Category: Old Dish

You may have read the original Catholic News Service Review I linked to yesterday. Well, the Vatican was not pleased. And so the review has been changed. The rating given originally was “L” for “appropriate for limited adult audiences”. The new rating is “O” for morally offensive. The reviewer’s name has been taken off the review. The theocon website, a conduit for the most reactionary forces in the Church, i.e. Benedict, Neuhaus, et al., exults here. Here’s the old cache for the intellectually honest review. Here’s the censored one.

THE VATICAN AND BROKEBACK: You can see why this movie may pose a threat to Benedict’s anti-gay crusade. I haven’t seen it yet, alas, but just read the gut-wrenching and beautiful short story on which it’s based. It’s an astonishingly beautiful piece of writing. The story is about love: human love. Not homosexual love; or heterosexual love. Just love. And the immense psychic pain and cruelty inflicted on countless human beings for so many centuries because of whom they fell in love with. I haven’t seen the movie yet, because it hasn’t reached DC yet. But the story’s message is, to my mind, one of the more eloquent rebukes to the current Vatican. You know, the Vatican that speaks, at its most compassionate, of the “affliction” of “deep-seated homosexual tendencies.” Change one word and you see the truth the Church hierarchy refuses to see. How about “deep-seated homosexual love?” In Annie Proulx’s inspired story, that becomes something deeper and grander: “deep-seated human love.” That’s what the Pope is so afraid of. And why, in the end, he will lose this argument. Love and truth are on the other side of the debate. And our Catholic faith assures us that love and truth win in the end. Popes come and go; but the truth remains. And slowly, painfully, the truth is coming nout.

IS BUSH ABOVE THE LAW? It would appear so.

Last week, my other half and I rented the original King Kong, just to get a feel for the epic before Peter Jackson’s remake. The original was far better than I expected and heralded the beginning of Hollywood spectaculars and special effects. We saw Jackson’s Kong yesterday, and I have little doubt that the gloom-sayers about its box office prospects are wrong. It’s an astounding achievement of cinematography: more graphic, involving, spectacular and emotionally resonant than any movie of its kind ever made before. I’m not a huge fan of the big epics, or even CGI-dominated event movies. But this is different. Naomi Watts is gorgeous and vulnerable and credible; Jack Black is wonderfully, enthusiastically amoral; the beast itself a miracle of emotional expression without anthopomorphic distortion. It’s a tour de force. I predict that word of mouth will soon propel it to box office success. But then, I’m often wrong about these things.

“Is Reynolds kidding? Being unspecific is his entire M.O. His blog consists of little but broad agreements with the opinions of others (“indeed”) and vague endorsements of Rove and Bush-isms written in a passive voice (“if I were Rove I might not do ____”)
If anything, you’ve been irritatingly SPECIFIC on this subject, quoting endlessly from reports on torture, the McCain bill, etc.
I think you need to inaugurate the ‘Glenn Reynolds Unintentional Irony Award.'”

Heh.

Instapundit finds me “consistently, pompously, and annoyingly moralistic and irritatingly unspecific” on the question of torture. I’m sorry about that. But I can promise him my position had nothing to do with “brand differentiation,” as he calls it. Believe it or not, opposing torture was and is a deep principle of mine, sincerely held, and I think the record shows I blog according to what I think, even if it loses me readers and alienates people who would otherwise be allies. I’m sorry that Glenn, over the last year and half, said he opposed torture but did nothing to help stop it. In fact, he did much to excuse and ignore it or look the other way, as well as denigrating or condescending to those of us who fought against it. He even argued that vocally opposing torture would only help legalize it, because most Americans were in favor. Mercifully, the American people, as represented in the Congress, have proven him wrong. He lacked faith in American decency. Some of us didn’t.

FOR THE RECORD: And just for the record, let me correct one statment that Glenn has posted about my work on this issue. He has written that I “count” wrapping a Muslim in the Israeli flag or smearing fake menstrual blood on them “as torture,” and recently went further and cited my alleged “repeated treatment of those subjects as ‘torture.'” (My italics.) His evidence is the following sentence:

A simple question: after U.S. interrogators have tortured over two dozen detainees to death, after they have wrapped one in an Israeli flag, after they have smeared naked detainees with fake menstrual blood, after they have told one detainee to “Fuck Allah,” after they have ordered detainees to pray to Allah in order to kick them from behind in the head, is it completely beyond credibility that they would also have desecrated the Koran?

It seems clear to me that in that sentence, I distinguish between torture (which I use to describe actual murder) and other interrogation methods which are indeed “cruel, inhuman and degrading,” but not torture. All are banned under U.S. law and military code and the Geneva Conventions. But obviously, someone uttering “Fuck Allah!” – however depraved – is not torture, and I didn’t suggest it was. Ditto with the “fake menstrual blood” issue. Reynolds links to James Taranto’s ugly rants to back him up. Well go read the full evidence. Find one instance where I count fake menstrual blood as “torture,” let alone any “repeated treatment of those subjects as ‘torture.'” Even Taranto concedes I didn’t call it “torture.” He says I called it an “abuse” and described such tactics as “inhumane,” “immoral” and “disgusting”. I challenge Reynolds to cite one single instance where I “counted” such techniques as “torture.” It’s one more piece of flim-flam from the good professor to disguise his own sad failure to have the courage of his own alleged convictions. Sorry, Glenn. But the record speaks for itself.

A man says farewell to his soldier husband as he heads back to war.

A priest with integrity.

“Neither Per nor I is as scandalized as NPR apparently is [by allegations of voter fraud in Kurdistan]. The elections here went off without a hitch. No bombs. No violence at all. Quiet. As orderly as things get in Iraq. And, man, were the Kurds ever thrilled to vote. Per told me that in one rural village outside Erbil, info on registration procedures never got out, and hundreds of villagers were turned away from the poll. They were devastated. Democracy is life to these people — or, as one Kurdish Christian named Jacob told me: “Democracy is the best religion for mankind.” He meant that, and most Kurds agree with him. There will always be fraud and corruption in Iraq. (In one desperate moment, a cabbie here charged me 1000 times the normal rate for a short trip!) Nevertheless, these elections have been a resounding success.” – Noah Schachtman, blogging from Kurdistan.

Two fascinating and largely positive reviews from the Catholic News Service and Christianity Today. My favorite line from CNS:

While the actions taken by Ennis and Jack cannot be endorsed, the universal themes of love and loss ring true.

Hard to summarize better the contradiction at the heart of the Church’s teaching on homosexual dignity.

END OF GAY CULTURE WATCH: Casper, Wyoming, has an openly gay mayor. Zzzzzz.

The bottom line is surely this. With each election, Sunni Arab participation has risen this year. Yesterday, there was a clear indication that some deal had been made between the Sunni Arab political leadership and the insurgents to halt violence. That means that a) Sunni Arabs want in on an equitable Iraq and that b) the insurgency can indeed be destroyed by politics. American policy must now be a relentless attempt to facilitate concessions to the alienated minority, especially on oil rights, that can continue this process. Zalmay has his work cut out; and the dealing will, of course, be determined by the precise result. But this is an amazingly good opportunity for progress. Moreover, I believe as a matter of faith and of history that each time a people votes for its own future, the practice of democracy deepens, the sane majority strengthens, the appeal of extremism diminishes. Our job is now to keep this momentum going, to force the parties to deal, quickly and expeditiously, with their differences, and to lean on the Shiites to understand it is in their interest to make concessions to the people who tormented and oppressed them for so long.

THIS IS NOT ABOUT BUSH: I should add that pure domestic partisanship on this matter – and even recriminations and criticisms of the past – need to be abandoned in America right now. We are asking the various Iraqi factions to put the past behind them and work constructively for a better future. President Bush is the commander in chief for the next three years – the crucial years for Iraq – whether you like it or not. It is in all our interests – Democrat, Republican and Independent – that he succeed. Scoring points – as distinct from making clear and constructive criticism – is not what we need right now. Here’s a reader who sums up my own feelings pretty well:

I voted in the first democratic election in South Africa in 1994. There were long, long lines of people. Everyone was happy, smiling, black, white, rich, poor. The election changed everything, absolutely fundamentally. Ten years on, South Africa is a country with a lot of problems – AIDS, unemployment, violence. But the economy is booming, people are optimistic overall, and there’s no doubt it’s a way better place than it was in the dark days of apartheid. Democracy is powerful, powerful medicine. As a Democrat watching the Iraqi elections today, I could not help feeling very positive about the future of Iraq, and also what the United States has accomplished there. Despite all the screw-ups, and the moral lapses (like torture), George Bush may well be hailed as a visionary in ten years time by many in the Arab world, and the world at large. Liberals today should drop their hatred of George Bush, and hope this is a new beginning for the Iraqis and the future of democracy and freedom in the Middle East. As liberals, we should be wanting that more than anything.

Just as the Sunnis are splitting into those who want a constructive future and those who want to fester in the bitterness and divisions of the past, so the Democrats need to distance themselves from the humiliate-Bush-at-any-price extremists who can shout the loudest. the Iraqi people deserve better than that from us. And we owe them our support.

Yesterday was a stupendous day for those who care about the moral standing of the U.S. and its capacity to get good, reliable intelligence. The McCain Amendment is real, and will profoundly strengthen the hands of the majority of soldiers and CIA officers who want nothing to do with illegal treatment of detainees. But the Graham-Levin Amendment is a bizarre addition, as Emily Bazelon spells out in Slate. The records of Alberto Gonzales and Don Rumsfeld are clear. As long as Rumsfeld runs the Pentagon, you know there will be an attempt to undermine the clear new rules. McCain’s looming chairmanship of the Senate Armed Services Committee will help. I’m not minimizing the complete victory of the anti-torture forces this week, and Bush’s shrewd cooptation of them. Deep down, I believe Bush And Rice don’t want the U.S. to be tarred with this kind of stain, but that Cheney and Rumsfeld are fine with it. The lesson here seems to me to be along Churchill’s dictum of magnanimity in victory … but vigilance too. I do not trust Cheney, Rumsfeld or Gonzales on this issue; and they need to be watched continuously to see they do not try and subvert the law again.