A book full of humanity, humor, and tenderness

I finished the book My Friends by Fredrik Backman. On the title page translator Neil Smith is listed, so I had to do some checking. Backman is Swedish, so a translator is necessary. The story is triggered by a painting. Most people looking at it see it as a painting of the sea. But Louisa sees there is also a pier and three boys in their early teens portrayed as laughing. Louisa spent most of your childhood in the foster care system and at one point was given a postcard of the painting. That painting is up for auction and she just has to see the real thing before it is sold for millions. She does see it before being thrown out of the auction. Then she encounters the artist who, with his friend Ted, sold all they had to buy it back. The artist recognizes Louisa as a fellow artist. That night the artist dies, telling Ted to give the painting to her. She doesn’t want something that expensive. But Louisa, just turned 18 and out of the foster care system, convinces Ted to take her with him as he boards the train to return to his home. On the way he tells her about the origins of the painting. The story then switches back and forth between the summer when Ted and his friends are fourteen, about to turn fifteen, when the painting was created and Ted traveling with Louisa twenty-five years later. Beside Ted and the artist (never explicitly named until the end of the book) the friends are Joar and Ali, the one girl in the group. Yep, one of the boys in the painting is a girl. They spend as much time together as possible and most of that time is on the pier or in the sea around it. They’re together so much because their home life is bad. Joar’s father is abusive. Ted’s is dying. Ali’s father tends to not pay bills so she’s in town only a couple years before dad needs to move on to avoid creditors. And the artist’s parents think he’s strange, drawing all the time, and just want him to be normal. Joar recognizes the artist’s talent. He also recognizes the artist can’t stay in this city and develop his craft. The artist isn’t doing much after being thrown out of the class of a nasty art teacher. So Joar announces that a contest is coming up and the artist absolutely must enter it, then makes sure he does, creating this painting. In the later time Ted took care of the artist as he was dying. There is strong implication that they were a gay couple. That is reinforced on the train ride when Louisa notices Ted admiring he conductor. Though this explains some of the artist’s strangeness, that they are probably gay is barely mentioned. Though the kids are dealing with bad home lives they are great friends to each other with days that are idyllic. Being fourteen they also get into mischief, usually with funny consequences. There are moments of blessing with mothers, older brothers, and various adults. It’s a beautiful story, full of humanity, humor, and tenderness. There isn’t much plot, though a great deal of simply living. Backman is an excellent writer and Smith did a masterful job in translating – I thought of the translation process a lot while reading. I very much enjoyed this book and highly recommend it. I may have to find some of his other books. Nick Romeo, in an article for Capital & Main posted on Daily Kos wrote that the most dangerous innovation of Silicon Valley is tech fascism. He discussed this with author and journalist Gil Durán, who wrote the book The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy. Romeo described tech fascism...

This anti-democratic ideology is destroying laws and norms while promising a glorious future delivered by technology, and it’s now moving from the fringe belief of a few eccentric billionaires to the cultural mainstream, according to Durán.

Some of the major points Durán talked about: There is a rising cult of Silicon Valley billionaires “who believe that technology is going to make democracy obsolete in the 21st century.” It is fascism because it aligns with the MAGA cult and is funding the nasty guy through gifts and crypto.

Fascism is generally a cult of grievance and self-victimization that promises a return to greatness through the purging and persecution of enemy groups. What tech fascism adds is that instead of only promising a return to some greater period in the past, it also promises this great, glorious future that will be achieved if only we eliminate the obstacles in our way, including regulation, law, democracy and anybody who opposes this acceleration of technology.

AI is being marketed as a terrifying invention that will fundamentally disrupt our lives quickly while not giving us a choice. Yeah, a lot of it is hype, but AI isn’t harmless and is already having an effect. The AI industry is calling it an existential threat to humanity and the biggest job killer ever. Of course, there is a backlash. Another claim is AI will create super abundance. We already have that, but too much of it is sucked up by the tech billionaires. The tech bros are claiming that AI is promising the greatest economic depression (except for billionaires becoming trillionaires). That’s while AI seems less useful than its marketers say.

We are taught to revere wealthy people. If you’re wealthy, it means you’re morally better. It means you’re a superior intellect, and you’re important, and people should be in awe of you. I think that people get this idea in our country that somehow people become billionaires because they’re smart and disciplined and visionary, which is actually not the case at all. And unfortunately billionaires also buy into this myth of their own greatness.

The tech bros demand all the power to destroy everything and no one has the right to stop them. What if farmers said that? Or garbage men? His book is about, “the radicalization of Silicon Valley billionaires into the most dangerous anti-democratic force the country has ever faced.” We have to deal with the billionaire threat. But many of the big champions of the Democratic Party blast at the nasty guy, but not at billionaires. The nasty guy will be around for only a couple more years. Tech bros will be around a lot longer. There are some Democrats speaking out, including Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. People don’t trust billionaires. We need politicians that won’t take billionaire money and will increase the distrust. Start with the 5% wealth tax on California’s ballot. It’s great, but not nearly enough. In Wednesday’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Jill Lawrence of The Bulwark listing the three new demands that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick made that prompted Mark Carney, Prime Minister of Canada, to pull out of trade talks. The quotes are quite likely from Carney:

Limits on Canada’s ability to negotiate and sign trade deals. Canada has negotiated twenty economic and security partnerships in the last year, and forthcoming deals in the next six months could double its market access. “We’re the partner of choice in many respects for countries around the world and the Americans wanted to restrict that. ... It’s a power play and becomes a question of sovereignty.” Continual efforts “until the very last minute” to restrict French language protections (like bilingual labels), Canadian culture, “and in effect our sovereignty,” even though “these issues were never on the table” and never will be. Late U.S. demands that would have been unfair to Canadian auto parts and extended favorable tariff treatment to some cars and trucks but not others. The exclusions were “a big change” with no rationale given, Carney said, and would have made Canadian vehicle production “more uneconomic over time.”

Each of the three sounds like a good reason to pull out of the talks. In the comments exlrrp posted a meme of a Dolly Parton quote from the Larry King Now show in 2016:

If you’re gay, you’re gay. If you’re straight, you’re straight. And you should be allowed to be how you are and who you are.

Thanks, Dolly. Another meme posted by exlrrp:

Remember when Trump collected $12 billion dollars, started WWIII, & then we never heard from the Board of Peace again? One of Trump’s biggest scams and nobody ever talks about it.

In the comments of today’s roundup exlrrp posted a meme about the broken trade talks with Canada that prompted the nasty guy to order Lake Ontario be renamed Lake America. The meme has the text:

Mark Carney, the Prime Minister of Canada, announced today that the United States of America will be renamed South Canada, the 14th Province.

Another meme posted by exlrrp show a house labeled Quality of Life and rooms labeled Affordable Housing, Healthcare, Good Jobs, Lower Prices, Safe Communities, and Education all going up in flames. In front of the house the nasty guy is telling a man in a MAGA hat, “Oh look, a trans person!” Anil Dash has a couple tweets on Meta’s settlement over the harm its products might do to children and teens:

So Meta will always choose to pay, rather than to fight, because then it doesn't have to change. The initial investigation by the FTC into Facebook's abuse of its users was *SEVENTEEN YEARS AGO*, and that one also ended in a settlement. After which, they... went back to abuse their users. Meta is a creep who will _never_ take no for an answer, and never stop trying to ignore their lack of consent. Every media & regulatory organization in the world seems determined to ignore this reality; I genuinely don't understand why. Today's settlement is so that Meta can keep violating consent.

David Michigan added that the $17 billion in payments will be spread out over ten years. This becomes barely more than a rounding error to the company. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos has something to say about Meta’s settlement:

No admission of algorithmic skullduggery. No apologies. No nothing. Just some chump change distributed to a bunch of states that will probably toss it into their general fund to shore up their coffers a bit. But, hey, Zucky Boy promises—cross his heart and all!—that he’ll “make massive transformations that will reduce the risk of harm [to kids] from its platforms—and will do it within months.” And here’s my promise: I’ll let you know when media outlets start publishing stories “within months” about how Facebook and Instagram’s “transformations” are riddled with holes, if they’ve been done at all.

Bill also remembered an event from, 2002, which was 24 years ago. Bush II invited Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan to his Crawford ranch. In on the meeting was Adel Al-Jubeir, a foreign policy adviser to the Saudi kingdom.

“If the objective is to dismantle the weapons of mass destruction program, we could probably do that without going to war,” Al-Jubeir said. “Why not use that option? Why do people want to risk the lives of tens of thousands of American men and women in uniform for an objective that can be achieved through negotiations?”

Bill added:

Oh, let’s see: to get our hands on cheap oil, to feed the military-industrial complex, to scare Americans into re-electing the macho Republicans, to bully the world, to get revenge on Saddam for “tryin’ to kill muh daddy,” and to act out G.I. Joe fantasies aboard an aircraft carrier under a “Mission Accomplished” banner. Other than that, I got nothin’.

They're not going

The GOP has been working on their party platform. Yeah, it is as nasty as one would expect. It is more conservative than the 2012 platform – talk of "traditional" family structure, reinstituting the ban on women in combat, describing coal as "clean," declaring porn as a "public health crisis" (not guns?), adding more disapprovals of LGBT people, encouraging teaching the Bible in schools, and demanding that lawmakers be guided by religion. It seems in their efforts to prevent Islamic Sharia law in America they want to institute the Christian equivalent. And don't forget Trump's wall.



Four years ago Wall Street went to the GOP convention and schmoozed, putting perhaps $60 million into Romney's campaign. This year? They're not going.



They Anglican Church of Canada voted whether to allow same-sex marriage. The process required two-thirds approval by each of lay, clergy, and bishops. The clergy category missed getting enough by one vote. Because it was so close delegates asked for a hard copy of the voting records. One clergy vote was counted in the wrong category. So they got their two-thirds! The resolution in favor of same-sex marriage passed.



Twitter user Buxy tweeted:

I've been waiting for Obama to take my gun for 7 years and all I got was health insurance, marriage equality, a job and cleaner energy.

With all the terrorist bombings around the world getting lots of attention someone decided to present a different perspective. Follow the link to a map showing all the car bomb explosions in Baghdad since the USA invaded in 2003.

Coming from the grassroots

Sarah van Gelder, writing for Yes! Magazine, lists six trends of 2015 that she suggests could be at a turning point in America and in the world.

* Leadership in the health of the climate is coming from the grassroots – activists resisting dirty infrastructure projects, such as mines and pipelines, and state and local ordinances for carbon taxes and against fossil fuel infrastructure. It helps that the drop in oil prices means it isn't such a good investment and that there has been a boom in renewables.

* Black Lives Matter is changing hearts.

* Bernie Sanders has forced the power of Wall Street and inequality into the national debate.

* The politics of vilifying and scapegoating people is running out of people to vilify. Gay people? Mormons march in the Utah Pride. Black folks? South Carolina took down the Confederate flag. Immigrants? Political advisors warn both parties that the Latino vote is critical. Muslims? Beyond the GOP extreme Americans are standing with their Muslim neighbors. Who does that leave? Women. Sigh.

* Yeah, American actions made a mess of the Middle East, but Americans now see it as a quagmire. That prompts a much bigger conversation. What is the global role of the US military? What happens when we reduce our use of fossil fuels and no longer rely in Saudi Arabia? It is a discussion worth having.

* America is turning away from the prison state. Both Dems and GOP are looking for ways to reduce and avoid incarceration.

Staggering goodness and innocence

Tomorrow is the 14th anniversary of the attack that brought down the World Trade Center and put a hole in the Pentagon. Tom Englehardt, in an article posted on Alternet tells us what we managed to do for Osama bin Laden that he wasn't able to do himself. Englehardt's list is long. I can only share the highlights. In 14 years we've built a monumental national security state and a global surveillance system besting Germany of 1940, created a culture of fear, changed democracy into a billionaire's playground, demobilized the citizenry, made gov't more secretive, created warrior corporations, militarized domestic police, and starved national infrastructure.

We named that site in New York "ground zero" as if it had been hit by a nuclear bomb. That's how over the top the coverage was. Osama spooked the country into unleashing the dogs of war, which has brought chaos into the Muslim world.

One wonders what was going on before the attacks to see how swift and how pervasive was our launch into the Global War on Terror, the efforts to create a Pax Americana, and have a blind faith in our military as a force for human liberation. So we launched wars we can't get out of and we've created a big business in robotic assassination.

So far no one in Washington has taken any responsibility for blowing a hole through the Middle East, loosing mayhem across the planet, releasing the forces for creating a state built on terror, and prompting the current flood of refugees. Somehow we are still devoted to the idea that America is an "'exceptional' and 'indispensable' country of staggering goodness and innocence."

Commenters noted Englehardt forgot to mention the trillions of dollars wasted in these efforts and what that has done to the middle class.

A Catholic thing

Let's see if I can clean out a few browser tabs...

Timothy Kincaid of Box Turtle Bulletin notes that except for the Catholic Church most American Christian denominations – including Southern Baptists and Mormons – are no longer taking much of a public stand against sexual minorities. Yes, some still rant from pulpits and some denominations still have restrictions of various kinds. But their public stance and political involvement has become muted.

The exception, as I said, is the Catholic Church. Which leads Kincaid to speculate that opposition to sexual minorities is shifting from a "Christian thing" to a "Catholic thing." And that shift is giving Protestant denominations space to be more welcoming to gay people.

Now a few thoughts of my own. Yeah, the current GOP presidential candidates are each trying to show they are more rabidly anti-gay than the next one. Something is driving that. It can't be the Catholic members because, in sharp contrast to the church hierarchy, they are widely gay-supportive. It must be the Fundamentalist Protestant members still pushing their candidates. And that means it appears the Fundamentalist Protestant hierarchy is keeping quiet and their members are pushing the GOP position, while the Catholic hierarchy is speaking out against sexual minorities while their members are much more pro-gay.



Digby writes the blog Hullabaloo, and he excerpts an article in Mother Jones about gun violence. In the last 10 years 750,000 have been injured by guns and 320,000 have been killed. Mass shootings are on the rise. So what is the cost to society of all this carnage?

We can find out the cost to society of motor vehicle crashes, including property damage, traffic congestion, pain, loss of quality of life, etc. But we can't find out the societal cost of gun violence. That reason is simple. The NRA won't allow anyone to do the research.

Digby wonders why. For freedom? 320,000 Americans dead because of guns. 5,000 Americans dead in the Iraq war.



In another post Digby delves into the rise of ISIS, the Islamic State.

So the genesis of ISIS is really in the inane decision to "de-Bathify" and leave a bunch of highly trained soldiers (many of them trained by the US) humiliated and without any means of support --- then later imprison them all together for years so they could hatch plans to re-take the region and wreak revenge on their enemies. It could not be any dumber.

Digby also mentions what they were thinking about as they were hatching those plans: the techniques of the East German Stasi and how to use religion as a cover.

The post ends with a review of the book, Imperial Life in the Emerald City, that documents the arrogance and ineptitude of the invasion of Iraq.

Assessing blame

There seems to be two basic GOP talking points about what is going on with the ISIS takeover in parts of Iraq. One is that the original war (started way back in 2003) was a “mistake.” Dennis Kucinich (remember him?) in an article for Huffington Post says that saying the war was a mistake is the language of denial. No, going to war was intentional and happened because we were lied to. Kucinich now calls on Obama to state those lies, so we can see the current situation clearly. Kucinich also calls on media to stop giving free air time to those who won't tell the truth of the start of the war or those who profited from the war.

The second talking point is the current mess is all Obama's fault. While Obama's mistakes in Syria strengthened ISIS, it was Bush who started a war that didn't need to be fought, it was Bush who kicked all the Baath Party members out of their jobs (the people who now form the core of ISIS), and it was Bush who created the timetable for the Iraq pullout before Iraq was stable.

Is Obama blame free? No. But neither is the GOP.

Victory that will take years to pay off

Now that the Iraq war is over (and only extreme conservatives are using the word "won") Terrence Heath looks at the cost. The end of the war is like a gift we've all been waiting for with a credit card bill that will take years to pay off. I've discussed some of these costs before, so I'll only itemize them now.

* American and Coalition dead, wounded, and suffering from PTSD.

* Much higher numbers of Iraqi (especially children) dead, wounded, suffering from PTSD, and displaced. Women and girls forced in sexual slavery. We should consider this is a nation with PTSD. And it won't recover quickly.

* A shattered Iraqi infrastructure. Decimated health system.

* Extensive hit to our national debt (perhaps $1.3 trillion, which we'll be paying interest on for a long time), and through that an extensive hit to our ability to help our national economy recover.

The idea of an entire nation suffering from PTSD got me to thinking. I'm well aware that in 2003 when the war began nobody had any idea of the Arab Spring that would happen 8 years later (and before the end of the war). Suppose we didn't topple Saddam in 2003 and waited for the Iraqis to do it themselves. Would they have succeeded like Libya or been stuck like Syria? What would the costs have been like?

The American and Coalition costs would have been close to zero.

Would the overthrow of Saddam have cost the Iraqis 103K dead and 1.6 million refugees. Would it have shattered the infrastructure? Would it have created an entire nation suffering from PTSD? Would all that suffering be smaller or larger than 8 (or more) years under Saddam?

I suspect if we had stayed out of Iraq the Iraqis would have a lot fewer dead (compare numbers with Syria), a lot fewer refugees, and would have a much better level of mental health. And their mental health would have been boosted by being able to claim the overthrow was their own victory.

The true cost

Now that Obama has announced the withdrawal of troops from Iraq John Tirman of the MIT Center for International Studies in an article for The Washington Spectator (alas, no link) says it is time to look at the true cost of the war, and he doesn't mean dollars. When we look back on a war we tend to rate its worth only in terms of cost to Americans. But that doesn't give us an idea of the sheer destructive cost of war, which allows us to ignore these costs when the next war comes up. Here are some of these costs.

* Dire levels of health care because doctors and nurses have fled or been killed. Poor hygiene cannot be maintained at many facilities.

* Perhaps up to 5 million Iraqis displaced. Those displaced yet still in Iraq are in settlements with poor conditions.

* Shortages of electricity, clean water, and sanitation.

* Thousands of women and girls forced in sexual slavery. 750,000 war widows living in poverty. Rising Islamic militancy (reaction to US occupation?) strips rights of women.

* More than half of all Iraqis live in slum conditions, up from 17% in 2000.

* Perhaps up to 650,000 have died because of the war.

* Perhaps a half million children died because of the 12 years of sanctions between the Gulf War and the Iraq War.

Why is this important? Because many conservatives are declaring the Iraq War a victory. This is a war that most Americans oppose and feel we got into it because conservatives lied to us. Because we are walking away from our responsibilities to account for our own destructiveness. Because we face "reputational costs" of being seen as reckless and callous. Because we won't have real consequences to stay our hand when the next crisis erupts.

Credit where credit is due

As the War in Iraq "officially" ended -- even though we have 50K troops still there who don't think their mission has changed -- and Obama gave his Oval Office speech marking its end, GOP leaders demanded Obama give credit and thanks to his predecessor for making the "victory" possible. Rachel Maddow has the takedown. The only thing she missed is how many Iraqi's died in the process. Hearing her go through the reasons Bush & Cheney gave for the war made me wonder: We were that gullible? Or that afraid? It's a 10 minute video.

Reviewing a responsible plan for Iraq

I've heard rumors about this idea so it is good to finally see the document. Several candidates to the U.S. House along with retired military personnel have written a Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq. It is worthwhile to download the 36 page document and at least scan it. You can find it here.

There is a lot to recommend, but alas, also a couple holes. The responsible plan appears to be based on a comment by General Petraeus towards the beginning of the surge, "There is no military solution to a problem like that in Iraq." The surge was supposed to lower the bloodshed enough that the non-military solutions had a chance. But so far, that hasn't happened.

The plan is based on two strategic questions. The first is how to bring American military involvement to a responsible end? The answer is in more and better diplomatic, political, and economic efforts. The second question is how do we prevent another Iraq? That requires a restoration of Constitutional checks and balances and a fix of various government, military, and civil institutions that failed us.

In detail, the answer to the first question is responsible troop withdrawal, done in such a way to keep the remaining troops from being a target and with a commitment that we won't keep any troops in Iraq over any sort of long term. We also train as many Iraqis in defense as possible before we go. Instead, we should focus on the humanitarian crisis -- the refugees, the lack of a functioning government -- and the economic crisis -- young unemployed men see the only viable future as being in one of the militias. A third step is to use our considerable diplomatic tools to keep neighboring countries from stirring up trouble and convincing them and the rest of the world that a stable Iraq is in their best interest. Along the way we need to go after war profiteers, revitalize the State Department, expand the role of the international community, and to commit to human rights.

To prevent another Iraq several steps are proposed: Put war funding in the regular budget, restore congressional oversight, eliminate signing statements, restore habeas corpus, end warrantless spying, end detainee torture, stop outsourcing military operations to private companies such as Blackwater, fully fund veteran care, fully fund college tuition for those who served in the military, restore proper oversight for military contracts, restore trust in the media by reducing conglomerates in individual markets, and update our energy policy to lessen dependence on oil.

I'll let you read the details of each proposal, which includes actual bills to be submitted to Congress.

Now to the good ideas: I like the emphasis on diplomacy both in and around Iraq, the emphasis on humanitarian and economic development, the plan to get the military out of the way. All this is what I see in Christ -- let us be your servant, let us help you build up, instead of us playing the role of enforcer, one who imposes on another, the one who is blind to your pain, the one who tears down. It is good to see a clear enumeration of governmental problems and a concrete way to address them. Alas, Bush will veto any that get to his desk. Note the signers are those not yet in Congress.

However, I see one glaring hole. I admit I am not a military expert and I probably should rely on the retired military guys who helped create this plan. Even so, with the recent Sunni on Sunni violence in Basra which sent the Iraqi prime minister scurrying away with his tail between his legs I’m not convinced that removing American troops won't allow a civil war to erupt. To reduce my fears -- and that of a lot of Americans -- this issue needs to be addressed. I see several ways the issue could have been addressed: (1) A confirmation that our presence is what keeps the prospect of civil war alive. (2) Humanitarian and diplomatic efforts will be well underway and have the intended effect before the troops are gone. (3) Other countries, such as Morocco and Indonesia, that aren't about to stir up trouble take over peacekeeping duties. There are likely other ways to fill this hole. I am aware that in many cases the military presence is part of the problem, but it is difficult for me (and other Americans) to see how pulling the military out won't leave a power vacuum. Perhaps we'll be fine, but this plan needs to explain why we'll be fine. I sincerely hope the plan will work, however this hole may doom its chances of being implemented.

And one minor hole: The real solution to many of the preventative measures, such as eliminating signing statements and restoring habeas corpus is the impeachment and removal of Bush. He has ignored laws and his legacy will embolden future presidents to ignore laws as well. Impeachment means that we intend for laws to be followed. Simply passing new laws means more laws this future president might ignore.

At least I offer praise and thanks that people are thinking about the issue in creative ways.

Counting the cost and misjudging morality

Edmund Burke was an English-Irish statesman and philosopher who is seen as the father of modern conservatism (the original political meaning, not the religious meaning nor the twisted Bush meaning). He supported the American colonies in their dispute with King George III. He wrote this about the American Revolution:

A conscientious man would be cautious how he dealt in blood, he would feel some apprehension at being called to a tremendous account for engaging in so deep a play, without any sort of knowledge of the game.

Burke wasn't opposed to war, but felt war should be waged to reduce the loss of blood, treasure, and reputation without corresponding gains. This calculation is most important if the cause is weak and is on foreign soil. People, even presidents, make mistakes and that in itself isn't a reason to criticize them. But a thoughtful conservative (or anyone) will recognize when things go wrong and will work to correct them. While Bush does not understand that concept and Cheney has a complete disregard for democratic accountability, there are others who recognize their error of their earlier support for the Iraq war. Andrew Sullivan, writing at Slate, is one of those. His reasoning for his change of view include these points:

Sullivan was for the war partly from historical narcissism. He had lived through the Cold War and felt the walls of tyranny would fall if we had the will and gumption to use our military force. But the military force to get rid of Saddam is not the same as building a stable government in its place and the cost of doing so was not considered.

Sullivan chose war through narrow moralism. His personal tally of the pros and cons of the war did not include that war itself is a monster with possibly evil consequences that should be weighed.

Sullivan says he is guilty of unconservatism, not being conservative enough in not understanding the depth of the divide between Sunni and Shiite.

Sullivan says he misread Bush, who campaigned in 2000 as a unifying moderate Republican. The missed attribute wasn't incompetence, but morality. He did not see that Bush would use 9/11 to tear up the Geneva Conventions and use torture and lie about it.

I certainly never believed that a war I supported for the sake of freedom would actually use as its central weapon the deepest antithesis of freedom—the destruction of human autonomy and dignity and will that is torture.

Sullivan didn't see the effect the war would have on Iraq. He also didn't see the effect Bush's lack of morality would have on America.

The original Slate article is here.

Commentary (including about Burke) with extensive quotes from the Slate article is here.