Exceptional Myopia

Joe,
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We're going to have to start "walking the walk". The gulf between our talk and our actions has been killing us internationally, and will continue to do so until we match the two.

Just noticed Swampland has gone to a truncated RSS feed. Is there a full-text feed out there? Otherwise I will have to bid adieu to Swampland as I remove this worthless feed from my reader.

According to the remaining GOP diehards anything Obama does equals bad. It's already become nothing but tiresome rhetoric to the mainstream American voter. Which probably explains why GOP party identification is at a several decade year low.

Excellent points, Joe. I just got back from a long week-end in London and some friends I saw spoke again about how they waited with fingers crossed and high hopes for the results of our election. The Bush years were such a disaster from their point of view that they really dispaired if Obama didn't win.
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The other thing that struck me was the sheer number of daily papers widely available - ten in the supermarket I passed on the way from the tube to my hotel. I read several different ones in the days I was there and they were all positive in their Obama and US coverage.
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It won't happen overnight, but as you note in your last sentence, Americans whole heartedly support Obama's approach and feel it is the way we will be able to gain back the respect and support of the world.
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OT, glad you're back SZ.

To Americans, it refers to our most obvious and unique strength--that ours is the only nation where citizenship is not dependent on ethnic identity, but on the willingness to subscribe to the ideas of freedom, equality and democracy. When we're at our best, America tends to mean that to the rest of the world as well.
But in recent years, much of the rest of the world came to see American exceptionalism as a belief that we can make our own rules, make exceptions, as it were...
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Its interesting that you can state this so clearly and understand it so well, yet still insist that our intelligence services should be able to operate with no supervision or oversight whatsoever, even from people within the blanket of proper security clearances.
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Don't get me wrong. I'm glad that your willing to point out that American exceptionalism means that America is exceptional and not that it can do no wrong. I just wish you were more consistent in the application of the principle.

You know, at first glance I read that as "Exceptional Mojito" for some reason--guess its just been a rough week.
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At this point, that the vocal "right wing punditry" is nothing more than a mass of rabid, frothing reactionaries is nothing surprising. Indeed, par for the course. And since they've taken their recent electoral drubbings as a sign they're not being whack-job enough, they're just going to advocate more and more radical stuff. In this case, the only appropriate and rational response Obama could have done for, say, Chavez shaking his hand and giving him a book is to:
a) do one of those finger-crushing handshakes while grinning toothily
b) beat him to death with said book
c) scream "Amerka, f#@& YEAH!"
d) all of the above
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Their version of diplomacy is straight out of the Conan novels; needless to say its done a great job over the last eight years in terms of making friends and influencing people.

Here's an article from your own mag, Joe, that points to some of the benefits gained by Obama's so-called "apology" tour:
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1894347,00.html
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The world has spent the last 4 years giving Bush the "bobblehead yes" on many major issues because they didn't want to run afoul of the "if you're not with us, you're against us" policy of the Administration.
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Now, they feel much freer to open up cooperative channels because they do not fear that their laws will be violated, constituting a reverse "extroidinary renditions" problem.

Ivy_B:
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Have a collegue that moved to London to get her masters in geomatics at UCL. She loves it there, dispite the weather.

I wish we'd had conservative blogs around a few generations ago.
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"Kennedy just said he was a Berliner!!! OMG!!! I guess being an American just isn't good enough for him!!!"

Maybe the "right wing poultry" (hammerlock, I'm still clearing the fog in my brain with coffee, sorry!) should really take their "concerns" to a new level a la Palin and others who want to turn down that stimulus money:
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They should turn away their allotment of Tamiflu doses that Obama released yesterday.
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Let's see how that blows over...

"wingnuts", gee Joe, nice way to dismiss your ideological opposition. Are you a serious commentator or an overaged KosKid?
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I have a question. Since Dems were briefed on waterboarding and other assorted techniques, why didn't they introduce legislation to ban the practice? Why don't they do so now?

Wow, spob, this one is easy.
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1. That information was classified and the "knowers" were bound by law not to divulge their infomatin.
2. It would have never gotten any where as Bush would have vetoed it.
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It's dumb enough to read some of your pontifications on scientific stuff, spob, but existance is not complicity!
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I have yet to see any right wing poultry in our ranks...

I often complain when people anthropomorphise nations and speak of them as if they were individuals, but consider this. What would you think of an individual who was utterly incapable of the thought that he might be wrong and who saw the act of apologizing as a sign not only of weakness but of failure?
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I would not only regard such a person as an a$$h01e but I would be inclined to do everything in my power to cut him down to size.
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Funny how that works......

#1. Jamie Kirchuk only writes what Martin Peretz tells him to write.
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#2. This is all about Iran.

They're not bound now, 53_3, and it's doubtful that when briefed, they were barred from introducing legislation. You know, that whole constitution thing.
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Bush cannot veto it now.

Since Dems were briefed on waterboarding and other assorted techniques, why didn't they introduce legislation to ban the practice?
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Because the legislation to ban the practice is already in place. Why would someone write a new law just to remind people that there's an old one already on the books?
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One could better ask why no one's introduced the legislation to repeal TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 113C >
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http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/usc_sup_01_18_10_I_20_113C.html

spob
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Bush vetoed a bill banning waterboarding. Where were you?
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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23526436/

(1) “torture” means an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control;
(2) “severe mental pain or suffering” means the prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from—
(A) the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering;
(B) the administration or application, or threatened administration or application, of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality;
(C) the threat of imminent death; or
(D) the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering, or the administration or application of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or personality; and

53_3,
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Add to your list the fact that the Dem leadership was (and, in some cases, continues to be) a bunch of spineless weasels, terrified of being painted as "weak on terrorism".
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We really do need a change in leadership.

Er, Klein, this post is 1% quote, 99% wishful thinking, and 100% bombast.
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Yes, Obama's approach may make significant progress in the international theater. Unfortunately, none of us know for sure.

Same old stuff.
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"President Clinton's apology-strewn tour of Africa is Issue 1: He's sorry about slavery; he's sorry about the Rwanda massacre. And the schoolyard murder in Jonesboro, Ark."
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http://www.slate.com/id/1679/

In case you need it spelled out, sleep deprivation is a procedure calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality and waterboarding most certainly represents the threat of imminent death.

"#1. Jamie Kirchuk only writes what Martin Peretz tells him to write.
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#2. This is all about Iran."
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Spot on. I wouldn't consider Kirchick a wingnut in the conservative/far right mold. (no gay man would ever be accepted by that crew) I think he leans center left on everything outside of the foreign policy realm. But when it comes to foreign policy, especially the Middle East/Israel, he's Marty Jr. with a strong does of neo-conservatism.

Only slightly of topic: exceptional irony
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The Supreme Court just upheld Bush administration crack down on profanity in television. Isn't it just too ironic that at the very moment in time when we find ourselves embroiled in a debate about the morality of torture, our supreme law of the land has chosen to define our national decency in terms of not using a curse word on live tee vee when children might hear.

Bush cannot veto it now, and hey look--all this stuff is coming out and they want to act on the information released.
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Congress critters are limited by state secrets rules. They get oversight capacity, but even then they are limited to what the various agencies tell them--and everything points to this being one of those "creatively reported" issues. The executive branch wasn't too keen on that whole oversight thing; it slowed down their pursuit of terrists and constitutional rights.
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I would expect at the least for waterboarding and other "aggressive interrogation" tactics to get labeled as torture and expressly illegal sometime in the next 6-9 months. As to hearings into the Bushie sociopaths...less definite, but still quite likely.