Simple Utah Mormon Politics

Despite our desperation to believe otherwise, there is a difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter. Those who spend the effort to think rationally can distinguish the difference. Those who don't distinguish the nuances between the two make it easier for terrorists to thrive. We may even be thought of by the rest of the world as terrorists themselves, and perhaps rightly so.

At one point in the mid-1990's, Osama bin Laden was persona non grata in just about any place in the world. Imperiled by the Monica Lewinsky scandal, however, United States President Bill Clinton's face saving missile attacks on the Sudan and Afghanistan changed bin Laden's fortunes. In very short order, bin Laden was a Middle Eastern rock star. So, you see, Bill Clinton's impeachment wasn't just about sex.

If you thought that America's foreign policy outlook would improve with the election of Barack Obama, you thought wrong. Part of the problem, being residual blowback from previous American sins, is, admittedly, not Obama's fault. But a great deal of it is. When Establishment candidates are elected one right after the other, you should expect that U.S. foreign policy will continue to be inane. And you should expect that more and more of the world will have reason to hate us. At exactly the time American troops are pulling back from the cities in Iraq, new revelations of old torture are giving Iraqis another perfectly good reason to hate everything that is American. As if their enmity were not enough, deaths of scores of civilians in Pakistan at the hands of remote-piloted U.S. airplanes are ensuring another bumper crop of American enemies. With the advent of high technology, virtually every person in the world knows about yet additional episodes of American perfidy on Presid...

In just over 100 days, President Barack Obama, once thought by many to be the man to right the wrongs of the Bush Administration, has now out-bushed Bush and out-cheneyed Cheney. In a speech given last Thursday, President Obama unveiled a brand new approach to the war on terrorism, one that the New York Times says "is at the very boundary of American law". It's referred to as "prolonged detention", and it means that you can be kept prisoner without trial for an indefinite period of time, simply because of the crimes that you might have committed if you had been released from prison. Is this where the neocons join hands with Barack Obama? I expected that the Obama Administration would be similar to the Bush Administration, but I am astonished that our new President would go so soon beyond what he regularly and roundly castigated in the 2008 presidential campaign. In a moment of great and much-appreciated clarity, MSNBC talk-show host Rachel Maddow called it some...

On a warm early morning near Baghdad in May 2007, fifteen Iraqi insurgents surprised two four-man humvee crews of American soldiers. Five of the Americans were killed. Three were captured. As a result of the captures, the Bush Administration and the U.S. National Security Agency sought for and received drastic strengthening of surveillance powers. Ironically, the attacks on the Americans were only in direct retaliation for a brutal rape and several grizzly murders committed by other Americans a few months prior. To add insult to the irony, the draconian new powers requested by the Executive Branch were not needed to find the missing soldiers, and they were granted after the bodies of the three missing soldiers were found. Private Steven D. Green was granted a "moral waiver" to join the U.S. Army. In 2006 he deployed to Iraq, "because I wanted to kill people." Green worked with his squad members at a checkpoint in Mahmudiyah, The worst part about the Global W...

The attacks of 9/11 had an interesting, but largely unknown genesis. Have you ever heard of "extraordinary renditions"? Not many people have. In the past 10 years or so, these 'tools' have become a common facet of American foreign policy. In multiple instances, such renditions have become the impetus for retaliation in the third world--what the CIA has come to refer to as "blowback". There is no evidence that any of these CIA renditions have made America any safer, but there is ample evidence that they have made our national security much more precarious, particularly before 9/11 . Extraordinary renditions helped radical Muslims to become more radical and reach the boiling point that we now commemorate as 9/11. Even more unfortunately, such renditions have become far more frequent since the attack 7 years ago today. It's called Patriot's Day now. Some of the LDS Scout troops put up flags in their LDS ward neighborhoods America is much more im...

I've thought about this question a lot lately, and I thought I knew the answer to it. The question is a lot more nuanced than to satisfy itself with only one answer, though. First, some people don't criticize terrorism because they're afraid of the terrorists. Others don't because they can't understand why the United States and others have exercised imperial dominion over the Middle East for so long. But the most important answer to the question--which admittedly came as some surprise to me--is this: most liberals and Muslims do criticize Islamic violence and terrorism. You just have to know where to look. Where Not to Look. One of the places that you can't look to find out what liberals and Muslims really think about radical Islam is the Rush Limbaugh show. Yesterday on his last hour, he attempted to lambaste Barack Obama for his willingness to have a dialog with the Iranians. Limbaugh made the mistake of letting Obama speak for himself and his own se...

My brother and I agreed the other night over dinner that George W. Bush will most likely go down as the worst US president in our history. From his misguided "compassionate conservatism" takeover of philanthropy, to his support for a North American Union, to his senseless attack of Iraq, the man has done almost nothing right. Perhaps the worst trait of this ego-maniac is his seeming desire to emulate Jack Bauer of "24" fame, apparently believing that the protection of America against another 9/11 attack must involve torture of our potential enemies. Early in the War on Terror ballgame, George W Bush decided that any kind of interrogation--including torture--is fair game if it might protect America from further attack, and the "War on Terror" was lost in one fell swoop. This goes against every American tradition. Such arrogance invites future attacks on America. Ron Suskind called it the One Percent Doctrine. The people at Guantanamo came to know it a...

Imagine there really was terror, but that the warriors against that terror were nowhere to be found. Well...you don't have to imagine. Is there a terror in the world today? Yes, there is. But not the kind the Establishment would have you believe by getting you hooked by their deadly hypnotic spell. It's critical to discover--if someone hates you--what motivates that hatred. If you come up with the wrong answer (or if someone conditions your mind perpetually with the wrong answer), chances are you're fighting the wrong war . I was reminded in the comments to my previous article here on SUMP why I really was mad at Mitt Romney for quitting. It was partially that he quit at the most inopportune time, but that was not so much it as the crap that came out of his mouth when he announced his personal surrender. Here's what frosted my cookie : I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror. We all know what terror he is referring to, and what ...

Columbia University President Lee Bollinger may have thought he was pulling a fast one by inviting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad into the ring of verbal opinion. But with only one minute gone in the second round, Bollinger's oral parries had been long forgotten, and he was laying on the canvas. Americans are getting stupider all the time. What a silly claim that it would have been a violation of free speech to deny Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to appear at Columbia University? Okay, I want to appear as well! And I want the same amount of media coverage as Ahmadinejad got! Columbia University just invited the #2 enemy of the United States to exercise his right of free speech on American soil. Imagine if we had invited Josef Stalin or Adolf Hitler to speak in their heydays! The only thing worse than inviting Ahmadinejad to speak in the US would have been to invite Osama b...wait a second...I don't want to give anybody any ideas. Mahmoud Admadinejad is a tin-horn oligarch. He has no business ...

Previous fervor for the impeachment of George W. Bush has subsided as of late. If--as is being reported--he's thinking about attacking Iran before the end of his second term, though, I suggest we need to strike up the calls for impeachment once again. It was a huge mistake to attack Iraq, and now we are cleaning up the mess. I'm all in favor of The Pottery Barn Rule . But if Bush is really planning to attack Iran, he would make a mistake of colossal proportions. Since we are in Iraq, and we must fix what we have helped to break, I support General Petraeus in what everyone is calling "The Surge", even though it isn't much of a surge. It's actually a successful implementation of Counterinsurgency Tactics (working together with the populace to defeat the enemy instead of treating everyone like they are the enemy) that has caused most of the improvements in Iraq. These tactics, when implemented in limited areas of Iraq by Petraeus when he was a brigade comma...

US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales resigned today. But he'll still be around for another month. After what I've just found out, I'm not sure why he wasn't fired about 3 years ago. Interestingly, Orrin Hatch disagrees with me. It's time to can Senator Hatch as well. I picked up a copy of the book Our Endangered Values by former US President Jimmy Carter some time ago, and have been reading it here at work whenever I get a free moment. It is an interesting coincidence that I read the following statements just today, on page 127 of his book, just minutes after hearing on the radio the news that US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales resigned effective September 17th. The first quote by President Carter was a statement by the Department of Defense about torture, which I also found on the internet : the president has the authority, as commander in chief, to approve almost any physical or psychological error actually doing interrogation up to and including torture. A...