Year: 2005

“With regard to your description of the mosque suicide bombing: Even though your horror and disgust over this and similar terrorist incidents is understandable, I think when you deny this act is a product of religious fanaticism and instead ascribe it to some kind of reified “evil”, you run the risk of relieving both individuals and religious and political institutions of responsibility. No, this is precisely religious fanaticism. Suicide bombings are hardly the first time that religious fanaticism has brought horror to the world. Look at history. Look at European history. Look at Catholic history. Look at Nazism and Communism, which denied religion but acted as religions. One could make a good case for the fact that fanaticism is the core problem of humanity, the outward symptom of our deepest psychological and spiritual dilemma. Calling it “pure, nihilist evil” lets us off too light, lets it get away and scuttle off into the darkness again. It is not pure, nihilist evil; it is precisely religious fanaticism, and precisely what we need to recognize and acknowledge as a universal human issue if we ever intend to take responsibility for it and grow beyond it. Don’t give it a place to hide by reifying it or blaming it on the perpetrator of the day. This shadow belongs to all of us. Drag it front and center and make us look at it.”

I take the point. My point, perhaps artlessly made, is that this is a kind of religion which does not do justice to the genuine article. No true Muslim can believe that suicide and mass murder in a religious place is religiously mandated or permissible. This distortion, this pride, is an evil that can occur under any totalist philosophy, including atheist totalitarianisms, as well as religions. But someone who truly struggles to understand God cannot arrive at the kind of moral certainty and extremism of al Qaeda. They have substituted man for God, as the Catholic church has done at various points in its history, and as other nominally Christian bigots have also done, in coopting the Bible to justify any number of hatreds and pathologies over the centuries. Where religion ends and evil begins is an interesting question, of course. How can something that does so much good be turned to so much evil? My own tentative view is that this moment arrives whenever human beings really do believe they have achieved certainty about the great unknowables. That certainty masks itself as revelation or authority but is in fact an abandonment of the humility that is the mark of genuine faith. You see that certainty in the Islamists and, to a far lesser extent, in the Christianists. And at some point such certainty becomes evil. With al Qaeda, that happened a long time ago.

“I think we may well have some kind of presence there over a period of time. The level of activity that we see today from a military standpoint, I think, will clearly decline. I think they’re in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency.” – vice-president Dick Cheney. You’ll either be relieved or terrified by this statement by Mr Cheney. Relieved if you think he has a grip on the situation; terrified if you think it shows he has no idea what is going on in Iraq (or in the military’s own detention facilities, for that matter). But at least he has given us a clear marker for the future that we can hold him to.

It’s worth reminding ourselves that as we rightly subject religious intolerance or abuse within the U.S. military to scrutiny, the enemy is doing things far, far worse. It tells you a lot about the genuine blasphemy of the Islamo-fascists that they go apeshit every time a mortar falls faintly near a mosque (which are often fronts for paramilitary activity in Iraq), and yet they also commit atrocities like this. An al Qaeda suicide bomber kills up to 20 people at a funeral, wounding many more – in a sacred place. This is not religious faith; it isn’t even religious fanaticism. It is pure, nihilist evil.

There has been much sane commentary on the collapse of the EU constitution in France. I’m happy, because I am not a believer in a politically unified Europe, although I’m a strong supporter of free trade and free movement on the European continent. I’m happy also because it means that Britain will be less isolated and free from a deeper union. But a little realism is in order. The reason the French voted against the constitution is primarily because they fear an open market, a global economy and a free economy. Yes, this was a protest against the results of the current policies – economic stagnation. But it was also a vote to intensify the current policies, not reverse them. The vote makes economic reforms harder not easier; and will probably mean even worse times for the euro-area economy. This isn’t good for Europe, for the prospect of Angela Merkel’s reforms in Germany, and for the U.S. Chirac lost in part because he wasn’t anti-Anglo-American enough. Every day, I feel more amazed at what Margaret Thatcher achieved for Britain. Without her, Britain would be in the same state as France: deadlocked in decline with no one bold enough to shake the whole system up. She made all the difference.

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL FOR KERRY: Why is an ostensibly independent human rights group allowing its officials to contribute to political campaigns? Mike Petrelis has the details.

EMAIL OF THE DAY: “We already have a perfect historical analog for your support of non-reciprocal Geneva adherence – the fact that the the US stuck to the Geneva rules in its treatment of Japanese POWs, despite the fact that Imperial Japan not only refused to reciprocate but treated our POWs in the vilest ways imaginable. There would, no doubt, have been widespread public support among the American people for reciprocal mistreatment of Japanese POWs – but the Roosevelt Administration refused to do so for one simple reason: we wanted Japan afterwards to be a peaceful, non-occupied nation, and mistreating their POWs was not the way to accomplish this. This factor is even more important in the War Against Megaterrorism — we can hardly occupy the entire Moslem world, even briefly — but the self-indulgent dimwits currently running the government refuse to see this, and we will all end up paying for it.”

GOD’S PHONE COMPANY: Some wonderful telemarketing tapes can be listened to here, with callers urging listeners to switch to “Christian” telephone companies, if they object to same-sex marriage. The religious right doesn’t sleep. If a company allows domestic partnerships, or if it supports the ACLU or gay rights groups, they need to be boycotted. Money quote: “Together, you and I will destroy the gays.” “Exactly.” Feel the love of Jesus.

A dialogue between two politically diverse brothers can be read here. But the transcript also contains the following priceless exchange:

Female audience member: Excuse me. I’m not usually awkward at all but I’m sitting here and we’re asked not to smoke. And I don’t like being in a room where smoking is going on.

CH (smoking heavily): Well you don’t have to stay darling, do you? I’m working here and I’m your guest, OK? And this is what I’m like; nobody has to like it.

Ian Katz (Facilitator): Would you just stub that one out?

CH: No. I cleared it with the festival a long time ago. They let me do it.

FAM: We should all be allowed to smoke then.

CH: Fair enough. I wouldn’t object. It might get pretty nasty though. I have a privileged position here, I’m not just one of the audience, so it would be horrible if everyone was like me. This is my last of five gigs, I’ve worked very hard for the festival. I’m going from here to Heathrow airport. If anyone doesn’t like it they can kiss my ass.

IK: Would anyone like to take up that challenge?

(Laughter. Woman walks out)

Love it. Reminds me of the AbFab episode where Patsy attends a play put on by Saffi. As she walks to her seat, she is asked to stop smoking. “Oh, don’t be so bloody stupid!” is the reply. I don’t know why I like this, except, of course, a fondness for people who don’t always conform. I hate cigarette smoke, but I often love the people who emit it.

“ABSURD”: Some of the rhetoric in Amnesty International’s report on U.S. detainment policies is indeed excessive. It is simply wrong on every level to equate the United States’ policy of detention, abuse, torture and rendition of terror suspects with the Soviet Union’s vast domestic prison system, designed to perpetuate an evil totalitarianism. But equally, it is now indisputable that a network of secret prisons exists to detain and interrogate terror suspects, that some of those imprisoned are “ghost detainees” with no proper records or accounting, that abuse and torture have occurred in hundreds of cases, that this president signed a memo defining torture into near-non-existence, that there is no secure method for determining the guilt or innocence of the prisoners, and that all of this has decimated America’s international reputation. It is equally indisputable that investigations into these incidents are simply not “fully investigated in a transparent way.” Even the most egregious cases of murder, as in Bagram, are sometimes dismissed at first for lack of evidence. Incidents of Koran abuse were deemed “not credible” for a week, until five incidents were confirmed. Many, many other accusations are deemed baseless because the only willing testimony comes from prisoners and no investigation takes place. Further, military critics of administration policy are often fired; and the message from the top is unmistakable. These are simply facts. To describe criticisms of this policy and record as “absurd” is itself absurd. It bespeaks either stunning cynicism, or equally stunning denial. And it suggests to me that there will be no resolution to this profound problem coming from the administration itself. They’re relying on the general public not to care, or to believe that the ends of preventing terror justify almost any means, including an end to America’s proud history of decency toward prisoners in wartime. That makes it all the more incumbent on the Congress, the media and the part of the public that does love this country’s reputation and humaneness to speak out and demand accountability. The odds are long, but we have no choice but to try.

I have nothing to say that others cannot say better. For people of my generation, this dispute will always be a little inaccessible. We came of age after the great disillusionment of the late 1960s and 1970s. Rather than disillusioned, my generation was and is, I think, merely unillusioned. But I have to say that if you want a defense of anonymous sources, you couldn’t find a better one than Felt. And, yes, he had mixed motives. So what? Most sources do. And they can still tell the truth. I hope the press isn’t spooked by the Isikoff kerfuffle. With an administration as secretive as this one, and with a war granting it unparalleled powers, we need more reporting, not less.

There has been no increase in the number, despite reports to the contrary.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “Even we at Fox News manage to get some lefties on the air occasionally, and often let them finish their sentences before we club them to death and feed the scraps to Karl Rove and Bill O’Reilly. And those who hate us can take solace in the fact that they aren’t subsidizing Bill’s bombast; we payers of the BBC license fee don’t enjoy that peace of mind. Fox News is, after all, a private channel and our presenters are quite open about where they stand on particular stories. That’s our appeal. People watch us because they know what they are getting. The Beeb’s institutionalized leftism would be easier to tolerate if the corporation was a little more honest about it.” – Fox News’ London bureau chief, Scott Norvell, as reported by Tim Noah. He’s right on both counts. The problem with the BBC’s leftism is that it’s publicly financed and Beebers are in denial about it. Neither problem afflicts Fox, to their credit. They’re not in denial, as Norvell proves; they simply fib about it. Why not acknowledge the bias and revel in it? That’s what we do here at as.com.

You can read an excellent summary of material I have been posting and writing about as well as some more statistical and political data here. Even Glenn Reynolds is now forced to concede that the accumulation of evidence is “non-hysterical”, (i.e. written by a heterosexual male), and “well-documented” (unlike, I suppose, the review-essay I wrote a while back after poring through all the official government reports). One critical fact the author omits is, to my mind, one of the more telling: there have been no reports of prisoner mistreatment anywhere in the war-zone in detention facilities that were not geared toward interrogation. Doesn’t that suggest a strong link between the abuses and new interrogation standards? Another really excellent review is found in the current New Republic by Noah Feldman (alas, subscriber-only). Feldman points out that critics like me do not have a huge smoking gun linking all the abuse to decisions by the White House to relax standards of detainee treatment. The reason?

Plenty of material certainly remains classified, and it will remain so for the foreseeable future, as perhaps some of it should in light of the continuing terrorist threat. We cannot at present answer responsibly the question of the exact consequences of the memoranda by the administration’s lawyers.

But we can parse what we know and the empirical evidence points to widespread abuse and torture of detainees in every field of operation. The patterns of abuse were very similar – geared toward humiliation of Muslims through nakedness, use of dogs, sexual shame, etc. – and they crop up everywhere. Abu Ghraib was “Gitmoized” and techniques approved for the CIA in cases of al Qaeda big-shots “migrated” throughout the system, as the government reports delicately put it. The memos lowering U.S. moral standards were part of the Iraq war-plan, even though no observers would dispute that the Iraq war was covered by the Geneva Conventions in every respect. The evidence of abuse – far greater than any infractions in domestic U.S. jails – is now simply indisputable. It is telling, it seems to me, that the administration’s essential defense now is that all the abuse was a result of military insubordination, i.e. that it was not in control of its own soldiers. So you get to pick between a deliberate legal choice of abuse and incompetence on an epic scale. But if it was incompetence, why have none of the architects been fired? In fact, they’ve been rewarded.

THE QUESTION OF RECIPROCITY: Feldman’s deeper argument – and the superb essay is well worth re-reading – is that the administration made a simple decision after 9/11 to change for ever the way the U.S. wages war. Since the enemy was now beneath civilized standards, the argument was that we should be prepared to match them in depravity, if “military necessity” required it. The Jacksonian logic was one of reciprocity. But the point of the Geneva Conventions was far more than reciprocity. It was to lay out clear, universal moral standards for civilized countries to pursue; and, like all such international agreements, gained force and power by the cumulation of adherence. For the most powerful actor on the world stage to formally renounce or marginalize the code of Geneva might have made short term sense in pursuing the evil men of al Qaeda (although the purported benefits have yet to be shown). But in the medium and long term, all it has done is to soil the U.S.’s reputation as a beacon for human rights and undermined the war itself, especially its broader pro-democracy aspects. It has also made the cumulative force of Geneva far weaker. The next time a U.S. soldier is captured and tortured, we will have very little credibility in complaining. Why could we not have said: “This is a war. We will fight it as we always have done – with vigor but humaneness toward prisoners. Just because they are scum doesn’t mean we have to copy them. We will provide them with our own military documentation and treat them like Geneva inmates. We will only release them when bin Laden declares an unconditional surrender.” If we’d done that, we would have maintained the vital structure of Geneva, we would have avoided the blights of Guantanamo and Bagram and Tikrit and Basra and Abu Ghraib. We would have far more moral force in our legitimate, vital campaign for democratization in the Middle East and beyond. Now it is too late. You only get one shot at maintaining Geneva. And we blew it. Reversing course now would subject too many soldiers and commanders and CIA interrogators and administrtoion officials to legal perils. So Bush will hang in there. It remains one very important reason why we should have fired him last November.

“As a former Marine officer I can tell you that your criticism of the inscription on the tank was proper. The officer or NCO in charge of that tank should at a minimum be reprimanded.

However, I suggest, it may have been better had you not printed that misguided and vile email. It may give some the idea that the opinion of that one soldier, probably someone ensconsced in the safety of the Green Zone, represents more than just his or her immature bragadoccio. I have great doubt it represents the thinking of the great majority of our soldiers and Marines.”

He writes back taking issue with my stance on stem cells. Here’s his point:

I wanted to comment back to you because I, frankly, found it odd that you would grant my premise-that the administration’s position is incoherent yet maintain that the stance taken is still the correct one. If the underlying precedent condition of the argument is contradictory the antecedent result cannot be legitimately rooted in that. Unless you think Bush’s position is right by accident, but that assumes that the embryos in the post are ‘alive’ when the truth is cryogenic preservation means an embryo isn’t moving towards life–it’s dying. It has a fatal condition–the lack of a womb. It can be adopted, implanted to the genetic donor, used for research or disposed of. Even if it’s the first two, the embryo is still not viable life as the millions of embryos that wash out in menses (unremarked upon) demonstrate.
You write: “Nevertheless, actually using such embryos for medical research, and creating them for that purpose, does strike me as more morally problematic.”
Ummm…. How? While discussing this with my friend I noted several observations. The issue is not the creation of embryos for research. There are hundreds of thousands of fertilized eggs that are the by-product of IVF that can be used for stem cell research. So even if you are against the creation of embryos for research, that is not really the immediate issue, and this objection can be readily discarded.
Second, how can you deem destruction of these fertilized eggs as being less morally problematic than using them for life-saving experiments? They are not in the process of living-they are in the process of dying. It is not possible to oppose the use of embryos for research if you simultaneously support (or don’t oppose) IVF which necessarily involves the destruction of fertilized eggs.
Further, if it is the status of a flushed embryo than we must as readily object to the process of heterosexual intercourse, which results in this as a natural byproduct (as does IVF).
You oppose the research by supposing that the use of embryos for medical research is more objectionable than throwing the embryos into a medical waste dump.

Two things. I don’t support banning such research. I support banning federal funding for such research, which gives the imprimatur of the American democratic system to such a morally troubling area. Second, I do indeed think there’s a difference between letting organisms that are “in the process of dying” die and using them for experimentation. The latter exploits them in a way that merely letting them die does not. To take a simple and inexact parallel: would it be okay to use, say, a near-death patient for medical experimentation that would end in her death just because her death was imminent anyway? I know the embryo analogy is not exact, but the principle is similar: using some human life for the possible, but not proven, benefit of others’. Just because you’ve already crossed one line doesn’t mean you cross all of them.