Month: November 2006

Here’s a clip about making an ’80s video on spec – from the classic movie, Tapeheads. They get what we’ve been enjoying this past month or so. And yes: paint.

Rich Lowry finally comes out of denial about Bush:

Bush simply has failed to run his war. Historian Eliot Cohen describes how, in contrast, the best American wartime president conducted himself: "Lincoln had not merely to select his generals, but to educate, train and guide them. To this end he believed that he had to master the details of war, from the technology to the organization and movement of armies, if only to enable himself to make informed judgments about general officers."

Bush has taken the opposite approach and — for all his swagger and protectiveness of executive prerogatives — is becoming a disturbing study in lassitude in the executive branch.

A new Cornerite, Mario Loyola, is even forced to the following concession:

I still think that given the alternatives ‚Äî in 2000, the disturbingly insincere and megalomaniac Al Gore; and in 2004, the sincerely pompous and foolish John Kerry‚ÄîBush was by far the better choice. But in the end, in these horribly difficult times, America needed a leader of real greatness …

Well, yes and no. In 2004, we knew Bush was a failure. Hence my decision to give someone else a chance. On September 12, 2001, I wrote in this space:

The only question is whether we will get the leadership now to deal with this or whether we will have to endure even worse atrocities before a real leader emerges.

For well over a year after that, I did all I could to give this president the benefit of every doubt, until, in the weeks afer the Iraq invasion and the torture revelations, it became impossible to continue to do so. Four years later, I think we now all sadly know the answer to the question of whether we had the right leader at the right time. The Iraq failure, I should add, does not mean surrender. It means a tactical retreat from a dreadful error in order to fight again. But not recognizing it as an irretrievable failure at this point is pure fantasy. In war, we cannot afford fantasy. We need strategy, based on a cold, hard empirical look at where we are. You think Churchill would have advised fighting on to retain Dunkirk? The choices are as Tom Friedman puts them today:

10 months or 10 years. Either we just get out of Iraq in a phased withdrawal over 10 months, and try to stabilize it some other way, or we accept the fact that the only way it will not be a failed state is if we start over and rebuild it from the ground up, which would take 10 years. This would require reinvading Iraq, with at least 150,000 more troops, crushing the Sunni and Shiite militias, controlling borders, and building Iraq’s institutions and political culture from scratch.

Given our military constraints, the message of the last election, and the inadequacy of presidential leadership, I’m compelled to say: 10 months.

(Photo: Hadi Mizban/AP.)

The Italian magazine, L’Espresso, has a multi-media presentation of the many fashion statements of the current pontiff. He has a style the magazine calls "neo-Bavarian and Wagnerian" – with "square robes, showy gold, and hats"! Check out this one for size. For this Pope, every aisle is a runway.

I’m not budging. Neither is this reader:

The apoplectic responses of Reynolds and others only reinforces your argument. Speaking of which, I found this passage interesting. It’s from the Wikipedia entry for Islamism:

"This usage is controversial. Islamists themselves may oppose the term because it suggests their philosophy to be a political extrapolation from Islam rather than a straightforward expression of Islam as a way of life."

Sounds a lot like the Reynolds-Althouse opposition to the use of Christianist. Regarding Prager, perhaps he should read the Constitution, Article VI, clause 3:

"The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States."

What part of "no religious test" is unclear? I guess the Christianist part.

A reader writes:

Menachem Begin was not, of course, the first person to undergo sleep deprivation. The inquisition used it as well, and considered the tormentum insomniae to be one of its most useful tools. And since torture was forbidden in England, when the Witchfinder General Matthew Hopkins went after the alleged witches in the 1640s, he had to make do with sleep deprivation. It worked well enough: people confessed to crimes they couldn’t possibly commit, knowing the punishment was death – and accepting it for a few hours of undisturbed sleep.

Yep: it’s enough to make you want to accept death if you can finally sleep. Sleep deprivation was, in fact, a routine form of judicial torture in the early modern period in Europe. It was also a critical part of the Rumsfeld-monitored torture of al-Qahtani in Gitmo. At the end of months of sleep deprivation and other forms of torture, Qahtani, according to an FBI letter,

"was evidencing behavior consistent with extreme psychological trauma (talking to non existent people, reporting hearing voices, crouching in a cell covered with a sheet for hours on end)."

You can argue whether what was done to Qahtani was justified or not. But you cannot argue that it was not torture. And it was authorized directly by Donald Rumsfeld. You cannot argue against that either.

A reader writes:

Pace Mr Prager, there has never been, and is no, requirement that a member of Congress put his hand on anything when taking the oath of office. There is nothing in the law requiring a member to do anything in particular with his hands. A member is free to put his hand on a Bible, on any other book or for that matter, to keep his hands at his sides or in his pockets or to make bunny shadows with them during the taking of the oath.

The very first law passed under the Constitution was enacted on June 1, 1789 (Statute I, Chapter 1 (1 Stat. 23)):  "An Act to regulate the Time and Manner of administering certain Oaths." That law says nothing about what someone taking the oath of office is supposed to do with his hands; nor does it say anything about Bibles or any other books being involved in the process. That original law currently is disbursed in 2 U.S.C. Sections 21, et seq. and 5 U.S.C. Section 3331 and in none of these sections (nor in the Rules of the House of Representatives) is there any requirement about what one does with his hands.

Near Dodge City, Kansas, 5 pm.

Today, the Althouse-Reynolds Axis begs for me to engage them on the issues, rather than making them my "enemy." I’m befuddled. I linked to a quote by Glenn Greenwald, which was very long and included many links to Althouse and Reynolds and others over the question of whether "Christianist" is an appropriate term to use to describe the fusion of political ideology and religious faith. Greenwald shows that Reynolds and Althouse simply refuse to allow me to deploy a word in a manner that makes sense to me. Althouse writes:

I criticize Sullivan when he shows a hostility toward ordinary religious people who aren’t trying to bully their way around the political world. There are distinctions to be made here.

Indeed there are. That’s why I call "ordinary religious people" Christians and call those who are "trying to bully their way around the political world" Christianists. Is that so hard for her to understand? I’ve stated it quite clearly from the beginning, but she refuses to take me at my word. Reynolds writes:

"The problem with the term "Christianist" isn’t that it adds "ist" to the end of a religion. It’s that, by parallelling "Islamist," it is a deliberate attempt at conflating people who oppose gay marriage – or, apparently, Madonna’s schlocky posturing – with people who blow up discos and mosques…"

But, as Greenwald points out, my definition of the term includes the following:

I should underline that the term Christianist is in no way designed to label people on the religious right as favoring any violence at all. I mean merely by the term Christianist the view that religious faith is so important that it must also have a precise political agenda. It is the belief that religion dictates politics and that politics should dictate the laws for everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike.

I presume Reynolds can read, so why the inversion of my stated reason? Yes, this term is an attempt to reclaim Christianity from some of its most vociferous representatives in the Republican establishment. When they use the word "Christian" to describe their politics of big government intolerance, I find it distasteful and offensive to my own faith. I have every right to take back a word they have defiled and invent a new one to describe their politicization of faith. Yes, it’s provocative. But nowhere near as offensive as the Republicans’ cooptation of Christ for themselves.

A new law in Ohio. But if your dog is the same sex as you, it may be unconstitutional in Virginia.

A reader writes:

For your and Aaron’s Netflix Queue, may I recommend Billy Wilder’s brilliant "Stalag 17" (now available in a special edition format). Sure, William Holden won an Oscar, but check out the scene in Commandant Col. von Scherbach’s (Otto Premminger) office. Von Scherbach is trying to get a confession out American POW Lt. Dunbar for blowing up a munitions train.  To force the confession, Lt. Dunbar is forced to stand on his feet and not sleep.

That is, until a "Geneva Man" comes in to inspect the camp and enters Col. von Scherbach’s office as well. Dunbar runs to the couch and falls asleep.  In the presence of the "Geneva Man", Von Scherbach does nothing.

Billy Wilder was a Polish Jew who made films in Germany until Hitler came to power when he fled to the US. He had no desire to show the Germans in a positive light by showing their techniques as mild. Wilder knew that sleep deprivation was torture, and it was torture that you could show on a movie screen back in 1953.

Not every tortuous method has to involve the "Jack Bauer" techniques that current day people have come to equate with "typical" torture.

Agreed. But the president differs. He has the same contempt for the "Geneva man" that previous foes of America had.