As usual, The Onion captures the moment beautifully:

 That cracked me up.

If you’re an American citizen over the age of 18 and haven’t voted yet today, what are you waiting for?

If you don’t know where to vote, check out http://www.mypollingplace.com.

I saw Fahrenheit 9/11 tonight. Depending on who you ask, my ticket stub is good either for admission into the left-liberal Hall of Fame or the corner of hell reserved for Communists and people who buy foreign automobiles. For the record, I liked the film -- so that should help you clarify what box you want to put me in.

Regardless of whether you agree with Michael Moore’s politics or not, I think the film is significant for a number of reasons. First, it communicates a point of view that differs from the mainstream line of thought. By acting as a counterpoint to the general position on the war on terror, the film incites debate. Even if you disagree with the film’s position, its very existence forces you to process its content in some way and think about why you find it so great/horrible. Prior to Moore’s film, there really had been no mainstream media vehicle critical of the Bush administration’s policies; since what most people think about is largely driven by what’s presented by the mainstream media, a whole side of the dialectical process was missing prior to the film. It’s much easier to make good decisions when you have two differing positions to compare and contrast – it gives you a basis for examining their relative strengths and weakness – than it is to form an informed, reasoned opinion given only one point of reference. Moore’s film injects a different opinion into the public forum, and I think that’s a very good thing.

On a larger scale, though, Moore’s film tells us that it is still OK to publicly disagree with the politically correct. I got a little bit scared when George W. got up in front of Congress and gave his “you’re either with us or against us” speech. At the time, he was directly addressing the leaders of countries who harbor terrorists. However, there was a more subtle, more indirect consequence of that line – whether he intended to or not, he was setting new standards for the acceptable range of political opinion (if you don’t believe me, ask yourself this: in January of 2002, would you have felt comfortable telling someone you sympathized with the plight of the Palestinian people? Would you feel more comfortable doing that today?). Looking at history, times of war are characterized by the need to identify others as either friend or foe – even off the battlefield. In these times, the definition of “enemy” tends to creep toward “someone who disagrees with the mainstream”. As such, it becomes socially taboo to hold contrarian opinions. However, the cornerstone of democracy is the idea that people are free to think for themselves and hold whatever opinions they want, regardless of how politically unpopular those opinions may currently be. Furthermore, they have the right to openly express those opinions in public, without fear of political or social repercussions. By proudly proclaiming the contrarian viewpoint in a visible and public way, Moore’s film tells us that it is once again safe to be a free thinker.

Did Fahrenheit 9/11 change my political views? Well, I’ll put it this way – I’m no more likely to vote for Bush now than I was before I saw the film. But, in the grand scheme of things, I don’t think changing people’s minds was really Michael Moore’s primary intent.

I’ll be the first to admit that I have a lot of liberal views when it comes to politics. However, I’m a firm believer in dialectical reasoning, which is why I read more than a few political blogs that carry a conservative view (they’re filed under the “Right Wing Crap” category in SharpReader, but I do read them J ). One of my favorites is Joe Carter’s blog. He’s obviously very smart, he backs up his points, and he’s a good writer – which is why I enjoy reading him even though I generally disagree with what he has to say.

He recently posted a blog titled “Trading Freedom for Stability: Kerry’s Paleoconservative Foreign Policy”. The impetus for Joe’s post was an LA Times article that quoted Kerry as saying that a stable Iraq was more important than a fully democratized Iraq. What struck me about Joe’s post is that it implies that conservatives think trading freedom for security is a bad thing. Looking at Joe’s post and the things he links to, it’s possible to make a reasonable inference that conservatives tend to think that freedom and democracy is more important than political stability and (consequently) security.

It’s clear that Bush supports the “democracy at any cost” idea, as evidenced by his determination to turn the Iraqi government over to a to-be-determined third party on June 30^th, even though the political infrastructure in the country is still in post-war chaos and it’s unclear who from the Iraqi side is going to be receiving the power that the United States is relinquishing. Even though turning over Iraq to the Iraqis might introduce political instability and possibly sow the seeds of a civil war thereby endangering the lives of Iraqi citizens, such a move is complete acceptable in the conservative view because it furthers the cause of Iraqi freedom.

I find it ironic that many of the same conservatives who are so willing to trade security for freedom in Iraq are also the same people who are adamantly against making a similar tradeoff domestically. Since 9/11, the government of the United States has passed laws like the PATRIOT act that sacrifice civil liberties in order to provide security. We have things like CAPPS-II and secret (and inaccurate) no-fly lists maintained by the TSA. All of these things intrude (and in some cases, eliminate) the fundamental freedoms that we enjoy as Americans. The conservatives have justified these laws by claiming that, in the times in which we now live, it is necessary to trade freedom for security.

I wonder how many conservatives will be arguing that we should be willing to put freedom ahead of security when it comes time to vote on the renewal of the PATRIOT act later this year.

In his press conference tonight, Bush talked a lot about “winning the war on terror”. He stated that winning the war on terror was in fact possible, and that he had a plan for doing so.

The question I really wanted him to answer was: “If winning the war on terror is possible, how will we know when we’ve won it? What’s the concrete metric of victory?”

Condoleeza Rice has agreed to testify under oath before congress and the American people to give more details about the 9/11 affair. I think that this is a good thing.

It’s interesting how the White House is so concerned about her testimony setting a “precedent” for other White House officials to offer public testimony before Congress. The White House cited concerns that having Rice testify might violate executive privilege, and Rice herself said she didn’t want to testify as a “matter of principle”.

What principle is that, I wonder? That White House staffers are free to act without being held accountable to Congress? That the legislative branch of our government, the people’s direct representatives, don’t generally have a right to question the actions of the Executive branch? That the President and his appointees have the right to operate unchecked under the banner of “executive privilege?”

I’m not naïve; I understand that Dr. Rice, due to her position of as National Security Advisor, must necessarily keep some of her activities from the public eye. What concerns me is that the White House seems, in general, unwilling to have its staffers held accountable to the American people. It’s as if the White House is saying “we operate under executive privilege, on the direct orders of the President himself, and no one – not even the Congress – should be allowed to question that.”

Congress has the right and the responsibility to check the power of the executive branch. I think Dr. Rice’s testimony *should* set a precedent – the very precedent of transparency and accountability that the White House doesn’t want to be set.

Inspired by my recent purchase of Noam Chomsky’s book Hegemony or Survival (an act itself inspired by the recent interview he gave), I took a gander at the National Security Strategy of the United States (as published by the Bush administration in September of 2002). Particularly interesting is Section V (“Prevent Our Enemies from Threatening Us, Our Allies, and Our Friends with Weapons of Mass Destruction”), which outlines the U.S. doctrine of preemptive war.

Quoting from the Section V of the National Security Strategy:

“The United States has long maintained the option of preemptive actions to counter a sufficient threat to our national security. The greater the threat, the greater is the risk of inaction— and the more compelling the case for taking anticipatory action to defend ourselves, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy’s attack. To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively.

The United States will not use force in all cases to preempt emerging threats, nor should nations use preemption as a pretext for aggression. Yet in an age where the enemies of civilization openly and actively seek the world’s most destructive technologies, the United States cannot remain idle while dangers gather.”

With this strategy, the Bush administration justified the invasion of Iraq. According to the administration, action against Iraq was justified because the constituted an “imminent threat” to the security of the United States by virtue of their possession of WMD. Thus, the United States was determined to take preemptive action to neturalize the Iraqi threat in accordance with the current National Security Strategy.

However, after the invasion was completed and no WMD were found, the rhetoric and justification for the war has shifted away from the “imminent threat” argument and bifurcated along two major lines. One is idealistic – the war was justified because we gave freedom to the Iraqi people. The second is a refactored version of the preemptive war doctrine – invading Iraq was justified not because they were in fact an imminent threat, but because they possessed the capability and potentiality to become one at some future date. In other words, the National Security Strategy was now being used to justify military action that was not so much preemptive as preventative – what Chomsky terms “anticipatory self-defense”. Iraq’s actions around WMD were termed irrelevant; all that mattered was their intent to create them.

Chomsky provides a great summary of the effect of this strategic shift:

“Virtually any country has the potential and ability to produce WMD, and intent is in the eye of the beholder. Hence the refined version of the grand strategy effectively grants Washington the right of arbitrary aggression. Lowering the bar for the resort to force is the most significant consequence of the collapse of the proclaimed argument for the invasion.”

Perhaps this is why 86.9% of respondents to a 2003 Time Europe poll picked the United States at the greatest threat to world peace in 2003.