"What an outrage. Big win for democrats." II: The Birth of a Talking Point, and some thoughts in and around

The Wall Street Journal, the paper of record for folks who like their police jack-booted, their politicians brownshirted, and their poor people Dickensian, tells us that the SCOTUS ruling might be good for Bush. John D. McKinnon and Jess Bravin are here to tell us that "Many Republicans predict that despite the White House's legal defeat over military tribunals, President Bush will emerge as the political winner among security-conscious voters."

Hmmm. Seems a bit over-reaching, doesn't it? Overly optimistic? Desperation to make lemonade out of lemons, as Erma Bombeck might say. Problem was, is, and always will be with the Administration's policy concerning Gitmo and the various other black-ops hell holes scattered about is that they are fundementally un-American. This is shit that Reagan reminded us ad infinitum about the Soviet Union, and something that only an idiot would try to deny about that regime: Incarceration without trials, family disappearing in the middle of the night. This is the stuff of Stalin, who would, of course, argue the necessity of such for security reasons. These are the same reasons we get everyday from the White House. Funny how the march of history goes, teleologically speaking, when one "superpower" emerges, but Hegelian metaphysics aside, axiomonically speaking, they were always trying to turn "chicken shit into chicken salad", and sell it with a large suspension of reality and a toy World Trade Center in the Super Security Happy Meal...while supplies last...

But I digress, but only slightly, because this is the underpinning of the quickening talking point, something that House Majority Leader John BONER, representing the gated constituents of West Chester, elucidates in concluding that "Democrats [support] 'special privileges for terrorists'."

There is something so sublime in that very Southwest Ohio conception of such, for he has managed to incorporate the "special rights" meme of the Gay Rights ordinance / Gay Marriage amendment battle of 2004. We hate "special rights", even if they are civil/human rights, and "special privileges" for terrorists, for they are enemy combatants. Of course it matters not if many were picked up nowhere near Iraq or Afghanistan.

Part of the problem is in definition: Are they criminals or combatants? Combatants implies a battle field, an active engagement with troops, being captured, etc. Noriega was captured in Panama, a battle field, yet was afforded a civil trial, no? Even Nuremburg was a public trial. Previous administrations treated these peoples as criminals because they represented no nations but an ideological one.

The apologists would say that I am engaged in "Pre 9/11" thinking, but the question the 800 pound Guerilla in the room points to the fact that if this is a new kind of war, as they say, then why are we conducting it in the old way, vis a vis, occupation, land armies, etc. The answer is the Cold Warriors in the administration who cannot look past their monolithic paradigm: The Soviet Union is gone, so we need another monolith to struggle against. The Soviets had the same paradigm, Al Quaeda does not, neither did we, when we kicked the British out. Seems a bit flawed.

I look for Boner's comment to end up in campaign commercials across the country, and for those "security minded" folks, desperate to shore up their fantasies about the world, to savor every bit of Chickenshit, uh, salad, sandwhich.

Wholesome goodness.