Category: The Dish

"Suddenly religion comes along and you suddenly realize, I think we all have to realize, that liberal rights, dear old dreary liberal rights, have got to be continually fought for. It’s like anything else in life, you don’t climb up to a plateau where the sun always shines, you are always marching on relentlessly. Nothing stands still and liberal rights, which are the easiest thing in the world to sneer at, have in fact taken a long time to create, particularly in the United Kingdom. We really have to fight to make sure we keep them," – pop musical genius, Neil Tennant.

The Pet Shop Boys’ new album is dedicated to the teens recently hanged in Iran for being gay. It’s called "Fundamental." I know it’s weird, but for twenty-five years, Tennant and Lowe’s music has been a constant source of comfort and inspiration to me. To discover that their thoughts have been tracking mine doesn’t surprise me, but it does reassure me.

The Pentagon says the dead children were collateral casualties of a legitimate raid on an al Qaeda hide-out:

The footage shows at least one adult male and four of the children with deep wounds to the head that could have been caused by bullets or shrapnel. One child has an obvious entry wound to the side and the inside of the walls left standing were pocked with bullet holes. A voice on the tape said there were clear bullet wounds in two people.

Although it has been known that U.S. air power was involved in the assault on the building in Ishaqi, it was not previously reported that there was an AC-130 gunship, a devastating weapon capable of operating at night and pummeling its target with side-firing guns, including a 105mm cannon. The gunship is flown by Air Force Special Operations crews.

So these civilians may have been shot accidentally by a gun-ship in pursuit of a legitimate target, and not in any pre-meditated or illegal fashion, as is alleged at Haditha. There are some important distinctions here: the collateral civilian casualties that can and do regrettably occur in urban guerrilla warfare; the abuse of detainees under command authority; and battlefield war crimes, in which defenseless civilians are deliberately targeted out of revenge, or in some psychological snap. The first is always terrible – but not out of ethical bounds, as long as force was proportionate. It’s the terrorists who are ultimately responsible if they choose to hide among civilians and prompt a battle. The civilian casualties are always a hideous thing; but so is war. And a just war can be waged minimizing such casualties, but rarely avoiding them altogether.

But the latter two are indeed out of bounds. I feel more strongly about detainee abuse and torture, because it is pre-meditated, committed against targets already under control, and subject to command authority. But that is no excuse for Haditha, if the charges pan out. The conclusions about Ishaqi also seem to me to be provisional. More evidence may yet emerge. We should be cautious about drawing any firm conclusions yet.

A reader writes:

Those photographs of little children are truly heart breaking and the thought that Marines did this intentionally fills me with a very sick feeling (since I was a Marine myself).

That much said, don’t yet despair about what this country has become. This is no excuse, but such atrocities happen in all wars (My Lai for example involved scores more casualties). War is hell. I am very forgiving of the men and women fighting this war (or any war on our behalf) and believe they should get every reasonable doubt, but if they crossed that line then they need to face the consequences. The Marines should have a presumption of innocence, but if they broke under pressure of combat and committed retaliatory war crimes against innocent and even not-so-innocent civilians they need to face the appropriate penalty. 
I heard a Marine JAG describe the actual training troops get in Iraq about war crimes and make no mistake – the instruction they get about engaging civilians makes it crystal clear that retaliation against civilians will not be tolerated.  If there was a cover up here, that needs to be investigated to. If there is a complete investigation and courts martial (if warranted) and justice is done – then that makes all the difference. We do not need hyperbolic rhetoric on the left and right (thank you for not engaging in it like some other commentators have). The only remedy now is sunlight and objective scrutiny. The press and the criminal investigators both need to do their jobs. 

Sane words. But still heart-breaking.

Manhattan, West Side, sunset.

A reader recalls a two-year-old column by David Brooks which seemed to presage the kind of move Maliki may now be making. Money quote:

Now, looking ahead, we face another irony. To earn their own freedom, the Iraqis need a victory. And since it is too late for the Iraqis to have a victory over Saddam, it is imperative that they have a victory over us. If the future textbooks of a free Iraq get written, the toppling of Saddam will be vaguely mentioned in one clause in one sentence. But the heroic Iraqi resistance against the American occupation will be lavishly described, page after page. For us to succeed in Iraq, we have to lose.

That means the good Iraqis, the ones who support democracy, have to have a forum in which they can defy us. If the insurgents are the only anti-Americans, then there will always be a soft spot for them in the hearts of Iraqi patriots.

Prescient and smart, as David often is. My hope is that this is beginning to happen. And that Maliki is, when all is said and done, one of the "good Iraqis."

AEI has a useful study, summarizing all the data from many polls, and giving some historical perspective. There are two obvious inferences. The country is obviously divided on this: around 50-50 on a constitutional amendment, and, with some variations, a rough 30-30-40 split on support for marriage, civil unions or nothing at all. This seems to me to work in favor of the federalist answer, with various options being tried out across the country. But the other finding of all the polls is equally indisputable. There has been a massive shift in the last thirty years toward acceptance of gay equality. This has continued despite (or even because of) the campaign against marriage rights by the Christianist movement. The proportion of people who say they know a gay person has doubled in twenty years. In my view, that has been the real agent for change. And if gay people want their civil rights, they know what to do. If you’re in the closet, you have no one to blame for your inequality but yourself.

Feel the love.

A reader explains:

Dobson is right. My Oregon marriage with my partner was viciously attacked by the forces of hell. It was anulled. Only the forces of Satan can dedicate so much of their lives to ensure that if I’m on my death bed in intensive care, I die alone, without my partner with me. Only Satan can want to inflict that type of pain on both of us.

Many of the anti-gay marriage laws prevent hospitalization visit rights: "Immediate family" members only and that excludes gay partners. We die alone.

Of course, the truth is: we already died alone. In the plague years, we saw what some people would do to inflict cruelty and pain and contempt on gay families, even in the hour of their direst need. To which my response was and is: Never again. For their sake, and to honor their memory, we will achieve our civil equality and defend our human dignity. Never again.

Raw Story has now posted some photos of the corpses of children murdered in Ishaqi. Don’t go there if you are squeamish, or believe that possible war crimes should not be covered by the media. Investigations continue, and exactly what happened has not been established. But the omens are grim. And these pictures of infants with bullet holes in their skulls simply defy my comprehension of what has happened to this country.

A reader captures what has been in my mind and gut for the last few days:

The BBC just released a video alleging yet another covered-up massacre of civilians by American personel in Iraq.  5 women, 4 children, and 2 men in Ishaqi in March. Just when I think I’m totally numb, I find out a fellow American may have executed a 6 month-old baby in the name of protecting me, and I can’t hold back tears. What country are we in?

The same country that now practices torture. Cheney country.