Drone strikes violate international law and should be stopped

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have issued a joint report calling for those in charge of U.S. drone strikes in the Middle East to be tried for war crimes. I totally support this effort.

“The report is issued in conjunction with an investigation by Human Rights Watch detailing missile attacks in Yemen which the group believes could contravene the laws of armed conflict, international human rights law and Barack Obama's own guidelines on drones.”

Drone attacks are nothing but high-tech terrorism. Bombs can make no judgment about whom they kill, and anyone in the vicinity of an attack, man woman or child, is going to be collateral damage. And on top of everything else, our government is lying to us about the number of civilians hurt and killed by these attacks.

I don’t know much about international law, but it’s always been hard for me to believe that a drone strike in another country wasn’t a crime. If it happened here, we’d be at the UN and the World Court within hours, after retaliatory bombings, of course.

The war on terror continues to be used by the U.S. as justification for all manner of illegal and immoral activities around the world. How long will we allow this to continue? 

Why’s Maddow so mad about 9/11?

Although I don’t watch her show regularly, I’ve always liked Rachel Maddow. Her articulate, intelligent and snarky approach to the political circus in Washington is a refreshing counterweight to the mainstream corporate media’s script readers.

So I was surprised to watch some clips from recent shows where she angrily attacks 911-truthers as not only being wrong, but dangerous. Dangerous? She is certainly entitled to her opinions about what happened on 9/11, but it was the vehemence of her attack that I found odd.

Maddow hosts a show that is based on exposing the lies and hypocrisy of our political leaders, from the insanity of the recent government shutdown to the NSA surveillance revelations to the drone program that is far more aggressive than we were led to believe. Day in and day out Maddow lambasts government officials who are caught in misstatements, obfuscation and lies. There is certainly no lack of material for her show.

Yet when it comes to 9/11, she is adamant that the government’s account of what happened is 100 percent accurate, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary. It just seems strange to me that someone who makes her living questioning the government’s motives on just about every issue imaginable should turn around and defend that same government over its deeply flawed assessment of what happened on 9/11. Curious.

We may have won this battle, but the war is far from over

The editors at The Nation make a good point in the magazine’s latest issue. While in many ways, Republicans in Congress “lost” much in this latest attack on Obama and his priorities, Democrats are now forced to work with a budget where sequestration levels are the new starting point. In other words, Republicans did lose this battle, but they continue to be successful in the larger war by pulling the government and the country further and further to the political right.

We have to give kudos to the President for standing firm in this latest showdown, but he has already conceded too much to Republicans and there is nothing to keep the Tea Party anarchists from resorting to extortion in the future to get what they want. For a variety of reasons, some good and many bad, before this week, Obama never drew a line in the sand in regards to the budget or anything else for that matter, and demanded that Republicans work with him on his terms. I’ve said this many times in the past, but Democrats continue allowing Republicans to set the parameters of the debate.

As Democrats, we should be the ones setting priorities on national issues. We need far more angry progressives like Elizabeth Warren and Alan Grayson and Dennis Kucinich in leadership roles and far fewer establishment rollovers like Pelosi, Reid and Feinstein. We need our own Michele Bachmann and Ted Cruz, passionate politicians (who aren’t clinically insane) willing to fight for progressive causes and not be cowed by the childish, name-calling haters on the Right.

The one great hope to come out of all of this is that Republicans have damaged themselves enough for Dems to keep the Senate and take back the House in the next election. 

Take the post-shutdown pledge

Now that another government crisis has been averted (for the time being), it’s time to turn our attention inward and ask, “How did these lunatics ever gain the power to do what they did?” If you stand in front of a mirror the answer will be obvious. We voted for them. We willingly sent them to Washington D.C. to wreak havoc and mayhem. We should all feel bad about that.

That can change, however. I ask you to take the pledge today. Make a stand to only send people to Congress who want to improve the way government works, not destroy it. Let’s elect men and women who will work to make government more effective, more responsive and more open. Let’s look for smart people to run for office, not anti-intellectuals. Let’s elect people who embrace the diversity of our country and not put bigots and haters in positions of power.

Real change begins with us and the people we elect to office. Let’s start voting smarter. It’s quick and easy. Raise your right hand and repeat the following sentence aloud.

“I vow to never again vote for radical, bigoted, government-hating Christian fundamentalist Republicans.”

America thanks you. 

Will Republicans pay a price for their stupidity?

As the government shutdown shenanigans come to a whimpering end today (everyone hopes), we can now focus on the great lesson learned from this fiasco: Congressional Republicans are morons, and I mean that literally.

How else can you characterize a group of individuals who would agree to shut down a government based on ridiculous demands that no one in their right mind would agree to, and who had no plan, strategy, end game or escape clause? These are allegedly adults who went to school, many of whom were financially successful in their private lives, and yet they couldn’t see what a boneheaded, fatally flawed idea this was. Lord have mercy.

What will the ramifications be? In an alternate universe they would be arrested and tried for attempting to extort the government of the United States. One would hope that in our current universe, however, their outlandish actions would cause more moderate Republican voters to question their loyalty to a party now run by anarchists, corporate lackeys and religious fanatics.

That may be asking too much. We shall see. Republicans do have a loyal base, but it is relatively small if you look at the numbers. If Democrats do not recapture the House and take more Senate seats in the upcoming election, they will only have themselves to blame. 

Throw the bums out? Then what?

In a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, 60 percent of respondents say that if they had the chance to vote to defeat and replace every single member of Congress, including their own representative, they would.

Although these results clearly convey the public’s anger and frustration at the current stalemate in Washington, the sentiments are disingenuous to say the least. The very people who want to throw the bums out are the same people who routinely send conservative extremists like Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, Steve King of Iowa and Louie Gohmert of Texas back to Congress time and time again.

The poll results might be reassuring if I felt that voters had learned something from the current dilemma, but I doubt that there have been many true political epiphanies. Of course, the mainstream media has once again failed the public with its “pox on both their houses” reporting; ignoring the reality that this is a Republican engineered disaster.

I’m all for throwing the bums out, but I don’t think the majority of voters, especially those in red states, are yet well informed enough to clearly distinguish between demagogues and democrats.