Category: Old Dish

Lots of people are now complaining about the Bush spending habit. Here’s my piece from two years ago. Anyone who voted for the guy has, to my mind, somewhat tattered standing to criticize the spending now. On fiscal matters, there was one big difference between Bush and Kerry last November. Kerry backed the pay-as-you-go principle, where every new piece of spending would be offset by a spending cut. Operation Offset, anyone? And with a Republican Congress, you can bet your life government spending would be far lower under president Kerry than it now is under president George “Whatever it costs” Bush. From my Kerry endorsement last fall:

Domestically, the record is horrifying for a fiscal conservative. Ronald Reagan raised taxes in his first term when he had to; and he didn’t have 9/11 to contend with. Ronald Reagan also cut domestic spending. Bush has been unable to muster the conservative courage to do either. He has spent like a drunken liberal Democrat. He has failed to grapple with entitlement reform, as he once promised. He has larded up the tax code with endless breaks for corporate special interests; pork has metastasized; and he has tainted the cause of tax relief by concentrating too much of it on the wealthy. He has made the future boomer fiscal crunch far more acute by adding a hugely expensive new Medicare prescription drug entitlement.

Would anyone care to disagree now? By the way, I’m glad to see that the NYT’s John Tierney has endorsed a 50 cent increase in the gas tax. Sorry I can’t link.

A PATTERN OF ABUSE: Beyond the abuse and torture of detained Iraqi prisoners, we also have the issue of general treatment of the Iraqi population. The Dayton Daily News has just done a study on how the military has acted in response to mistreatment of Iraqi civilians. The results are to any reader of this blog unsurprising:

Using previously undisclosed Army records, the Dayton Daily News found that dozens of soldiers have been accused of crimes against Iraqis since the first troops deployed for Iraq. But despite strong evidence and convictions in some cases, only a small percentage resulted in punishments nearing those routinely imposed for such crimes by civilian justice systems. In a number of other cases, there was no evidence that thorough or timely criminal investigations were conducted. Other cases weren’t prosecuted, and still others resulted in dismissals, light jail sentences or no jail sentence at all… Charges involving Iraqi victims were three times more likely to be dismissed or withdrawn by the Army than cases in which the victims were soldiers or civilian military employees, the examination found… In a number of incidents in which soldiers were accused of killing civilian noncombatants, the Daily News found the Army did not conduct thorough or timely criminal investigations, or there was no evidence any investigation was conducted.

This is not in the same league as abusing defenseless prisoners, and shouldn’t be confused with it. And obviously, it’s tense and back-breaking work in Iraq and some of this is inevitable in wartime. But the military climate over there – set by commanders – is not conducive to winning over the Iraqi public. And so it doesn’t help our cause. I wish we had a Pentagon leadership more attuned to this. But, of course, we don’t.

Two more for the record:

“Dear Captain Fishback,
It’s far too easy these days to feel demoralized about the state of so many things in America. It seems as if our nation has been afflicted by a kind of creeping stupor in which most of us turn away from the hard truths – not because we’re bad people, or uncompassionate people, or lazy people, but because too often speaking out seems futile. And of course, that is the most deadening, demoralizing thing of all – that so many of us won’t even bother to protest what’s so obviously wrong on so many levels. Thank you, thank you, thank you, for reminding me of what’s right about our country, and what must never be lost. Few of us will have – or take – the opportunity to stand for what’s right in such a meaningful way. Few of us have the authority and credibility that you do. But every one of us has the obligation to say what needs to be said, in matters of conscience large and small.
Today, I begin. You’ve made this a better country. Most of us don’t know that yet. But we will. I’ve never claimed a hero before because I’ve never known of anyone in my lifetime worthy of that title. I have one now. I hope you can feel the presence of so many of us standing right behind you.”

I forwarded another 80 or so emails today to Ian via his lawyer and family. In the end, I decided reprinting them all on the Letters Page would be too onerous a task, and perhaps unnecessary after posting many here. All I can let you know is that I have been told on very good authority that this blog-effort has been appreciated. Fishback is not alone. And if he didn’t know it before, he knows it now. Thanks for all your emails. You give me hope that one day soon, we can end this policy of abuse. Finally, this:

Dear CPT Fishback,
My proudest moment as an American came in Munich in 1992, when an old man waved my car down on a deserted street on a rainy Sunday morning. He pointed at my license and asked if I was an American soldier, then proceeded to tell me that he had been in the Italian army in WWII. Captured during the war, he was went to a US-based EPW camp.
I’ll never forget his praise: “The Americans treated us so well, and the food! I eat better in American than with Italian army. You treat us so well, we were your prisoner but we were safe in the camp. I always love America.”
Fifty years after the war, we had won the enemy’s heart. I fear that fifty years after this war, we’ll still be fighting people who weren’t originally our enemies because of what we did to their countrymen in Abu Ghraib and a dozen other places.
Thank you for standing up to right this wrong. You have validated my belief in our junior officers and your actions reflect the moral courage that we should all aspire to as members of the Long Gray Line.

Amen.

I have no idea if this is true, but it’s worth looking into. In a piece dedicated to explaining why India joined the U.S. and the EU3 in referring Iran to the Security Council for breaching its agreement to curtail the development of nukes, the Calcutta Telegraph states:

Top-ranking Americans have told equally top-ranking Indians in recent weeks that the US has plans to invade Iran before Bush’s term ends. In 2002, a year before the US invaded Iraq, high-ranking Americans had similarly shared their definitive vision of a post-Saddam Iraq, making it clear that they would change the regime in Baghdad.
On the last day of his stay in New York this month, Singh made public his fears for the safety of nearly four million Indians in the Gulf in the event of diplomacy failing to persuade Iran away from a confrontation with the US and others on the nuclear issue.

Hmmm. How reliable a source is the Calcutta Telegraph?

It’s a good sign that the president seems to see the real threat this could pose to the country and basic civil order. I’m leery of using the military to deal with it, though. Maybe it’s useful to have that option available so we don’t have some kind of paralysis as we did with Katrina. Stockpiling sufficient amounts of Tamiflu and other means to ameliorate those infected might help. It’s also a good idea to stock up on canned goods and other survival items in case the worst happens and you end up in a quarantined area. Still the president is reassuring that he is on top of this. Or at least he says he is:

I take this issue very seriously, and I appreciate you bringing it to our attention. The people of the country ought to rest assured that we’re doing everything we can: We’re watching it, we’re careful, we’re in communications with the world. I’m not predicting an outbreak; I’m just suggesting to you that we better be thinking about it. And we are. And we’re more than thinking about it; we’re trying to put plans in place, and one of the plans — back to where your original question came — was, if we need to take some significant action, how best to do so. And I think the President ought to have all options on the table to understand what the consequences are, but — all assets on the table — not options — assets on the table to be able to deal with something this significant.

Notice also that Bush has been reading about the 1918 pandemic. I’ve thrown enough criticism his way lately. Time for some praise on this potentailly catastrophic scenario.

LINGUISTS UPDATE: The complete total of Arabic and Farsi linguists dismissed by the Pentagon from 1998 to 2004 because they were gay is 26.

Gay activists in London protest the Iranian regime’s hanging of gay youths. Where are the American gay groups?

An emailer writes:

Regarding your link to Peter Berkowitz’ article on funding Arabic education, I just want to make the point that it’s even more ridiculous than you think that the US government doesn’t provide more scholarships for studying Arabic. There’s already a program, the National Security Education Program, that funds up to a year of study of “less commonly studied” languages; the recipient must work for at least a year in a defense/intelligent/security position in the US government in return. Their website is here. Yet probably less than 100 students get grants each year, and only a fraction of them go to the Mid East. Why can’t the government just increase NSEP’s funding? It would be so easy and wouldn’t even require creating any additional programs. And yet…
(If it’s any consolation though, there are about 40 students enrolled in second year Arabic class here at Yale, and those students who do take Arabic are quite enthusiatic about it. So there’s hope yet.)

I might also add that six trained Arab linguists in the Pentagon were fired by the Bush administration in 2002 – for being gay. Hey, you gotta have priorities …

Bush-worshipper Hugh Hewitt clashes with principled conservative Stephen Bainbridge. Fight! Fight!

GAY VERSUS GAY: The case of Paula Ettelbrick, a lesbian “activist” and head of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, who has some questions to answer with respect to human rights abuses in Iran. I.e. why is she so craven toward the mullahs?

“With three years left in a lame duck presidency, with an exhausted and beaten-down administration that has pushed the envelope on several fronts with mixed success, I don’t think it should come as a surprise that the President might have considered this vacancy an opportunity to remind his bunch that he remembers and rewards loyalty and fidelty. ‘I know it’s 2005,’ you can imagine him telegraphing, ‘I know we are in a tail spin, Katrina hurt, Iraq hurts, our domestic agenda is stuck in the mud. But don’t give up. Don’t be tempted to leak, to leave, to surrender. Stick with me and you, too, will earn your reward.'”

AN AMERICAN HERO: The story of Captain Ian Fishback – and the most pressing moral issue in politics today. My newest column in the Sunday Times of London.

Johann Hari points out that the Darfur genocide is ending. There are, apparently, no more black people to kill or cleanse. Money quote:

The National Islamic Front government has culled over 400,000 ‘Zurga’ – a word which translates best as ‘niggers’ – and driven two million more from their homes in its quest to make western Sudan ‘Zurga-free’. Their racist Janjaweed militias would love to carry on rampaging and raping, but the black villages have all been burned down and the women have all been raped with ‘Arab seed’ to ‘destroy their race from within’ – what’s a poor militiaman to do? The first genocide of the twenty-first century has proceeded without a hitch, and the genocidaires have won.

Johann is always worth reading.

“I’m not softening my position a bit, in spite of the emails. I’m sorry, but the Republicans richly deserve to lose control over the House and the Senate in 2006. There is no excuse whatsoever for their profligate spending, and no excuse for Tom Delay’s absurd claim that there is no fat in the federal budget. Every American should be disgusted at this spending spectacle.” – libertarian radio host, Neal Boortz, sticking to his guns.