The Dish

Slate’s often diverting advice columnist answers a gay correspondent who’s offended when someone finds out he’s gay and says: “What a waste.” Here’s Prudence’s reply:

Prudie believes you are misinterpreting the remark. Rather than implying that the gay person has “no sort of life of their own,” Prudie finds it to mean, “You are GORGEOUS.” (And it’s the straight person’s loss that you bat for the other team.) It is meant both as a compliment and a lighthearted statement. As you may have divined, Prudie has made this comment, herself, and always to a big smile in response.

Well, almost. The key way to figure this out is to reverse roles. If it emerges in conversation that a man is married to a woman, would he be offended if a gay guy were to say, “What a waste”? I think he would. Or am I wrong?

BLOCK THAT METAPHOR: “America’s Mayor having to eat a little crow after three years of galloping hagiography is a classic case of karma coming due.” – Tina Brown, Washington Post.

THE GAY CASE FOR BUSH: Here’s Abner Mason, making the best case he can. I wonder what Bush really meant when he said he wasn’t against civil unions, even though his party platform opposes any legal protections for gay couples. Karl Rove said he meant nothing but some ad hoc legal arrangements, made by private contract, and unenforceable in court if challenged by other family members. I suspect it was merely politics. But I don’t know. Why doesn’t someone ask the president or McClellan what rights the president believes a civil union should contain. That might move the ball forward. But somehow I doubt we’d get a real answer.

Yes, it’s the pundit equivalent of the Iraq-Iran war. David Brock calls out Bill O’Reilly. Brock is surely right on one thing: O’Reilly should have him on his show. Please.

I’ve been a little busy but Wally Olson at his superb blog, Overlawyered.com, dissects the inaccuracies in David Frum’s recent posting about a Vermont child-custody case. David also implies that my support for federalism is purely tactical. It isn’t. I’ve long been a believer that important policy decisions should be made as close to the local level as possible; I don’t believe the Full Faith and Credit Clause can or should be applied to civil marriage. I support the utterly superfluous part of DOMA that allows states to refuse to recognize other states’ marriages. I do believe that the right to marry is covered under equal protection guarantees under Loving, but that’s a separate matter than the federalist issue, and would require a sea-change in public attitudes toward gay relationships (a sea-change I’ve been doing my bit to advance). Still, we’re nowhere near there yet – and may never be. I see no possibility in the foreseeable future of SCOTUS applying equal protection to marriage for gays.

“We are all happy when U.S. soldiers are killed [in Iraq] week in and week out. The killing of U.S. soldiers in Iraq is legitimate and obligatory.” – Walid Jumblatt, Head of the Progressive Socialist Party in Lebanon. Jumblatt just enjoyed a lavish state visit to France. More on his views here.

“We are in a war with people WHO WANT US DEAD. These same people have no qualms about beheading civilian contractors or using religious shrines as cover – they do not abide by the laws of war or the Geneva Convention. We cannot win this war with one hand tied behind our back. We are not always going to be perfect, but interrogation methods consisting of “pretty please with sugar on top” are not going to work.
Soldiers should do whatever is necessary to save the lives of their comrades and ensure a successful completion to their mission. If that means a few jihadis get roughed up, too friggin’ bad. They should put on uniforms and swear allegiance to a sovereign nation if they want to be treated like POW’s. Other wise, I have no qualms with treating them like they are – barbarian scum.
If they do not follow the laws of war I see no reason why we should treat them as if the rules apply to them. I’m glad many in our government do not as well. Please stop acting as if this is a conventional war where all the old rules apply – you’re smarter than that.”

This is a common and honest argument. It misses two things. First: there is little evidence to suggest that the torture used by U.S. forces has in any way helped our intelligence efforts. In fact, it may well have proven counter-productive, as experience has shown. Tortured inmates tell you whatever can get them out of torture. They don’t often give you really helpful intelligence. Secondly, this is indeed a different kind of war. The critical element in defeating an inurgency is winning over the civilan population that can give insurgents cover and support. But stories of brutality – in Saddam’s own slaughter-house no less – and the use of mass round-ups of innocent civilians, the taking hostage of relatives of suspected insurgents and everyday brutality actually hurts your cause and undermines the war. That’s why armies try to rein it in. The case against abuse and torture is not just a moral case; it’s a practical case. It’s helping the enemy. And it is destroying the moral high-ground which we are fighting to defend.

Let’s review. We have the horrors of Abu Ghraib; we have several murders and rapes of inmates in Iraq and in Afghanistan; we have separate abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib after the scandal broke; we have the use of electric shocks, beating to unconsciousness, scarring chemicals, one instance of “water-boarding,” using dogs to terrorize and sometimes bite inmates, forced sodomy, and any number of bizarre pieces of sexual humiliation, designed specifically to abuse Arabs. Got all that? We have at least 130 convictions. Now we have this:

In Karbala in May 2003, one Marine held a 9mm pistol to the back of a bound detainee’s head while another took a photograph. Two months later, in Diwaniyah, four Marines ordered teenage Iraqi looters to kneel alongside holes and then fired a pistol “to conduct a mock execution.” In April of this year, shortly before the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal shook the U.S. military, three Marines in Mahmudiya shocked a detainee with an electric transformer, forcing him to “dance” as the electricity hit him, according to a witness, one document states.

The ACLU also discovered a document containing

a statement taken in October by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service in which a Navy corpsman who had been attached to the Marines in Iraq stated that it was routine to take a prisoner to an empty swimming pool, place cuffs on his hands and legs, put a burlap bag over his head, and then “the EPW [enemy prisoner of war] would remain in the kneeling position for no longer than 24 hours while the EPW was awaiting interrogation.”

It’s also increasingly clear that these kinds of abuses – the use of nakedness, exposure to extreme heat and cold, hooding, sexual abuse, real and faked electric torture – are themes across these disparate acts. In other words, there seems to be an informal methodology for the abuse and humiliation of prisoners. Do we really believe that these common practices are the result of completely spontaneous imagination by soldiers with no idea of what they were doing and no culture of acceptance from their superiors? These were not just some untrained grunts, coping with Rumsfeld-engineered chaos. These were elite Navy SEALs and Special Forces. And we have no idea how many incidents have gone unreported or have been covered up.

WHAT WE DON’T KNOW: We don’t know – and may never know – the full extent of the torture. But we do now know that this wasn’t just “abuse”; it was torture, used as part of the interrogation process or just randomly. We do know it wasn’t a handful of hoodlums on the night shift in one prison. We do know that it followed a clear directive from the president that in this war, the enemy has the protection of the Geneva Conventions solely at his personal discretion, and that the “enemy” can include thousands of people rounded up in the middle of the night who are and were guilty of absolutely nothing. We also know that this president only rewards loyalty, not competence. We do know that the pattern of abuse affects the Special Forces, the Military Police, the Army, the Navy SEALs, reservists, and the Marine corps. We also know that no one in the higher commands has been found guilty of anything. And check this out: the marines who used electric shock torture against an inmate were found guilty. Their sentence? One got one year in confinement. The other eight months. The lesson? No big deal. They’re still in the uniform.

STUPIDITY INSURANCE: Another take on social security – and its critics.

NEWS FROM AFRICA: An event the U.N. is proud to endorse.

Here’s David Frum’s defense of the Medals of Freedom for three architects of failure in the invasion and occupation of Iraq:

[T]he president is doing something important. He is declaring to the officials and soldiers who are executing this policies that he will stand behind them when things get tough; that he won’t go seeking scapegoats; that he fully, strongly, and publicly supports the individuals he himself chose to carry out the tasks he himself assigned. There’s a lot of loose talk about President Bush’s demands for loyalty. One thing that critics of this president have never grasped is that he has been unprecedentedly successful in claiming loyalty up because he is unprecedentedly committed to loyalty down.

Memo to David: a “scapegoat” is someone unfairly singled out for criticism when he isn’t the man responsible. Take just on example here. George Tenet was CIA chief when the worst intelligence failure since the Bay of Pigs led to the deaths of thousands of people at the hands of Jihadist murderers. He followed up by assuring the president that the case for Saddam’s existing stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction was a “slam dunk.” Not only is this man not fired; he is given the highest civilian medal possible. Frum’s case is that what really matters is not competence or candor or effectiveness – but loyalty. How is the ethic he praises inapplicable to, say, a successful mob boss?

Over at Tech Central Station. By the way, isn’t this a great mini-moment for the blogosphere? Here we have one of the smartest writers in the country testing a hypothesis against the collective brain of the blogosphere. It couldn’t have happened before. And it may actually add substance to an important public policy debate. What’s not to like?

No need to. Rumsfeld already got the Medal of Freedom – in 1977.

“I certainly agree with you that conservative criticism of Sec. Rumsfeld is long overdue, and this piece in the Post is a good start. But I must say that this type of criticism has been around since before the war was even launched, and reached a fever pitch months before the election. So my question to you, and in particular your more conservative counterparts, is: where was this indignation when it mattered? I’m not saying that Kerry would have had all of the answers, and I know that you did you part in voicing many of these same concerns, but for the Sec. of Defense to be such a monumental failure and not get called out for it by his boss is unimaginable. I guess I expected more… Party over Country is the rule of the day.” More feedback on the Letters Page.