US Politics

Tom Friedman returns in his new guise as Chief Assistant to the Assistant Chief Sassanian Senmurv’s Sub-Deaconry Baldachin Polisher in the Noble, Ancient and Hermetic Order of the Shrill:

bq. Sorry, I’ve been away writing a book. I’m back, so let’s get right down to business: We’re in trouble in Iraq. I don’t know what is salvageable there anymore. … This war has been hugely mismanaged by this administration, in the face of clear advice to the contrary at every stage, and as a result the range of decent outcomes in Iraq has been narrowed and the tools we have to bring even those about are more limited than ever. … For all of President Bush’s vaunted talk about being consistent and resolute, the fact is he never established U.S. authority in Iraq. Never. This has been the source of all our troubles. We have never controlled all the borders, we have never even consistently controlled the road from Baghdad airport into town, because we never had enough troops to do it. … Because each time the Bush team had to choose between doing the right thing in the war on terrorism or siding with its political base and ideology, it chose its base and ideology. More troops or radically lower taxes? Lower taxes. Fire an evangelical Christian U.S. general who smears Islam in a speech while wearing the uniform of the U.S. Army or not fire him so as not to anger the Christian right? Don’t fire him. Apologize to the U.N. for not finding the W.M.D., and then make the case for why our allies should still join us in Iraq to establish a decent government there? Don’t apologize – for anything – because Karl Rove says the “base” won’t like it. Impose a “Patriot Tax” of 50 cents a gallon on gasoline to help pay for the war, shrink the deficit and reduce the amount of oil we consume so we send less money to Saudi Arabia? Never. Just tell Americans to go on guzzling. Fire the secretary of defense for the abuses at Abu Ghraib, to show the world how seriously we take this outrage – or do nothing? Do nothing. Firing Mr. Rumsfeld might upset conservatives. Listen to the C.I.A.? Only when it can confirm your ideology. When it disagrees – impugn it or ignore it.

Whew! Did ole Airmiles finally run into Daniel in a 1st Class Transit Lounge somewhere? Perhaps Tom is realizing that, thanks to the Bush Administration, he may get the twenty year occupation he told _Oprah_ viewers to gear up for last year.

Katherine has a significant post on the potential legalization of outsourcing torture. Opponents of the provision include the American Bar Association, the 9/11 Commission, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch. This isn’t over.

The office of Edward Markey has sent a letter to President Bush on the provisions of the bill in question. UPDATE: The whole letter is below the fold. Here it is in .pdf form.

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I watched the debate with my friend Rob “Get Donkey” Humenik. Afterwards, I thought that I’d better get home and start rooting for the home team, but… it looks like Kerry did just fine without my little squeakerbox.

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Sebastian Holsclaw is a regular commenter here – while I’ve had some serious differences with him, he certainly deserves some kudos for this post on Obsidian Wings explaining why his fellow Republicans should disavow the proposed legislation that would facilitate extraordinary renditions. I only hope that others on the right side of the blogosphere start to pick up this message.

The Bush administration is supporting a provision in the House leadership’s intelligence reform bill that would allow U.S. authorities to deport certain foreigners to countries where they are likely to be tortured or abused, an action prohibited by the international laws against torture the United States signed 20 years ago.

The provision, part of the massive bill introduced Friday by House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), would apply to non-U.S. citizens who are suspected of having links to terrorist organizations but have not been tried on or convicted of any charges. Democrats tried to strike the provision in a daylong House Judiciary Committee meeting, but it survived on a party-line vote.

The provision, human rights advocates said, contradicts pledges President Bush made after the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal erupted this spring that the United States would stand behind the U.N. Convention Against Torture. Hastert spokesman John Feehery said the Justice Department “really wants and supports” the provision.

Kudos to the Washington Post for picking up on this. If this is defensible, I’d really like to hear a defense. Until then, I’m going to contact my Representative again.

What Belle said: Please, please contact your Representatives about this bill. I’m including the email that I sent to my Rep under the fold. Feel free to use any or all of it.

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Erstwhile (and deeply missed) blogger Katherine has returned to Obsidian Wings with a very important post. Under cover of the “9/11 Recommendations Implementation Act of 2004”, House Republicans are attempting to pass a law which would legalize “extraordinary rendition” — the practice of deporting foriegn-born suspects to a country which practices torture, in order to get information our government feels it cannot extract legally. From a press release sent to Katherine by the staff of Rep. Edward Markey (a Massachusets democrat who has sought to ban such extraordinary rendition):

The provision would require the Secretary of Homeland Security to issue new regulations to exclude from the protection of the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, any suspected terrorist – thereby allowing them to be deported or transferred to a country that may engage in torture. The provision would put the burden of proof on the person being deported or rendered to establish “by clear and convincing evidence that he or she would be tortured,” would bar the courts from having jurisdiction to review the Secretary’s regulations, and would free the Secretary to deport or remove terrorist suspects to any country in the world at will – even countries other than the person’s home country or the country in which they were born. The provision would also apply retroactively.

This provision was not part of the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations, and the Commission actually called upon the U.S. to “offer an example of moral leadership in the world, committed to treat people humanely, abide by the rule of law, and be generous and caring to our neighbors.”

It’s difficult for me to express what a terrible, immoral piece of legislation this is. This is a shameful and cowardly attempt to sneak language legalizing the outsourcing of torture into a bill claiming to implement the recommendations of the 9/11 commission. Katherine urges bloggers to link to this post, and US readers to contact their representatives and object to this harmful measure (Markey is sponsoring an amendment to remove this provision). If the blogosphere really has any ability to break stories, we should be spending our firepower here. I’m willing to bet this law won’t get passed if it is publicized before passage, but it might get through in some hasty, last-minute bill passing if it is overlooked. Don’t let it happen.

If you ever need to reach me, don’t bother trying at 10pm (CST, Mon-Thu) because I am likely watching The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. I am obsessed with that show not only because the entire cast is incredibly funny, but also because Jon Stewart is so well informed and quick on his feet. He did a great job talking tonight (Tue) with Ralph Reed, former head of the Christian Coalition and chair of the Southeast region Bush-Cheney campaign. It was an interesting glimpse into what it would be like to have Jon Stewart take part in a presidential debate. I am not referring to the laughs we would get out of it, but the witty and sharp comments that would keep everybody on their toes. Even Al Gore, in his NYTimes op-ed today about debating George Bush, quotes Stewart. Bummer that Bush likely won’t go on TDS, it would be interesting to watch him interact with Jon Stewart. But as someone from the Bush campaign who recently visited the show commented: why would Bush bother showing up on TDS?

To spice things up a bit this Thursday, I will be watching the presidential debate with a group of students in Northwestern’s Communications Residential College where my colleague David Zarefsky, an expert in argumentation and Presidential rhetoric, will lead a discussion about the debates right after.

Three stories I heard on NPR on the way to Daycare which made me want to drop myself off there and play for the day while sending my baby daughter off to the office instead:

* This kid whose doctor and parents are reluctant to take her off the Zoloft they suggested she start taking, even though she’s been asking to stop for a year. Some of the doctors quoted in the report are a bit frightening. “Oh, we don’t know when to take them off the stuff — some of my patients have been on them since they were seven and now they’re in their 20s,” or words to that effect. Mom and Dad insist they are just waiting for a “less stressful time” in their daughter’s life to stop her course of anti-depressants. But guess what? She’s a junior in high school, is looking at colleges, next year’s senior year and then it’s the transition to University and … you see how it goes. That’s the kind of parent I want to be! “Honey, the problem isn’t your shitty high school, it’s serotonin re-uptake malfunctions in your brain.”

* John Kerry is starting to refer to himself in the third person, like Bob Dole did in ’96. A sure sign of fatigue. Bush’s glib one-liners about Kerry are better than Kerry’s rebuttals. I’ve come to agree with Matt that the debates are going to be a rough ride for Kerry.

* Perhaps saddest of all was hearing the father of Sgt Ben Isenberg of Oregon talk about his son’s death in Iraq. Sgt Isenberg was killed when his Humvee ran over a home-made mine. His father quietly explains how the war in Iraq is a “spiritual war” and that people “need to just dig into their Bible and read about it — it’s predicted, it’s predestined.” He says his son understood he had to go to Iraq because “our current President is a very devout Christian … [who] had the knowledge, and understood what was going on, and it’s far deeper than we as a people will every really know, because we don’t get the information that the President gets.” What can one say in the face of such belief? The President is simply unworthy of the trust these people have placed in him.

On CNN’s _Newsnight_ last night, David Brooks took his favorite rhetorical trope — that there are two kinds of people in the world — to its _realpolitik_ conclusions:

bq. You’ve got to have a political strategy and you’ve got to have a military strategy. … You’ve got to use our Iraqis, the Iraqis who want a democratic Iraq to give them something concrete, win them over. But then you’ve got to have a military strategy too and those are the people who, like Zarqawi, who just want to spread death and destruction. So, what you do is you win over the people you can, town by town and then you kill the people you can.

Brooks was ready to fly to Iraq and lead the army from house to house in Iraq using his magic glowing finger to distinguish the Iraqis we must kill from those we must win over, he did not go on to say.

In shock news veteran Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm has been deported from the United States. After the historian’s name appeared on a no-fly list, his UA flight was diverted 600 miles to Maine, the elderly scholar was removed and, after questioning by FBI agents he was placed on the first available flight to the UK. Homeland Security officials said “we’ve been watching this guy for a while, we had new intelligence….”

Hobsbawm has long been a controversial figure, in a notorious interview with Michael Ignatieff he appeared to justify the Soviet Gulag :

bq. Ignatieff: “In 1934, millions of people are dying in the Soviet experiment. If you had known that, would it have made a difference to you at that time? To your commitment? To being a Communist?”

bq. Hobsbawm: “This is the sort of academic question to which an answer is simply not possible. . . . If I were to give you a retrospective answer which is not the answer of a historian, I would have said, ‘probably not.’”

bq. Ignatieff: “Why?”

bq. Hobsbawm: “Because in a period in which, as you might imagine, mass murder and mass suffering are absolutely universal, the chance of a new world being born in great suffering would still have been worth backing. Now the point is, looking back as an historian, I would say that the sacrifices made by the Russian people were probably only marginally worthwhile. The sacrifices were enormous; they were excessive by almost any standard and excessively great. But I’m looking back at it now, and I’m saying that because it turns out that the Soviet Union was not the beginning of the world revolution. Had it been, I’m not sure.”

bq. Ignatieff: “What that comes down to is saying that had the radiant tomorrow actually been created, the loss of fifteen, twenty million people might have been justified?”

bq. Hobsbawm: “Yes.”

Seeking to justify Hobsbawm’s deportation on the grounds that he was a threat to the security of the United States, guys-with-websites all across the internet cited Hobsbawm’s remarks by way of justification. Prominent US liberal bloggers, such as Juan Cole , Mark Kleiman and Kevin Drum also mentioned the repulsive remarks and said that in their view, the fact that Hobsbawm had made the remarks had left them indifferent in the face of Homeland Security’s actions. As one of them said: “If you excuse the execution of dissidents, you and John Ashcroft deserve one another.” “Screw him,” was another’s comment on the affair.

Is it just me, or does this Samizdata post sound oddly as if it were written by the Medium Lobster?

I hardly know where to begin on this one (from Fox News).

While Bush has been campaigning as the best candidate to deter terrorists and protect the nation, Kerry portrayed him as out of touch with the situation in Iraq.

“With all due respect to the president, has he turned on the evening news lately? Does he read the newspapers?” Kerry said. “Does he really know what’s happening? Is he talking about the same war that the rest of us are talking about?”

This man thinks the Commander-in-chief should formulate war strategies according to what it says on CNN, and he is standing for president of the United States?

With all due respect to the Democratic candidate, has he never heard of military intelligence? Does he even know what the blogosphere is? Is he talking about the same universe that the rest of us are talking about?

Damn right, we are talking about different wars. This is the real one. And it’s not available in any newspapers.

I recommend very strongly that you follow the link and learn that John Wayne movies about Vietnam are an awesome place to learn about press bias. And, if you read the comments thread, you learn that the liberal media travelled back in time from the 70’s and caused the US to lose the Vietnam war by raising geo-political concerns about open war with China. Also, can we think of a new name for libertarians who think it’s a good idea to invade other countries and overthrow their governments, like maybe “shmibertarians”? Thanks.

Yusuf Islam — the former singer once known as Cat Stevens — has been banned from the United States . And not just banned, they actually diverted the plane 600 miles to Maine to remove him from it. He’s made some equivocal statements in the past, but more recently has been forthright in his condemnation of terrorism . Perhaps there’s something we don’t know, but, on the surface, this looks like a bad mistake. Ordinary Muslims will be bound to see this as hostility to their religion as such rather than just to extremists and terrorists.