"Exterminate the Brutes"

How do you get your head around this?

Almost six years after the worst attack ever on U.S. soil, special operations commanders believe that simply killing terrorists will not win a war against an ideologically motivated enemy.

That view is reflected in a series of transitions in special operations leadership posts. New senior officers are expected to give greater weight to an indirect approach to warfare, a slow and disciplined process that calls for supporting groups or nations willing to back U.S. interests.

Former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld turned special operations forces into a “giant killing machine,” said Douglas Macgregor, a former Army colonel and frequent critic of the Defense Department.

Now, with Rumsfeld gone and Navy Vice Adm. Eric Olson about to take control of U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM), Macgregor anticipates a return to the fundamentals drilled into Army Green Berets, Navy SEALs and other specially trained troops.

“The emphasis will be on, ‘If you have to kill someone, then for God’s sakes, kill the right people,”’ Macgregor said. “In most cases, you’re not going to have to kill people and that’s the great virtue of special operations. That’s been lost over the last several years.”

I remember when the concept of "pest control" was simply: Eliminate the insects. Of course, by the time Rachel Carson wrote "Silent Spring" we began to figure out that wouldn't work. But this Administration seems to have missed that lesson, and the lessons of European Empire: you cannot control what you must destroy. If you're only option is "kill 'em all," then you have no options.

How hard is that to figure out?

It's becoming clearer and clearer this Administration's approach to every problem has been: extermination. Did Donald Rumsfeld really, seriously believe this was "Fortress America," and that we could eradicate all enemies and threats, that we could kill all our enemies? Did he really imagine that was a defensive posture? That's foreign policy via Tom Clancy video game. That's not serious; it's madness.

But apparently he did believe it. Why do we continue to consider these people intelligent? Why do we continue to think they even deserve the positions of authority they hold? Because we are, at bottom, afraid of the government?

The questions of theodicy are much easier to deal with than this. That field of inquiry just asks: "Why does God permit evil in the world?" The question here is: "Why was Donald Rumsfeld convinced evil would do good, and why did the rest of us let him get away with it?"

Brown v. Board of Education: A Brief Personal History

When I started high school, there had been three high schools in my small Texas town: two white, one black. The year I started high school, 16 years after Brown v. Board of Education, a Federal Judge ordered the black school closed and the two white schools integrated. The school I went to was "Robert E. Lee," and the school mascot, not surprisingly, was the Rebel.

By the next year there was a small fight (we called it a "riot" at the time) which closed about half the school (it was during one of four lunch periods; few of the students in class knew what was going on) for the day, and engendered some very bad feelings that night at the football game, and generally left a bad taste in everyone's mouth. After that, the school gave up the Rebels, the giant Confederate Battle Flag, and all the "Dixie" insignias, including that song as the school fight song (although the school song still mentioned the school colors: "...the red is for courage, the white for purity." The word "white" was always shouted belligerantly by the whites at pep rallies and school assemblies when the school song was played). I don't know how things are now in that school, although when I moved to Austin ten years later, the Most Liberal Town In Texas was still struggling with the issue of integration (and far less successfully, I'm ashamed to say). Since then, I understand, Brown v. Board of Education has been waning as the law of the land (the school district I live in now has five high schools, one predominantly black, but that fact doesn't seem to bother Federal judges anymore); I know there has been much notice paid to the decline of that ruling, but that's beyond the scope of my knowledge here.

And so here comes the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, in one of two rulings handed down today:

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. authored the most important opinion of his two terms leading the court. He held that both plans, which categorize students on the basis of race and use that in making school assignments, violate the constitution's promise of equal protection, even if the goal is integration of the schools.

"The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race," Roberts wrote.

Now, to be fair, I haven't read the ruling, only the article about it, and this language may be mere dicta, Justice Roberts' personal opinion and not ruling law in any way. But I read that language, plucked out by the Washington Post as significant (and I don't disagree), and I think: "On what planet?"

It would be great, of course, to stop discriminating on the basis of race by not discriminating on the basis of race, but how, exactly, do you do that without freezing the status quo? The school district I live in now has, as I mentioned, five high schools. The "best" high schools (in terms of test scores) are in the whitest, wealthiest part of the district. The "black" high school is in the poorest, "darkest" part of the district. The schools are fairly evenly funded, I'm sure; but there's no question the "black" high school needs far more help, far more support, far more attention, than the "white" high schools get. Is it discriminated against? Not in the sense the black high school in my hometown was. There is no longer quite the same "seperate but equal" standard that once existed. But does that mean no discrimination occurs at all?

The very assertion is laughable. You know, we have a rather extensive history of racism in this country which hasn't been completely erased simply because Burger King runs an ad where Sean Combs rouses the white franchise operator from his house to open the local BK so Mr. Combs and his krewe can get burgers late at night. I know Clarence Thomas made a mockery of the concept with his allegations of an "electronic lynching" (what does that even mean?) during his confirmation hearins, but the lynching of black men was a public spectacle within the scope of the past century, and was not uncommon as recently as 40 years ago. So when the Chief Justice pens a groundless and pointless tautology that really signifies absolutely nothing, I have to wonder again:

On what planet?

It is a breathtakingly stupid comment. I know it's been paraded by know-nothing pundits and empty-headed reactionaries for a decade or more now. But to see it being offered in seriousness by a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court...well, I think I'd rather read Annie Dillard on theodicy ("Holy the Firm"). There is more comfort (and sense!) in her work than I am finding in the news. Time to turn it off and return to meditation. As Thomas Merton said of the Desert Fathers, when all human society is in chaos, sometimes the only response is to grab a bit of flotsam in the flood and hang on for dear life.

That's what I'm doing to do now.

Addendum: it just gets worse. The NPR story on this case when it was argued notes:

Her lawyer, Teddy Gordon, says that does not change the fact that the school board's race-conscious student assignment plan is unconstitutional. He claims it "is a pure quota," adding, "We've color coded children."

Which, of course, we did do, once. Now it's a matter of whose ox is being gored. Sorry, that argument doesn't pass the smell test. And then there's the reality of America post-Brown v. Board of Education:

PTA board member Mary Myers says the race-conscious assignment plan has ... equalized school resources. "My children do not have to sit next to a white child to learn," she says, "but they need the resources of that school," and under this system, "they all get the same resources."

What's more, she says, diversity is more than a word: "I just like to see that 'cause I'm 48 years old, and came from a segregated school system."

Haddad, the school board member, echoes that sentiment. "Children see other children differently than they saw back in 1975..." she says. "They like all the kids. They don't differentiate between them, and I think that is really, really important as they grow up into the real world."

That is very true. I grew up very aware of race, and of differences based on race. My daughter doesn't recognize the differences I did. That is what is important.

Chief Justice Roberts would return us to the world I grew up in. As the war protestors used to say in my childhood: "Hell, no! We won't go!" The other encouraging bit of this: the Supreme Court is very out of step with the country:

What the parents want is important, the school board says. It points to the fact that white students were fleeing the Louisville public schools by the thousands until the board adopted a plan in the mid-1980s that combined race-conscious student assignment with choice. Suddenly, school attendance stabilized.

Indeed, racial concentration in Louisville's public schools has decreased, in contrast to a rise nationally. A survey conducted by the University of Kentucky found 77 percent of Louisville parents favoring the guidelines, even though it means that a majority of the children are bused, often from one end of the sprawling school district to the other. The reason for the guidelines' popularity, says PTA President Paula Wolf, is that there are so many different programs and approaches to educating children offered throughout the district.

The people are far ahead of the "leadership" which would lead them backwards.

The Faith Delusion

Ed. note: I'm dragging this back up simply because I've been re-reading Annie Dillard's "Holy the Firm," in order to teach it in the morning. And that's left me full of beans. That, and I had to respond to ProfWombat.

You know, I come across something like this, and I realize there is no end of ignorance in the world. First, let's give the devil his due:

When it comes to arguing whether God exists, or whether she is a figment of the human mind, first-year theological students have it all over Richard Dawkins.

Review after review after review after review states this.

Only they never mention why our first-year theological student is correct and Dawkins is wrong. Or, if the [sic] do, it’s a point so peripheral and probably misinterpreted, that the end result is the same.

This is why Dawkins riles so many. Because, in essence, he is absolutely correct in his utterly logical condemnations of God and religion. And because he married Romana from Dr. Who, the lucky bastard.

Yeah. My problem with Dawkins is Leela Ward-envy. I guess somehow I knew they were married. And my other problem is, I'm obsessed with the question of God's existence, without even knowing it! Of course, what follows is peripheral to whatever "proof" Dawkins' submits as to God's non-exsitence, and it's probably misinterpreted, too. Well, misinterpreted by someone.

What is it about God's existence that so riles people? Maybe it's the Turing Test mentality of it: "existence" is known by experience. If I "chat" with you on a blog, then clearly we both have "existence." Right? But consider (again) Kierkegaard's answer to the issue: can I prove the existence of the prisoner in the dock, or can I only prove his identity as the criminal he is accused of being? Careful how you answer: the entire project of ontology, ontotheology, Western metaphysics, and phenomenology, are involved in the issue. The problem is, as I've pointed out before:

It is generally a difficult matter to want to demonstrate that something exists-worse still, for the brave souls who venture to do it, the difficulty is of such a kind that fame by no means awaits those who are preoccupied with it. The whole process of demonstration continually becomes something entirely different, becomes an expanded concluding development of what I conclude from having presupposed that the object of investigation exists. Therefore, whether I am moving in the world of sensate palpability or in the world of thought, I never reason in conclusion to existence, but I reason in conclusion from existence. For example, I do not demonstrate that a stone exists but that something which exists is a stone. The court of law does not demonstrate that a criminal exists but that the accused, who does indeed exist, is a criminal. Whether one wants to call existence an accessorium [addition] or the eternal prius [pre-supposition], it can never be demonstrated. We shall take our time; after all, there is no reason for us to rush as there is for those who, out of concern for themselves, or for the god, or for something else, must rush to get proof that something exists. In that case, there is good reason to make haste, especially if the one involved has in all honesty made an accounting of the danger that he himself or the object being investigated does not exist until he proves it and does not dishonestly harbor the secret thought that essentially it exists whether he demonstrates it or not.

If one wanted to demonstrate Napoleon's existence from Napoleon's works, would it not be most curious, since his existence certainly explains the works but the works do not demonstrate his existence unless I have already in advanace interpreted the word "his" in such a way as to have assumed that he exists. But Napoleon is only an individual, and to that extent there is no absolute relation between him and his works-thus someone else could have done the same works. Perhaps that is why I cannot reason from the works to existence. If I call the works Napoleon's works, then the demonstration is superfluous, since I have already" mentioned his name. If I ignore this, I can never demonstrate from the works that they are Napoleon's but demonstrate (purely ideally) that such works are the works of a great general etc. However between the god and his works there is an absolute relation. God is not a name but a concept, and perhaps because of that his essentia involvit existentiam [essence involves existence].

Johannes Climacus, Philosophical Fragments.

Basically, if we're going to approach this from the posture of a scientist (like Dawkins), we'd first need to establish what "existence" is, and to establish it as something falsifiable. Existence, of course, is merely a concept, even to the most hardcore empiricist. Can someone tell me the difference between a sleeping person and a corpse, except that one is "alive," and the other, purely by definition, is not? (If you doubt me, recall Poe's fears of "premature burial," in an age where recognizing what we now call "coma" was a serious medical issue.) Where does the "alive" come from, and where does it go? What is it that animates a body, that gives that body "existence"? Because surely, if someone is dead, they no longer have "existence". What, then is "existence"?

Nexus 6 wants to assert Dawkins falsifies the proposition that God exists by running rings around people like me, logically. Socrates, of course, would have a field day with anyone asserting "existence" is provable or unprovable, and by his relentless logic (and little else), he "proved" the existence of the immortal soul stoutly enough it is still an almost ineradicable part of Western culture (we argue against the proposition to this day, if we argue it at all; no one argues from the assumption the soul does not exist. Such is the one-sidedness of logic, eh?)

Not that you'd know any of that from people who call a reviewer for the Times Literary Supplement a "First year theological student." Speaking as a graduate of a theological seminary, I can confidently state that at no time did we have a class arguing or even studying the existence of God, or any of the many proofs thereof. (Of course, what do I know? Unlike Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris, or Dennett, or the blogger at Nexus 6, I've actually attended a theological seminary. Clearly those who are unsullied by the experience know better than I what goes on there. You want to know what seminary is like? I have an anecdote here that sums it up nicely.) We did have some lively discussions on the nature of God, and of metaphysics, and the faculty included people from traditional theists to process theologians (in terms of metaphysics, of which the subject of "existence" is primary theme, those two barely speak to each other.) . Although, as I pointed out in the post that caused Nexus 6 to include me in his/her/its ignorant diatribe, I've studied all the proofs for God's existence, and find all of them wanting. And for much better reasons than Dawkins managed to elucidate. And despite all that, I'm still an ordained minister and a confessing Christian.

Clearly, however, I'm not as well off as the ignoranti on this subject. Orwell was right: ignorance is bliss.

Google, which is my grate gud friend (N. Molesworth), popped up this link, which is another worthy examination of the topic of belief and biology. One serious question which is never explored as it should be is the simple, empirical one (via Karl Popper or David Hume; take your pick): is the concept of "belief," or "faith," for that matter, falsifiable? If not, it isn't subject to empirical analysis, and therefore, per Hume the uber-empiricist, we can't talk about it because it's nonsense. End of discussion. But, of course, that presumes the empiricism is the only way we can speak validly about anything. And if Christopher Hitchens, for example, only speaks of his politics or his wife and daughter in purely empirical terms, then, well, I'd be surprised (and sad for them). Even Hume didn't think such an end result of thought meant everything had been thought. He concluded it meant an end to philosophy, and a good excuse to take up sheep-herding.

Then along came Immanuel Kant....but that's another story, and another problem.

Because what really interests me here is the continued debate over God's existence, as if determining that argument would end all discussion. It's an atheist's canard, and I don't say that derisively but descriptively. The 19th century idea that, if we eliminated God (God's Funeral, A.N. Wilson called it), morality would cease, was not formulated by a hand-wringing theologian challenged by Enlightenment reasoning (I've yet to find any modern-day critic of religion who shows even a passing knowledge of theology, by the way), but by Friederich Nietszche, in Thus Spake Zarathustra. Atheists, you see, are forever setting up straw men and knocking them over. And then they are puzzled why all the world's believers don't explode like puffballs. Go figure.

The primary reason is, of course: Christians aren't worried about the question of God's existence. That has become a hot topic in the philosophy of religion and "Christian philosophy" (I'm not sure whether that's really a category of philosophy or not), and Heidegger critiqued such concerns as "ontotheology," claiming the issue confused Being with "a being," a position Tillich took up in describing God as the "ground of being" (as God transcends experience, Tillich argued, it is wrong to speak of God has "having existence.") Tillich also argued that everyone has an "ultimate concern," and so atheism is, strictly speaking, impossible. Given how many atheists wrap themselves around the question of God's existence, it's hard to argue against Tillich's point. But it's always atheists who bring this up as the "logical" demonstration that all believers are fools. It is a topic usually considered to have come from Christians, as the primary "proof" of God is usually considered to be Anselm's. Only problem is, it isn't so clear today that Anselm was engaged in apologetics (intellectual defense of the faith) when he crafted what Kant later labeled (and undermined) the "ontological proof." The argument of Anselm's proof (pace Charles Hartshorne) seems aimed more at providing intellectual (i.e., Greek rationalistic) support to a faith position already taken, rather than an argument for bringing the faithless to faith. Which brings us, mutatis mutandis, back to Kierkegaard:

The whole process of demonstration continually becomes something entirely different, becomes an expanded concluding development of what I conclude from having presupposed that the object of investigation exists. Therefore, whether I am moving in the world of sensate palpability or in the world of thought, I never reason in conclusion to existence, but I reason in conclusion from existence.

If I don't suppose God exists, in short, how am I to prove otherwise? If I do suppose God exists, why do I need proof? And so the whole obsession with God's existence is an obsession of the non-believers; not the believers.
Yes, yes, I know many Christians who worry themselves over the proof of God's existence, and it's still a lively topic among Christian philosophers (such as Alvin Plantinga's ontological argument from modal logic). But the argument as a form of apologetics is not the same as an argument for the necessity of faith (which is not to be confused with belief). In fact, that's the real problem, and the good Lord willing I'll return to it eventually (promise! promises!): the distinction that needs to be made between "faith" and "belief." Oh, and the problems of epistemology, Christian and otherwise.

I know you can't wait. I'll bring okra.

Life in Hell

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper

Forget Sen. Richard Lugar's speech. It isn't a sign of hope; it's a sign of complete insanity. In an interview on NPR this morning, the most decisive effort to end the war he could come up with was his own speech to an empty Senate chamber. Funding? "Support our troops." What could the Congress do? The most he could come up with was a "sense of the Senate resolution." Why? "Support our troops." The interview is a marvel of mendacity:

If we are not thoughtful and careful, the president may believe that he can simply continue on with or without the Congress, but I think he is wrong in that assumption. And my fear is that at some point we will have a withdrawal from Iraq that is very disorderly and not very well planned. That would be a tragedy for the troops, a tragedy for Iraq, a tragedy for us with regard to all of the neighborhood out there that could become very, very volatile.

If the president does not see things your way and continues on the same course, should the Senate and Congress in general force him to change?

I'm not certain how that occurs. I would just say that at some stage it will become apparent that the lack of support for the president not only in the Congress but with the public would command such a change. Even the president will understand that.

Notice the brilliant use of the passive voice. The President won't be responsible for ending the war. The Congress won't be responsible for ending the war. Apparently the fairies at the bottom of the garden will work their magic, and that will end the war! "Even the President will understand that."

If we have not reached that point now, when would we, given the lack of support for the war and the concerns that have been raised in Congress?

Indeed; if not now, when?

In the latest CNN-Opinion Research Corporation poll released Tuesday, 69 percent of those polled believe things are going badly in Iraq....Thirty percent of Americans polled say they favor the war, the lowest level of support on record. Two-thirds are opposed.

Well, not quite now:

Well, there is still very considerable support for certain elements of our activities in Iraq. This is a very complex business as opposed to just simply being in or out. That is why the president really has to enter a dialogue that is a more extensive one than the current one we have.

It is almost breathtaking the way Sen. Lugar manages to say absolutely nothing. This is more "complex" than "simply being in or out"? How so, pray tell? Speak to us, O Delphic Oracle!

And it doesn't get any better:

Given what you said, the next time there is an opportunity for you to vote on the war, would you be a vote against the war?

I'm not going to have a vote for or against the war, at least I don't conceive of how this would occur. Most likely debate will occur once again when we take up money for the troops, for the prosecution of Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. I think the majority of the Senate, regardless of how they feel about the prosecution of the war, are not about to cut off funds that would jeopardize our troops in any way. That will be probably an overlying proposition.

Which sounds like you're saying that this is not going to change your vote.

Not with regard to support of the troops. I'm going to vote for the authorization and the appropriations. But there are many, many ways in which the Congress ultimately can influence even the president with regard to this war and we'll have to think through the most appropriate one.

Give me one — before we let you go — one thing that Congress can do.

Well, Congress could offer at minimum Sense of the Senate resolutions. They do not have the effect of law, but they clearly indicate how the country feels through its representatives. And that we really have not come to do simply because we have not really wanted to be ambiguous as a nation with regard to our foreign policy.

Meanwhile, in Baghdad, people consider death by natural causes a blessing. Our troops are on extended tours of duty because the "surge" is impossible without leaving everyone there forever and a day. But Congress can't reallocate funds for the war because Congress has to "support our troops."

Think Progress has a nice collection of fine-sounding words, too. Voinovich comes closest to the matter, saying: "I think that many of us are going to look at legislation that will limit the number of troops," which is not exactly a ringing commitment for withdrawal. Jeff Sessions "agrees that troops levels should be reduced 'as soon as it is realistic to do it.'" And John "Warner said that he too feels the September reporting date is too long to wait to revise U.S. war policy." Not even sound and fury, but still signifying nothing.

Welcome to the insane asylum. We have to do the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. To do otherwise would not support our troops.

Cleaning out the closets

I found this, from mid-May. I will admit I wasn't impressed with Tony Hendra's The Messiah of Morris Avenue (to each his own), but I am very impressed with this:

Why subversive? Because revenge, the opposite of forgiveness, makes the world go round. Individuals, groups, corporations, nations operate on the principle that pay-back is normal, that if you do ill to me, I am justified, even legally obliged, to do at least as much ill to you. But in truth revenge is self-destructively futile. Life is not an action movie where the good guys pay back the bad guys and live happily ever after. In the real world, no-one believes themselves or their cause to be evil; so no act of revenge goes un-revenged. The endless daisy-chain of payback, preaches the new Messiah - whether it's mass murder masquerading as national 'defense' or the legal murder of those who've murdered - must be broken.

Forgiveness is the only way to do that. But while the world believes forgiveness to be weakness, in truth it takes great courage. Just as killing those you feel threatened by is far easier than learning to live with them, payback is the weak and spineless option, the way out no-one will give you a hard time for. Forgiveness on the other hand takes true grit. (If for no other reason than that payback is big, big business. The Pentagon's new budget, almost three-quarters of a trillion bucks, will make it the tenth largest economy in the world. But I digress, because of course the Pentagon is not in the business of payback).

Subversive forgiveness may be, but, unfortunately, it's the core message of the guy from Nazareth. What's not to understand in the preachment: love your enemies? And even if the Aramaic (via the Greek and Renaissance English) is open to a slightly different translation, his choice not to defend himself against his enemies -- or even allow himself to be defended -- when they came to arrest him, is unambiguous. It's what defines Christianity against the other two Abrahamic faiths. You don't have to believe that the story's historically true; the example of its protagonist in the defining narrative of Christianity is unmistakable. Violence even in your own defense, is not acceptable. You cannot be a follower of Christ and kill your enemy; you cannot be a Christian and not forgive him. The history of Christianity is largely the history of grappling with this highly inconvenient truth and its manifold implications.

Hendra notes that "Mark Twain famously said: if Christ did return, the Christians would crucify him." I don't doubt it for a moment. But that's the point: forgiveness is subversive. He then connects the message of the man from Nazareth to Jerry Falwell:

I saw Jerry Falwell as an enemy. I believe he was America's enemy and for good measure Christianity's. (As his ilk still are). And I agree with that fine old atheist Samuel Clemens that if Christ had returned, FalIwell would have crucified him. And while Falwell's lies and distortions should have been combated by every non-violent means necessary, and the evil and hurt he caused, documented and remembered, that doesn't mean that the retribution Falwell sought to exact on others or threatened to, must be taken on him now, in any form. Which includes crowing that death has somehow found him out, or hoping that he went in pain or that he's up to his eyes in hot sewage in the Ninth Circle of hell or -- as was my intention -- dancing a triumphant two-step on his grave.

No, this is the moment for forgiveness. I hope that Jerry has met again and been reconciled with, the force of love and forgiveness that at some point in his life, he must have encountered. And while I never imagined I would ever write these words: may his turbulent and misguided soul -- however far it may have gone astray -- now find its way home and rest in peace.

If you still aren't sure forgiveness is subversive, check out the comments at Hendra's post. At least two rail against the idea of forgiveness for any reason.

It's all about the problem of power, and the problem of evil, and the problem of using power, any kind of power, to "fight" evil.

Here be Dragons

This is where the urge to argue, pontificate, and analyze (usually on slim evidence) begins to fascinate me, because it inevitably breaks down into projection, or at least mirroring the "enemy" you've worked so hard to identify, analyze, and pontificate on. And that, as I've said ad nauseum, is the problem with power. That is why there is no power without resistance; and resistance creates the conditions for power to operate.

Glenn Greenwald gives us one example (I'm sorry, but if that excerpt of his book is exemplary, he's no better than the George W. Bush he decries). Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Daniel Dennett are other prime examples: don't bother them with information about the subject, they are experts on fallacious reasoning! But Robert Wright understands all too well what is going on, especially when it's applied to the Middle East:

Still, seeing terrorist groups as rational actors is the first step to combatting a pernicious right-wing meme: the idea that terrorism is ultimately incoherent, grounded in pure religious zealotry or some supposed Arab irrationality or whatever. If you buy that meme, you're likely to think there's no point in even talking about serious territorial concessions in Palestine, or reconsidering American military deployment in Iraq or the Middle East broadly.

Of course, the people who decry "terrorists" as "those who hate our freedom" are also the people first in line to give up our freedoms. They zealously support whatever outrageous claim Bush makes, from wiretapping anyone's phone he chooses to eliminating habeas corpus for "dangerous persons" (read: "enemy combatants") to letting Dick Cheney call himself "not a part of the executive branch." Irrationality, of course, is the first step in demonization. Once the "other" is no longer human, no action taken against it is unjustified. I imagine the same process was used in World War II, where we began the war appalled that military force would be directed toward a purely civilian target (Guernica; London; Nanking) and later decided it was "necessary force" when dealing with a "ruthless enemy" (Dresden; Hiroshima; Berlin).

Wright's argument, drawn from the work of political scientist Robert Pape, is that the "insurgents" are fueled by military occupation. End the occupation, the insurgency ends. Far from 'following us over here' as Bush keeps claiming they will do, the fighters start cleaning up the place where they live. Pretty much what we would do, of course, if we were occupied and finally drove the occupiers out. What makes Wright's (and Pape's) argument more compelling is that it is based on some evidence: interviews with two would-be suicide bombers, conducted by Judy Miller. Much harder, as I've often said, to see the "other" as bestial and sub-human when you actually sit down and talk with them. The refusal to do that, of course, as Josh Rushing noted, is what keeps war and belligerence going. Much easier to fight an enemy you refuse to recognize as human, or as having a legitimate grievance.

We've been over this ground before, haven't we? And now, of course, it's moving into left blogistan. But let's leave it there, at least insofar as left blogistan is concerned. This is human nature. Dese are de conditions dat prevail. This is the "fallen state of Creation," as Niebuhr would observe. How far we have fallen is the interesting observation now. The other morning on NPR James Banford noted that we were all aghast in the '70's when it turned out the CIA was opening mail and running secret prisons. But now the CIA is running secret prisons all over the world, and the NSA is wiretapping potentially every American citizen in the country, and nobody seems surprised, much less outraged. And now we find out that, not only is an analysis like Wright's being ignored (that much has been obvious for years) but our leadership is actively deluding us in order to maintain, by hook or by crook, support for "their war". This is not news, either, but how they are doing it, is:

It's an interesting passage in that it essentially confirms the point made above -- that the only change here is one of labels, that the 'Sunni insurgents' and 'Baathist dead-enders' are now 'al Qaeda' merely by dint of blowing things up. But it also suggests that the change of labels isn't simply a matter of the US military and American journalists but also appears to be the norm among ordinary Iraqis themselves.

I'm skeptical of that claim. But it is also worth noting that it has long been claimed that the Iraqi government, like the US government, has systematically overstated the role of 'foreign fighters' and 'al Qaeda' since they too do not wish to see the insurgency as Iraqi and either inter-sectarian or anti-occupation in nature.

So add another piece of Wright's puzzle: we can decide who we are fighting, even if that decision contradicts the facts on the ground. It isn't only terrorism that is "ultimately incoherent, grounded in pure religious zealotry or some supposed Arab irrationality or whatever." As Nietszche observed: the man who fights dragons too long becomes a dragon himself. Certainly Cheney has decided the best way to walk through the valley of the shadow of death is to be the meanest SOB in the valley. But that makes all Americans SOB's, in the end.

The problem is with trying to fight the dragon, instead of understand what motivates the dragon in the first place (which, of course, is the practice of diplomacy, v. the practice of war). And maybe, with Sen. Lugar's speech, a few more people in the Congress are starting to understand that.

One of these things is not like the other

one of these things just doesn't belong:

President Bush was presented with a letter Monday signed by 50 high school seniors in the Presidential Scholars program urging a halt to "violations of the human rights" of terror suspects held by the United States.

The White House said Bush had not expected the letter but took a moment to read it and talk with a young woman who handed it to him.

"The president enjoyed a visit with the students, accepted the letter and upon reading it let the student know that the United States does not torture and that we value human rights," deputy press secretary Dana Perino said.

The students had been invited to the East Room to hear the president speak about his effort to win congressional reauthorization of his education law known as No Child Left Behind.

The handwritten letter said the students "believe we have a responsibility to voice our convictions."

"We do not want America to represent torture. We urge you to do all in your power to stop violations of the human rights of detainees, to cease illegal renditions, and to apply the Geneva Convention to all detainees, including those designated enemy combatants," the letter said.

First, of course, we don't torture, because we re-wrote the dictionaries. Maybe these young scholars would like a new copy. But compare their thorough scholarship with the President's reported response:

a) "We do not want America to represent torture."

b) "We urge you to do all in your power to stop violations of the human rights of detainees,"

c) "to cease illegal renditions,"

d) "and to apply the Geneva Convention to all detainees,including those designated enemy combatants"

And the answer is: "We don't torture." The rest of that stuff? We're gonna keep doin' it.

Dick Cheney must be so proud. Especially since the President took the words right out of his mouth:

In a radio interview last fall, Cheney said, "We don't torture." What he did not acknowledge, according to Alberto J. Mora, who served then as the Bush-appointed Navy general counsel, was that the new legal framework was designed specifically to avoid a ban on cruelty. In international law, Mora said, cruelty is defined as "the imposition of severe physical or mental pain or suffering." He added: "Torture is an extreme version of cruelty."

So, see, we don't torture. We're just cruel. Very, very cruel. But that's okay.

Cheney can be proud of his minion. The rest of us can only be proud of these fine scholars. They are the hope of America. Now if the Congress would just take their concerns seriously.

"You failed me in English."

When you hear that from behind the counter at Starbucks, you know it's time for one of two things:

a) return to parish ministry as fast as you can;

b) start saving to replace your home espresso machine.

Fortunately, someone else brewed the coffee....

The Military Commissions Act of 2006

I told you there was too much for one post. The suspension of habeas corpus is the least of the problems with that law:

The Military Commissions Act, passed by strong majorities of the Senate and House on Sept. 28 and 29, 2006, gave "the office of the vice president almost everything it wanted," said Yoo, who maintained his contact with Addington after returning to a tenured position at Berkeley.

The new law withstood its first Supreme Court challenge on April 2. It exempts CIA case officers and other government employees from prosecution for past war crimes or torture. Once again, an apparently technical provision held great importance to Cheney and his allies.

Without repealing the War Crimes Act, which imposes criminal penalties for grave breaches of Geneva's humane-treatment standards, Congress said the president, not the Supreme Court, has final authority to decide what the standards mean -- and whether they even apply.

But hey, they're furriners and terrists and they hate us for our freedom anyway, right?

"Nobody kills anybody in my place of business except me or Zed."

And you thought "Pulp Fiction" was just a movie. Dick Cheney thinks its a road-map for American foreign policy.

Quentin Tarentino is a Sunday School Teacher

Jack Bauer is a wimp.

There is so much in this article on Cheney it's hard to know where to start. But the announcement, recently, that there were plans to close Gitmo? Depends on who you're talking to:

A year after Bush announced at a news conference that "I'd like to close Guantanamo," plans to expand it are proceeding. Senior officials said Cheney, standing nearly alone, has turned back strong efforts -- by Rice, England, new Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and former Bush speechwriter Mike Gerson, among others -- to give the president what he said he wants.

Cheney and his aides "didn't circumvent the process," one participant said. "They were just very effective in using it."

And that information, is put in the context of David Hicks. Remember him? Australian citizen captured in a taxi in Afghanistan bound for Pakistan? He was, the article reports, "Detainee 002" in Gitmo,

arriving on opening day at an asserted no man's land beyond the reach of sovereign law. Interrogators questioned him under guidelines that gave legal cover to the infliction of pain and fear -- and, according to an affidavit filed by British lawyer Steven Grosz, Hicks was subjected to beatings, sodomy with a foreign object, sensory deprivation, disorienting drugs and prolonged shackling in painful positions.

Isn't this illegal? Not according to Dick Cheney:

The U.S. government denied those claims, and before accepting Hicks's guilty plea it required him to affirm that he had "never been illegally treated." But the tribunal's rules, written under principles Cheney advanced, would have allowed the Australian's conviction with evidence obtained entirely by "cruel, inhuman or degrading" techniques.

And why was Mr. Hicks finally released? Dick Cheney went to Australia to meet with John Howard. Howard faced a tough re-election campaign. Cheney returned from Australia, and a few days later, Mr. Hicks was allowed to leave Gitmo.

The deal, negotiated without the knowledge of the chief prosecutor, Air Force Col. Morris Davis, was supervised by Susan J. Crawford, the senior authority over military commissions. Crawford received her three previous government jobs from then-Defense Secretary Cheney -- appointed as his special adviser, Pentagon inspector general and then judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces.

Lovely government you've got here. Be a shame if anything were to happen to it.

Forget Jack Bauer

Hang it all, Antonin Scalia! There can be but one set of absolutes! But absolutes, and my absolutes?

The conservative jurist stuck up for Agent Bauer, arguing that fictional or not, federal agents require latitude in times of great crisis. “Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles. … He saved hundreds of thousands of lives,” Judge Scalia said. Then, recalling Season 2, where the agent’s rough interrogation tactics saved California from a terrorist nuke, the Supreme Court judge etched a line in the sand.

“Are you going to convict Jack Bauer?” Judge Scalia challenged his fellow judges. “Say that criminal law is against him? ‘You have the right to a jury trial?’ Is any jury going to convict Jack Bauer? I don’t think so.

“So the question is really whether we believe in these absolutes. And ought we believe in these absolutes.”

Funny how quickly we come back to questions of "faith" and "belief," isn't it? I tend to agree with r@d@r: belief in the kind of absolutes Scalia is defining is rather like saying you believe in the weather. Not that the US military is entirely comfortable with that.

TONY LAGOURANIS: Well, the problem was that when we were interrogating in Iraq in 2004, we were being told that Geneva Conventions didn't comply. So we didn't have training that informed us what to do anymore, because we were taught according to Geneva Conventions. So people were getting ideas from television. And among the things that I saw people doing that they got from television was water-boarding, mock execution, using mock torture. They wanted to hook up one of our translators to an electric generator and pretend that they were torturing him and allow prisoners to see that so that they thought that they would experience the same thing.

Nor that the CTU on "24" is entirely competent:

Actually, I doubt Scalia really is watching 24. If he were, he would know that the anti-terrorist agency CTU, where Jack Bauer works when he isn't being imprisoned, hunted, or tortured by Chinese/Arab/Russian thugs is:

A. Run by incompetent but well-meaning nincompoops who can't even secure their own building from terrorist infiltration through sewer lines and probably the front door,

B. Staffed by computer geniuses who can't tell when their system is breached, and don't notice when the terrorists they desperately seek have set up shop just blocks away from them

C. Constantly letting terrorists escape when the bad guys use techniques like the old, they-got-in-their-SUVs-and-just-drove-away trick.

In short, CTU is a pretty good approximation of FEMA, or the TSA. Or, of course, the Department of Homeland Security.

But, as Paul Simon said, "a man hears what he wants to hear, and disregards the rest." All in all, I suppose we can all be grateful Quentin Tarentino confined himself to words:

Marsellus: What now? Let me tell you what now. I'ma call a coupla hard, pipe-hittin' niggers, who'll go to work on the homes here with a pair of pliers and a blow torch. You hear me talkin', hillbilly boy? I ain't through with you by a damn sight. I'ma get medieval on your ass.

Tarentino, however, is more honest than we are willing to be; because that is what we are talking about. And now we are talking about it, not in some obscure store in a fictional L.A., but in the highest possible levels of government:

More than a year after Congress passed McCain-sponsored restrictions on the questioning of suspected terrorists, the Bush administration is still debating how far the CIA's interrogators may go in their effort to break down resistant detainees. Two officials said the vice president has deadlocked the debate.

Bush said last September that he would "work with" Congress to review "an alternative set of procedures" for "tough" -- but, he said, lawful -- interrogation. He did not promise to submit legislation or to report particulars to any oversight committee, and he has not done so.

Two questions remain, officials said. One involves techniques to be authorized now. The other is whether any technique should be explicitly forbidden. According to participants in the debate, the vice president stands by the view that Bush need not honor any of the new judicial and legislative restrictions. His lawyer, they said, has recently restated Cheney's argument that when courts and Congress "purport to" limit the commander in chief's warmaking authority, he has the constitutional prerogative to disregard them.

If Cheney advocates a return to waterboarding, they said, they have not heard him say so. But his office has fought fiercely against an executive order or CIA directive that would make the technique illegal.

"That's just the vice president," said Gerson, Bush's longtime chief speechwriter, referring to Cheney's October remark that "a dunk in the water" for terrorists -- a radio interviewer's term -- is "a no-brainer for me."

Gerson added: "It's principled. He's deeply conscious that this is a dangerous world, and he wants this president and future presidents to be able to deal with that. He feels very strongly about these things, and it's his great virtue and his weakness."

Did you get that? Is it real clear? Torture is a matter of principal. But even Jack Bauer knows its illegal. Dick Cheney is convinced its legal. Because he's the Vice President. Because we are at war. Because it's in defense of the American people. Jack Bauer does it for entertainment, in some fictional realm of the imagination where nothing is real and so "illegal but necessary" doesn't violate any laws of human society. Dick Cheney simply suspends those laws by some act of divine fiat that only he, apparently, can divine. And it's all okay, because he's doing it as a matter of principle! And surely the US government is more competent than the fictional CTU! Right? Right!?

Of course, we know even John Yoo wanted to draw the line at "threatening to bury a prisoner alive." I'm guessing that meant tossing the last shovelful of dirt in would be over the line; but I'm still not sure.

I'm not sure what we did to deserve such principled people in the highest levels of our government; but it must have been something really, really bad.

This observation will be lost in the white noise, but, what the heck

The flap over Cheney's compliance with Executive Order is an interesting one not only because it reveals Cheney's machinations. It reveals the attitude of the President, too.

As Ron Elving noted on NPR this morning, Cheney's argument that he is the President of the Senate, and therefore not a member of the Executive branch under the meaning of the Executive Order, actually means Cheney is obligated to follow the laws governing the Legislative Branch as well as the Executive Branch. And the Executive Order is not law; it is regulation. The President has no power to pass a law; he has the executive power to administer them, which is why all agencies of the federal government, such as the National Archives, promulgate regulations which determine how the law is to be implemented. This regulatory power is overseen by Congress, who can change the law to change the regulations as it sees fit. Executive Orders apply only to the Executive Branch, but they do not override federal law.

So, when Dana Perino says: "that Bush, not the National Archives, was the 'sole enforcer' of the executive order relating to classified information," she's wrong. Bush does not have discretion as to the enforcement of that law; he only has authority to regulate compliance with the law, and even that authority is bounded by the parameters of the law itself. Bush & Cheney are not a mutually reinforcing fourth branch of government. But it may be this very small matter which makes clear to a majority of the American public that they believe they are.

Concluding Unscientific Postscript

As Murrow said: "This just might do nobody any good." But it's time to bring this matter to a close with a final observation.

Blogs serve two purposes, it seems. GWPDA says they're broadsheets. Fair enough. Except they've moved away rapidly from anything approaching Paine's "Common Sense" (no hidden snark there). Now they are settling into "communities." Which is both fine (who am I to complain?) and inevitable (Sociology 101). The pity is, they are communities of the like-minded and fit for political junkies (or food junkies, or diary junkies, etc., etc., etc.)

I didn't mean to offend anyone with my observations, nor to discount anyone else's experiences. But blogs as "the revolution finally realized," is pretty much done with. And I think the canary in the coal mine is the declining number of visitors I keep seeing mentioned on other small blogs. That and the fact that blogs are not taken seriously enough they are mentioned by Hannity and Limbaugh and bloggers have their own special interest group meetings, etc., etc., etc. At best, they have become just another special interest group: not drawing America into a virtual town meeting on line, but giving people too busy to be activists canvassing neighborhoods or organizing protests and demonstrations and mass mailings, an opportunity to be virtually active, too.

Which ain't a bad thing. But sadly, it's hardly revolutionary. To repeat the quote from Alicublog I buried in one of the longer and duller posts below:

Admittedly, not every blogger who goes mwah-ha-ha over what he or she imagines to be the corpse of the "MSM" is the online equivalent of the Simpsons' Cat Lady. But if we are tempted to believe that blogs represent some kind of massive paradigm shift that changes everything forever -- that is, if we forget how foolish that sort of triumphalist blather almost always turns out to be -- we should remind ourselves: Just because someone is using relatively new technology does not necessarily mean that he or she is the wave of the future. The screaming fellow with the Bluetooth earpiece may not in fact be connected; he may in fact be screaming to himself, only using technology to conceal his madness from the world.

Technology is just another way of doing things. But still, at the end of the day, it's just people, doing those things.

Same as it ever was.

Oh, and the new names for this blog now include consideration of:

In Praise of Okra

or

God Bless Okra!

Watch this Space!

I am going to be changing the name of this blog to:

"Wait. That Sounded Better Before I Said It."

That, or:

"The Desert Fathers Don't Really Care How That Makes You Feel."

I haven't decided yet.