making things up.
We have Republicans who are unwilling to hold Dick Cheney and George W. Bush accountable for perpetrating torture, violating the Geneva convention, militarizing the CIA, and waging unjust war. Yet folks like Kephart and Howie will promote arguments that FDR and Obama are warmongers. There lies the partisan hackery.
Personally,I'd love to see Obama start a war with Russia using conscripted wingnut children as cannon fodder so wingnuts could be right about war loving Dems once.