By the way, in addition to the Daily Howler, liberals with too much time and bandwidth should probably put Working for Change on their daily checkum list. In addition to hosting a variety of syndicated columnists (and a few cartoons), they do a good job of posting links to other columns of interest to traitorous, obstructionist, tax'n'spend liberals.
For instance, today they link to a New Yorker interview with Seymour M. Hersch about the process by which intelligence preparatory to the so-called Battle of Iraq was gathered and analyzed, and how that process differed from the usual one, and what repercussions all of that may have for us.
The most troubling thing to me in this story (and in this administration)(OK, there are probably even more troubling things) is the muddling of military and civilian roles. This ranges from frankly dopey things like Bush's jumpsuit and tendency to salute to the use of military tribunals for civilian resident aliens.
Digression: John Lukacs in an April 14 New York Times op-ed called "The Senseless Salute" complained bitterly about the salute, which Reagan evidently started doing, but which no other president did; more recently Krugman complains that neither Kennedy nor Eisenower ever wore military or quasi-military garb while in office. Sure, that's an annoying tendency to blowhard pseudo-militarism, but we don't want to get too caught up in whinging about symbolism when there are substantive issues. Bush got away with the Lincoln, and everybody who will ever be outraged already is outraged; let's talk about bridges and libraries, tribunals, disinformation, and Syria. End digression.
The US has (in common with lots of other countries) a terrific tradition and structure of civilian oversight of the military. In addition, the military role is restricted in a variety of ways; we don't allow the military to get involved in domestic police work, normally, nor do we include sitting generals or admirals in the cabinet or on diplomatic missions. In the history of the US, it's conspicuous that the military has not (as most militaries have) abused its powers by stealing, raping and killing with impunity. Why not? I submit that it is in part because of the civilian oversight, in part because of the restrictions on military use, and in part because of the American ideals of democracy, equality, and liberty.
However, in the last twenty years or so, there has been an increasing fetishization of the military, deliberately (and likely with good will) encouraged by the Republican right, and currently we are pretty much at the furthest I think it is safe to go in that direction. And there's no obvious sign that it is slowing down.
Thank you,
-Vardibidian.