The Soap Box

Occupiers, Not Liberators

Esgie — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 17:59:02 +0000

In the re-election race of his life, Republican Senator Mike DeWine of Ohio let the cat out of the bag this morning on Meet the Press. According to Senator DeWine, we’re in Iraq for us, not for the Iraqis. Acting as though this is common knowledge, Senator DeWine appeared not to even notice that he single-handedly put the final nail in the coffin of President Bush’s Iraq policy. Luckily for him, the rest of the nation is not likely to notice either.

A quick review is in order. The Bush administration bombed its way into Iraq for three main reasons: First, Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and therefore posed a “grave and gathering” threat to the U.S.; Second, the Iraqi regime was connected to the attacks of September 11th and al Qaeda, and might even transfer some of these weapons to “the terrorists” leading to a mushroom cloud over New York City; Third, Saddam Hussein had used these weapons of mass destruction against his own people who need to be liberated from a regime with no respect for human rights.

One by one, each justification for the most costly American war since Vietnam — in terms of dollars and human lives — fell by the wayside and the administration, never detered, simply shifted focus to the next justification on the list. A thorough search of Iraq (to say the least) failed to turn up a single shred of evidence that Iraq had any active unconventional weapons programs operating at the time of the invasion. We now know that Vice President Cheney himself personally made sure that our intelligence agencies were following every lead and overturning every rock. Still nothing. It took the administration many more months than it did David Kay, their chief weapon’s hunter, to bring themselves to admit that there were no weapons, but finally the adminstration, too, gave up on this argument. House Majority Leader John Boehner and Senator Rick Santorum are now the two last remaining people in the country who continue to keep their fingers cross that something will turn up one of these days.

No matter. “At the time, everyone believed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction,” the Republicans say and move on to the next justification. (N.B. “everyone” doesn’t include Joe Wilson, Mohammad El-Baradei, Hans Blix, Colin Powell, the French, the Germans, the Russians, probably George “slam dunk” Tenet, and half of the American people, and “believed” means that, on-balance, the cherry-picked intelligence outweighed the contradictory intelligence which was suppressed and, where it somehow made its way through the process, was completely ignored.) Unfortunately, Iraq’s connection to September 11th was a short-lived justification for the war. Affective during the intitial sales pitch, once the drums of war stopped beating, the American people managed to hear through the din the voices of all rational people who quickly debunked the “evidence” that Iraq officials had had operational meetings with and harbored al Qaeda operatives. The 9/11 Commission finally laid to rest the notion that there was any operational relationship at all between Iraq and al Qaeda.

But the connection between the Iraq War and the War on Terrorism continued to offer the administration some cover for some time more. “We’re fighting them over there so that we don’t have to fight them over here,” was the guiding mantra. Sadly, this is perhaps the one true statement on the war that has come out of this administration. Although before the invasion Iraq was virtually devoid of any militants who posed a true risk to our national security, today the coutry is rife with them, and the risk they pose is mainly to our troops stationed within the country. Remove the troops, remove the threat. Substantially, but not entirely. Iraq is virtually doomed to become the next Afghanistan, a failed state which offers an effective home base to al Qaeda, and that does pose a true threat to our security even after the troops have gone.

Unfortunately, our fight in Iraq only postpones this outcome, at best.
It is true that we are fighting “them” over there so that we don’t have to fight them over here. Much of al Qaeda’s focus — if an ill-defined, decentralized world-wide movement can have a focus — has been shifted to finishing the process of destabilizing Iraq which we initiated with our invasion. This, of course, could never be a justification for the invasion itself, unless the administration was prescient enough to have calculated that after the invasion there would be a major insurgency which would draw “the terrorists” into the country where we could confront them. We know for sure that’s not the case. So the White House apparently made the grotesque calculation that it is desireable to condemn 100 innocent Iraqis (and various numbers of American soldiers) to death each day to ensure that 3,000 Americans won’t die in the next many years to come that it will take al Qaeda to be able to plan and execute another September 11th-scale attack. Gives one a sense of just how much an innocent Arab life is worth to the White House when compared to an American life.

Fortunately, neither is this justification withstanding the test of time. Currently, the majority of Americans do not see the War in Iraq as connected to the War on Terrorism, perhaps because it’s doing nothing to help Iraq avoid its fate of becoming a failed state which harbors terrorists. This is fortunate because in addition to being merely an after-the-fact rationalization of the initial invasion, fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them here isn’t even working. The President cites the fact that there have been no further attacks on American soil as evidence that his strategy is working. However, correlation does not equal causation. The only previous al Qaeda attack on American soil, the attack against the World Trade Center in 1993, came eight years before September 11th. By that measure, Mr. Bush won’t even be in office any longer when the time comes that he can legitimately claim to be keeping the homeland safe.

Much worse, claiming that this strategy has been effective ignores the many major terrorist attacks that have been successfully carried out around the world since the War in Iraq began. The war has failed to keep the people of London or Madrid safe. Worldwide, the number of terrorist attacks have only increased since the war began, and the intelligence services now tell us that the War in Iraq has officially made us less safe. A lack of attacks on American soil is no evidence that our fight in Iraq has impeded “the terrorists’” ability to strike where they wish. As with much of this administration’s foreign policy, what dogs their attempt at selling their rosey version of events is much less their wrong-headed policy as the incompetence with which they attempt to carry it out.

This all left a single remaining justification for the War in Iraq: liberating the good people of that nation. For the entire length of the war so far, President Bush has always taken great pains to point out that the United States is in Iraq to liberate it, not to occupy it. As the Iraqi’s stand up, we will stand down, he has always said. If the Iraqis ask us to leave, we will leave. Perhaps it was due to our complete lack of control over the country that there was never any serious suspicion among the American people that our role in Iraq was as an occupier (incompetence saves the day again). That has, of late, begun to change.

More and more Americans are beginning to believe that we aren’t standing down as the Iraqis stand up, or at least that the Iraqis aren’t standing up and we’re not trying too hard to get them to. Certainly more and more Iraqis are beginning to wish the Americans would leave their country, now a solid majority. Despite that clear majority, it appears that the President will insist that he hear it from the loyalist Iraqi leadership before he believes that the Iraqis are asking us to leave (just like requests for more troops have to come from the top generals in charge, hand-picked by Defense Secretary Rumsfeld for their unwillingness to make waves, before he’ll send more troops).

Nevertheless, things still seem to be holding together on the notion that we’re fighting to give the Iraqis a stable, free nation. Then comes Senator DeWine and blurts out the fact that we’re in Iraq for ourselves, not for the Iraqis. The only important objective left in Iraq is the safety of the United States. “Step down when they step up? We’ll leave if they ask us to? Don’t think so.” Now that sounds like occupier talk.

To recap, no weapons of mass destruction, no connection to “the terrorists,” and no liberating here. What’s the truth, Mr. President? What is the real justification for the War in Iraq? “We invaded Iraq to protect the innocent Iraqis from an evil communist — er, terrorist regime which had the potential to spread the communist — er, terrorist threat throughout the world which would jeopardize our national security. We will win the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese — er, Iraqi people when we liberate their country from the enemy and hand them a stable, democratic nation tied up neatly in a bow.”

Senator DeWine inadvertently confirmed for the nation the true reason we now find ourselves bogged down in Iraq: because we’ve forgotten why we lost the last one we got bogged down in.

How Not to Think About Israel

Esgie — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 22:18:56 +0000

Just like opinions concerning the greater conflict in which the State of Israel has been embroiled for decades, the various positions people stake out with regard specifically to Israel’s role within the region are often based on misunderstanding and ignorance. Reaction to the latest hostilities that have erupted in the Middle East is once again exposing the ignorance of that region’s history which many on the left are relying upon. The final truth about the current conflict and the entire Palestinian-Israeli conflict itself is that the situation is extremely complicated and lends itself to very few absolutely right answers, just like every other geo-political conflict that has ever occurred anywhere around the globe. Regardless, spectators of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict seem to feel entitled to their own authoritative opinion on the moral righteousness of Israel’s existence and its actions. Unfortunately, more often than not, and particularly it appears for those on the left, these viewpoints are based on myths about the Middle East which are spread as propaganda by one side or the other in order to gain a rhetorical — and ultimately a military — advantage in the conflict.

One such myth states that the American Jewish community has hijacked United States foreign policy by pressuring the federal government into unwaivering support of Israel. For some on the left, this perspective conflates into a crass anti-Semitism which posits that the majority of American Jews (or at least the majority of organized American Jews) uniformly promote the Israeli agenda in the halls of American government, as if American Jews are a monolith and there is a singular “Israeli agenda.” As proof of the theory, adherents often note the presence of (a few) Jewish people in high positions of power in the federal government who do not aggressively criticize Israeli policy or who advocate other seemingly anti-Arab policies (because if it’s anti-Arab, it must be pro-Israel) or Middle East policies with which they disagree, such as the Iraq War.

Every community — religious, ethnic, or otherwise — has its share of hawks and conservatives. Ultimately, it was Colin Powell’s speech to the U.N. which sealed the deal for the neocons’ war plan in Iraq. Some of those neocons, such as Paul Wolfowitz, are Jewish, although there is never any discussion of how strongly these officials identify as Jewish or feel a bond with the State of Israel based on religious or ethnic identity; it’s enough merely to point out their heritage. Despite there being at least a valid basis now to believe that Powell knew precisely what he was doing when he gave what amounted to essentially a falsified report to the Security Counsel in order to garner world support for the invasion, and that he was likely the only person in the world who could have possibly stopped the President from going to war, there has never been any suggestion that the United Stated entered into the Iraq War because the well-organized and extremely influential Black community in the United States pushed for it. Such an allegation has been lodged, however, against the American Jewish community.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, is the sole reason why some on the left believe it is acceptable to brush the entire American Jewish community as “pro-Israel” and as being at least partially responsible for the War in Iraq. The NAACP didn’t engage in a years-long campaign to push for a policy of overthrowing Saddam Hussein the way that AIPAC did, so the Black community is not implicated the way the Jewish community is. But AIPAC does not speak for the American Jewish community any more than the Christian Coalition speaks for the Protestant community. The American Jewish community is as diverse as all of our other religious and ethnic communities, many of whom are opposed to much of AIPAC’s policy positions.

Even AIPAC’s role in promoting the Iraq War can be grossly overstated. AIPAC is an extremely affective lobbying organization, and they are able to have a significant impact on politicians in Washington. But President Bush did not make the decision to go to war based on AIPAC’s lobbying any more than President Clinton nominated Stephen Breyer to the Supreme Court based on lobbying for a pro-choice candidate by EMILY’s List; sure, lobbying may have helped, but President Bush was going to go to war for his own reasons whether AIPAC was pushing for it or not. The Jewish community is not even a particularly influential voting block (they make up only about 2% of the population) and have historically voted solidly Democratic. Even if Republicans were able to score a coup and capture the entire Jewish vote as a reward for their cooperation with AIPAC, the political benefits would be negligible. AIPAC’s influence in Washington is commonly overstated by those on the left; they mainly are a true believer’s best friend, useful to accomplish objectives which one already wishes to realize.

The close relationship between the United States and Israel has always been the result of America’s own geo-political self-interests. The relationship didn’t begin in earnest until the late 1950’s or early 1960’s, after the decades-long struggle between native Arabs and Jewish settlers culminating in the controversial birth of the State of Israel in 1948, all of which the United States essentially watched from the sidelines. Contrary to the popular perception on the left that this relationship has been dominated by the overwhelming political influence of American Jews, the relationship was born out of the Cold War struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union. At the time, the American Jews who are thought to have hijacked American foreign policy in the Middle East were still excluded from institutions of higher learning based on their ethnicity and restrictive covenants kept them out of homes in white neighborhoods, just as Black Americans were, hardly a position from which a community overpowers the U.S. Department of State.

In the 1950s, the Soviet Union shrewdly saw an opportunity to expand the influence of Communism in the newly established post-colonial Arab states of the Middle East. The Soviets had significant influence over states such as Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. Close relations with Israel was the United States’ best option for countering the spread of Communism throughout the region. In this sense, the relationship between the United States and Israel is comparable to our longstanding and costly relationship with South Korea; and yet no one has suggested that this relationship resulted from overpowering political influence in the South Korean American community, or that the relationship hasn’t been to the United States’ benefit.

Israel has fought many of the Middle East wars in which it has been a participant using American-made fighters and munitions that the United States has supplied them with, some on the left complain. American tax dollars have gone to funding Israel’s aggression against neighboring states and oppression of the Palestinian people. What is never acknowledged is that all of those Arab states with which Israel has warred repeatedly — sometimes in wars flagrantly instigated by those other states — were being armed by the Soviet Union, fighting wars in Soviet fighters and using Soviet munitions. Some of those nations continue to be armed by Russia today. Over the years, American tax dollars have gone towards countering Soviet (and now Russian) military influence, essentially fighting the Cold War in the Middle East by proxy. These Arab regimes have also had a long history of oppressing their native Jewish populations, many of whom have also been displaced from their homes in the years since Israel came into existence. It is estimated that more Arab Jews in these countries were displaced when those countries clamped down on their Jewish populations following the 1948 war than there were displaced Palestinians in Israel.

None of which justifies Israeli’s position vis-a-vis the Palestinians, or even the situation in the greater Middle East. What is clear is that the myth that Israel (or American Jews) have hijacked our foreign policy cannot be sustained. For instance, proponents of this position frequently cite the fact that Israel is the greatest recipient of American foreign aid, receiving $48.7 billion between 1960 and 2004, as evidence that our government is a slave to the Israeli cause. However, seldom do these same people acknowledge that the nation coming in a close second — at $42.9 billion during the same period — is Egypt, one of the nations which the United States has allegedly blindly opposed at Israel’s command until the 1970s and which continues to spread virulent anti-Semitism throughout the region today, including the very myth that the United States is under Israel’s command.

In fiscal year 2005, Israel received $2.58 billion in U.S. foreign aid while Egypt, with whom Israel has long been at peace, received $1.84 billion. But making peace with Israel is not a quid pro quo for jumping to the head of the aid line; Jordan, who has also made a lasting peace with Israel, is only seventh on the list of recipients in 2005, behind Pakistan, Colombia, and the Sudan, the nation which has been slaughtering innocent civilians in Darfur. Cessation of hostilities by Egypt and Jordan has increased stability in the region where so much of the world’s supply of oil resides, which is a direct strategic benefit to the United States. American aid has been directed to the Middle East to support stability, just as it flowed into Europe after World War II, and into Southeast Asia — particularly South Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam — in the 1950s and 1960s at the height of the Cold War.

The United States has always conducted its foreign policy in the Middle East in its own interest — not on the basis of Israel or American Jews dominating the relationship — first as a major front in the Cold War, and now as its only dependable entrée (with the slow collapse of the Saudi regime and the mess in Iraq) into a region of great strategic importance based primarily upon access to oil, and in which it is otherwise almost entirely irrelevant (some European nations have very close relations with Arab countries as their former colonies, an avenue to influence which the United States has never had the benefit of).

But the most common and by far the most damaging myth attractive to those on the left with regard to the situation in the Middle East is that all of the violence is a result of Israel’s illegal occupation of Arab lands, and that if they would merely withdraw from the Occupied Territories back within the 1967 borders, the violence would cease. Virtually nothing asserted in this point of view, however, even remotely resembles the reality on the ground.

The Middle East is among the regions with the longest recorded history of humanity, and that history is a veritable laundry list of conflicts and hostilities which make understanding virtually any contemporary relationship there nearly impossible. For Jews, their connection to the modern State of Israel goes literally back to biblical times when the land was given to them by God, and before they were conquered and dispersed by a variety of invading forces. Katha Politt once argued in the pages of The Nation that, besides the obvious problems of verification, no claim to land based on divine gift should be considered legitimate as it invites conflicting claims which can never be resolved. And yet, heavenly conveyances aside, no one disputes the historical fact that the holy city of Jerusalem would not exist today if the Jews had not built it in the days before Jesus or Muhammad, and that it would always have been control by the Jews if the city had not been taken from them by force. Some Jews have maintained a continual presence in modern-day Israel and the surrounding areas since biblical times, and there can be no dispute that the Jewish people (an extraordinarily coherent diasporic community) have legitimate historical ties to the region.

Regardless, to many Arabs, every inch of the modern State of Israel belongs in Arab hands. Virtually all militant groups in the area, and even many of the Arab states, have made it their explicit goal to destroy the entire State of Israel and drive the Jews out of the region, usually choosing the Mediterranean Sea as the prefered exit point (and not on boats). For instance, Hezbollah, a Lebonese Shiite Muslim militant group, precipitated the current crisis even after Israel had withdrawn completely from every inch of occupied Lebanon years ago. Likewise, Israel’s voluntary withdrawal from Gaza preceded Hamas’s recent incursion into Israel proper and the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier. If what these anti-Israel forces want is withdrawal from the areas which Israel currently occupies beyond the 1967 borders, they certainly have a strange way of encouraging it.

Certainly the Israeli occupation is problematic for reasons which extend beyond the physical control of portions of land. Palestinians experience degredations at the hands of Israeli forces, including incarceration or worse, which militants and Arab states might legitimately oppose even if Israel does withdraw its forces from discrete areas. But the paradigm which forms the basis of the myth of Israeli violence as the root cause of the conflict is one of Israeli hatred and Arab unity. The surrounding Arab states and militant groups (sometimes including even al Qaeda) purport simply to have the Palestinians’ best interests in mind when they attack Israel and want only to see them returned to their rightful place in the community of nations.

The idea that al Qaeda has anyone’s best interests in mind is laughable; and it is only slightly more believeable that Islamic militant groups in the area or other Arab nations (many of whom are Shiite) are looking out for the Palestinians (who are Sunni). The regional wars which surrounding nations played at least a part in instigating have done absolutely nothing to improve the lot of Palestinians. On the contrary, as moderate Arab nations have evolved towards a political resolution of the wider conflict, some — particularly Jordan and Egypt — have developed antagonisms with the Palestinians. Palestinian refugees who had fled to Jordan after the 1948 war openly opposed the Jordanian monarchy and precipitated a civil war there in which Syria also involved itself (on the side of the Palestinians, against Jordan). The PLO then took refuge in southern Lebanon after being driven out of Jordan and, by perpetrating attacks on northern Israel, instigated the Israeli occupation of a buffer zone in southern Lebanon, leading to the creation of Hezbollah as an armed resistance to the Israeli occupation which the PLO had provoked; Hezbollah’s raison d’etre was to fight back the Israeli occupation of Lebanon, not to fight for the return of any other Israeli-occupied lands which the Palestinians laid claim to. And although Egypt occupied the Gaza Strip between 1948 and 1967 (nearly twenty years), it maintained a closed border with Gaza and never offered the Palestinians citizenship or autonomy. When Israel recaptured Gaza in the 1967 war, Egypt made no effort to regain the territory. Neither Jordan nor Egypt ever attempted to establish a Palestinian state in either the West Bank or Gaza even though they were both part of a Palestinian state contemplated in the U.N. partition plan of 1947. Until recently, when the Palestinians had become relatively stable in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza, the surrounding Arab populations had not been their friends so much as the common enemy of the Jewish State of Israel.

Neither have the Palestinian militant groups done much to improve the station of the Palestinian people. For decades, Yassir Arafat used the PLO to enrich himself immensely and amass unrivaled personal power both before and after signing peace accords with Israel. Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other militant organizations continued to engage in counter-productive assaults on Israel even when the prospect of peace was nearing fruition, and no militant group challenged Arafat’s (and then the Palestinian Authority’s) rampant corruption which plundered the wealth of the Palestinian people. All focus was on “ending the Israeli occupation.”

In a recent interview with John McLaughlin on national television, the Syrian ambassador to the United States professed his belief that if Israel returned “our occupied lands”, this would end all violence in the Middle East. This neatly sums up the core of the myth which undergirds so much of the left’s hostility towards Israel. However, neither retreating from southern Lebanon nor from Gaza recently earned Israel any good will with militant groups. It was seen instead as either a victory for armed resistance (in Lebanon), or a refusal on Israel’s part to fulfill its obligations to negotiate with a counterpart bent on its destruction (in Gaza). It is not clear what occupied lands the return of which the ambassador believes would magically end all of these hostilities; perhaps he was referring to the entire State of Israel, contending that once all the Jews were driven into the sea, the attacks on them would stop.

But even this is much too simplistic. Jordan and Egypt still have scant love for the Palestinians, and vice versa. Hezbollah is supported by Syria, but many in Lebanon resent Syria’s meddling in Lebonese affairs, which are for all intents and purposes still controlled either by Syria or Hezbollah. And the various Palestinian militias, principally Hamas and Fatah, have never gotten along with one another; their relations have recently strained so far as to have resulted in gunfights on the streets of Gaza as they jockey for power over the Palestinian-controlled territories. And that is to say nothing of Iran’s clear designs now on becoming the primary powerbroker within the region, the sectarian splits within Iraq, or the tensions between the Kurds of northern Iraq and Turkey, never mind al Qaeda’s goal of overturning the “secular” governments of moderate Arab countries and create one pan-Arab Muslim theocracy. Even if Israel had never come into existence, violence in the Middle East would still be going strong.

That is because there is little in the Middle East which is organic, which makes sense on its own. Virtually all of the national borders in the region were devised by colonizing powers in the first half of the Twentieth Century. Even the call for Israel to return to the 1967 borders, a final disposition which is almost universally accepted as a solution to all of the Middle East’s problems (except by the proponents of Israeli settlement building and by Arab militants and states which still cling to the dream of eradicating the Jews), has no basis in logic or history. The post-1967 borders are no less valid than the 1947 partition plan, or the 1948 borders following Israel’s war for independence. Most of what people on the left or the right consider to be commonly held truths about the conflict are actually nothing more than a point of view.

Which is precisely why the conflict has been so intractable for so long. The myths which both sides spread and attempt to perpetuate eventually take hold and appear as truths. But those myths which the left in this country has embraced are particularly damaging, not just to Israel but to all of the West. The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is a convenient excuse for any violent acts or threats which Islamist extremists decide they would like to commit: Iran obtaining nuclear weapons, Syria invading and controling Lebanon, Osama bin Laden attacking Manhattan to punish the U.S. for its support of Israel. There is no question that Israel has acted inappropriately, and that U.S. policy in the region has been flawed at times. But the notion that all of the problems of extremist Islam have their roots in Israel’s occupation of Arab lands is nothing but a shell game to divert attention from the share of blame for the current situation which belongs to tyrranical regimes and terrorist organizations, and from their repressive policies which keep so many of the world’s Arab civilians living under crushing and unaccountable regimes. And the myth that Israel and American Jews are holding the United States hostage to their interests in the region is merely an attempt to blame the mess on someone else who won’t threaten or attack us for doing so, rather than admitting that it is our own self-interests which drive us to be involved in the first place. It also allows us to avoid the fact that the absence of peace in the region is as much the result of virtulent anti-Semitism and militant theocracy as it is the result of an unjust occupation. Under these conditions, it is hard to imagine either side understanding the other sufficiently for peace ever to flourish in that troubled region, and bridging the gap between Islam and the West might as well be a pipe dream.

The Missing Truth

Esgie — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 03:37:08 +0000

I want to start at the end and say I do not believe Al Gore should run for president again in 2008, or probably ever. The fact is, the man really just isn’t a great politician. There’s a reason his campaign was hijacked by consultants in 2000 who convinced him to run a campaign centered around earthtone sportscoats and middle-aged makeout sessions on national television: It’s because Al Gore has an uncanny ability to make issues unbearable with a laundry list of esoteric facts.

Essentially, Vice President Gore does exactly that in the new documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. The film turns out not to be unbearable precisely because it is a film, not a candidate’s debate. Gore wants to impart to you every interesting detail about global warming because he is passionate about it. And though the film is chock full of charts and graphs and big-sounding words, everyone knows what to expect walking into the theatre and everyone manages to learn quite a bit. Something Americans are acutely unwilling to tolerate from their elected officials.

That is Al Gore’s strength. For those willing to listen, the man can teach you everything you need to know about an issue. He’s an informed electorate-making machine the likes of which is truly unparalleled in our country. So long as he is doing what he’s doing now, rather than trying to convince a half-concious country to like him, the man truly is a national treasure. (As an aside, I don’t want to see him become president, but Gore would make the best EPA Administrator this country has ever seen.)

There is a single truth on display in Gore’s movie that stands out above all of the rest, but not because he emphasizes it. In fact, it is really given tangential treatment compared to all of the scientific data he imparts. Despite the short-shrift it’s given in the movie, this truth is truly the crux of the matter; it is the truth around which the entire global warming issue revolves.

Gore tells us that some scientists performed a survey of peer-reviewed scientific papers on global warming which unconvered that not a single one of those scholarly works challenged the consensus that the earth is warming and that human behavior is causing it. A similar survey of popular media stories about global warming, however, found that over fifty percent of those stories suggested that there is some debate concerning two points. Clearly, the media was not reflecting the scientific reality while it was reporting on a scientific phenomenon. The news stories were about politics.

The media is the single reason why our environmental policy is the way it is. If there was no doubt among the American public that we are indeed destroying the environment upon which we rely for survival, we would not countenance such changes in policy as withdrawing from the Kyoto Protocols (or Gov. Romney of Massachusetts backing out of a similar environmental pact between the New England states, as he did recently). Because science is extremely complicated, and because the American public don’t enjoy listening to smart people lecturing at them, we rely on the media to filter scientific facts in a reliable and at least slightly entertaining way.

So why does the media tells us that there is debate about global warming when not a single scientist ever said anything of the sort? Politics, of course. But it’s not enough just to say politics, or to say that there is money to be made. The global warming “debate” is a product of the most insidious fraud perpetrated on the American people in decades, and to disasterous effect: The concerted effort by the political right to create the myth of the liberal media.

The role of the media - once upon a time - was to unconver and report on the truth. Courageous reporters would investigate an issue and stand up to demagogues, protecting the American people from bad policy devised for the benefit of a few at the expense of the many, and sold to the public through lies. Particularly with respect to quantifiable matters such as science, the role of the media was to report on the facts, not the spin. But so effective has the right been at discrediting media institutions by crying bias that even our greatest institutions are scared to death of being labeled as liberal. The result is that the spin has become the story - just report on what they said rather than whether it’s true. Fact checking has become that gameshow-esque portion of the news broadcast where the intrepid reporter doles out equal helpings of “that’s not exactly true” to each side like a mother administering spankings following a fight which each child insists the other started. It is as if the media has thrown up its hands, concluding that politicians lie and that’s just the way it is, so they might as well make it entertaining and make a few bucks off of it. Meanwhile, the people no longer have any means for deciding what is good policy and what is bad; everything is good policy, depending on who you ask.

The country is no longer safe from demagogues, and policy gets to be made by the best snake oil salesman in Washington. That’s why fuel efficiency standards for cars in the United States are abysmally low; that’s why the United States is no longer a signatory to the Kyoto Protocols; that’s why instead of reducing our dependence on foreign oil by simply using less oil, we are on the verge of completely destroying a large portion of what’s left of the wildlands in Alaska for a pittance of oil that won’t reduce the cost of it or our dependence upon it.

And that’s why we need Al Gore not to run for president in 2008. The truth is, no matter who takes over in the oval office in January of 2009 - Republican or Democrat - energy consumption in the United States will not be drastically reduced unless we begin getting some truth from our media once again. More than we need a competent president or campaign finance reform, we need media reform in this country. We need a revival of standards of journalistic integrity. We just need a few investigative reporters again whose job it is to report on the truth that the media isn’t even looking for. We need Al Gore to kick Katie Couric to the curb and succeed Dan Rather as anchor of the evening news. We need him to keep bringing us the truth, and to get others to start doing the same.

The American people are missing out on a lot of truth, and that is where every fight must begin.

This just in: The NSA keeps you safe

Esgie — Sun, 29 Jan 2006 19:57:16 +0000

It should have occurred to everyone the moment the story broke: The Bush Administration’s domestic spying scandal is not a constitutional crisis, or a case of an unchecked executive; it’s about security, stupid. The National SECURITY Agency. It seems Karl Rove may already have successfully spun the story right into a royal flush for the GOP.

We now know that a majority of Americans agree that spying on Americans who might have some connection to Al Qaeda - even though it likely violates the Fourth Amendment - is the right thing to do. (Really, we should pretty much take it for granted that a majority of Americans will agree with any poll that includes the words “Al Qaeda.”) When the nation first learned that the NSA had been listening in on their phone conversations, it sounded like the resurrection of Richard Nixon; once the administration finally weighed in, we all learned that the program just makes America more secure against “the terrorists.”

Karl Rove doesn’t frequently push for a policy position which turns out to be a political loser, and so it appears that, not only will there be no impeachment hearings, but the Democrats very well may lose this issue entirely long before the 2006 elections. Rove is banking on the fact that developing an effective counter-strategy to the now perennial GOP security argument will continue to be the bane of the Democratic Party in the post-September 11th world. However, unlike 2002 and 2004, this time we’re also in the post-Iraq and post-Katrina world.

The Constitution itself should be a sufficient counter-argument to framing this scandal in security terms. Ben Franklin does all of the heavy lifting for you: “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” (How wonderful would it now be had this quote of his been repeated endlessly in the media just a few weeks ago on his 300th birthday?) But in order to be successful, the groundwork for a constitutional strategy in this case should have been laid before the GOP weighed in on the issue, and certainly before a majority of the public sided with them, because constitutional arguments rarely trump security in public opinion, even with Franklin’s help. Americans rarely support the Bill of Rights because they generally believe that it’s designed to provide protections only to those who really need it, i.e. the guilty, à la I don’t call Al Qaeda, so why not let the Bush administration listen in on the phone conversations of people who do?

The Democrats still have one very powerful weapon that could be brought to bear successfully against the GOP’s security argument in this scandal, and against every other security argument this administration makes from now until 2008. American’s value security, the Constitution (to some extent) . . . and trust. The President has violated that trust repeatedly and egregiously by leading us into a war in Iraq to prevent the spread of what we now conclusively know were imaginary WMD, and then again by failing to keep the people of the Gulf Coast safe in the face of a major natural distaster. In 2002, the GOP reran footage of the President on a heap of rubble at Ground Zero; in 2006, the Democrats must rerun footage of the President pretending to protect the people of the Gulf Coast.

The issue of trust is particularly paramount in the domestic spying scandal because the program is secret and the President himself has said it must remain that way. The administration’s case essentially boils down to: This is necessary to secure our nation against our enemies. I can’t tell you or even the other branches of government exactly what we’re doing, so you’ll just have to trust us. The security half of the argument may be true (even if it isn’t true, it’s politically impossible to oppose), but the trust half of the argument could be a big, big loser for the administration. Why should we trust you to be able to identify who really is connected to Al Qaeda and to leave the innocent alone? Why should we trust you to keep us safe from Al Qaeda at all?! And hey, WHERE’S OSAMA?!!

How to exploit this weakness? First, Iraq and Katrina should be the most oft-repeated words in the media. Every Democrat who ever stands in front of a microphone must repeat the message that this President has squandered the American people’s trust (specifically referencing Iraq’s WMD and Hurricane Katrina, the same way the GOP can’t stop saying September 11th), and so should not be allowed to exercise an unchecked power of domestic surveillance. Second, Democrats need to do a better job of emphasizing the six month window which the administration has to turn things around in Iraq. Democrats like Lieberman and Biden need to stop offering optomistic cheerleading for the President and start holding his feet to the fire. If Tim Russert asks you whether Iraq is going to turn out okay, the answer is, “Well, Tim, I don’t know. It’s not looking real good right now, but there is a six month window for the President to get this right. He got us into this; let’s see if he gets us out of it.” Not only did the President take the nation to war based on a mistake (at best), but we’re also in grave danger of losing that war because of the administration’s incompetent execution. That needs to be the focus.

With the administration looking weak on security, the issue of unconstitutional domestic spying can successfully be reframed as the high crime it truly is. The President will be radioactive in the November elections, the GOP’s security advantage will disappear (possibly ushering in huge Democratic electoral victories), and moderate Republicans up for re-election will be forced to supprt investigations into whether the President broke the law in order to avoid being tossed out by their constituents.

An opposition party does not need to have better ideas for keeping the country safe. That is the job of the party in power; they hold all of the tools. Half of the challenge of convincing the nation that the opposition party is better suited to lead is merely pointing out the incompotence the party in power, why they should no longer be trusted. From there, the second half of the challenge takes care of itself.

King is Dead. Long Live King.

Esgie — Sat, 21 Jan 2006 20:31:45 +0000

That’s it, we’ve finally done it. We’ve finally killed Martin Luther King.

In 1968 he was martyred, and though the civil rights movement that he was such an essential participant in - and of which he remains the principal representative - splintered and fizzled beginning even before his death, his legacy continued to have at least some meaning until recently. King was gone, and yet we still talked from time to time about the color line in our country. The government and politicians still at least postured as though they were doing something about it. We could agree that there was a problem, and we backed government programs (though not fully) to deal with them.

But this year, on Martin Luther King Day, we were treated to two political moments which conclusively demonstrate that Dr. King has indeed crossed over to the other side, into the world of totally ineffectual mythic national symbols. The first was Senator Hillary Clinton in a black church in Harlem, where she compared the U.S. House of Representatives to a plantation on which the Republicans are the slaveholders and the Democrats, presumably, are the slaves. At the same time, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin informed the nation that New Orleans will be a chocolate city once again, because God wants it that way. And both of them are Democrats.

Nowadays, rather than discussing resegregation in our urban centers, racial tracking in our schools, and outrageous levels of unemployment among black workers, our politicians only feel compelled on Martin Luther King Day to make vague references to race in order to score the obligatory politcal points. And those points are so easy to capture. It doesn’t even require any understanding of racism in contemporary America. According to Clinton, black people are no longer the principal party in need of salvation from racism and prejudice; apparently, the Democratic Party are now the slaves, and once they are freed, the emancipation of black America will follow. And even Bootsy Collins knows that chocolate cities went out of style twenty years ago; no one wants to see destitute, majority-black urban centers anymore. To add insult to injury, once the MLK balloons and streamers come down, it’s back to personal responsibility, work instead of welfare, and school vouchers for the pols.

In the 1970’s, King’s vision was still being pursued, albeit through more militant vehicles such as Black Power. As recently as the 1980’s, King’s importance to American culture and history was directly debated and affirmed when the federal holiday was established to honor him. And the push from multiculturalists to include more minority voices in American culture and education that culminated in the 1990’s often drew inspiration and claimed legitimacy from King’s legacy. In retrospect, these movements represent the clear dissolution of King’s legacy from effective direct social action against injustice and poverty to mere symbolism. And now that transformation is finally complete.

King’s legacy has been demoted as an active force in our society, reduced to a national motto, a vacuous platitude to reference on the back of a coin. All that’s left is his dream. Just as the Republican Party (with a recent presidential approval rating among black Americans of 2%) can get away with calling itself “The Party of Lincoln,” politicians of every persuation - activists and bigots alike - are now the proud owners of equal shares in the socially bankrupt King cottage political industry. An altar to King will soon be constructed on the National Mall so that we will all have a place where our righteousness is made palpable.

Beware, the Martin Luther King Day auto dealership sales cannot be far behind.

Holly Jolly Whatever

Esgie — Mon, 26 Dec 2005 21:13:15 +0000

Nothing seems to cause rancor and vitriol, stimulate avarice and conspicuous consumption, and create division and controversy in America today like Christmas does. What a wonderful time of year. In the interest of trying to inject a bit of unwanted sanity into our winter revels, this seems like a good time to explore Christmas’s long and glorious relationship with that other great American institution, our Constitution.

In 1787, the U.S. Constitution was ratified; in 1791, the Bill of Rights was ratified, including the First Amendment, which states (in part), “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . . .” In 1870, Congress passed and President Grant signed a bill making Christmas (as well as New Year’s Day, the Fourth of July, and Thanksgiving) a federal holiday. From then until 1984, there was essentially no controversial interaction between Christmas and the federal government.

So it’s not exactly a long and glorious history. It wasn’t until nearly one hundred years after the Constitution was ratified - when the founding fathers and even Lincoln were long dead and gone - that the government had anything officially to do with Christmas. And it was more than another hundred years before anyone actually noticed that the government had anything to do with it. It could be that Christmas was ignored by the Supreme Court (the defenders of the Constitution) for so long because the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment (stated above) are so ambiguous. More than likely it was ignored because during much of that period, there were so few non-Christians in the country and, much like black people or women, it was acceptable to pretend that they didn’t have constitutional rights anyway.

That’s not to let the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause off the hook. They are short yet exceedingly difficult to interpret and apply. There is at times an inherent contradiction between their twin proscriptions: To prohibit prayer in school might constitute impeding the free exercise of religion, while to permit school prayer could be considered establishment of an official religion. Establishment Clause jurisprudence dealing with these questions has always been rather fluid. But the closest thing we have to a rule for determining whether the government has violated the provision is called the Lemon test. It has three parts: 1. The law must have a secular purpose; 2. The primary effect of the law must not be to promote or inhibit religion; and 3. The law must not create an excessive entanglement between the state and religion. In an attempt to clarify the Clause’s broad language, some would say the Justices actually succeeded in making it more ambiguous.

Enter Christmas once more and the first major spat over a public Christmas display, the inevitable result of 100 years of government-sanctioned Christmas celebration. In 1984, the Supreme Court considered the constitutionality of a Christmas display that included a “Seasons Greetings” sign, candy-striped poles, Santa, reindeer pulling his sleigh, lots of lights, a Christmas tree, carolers, a clown, an elephant, a teddy bear, and the problematic creche. The question facing the Court was whether the inclusion of the creche in the display constituted an attempt by the state to convey a religious message in favor of a particular religion. The majority concluded that it did not; the intent of including the creche was merely to honor the religious roots of the secular “Christmas holiday season.” As support for its position, the majority mainly cited the fact that Christmas has been celebrated by our government for many years, concluding that it must therefore be constitutional. Justice O’Connor’s separate opinion stressed the fact that the federal holiday is a cultural one, even if it has religious roots, and therefore can be celebrated by the state. Both opinions essentially ignored the Lemon test, focusing exclusively on whether the effect of the display is to endorse a particular religion, further undermining and yet focusing Establishment Clause jurisprudence.

The holding that a Christmas display including a creche is constitutional came to be known as “The Reindeer Rule.” In a nutshell, as long as the state also includes symbols of the secular “Christmas holiday season” - such as reindeer, Santa, candy canes, and (for reasons unknown) clowns, elephants, and teddy bears - even displays in which some explicitly religious symbols appear will not constitute a state endorsement of a particular religion and will pass constitutional muster. So, rather than an assault on Christmas-loving people everywhere, the secularized “holiday season” and watered-down Christmas symbols that so many conservatives now rail against come directly from the Supreme Court itself and more accurately constitute an attempt to keep Christmas constitutional. The Court has ruled, in so many words, that it is constitutional for the state to celebrate the secular Christmas holiday season, but not the Christian Christmas. In the Court’s opinion, we should consider them two separate holidays.

What, then, is a poor public school to do when they wish to have a “holiday” concert? What songs may the children sing without violating our core priciples of democracy? Since the Supreme Court cannot devise a bright-line test for everyone to follow, a thorough review of Christmas songs is necessary to separate the secular from the religious; then, the program may include a slight mix of the religious along with the secular, just to honor the religious roots of the Christmas holiday season. The following is a very limited list of such songs and their new disginations, where CHS represents secular Christmas holiday season songs, and CC represents religious Christian Christmas songs:

All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth: refers only to gift giving and growing pains. CHS
Frosty the Snowman: a song entirely about a snowman with no reference to Christmas whatsoever. CHS
Little Drummer Boy: a poor boy visits the newly-born King, Jesus. CC
We Wish You a Merry Christmas: a gang of children make demands for pudding while bringing tidings of the season. CHS
Joy to the World: rejoicing at the arrival of the King, Jesus, on earth. CC
O Come, All Ye Faithful: an exhortation to come and adore the Christ child. CC
Deck the Halls: refers only to holly, yule-tide, and yule logs, all originally pagan symbols. CHS
Silent Night: praise for the night on which the son of God was born to a virgin mother. CC
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: the story of a picked-on reindeer who overcomes his adversaries. CHS
Jingle Bells: a song recalling with fondness dates had on a horse-drawn sleigh. CHS

Even assuming such designations can be arrived at without disagreement, there is as yet no constitutionally acceptable ratio of religious Christmas songs to secular Christmas holiday season songs in a holiday concert. Furthermore, it’s not clear whether that ratio would change depending on the maturity of the children and their ability to understand that Christian Christmas songs have been included in order to impart a purely historical message, as opposed to a religious one. To be safe, there should be a sliding scale - with an inverse proportional relationship between the children’s ages and the number of securlar songs required per religious song - and in no event should any fewer than three secular songs be required per religious song sung. If the stage can be decorated with clowns, elephants, and teddy bears, all the better.

What insanity. Maybe there is a war on Christmas after all, and the Supreme Court is its four-star general. Hogwash. A war on Christmas is like a war on slaveholding. The reason for all the ridculousness is that these are the lengths one must go to in order to accommodate a patently unconstitutional tradition. And the Supreme Court is willing to make fools of us all rather than strike down state-sanctioned Christmas because it has ignored the issue for so long and allowed it to become entrenched, just as it did with racism and slavery. It took a very brave Court to outlaw state-sanctioned segregation, one which has clearly not been matched since.

Bad constitutional theory is often based on legal fictions - ideas that are not objectively true, but which, once accepted, help the Court to reach its desired outcome - such as the notion that slaves are not men, or that separate can be equal. In Christmas jurisprudence, the Court has relied on two principle legal fictions, the first being that there is a secular Christmas holiday season, and the second being that Hanukah is likewise a cultural event in addition to being a religious one.

As evidence that there is a secular Christmas holiday season, the Court relies largely on the commodification of the holiday, along with the tendency of the more secular Christians to focus on the “non-religious” aspects of the holiday, such as gift-giving, Santa, Christmas trees, and Christmas lights. For every religious holiday of every denomination, there are less orthodox followers who celebrate that holiday in more secular ways; even among the religious, holidays are celebrated by different sects in varying yet equally pious ways. Following the Court’s logic, for each and every religious holiday, some particular manner of observing it could be declared by the Court to be a secular form of observance - simply because it appears so to them - which the state can adopt, a proposition that every sect of every religion (and the founding fathers) surely would condemn.

The symbols of Christmas which the Court declares as secular - Santa and his reindeer, Christmas trees, etc. - although having their origins in pagan traditions, have not ever appeared in the traditions of any religion other than Christianity. In fact, these symbols - along with the date December 25 - were purposefully incorporated into the Christian Christmas holiday centuries ago in order to assert Christianity’s dominance over the followers of paganism. Now hundreds of years removed from this shift, these symbols have become fully Christian and appear in virtually every church at Christmastime without suspicion. While upholding the constitutionality of Christmas, Justice Blackmun even hinted at the fact that Christmas is not actually a secular holiday at all (and at the fabricated connection between Christmas and Hanukah) when he referred to Hanukah as “a contemporaneous alternative tradition.” If the Christmas holiday season is a secular, national holiday, why is there a need for an alternative? Are we not all Americans? And why is there no alternative Jewish Fourth of July, or Thanksgiving?

To the extent that Hanukah has any cultural, non-religious significance, it is only as a stooge of Christianity, which has also begun to coopt and distort the symbols of Hanukah in order to maintain its dominance over Judaism in America and its constitutionality, largely in concert with the Supreme Court. In response to the saturation of Christmas in America and the alienation it causes, many of the more secular Jews (with the willing participation of the Christian culture) have slowly remodeled Hanukah in the image of Christmas. It has been given equal prominence with Christmas even though it occupies an obscure, unimportant place in the traditional Jewish calendar (it is actually the least important, not most important, Jewish holiday). The exchange of Hanukah gifts (Christmas gifts with different wrapping paper) has even been introduced, a practice entirely outside the Jewish tradition and completely unrelated to the actual holiday. Because the Court has essentially held that state-sponsored Christmas is not constitutional unless it is accompanied by secular symbols or the symbols of other religious traditions, the state has latched onto and promoted these bastardized Hanukah traditions, the result of Christianity’s proselytizing effect in the United States, leading the state to contribute to the diminution of one faith’s traditions in order to preserve the charade that promoting the traditions of another faith is constitutional. The greatest irony is that the true Hanukah is the celebration of the Jewish people’s victory long ago over an occupying power which had attempted to force them to convert.

Hanukah’s uniformly religious significance is evidenced in Justice Blackmun’s uneasy acceptance of the Hanukah menorah as a secular symbol of the holiday only because there are no “reasonable alternatives that are less religious in nature.” Indeed, the menorah is a purely religious symbol. The traditional menorah actually has only six branches and used to reside in the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, the center of all Judaism; it has come in Jewish culture to stand somewhat in the stead of the destroyed Temple itself, and it is now the official emblem of the Jewish State of Israel. Even the Hanukiah - the type of menorah used on Hanukah - has no cultural significance beyond the religious miracle it represents. Blackmun further stated, “It is difficult to imagine a predominantly secular symbol of Chanukah that the city could place next to its Christmas tree.” Even in their attempts to save the mighty Christmas tree from constitutional disgrace, neither cities across the nation nor the highest court in the land can find a secular symbol of Hanukah . . . because they have not yet entirely succeeded in creating one. To resolve the matter, at least until the menorah is fully secularized, the Court will simply give it a pass.

There has been an uneasy relationship between Judaism and Christianity from the start, and Christmas is the epitome of that tension. It is with the story of the birth of the Christ that Christianity distinguishes itself from Judaism; the essence of Christianity is that Jesus was the messiah, the son of God, and without that belief, Christians would still be Jewish. The Jewish faith utterly rejects Jesus as a divine being, and the Jewish people’s stubborn adherence to this point of view has been the reason for millenia of forced conversion, segregation, expulsion, torture, and even genocide. In the face of all this, for millenia, Jews have been faithful to the First Commandment: I am the Lord, your God; you shall have no other gods before me. But the Supreme Court expects Jews to surrender their faith now to the town Christmas tree lighting.

The word Christmas means “the festival of the Christ,” a phrase which alone is anathema to Judaism. Christmas tree; Christmas lights; Christmas holiday season. Nothing could run more counter to a belief in Judaism than accepting so much as the name of the holiday, never mind its supposedly secular facets. Regardless of the number of non-religious songs sung before or after, there is no way for Jewish people to reconcile with the First Commandment uttering the words “Silent night, Holy night!/Son of God, love’s pure light/. . . Jesus Lord at thy birth.” The Supreme Court’s approval of the state-sanctioned Christmas holiday season cannot help but endorse the Christian religion, and unwittingly results in state-sponsored religous conversion of one faith’s holiday to another’s. If that is not excessive entanglement between the state and religion, then the phrase has no meaning.

Justice O’Connor teaches us that the danger of the state endorsement of religion is that it says to non-adherents that they are not “full members of the political community.” Giving a child the choice violating her faith, just for a moment, to praise Jesus at the holiday concert for historical reasons, or else standing quietly while the rest of her classmates do so in front of the entire community, does just that; it says to her that, because of her faith, she must be excluded. It is a singularly embarassing, alienating, and painful experience that the majority of school children will never know; it should be one which no school children ever have to know again.

If it Walks Like a Strict Constructionist, and it Talks Like a Strict Constructionist…

Esgie — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 21:10:25 +0000

Quick, define the term “Strict Constructionist.”

You failed the quiz, didn’t you? Don’t feel bad. That surely puts you solidly among the vast majority of American citizens (some of them in the highest levels of our federal government) who also have no idea what the term actually means. But if you’re a member of the Republican party, you’re obligated to use it - or some coded equivalent - despite your ignorance.

And if you’re President Bush’s nominee to the Supreme Court, then you definitely have to use it, just as Harriet Meirs did in her remarks upon being nominated to the high court. She said, “It is the responsibility of every generation to be true to the founders’ vision of the proper role of the courts in our society. If confirmed, I recognize that I will have a tremendous responsibility to . . . help ensure that the courts meet their obligations to strictly apply the laws and the Constitution.” Strict Constructionism. There’s a good definition.

Except that she got it completely wrong, which is a great quality in a nominee to the Supreme Court. Or whoever wrote her remarks got it wrong. No, wait. Judging by her Senate questionnaire, she clearly wasn’t getting any help managing her nomination; so yeah, she got it wrong. Strictly apply the laws and the Constituion? Have the courts not been applying them strictly enough? On some days, the Supreme Court feels like enforcing the prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, and on other days they just let it slide? This is the first misconception about what it means to follow Strict Construction principles: It has nothing to do with the application of the law, and everything to do with the interpretation of the law.

Strict Construction is a theory of constitutional and statutory interpretation championed primarily by Justice Scalia, and to a lesser degree, Justice Thomas. It basically posits the following (get ready, it’s slightly complicated): The proper interpretation of a constitutional or statutory provision can be divined using only the plain meaning of the words of that provision, as that plain meaning was understood at the time the provision was written. This is often coupled with the theory called Textualism, which says that the context of the entire Constitution or the entire statute can help to give meaning to the words of the provision being interpreted. A Strict Constructionist therefore considers the plain meaning of the words of the provision, guided only perhaps by the plain meaning of the words in provisions surrounding it, when attempting to interpret the law. Most importantly, the tools which advocates of a more broad theory of intepretation might use - such as legislative history (the record of debate when the provision was being written and voted upon), societal changes since the time of the provision’s passage, and the laws of other countries - are irrelevant for purposes of interpretation. There’s your definition. No wonder so many people get it wrong.

“The Congress shall have power to . . . regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes.” That is the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution. It is one of the most litigated provisions of the Constitution and has been the basis for a very large degree of Congressional power. For instance, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, ending segregation in public accommodations like restaurants and hotels, derives its authority from the Commerce Clause. Shortly after the Act’s passage, the Supreme Court decided that, because people travel from state to state and stay in hotels, hotels were included in the meaning of interstate commerce which the Commerce Clause allows Congress to regulate. Therefore, Congress’ ban on discrimination is constitutional.

A Strict Constructionist on the court when the decision was handed down, attempting to determine the plain meaning of the words “commerce . . . among the several states,” as it was understood in 1787 when the Constitution was written, might note that interstate travel requiring a stay at a hotel was much more rare and not terribly lucrative in the eighteenth century compared to 1964 since cars did not yet exist. As such, it was not likely the first thing to come to mind when considering “commerce . . . among the several states.” But even if it is enough to constitute interstate commerce that a person stays in a hotel and has crossed a state line, black people did not cross state lines virtually at all in 1787 (at least in many states) except when being shipped by their owners. So black people staying in hotels in other states definitely could not have been within the plain meaning of the Commerce Clause at the time. At most, the framers might have been referring to white people staying in hotels in other states.

Alternatively, a Strict Constructionist might remember that under the Articles of Confederation, the various states acted essentially as independent nations and would place tariffs on goods entering their borders for sale, a problem which the Constitution remedied. It might therefore be concluded that the plain meaning of the Commerce Clause includes only goods crossing state lines which might be subject to tariffs (which is more or less Justice Thomas’s position, by the way), a far leap to racial discrimination in public accommodations. And yet it is equally as plausable, given all of this ambiguity, that a Strict Construtionist might conclude that the Commerce Clause includes any commerical activity of any sort which involves more than one state in any way. Whatever side a Strict Constructionist comes out on, clearly the words have no plain meaning.

Therein lies the folly of Strict Constructionism as a constitutional theory: Words generally do not have plain meanings, and the ones that do require no interpretation. The purpose of the Supreme Court is to clarify the ambiguities inherent in the language used in making our laws so that the laws may then be applied consistently, establishing a rule of law, not of men. But Justice Scalia’s dogged insistence that a plain meaning may be arrived at in all cases - and his morally superior attitude about almost everything - often leads him to dismiss perfectly reasonable positions and deflect legitimate criticism using his fallacious theory of interpretation as a shield.

All of that is very complicated blather that only a lawyer could be interested in. So what are Republicans talking about when they preach the gospel of Strict Constructionism? Well, what they really mean is that a Strict Constructionist isn’t a judicial activist; he or she would never legislate from the bench. Only sometimes they even have trouble keeping that much straight.

Take for instance a recent appearance on Meet the Press by Republicn Senator Tom Coburn to discuss the current Supreme Court nominee, Judge Samuel Alito, with Tim Russert. The good judge’s dissent in the case Rybar v. U.S. was one topic of discussion. The case involved the federal assault weapons ban which made it a crime for civilians to possess a machine gun. It is settled law now that anything which has a substantial effect on interstate commerce may be regulated by Congress under the Commerce Clause. Based on this doctrine, the Third Circuit Court issued a decision concluding that Congress’ claim that the interstate trafficking of firearms had overwhelmed state law enforcement’s ability to prevent criminal activity involving guns to the extent that is has become an issue of “national concern” was enough to bring it within the Commerce Clause. The court therefore allowed Congress to outlaw the possession of machine guns whether they had traveled in interstate commerce or not. Not the cleanest of logic, really. And just for good measure, putting the cart before the horse, the court also rested its decision on the fact that outlawing the possession of the weapons would assist in preventing their interstate sale - i.e. no willing buyer, no sale. Of course, no interstate sale, no Commerce Clause power. Details, details.

To these arguments, Judge Alito responded thusly: 1. regardless of “national concern,” the intrastate possession of a machine gun is not a commercial activity and bears no relation to interstate commerce; and 2. if Congress may regulate interstate commerce by outlawing all possession of any article it chooses so long as that article sometimes travels in interstate commerce, there is no limit to its powers since in our modern world at least one item of virtually all articles held for sale cross a state line at some point. Alito therefore concluded that while regulating the interstate transfer of machine guns is within Congress’ powers under the Commerce Clause, Congress’ ban on the fully intrastate possession of machine guns is unconstitutional.

Russert (who himself most assuredly does not know what a Strict Constructionist is) gave Senator Coburn a little pop quiz of his own on national television:

Q: Do you think Congress has the right to restrict the sale of machine guns or do you think Judge Alito is right? (actually Judge Alito thinks Congress has that right, too; he just thinks Congress can’t regulate the INTRASTATE POSSESSION of machine guns)

A: Yes, I think we probably do. Judges don’t have the right to decide whether Congress has the right under the Constitution to restrict the sale of machine guns (actually, that’s pretty much EXACTLY what judges do in this country). “Those are decisions that legislators should be making. And that’s how we’ve gotten off on this track is, that we allow judges to start deciding the law, new law, rather than interpret the law that the Congress–what the–what should have happened in that case is this is an area that’s up for debate and needs to go back to Congress. If Congress decides that, then it should be there .” (huh? what new law? the Commerce Clause is in the Constitution! and Congress should decide what Congress can do under the Constitution? you don’t believe in checks and balances?!)

Q: So Judge Alito was wrong? (no, you misrepresented Alito’s position.)

A: Sure. (wait, what?)

Q: And he was legislating? (what are you talking about?! he wanted to strike down a law; how is that legislating?!)

A: Sure. (wait, who’s side are you on?!)

Q: So conservative jurists or Strict Constructionists can also legislate? (oh boy . . .)

A: “Well, I’m not sure that’s what he is yet. You’ve assumed that. I haven’t made that decision on what he is . . . .” (yeah, no one’s buying that one, Senator; you’ve just been spanked.)

Coburn’s score: 1. The judiciary is not a check on the Congress. WRONG 2. Judge Alito was legislating from the bench when he argued for striking down a federal law as unconstitutional. WRONG 3. Senator Coburn is not yet sure that Judge Alito is a Strict Constructionist. WRONG It’s not looking real good.

So if Republicans don’t actually know what Strict Constructionism is, and end up undermining their own when they can’t keep it all straight, why are they still trying to force this Strict Constructionism stuff down our throats? Abortion and gays: The two legal issues conservatives just cannot forgive the judiciary for. Since the 1970s, the Supreme Court has firmly defended its expansion of the right of privacy (not found anywhere in the text of the Constitution) to include a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion. And more recently - in Vermont, Hawai’i, Massachusetts - state courts have begun expanding equal protection doctrine to mandate that gay people be given the same state privileges of marriage that straight people enjoy.

Conservatives came up with the phrase “legislating from the bench” to describe these expansions of constitutional rights. Some other examples of legislating from the bench to create rights not found in the text of the Constitution include: ending segregation in Brown v. Board of Education; requiring police officers to “read citizens their rights” prior to interrogation and providing a lawyer free of charge for those who cannot afford it in Miranda v. Arizona; prohibiting the states from outlawing the use of contraceptives in the privacy of one’s own home in Griswold v. Connecticut (the precursor to Roe); striking down a state constitutional amendment which proactively nullified any state law providing legal protections for gay and lesbian people, concluding that such laws do not amount to “special rights” in Romer v. Evans (a decision authored by Justice Kennedy, a conservative); and most recently, giving voters an equal protection right to have their votes for President counted in the same manner in every county in Florida (but only in Florida, only in counties which favored Bush, not necessarily to be counted by the same means - i.e. by hand or by optical scanner, which have vastly different error rates - and only in the 2000 presidential election because the Supreme Court explicitly told every other court in the nation never to cite this case as precedent) in Bush v. Gore, an opinion which both Scalia and Thomas signed onto, incidentally.

In a perfect world where every word clearly means what it’s intended to mean, it is true that a Strict Constructionist would not legislate from the bench, and wouldn’t expand constitutional rights. But language is not so determinate, and even Strict Constructionists have resorted to legislating from the bench every now and again. But it’s not clear anyway that refusing to expand constitutional rights is a good idea, even for Republicans. President Bush has never come out in favor of segregation, in opposition to contraceptives, or against votes being counted in his favor in his presidential election. All Republicans know is that they want abortion and gay rights written out of the Constitution. And like a torturous pop song you just can’t get out of your head, selective Strict Constructionism is the most politically catchy, and therefore most efficient way to get it done.

Ironically, Judge Alito’s dissent in Rybar, so viciously attacked by Senator Coburn, was the exact opposite of legislating from the bench, limiting Congress’ power to intrude into the private lives of Americans. It is more faithful to the Constitution than the majority opinion which upheld the federal assault weapons ban is, or than the Congress that passed the ban was. Many of Justice Scalia’s undeniably conservative opinions are similarly faithful. Judging is a very tricky business; it does not align neatly with political or ideological persuasions, so any process for the selection of judges would be imperfect. Our system is explicitly political, and that is the best system for picking a jurist who will be virtually unaccountable for the rest of his or her life. In order to insulate judges from popular opinion we do not allow them to be fired. The people can fire the person who put a judge on the bench, however, and hopefully we’ll know better next time.

But that doesn’t mean that nominations - or indeed, the judiciary as a whole - should be politicized. Politicians should be honorable and try to pick judges who are smart and will rule fairly, even if that means handing down some decisions which are politically unpalatable because sometimes that’s the best decision for our Constitution. For decades now, Republicans have prosecuted an elaborate campaign to exert popular and political pressure on the judiciary to overturn decisions they do not like. This is extremely harmful to the Constitution and to the nation because our very system of government is predicated on the judiciary protecting individuals and minorities from the will of the majority as exercised through the political branches. Unlike the current conservative assault on abortion rights and gay rights, the NAACP’s campaign to end the legal regime of segregation argued the legal theories case by case, lawsuit by lawsuit, until it was clear to fair-minded jurists that there was no room for Jim Crow in the Equal Protection clause, even though that decision was extremely unpopular and politically damaging.

While a Justice Alito on the Supreme Court may end up being a threat to certain constitutional rights (although it is not clear even with his arrival on the Court that there will be a majority in favor of overturning or severely limiting a woman’s right to choose), he really is not a threat to the Constitution. A Strict Constructionist will often limit the reach of the Constitution in the name of the plain meaning of the text, but the theory is as inconsistent as any other method of interpretation; and like other methods, it only rarely produces any result other than what the Justice wants to believe. Not even conservative credentials are a guarantee of a conservative court, as Justices are notorious for evolving on the bench. The Republican assault on the judiciary, on the other hand, has the potential to transform our Constitution into a justification for the tyranny of the political majority, which threatens all Americans as the winds of political change shift. The Republican Strict Constructionist judicial nominees are merely pawns in that larger, and much more damaging, game.

Where, Oh Where Has My Colin Gone?

Esgie — Mon, 07 Nov 2005 21:08:48 +0000

Really, where is Colin Powell? If there is anybody who can she some light on this entire Iraq War intelligence debacle, it’s him. And who would the country trust more to tell us whether the White House was up to no good?

Certainly Powell doesn’t have perfect information since he didn’t work in the White House. But he worked with all of the relevant players - Cheney, Rumsfeld, Tenet - in the run-up to the war, reviewing the intelligence and crafting the justification for military action. He was never part of “the team” who engineered the hysteria that forced us into Iraq, those whom Powell’s former Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson recently called a cabal and accused of hijacking the foreign policy prerogative of the Office of the President. But along with the limits on Powell’s access to privileged information comes heightened credibility on the issue; he’s not an inside man, so maybe he can tell us the truth.

Powell has never really been an inside man in the George W. Bush Administration. At the Republican National Convention in 2000, where Bush was nominated as the Republican presidential candidate, Powell delivered a supportive speech. But during that speech, he highlighted a number of issues which the GOP - and Bush himself - usually prefers to keep quiet on, such as the growing prison population, the links between race, poverty, and crime, the failure of our supply-side interdiction drug policy, the importance of universal child healthcare coverage, the failure of the GOP to understand the pervasive cynicism which the black community holds towards The American Dream and the party itself, and the double-standard of opposing affirmative action for women and people of color while tolerating corporate welfare.

As Secretary of State under Bush, Powell was the government’s most prominent doubter of the need to invade Iraq. His was the voice in the administration which cautioned patience, valued diplomacy, rejected the President’s cowboy approach to foreign policy, and insisted on acting only with the support of a grand coalition. The behind-the-scenes rift between the dovish Powell (irony of ironies) and the Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal concerning the wisdom of starting a pre-emptive war was front-page news. But eventually, when Powell’s view did not win out, he fell into line behind his commander-in-cheif. Indeed, he was chosen to be the man to state the administration’s case for war to the world.

Sitting before the Security Council with his vial of white powder and satellite photos of Iraqi tractor trailors, Powell assured the world that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. But long before the revelations about Karl Rove and Scooter Libby’s involvement in outting Valerie Plame came to light, even before David Kay’s final report confirming that there were no weapons, going all the way back before the war to Powell’s speech in 2003, even then there was a significant number of people who suspected that the evidence had been tampered with. Powell himself appeared apprehensive while speaking the administration’s words, maybe knowing that there wasn’t quite enough “there” there to justify starting the country’s first pre-emptive war. Describing the experience recently, he said, “It was painful. It’s painful now.” Then and now. Not just now that he knows the intelligence was wrong, but also then, when he must have at least suspected it.

One might expect Powell to be bitter at the administration for hanging him out to dry. “It’s a blot,” he has said. “I’m the one who presented it on behalf of the United States to the world, and [it] will always be a part of my record.” It would be reasonable for him to be resentful of a President, a Vice-President, a Secretary of Defense, and a CIA director who fed him intelligence, virtually all of which was wrong, to present to the entire world. Before the speech, Powell spent five days with Tenet checking the reliability of that intelligence. His hard work was in vain, and his reputation has been tarnished.

And yet, despite the consequences he has suffered and the suspicions he must have harbored, his voice has hardly even been heard since stepping down as Secretary of State in January. In September, he gave an interview to Barbara Walters on 20/20, finally giving some glimpse into what he believes happened to him. His estimation? “There were some people in the intelligence community who knew at that time that some of these sources were not good, and shouldn’t be relied upon, and they didn’t speak up. That devastated me.” The intelligence community. Not the Secretary of Defense, not the Vice-President, not the Director of the CIA, but their underlings. They were the ones who blew it, and caused the very heads of our government to give him bad information for the most important speech the world will see for decades to come.

Wilkerson has recently spoken out to tell the nation about the pressure put on the intelligence community by the White House and the Department of Defense to come up with the right intelligence to support their rationale for war, corroborating scores of similar accounts in the media from former intelligence personnel. If his chief of staff was aware of the administration’s behavior, how could Powell not be? How could Powell spend five days in a room with the Director of the CIA verifying intelligence and then not suspect the Director was looking the other way when all of it turned out to be erroneous? Even if an analyst was intentionally trying to get bad intelligence into Powell’s speech, how could it not have been discovered through even a modicum of oversight - never mind five days with the CIA Director - when many already believed it to be faulty?

After the dust had cleared, George Tenet was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom, while Powell retired into self-imposed near-obscurity. For the time being, the man who lost the most as a result of the drive to war still chooses to cling to a rationalization that no intelligent person can take seriously, rather than speak truth to power. The lone administration voice who thought better of the invasion, who has borne the greatest punishment for its mistakes, who is in perhaps the best position to reveal the truth to the American public, and who alone the American people would be anxious to forgive if he would just come clean, continues to be loyal to his commander-in-chief.

Alas, he fingered the nameless, faceless analysts for the job because placing the blame on anyone more superior would eventually bleed its way back up to the President. Of course, no one has yet accounted for the fact that Powell may have been not just suspicious, but a willing participant in fooling the American people into war, and the absurd rationalization he clings to is not a rationalization at all, but a cover story; given his (oft-forgotten) history with the Iran-Contra Affair, the hypothesis is actually not that unlikely. Either way, perhaps one day - hopefully one day soon - Powell will finally decide, as many soldiers before him have had to do, that his duty to his country is greater than his duty to himself or to his commander.

The War on Terror Decoded

Esgie — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 21:05:37 +0000

On October 6th, the President appeared before the National Endowment for Democracy (the friendliest audience he could find using his now-notorious search methods) and made his best case for the War on Terror, since somebody had to finally respond to the critics. In the days leading up to it, the White House hyped President Bush’s speech as if it were the State of the Union. It will be a major policy speech with detail and explication the likes of which have heretofore never been heard, they said. The media was skeptical since this wasn’t the first rehashed, same-old same-old speech that Scott McClellan had dressed up in those fancy clothes. Turned out, the media was mostly right.

The speech wasn’t entirely rehash, though, and the press did report on it for a few days. One big tidbit they missed entirely was the Jews. President Bush continued his courting of American Jews with this speech - some of his most ardent supporters on the war - but he really went the extra mile, where no President before him had dared to tread. All in one forty-minute speech, he explicitly referenced the anti-Semitism which is a staple of much of the Arab media, he suggested that perhaps Israel would be justified in retaliating against Iran or Syria for terrorism within its borders, and he broadcast that dirty little secret that the Paletinian/Israeli conflict is most often used as cover for geopolitical gain by parties who either are unable to or are not interested in actually resolving the conflict (and who more often than not do not have the Palestinian people’s interests in mind), à la Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s recent theatrics.

And there was one pretty major gaff which the media missed: The President actually used the term, “the Jews,” as in “Syria and Iran . . . use terrorist propaganda to blame their own failures on the West and America, and on the Jews.” His intentions were good, surely. But a goy using our term? Regardless of his ethinicity, the term is actually an objectifying one anyway, historically used primarily by Arab and Christian anti-Semitic propagandizers to refer to the Other, not used by Jews themselves (Jews tend to say things like “Jews” or “Jewish people” or “the chosen people” or “us,” not the Jews). It was like a Klansman discussing the evils of “the N word.” Not nearly as bad as Nixon’s virulent and persisting anti-Semitism, or Jesse’s politically incorrect moment of weakness, but condemnable nonetheless.

The one part of the speech which was substantive and clearly new was the President’s reference to ten terrorist plots and five “casings” foiled by the U.S. and its allies since September 11th. This received the majority of the media attention. Analyses of these claims in the press almost unanimously concluded there’s nothing to analyze since it’s all classified information, and that was the end of the coverage of “the biggest speech of the year.” But there was more in Bush’s speech that was new; in fact, taken as a whole, the speech provided more insight into the true nature of the War on Terror than we’ve ever gotten before, more for the lack of what was said than what was actually there (who knew? McLellan was right!). And surely that is worth reporting on.

This speech represented the President’s rosiest snapshot of how the War on Terror is going, his best pitch for why his approval ratings should begin the steep climb back upwards to “respectable.” The meat of the speech was something akin to a report card for his prosecution of the War. Like everything that comes out of this White House, it was heavier on spin than on facts (and what facts there were are, of course, classified), so it was never taken seriously. But Bush’s case deserves a second - and honest - look because the yardsticks are (mostly) accurate; it just requires an objective grader. So let’s give it a try.

The President’s report card has five separate categories. Rather than being graded just on the half-truths the President cited during his speech, marks will be given based also on all that was left out.

* * *

Stops Attacks Before They Happen
President cites ten plots and five casings averted, but refuses to give details about more than a handful of them, saying they are “secret.” Has managed to prevent any attacks against himself - though not against his friends such as England, Spain, Israel, Russia, and Indonesia - primarily by picking fights at other students’ desks and taking blows over there. Claims to have incapacitated virtually all of the leadership of his enemy. But even without leadership, there seems to be a large group of loosely affiliated yet independently-acting terrorists who disguise themselves well attacking President and his friends. In all, the number and severity of attacks seem to be continuing with more or less as much frequency and success as in years before Sept. 11, 2001 (recall World Trade Center bombing 1993, Khobar Towers bombing 1996, US African Embassy bombings 1998, USS Cole bombing 2000).
Grade: C

Denies Weapons of Mass Destruction to Outlaw Regimes
President insists that weapons of mass destruction (or WMD) must be kept only from outlaw regimes mainly because President wants to be able to keep and further develop his own. However, President is inconsistent when defining precisely what an “outlaw regime” is. Has visciously attacked Class Bully who President claims possessed WMD, only to change the subject when proven wrong. Protects his friends who possess WMD such as Pakistan, India, and Israel, and virtually ignores troublemakers other than Bully - such as Iran and North Korea - as they quite openly obtain WMD. President cannot take credit for preventing anyone in the class from obtaining WMD who was looking for them, erroneously takes credit for convincing Lybia to give up WMD programs despite the fact that Lybia had been begging for handouts in exchange for doing so for years, and has even hurt the cause of non-proliferation by flaunting his own WMD with fancy made-up terms such as “National Missile Defense” and “Bunker Busters.”
Grade: F

Denies Terrorists the Support of Outlaw Regimes
President initially removed from Afghanistan’s desk troublemakers who were harboring terrorists there, and has made efforts to reform the desk to prevent a resurgence, with mixed results. Since that time, has focused almost exclusively on Class Bully whom he attacked, also falsely claiming Bully was harboring terrists. As a result, terrorists have found harbor and a cause to fight for at Bully’s former desk. Meanwhile, President has turned a blind eye to the notorious connection his friends Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have to terrorists. Claims to have broken up the WMD technology distribution ring being run out of Pakistan’s desk; but it is likely such a sophisticated network had to have been know about - and covered up by - Pakistan in the first place, and even after it has been exposed the ringleader remains a national hero there. Furthermore, President has done little more than make idle threats towards classmates Iran and Syria who have harbored and supported the terrorist enemies of his friend, Israel.
Grade: D

Denies Terrorists Control of Any Nation
Having removed Bully, President has been preoccupied with fighting terrorists for control of Bully’s desk, and has been inattentive to the rest of the classroom. Results at Bully’s desk are still uncertain at best. Is also still struggling with reforming Afghanistan’s desk. Again, has done little about Iran or Syria who are virtually terrorists themselves, to the detriment of Israel and Lebanon. It’s not clear that the terrorists are attempting to gain control of any nation anyway, but just attempting to prevent anyone in the classroom from completing their work of modernizing and unifying the classroom in peace.
Grade: D

Denies Terrorists Future Recruits by Spreading Democracy
Claims to have spread democracy to classmates Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Lebanon. Egypt recently made perfunctory efforts at appearing as though it has embraced democracy while ensuring it doesn’t actually cede any control whatsoever. Saudi Arabia embraces (some limited form of) democracy only with respect to inconsequential local decisions, and remains under the tight grip of Shari’a law. Lebanon made noises suggesting that it wished to be free from neighbor Syria’s cluthces, but a week later voted with its feet and made clear that it wasn’t interested. There is some doubt as to whether it is possible to spread democracy to anyone without a domestic democratic movement anyway. President’s efforts so far seem only to have produced democratic imperialism, further spurring terrorist recruiting efforts.
Grade: F

* * *

President Bush’s failure in prosecuting the War on Terror should be enough to report on every time he makes a rosy claim about America’s progress and resolve. But the even bigger story not being reported is that the War on Terror isn’t really a war at all; it’s just been packaged that way for domestic political consumption. By the President’s own analysis, only one facet of the War - denying control of any country - actually involves military action. And even then, it was begun and finished in Afghanistan. The majority of the War is prosecuted through law enforcement, intelligence and counter-intelligence, and diplomacy. But instead of giving an honest explanation of the threat and how we’re dealing with it, Bush made the decision four years ago to become a wartime President, for the political benefits. He is now fully wed to selling his presidency as one big war, and so is stuck with his wartime rhetoric whether it fits or not.

Most often, it doesn’t (not that the American public seems to have noticed). If the President stuck to his rhetoric to treat regimes that support terrorists the same as the terrorists themselves, we would have invaded Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Syria, and Iran a long time ago. But instead we deal with these countries through the proper diplomatic channels (when Bush bothers to deal with them at all), as well we should. The War on Terror is in truth one big rhetorical flourish, a great shadowboxing match. If we are to believe - as this President would like us to - that the rhetoric of war actually is war, then Iran would have been at war with us since the revolution, Iraq continuously since the First Gulf War, and Al Qaeda since bin Laden moved to Afghanistan. Thankfully, we managed not to lose a single soldier in those wars, even though Khomeini, Hussein, and bin Laden proved to be great shadowboxers.

And of course, Bush cannot convince us we are at war without telling us who we are at war with. Not only must the President blow hot air about how we are making our country safer, but to sell it he must lend credence to the enemy’s rhetoric, to make them formidible enough to be in a full-fledged war with. The October 6th speech was the pinnacle of legitimizing “the terrorists.” In truth, they are boys playing soldier in the woods. In the modern age, anyone can kill thousands of innocent people and bring buildings tumbling down; but Al Qaeda is nothing compared to the military, police, and diplomatic force of the United States and its allies. They have no bombers or missiles, no ambassadors or negotiating skills, and not even any refuge . . . except in those countries where - despite the President’s rhetoric - we allow regimes to support terrorists because those regimes would otherwise be toppled by Islamist elements in their societies. But on October 6th, referring to the enemy with phrases like “chief of al Qaeda operations in the Persian Gulf” and outlining their sophisticated strategy as if it were a Fortune 500 business plan, the President of the United States officially elevated a loose international affiliation of the murderous, fanatical enemies of humanity and Islam to a well-organized, ideologically coherent operation which is the military equal of the world’s only superpower.

Although it was entirely unconnected at the time it began, the War in Iraq is the only facet of the War on Terror that truly is a war and now involves terrorists. It has come to pass that we are fighting the terrorists over there so that we do not have to fight them over here, because Iraqi lives are worth less than American ones. The result has been 30,000 Iraqi civilians killed in the war. Since the U.S. invasion, the average Iraqi has become 2.5 times more likely to die than before the invasion. What the Iraqis have bought with their lives is a forced political process, a constitution which just squeaked past and is expected to be amended so significantly it can hardly be called a constitution, and a security situation which has scarcely improved from all out war. Ironically, it is also the one facet of the War that could have been avoided.

So the War on Terror we are actually getting is just the same old law enforcement anti-terrorism paradigm (the efficacy of which we now know nothing about), tied up with a more nuclear-armed world and tens of thousands of Iraqi’s killed in the place of thousands of would-be Americans killed. It’s hard to understand how the rhetoric of a President with failing grades is keeping us or anybody else safe from the dangers of a new century. Perhaps our only consolation is knowing that eventually, once the statute of limitations for political blame has run out, the War on Terror (like its predecessor the War on Drugs) will be exposed for what it is: a flawed policy for an imperfect world, dressed up in the gravest possible terms for the political gain it provides, without much social benefit accompanying it.

When John the Apostle Comes Marching Home Again

Esgie — Wed, 05 Oct 2005 21:05:36 +0000

Hurrah, hurrah. President Bush is back.

No, President Bush is not John. But in the wake of the Katrina disaster, he has been attempting to make himself into something of a Lazarus. With his approval ratings in the basement, it’s unanimous that the President’s primary task is to try to rise from the dead. But what no one seems to be noticing is that he’s trying to use God to do it. Though when you think about it, his entire presidency has been about God, hasn’t it?

Compassionate Conservatism, stem cell research, evildoers. Yeah, Compassionate Conservatism. Remember that? The stem cell issue has stayed with us since it became the first big decision of Bush’s presidency, and the evildoers are certainly still with us. But everyone seems to have forgotten what this administration was about before September 11th, when Bush redirected the fury of God which it is America’s birthright to steer toward the evildoers in Al Qaeda - er, Afghanistan - er, Iraq. Yeah, that’s it. Iraq.

For those who can’t recall, President Bush campaigned heavily in 2000 on what he called “Compassionate Conservatism” - that is, you can be a conservative and still care about people (as it turns out, the only people a Compassionate Conservative cares about are the wealthy whose taxes are too high, and those who want their children to learn about God in the classroom). Upon taking office, Bush created a White House agency called the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, with outreach centers in the major executive agencies to coordinate all of their faith-based efforts. The mission of the office is to identify “unnecessary” restrictions on the channeling of federal dollars to religious organizations that perform social services. You know, that pesky “separation of church and state” stuff.

Bush also introduced legislation in Congress to remove many such restrictions. For months and through numerous congressional hearings, Bush’s Faith-Based Initiative languished. Liberals decried the Constitutional violations, as well as the idea of public money funding discrimination by religious organizations against women and gay people. Even in the Republican Party, all but the most religious conservatives were uneasy about signing on since the President was still new to the office and largely unpopular. Finally, after almost certain failure, the President skirted Congress and implemented most of the policies through Executive Order instead. Then September 11th happened, Bush became the embodiment of American vengeance, and everyone forgot about compassion.

August 29, 2005. At least hundreds of Americans are dead; the President’s approval ratings are in the basement, again. This time, there is no one to direct his vengeance towards (besides himself), so the moment calls for . . . what else? Compassion. In his twenty minute primetime address to the Nation from New Orleans two weeks after the tragedy (it apparently took him awhile to remember the term, too), President Bush referred to compassion a total of four times. He referred overtly to God twice (not counting the obligatory closing, “God bless America”), at times sounding more like a preacher than a President. While pundits were focusing on whether the President would take personal responsibility for the government’s failed response to the crisis or not, whether he would be able to convey that same sense of leadership he showed after September 11th or not, they completely missed the signals that President Bush has returned to the domestic agenda that he lost during his first year in office. The unfinished work of the Bush Administration is bringing God back to the country, and as domestic policies regain the limelight, the Compassionate Conservative identity has clearly regained control of the presidential schizophrenia.

So far, we have gotten from the President a vague outline of the government initiatives he thinks are necessary in response to this tragedy: opportunity zones in the gulf region (a twenty-year-old economic stimulus policy consisting mainly of tax breaks which didn’t work then and won’t work now); personal recovery accounts (much like what Bush would have liked to have seen Social Security turn into); and an urban homesteader act which will give federal land to lower-income people willing to construct a home on it. But these are not policies to deal with the immediate concerns facing evacuees, such as food and clothing, those short-term needs which are the only ones the American public has the attention span to care about. As the administration is pressed to respond to these challenges, what’s become clear is how the President is trying to use this tragedy as a springboard to complete the domestic agenda he hopes will be his other, more successful, legacy. It’s all about God from here on out.

The very next day after the President’s televised response to the biggest natural disaster in American history, who was leading the serial “Ask the White House” session on the White House website? Not the Secretary of the Interior, or the Secretary of Homeland Security, or even the First Lady, but the Director of the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, Jim Towey. The entire session was spent discussing the amazing job people of faith have done to provide for the survivors (as though all the non-religious have been sitting on the sidelines, and in stark contrast to the job done by the government). Towey was awed by how the “armies of compassion” were providing food, offering housing, and “most of all, loving those who survived and consoling them.” Towey assured a nervous nation that “President Bush knows that while government can not love,” religious organizations can.

When the erstwhile FEMA Director, Michael Brown, recently expressed his personal opinion on the government’s role in the recovery, he inadvertently revealed how he got the job everyone seems to agree he was not qualified for: It is the responsibility of churches, he said, to take care of the poor and homeless, not the government. The Bush Administration’s principal domestic tenant is that non-governmental organizations (especially “faith institutions”) must be the ones to “administer important programs [otherwise known as social welfare programs] with love and tenderness,” to use Towey’s words. And for the federal government to pay for it, as Bush has been trying to do for years; FEMA recently announced it would reimburse religious institutions for their Katrina disaster relief efforts.

That last item was the only thing in this entire two-week chain of events that woke the press up a bit to Bush’s impending religious domestic agenda, and the White House took a lot of heat for it. Expect more in the near future. Without the albatros of reelection hanging around the President’s neck, he is likely to be even more brazen in his holy quest to shepherd America back to Jesus, and to get into more trouble as a result. The formerly secular dismantling of New Deal and Great Society government programs begun by Ronald Reagan in the eighties will continue so that, in place of the concrete social and economic support system the disadvantaged have been entitled to for seventy years, the Bush Administration will offer them houses of worship where they can go to receive their fair share of love.

Ultimately, the reinvigorated Faith-Based Initiative will be as spectacular a failure as it was in 2001 less because of the American people’s fidelity to the separation of church and state, but more becase of our infidelity. Despite the fact that nearly forty percent of Americans regularly attend church, and the new-old Republican strategy of sweeping into office on the wings of a Bible, for most religion is merely another source of instant gratification in our informercial capitalist culture: Be wicked all week with sex, chocolate, alcohol, and avarice, and quickly restore your place in heaven in only a few short hours Sunday morning. Americans take offense at little else more than being told how to be moral, particularly by their President. Really, the framers of the Constitution included that separation-of-church-and-state provision mainly as a back-up plan. We probably won’t even need to use it.