Category: Old Dish

Call this fascinating piece a hastily improvised variation on the “fly-trap” theory. I’m not saying internal Muslim division has ever been an intentional policy of the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq, but it might be a fortunate by-product of failure to pacify the country. By allowing chaos and disorder to engulf many Iraqi lives, the coalition may have undermined Jihadist appeal by exposing their willingness to slaughter other Muslims in their bid for a new Caliphate. Al Qaeda is as splintered today as it is brutal as it is dumb. We may have unintentionally given these murderous fanatics enough rope to hang themselves in Arab and Muslim opinion. It’s not that we’re safer because we’re engaging them there rather than here, as the Bush soundbite goes. It’s that by forcing the battle into the heart of the Middle East, rather than in the West, the coalition is exposing internal rifts and dividing the Muslim world into its sane and insane camps. If the sane camp wins, we all win. The risk, of course, is a widening conflagration between Sunni and Shiite – especially if Iraq degenerates into complete civil war, and Iran backs the Shia and the remaining Sunni autocracies, like Syria, keep funding the Sunni-Jihadist forces. But if we can keep the fldegling Iraqi state somewhat stable, the potential benefit is that by using schismatic divisions in Islam, we can help isolate and undermine al Qaeda and Jihadism in general. If Iraq is the place where moderate Islam finally rebels decisively against the mass-murderers, we will have achieved something very significant. It may take a long time, and the odds are still against us, I’d say. But the strategy is not a crazy one, even if it has emerged from the wreckage of incompetence. Indeed, it may be the best hope we now have.

THE SEXISM CARD: Laura plays it in defense of her close friend, Harriet Miers. I’ve read a lot of the criticism of Miers and I have yet to see a shred of sexism in it. Her legal qualifications have been questioned; and her ideological fervor. Other female candidates have been proposed, with far stronger credentials than Miers’. If the president had appointed Gonzales and there had been similar questions, would we now be hearing charges of racism? I suspect we might. When you really are devoid of argument, play the race or the gender card. It’s pretty pathetic. And another reminder of how the administration is happy to coopt left-liberal rhetoric to suit their own dynastic purposes.

“After years of being told by people of faith (almost exclusively Christians) that my lack of same must be due to some horrible event in my life, some trauma that convinced me there couldn’t possible be a benevolent controlling intelligence behind the universe, I now read from your e-mail correspondent that “people who have never found themselves in a situation that they could not possibly comprehend or conquer through their own wills and resources (or resources they’ve been given by others) are the quickest to say that there is no God.”

So now my lack of faith is apparently down to the absence of trauma, rather than an over-abudnance of it. (Could it possibly be that faith or the lack of it is more about the individual and how he or she deals with trauma than it is about traumatic events themselves? Perhaps different people just deal differently.)

I’m not sure why people feel the need to come up with some abberational explanation for my failure to share their beliefs, but this gratuitous insult — supplemented by the expressed (and rather un-Christian) wish that I one day experience such horror — spoiled what would otherwise have been an affecting account of one person finding a way to deal with the trouble in her life.”

Every single major Texas paper has come out in favor of the McCain amendment barring torture and abuse of detainees and clarifying rules for their treatment. From the Houston Chronicle:

[N]o president should have the authority or flexibility to order the torture or abuse of prisoners. It doesn’t produce usable intelligence, it endangers the safety of captured U.S. troops and it’s wrong on its face. The similarity of the alleged mistreatment at Guantanamo Bay to the documented prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib and other prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan suggests a pattern of official encouragement or indifference.

The San Antonio Express-News:

The White House has threatened a presidential veto. During nearly five years in the Oval Office, Bush has yet to veto a bill. This is not the place to start.

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram:

What the president and others who might oppose this legislation must understand is that this country can never own the moral high ground — in war or peace — if it is willing to do what it condemns others for doing.

And the Austin American-Statesman. This is, of course, a no-brainer – as long as you assume that this president isn’t committed to torture and abuse as a policy. But he is and long has been. Moreover, reversing what has been going on completely strips him of his defense that none of it happened, or that only a few incidents occurred, or that no one higher up knew, or whatever his latest spin is. He may have to veto to maintain the fallacious facade of the last three years. With any luck, the House will vote by a non-vetoable margin, just as the Senate has. But if Bush is forced to veto, so be it. Let him be forced to embrace publicly what he has enforced privately: the corruption of the moral integrity of the armed services of the United States. And let him finally be held to account.

The man who ran that Iraqi-corpses-for-amateur-porn site has been arrested. The deeper question is: why hasn’t the military disciplined those soldiers who violated the Geneva Conventions?

Remember those little blue people from the 70s? They’re finally getting what they deserve, courtesy of Unicef. Yes: Unicef. (Hat tip: the Walrus.)

There are, of course, other variables affecting high growth rates in Eastern Europe and Russia, where flat taxes have taken off as a trend. But the average growth rate now in flat tax countries is 8 percent. Here are some updated stats.

EMAIL OF THE DAY: “I have been an avid fan of Bill Maher and his talk shows for years now, and I have always enjoyed your appearances on his current show.

I especially wanted to thank you for your eloquent comments on this past Friday’s show about faith and people of faith. As a recovering alcoholic and survivor of rape and childhood sexual abuse, there has been nothing but faith at times that has allowed me to continue living (sober!) in a world I have frequently wished to desert. I discovered a higher power through the 12 steps and continue to know that power in my life; I often come across people who misunderstand, who consider reliance on a higher power to be weak and cowardly, or even stupid, as Bill said.

One thing I have learned through all of my experiences in dealing with matters of the spirit, is that the word “God” has meanings attached to it that have undermined it and spoiled it, and that when people use that word, they have one concept in mind, which of course is very limited. One other thing I have learned is that people who have never found themselves in a situation that they could not possibly comprehend or conquer through their own wills and resources (or resources they’ve been given by others) are the quickest to say that there is no God. Not that I wish them to experience that – okay, maybe sometimes. Anyway, your comments about learning to love and be in this world were so very important for me to hear and truly validated my personal work and the message I carry to other women and those who may be suffering.”

We now have very clear testimony from someone at Guantanamo Bay who probably saw more of what was going on than anyone else: James Yee, the Muslim chaplain at the base. My paper, the Sunday Times of London, has reprinted part of his must-read book, “For God And Country.” Check it out. Yee is particularly acute about Major General Geoffrey Miller, the commander ordered by Rumsfeld to transfer the torture and abuse techniques developed at Gitmo to Abu Ghraib. Neither Miller nor Rumsfeld, of course, have suffered any repercussions for their actions. Only the grunts get scapegoated in Rumsfeld’s military. Miller, according to Yee, was fighting what he saw as a religious war against Islam:

The man in overall charge was Major General Geoffrey Miller, a slight but self-confident Texan in his late fifties. He was later sent to Iraq to make recommendations on improving intelligence collection at Abu Ghraib prison in the months before it became infamous for the maltreatment of its inmates. If there was trouble with the prisoners, guards were supposed to restore order calmly. But Miller said when visiting Camp Delta or whenever seeing troopers around the base: ‘The fight is on!’ This was a subtle way of saying that rules were relaxed and infractions were easily overlooked.
Miller was a devout Christian. In one of the first private conversations that he and I had, he invited me for a stroll under the watchtowers and told me that several of his friends and colleagues had been killed in the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon. He had felt a deep anger towards ‘those Muslims’ who attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon – such anger, he explained, that he had sought counselling with a chaplain. I appreciated his candour but I sensed there was a subtle warning behind his words.

Yee was onto something.

TARGETING FAITH: Miller’s rules at Gitmo were precisely to target the prisoners’ religious faith for random retribution and cruelty:

Violent episodes were increasing. In one incident a guard had to be hauled off a handcuffed detainee whom he was beating on the head with a handheld radio. By the time I arrived the detainee had been taken to the hospital, but his blood was fresh on the ground and what appeared to be large pieces of flesh were soaking in it.

Bad as this violence was, many soldiers discovered a weapon far more powerful than fists: Islam. Because religion was the most important issue for nearly all the prisoners in Camp Delta, it became the most important weapon used against them.

Guards mocked the call to prayer and rattled doors, threw stones against the cages and played loud rock’n’roll music as the prisoners prayed.

Knowing that physical contact between unrelated men and women is not allowed under Islamic law, female guards would be exceptionally inappropriate in how they patted down the prisoners or touched them on the way to the showers or recreation. Detainees often resisted and were IRFed.

The guards knew that Muslims believe that the Koran contains the actual words of God and is to be treated with the utmost respect. I never heard of an incident where a detainee hid anything dangerous in the Koran; doing so would be considered an insult. Yet the guards shook the prisoners’ Korans violently, broke bindings, ripped pages and dropped the book on the floor, all on the pretext of searching them… Translators with the Joint Intelligence Group (JIG) also confirmed that some prisoners were forced to prostrate themselves in the centre of a satanic circle lit with candles. Interrogators shouted at them, ‘Satan is your God, not Allah! Repeat that after me!’

I’m waiting for Michelle Malkin and Heather Mac Donald to describe all of this – which verifies widespread abuse of the Koran at Gitmo – as enemy propaganda. It isn’t. It’s true. Yee knew the truth which was partly why he was disgracefully framed and smeared by the Pentagon. But what matters now is that this kind of abuse be stopped. It only hurts us in the war by making it a battle between Christianity and Islam rather than between freedom and theocracy. And what matters now is that someone be held accountable. Surely we can all agree that the new guidelines for humane treatment of detainees (which were the old ones), set by the Senate, need to be passed by the House. The president’s threatened veto is an open acknowledgment that this administration abuses detainees as a matter of policy and refuses to be reined in. We have to choose between the integrity of an Ian Fishback and the sadism of General Miller, and his enablers, Bush and Rumsfeld. There is no choice, as long as this is still America.

I know that at some point, the poet Philip Larkin, in a letter or review or essay, wrote something to the effect that he regretted the civil rights movement in America because it was ruining jazz. It was a joke, of course, but you can see the deeper point he was making. I’ve tried to nail it down, but can’t, and I’m now worrying I may be completely wrong. Is there anyone out there who knows the source?

Here’s an extremely persuasive case for a kinder, gentler flat tax that would gut the IRS, energize the economy, force the wealthy to cough up more and encourage savings and health insurance. All for a mere 14 percent. The flat tax is for this decade what equal marriage rights was for the last: an idea whose time has come.

I saw the movie Saturday in L.A. at the beautiful Arclight theaters. It’s easily the finest movie I have seen this year (with “MurderBall” a close second), but my fascination by it is probably colored by my chosen profession. In most movies about writing or even intellectual life – the comically bad “Good Will Hunting” or the moronic “A Beautiful Mind,” come to mind – there is not the slightest indication that the writer, director or actors have a clue about the simple dynamics of the writing or thinking process. “Capote” catches it with unnerving, restrained skill. I cannot improve on Daphne Merkin’s pitch-perfect review in Slate so let me merely echo this judgment:

Capote enables us to grasp, more than any movie on the subject I have seen, what it is exactly that a writer does when he or she writes, how observation leads to perception leads to the crafting of sentences. In so doing, it gets far closer to the complicated, elusive heart of this strange calling-the way it is both an explicitly private but implicitly public act, a means of rendezvousing with the self but also of showcasing the self-than any cinematic depiction until now.

Merkin, oddly, does not acknowledge Capote’s homosexuality, which permeates the movie, and sets the gay writer even further apart from the rural, straight world he has to confront and immerse in. Capote navigated straight society the old way: by a “talent to amuse” in high society, even while he was deadly serious about his work. Funny fags have always been acceptable in certain circles. But what helped connect him to his murderous subjects? A shared history of an awful childhood, but also surely an intuitive understanding of what it means to be an outsider. That’s a gift – made all the more compelling by the way in which the movie did not flinch in the face of Capote’s alloyed character and ethics. But the loneliness and sadness of the man remains. Did he ever know love? And if it had been offered, would he have ever been able to say yes?