Month: January 2005

Here are a couple of emails worth sharing on the question of what we are doing to detainees we suspect of being insurgents in Iraq or terrorists anywhere:

Hate to sound flip, but relax. What was being done (and perhaps continues to be done) is not torture by any conventional definition. It only has become ‘torture’ because the pious among us have chosen to redefine the term without any sense of perspective. At worst we ‘waterboard’. At best, they behead. I’m sorry, but these are new times with a truly evil enemy that is determined at any cost to kill as many of us as possible by any means. I just don’t have a problem with making these people uncomfortable.

“Uncomfortable” in five certified cases means dead at the hands of American interrogators. 23 others have died in U.S. custody and their deaths are under investigation. Oh well. Then there’s this angle, suggested to me by a reader:

Since you want to continue to wallow in the Abu Ghraib “torture” allow me to point out a number of observations. Firstly, I pride myself on a skill that involves the dissection of pictures that would appear to portray certain things. I’ve looked carefully at the Abu Ghraib human “pyramid” and my assessment is that the prisoners in that particular picture are complicit in this so-called “torture”. I see a scenario wherein the guards say; “Hey, lets have some fun, you guys get naked and get into a pile and we’ll get some pictures”. Some say absolutely not and do not participate. Others say “Okay but we need to hide our faces”. Hence the pictures depict hooded prisoners.

You understand from this email how democracies can become police states. Because we look away.

SPEAKING OF WHICH: Heather Mac Donald continues to write about what the official formal policy was for Gitmo, as if the administration’s cover for what they sanctioned is proof of their innocence. She doesn’t mention the gaping loophole in Bush’s memo that allows deviation from the formal rules against torture for “military necessity.” She still appears not to have read the major government reports that cite top government decisions as leading to the abuses. She doesn’t address any of the non-Abu Ghraib torture incidents – in almost every branch of the military in Iraq. She doesn’t answer why the administration has itself renounced its own torture memo from 2002. If it had nothing to do with the problem, why did it need to be rescinded? Her final point is worth addressing frankly:

What is ultimately at stake in this debate is the validity of the administration’s decision not to confer Geneva Convention prisoner of war status on terrorists. Mr. Sullivan refuses to explain why he thinks that terrorists who aim to massacre as many civilians as possible, hide in the civilian population, and fail to carry arms openly or wear uniforms, should be granted status as lawful combatants. Nor does he explain how such a decision would lead to a safer, more law-abiding world.

I disagree that that is what is at issue. Even if the alleged terrorists (and remember they include non-Qaeda captives in Iraq, according to Gonzales) are unlawful combatants, they still, according to U.S. law, should be free from cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment that would “shock the conscience.” I fail to see why those who support this war, those who are principled conservatives, those who believe that the government should never be above the law, should still be finding pathetic excuses for this stain on the honor of the United States and its rightly revered armed forces.

BUSH ON GAYS: He’s not a homophobe, according to Lanny Davis. I never thought he was. In fact, that’s why his extraordinary attack on gay relationships and citizens is so dispiriting. It’s also counter-productive. Imagine if Bush had made a speech or remarks in which he had expressed his own view of the dignity of gay people and their relationships, even while believing that civil marriage should not be granted to them. Wouldn’t that have helped him? But the far right prevents him from saying that, because they believe that gay people are either sick or sinful. In order to win and hold power, he has to cater to homophobes, who have succeeded in obscuring the real Bush. This will hurt him. Note this interesting fact from the USAToday poll:

On domestic issues, Americans are more concerned about education and health care costs than they are about Social Security. They worry more about jobs, the deficit and poverty than they do about taxes, another focus for Bush. Protecting the environment ranks above curtailing lawsuits against doctors, the first major legislative proposal the president plans to pursue this year. Among 18 issues, same-sex marriage – the subject of heated debate in the election – comes in last when Americans are asked to rate their concerns.

Over to Tony Perkins, of the Family Research Council:

“I believe there is no more important issue for the president’s second term than the preservation of marriage.”

Can Bush square that circle? No wonder he wants to put all the burden of resisting the FMA on the Senate.

A reader notes something else:

As the President raised his hand to take the oath of office, Rick Santorum’s face was framed perfectly for the camera between the President’s hand and his ear. Such an image was at once startling and telling – a vivid reminder of who will be looking over the his shoulder as he works to “preserve, protect and defend the constitution of the United States.”

Yes, I did notice that. And, yes: gulp.

Worthwhile piece from Peter Robinson on the big government assumptions behind Bush’s address. Money quote:

On domestic policy, a “broader definition of liberty?” Citing as useful precedents the Homestead Act, the Social Security Act, and the G. I. Bill? Compare what Bush said today with the inaugural address of Lyndon Baines Johnson and the first inaugural address of Ronald Reagan and you’ll find that Bush sounds much, much more like LBJ. He as much as announced that from now on the GOP will be a party of big government.

Well, if this is news to Robinson at this point, he’s been snoozing for a while. Bush killed off small government conservatism years ago. Bush is a Wilsonian liberal abroad and a Bismarckian at home.

I wonder if Mike Gerson and John McConnell were thinking of this wonderful Lincoln quote in their skilled speech: “As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.” Lincoln said that in Cleveland, Ohio February 15, 1861, according to an alert reader. If they did, it wouldn’t surprise me. If they didn’t, they’re on the same wavelength as Lincoln. Either way: not too shabby.

Two emails caught things I didn’t:

How convenient that the two Cheney daughters were seated with their mother and each of their spouses seated behind them. Funny, all the Bush relatives were seated side-by-side with their spouses. Why do you suppose?

Could be chair-spacing, I don’t know. Even I’m not that paranoid. Then the answer we’ve all been waiting for:

Justice Breyer was wearing a silk cap of a sort the court used into the 1930s. If you look at Chief Justice Hughes swearing in President Roosevelt you will see him wearing the same sort of headgear. If memory serves its revival was another of Chief Justice Rehnquist’s little nods to court tradition.

That and the Gilbert and Sullivan costuming.

MICKEY AGAIN: In response to some emails, I have no idea why Mickey Kaus has gone on a tear against me lately. But his latest post again misses an important point. I never believed and still do not believe that Hans Blix or the U.N. would ever have been able to confirm beyond doubt that Saddam had gotten rid of all his WMD stockpiles or research ambitions. So I stand by my opposition to the NYT’s pre-war position that the U.N. could solve this if given more time. (The only reason for delay would have been to win over more allies, principally the Turks. We now know the urgency wasn’t necessary – but we couldn’t have known that then.) But hindisght also works in my favor. Given how much we know now about the deep corruption of the U.N. oil-for-food program, I’m even more relieved they are not the instrument for keeping Saddam contained. They were and would be the instrument for empowering Saddam and further impoverishing the Iraqi people. Bush was right to do what he did. And no amount of criticism of the conduct of the war will take that away.

Who could disagree with the stirring, elegant and somewhat sweeping address the president just gave? Well: here’s a rough shot. The speech was a deep rebuke to conservative foreign policy realists. Its fundamental point, it seems to me, is that security is only possible through the expansion of liberty abroad. In the long run, that’s indisputable. In the short run, there are sometimes trade-offs to be made. What Bush was saying was that he will not trade liberty for security. Translation: he will stick to the democratization of Iraq. That was the main point of the address on the major policy issue in front of us. In that sense, it was an old-style liberal speech, about as far from the conservative tradition in foreign policy as can be imagined. And at its most ambitious, it was a fusion of liberal internationalism with realism – saying that the latter cannot be secured without the former. It was ecumenical; and it was rightly thematic. If I could offer one criticism, I’d say it could have been shorter. There were times when the liberty theme became repetitive. And, of course, the relationship of rhetoric to reality is, as always with Bush, problematic. How do you reconcile the expansion of freedom with Bush’s expansion of government? How do you square domestic freedom with the curtailment of civil liberties in a war on terror? How do you proclaim that America is a force for freeing dissidents, when the government now has unprecedented powers to detain anyone suspected of terror across the globe and subject them to coercive interrogation techniques that the government will not disclose? Perhaps these questions do not need to be answered in an inaugural address. But they linger in the air, even as Bush’s eloquence and idealism lifts you up and gives you hope.

BEST LINE: “Across the generations we have proclaimed the imperative of self-government, because no one is fit to be a master, and no one deserves to be a slave.”

MOST SIGNIFICANT LINE: “So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.”

MY PERSONAL FAVORITE: “Americans, at our best, value the life we see in one another, and must always remember that even the unwanted have worth. And our country must abandon all the habits of racism, because we cannot carry the message of freedom and the baggage of bigotry at the same time.”

WORST HAT: What was Stephen Breyer wearing?

“Poll: Nation split on Bush as uniter or divider,” – CNN.com. Says it all today, doesn’t it?

GONZALES’ ANSWERS: Marty Lederman goes through the fine print of the Senate responses from the nominee to run the Justice Department. Plenty of reason to delay the vote on his confirmation. Money quote:

The responses confirm what has been manifest for a while now: The Administration has concluded that the CIA, when it interrogates suspected Al Qaeda detainees overseas, may lawfully engage in “cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment–i.e., treatment that would “shock the conscience,” and thus be unconstitutional, within the United States–as long as that treatment does not constitute “torture” under the very narrow meaning of that term in the federal criminal law.

Translation: America is now a torturing nation, under any reasonable definition of the word “torture”. This is president Bush’s achievement. When Gonazales was given an opportunity to disown such practices as “forced enemas, infliction of cigarette burns, and binding detainees hand and foot and leaving them in urine and feces for 18-24 hours,” he replied that it was not appropriate for him to “attempt to analyze” the legality of such techniques. We want this guy for AG? Lederman also notes how the administration, despite saying that the war in Iraq falls under the Geneva Conventions, nevertheless exempts insurgents from the protections. How conveeenient. So it’s open season for any suspected insurgent in U.S. custody in Iraq. (And the word “suspected” is apposite here. The dozens of inmates abused at Abu Ghraib were part of a random intake that was up to 90 percent innocent.) Abu Ghraib begins to make more sense, doesn’t it, as does the pattern of abusive behavior by scattered U.S. (and now British) troops across the areas of combat. Then there’s this:

Moreover, Gonzales suggests that the Fourth Geneva Convention, with its protection of civilians, no longer applies to civilians detained by the U.S. now that the U.S. is no longer an occupying power.

Wow. Once sovereignty was transferred, we’re no longer at war and therefore no longer formally bound by Geneva. I can’t imagine how stressed out soldiers might feel they’ve been told they can treat Iraqi civilians however they want. Given these responses, a vote for Gonzales is to my mind very hard to defend. What he didn’t say was legion; what he did say was chilling.

Yes, the British Conservatives have finally decided to campaign as a lower-tax party. Halleluia. The notion that all government spending is good is buried deep in the British psyche – and nurtured by that statist creation, the BBC. But it can be challenged. And if the Tories are ever to regain the political initiative, cutting taxes on the poor and streamlining government will be their path back to power.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “Look, the truth cannot be offensive. Perhaps the hypothesis is wrong, but how would we ever find out whether it is wrong if it is ‘offensive’ even to consider it? People who storm out of a meeting at the mention of a hypothesis, or declare it taboo or offensive without providing arguments or evidence, don’t get the concept of a university or free inquiry.” – Steven Pinker. (Hat tip: Jonah).

JibJab has gone a bit soft, but this cartoon skit is still funny.

Ron Rosenbaum says what must be said.