The diagnostic criteria for this Syndrome seem to be:

- the conviction that no intelligent, informed and rational person outside the Bush Administration could possibly agree with Bush, and that no person inside the Bush Administration holds any honest convictions on the matter of how to deal with terrorism if those convictions conform to Bush policies. In this sense, the Syndrome shares some features with paranoid personality disorder, although limited to the political context.

- the belief that an assertion of opinion, such as the claim that “terrorism tends to be self-limiting unless it wins the support of its erswhile (sic) opponents,” if stated in strong enough terms and with enough contempt for skeptics, becomes a fact, and the belief that a prediction of the outcome of a policy has the same logical weight as a fact. The Syndrome therefore shares some of the characteristics of schizoid personality disorder, notably the tendency toward magical thinking;

- a memory defect that prevents the sufferer from recognizing that President Bush’s last term expires in two years, and that therefore there is no rational basis for believing that Bush’s “political fortunes absolutely depend on scaring the wits out of the public.” Memory also appears to be affected in other areas, such as the belief that “if grown-ups were in charge the radicals in the Middle East would be marginalized in short order,” a belief that requires forgetting the history of the current threat since its beginnings in the late 1920s, as well as the history of other regimes such as the Nazis and the Communists, which also offered an overarching ideological framework, a sharp delineation between the pure adherents of the ideology and all others, and an exclusively utilitarian view of the individual human being.

- in an environment where both available choices involve risks, a compulsive need to minimize to the point of insignificance the threats from one choice, “What the heck do they have to offer to anybody?” while exaggerating the threats from the other, Bush, precluding any rational analysis of the choices. Jim ought to understand one of the things that the Islamists have to offer, since he derives it from his own political beliefs, and that is a certain conviction of one’s superiority over other people who don’t share one’s views.

Value issues aside, support for the Bush agenda is based on a misunderstanding of the facts. The threat from terrorism is real but entirely managable–terrorism tends to be self limiting unless it wins the tacit support of its erswhile opponents. Bush would have to be nuts to allow a real victory over Islamic terrorism since his political fortunes absolutely depend upon scaring the wits out of the public. If his administration defeats terrorism, it will be by mistake. On the other hand, if grownups were in charge, the radicals in the Middle East would be marginalized in short order. What the heck do they have to offer to anybody?

Only an ALIEN UNLAWFUL ENEMY COMBATANT is subject to trial by military tribunal. Could Sean or one of the posters who is opposed to trying such indviduals by military tribunal make clear what their alternative would be? A criminal trial with full consitutional protections including taxpayer funded defense counsel, Miranda warnings upon capture, and full discovery of all intelligence upon which their capture was based?

Sorry, folks. I don’t remember Lincoln, Wilson, FDR or Truman granting such rights, so why the Bush hatred for his failure to do so?

And anyone who is offended by legislation attempting to define torture hasn’t read much legislation. The whole point of a law is to make as clear as possible what it applies to and what it doesn’t. You may think waterboarding or sleep deprivation is torture, even though I’ve heard both are used in training our own soldiers and new parents are routinely subjected to sleep deprivation, but not everyone would agree with you. A non-believer touching the Qu’ran with ungloved hands may be torture to some people, while forbidding it might be considered pandering to bigotry by others.

As for the historical review devoted to addressing whether the United States is good or evil, or overall has acted for good more than for evil, or whatever: A lot of interesting points are being made, but I am reminded of discussions I have had with suicidal people. There’s a strong underlying premise that if parts of your life really suck, it’s not worth living. A lot of the arguments about Amercia’s problems seem more to be justifications for why it should not consider itself worth saving, especially if saving itself entails any unpleasantness.

I guess I am one of those ignorant, stupid, fearful individuals who continue to support Bush. That’s because he’s President and he seems to be more interested in making war on Al Qaeda than on Walmart, and he seems to have a plausible though not guaranteed long-term strategy for diminishing their number and appeal to their co-religionists. I have plenty of complaints about how he’s done his job, but they are largely irrelevant because I don’t think the alternative I had in the last election, John Kerry, would have done as well, and there were, after all, only two choices.

In the final analysis, there usually only are two choices - [metaphor alert] drown or come up for air. When people complain bitterly how the country is going to hell in a handbasket because Bush is engaging in the very mildest versions of actions FDR is still lauded for having taken to extremes, I can’t help thinking that drowning is only way we’ll satisfy some of them that we are pure enough. Much like the people who complain about how we squandered all of the world’s goodwill by going to war after 9-11. We could surely have kept that goodwill - if we’d kept on dying.

U.S. citizens are NOT subject to being tried by military commission. The law specifically defines the persons subject to trial by military tribunals as ALIEN unlawful enemy combatants (at Section 948c) and defines alien as a person who is not a citizen of the United States (at Section 948a).

A lawful enemy combatant is not subject to trial by military tribunal either.

Only an ALIEN UNLAWFUL ENEMY COMBATANT

I think what’s safe to say is that none of these nations had a text beginning with the words “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal” at their basis. That slaves, black and women should be counted among men came gradually, but the US was a bold step, in France similar and bolder steps led to catastrophe and relapse into absolutism.

However, my point was merely that this is something worth remembering for critics of the US. Whether or in what sense they were “first” is not that important in this context.

I’ve been absent for a week or so, and will be for a few days more. However, before I hop on a plane, I thought I’d quickly comment on what a remarkable week it has been for the constitution.
I hesitate slightly before continuing to write…

Seriously:

a) Nobody here thinks the US is evil (in this comments at least). We just don’t think that it’s “good” by definition or divine destiny. If it’s good it’s good by it’s actions.

b) Nobody here thinks that we should never involve ourselfs in other countries, most of the countries opposing the US’ so called “War of Terror” and the “War on Iraq” were supporting the Blakan and Afghanisthan Wars. These were difficult decisions, too.

c) “Leftist sympathizers” want to understand the enemy to eliminate it. Instead of simply blindly waging vaguely or totally unrelated wars and thereby strengthening it (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5384548.stm). We are against the war in Iraq because it’s a ’cause celebre’ for al Quaeda. We are shocked by this latest legislation because see a).
This is not about leftist sympathizers what the CIA has done and is now authorized to do is simply illegal. Several Attorney Generals are investigating CIA agents, some arrest warrants against CIA agents have been issued. This has nothing to do with partisan politics. This is quite simply an issue of modern civilization, the rule of law and reason. This is what makes us “good” and them “evil”.

d) I personally have repeatedly argued that the US has been one of the most benign Imperial Powers the world has ever seen. Often opting for indirect and economic influence rather then direct control. The Roman empire was so succesfull in parts because it granted total Religious freedom to the subjugated regions.
The counter narrative is that misguided capitalist policies backed by Europe and the US have wrecked many countries economies and limited their democratic freedoms.

e) In order to maintain it’s imperial influences the US agencies have, often without knowledge of the US people, resorted to anti-democratic, anti-freedom, anti-human rights methods, these deeds stand in contrast to the (not purely, though partially selfless) deeds you mentioned.
The US left? Well except of course for the military bases it has throughout Germany.
(And if you want to be legalistic about it: “Germany remained under nominal military occupation until 12 September 1990, when the Treaty on the Final Settlement With Respect to Germany, the final peace treaty, was signed by the four powers and the two German governments, restoring German sovereignty.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_Control_Council)

f) Internally the US has shown time and time again that it has a great resillience to fascist tendencies, McCarthy, Concentration camps during WWII for the Japanese, and so on, all resulted in a backlash that undid these terrible things, so I have no doubt that this will happen again, because people like Sean and others who have commented will push things back. It’s not accidental that the US is the longest surviving democracy on this planet…

g) For me the central question is the following: The US (and to a somewhat lesser degree the EU) are militarily and economically the dominant powers in the world today. This will last for a few more decades until China overtakes us and the brief centuries of European dominance (of which the US dominance is just the latest chapter) of the globe come to an end.
What do we do with our power? We defend our values, of course. We cannot accept the limits on freedom of speech, science and culture that the terrorist threat has brought forth. This is not neccessarily best done by military power of course, ideally we would just be calm about the “terrorist threat” which is minimal anyways (http://www.boingboing.net/2006/09/17/flu_hernia_or_police.html).
But beyond that? Do we try to spread our values? If so these can only be our humanist values and not our christian values. Our humanist and democratic values were developed in a specific cultural tradition and context though, and though I believe them to be in some sense universal it’s likely that each soiciety needs to reach these universal values in their own way.
This is a diffcult question to which your postings have not contributed at all, in fact they merely distract from this, IMO, most real and urgent question facing us.