Month: June 2004

“We believe – or we act as if we believed – that although an individual father cannot alienate the labor of his son, the aggregate body of fathers may alienate the labor of all their sons, of their posterity, in the aggregate, and oblige them to pay for all the enterprises, just or unjust, profitable or ruinous, into which our vices, our passions or our personal interests may lead us. But I trust that this proposition needs only to be looked at by an American to be seen in its true point of view, and that we shall all consider ourselves unauthorized to saddle posterity with our debts, and morally bound to pay them ourselves.” – Thomas Jefferson, 1813. Alas, the boomers have no intention of honoring their offspring. And the president has added mountains of debt to the future generations. What I like about Jefferson’s statement is that he realizes that acquiring long-term debt for no good reason is immoral.

Was that what the president lobbied the Vatican about? Was it a subtle attempt to persuade the pontiff to lean on the American bishops, especially Cardinal McCarrick, for partisan advantage? That’s Josh Marshall‘s “suspicious speculation.” I don’t know. But I do believe that if this was Bush’s intent, it was unbelievably stupid. If the bishops decide to bar Kerry from communion – and leave everyone else alone – then it would probably increase support for the Democrat. Most Catholics find such politicization of their faith to be anathema. The hierarchy has less moral authority at this point than in its entire history. If they want to lose the last shred, they’ll take sides in a presidential election campaign.

EMAIL OF THE DAY: I haven’t received more than a handful of emails supporting my position on the torture issue. But I have received dozens like the following:

I really enjoy your writing and insights and, like you, am concerned that we not torture innocent or non-threatening combatants. But like the old proverb says – “All’s fair in love and war” – and this is war. I, for one, hope we intend to win – whatever it takes – if that includes torturing (not just humiliating the enemy) then I literally thank God we have people like Rumsfeld and Cheney with the balls to get it done.

My only question then is: why won’t Rumsfeld and Cheney and Bush come out and defend this policy openly? Or maybe they will. Rummy has said he wants to make public all the memos on torture and abuse.

Well, we’re getting closer to understanding what’s been going on. Here’s a nugget from Newsweek:

White House officials told reporters that such abstract legal reasoning was insignificant and did not reflect the president’s orders. But NEWSWEEK has learned that Yoo’s August 2002 memo was prompted by CIA questions about what to do with a top Qaeda captive, Abu Zubaydah, who had turned uncooperative. And it was drafted after White House meetings convened by George W. Bush’s chief counsel, Alberto Gonzales, along with Defense Department general counsel William Haynes and David Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney’s counsel, who discussed specific interrogation techniques, says a source familiar with the discussions. Among the methods they found acceptable: “water-boarding,” or dripping water into a wet cloth over a suspect’s face, which can feel like drowning; and threatening to bring in more-brutal interrogators from other nations.

This kind of tactic was designed specifically for a few top al Qaeda captives; but it was apparently transferred to Abu Ghraib as well. That last transition is murky. How did those new relaxed rules get moved from Guanatanamo against high-profile Qaeda terrorists to people dragged in off the street in Baghdad? We don’t yet know. But we do know that the administration debated various methods of torture – because Rumsfeld signed off on some and then had a change of heart and restricted some of the more horrifying methods. It’s also clear that there was considerable internal debate about the new regulations. The CIA won out against the FBI most of the time. The reason I’m concerned about this is not simply because it is horrifying that the United States now uses forms of torture on captives. I’m concerned because, as Hitch has written, we are about to find out much more about Abu Ghraib, where rape and murder of inmates occurred. As John McCain has put it, “It’s just incredible. Why doesn’t every nation in the world now have a green light to do everything it thinks is necessary to combat a ‘terrorist threat’?” I guess some will dismiss McCain as a wuss when it comes to terror. But I don’t. He has a point about another notch downward in America’s reputation. And I’m sick of being told that worrying about this is a sign of faint-heartedness in the war. It is a sign of basic decency. Torture is not only horrifying for the victim; it corrupts the perpetrator. I don’t want to see America become indistinguishable from some Latin American police state in the way it treats its inmates in this war on terror. There are limits. How we conduct this war is as important as winning it. We cannot lose our soul in the process.

The British FCC – OfCom – has censured Fox News’ John Gibson for robust criticism of the BBC:

“We recognise how important freedom of expression is within the media. This item was part of a well-established spot, in which the presenter put forwards his own opinion in an uncompromising manner. However, such items should not make false statements by undermining facts,” the regulator said. “Fox News was unable to provide any substantial evidence to support the overall allegation that the BBC management had lied and the BBC had an anti-American obsession. It had also incorrectly attributed quotes to the reporter Andrew Gilligan. Even taking into account that this was a ‘personal view’ item, the strength and number of allegations that John Gibson made against the BBC meant that Fox News should have offered the BBC an opportunity to respond.”

But, as Jeff Jarvis has pointed out, all of what Gibson said is demonstrably true.

PILING ON BROOKS: The best explanation of the current fad of bashing David Brooks is professional jealousy. The man is well-liked, has the best column space in America, and has made a fortune writing popular books. Grrr. David Plotz’s latest slam-job is particularly harsh, and undeserved. Brooks’ pop-sociology isn’t meant, as far as I can see, to be much more than a diverting take on current American culture. Is that such a frigging crime? His qualms about the war have been honest and forthright. He hasn’t hidden from the consequences of the liberation. On several occasions, I’ve found Brooks’ columns to be calibrated records of a man trying to think things through – not mere wussiness. It’s not necessarily a virtue to proclaim full speed ahead when a policy you have championed comes unstuck or frayed. And it’s a little trite to link David’s “National Greatness” meme so specifically to the war in Iraq. David is a friend, so you can dismiss this short defense if you want. There have been a few columns that I thought were weak – his mash-note about the current Pope struck me as particularly obtuse. But to say he doesn’t have enough “anger” to be a columnist strikes me as misplaced. We need more Krugmans? And when was the last time you read a Kinsley column that bristled with anger?

“My thought can be summed up very well by the late Stephen Ambrose when he wrote in Citizen Soldiers about how in war for civilians the sight of soldiers meant trouble, EXCEPT for the sight of American soldiers. We were the first army in history (with the possible exception of the Tommies) to break that mold. That’s what sets us apart from the thugs we are fighting! That’s why America is different. We have lost much of that moral power due to the torture at AG and how “enemy combatants” are treated in general. I know that almost all of our troops are upholding our best traditions, but it doesn’t take much behavior like AG or shady decisions like the DoD has been making to cancel that out.
It makes me sad to know that the government knew that harsh measures were being taken with prisoners, and did not remember that we shouldnt do that. Our behavior should be dictated by our own standards, not based on who our enemy is or how he might behave.” More feedback on the Letters Page.

EMAIL OF THE DAY II: “I’m not going to sit here and, like the pseudo-conservatives of this country, complain about how hard it is to be even remotely conservative in a radical, Massachusetts college town. In short, it sucks. Regardless, I have managed to make somewhat of a name for myself by being the (and it’s not only self-proclaimed) ‘first intellectual teenage conservative Northampton has ever seen.’ After a couple years of trying, myself and a classmate succesfully ressurected our school newspaper. She’s a radical beyond even the ultra-liberal Northampton, MA status quo and, me a moderate (socially liberal, fiscally conservative and hawkish) usually classified as a staunch GOP guy, wanted to create a school newspaper that wasn’t a rag or an outfit for uninformed, teenage leftists to rant in. We became so attached to this paper that, for the final semester of high school, everything we did was in some way related to producing a thought-provoking weekly. As the paper expanded and became quite popular in our college town of 30,000, my co-editor/ressurector, Hannah and I shared deep intellectual discourse on local, state and national politics. In nine of our issues, we debated a different topic. The two of us taught each other alot but I am ecstatic over one thing that has come about from our friendship: we both read your blog. I turned her on to it and she now feels that there is at least one insightful conservative who is not a religious zealot. As a token of her appreciation Hannah’s graduation gift to me was – yup you guessed it – a donation to Andrewsullivan.com in my name. My first year at college will be filled with updates and special features from the Daily Dish. I hope you’ll run this letter so that people out there know that honest, intellectual and respectful discourse still exists even if it is only amongst a 17 and 18 year old. Running this letter is also a terrific plug for the importance of donating to the dish.” And so it is. I haven’t run a pledge drive this year because I’m unsure of how long I can keep this up, but you can help keep this blog alive by donating here.

“Bill Clinton could always see a better day ahead and Americans knew he was working hard to bring that day closer. Over eight years it was clear that Bill Clinton loved the job of the presidency. He filled this house with energy and joy. He’s a man of enthusiasm and warmth, who could make a compelling case and effectively advance the causes that drew him to public service.” – president George W. Bush, today.

Whenever I think I’m going crazy (having qualms about extra-legal torture while most conservatives are fine with it), I’m relieved to find William F Buckley on a similar wavelength. On Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, WFB gets it right:

The best evidence of the incongruity of Abu Ghraib with American standards is the universal revulsion felt by the American people when those photographs were published. But right now there are only seven soldiers being prosecuted, and the sense of it is that that does not go deeply enough. If what happened was odious, but what happened did so under the auspices of a well-organized military, then you scratch up against the lessons of Nuremberg, which held superiors responsible for misconduct by subordinates. And people are wanting to know what are the relevant jurisdictions, and what tribunals do we have in mind to convoke in order to satisfy ourselves – and the world – that America wants more than merely to punish the people who did it. We need to punish also the people who let it happen.

We have to know who really sanctioned this. And we have to stop it. Just because some anti-war opportunists are getting on this bandwagon does not absolve pro-war advocates from holding this administration responsible.

Gerhard Schroder went down to a staggering defeat in the European elections yesterday. The SPD won a mere 22 percent of the vote to the Christian Democrats’ 45 percent. In Britain’s local elections, Blair’s Labour Party came in a humiliating third – the worst performance for a governing party in British political history. Just as interesting was the surge in support for the new UK Independence Party, a group that, on the latest results, robbed both Labour and the Conservatives of significant backing. It may end up with around 15 percent of the vote. The UKIP wants withdrawal from the EU. The consequences? The UKIP won’t amount to much, but its success guarantees that Britain won’t join the Euro any time soon, and that the Tories may be drawn further to the right on the European issue. It’s no longer inconceivable that the Conservatives could win the next election – and provoke a real crisis in the EU. Some of this anti-Blair voting was doubtless due to Iraq. But there’s also the beginning of an understanding that Blair’s approach to public services – lots more money, minimal reform – won’t and can’t work. A future Tory government could get away with a more radical reform of the welfare state, some tax cuts, and a confrontation with Brussels. Goody.

THE MEMO: The Justice Department formally decided last year that torture could be justified in Guantanamo. Now we can have a debate. John Ashcroft and Don Rumsfeld need to explain why this was decided, what torture techniques are now approved, and when and how and where they have been used. I’ve been inundated with emails all enthusiastically supporting such torture. I beg to differ, but I certainly think it’s worth debating. What is not acceptable is for the government to decide for itself what is now legal or illegal, to keep it secret, to use abuse and torture in the name of the American people, and then, when horrors are revealed, place the blame on a few underlings. For his part, the president issued a Clintonian answer to the torture question last week:

Q Returning to the question of torture, if you knew a person was in U.S. custody and had specific information about an imminent terrorist attack that could kill hundreds or even thousands of Americans, would you authorize the use of any means necessary to get that information and to save those lives?
THE PRESIDENT: Jonathan, what I’ve authorized is that we stay within U.S. law.

But what if his own Justice Department wrote a memo arguing that, because of the war on terror, torture now is within the law, since the commander-in-chief can determine that law in wartime? That’s very close to Nixon’s statement that if the president does something, that makes it lawful. Look, I don’t think we should treat these prisoners as if they had a parking offense. Some are truly depraved individuals. I appreciate the difficult task any president would have fighting an unnamed enemy capable of terrible atrocities. But neither do I believe it is acceptable to do what we have apparently been doing – while keeping it out of the public domain.

I found this David Gelernter essay in the Weekly Standard to be really insightful. He saw Reagan as a “mystic nationalist,” someone truly in love with his own country, and unapologetic about it:

Reagan was a realist, but a “mystic nationalist” also. He did in fact call himself a “mystic,” according to Peter Schweizer; and he was certainly a patriot and a nationalist. But mystic nationalism is more than the sum of parts. It is a religion–but one that translucently overlays (without obscuring or superceding) Judaism or Christianity.
Mystic nationalism is a tradition nobly represented in the 20th century by such statesmen as Winston Churchill and David Ben-Gurion. Reagan would have recognized himself in a passage by the poet Rupert Brooke, killed at age 28 in the First World War. “He was immensely surprised,” Brooke wrote in 1914 about an unnamed friend, “to perceive that the actual earth of England held for him…a quality which, if he’d ever been sentimental enough to use the word, he’d have called ‘holiness.’ His astonishment grew as the full flood of ‘England’ swept him on from thought to thought. He felt the triumphant helplessness of a lover.”
“There are a few favorite windows I have up there that I like to stand and look out of early in the morning,” Reagan said in his farewell speech, referring to the White House. “The view is over the grounds here to the Washington Monument, and then the Mall and the Jefferson Memorial. But on mornings when the humidity is low, you can see past the Jefferson to the river, the Potomac, and the Virginia shore. Someone said that’s the view Lincoln had when he saw the smoke rising from the Battle of Bull Run. I see more prosaic things: the grass on the banks, the morning traffic as people make their way to work, now and then a sailboat on the river.”

This love of the physical aspects of one’s own country is a very Tory sentiment and Reagan’s least remarked ability was to summon up these feelings until they became a “civil religion” of sorts. His week-long funeral was, in some ways, a beautiful ritual of that civil religion – binding us together, setting us apart, lifting us up.