What Happens When Leaders Cut Brush Instead of Leading

For a variety of reasons, some known knowns, many more either known unknowns or unknown knowns, I am not keeping up with my reading this year, based on both current goals and comparison with last year's program. It's certainly not for want of inspiration. I had Glenn Greenwald's "Great American Hypocrites" pre-ordered and received it a couple weeks ago, but it has alas languished amidst the splendor of other materials (many with a compelling library due date!). However, it is clearly must reading, and will wrestle its' way to the top of the heap soon, I'm sure.

Philip Shenon's "The Commission," the "Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation," despite being quite gripping, did consume more days than I expected. One of the major side-plots featured there that came across as new to me was the attempt by AG Ashcroft and a supporting cast of the usual right-wing swine to scapegoat Commissioner Jamie Gorelick for the failures of the intelligence community and the bush administration in particular to pay attention to repeating warnings of imminent terrorist attacks on US soil prior to September 2001. This ruse involved a memo signed by Gorelick in her role as deputy AG in 1995. This memo basically recounted the long-standing DoJ policy on handling of terrorism cases, including restrictions on unfettered sharing of information between intelligence agents and criminal investigators. Based on multiple court orders, this policy was aimed at preserving civil liberties and reducing the risk that the comparatively low standards required for counterterrorism agents to obtain warrants for eavesdropping would not poison criminal prosecutions by introducing inadmissible evidence. It is a mark of the level of desperation felt by the bush administration that they attempted to gang-tackle Gorelick and make the absolutely ridiculous claim that this memo so hobbled the intelligence agencies that they just couldn't figure out how to do their jobs. Frankly, a little more brush left un-cut down there on that ranch, a lot less strutting around and cartoon role-playing, any midnight oil at all by the president (ever!), and anything resembling actual courageous leadership from george, dick, condie, donald, and george et al could have made a hell of a difference. They know it and even Shenon's pulled punches make it clear how desperately afraid they were of having the truth come out.

Interestingly, pretty much the entire 9/11 Commission apparently rallied strongly behind Gorelick, in particular Republican Slade Gorton:

But as he listened to the attorney general's testimony and the attack on Gorelick, Gorton realized how wrong he had been about Ashcroft. "I was shocked," he recalled. "This attack was unprincipled. I was just infuriated."

I highly recommend The Commission. Important reading for anyone trying to understand the back-stage machinations of that strange incestuous community back in DC. I admit I was hoping for a harder-hitting condemnation of the Commission for the compromises involved in their publications. Likewise, while Philip Zelikow certainly comes off as seriously tainted (and ever so appropriately) in his fully-conflicted and compromised role as the executive director, in my opinion he got off way too easy here.

I have also found myself in the grip of some great historical espionage novels from the pen of Alan Furst. I'm currently in the end-stages of "Night Soldiers," having previously greatly enjoyed "Foreign Correspondent." These are wonderfully gritty tales of very credible characters fully embedded in the intricacies of world events; both of these books are set in the 1930's and '40's in Europe.

But my backlog just within easy reach of the keyboard here (besides Greenwald) includes "Death of a Hawker," an intriguing mystery set in Amsterdam and recommended by neighbor Steve (hi!), "Three Cups of Tea," offered up by Mom but also recommended previously by a co-worker, "How Proust Can Change Your Life," "Walden Pond - a History," and Olbermann's "Worst Person in the World" as well as "Truth and Consequences." Relentless.

And then today I was reminded that Arianna Huffington has a highly-touted new book out also, namely "Right is Wrong." I believe the following post is the result of Greenwald acting as host for a book soiree at the Firedoglake site earlier today. I relished the primary post but imagine there is a lot more good nutrition to be found in the extended comment section. This is familiar turf, very complementary to Greenwald's Hypocrites and his yeomanly blogging at Salon on the topic of television and print media having absolutely fallen from grace, drunk the kool-aid, and sold out, as well as the democratic party leadership having bred with jellyfish and lost any ability to actually resemble a party in opposition to the rape of democracy that has been going on in this country for a good long time now.

I believe you will benefit from a full reading of the post and comments. A taste:

Arianna Huffington's latest book -- Right Is Wrong: How the Lunatic Fringe Hijacked America, Shredded the Constitution, and Made Us All Less Safe -- thoroughly documents the most influential fact in our political life: namely, that the right-wing faction which has taken over the Republican Party is radical, deeply hostile to America's core political traditions and values, and incomparably destructive. As she puts it: "they don't believe in evolution but believe in torture."

But the real value of this book is its examination of the two key culprits in the ascension of this right-wing fringe: the establishment media and the Beltway leaders of the Democratic Party. Huffington's insights are most piercing and innovative when her targets are the bloated, empty-headed media stars who have done more than anyone else to allow this fringe group to masquerade as part of the mainstream. And she pinpoints the dual afflictions which have rendered the media totally supine, when they aren't actively complicit, in the face of this falsehood-spewing, extremist movement -- the twisted notion of journalistic "balance" which means that they present every claim no matter how objectively false, along with the "self-hating" mentality of "liberal" journalists who have internalized right-wing smears and thus repeat them and seek to accommodate them:

A key to understanding the fanatical Right’s takeover of the Republican Party and how these ideas spread to the rest of the country is looking at the role of the media—not the Fox News pseudo-newsmen or the talk radio blowhards—but the respectable, supposedly liberal media. Without the enabling of the traditional media—with their obsession with “balance” and their pathological devotion to the idea that truth is always found in the middle—the radical Right would never have been able to have its ideas taken seriously. . . . By reporting everything through this prism the media missed the big story: the hijacking of America by the lunatic Right.

Perhaps the most compelling proof of how potent is Huffington's critique of the media's malfeasance is that one of her prime and most-deserving targets, pseudo-tough-guy Tim Russert, banned Huffington from appearing on NBC and MSNBC shows to discuss her book, because of his hurt feelings over the criticism she voices. As demonstrated by the recent network news blackout of the NYT's "military analyst" expose -- a blackout which Huffington recently described as "among the most shameful in the history of American journalism" -- our media stars will simply suppress, conceal from their audience, any content which reveals their fundamental corruption. Hence, Russert uses his position at NBC to ensure that NBC viewers are blocked from hearing Huffington's revealing critique of his "journalism."

Huffington is equally unsparing -- and equally on-point -- when it comes to the fear-driven, weakness-embodying Democratic Party establishment, which has been as unwilling as the establishment press to take on the fringe Right:

The other not-so-innocent bystanders to the Right’s takeover are the Democrats who have continued to tread far too lightly when it comes to holding the GOP’s fanatical core accountable. Time and time again, the Democratic leadership has allowed itself to get played, run over, or distracted.

In sum, we are a nation that has been taken over by a political movement that holds fringe views largely because the two institutions which had the responsibility to expose the truth of what they are -- the media and the "opposition party" -- miserably failed to fulfill those functions. Huffington's book is a merciless though extremely well-document indictment of those failed institutions, and highlights the havoc these failures have wreaked on our country and political culture.

As depressing as all of that may sound, the book itself is characterized by the vibrant and entertaining yet always hard-hitting tone which characterizes everything Arianna does. And underlying its assessment of our deep-seated political woes is a bulging optimism that the Right can be easily crushed -- the same optimistic premise which drove her to create and build with shocking speed The Huffington Post, one of the few real counter-weights to the toxic right-wing noise machine.

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