Category: Old Dish

The one thing that Roberts and Miers immediately seem to have in common is complete judicial deference to the executive branch in wartime. An emailer makes the following important point:

I believe that the Roberts and Miers nominations reflect the Bush administration’s overriding preoccupation with preserving the prerogative to torture. As you know, it’s the only issue on which Bush has seriously threatened to veto congressional legislation (the McCain proposal that would outlaw cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment). Roberts’ decision in Hamdan shows that he will give the administration carte blanche when it comes to the treatment of detainees. Miers’ close relationship to Bush and her role as White House Counsel (the position Alberto Gonzales had when he gave the torture policy his legal blessing) points the same way.

Hard to disagree. I think this president understands the gravity of his own legal decisions permitting cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of military prisoners, even those clearly meriting Geneva protections. And he knows there’s a paper trail. My emailer points out that the war on terror is one of the GOP talking points:

Ken Mehlman, chairman of the Republican National Committee, yesterday held a conference call with conservative leaders to address their concerns about Miers. He stressed Bush’s close relationship with Miers and the need to confirm a justice who will not interfere with the administration’s management of the war on terrorism, according to a person who attended the teleconference.

The Miers appointment is completely compatible with the need to maintain the president’s approval of detainee abuse – against potential legislative checks and judicial oversight. The war for America’s soul continues.

Here’s an interesting story. Back in 1989, Harriet Miers gave answers to a questionnaire on gay rights when she was running for the Dallas city council. She didn’t favor repeal of anti-sodomy laws, but she did say yes to the question:

“Do you believe that gay men and lesbians should have the same civil rights as non-gay men and women?”
She was noncommittal on several other questions, saying, for example, that she would be willing to discuss the need for a law prohibiting discrimination in housing or public accommodations against people who had AIDS or were HIV-positive.
Asked whether qualified candidates should be denied city employment because they are gay or lesbian, she said, “I believe that employers should be able to pick the best qualified person for any position to be filled considering all relevant factors.”

I’m not sure what to make of this, except to say that this was 1989, and that her refusal to endorse discrimination against gays and lesbians on those grounds alone speaks well of her. (Hey, this was Texas in 1989.) Her view that people could be arrested for private consensual sex, however, was and is alarming. But a whole lot of people have changed their minds on that in the last decade or so. Maybe Miers is one of them. I think it’s a fair question to ask of her at the Senate hearings: “Do you believe that gay men and lesbians should have the same civil rights as non-gay men and women?” And: “What do you understand by the term ‘civil rights’?”

The Ten Commandments judge is running for governor of Alabama. I have a feeling we haven’t heard the last of him. Here’s a profile that’s about as good as it gets.

Peter Berkowitz makes an obvious but still-over-looked point on how to win the war on terror. We need more Americans who can speak and read Arabic.

“We believe in the biblical approach to marriage,” – Harriet Miers’ pastor, Ron Key, according to Marvin Olasky, religious right muckety-muck. I don’t think he’s referring to polygamy or, ahem, divorce. Miers, of course, has never married. Is that also the “Biblical approach”?

“Some of what I know I am not at liberty to talk about,” – James Dobson, Focus on the Family. Isn’t it strange that a man like Dobson now knows more about Harriet Miers than the Senate will ever likely be able to find out?

How not to be deeply troubled by what has just happened in Iraq? Perhaps the critical issue in finding a half-way decent outcome is to engage the alienated Sunnis who don’t want to throw their lot in with the insurgency. A critical element of that is political: getting them to sign up to a Constitution in which they lose considerable power. There have been encouraging reports of heavy Sunni registration for the vote in a couple of weeks. I was then worried that we could get high Sunni turn-out, but ratification of the Constitution nonetheless – because the Sunnis needed a two-thirds majority in three provinces to stop it. Their disillusionment might worsen the insurgency. But now even the tiniest chance that the Sunnis might succeed and feel empowered by democracy could be scuppered. Kurdish and Shiite leaders have apparently quietly introduced wording that gives different meanings to “voters” in two separate sections of the proposed constitution. The result? Even if the Sunnis achieve record turnout in their three most reliable provinces, their votes won’t make a difference. It would be hard to find a better way to discredit democracy, accelerate civil war or galvanize the insurgency. Zalmay Khalilzad is doing his best to avert what looks like a looming disaster, but without much luck so far. Juan Cole, naturally, predicts disaster – but his analysis seems pretty solid to me. Is there a more optimistic take on this development? I hope we are not witnessing the moment when a civil war in Iraq became inevitable.

SUNNI CYNICISM: Meanwhile, Sunni blogger, Riverbend, is trying to make sense of the document and illustrates, as Cole points out, the deep Sunni sense that the fix is in:

I frowned and tried to hand [my neighbor] the Arabic version [of the new Constitution]. “But you should read it. READ IT. Look – I even highlighted the good parts… the yellow is about Islam and the pink is about federalism and here in green- that’s the stuff I didn’t really understand.” She looked at it suspiciously and then took it from me.

I watched as she split the pile of 20 papers in two – she began sweeping the top edge of the wall with one pile, and using the other pile like a dustpan, she started to gather the wilted, drying tooki [tree fruit] scattered on the wall. “I don’t have time or patience to read it. We’re not getting water- the electricity has been terrible and Abu F. hasn’t been able to get gasoline for three days… And you want me to read a constitution?”

“But what will you vote?” I asked, watching the papers as they became streaked with the crimson, blood-like tooki stains.

“You’ll actually vote?’ She scoffed. ‘It will be a joke like the elections… They want this constitution and the Americans want it- do you think it will make a difference if you vote against it?’ She had finished clearing the top edge of the wall of the wilting tooki and she dumped it all on our side. She put the now dusty, took- stained sheets of paper back together and smiled as she handed them back, “In any case, let no one tell you it wasn’t a useful constitution – look how clean the wall is now! I’ll vote for it!” And Umm F. and the hedge clippers disappeared.

Just a smidgen of reality in a still-abstract debate.

I’ve now forwarded every email you’ve sent so far in support of Ian Fishback. Around 400 or so so far. But here are three emails I wanted to highlight. They speak to the core of this issue. Look, I believe in fighting the enemy with everything we have; I believe we have to win in Iraq to stem the tide of Islamo-fascist terror; I believe in ferocious, smart and unrelenting warfare against the enemy. But when they are in our custody, when they are defenseless, it is a mark of Western civilization that we treat them humanely. That has been the American rule since Washington insisted on refraining from torture. There is no issue today that goes so deep into the soul of a nation. Here are emails that struck home to me, and illustrated what is now at stake in getting to the bottom of this horror – and stopping it. The first one:

I hesitated to write because I am not a military person, don’t know the parlance, but when I first heard your story, I thought “they’ve got to listen to one of their own.” I’m 54 years old, and I always remember a story that a girl told me back in grade school – – how her father was guarding Japanese prisoners of war duing WWII and how the Japanese prisoners got better food than the American soldiers… and I never forgot that story and that’s what I thought this country was about… that the American flag flying over some place meant that you’d be safe as a prisoner, that you’d be treated humanely and that torture happened in those “other” places — those third-world countries that were just backward.

I also remember hearing Elie Wiesel, who wrote extensively about the Holocaust — when he was asked if he were surprised the Holocaust happened, he said his only surprise is that it happened only once — and I saw that sentiment being acted out in the photos I saw — how easily decent people can be made to participate in torture. I don’t know what a man or woman has to tell himself to make that OK.

Anyway, you are right, and you’ve just got to find tremendous strength in that. You will not be guilty of the sin of silence, and no matter what the outcome, you will be able to look yourself in the mirror and know that you did the right thing. I have been so disheartened and so disturbed and so you are a bright light to me and to many.

And another:

My nephew served in Iraq until recently, and it breaks my heart that his honest and deeply felt service to his country has been smeared so thoroughly by those who are now turning on you. The Abu Ghraib scandal and other tales of torture coming out of Iraq have demoralized me more than any of the long list of horrendous decisions made by our leaders in the war in Iraq.

Even more difficult has been the tacit acceptance of these outrages by most of the media, pundits, political leaders, and voters. Your integrity, bravery and patriotism in the face of what must be unimaginable pressures has been a true inspiration.

To those who say exposing these horrible acts will harm our country, I say the damage has already been done. Our only hope now is to bring it all out in the open and hold people accountable. You are doing more to serve our great country than your critics could even begin to comprehend. You make me proud to be an American.

And this:

Your courage is so uniquely American that I cried when I read about you. You have given everyone in my family – dozens of us across all walks of life – reason to believe again, to hope that the dragons of mediocrity and dishonor that have attached themselves to our beloved military may actually be slain. You have single-handedly lifted so many of us up from a place of despair and shame.

I know that Fishback has given me hope that this evil in our midst can and will end.

Here are the still-sketchy details.

That’s what Josh says. Is this implosion getting bigger?