Now That The GOP Is Modeled On The Taliban

Original Link: http://washingtonindependent.com/29244/now-that-the-gop-is-modeled-on-the-taliban

By Spencer Ackerman

I’m way late to this party — stupid Panetta hearing! — but judging from this interview with Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas), the GOP has apparently decided to model itself on the, uh … well …

“Insurgency, we understand perhaps a little bit more because of the Taliban,” Sessions said during a meeting yesterday with Hotline editors. “And that is that they went about systematically understanding how to disrupt and change a person’s entire processes. And these Taliban — I’m not trying to say the Republican Party is the Taliban. No, that’s not what we’re saying. I’m saying an example of how you go about [sic] is to change a person from their messaging to their operations to their frontline message. And we need to understand that insurgency may be required when the other side, the House leadership, does not follow the same commands, which we entered the game with.”

You know, in the past, when I compared President Obama’s governing style to a counterinsurgency campaign, I wondered if I was going too far. But if this is how Sessions wants it, then clearly it follows that Obama should follow solid GOP advice for how to deal with the Taliban.

Tomorrow, Pete Sessions and his colleagues should find themselves bound and goggled in the belly of a C-130 and taken to the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, where they will enjoy an hour of exercise a week. Attorney General Eric Holder and the rest of the Justice Department should file papers blocking the access of the congressional Republicans to legal representation or meaningful due process, preferring instead to create an ad hoc system for determining the degree to which the GOP poses a threat to President Obama and releasing congresspeople accordingly. And, really, what’s the alternative? The American people decisively proved in November that they’re not willing to house GOP congresspeople in their districts.

Now, this might not be a really American way of doing things — I’m in favor of trying the House GOP in civilian courts with full due process rights and Goddamn the fearmongers who say we’re risking our security by doing so — but, you know, they’d at least get a meal of orange chicken and other delicacies. And indefinite detention without charge is pretty bad, but it’s not, like, a top marginal tax rate of 40 percent or anything, which is how you’d know if this country had descended into tyranny.