When asked by Chairmen John Conyer's about the theory of the unitary executive, David Addington asserted that he did not know what that was. Of course, he had heard of the term from reading the newspapers, but as far as a 'theory', well, what theory is that?
Have we been misled all along thinking that the great Addington had devised and articulated such a brilliant conception of a powerful executive. Or, is it rather that he is just contemptuous of Congress and all those meddling fools who want to stop him and Cheney from protecting us--from ourselves?
Thursday, June 26, 2008
The look of contempt
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Must read
The final Senate report on executive use of intelligence prior to Iraq war is finally released. The report was held up for many years, although there were repeated assertions (by then Republican chair, Pat Roberts) that investigations were moving forward. For links to official report go here.
The ultimate quote from committee chair John D. Rockefeller, "In making the case for war, the administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when it was unsubstantiated, contradicted or even non-existent."
If accurate what happened was not an exaggeration of known intelligence (as both the Times and WaPost headlines read today), but rather intentional deception. Can't editors recognize the difference?
I have no sense for whether the report's conclusions are already widely believed or not, but it's important to have official government confirmation even if such beliefs are already widely held. No longer can we merely claim that everyone was misled by faulty intelligence; evidently, we were misled by our current government.
Thursday, May 1, 2008
"No greater legal monstrosity than a secret statute"
An executive order is the product of the executive, and he has the authority to revoke at will. So, suppose an executive publicly declares some order that prohibits certain interrogation techniques and then changes his mind, publicly declaring instead that they should be now permissible. Those interested in the content of the law, its consequences for public policy, its ramifications for international relations, etc., will first turn to X and then to Y to acquire guidance and direction about what they should do. That’s what the publicity condition on legal principles is for, because if law is to serve as an instrument by the people for the people, the people must know and have access to it. So, whether one agrees with X or Y, at least one knows our government’s standing with respect to that area of law.
The current executive in the U.S. has a different take on matters. His Justice Department disclosed yesterday that not only can the executive change his mind about an executive order, that changing of his mind does not need to be publicized. The New York Times reports, “At the hearing, a department official, John P. Elwood, disclosed a previously unpublicized method to cloak government activities. Mr. Elwood acknowledged that the administration believed that the president could ignore or modify existing executive orders that he or other presidents have issued without disclosing the new interpretation.”
So while the initial executive order is made public, the actual functioning directive to all agencies under executive power can operate in secret. This understanding of executive privilege has wide ranging adverse consequences. For example, while citizens may believe, because of a public executive order, that the U.S. does not condone some heinous act X, all agencies under the executive may through some secret directive actually condone and engage in X. To point out just one concern, how can a responsible citizenry protest and attempt to change a law it cannot know about?
We already know, because of the fine work of the Boston Globe’s Charlie Savage, about the Bush administration’s abusive use of executive signing statements. Their excessive employment can be considered a form of secrecy, but technically they are not since the executive’s statements are a matter of public record. However, yesterday’s disclosure marks a whole new path to secrecy.
In the nature of things, the Justice Department official justified this interpretation of the executive’s powers by invoking the need for secrecy in matters of national security. However, even if we suppose that in matters involving dire necessity secrecy is justified, the powers referred to are general and are unconstrained, as a matter of law, by the substance of the matter at hand. We can see this with the Bush Administration’s handling of the OLC torture memos. What reason could be given to make those legal documents classified, except to save the administration from public ridicule?
At the heart of a discussion on the conditions required for a legal system to exist, Lon L. Fuller, a noted legal philosopher, declared that “there can be no greater legal monstrosity than a secret statute.” Who, except the shameless and corrupt, can disagree with that?
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Rev. Wright's alleged sins that Obama pretends to condemn
Yesterday, at the Press Club in D.C., Rev. Jeremiah Wright gave a speech (transcript here) describing his church and its mission. He spoke of the ‘invisibility’ of his church’s liberation theology, about the need for an honest racial conversation, about the value of moral equality, about the need to transform injustice into justice, about global economic injustice, about his church’s many significant contributions to poverty, and about reconciliation through the acknowledgment of past grievances and forgiveness of such grievances.
During the question period a moderator read questions given to him by members of the press. They asked Wright, among other things, about his previous assertion about God damning America, whether he owes Americans an apology, Louis Farrakhan, and whether he is disappointed that Obama has distanced himself from him.
In other words, the questions and his, in my opinion level-headed responses to them, bore no relationship to the content of the speech he came there to deliver.
Today, as a way of recapping Wright’s speech and Obama’s response to it, the U.S.’s two most important editorial boards write:
NY Times: It took more time than it should have, but on Tuesday Barack Obama firmly rejected the racism and paranoia of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., and he made it clear that the preacher does not represent him, his politics or his campaign.
and,
WaPost: Did Mr. Obama climb out of that hole yesterday? It seems to us that the whole sorry episode raises legitimate questions about his judgment. Given the long and close relationship between Mr. Obama and the Rev. Wright, voters will ask: How could Mr. Obama have been surprised by the Rev. Wright's views?
“Racism”? I challenge the Times editorial board to point to anything in Wright’s speech that could be reasonably judged racist. How about the Washington Post’s reference to Wright’s ‘views’ as if they were bombastic and condemnatory? Which views exactly? They mean the one asserting that there is global poverty and economic injustice? Or the one about the value of moral equality? Or the one which asserts that the U.S. government has committed numerous injustices throughout its history for which it has never formally apologized?
Our mass media seems to live and report on activities from another planet, and confuses them with the happenings of our planet.
Of course, this is not true of all media outlets, as Bill Moyer’s excellent interview with Wright proves (video and transcript here).
One further unfortunate aspect of all this is to see Obama debasing himself with ridiculous political posturing. Commenting on Wright’s speech, Obama declares, “Upon watching it, what came clear to me was that it was more than just him defending himself. What became clear is that he was presenting a worldview that contradicts who I am and what I stand for. What particularly angered me was his suggestion that my previous denunciation of his remarks was political posturing.”
So, Obama stands against global economic justice, moral equality, and the church’s work to alleviate poverty? Or, if not, which ‘worldview’ is he referring to? It’s also mildly amusing that Obama is angered by Wright’s calling his political posturing, political posturing. Is he angry that he has to do it, or that someone is pointing out the obvious truth that he is engaged in it?
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Silencing debate to achieve political good by MT Nguyen, NYC
Political dialogue is an ideal and if well-functioning seeks to discover political good. It has been repeatedly argued that this mechanism for discovering and articulating political good is the best we have. Arguably, since there is no Form (Plato™) of the political good and at any rate no agreed upon means to approach it even if it did exist, we must ground society’s pursuits on co-deliberation and subsequent collective decision. Dialogue and the freedom of speech which grounds it is the cornerstone of the value we place on our democracy.
I am not interested in debating these particular points, but rather want to explore some conditions for genuine political dialogue. In their absence, we do not have dialogue but its simulacrum. In their absence, dialogue cannot fulfill its promise to lead to political good. It is important to be able to distinguish the two because tyranny and other modes of vice often employ the mechanisms of dialogue in order to delay, divert, confuse, and obfuscate the search for and discovery of political good. In such circumstances, dialogue establishes and solidifies political power through illegitimate means. In such cases, I want to suggest, we need to silence debate’s simulacrum, stop debating, and employ principled political power to achieve political good.
A paradigmatic case of disingenuous political dialogue is the case of the holocaust deniers. They present the silencing of their argument in terms of a free speech issue. It is true that their attempts to promote their views have been in various ways thwarted, but does a free society bear a responsibility to promote any view no matter how unreasonable? For the majority of us, debate with holocaust deniers is pointless because we acknowledge the overwhelming evidence that contradicts their central tenet. Now, although it is fruitless for us to continue it, the other side insists that the majority view is the product of a massive hoax. The belief in the value of political dialogue seems to undermine our unilateral withdrawal from the discussion, and this principle suggests that it would be wrong to thwart discussion, any discussion. The first condition of political dialogue is that it should proceed as long as one side remains unconvinced and continues to say more. However, if this is the implication of our valuing political dialogue, that we must continue debating with those who hold (from one point of view) outrageously erroneous beliefs, perhaps the value is not that important after all. It seems to embroil us in an unacceptable relativism and/or skepticism about the truth of beliefs in which we are extremely confident. Must we draw these implications? Is there another way?
I believe there is, for what can happen is the recognition that one’s interlocutor is not really debating with one at all. This recognition (to be sure, a difficult point at which to arrive) releases parties from the responsibility to dialogically engage and allows them to explore other avenues, e.g. silencing opponents. This approach needn’t deny that dialogue is the correct approach to articulating political good or that there is a discoverable political good. It embraces neither relativism nor skepticism. It implies only that, given things as they are, because there is no dialogue there can be no responsibilities to further it. Applied to holocaust deniers the idea is that we can easily recognize the vicious political agenda behind their calls for a public hearing. It is this agenda, and not dialogue leading to truth, that they want to promote. And there is no political principle that compels the promotion of any political agenda no matter what.
It is true that this is treading on thin ice, for it is difficult to show that we are not silencing a political opponent merely because we do not agree with him. This makes it important to reflect upon the conditions for genuine dialogue. I’ll merely take up two vital but often ignored ones.
One essential condition of dialogue is sincerity. Even in a context in which the substance of debate is hotly contested, in which either side is unlikely to be persuaded by the other, the presumption remains that both sides believe what they assert and are engaged in the practice of justification to the other. Discussion is undermined when an interlocutor merely asserts his views and fails or refuses to acknowledge the challenges presented by his opponent; that is, there can be no dialogue when the interlocutor engages in monologue. This is, to varying extents, always the case, because when the subject matter is of great importance, the opposing sides have already to a large degree made up their minds. Nevertheless, we can demand a good faith effort to bear an open mind and to present a coherent case that can be openly discussed.
A different but connected condition of genuine political dialogue is friendship. This might seem like a strange concept to deploy in our agonistic democracy where political contestants seem to disdain one another, but it is not. The idea of political dialogue as an essential component of political good requires friendship at least in the sense that the project of discovering political good is a shared one grounded in a mutual respect for its participants. Obviously, the concept of friendship here does not refer to mutual personal emotional attachment, but rather civic friendship. This is not compatible with mutual disdain, but is compatible with, as typical friendships are, heated argument and permanent disagreement.
We in the U.S. are now in the midst of a simulated public discourse over whether certain undisclosed (really, open-ended) interrogation techniques (read: torture) are morally permissible and legitimate or whether they are morally impermissible and/or violate international law. This so-called dialogue continues and promises to continue until some indefinite time in the future. For those of us who believe that there can be no debate regarding torture, it is frustrating (to say the least) to observe this continuing back and forth between congress and members of the Bush administration. We believe the back and forth must end, for while it occurs people are having their dignity stripped, are being degraded, tortured and killed. Dialogue, just like other activities, can have dire consequences.
As I have been arguing, however, we do not need to end discussion on the grounds that we do not believe what the other side says or that it leads to bad consequences. We can end it by suggesting that the other side is toying with us, holds us in contempt, and is insincere in its pronouncements. There is no space here to demonstrate that the Bush administration’s actions evidence a failure of each of the conditions for genuine discussion. For anyone following their moves, however, the case is not difficult to make: the legal acrobatics in a ‘torture memo’ written by a tenured law professor who, by all accounts, otherwise possesses a sound legal mind; the paranoid secrecy and duplicity which discloses information and relevant documents only upon being compelled; the ever changing, unprincipled, and obfuscating interpretations of the concept of torture; and, lastly, the contemptible and surely insincere attempt to distinguish Spanish Inquisition waterboarding from U.S. waterboarding. Each new month brings us a fresh perspective on the Bush administration’s tactics and none of them evidence any attempt to justify to others and do anything but push forward through brute force and occasional gerrymandering an egregious political agenda.
Knowing all this we need to adjust our response and make them appropriate to the conditions at hand. M.L. King recognized this more than 40 years ago when he abandoned dialogue with white supremacists who promised much but delivered nothing, and began employing civil disobedience. The call to confront an egregious agenda does not mean, obviously, that anything goes or that politics is reduced to brute exertions of power. The language and value of persuasion, dialogue, and debate are with us and our democracy, and this is verified by their use even by those who do not believe in their value. We can confront (non-dialogically) insincere and disdainful political opponents by compelling them with whatever legitimate powers we have to live by words and concepts they themselves use. We can do this not with the purpose of crushing them, but to bring them back into the fold, motivating them to engage us on terms grounded in civic friendship. If we are to articulate through political dialogue our conception of political good, sometimes principled political force used in the service of dialogue is the only way to do it.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Socratic method
Socrates’ method, sometimes called the Elenchus, aims to reveal the cognitive health of his interlocutors. After answering a range of questions, typically concerning ethical concepts, the interlocutor is supposed to come to the conclusion either that his beliefs are consistent with one another, meaning that he is cognitively healthy, or that they are not, meaning that there is some cognitive dissonance and disease.
Let’s try this out on Americans, particularly those who were recently polled.
A recent AP/Ipsos poll registers Bush at a 70% disapproval rating for his handling of the economy.
Yesterday, just in time for paying one’s taxes, McCain outlined his economic policy in a speech (text here) at Carnegie Mellon. He advocates making permanent Bush’s tax cuts, as well as a whole host of other tax cuts, free (really?) trade, and ‘reforming and protecting’ of Medicare and Social Security (I’m scared to know what ‘reform and protect’ means; perhaps something like ‘to destroy in order to make better’). In other words, as many have pointed out, he is more or less like Bush with respect to handling the economy.
Putting those two together, the consistent position would be that McCain’s numbers on the economy should be fairly low.
However, yesterday Reuters/Zogby released its poll. The relevant question was whether McCain, Clinton or Obama would be a better steward of the economy. The results: McCain led, 3pts over Obama and 5 over Clinton.
At this point, Socrates would expect his interlocutor, recognizing the disease of his mind, to alter one of his beliefs, given that they are in tension with one another. Can we expect Americans, who are evidently blinded by McCain’s reputation as a straight shooter, to be as rational?
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Politics and hunger
According to the Wall Street Journal, global food prices have risen over 80% in the past 3 years. Citizens of the bottom billion countries spend over 60% of their income on food. That amounts to trouble. And indeed recently there have been ‘food riots’ in these countries, not to speak of starvation and the continuing crisis of world poverty.
As spelled out in several major newspapers here and here, food shortages are the result of multiple causes: recent droughts in Australia, Morroco and S. Africa and poor conditions in other important agricultural areas, escalating prices for oil, fertilizer and seed, and increased demand from emerging economies like India and China. In addition to these, many foreign ministers are pointing towards a political cause: the U.S. ethanol biofuel policy. The U.S. mandates that by the year 2017, 15% of road fuel used in this country come from ethanol. It subsidizes corn farmers for this. Sounds relatively harmless and perhaps even beneficial for the environment, except for the fact that corn isn’t the most efficient product to convert into ethanol, sugar cane is. In the face of that, what is our response? This: sugar cane ethanol imports into the U.S. (primarily from Brazil) are taxed to the tune of 25%. In addition to that economic puzzle, diverting corn to fuel production raises world corn prices (the U.S. is responsible for 50% of the world’s corn production).
Showing his sensitivity to the situation, Senator Charles E. Grassley (R-IO) (as quoted in the New York Times) “called the recent criticism of ethanol by foreign officials ‘a big joke.’ He questioned why they were not also blaming a drought in Australia that reduced the wheat crop and the growing demand for meat in China and India.
'You make ethanol out of corn,' he said. ‘I bet if I set a bushel of corn in front of any of those delegates, not one of them would eat it.’”
Evidently, Grassley can’t distinguish natural causes from political ones, and rich delegates from the world's poor. One could blame droughts in one sense (as a causal contributor), but not in the moral sense (moral blame), as one can with political shenanigans. Clearly, he has a political agenda to push, and I don’t know the merits of that agenda to judge, but to perversely suggest that corn is primarily a fuel product and not a food one--that is the big joke, one for which the world's poor are paying the price.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Bait and switch
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, former CEO of Goldman Sachs, announced a plan for new rules governing federal regulation of financial markets. Given the crisis we’re in that would mean stricter control over the free for all of the past 8 years, right? Apparently not, as Paulson asserts, “I do not believe it is fair or accurate to blame our regulatory structure for the current turmoil.”
So, what are these new regulations really about? As the Times reports,
Mr. Paulson has worried that any effort to substantially tighten regulation could hamper the ability of American markets to compete with foreign rivals — and, in fact, the proposal stemmed from a series of policy discussions that began well before the current tumult that has rocked the nation’s economic underpinnings.I see. Use a crisis to roll out a plan, devised previously for the sake of corporate profit, to do exactly the opposite of what is required to mitigate said crisis. Sound familiar?
Monday, March 24, 2008
The Nader Factor by Matias Bulnes, NYC
The heated race for the Democratic nomination between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama has overshadowed Ralph Nader’s announcement that he will be a presidential candidate in this year’s election. The announcement has already been received with much criticism and scorn by Democrats who saw Nader’s candidacy as the main cause of Al Gore’s defeat in 2000. No doubt this rhetoric will intensify as we approach the election on November 4. But by all lights these accusations are absurd. In fact, under the same logic one might as well accuse Al Gore and George W. Bush of having obstructed Nader’s way to the White House in 2000. Nader supporters are no more accountable to Democrats for their vote than Democrats are to them. In a democracy abundance of candidates offers better chances of finer representation of ideas which in a country of the dimensions of the US is badly needed. Those who think otherwise should aim their darts at the Constitution and specifically at the multiparty system rather than at those who don’t want to settle for the least evil and lawfully seek to offer the same chance to their fellow citizens.
But granting that Nader’s candidacy is perfectly legitimate and even desirable the question remains whether it’s reasonable for Nader supporters to vote for the Democratic candidate, be it Obama or Clinton.
Before trying to sketch an anlysis, two preliminary points are in place. First, oftentimes voters are less than fully identified with one ideology or candidate which may limit the scope of this question. However, this shall not harm our inquiry since my main concern is whether somebody should vote for the Democratic candidate given that he or she already identifies with Nader’s views and hence has a well-defined political ideology. Secondly, as so usually happens in political analysis we will have to fall back on the general Consequentialist framework. By this I mean the old strategy of assessing political questions by weighing the likely consequences of making different decisions of action. In this situation the strategy seems especially appropriate for non-ideological voters almost invariably offer Consequentialist justifications for their vote. Moreover, it is hard to see what else could justify them in betraying their own battle flag.
In general, the most obvious consequence of voting for a candidate is increasing his or her chances of winning the election. Thus when voting for the candidate that represents my ideology I’m at the same time increasing the chances that the policies I deem correct will be implemented. However, if my candidate’s chances of winning the election are low enough and there is another candidate sufficiently close to my ideology whose victory my vote can decide, it may be reasonable for me to support him or her. For in that case I may be sacrificing precision in the kind of society I want in favor of likelihood of getting something “similar” to that implemented.
This tradeoff can be emphasized if a candidate whom I deem intolerable has good chances of winning. This was arguably the case of the 2002 election in France when the extreme right-winger Le Pen unexpectedly came second and forced a second round against the more moderate Chirac, turning a good deal of left-wingers to the latter. On the other hand, the tradeoff is less appealing the closer the two frontrunners are perceived by the minority voter. Unless I perceive my vote as making a significant difference to the view of society that will be implemented one way or another, it remains reasonable for me to vote for my ideological candidate no matter how low his or her chances of winning.
This is important weakness in the argument against Nader. For it is unclear from the point of view of Nader supporters that Democrats and Republicans differ significantly in their proposals. In point of domestic policy the differences are far from overwhelming—as many have observed. A better case could probably be made with regard to foreign policy. For even though the differences in this area are not overwhelming either, it is important to bear in mind that unlike less powerful countries, small variations in US foreign policy can make a huge moral difference to world peace and the suffering of the peoples of countries such as Iraq.
But either way, this analysis is too simplistic. For it relies on the assumption that increasing the chance of one’s candidate to win the election is the only positive consequence of voting for him or her. In fact, this is a very short-term view of voters which does not fully capture our normal political concerns. In addition, voters seek to build political structures that will serve as ground for future political scenarios. This is clearly an important part of Nader’s endeavor. For Nader knows better than anybody that he has no chance of winning the election but even so he thinks it good for the US to develop an alternative to the two-party system. By giving their vote to Nader, citizens see themselves as contributing to breaking out of the Democrat/Republican dualism and furthering the chances of having a competitive third alternative in the future. As a result, now it is less attractive to give my vote to the Democratic nominee because by doing so I also forfeit the chance of building political structures that will change future political scenarios in ways furthering of my ideology.
Finally, we have been assuming the system of candidates and voters to be more static than it really is. Candidates and voters do not define their political positions in isolation and then proceed to revise who best matches one another. Another consequence that candidates and voters pursue is to influence other candidates in their political stances. Again, no doubt this is another important goal of Nader’s campaign. By resolutely supporting Nader one is also letting Democratic candidates know that they will have to be more sensitive to one’s ideology if they want to earn one’s vote. Hadn’t Nader been a candidate we would have probably seen the Democratic nominee hovering closer to Republican ideas than we’ll get to see him or her now. And this is not something Nader supporters should regret.
Having said this, I have to acknowledge a couple of particularities about this ongoing presidential election that play in favor of the Democratic nominee. First, unlike previous elections the Democratic nominee is going to belong to a minority group in the US. Should he or she be elected president, this will doubtlessly be a significant historical vindication quite aside from his or her actual performance in office. Secondly, we are facing a very important environmental danger which does make for a significant difference between Democrats and Republicans. Given the environmental risk for humanity as whole it may prove imperative that we elect anyone, whomever he or she is, who can get the US on board with the international community in facing up to this danger. Considering how irresponsible Republicans have been on this issue, this might be a powerful reason to support the Democratic nominee.
I doubt that what I have said here will give anyone identified with Nader a decisive reason to either stick to him or vote for the Democratic candidate. But this was not my intention from the outset. On the contrary, I’ve just hoped to offer some clarification on the kind of considerations that seem relevant at the moment of making a decision of this kind. However, I do hope to have shown that it is not obviously unreasonable or immoral to support Nader pace some Democrats. I find it perfectly understandable and even laudable that someone decides to support Nader out of identification with his political views. I myself find him an incredibly interesting political figure and have no doubt in my mind that he has been an enormous contribution to US politics.
Friday, March 14, 2008
To gerrymander
Gerrymandering specifically refers to altering the lines demarcating voting districts in order to gain a political advantage in an upcoming election. Most recently, this occurred in Texas under Tom Delay's directive. More generally, gerrymandering can refer to altering any set of rules for the purpose of eliciting a specified outcome.
In an egregious bit of gerrymandering, the EPA, directed by Bush himself, weakened the rules governing ozone targets. In doing so, the EPA overruled its own scientific advisers. This is not particularly unusual for this administration, for its contempt for science is well documented. What caught my eye were these couple of paragraphs from a Washington Post article:
The president's order prompted a scramble by administration officials to rewrite the regulations to avoid a conflict with past EPA statements on the harm caused by ozone.
Solicitor General Paul D. Clement warned administration officials late Tuesday night that the rules contradicted the EPA's past submissions to the Supreme Court, according to sources familiar with the conversation. As a consequence, administration lawyers hustled to craft new legal justifications for the weakened standard.
With this we’re in a different realm altogether. It is one thing to override the opinions of scientists who are, after all, mere advisers and not deciders. It is quite another to have the executive asserting a directive requiring a whole new set of legal justifications, which justifications contradict previous justifications. In other words, in this case the rules and the basis of the rules have been gerrymandered. Typically the adoption of a rule is motivated by its justification. In this case, and who knows how many others, things are the other way around: give me a rule, any rule, and I’ll gerrymander some justification for it.
With this, it is hard to conceive how there is even the semblance of the rule of law.
Manufacturing consent
Manufacturing consent is accomplished in several ways. In Chomsky and Herman’s widely known theory, various economic, political and social pressures placed on the media result in the ‘filtering’ of materials disseminated for public consumption. The filtering processes are mainly hidden from plain view, revealed only through empirical investigation and analysis. Their theory even attempts to explain why participants in media do not themselves recognize the inevitable bias in their coverage: the standards of journalistic integrity are themselves manufactured to produce the desired outcomes. To manufacture consent in this way requires the interplay of seemingly disparate institutions and norms, and is incredibly subtle.
Brutes prefer a less clever, more direct and coarser means of manufacturing consent: they simply do away with (e.g. kill, coerce, threaten, fire, bribe, etc., etc.) dissenters; and, those left over are those who are either true believers or have been given an incentive to stay silent.
Last Wednesday, we witnessed the Bush administration resort to this coarser method. Admiral William Fallon, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East, resigned his post. Why? Fallon had given an interview with Esquire magazine in which he aired his strong disagreements with the administration’s Middle East policy. By some accounts, he lobbied hard against war with Iran and for quicker troop withdrawals from Iraq. Evidently, this sort of public dissent could not be tolerated. Now, the yes-man General Patraeus is left standing and the Wall Street Journal reports that he is a front runner to take Fallon’s place. Manufacturing consent Bush/Cheney style. Numerous other examples can be offered. Given this, we better understand Bush’s repeated assertions that he listens to his generals. Of course he does, for in doing so, he is listening to himself.
Bush was not altogether unsubtle. In a statement, he thanked Fallon for serving "with honor, determination, and commitment." What he left out was that Fallon lacked a vital character trait: loyalty to Bush's unending war.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
House fails to override Bush veto
Another disappointing and inexplicable (but not surprising) piece of news: House fails to override Bush's veto on a bill which would have effectively ruled out waterboarding and other sordid behaviors. 225-188. Not even close. Roll call here
What to do? The Republicans (and 3 Democrats) are so contemptible (only 8 passed party lines, 3 of which went the wrong way) that reasonable dialogue is becoming (or has it always been this way?) unreasonable to expect. Even on a no-brainer issue like torture, we become embroiled in 'debate' and endless negotiations. The news media is of little use, as is evidenced by the fact that there is virtually no coverage of this important vote (to be fair, the Spitzer mess is pushing everything to the margins).
The very idea of a sphere of public discourse, thought to be a model of our democracy, is wrongheaded. We have to conceive of new ways of achieving the public good.
Friday, March 7, 2008
Samantha Power out
Stemming from her remark that Hillary Clinton is a monster, she resigned her position as Obama's advisor.
This is a great shame, really. I had just remarked in one of the posts below how refreshing it is to have someone like Power in a political role. Her book Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide is one of the best books I've read in recent memory.
Socrates is right when he quipped that good people can't endure in politics.
Hopefully, she'll come back in an even more prominent role if Obama gets the nomination.
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Vanity Fair's bomb
In this month's Vanity Fair, David Rose's piece reveals the following:
Vanity Fair has obtained confidential documents, since corroborated by sources in the U.S. and Palestine, which lay bare a covert initiative, approved by Bush and implemented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, to provoke a Palestinian civil war. The plan was for forces led by Dahlan, and armed with new weapons supplied at America’s behest, to give Fatah the muscle it needed to remove the democratically elected Hamas-led government from power. (The State Department declined to comment.)
So much for Bush's love of democracy. We didn't require more evidence to unmask American imperialism, but here it is.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Rule of law objections against retroactive immunity
Yesterday, the Senate (by a 68-29 margin!) shamefully endorsed retroactive immunity for those telecom companies which helped the government to illegally wiretap domestic calls.
Whether one believes that the government did the right thing (in the moral sense) in wiretapping our calls or the phone companies did the right thing (in the moral sense) to consent is one matter. It is a difficult question, in my opinion, whether such invasions of citizens’ presumption of privacy are justifiable in light of the dangers we face. One route towards a negative answer is to point out, as many have, that FISA’s restrictions on government wiretapping were not stringent (out of nearly 20,000 requests for warrants the FISA courts have rejected only 5). This belies any assertion that emergency conditions and immanent dangers demanded that government act without a warrant. This is not to mention that wiretapping has continued for 5 years now, and probably would have remained a secret had the NY Times, in a rare act of courage, not exposed the program. Be that as it may, my main point here is just to say that an answer to who is right or wrong in such matters requires making substantive judgments of value.
A concern for the rule of law, however, is different. Respect for the rule of law is respect for the procedures the law encodes. Whether or not one believes the government and the telecom companies made a substantive mistake or not, it is a fairly straightforward judgment to say that they violated the rule of law. With the 1978 FISA law in place, Bush unilaterally decided that it didn’t apply to him and thereby directed ATT and Verizon (and who knows what other companies) to spy on their customers. This is a violation of the rule of law plain and simple.
We cannot underestimate the value that rule of law constraints have in a functioning democracy. Arguably, since liberal democracies should be neutral with regards to moral value, the rule of law is the most fundamental political value we have. The contempt with which the Bush administration has treated this value is well known. It serially substitutes its own judgment for laws that previous administrations working with previous congresses have carefully crafted.
With yesterday’s vote, the Senate has now endorsed such lawlessness—and this is a source of deep disappointment for anyone who, perhaps wishfully, believed that this body possesses the institutional wisdom to confront an evisceration of the rule of law. Pitifully, some members of Senate are now praying that the House manages to do what the Senate should have done.
For an eloquent, but evidently ineffective, defense of the rule of law, read Senator Dodd’s (D-CT) statement.
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