One of the very few positive outcomes of this economic meltdown may be the inevitable decline of Western power in the world and the waning of its previously overbearing reach over less developed nations. While it used to be the case that through its powerful institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, the West could place entire economies under strict surveillance and dictate the ways in which these countries would structure their economies. All in return for loans. No more.
Brazil's President da Silva might have come dangerously close to racism when he proclaimed that the crisis was caused by "white blue-eyed" people, but the general point of this statement is correct: the Western powers, particularly the United States, shaped the post WWII world in accordance with their visions which they self-righteously declared was the only prescription for growth.
As the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989, Western style, Reaganesque capitalism seemed vindicated. Eastern European and postcolonial countries rushed to dismantle the carefully constructed social programs while they tore down their borders, inviting foreign capital to wreak havoc on their previously closely regulated markets. The new members of the EU were promised life-long prosperity as the IMF dictated the terms of the loans to the newcomers who were drunk on capitalist fervor. Well it turns out, to quote the Brazilian President again "they [the West] have demonstrated that they know nothing about economics."
The G20 summit in London represents a tectonic, once-in-a-generation shift in economic power in the world. For the first time, countries that had been previously treated like unruly school children (Brazil, Argentina, Saudi Arabia, India, China) are invited to the big table. In return for their cash donations to the IMF, they will obtain extensive voting rights at the G20, while the previously country club-like Financial Stability Forum in Switzerland will also include 10 new members (emerging markets), including Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, and China.
It is not an exaggeration to say that we are truly witnessing the disappearance of the idea of "the West" itself.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Monday, March 30, 2009
Betrayal of Europe
As President Obama prepares to leave for his European trip--which will take him to the G20 summit in London, then to France, Czech Republic and finally to Turkey--divisions are already emerging between the European approach(es) and US approach to solving the economic quagmire. In an unusually blunt interview with the New York Times and the International Herald Tribune, German Chancellor Angela Merkel stressed that while Obama might enjoy popularity of a rock star all across Europe, the Germans oppose Obama's stimulus solutions. The normally reserved and superbly intelligent Merkel said in a moment of candor: "International policy is, for all the friendship and commonality, always also about representing the interests of one's own country."
What this statement exposes is not only Germany's disagreement with Washington's approach to the crisis, but it reveals the fragility of the very idea of Europe itself. The idea of the European Union emerged on the ashes of post World War II Europe when a few French and German intellectuals tapped into the legacy of European idealism, mixed with the German Catholic tradition of solidarity, to create a blueprint for an all European Union. The idea was to connect all the European countries, which had been sporadically each other's enemies for centuries, through a series of multilateral trade agreements. The core of the idea was the belief that if European countries became inextricably linked to each other through their economic interests, that a common European identity would emerge, which would eventually serve as an arch over all the particular national identities, which had been the cause of so much suffering on the continent. That is, the emergence of a pan-European identity has always been the driving force of the European Union.
Angela Merkel's statement, coupled with the recent policies (or lack thereof) of the European Union towards solving the crisis shows that 17 years after the European Union became a reality with the signing of the Maastricht treaty (1992), the idea of a pan-European identity and solidarity is being displaced by the return of the good ole' nation-state realpolitik rooted in national self-interests.
The European response(s) to the crisis have been very troubling. The big European countries have repeatedly refused to extend a hand to their poorer Eastern European neighbors whom they had just let join the EU. Despite the fact that most of the E.European economies, of countries like Hungary and Serbia, had come to the edge of the precipice because of high-interest loans from Western European banks, the Western members of the EU have refused to shore up International Monetary Fund's aid to Eastern Europe. Keeping in mind that Eastern European countries were sold the idea of the EU on the premise that after living under the tyranny of inefficient communism they would be enjoying a life-long prosperity under capitalism, this represents a serious betrayal of Western European promise to Eastern Europe. In fact, it represents a near-death blow to the very idea of Europe since it shows that European leaders do not think in terms of larger European interests, but rather national self-interests.
What is even more disturbing is that these policies are very self-destructive. For example, if Eastern European banks are not bailed out, then they will not be able to repay their loans to Western European banks, which in turn might bring some of these down because they are heavily leveraged in the E.European markets. With the fall of major Western European banks, the whole European banking system might be endangered.
Obama has to stress to Merkel and other Western Europeans that they have an obligation to help their poorer neighbors recover and to spend on their own recovery. Merkel's opposition to spending plans is reasonable given Germany's shrinking population and the fears of inflationary pressures on the Euro, but if Germany, France and Britain continue to act separately from the rest of Europe at a time of crisis, the end of the crisis might be followed by Eastern European countries deciding that joining the EU was not in their best interest. And I wouldn't blame them.
What this statement exposes is not only Germany's disagreement with Washington's approach to the crisis, but it reveals the fragility of the very idea of Europe itself. The idea of the European Union emerged on the ashes of post World War II Europe when a few French and German intellectuals tapped into the legacy of European idealism, mixed with the German Catholic tradition of solidarity, to create a blueprint for an all European Union. The idea was to connect all the European countries, which had been sporadically each other's enemies for centuries, through a series of multilateral trade agreements. The core of the idea was the belief that if European countries became inextricably linked to each other through their economic interests, that a common European identity would emerge, which would eventually serve as an arch over all the particular national identities, which had been the cause of so much suffering on the continent. That is, the emergence of a pan-European identity has always been the driving force of the European Union.
Angela Merkel's statement, coupled with the recent policies (or lack thereof) of the European Union towards solving the crisis shows that 17 years after the European Union became a reality with the signing of the Maastricht treaty (1992), the idea of a pan-European identity and solidarity is being displaced by the return of the good ole' nation-state realpolitik rooted in national self-interests.
The European response(s) to the crisis have been very troubling. The big European countries have repeatedly refused to extend a hand to their poorer Eastern European neighbors whom they had just let join the EU. Despite the fact that most of the E.European economies, of countries like Hungary and Serbia, had come to the edge of the precipice because of high-interest loans from Western European banks, the Western members of the EU have refused to shore up International Monetary Fund's aid to Eastern Europe. Keeping in mind that Eastern European countries were sold the idea of the EU on the premise that after living under the tyranny of inefficient communism they would be enjoying a life-long prosperity under capitalism, this represents a serious betrayal of Western European promise to Eastern Europe. In fact, it represents a near-death blow to the very idea of Europe since it shows that European leaders do not think in terms of larger European interests, but rather national self-interests.
What is even more disturbing is that these policies are very self-destructive. For example, if Eastern European banks are not bailed out, then they will not be able to repay their loans to Western European banks, which in turn might bring some of these down because they are heavily leveraged in the E.European markets. With the fall of major Western European banks, the whole European banking system might be endangered.
Obama has to stress to Merkel and other Western Europeans that they have an obligation to help their poorer neighbors recover and to spend on their own recovery. Merkel's opposition to spending plans is reasonable given Germany's shrinking population and the fears of inflationary pressures on the Euro, but if Germany, France and Britain continue to act separately from the rest of Europe at a time of crisis, the end of the crisis might be followed by Eastern European countries deciding that joining the EU was not in their best interest. And I wouldn't blame them.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Israel between Religious Intolerance and Secular Pragmatism
The fallout from Israel's invasion of Gaza this winter reveals an intensifying struggle between the secularist liberals and religious nationalists over the very identity of Israel. The invasion of Gaza has been followed by testimonies of many soldiers who witnessed brutal murders of Palestinian civilians by the Israeli military. According to these reports, which have set off an army investigation in Israel, Israeli military was purposefully lax in its rules of engagement with civilians. There are disturbing reports of Israeli troops shooting Palestinian women and children, including the killing of an old lady by sniper. The whole-scale demolition of Palestinian homes in Gaza was not only tolerated by top Israeli military commanders, but encouraged. The Human Rights Watch has said that there is enough evidence in Gaza to warrant a war crimes investigation of Israeli troops.
But what the testimonies of many Israeli soldiers who served in Gaza reveal is that many of the crimes were committed, or encouraged, by the religious nationalists who have become extremely powerful within the ranks of the Israeli military. The chief rabbi of the military has recently been reprimanded for distributing a booklet warning the troops not to show mercy to the enemy. There have been reports of religious nationalist soldiers anointing themselves with oil before the battle and calling for all Arabs to be kicked out of the Holy Land because they were impeding Israel's God-given mission to resettle the land. The fact that most of these religious nationalists, including the army's chief rabbi, are West Bank settlers shows the depth of the Israeli division.
The society seems to be divided between the secular liberals who desperately want a peace with the Palestinians, even though this will have to include a complete abandonment of West Bank settlements and the return to the pre-1967 borders; and the far right religious fanatics, many of whom are West Bank settlers, and who believe they are on God's mission therefore the Palestinians are the intruders in the Holy Land. The fact that the recently formed government includes a man who openly called for Arabs to be expelled from Israel does not bide well for the secularists.
The fight between the secularists and the religious fanatics is a struggle to define the future of Zionism. Would Zionism succumb to the religious intolerance which would seriously endanger the future of the Israeli state? Or would Zionism take a more secular and pragmatic route, acknowledging that a two-state solution is the only way that Israel can remain true to its founding mission to be the state of all Jews.
But what the testimonies of many Israeli soldiers who served in Gaza reveal is that many of the crimes were committed, or encouraged, by the religious nationalists who have become extremely powerful within the ranks of the Israeli military. The chief rabbi of the military has recently been reprimanded for distributing a booklet warning the troops not to show mercy to the enemy. There have been reports of religious nationalist soldiers anointing themselves with oil before the battle and calling for all Arabs to be kicked out of the Holy Land because they were impeding Israel's God-given mission to resettle the land. The fact that most of these religious nationalists, including the army's chief rabbi, are West Bank settlers shows the depth of the Israeli division.
The society seems to be divided between the secular liberals who desperately want a peace with the Palestinians, even though this will have to include a complete abandonment of West Bank settlements and the return to the pre-1967 borders; and the far right religious fanatics, many of whom are West Bank settlers, and who believe they are on God's mission therefore the Palestinians are the intruders in the Holy Land. The fact that the recently formed government includes a man who openly called for Arabs to be expelled from Israel does not bide well for the secularists.
The fight between the secularists and the religious fanatics is a struggle to define the future of Zionism. Would Zionism succumb to the religious intolerance which would seriously endanger the future of the Israeli state? Or would Zionism take a more secular and pragmatic route, acknowledging that a two-state solution is the only way that Israel can remain true to its founding mission to be the state of all Jews.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Governor Jindal thinks torture is funny!
In a response to Obama's news conference last night, the new prophet of the Republican party Mister Rogers, umm sorry, Governor Jindal defended the worryingly obese Rush Limbaugh in his insistence that it is alright to wish that Obama fails. Xeroxing his speech from the most recent right wing talking points memo, Mister Rogers claimed that the media criticism of this wish represents "political correctness run amok." Really? Remember when a few brave Democrats dared to question Bush's "war on terror" back in the early 2000s, they were accused of supporting terrorists? Remember how Senator John Kerry's criticism of the Vietnam War was used to question his service in Vietnam? Worst of all, do you not remember dear Governor, how the Republican warmongering machine compared the amputee war veteran Georgia Senator Max Cleland to Osama Bin Laden, ousting him from the Senate?
But the most offensive remark came when Jindal joked about his disastrous initial response to Obama's first press conference, comparing it to torture. "They are not allowed to show my speech at Gitmo anymore," he laughed. "They've banned that."
Now, I might be a wild-eyed liberal whose political correctness has run amok, but this statement betrays the depth of Republican immorality. Their casual use of torture and Gitmo, the most disgraceful chapters of the US history, as punchlines in a joke are an insult to our common humanity and our love for this country.
If Obama's remark about the Special Olympics warranted a deep apology to the Special Olympics folks (which I think it did), then Governor Jindal's joke about torture warrants his stepping down from the role as the new Republican voice. It also constitutes a candid, albeit denigrating, admission that his party, led by George Bush, engaged in torture. The Republicans need to be reminded of this every minute of every hour of every day!
Shame on Governor Jindal!
But the most offensive remark came when Jindal joked about his disastrous initial response to Obama's first press conference, comparing it to torture. "They are not allowed to show my speech at Gitmo anymore," he laughed. "They've banned that."
Now, I might be a wild-eyed liberal whose political correctness has run amok, but this statement betrays the depth of Republican immorality. Their casual use of torture and Gitmo, the most disgraceful chapters of the US history, as punchlines in a joke are an insult to our common humanity and our love for this country.
If Obama's remark about the Special Olympics warranted a deep apology to the Special Olympics folks (which I think it did), then Governor Jindal's joke about torture warrants his stepping down from the role as the new Republican voice. It also constitutes a candid, albeit denigrating, admission that his party, led by George Bush, engaged in torture. The Republicans need to be reminded of this every minute of every hour of every day!
Shame on Governor Jindal!
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Defending the Enlightenment
The legacy of the Enlightenment has been under a continuous assault not just from the religious right in this country, but has been one of the most favorite targets for the postmodern and postcolonial critique so popular in the academia in the late 1990s and early 2000s. This critique was based on the insistence that the experience of the Enlightenment is a Western experience deeply rooted in the Western European milieu. Therefore, secularism--and its insistence on the separation of church and state--is a Western construction that has been imposed onto non-Western societies either by native authoritarian leaders (Kemal Ataturk in Turkey) or European colonial powers (the British in India, the Austro-Hungarians in Bosnia, etc). This is more than a purely academic debate. What is at heart here is the legitimacy and the future of secular age.
The Enlightenment came out of Europe's bloody religious wars, the Reformation, and the scientific revolution. The right to think freely using reason, empirical observation, challenge dogmas, and push organized religion out of politics, came out of bloody battles on the European continent. While it can be argued that the particular form of secularism in many non-Western European societies was imposed during a foreign rule, such as during the Austro-Hungarians in Bosnia-Herzegovina, it is equally true that the ideas of the Enlightenment almost always had native voices. Therefore just like the French Revolution of 1789 (that political climax of the Enlightenment) cannot be considered only a French phenomenon (due to its long-term consequences, origins, and echoes throughout Europe and the world), the Enlightenment should not be seen as an exclusively Western European experience.
The critique of the Enlightenment is often brought up by the critics of French/Turkish style of secularism and in defense of the right of Muslim women to wear the Muslim veil in public space. By agreeing to this critique many Western academics have joined in the chorus of condemnation of the Enlightenment by defending the right of Islam to obligate its female followers to wear the veil in public institutions. What this argument completely ignores that Islam itself, like any other religion, is a political ideology. The supposed requirement of women to wear a veil (and the type of veil) is a political decision based on a certain interpretation of the Kur'an and the Hadith.
By insisting that the secularism of the Enlightenment is a Western construction, these critics ignore (purposefully or in ignorance) the fact that all of the strands of Islam (and any other organized religion) are also rooted in a particular historical experience of the Middle East, the Balkans or wherever. Many critics of the Enlightenment also point to Islam's emphasis on God rather than the state in arguing that the separation of church and state in an Islamic context becomes irrelevant. However, this criticism takes Islam's argument about the elevation of God above the state at its face value potentially entrusting those who represent the state with the voice of God (if there is no distinction of God and State then what is the purpose of the state if not to articulate the voice of God?).
In other words, yes all of the ideologies with which we live are historically constructed. But given the history of religion's violence against anyone who dares to challenge its irrational dogmas, I'd rather stick with my Enlightenment. So, let me be!
The Enlightenment came out of Europe's bloody religious wars, the Reformation, and the scientific revolution. The right to think freely using reason, empirical observation, challenge dogmas, and push organized religion out of politics, came out of bloody battles on the European continent. While it can be argued that the particular form of secularism in many non-Western European societies was imposed during a foreign rule, such as during the Austro-Hungarians in Bosnia-Herzegovina, it is equally true that the ideas of the Enlightenment almost always had native voices. Therefore just like the French Revolution of 1789 (that political climax of the Enlightenment) cannot be considered only a French phenomenon (due to its long-term consequences, origins, and echoes throughout Europe and the world), the Enlightenment should not be seen as an exclusively Western European experience.
The critique of the Enlightenment is often brought up by the critics of French/Turkish style of secularism and in defense of the right of Muslim women to wear the Muslim veil in public space. By agreeing to this critique many Western academics have joined in the chorus of condemnation of the Enlightenment by defending the right of Islam to obligate its female followers to wear the veil in public institutions. What this argument completely ignores that Islam itself, like any other religion, is a political ideology. The supposed requirement of women to wear a veil (and the type of veil) is a political decision based on a certain interpretation of the Kur'an and the Hadith.
By insisting that the secularism of the Enlightenment is a Western construction, these critics ignore (purposefully or in ignorance) the fact that all of the strands of Islam (and any other organized religion) are also rooted in a particular historical experience of the Middle East, the Balkans or wherever. Many critics of the Enlightenment also point to Islam's emphasis on God rather than the state in arguing that the separation of church and state in an Islamic context becomes irrelevant. However, this criticism takes Islam's argument about the elevation of God above the state at its face value potentially entrusting those who represent the state with the voice of God (if there is no distinction of God and State then what is the purpose of the state if not to articulate the voice of God?).
In other words, yes all of the ideologies with which we live are historically constructed. But given the history of religion's violence against anyone who dares to challenge its irrational dogmas, I'd rather stick with my Enlightenment. So, let me be!
Monday, March 23, 2009
A 5-Step Recovery Program for Republicans
If the Republicans are ever to become relevant again in our national discourse, which I hope they will one day since we need a healthy opposition party, they have to go through a tough 5-step rehab:
1. Stop telling the world that America is the best country on earth. Coming from many Republicans who have never left the place this statement echoes ignorance of such magnitude that one always wonders if people who utter such nonsense are not merely children in adults' bodies. Going around the globe with a big stick shouting that America is the best democracy in the world, when it clearly it isn't so, can be pretty obnoxious. After Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and CIA's "black sites" fiasco we as Americans have forever lost the right to say such things.
2. Stop using shallow symbols to attract support. Just because Michael Steel happens to be black, it does not mean that he can miraculously save the Republican Party from plunging deeper into the abyss of irrelevance. By picking their "own black man" to counter Obama, the Republicans have once again shown that they really do not get that "other America." They do not understand that Obama's appeal comes not from the color of his skin, but from his experience and his ability to channel that experience to the public and his specific policy proposals. Joe the Plumber is another example of Republicans' utterly idiotic embrace of shallow symbols over substance. The fact that the man is not only NOT a plumber, but also a total moron with nothing mildly intelligent to say does not seem to worry the Republicans about their new symbol. The embrace of symbols without substance just confirms the Republicans' failure to connect with the diverse America.
3. Take economics classes. I am not an economist but this crisis has made me read more widely and deeply about economics than I ever had before. Reading, that thing that Bush abhorred and Palin mocked, can be instructive, so I suggest the Republicans pick up Econ books and read about the Great Depression and the way government spending is essential to any economic rescue.
4. Drop the fake populist act. The Republican party has been the party of big business and it is their policy of deregulation that got us to where we are today. Now, this doesn't mean that the Democrats are blameless. Let's remember that it was during the Clinton years that the infamous credit default swaps became legalized and it was under the Democratically-influenced Freddie and Frannie real estate giants sub-prime mortgages became widespread. But the policy of Reagan-inspired deregulation, fetishism of the free markets, and hatred of the government, are at the very heart of the Republican party. So Republicans' outrage at AIG bonuses and bailout money only reveals the deeply embedded hypocrisy running through the very core of their mission.
5. Stop embracing anti-intellectualism. George W. Bush became a hero of the Republican party in the 2000s due to his embrace of know-nothing ignorance, his supposed ability to speak from the gut, his acknowledgment that he doesn't read newspapers, and his cowboy attitude. The Republicans' hatred of "elite liberals" included the embrace of Sarah Pallin despite the fact that her knowledge of the main issues confronting the country was way below the level of a middle school A average student. The Republicans have to acknowledge that we need the "elite" with top-notch education credentials to run our country, particularly at the face of such giant problems.
If the Republican party was asking me for advice on how to start emerging from the wilderness in order to become relevant in our national discourse, they should follow this not-so-simple 5 step recovery program.
1. Stop telling the world that America is the best country on earth. Coming from many Republicans who have never left the place this statement echoes ignorance of such magnitude that one always wonders if people who utter such nonsense are not merely children in adults' bodies. Going around the globe with a big stick shouting that America is the best democracy in the world, when it clearly it isn't so, can be pretty obnoxious. After Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and CIA's "black sites" fiasco we as Americans have forever lost the right to say such things.
2. Stop using shallow symbols to attract support. Just because Michael Steel happens to be black, it does not mean that he can miraculously save the Republican Party from plunging deeper into the abyss of irrelevance. By picking their "own black man" to counter Obama, the Republicans have once again shown that they really do not get that "other America." They do not understand that Obama's appeal comes not from the color of his skin, but from his experience and his ability to channel that experience to the public and his specific policy proposals. Joe the Plumber is another example of Republicans' utterly idiotic embrace of shallow symbols over substance. The fact that the man is not only NOT a plumber, but also a total moron with nothing mildly intelligent to say does not seem to worry the Republicans about their new symbol. The embrace of symbols without substance just confirms the Republicans' failure to connect with the diverse America.
3. Take economics classes. I am not an economist but this crisis has made me read more widely and deeply about economics than I ever had before. Reading, that thing that Bush abhorred and Palin mocked, can be instructive, so I suggest the Republicans pick up Econ books and read about the Great Depression and the way government spending is essential to any economic rescue.
4. Drop the fake populist act. The Republican party has been the party of big business and it is their policy of deregulation that got us to where we are today. Now, this doesn't mean that the Democrats are blameless. Let's remember that it was during the Clinton years that the infamous credit default swaps became legalized and it was under the Democratically-influenced Freddie and Frannie real estate giants sub-prime mortgages became widespread. But the policy of Reagan-inspired deregulation, fetishism of the free markets, and hatred of the government, are at the very heart of the Republican party. So Republicans' outrage at AIG bonuses and bailout money only reveals the deeply embedded hypocrisy running through the very core of their mission.
5. Stop embracing anti-intellectualism. George W. Bush became a hero of the Republican party in the 2000s due to his embrace of know-nothing ignorance, his supposed ability to speak from the gut, his acknowledgment that he doesn't read newspapers, and his cowboy attitude. The Republicans' hatred of "elite liberals" included the embrace of Sarah Pallin despite the fact that her knowledge of the main issues confronting the country was way below the level of a middle school A average student. The Republicans have to acknowledge that we need the "elite" with top-notch education credentials to run our country, particularly at the face of such giant problems.
If the Republican party was asking me for advice on how to start emerging from the wilderness in order to become relevant in our national discourse, they should follow this not-so-simple 5 step recovery program.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Obama responds to Cheney
"How many terrorists have actually been brought to justice under the philosophy that is being promoted by Vice President Cheney?...It hasn't made us safer. What it has been is a great advertisement for anti-American sentiment." This is how in an interview that aired on "60 Minutes" Obama responded to Cheney's ludicrous accusation that Obama's intention to close down Guantanamo was making America less safe. In one of the toughest responses to Darth Vader yet, Obama has made clear that he will break with the criminal policies of the Bush administration. This means not only shut down the Guantanamo gulag, but also process all the individuals there, release those who are innocent, and restore the right to haebas corpus to those who we suspect are dangerous.
But Obama needs to go one step further: those who are responsible for orchestrating, executing, and not preventing the campaign of torture need to be held accountable. They need to be tried either under US laws for breaches of the US Constitution, and numerous US federal statues, including the US Convention Against Torture, as well as the grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions.
As I finally finished reading Jane Mayer's book last night, I thought of all those innocent people who ended up being snatched by CIA black-masked commandos, "rendered" to one of CIA's "black sites" and exposed to torture we never imagined our government would be capable of committing. For example, the German citizen el-Masri was arrested by Macedonian police on the Macedonian border suspected of being a member of AL-Q. He was turned over to the CIA who under the direct instructions from Washington kidnapped him and threw him into the black hole of CIA's world. He was stripped naked, a depository inserted into his anus, wrapped in diapers, dressed in an orange suit, and huge goggles placed on his eyes while his ears were covered with headphones transmitting loud music. He was held in Afghanistan's CIA-run prisons and tortured because he was supposedly not confessing to his crimes and not naming new names. He was held in captivity for 149 days when the CIA finally realized they had caught the wrong Masri--his passport was not a forgery and the German government demanded that he be released immediately. In an effort to shut him up, he was given a suitcase full of cash, and released on the Albanian border and told "not to look back." Back in Germany he filed a lawsuit against CIA Director George Tenet.
For many others like Masri, Obama represents the America that the world has been waiting for. A kind, just, reasonable, and thoughtful America. America determined to strike back at enemies using the tools of justice which had been admired by the whole world and copied in many constitutions. It is the America in which suspects are tried in open courts no matter what the outcome might be. It is the America that understands the risks that come with having an open and democratic society in which the rule of law is above everything else. It is the America in which the victims of 9/11 hope for those who perpetrated the crimes to be brought to justice without having to violate the very principles which we live by.
It is also important to remember that not all members of the Bush administration participated in the crimes. Many FBI agents, including veteran interrogators, emerged as true defenders of the law and opponents of torture warning Bush officials on numerous occasions that they might be prosecuted one day. The former head of the Office of Legal Council Jack Goldsmith also emerges as a hero who stood up to Cheney and reversed the blank check which his predecessor Yoo had given to the CIA. Joining this group of honorable Americans is also Alberto Mora, former General Counsel for the US Navy who upon seeing the evidence of torture at the prison ordered a full investigation and tried to go up the chain of command in order to stop it. Thus it is important to remember that this is truly one of those issues which are not Republican vs. Democrat. Hopefully, Republicans like John McCain, who himself endured years of terrible torture in Vietnamese gulags, Senator Arlen Specter, Chuck Hagel among others will join Sen. Patrick Leahy in establishing "truth commissions" to investigate these horrendous crimes against our own Constitution, the international law, and humanity in general.
However, knowing that Obama has the helms of our fight against terror helps me sleep a little bit better at night.
But Obama needs to go one step further: those who are responsible for orchestrating, executing, and not preventing the campaign of torture need to be held accountable. They need to be tried either under US laws for breaches of the US Constitution, and numerous US federal statues, including the US Convention Against Torture, as well as the grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions.
As I finally finished reading Jane Mayer's book last night, I thought of all those innocent people who ended up being snatched by CIA black-masked commandos, "rendered" to one of CIA's "black sites" and exposed to torture we never imagined our government would be capable of committing. For example, the German citizen el-Masri was arrested by Macedonian police on the Macedonian border suspected of being a member of AL-Q. He was turned over to the CIA who under the direct instructions from Washington kidnapped him and threw him into the black hole of CIA's world. He was stripped naked, a depository inserted into his anus, wrapped in diapers, dressed in an orange suit, and huge goggles placed on his eyes while his ears were covered with headphones transmitting loud music. He was held in Afghanistan's CIA-run prisons and tortured because he was supposedly not confessing to his crimes and not naming new names. He was held in captivity for 149 days when the CIA finally realized they had caught the wrong Masri--his passport was not a forgery and the German government demanded that he be released immediately. In an effort to shut him up, he was given a suitcase full of cash, and released on the Albanian border and told "not to look back." Back in Germany he filed a lawsuit against CIA Director George Tenet.
For many others like Masri, Obama represents the America that the world has been waiting for. A kind, just, reasonable, and thoughtful America. America determined to strike back at enemies using the tools of justice which had been admired by the whole world and copied in many constitutions. It is the America in which suspects are tried in open courts no matter what the outcome might be. It is the America that understands the risks that come with having an open and democratic society in which the rule of law is above everything else. It is the America in which the victims of 9/11 hope for those who perpetrated the crimes to be brought to justice without having to violate the very principles which we live by.
It is also important to remember that not all members of the Bush administration participated in the crimes. Many FBI agents, including veteran interrogators, emerged as true defenders of the law and opponents of torture warning Bush officials on numerous occasions that they might be prosecuted one day. The former head of the Office of Legal Council Jack Goldsmith also emerges as a hero who stood up to Cheney and reversed the blank check which his predecessor Yoo had given to the CIA. Joining this group of honorable Americans is also Alberto Mora, former General Counsel for the US Navy who upon seeing the evidence of torture at the prison ordered a full investigation and tried to go up the chain of command in order to stop it. Thus it is important to remember that this is truly one of those issues which are not Republican vs. Democrat. Hopefully, Republicans like John McCain, who himself endured years of terrible torture in Vietnamese gulags, Senator Arlen Specter, Chuck Hagel among others will join Sen. Patrick Leahy in establishing "truth commissions" to investigate these horrendous crimes against our own Constitution, the international law, and humanity in general.
However, knowing that Obama has the helms of our fight against terror helps me sleep a little bit better at night.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Stop with the Populist Outrage!
I am as outraged about AIG's taxpayer-funded bonuses as any other American, but the populist rage-fanned by the Congress is really getting out of control. Today, a group of "activists" are planning "bus tours" of AIG executives' homes around the country. To do what? Are there any pitchforks on that bus? Meanwhile, the NY Attorney General Cuomo is reconsidering his plans to publish the names of AIG executives who received the infamous bonuses after the government-appointed AIG CEO informed the Congress that the company had received email threats wishing for executives' families to be strangled with piano wire. Iowa Republican Senator Grassley wanted to get his populist creds by calling for the executives to commit suicide the Japanese style.
Ok, chill out. Yes, these bonuses were awful, but they are nothing unexpected. They show the gap between the rich and the rest which capitalism necessarily creates in its constant rush for capital. Instead of scoring cheap political points (which will be forgotten by the 2010 Congressional elections), the Congress needs to act as a voice of reason and use the opportunity to educate the public about the crisis. It should hold hearings like the ones we had after the Watergate, which lasted for 2 years, and were really educational in explaining what had gone wrong in the Nixon administration. Instead of hauling the poor AIG CEO (who by the way, was appointed by the government after the bailouts and had nothing to do with the current mess) and pounding him with harangues, the Congress should help the President get to the bottom of this mess.
However, as an excellent article in the business section of today's NYT points out, the populist rage is seriously hampering our efforts to get out of the crisis:
1. The bailout money to AIG was not a gift, but a loan which means that the company will pay back the taxpayer with interest. But if the company is being pummeled with death threats that hardly helps its stock. No one in the right mind will want to own any piece of this company which makes it harder for the AIG to pay us, the taxpayers-back.
2. It is distracting. Instead of solely focusing on the bonuses, the Congress should investigate how the AIG spent the bulk of the money. For example, why did they pay 100 cents on the dollar to the Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and CitiGroup, the very same companies that bought the risky credit default swaps that had gotten us into this mess to begin with. In other words, why did these companies receive the full value for their dollar? This is even harder to understand if you remember that Godlman Sachs had gotten $25 billion cash infusion (note: former Treasury Secretary Paulson had been the CEO of Goldman Sachs) before getting the bailout money from the AIG.
3. Finally, it is destabilizing. I think the Dems' plans to tax 90% of all the bonuses is a terrible idea. It affects even those in the AIG (and other companies) who had had nothing to do with the mess. Keep in mind that the AIG is an enormous company in which only one division was involved in the credit default swaps mess. The rest, like the insurance division, are hardworking people who are trying to fix the company and help us all fix the economic crisis. But if the Congress issues the bailout money and then keeps changing the rules, it will be impossible to stabilize the market. Also, how can you expect any Wall street investor to participate in Geithner's plans to buy up the infamous toxic assets off of banks' books if they will be attacked by the angry mob every time they turn a profit?
So, the Congress should act like an adult here, step up and start educating the public rather than ride the wave of populist rage in the hope of scoring enough political capital that will hold until the next election in 2010. Barney Frank should hold hearings which would bring in top economic scholars and educate the public (in layman's terms please) about the credit default swaps, "too big too fail" growth of these companies, global capitalism, etc. Maybe then we will be more prepared when the next crisis hits. And it will inevitably hit again. That's just the nature of capitalism.
Ok, chill out. Yes, these bonuses were awful, but they are nothing unexpected. They show the gap between the rich and the rest which capitalism necessarily creates in its constant rush for capital. Instead of scoring cheap political points (which will be forgotten by the 2010 Congressional elections), the Congress needs to act as a voice of reason and use the opportunity to educate the public about the crisis. It should hold hearings like the ones we had after the Watergate, which lasted for 2 years, and were really educational in explaining what had gone wrong in the Nixon administration. Instead of hauling the poor AIG CEO (who by the way, was appointed by the government after the bailouts and had nothing to do with the current mess) and pounding him with harangues, the Congress should help the President get to the bottom of this mess.
However, as an excellent article in the business section of today's NYT points out, the populist rage is seriously hampering our efforts to get out of the crisis:
1. The bailout money to AIG was not a gift, but a loan which means that the company will pay back the taxpayer with interest. But if the company is being pummeled with death threats that hardly helps its stock. No one in the right mind will want to own any piece of this company which makes it harder for the AIG to pay us, the taxpayers-back.
2. It is distracting. Instead of solely focusing on the bonuses, the Congress should investigate how the AIG spent the bulk of the money. For example, why did they pay 100 cents on the dollar to the Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and CitiGroup, the very same companies that bought the risky credit default swaps that had gotten us into this mess to begin with. In other words, why did these companies receive the full value for their dollar? This is even harder to understand if you remember that Godlman Sachs had gotten $25 billion cash infusion (note: former Treasury Secretary Paulson had been the CEO of Goldman Sachs) before getting the bailout money from the AIG.
3. Finally, it is destabilizing. I think the Dems' plans to tax 90% of all the bonuses is a terrible idea. It affects even those in the AIG (and other companies) who had had nothing to do with the mess. Keep in mind that the AIG is an enormous company in which only one division was involved in the credit default swaps mess. The rest, like the insurance division, are hardworking people who are trying to fix the company and help us all fix the economic crisis. But if the Congress issues the bailout money and then keeps changing the rules, it will be impossible to stabilize the market. Also, how can you expect any Wall street investor to participate in Geithner's plans to buy up the infamous toxic assets off of banks' books if they will be attacked by the angry mob every time they turn a profit?
So, the Congress should act like an adult here, step up and start educating the public rather than ride the wave of populist rage in the hope of scoring enough political capital that will hold until the next election in 2010. Barney Frank should hold hearings which would bring in top economic scholars and educate the public (in layman's terms please) about the credit default swaps, "too big too fail" growth of these companies, global capitalism, etc. Maybe then we will be more prepared when the next crisis hits. And it will inevitably hit again. That's just the nature of capitalism.
Friday, March 20, 2009
Universalizing Gay(Human) Rights
In another reversal of Bush administration's irrational, reactionary, bigoted and downright criminal policies, the Obama administration has pledged to sign the UN Declaration for decriminalization of homosexuality. The declaration has been signed by some 66 countries, including all Western countries plus Australia, Japan, and Canada. Many countries (including most Muslim countries) oppose it. The resolution was drafted under the sponsorship of France and the Netherlands out of concern that human rights of gays throughout the world are being savagely violated on a daily basis given the fact that homosexuality is considered a crime in 77 countries.
In its characteristically bigoted Texan-style manner, the Bushies argued that had the US signed the declaration it would have exposed itself to violating its own laws, such as the Defense of Marriage Act, by mandating down the road the right of gays to marry. Even though I believe the latter to be an essential human right--guaranteed by the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights--the argument of the Bush administration was simply bullshit since the resolution has no legal enforcement provisions. So, what is the point?
Well consider the fact that the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights has no provisions to enforce them per se. The UN does not have a universal army which can go into a country and prevent human rights abuses (they tried to do that in Bosnia with UN blue helmets and we know how that turned out). But, the power of the UN Assembly is in its ownership of a global podium, a global soapbox from which to put the spotlight on certain issues, such as, in this case, murder, abuse, and discrimination of millions of homosexuals throughout the world. These resolutions can definitely shame and eventually force governments into doing the right thing. Let's remember that the UN's resolutions against Serbia eventually morphed into Milosevic dying in a small prison cell meeting a destiny much better than he truly deserved, but still paying for his crimes.
The resolution will have a powerful impact on Eastern European countries which are trying to join the EU as well as those E.European countries which are already members but which have a history of homophobic violence. As I do not like to criticize anyone before looking into my own backyard, let's take Bosnia-Herzegovina for example, my homeland.
Gay rights in Bosnia remain an underground movement with even heterosexual allies like myself afraid to come out in public and defend their gay fellow citizens from discrimination and abuse. As the public sphere in Bosnia matures and expands, the gay movement has attempted to come out of the closet by organizing a first Queer Festival in Sarajevo between 24 and 28 September 2008. The festival was to include exhibitions, performances, public discussions, movie screenings, all with the purpose of ending gay discrimination and ensuring equality before the law. In the prelude to the festival, the Amnesty International issued a warning to the Bosnian authorities that they were obligated by international law to ensure the safety of the participants of the festival. In the prelude to the festival, there were reports of the Bosnian media fanning the homophobic hysteria. So, how did the festival go? Not so well to say the least.
At the opening of the festival on 25 September 2008 some 70 men, sporting long Wahabbi-style beards and carrying signs "Allahu Ekber" and "Kill the Gays" attacked the gathered festival participants outside of the Academy of Fine Arts, beating them savagely. There were even threats that "fags" would be burned alive because they were violating the beginning of the Muslim month of Ramadan. Despite the alarming warnings from the Amnesty International, the city authorities failed to prevent the Wahabbi thugs from unleashing violence on Bosnia's fragile democracy. To their credit, though, the police intervened and some seven police officers were injured some seriously. The organizers were forced to move the festival underground.
Now, even though I have enormous problems with any kind of religion, Wahabbism that has been imported into Bosnia during the darkest hours of the war is particularly infuriating to me. This is not the first time these extremist fucks have disrupted the fragile civil society in the country. In a small remote village in central Bosnia they had even established a school (just for boys) the Wahhabi style despite instructions from the authorities not to do so, violating the state education laws.
In my mind, the behavior of these groups (and they are very well organized by some leading "religious scholars") has earned them a one-way ticket to an Islamic country of their choice, a procedure I would follow with religious fanatics of all creeds. But the more worrisome thing is the fact that while their violence might have been abhorrent to many Bosnians I know for a fact that homophobia is widespread in Bosnia and that many supported such attacks.
Thus, the UN Declaration on decriminalizing homosexuality has the potential to open up public discussions in societies like Bosnia, which is desperately trying to join the EU. Given the fact that all members of the EU, as far as I know, have expressed support for the Declaration, the latter can also give many straight Bosnians the courage to come out in defense of their gay friends. In short, by universalizing gay rights, the UN can help make them simply human rights and strip the term of its potentially unhelpful exoticism.
In its characteristically bigoted Texan-style manner, the Bushies argued that had the US signed the declaration it would have exposed itself to violating its own laws, such as the Defense of Marriage Act, by mandating down the road the right of gays to marry. Even though I believe the latter to be an essential human right--guaranteed by the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights--the argument of the Bush administration was simply bullshit since the resolution has no legal enforcement provisions. So, what is the point?
Well consider the fact that the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights has no provisions to enforce them per se. The UN does not have a universal army which can go into a country and prevent human rights abuses (they tried to do that in Bosnia with UN blue helmets and we know how that turned out). But, the power of the UN Assembly is in its ownership of a global podium, a global soapbox from which to put the spotlight on certain issues, such as, in this case, murder, abuse, and discrimination of millions of homosexuals throughout the world. These resolutions can definitely shame and eventually force governments into doing the right thing. Let's remember that the UN's resolutions against Serbia eventually morphed into Milosevic dying in a small prison cell meeting a destiny much better than he truly deserved, but still paying for his crimes.
The resolution will have a powerful impact on Eastern European countries which are trying to join the EU as well as those E.European countries which are already members but which have a history of homophobic violence. As I do not like to criticize anyone before looking into my own backyard, let's take Bosnia-Herzegovina for example, my homeland.
Gay rights in Bosnia remain an underground movement with even heterosexual allies like myself afraid to come out in public and defend their gay fellow citizens from discrimination and abuse. As the public sphere in Bosnia matures and expands, the gay movement has attempted to come out of the closet by organizing a first Queer Festival in Sarajevo between 24 and 28 September 2008. The festival was to include exhibitions, performances, public discussions, movie screenings, all with the purpose of ending gay discrimination and ensuring equality before the law. In the prelude to the festival, the Amnesty International issued a warning to the Bosnian authorities that they were obligated by international law to ensure the safety of the participants of the festival. In the prelude to the festival, there were reports of the Bosnian media fanning the homophobic hysteria. So, how did the festival go? Not so well to say the least.
At the opening of the festival on 25 September 2008 some 70 men, sporting long Wahabbi-style beards and carrying signs "Allahu Ekber" and "Kill the Gays" attacked the gathered festival participants outside of the Academy of Fine Arts, beating them savagely. There were even threats that "fags" would be burned alive because they were violating the beginning of the Muslim month of Ramadan. Despite the alarming warnings from the Amnesty International, the city authorities failed to prevent the Wahabbi thugs from unleashing violence on Bosnia's fragile democracy. To their credit, though, the police intervened and some seven police officers were injured some seriously. The organizers were forced to move the festival underground.
Now, even though I have enormous problems with any kind of religion, Wahabbism that has been imported into Bosnia during the darkest hours of the war is particularly infuriating to me. This is not the first time these extremist fucks have disrupted the fragile civil society in the country. In a small remote village in central Bosnia they had even established a school (just for boys) the Wahhabi style despite instructions from the authorities not to do so, violating the state education laws.
In my mind, the behavior of these groups (and they are very well organized by some leading "religious scholars") has earned them a one-way ticket to an Islamic country of their choice, a procedure I would follow with religious fanatics of all creeds. But the more worrisome thing is the fact that while their violence might have been abhorrent to many Bosnians I know for a fact that homophobia is widespread in Bosnia and that many supported such attacks.
Thus, the UN Declaration on decriminalizing homosexuality has the potential to open up public discussions in societies like Bosnia, which is desperately trying to join the EU. Given the fact that all members of the EU, as far as I know, have expressed support for the Declaration, the latter can also give many straight Bosnians the courage to come out in defense of their gay friends. In short, by universalizing gay rights, the UN can help make them simply human rights and strip the term of its potentially unhelpful exoticism.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Anatomy of a War Crime, Part III
Continuing the summary of the horrific story in Jane Mayer's book "The Dark Side" let me briefly address the issue of Guantanamo prisoners. In the summer of 2002 the military had become very irritated by lack of information from the prisoners at the camp. The interrogators were hitting a wall with almost every prisoner and when the White House asked to see files, many prisoners did not have any. So, could it be that these were super-trained terrorists trained in the art of evasion and were waiting out the interrogators refusing to give up information on an imminent attack? Not by a long shot.
What Mayer and other investigative journalists have concluded is that the reason why they were not getting anything out of them is because they did not know anything. Where do we get this information? From the CIA! Concerned with the situation CIA sent a senior intelligence officer in the summer of 2002 to the island. He was a man fluent in Arabic who spent hours talking to them, drinking tea, listening to their stories. What he concluded was devastating to the administration: most of these people had nothing to do with terrorism. Let us take several examples.
Among the prisoners was an Arab teenager who was so deranged that he was eating his own feces, and an eighty year old man who was deaf. Another man was a rich Kuwaiti who had spent every year doing charity work in a Muslim country and 2001 happened to be the year he was in Afghanistan. He told the CIA interrogator that he had always bought Cadillacs and was now so furious with his imprisonment he would only buy Mercedeses from now on. A particularly horrific story came from an Iraqi Shiite who fled Iraq due to his opposition to Saddam and he hid in Iran. He was captured in Iran and deported to Afghanistan where he was imprisoned by the Taliban for being a "US spy" for his anti-Saddam activities. In the aftermath of Sept.11th he fled to Pakistan where he was picked up by a warlord and extradited to the US authorities for $5000 bounty. He had no idea what was going on!
A study by the Seaton Hall University Law school supports the findings of the CIA. The study reviewed in depth 517 Guantanamo cases. Of these only 8% had any associations with AL-Qaeda. 55% were not alleged to have engaged in any hostile act against the US at all, remainder were charged with dubious wrongdoing, mostly for fleeing from the US bombs! Only 5% had been captured by US forces and the rest had been captured by local warlords for hefty bounties.
After the summer of 2002, interrogation methods got nastier. The torture that had been approved for CIA at the "black site" prisons abroad now spread to the military: sleep deprivation, threats, humiliations, chaining to the floor, loud music. The situation got so out of control that Condi Rice's lawyer Bellinger tried to get audience with the President but was confronted with Gonzales, Addington (the War Council I have written about before) who told him that detainee policy was off limits, there was nothing to be discussed, they argued. The authorization for the detainee interrogations came from the President personally.
So the claims by the Bush administration that abuses that happened at Gitmo and later Abu Ghraib were sporadic results of frustration and bad behavior are just simply LIES!
In the most recent edition, the New York Review of Books is running an article by Mark Danner titled "US Torture: Voices from the Black sites in which he summarizes the previously classified report by the International Committee of the Red Cross which was the only international organization to interview in depth the 14 high-priority prisoners who were interrogated at CIA prisons. It makes for a very, very depressing read and confirms all the claims made by Mayer in her "The Dark Side."
In any case, it is clear that the Bush administration committed serious breaches of the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war, but also the US Convention Against Torture. If the US government won't prosecute Bush officials than all of the countries that are signatories to the Geneva Conventions have a legal obligation to arrest them if they are on their territory and extradite them to the International Criminal Court in the Hague.
What Mayer and other investigative journalists have concluded is that the reason why they were not getting anything out of them is because they did not know anything. Where do we get this information? From the CIA! Concerned with the situation CIA sent a senior intelligence officer in the summer of 2002 to the island. He was a man fluent in Arabic who spent hours talking to them, drinking tea, listening to their stories. What he concluded was devastating to the administration: most of these people had nothing to do with terrorism. Let us take several examples.
Among the prisoners was an Arab teenager who was so deranged that he was eating his own feces, and an eighty year old man who was deaf. Another man was a rich Kuwaiti who had spent every year doing charity work in a Muslim country and 2001 happened to be the year he was in Afghanistan. He told the CIA interrogator that he had always bought Cadillacs and was now so furious with his imprisonment he would only buy Mercedeses from now on. A particularly horrific story came from an Iraqi Shiite who fled Iraq due to his opposition to Saddam and he hid in Iran. He was captured in Iran and deported to Afghanistan where he was imprisoned by the Taliban for being a "US spy" for his anti-Saddam activities. In the aftermath of Sept.11th he fled to Pakistan where he was picked up by a warlord and extradited to the US authorities for $5000 bounty. He had no idea what was going on!
A study by the Seaton Hall University Law school supports the findings of the CIA. The study reviewed in depth 517 Guantanamo cases. Of these only 8% had any associations with AL-Qaeda. 55% were not alleged to have engaged in any hostile act against the US at all, remainder were charged with dubious wrongdoing, mostly for fleeing from the US bombs! Only 5% had been captured by US forces and the rest had been captured by local warlords for hefty bounties.
After the summer of 2002, interrogation methods got nastier. The torture that had been approved for CIA at the "black site" prisons abroad now spread to the military: sleep deprivation, threats, humiliations, chaining to the floor, loud music. The situation got so out of control that Condi Rice's lawyer Bellinger tried to get audience with the President but was confronted with Gonzales, Addington (the War Council I have written about before) who told him that detainee policy was off limits, there was nothing to be discussed, they argued. The authorization for the detainee interrogations came from the President personally.
So the claims by the Bush administration that abuses that happened at Gitmo and later Abu Ghraib were sporadic results of frustration and bad behavior are just simply LIES!
In the most recent edition, the New York Review of Books is running an article by Mark Danner titled "US Torture: Voices from the Black sites in which he summarizes the previously classified report by the International Committee of the Red Cross which was the only international organization to interview in depth the 14 high-priority prisoners who were interrogated at CIA prisons. It makes for a very, very depressing read and confirms all the claims made by Mayer in her "The Dark Side."
In any case, it is clear that the Bush administration committed serious breaches of the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war, but also the US Convention Against Torture. If the US government won't prosecute Bush officials than all of the countries that are signatories to the Geneva Conventions have a legal obligation to arrest them if they are on their territory and extradite them to the International Criminal Court in the Hague.
Why Tim Geithner Needs to Resign
In its article this morning, the Washington Post lays out a pretty clear case of negligence on the part of Timothy Geithner. First let me say that I have nothing against this man: he seems to be brimming with intelligence, speaks Japanese and Chinese, is very cosmopolitan and a hard-worker (works out at 5:30am, comes to work at 6:30 and works 15 hour days often including the weekends). He also has the least envious job of all in the administration: he is a Treasury Secretary at a time of an economic meltdown we haven't seen since the Great Depression. The mere fact that most Americans know who our Treasury Secretary is (and that I am writing about him) shows the extent of trust we have justifiably placed in the government to fix this mess. This is all the more reason why Timothy Geithner needs to resign.
The Washington Post article reveals that the Fed was informed 3 months ago by the AIG that it would pay bonuses to the financial division executives (you know the ones who flushed the company down the toilet) by March 15 deadline. This detail was also put into the company's quarterly filing at the end of the year. So the Treasury Department had a responsibility to know this detail and inform the President about it. The President learned about the bonuses two days ago and was, in the words of his adviser David Axelrod "aggravated" and "a little bit disbelieving." What Obama was aggravated about was not the actual bonuses, since this was to be expected, but the failure of the government to stop them. Tim Geithner said there was nothing the government could do.
While that may be the case now and there is absolutely no way the government can break its contract (which would only further weaken the confidence in the economy), Tim Geithner should have definately seen this one coming. In Sept last year he was the main architect of the first round of bail-out of AIG. After working through the night, Geithner and other NY Fed officials realized the extent of AIG's tentacles throughout the global economy. At the time he wasn't focused on bonuses because he was not a member of a political administration and was thus not really exposed to public pressure. Now, he is. He is Obama's face of the economic rescue efforts and if the public does not have an absolute confidence in these efforts the whole fragile house of cards that Obama has built (and which is already showing signs of working) will collapse.
What is particularly disturbing about the case is the perception of Geithner. I have no doubt he is an honorable man with a strong sense of public service and he wants to do the right thing. He has also been hampered by vacancies in the Treasury Dept due to the slowness of the confirmation process. However, his intimate involvement with the early AIG bailout creates the perception of an impropriety. While there is no evidence there was any such impropriety, the perception is the what matters in both, politics and the economy. So, he should instruct Obama to find another secretary (Paul Krugman please!!) and step aside after Obama has settled on a pick.
In the end, I still think the bailout of AIG and the rest of the financial industry was an absolute necessity. As I am not an economist, I have tried to educate myself about the crisis by reading economists' (not politicians') analyses, including the Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman. They all argue that the extent of AIG in businesses throughout the world as insurers of millions of pension plans, mutual funds, etc, were just simply too much of a glue for the global economy for it to fail. Economic analysts have carefully outlined the aftershocks' of Lehman Brothers' failure last fall which literally caused a collapse of Iceland (yes the entire country) and seriously damaged the European banking system. AIG was even bigger.
Now after we get out of this mess (and we will soon) then we can talk about the argument that "if they are too big to fail, they are too big to exist." Expansion of these companies, often violating anti-monopoly laws, went on without any regulation from the SEC, the Fed, or the Bush White House (of course!). So tighter regulation and an outright ban on credit default swaps has to happen soon. However, I am also afraid that limiting expansion of these companies in the future will undermine the very logic of greed that is (for better or for worse) the engine of capitalism. As Marx aptly concluded some 200 years ago, it is the inherent nature of capitalism to expand. If it doesn't, it fails. Simple as that. So I guess we will always be doomed to periodic crises during which we will always promise to do it better the next time. As soon as the crisis ends, however, the capitalism resumes its risky path.
The Washington Post article reveals that the Fed was informed 3 months ago by the AIG that it would pay bonuses to the financial division executives (you know the ones who flushed the company down the toilet) by March 15 deadline. This detail was also put into the company's quarterly filing at the end of the year. So the Treasury Department had a responsibility to know this detail and inform the President about it. The President learned about the bonuses two days ago and was, in the words of his adviser David Axelrod "aggravated" and "a little bit disbelieving." What Obama was aggravated about was not the actual bonuses, since this was to be expected, but the failure of the government to stop them. Tim Geithner said there was nothing the government could do.
While that may be the case now and there is absolutely no way the government can break its contract (which would only further weaken the confidence in the economy), Tim Geithner should have definately seen this one coming. In Sept last year he was the main architect of the first round of bail-out of AIG. After working through the night, Geithner and other NY Fed officials realized the extent of AIG's tentacles throughout the global economy. At the time he wasn't focused on bonuses because he was not a member of a political administration and was thus not really exposed to public pressure. Now, he is. He is Obama's face of the economic rescue efforts and if the public does not have an absolute confidence in these efforts the whole fragile house of cards that Obama has built (and which is already showing signs of working) will collapse.
What is particularly disturbing about the case is the perception of Geithner. I have no doubt he is an honorable man with a strong sense of public service and he wants to do the right thing. He has also been hampered by vacancies in the Treasury Dept due to the slowness of the confirmation process. However, his intimate involvement with the early AIG bailout creates the perception of an impropriety. While there is no evidence there was any such impropriety, the perception is the what matters in both, politics and the economy. So, he should instruct Obama to find another secretary (Paul Krugman please!!) and step aside after Obama has settled on a pick.
In the end, I still think the bailout of AIG and the rest of the financial industry was an absolute necessity. As I am not an economist, I have tried to educate myself about the crisis by reading economists' (not politicians') analyses, including the Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman. They all argue that the extent of AIG in businesses throughout the world as insurers of millions of pension plans, mutual funds, etc, were just simply too much of a glue for the global economy for it to fail. Economic analysts have carefully outlined the aftershocks' of Lehman Brothers' failure last fall which literally caused a collapse of Iceland (yes the entire country) and seriously damaged the European banking system. AIG was even bigger.
Now after we get out of this mess (and we will soon) then we can talk about the argument that "if they are too big to fail, they are too big to exist." Expansion of these companies, often violating anti-monopoly laws, went on without any regulation from the SEC, the Fed, or the Bush White House (of course!). So tighter regulation and an outright ban on credit default swaps has to happen soon. However, I am also afraid that limiting expansion of these companies in the future will undermine the very logic of greed that is (for better or for worse) the engine of capitalism. As Marx aptly concluded some 200 years ago, it is the inherent nature of capitalism to expand. If it doesn't, it fails. Simple as that. So I guess we will always be doomed to periodic crises during which we will always promise to do it better the next time. As soon as the crisis ends, however, the capitalism resumes its risky path.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Collin Powell's Chief of Staff on Cheney: "Cheney is evil"
"Cheney went on to say in his McLean interview that “Protecting the country’s security is a tough, mean, dirty, nasty business. These are evil people and we are not going to win this fight by turning the other cheek.” I have to agree but the other way around. Cheney and his like are the evil people and we certainly are not going to prevail in the struggle with radical religion if we listen to people as he. […]
But al-Qa’ida will be back. Iraq, GITMO, Abu Ghraib, heavily-biased U.S. support for Israel, and a host of other strategic errors have insured al-Qa’ida’s resilience, staying power and motivation. How we deal with the future attacks of this organization and its cohorts could well seal our fate, for good or bad. Osama bin Laden and his brain trust, Aman al-Zawahiri, are counting on us to produce the bad. With people such as Cheney assisting them, they are far more likely to succeed."
(Lawrence Wilkerson, Secretary of State Collin Powell's former Chief of Staff).
But al-Qa’ida will be back. Iraq, GITMO, Abu Ghraib, heavily-biased U.S. support for Israel, and a host of other strategic errors have insured al-Qa’ida’s resilience, staying power and motivation. How we deal with the future attacks of this organization and its cohorts could well seal our fate, for good or bad. Osama bin Laden and his brain trust, Aman al-Zawahiri, are counting on us to produce the bad. With people such as Cheney assisting them, they are far more likely to succeed."
(Lawrence Wilkerson, Secretary of State Collin Powell's former Chief of Staff).
Top 10 Daily Things that Wear me Out in Champaign
Here is my list please feel free to contribute your own. Keep in mind, here I am only talking about the things that annoy me in my everyday routine, not national/international/historical events. (there is another post coming for those as well). So here are my top 10 in the descending order of annoyance.
1. The weather in the Midwest. I have been living in Champaign for almost 6 years now and every year at the end of winter my body comes to the precipice of a complete shutdown. The Siberian temperatures, which here last from late November to late March, coupled with the wind chill of -30 and windgusts that are strong enough to harm your ability to ever have children, wreak havoc on your body and your daily routine. As a defense mechanism, your body recoils every time you go outside, so you are forced to hibernate in your home eating fast food take outs and pizzas. So inevitably I put on at lest 10 additional pounds every winter as I also stop going to the gym. Just when you thought it is over in March, or even early April, another cold front comes in reminding you how shitty you have it.
2. Loud motorcycles. As the winter finally lets up in Champaign, it becomes absolutely gorgeous: the colors, the smell, the soft breeze, and of course, sorority girls' change of attire (hence, the Quad becomes my favorite place to hang). But, and here is the big but, early spring is also the time when all those frustrated, mostly overweight, poorly endowed individuals with motorcycles with exhausts so loud that you can hear them no matter where you are at a time come out blaring across the city. This is particularly annoying if you are enjoying the weather on the patio of my favorite pub Blind Pig and these idiots circle through the same streets over and over, in hope that the big bad machine they are on, and the obnoxious noise can ever compensate for either a) the fact that their obesity has prevented from seeing their penis except an ocassional glance in a mirror; or b) the fact that all those pills, contraptions, and internet programs to enhance the size of their manhood have failed. Just a note: I have no problem with motorcycles and several very good friends of mine have them. But these are normal exhausts producing very normal levels of noise.
3. Cyclists who do not obey traffic rules. As a caveat, I have a great admiration for everyone who rides a bike on a daily basis. I support even a tax hike on all of us in order for the city to be able to pay for additional bike lanes and I am more than happy to see many streets shut down to cars. But, if you are on a bicycle, you are under the same traffic rules as I am in my car. Otherwise, I will hit you with my car. This means: running the red light and whizzing right in front of my car as I am going 45mph will probably get you killed. Riding your bike on an already narrow sidewalk is ILLEGAL! Get your ass on the street in that biking lane, honestly! As a pedestrian, I have already been relegated to a very very narrow sidewalk that I have to share with throngs of slowly moving, flip-flop wearing, hung-over, I-pod listening undergrads and now you are telling me I have to move for your stupid bike. Also, if you do this, you are exposing yourself to a real possibility that I will push your bike out of my way. And my biggest, biggest reservoir of anger comes gushing out at cyclists who ride their bike on the quad! Are you fucking kidding me? This is especially annoying between classes when you have anywhere between 5-10,000 students moving from one building to another in a space of about 10 minutes. And now you want to rush through the crowd with your bike? These people need to be slapped with a huge fine.
4. Champaign-Urbana's city traffic grid. I swear this city was designed by mentally handicapped urban planners. What in the world would possess someone to make every major and semi-major street the main artery through the city? Since we only have two outlets to the 74 interstate, Prospect, Springfield and Neil are ALWAYS, ALWAYS, swamped with traffic. Green street, that perpetually exhausting jewel of urban planning is always packed with undergrads rushing to their classes in their shiny, loud cars. Seriously, shut down Green street to traffic, make it into a pedestrian/cycling zone. Make several more entries from the highways into the city so that Springfield (outside of my door) does not sound like a highway at every moment of the day. This would also make walking to campus (something I LOVE to do and always do weather permitting) a pleasurable rather than exhausting experience.
5. The temperature in the older buildings at the University. As we historians have been relegated to the older buildings (but beautiful) of the University--Greg Hall, Lincoln Hall until recently, etc--we also experience the emotional rollercoaster that is the temperature inside of these classrooms. If the temperature is let's say a pleasant 60 F, you can be sure that it will be over 80 inside of Greg Hall classrooms. If, on the other hand, the temperature is the steaming, disgustingly swampy 99 F, it will be around 30 F in the buildings. I mean, whatta fuck is so hard about controlling the temperature? The library is the biggest example of this. We have one of the best libraries in the world and the poor staff there has to work with a big fan over their heads at the height of winter and heaters at the height of summers. How about the university takes some of that money from science and engineering departments and from athletic dept, and rips down those old pipes and makes these buildings more energy efficient? Every time I go to the library with an intent to work, I find myself walking out in anger my day having been ruined and also feeling sorry for the poor library staff who have to work there in the blistering heat and yet are not allowed to work in nude.
6. Neil Street. This street completely wears me out. Neil Street, for those of you not from Champaign, is one of the main North-South arteries in the city and a small portion of it, going through downtown, is really pleasant as it is surrounded by nice pubs, restaurants and cafes. However, the Northern part is exhausting to drive through. You pass by this giant factory on your left, which I assume is the Kraft factory, that produces this horrible acidic, metal tasting smell and makes you wonder: "Am I going to get leukemia if I spend too much time in this place?" Honestly, can you move that thing out to the outskirts of the city? There are people living here for Christ's sake!
7. The local weatherman Ed Giezer. Now, Ed and I have a love-hate thing going. As I wake up to the sounds of NPR'S Morning Edition, I actually look forward to Ed's forecast, which to be fair has been accurate most of the time. Thanks, Ed. But, can you please stop telling me what the temperature in Champaign was in 1913. Yes, I am a historian, but also if I am listening to you that means I am probably already 10 minutes late to my class, so if you could get to what the temperature will be today? I often find myself standing butt naked in my room with different kinds of clothes on my bed, waiting for ED to give me the forecast. Also, please cut the banter with our local announcer of Morning Edition (whose voices crawls under my skin), and stop laughing when you are announcing the next cold wave. It is annoying enough to have to walk out those mornings, but it becomes even more annoying if someone's laughing at you while you are doing it. But, keep up the good job Ed. Don't mean to knock on the man.
8. The local NPR programing. While I was living in Louisville I fell in love with Louisville's NPR station: morning NPR, followed by Fresh Air (a wonderful show), Tavis Smiley (so-so, but provocative with interesting guests), then my favorite the Talk of the Nation, followed by All Things Considered, the World, recap of Jim Lehrer's evening news, and then finally BBC programming. Louisville's 89.3 NPR is also the first thing that greets me as I drive over the Kennedy bridge into Downtown. To be fair, our local 580 AM NPR station does have Morning Edition, the World, All Things Considered and BBC programming (without which I cannot fall asleep, I know, I know, I need help). But whatta hell is with the 10am David Inch show that talks about insects, home improvement and other completely inappropriate things for Monday mornings! Monday mornings have to be about politics, period! On Mondays I had already been deprived of MSNBC's Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann for two days (during MSNBC's prison obsession), so I need my political fix without having to turn on my laptop, go to the sites, dress, etc. And farmer's report. I have an immense respect for farmers whose lives are not easy, they work hard and often get very little in return. The local NPR station is as much as theirs as it is mine. But, honestly, do we need to have farmer's report--which always includes how hogs are doing on Chicago trade--at 2pm, taking the spot of The Talk of the Nation!? And David Inch really ought to get more current with his show (he is a smart man but the content of his show is like the content of Budlight, not much to taste unless you like the taste of piss).
9.Prices at Schnucks. I know, I know, I should shop at Meyer, which I do, but have to say that meat at Schnucks is so much better, their wine selection is almost always superior and on sale (just yesterday I got me some delicious Old Bycyclette wine for $7 and the bottle had been $20). Their vegetables can be hit or miss but they always have an organic section (on sale), and it is closer to my house. And, I get my gas points saving me about $10 per month. Having said that, however, the Schnucks' management randomly increases prices by such margin that in a week your grocery bill increases by like 15%. Isn't this illegal? I mean you can't just increase the price of my spinach pie dough from $3.89 to $4.89 in a day! And you can't charge $6.00 for a small box of blueberries. That's just wrong.
10. The depth of my bathtub. I love taking baths with a nice glass of wine, some candles, smooth jazz, and a nice book. And yes, I am straight. But, I have discovered that the shallowness of my bathtub just destroys the enjoyment. By the time I fill it up with water, and I lie my fat ass down in there, there is almost no room left for my snuggly bubbles which is the whole of the bath. So, I guess I will have to wait to have a bigger place with a huge bathtub.
Your turn...
1. The weather in the Midwest. I have been living in Champaign for almost 6 years now and every year at the end of winter my body comes to the precipice of a complete shutdown. The Siberian temperatures, which here last from late November to late March, coupled with the wind chill of -30 and windgusts that are strong enough to harm your ability to ever have children, wreak havoc on your body and your daily routine. As a defense mechanism, your body recoils every time you go outside, so you are forced to hibernate in your home eating fast food take outs and pizzas. So inevitably I put on at lest 10 additional pounds every winter as I also stop going to the gym. Just when you thought it is over in March, or even early April, another cold front comes in reminding you how shitty you have it.
2. Loud motorcycles. As the winter finally lets up in Champaign, it becomes absolutely gorgeous: the colors, the smell, the soft breeze, and of course, sorority girls' change of attire (hence, the Quad becomes my favorite place to hang). But, and here is the big but, early spring is also the time when all those frustrated, mostly overweight, poorly endowed individuals with motorcycles with exhausts so loud that you can hear them no matter where you are at a time come out blaring across the city. This is particularly annoying if you are enjoying the weather on the patio of my favorite pub Blind Pig and these idiots circle through the same streets over and over, in hope that the big bad machine they are on, and the obnoxious noise can ever compensate for either a) the fact that their obesity has prevented from seeing their penis except an ocassional glance in a mirror; or b) the fact that all those pills, contraptions, and internet programs to enhance the size of their manhood have failed. Just a note: I have no problem with motorcycles and several very good friends of mine have them. But these are normal exhausts producing very normal levels of noise.
3. Cyclists who do not obey traffic rules. As a caveat, I have a great admiration for everyone who rides a bike on a daily basis. I support even a tax hike on all of us in order for the city to be able to pay for additional bike lanes and I am more than happy to see many streets shut down to cars. But, if you are on a bicycle, you are under the same traffic rules as I am in my car. Otherwise, I will hit you with my car. This means: running the red light and whizzing right in front of my car as I am going 45mph will probably get you killed. Riding your bike on an already narrow sidewalk is ILLEGAL! Get your ass on the street in that biking lane, honestly! As a pedestrian, I have already been relegated to a very very narrow sidewalk that I have to share with throngs of slowly moving, flip-flop wearing, hung-over, I-pod listening undergrads and now you are telling me I have to move for your stupid bike. Also, if you do this, you are exposing yourself to a real possibility that I will push your bike out of my way. And my biggest, biggest reservoir of anger comes gushing out at cyclists who ride their bike on the quad! Are you fucking kidding me? This is especially annoying between classes when you have anywhere between 5-10,000 students moving from one building to another in a space of about 10 minutes. And now you want to rush through the crowd with your bike? These people need to be slapped with a huge fine.
4. Champaign-Urbana's city traffic grid. I swear this city was designed by mentally handicapped urban planners. What in the world would possess someone to make every major and semi-major street the main artery through the city? Since we only have two outlets to the 74 interstate, Prospect, Springfield and Neil are ALWAYS, ALWAYS, swamped with traffic. Green street, that perpetually exhausting jewel of urban planning is always packed with undergrads rushing to their classes in their shiny, loud cars. Seriously, shut down Green street to traffic, make it into a pedestrian/cycling zone. Make several more entries from the highways into the city so that Springfield (outside of my door) does not sound like a highway at every moment of the day. This would also make walking to campus (something I LOVE to do and always do weather permitting) a pleasurable rather than exhausting experience.
5. The temperature in the older buildings at the University. As we historians have been relegated to the older buildings (but beautiful) of the University--Greg Hall, Lincoln Hall until recently, etc--we also experience the emotional rollercoaster that is the temperature inside of these classrooms. If the temperature is let's say a pleasant 60 F, you can be sure that it will be over 80 inside of Greg Hall classrooms. If, on the other hand, the temperature is the steaming, disgustingly swampy 99 F, it will be around 30 F in the buildings. I mean, whatta fuck is so hard about controlling the temperature? The library is the biggest example of this. We have one of the best libraries in the world and the poor staff there has to work with a big fan over their heads at the height of winter and heaters at the height of summers. How about the university takes some of that money from science and engineering departments and from athletic dept, and rips down those old pipes and makes these buildings more energy efficient? Every time I go to the library with an intent to work, I find myself walking out in anger my day having been ruined and also feeling sorry for the poor library staff who have to work there in the blistering heat and yet are not allowed to work in nude.
6. Neil Street. This street completely wears me out. Neil Street, for those of you not from Champaign, is one of the main North-South arteries in the city and a small portion of it, going through downtown, is really pleasant as it is surrounded by nice pubs, restaurants and cafes. However, the Northern part is exhausting to drive through. You pass by this giant factory on your left, which I assume is the Kraft factory, that produces this horrible acidic, metal tasting smell and makes you wonder: "Am I going to get leukemia if I spend too much time in this place?" Honestly, can you move that thing out to the outskirts of the city? There are people living here for Christ's sake!
7. The local weatherman Ed Giezer. Now, Ed and I have a love-hate thing going. As I wake up to the sounds of NPR'S Morning Edition, I actually look forward to Ed's forecast, which to be fair has been accurate most of the time. Thanks, Ed. But, can you please stop telling me what the temperature in Champaign was in 1913. Yes, I am a historian, but also if I am listening to you that means I am probably already 10 minutes late to my class, so if you could get to what the temperature will be today? I often find myself standing butt naked in my room with different kinds of clothes on my bed, waiting for ED to give me the forecast. Also, please cut the banter with our local announcer of Morning Edition (whose voices crawls under my skin), and stop laughing when you are announcing the next cold wave. It is annoying enough to have to walk out those mornings, but it becomes even more annoying if someone's laughing at you while you are doing it. But, keep up the good job Ed. Don't mean to knock on the man.
8. The local NPR programing. While I was living in Louisville I fell in love with Louisville's NPR station: morning NPR, followed by Fresh Air (a wonderful show), Tavis Smiley (so-so, but provocative with interesting guests), then my favorite the Talk of the Nation, followed by All Things Considered, the World, recap of Jim Lehrer's evening news, and then finally BBC programming. Louisville's 89.3 NPR is also the first thing that greets me as I drive over the Kennedy bridge into Downtown. To be fair, our local 580 AM NPR station does have Morning Edition, the World, All Things Considered and BBC programming (without which I cannot fall asleep, I know, I know, I need help). But whatta hell is with the 10am David Inch show that talks about insects, home improvement and other completely inappropriate things for Monday mornings! Monday mornings have to be about politics, period! On Mondays I had already been deprived of MSNBC's Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann for two days (during MSNBC's prison obsession), so I need my political fix without having to turn on my laptop, go to the sites, dress, etc. And farmer's report. I have an immense respect for farmers whose lives are not easy, they work hard and often get very little in return. The local NPR station is as much as theirs as it is mine. But, honestly, do we need to have farmer's report--which always includes how hogs are doing on Chicago trade--at 2pm, taking the spot of The Talk of the Nation!? And David Inch really ought to get more current with his show (he is a smart man but the content of his show is like the content of Budlight, not much to taste unless you like the taste of piss).
9.Prices at Schnucks. I know, I know, I should shop at Meyer, which I do, but have to say that meat at Schnucks is so much better, their wine selection is almost always superior and on sale (just yesterday I got me some delicious Old Bycyclette wine for $7 and the bottle had been $20). Their vegetables can be hit or miss but they always have an organic section (on sale), and it is closer to my house. And, I get my gas points saving me about $10 per month. Having said that, however, the Schnucks' management randomly increases prices by such margin that in a week your grocery bill increases by like 15%. Isn't this illegal? I mean you can't just increase the price of my spinach pie dough from $3.89 to $4.89 in a day! And you can't charge $6.00 for a small box of blueberries. That's just wrong.
10. The depth of my bathtub. I love taking baths with a nice glass of wine, some candles, smooth jazz, and a nice book. And yes, I am straight. But, I have discovered that the shallowness of my bathtub just destroys the enjoyment. By the time I fill it up with water, and I lie my fat ass down in there, there is almost no room left for my snuggly bubbles which is the whole of the bath. So, I guess I will have to wait to have a bigger place with a huge bathtub.
Your turn...
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Cheney: Torture Saves Lives
In a continuation of my summary of Mayer's book, and venting my frustration with our former (thank God!) administration, I want to briefly address Cheney's criminal claim from this weekend that Obama is making the nation less safe by respecting the rule of law in dealing with terrorism suspects. Cheney's main argument behind his justification of Bush's war crimes is that we are dealing with a new kind of enemy who is willing to die in exacting maximum casualties. Further, he argues that there are moments when top terrorists are captured and "enhanced" interrogation might be the only way to get the information out of them about an imminent terrorist attack. In other words, torture saves lives. My answer to Cheney: bullshit!
A fascinating case which explicitly shows that torture does not work and humane interrogation does is the case of al-Midhar and Hazmi in the prelude to Sept.11th. Mayer's description of the case is corroborated by the bipartisan 9/11 Commission Report. After the African embassy bombings, the FBI captured a person who during an interrogation volunteered a phone number which would emerge as the main missed clue in thwarting the horrors of 9/11. The FBI immediately tapped the number which belonged to the father-in-law of Khalid al-Midhar, one of the Sept. 11 hijackers. The phone line was a goldmine: soon, the FBI was getting the voices of Bin-Laden's top lieutenants discussing a major operation. It was enough information for the FBI and CIA to warn the Bush administration that "Bin Laden prepared to strike in the US." A warning which Bush and Condi Rice brushed aside as the President was too distracted by his big speech on banning stem cell research. Reportedly Bush said to the intelligence officers: "Well, now you covered your asses" and moved on.
However, the FBI and the CIA realized that two men, al-Midhar and Hazmi were going to attend a major Al-Q meeting in Kualalumpur, Malaysia. Later, it was discovered that this was where the 9/11 plans were finalized. The intelligence services followed al-Midhar and Hazmi as they crossed Asia and ended up in Bangkok, Thailand. This is where the CIA mysteriously lost track of the men. Why? Because there was very weak cooperation between different intelligence branches in different countries. The animosity between the FBI and the CIA was reportedly so bad that FBI did not share with the CIA the information that al-Midhar and Hazmi had entered the US on multiple occasions! The fatal misstep was also due to simple human incompetency: it turned out that the rap sheets of the two would be hijackers just sat in an inbox at a CIA office for weeks before they were analyzed. The details get even more complicated and they are tracked down in the 911 commission report, but it is clear that sheer human incompetence (which is very normal given the scope of the agencies and human fallibility) and the failure to follow up on actionable intelligence (hence losing the terrorists in Bangkok) that caused the US to miss the warning signs of the horrible tragedy.
So, the intelligence goldmine--the phone number of a hijacker's father in law--was retrieved through a routine interrogation but it was the failure of human intelligence and competency not the fact that the terrorists weren't tortured enough, which caused the US intelligence services to miss the warning signs of 9/11.
I just wish one of the media "pundits," such as John King, would educate themselves about these damning details before interviewing Dick Cheney. So rather than blasting Obama for struggling to bring the rule of law back to the US, Cheney should disappear in one of his bunkers just in case someone in Obama's Justice Dept is reading Mayer's book and preparing indictments.
A fascinating case which explicitly shows that torture does not work and humane interrogation does is the case of al-Midhar and Hazmi in the prelude to Sept.11th. Mayer's description of the case is corroborated by the bipartisan 9/11 Commission Report. After the African embassy bombings, the FBI captured a person who during an interrogation volunteered a phone number which would emerge as the main missed clue in thwarting the horrors of 9/11. The FBI immediately tapped the number which belonged to the father-in-law of Khalid al-Midhar, one of the Sept. 11 hijackers. The phone line was a goldmine: soon, the FBI was getting the voices of Bin-Laden's top lieutenants discussing a major operation. It was enough information for the FBI and CIA to warn the Bush administration that "Bin Laden prepared to strike in the US." A warning which Bush and Condi Rice brushed aside as the President was too distracted by his big speech on banning stem cell research. Reportedly Bush said to the intelligence officers: "Well, now you covered your asses" and moved on.
However, the FBI and the CIA realized that two men, al-Midhar and Hazmi were going to attend a major Al-Q meeting in Kualalumpur, Malaysia. Later, it was discovered that this was where the 9/11 plans were finalized. The intelligence services followed al-Midhar and Hazmi as they crossed Asia and ended up in Bangkok, Thailand. This is where the CIA mysteriously lost track of the men. Why? Because there was very weak cooperation between different intelligence branches in different countries. The animosity between the FBI and the CIA was reportedly so bad that FBI did not share with the CIA the information that al-Midhar and Hazmi had entered the US on multiple occasions! The fatal misstep was also due to simple human incompetency: it turned out that the rap sheets of the two would be hijackers just sat in an inbox at a CIA office for weeks before they were analyzed. The details get even more complicated and they are tracked down in the 911 commission report, but it is clear that sheer human incompetence (which is very normal given the scope of the agencies and human fallibility) and the failure to follow up on actionable intelligence (hence losing the terrorists in Bangkok) that caused the US to miss the warning signs of the horrible tragedy.
So, the intelligence goldmine--the phone number of a hijacker's father in law--was retrieved through a routine interrogation but it was the failure of human intelligence and competency not the fact that the terrorists weren't tortured enough, which caused the US intelligence services to miss the warning signs of 9/11.
I just wish one of the media "pundits," such as John King, would educate themselves about these damning details before interviewing Dick Cheney. So rather than blasting Obama for struggling to bring the rule of law back to the US, Cheney should disappear in one of his bunkers just in case someone in Obama's Justice Dept is reading Mayer's book and preparing indictments.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Anatomy of a War Crime
In the past few days I have been falling asleep with a perversely fascinating book by Jane Mayer, a reporter for the New Yorker, which represents the most comprehensive biography of Bush's "war on terror." The book titled "The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals," is the most detailed account (to my knowledge) of the behind-the-scenes activities of key Bush officials after September 11th in drafting the policy of torture, illegal imprisonment, and Guantanamo Bay. In short, it is a harrowing story of a war crime in the making by top US officials, including President Bush himself. There are many interesting aspects to the story but in this post I will focus on one: how did the legal infrastructure authorizing torture and indefinite imprisonment of "illegal enemy combatants" come into being following the September 11th attacks on our country.
The key officials in the Bush administration who were responsible for drafting this policy were known as the War Council and were composed of Vice President Dick Cheney's chief counsel David Addington, White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, Pentagon's Legal Counsel William Haynes, and the now infamous Jon Yoo, who was at the time a deputy chief in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. The self-appointed War Council was thus composed of unelected lawyers with extreme far-right legal views which had been in developing since the Watergate era. The War Council reported to Dick Cheney personally who in turn controlled the flow of information to President.
The main intellectual thrust of these right-wingers, many of whom were members of the Federalist Society, came from their deep seated conviction that in the aftermath of Nixon's Watergate shenanigans, the Congress had curtailed the power of the President way too much. The mentor of the group and Cheney's long-time confidant David Addington, who would emerge as the main brainpower of the torture policy, was a firm believer in the so-called Unitary Presidency which argued that in the time of war, the President had an unlimited authority to override basically any law he wished if he declared it to be in the interest of national security. In other words, the War Council members believed in Nixon's (in)famous credo that "if President does it, it is no longer illegal." And September 11th offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for these people to put their ideas into action: to emasculate the Congress and entrust the President with literally limitless power. In short it was the mobilization of the long-forgotten absolutist credo so articulately voiced by Louis XIV: "L'etat, c'est moi!" David Addington's acerbic, ironic, and far right-wing ideology was abhorrent even to the highest officials in the Bush administration. Jane Mayer quotes one of his colleagues, who was present at many of the meetings David Addington presided over, who said: "Who let this fucking lunatic run the country." In the words of another long-term colleague, "David just didn't believe in the Constitution." The War Council also cooperated with a Mormon layer by the name of James Flannigan who lived conservatism in his everyday routine (he had 14 children!). John Yoo, who would emerge as the public face of Addington, was a former Berkley law professor whose obsession with the Unitary Presidency was intensely personal: as a son of Korean immigrants he abhorred what he saw was the Supreme Court's attempts to curtail the power of President Truman to wage the Korean War (more about this later). In short, the Council was purely ideological and it was composed of highly skilled lawyers, filling the gap in the Bush administration's cabinet which consisted of very few lawyers, in contrast to Clinton's and now Obama's cabinet(both Clinton and Obama had been constitutional law professors before becoming President).
The reason why Addington emerged as the intellectual mentor of the group is because he was a long-time confidant to Dick Cheney with whom he had participated in evacuation exercises orchestrated by the US government during the first Bush and Reagan administration, in case the executive branch was ever to be wiped out in a terrorist attack. Thus, underground bunkers and threats of a massive biological/nuclear attack had dominated both, Cheney's and Addington's thinking. Addington articulated through law what Cheney felt in his gut. It was truly a scary team.
Abrogating the Geneva Convention. Cheney's minions hated international organizations and treaties and high on the list of these was the Geneva Conventions, a series of treaties on treatment of prisoners and conducts of war which had been negotiated under the leadership of the United States in the aftermath of World War I (1929) and finally in 1949 after the horrors of the Holocaust and WWII. David Addington and Co. mocked the provisions of the Geneva Conventions which mandated that states treat all prisoners humanely on the basis of our common humanity. They argued that the heinous nature of 9/11 and the viciousness of our new enemy was nothing like we had seen before. This is why in the days after 9/11 one of the main CIA people Coffer Black said "the gloves come off." But there needed to be a legal justification for this new war and the War Council led the effort to provide such.
John Yoo and Addington argued that the Geneva Conventions were "quaint" because we were facing a new and vicious enemy. They mocked the provisions of the carefully negotiated treaties which gave prisoners of war the right to athletic exercise among other things, access to fresh air, etc. They forgot to mention that these provisions were inserted at the insistence of US negotiators and eagerly ratified by Republicans and Democrats in Congress in the aftermath of WWII. Further, the War Council argued that the Geneva Conventions did not cover combatants who were not soldiers for a state and who themselves did not recognize the rules of war. In their mind, Afghanistan was a "failed state" so the members of Al-Queada and Taliban had no rights to Geneva Protections.
According to Mayer's exhaustive investigation, which included interviews with many legal scholars including some pretty conservative ones, this reading of the Geneva Conventions was simply not true and was blatantly cynical. For example, Yoo forgot to mention that while some provisions of the Geneva Conventions gave prisoners of war the right to athletic exercise the other provisions authorized the state to execute on spot those it deemed to be spies. Further, the conventions also mandated that states convene Article 5 Tribunals at times of war during which it would weed out civilians from combatants. The US had done this even at the height of the Vietcong attacks on the US soldiers and even as recently as the Gulf War in 1991. Article 5 Tribunals had become a routine practice in the Military Code of Justice. Hence, when Bush instituted the military commissions many generals were outraged at what they saw as degradation of the venerable tradition. Finally, the Geneva conventions (in letter and spirit) included all possible categories of people including those deemed to be non-state actors, like French resistance fighters in World War II. Ironically, the argument that terrorists were not included was the same argument the Vietcong used against the Americans.
What is particularly remarkable about the whole process is that Cheney and Co. cut out of the loop everyone who did not agree with the War Council. This included Secretary of State Collin Powell and his Chief of Staff Wilkerson, Condi Rice and her lawyer Bellinger who, get this, WAS IN CHARGE OF NATIONAL SECURITY! Every time a new memo would come out justifying ignoring the Geneva Conventions or authorizing illegal wiretapping, the Powell wing of the administration (which included the State Dept) would be outraged but wasn't able to do much because this is what "the Vice President wants" many would say. It was Vice President and David Addington who had the final say on every document that reached Bush's desk. They controlled the vital flow of information to Bush and this is where the ultimate power of the executive was hidden--in the flow of information.
Interrogations. The abrogation of the Geneva Conventions was the legal justification for Bush's "enhanced" interrogation policy, which eventually came to include waterboarding, chaining the prisoner to a floor in fetal position, attacks by dogs, ramming the prisoner's head through a wall (a practice the CIA learned from Israeli intelligence), nudity, food deprivation, anal intrusion with sharp objects, and the list goes on. There are even reports by several former prisoners who claimed they were threatened to be anally raped by specially trained German shepard. In short, the Cheney Council had authorized unimaginable torture. However, Yoo devised such a narrow definition of torture which clearly violated the letter and the spirit of the Geneva Conventions. More importantly, it violated the US Convention Against Torture of 1984, making these practices multiple felonies carrying maximum prison sentences.
That this is not reporting by some wide-eyed liberal journalist is confirmed by the honorable behavior of the FBI through the whole ordeal. After Bush himself ordered the CIA, run by the cowering George Tenet, to run the interrogation policy he cut out of the process thousands of FBI interrogators who had been trained for decades in anti-terrorism strategies, including interrogations, and who had a deep experience of the Middle East, and knew the intricacies of the law regulating these practices. The latter is what made Cheney distrust the FBI so much. For example, after witnessing an interrogation of an Al-Queada operative Zubayda in Afghanistan (who according to multiple reports was rammed head first through a wall and let to bleed on a bed for days), the FBI was ordered by its director Mueller to walk out and have nothing to do with the CIA interrogations. To its great credit, the FBI would consistently try to thwart the torture methods, pointing out that the CIA and the Bush administration were not only violating the US law but possibly committing a war crime. Mayer interviews many FBI interrogators with long experience in combating terrorism and Al-Queda in particular and they all argue that torture never works, it just simply makes people tell the interrogators what they want to hear. And this is where Bush becomes personally implicated.
After one of the earliest Al-Q people al-Libi was captured in Afghanistan (and he himself admitted running a terrorist camp), FBI interrogators started questioning him (this is based on Mayer's conversation with these interrogators). At their surprise he was very talkative and told them many things about the camps, terrorist activities, plans, etc. However, under intense pressure from Cheney and Bush to link Al-Q to Iraq in the prelude to the war against Iraq, CIA took over interrogations and started torturing al-Libi after which he completely shut down. The FBI was once again completely left out of the loop. Al-Libi became the first detainee to be "outsourced" to Egyptian prisoners where he was beaten severely, held in a cage for 80 hours and urinated on by the guards. Finally he started telling very confusing stories about Saddam's links to his camps and the information was dispatched to Cheney's office and eventually to Bush. Hence, Bush used it in a Cincinnati speech in which he claimed that Saddam was developing nuclear weapons in cooperation with Al-Q. What he didn't say however is that Tenet had been warned of the dubious nature of al-Libi's confessions--an independent intelligence analysis of his testimony showed up on the intra-agency computer system and anyone working at the CIA (especially Tenet) would know about it. The information also never made it to Colin Powell who used al-Libi's confession in his infamous speech to the UN Security Council justifying the war. By 2004, the CIA itself was confirming that al-Libi's testimony was a pure fabrication. Again, this was never reported to the American people. What is most remarkable to me about this story is that Bush's use of this information in a speech shows his direct knowledge of al-Libi's interrogation and might be the clearest instance of linking him personally to torture.
Mayer's brilliant description of the creation of the war on terror leaves no doubt that serious crimes were committed not JUST by individual CIA interrogators but especially by top US officials, including Dick Cheney and George Bush. What is particularly tragic is that with this policy, the Bush administration violated an honorable tradition of the US' respect for the Geneva Conventions and the rules of war. This doesn't mean there were never aberrations but they were only that--aberrations which were condemned, and corrected, but never EVER justified in legal documents.
The lawyers of the War Council ignored the long history of American jurisprudence banning torture. George Washington himself ordered his troops in the Revolutionary War to treat British prisoners humanely despite the fact that the Brits had tortured the American "terrorists" in ways that were even then seen as inhumane. Far from being an altruistic order, George Washington was a brilliant military commander who knew degrading treatment of prisoners wreaks havoc on army morale and performance. During the American Civil War, a Columbia Law Professor drafted the "Lieber Code" which remained in force until the 20th century and mandated humane treatment of military prisoners. After both world wars, America was the leading force behind the institutionalization of anti-torture laws which it has recently so blatantly and tragically violated.
I think we should all write letters to our representatives and anyone who will listen to put pressure on the Obama administration and Congress to conduct a thorough investigation of this. I have no doubt that any criminal investigation would result in a lot of formerly high-level people going to prison for very very long time. Only then will America's honor be restored.
The key officials in the Bush administration who were responsible for drafting this policy were known as the War Council and were composed of Vice President Dick Cheney's chief counsel David Addington, White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, Pentagon's Legal Counsel William Haynes, and the now infamous Jon Yoo, who was at the time a deputy chief in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. The self-appointed War Council was thus composed of unelected lawyers with extreme far-right legal views which had been in developing since the Watergate era. The War Council reported to Dick Cheney personally who in turn controlled the flow of information to President.
The main intellectual thrust of these right-wingers, many of whom were members of the Federalist Society, came from their deep seated conviction that in the aftermath of Nixon's Watergate shenanigans, the Congress had curtailed the power of the President way too much. The mentor of the group and Cheney's long-time confidant David Addington, who would emerge as the main brainpower of the torture policy, was a firm believer in the so-called Unitary Presidency which argued that in the time of war, the President had an unlimited authority to override basically any law he wished if he declared it to be in the interest of national security. In other words, the War Council members believed in Nixon's (in)famous credo that "if President does it, it is no longer illegal." And September 11th offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for these people to put their ideas into action: to emasculate the Congress and entrust the President with literally limitless power. In short it was the mobilization of the long-forgotten absolutist credo so articulately voiced by Louis XIV: "L'etat, c'est moi!" David Addington's acerbic, ironic, and far right-wing ideology was abhorrent even to the highest officials in the Bush administration. Jane Mayer quotes one of his colleagues, who was present at many of the meetings David Addington presided over, who said: "Who let this fucking lunatic run the country." In the words of another long-term colleague, "David just didn't believe in the Constitution." The War Council also cooperated with a Mormon layer by the name of James Flannigan who lived conservatism in his everyday routine (he had 14 children!). John Yoo, who would emerge as the public face of Addington, was a former Berkley law professor whose obsession with the Unitary Presidency was intensely personal: as a son of Korean immigrants he abhorred what he saw was the Supreme Court's attempts to curtail the power of President Truman to wage the Korean War (more about this later). In short, the Council was purely ideological and it was composed of highly skilled lawyers, filling the gap in the Bush administration's cabinet which consisted of very few lawyers, in contrast to Clinton's and now Obama's cabinet(both Clinton and Obama had been constitutional law professors before becoming President).
The reason why Addington emerged as the intellectual mentor of the group is because he was a long-time confidant to Dick Cheney with whom he had participated in evacuation exercises orchestrated by the US government during the first Bush and Reagan administration, in case the executive branch was ever to be wiped out in a terrorist attack. Thus, underground bunkers and threats of a massive biological/nuclear attack had dominated both, Cheney's and Addington's thinking. Addington articulated through law what Cheney felt in his gut. It was truly a scary team.
Abrogating the Geneva Convention. Cheney's minions hated international organizations and treaties and high on the list of these was the Geneva Conventions, a series of treaties on treatment of prisoners and conducts of war which had been negotiated under the leadership of the United States in the aftermath of World War I (1929) and finally in 1949 after the horrors of the Holocaust and WWII. David Addington and Co. mocked the provisions of the Geneva Conventions which mandated that states treat all prisoners humanely on the basis of our common humanity. They argued that the heinous nature of 9/11 and the viciousness of our new enemy was nothing like we had seen before. This is why in the days after 9/11 one of the main CIA people Coffer Black said "the gloves come off." But there needed to be a legal justification for this new war and the War Council led the effort to provide such.
John Yoo and Addington argued that the Geneva Conventions were "quaint" because we were facing a new and vicious enemy. They mocked the provisions of the carefully negotiated treaties which gave prisoners of war the right to athletic exercise among other things, access to fresh air, etc. They forgot to mention that these provisions were inserted at the insistence of US negotiators and eagerly ratified by Republicans and Democrats in Congress in the aftermath of WWII. Further, the War Council argued that the Geneva Conventions did not cover combatants who were not soldiers for a state and who themselves did not recognize the rules of war. In their mind, Afghanistan was a "failed state" so the members of Al-Queada and Taliban had no rights to Geneva Protections.
According to Mayer's exhaustive investigation, which included interviews with many legal scholars including some pretty conservative ones, this reading of the Geneva Conventions was simply not true and was blatantly cynical. For example, Yoo forgot to mention that while some provisions of the Geneva Conventions gave prisoners of war the right to athletic exercise the other provisions authorized the state to execute on spot those it deemed to be spies. Further, the conventions also mandated that states convene Article 5 Tribunals at times of war during which it would weed out civilians from combatants. The US had done this even at the height of the Vietcong attacks on the US soldiers and even as recently as the Gulf War in 1991. Article 5 Tribunals had become a routine practice in the Military Code of Justice. Hence, when Bush instituted the military commissions many generals were outraged at what they saw as degradation of the venerable tradition. Finally, the Geneva conventions (in letter and spirit) included all possible categories of people including those deemed to be non-state actors, like French resistance fighters in World War II. Ironically, the argument that terrorists were not included was the same argument the Vietcong used against the Americans.
What is particularly remarkable about the whole process is that Cheney and Co. cut out of the loop everyone who did not agree with the War Council. This included Secretary of State Collin Powell and his Chief of Staff Wilkerson, Condi Rice and her lawyer Bellinger who, get this, WAS IN CHARGE OF NATIONAL SECURITY! Every time a new memo would come out justifying ignoring the Geneva Conventions or authorizing illegal wiretapping, the Powell wing of the administration (which included the State Dept) would be outraged but wasn't able to do much because this is what "the Vice President wants" many would say. It was Vice President and David Addington who had the final say on every document that reached Bush's desk. They controlled the vital flow of information to Bush and this is where the ultimate power of the executive was hidden--in the flow of information.
Interrogations. The abrogation of the Geneva Conventions was the legal justification for Bush's "enhanced" interrogation policy, which eventually came to include waterboarding, chaining the prisoner to a floor in fetal position, attacks by dogs, ramming the prisoner's head through a wall (a practice the CIA learned from Israeli intelligence), nudity, food deprivation, anal intrusion with sharp objects, and the list goes on. There are even reports by several former prisoners who claimed they were threatened to be anally raped by specially trained German shepard. In short, the Cheney Council had authorized unimaginable torture. However, Yoo devised such a narrow definition of torture which clearly violated the letter and the spirit of the Geneva Conventions. More importantly, it violated the US Convention Against Torture of 1984, making these practices multiple felonies carrying maximum prison sentences.
That this is not reporting by some wide-eyed liberal journalist is confirmed by the honorable behavior of the FBI through the whole ordeal. After Bush himself ordered the CIA, run by the cowering George Tenet, to run the interrogation policy he cut out of the process thousands of FBI interrogators who had been trained for decades in anti-terrorism strategies, including interrogations, and who had a deep experience of the Middle East, and knew the intricacies of the law regulating these practices. The latter is what made Cheney distrust the FBI so much. For example, after witnessing an interrogation of an Al-Queada operative Zubayda in Afghanistan (who according to multiple reports was rammed head first through a wall and let to bleed on a bed for days), the FBI was ordered by its director Mueller to walk out and have nothing to do with the CIA interrogations. To its great credit, the FBI would consistently try to thwart the torture methods, pointing out that the CIA and the Bush administration were not only violating the US law but possibly committing a war crime. Mayer interviews many FBI interrogators with long experience in combating terrorism and Al-Queda in particular and they all argue that torture never works, it just simply makes people tell the interrogators what they want to hear. And this is where Bush becomes personally implicated.
After one of the earliest Al-Q people al-Libi was captured in Afghanistan (and he himself admitted running a terrorist camp), FBI interrogators started questioning him (this is based on Mayer's conversation with these interrogators). At their surprise he was very talkative and told them many things about the camps, terrorist activities, plans, etc. However, under intense pressure from Cheney and Bush to link Al-Q to Iraq in the prelude to the war against Iraq, CIA took over interrogations and started torturing al-Libi after which he completely shut down. The FBI was once again completely left out of the loop. Al-Libi became the first detainee to be "outsourced" to Egyptian prisoners where he was beaten severely, held in a cage for 80 hours and urinated on by the guards. Finally he started telling very confusing stories about Saddam's links to his camps and the information was dispatched to Cheney's office and eventually to Bush. Hence, Bush used it in a Cincinnati speech in which he claimed that Saddam was developing nuclear weapons in cooperation with Al-Q. What he didn't say however is that Tenet had been warned of the dubious nature of al-Libi's confessions--an independent intelligence analysis of his testimony showed up on the intra-agency computer system and anyone working at the CIA (especially Tenet) would know about it. The information also never made it to Colin Powell who used al-Libi's confession in his infamous speech to the UN Security Council justifying the war. By 2004, the CIA itself was confirming that al-Libi's testimony was a pure fabrication. Again, this was never reported to the American people. What is most remarkable to me about this story is that Bush's use of this information in a speech shows his direct knowledge of al-Libi's interrogation and might be the clearest instance of linking him personally to torture.
Mayer's brilliant description of the creation of the war on terror leaves no doubt that serious crimes were committed not JUST by individual CIA interrogators but especially by top US officials, including Dick Cheney and George Bush. What is particularly tragic is that with this policy, the Bush administration violated an honorable tradition of the US' respect for the Geneva Conventions and the rules of war. This doesn't mean there were never aberrations but they were only that--aberrations which were condemned, and corrected, but never EVER justified in legal documents.
The lawyers of the War Council ignored the long history of American jurisprudence banning torture. George Washington himself ordered his troops in the Revolutionary War to treat British prisoners humanely despite the fact that the Brits had tortured the American "terrorists" in ways that were even then seen as inhumane. Far from being an altruistic order, George Washington was a brilliant military commander who knew degrading treatment of prisoners wreaks havoc on army morale and performance. During the American Civil War, a Columbia Law Professor drafted the "Lieber Code" which remained in force until the 20th century and mandated humane treatment of military prisoners. After both world wars, America was the leading force behind the institutionalization of anti-torture laws which it has recently so blatantly and tragically violated.
I think we should all write letters to our representatives and anyone who will listen to put pressure on the Obama administration and Congress to conduct a thorough investigation of this. I have no doubt that any criminal investigation would result in a lot of formerly high-level people going to prison for very very long time. Only then will America's honor be restored.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Gay Rights are Human Rights
The Obama administration is facing another test of its commitment to human rights: whether or not to extend health insurance benefits to same-sex spouses of federal employees. The administration has to respond to a Ninth Circuit Court ruling in California which mandated the federal government to provide health insurance benefits to spouses of gay federal employees, a right that is enjoyed by millions of straight federal employees and their spouses. The Bush administration argued that this would be a violation of a federal statute as mandated by the Defense of Marriage Act passed during the Clinton Administration in 1996 (DOMA), which defined marriage as a union between man and woman, setting off a series of legal precedents which denied basic government protection against discrimination to millions of gay Americans. The Ninth Circuit court judge argued in his decision that the Defense of Marriage Act violated the Fifth Amendment's guarantee of "due process of law" and is therefore unconstitutional. The case is almost certainly going to end up in front of the Supreme Court.
This issue goes beyond health insurance--which is important enough given the scarcity and the astronomical price tag of health insurance in this country as well as the extensive health coverage the federal government offers to its employees--but goes to the heart of the American ideal that all human beings should be treated equally not on the basis of some political, social, or personal character, but by the mere fact that they are human beings and American citizens.
The main argument of the Right-wing ideologues on this issues rests on the defense of laws which for gays today are almost equivalent to what Jim Crow laws were for the African-Americans some 60 years ago. The Defense of Marriage Act was one of the most cowardly political maneuvers of Clinton who used to drive me nuts with his desire to have his cake and eat it too. It was hailed as a "compromise" by the Clinton Democrats to the far right-wing in what was an all out cultural war in the 1990s. It was at the height of the Democratic Leadership Council's cowering attempts to take off the cloak of liberalism from the party and move to what they called "centrist" position (and we saw how that served them during the ensuing 8 years of Republican dominance). The Defense of Marriage Act is a blatant discriminatory measure, passed by the Congress and signed into law by the President, that claims that millions of Americans can be legally placed outside of the law just because the government does not like their choice of partners in life. It is a slippery slope when the government starts mandating sexuality and taste, crafting discrimination in a legal language that is somehow beyond criticism. The Defense of Marriage Act needs to be repealed today.
The issue is also tangentially connected to another legacy of the Clinton Democrats: "don't ask, don't tell". The policy stated that gay military personnel can serve in the military as long as they are not openly gay; otherwise, the military can dishonorably discharge anyone who is openly gay. The way I read this policy is: you have to remain in the closet because being a homosexual is something the government finds unlawful! This policy strikes me as one of the most cynical, blatantly hateful, anti-American, and stupidest policies in the history of the Democratic Party's governance. The fact that the policy resulted from Clinton's well-intentioned desire to offer equal rights to gay Americans serving in the military is what makes the policy even more breathtakingly stupid. What started as Clinton's progressive move to protect gays in the military from being fired just on the basis of their sexual orientation turned into a fossilization of legal discrimination against gay Americans. The infamous law takes its place right next to the DOMA in a shameful cannon of discriminatory jurisprudence. The human consequences of this anti-American measure can be seen in some 12,500 lives of soldiers who have been fired from the military for being openly gay and whose careers have been ruined.
Obama's opposition to gay marriage is still completely baffling to me. He opposes it on the basis of an antiquarian Biblical definition of an institution which is not religious, but secular and therefore, state-sponsored. Nobody is mandating that Churches preform gay marriage, but at the same time, nobody should mandate that the Churches should tell the state how to regulate its own institution. We have been through this discussion already and it was called the Enlightenment!
However, I am encouraged by Obama's strong, consistent, and genuine support for gay rights which seem to be a cleverly devised policy to make the polarizing debate over marriage moot (by giving gay Americans all the right "married" Americans enjoy but without the name). While in the Senate Obama supported repealing the DOMA, "don't ask, don't tell," as well as the extension of benefits to gay couples, including health insurance, hospital visitation rights, etc. What is even more encouraging is that during his campaign he openly supported the same policies and since becoming President has appointed openly gay Americans to some key posts, including the influential Director of Personnel office John Berry.
But now is also the time for Obama has to step up, issue an executive order, creating a commission composed of legal scholars and gay activists to study a complete overhaul in the government's position towards gay Americans. He also needs to work with Pelosi and Reid in getting them to repeal the DOMA and with the Joint Chiefs of Staff in repealing "don't ask, don't tell." There are already more encouraging signs: the wanna-be Democrat and former Republican Joe Liebermann is sponsoring a resolution to repeal the DOMA. At the same time, the public opinion as well as the opinion of many military personnel is on the Obama side so he should have no problem in ignoring and shaming the Republican right-wingers, such as Tony Perkins and CO., whose shrillness and obsession with this issues raises some serious questions about their own sexuality.
I am confident Obama will do the right thing in this case.
This issue goes beyond health insurance--which is important enough given the scarcity and the astronomical price tag of health insurance in this country as well as the extensive health coverage the federal government offers to its employees--but goes to the heart of the American ideal that all human beings should be treated equally not on the basis of some political, social, or personal character, but by the mere fact that they are human beings and American citizens.
The main argument of the Right-wing ideologues on this issues rests on the defense of laws which for gays today are almost equivalent to what Jim Crow laws were for the African-Americans some 60 years ago. The Defense of Marriage Act was one of the most cowardly political maneuvers of Clinton who used to drive me nuts with his desire to have his cake and eat it too. It was hailed as a "compromise" by the Clinton Democrats to the far right-wing in what was an all out cultural war in the 1990s. It was at the height of the Democratic Leadership Council's cowering attempts to take off the cloak of liberalism from the party and move to what they called "centrist" position (and we saw how that served them during the ensuing 8 years of Republican dominance). The Defense of Marriage Act is a blatant discriminatory measure, passed by the Congress and signed into law by the President, that claims that millions of Americans can be legally placed outside of the law just because the government does not like their choice of partners in life. It is a slippery slope when the government starts mandating sexuality and taste, crafting discrimination in a legal language that is somehow beyond criticism. The Defense of Marriage Act needs to be repealed today.
The issue is also tangentially connected to another legacy of the Clinton Democrats: "don't ask, don't tell". The policy stated that gay military personnel can serve in the military as long as they are not openly gay; otherwise, the military can dishonorably discharge anyone who is openly gay. The way I read this policy is: you have to remain in the closet because being a homosexual is something the government finds unlawful! This policy strikes me as one of the most cynical, blatantly hateful, anti-American, and stupidest policies in the history of the Democratic Party's governance. The fact that the policy resulted from Clinton's well-intentioned desire to offer equal rights to gay Americans serving in the military is what makes the policy even more breathtakingly stupid. What started as Clinton's progressive move to protect gays in the military from being fired just on the basis of their sexual orientation turned into a fossilization of legal discrimination against gay Americans. The infamous law takes its place right next to the DOMA in a shameful cannon of discriminatory jurisprudence. The human consequences of this anti-American measure can be seen in some 12,500 lives of soldiers who have been fired from the military for being openly gay and whose careers have been ruined.
Obama's opposition to gay marriage is still completely baffling to me. He opposes it on the basis of an antiquarian Biblical definition of an institution which is not religious, but secular and therefore, state-sponsored. Nobody is mandating that Churches preform gay marriage, but at the same time, nobody should mandate that the Churches should tell the state how to regulate its own institution. We have been through this discussion already and it was called the Enlightenment!
However, I am encouraged by Obama's strong, consistent, and genuine support for gay rights which seem to be a cleverly devised policy to make the polarizing debate over marriage moot (by giving gay Americans all the right "married" Americans enjoy but without the name). While in the Senate Obama supported repealing the DOMA, "don't ask, don't tell," as well as the extension of benefits to gay couples, including health insurance, hospital visitation rights, etc. What is even more encouraging is that during his campaign he openly supported the same policies and since becoming President has appointed openly gay Americans to some key posts, including the influential Director of Personnel office John Berry.
But now is also the time for Obama has to step up, issue an executive order, creating a commission composed of legal scholars and gay activists to study a complete overhaul in the government's position towards gay Americans. He also needs to work with Pelosi and Reid in getting them to repeal the DOMA and with the Joint Chiefs of Staff in repealing "don't ask, don't tell." There are already more encouraging signs: the wanna-be Democrat and former Republican Joe Liebermann is sponsoring a resolution to repeal the DOMA. At the same time, the public opinion as well as the opinion of many military personnel is on the Obama side so he should have no problem in ignoring and shaming the Republican right-wingers, such as Tony Perkins and CO., whose shrillness and obsession with this issues raises some serious questions about their own sexuality.
I am confident Obama will do the right thing in this case.
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Obama's Guantanamo Disappointment
Yesterday was a major chance for the Obama administration to break forever with the criminal policies of George W. Bush who, I still insist, one day may be charged with war crimes in front of the International Criminal Tribunal in the Hague. Yesterday was a deadline for the Obama Justice Department to file a response to some 40 habeas corpus challenges of Guantanamo inmates, challenging their detention, on the basis that the US government had no authority under international law to hold them indefinitely. At the heart of the habeas corpus challenge was a Bush-era construction which granted the President exclusive authority to hold someone just on the basis that they "supported" Al Queda or Taliban no matter how tangentially they were connected. Rather than being just a case of legal semantics the fate of over 241 men still held at the concentration camp hung in balance.
And how did Obama do yesterday? He disappointed all of us who believe in the ideals of America, the rule of law, and international justice. In an under-reported statement, Eric Holder, our current Attorney General, claimed that the US government still had the authority to hold these individuals indefinitely on the basis of their "support" for Al Queda and without having to charge them. Dropping the name "enemy combatant" from the government justification and arguing that the power comes not from the President, but from the Congress, is nothing but a pure semantic exercise designed to make it seem like Obama was breaking with Bush while at the same time adopting the basis of his illegal policy in the so-called "war on terror."
Steven Engel, who was a senior lawyer in the Justice Dept in charge of detainee policy, said that "this seems fundamentally consistent with the positions of the prior administration." Eric Holder's Justice Dept lawyers also inserted the word "substantially" in front of "support" of terrorists to make is seem that they are more meticulous in their legal justification. What is simply breathtakingly disappointing is that Holder argued that these policies are somehow rooted in International Law! This is exactly what Bush had argued! And it is exactly why his appearance in front of the ICC in the Hague seems a possibility (however remote) in the future. Just because there was one case of "enemy combatant" after WWII, this does not give the US the right to hold individuals in detention indefinitely without bringing charges just because the President, the Congress, or God himself said so. This is illegal! Period!
I understand that there are so many legal complexities in these cases and that some, if not many, of these individuals might be dangerous to the security of our nation. But to violate our very basic ideals is to be defeated by the enemy who holds himself to no such standard. We live in a democracy, a society ruled by law which, while imperfect and full of loopholes, is the best thing we could have come up with in the past 200 years. To throw this whole network of laws into disarray on the basis of the current (and temporary) threat to our national security is to admit defeat by exposing the fragility of our democracy and the hypocrisy of our values.
President Obama has shown immense boldness in dealing with a lot of issues and has began to implement many of his campaign promises. His policies, as I wrote in earlier posts, have led to real improvement in the life of prisoners like al-Marri. Ending the Guantanamo shame, however, remains a promise yet to be fulfilled. And he will be held accountable now that he has taken ownership of this legacy stained with war crimes.
As a constitutional lawyer I am sure that Obama is aware of former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis' famous creed that "the greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding." President Obama should laminate this quote and put it above his desk in the Oval Office.
And how did Obama do yesterday? He disappointed all of us who believe in the ideals of America, the rule of law, and international justice. In an under-reported statement, Eric Holder, our current Attorney General, claimed that the US government still had the authority to hold these individuals indefinitely on the basis of their "support" for Al Queda and without having to charge them. Dropping the name "enemy combatant" from the government justification and arguing that the power comes not from the President, but from the Congress, is nothing but a pure semantic exercise designed to make it seem like Obama was breaking with Bush while at the same time adopting the basis of his illegal policy in the so-called "war on terror."
Steven Engel, who was a senior lawyer in the Justice Dept in charge of detainee policy, said that "this seems fundamentally consistent with the positions of the prior administration." Eric Holder's Justice Dept lawyers also inserted the word "substantially" in front of "support" of terrorists to make is seem that they are more meticulous in their legal justification. What is simply breathtakingly disappointing is that Holder argued that these policies are somehow rooted in International Law! This is exactly what Bush had argued! And it is exactly why his appearance in front of the ICC in the Hague seems a possibility (however remote) in the future. Just because there was one case of "enemy combatant" after WWII, this does not give the US the right to hold individuals in detention indefinitely without bringing charges just because the President, the Congress, or God himself said so. This is illegal! Period!
I understand that there are so many legal complexities in these cases and that some, if not many, of these individuals might be dangerous to the security of our nation. But to violate our very basic ideals is to be defeated by the enemy who holds himself to no such standard. We live in a democracy, a society ruled by law which, while imperfect and full of loopholes, is the best thing we could have come up with in the past 200 years. To throw this whole network of laws into disarray on the basis of the current (and temporary) threat to our national security is to admit defeat by exposing the fragility of our democracy and the hypocrisy of our values.
President Obama has shown immense boldness in dealing with a lot of issues and has began to implement many of his campaign promises. His policies, as I wrote in earlier posts, have led to real improvement in the life of prisoners like al-Marri. Ending the Guantanamo shame, however, remains a promise yet to be fulfilled. And he will be held accountable now that he has taken ownership of this legacy stained with war crimes.
As a constitutional lawyer I am sure that Obama is aware of former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis' famous creed that "the greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding." President Obama should laminate this quote and put it above his desk in the Oval Office.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Karl Marx was right
"Modern bourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and exchange, is like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells. For many a decade past, the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are conditions for the existence of the bourgeoisie and of its rule. It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put on trial, each time more threateningly, the existence of the entire bourgeois society" ("The Communist Manifesto" p.41, Modern edition, 1998).
Karl Marx wrote this almost two hundred years ago at a time when capitalism was cocky in its self-confidence and reading it today he seems to be talking about our current recession/depression. The first burst of the Industrial Revolution refashioned the way Western Europeans lived, pushing small peasants off their land and into the filthy cities, enriching the formerly petit-bourgeois merchants, and causing a massive explosion in urban space throughout Europe. Even the kings seemed emasculated under the crushing flow of capital which seemed to laugh in the face of nation-states. The bourgeoisie seemed to have conquered the world once and for all.
Not so fast, Marx said. The brilliance of Marx as an economist--and a founder of modern economics--is his ability to see beyond the temporary triumph of capitalism and tease out the inherent contradictions within capitalism itself. Built on glorification of greed, Marx argues, capitalism by its very nature has to continuously expand in search of new markets. The Europeans would come out of the first wave of Industrial Revolution poised to take on the whole world. It would be Lenin in the beginning of the 20th century who would take Marx further by seeing European imperialism (and the ensuing Scramble for Africa) as an inevitable and quite logical phase of capitalism. The accumulation of wealth is the very engine of capitalist growth and it would be this engine that would drive the bourgeoisie to span the globe from the expanding capitals of Europe, conquering almost every patch of land mass. The British Empire alone "owned" 1/3 of global land mass by the end of the 19th century. Capitalism needed imperialism not in order to expand for the expansion's sake, but in order to survive.
And what about the crisis today? The greed of Wall Street investors, bankers, and individual home owners pushed everyone to make immensely risky bets, endowing everyone with the irrational belief that markets will just keep growing no matter how inflated the prices were. "That's simply how you make money," the financial "expert" Jim Cramer said repeatedly, imploring investors to buy Bear Stearn stock only a few days before it plummeted. The tragic thing about this mess is that this was not some Bernie Madoff-like conspiracy by CNBC and the Wall Street to dupe the investors. The mad accumulation of capital was a very logical goal that most investors developed observing the ever-expanding markets during the boom of the late 1990s and early 2000s. This is why today's so-called financial experts are so limited in their "expertise." They completely give in to the temporary orgasmic pleasures of wealth without seeing beyond the current moment and analyzing the underlying processes making them rich: for example, why the housing prices had become so inflated. No, they did not care. As Cramer so bluntly put it: "this is how you make money." And today's millions of jobs lost, peoples' savings wiped out, European banking system on a verge of collapse? All of this is the inevitable price of making money.
And Marx realized this even before capitalism had a chance to go through constant commercial crises. Marx's prediction of an impending revolution in Western Europe might have been more wishful thinking, influenced by the enthusiasm of the 1848 Revolutions, and his vague ideas of communist society left room for some of the most horrific regimes of the 20th century (such as Stalin, or USSSR's domination of E.Europe). But his brilliance as an economist cannot be disputed. The Communist Manifesto should be a required reading in every Econ 101 class. Maybe then capitalism could become more self-reflective, mindful of the limits of greed.
Karl Marx wrote this almost two hundred years ago at a time when capitalism was cocky in its self-confidence and reading it today he seems to be talking about our current recession/depression. The first burst of the Industrial Revolution refashioned the way Western Europeans lived, pushing small peasants off their land and into the filthy cities, enriching the formerly petit-bourgeois merchants, and causing a massive explosion in urban space throughout Europe. Even the kings seemed emasculated under the crushing flow of capital which seemed to laugh in the face of nation-states. The bourgeoisie seemed to have conquered the world once and for all.
Not so fast, Marx said. The brilliance of Marx as an economist--and a founder of modern economics--is his ability to see beyond the temporary triumph of capitalism and tease out the inherent contradictions within capitalism itself. Built on glorification of greed, Marx argues, capitalism by its very nature has to continuously expand in search of new markets. The Europeans would come out of the first wave of Industrial Revolution poised to take on the whole world. It would be Lenin in the beginning of the 20th century who would take Marx further by seeing European imperialism (and the ensuing Scramble for Africa) as an inevitable and quite logical phase of capitalism. The accumulation of wealth is the very engine of capitalist growth and it would be this engine that would drive the bourgeoisie to span the globe from the expanding capitals of Europe, conquering almost every patch of land mass. The British Empire alone "owned" 1/3 of global land mass by the end of the 19th century. Capitalism needed imperialism not in order to expand for the expansion's sake, but in order to survive.
And what about the crisis today? The greed of Wall Street investors, bankers, and individual home owners pushed everyone to make immensely risky bets, endowing everyone with the irrational belief that markets will just keep growing no matter how inflated the prices were. "That's simply how you make money," the financial "expert" Jim Cramer said repeatedly, imploring investors to buy Bear Stearn stock only a few days before it plummeted. The tragic thing about this mess is that this was not some Bernie Madoff-like conspiracy by CNBC and the Wall Street to dupe the investors. The mad accumulation of capital was a very logical goal that most investors developed observing the ever-expanding markets during the boom of the late 1990s and early 2000s. This is why today's so-called financial experts are so limited in their "expertise." They completely give in to the temporary orgasmic pleasures of wealth without seeing beyond the current moment and analyzing the underlying processes making them rich: for example, why the housing prices had become so inflated. No, they did not care. As Cramer so bluntly put it: "this is how you make money." And today's millions of jobs lost, peoples' savings wiped out, European banking system on a verge of collapse? All of this is the inevitable price of making money.
And Marx realized this even before capitalism had a chance to go through constant commercial crises. Marx's prediction of an impending revolution in Western Europe might have been more wishful thinking, influenced by the enthusiasm of the 1848 Revolutions, and his vague ideas of communist society left room for some of the most horrific regimes of the 20th century (such as Stalin, or USSSR's domination of E.Europe). But his brilliance as an economist cannot be disputed. The Communist Manifesto should be a required reading in every Econ 101 class. Maybe then capitalism could become more self-reflective, mindful of the limits of greed.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
The Right to Castration
This morning's NYT is reporting on a fascinating debate in Europe echoing through chambers of the European Parliament, Council of Europe, the media, and millions of European households. At the center of the debate is the following question: should European courts mandate, allow, or prohibit the increasing practice of castration for repeated sex offenders. The Council of Europe's anti-torture committee has argued that this constitutes a cruel punishment which takes away the human right to reproduce from sex offenders. The opponents of the practice argue that sex offenders should be locked up, treated, monitored, but that state's flirtation with biological remedies to a social problem leads to the dangerous path towards eugenics. The proponents of the practice point to a Danish study of 900 sex offenders in the 1960s which showed that a rate of repeat offense after castration dropped from 80 to 2%. They also point to testimonies of (former) sex offenders themselves who after being castrated say with relief that they can finally lead happy lives no longer a threat to society.
Czech Republic has offered the procedure although hospitals point out that it is a very rare form of medical practice which is always safe and painless. After some pretty gruesome murders of children by pedophiles, Poland is also preparing legislation which would allow the courts to impose hormone-blocking drugs on repeated sex offenders.
It might surprise you that despite my decidedly liberal convictions, I am supportive of the voluntary castration measures. To allow castration is in itself a liberal value. If Europe is a haven of liberalism, it will allow the procedure to continue and even increase if that is what sex offenders desire. If the state mandated the procedure it would ignore the lack of public consensus on the issue. It is pretty clear that European public(s) are divided on this issue so for any state to take an interventionist role in this would be unethical and unconstitutional. The argument that the state has the obligation to protect the society from sex offenders does not apply here since the state already has a wide range of tools available (prison, home monitoring, psychiatric treatments, etc) to carry out this obligation. But to mandate this would be to overstep the boundaries and take a position in a public debate which has not been resolved. On the other hand, for the state to prohibit the procedure would be as equally unethical since it would once again, ignore the lack of consensus. Prohibiting or mandating castration would be tantamount to prohibiting or mandating abortion. The main reason I am vehemently pro-choice is because there is no societal consensus (is a fetus a human being, does woman have sovereignty over her womb,etc) on the issue so the choice has to be left to the individual.
It is the same case with sex offenders. They may have committed horrendous crimes and for this the state has a complete authority to take away their freedom by putting them in prisons for long time, mandating that they undergo lifelong psychiatric treatment, or monitoring their lives (or all of the above). But it is equally clear that the state has no mandate to impose biological solutions to this problem. On the other hand, if the individual sex offender voluntarily submits to the procedure, the state has no right to deny this to him/her just like it has no right to deny a terminally ill person to end their life or a woman to have an abortion.
Czech Republic has offered the procedure although hospitals point out that it is a very rare form of medical practice which is always safe and painless. After some pretty gruesome murders of children by pedophiles, Poland is also preparing legislation which would allow the courts to impose hormone-blocking drugs on repeated sex offenders.
It might surprise you that despite my decidedly liberal convictions, I am supportive of the voluntary castration measures. To allow castration is in itself a liberal value. If Europe is a haven of liberalism, it will allow the procedure to continue and even increase if that is what sex offenders desire. If the state mandated the procedure it would ignore the lack of public consensus on the issue. It is pretty clear that European public(s) are divided on this issue so for any state to take an interventionist role in this would be unethical and unconstitutional. The argument that the state has the obligation to protect the society from sex offenders does not apply here since the state already has a wide range of tools available (prison, home monitoring, psychiatric treatments, etc) to carry out this obligation. But to mandate this would be to overstep the boundaries and take a position in a public debate which has not been resolved. On the other hand, for the state to prohibit the procedure would be as equally unethical since it would once again, ignore the lack of consensus. Prohibiting or mandating castration would be tantamount to prohibiting or mandating abortion. The main reason I am vehemently pro-choice is because there is no societal consensus (is a fetus a human being, does woman have sovereignty over her womb,etc) on the issue so the choice has to be left to the individual.
It is the same case with sex offenders. They may have committed horrendous crimes and for this the state has a complete authority to take away their freedom by putting them in prisons for long time, mandating that they undergo lifelong psychiatric treatment, or monitoring their lives (or all of the above). But it is equally clear that the state has no mandate to impose biological solutions to this problem. On the other hand, if the individual sex offender voluntarily submits to the procedure, the state has no right to deny this to him/her just like it has no right to deny a terminally ill person to end their life or a woman to have an abortion.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Why David Brooks Just Doesn't Get It
In his column this morning, David Brooks, the voice of the so-called "moderate" Republicans (an oxymoron if ever there was one) criticizes the worryingly manic knee-jerk reactions of the Republicans to Obama's evolving plan to deal with the economic crisis. He opens the column promisingly by arguing that while "the Democratic response to the economic crisis has its problems, ...lets face it, the current Republican response is totally misguided." He usefully scolds the non-leadership of John Boehner whose call for a spending freeze at a time of a tsunami-like economic meltdown is so childlike that you would think he was receiving daily talking points from Jonathan Krohn (see my earlier post). Brooks also criticizes the cynically moronic pseudo populism of McCain and Co. in calling for Obama to allow banks, including AIG, to fail. We did that with Lehman brothers, remember? And what did that do? It only caused the entire European banking system to come to a grinding halt, throwing Iceland into the abyss of bankruptcy and causing a near revolution in Ukraine. In any case, David Brooks urges the Republicans to step up to the podium and accept Obama's necessary intervention in the economy while offering constructive criticism to the Democrats.
In particular, David is highly critical of Obama's multifaceted approach to the crisis that involves dealing with health care, education, and energy policy reform at the same time he is trying to stimulate the economy, help the unemployed, and save the banking system from a total meltdown. He urges his fellow Republicans to point out that instead of putting out the fire to our collective home, Obama and the Democrats are redecorating the house. The core of David Brooks' argument against the Democrats is summarized by this statement:"Democrats apparently think that dealing with the crisis is a part-time job, which leaves the afternoons free to work on long-range plans to reform education, health care, energy, and a dozen small things."
The column shows that after all these years of being wrong--on Iraq, George Bush, WMD, Iran, the election--David Brooks still does not get it! Period. He is either analytically challenged, blinded by his ideology or both. The whole point of Obama's aggressive effort to tackle these "long-term" issues IS to fix the economy. Health care reform is as inseparable from economic recovery as the fixing of the banking system is from thawing the credit markets.
It is a fact (you know the thing that is always so uncomfortable for right-wing ideologues) that health care costs have seriously crippled our economy and our way of life. A health care research institute projected that health care costs for 2006 in the US surpassed 2 trillion dollars. That is more than our current deficit and it is three times the cost of health care in 1990. Rising premiums are crippling not only the government--whose Medicaid and Medicare programs are draining state and federal budgets--but also employers and individuals. Thus, GM (the automotive giant we are so desperately trying to save) has announced a whopping $5 billion in yearly health care payments to its workers. How in the world can GM afford to pay $5 billion after losing $20 billion in one year!? The health care costs are wreaking daily havoc on millions of families throughout this country. Besides the 40 million Americans without health insurance, the recession is seriously weakening the lifestyle of even those who are insured by their employer. On May 4, 2008 NYT reported that skyrocketing premiums, less extensive coverage, and bigger deductibles were draining families' paychecks. For example, a man working for a local utility company in Tuscon, AZ reported that he had to pay $4,000 for his family's annual doctor's visit on top of $1600 per year in premiums. For those many Republicans who seem incapable of basic algebra, this totals almost $6000 per year, per middle-class family!
Instead of robotically repeating tax cuts and making an embarrassment of themselves maybe David Brooks and his colleagues ought to pick up an Algebra 101 book and educate themselves before speaking publicly and wasting everyone's time.
In particular, David is highly critical of Obama's multifaceted approach to the crisis that involves dealing with health care, education, and energy policy reform at the same time he is trying to stimulate the economy, help the unemployed, and save the banking system from a total meltdown. He urges his fellow Republicans to point out that instead of putting out the fire to our collective home, Obama and the Democrats are redecorating the house. The core of David Brooks' argument against the Democrats is summarized by this statement:"Democrats apparently think that dealing with the crisis is a part-time job, which leaves the afternoons free to work on long-range plans to reform education, health care, energy, and a dozen small things."
The column shows that after all these years of being wrong--on Iraq, George Bush, WMD, Iran, the election--David Brooks still does not get it! Period. He is either analytically challenged, blinded by his ideology or both. The whole point of Obama's aggressive effort to tackle these "long-term" issues IS to fix the economy. Health care reform is as inseparable from economic recovery as the fixing of the banking system is from thawing the credit markets.
It is a fact (you know the thing that is always so uncomfortable for right-wing ideologues) that health care costs have seriously crippled our economy and our way of life. A health care research institute projected that health care costs for 2006 in the US surpassed 2 trillion dollars. That is more than our current deficit and it is three times the cost of health care in 1990. Rising premiums are crippling not only the government--whose Medicaid and Medicare programs are draining state and federal budgets--but also employers and individuals. Thus, GM (the automotive giant we are so desperately trying to save) has announced a whopping $5 billion in yearly health care payments to its workers. How in the world can GM afford to pay $5 billion after losing $20 billion in one year!? The health care costs are wreaking daily havoc on millions of families throughout this country. Besides the 40 million Americans without health insurance, the recession is seriously weakening the lifestyle of even those who are insured by their employer. On May 4, 2008 NYT reported that skyrocketing premiums, less extensive coverage, and bigger deductibles were draining families' paychecks. For example, a man working for a local utility company in Tuscon, AZ reported that he had to pay $4,000 for his family's annual doctor's visit on top of $1600 per year in premiums. For those many Republicans who seem incapable of basic algebra, this totals almost $6000 per year, per middle-class family!
Instead of robotically repeating tax cuts and making an embarrassment of themselves maybe David Brooks and his colleagues ought to pick up an Algebra 101 book and educate themselves before speaking publicly and wasting everyone's time.
Monday, March 9, 2009
What Jonathan Krohn means for the Republican Party
There is one silver (or golden I should say) lining to the economic meltdown: it has ripped through the Republican party like a tornado, leaving Republican ideologues sitting in the shell of their former home on the only piece of furniture that has survived the storm, lamenting their faith. And this is where Jonathan Krohn comes in. He is seen as the new voice of the Republican party. Someone with fresh ideas and a natural charisma that can counter the overwhelming juggernaut that is Obama's now historic personality. Even the populist spokesman for the Republican Party "Joe the Plumber" was giddy after he had a chance to shake the savior's hand at CPAC, the annual Conservative gathering in D.C. It was at the CPAC that Jonathan vowed the Republican activists with a rousing speech re-affirming the conservative principles of the GOP reassuring them that Obama's victory was short-lived and that once again, the party would find itself back in the golden years of Ronald Reagan. The messiah of the Conservative radio Bill Bennett, and Reagan's former foot soldier, has since accepted daily calls from Jonathan into his radio show giving him a daily soap box from which he could deliver the agenda which would save the Republicans from a complete annihilation in 2010. So, should the Democrats be worried? Is a Republican comeback behind the corner? Not so much.
It turns out that Jonathan Krohn is 14 years old! When he is not being scolded by his suburban, van-driving mother (this is true--I mean you can't make this stuff up!), the 14 year old Jonathan wakes up every morning at 6am to the tune of Bill Bennett's soothing voice reassured that he lives in America. He wants the Republican Party to hold tightly onto its conservative roots: low taxes (or no taxes at all), small government, and.....low taxes. Oh, I forgot one more Republican credo: low taxes. When he is not writing his homework Jonathan is in the back of his mother's van talking to conservative radio hosts throughout the country while his mother scolds him not to be too abrasive. He even appeared on Fox and Friends, the daily morning antidote to pretentious liberal intellectual snobbery. His electrifying speech at CPAC brought, dare we say, HOPE, to the Republicans that "Yes they Can" prevent their country from being taken down the path of socialism. And Jonathan Krohn would play an integral role in this resurgence.
My giddiness at the implosion within the Republican Party is tempered by the fact that I do wish that we had a healthy opposition party, an essential ingredient in every democracy. I am afraid that with the GOP forever in exile, the Dems in Congress might get too cocky and Obama might lose the self-reflectedness that is one of his most appealing characteristics. The fact is, we need the Republicans.
My giddiness truly dissipates when I look at our economic situation: 4.4 million jobs lost since September with the monthly rate of 600,000 jobs gone (most of these are not coming back). The most pessimistic unemployment projection of 8% for the entire year has been already surpassed (it's 8.1% now) and we are only in March! The GM will almost certainly file for bankruptcy and Chapter 11 would be good news since the other kind of bankruptcy--Chapter 7--would mean liquidation (i.e. probably additional million jobs lost in a matter of days!) What is particularly worrying is that the banking system is not only NOT getting better, but it on the precipice of a complete meltdown which would make the Great Depression look like the economic boom of the Clinton years. The insurance giant AIG is begging for billions more of that TARP money in preventing its collapse which would almost certainly wipe out the pension plans of millions of Americans. In short, we are in deep, deep trouble. Economists from all sides of the political spectrum, Paul Krugman as well as the US Chamber of Commerce, believe that Obama's stimulus plan, get this, was not big enough. The stimulus' honest promise that it would create 3.5-4 million new jobs is being drowned by these numbers and panicked Americans who are literally seeing their life savings wiped out overnight as DOW plunges to the low 6000s (we were hoping 9000s would be the bottom!)
In response to the crisis Obama has assembled the country's leading economists, passed an ambitious stimulus plan, an intelligent housing program to reverse foreclosures, and is preparing to roll out a plan that would save the banking system. Britain is leading Europe's intervention as its Prime Minister Gordon Brown puts his economics' PhD to work.
And what are the Republicans doing? I mean, besides getting their daily orgasm through Rush Limbaugh (sorry for the mental picture). They are trying to loosen up gun laws in D.C.! Yes, you read it correctly. Backed by the NRA gangsters, the Republicans in both, the Senate and the House have added an amendment to the Voting Rights Bill that would give House Representatives to the District of Columbia. The price of Republicans' support: stripping any remaining gun control legislation from the Districts' laws blatantly thumbing their nose at the District's horrendous homicide rate (134% of the nation's). The bill is stalled in the House but this does not excuse the Democrats in the Senate who voted for this awful bill fearful of the NRA gangsters. The remaining gun laws in D.C. are still the strictest in the nation despite the awful Supreme Court decision in 2008 (District of Columbia vs. Heller) which declared unconstitutional the District's 1976 law which outlawed all handguns.
Maybe we can call Jonathan Krohn for advice? He might be busy these days so you might want to leave a message with his secretary, um, I mean his mother.
It turns out that Jonathan Krohn is 14 years old! When he is not being scolded by his suburban, van-driving mother (this is true--I mean you can't make this stuff up!), the 14 year old Jonathan wakes up every morning at 6am to the tune of Bill Bennett's soothing voice reassured that he lives in America. He wants the Republican Party to hold tightly onto its conservative roots: low taxes (or no taxes at all), small government, and.....low taxes. Oh, I forgot one more Republican credo: low taxes. When he is not writing his homework Jonathan is in the back of his mother's van talking to conservative radio hosts throughout the country while his mother scolds him not to be too abrasive. He even appeared on Fox and Friends, the daily morning antidote to pretentious liberal intellectual snobbery. His electrifying speech at CPAC brought, dare we say, HOPE, to the Republicans that "Yes they Can" prevent their country from being taken down the path of socialism. And Jonathan Krohn would play an integral role in this resurgence.
My giddiness at the implosion within the Republican Party is tempered by the fact that I do wish that we had a healthy opposition party, an essential ingredient in every democracy. I am afraid that with the GOP forever in exile, the Dems in Congress might get too cocky and Obama might lose the self-reflectedness that is one of his most appealing characteristics. The fact is, we need the Republicans.
My giddiness truly dissipates when I look at our economic situation: 4.4 million jobs lost since September with the monthly rate of 600,000 jobs gone (most of these are not coming back). The most pessimistic unemployment projection of 8% for the entire year has been already surpassed (it's 8.1% now) and we are only in March! The GM will almost certainly file for bankruptcy and Chapter 11 would be good news since the other kind of bankruptcy--Chapter 7--would mean liquidation (i.e. probably additional million jobs lost in a matter of days!) What is particularly worrying is that the banking system is not only NOT getting better, but it on the precipice of a complete meltdown which would make the Great Depression look like the economic boom of the Clinton years. The insurance giant AIG is begging for billions more of that TARP money in preventing its collapse which would almost certainly wipe out the pension plans of millions of Americans. In short, we are in deep, deep trouble. Economists from all sides of the political spectrum, Paul Krugman as well as the US Chamber of Commerce, believe that Obama's stimulus plan, get this, was not big enough. The stimulus' honest promise that it would create 3.5-4 million new jobs is being drowned by these numbers and panicked Americans who are literally seeing their life savings wiped out overnight as DOW plunges to the low 6000s (we were hoping 9000s would be the bottom!)
In response to the crisis Obama has assembled the country's leading economists, passed an ambitious stimulus plan, an intelligent housing program to reverse foreclosures, and is preparing to roll out a plan that would save the banking system. Britain is leading Europe's intervention as its Prime Minister Gordon Brown puts his economics' PhD to work.
And what are the Republicans doing? I mean, besides getting their daily orgasm through Rush Limbaugh (sorry for the mental picture). They are trying to loosen up gun laws in D.C.! Yes, you read it correctly. Backed by the NRA gangsters, the Republicans in both, the Senate and the House have added an amendment to the Voting Rights Bill that would give House Representatives to the District of Columbia. The price of Republicans' support: stripping any remaining gun control legislation from the Districts' laws blatantly thumbing their nose at the District's horrendous homicide rate (134% of the nation's). The bill is stalled in the House but this does not excuse the Democrats in the Senate who voted for this awful bill fearful of the NRA gangsters. The remaining gun laws in D.C. are still the strictest in the nation despite the awful Supreme Court decision in 2008 (District of Columbia vs. Heller) which declared unconstitutional the District's 1976 law which outlawed all handguns.
Maybe we can call Jonathan Krohn for advice? He might be busy these days so you might want to leave a message with his secretary, um, I mean his mother.
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