Month: December 2008

"The people who are asking us to do this today, these are people who can’t play piggyback with their 3-year-old. These are people who get up every day and battle HIV/AIDS. They are people who wonder if their chemotherapy is going to work. I can’t look at those folks and let them be perhaps the only ones who don’t have the ability to have less pain," – New Jersey state senator, Bill Baroni, on why he voted for a medical marijuana bill.

Oslo, Norway, 9.41 am.

Reuel Marc Gerecht responds to my postings yesterday:

I take it from your post that if you had been confronted on 7 September 2001 with a captured Khalid Shaykh Muhammad or Abu Zubaydah and you knew that a major, mass-casualty terrorist strike was about to go down in the United States, and you had plenipotentiary authority for the nation’s security, you would not have used any physically coercive techniques against the gentleman?  Okay, but I do believe that moral men can go the other way, and I strongly suspect that the vast majority of Democrats and Republicans elected or appointed to high office would go the other way.   

I don’t think fleeing the Middle East, an idea whose popularity will surely grow among Republicans and Democrats as Afghanistan and Pakistan test our mettle much more than Iraq did, will exempt us from such scenarios since holy warriors came after us long before we were in Mesopotamia and Central Asia.  The Clinton Administration started rendering folks when the "peace process" was in full bloom.  Not many, of course.  This was pre-9/11.  But I would be willing to bet large quantities of money that if Al Gore had won the presidency in 2000, he would have continued and accelerated the program begun by Bill Clinton, as did Bush. 

The Europeans in Afghanistan have a unspoken agreement to render all al-Qa’ida suspects to the Americans.  They do this not because the Americans demand it; they do it because they know that they don’t want to be responsible for interrogations and what to do afterwards.  Not particularly brave, but quite understandable.  Although your posting seems to be just a tous-azimuts venting of indignation, and not a particularly thoughtful critique, I would like to underscore two little datums:  the Jordanians do torture, my essay clearly lets the reader know this, and the Clinton and Bush Administrations were fibbing about the regime’s behavior when they sent folks to the Hashemite Kingdom.   And I don’t believe Senator McCain opposed or opposes the CIA having a somewhat different charter when it comes to the interrogation of holy warriors. This point often got lost in the campaign, in part because people on his own side would blur the distinction.

As I’ve written before, I’m strongly opposed to rendition. Would that the Clinton and the Bush administrations—especially the Bush administration—had started a public discussion of what we do with holy warriors who live to slaughter thousands. No senior Democratic or Republican senator or congressman could have then winked their approval of the CIA’s special methods (as they most definitely did).  If Bush had done this in 2001 or 2002 or even 2003, we would have all been much better off.  You might not like what America’s legislature would have decided (Andrew, what was your position on this in 2001/2002?), but it would have carried the approval of more of the American people’s representatives.  Would that there had been more essays earlier like those done by the Atlantic’s Mark Bowden in the Philadelphia Enquirer in December 2007—easily the most thoughtful discussion of waterboarding printed anywhere.

If these things had happened, we would surely not have such an Orwellian discussion of this issue today, and good and decent men would be more careful with their language.   There is a Bodleian Library’s worth of difference between Americans who must choose ugly means to defend themselves against men who live to massively slaughter civilians and the Gestapo and Chekists. The Bush administration, despite  its many terrible mistakes, didn’t open the doors to hell, or make Americans more savage or less moral. (As a people, we were much more brutal in war sixty-five years ago than we are today, the sins of Abu Ghurayb included.) 

If Americans again ever waterboard someone, and we can all hope that doesn’t happen, it will no doubt be because our elected representatives have decided that such an ugly but defensible act is required to save Americans from another 9/11. That is an unlikely contingency now, in part because of the counter-terrorist successes of the Bush administration and our allies.  (The line that the President-elect used, at least for awhile during the campaign, that “we are less safe” was just silly.)

For the record, my position on torture has always been the same and was unaffected by 9/11. It is illegal, immoral and counter-productive. I believe we are less safe because of it, and Reuel has produced no evidence to the contrary. I am grateful, however, for an honest defense of the practice and of its incorporation within the American constitution. It would alter the meaning of America for ever. But better that be done in public, under an amended law, than by an unaccountable executive answerable only to elections every four years – and able to torture in order to procure evidence to defend more torture.

Sculptor Jason de Caires creates art to be viewed beneath the waves:

The works are all intended to highlight the temporal and organic nature of our existence – not celebrating or depicting moments from the past but aiming to remind the viewer of the inevitability of change and evolution. I also feel we have started to alienate ourselves from our natural surroundings and hope the work portrays a symbiotic and sustainable relationship with our environment.

More stunning images here.

Jessi Klein:

When I meet a guy for the first time, I have no problem with his eyes wandering south for a second to check out my rack—that’s when I steal a glance at the little slip of landscape peeking out from the collar of his shirt. Is it heavily forested, gently grassy, or just a desert-like stretch of flesh, with nary a hair in sight to provide shade?

Two of them, in fact, that summarizes his entire, cosseted, spoiled, rich-kid attitude:

"So what?"

That’s how he acknowledges that there was no al Qaeda in Iraq to speak of before he created a power vacuum through his botched war and occupation. So two wars to cripple al Qaeda actually gave al Qaeda and Jihadism in general two new bases for operation: Iraq and Waziristan. Thanks to the amazing work of many troops and generals and Iraqis, al Qaeda is at bay (though not defeated) in Iraq, but resurgent in Pakistan. Which is to say that several thousand Americans – and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis – died to get us back to Square One.

Now it all makes sense:

In 1980, a vacationing Rod Blagojevich camped in front of Richard Nixon’s home, with a friend, until the pariah ex-president emerged and this picture was taken.

The point of capitalism is that actions have consequences. Once that market discipline is removed for a few of the worst, ill-managed, union-crippled companies in America, the stage is set for endless mediocrity, government-run industry (i.e. even more endless mediocrity), and a free-for-all at the government trough. A clear majority of Americans agree, in the new WaPo poll. If this intensifies the recession, so be it. Recessions are sometimes necessary for long-term economic health. And the bigger and sharper it is now the more time Obama has to recover from it. Let them die.

You can imagine why Andy McCarthy would explode at the bipartisan Senate report that proves that president Bush authorized the torture and abuse methods used at Abu Ghraib. The case is closed. Sadly, he and a few on the Schmittian right, still gamely insist that there is no truth to what the report says. McCarthy calls it "utterly partisan." Er:

Committee staff said the full report was approved on Nov. 20 in a unanimous voice vote by 17 of the panel’s 25 members. The panel consists of 13 Democrats and 12 Republicans.

There were no dissents. McCarthy then quotes Senator McCain, the Republican presidential candidate who signed the report:

"The committee’s report details the inexcusable link between abusive interrogation techniques used by our enemies who ignored the Geneva Conventions and interrogation policy for detainees in U.S. custody," Sen. McCain said in a statement. "These policies are wrong and must never be repeated."

McCarthy splutters:

 

 

So al Qaeda — which is not and cannot be a party to the Geneva Conventions, and which has never done anything but torture and kill its captives — ignores Geneva and follows its torture/kill practice because of American policy rather than twisted jihadist ideology?  Really Senator?

No, Andy. If you had read the report (and I assume you haven’t), you would realize that the enemies McCain was referring to are the Communist Chinese who honed the torture tactics against U.S. prisoners in the Cold War, not al Qaeda. Furthermore, while al Qaeda is indeed not a party to Geneva, Common Article Three requires basic humane treatment of all prisoners, regardless of any affiliation or lack of it. Geneva is about us, not them.

Let it sink in:

"In real (inflation-adjusted) terms, the war in Iraq alone has already cost more than every past U.S. war but World War II," the study finds.