Month: January 2005

“As for those in the World Trade Center, well, really, let’s get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break.” – University of Colorado professor, Ward Churchill. He also described the victims of 9/11 as “little Eichmanns.”

FISKING EAGLETON: If anyone deserves it …

SPELLINGS: I didn’t really take Margaret Spellings’ attack on PBS’ Buster very seriously at first. But the more you read about it, the more egregious it is. The series in question takes the bunny Buster across many states and introduces him to many different types of families and backgrounds. From the NYT today:

One episode featured a family with five children, living in a trailer in Virginia, all sharing one room. In another, Buster visits a Mormon family in Utah. He has dropped in on fundamentalist Christians and Muslims as well as American Indians and Hmong. He has shown the lives of children who have only one parent, and those who live with grandparents.

This strikes me as pretty diverse – and certainly exposes kids to situations that are not the nuclear family. So why is it okay to present a single parent or no parents but not two gay parents? If Mormons are portrayed, why not gays? Why should young children be exposed to the tenets of Christian fundamentalism but not even learn a simple fact about life in Vermont? The lesbian couple are not front and center in the piece; they are background. They are Americans. And, according to the Bush administration, they must be airbrushed out of the country. Not a good sign.

There are more than you might imagine. I’m told by the Sunday Times’ Sarah Baxter that at a Hudson Institute confab last September, several pro-war neocons and others came out in favor of energy conservation. Bernard Lewis argued: “There is only one solution and that is to find another source of energy besides oil. It seems to me to be the only way we can put an end to this poison which fouls the sea and the roads and pollutes minds.” David Pryce-Jones cited V.S. Naipaul on the strategic importance of a more enviro-friendly energy policy. “You must make it plain to people,” Naipaul had urged Pryce-Jones that morning, “that they face a choice between saying it’s more convenient for the sake of oil to keep the Saudis going and taking a stand against them. If they hesitate to make that choice, they are gambling with civilisation.” You can read an alternative view here.

“Starkly put, Baghdad is not under control, either by the Iraqi interim government or the American military.” – John F. Burns, New York Times, today.

QUOTE FOR THE DAY II: “Our grunts have been letting me know since the early days of the invasion that there has never been enough people power on deck to do the job. ‘We’re stretched too thin’ has been a constant complaint. ‘Battalions are doing the work of brigades and brigades divisions,’ snorts an infantry skipper now in the Mosul area of operations.” – David Hackworth, yesterday.

RELEASED WITHOUT CHARGE: The final four Brits in Guantanamo were immediately released by the British government upon returning to the UK. They are charging torture. No formal charges of terrorism have been brought against them. Either we should be deeply concerned that potential terrorists are now at large or that innocent men have been held without any due process for three years and, if they were not British, would still be in jail. Which is it?

FEITH QUITS: For personal reasons, the official press release says.

BUSTER’S BLOG: The material that offended Margaret Spellings. Located by Josh Marshall.

ANTI-SEMITISM WATCH: A blogger reports on a not-very encouraging listserv for the Muslim Student Union at the University of Southern California.

The Committee Democrats who took a stand against Gonzales and torture: Leahy (VT), Kennedy (MA), Biden (DE), Kohl (WI), Durbin (IL), Feinstein (CA), Feingold (WI), and Schumer (NY). Feingold is particularly interesting. Like me, he believes that, in general, presidents should get the cabinet secretaries they want. Like me, he draws the line at Gonzales. It’s called “moral values.” Am I wrong to notice a touch of condescension in even Hatch’s remarks: “He is a man of decency, integrity and honor who answered the questions before the committee as well as he could.” Translation: if the president wants this mediocre yes-man, then okay.

He distances himself:

President Bush, asked about the practice at a news conference this morning, acknowledged that his administration had made a mistake by awarding contracts to commentators who support his policies. Bush said he expects his Cabinet secretaries to end the practice. “Mr. Armstrong Williams admitted he made a mistake,” Bush said. “We didn’t know about this in the White House. There needs to be a nice independent relationship between the White House and the press, the administration and the press.” Bush said in response to a follow-up question that the Education Department had made a mistake as well. “All our Cabinet secretaries must realize that we will not be paying commentators to advance our agenda,” he said. “Our agenda ought to be able to stand on its own two feet.”

One way to insure this would be for Bush to order all his cabinet secretaries to release all the information they have on payments to individuals who also write as allegedly independent journalists. Meanwhile, Ryan Sager defends Gallagher.

More details from Alberto Gonzales’ written responses to the Senate. Marty Lederman is on the case. Here’s my favorite part:

I’ve wondered how Secretary Rumsfeld, General Counsel Haynes, and other high-ranking DoD officials could have determined — as they did — that techniques such as waterboarding, forced nudity, threatening the death of family members, use of dogs to induce stress, etc., could possibly be lawful in light of (i) the Uniform Code of Military Justice; (ii) the prohibition in Article 16 of the Convention on Torture against cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment; and (iii) the President’s February 2002 directive that the Armed Forces treat all detainees “humanely.”
Well, we still don’t know why the UCMJ doesn’t apply. But we learned from Judge Gonzales’s earlier responses that the Administration does not think Article 16 applies in U.S. facilities overseas (such as Guantanamo). And now we learn why the President’s “humaneness” directive is no obstacle to the use of such grotesque techniques. Judge Gonzales writes that “the term ‘humanely’ has no precise legal definition,” but that, “[a]s a policy matter, I would define humane treatment as a basic level of decent treatment that includes such things as food, shelter, clothing and medical care. I understand that the United States is providing this level of treatment for all detainees.”

So “humane” care can also mean near-drowning, use of electric shocks, beating to a pulp, hooding and rape – as long as the victim has shelter, food, clothing and medical care. Well, scratch the clothing. We keep our prisoners naked these days. And the medical care is often needed just to keep the prisoners from dying at the hands of U.S. soldiers. Alas, that didn’t stop over thirty inmates across the war-theater from expiring in suspicious circumstances. Anyway, it’s just a useful defnition of “compassionate conservatism.” Pummel someone’s head in and then hang him from the ceiling. Just give him a sandwich later.

VOLKSWAGEN SUES: They should be pleased. Whatever. The guy who made the TV spoof ad says it was merely for his professional portfolio. But once it got on the web … Hey, nothing’s private any more. Especially something as inspired as that ad.

ABE AND SPONGEBOB: Together at last – in a cartoon. meanwhile, W-crony Margaret Spellings is appalled that a publicly-financed cartoon might actually show a living, breathing lesbian couple. Children are supposed to be protected from such images. Why didn’t Spellings forbid Mary Cheney and Heather Poe from attending the Inauguration? Again, you see the real agenda of some on the right: not a principled campaign against all non-marital heterosexual sex, but an animus against even the visibility of openly gay couples and people.

EMAIL OF THE DAY: “I had to laugh reading your comment on the Slate article on green conservatives. It hits home. I am a Republican, more of a libertarian than a conservative these days, married to a Eurowannabe liberal.
When we went looking for a new car (we are about to have our second child) I wanted a Prius, she wanted a big wagon (we compromised on a small station wagon with good mileage). As it was obvious I was the one who wanted the Prius, the salesperson asked if I was a “Green.” My wife started to laugh. I told the salesperson that I was enamored with the technology, but my wife knows the real reason. It angers me that the political, economic and military security of my country depends in large part on the continued goodwill of a bunch of fanatical men wearing dresses who dream about the 7th Century.
Besides my support for gay marriage (in part due to your writing, I have come around to using the “M” word these days), I shock most of my friends and family with my hope that gas prices stay high. Why? Because that will provide economic incentives to in the short term improve hybrid technology and in the long term, develop alternative fuels (like hydrogen fuel cells).
A few years back, when people were trying to come up with name for the various flavors of conservatism (“neocon,” “Paleocon,” “theocon,” etc.), a friend started to call me a “crunchy con.” I sort of like it. In any event, part of being a conservatie is preserving those things in your culture you like. I do not believe in slavishly holding onto the past, as much of the past was nasty. But being a conservative should mean balancing environment and progress. As I look out my window onto Lake Michigan, I realize that an America without open spaces and barren landscapes and dense forests would not be America.” More feedback on the Letters Page.

It turns out Armstrong Williams isn’t the only aggressive journalistic backer of Bush administration policies who was at one point paid by the Bush administration. Maggie Gallagher, perhaps the chief journalistic advocate of the constitutional ban on civil marriage for gays, also received, by her account, $21,500 in 2002 to write materials related to the administration’s promotion of civil marriage. She never disclosed the income – even though she continued to write as an independent journalist on the issue of marriage, especially the Federal Marriage Amendment. Here’s her defense:

In 2001, HHS approached me to do some work on marriage issues for the government, including to do a presentation on the social science evidence on the benefits of marriage for HHS regional managers, to draft an essay for Wade Horn on how government can strengthen marriage, and to prepare drafts of community brochures: The Top Ten Reasons Marriage Matters, stuff like that.

The contract reads; “ACF is pursuing research to create knowledge about the dynamics of marriage among low-income populations, and potential strategies states might pursue to strengthen marriage. ACF needs additional expertise to accomplish this work.

“Statement of work: The Contractor shall consult with and assist ACF in ongoing work related to strengthening marriage, and provide assistance advice on development of new research activities in this area. The contractor shall performa a variety of activities including (but not limited to) providing information on the programs to strengthen marriage, advising on the dissemination of materials, and participating in meetings and workshops.”

The contract did not authorize a general consulting fee. Instead, it authorized payment for actual work performed, to be submitted and approved via separate invoice.

She argues, reasonably, that her case is not a direct equivalent to Williams’. She received a tenth of the money, and wasn’t paid to be a mere flack for a piece of legislation. She just worked for the government, while seeming to be writing independently of any government position. Howie Kurtz asked her whether she should have disclosed this information:

My first instinct is to say, no, Howard, I had no special obligation to disclose this information. I’m a marriage expert. I get paid to write, edit, research, and educate on marriage. If a scholar or expert gets paid to do some work for the government, should he or she disclose that if he writes a paper, essay, or op-ed on the same or similar subject? If this is the ethical standard, it is an entirely new standard. I was not paid to promote marriage. I was paid to produce particular research and writing products (articles, brochures, presentations) which I produced. My lifelong experience in marriage research, public education and advocacy is the reason HHS hired me.
But the real truth is that it never occurred to me. On reflection, I think Howard is right. I should have disclosed a government contract, when I later wrote about the Bush marriage initiative. I would have, if I had remembered it. My apologies to my readers.

I wonder who else is out there.

Fascinating piece in Slate on how some pro-war conservatives are going green. Why? For the obvious reason that anything that can reduce our dependence on Middle Eastern oil helps disentangle us from Saudi autocracy. I’ve never understood why conservatives in principle oppose tougher fuel standards or conservation measures. Conserving energy is conservative, no? And increasing energy independence is a useful foreign policy tool, no? Where’s the catch? One of my first attempts at policy analysis was a small study for Margaret Thatcher’s private policy institute arguing that the Tories should be far more enviro-friendly. It never caught on. I doubt this new outbreak of sanity will either.

WORDS AND REALITY: Some interesting contrasts from the president’s Inaugural address and actual incidents of torture by U.S. troops in Iraq, made possible by White House memos. A journalist friend of mine who has good sources in the Chinese government recently asked them what their response was to Abu Ghraib. He told me they smiled broadly. “Oh, we loved Abu Ghraib,” they replied. “We just hope your president doesn’t start preaching to us about human rights any time soon.”

RAMESH ON BUSH: Here’s an interesting concession:

Social conservatives have a legitimate complaint with Bush, who does appear to have used them (not to mention gays) for electoral purposes on the marriage question.

Moral values, anyone?

EMAIL OF THE DAY: “The current debate over torture marks the first time the issue has achieved such prominence in American political discussion. But it is hardly the first appearance of the issue. During the Spanish-American War, the use of certain torture techniques by US soldiers in the Philippines grabbed brief newspaper attention. Specifically, in 1902, a soldier was court-martialed for using what was called the “water cure” — forcing a prisoner to consume large amounts of water — as a technique in the interrogation of Filipino insurgents. The soldier invoked “military necessity,” saying that the insurgents presented a grave threat to the safety of his troops and had to be ferreted out.
The Judge Advocate General of the Army took an appeal from the case and addressed the claim that a “military necessity” defense could be raised to justify this conduct. He noted a General Order in effect for the US forces at the time which stated that “military necessity does not admit of cruelty, that is, the inflicting of suffering for the sake of suffering or revenge . . . nor of torture to extort confessions.” Indeed, this has been military doctrine for the US Army since the Revolutionary War, and reflects the famous Order at Trenton issued by George Washington. The Judge Advocate General’s decision goes on, “the [necessity] defense falls completely, inasmuch as it is attempted to establish the principle that a belligerent who is at war with a savage or semicivilized enemy may conduct his operations in violation of the rules of civilized war. This no modern State will admit for an instant; nor was it the rule in the Philippine Islands.”
Of course the Bybee Memorandum and even the DOD Working Group completely ignored military precedents like this and sought consciously to exclude military lawyers trained in such matters. This is an example of the administration’s enforced amnesia about US policy and traditions. The case is reported in 1 THE LAW OF WAR: A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY 814-819 (Leon Friedman ed. 1972).” More feedback on the Letters Page.

Somehow I don’t think Conde Nast will be calling. (Hat tip: Ollie).