Rantings of a Bastard

"We can't have really restrictive term limits on politicians, because they'll barely learn how to do their jobs well before having to give them up."

Uh, what?

Okay, let's say that we restrict, say, Representatives to three 2-year terms (total of six years), which somehow comes across as a terrible idea.

Look, if you can't learn how to do your job (show up, read legislation, vote on legislation, have three martini lunch, fuck off for rest of day) inside of a couple of weeks, you're doing something wrong. And half the fucking time, they don't even bother reading the legislation. "Oh, I'm a {insert party} and this is from {same party}. I'm for it." Or "Oh, I'm a {insert party} and this is from {other party}. I'm against it."

Yeah, yeah... if you're on one of the big committees, you actually have other shit to do.... ahahahahahaha... yeah, not so much. Pretty much boils down to "Same shit, different room."

Fuck that. They should no longer get to vote on their own raises either, for that matter. In fact, we should vote on whether they get pay raises or pay cuts.

The U.S. Attorney General wants Congress to explicitly declare war against a terrorist organization.

Now, ignoring the fact that this terrorist organization has no national boundaries, no capital, no standing army, no regular and consistent chain of command, and no means of declaring a surrender should we "win" this war, oh it's just a shitty idea. Now, it's supposed to be to "help prosecute" terrorist suspects because, you know, that pesky Supreme Court said the prisoners at Gitmo had rights.

Let me break this down.

Groups calling themselves part of Al-Qaeda operate in several countries. Some of them are actually part of Al-Qaeda. Some of them are just trading on the name. It's kind of like saying you're part of the Boston Celtics, when in reality, you're a really tall janitor who happens to mop out their locker room. Since there is no one country that anyone can point to on a map and say (without lying through their goddamned teeth) "Here is Al-Qaeda. All of it." declaring war on Al-Qaeda would only serve the purpose of letting an demonstrably incompetent and warmongering administration use that declaration as a pretext to invade any country.

Or, worse, declare martial law. (Okay, that's probably real far out there in tinfoil hat territory.)

Al-Qaeda does not have a standing army. Are there apparently a lot of people willing to join whatever terrorist cell in some claim to fame/blow up some Americans (or whoever just happens to be standing nearby)? Yes. But there's no uniforms, no standardized training (what would be the training for a suicide bomber anyway? "Press the button, Achmed, but NOT HERE, OH SHIT DUCK!"), and there's no standardized chain of command. I mean, in the U.S. Army, there's a chain of command. Generals order colonels, colonels order majors, majors yell at captains and lieutenants, and eventually someone gets the enlisted men to do whatever needed to be done, usually under the careful supervision of a sergeant. (The sergeant is mostly there to make sure the lieutenants don't try and help. You can't trust a lieutenant.)

But I digress.

Al-Qaeda doesn't have that. Oh sure, Osama Bin Laden is, in theory, heap big chief of it all. Except, of course, that he's in hiding (possibly dead), and it's a stone bitch, even in the modern age, to try and run a jihad when you can't step outside of a cave. Al-Qaeda is too loose of an organization to declare war on, because it's really impossible to tell who is Al-Qaeda and who isn't. I mean, fuck, did no one learn anything from Vietnam? Hey, indigenous people who don't wear uniforms and who could all, in theory, be the enemy.

Yup, that's gonna be a reaaaaal easy conflict.

And because of the lack of this chain of command, because of this lack of structure, Al-Qaeda can't surrender. Not in the accepted way of their leaders waving a white flag, or calling a cease fire, or even shooting their own brains out in a bunker while the Russians advance. I mean, if some "Al-Qaeda" leader in Iraq surrenders his entire terrorist cell today, what does that mean for other "Al-Qaeda in Iraq"? Why, sweet fuck all.

But hey, let's say, for sake of arguement, that it's only going to be used against those guys what are being held down in Gitmo. Hasn't the Supreme Court made it clear already (a couple of times, actually) what the legal process should be? Shouldn't the Bush administration have gotten the idea that at this point, they need to stop trying to do an end-run around the Constitution?

You'd think that, but you'd be wrong.