10/31/11
"Our servant, the mind"
When we look for the mind, we can't find any shape, or color, or form. This mind that we identify as the self, which we could call ego-mind, controls everything we do. Yet it can't actually be found—which is somewhat spooky, as if a ghost were managing our home. The house seems to be empty, but all the housework has been done. The bed has been made, our shoes have been polished, the tea has been poured, and the breakfast has been cooked.
The funny thing is that we never question this. We just assume that someone or something is there. But all this time, our life has been managed by a ghost, and it's time to put a stop to it....
--Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche, Daily Dharma for October 30, 2011 An excerpt from Searching for Self
10/29/11
Rightly, Huntsman takes Romney down in the first of many ads about his political flip-flopping
Too bad Huntsman wasn't born into a Democratic family because his instincts are naturally progressive (in the best sense of the word).
10/28/11
Hudson Taylor is doing great work in getting athletes to support LGBT people
Here he is being his bold self.
10/27/11
Even after this all-consuming day, being a human is mostly wonderful. And if you don't believe me, watch this...
Now time for dinner, a beer, a chat with my family, and the finale of Project Runway!
This is another example of why we are fighting for LGBT kids everywhere. We won't rest until this type of anti-bullying behavior is unacceptable in society
From Towleroad.com:
A student at Union-Scioto High School in Chillicothe, Ohio was brutally beaten this week by another student for being gay. Class members watched as the bully waited for the student to arrive in the classroom, grabbed him, pushed him to the ground and punched him in the face several times.
Another student recorded the assault on his cell phone. The video was posted to Facebook.
The bully had harassed the gay student (who has not been identified) on Facebook a few days earlier, writing, as the comment on a photo of him: "You fag. Check out the definition of a fag."
According to an email received by Towleroad from Equality Ohio, "The victim has suffered a possible concussion and dental damage. The attacker was suspended from school for just three days."
10/26/11
10/25/11
NJ's Congressional delegation (including the first Republicans to participate in this project) says "It Gets Better". RIP Tyler Clementi
This is great that three GOPers had the moral courage to reach out to at-risk gay youth.
Self-love according to RuPaul
"How the hell can you love someone else, if you can't love yourself. Can I get an amen?"
--RuPaul
Frank Kameny: our great gay patriot
Why is it that I often call Frank Kameny the gay rights movement’s closest thing to King? Because, like King, he rooted his life in the Declaration of Independence’s promise and never lost faith in it, or with it. All men are created equal. Frank held his country to its founding promise and helped it find the better angels of its nature. That is why I remember him not just as a great gay activist but as a great American patriot.
He used to say that his fight for equality at home was an extension of the fight he waged against tyranny in Europe. And so it was that in June, when his car passed, I didn’t cheer. On an impulse, I stood at attention and silently saluted. I will never know if he saw me in the crowd, but I know that, if he did see me, he understood.
--Jon Rauch
The power of "nothing to hold on to"
–-Pema Chödrön
10/24/11
CBS News reports on claims of anti-Semitism at OWS
I have not read enough about this issue to know what is really happening in these protests. The Republican National Committee is claiming that anti-semitism is widespread in the anti-Wall Street movement. However, according to the article below, Jewish anti-defamation watchdog groups say they have found few instances of anti-Jewish messages. (On Friday morning, I saw no such signs when I passed the OWS protesters on Market Street in SF.) But one thing is for certain: if there is anti-Semitism, racism, sexism, homophobia or any other form of hatred in these protests, these protestors should be renounced by the organizers AND be allowed to exercise their First Amendment rights. Just like the hate-filled members of the Westboro Baptist Church do at funerals...no matter how it boils my blood.
I also applaud the GOP's decision to come out so strongly against hate and fear, and I will hold them to this standard in the future when they are discussing LGBT rights and equality -- a topic that I follow closely. And I urge the Democratic party to renounce anti-semitism one more time, which should a non-issue given the long-standing inclusion of Jewish leaders throughout the Democratic party and its historical rejection of anti-semitism, sexism, racism, and homophobia.
I have bolded the sections of the article below that merit further scrutiny and investigation from the general news media, especially more objective news sources like the three networks, PBS News Hour, WSJ, NYTimes, Washington Post, CNN, and USA Today. (I don't consider Fox or MSNBC to be objective...both specialize in opinion journalism, speaking for the Right and for the Left. They have a place in society but generally they are not objective news sources since what they do is more entertainment-oriented and blatantly partisan.)
"RNC blast Dems for lack of "outrage" at alleged anti-Semitism at Wall Street protests"
by Lucy Mason, CBS News
As Democratic leaders increasingly begin to lend their support to the "Occupy Wall Street" protests, the Republican National Committee (RNC) is targeting those who have supported the movement for a lack of "outrage" over a string of alleged anti-Semitic incidents that have recently been reported at the protests.
In a memo on Tuesday, the RNC's Sean Spicer writes that Democratic leaders who have come out for "Occupy Wall Street" (OWS) have "been silent" when it comes to "protestors' extreme anti-Semitic, anti-Israel comments."
"Where's the outrage?" he asks. "While protestors are seen spewing hate against Jewish Americans, President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz have declared their support for the demonstrations. Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chair Steve Israel even circulated a petition saying he's 'standing with' Occupy Wall Street."
A handful of conservative blogs and Jewish organizations have recently pointed to anti-Semitic incidents at the Wall Street protests - most recently in the form of a video put out by the Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI), among whose board members include former presidential candidate Gary Bauer and conservative columnist Bill Kristol.
The video shows protesters making disparaging and offensive comments about and/or directed at Jews, including one man's cry that "Jews control Wall Street."
"Why are our leaders turning a blind eye to anti-Semitic, anti-Israel attacks?" the narrator in the ad intones. "Tell President Obama and leader Pelosi to stand up to the mob. Hate is not an American value."
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which fights anti-Semitism in America and abroad, has also called on OWS organizers to condemn the remarks - but the organization has noted that the incidents do not appear to be widespread or characterize the protests.
"I really don't see any endemic anti-Semitism at these rallies at all. Anybody can show up at these things," said Oren Segal, director of the organization's Center on Extremism, in the Jewish Week. ADL National Director Abraham Foxman noted in a statement that "There is no evidence that these anti-Semitic conspiracy theories are representative of the larger movement or that they are gaining traction with other participants."
Jesse Ferguson, a spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, argued in a statement that the calls of anti-Semitism had been "discredited" and that Republicans were using the issue as a "distraction" from the real issues at play.
"We're not going to listen to lectures on anti-Semitism from the same Republicans who continue to stand behind one of their biggest donors, the Koch Brothers, doing business with the Iranian regime that threatens Israel's very existence," said Ferguson, referencing reports tying the Koch brothers to business deals with Iran.
"Republicans are casually throwing around discredited accusations of anti-Semitism against top Jewish leaders in an attempt to distract from the fact that hundreds of thousands of Americans are rightfully angry about Republican economic policies that led to lower home values and incomes, fewer jobs and weaker retirement savings."
Hear! Hear! Jon Huntsman: Too Big To Fail Is Too Big
“More than three years after the crisis and the accompanying bailouts, the six largest American financial institutions are significantly bigger than they were before the crisis, having been encouraged to snap up Bear Stearns and other competitors at bargain prices. These banks now have assets worth over 66% of gross domestic product—at least $9.4 trillion, up from 20% of GDP in the 1990s. There is no evidence that institutions of this size add sufficient value to offset the systemic risk they pose.”
--Jon Huntsman
10/22/11
Portrait of a man who lacks integrity
Despite all his fame, money and power, this man will never be considered a good man. Why? He lacks integrity and honesty. Read about this article from The Daily Beast. Sad.
All politicians talk about patriotism. This family lives it
They have paid the ultimate sacrifice for freedom and liberty...doing so for all citizens, including the LGBT. Thank you!
American exceptionalism needs generous helpings of humility & responsibility
There is a world of difference between the person who with a brash swagger asserts that America is the greatest nation on earth and the patriot who lovingly cares for his particular place while uttering a prayer of thanksgiving for the manifold blessings he and his children enjoy. One fails to admit responsibility or to tread lightly and therefore invariably behaves poorly while remaining blind to the fact. The other recognizes that gratitude is inseparable from responsibility, for a gift rightly received must be tended with intelligence and care. Perhaps it’s time to seek out (or carve out) another strand in our American tradition, a strand that acknowledges the many good things we have inherited and soberly embrace the responsibility to steward these things well. A more modest republic would, in light of our history, be an exceptional accomplishment.
--Mark Mitchell
If Jesus were alive today...according to my brother
If Jesus were alive today, he'd be occupying Wall Street: “I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” Matthew 19:23-24 The saying was a response to a young rich man who had asked Jesus what he needed to do in order to inherit eternal life. Jesus replied that he should keep the commandments, to which the man stated he had done. Jesus responded, "If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me." He sounds like a Communist!
--Frank Rodriguez
10/21/11
"The Untold Story Of The Actual Obama Record" from The Dish
Personally, I am praying that Obama's messaging improves drastically. (It has failed on multiple occasions - not the least of which was during August/September of 2008.)
The truth is that this President has done a good job in what has been one of the most difficult periods of modern history. He saved the economy from ruin (until the Tea Party took over Congress) with a stimulus that was as large as possible given the political realities, presided over a stock market that fairly quickly recouped many of its losses, presided over almost consecutive monthly increases in private sector job growth (unfortunately balanced by monthly decreases in public sector jobs which I attribute to the GOP further starving government), enacted the only meaningful healthcare reform ever in our history, passed financial reform (no matter what the Left says, he did this), saved the auto industry (which Romney is on record opposing), fired the first salvo of the Arab Spring with his address in Cairo no less, drawn down our footprint in Iraq in a responsible way (and headed toward almost total withdrawal), stopped numerous terrorist attacks in this country, stopped torture as policy, repealed DADT, joined the international community in a measured and responsible way to bring down an odious tyrant in Qaddafi, and killed a whole generation of al Qaeda leaders. And taking out Osama bin Laden the way he did will go down as one of the bravest military actions in American history.
I know this President is not popular, and it is very unpopular to defend him in such a way. I don't care. For this country to dump him for anyone on the other side would be a terrible thing. Progress is slow and painful, but we are doing it. Is that fashionable to say? No. Again, I don't care.
--From a Dish Reader
10/20/11
The White House observes anti-bullying Spirit Day
Sadly, while not one Republican elected official has had the moral courage to make an "It Gets Better" video to reach out to bullied gay youth, this White House is taking both big and small steps to do so. President Obama has done more for the LGBT community than all the previous presidents combined. Thank you!
via Joe My God
10/19/11
Supporting those who have risked much to support us, including a Republican who helped pass marriage equality in NY state & Patrick Murphy, the sponsor of DADT repeal
The foes of marriage equality are targeting a GOP New York State senator who provided us the winning votes to pass gay marriage in June: Mark Grisanti. The National Organization for Marriage is funding the candidates who is running against this brave Republican as warning against other Republicans who break from the party's anti-gay platform. We need to send a clear message to politicians, especially Republican office holders, that LGBT community stands behind our friends. I encourage you to give $25, $50 or any amount to:
Contribute to State Senator Mark Grisanti
Also, Democratic Patrick Murphy sponsored and spear-headed the legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives that repealed DADT. In last November, he lost his House seat to a socially-conservative Tea Party candidate who opposed the repeal of DADT. Now, Patrick is running to be the next attorney general of Pennsylvania and our community should do anything we can for him, including giving money.
Contribute to Patrick Murphy for Attorney General
10/17/11
In a clear and compassionate tone, Obama speaks at MLK memorial dedication
"At this moment, when our politics appear so sharply polarized, faith in our institutions so greatly diminished, we need more than ever to take heed to Dr. King’s teachings. If he were alive today, I believe that he would remind us that the unemployed worker can rightly challenge the excesses of Wall Street without demonizing all who work there. That the businessman can enter tough negotiations with his company’s unions without vilifying the right to collectively bargain. He would want us to know that we can argue fiercely about the proper size and role of government without questioning each other’s love for this country."
-- President Barack Obama, at the dedication of MLK Memorial
The words of a bullied kid before he took his life...and then a statement by his father. Bullying has to change...
The words of Jamie Hubley before his death: "I'm a casualty of love"
The words of Jamie's dad:
This past Friday, our family suffered one of the worst experiences that can happen to a family when we lost our boy – Jamie. To make this even more difficult, his death was a result of suicide.
I would like to thank all the family and friends that have been helping us get through these very difficult days. Very special thanks to everyone that came out in the rain to walk every foot of our community to look for our boy. The outpouring of support has shown us that our angel was loved by many and we were not the only people to witness his beautiful spirit.
Jamie was for most of his life a very happy and confident child. He was a compassionate person always looking to help others and didn’t have a mean bone in his body. Jamie often worked with me on community events and our many efforts to help others were made more effective with his ideas. From a very young age he wanted to make a better community and a better world.
He was a championship figure skater for years and was just beginning to excel as a singer. He enjoyed acting as well. He had a wide circle of friends and was involved in many different clubs and groups both in and outside of school. James’s family and friends unconditionally supported and accepted him for who he was and whatever direction he wanted to go in life.
James had been suffering with depression and was receiving care from doctors at CHEO and counselors. These professionals, along with James’s family and friends, were trying to help him learn to cope with his depression and other issues one of which was his struggles with his sexuality. He struggled with the idea that people can judge you harshly even when you are trying to help others. Jamie asked a question no child should have to ask – why do people say mean things to me?
Although James had a great many people who loved and supported him, something in his mind kept taking him to a dark place where he could not see the positive side of life, which lead him to this drastic and tragic decision on Friday. Jamie is free of his pain now and there is a new angel but we have paid too high a price.
There are some reports in the media and on social media that James was bullied. This is true. We were aware of several occasions when he felt he was being bullied. In Grade 7 he was treated very cruelly simple because he liked figure skating over hockey.
Recently, when Jamie tried to start a Rainbow Club at his high school to promote acceptance of others, the posters were torn down and he was called vicious names in the hallways and online. We had meetings with officials at the school and were working with them to bring an end to it but Jamie felt it would never stop.
We will not say that the bullying was the only reason for James’s decision to take his own life but it was definitely a factor. As his family and friends or even if you never met him but want to help, we must do whatever we can to wipe out bullying for any reason in our society and especially in our schools. Young people are very vulnerable and have enough pressures in life to have to deal with aside from the stress of being bullied. My family’s wish is that no more families have to suffer the unbearable pain of losing a child. No child should have to deal with depression or feel hated because of their beliefs – that is not the Canadian way of treating others.
Bullying doesn’t always take the form of physical violence. Especially today with cyber bullying on the Internet, children often feel there is no safe place to go; even when they are at home they can still be victims. Earlier I mentioned his posters being taken down. Many friends have offered to stand by the posters to ensure children that may want to meet and talk about issues that don’t harm others will be given the chance to do so. The school has made a promise to me that they will ensure the posters are protected. We hope from our tragedy others will become more active in stopping this cruelty towards children.
To this end, after my family and I have had some time to come to terms with the loss of our beautiful son James, I will be working hard to use my energy and public position to help bring awareness and resources to those groups working to stop the bullying and find a treatment for depression. Wendy and I have asked that all the people wishing to make a donation in Jamie’s memory can direct them to Youth Services Bureau’s Mental Health Walk in Clinic.
Over the years I have tried to help a lot of people and I was very proud that my beautiful boy was also learning the joy that comes from helping others. I need time to deal with the pain of not being able to save my precious boy and will speak more on his life and these issues later.
--Kanata South Councillor Allan Hubley
And a video of Jamie covering Lady Gaga. RIP
10/16/11
Why liberal Massachusetts does not elect women as senators or governors
Read this article from the Daily Beast about the underlying reasons for the lack of women at the top of the pyramid from this notoriously liberal state. Fascinating. Sounds like men don't want to cede control.
10/13/11
Going beyond praise & criticism, through pure intention
If we really stop to think about praise and criticism, we will see they do not have the least importance. Whether we receive praise or criticism is of no account. The only important thing is that we have a pure motivation, and let the law of cause and effect be our witness. If we are really honest, we can see that it makes no difference whether we receive praise and acclaim. The whole world might sing our praises, but if we have done something wrong, then we will still have to suffer the consequences for ourselves, and we cannot escape them. If we act only out of a pure motivation, all the beings of the three realms can criticize and rebuke us, but none of them will be able to cause us to suffer.
--The Dalai Lama
RIP: One last post on the moral courage of Kameny
Slate's Linda Hirshman on Frank Kameny, a man of action:
And when the American Psychiatric Association, which defined homosexuality as a mental disorder, decided to hold a meeting in Kameny’s hometown, he quickly organized the disorganized protesters of the GLF and the alphabet soup of other burgeoning gay organizations to disrupt the meeting. They then and force the shrinks to listen to their claims that they were not crazy.
When the moment came, the protesters upended the psychiatrists’ convocation, and actual fighting broke out, with the doctors using the medals they had just been awarded to beat back the invading homosexuals. Kameny, seeing that the designated protest speaker had been pushed out of the meeting room, leaped onto the stage. “I saw that nothing was going to happen unless I did it,” he recalled. The psychiatrists had taken away the microphone, but “I never needed a microphone. And I knew exactly what to say because I had been speaking about how wrong they were for years.”
And so Frank Kameny proceeded to regale the assembled professionals with his recitation of how their diagnosis of homosexuality as a mental illness was unscientific, groundless, immoral and harmful. Two years later, the APA took homosexuality out of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. Not Crazy. Two years after that, the federal government explicitly rescinded Executive Order 10450.
Grapplers of change: because of Hudson Taylor's Athlete Ally movement & shifting societal values, the Harvard Wrestling team supported National Coming Out Day
Ten years ago, athletes like these would be afraid that a pro-gay stance would make others question their sexual orientation. Not so much in 2011.
Andrew Sullivan eulogizes Frank Kameny, one of the founding fathers of the modern Gay movement
The great, perhaps greatest ever, campaigner for gay equality, Frank Kameny, died last night. Picketing the White House in 1962 in a tie for homosexual equality tells you much that you need to know. That he never gave up, that he insistently engaged even his fiercest opponents for decades with unremitting conviction and self-worth, that he was firing off clarifying emails to his last days ... this was a giant of a man. Without him, the movement to remove homosexuality as an impediment to security clearance in federal work would never have gotten off the ground. Ditto sodomy law repeal. Ditto the removal of homosexuality from the list of psychological disorders by the American Psychiatric Association board in 1973.
But what I treasure about Frank was his refusal to write anyone off. The most ferocious bigots he wrote polite but stern letters to. Here is an extract from one that was sent to the raging bigot, Joseph Farah, of WorldNetDaily. And they published it. Classic Kameny quote:
I am a long-time gay activist, considered by many to be one of the remaining Founding Fathers of the gay movement. I initiated gay activism and militancy in 1961 and coined the slogan "Gay is Good" in 1968. It is!
I am a gay veteran of front-line combat in Europe in World War II. I did not fight that war to return to second-class citizenship or back-of-the-bus status (or off the bus altogether) for me and my fellow gays...
We gays know that our homosexuality is a divinely inspired gift and blessing, given to us by our true God to be enjoyed to its fullest, exultantly, exuberantly and joyously.
We seek not "special rights and privileges" as you term them, but precise equality of rights and privileges in what is our America, for us explicitly as gay Americans (not merely "American Americans" so to speak) fully – fully – as much as it is your America as non-gay Americans.
To repeat: For us, as gay Americans, this is our America, fully as much as it is yours, and you are not going to be allowed to steal it from us, try as you may – and you are certainly trying very hard.
And they are our White House and our president, fully as much as they are yours.
Any time one's nerve faltered, or when the price of being a bit in the drill of a civil rights movement seemed too high, Frank's enthusiastic embrace of the goodness of gayness always cheered me up. There was not the slightest trace of defensiveness about him or his arguments. He believed, as I do, that gayness is not a disorder but an objective wonder, a way of being human that has its own unique patterns and staggering achievements through the centuries of our civilization and others.
The tragedy is not that gays are discriminated against because of who we love. That is an absurdity. The tragedy is that the goodness of gayness is barely grasped by many gays, beaten down as they have been by social and cultural pressure, and only recently grasped by large numbers of straights.
Frank Kameny believed in the goodness of gayness with all his mind, heart and soul in 1957. And he lived a long life, and died a peaceful death at home. His thought and his life made "gay tragedy" finally an oxymoron. He was a gay triumph.
10/11/11
I am just sayin...
In order to save this democracy from money-interests, it is time for campaign finance reform. Both parties have been corrupted.
Today, on National Coming Out Day, I need come out to someone...who will that be? Who is left? :)
And why coming out in 2011 matters:
Coretta Scott King on the link between racism & homophobia
For too long, our nation has tolerated the insidious form of discrimination against this group of Americans, who have worked as hard as any other group, paid their taxes like everyone else, and yet have been denied equal protection under the law.... I believe that freedom and justice cannot be parceled out in pieces to suit political convenience. My husband, Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” On another occasion he said, “I have worked too long and hard against segregated public accommodations to end up segregating my moral concern. Justice is indivisible.” Like Martin, I don’t believe you can stand for freedom for one group of people and deny it to others. So I see this bill as a step forward for freedom and human rights in our country and a logical extension of the Bill of Rights and the civil rights reforms of the 1950’s and ‘60’s. The great promise of American democracy is that no group of people will be forced to suffer discrimination and injustice.
--Coretta Scott King, remarks, press conference on the introduction of ENDA, Washington, DC, June 23, 1994
Be...
Be kind, be just, be humane, be honest, if you desire to crown your future! Dishonesty, cruelty, inhumanity, will condemn you to a miserable fall!
--Soyen Shaku
10/9/11
10/5/11
10/4/11
"Any sailor, regardless of background, race, gender, or sexual preference, has the opportunity to go as far as they can in this great Navy..."
"The promise from Navy leadership in this meritocracy is that any Sailor, regardless of background, race, gender, or sexual preference, has the opportunity to go as far as they can in this great Navy based on their work ethic, intelligence, aptitude, and commitment."
--Commander Tate Westbrook, at the commissioning ceremony for the Navy destroyer USS Spruance.
10/3/11
Welcome to the cause: formerly pro-DOMA GOP lobbyist switches sides after she comes out as a lesbian
From the Advocate:
And by hiring Lehman, the organization is taking a page out of the playbook from Proposition 8 opponents, who hired polar opposites Ted Olson and David Boies to make a court win happen.
Lehman, who has a law degree from the Catholic University of America, joined Holland & Knight in 2005 after working for a who’s-who of GOP lawmakers — Gingrich, Tom “The Hammer” DeLay, Dennis Hastert, and Deborah Pryce among them. As The Hill noted in November, the Republicans’ takeover of the House in the 2010 midterm elections has only raised her lobbying profile in Washington.
When DOMA was being written in 1996, Lehman was chief counsel for the House Subcommittee on the Constitution for former chairman Rep. Henry Hyde of Illinois. She oversaw the execution of all the subcommittee’s work, including the drafting and passage of DOMA. At the time, the right to marry for gay people existed nowhere on Earth, yet a court case in Hawaii was stoking both homophobia and fear that states could be forced to recognize same-sex marriages performed elsewhere.
When the legislation was drafted and debated in committee, Lehman was not out of the closet (not out to even herself, she said). “I have to say I do recall vividly sitting there, and listening to Barney Frank, who was the ranking member of the subcommittee during the hearings. And Barney’s saying, I just don’t understand how if I’m in a loving, committed relationship with my partner, how it hurts somebody else’s marriage,” she said. “I remember thinking at the time, Yeah, I’m not sure about that, either.”
10/2/11
10/1/11
Andrew Sullivan on this dovish & hawkish Democratic president
"The Un-Bush" by Andrew Sullivan
Last fall, the Dish hosted an impassioned debate about the morality and ethics and prudence of targeting US civilians who have joined the Jihadist enemy in seeking to attack the US. My own position is that we are at war, and that avowed enemies and traitors in active warfare against the US cannot suddenly invoke legal protections from a society they have decided to help destroy.
And so my response to the death of Anwar al Awlaki is obviously not going to be Glenn Greenwald's, although I respect his consistency and integrity on this question, even though I think his position minimizes the stakes of the conflict, and misreads the nature of war.
My response is to note what the Obama administration seems leery of saying out loud - in line with its general response to al Qaeda which is to speak very softly while ruthlessly killing scores of mid-level and high-level operatives. This administration actually is what the Bush administration claimed to be: a relentless executor of the war in terror, armed with real intelligence and lethally accurate execution. Sure, Yemen's al Qaeda is not the core al Qaeda of Pakistan/Afghanistan - it's less global in scope and capacities. But to remove one important propaganda source of that movement has made all of us safer. And those Americans who have lived under one of Awlaki's murderous fatwas can breathe more easily today.
The same goes for al Qaeda more generally. Obama has done in two years what Bush failed to do in eight. He has skillfully done all he can to reset relations with the broader Muslim world (despite the machinations of the Israeli government) while ruthlessly wiping out swathes of Jihadist planners, operatives and foot-soldiers in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He has thereby strengthened us immeasurably both in terms of soft and hard power.
Compare the two presidents. One unleashed a war in Afghanistan he then left to languish, and sparked an unjustified war in Iraq, that became a catastrophe of mass death and chaos. He both maximally antagonized the Arab and Muslim world and didn't even score a major victory against the enemy. In many ways, Bush gave al Qaeda an opening in Iraq where it never had one before, and allowed its key leadership to escape at Tora Bora. The torture program, meanwhile, fouled up our intelligence while destroying our moral standing in the world.
Obama has ended torture and pursued a real war, not an ideological spectacle. He has destroyed almost all of al Qaeda of 9/11 (if Zawahiri is taken out, no one is left), obliterated its ranks in Afghanistan and Pakistan, found and killed bin Laden, in a daring raid pushed relentlessly by the president alone, capturing alongside a trove of intelligence, procured as a consequence of courage and tenacity rather than cowardice and torture.
I know the next election will be about the economy. But what it should also be about is the revelation of the Republicans as fundamentally weak on national security. Caught up in their own ideology, they proved for eight years they'd rather posture and preen than do the intelligent, relentless, ethical intelligence work that is only now leading to victory.
Obama, in other words, is winning the war Bush kept losing. And since Cairo, we have witnessed the real flowering of democratic forces in the Middle East - unseen during the Bush-Cheney years. For all the tireless efforts of the Israelis to cripple US foreign policy against Jihadism, Obama has done the job. If he fails to make this case in the next election, he will, in my judgment, be blowing an important opportunity to reinforce a structural advantage against the GOP on national security.
Back in 2001, I wondered if Bush would be the president to win this war, while hoping he would. I wondered if his errors might lead to a successor who learned from them. That hope has now been fulfilled - more swiftly and decisively than I once dared to dream about.
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