“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.
The Sunday Talking Heads:
This Week with Christiane Amanpour: Joining Christiane this week are:
President Obama’s National Security Advisor, Tom Donilon to defend the killing of OBL;
Former Secretary of State under George W. Bush, Condoleeza Rice to defend Pres Bush not killing OBL and torturing everyone under the pretext of finding the elusive one;
Liz Cheney, Co-Founder of Keep America Safe, Tom Ricks of Foreign Policy Magazine and The New Yorker’s Lawrence Wright discuss whether this successful mission changes the torture debate and if Pakistan is a credible partner in the fight against terrorism;
And finally a round table of guests, including Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper, Senior Foreign Affairs Correspondent Martha Raddatz and Senior Justice Correspondent Pierre Thomas join Christiane and George Will to discuss the very latest on how the Obama administration is moving forward after taking out Bin Laden
On Bill Maher’s Real Time, he ran a video from his show in 2007 where Christiane said OBL was hiding in a mansion in Pakistan. Somebody in the CIA should have asked her. Ya think.
Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Mr. Scheiffer’s guests are Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) and Donald Rumsfeld, former Secretary of Defense discussing what’s next in the war on terror And what’s the future of U.S.-Pakistan relations.
The Chris Matthews Show: This week’s guests are Helene Cooper, The New York Times White House Correspondent, Rick Stengel, TIME Managing Editor, David Ignatius, The Washington Post Columnist and
Elisabeth Bumiller, The New York Times Pentagon correspondent tackling what else butAfter bin Laden, What’s Our Biggest Threat Now?
How Fast Can We Leave Afghanistan?
Meet the Press with David Gregory: This week Mr. Gregory has achieved an all time low in assembling a group of war crime and Bush apologists that include: Former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, Former CIA Director General Michael Hayden and Former Mayor of New York City Rudy Giuliani who will discuss if the world is safer.
Seriously, could this be worse?Also White House National Security Adviser Tom Donilon to do some more explaining.
The round table guests are: Bob Woodward, Katty Kay, Doris Kearns Goodwin and Mike Murphy
State of the Union with Candy Crowley: Tom Donilon is gonna need to rest his vocal cords. The only other guest discussing OBL will be Senate Foreign Relations Ranking Member, Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN).
NATO Secretary General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen will discuss Libya and former Congressman Tom Davis and former Obama White House aide Anita Dunn will talk about other political happeings.
Something else happened besides killing OBL?
If you’re a Mom, Happy Mother’s Day, go back to bed. Everyone else pamper a Mom.
When I first wrote about the bin Laden killing on Monday, I suggested that the intense (and understandable) emotional response to his being dead would almost certainly drown out any discussions of the legality, ethics, or precedents created by this event. That, I think, has largely been borne out, at least in the U.S. (one poll shows 86% of Americans favor the killing, though that’s hardly universal: a poll in Germany finds 64% view this as “no reason to rejoice,” while 52% believe an attempt should have been made to arrest him; many European newspapers have harshly criticized U.S. actions; and German Prime Minister Angela Merkel’s declaration of happiness over bin Laden’s death provoked widespread criticism even in her own party). I expected — and fully understand — that many people’s view of the bin Laden killing is shaped first and foremost by happiness over his death.
But what has surprised me somewhat is how little interest there seems to be in finding out what actually happened here. We know very little about the circumstances of bin Laden’s killing, because the U.S. government has issued so many contradictory claims, which in turn contradict the reported claims of those at the scene. When I wrote about this on Monday, I said that the use of force would be justified if, as the U.S. Government claimed, he was violently resisting his capture. But that turned out to be totally false. It’s now beyond dispute that bin Laden was unarmed when killed and there was virtually no violent resistence in the house. Still, the range of possibilities for what actually happened is vast — everything from he was lunging for his AK-47 to he was already captured when shot (in front of his family) to the order from the start was to kill, not capture, him — and I personally don’t see how it’s possible to assess the justifiability (or legality) of what took place without knowing which of those are true.
David Sirota: The High Cost of Cheap War
It seems only fitting that in the very month the Terminator sci-fi franchise predicted the rise of militarized artificial intelligence, the Guardian of London reported on a British Ministry of Defence analysis warning that drone warfare may be creating an “incremental and involuntary journey towards a Terminator-like reality.”
The report’s life-imitating-Skynet idea of robots ultimately making combat decisions is certainly scary-but still a bit fantastical. The more frightening part of the analysis was its look at how roboticized war may already be prompting governments to “resort to war as a policy option far sooner than previously.”
The dynamic is not surprising-nations will inevitably be more willing to use warfare as a foreign policy tool if they possess instruments limiting the cost of waging war. By letting kids in Las Vegas drop remote-controlled bombs on kids in Pakistan, Yemen and now Libya, drones are one of those instruments. But they are only one of many. Indeed, while President Obama preposterously claimed this week that most Americans “know well the costs of war,” it’s quite the opposite: Most Americans have been insulated from those costs-and it’s no coincidence that as we’ve become more insulated, we’ve happily waged more frequent wars.
Joe Conason: Tough Enough
It is always a happy moment when Americans are reminded of our country’s greatness, especially when we are so often warned about its imminent decline-and the elimination of Osama bin Laden, fanatical murderer of thousands of Christians, Jews and Muslims, was certainly such a moment.
Especially for those of us who were living in New York City on Sept. 11, 2001, as well as those who died and their families, justice was finally done. From now on, the heroic pantheon associated with that infamous date will include not only the police officers, firefighters and rescue workers of 9/11, but the Navy SEALs and the military and intelligence officers who avenged them.
Everyone who feels pride and satisfaction in bin Laden’s fate must also acknowledge the bold action and sound priorities of President Obama, who has coolly and cleanly fulfilled a promise he made during his campaign. Maintaining the nation’s dignity and his own, he has handled the aftermath of the mission with precise correctness and stayed focused on the policy goals that guide his administration.
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