Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Back to Yoo

I just found a great article from a couple of months ago, thru a post on Andrew Sullivan's blog. Now, I've gone off on in the past, but, seriously, I'm a dope-smoking homo-hugging lefty (I'm pro-gun-rights for the most part, but I doubt that'll convince anyone that I'm a loyal neocon unitary executive booster). So who's going to take my criticisms seriously?

Well, no one can accuse The American Conservative of being some squishy soft human-rights-devoted liberal rag. And what do they have to say about our Johnny? Well, it's good stuff:
Yoo’s new book, War by Other Means: An Insider’s Account of the War on Terror, reads like a slippery lawyer’s brief submitted to a dim judge who gets all his information from Fox News...
A particular juicy quote goes: "Yoo suggested that 'an American attack in South America or Southeast Asia might be a surprise to the terrorists,' since they were expecting the U.S. to target Afghanistan." Yeah, an attack on Iceland also would have been a surprise and for pretty much the same damned reason: South American, Southeast Asia, and Iceland all share the distinction of being in no way related to the attacks of 9/11 nor any of the other terror attacks that have occurred before, on, or since 9/11.

Let's be clear: in the wake of 9/11, there was going to be a war. I was cool with that, seriously I was. I thought the war in Afghanistan was justified and necessary. You can't just allow someone to harbor and support an attack like that and then allow them to say, nah we really don't feel like coughing up the guys that did it. It's like getting malaria from mosquito bites but not dumping out the water puddles because your buddy keeps his goldfish in there. The goldfish gotta go.

And creative thinking is awesome! It's given us Starry Night, the light bulb, and Pop Rocks. But there's creative thinking and then there's plain old making shit up. The idea of attacking South America or Southeast because they would be surprised sails way past the mark of even making shit up: it's just profoundly stupid. Explain to me, please, how this at best dishonest and disingenuous and at worst stupid and evil person merits a professorship at Boalt Hall?

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