Political Theatre category archive

The story is about the perceptions of the populace popped by drones.

American drone strikes inside Pakistan are killing far fewer civilians than many in the country are led to believe, according to a rare on-the-ground investigation by The Associated Press of 10 of the deadliest attacks in the past 18 months.

The widespread perception in Pakistan that civilians, not militants, are the principal victims — a view that is fostered by leading right-wing politicians, clerics and the fighters themselves — fuels pervasive anti-American sentiment and, some argue, has swelled the ranks of al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

But an AP reporter who spoke to about 80 villagers at the sites of the 10 attacks in North Waziristan, the main sanctuary for militants in Pakistan’s northwest tribal region along the Afghan border, was told that a significant majority of the dead were combatants.

I have no doubt that this will be cited to prove that raining death on innocents from the sky is okay if the percentage of innocents is small enough.

This reminds me of the olden days, when I was a young ‘un, and body counts were all the rage amongst the uniformed set.

(Link fixed.)

AKA full employment for Generals, consultants, and munitions makers.

Asia Times considers the ambling course of endless war over what seems like endless decades.

With the United States now well into the second decade of what the Pentagon has styled as an “era of persistent conflict”, the war formerly known as the global war on terrorism (unofficial acronym WFKATGWOT) appears increasingly fragmented and diffuse. Without achieving victory, yet unwilling to acknowledge failure, the United States military has withdrawn from Iraq. It is trying to leave Afghanistan, where events seem equally unlikely to yield a happy outcome.

Elsewhere – in Pakistan, Libya, Yemen, and Somalia, for example – US forces are busily opening up new fronts. Published reports that the United States is establishing “a constellation of secret drone bases” in or near the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula suggest that the scope of operations will only widen further.

Clarence Page muses upon Republicans’ skeevy (my word, not his) fascination with the sex lives of others. A nugget:

How has an election year that was supposed to be all about economic recovery suddenly become all about sex? Critics blame the media. They have a point. The media keep reporting what the candidates are saying.

The Booman Tribune contributes two excellent articles contemplating the hollowness of Mitt the Flip and of Republicanism in general.

Here’s a bit from the first:

This is what happens when you take a poll-driven position that is wrong on the merits. Romney opposed the bailout (of auto manufacturers–ed.) because he saw it as a way to score political points. Because the bailout was deeply unpopular, he assumed that he’d be well-placed later on for having opposed it. And so one piece of bullshit begat another and begat another and begat another. In the end, Romney wound up in the same place he wound up with ObamaCare, out on an island surrounded by a sea of contradictory nonsense and lies, looking like the most inauthentic man to ever run for high office.

And from the second:

Conservatives have done a great job of organizing to take over the Republican Party, but they seem like the dog that caught the car. The dog doesn’t know how to drive. The dog doesn’t even think a car should drive. That’s why they chased it in the first place. In the first issue of the National Review, William F. Buckley said “It stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.” I think he launched a movement that succeeded in slowing the government to a stop. But where do the Republicans go from here?

In other words, conservatives have basically arrived at their destination and now they are in a position to actually act on their rhetoric. And people want no part of their actual agenda, which has been fueled on lies and bullshit and fear and paranoia.

Check them both out.

It would appear that the contemporary Republican party has gotten a field of candidates that it deserves.

Just sad.

Via Balloon Juice.

Take the quiz.

Ronnie Polaneczky reminds us:

But the more I thought about asking Santorum to shut up, the more I realized that we need him to keep blathering.

Because the more he talks, the more he reminds us that the personal liberties enjoyed by Americans – particularly female Americans – are always at threat from primitive minds that want to rescind rights we thought had already been won.

Read the rest.

In other news, I understand that Primitive Minds is protesting the comparison as slanderous.

Daniel Ruth comments on the fact-free zone which is the Republican campaigns. A nugget:

And we still have a good eight months to go of phony negative commercials produced by shadowy groups like Americans for the Freedom to Be Dumber Than a Sack of Sea Slugs, or the Committee for Truth-Free Propaganda.

Read the rest.

Dick Polman recounts a list of recent unintentionally revealing pronouncements by Little Ricky.

Check them out for what they unintentionally revealed (or confirmed–either one works).

Pepe Escobar, writing at Asia Times, sees the formation of a no-way-out spiral into the dealing of more death.

A nugget:

What was the parade of European poodles thinking – that Tehran would just roll over and absorb the European Union’s oil embargo, scheduled to start on July 1?

No wonder Brussels was caught as a Gucci deer in the headlights when the news started to flow that Tehran would pre-empt the move and immediately slap its own embargo of crude oil exports to six European Union countries – deeply in crisis Club Med members Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain plus recession-hit France and the Netherlands.

It took virtually no time for Iran’s Oil Ministry and then the Foreign Ministry to deny it; such a decision, technically, would have to be officially announced by the Supreme National Security Council, which also deals with the nuclear negotiations.

But only the deaf, dumb and blind wouldn’t understand the message; blowback for the ridiculously counter-productive European sanctions/oil embargo package will only plunge vast swathes of Europe further into deep economic pain.

A common fallacy among politicians regarding international relations is assuming that other nations will react the politicians want them to. They are correct about as often as Criswell.

I’m trying to think back over all the international sanctions I recall during my lifetime. I don’t have time to do research, but, off the top of my head, I think the only ones that produced a positive outcome were the ones against apartheid South Africa. The others tended towards failure (Cuba, for example, where the U. S. is pretty much the only nation left enforcing sanctions) or further deterioration of the situation (Iraq after the First Gulf War).

John Baer takes a detailed look at Little Ricky. A snippet:

For example, everybody knows that Santorum doesn’t like gays in relationships and doesn’t like gays in the military.

But he also doesn’t like women in the workplace, doesn’t like women in combat, doesn’t like women (or men) using contraceptives.

He says that contraception is “harmful to women” and society, and that “radical feminism” ruined society by encouraging women to work outside the home, which is one reason an Inky reviewer of his 2005 book, It Takes a Family, called Rick “one of the finest minds of the 13th Century.”

Dick Polman realizes that Mitt the Flip does indeed believe in something:

Despite his reputation as a weather vane, Mitt Romney is actually a man of firm conviction. He strongly believes that any rival who threatens his nomination deserves to be thoroughly trashed.

Which is why the gods of negativity have already begun to hurl thunderbolts at Rick Santorum.

Follow the link for the rest.

Meanwhile, a Republican operative tries to make a serious argument that Little Ricky Santorum is

. . . the most electable conservative remaining in the race..

“Look! Up in the Sky! It’s Super Drone!”

See Political Prof for the answer.

This is an episode of what Hanlon said.

Via BartCop.