Undermining America

2005-07-14T10:10:00.000-07:00

Dan Abrams, the BBC and "Terrorism"

There has been something of a flap in recent days over the BBC shying away from the use of the word "terrorist" to describe those who detonated devices (and it seems themselves) on the London transport system last week, killing over 50 innocent people. Apparently the Beeb has even gone so far as to edit contemporaneous news reports replacing "terrorist" with "bomber".

Attempting to doctor the historical record is at best risible, at worst Stalinist, so I won't intend to defend that activity at all.

But I will take issue with something Dan Abrams said on MSNBC last night (Wed July 13) on the Abrams Report in attacking the BBC. (Transcript not yet available).

Attacking the BBC for describing the term "terrorist" as "contentious in some contexts" and carrying "emotional and value judgements", Abrams was quick to scoff that the London bombers, like the 9/11 bombers and suicide bombers in Israel for example were obviously terrorists, because they "purposely targeted civilians" and even children.

Abrams here uses quite a common construction frequently raised when it is argued that the militaries of countries like the US, the UK and Israel using violence for political ends and frequently killing civilians cannot be differentiated under any reasonable definition of terrorism. Supposedly the intention is key. The military intends to kill enemy soldiers, or destroy their installations, even if sometimes their proximity to civilians means it is likely or even inevitable that civilian death will result. Therefore acts like, for example, This page quite succintly sums up the matter as decided in the UK.

Hyam (1975)
where the defendant knows that there is a serious risk that death or grievous bodily harm will ensue from his acts, and commits those acts deliberately and without lawful excuse ... It does not matter in those circumstances whether the defendant desires those consequences to ensue or not, and in none of these cases does it matter that the act and the intention were aimed at a potential victim other than the one who succumbed.

Moloney (1985)
[W]as death or really serious injury ... a natural consequence of the defendant's voluntary act? Secondly, did the defendant foresee that consequence as being a natural consequence of his act? ... if [the] answer [is] yes to both questions it is a proper inference ... to draw that he intended that consequence.

Simply therefore as Abrams should know, one cannot simply fire a missile into a crowd and claim one intended to kill only one person. If the launcher foresaw the death of a crowd as being "a natural consequence of his act" then the correct inference is that "he intended that consequence", and it makes no difference whether or not they "desire those consequences to ensure".

Thus to say that terrorism has the simple requirement of intending the deaths of innocent civilians, can only mean that in any case where the US or other military carries out an act resulting in the deaths of innocent civilians (e.g. the bombing of Baghdad) where those deaths were natural consequence of the act, then regardless of whether or not those deaths were desired that military has - by Abrams definition - committed "terrorism".

But since that is probably not the kind of thing the BBC wants to be relaying to its viewers every day, maybe it's understandable that they try to restrict their use of the T-word.

2005-06-03T09:19:00.000-07:00

More Lies from the Right - Bogus Martin Amis Book Review

For no good reason other than that I haven't written anything here in a bit, I thought I'd reproduce a review I just submitted to Amazon on Martin Amis' book Koba the Dread (On the USSR 1917-1953). I don't often write Amazon reviews; in fact this was only my third (the first was of the Turner Diaries, and as far as I know never published, the second of Phyllis Chesler's screeching "the New Anti-Semitism"). But was inspired by another review I'd read there which was a total distortion of the book's contents - plainly for political point-scoring and I thought it merited some correction.

The offending review was from Andrew S Rogers and was at the time of writing the first one here (I don't know if you can permalink an Amazon review?). I am reproducing only the latter two paragraphs - the rest was generally innocuous.

Uncovering why this is true [that the true horrors of Stalin's Russia is less well known than the Holocaust] makes up the final, and arguably most important, part of the book. That's because Amis takes aim at the myth -- so often heard even from people who should know better -- that Stalin's "excesses" were not endemic to communism, but rather were a result of the "cult of personality" that undermined true communism. Amis is having none of it. Terror, famine, slavery, and failure, "monotonous and incorrigible failure" (p. 30) are, he argues, the inevitable "Communist tetrarchy."

For Amis, the lesson of the twentieth century is what it teaches about Leftism and "revolution." Much of this book is intensely personal, because Amis believes some of his dearest friends -- and, for a while, his father as well -- were duped by Stalin and his mania. In wrestling with the ghost of Stalin, Amis is wrestling too with their demons, and his own. After gazing, in these pages, upon the twenty million, his conclusion that "the Revolution was a lie" (p. 258) is hard to refute.

These paragraphs represent an absolute and systematic distortion of the point of the book as I hope I made clear as follows:

Not a book about "Leftism", June 3, 2005, Reviewer: Brian OC (Boston)

One should not believe everything one reads. Even from Amazon Top 500 reviewers.

Despite what some might have you believe Amis' book is not about "Leftism", or even Communism in general. It is specifically about the Soviet Revolution (or "counter-revolution" as Amis dubs it here) and its deplorable excesses under Lenin and Stalin. Amis would be a poor writer indeed, if he claimed that one could base conclusions about "Leftism" in general on an examination of this limited topic. Amis is not a poor writer.

Defining Communism as a whole or attacking it was never part of Amis' ambit. (His ambit was better encapsulated in the question in his conclusion "Russia 1917-1953: what is it's genre? " (p258))

(Amis certainly never "takes aim at" or "is having none of" any "myths" about Stalinist crimes not being an intrinsic part of Communism. One marvels at the zealous miscomprehension of the true believer that could read the book and think this so.)

Soviet Russia was an abomination, all the more so in contrast to its claim to be rendering an earthly paradise. Its incarnation of Communism - the first on earth - combined "Terror, famine, slavery, and failure" and so these became the "Communist tetrarchy". Amis of course never seeks to claim that these four were "inevitable" consequences of Communism, that is a question perhaps for a different author, in a different book.

In fact Amis makes clear at numerous points in the book that he does not consider Marxism/Socialism/"Leftism" and Soviet Communism as synonymous.

Amis states his belief that Marx and Marxism was not the primary driving force behind the Russian Revolution:
"With its didactic portrait of the revolutionary New Man, its "russification" of current radical themes, and its contempt for ordinary people 'Chernyshevsky's novel [What is to be Done (1863) - read 5 times in one summer by Lenin], far more than Marx's Capital supplied the emotional dynamic that eventually went to make the Russian Revolution'(Joseph Frank)"(p27)

Amis talks of Lenin distorting and abusing Marx's writings, failing to live up to them, and failing ultimately to implement Marx's notion of Communism:
"Let us consider 'the dictatorship of the proletariat.' Barely more than a footnote in Marx, the phrase was fetishized by the Bolsheviks as 'vanguardism': the elite revolutionaries establish a dictatorship in the name of the proletariat; the proletariat over time outgrows mere "trade-union consciousness," and catches up with the vanguard; the vanguard, the state, then famously "withers away" and full Communism is "realized". The Bolsheviks, as we are aware got stuck in the first phase of the process and never moved beyond it."

Amis clearly believes that the Soviet Union was not socialist (and therefore clearly his denunciation of the USSR is not a denunciation of Socialism, or "Leftism")
"In the USSR... Union was a lie. Soviet was a lie. Socialist was a lie. Republics was a lie."(p258, my emphasis)

Amis clarifes that he personally never had much faith to lose in the Soviet Union. He is not at all "wrestling with his own demons" over Communism, and speaks of his inability to fully empathize with someone who did.
"'Perhaps the only thing I achieved in this life,' he [Volkogonov an old Stalinist turned anti-Communist] wrote, 'was to break the faith I had held for so long.' The workings of Volkogonov's internal perestroika are altogether alien to me." (p250, my emphasis)

It would certainly be possible for someone avowedly on the right to pick through this book selectively and misrepresent it as Martin Amis's deunciation of leftwing politics as a whole. But it would take a modicum of dishonesty or incompetence or some combination of the two to accomplish that.

This is a book about the failure of some individuals on the left to face up to the monstrosity of the Soviet Regime 1917-1953, because of romanticised notions of the nobility of the struggle. It is not about rejecting left wing politics per se, and it would take an excess of right-politicised gymnastics to try and represent it that way.

(As a footnote it should be said that Martin Amis is still avowedly on the left and recently while he disagreed with his friend Christopher Hitchens' support of the Iraq War, he took some solace in the fact that Hitch's postion "is a position held from the left")

****

Just before I posted this, I thought I'd read some of Rogers' other reviews to ensure I was correct in characterising him as someone "avowedly on the right", (with Americans it is sometimes very hard to tell), to discover he'd written approvingly of Ann Coulter, had once run for office on the Libertarian ticket, and routinely uses the word "leftist" as a term of abuse. None of this surprised me in the slightest.

In short, if dunderheaded reactionary nitwits want to post their own political viewpoints on the web there are a myriad of forums where they can do so. But there is something quite infuriatingly dishonest about trying to insert those views into the mouths of established authors in an effort to bolster said views. I hope anyone in the future who reads Roger's mendacious review takes the time to read mine after it, and recognizes him for the charlatan that he is.

2005-05-24T10:11:00.000-07:00

Why Does Christopher Hitchens Hate the Troops?

Christopher Hitchens, May 16, 2005
[A recent New York Times article] portentously headed "The Mystery of the Insurgency," ... rubbed its eyes at the sheer lunacy and sadism of the Iraqi car bombers and random murderers. At a time when new mass graves are being filled, and old ones are still being dug up, writer James Bennet practically pleaded with the authors of both to come up with an intelligible (or defensible?) reason for his paper to go on calling them "insurgents."

I don't think the New York Times ever referred to those who devastated its hometown's downtown as "insurgents."

It's time for respectable outlets to drop the word, to call things by their right names (Baathist or Bin Ladenist or jihadist would all do in this case).

Well said, Christopher! My one criticism is that you didn't get in a gratuitous shot at Newsweek. Or indeed every other publication giving aid and comfort to our enemies by using the term "insurgent" to describe individuals who can surely only be described correctly as nihil-islamo-terro-fasco-binladeni-jihadi-baathi-embodiment-in-human-form-of-unspeakable-evilists.

It is such a shame to see these publications putting the final nail in the coffin of that lost, lamented luxury: freedom-of-speech. We so wanted to keep it around, it's just a shame the New York Times had to force us into getting rid of it by consistently broadcasting their terrorist propaganda with the sole purpose of undermining our armed forces in their fight for goodness and purity and freedom.

But lets not go easy on these terrorist-enabling miscreants by failing to hold their words up to the light with their names highlighted beside them. Let us detail all those fifth columnists who have stooped to use the word "insurgent" to describe those attacking our brave boys in Iraq. Here are some of the very worst offenders - enemies of freedom to a man - I found via a quick google search:

Andrew Morton, 78th Division (TS) PAO, Oct. 7, 2004:
A number of the convoys encountered insurgent resistance and weapons fire, however, Hershkowitz unit miraculously suffered no major casualties after months of operations

Lt Col Paul Hastings Dec 13, 2004:
Iraqi Security Forces and Multi-National Forces repelled separate attacks by anti-Iraqi insurgents as they attempted to seize a police station and attack an MNF convoy on Dec. 11 in Mosul

Spc. Curt Cashour, Army News Service, Feb. 15, 2005
[T]he Army, along with scores of defense contractors, started developing various armor technologies in August 2003, when insurgents ramped up improvised explosive device attacks in post-invasion Iraq.

Name and shame them Christopher! Name and shame!

2005-05-20T06:06:00.000-07:00

Trump Stumps for Military in Primetime

Fort Dix Website

The main character of the [new Department of Defense] commerical, aimed at parents, teachers and other who may influence the decisions of young men and women to join the Army, is former Ranger and West Point graduate Kelly Perdew. For most, he is better known as the man who was hired by Donald Trump during the hit series, The Apprentice.

If Donald Trump and Kelly Perdew (winner of Apprentice II) want to appear in ads for the Dept. of Defense to promote recruitment in these lean times for the military that is certainly their business. Personally I'm not sure it's the lack of encouragement from 15-minute cardboard celebrities that's failing to convince the youth of America that a couple of years in Iraq with second class equipment, a high risk of death and no exit strategy sounds like a great career option. But then, what do I know, I've never been to Westpoint.

And it certainly doesn't seem like Perdew for one has much better things to do with his time:

Perdew's desk is in a small, windowless space next to the assistant to Donald Trump's wife, Melania (Perdew has no assistant). The walls are bare, except for a dry-erase board and a U.S. map, stuck with pins marking the distributors he's signed to buy his boss's new line of bottled water, Trump Ice.

My problem comes not with the paid and clearly demarcated DOD advertisement that appeared during an ad-break during last night's season finale of Apprentice III, but the (unpaid?) underhand unannounced advertisement that Trump and Perdew slipped in during what was supposedly the "editorial" meat of the show:

At one point in the finale Trump turned to Perdew and in an exchange almost as wooden and scripted as the ad itself the following snippet of conversation ensued: (NB I'm not quoting, this is only from memory but I think I got the gist)

Trump: Kelly, do you feel your career in the military helped you to win the Apprentice?
Perdew: Absolutely yes. The military taught me team-work, enthusiasm and commitment.

I suppose this is only the next logical progression from the hour long Product Placement in Paradise show which is broadcast for most of the year on CBS Thursdays under the working title "Survivor", but it still stuck in throat a little. A career in the military is a much too serious a product to be trying to sell underhandedly (even so ineptly) in the midst of a light entertainment hour.

But hey kids, the message was loud and clear - if you want a chance to work phones in a windowless office trying to hawk bottled water, why not risk your life for a bogus war in the Middle East first?

2005-05-18T09:21:00.000-07:00

Revenge of the Scot

One doesn't have to agree with every past utterance of Respect Party MP George Galloway or to harbour no qualms about his (alleged or actual) conduct to feel a great surge of exhilaration watching his performance versus Norm Coleman's Kangeroo Committee in the US Senate yesterday. (My emotions viewing his opening remarks were somewhat akin to those I felt watching Michael Owen score against Argentina in the 1998 World Cup.)

"I met Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of times as [US Defence Secretary] Donald Rumsfeld met him," Mr Galloway said. "The difference is that Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns, and to give him maps the better to target those guns."

Nice.

We Northern Irish and Scots have long shared a special affinity (largely based on mutual disdain for the English), so it was with something akin to pride that I was able to view Galloway's barnstorming performance. But it also occurred to me that in a parallel universe it could have been a plain-speaking politician from N. Ireland who came to the United States senate and gave the bizarrely coiffed and preening Coleman the hairdryer treatment at his deluded little show trial.

We certainly have world class ranters back home - if we weren't so concerned with our tedious little internecine squabbles in N. Ireland maybe we could take these skills to the world stage. Were he to turn from the dark side, Ian Paisley could have had Coleman in tears. Were Gerry Adams not so concerned with his image (and fundraising ability) in the US maybe it could have been him.

If nothing else Galloway has stuck one in the eye for the tiny nations of the world against it's greatest lumbering behemoth.

But Northern Ireland - what a waste of our national talents, our national politics are.

2005-05-16T13:22:00.000-07:00

History Repeating

Steve Gilliard quoting the Telegraph (UK)
The officer said: "US troops [in Iraq] have the attitude of shoot first and ask questions later. They simply won't take any risk.

"It has been explained to US commanders that we made mistakes in Northern Ireland, namely Bloody Sunday, and paid the price.

It can't be all that much of a surprise that US Commanders failed to learn the lessons of counter-terrorism in Northern Ireland, when the British who were actually there apparently didn't learn them either.

For years the British government used to insist that to call the N. Irish Troubles a "war" was to give the terrorists a legitimacy they did not deserve. (Thus the Hunger Strikes aimed unsuccessfully at gaining for POW rights for Republican prisoners.) It was felt that treating the IRA etc. as common criminals and defeating them using the criminal justice system would undermine their cause and help keep it from escalating into an ever-growing Irish insurrection. (Despite the deployment of troops Martial Law was never declared in N. Ireland)

While a lot of mistakes were made - particularly in the beginning (notably Bloody Sunday), the British government did make serious attempts to avoid collective punishment of the Catholic population - it least when you compare the British Army to the US Army in Afghanistan or Iraq or the IDF in the Occupied Territories. They also spent time actually trying to address the (often legitimate) grievances of the Catholic populace.

This is not to say that terrorist killers - like for example Bin Laden, or Dessie O'Hare - aren't often psychopaths with whom all reasoning is futile. Simply that in an aggrieved populace, certain actions which would not normally be tolerated will be rationalized by the notion that "at least they're doing something". Criminal gangsters can thrive in an atmosphere where the population have lost their respect for the forces of law and order, so those forces to prevail must attempt to gain that respect. The extent to which this is happening in Iraq is highly debateable.

As a result of the UK government's less "you're with us or against us" approach we have a kind of peace in N Ireland. Not perfect by any means but a lot better than it was in the 70s through the early 90s.

Yet somehow no one in British administration with any kind of knowledge of how the IRA was effectively neutralized, appears to have spoken up during Bush's drumbeat for war. Tony Blair's Labour party - who were in power during some of the darkest days of the 1970s - were eager to fall into step behind Bush's War On Terror. And no one seems to have mentioned that the UK's own "War on Terror" in the early 70s had to be abandoned when incidents like Bloody Sunday and Internment sent IRA recruitment skyrocketing, and replaced with something a little more nuanced, and a little more discriminatory with its targets.

So I don't particularly blame American soldiers' for failing to learn lessons from history when it seems British politicos didn't either. Eventually I suspect the relentless succession of propaganda victories the US is handing to Al Qaeda, with their witless tactics in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere will force a rethink there too.

"Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it" and all that.

***

Also on this topic I read a book recently "Making War, Thinking History" (written before September 11) by a Professor in the US Air Force, Jeffrey Record, who feared that the tactics (ordnance dropped from a great height by pilots far from danger) used in the Gulf War and particularly Kosovo might lead to an erosion of something he called the "Warrior Ethic" which held for example that the military should be prepared to give up their lives as opposed to killing civilians. It is difficult to square this "warrior ethic" with what we know about US Army Standard Operating Procedure in Iraq.

***

Finally many of my friends would probably be mightily offended by any implication that the British troops in N. Ireland were paragons of decency. It should go without saying that many of them did despicable things there but I'll offer this story of one of my earliest memories as a counterweight. And invite the reader to wonder if this could happen in Iraq 2005.

I must have been about 6 or 7 years old (so this was the late 1970s in N. Ireland) when my parents bought what to me was an excellent toy facsimile of a machine gun. The ack-ack-ack noise it made when I pulled the trigger was extremely satisfying. Nothing felt more natural, when the truckload of British troops drove past the garden where I was playing, than for me to point it at them and "fire". I couldn't understand why my mother panicked as she did and dragged me into the house. After all, and I still remember this vividly, the soldiers themselves had all laughed good-naturedly and waved. Funny that.

2005-05-16T09:56:00.000-07:00

More Bad News for the Troops

CROWDS 'FONDA' JANE COMEBACK
May 16, 2005 -- J.Lo and J.Fo rocked the box office over the weekend, as moviegoers flocked to see Jennifer Lopez and Jane Fonda battle it out in "Monster-in-Law." The brassy comedy, Fonda's first picture since 1990, was the No. 1 film in North America, with a take of $24 million, exceeding studio expectations.

What surer sign can there be of waning support for the troops on their foreign adventure than that US movie-going audiences have put Jane Fonda at the top of the box office? What clearer signal could there be that Americans want to bring their boys home?

"Audiences obviously ignored reviews, as they were roundly awful," analyst John Hamann said on the Box Office Prophets Web site."

By the same analysis, audiences obviously also ignored all of Jennifer Lopez's previous movies. At least since she became "J-Lo" around 1999 and has thus been able to pick and choose her roles, as far as I can tell Jennifer Lopez has failed to be associated with anything but "roundly awful" movies. (I have seen The Cell, The Wedding Planner, Maid in Manhattan, Shall We Dance and Gigli - the blame for most of this is my wife's* but for Gigli it's my own morbid fascination). Which is apropos of nothing of course, but I thought it warranted mentioning.

*In fairness I should confess that my wife does not have a monopoly on insisting we watch terrible movies together, and that within the next few weeks we'll be going together to see Revenge of the Sith.

2005-05-16T05:50:00.000-07:00

Who Cares About Winning Elections?!

I read quite often fellow liberals (I have decided to try to force myself to use this term of self-description. I don't like it, but I have a sneaking suspicion this is just because I've been brainwashed into not liking it by the Right Wing Noise Machine) objecting to what they see as internecine feuding by saying we should bury our differences with fellow liberals/Democrats and concentrate on the true enemy - Karl Rove, the Republican Party, Rush Limbaugh, Fox News etc.

That kind of cosy thinking sounds well and good until you hear those kind of exhortations being offered on behalf of someone like Kenneth Baer, a former Gore speech writer. Baer recently wrote this piece while guesting on Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo blog:

"Word just came in that the far-far-far left, Islamist candidate George Galloway has defeated Oona King - daughter of an ex-pat African-American civil rights activist and Jewish mother - in the east London constituency of Bethnal Green and Bow. Galloway is not just anti-war and anti-American, he is pro-Saddam.

[]

As Forsythe goes on to explain, a Galloway win could spark a backlash against Muslims as: - it could lead many Britons to conclude that Muslims threaten the country's liberal political culture. Galloway's win is a loss for us all."

I had already written a (I hope) stinging email to Baer in response to this ersatz LGF drivel, before I stumbled on Atrios lambasting the same piece as the "f***ed up thinking of DNC insiders". Predictably Atrios (and those who agreed with him) were subsequently attacked by some of his commentors categorizing this as not-sticking-together etc, asking how we could ever expect to win elections, and of course saying we should attack the real enemy. (Unfortunately the Haloscan comments had already mostly disappeared by the time I went to write this so I can't offer exact quotes.)

Those people perhaps missed the point that Kenneth Baer is the enemy. And no liberal in their right-mind should ever want his type of thinking to prevail in an election, even though - as is the way of things - it probably will some time in the not-so-distant future. I have read Talking Points Blog religiously for months, but am sadly looking on it in a whole new light since Josh Marshall returned from his sojourn and neglected to offer a public mea culpa and disassociation from Baer's absurd comments. (George Galloway = "Islamist"!?, "Far left" as a term of abuse - as if Stalin's Gulags and mass murder were just progressive social activism taken to its logical conclusion) I would no sooner want to help Kenneth Baer into office than I would Zell Miller, Democrats though they may be.

Now admittedly that kind of thinking doesn't win elections, but I have long ago come to the conclusion that I don't care that much about winning elections by selling out my principles, or even winning them at all for that matter.

I have next to zero faith in the electoral system for bringing worthwhile change which is not to say I'm for tyranny or dictatorship, just that democracy is a nice idea that I've never found has been of all that much use to me.

I was raised in Northern Ireland under the rule of the United Kingdom and at 18 blessed with a vote that I could do nothing but waste. I'd lived most of my childhood under the suffocating cloud of military occupation-lite and Thatcherite Conservatism but the parties who had a chance of winning power from Thatcher (Labour, Liberal Democrats (barely)) in the UK didn't even run candidates in N. Ireland. In the US I appreciate that a Republican voter in Massachusetts might feel his vote is a waste but at least he can vote for his favored party. I couldn't vote Labour and was left with selecting from one of N. Ireland's numerous religious-based parties. The only alternative was which religion you wanted to vote for, so the choice seemed completely irrelevant for those of us who didn't have much of a preference either way. OK I could have voted for the simperingly bland middle-of-the-road Alliance party but that seemed like a close equivalent of just ticking a box marked "neutral", so I ended up in frustration voting for the N. Irish Conservative (affiliated with but distinct from Thatcher's UK Conservatives).

In case there should be any confusion, I did completely despise the party for whom I cast my vote, but my 18-yr old logic told me that if a party affiliated with the UK Conservatives started getting votes then maybe the Labour party might think about fielding candidates in N. Ireland. This has still never happened, a N. Ireland voter still can't cast his vote for Tony Blair's party or one of his direct challengers which I think is incredible. An object lesson in the tricky question of how to give a populace a vote, yet still completely disenfranchise them. In the following elections I think I mindlessly cast all my votes for the SDLP (Social Democratic and Labour Party) - the least extremist party that didn't consider me an incipient Vatican insurrectionist. But I was sufficiently numbed by the depressing nature of electoral politics - especially in the wake of Tony Blair's New Labour - to not even bother to vote in the last General Election before I left the country.

Now I'm in the US and as a non-citizen I don't even have a vote so I am relieved of the burden of having to feel guilty about not using it. The high end of the Democratic Party stinks even if there are many good people in its rank and file. It hasn't even only begun stinking recently, it pretty much always has, and it most likely always will. My wife though intending to vote for Nader, for whom she'd voted last time, was surprised to find he wasn't even on the local ballot so ended up practically voting at random.

All of which is to say I am largely unaffected by exhortations to "support the team" and swallow my objections to odiferous liberals like Mr Baer by helping the Democrats into power (lesser of two evils though they may be). Sure I may not "win" any elections but then I'm in my thirties and I never have so far and I think I'm going to have to be OK with that.

Not that that means I'm apathetic or would encourage anyone else to be. I run (or have run) several political blogs, I've give money to causes I support, I've represented low-income individuals in benefits tribunals against the state, I've done years of work gratis for non-profit organizations, I fire off rude emails to Joe Scarborough or Tim Russert every couple of weeks, and I get really angry about the state of things in this country and the world almost every day, all of which makes me far from apathetic. I'm just not going to support Baer's Democratic Party just because it has a chance of winning an election, and I'm not going to feel in the slightest bit bad about it either.

***

Postscript. The mail I sent to Kenneth Baer (and Josh Marshall):
Your comment:"Word just came in that the far-far-far left, Islamist candidate George Galloway has defeated Oona King -- daughter of ... [a] Jewish mother... Galloway is not just anti-war and anti-American, he is pro-Saddam. ...

a Galloway win could spark a backlash against Muslims as: it could lead many Britons to conclude that Muslims threaten the country's liberal political culture. Galloway's win is a loss for us all."

I am a daily reader of Talking Points Memo, but occasionally I like to glance over at Free republic or Little Green Footballs for example just to see what the reactionary halfwits are mulling over at the moment. I take it Josh has decided to spare me the effort by letting you guest here for a bit. (I'm surprised you omitted a reference to "Eurabia" there.)

I can't even imagine how long it would take me to dissect everything that's wrong-headed, clueless, ignorant, and baselessly inflammatory about what you've written and as it's my lunch break, and I suspect you are beyond help, I have no intention of taking the time.

Since you are now such an expert on the UK I hope you will be familiar with the analogy when I tell you that your appearance on Talking Points Memo is like seeing a monstrous carbuncle appearing on the nose of an old and dear friend.

Josh, dear God, what were you thinking. Still I hope you had a good honeymoon.

Yours,Brian OC(expat N. Ireland)

P.S. And while I'm at it, didn't it even occur to you that perhaps the fact of the native food being bland is the *reason* the Brits like curry so much! [BOC - a reference to a previous assinine comment from Mr Baer that he couldn't figure out why curry was so popular in the UK, when the native food was so bland.]

2005-05-16T05:21:00.000-07:00

Cunning Killer Plots Death Row Escape: One Body Part at a Time

Seattle Times:

INDIANAPOLIS -- Gregory Scott Johnson's sister suffers from liver disease and will die without a transplant. Johnson wants her to have his liver.

"Chances are I'm not going to be needing it very long," he said.

Johnson, 40, is scheduled to die by injection at 12:01 a.m. May 25 for the 1985 murder of 82-year-old Ruby Hutslar.

The story about a death row inmate who wants to donate his liver to his sister who will die without it raises a whole raft of ethical issues.

Top of the list:

(a) What if the sister goes on to murder someone, and receives the maximum penalty? How are they then going to execute the liver twice?

(b) If the liver is allowed to live on the basis that it is not personally responsible for Johnson's crime, then on what grounds can we justly execute his kidneys? In fact given that Johnson's crime was "stomping an 82-year-old woman to death" isn't there a strong case to be made that we should just execute his feet, and let the rest of him go free?

2005-05-12T13:41:00.000-07:00

No More Munichs!

It is very common for US warhawks to cite the example of Hitler's appeasement Munich as a reason why the country has to go to war NOW! and not waste a moment to nip in the bud aggression from their Evil-doer-de-jour - Ho Chi Minh, Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic, Kim Il Sung, General Noriega.It should not be surprising that such people are pretty ignorant of what was in fact the cost of Munich. It was not - as some seem to think simply the psychological cost of letting a nasty piece of work think you don't have the guts to stop him. In fact there were numerous clear military advantages that were sacrificed by not taking military action against Germany when they invaded Czechoslovakia in 1938 and waiting until the Poland invasion in 1939.

i) In 1939 came the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact when the mutually distrusting Russia and Germany made an agreement that assured Germany it could turn it's attentions away from it's Eastern front and concentrate on the West

ii) Germany's war machine grew much faster proportionately over the next year than did the allies as Hitler was able to harness the Czech arms industry (the biggest in E. Europe to his war machine)

iii) Czechoslovakia had a 35 division army that was completely neutralized by the invasion.

In fact Hitler's own generals didn't believe they could win a war over Czechoslovakia in 1938.

In the case of Il Sung and Hussein of course while argument (ii) in terms of their armies' conventional strength potentially outstripping that of the US in time is plainly bogus, the WMD angle did/does provide some cover to say they are getting more militarily dangerous as time goes by. But the Munich analogy has been wheeled out by the Hawks against all sorts of people (in Vietman and Bosnia for example) with no feasible evidence that this applies.

"No more Munichs!" has become a meaningless and much-abused cliche by those without the faintest clue of what was sacrificed there.

(I put some of this in the comments section at Eschaton)

2005-05-12T11:27:00.000-07:00

Not Dead Yet

Since some recent comments I've left on a few other blogs have caused the hits here to skyrocket - almost reaching double figures one day! - I've decided I might actually resurrect this blog and start posting here occasionally.

On the other hand, this is only one of six blogs I have and I lose and gain interest in contributing to them so frequently that I don't imagine my best intentions will amount to much.

2004-05-19T06:01:00.000-07:00

More Apologia For Torture

Joe Scarborough:
All I can say is, it's a darned good thing [American GIs] didn‘t have to fight Hitler and the 24/7 news cycle, because, if they had, Eisenhower probably would have been run out of the Army on a personal scandal, FDR would have faced impeachment hearings, and U.S. troops would have been tried for manhandling S.S. guards or prison guards at Auschwitz.

On Joe Scarborough's MSNBC last night we were treated to yet more of the constant diminishing drip-drip "Abu Ghraib wasn't so bad" meme that has emanated constantly from the right-wing over the last couple of weeks.

Joe is plainly just a little too middle-brow to lower himself to the "no worse than frat-hazing" line used by Rush Limbaugh among others. So he instead used a historical reference reciting a long list of things he said would have happened had today's press treated Eisenhower during WW2 the way they treat Bush during the War in Iraq.

Among Scarborough's litany was "S.S. troops would have been tried for manhandling S.S. guards or prison guards at Auschwitz".

A little underhand perhaps - since Joe made a couple of plainly false implications here. He was obviously trying to draw parallels with the Abu Ghraib affair, yet

1) The US Guards were not "manhandling" they were torturing and sexually abusing; and

2) Estimates are the 70% of Iraqi detainees are innocent of any offence so to equate the tortured Iraqis to "prison guards at Auschwitz" is little short of slanderous.

(It is in fact laughable how in the Abu Ghraib affair Joe feels it was the abused prisoners and not their overseers who bore the closer resemblance to Auschwitz guards.)

Joe also had a guest on to debate the issue "Is torture ever justified". One of his guests was Bo Dietl, a gravel-voiced neanderthal former policeman who almost proudly admitted that in the past he had physically abused interrogation subjects.

Well case closed! Obviously torture was justified if this incoherent knuckle-dragging thug had done it in the past. Or that apparently is what we were being encouraged to think.

It was notable how much time Scarborough allowed this thug to bluster on through the stresses our forces suffer in Iraq (doubtlessly excessive) while slipping in the suggestion that what had happened at Abu Ghraib wasn't torture. ("Where have we seen torture? You had some guy wearing panties on his head.")

1) What was depicted in the pictures we have seen, and what we now know was standard practice, from Abu Ghraib was torture:

Physicians For Human Rights
[I]n the United Nations Committee Against Torture’s 1997 report on Israel, the Committee concluded that 1) restraining in very painful conditions, 2) hooding under special conditions, 3) sounding of loud music for prolonged periods, 4) sleep deprivation for prolonged periods, 5) threats including death threats, 6) violent shaking, and 7) using cold air to chill, are interrogation methods in violation of the Convention Against Torture.

2) No one on the panel can have been unaware that the Taguba Report mentions much worse conduct than what was contained in the pictures:

Taguba Report:
I find credible based on the clarity of their statements and supporting evidence provided by other witnesses

a. Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees;

b. Threatening detainees with a charged 9mm pistol;

c. Pouring cold water on naked detainees;

d. Beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair;

e. Threatening male detainees with rape;

f. Allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell;

g. Sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick.

h. Using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.

(T)he intentional abuse of detainees by military police personnel included the following acts:

a. Punching, slapping, and kicking detainees; jumping on their naked feet;

b. Videotaping and photographing naked male and female detainees;

c. Forcibly arranging detainees in various sexually explicit positions for photographing;

d. Forcing detainees to remove their clothing and keeping them naked for several days at a time;

e. Forcing naked male detainees to wear women’s underwear;

f. Forcing groups of male detainees to masturbate themselves while being photographed and videotaped;

g. Arranging naked male detainees in a pile and then jumping on them;

h. Positioning a naked detainee on a MRE Box, with a sandbag on his head, and attaching wires to his fingers, toes, and penis to simulate electric torture;

i. Writing “I am a Rapest” (sic) on the leg of a detainee alleged to have forcibly raped a 15-year old fellow detainee, and then photographing him naked;

j. Placing a dog chain or strap around a naked detainee’s neck and having a female Soldier pose for a picture;

k. A male MP guard having sex with a female detainee;

l. Using military working dogs (without muzzles) to intimidate and frighten detainees, and in at least one case biting and severely injuring a detainee;

m. Taking photographs of dead Iraqi detainees.

Nor can Joe or his guest have been unaware that members of Congress have seen photographs depicting much worse acts, that even Donald Rumsfeld considered "blatantly sadistic, cruel and inhuman".

Yet Joe's guest and many, many people on the right insist on discussing Abu Ghraib as if the most grevious action yet uncovered was Lynndie England pointing at the genitals of a naked man.

What is ironic is that many of those same people have blamed the media's publication of the photos for the death of Nick Berg - saying they inflamed the passions of the country.

"Joe, I have not seen one piece of evidence of torture"
- Bo Dietl,

But isn't it odd how without the pictures these people feel able to act is if nothing happened? It is those people I think ought to take more responsibility for the publication - Joe Scarborough and his guests - who refuse to acknowledge, in the absence of plain visual evidence that any misdeeds took place at all. We "saw" a guy with panties on his head. But we didn't see photots anyone getting sodomised with a broom. Ergo - no one did get sodomised with a broom. Brilliant.

(And of course whatever you do, don't publish any pictures of anyone getting sodomised with a broom - you don't want to inflame any terrorists who would never dream of beheading an American Jew if it hadn't been for 60 minutes and the Elite Media)

2004-05-14T09:40:00.000-07:00

Guess The Memo

Ever since I read (ex Fox News employee) Charlie Reina's amusing and illuminating expose of shamelessly biased Fox News I have while watching that channel (for some reason a guilty pleasure of mine) played a little game I call 'Guess The Memo'.

One of the most striking of Reina's revelations was about the daily instructional memo feeding Fox on air talent ideas about a particular point they should be trying to drive home:

The Fox News Memo
"the roots of FNC's day-to-day on-air bias are actual and direct. They come in the form of an executive memo distributed electronically each morning, addressing what stories will be covered and, often, suggesting how they should be covered. To the newsroom personnel responsible for the channel's daytime programming, The Memo is the bible. If, on any given day, you notice that the Fox anchors seem to be trying to drive a particular point home, you can bet The Memo is behind it"

So the aim of Guess The Memo is pretty simple. You watch Fox News and try to figure out the partisan point the anchors have been told by Roger Ailes (Fox News boss) to repeat ad nauseam today.

Today's winner?
The troops at Abu Ghraib were not acting under orders from above according to Spc. Jeremy Sivits .

Probably not in Today's Memo:
Klas-TV
Lynndie England: "I was instructed by persons in higher rank stand there -- hold this leash, look at the camera. They took a picture for SI-OP* and that's all I know."(May 12)

[BOC note - London probably said "PSYOP - abbreviation for Psychological Operations]

CNN
Graner contends that he was ordered by civilian and military intelligence to participate in the abusive activity and that one of the photographs that came to light this month is proof.

"The photo we presented is proof of what we've been saying because it shows military intelligence and civilian intelligence where this activity is taking place," [Graner's lawyer] said. (May 14)

But you wouldn't know any of this according to Fox News. At least 5 times in the hour I watched Fox & Friends this morning I heard references such as "we now know that apparently senior command did not know what was going on according to Sivits"

And featured predominantly on their Fox News website is Sivits story (contradictory testimony from England and Graner are not evident as headline stories)
"Sivits said his superiors were unaware of the abuse, which came to light after another guard tipped authorities in January."

True or not it is Sivits' minority testimony which exonerates military command that Fox have been blaring out today at the expense of opposing majority testimony.

But here's one line which might be worth highlighting in their own report:
Lawyers for the soldiers that Sivits named said his statements were "fabricated" and questionable because of his plea deal."

Fair and Balanced? I report, you decide. (sorry)

2004-05-14T08:42:00.000-07:00

Better Than The Worst

I'm starting to detect something almost unseemly about the media's interest in Nick Berg's family since his death. I can't blame them entirely - there is no doubt that Michael Berg, Nick's father, is providing them with plenty of salacious copy - suing the US government for Nick's release from custody shortly before his abduction, making no secret of his fervent opposition to the war, the he-said she-said disputes over the exact circumstances of Nick's arrest and detention, actually blaming the US government for the death - but in the circumstances it is impossible to judge him too harshly.

Somehow though I'd like to think between the media, the wider family and the government they might be able to keep the spotlight off the griecing relatives for a decent interval, facilitate an open and honest exchange between the family and the US government so that every disputed point can be resolved away from the public gaze - avoiding the ghoulish media circle which has arised around this messy spat. After that if questions remain unanswered - or answered in unsatisfactory ways - then by all means make that public. Let's just give the dust swirling round the (frequently bizarre) facts of the murder some time to settle.

It is, or it certainly appears to be, a fact that Nick Berg was in favor of the Iraq war, he travelled there in full awareness that it was a dangerous place and he was abducted and murdered by a gang of unholy psychopaths.

My own views on the war are certainly more in sympathy with Michael Berg's than with his son's, and I write from obviously a position far-removed, but I am wary that a father's grief (and frustration that his son travelled to Iraq despite his wishes) is being expressed by lashing out without full reflection and perhaps in a manner that does not serve Nick's memory.

I would hate to see anyone in the anti-war left leap on Nick Berg's tragedy like it was a heaven-sent PR opportunity, and I'm wary that that is the direction in which some are headed from the amount of exposure the "Berg's Dad Blames President" spin on the sory is getting.

Abu Ghraib reminded us that at all times our society should be better than those we oppose. And at all times we on the left should be better than those on the right (see yesterday's entry) who would exploit Nick Berg's death for their own political ends.

2004-05-13T07:44:00.004-07:00

Know Your Enemy: He May Not Be As Stupid And As Evil As You Think

One way in which I believe the left does itself a disservice particularly on the web is to completely isolate itself from alternative perspectives on issues. (Of course the right tends to do this as well but their disservices to themselves are, for obvious reasons, of less immediate concern to me).

If an individual on the left only ever hears the left spin on a certain event or phenomenon then, as frequently happens, they tend to believe only someone who is completely (a) stupid or (b) immoral could see things differently. The perception that Bush supporters are both these things is absolutely rampant in the comments sections of left-leaning fora like Eschaton and Daily Kos.

It may be comfortable to believe these things of those who disagree with you but ultimately it lazy and unhelpful to your cause if you act as though only non-sentient beings could possibly see things the way you do.

In short this is why I like to read BlogsForBush. Here I have found a generally decent bunch of Republicans and a good and regularly updated presentation of their thinking on the issues of the day.

I agree with probably no more than 5% of it's content but not because it is either evil or stupid. Most of my disagreements with Republican thinking (on foreign policy at least) comes down to differing fundamental value systems where I tend to find that they have:

a) a very limited regard for the value of an international rule of law.
b) an extreme regard of the utility of military might (like the old observation about the guy whose only tool is a hammer is going to try to fix every problem with a hammer, because the US has the greatest military machine every constructed it should be used in almost every circumstace)

Combined these tend to contribute to the belief that since America *can* do whatever it wants, it has the *right* to do whatever it wants. (In general this belief is, I should say, tempered by a strong faith that whatever America *wants* to do will be for the general global good, even if specifically for the good of America)

Personally I could debate and attack that notion with what I consider to be irrefutable logic all day. I think it's inherently chauvinistic, short-sighted and dependant on a certain degree of xenophobia.

However I don't think you have to be evil or stupid to maintain it, as I have certainly met people who are neither of those things who do just that.

****

Having said all the above I must confess I have been troubled in recent days by the contributer of a certain very vocal contributor the BlogsForBush site called Mark Noonan. Here are a few of Mr. Noonan's choice contributions in recent days:

"Don't fall for the garbage that a few piddling pictures of naked Iraqi prisoners is anything to lose any sleep over."

"I seriously feel like going out and punching the first reporter or Democrat I come across."

"no amount of attempts to inflate some piddling abuse of prisoners will ever make the American liberation in any way less than the best thing that ever happened in Iraq."

What appears to have been the final straw were these comments which Mr Noonan wrote in the aftermath of the Nick Berg murder which united America in shock:

Ted Kennedy killed this man; so did Nancy Pelosi, the people over at Democratic Underground, Ted Rall

I considered these comments appalling and cheap political point-scoring of the basest kind and was drawn to make my feelings known as follows:

Mark I get the impression that you are of the opinion that we should be trying to gain the respect of terrorists by acting as badly as they do.

I noted elsewhere you described the "piddling abuse" at Abu Ghraib even when you were surely aware of the reports of rape, sodomy and murder.

Personally I don't want to be respected by terrorists. If they want to think we're weak, decadent fools because we have due process, the rule of law, freedom of the press, high standards of morality then so be it.

You know, if you really care so much about being respected by the terrorists maybe you should try and get an Islamic fundamentalist government in charge here to do a few televised beheadings on American soil. That would really show them, wouldn't it?

To be honest I have a lot of respect for a lot of Republicans but I found your attempts to score cheap and nasty political points in the immediate aftermath of a countryman's brutal murder absolutely stomach-churning. (In fairness though having just watched TV I was feeling pretty sick anyway)

Shortly thereafter I was apparently banned from BlogsForBush for "trolling", so it looks as though I may be only an observer of the site in future. Of course I know that "freedom of speech" does not mean every moderator has to give webspace to every disputing point of view but I feel reference to another of Mr. Noonan's recent comments is called for:

"Its hard, I know, to put up with this mindless political hackery and the blistering hatred of the [the other side]"

I can really empathise Mark. Really I can.

***

Ironically later a few other people objected to Mr. Noonan's comments and he subsequently issued a clarification which might almost be regarded as a withdrawal:

Now that I've had some hour to digest it all, I wish to clarify - of course it was al Queda that committed the actual murder, but the fact that they committed the murder is in direct response to the fact that they think it will have an effect...Ted Kennedy, et al, did set the situation in which an American would be butchered by these savages

***

I wish I had a transcript of the interview Republican Senator Lindsey Graham gave on Fox News yesterday where in the face of consistent goading by Big Story host John Gibson, along the lines of "Since nobody was being beheaded in Abu Ghraib it's not really such a big deal is it?" Graham was able to take a clear moral stance.

There is no doubt, none whatsoever that cold-bloodedly hacking off the head of a defenceless man is in a different league, a different dimension of depravity to the pictures we have seen thus far from Abu Ghraib. And in fact it is mere slight of hand and misdirection to assert that anyone serious would make such a claim.

But as Sen. Graham repeated - we do not want to set the behaviour of those people as our bar. The two things are irrelevant to each other. Those cold-blooded killers will behave in one way, irrespective of what we do. And we on the other hand will apply our rules and values to wrong-doing irrespective of what they do as well.

I could not find such a transcript of the Graham interview but here is an extract from the same show from Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss (facing the same kind of leading questioning):

GIBSON: Senator, is this going to take some of the bite out of the investigation of the abuses at Abu Ghraib?

CHAMBLISS:Well, I'm afraid we can't do that, John. It's imperative we continue to abide by the law because the rule of law is what makes America the great country that it is. And we have to abide by that, so we've got to move forward with the Abu Ghraib investigation and whatever prosecutions or treatment may come towards military officers out of that.

It is reassuring to know that at least while the offensive characterisation by some of the systematic torture of prisoners is described by some as "piddling" at least such people exist only on the extremist fringe of the right. I just think it's a shame that a generally worthwhile organisation such as BlogsForBush would give such prominence to these unpleasant extremist views, going so far as to ban reasoned dissent against it.

2004-05-11T06:37:00.000-07:00

The Best Secretary of Defence America Has Ever Had
After the initial shock impact of the Abu Ghraib photographs has lessened, differing perspectives on various facets of the affair have started to be discernible often along Republican/Democrat lines.

On the issue of whether or not Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld should resign, some Republican commentators have been heard to remark that the only issue is whether or not Rumsfeld is capable of doing his job, and since Rumsfeld is the "best Secretary of Defence America has ever had" only "partisan Democrats" could possibly want him to resign.

In such circles of course the corrollary - that perhaps only "partisan Republicans" could rate Donald Rumsfeld "the best Secretary of Defence America has ever had" - appears not be granted much consideration.

And is the ability to carry out one's job really the only consideration when considering fitness to remain in public office? If a politician was to be caught having an affair with an intern, even if he lied about it under oath, apparently according to the latest Republican thinking, as long as he was able to do his job those things would be irrelevant.

They're Laughing at us Now
Another common meme I've noted arising in some Republican circles is the notion that our enemies are now laughing at us because we seem weak for getting in a stir about a bit of prisoner abuse.

A Republican Notes
"We are being laughed at today in the part of the world with whom we are at war. We are being laughed at and seen as weak and malleable."

My response is one of slight bemusement. Should our new standard of behavior be to avoid at all costs acting in a way in which a few radical jihadists might consider laughable and weak?

In that case we should probably first of all dispense with trials and the presumption of innocence and just start executing on sight anyone who looks like them might not agree with us.

Then we should probably ban make-up, music and kite-flying as these are dead giveaways of our decadence to the homicidal jihadists.

Ultimately we should probably revert to some kind of a stone-age society where women can't show their faces in public, blasphemers have their tongues hacked out at the root and we strictly apply the most bloodthirsty interpretation of the Koran.

Perhaps then we could finally earn the respect of a bunch of medieval psychopathic murderers!

It's the Liberal Media's Fault
BlogsForBush Comment:
"it's not the democrats who are a danger. it's not activist judges. its the media who covers up almost everything-- playing up the prisoner "abuse" (encouraging the enemy)"

Finally I also noted how - inspired by Rumsfeld himself in his testimony before the Armed Services Committee - the photographs and ultimately their publication on 60 Minutes is being blamed for much of the stir.

Yes, if only our media would avoid reporting any wrongdoing by our government or troops and pretend we were completely blameless the world would think we were perfect. If only our journalists lived in fear of being consigned to a gulag for uttering any dissent. Sigh. If only America could be a bit more like Soviet Russia...

2004-05-10T09:26:00.000-07:00

No Sympathy for the She-Devil
Can Lynndie England bear the weight of a nation's shame?

I'll open with a couple of statements of the obvious:

It is possible to harbour violent urges toward the kid who just made off with your car stereo, while at the same time retaining a troubled awareness of the deprived social background which might have guided him towards a life of crime.

It is possible to utterly condemn the actions of a Palestinian suicide bomber, while at the same time believing there is much fault in Israel's policies towards the Occupied Territories.

It is possible to feel nauseated by the image of a young female American soldier holding an Iraqi prisoner on a leash, while at the same time thinking that young woman might be bearing more than her share of national condemnation for her part in a complex (both ethically and factually) pattern of prisoner abuse.

While the majority of mainstream American public opinion seems to have been thoroughly shocked that some of their soldiers could behave in the way they plainly did in the Abu Ghraib prison, the shock is not universal, nor is it confined to one side of the political spectrum.

On the left fringes the lack of surprise might be characterized as the following sentiment, "Of course these things will happen in war and occupation. This is why me must avoid war and occupation."

On the right fringes the sentiment is more akin to "Of course these things will happen in war and occupation. So get over it."

Nonetheless that majority of mainstream America reels in shock, and has turned in particular on the female soldier most commonly seen in the photographs, Lynndie England, a young 21 year old woman who is now demonised daily to an extent redolent of the flip-side of Jessica Lynch's premature beatification of last year.

What I personally find most surprising about the whole affair is that anyone really is particularly surprised that the abuses being uncovered in Abu Ghraib occurred. We all know how badly many 20 year olds behave in their home cities; is it not just plain wishful thinking to imagine that being transplanted to a foreign land, into the atmosphere of fear and paranoia that military occupation engenders, watching blood (of friend and of foe) spilled regularly, is going to make them behave any better?

Does it really seem likely that a few months of "military training" is going to completely remould a person's basic nature? My supposition, entirely unscientific, is that if 10% (or whatever number) of the populace at large are going to be inclined towards violent criminal activity then 10% of the military are probably going to be likewise inclined. A few months of military training cannot turn legions of complex young men and women into legions of Sir Galahads and Joan of Arcs.

And that just relates to acts of individual criminality. Where a soldier is involved in a command mechanism which invites systemic abuse, as increasingly we are being led to suppose was the case at Abu Ghraib, the instances are going to be much higher.

At around the same time last year I happened to read two books ("The Nazi Doctors" by Robert Jay Lifton and "Lieutenant Calley - His Own Story" by William Calley (with John Sack)) and found I was very struck by the similarities between the prevailing ideologies that led to separate, distinct but nonetheless comparable barbarities over 30 years on different continents. For the Nazi doctors, sterilising, euthanasising, gassing, even experimenting, the perception of personal culpability was reduced by being divided across a vast system of which each actor was only a tiny part.

In the context of Nazi Germany it took heroism to stand against the Holocaust machine, and unfortunately too few among us are heroes. Successfully indoctrinated with Hitler's ideas of the master race and the unclean others, it became depressingly easy to accede and become a tiny cog in history's most ruthless and effective murder machine.

Here is Lieutenant William Calley describing his feelings about fighting Communism in the Vietnamese jungles:

I had this mental picture: communism, and it was something mechanical. It crawled along: it crept along and it engulfed people, it enslaved people, it chewed people up. I told myself, I'll recognise it. And with rifles, grenades etcetera, I'll dismantle it. I told myself I'm superior: sure, but I was confronting communism now, and I was inadequate. It wasn't any machine, and it wasn't anything that a weapon could stop.

Calley's long self-exculpatory book evokes a lot of similarities with the self-justificatory mechanisms of the Nazi doctor. Insistent to the last that he was obeying orders when he led the massacre of hundreds of woman and children at My Lai, Calley has some success in evoking sympathy. The picture he paints is of a man led by ideology and immersion in paranioa and the deaths of fellow soldiers into regarding the Vietnamese (men, woman, children) as less than human and worthy of a similar extermination that Hitler designed for the Jews.

There are certainly distinctions in that theoretically at least Calley intended not to exterminate an entire people, but only those "infected" with Communism. But since, as he acknowledged, it was quite impossible to accurately determine which Vietnamese were thus "infected" and which were not, and in My Lai at least he erred on the side of bloody caution, that distinction became lessened in importance. It is also important to note I am not claiming any moral equivalence between the overall war aims of Nazi Germany and the US in Vietnam, however those aims might have been misrepresented by and to soldiers like Lieutenant Calley.

Similarly while there is certainly no equivalence between the Nazis and the US in Iraq, nonetheless the same dehumanising influence certainly appears to have infected Lynndie England and the other soldiers at Abu Ghraib, albeit it to a lesser extent. Perhaps paraphrasing Calley, part of the frustrations that led to the abuse went something like:

I had this mental picture: terrorism, and it was something mechanical. It crawled along: it crept along and it engulfed people, it enslaved people, it chewed people up. I told myself, I'll recognise it. And with rifles, grenades etcetera, I'll dismantle it. I told myself I'm superior: sure, but I was confronting terrorism now, and I was inadequate. It wasn't any machine, and it wasn't anything that a weapon could stop.

--------------------------

Witnessing the shock evidenced over the last couple of weeks, it might be supposed that America is in some large degree in denial about the realities and dynamics of modern military occupation. How the humiliation of being under the control of foreign soldiers (particularly of "Christian" soldiers in a Muslim land) inevitably leads at least a minority to significant resentment; how this resentment leads to violence against the occupiers; how this violence leads the occupiers to respond, inevitably with less than 100% accuracy and so occasionally against the innocent. And thus the resentment grows, and the attacks grow. And the fear of being attacked, the horror of watching ones friends die, leads to escalated response from the occupiers. And as in cellblocks from Belfast, to Israel, to Iraq leads to the abuse of the most helpless of the perceived "others".

This is not to absolve individuals like Lynndie England of all guilt, by any means. Only to recognize that they do not act in isolation from a much wider environment. Whether or not that environment directly involves a command structure explicitly encouraging abuse, it certainly involves the wider less explicit demands of the realities of being an occupying soldier.

For those who reject this analysis and point to the examples of Japan and Germany as instances where occupation works I must point out the obvious similarity between these two, and the difference with Iraq (and Afghanistan and indeed any country that falls to a modern military machine). The populations of both Japan and Germany had been decimated in the days when saturation bombing of civilian populations was acceptable in warfare. This is not to say one should believe all one hears about the miracles of smart weaponry and "targeted strikes", or to deny the likelihood that thousands of innocents in Iraq and Afghanistan fell victim to American bombs; nonetheless Baghdad 2003 bore little resemblance to Dresden or Tokyo 1944.

The WW2 populations of Germany and Japan had been facing defeat for months before it came and drained by years or war were almost relieved when it came. This was not the case in Iraq, it was not the case in Afghanistan and ironically it will not be the case anywhere where the current, comparatively targeted, mode of military occupation is engaged. In these places, the populaces comparatively (and I use the term advisedly) unscathed by war, feel undefeated and often prepared to continue with the conflict.

Ironically therefore, it seems that the better the weaponry the less conclusive the victory. American war-time leaders in the future may be faced with the dilemma that since they now have the means to avoid a large degree of civilian death, but since that will not grant them their ultimate war aims, they may have to go back to purposely targeting civilians on a scale unimagined at any time in history. At least WW2 leaders could claim with some justification that many civilians would inevitably - even accidentally be killed when their bombers sought to destroy military targets even within miles. Now such widescale civilian deaths, as may be sufficient to pacify an occupied population, can be nothing but deliberate.

If the American future is beset with inconclusive victories over unpacified populations, we can expect Abu Ghraib, and Lynndie England to be but a foretaste of the future. It remains to be seen - given the stark choice between such barbarities or alternatively the large-scale purposeful targeting of civilians - which will prove ultimately more palatable to the 21st century America public.

2004-05-07T06:38:00.000-07:00

No Sense Of Fun: Overlooking the Lighter Side of Authoritarian Abuse

Miscellaneous comments on the Abu Graib Prison abuse scandal:

"Worse happens in frat houses across America ... bad pictures with some guys playing naked Twister. "
-Weekly Standard online editor Jonathan V. Last (on Dennis Miller's MSNBC show)

"I've seen -- I've seen worse than this at -- frat hazing is worse than this. "
-former U.S. Army sergeant and former interrogation instructor Tony Robinson (on Fox News Hannity and Colmes)

"stupid, kid things — pranks"
- Terrie England, mother of one of the accused.

An important point, perhaps the elephant in the living room, that all these apologists for barbarity appear to have overlooked is that the element of "consent" is more than a minor detail in most civilised perceptions of what is moral and permissible and what is not. Consent, or the lack of it, is what turns a friendly clap on the back into a common assault, an act of love into a rape, in America today it can turn an entirely legal act (abortion) into a first degree murder.

So the fact that college students across this great nation get drunk and do stupid things is no more a defence to - nevermind a negation of - the abuse at Abu Ghraib prison, any more than Kobe Bryant's team can expect to amount a defence to his rape charge simply by pointing out that all across the country the night of his supposed offence, college students were having consensual sex.

Guys, we all know people have sex and we all know people get naked and do dumb things. And there is no argument that they have the perfect right to do so. Where some of us have a problem though is where people don't want to have sex, or they don't want to get naked and someone else by force makes them do those things

If that's not clear enough perhaps this little vignette from my country of origin will help to elucidate the distinction being missed:

My friend Mary grew up in West Belfast, some miles from where I did, in a noted Catholic, even Republican area. Many from her community joined the IRA and took up arms against the British government and against our domestic security services. No one in Mary's family had done, but as theirs was a single parent family they were an easy target for the anti-Catholic bigotry of a sizable portion of our police force and the army.

On one occasion when Mary was about 8 years old, her house was raided by a joint army/police patrol. Mary vividly recalls the leers and the smirks as members of the British army and of the RUC (Royal Ulster Constabulary) rifled through her mother's underwear drawer in front of the whole family, lifting various items, and making remarks which even she could tell were "dirty", even if she did not quite understand them.

Next that patrol entered a family room where Mary's medals - for she was a gifted Irish dancer - bedecked the walls. Mary relates today how one of the RUC asked whose were the medals; she recalls her mother's innocent pride in answering Mary's name. And she very clearly recalls what happened next.

To some in the North of Ireland anything relating to native Irish culture - the Southern Irish Tricolour flag, the traditional music, Catholicism, or Irish Dancing - smacks of heresy. Irish nationalism is an evil and all its signs and symbols are an evil too.

So when this policeman asked whose were the medals it was not to offer his congratulations. Instead, he asked Mary to dance but she could tell from his tone that it was not a friendly invitation. She declined. He asked again. She declined again. The next time he drew his gun and pointed it at her head. So this time she danced. The soldiers and police laughed and then they left.

But no big deal right? Because people are always dancing. Little girls love to dance. And if you take away the weapon, the dynamic of power, the coercion, the oppressive backdrop of foreign military occupation, the malicious and mocking intent, all you have is a man watching a little girl dance. Just like how in Abu Ghraib if you take all those things away all you have is Animal House.

And who could possibly get offended by little girls dancing, or college boys drinking except someone with entirely no sense of fun.

2004-05-06T13:37:00.000-07:00

Somewhere in a Galaxy Far, Far Away...

From the BBC Website today:
Bush 'sorry' for prisoner abuse

President George Bush has apologised for the first time for the abuse of .... prisoners by US troops...

Mr Bush told reporters at the White House he was "sorry for the humiliation suffered by the prisoners and their families"...

He has said he only realised the extent of the abuse when he saw the pictures on television...

The Bush administration has faced widespread revulsion over the photographs of ...US troops next to... prisoners in humiliating... poses...

Mr Bush said they had made Americans "sick to our stomachs" - and repeated his insistence the photos did not reflect "the true nature and heart of America"...

2004-05-06T10:06:00.000-07:00

Kill Your Heroes: Taking Fisk to Task

If someone had told me even a week ago that I'd have opened my new blog by bashing a Counterpunch article, and particularly one written by Robert Fisk, I'd have thought they were crazy, but I found it impossible to let this one ("A Warning to Those Who Dare Criticize Israel in the Land of Free Speech") pass by without comment, as I feel it plays unfortunately into the hands of Fisk's detractors by being frankly more than a little hysterical and, in part at least, more than a lot illogical.

For the record I consider Counterpunch the most essential political site on the web, bar none, I am a huge fan of Fisk's journalism and on the one occasion I heard him lecture I found him an unassumingly inspiring man. (That lecture also marked the only time I have ever met anyone who considered Fisk "too liberal" in the sense that his critiques of Israeli policy did not go far enough!)

But here is where I'm afraid Fisk at least slightly lost the plot:

Webster's Third New International Dictionary defines "anti-Semitism" as "opposition to Zionism: sympathy with opponents of the state of Israel".

Come again? If you or I suggest... that the Palestinians are getting a raw deal under Israeli occupation, then we are "anti-Semitic". It is only fair, of course, to quote the pitiful response of the Webster's official publicist, Mr Arthur Bicknell, who was asked to account for this grotesque definition.

"Our job," he responded, "is to accurately reflect English as it is actually being used. We don't make judgement calls; we're not political." Even more hysterically funny and revolting, he says that the dictionary's editors tabulate "citational evidence" about anti-Semitism published in "carefully written prose-like books and magazines". Preposterous as it is, this Janus-like remark is worthy of the hollowest of laughs.

Even the Malaprops of American English are now on their knees to those who will censor critics of Israel's Middle East policy off the air.

Fisk here appears to have badly fallen prey to a common misconception about most English dictionaries. Mr Bicknell is only telling the truth - most dictionaries these days (including Merriam Webster) are indeed only intended to reflect the common usage. They are not intended to be ultimate arbiters of correctness. That's why every time you find yourself debating with someone who turns to a definition of a word and proclaims "I must be right - the dictionary backs me up" then that person is on very shaky ground.

In fact, all that the dictionary's definition proves is that your misguidedly-triumphalistic interlocutor is not the only person who is mistaken: if suddenly for no good reason whatever 10000 people decided they were going to use the word "aardvark" to mean "sleepy" then sooner or later Merriam Webster would be obliged to include that definition. That doesn't mean "aardvark" means "sleepy" in any objective sense, any more than "anti-Semitic" means "anti-Israeli policy" in any objective sense. However Merriam Webster is bound by longstanding policy to recognize that some (albeit ignorant) people use it that way. And that is all their including that definition means:

To many people's horror and dismay, when Webster's Third appeared [in 1961], it had switched from being a prescriptive dictionary to a descriptive one. What's the difference? A prescriptive dictionary says "this is the correct way to use this word." A descriptive dictionary says "most people use the word this way, some people use it this way, a few people have been known to use it this way - you decide for yourself."

So I'm afraid what Mr Fisk has ascertained to be "grotesque", "pitiful", "hysterically funny and revolting", "Janus-like" and demonstrative that Merriam Webster are "on their knees" to the Israeli lobby is simply an honest statement of their blanket policy since 1961.

Does Mr Fisk feel similar outrage that Merriam Webster includes the following:

wicked
Function: adverb
: VERY, EXTREMELY

scrub
a person of insignificant size or standing

I would have to guess not. As with the term "anti-Semitism" the dictionary is simply recognizing that words can evolve different meanings, even meanings that certain people might deem incorrect or even offensive. Who hasn't heard some Luddite retentive at some time bemoaning the fact that "gay" now means homosexual? Does Merriam Webster's including this definition mean they are somehow "on their knees" to the pink lobby? I'd have to venture not!

And here for the record is the top definition for "anti-semitism" given on Merriam Websters online:

an·ti-Sem·i·tism
: hostility toward or discrimination against Jews as a religious, ethnic, or racial group

Any complaints, Bob? Is it just possible that Merriam Webster's is not in fact in thrall to some pro-Israeli Thought Police? Of course to the real purists this definition is no good either since technically "Semitic" means "of all semitic races" - including the Arabs!

In fact it is completely illogical for Fisk to complain that Merriam Webster defines "anti-semitic" as being "anti-Israeli policy" unless he takes equal umbrage at the fact that it does not include being "anti-Arab".

If we must be a stickler for etymological purity then let's have Merriam Webster define "anti-Semitism" purely as an antipathy towards all of the Semitic races. It will make it a pretty rubbish, fairly useless dictionary of course but as long as it can't be used as ammunition for ignorant, pro-Israeli Fisk-detractors then that, I suppose, is a small price to pay.

Look, no one likes being called "anti-Semitic", Robert Fisk is by no sane definition an "anti-Semite" and there is no doubt the epithet is the frequent recourse of the lazy, the sloppy, the anti-Arab, the snarling Likudist, but that is not Merriam Webster's fault, and they did not alter their longstanding editorial policy to accommodate such people.

In short I'm afraid Mr Fisk owes Merriam Webster an apology and, in view of his very intemperate and unjustified language, he owes one especially to Merriam's publicist Mr Arthur Bicknell.

Perhaps more seriously from Fisk and Counterpunch's point of view, this misguided article could be cited by anyone at any time in the future looking for back-up for the oft-levelled charge that Fisk has some peculiar animus against Israel. The fact is that Merriam Webster's definitions and their policies have nothing to do with pro-Israeli pandering, and anyone who would suggest as much runs the risk of looking something dangerously close to paranoid.