Month: October 2007

Are hip-hop and disco coming together again on the dance floor?

Here is TNR’s statement. I know my views will be discounted because of my long ties with the magazine and my deep respect for and loyalty to it, but readers know I am not afraid to challenge friends or those whom I support. Like Matt, I find TNR’s statement persuasive; we do not yet know what actually happened, and Beauchamp has not been given a chance to fully defend himself without pressure from the military; and the military itself has not interviewed every relevant party, and leaked information in a selective way to political actors that does not reflect well on them. Beauchamp never recanted his story, despite some headlines to that effect. From everything I’ve read Beauchamp does not appear to be a reliable character. But even unreliable characters deserve fair treatment. We have no proof of anything yet.

I’d add also that the incidents at issue strike me as completely trivial.

Very similar incidents of mild troop misbehavior are on YouTube if you want to see them. Of course this kind of things happen in a war zone. These are soldiers not social workers. What’s staggering to me is that having ignored some of the most serious evidence of brutality and war crimes on the part of a tiny minority of troops, the right-wing blogosphere have gone ape-shit over these typical shenanigans as if they somehow tarnish the broader reputation of the troops. You’d think they’d never heard of soldiers misbehaving in a war zone. Frankly, I’m amazed that more of this stuff doesn’t happen. They’re human beings – under stress the rest of us can barely imagine.

Here’s what actually tarnishes the reputation of the troops: Camp Nama, where detainees were routinely tortured and abused under the motto "No Blood No Foul;" Bagram where US soldiers chained an innocent man to the ceiling and pulpified his legs. Compare the amount of attention the right-wing blogs have paid to those stories with one still not resolved allegation of making fun of a burn victim’s face. Look: if Beauchamp invented any of it, the magazine should apologize and retract. But we still have no proof of that, as even some at National Review have been forced to concede.

You’d also think this piece appeared in some vicious anti-American anti-war magazine. It appeared in The New Republic, which supported the Iraq war in the beginning, and which has a sterling reputation with respect to America’s armed forces. This whole kerfuffle strikes me as unhinged in its ferocity. It’s really about something else: the fury of the right at the management of a war they are permanently wedded to; and the need to lash out at someone – anyone – other than the people ultimately responsible.

York, Maine, 12.25 pm.

His ability to become attorney-general may well hinge on his response to the waterboarding issue. (Note to self: did you ever in your entire life imagine you would have to write such a sentence?) Marty Lederman gives him some good advice.

How to get past the first sentence:

Republicans have won five of the last seven presidential elections by running candidates who broadly fit the Ronald Reagan model–fiscally conservative, and firmly but not harshly conservative on social issues.

Fund can honestly write – and his editors approve – the notion that Bush is now or has ever been a fiscal conservative. He has increased spending of all kinds by levels not seen since LBJ, is a big-government socialist compared to his predecessor Bill Clinton, and has uttered such statements, as in rebuilding Katrina, as" "it’s going to cost whatever it will cost." As for not being "harsh" on social issues: does amending the federal constitution to render gay people permanent second-class citizens and locked out of the legal protections their other family members enjoy count? Does throwing a record of close to a million people into the criminal justice system for smoking pot count? Does supporting a constitutional amendment to criminalize all abortion count? Does throwing away every legal and constitutional barrier to grandstand over a vegetative woman in Florida count? I guess not. Sometimes, you begin to realize just how hermetically sealed the partisan right-wing cocoon is.

I’d mention the rest of the piece on Huckabee which echoes this post somewhat. But after that beginning, why should anyone believe a word Fund writes?

Three more things to note. Bill Clinton’s email was apparently paid for by the DCCC. And it contained a link to Clinton’s campaign website. How can this be legal? Who approved it? Emmanuel? Has he already been bought and paid for by She Who Is Inevitable?

Former president Bill Clinton uses DCCC email to urge all those loyal to the royal family to send his wife, the Senator from New York, birthday wishes on her 60th birthday:

In 36 years, Hillary and I have shared a lot of birthdays, and each year I’m amazed at everything she has accomplished. This is a very special year: we’re celebrating Hillary’s 60th, and I hope you’ll join me in sending her a birthday message, sharing your wishes for her and your hopes for the coming year.

I’ll make sure to share your message with Hillary. And please encourage your friends and family to send their messages as well.

You can see my birthday message to Hillary and add your own here:
Click here to sign the card

I know how happy Hillary will be to hear from you on her birthday. Thank you for helping me to make her day special.

Sincerely,

Bill Clinton

And so, in the middle of a primary campaign, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee sends out a message from a former president touting everything one candidate has accomplished, who happens to be his wife. You think a former president would be using the DCCC to send birthday wishes to any other of the candidates? You think the DCCC would let him? And so our pseudo-monarchy deepens. Imagine the pardons when both of them can dole them out as Queen and Prince Consort.

I’ve predicted this for a while, but it’s the first real sign that many senior members of the Bush administration will have trouble leaving the country in future if they do not want to be arrested for war-crimes:

American and European rights groups filed a legal complaint in France accusing former US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld of responsibility for torture in Iraq and at the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay, the groups said on Friday.

The New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, the Berlin-based European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights and two Paris-based groups, the International Federation of Human Rights and the League of Human Rights, said they filed the complaint with the Paris prosecutor’s office as Rumsfeld arrived in France for a visit.

The groups say their complaint could go forward because people suspected of torture can be prosecuted in France if they are on French soil. The complaint says Rumsfeld, in his former position as defence secretary, "authorized and ordered crimes of torture to be carried out … as well as other war crimes."

Le Monde‘s story is here. Sooner or later, the men who authorized war crimes in the US will be brought to justice.

(Photo: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty.)  

I’ll be on the Bill Maher show tonight on HBO. I think I’m on with Martina Navratilova and Wesley Clark, which means I’ll be the least butch one on the panel.

The new prime minister’s speech on British liberty is worth reading in full. It’s a little too collectivist and communitarian for my taste, but when you compare this Labour prime minister’s concern for safeguarding individual liberty in the context of the war on terrorism with Bush and Cheney, it’s night and day. But the most striking part of the speech to me was the following:

In my first days as Chancellor of the Exchequer I gave up power to the Bank of England. To restore the credibility of government economic policy we had to constrain the power of government to put the politics of the moment ahead of the national economic interest.

Now – in my first few months as Prime Minister – we are consulting on other areas where the Prime Minister and executive should surrender or limit their powers, re-examining patronage where it is arbitrary and at all times seeking to bring the executive under democratic control.

In my statement to Parliament before the summer, I proposed that in twelve areas important to our national life the Prime Minister and executive should surrender or limit their powers – the exclusive exercise of which by the government should have no place in a modern democracy – including:

    * the power of the executive to declare war;
    * the power of the executive to ratify international treaties without decision by Parliament;
    * and powers in the appointment of judges — ensuring the independence of the judiciary and recognising their role in safeguarding liberty.

Now recall what Bush and Cheney have done: insisting that the Congress has no final say in whether the United States goes to war or not (in flagrant violation of the Constitution); insisting that the executive branch can unilaterally withdraw from or ignore treaty obligations, such as the Geneva Conventions, without Congressional assent; and abusing the Justice Department to enforce partisan and ideological conformity, rather than to administer justice as impartially as possible.

Remember: this is a Labour prime minister. Remember also that America’s historical commitment to individual liberty has actually been deeper than Britain’s; and the American constitution’s protection of the separation of powers does not exist in the same categorical way in Britain. This is how far America has sunk.