May 8, 2011, Righteous indignations
We'll start with perennial flame-thrower Noam Chomsky, who asks the musical question, "what if Iraqi commandos had landed here, assassinated George W. Bush and dumped his body into the ocean?" Chomsky's take is provocative, taking on such subjects as the unfortunate use of American Indian names in American weaponry (Apache Helicopter, Tomahawk Missile)... or even that the OBL mission was called "Geronimo," as well as the human scale of the result of Dubya's wars. No one will accuse old Noam of sugar-coating!
FDL's Emptywheel puts the official meme of "the risky White House decision" to launch the mission to get OBL in appropriate perspective. One of those risks-- dramatically underappreciated-- is just how pissed the people of and in Pakistan were likely to be from the whole thing, not the least of which is the implication that somehow it was widely known that OBL was there (rather than that he was the guest of elements of Pakistan's intel service). It seems the consequences of that will keep coming... as, inter alia, Pakistan has evidently decided to burn a local CIA chief (note that both the Emptywheel and the Times of India clue us in to the disclosure of just a wee bit too much of "means and methods" of spydom, such as that positive i.d.'s of OBL were difficult because he kept the battery out of his cellphone (or presumably those of "couriers") until they were at least 90 minutes away and that the windows were such that a satellite image of him couldn't be confirmed, or that the CIA had a "safe-house" in Abbotabad to monitor OBL's compound... and now we learn that OBL was in another location near Haribur (on the Abbotabad Highway) for around two years before Abbotabad, meaning he was in non-tribal-area Pakistan for over 7 1/2 years, or since 2003...
On the domestic front, I note the indignation all around, as a pilot refused to take off with two men, Muslim clerics, actually, who were wearing non-Western garb (one was in traditional Indian attire.) Ramifications... to follow, I suppose. Why can't we all just get along?
And Krugman expresses righteous indignation at this WaPo op-ed. Krugman observes that WaPo correctly identifies the problem ("structural unemployment"), and then rules out the solutions (fiscal and/or monetary expansion), and also refuses to accept the consequences of its own proposal (doing nothing), to wit, depression... In short, WaPo reflects the perfect current American political/economic fantasy mind-set... the house is on fire, but the usual methods of putting the fire out will be too painful, but everything will be o.k.... it just will. Krugman (and a number of other economists)... disagree with that. (Highway to hell, anyone?)
This has been... "righteous indignations."