A New Southpaw

Here's a toast that I hope we won't regret: to Evo Morales, new President of Bolivia. Anyone who wants to change the rules of engagement in the failed "war on drugs" and describes himself as the Bush administration's "nightmare" can't be all bad. And of course he's a friend of Lula's, Hugo's, and (gasp) Fidel's, who obstinately refused to sit still and let us overthrow or kill him, the rude bastard. Nothing is funnier than listening to the media gasp in horror at the "leftists" who have won recent elections in Argentina, Uruguay, and elsewhere.

OK, Fidel is a scumbag who ran out of ideas in 1963, and Hugo is no democrat. But the people of Latin America have had a gutful of "free trade" and conservative military governments servicing US multinationals and filling their own pockets while they napalm the peasantry. Let's let the left have its chance to prove its incompetence - and I'm willing to predict there won't be quite as many desaparecidos as the generals produced.

But following the Constitution is so darn Hard!

The judges on the FISA court are weighing in on Bush's wiretaps of international telephone calls (if they've really been limited to international calls). See the Washington Post story via the link above. One FISA judge has already resigned in protest, and evidently a number of others want to hear the administration's justification for their actions. Stand by - this could get big. I look forward to hearing Dick Cheney tell federal judges that he knows the Constitution better than they do.

And I'm reconsidering my opposition to the death penalty for anyone who attaches "-gate" to this scandal.

Speak Up, the NSA Can't Hear You

The domestic spying revelations look like another example of the malign influence of John Yoo. I know I'm late to this realization, but David Cole in the -New York Review of Books- (see the link) recently described just how important Yoo's incredibly broad interpretation of executive powers has been to Bush administration policy. Yoo, now a law professor at Berkeley, was an attorney within the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. He's evidently the author of Alberto Gonzalez's infamous "torture memo." More importantly, Yoo argues that Congress has almost no role to play in foreign policy, and that the Constitution doesn't mean what it clearly says about ratified treaties having the force of law (or more precisely, Yoo believes that the executive has carte blanche to disregard laws and treaties during times of war). Somewhere Richard Nixon is telling David Frost, "when the president does it, that means it's not illegal."

It was My Idea All Along

President Bush has done what a smart politician does when he knows he's beat: he made the best of the situation and grabbed a little reflected glory. Once John McCain had veto-proof majorities in both houses for an amendment that would actually require the United States to live up to its own regulations as well as international treaties ratified by the Senate (and thus, by the Constitution, having the force of US law) barring any American, anywhere from using "cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment" toward prisoners, Bush invited him over for a high-profile signing and some valuable photo ops. See Eric Schmitt's story in this morning's NY Times through the link above.

The deal, however, gives intel. officers and military personnel a disturbing defense against charges of violating this law: they can argue that a "reasonable" person could believe that they were following a "lawful order." What's wrong with that? Well, if all US personnel, military or civilian, everywhere are covered by this policy, it should be obvious that an order to abuse or torture (a distinction with little difference) a prisoner is NOT a lawful order. Oh, and it's also the Nuremberg Defense - and we rejected it when the Nazis tried it.

Meanwhile, somewhere in an undisclosed location, Dick Cheney is clutching his chest and growling curses at Lynn.

1,001 Nights

We've passed the 1,000-day-long mark in our war in Iraq, just the day before the parliamentary elections. Congratulations to the Iraqis - I hope that you get the government most, or some, of you want - and then I hope that this new government orders foreign occupiers, and foreign terrorists, out of its sovereign territory.

I Feel Better Now

The state of California put Stanley "Tookie" Williams to death this morning. To me, this raises a series of questions:
1. Why did the state execute this man? Was it vengeance, deterrence, eye-for-an-eye retribution?
2. Does his death make his victims' families feel better? If so, why?
3. Did people protest this execution because Williams was innocent? Or famous? Or "reformed"? Does it matter?
4. Should a civilized society purposely kill anyone? If so, why, and under what circumstances?

And I'm still waiting for response #1 to the question I posted a few days ago:

"Imagine that by some miracle you are suddenly the President of the United States, the most powerful man on earth.

What would you do about Iraq?"

Dry Hole

We were reminded today that Iraq's oil production is lower than it was before the war began. George W. Bush has now proved he can't produce oil in Texas or Iraq. So much for the CEO president with the energy expertise.

Bush's new speechwriter, and a question

'God is good. God is great. God is good. My God is good. Bin Laden's God is bad. His is a bad God. Saddam's God was bad, except he didn't have one. He was a barbarian. We are not barbarians. We don't chop people's heads off. We believe in freedom. So does God. I am not a barbarian. I am the democratically elected leader of a freedom-loving democracy. We are a compassionate society. We give compassionate electrocution and compassionate lethal injection. We are a great nation. I am not a dictator. He is. I am not a barbarian. He is. And he is. They all are. I possess moral authority. You see this fist? This is my moral authority. And don't you forget it.'

This is the speech that playwright Harold Pinter says he'd like to write for George W. Bush. It's from the video speech he presented yesterday at the Swedish Academy when he accepted the Nobel Prize for literature. Check it out at the above link: it's a striking indictment of US foreign policy, and it deserves to be read, or heard, in full.

Which brings me to something I've been thinking about for a while: it's rather easy to point out the flaws, contradictions, hypocrisies, lies, and sometimes atrocities in the US's actions (although few people rise to the eloquence of Pinter). Let me propose something a little different: imagine that by some miracle you are suddenly the President of the United States, the most powerful man on earth, blah blah blah.

What would you do about Iraq?

The Democratic Torture Olympics

Responses to a December 6 AP-Ipsos poll : (http://www.ap-ipsosresults.com/) : samples from select countries were asked "How do you feel about the use of torture against suspected terrorists to obtain information about terrorism activities?" : the following percentages responded that torture can "Often be justified" or "Sometimes be justified":

US: 38% (Silver Medal)
Canada: 28%
Mexico: 31%
S. Korea: 53% (Gold Medal)
France: 32% (Bronze Medal)
Germany: 30%
Italy: 23%
Spain: 21%
U.K.: 30%

We're shooting for Gold but have quite a ways to go : Too bad the old "CCCP" could not field a team : Uganda has really gone downhill since Dada left : but it's good to know that even a few democracies are willing to keep the sport alive.

Remember the Real Pearl Harbor

Today is the 64th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. That act of treachery drew the US into the world's greatest and most terrible war. Although some actions and behavior during that contest can be condemned (e.g., the firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo, the Nagasaki bomb), I believe there is no question that the American response was justified and honorable. We should treat our World War II veterans with the greatest respect and thank them for their service.

But I also hope that we can think clearly and distinguish between that conflict and others, especially the one we're now fighting. Just as no one should use the "Hitler" comparison - nobody else is Hitler, and nothing compares to the Holocaust, thank God - let's take it easy on the WWII comparisons. The attacks on 9/11 were not like Pearl Harbor, and they called for a different response, part of which we sort of got more or less right. And the Iraq war really isn't anything like WWII, and postwar Iraq is not 1946 Germany or Japan. And Bush sure ain't FDR (or Wilson, or Lincoln, or TR; maybe Franklin Pierce?). Terrorists are a genuine but limited threat, and they can't really destroy our way of life anymore than Saddam could - but if we keep butchering our responses, we can do great damage to our own bad selves.

Let's really remember Pearl Harbor (and the Maine, and 9/11, while we're at it).

Who you gonna believe - Condi or your lying eyes?

I have always had a certain grudging respect for the way the Bush administration operates, especially its straightforward use of assertion. When they want to convince us that something is so, they simply say that it's so, knowing that they can count on maybe 1/3 of us to believe them implicitly, and that they stand a decent chance of convincing another 1/4 or 1/3 by repeated assertion. Never mind evidence or documentation: "Saddam was involved in 9/11." "Iraq has a nuclear program." "John Kerry didn't deserve his medals."

Our latest demonstration is the ineffable Condoleeza Rice, telling Europeans that "the United States does not permit, tolerate or condone torture under any circumstances . . . The United States does not transport and has not transported detainees from one country to another for the purpose of interrogation using torture" (see NY Times article at the link above). Never mind the photographs, the film, the eyewitness testimony by victims, perpetrators, and onlookers. Lynndie England and Charles Graner are making big rocks into little rocks, so we've cleared up that little problem. (I'm still trying to figure out how England and Graner managed to be in Afghanistan and Cuba as well as Iraq.) The mainstream media faithfully reproduces Rice's statements and helps to muddy the waters.

Let's parse this: as for the first claim, note that Rice did not say that the US did not torture, merely that we don't "permit, tolerate or condone it." As for the second, I'm willing to bet that Alberto Gonzales et al. already have the legal language ready to assert that we have other "purposes" than torture for transporting "detainees" (a marvelously benign euphemism) to other nations.