Category: Old Dish

“I attended a continuing legal education seminar for Army Reserve and National Guard lawyers last weekend. I was struck by one thing: The biggest response from a ballroom full of JAG lawyers was when one dynamic Colonel spoke and said the Army needed to do a better job in handling detainees. He quoted a dispatch from WWII when the commander of a US prisoner of war camp reported back that his camp was under air attack by the German air force, that he could not protect his German prisoners of war, and he had opened the gates and set them all free. This is the standard for the US Army and we need to live up to it. The room cheered. My impression is that the people who have been trained in this stuff (at least the citizen solders) may not be terribly pleased and indeed may be somewhat embarrassed with how this is unfolding. This is also consistent with the JAG lawyers being kept out of the loop.” Yep. Good soldiers don’t believe in this poison. Alas, their civilian superiors do.

CORRECTION: The newly minted word “santorum” – meaning “the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex” – didn’t win the word of the year according to the American Dialect Society; it won the most outrageous word of the year. My apologies.

Marty Lederman’s blog is again a must-read on the Bush administration’s support of torture. One interesting fact: a recent USA Today poll, cited by Lederman, shows very strong public opposition to torture of even known terrorists even if they might have information to prevent future terror attacks. That’s extremely reassuring – and much higher majorities oppose the use of torture in the hundreds of cases where the exact culpability or even identity of the detainees is unknown. 82 percent oppose the use of the Bush-Rice-Rumsfeld backed policy of water-boarding. Glenn Reynolds’ belief that we shouldn’t make a fuss about torture because the backlash will lead to even worse methods doesn’t seem to hold up. Thank God.

It’s hard to find clearer evidence that Condi Rice wants to keep torturing detainees than the fact that the administration refused to acquiecse in a legislative ban on CIA torture last December. The techniques include Algerian-style water-boarding. Does Alberto Gonzales find that “abhorrent”? Will some reporter now do his job and ask Rumsfeld whether he endorses this CIA technique? The trouble with this president is – how do I put it? – he’s lying. He publicly says he finds torture abhorrent, and yet he ensures that the CIA’s expansion of torture techniques is retained. Remember that these relaxed CIA rules were widely disseminated throughout the military, where they are clearly illegal; and helped form the atmosphere and misunderstandings (or were they actually correct understandings?) of what was permitted and what was not. Again what’s remarkable is not just the brazenness of the Bushies’ endorsement of torture but the absolute cravenness of the Democrats, the pathetic excuse we have for a political opposition. If you’re still unclear about the relationship between the new Bush-backed CIA rules and what has happened throughout the war on terror, revisit this post from Marty Lederman. And remember that the incidents we have are not from black box CIA interrogations. If the abuses were this bad in the regular military, can you imagine what is actually going on – where none of us can find out?

QUEER PATRIOTS FOR THE STRAIGHT GUY: The first “Queer Eye” episode in the new series was a moving fusion of red and blue. Or so says Young Curmudgeon.

EMAIL OF THE DAY: “Doesn’t Bush (or any other religious person, even one who happens to BE president) have a right to suggest that he sees faith as so integral to proper perspective that he would most likely not support the presidential candidacy of an atheist? I am no bigot or religious fanatic, but I happen to agree. I might be willing to make an exception for the right person, but as a rule I will not vote for a president who has no faith convictions. I think it is human nature to suspect that people who differ from us in so fundamental a way cannot be trusted to make “presidential” decisions. I am fond of any number of faithless people, but I am quite convinced they have made a serious miscalculation in a fundamental matter. I certainly know many atheists or convicted agnostics who don’t trust Bush primarily because they cannot relate to his faith life, and they do not trust him as a result. They have every right to feel that way, and vote accordingly. Votes in a democracy pivot on these kinds of concerns all the time, and they are perfectly legitimate, whether they come out of ideological, religious, or philosophical convictions of citizens.” I disagree. One of the tasks of liberal citizenship is to eschew our religious convictions as guides to the equality of other citizens. It is, in my view, a failure of the liberal temperament to regard some who have a different faith or no faith as somehow less qualified for public office, let alone the highest public office. When the president himself says this, it’s even more troubling. But Bush has never understood classical liberalism. He is a conservative, religious statist, who sees himself as the personal guardian of the country. He’s Bismarck with a penchant for massive government debt. Hence the secrecy, condescension and occasional lapses like his subjective statement ruling atheists out of the presidency. But we knew this already. More feedback on the Letters Page.

LINCOLN, KUHN AND PARADIGMS: An interesting angle on the gay Abe debate over at Upword.

My review of the various government reports on torture by the U.S. in the war on terror is now up on the NYT site. Maybe it helps explain why I am still exercised about this. I remain a strong believer in the cause of liberating Afghanistan and Iraq from tyranny; and in trying to move the Arab Muslim world toward democracy. President Bush and prime minister Blair deserve huge praise for seeing this through. I just cannot believe what the Bush administration has managed to do in the execution – to America’s reputation, to the West’s integrity and to the cause itself. It is not irreparable – and I’m very cautiously optimistic about the long-term prospects for Iraq. But we owe it to the cause to investigate where we have gone wrong, and to do everything we can to put it right. The Bush administration’s failure to come to terms with this simply isn’t good enough, in my view. The fact that the United States has been routinely and illegally practising torture in its interrogation procedures is abhorrent to everything we are supposed to stand for. Some things simply cannot be wished away or moved on from. Especially when, in all likelihood, they are still occurring.

Did I over-react? It’s worth looking at the full quote as produced by the Washington Times:

“I fully understand that the job of the president is and must always be protecting the great right of people to worship or not worship as they see fit. That’s what distinguishes us from the Taliban. The greatest freedom we have or one of the greatest freedoms is the right to worship the way you see fit. On the other hand, I don’t see how you can be president at least from my perspective, how you can be president, without a relationship with the Lord.” (My italics)

Now notice that Bush is explicitly qualifying his defense of religious freedom (or the freedom to have no religion at all) by saying that the presidency, in his view, should nevertheless be reserved for people with a relationship of a personal nature with “the Lord.” He isn’t simply saying that he doesn’t see how he could have endured the presidency without faith; he is asserting that he cannot see how anyone could be president without a “relationship with the Lord.” Now I can see how this might be simply a slip of the tongue: just a projection of his own experience with nothing more to be inferred from it. But given how this administration has consciously eroded the distinction between church and state – fusing the two with federal funds, using religious groups as its political base, incorporating religious leaders into policy-making, and defending public policy decisions on purely religious grounds (calling civil marriage licenses “sacred,” for example) – this is worrying. To put it bluntly, on the separation of church and state, I don’t trust these guys.

FAITH AND ITS LIMITS: Look, I share Bush’s faith, admire it, respect it, and am quite sure it has helped him greatly in a terribly difficult time in the White House. More: I’m glad he has a relationship with Jesus to guide him. If he had said just that, it would be an inspiring and innocuous statement. Likewise, I have no problems with presidents’ invoking God in speeches and the like. But Bush went further. He linked the office of the presidency to religious faith. And as president, his words carry weight. No, he cannot legally prevent atheists from running for president (although his party would never nominate a non-Christian for president and would be hard-pressed to nominate someone who isn’t an evangelical). But if an atheist were to run, Bush’s position would logically be that, in his view, the man or woman would be unable to be an effective president, because they would not have the spiritual resources to withstand the pressure of the job. I do think that’s over the line. The deists who founded the republic would also be excluded on Bush’s reasoning. They had no “relationship with the Lord.” (And “the Lord” in this instance is quite obviously Jesus, not the Jewish God. So Jews and Muslims are excludable as well.) The deeper point is: the president represents all the people, including atheists. As president, he should not be opining that people who have no faith in “the Lord” are somehow handicapped for the highest public office. Imagine if an atheist president said that “I don’t see how you can be president, at least from my perspective, if you believe in something that cannot be rationally proved.” The religious right would immediately proclaim the man a bigot (and they’d be right). Bush is not a bigot. He just sees the world through the prism of his own life. As a man, that is his right. As president, he shouldn’t be sending signals that some people, because of their irreligion, are incapable of representing all the people. And that applies especially because an overwhelming majority of Americans agree with him.

THE GOOD NEWS: In the Washington Times interview, Bush seems really committed to ratcheting down government spending. Money quote:

Look, I fully understand there are people saying, “Can’t America deal with these twin deficits?” It’s an issue which we’re concerned about as we go into the second term. And you’ll see us submit a tough budget and call upon Congress to enact it. I’ve had a good record, by the way, of getting Congress to pass the budgets we’ve submitted. And we’re going to fund the war. I mean, we get soldiers in harm’s way, they’re going to have what they need. And we’ll protect this homeland. But the nondefense discretionary spending and nonhomeland discretionary spending is tough; it’s going to be tough again. It was less than 1 percent last time. I’m not going to give you a number yet; we need to get the process right. But it will be – it will be tough.

He’s right, in my view, to tackle social security; right to insist on benefit cuts as well as part-privatization. I just wish he hadn’t mortgaged our future with that new Medicare entitlement (Apparently he thinks it will save money in the long run. Try not to laugh too hard.) Still, there are real signs that the Bushies are talking the talk on spending control. We’ll see, I guess. Walking is another matter.

New restrictions on immigration would bar foreign visitors who don’t share “Russian values.” I hope he doesn’t give Karl Rove any ideas. Russia will also bar people with HIV from entering the country. Why is it that the first instinct of a country with a domestic HIV explosion is to ban foreigners with it?

“SANTORUM” WON: But the press would never pick it as the newly coined word of the year. So it got consigned to second place. Slate explains it all.

WHY DOES IT MATTER? Many of you have emailed me to ask why it matters one drop what Lincoln’s sexual orientation was. Well, the relationship between his conflicted sexual orientation and his political life hasn’t been fully or even partly explored and Tripp ventures nothing but a few musings. Future scholars may now try. I certainly don’t believe that someone’s being gay makes them somehow a better person. Jeffrey Dahmer and Ernst Roehm were gay, along with Proust, Auden, Michelangelo and Whitman. But I do think that any historian trying to understand Lincoln should be interested in his emotional life and development. To me, it merely reveals more layers of Lincoln’s greatness. Here’s what I wrote to a friend yesterday:

Understanding Lincoln’s personality – his deep depressions, his terrible marriage, his strange and distant religious faith, his empathy for outsiders – all make more sense when you consider the kind of toll his sexual orientation must have taken. Imagine a Jew forced to conceal his identity all his life for political reasons. Do you really think this is irrelevant to understanding someone’s life? I don’t think many straights understand the enormous psychological damage homophobia does to people who lived in societies where they could never express love or have meaningful relationships. It’s crippling at the deepest level of the human soul and heart. Lincoln triumphed over this to do truly great things, although he also succumbed at times to profound despair. He overcame the prejudice of his time and managed to find love and solace in a few moments of intimacy. He did so without ever lying or even concealing his loves. Why denigrate or minimize that personal triumph? Especially when so many of Lincoln’s Republican successors are intent on reimposing the agony and misery of the closet today?

That’s why it matters. We owe the past our respect. And we owe Lincoln of all people a modicum of honesty.

What was Bush thinking with this statement: “President Bush said yesterday that he doesn’t ‘see how you can be president without a relationship with the Lord,’ but that he is always mindful to protect the right of others to worship or not worship.” So, out of his beneficence, he won’t trample on others’ religious freedom. But the White House? That’s for Christians only. No Jews? Or atheists? Notice also the evangelical notion of a personal “relationship” with the Lord. That also indicates suspicion of those Christians with different approaches to the divine. I must say this is a new level of religio-political fusion in this administration. To restrict the presidency to a particular religious faith is anathema to this country’s traditions and to the task of toleration. The president surely needs to retract the statement.

The hatchet-job performed by Philip Nobile in the Weekly Standard on C.A. Tripp’s “The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln” might be perceived as an attack on the whole idea of Honest Abe’s at least complicated sexual orientation. Readers who are interested in the intellectual honesty of Mr Nobile should read this essay of his from 2001, when he is full of spleen against what he regards as the “homophobia” of established Lincoln scholars in denying the same-sex loves in Lincoln’s life. He says in correspondence in the 2001 essay that he was writing his own book on the subject entitled, “A Harp of a Thousand Strings: The Queer Lincoln Theory.” That vital fact – a blaring conflict of interest – was never disclosed in the Standard. In the 2001 essay, moreover, Nobile states his own view quite clearly:

Incidentally, I do not argue that Lincoln was bisexual, but rather that bi-sexuality is a better explanation than the standard all-heterosexual one.

Later in the same piece, he writes:

I am neither gay nor an advocate of Lincoln’s homosexuality. But I do believe that bisexuality (he was bisexual by definition) is the best explanation for Lincoln’s sex life.

So the Weekly Standard’s reviewer was a strong proponent of the view that Lincoln was bisexual. He had his own book in the works on the subject. Tripp beat him to the punch – and is now dead so cannot challenge Nobile’s account of the editorial process. Isn’t this a conflict of interest that the Standard should have disclosed? Isn’t it relevant background for understanding Nobile’s own motives for trashing a book by a scholar whose exhaustive research on the subject may have made Nobile’s own book largely redundant?

A HOAX AND A FRAUD: Weirder still are the inconsistencies between Nobile’s Standard piece and his previous essay. In the Standard, he argues that “the Gay Lincoln Theory fails any historical test.” His previous book title was “A Harp of a Thousand Strings: The Queer Lincoln Theory.” In the Standard, Nobile trashes Tripp in part because he allegedly “papered over holes in his story with inventions (Lincoln’s law partner and biographer William Herndon never noticed the homosexuality because he was an extreme heterosexual and thus afflicted with ‘heterosexual bias’).” In his previous piece, when he was peddling his own book, he complains that Lincoln scholar Gabor Boritt “seems to be following the het line of all Lincoln scholars, with the exception of Thomas Lowry, who refuse to examine Lincoln’s passionate preference for male company (though Sandburg referred to Lincoln’s “streak of lavender and spots soft as May violets” in connection with Joshua Speed).” The “het line”? That’s more accusatory of Lincoln scholars than anything Tripp wrote. In the Standard, Nobile writes, against Tripp, that

Tripp was cavalier about the negative reaction from historians–ascribing their rejection of the theory to their unwillingness to admit homosexuality in their hero. He said that Donald told him that he would not believe Lincoln was gay even if Lincoln said so. Tripp was even convinced that another doubtful biographer was timid because he was a nervous closet case–until the man introduced him to his fiancée.

Yet his 2001 essay was titled “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Publish: Homophobia in Lincoln Studies?” So he trashes Tripp for the exact same thing he argued only a few years ago.

THERE’S MORE: In the Standard, Nobile argues

One of the biggest roadblocks to the Gay Lincoln Theory is the fact that neither friends nor enemies ever connected the man to homosexual thoughts, words, or deeds. Would not a secret of that magnitude have leaked out somehow, sometime? Tripp had Lincoln boinking four bosom buddies during his prairie years, but there was not a whiff of this supposed hanky-panky anywhere in the record, not even in Herndon’s exhaustive history of Lincoln’s frontier contemporaries.

Yet in his previous essay, Nobile makes exactly the opposite point. In a letter to Borritt, Nobile specifically disowns the idea that the views of Lincoln’s contemporaries or even Lincoln himself are salient:

[R]eferring to Lincoln’s subjective state of mind regarding the possible homosexual nature of the overnights with Derickson, you wrote: ‘There is no evidence that [the homosexual dimension occurred] to Lincoln.’ This observation is true, but beside the point. At issue is not whether Lincoln perceived his feelings as homosexual, but whether he had such feelings and may have acted on them. The midnight rendezvous with Derickson are the best evidence that he did.

He also writes:

Of course, it is impossible to know what “most people” in Lincoln’s day might have thought about this matter. In any case, popular perception is irrelevant to historical truth, whatever it turns out to be. Fortunately, we know exactly how one Lincoln insider reacted when she heard the Derickson rumor. “What stuff!,” exclaimed Elizabeth Woodbury Fox, wife of Lincoln’s naval aide, in her diary of November 16, 1862.

In the Standard, Nobile argues that Lincoln’s early doggerel poem about boy-boy marriage suggests nothing:

In his mid-1990s draft, Tripp regarded the verse as another smoking gun: “viewed through the prism of sex research, the poem is an open and shut case, a virtual certification of Lincoln’s own engagement in homosexuality,” he wrote at the time. David Donald criticized Tripp’s forced interpretation in his 1996 letter: “The person who tells a joke about ‘fags’ or ‘gays’ or ‘butch’ women may reveal a lack of taste but that does not necessarily indicate homosexual leanings.” Under pressure from Donald and me, the simple equation of the poem and homosexuality was dropped.

In an email to Oxford University Press, however, Nobile made a strong case for his own book, insisting on the importance of the Derickson affair as evidence of Lincoln’s bisexuality. Then he adds, to bolster his case: “Incidentally, did you know that Lincoln wrote a boy-sex poem when he was 20?”

WILL THE STANDARD CORRECT? Is there a resolution to these contradictions? The best gloss is that Tripp believed that Lincoln was a 5 on the Kinsey scale and Nobile apparently thought he was more of a 3 or 4. Both believed Lincoln was bisexual to varying degrees. Even in the Standard, in a paragraph buried near the end of a piece calling the gay Lincoln theory a “fraud” and a “hoax,” Nobile concludes:

The Gay Lincoln Theory, for all its jagged edges, may be a more satisfying explanation for the president’s weird inner life than the Utterly Straight Lincoln Theory. “I have heard [Lincoln] say over and over again about sexual contact: ‘It is a harp of a thousand strings,'” Henry Whitney told William Herndon in 1865. Leaving aside Tripp’s bad faith, it is not utterly beyond imagining that Lincoln may have played a few extra strings on that harp.

Are we really to believe that the vituperation in Nobile’s piece is compatible with a simple difference of opinion over a nuance? Given the evidence in front of us, I’d say that the real bad faith in this instance is Nobile’s, not Tripp’s. The Standard piece is a work of character assassination against a rigorous scholar who cannot defend himself, in the service of a political agenda that is indeed homophobic. Maybe the Standard’s editors were unaware of Nobile’s rival book and past attacks on the “het-line” of homophobic Lincoln scholarship. Well, they are aware now. They need to apologize for this lacuna and correct the record.

Are we now the establishment? Fineman says we are. His admission that the mainstream media have acted as a de facto political party for three decades strikes me as a big deal – the first crack of self-awareness in the MSM. But I truly hope the blogosphere doesn’t become its replacement. Blogs are strongest when they are politically diverse, when they are committed to insurgency rather than power, when they belong to no party. I’m particularly worried that the blogosphere has become far more knee-jerk, shrill and partisan since the days when I first started blogging. Some of that’s healthy and inevitable; but too much is damaging. In challenging the MSM, we should resist the temptation to become like them.

One distinction somewhat blurred in Heather Mac Donald’s limited defense of torture in City Journal is the distinction between what might be allowed for the CIA in “black box” interrogations of high-level Qaeda detainees, and the military’s general strict prohibition of inhumane treatment of detainees. This is an important distinction; but it was blurred almost immediately by the Bush administration itself. Marty Lederman has a must-read on all this. Here’s one important point:

I agree with MacDonald that the 2002 OLC Memo likely was not intended to affect interrogation policies in the military. But she is wrong to insinuate that the Pentagon was unaware of the OLC Memo, and to argue that the Memo had no effect on Pentagon policies and practices. Although I assume the Memo was originally intended for use by the CIA, the White House soon forwarded it to the Department of Defense, where huge portions of it were incorporated virtually verbatim in the DoD Working Group Report on Guantanamo interrogation techniques in early 2003 (even though the statute discussed in the OLC Memo did not even apply at Guantanamo during the period in question). Most notably, the Pentagon adopted wholesale the most indefensible and most dangerous portions of the OLC Memo-where OLC concocted unlikely criminal defenses of ‘necessity,’ ‘defense of nation,’ and ‘presidential authority,’ and where OLC argued that criminal laws restricting methods of interrogation are unconstitutional to the extent they impinge upon the President’s decisions of “what methods to use to best prevail against the enemy.’

Armed with these OLC assurances of virtually no legal exposure, the DoD Working Group itself concluded that these techniques were among those that are lawful under the restrictive laws governing military interrogations: placing a hood over detainees during questioning; 20-hour interrogations; four days of sleep deprivation; forced nudity to create a ‘feeling of helplessness and dependence’; increasing ‘anxiety’ through the use of dogs; quick, glancing slaps to the face or stomach; and the threat of transfer to another nation that might subject the detainee to torture or death.

These relaxed strictures can also swiftly evolve in chaotic or badly organized wars into something much worse. Which is what happened. When regular soldiers see prisoners dehumanized in this way as a legitimate policy, it is unsurprising that further improvisation occurs. Moreover, all of this is almost certainly illegal for the regular military. I’m sorry but there is a clear link between decisions made by Bush and what happened at Abu Ghraib. I don’t fully understand why Mac Donald ignores this, because, in some ways, what the administration did makes even the selective use of a few, strict coercive techniques in a handful of cases much less likely, as we go through what I hope is a backlash against this cruelty and chaos.

THE MIGRATION OF TORTURE: Moreover, whatever the intent of the White House, the Fay/Jones and Schlesinger reports specifically argue that the relaxed rules for the CIA “migrated” to Iraq, where the Geneva Conventions indubitably apply. Money Lederman quote on this latter point:

The reports explain in detail that the interrogators at Guantanamo, and the conflicting and confusing set of directives from the Pentagon for GTMO, ‘circulated’ freely to Afghanistan and then to Iraq (Schlesinger 9). Lieutenant General Sanchez, the commander of the Combined Joint Task Force in Iraq, approved techniques going beyond those approved for GTMO, ‘using reasoning’ from the President’s February 7, 2002 directive on unlawful combatants (id. at 10). The ‘existence of confusing and inconsistent interrogation technique policies,’ including a ‘proliferation of guidance and information from other theatres of operation,’ and the fact that personnel involved in interrogation in GTMO and Afghanistan ‘were called upon to establish and conduct interrogation operations in Abu Ghraib,’ all contributed ‘to the belief that additional interrogation techniques were condoned in order to gain intelligence’ (Jones 15-16; Fay 8, 10, 22). ‘The lines of authority and the prior legal opinions blurred’ (Fay 10), and ‘DoD’s development of multiple policies on interrogation operations for use in different theatres or operations confused Army and civilian Interrogators at Abu Ghraib’ (Fay Finding No. 7).

There is, then, a direct link between the memos approved by Bybee, Gonzales, Bush, Rumsfeld and others and what eventually took place (and is still taking place, so far as we know) in the war in Iraq. We don’t know the intent or motives of the original decisions. But we do know the consequences.