The Dish

Hmm. You mean only one alleged terror cell was interested in mixing liquids in lip-balm to blow up "dozens" of airplanes across the Atlantic? Or that the entire London bomb scare is beginning to look less and less like anything close to a realistic danger and was hyped for political purposes? I guess we’ll soon find out from the British courts. But count me as a remaining skeptic on what exactly that August 10 bomb threat really was.

Orwell, torture and Bush’s America. My latest column.

Readers will have to judge for themselves what Senator John McCain said on "Face the Nation" yesterday. I’m afraid it confirms my worst fears: there is no legislative brake on the president’s use of torture, and the only restriction that has any teeth is that the president may – but may choose not to – publish his torture techniques in the Federal Register. Moreover, there seems to be no actual legal requirement for the president to do so, and no legal time frame cited in which he must provide details in the Federal Register. Can you imagine Cheney volunteering such information? Even if the president were to do so, any Congressional attempt to roll back specific torture methods would probably require a veto-proof majority, as Marty Lederman points out. The "transparency" is therefore transparently opaque.

There is no legal provision to prevent water-boarding, hypothermia, long-time-standing, intense sleep deprivation, or many of the abuses documented at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib – and cited in the "Gulag Archipelago". All of that is left up to this president to decide – and we know what his record is: brutality toward terror suspects, and reckless, ad hoc conflation of the innocent with the guilty.

Ask yourself this question: in the days after Abu Ghraib was exposed, did you believe that within a few years, the Congress of the United States would be formally decriminalizing exactly the techniques depicted in many of those photographs – and allowing the president to use his discretion to order them? Now absorb the fact that they are on the verge of doing just that. If this bill is passed, Abu Ghraib will be American policy, and integral across the world to the meaning of America. That’s a devastating self-inflicted wound in this war of ideas.

Here’s the key part of the McCain transcript:

Mr. HARRIS: This whole debate turned on things that I think most citizens couldn’t understand. You said you–severe punishment, pain should not be inflicted, but serious pain can–what can that possibly mean in concrete terms?

Sen. McCAIN: In concrete terms, it could mean that waterboarding and other extreme measures such as extreme deprivation–sleep deprivation, hypothermia and others would be not allowed.

Mr. HARRIS: That’s what you say. What if the administration interprets it differently, as it is allowed to do under the provisions of this law? What if you disagree with the interpretation?

Sen. McCAIN: If we disagree with the interpretation, the fact is that those interpretations have to be published in the Federal Register. That’s a document that’s available to all Americans, including the press. And we in Congress, and the judiciary, if challenged, have the ability then to examine that interpretation and act legislatively. These are regulations the president would issue, we would be passing laws which trump regulations.

Mr. HARRIS: If you have confidence that those were–tactics were disallowed, why didn’t you get it in the–in the actual law?

Sen. McCAIN: What we did, John, was we called–outlawed certain procedures, including some of those that you might think would be natural–murder, rape, etc.–but also cruel and inhuman–we included cruel and inhuman treatments, not as severe as torture but could still be considered a crime.

[Bob] SCHIEFFER: Well, we look at…

Sen. McCAIN: I’m confident that some of the abuses that were reportedly committed in the past will be prohibited in the future.

This "confidence" rests entirely on McCain’s personal trust in this president not to authorize various forms of torture against military prisoners. There is no rule of law in these instances. There is the will of one man – the president – against the confidence of another man – Senator McCain. That’s it. The rule of law – on something as critical as torture – is potentially over.

(Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty.)

I’ve long tried to give McCain the benefit of the doubt on all of this. He has been the sole figure able to resist this president’s permanent seizure of emergency powers – to detain any person at will without charges or recourse to courts and to torture them at will. McCain is, I believe, a good man. But he has obviously decided that he cannot win this one. He has decided that the best he can do is prevent a formal breach of the Geneva Conventions, keep the military itself away from torture, while allowing domestic law to be reinterpreted to allow all the torture techniques previously used by the CIA. It is easy to condemn him. Too easy, perhaps. He may have done as much as he possibly can to prevent torture without playing directly into Karl Rove’s hands. It is clear that if McCain continued his opposition, the Bush machine would have done all it could to kill his nomination prospects. And if he fails to win the nomination, and a Christianist Rove-backed candidate seizes it, then the future for American liberty and a decent conservatism would be even darker than it already is. I’m guessing that’s how he has rationalized it. He’s not dumb enough to trust the good word of George W. Bush. And he’s not dumb enough to fight a battle he cannot win – now.

Then there are more cynical interpretations. It is in McCain’s interests for the Republicans to do very badly this fall, so he can position himself as their savior in 2008. By taking the torture issue off the table, he removes one of Rove’s key weapons in the campaign: to portray the Democrats as too cowardly to torture the perpetrators of 9/11 and therefore too weak to defend the nation. It’s b.s., of course, but that’s beside the point. It works. So this deal may temporarily help the Democrats in November (which may explain their own supine cowardice on the subject).

McCain, in other words, is a shrewd politician and he knows when to fight a battle he can win and when to punt on a fight he will lose. If he becomes president, he could, with the discretion given the president in this bill, rescind the torture that Bush has authorized. Maybe, he could repeal the bill, with a Democratic Congress or even a Republican Congress that returned to its decent conservative principles. At the same time, it’s clear he has also acquiesced to giving complete legal impunity to the civilian architects of the torture policy within the Bush administration. Maybe that’s the real deal here – I’ll give you legal protection for past war-crimes if you give me the nomination in 2008. But surely McCain knows better than to trust the likes of Rove. He may have sold his soul … for a promise from a professional liar. The tragedy of 9/11 keeps deepening, dragging with it men of conscience and principle into the pit of opportunism and Caesarism.

I keep reminding myself of the hideous irony: John McCain has just allowed the U.S. president to use some of the techniques the North Vietnamese once used on McCain when he was a P.O.W. If that doesn’t make you sick to your stomach, then I guess you’ll never understand why so many of us feel so strongly about this.

We had one hope in this fight; and he just, at best, beat a tactical retreat. There is no knowing whether this moral ground can ever be regained. We must simply pray it can; and fight on to ensure that it is. We have no choice right now. But we must not surrender. And we must not despair. That way, Rove truly does win.

The polarization spreads. This photo was taken by a reader near Chicago. Readers are invited to send in slogans or posters designed purely to demonize opponents or polarize discourse.

"Our tendency to concentrate power in the hands of a few men deeply concerns me.  We can be conquered by bombs or subversion; but we can also be conquered by neglect – by ignoring the Constitution and disregarding the principles of limited government.  Our defenses against the accumulation of unlimited power in Washington are in poorer shape, I fear, than our defenses against the aggressive designs of Moscow. Like so many other nations before us, we may succumb through internal weakness rather than fall before a foreign foe," – Barry Goldwater, "The Conscience of a Conservative." There seems to me no question that Fox News would now regard Barry Goldwater as a leftist.

I read Damon Linker’s new book, "Theocons," reviewed today in the NYT by Adrian Wooldridge, a while back in proofs. It’s the most comprehensive analysis and take-down of the theocon set around – from an insider who knows them intimately. Linker worked at First Things until quite recently and saw first-hand the extremism and intolerance at the heart of the theoconservative project – and its remarkably direct reach into the White House. Among the most striking revelations is that then-Cardinal Ratzinger actually urged the American bishops in the 2004 campaign to formally deny communion to Catholic Democratic pro-choice candidates, and was scuppered only by some adroit maneuvring from the American Catholic bishops. From Booklist’s review:

Linker’s literate, reasonable chronicle and assessment of the theocons, that of an erstwhile colleague who shows no personal animus toward his former associates, is one of the most enlightening critiques of the Religious Right to date.

I agree. Of course, my own is better. But then I would say that, wouldn’t I?

Another reader (among many) writes:

I sincerely appreciate your ongoing comments on torture. Torture is wrong wherever it is done, and by whomever it is done. Keep the heat on those who now engage in the moral equivalency that was once so despised by the Right.

It is a sad period indeed when we must even discuss it in the context of creating or modifying laws to allow this to happen.  Senator McCain, I believe, said that our decision to torture has more to do with who we are than who they are. Perhaps my disappointment stems from my naive belief that we were the good guys in this global struggle, and my sadness from knowing that I am a citizen of a country that officially engages in torture. We are no better than they, now.

Another adds:

Please keep it up.  I am a firm believer that we must retain the moral high ground in this conflict.  Of course, we’ve probably irrevocably lost it …

But even for those who believe the ends justify the means (to whom morals are expendable) are making a grave error by supporting torture: we know that it is far from the case that every suspect brought into US custody is actually guilty of anything, let alone "fanatical mass-murder". Such people are simply subject to abuse in proportion to the extremity of our methods. From their perspective, we are the terrorists. Whether guilty or not, many will be converted to even more fanatical extremists by this extreme treatment.

It is a mistake to support the government in using such methods. We don’t really want the government to have this power. One day, dare I say, it could even be used against dissenters like us.

We are still better than them, of course. But if the torture bill passes, much less so. And that lost high ground makes this war harder not easier to win. We have surrendered one of our most powerful and important weapons: our soul and our principles. And once you have surrendered them, it is extremely hard to get them back.

His essential point was the resistance of Islamic thought to Greek conceptions of reason. It is indeed the crux of the matter, and reveals how hard it will be for Islam to have the kind of reformation it needs if it is to become compatible with the rest of the modern world. Here’s a great post on the subject. Money quote:

The high culture of Islam has been exposed throughout its history to the "blandishments" of Hellenistic philosophy and rationality.  Within two hundred years of the emergence of Islam (Sadr al-Islam) there was a fateful competition in learned circles over this very issue, the issue of whether or not Islam would be saturated with Hellenistic thought as Christianity was, and is. This contest was won by the pietists, traditionalists and scripturalists who in my opinion have bound Islam (especially Sunni Islam) in golden chains ever since. The losers in this struggle, and here I am thinking of the "Mu’tazileen," were variously disposed of and others of similar inclination toward "reform" were later exiled or marginalized.  That process continues to this day in one form or another although there is now some measure of debate in learned circles as to what it means to be Muslim in the 21st Century.

As a result of domination of the religion by the pietists, the view of Islam and the world that is held by a great many Muslims does not contain much of the traditions of freedom of opinion and discourse which have generally dominated much of our lives and history in the West.  (Yes.  I know about the Nazis and the Inquisition)  In the idea of Islam held by the masses, no one in Christendom (or anywhere else) has the right to say anything that raises the possibility that Islamic practise or past belief might have been in error theologically.  Such expressions are simply not acceptable to those who think of Christianity as the "house of war."  As a result, Benedict’s illustrative use of this ancient quotation in his argument in favor of Hellenistic thought became for them a declaration of hostility and disrespect by someone whom they think of as the "leader" of the "kuffar" (the unbelievers, the polytheists).

Hence the fact that offense is a one-way street for today’s Islam. This is ultimately a problem within Islam; but in son far as it may mean that the West is subjected to physical violence and attack, it is a question for us as well. And we must defend ourselves and our rational civilization. Like the old priest said.

(Photo: Wolfgang Radke/AP.)

Boulder, Colorado, 9 am.