In spite of the fact that I have a lot more I want to say about the President Bush's determination that the Fourth Amendment doesn't apply to his administration, I must leave the commenting to others for now. The grades are all in and it's time for a break. I'll resume posting on or about January 1.
Thanks for stopping by. Have a very merry Christmas!
No matter how things turn out in Iraq--and all people of good will must hope that a generation of Iraqis that has lived through three devastating wars and a long and brutal dictatorship will find peace and freedom--we must not forget that the United States initiated its current war in Iraq under false pretenses. The war, we were told, was necessary (even if preemptive or, more accurately, preventive) because Iraq was building weapons of mass destruction and was in league with Al Qaeda. Iraq, in short, posed a serious threat to the United States--if not directly, then through the medium of transnational terrorist organizations in common cause with Saddam Hussein.
Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction. It did not have ties to Al Qaeda. These facts have been definitively established. For present purposes, it does not matter whether President Bush lied or was merely mistaken. It does not matter because, after the President's defiant admission today during his weekly radio address that he did in fact order surveillance of Americans without judicial authorization, we need only be reminded of the consequences of being wrong--for whatever reason--when dramatic claims are made in the name of national security.
President Bush said today that he had authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans without warrants. He called the secret program "crucial to our national security" and said it was intended to "detect and prevent terrorist attacks against the United States, our friends and allies."
Just to be clear, President Bush acknowledged giving orders that violate the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. His claim that the authorization was "consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution" has no more validity than his administration's many attempts to define out of existence both domestic and international prohibitions against torture. His claim that his action was, and continues to be, "critical to saving American lives" is unverifiable.
The President initiated a war against Iraq in defiance of international law, the United Nations Security Council, and just war principles. He did so on the basis of claims, later proven false, that the war was necessary to protect American lives.
The President has also authorized--by his own admission at least thirty times--a program of domestic surveillance that clearly violates the Constitution (and for which legal alternatives are available). He claims, once again, to be doing so in order to save American lives.
Americans need to remember the President's own words: "Fool me once, shame on--shame on you. Fool me--you can't get fooled again."
For Pepperdine's press release concerning the book, go here.
President Bush has agreed to accept the McCain Amendment barring cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment of detainees.
Unfortunately, some people still don't get it.
It's a modest step toward restoring America's integrity. Now what will it take to get the Bush Administration to concede that cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment is wrong?
"Cowardice asks the question: is it safe? Expediency asks the question: is it politic? Vanity asks the question: is it popular? But conscience asks the question: is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular--but one must take it simply because it is right."
--Martin Luther King, Jr.
Anthony Lewis's recent essay in The Nation, entitled "The Torture Administration," is a must-read piece. Here, via Common Dreams, is a brief sample.
The pictures from Abu Ghraib, first shown to the public on April 28, 2004, evoked a powerful reaction. Americans were outraged when they saw grinning US soldiers tormenting Iraqi prisoners. But it was seeing the mistreatment that produced the outrage, or so we must now conclude. Since then the Bush Administration and its lawyers have prevented the release of any more photographs or videotapes. And the public has not reacted similarly to the disclosure, without pictures, of worse actions, including murder.
Maureen Dowd's skewering of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's doubletalk in Europe is also well worth reading. Here is Dowd parsing the Secretary's assurances regarding torture:
"The United States government does not authorize or condone torture of detainees," [Rice] said.
It all depends on what you mean by "authorize," "condone," "torture" and "detainees."
(This also comes via Common Dreams.)
Finally, Naomi Klein points out (in an article entitled "'Never Before!' Our Amnesiac Torture Debate") that the United States has a history with torture that we ignore all too readily. It's worth a read.
* * *
Why are most Americans so willing to ignore the atrocities--certainly that is what we would call them if any other government were responsible--that are being committed by their government? Is fear really that strong? Or are we just not as good as we suppose ourselves to be?
This site logged its 10,000th visit at 7:19 a.m. Pacific Time today. Ten thousand visits is a bad day for a lot of blogs, but it's not about the numbers. I'm grateful for all the visitors I get.
Thanks to all of you who stop by from time to time.
Tim Rutten, who writes a column on the media for the Los Angeles Times, has an exceptional piece in today's paper in which he laments the tendency of American journalists today to "make a fetish of that faux-fairness that housebreaks reporting by rendering it a subset of stenography."
What is it that provoked Rutten to alliterate? It's the media's coverage of Secretary of State Rice's comments on torture during her European travels.
Secretary Rice has been reported to have set things right regarding torture thanks to her clear condemnations of illegal practices. Rutten suggests, to the contrary, that Rice's words did nothing of the sort and that the only way one would come away thinking they did is by completely ignoring the context of her remarks. As Rutten puts it in his conclusion, "Facts plus context equal truth."
What context does Rutten suggest is missing? He lists some facts to supply context:
Fact: As the [Washington] Post previously has reported, the United States has been operating a network of clandestine CIA prisons in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, where suspected terrorists and adherents of Islamo-fascism are tortured.
Fact: U.S. intelligence agents have repeatedly kidnapped people and handed them over to third countries to be tortured in a process called "extraordinary rendition."
Fact: As the New York Times has reported, U.S. officials believe that information obtained from one of Al Qaeda's most infamous operatives--Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who planned the 9/11 atrocities--cannot be used in American legal proceedings because it was obtained by torture. Similarly, false information regarding purported links between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, which the administration used to make the case for invading Iraq, was obtained under torture from another terrorist, Ibn Al-Shaykh al-Libi, who was captured by the CIA in Afghanistan and turned over to the Egyptians for interrogation.
Fact: As the Post's editorial pointed out, Rice continues to argue that "'It is also U.S. policy that authorized interrogation will be consistent with U.S. obligations under the Convention Against Torture, which prohibit cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.' What she didn't explain is that, under this Administration's eccentric definition of 'U.S. obligations,' cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment is not prohibited as long as it does not occur on U.S. territory."
Rutten then notes, "Had all these facts and voices of rational authority--like [former State Department legal adviser Abraham] Sofaer's--been made part of the day-to-day reporting on Rice's tour, all her deliberate ambiguity would have come into focus for what it was: a convoluted defense of the indefensible."
Parsing the words spoken by the Bush Administration about torture is pointless and unnecessary. Actions speak louder--and far more truthfully--than words.
Today is International Human Rights Day. It marks the fifty-seventh anniversary of the adoption by the United Nations General Assembly of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the seed from which modern international human rights law has grown.
Paul Gordon Lauren, in The Evolution of International Human Rights: Visions Seen (2nd ed.), a magisterial account of the origins of our modern understanding of human rights, describes the signficance of the Universal Declaration this way:
In creating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, an international body representing the community of nations for the first time in all of history agreed on a universal vision of human rights on behalf of all men, women, and children everywhere in the world. The participants remarkably joined together to both reflect and transcend their many different political and economic systems, social and judicial structures, religious and cultural backgrounds, philosophical and ideological beliefs, stages of development and cultural settings, and histories of exclusive national sovereignty in such a way as to create the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that spoke of the "human family" as a whole and to establish a set of normative standards for all peoples and all nations. The fact that there was no single author, but rather hundreds--or, arguably, even thousands--who contributed to drafting the text, gave the proclamation and its vision even greater authority and prestige. . . . This vision proclaimed that all people everywhere possessed certain basic and identifiable rights, that universal standards existed for the world as a whole, and that human rights were matters of legitimate international concern and no longer within the exclusive domestic jurisdiction of nation-states as in the past. Yet, as those familiar with the long struggle for human rights knew from experience, tremendous distances often existed between abstract theory and actual practice. In fact, at the time of the adoption of the Univeral Declaration of Human Rights no state--not one--regardless of location, system of government, level of development, or culture, could meet its standards of achievement. Champions and opponents of human rights alike thus wondered what would happen and what it all would mean. The answer, of course, lay in the future and ultimately would depend on if, when, and how the world decided to transform this proclaimed vision into reality. (232)
You had to read all the way to the end of Andrew Revkin's story in today's New York Times about the American walkout during the climate change discussions in Montreal to find this description of a clever lobbying tactic by an NGO:
The National Environmental Trust distributed custom-printed noise-making rubber whoopee cushions printed with a caricature of President Bush and the words "Emissions Accomplished."
The rest of the story describes the effort made by the United States during the two-week-long Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change to ensure that nothing would be accomplished. "Emissions Accomplished" indeed.
U.N. Ambassador John Bolton today told U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour to back off. Arbour, in a statement closely related to her recent commentary in the International Herald Tribune, said the United States is eroding respect for the international prohibition of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. Having apparently slipped his leash, Bolton said,
Today is Human Rights Day. It would be appropriate, I think, for the U.N.'s high commissioner for human rights to talk about the serious human rights problems that exist in the world today. . . . It is disappointing that she has chosen to talk about press commentary about alleged American conduct. I think the secretary of state has fully and completely addressed the substance of the allegations, so I won't go back into that again other than to reaffirm that the United States does not engage in torture.
Bolton also said, "I think it is inappropriate and illegitimate for an international civil servant to second-guess the conduct that we're engaged in in the war on terror, with nothing more as evidence than what she reads in the newspapers."
"Alleged American conduct"? "Reaffirm that the United States does not engage in torture"? "Nothing more as evidence than what she reads in the newspapers"? Did Bolton somehow miss the photos from Abu Ghraib? Has he not read the reports conducted by military investigators? Is he unaware that American soldiers have been convicted of charges related to the abuse of detainees? Does he think that hundreds of stories in the world's most respected newspapers are all without foundation?
Or is he just intent on causing American credibility to go even lower?
Skepticism abounds.
Secretary of State Condolezza Rice, currently in Europe, has been telling British and German representatives that "the United States does not condone torture."
Many of those representatives have been skeptical.
"It's clear that the text of the speech [in London] was drafted by lawyers with the intention of misleading an audience," said Andrew Tyrie, a Conservative MP interviewed by the New York Times.
Louise Arbour, the former chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda and, since July 2004, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, writes today in the International Herald Tribune on torture.
Her argument is not that of an activist, a polemicist, or even a lawyer. Instead, Ms. Arbour writes--simply, dispassionately, and authoritatively--as an expert on international human rights with a single point to make: "The right to be free from torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment . . . may not be subject to any limitation, anywhere, under any condition." The right not to be tortured is, to use the term favored by human rights lawyers, non-derogable.
While Ms. Arbour does not cite the 1984 Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment in support of her position, Article 2 (2) looms large. It states, "No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture."
Ms. Arbour concludes with an admonition:
On Human Rights Day, I call on all governments to reaffirm their commitment to the total prohibition of torture by:
Condemning torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment and prohibiting it in national law;
Abiding by the principle of non-refoulement and refraining from returning persons to countries where they may face torture;
Ensuring access to prisoners and abolishing secret detention;
Prosecuting those responsible for torture and ill-treatment;
Prohibiting the use of statements extracted under torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, whether the interrogation has taken place at home or abroad;
Ratifying the Convention against Torture and its Optional Protocol, as well as other international treaties banning torture.
"He who has ears to hear . . ."
To be perfectly honest, the real point of this particular post is to make a few comments regarding web-based sources in general and Wikipedia in particular that might be helpful to my students. But because Swords into Plowshares is about international politics, a few preliminary comments may help to keep readers who aren't a part of the student population from tuning out.
Wikipedia, the web-based encyclopedia that is written, edited, and updated by any Internet user who cares to contribute, is an amazing phenomenon. Launched in 2001, the project generated over 20,000 encyclopedia articles in its first year and over 250,000 in English alone by April 2004. Another 600,000 articles in 50 additional languages were also online by that date. Today there are over 800,000 articles in English alone.
As I write this, Wikipedia.org is the 35th most commonly visited web site in the world, according to Alexa.com. It gets more hits each day than the New York Times and the Washington Post web sites put together.
Tom Friedman, in his bestseller The World Is Flat, uses Wikipedia as an example of open-sourcing, one of the "ten forces that flattened the world." On page 95, Friedman quotes Andrew Lih, author of an essay in YaleGlobal, who notes that Wikipedia
provides a manifold view of issues from the World Trade Organization and multinational corporations to the anti-globalization movement and threats to cultural diversity. At the same time malicious contributors are kept in check because vandalism is easily undone. Users dedicated to fixing vandalism watch the list of recent changes, fixing problems within minutes, if not seconds. A defaced article can quickly be returned to an acceptable version with just one click of a button. This crucial asymmetry tips the balance in favor of productive and cooperative members of the wiki community, allowing quality content to prevail.
But is there really quality content in Wikipedia? How trustworthy is the information it dispenses? Anyone wanting a general introduction to any of the hundreds of thousands of topics listed would probably be quite satisfied. But those whose lives (or grades) depended on their research might prefer to consult a more reputable source.
Recently, the Guardian (London) asked a number of experts to check the Wikipedia articles on the subjects they know best. Entries on composer Steve Reich, the Basque people, British diarist Samuel Pepys, and encyclopedias were among those evaluated. Most of the experts found problems with the articles devoted to their specialties. Some were trivial errors, some were more consequential mistakes, and a few of the problems were stylistic rather than factual. (Two evaluators thought the writing was poor.)
Essentially, the problem with Wikipedia from an academic standpoint is the same as the problem with the Internet in general. Its openness (open-sourcing) means that some of its content will be outstanding, some will be mediocre, and some will be very poor. Unfortunately, discerning the difference between the good, the bad, and the ugly may require a level of expertise beyond what is available to a reader who, we shouldn't forget, probably came to the Internet looking to be educated.
In theory, the peer-review process and the editing that occurs in the world of academic publishing serve to ensure that what is published is, if not outstanding, at least reliable. Of course, all scholars can point to peer-reviewed articles or books that they think represent a waste of paper. (I'm reminded of Dorothy Parker's famous comment about a work of fiction: "This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.") But, generally speaking, scholarship is scholarship not because it is produced by scholars but because it is scrutinized (and deemed acceptable) by scholars.
My opposition to the use of Wikipedia as a scholarly source was put to the test at a recent conference. Among the half dozen or so papers that I picked up, two cited Wikipedia articles. Both papers were written by well established scholars. I had to ask myself if my own standards for quality research might be too high. But, after seeing this, I've decided they're not. With Wikipedia, it's caveat lector.
On Friday, December 2, Kenneth Boyd was executed in North Carolina. It was the one thousandth execution in the United States since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.
According to Amnesty International, a majority of the world's states--122 of them--have abolished the death penalty. Only China, Iran, and Vietnam executed more people than the United States last year.
Security is like liberty in that many are the crimes committed in its name.
--Justice Robert H. Jackson, dissenting opinion in Knauff v.
Shaughnessy (1950)
[Some great poets emerged during--and in many instances died in--World War I. One of the greatest was Wilfred Owen, the author of the following poem. The final lines, taken from an ode by Horace, are translated thus: "It is sweet and proper to die for one's country." Owen died for England on November 4, 1918--just one week before the armistice ending the war was signed.]
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!-An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,-
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
Today is the day Ukrainians remember Holodomor--death by hunger. In 1932-33, roughly one-fourth of Ukraine's population died of starvation attributable to Josef Stalin's program to collectivize agriculture throughout the Soviet Union.
The plan to replace small family-owned farms with fewer large, mechanized collective farms (kolkhozy) in an effort to improve productivity and simplify the task of moving grain from the farms to the cities had disastrous results almost from the start. Unable to demonstrate to the peasants (kulaks) how they might benefit from turning over their farms to the state, collectivization was dependent on coercion. Thus, collectivization meant "dekulakization."
According to Geoffrey Hosking's The First Socialist Society: A History of the Soviet Union from Within (p. 160), Stalin told a meeting of agronomists in 1929, "Either we go backward, to capitalism, or we go forward, to socialism. . . . What does that mean? It means that we have passed on from a policy of limiting the exploitative tendencies of the kulaks to a policy of liquidating the kulaks as a class."
The outcome of Stalin's policy--perhaps thirty million dead throughout the Soviet Union as a consequence of the forced collectivization of agriculture--combined with the means used to implement collectivization--murder, forced starvation, deportation--suggests that Holodomor may have been, as the Ukrainians insist, a case of genocide. Russia's leaders, perhaps concerned about demands for reparations, are unwilling to concede the point. Regardless, Holodomor stands as one of the greatest atrocities in a century filled with totalitarian crimes.
For more on Holodomor, see this BBC story.
According to an article in yesterday's Times (London), the cast and crew of two Pirates of the Caribbean sequels--apparently Disney is not waiting to see how the first sequel does before filming the second sequel--have been victimized by pirates (or thieves, anyway) on location in the Bahamas. Two unidentified members of the cast "have been forced to flee for their lives," according to the breathless report in the Times.
Maybe Disney needs to spring for an LRAD.
[Thanks to Ian McCollum for the link to the story.]
Former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, who turned 90 today, has been indicted twice this week. The first indictment involves charges of income tax evasion. The second indictment, issued yesterday by Judge Victor Montiglio, alleges that Pinochet was responsible for the "permanent kidnapping" (or disappearance) of three Chilean dissidents in 1975. The three were were among at least 119 who disappeared in a 1975 sweep called Operation Colombo.
Although Pinochet has avoided several attempts to put him on trial for his regime's human rights abuses as a result of his poor health, an examination in September found him fit to stand trial. Still, many question whether Pinochet, who is currently under house arrest in Santiago, will ever see the inside of a courtroom.
Today's New York Times story on "Black Friday"--the day the bottom line finally shifts from red to black for many American retailers--notes how bizarre post-Thanksgiving shopping has become: "Across the country, millions of Americans mobbed discount stores, raced into suburban malls and swarmed downtown shopping districts in a retail ritual whose outlandishness--and sleeplessness--seems to grow with every season." Here in Southern California, stores opening at midnight seemed to be the new thing.
Adbusters--an organization dedicated to challenging consumerism--has declared this International Buy Nothing Day. At a mall in Delaware today, seven people promoting Buy Nothing Day by wearing T-shirts that read "Ask me about nothing" and carrying empty sacks with the words "free samples" were arrested for violating the mall's rules against solicitation. (Is anti-solicitation a form of solicitation?)
Those who are looking to curb their consumerist impulses this holiday season might be interested in this post from Black Friday 2004.
In his extraordinary opening statement, Justice Robert Jackson, the chief American prosecutor at Nurmberg, said, "We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants today is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow. To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our lips as well."
Scott Horton at Balkinization explains what this means for Americans today.
A turning point in Ireland's war for independence from British rule occurred on this date in 1920. First, a closely coordinated series of assassinations carried out by members of the (old) Irish Republican Army under the direction of Michael Collins crippled British intelligence in Ireland. Later in the day, British Auxiliaries opened fire on players and spectators at a Gaelic football match in Dublin's Croke Park. The massacre of innocents solidified support in Ireland for the Republican cause and prompted international condemnation of the British.
After another eight months of escalating violence during which the British and Irish Republicans fought to a stalemate, a truce was reached in July 1921. Soon thereafter, the Irish Free State was established under the terms of the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921.
(Another "Bloody Sunday" took place on January 30, 1972, when British paratroopers fired on marchers in Derry. It was this incident rather than the 1920 events that inspired the U2 song, "Sunday Bloody Sunday.")
Sixty years ago today, the International Military Tribunal convened for the first time. Twenty-four high-ranking Nazis were indicted, although only twenty-one appeared in court. (Gustav Krupp was, after a preliminary healing, excluded from the trial because of his health; Martin Bormann was tried and convicted in absentia, and Robert Ley committed suicide.) Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, and Joseph Goebbels, three of the most notorious Nazi leaders, were not included in the indictment. Each committed suicide before the war ended.
View inside the courtroom, International Military Tribunal, 1945. (Photo from the Truman Library.)
Four charges were included in the indictment: crimes against peace, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and conspiracy to commit the three foregoing crimes. The first day of the trial was taken up with the reading of the indictment. On the second day, defendants entered their pleas and the Court ruled on a motion filed by the defense on November 19.
The preliminary motion of the defense argued, inter alia, that certain charges, including the charge of crimes against peace, constituted ex post facto law. The motion was rejected by the Court.
Judgments in the trials were pronounced by the Court on October 1, 1946. Twelve defendants were sentenced to death, three were acquitted, and the remainder were given prison sentences of varying lengths.
Eleven of the twelve sentenced to death were hanged on October 17, 1946. Hermann Goering escaped hanging by committing suicide. The bodies of the twelve were cremated--at Dachau--and, to discourage the establishment of shrines, their ashes were scattered in the Isar River.
For additional information on the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, see these sites:
Congressman John Murtha (D-PA), a Vietnam War veteran who served thirty-seven years in the Marine Corps, today called for the United States to pull out of Iraq. He's not the first to do so, but he may be the first member of Congress with a strong pro-defense record to do so. He's certainly the first in that category to call for an immediate withdrawal.
Here are portions of Congressman Murtha's speech:
The war in Iraq is not going as advertised. It is a flawed policy wrapped in illusion. The American public is way ahead of us. The United States and coalition troops have done all they can in Iraq, but it is time for a change in direction. Our military is suffering. The future of our country is at risk. We can not continue on the present course. It is evident that continued military action in Iraq is not in the best interest of the United States of America, the Iraqi people or the Persian Gulf Region.
. . .
Our military has been fighting a war in Iraq for over two and a half years. Our military has accomplished its mission and done its duty. Our military captured Saddam Hussein, and captured or killed his closest associates. But the war continues to intensify. Deaths and injuries are growing, with over 2,079 confirmed American deaths. Over 15,500 have been seriously injured and it is estimated that over 50,000 will suffer from battle fatigue. There have been reports of at least 30,000 Iraqi civilian deaths.
. . .
Our troops have become the primary target of the insurgency. They are united against U.S. forces and we have become a catalyst for violence. U.S. troops are the common enemy of the Sunnis, Saddamists and foreign jihadists. I believe with a U.S. troop redeployment, the Iraqi security forces will be incentivized to take control. A poll recently conducted shows that over 80% of Iraqis are strongly opposed to the presence of coalition troops, and about 45% of the Iraqi population believe attacks against American troops are justified. I believe we need to turn Iraq over to the Iraqis.
. . .
Our military has done everything that has been asked of them, the U.S. can not accomplish anything further in Iraq militarily. IT IS TIME TO BRING THEM HOME.
Asked by reporters about a recent speech by Vice President Cheney that condemned Bush Administration critics, Mr. Murtha said, "I like guys who've never been there that criticize us who've been there. I like that. I like guys who got five deferments and never been there and send people to war and then don't like to hear suggestions about what needs to be done."
The distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania gets it.
"We're seeing a backlash against a bumbled foreign policy." So said Stephen Van Evera of MIT in response to the news that Americans are becoming more isolationist in their views. I would have used the term "bungled"--or even "mangled"--to describe U.S. foreign policy at present, but "bumbled" (combining "bungled" and "stumbled") works well enough.
But I digress, even before getting started.
The New York Times reports today on a Pew Research Center study of elite and general public attitudes regarding foreign policy issues. Summarizing the report, the Times article states, "The survey, conducted this fall and released today, found a revival of isolationist feelings among the public similar to the sentiment that followed the Vietnam War in the 1970's and the end of the Cold War in the 1990's."
The following chart shows the change over the past forty years in the number of Americans saying the country should "mind its own business."
Among the additional findings of the study are these:
Each of these points deserves some analysis and commentary, which I hope to provide when I have a bit more time--in a year or two. Meanwhile, take a look at the report.
Yesterday, Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) gave a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C. on "U.S. Foreign Policy and the Middle East." While the entire speech is well worth reading, I want to highlight a brief passage that deals with criticism of the Bush Administration's policy in Iraq. Coming from a conservative senator from the President's own party, it strikes me as a particularly important statement.
The Bush Administration must understand that each American has a right to question our policies in Iraq and should not be demonized for disagreeing with them. Suggesting that to challenge or criticize policy is undermining and hurting our troops is not democracy nor what this country has stood for, for over 200 years. The Democrats have an obligation to challenge in a serious and responsible manner, offering solutions and alternatives to the Administration's policies.
Vietnam was a national tragedy partly because Members of Congress failed their country, remained silent and lacked the courage to challenge the Administrations in power until it was too late. Some of us who went through that nightmare have an obligation to the 58,000 Americans who died in Vietnam to not let that happen again. To question your government is not unpatriotic--to not question your government is unpatriotic. America owes its men and women in uniform a policy worthy of their sacrifices.
"To question your government is not unpatriotic."
Don't forget it.
The New York Times reports today on new allegations of torture in Iraq, perpetrated this time not by Americans but by some of those we helped bring to power.
Iraq's government said Tuesday that it had ordered an urgent investigation of allegations that many of the 173 detainees American troops discovered over the weekend in the basement of an Interior Ministry building in a Baghdad suburb had been tortured by their Iraqi captors. A senior Iraqi official who visited the detainees said two appeared paralyzed and others had some of the skin peeled off their bodies by their abusers.
U.S. officials issued a disingenuous response:
A joint statement by the American Embassy and the United States military ommand called the situation "totally unacceptable" and said American officials "agree with Iraq's leaders that mistreatment of detainees will not be tolerated."
The American statement apparently omitted the words "by anyone other than us."
Sherzad Khalid, an Iraqi businessman who was subjected to abuse by his American captors in July 2003, said, "I was wondering if it could be real that the American army was acting this way." His friend, Thahe Sabber, also captured and abused by American troops, said, "They just wanted to humiliate us in any shape or form they could. . . . I wish I knew why. I was sure, however, that their actions were not the same as the values and morals of the American people."
Read their story--and Jeanne's thoughtful take on it--at Body and Soul.
Philippe Sands, who spoke at Pepperdine's School of Law two weeks ago, published a piece in yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle that warns John Yoo, David Addington, and others who have offered bad legal advice regarding torture about the risks of traveling to countries that take the Convention Against Torture more seriously than the Bush Administration does. It is well worth reading.
The alternative to participation in the International Criminal Court may not be the impunity for Americans sought by the Bush Administration; it may instead be justice in the courts of other countries.
The field of International Relations takes a hit from Kevin Drum at Washington Monthly. He quotes Abu Aardvark's contention that IR scholars have given surprisingly little attention to terrorism since 9/11. I confess that I don't devote large chunks of time to terrorism in my introductory IR course, but much of what I cover relates to the conditions under which transnational terrorism thrives. Discussions of failed states, transnational criminal organizations, ethnic conflict and intrastate war, and (during a recent discussion of international ethics) the problem of "blowback" all terrorism or the conditions conducive to its use. Still, I think that Abu Aardvark's focus on six particularly theoretical journals may suggest an idealized notion of how theory develops. That, however, is a long and boring topic that I will avoid for now.
Take a look at Kevin Drum's post, the Abu Aardvark post that inspired it, and then (if you're really interested in this topic) you can read my comment, which I'll cut and paste below to save you from having to scroll through the hundreds of comments that Kevin Drum gets.
I'm jumping into this conversation very late, but with both cheers and jeers for IR (since I teach the subject). First, IR has indeed been very state-centered since it got its start as a separate, identifiable discipline in the aftermath of World War I. (Incidentally, ever since Jeremy Bentham's comments about international law, the term international has been used to mean interstate. Likewise, the phrase "national security" has almost invariably meant "state security.") During the Cold War, state-centered analyses dominated--arguably for good reason since the big threat was a war like most of the other wars since 1648, only with nuclear weapons thrown into the mix. But, for many of us in the discipline, our failure prior to 1990 to see much beyond states (and the system they operate within) is a source of embarrassment.
The Vietnam War (and a host of other intrastate conflicts) helped some in the discipline to understand that there were important things happening in the shadows beyond the spotlight shining on U.S.-Soviet relations. But only with the end of the Cold War were IR theorists compelled to begin looking seriously at non-state actors. Curiously, some of the traditionalists argued that the post-Cold War focus on non-state actors was more about trying to preserve some relevance (and some jobs) than about a sincere effort to rethink the discipline.
Today, within the sub-field of security studies (to take a particularly relevant case), there are scholars writing about disease and security (and not just since the discoveries of SARS and avian influenza), transnational criminal organizations and security ("drugs and thugs"), environmental problems and security, and, of course, religious fanaticism and security. (Shameless self-promotion, but all of this is surveyed in a book being published next month entitled Seeking Security in an Insecure World.) Scholars generally recognize today that a lot of the most important stuff happening in the world today--both for good and for ill--has very little to do with the foreign and defense ministries of the world's great powers. And that recognition existed well before 9/11.
Those who didn't recognize the rising importance of non-state actors were, in many cases, committed ideologically to traditional ways of viewing international politics. Consider Richard Perle's words in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks: "This could not have been done without help of one or more governments. . . . Someone taught these suicide bombers how to fly large airplanes. I don't think that can be done without the assistance of large governments. You don't walk in off the street and learn how to fly a Boeing 767." (WaPo, 9/12/01)
Having said all of this, it is fair to ask whether IR can retain any coherence as a discipline if it moves from the study of politics among nations (to use the title of Hans Morgenthau's seminal work) to politics among nations, terrorist organizations, drug traffickers, pirates (they're making a comeback in the Indian Ocean), NGOs, international organizations, multinational corporations, influential persons from the pope to Bono, and who knows what else. Some of what those of us in IR are criticized for not knowing probably belongs in comparative politics or sociology or public health or any of a dozen other disciplines. But most of us wish we knew that stuff anyway. And the best students of IR do seem to know a lot about everything.
Veterans' Day. . . . Armistice Day. . . . Remembrance Day.
By whatever name it goes from country to country, today is an appropriate time to post what was almost certainly the most popular poem to come out of the First World War. Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, a Canadian doctor who served the British Empire in both the Boer War and World War I, published "In Flanders Fields" in December 1915. The poem memorializes those who died fighting in the Second Battle of Ypres of April 1915, a battle in which Germany used chlorine gas with deadly effect.
Soon after it appeared, the poem was used on military recruiting posters and in war bond campaigns. Later, after it had become apparent just how costly the Great War had been, "In Flanders Fields" would be read as an anti-war anthem.
McCrae himself died before the war was over, on January 28, 1918. As with so many other casualties of the war, it was disease, not gas or gunshot or shrapnel, that killed him. Dr. McCrae died from complications of pneumonia and meningitis.
In Flanders Fields
John McCrae
In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch, be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
It is now known as "Veterans' Day" in the United States, but originally November 11th was "Armistice Day." It marked the end of the Great War, or what, with the benefit of tragic hindsight, came to be called the First World War.
On April 6, 1917, the United States entered a European war that had long been stalemated along the Western Front. In the Senate, the vote for war was 82-6; in the House, 373-50.
At first, the American contribution was limited primarily to naval forces and war materiel. Before military conscription began in the summer of 1917, the United States' Army, with only 130,000 men, was smaller than Belgium's. Before the war ended, however, the United States would have 4.8 million men under arms.
It was not only the American military contribution that turned the tide in the war. On January 8, 1918, President Wilson announced his Fourteen Points, a set of war aims designed to convince the German people, if not their stubborn leadership, that peace might be more palatable than a continuation of the war and its privations. That the Fourteen Points were generally acceptable to Germany was demonstrated by a "prearmistice agreement" under which the Germans, the Allies, and the Americans all agreed to make the Fourteen Points the foundation for the ultimate peace agreement.
On September 29, 1918, General Ludendorff informed the German government that Germany's military situation in northern France had become untenable. The German government communicated its desire for peace to President Wilson, but Wilson insisted that he would only negotiate with a democratic Germany. When his military withdrew its support, Kaiser Wilhelm was forced to abdicate the throne and Wilson's condition for a democratic negotiating partner was satisfied. Meanwhile, to pressure the Allies to make peace on the basis of the Fourteen Points, Colonel House hinted that the United States might negotiate a separate peace with Germany. With modest reservations regarding the Fourteen Points, the Allies agreed to accept Germany's overtures for peace.
On November 8, Germany sent its representatives to northern France. There, in the Compiegne Forest aboard Marshal Foch's railroad car, an armistice was signed at 5:00 a.m. on November 11. It took effect six hours later.
The guns fell silent along the Western Front on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918.
According to several news sources (including USA Today), the sonic weapon used by the Seabourn Spirit to deter the Somali pirates who attacked the cruise ship in the Indian Ocean on Saturday was a long-range acoustic device (LRAD) originally developed for the U.S. Navy by American Technology Corporation of San Diego. The non-lethal weapon was designed to deter attacks on ships like the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000, an attack that was carried out in a Yemeni port by suicide bombers who approached the Cole in a small boat packed with explosives.
LRAD permits broadcasting of messages or sounds (including ear-splitting noises) over long distances. Its use can cause permanent hearing loss at distances of up to 100 yards.
At present, the device is deployed on U.S. Navy ships operating in the Persian Gulf and as part of the force protection kits of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force in Iraq. A number of cruise ships also carry the LRAD, which, because the sound it generates is focused in a particular direction, can be used without harming its operators or others not directly in the path of the sonic pulse.
That, at least, is what President Bush said today. But consider some of the reactions his statement provoked:
The CNN story on Bush's remarks followed that line with these words:
Over White House opposition, the Senate has passed legislation banning torture. With Vice President Dick Cheney as the point man, the administration is seeking an exemption for the CIA. It was recently disclosed that the spy agency maintains a network of prisons in eastern Europe and Asia, where it holds terrorist suspects.
The BBC story reporting the comment also noted the following:
The White House has not confirmed Washington Post claims that the CIA set up a covert prison network in eastern Europe and Asia to hold high-profile terror suspects following the 11 September 2001 attacks.
About 30 detainees, considered major terrorism suspects, were held at these "black sites", although the centres have now been closed, the paper reported.
On Sunday, the United Nations' special rapporteur on torture urged European officials to conduct high-level investigations into the allegations.
USA Today stated:
U.S. interrogation practices have been under fire since news accounts in 2004 reported harsh tactics by U.S. interrogators at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and at detention facilities in Afghanistan. In a new case Monday, five Army Rangers were charged with abusing detainees in Iraq.
Over White House opposition, the Senate voted 90-9 last month to approve an amendment by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., that would ban the use of torture. Vice President Cheney has pushed for an exemption for the CIA.
That the news media now seem to be inclined to report a few facts along with the President's outrageous assertions is an encouraging sign. Equally encouraging is that fact that both liberal and conservative bloggers (below) are expressing outrage over statements like the President's.
Kevin Drum wrote:
Fine. Then shut down the black sites, tell Dick Cheney to stop lobbying against the McCain amendment, and allow the Red Cross unfettered access to prisoners in our custody. After all, if the events of the past four years had happened in any other country in the world--the abuse, the memos, the photos, the relentless opposition to independent inspections--isn't that the least it would take for any of us to believe it when that country's head of state declared "We do not torture"?
Andrew Sullivan said,
If that's the case, why threaten to veto a law that would simply codify what Bush alleges is already the current policy? If "we do not torture," how to account for the hundreds and hundreds of cases of abuse and torture by U.S. troops, documented by the government itself? If "we do not torture," why the memos that expanded exponentially the lee-way given to the military to abuse detainees in order to get intelligence? The president's only defense against being a liar is that he is defining "torture" in such a way that no other reasonable person on the planet, apart from Bush's own torture apologists (and they are now down to one who will say so publicly), would agree. The press must now ask the president: does he regard the repeated, forcible near-drowning of detainees to be torture? Does he believe that tying naked detainees up and leaving them outside all night to die of hypothermia is "torture"? Does he believe that beating the legs of a detainee until they are pulp and he dies is torture? Does he believe that beating detainees till they die is torture? Does he believe that using someone's religious faith against them in interrogations is "cruel, inhumane and degrading" treatment and thereby illegal? What is his definition of torture?
(As they used to say on Monty Python's Flying Circus.) Actually, it's not completely different. It's still all about the piracy thing. But the presentation is different.
As you can probably tell, the recent account of pirates attacking a cruise ship off the coast of Somalia has captured my imagination. It's not because of some latent fascination with Blackbeard or Captain Hook. It has more to do with my concern that the spread of anarchy--from failed states to the high seas--has become a major source of insecurity in the world. Attacks on cruise ships (as well as cargo ships and fishing boats) are a manifestation of the problem.
At the risk of spending too much time and energy on what some may consider a back-page story, I want to pass along a bit of data on the incidence of piracy in the world. The following information comes from the International Maritime Bureau Piracy Reporting Centre, which collects data on piracy and armed robery aboard ships.
The total number of attacks on shipping dropped from 445 in 2003 to 325 in 2004. The greatest number of pirate attacks occur in the waters off Indonesia (including the Strait of Malacca, the Java Sea, and the Timor Sea); there were 121 attacks there in 2003, 93 in 2004. Rebels from Aceh have been known to hijack ships in the Northern Malacca Straits, but many recent hijackings have been the work of criminal syndicates.
While most acts of piracy are property crimes only, in 2004 there were 30 crew members murdered in attacks on shipping.
For maps showing the locations of reported acts of piracy in 2004, go here.
"No nation, ours or any other, is well served by illusions of righteousness. All nations make decisions based on self-interest and then defend them in the name of morality."
--William Sloane Coffin
The attack on a luxury cruise ship off the coast of Somalia yesterday was not the only act of piracy in those waters in recent months. The Russian newspaper Pravda reported two weeks ago that an International Maritime Bureau report documented twenty-three attacks in the area since March 15, 2005. One of the attacks resulted in the Hong Kong-based owner of a liquefied gas tanker paying hijackers $315,000 for the return of the ship after it was seized on April 10, 2005. In another attack on August 15, 2005, three fishing boats and forty-eight Asian fishermen were captured by Somali pirates. All are being held for ransom in Somalia.
According to Pravda, those engaged in piracy off the coast of Somalia are Somali rebels who use the proceeds of their raids to buy weapons.
Kevin Drum at Washington Monthly makes some important points regarding Vice President Cheney's efforts to preserve the freedom to torture detainees in the "war on terror." He also points these comments from Andrew Sullivan concerning Cheney:
He's still furiously lobbying Senators to protect his right to torture. A man who avoided service in Vietnam is lecturing John McCain on the legitimacy of torturing military detainees. But notice he won't even make his argument before Senate aides, let alone the public. Why not? If he really believes that the U.S. has not condoned torture but wants to reserve it for exceptional cases, why not make his argument in the full light of day? You know: where democratically elected politicians operate.
As Drum concludes, "It's enough to make any decent human being puke."
That's about right.
Rosa Brooks, writing in today's Los Angeles Times, recounts the news from a Washington Post story published earlier this week about the CIA's use of secret detention facilities in Eastern Europe and questions whether America's values, which served the nation well during the Cold War, have survived the "war on terror." She writes,
During the Cold War, we thought we knew what distinguished us from our Soviet bloc enemies. We did not have a gulag; we did not imprison and torture our enemies. But the war on terror has distorted our national values. We have used some of the same tactics we once decried. The Soviet Union's legacy of terror lives on, its tactics embraced by some of our leaders. Vice President Dick Cheney continues to insist that the McCain amendment, which prohibits U.S. personnel from cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of prisoners, should not be applicable to the CIA.
We Americans have always had an inflated view of our nation's moral righteousness, but rarely has the gap been so dramatic between who we believe ourselves to be and who our actions show us to be in reality.
This post from February of this year describes the plight of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen who was taken into custody by U.S. officials at New York City's Kennedy International Airport in September 2002 and then rendered by the United States to Syria. When he was released a year later--without ever having been charged with a crime--Arar claimed that he had been tortured while in a Syrian prison. According to a report prepared by Stephen J. Toope, former dean of the McGill University School of Law, Arar and other Canadian citizens who were rendered to Syria by the United States were unquestionably tortured while in Syrian custody. Regarding Mr. Arar, the report states, "Although there have been few lasting physical effects, Mr. Arar's psychological state was seriously damaged and he remains fragile. His relationships with members of his immediate family have been significantly impaired. Economically, the family has been devastated."
Meanwhile, the United States Congress is still unwilling to condemn torture unequivocally, although in fairness it appears that an increasing number of Republicans in the House of Representatives are now willing to vote for the McCain Amendment to the defense appropriations bill.
[Via Body and Soul.]
The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution (A/RES/60/7) yesterday that designates January 27 as an annual day of remembrance for victims of the Nazi Holocaust. The date chosen is the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz in 1945 and is already observed in much of Europe (and occasionally at Pepperdine) as the Day of Remembrance.
The resolution, which was introduced by Australia, Canada, Israel, Russia, and the United States, had 104 cosponsors and was adopted by consensus. According to Israel's ambassador to the UN, Dan Gillerman, this is the first resolution initiated by Israel to have been passed by the UNGA.
"The Bush administration is embroiled in a sharp internal debate over whether a new set of Defense Department standards for handling terror suspects should adopt language from the Geneva Conventions prohibiting 'cruel,' 'humiliating' and 'degrading' treatment," according to a story in today's New York Times. Although those surrounding Vice President Dick Cheney, including David Addington who was appointed to be Cheney's chief of staff in the wake of Scooter Libby's indictment, continue to resist efforts to curb the administration's use of torture against terrorism suspects, a significant pushback seems at last to be occurring.
The Bush administration has been unwilling to listen even to friendly critics of its policies in the so-called "war on terrorism," but domestic and international pressure to renounce torture may at last be having an impact. At least those interested in adhering to international law and morality are finally able to debate the treatment of detainees.
The New York Times reports in tomorrow's edition that Vice President Dick Cheney and CIA Director Porter Goss met with Senator John McCain last Thursday in an effort to get McCain to support language in the defense appropriations bill that would let the CIA do it. What, you ask, is it? Torture detainees, of course.
After the Senate passed the McCain amendment to bar the abuse of detainees (by a 90-9 vote) almost three weeks ago, the Bush Administration began lobbying Congress to preserve the ability of officials of the United States government to use torture as a means of interrogating suspected terrorists. Now it appears that effort has come to include a direct appeal from the Vice President to Senator McCain asking McCain to amend his own amendment so that at least the CIA could continue to torture prisoners.
McCain told Cheney and Goss no.
There was a time, believe it or not, when American presidents--both Republicans and Democrats--uniformly condemned torture. Now we have a president who is threatening to veto the defense appropriations bill if an amendment banning torture or one mandating an independent commission to investigate the torture of detainees is attached.
God have mercy.
Today marks the sixtieth anniversary of the entry into force of the Charter of the United Nations. At a time when considerable attention is being devoted to the future of the U.N. (Ambassador Bolton floated the idea before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week of shifting from a system of mandatory assessments--dues--to a system of voluntary contributions to finance the Organization), I want to offer a few observations about the history of the Charter.
The majority of the work of drafting the Charter occurred prior to the conclusion of World War II. In fact, most of the preparatory work was done at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C. during the fall of 1944. The Covenant of the League of Nations, on the contrary, was drafted entirely after the armistice ending World War I had been signed. More importantly, work on the Charter was almost completely dissociated from the diplomatic process of concluding World War II. In contrast, at Versailles in 1919, peace negotiations and negotiations for the creation of the League proceeded hand in hand and the League Covenant, in the end, was embedded in the three treaties of peace proffered to the Central Powers.
One reason work on the Charter was begun rather early was the tenuous nature of the war-time alliance. Significant differences of opinion among the American, British, and Soviet governments were apparent well before Germany's surrender. As Inis Claude noted in Swords Into Plowshares: The Problems and Progress of International Organization (4th ed., p. 65), "If the grand alliance for war was to be preserved as a grand alliance for peace, it seemed that there was no time to be lost."
Having secured agreement from the Allies on the basic outlines of the new United Nations Organization by mid-October 1944, the U.S. State Department was in a position to make an early push to gain public support for the Charter that would be signed at San Francisco on June 26, 1945. Almost two million copies of the Dumbarton Oaks proposals were distributed in the United States by the State Department. Speakers were sent all over the country to address civic groups and radio audiences in an effort to explain the proposed U.N. Again, the contrast with the League experience is instructive. As Woodrow Wilson lingered for months in Paris after World War I directing the negotiations that would produce the League Covenant, public support in the U.S. for any form of internationalism evaporated. Wilson's inattention to public opinion was a mistake that Franklin Roosevelt would not repeat.
In the end, the attention to public opinion paid off. On July 28, 1945, the United States Senate gave its consent to the ratification of the Charter by an 89-2 vote. President Truman communicated U.S. ratification on August 8 and, as we note today, the Charter entered into force on October 24.
A new report from the Human Security Centre at the University of British Columbia "shows that most forms of political violence have declined significantly since the end of the Cold War––and finds that the best explanation for this decline is the huge upsurge of conflict prevention, resolution and peacebuilding activities that were spearheaded by the United Nations in the aftermath of the Cold War."
For more about the report, see this site.
[Via America Abroad at TPM Cafe.]
The PBS series Frontline is examining the question of torture in the "war on terror" in a two-hour program entitled "The Torture Question." The entire program will be available here tomorrow. Interviews, photos, a panel discussion on torture, and other ancillaries are also available on the program web site.
Pierre-Richard Prosper has resigned his position as United States ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues, although not soon enough and not for the right reasons. Indeed, Prosper apparently went quietly without uttering a word of regret about the United States' long downward slide since 9/11 into the ranks of states known to employ torture.
So why did he resign? Like Alberto Gonzales before him, Prosper hopes to ride his success as an apologist for torture into the attorney general's office--the California AG's office in his case. Yesterday Prosper filed papers to run for the Republican nomination for attorney general in the 2006 primaries.
Explain Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Gardez, and Mosul, Mr. Ambassador. Explain your silence. Then think about running for elective office.
Anyone interested in the United States Foreign Service or in U.S. relations with the Arabic-speaking world should read former Foreign Service officer Jennifer Bremer's op-ed in today's Washington Post. Bremer notes that as of August 2004 there were only eight people in the U.S. Foreign Service who spoke Arabic at a 4+ or 5 level--the levels at which one might be expected to perform well if asked to speak before an agitated crowd or in an Arabic-language television interview.
Take a look at the piece to gain some insight into America's problems in the Middle East and into the nature of language training for American diplomats as well.
[Via Washington Monthly.]
The Lifetime cable network will air an original miniseries October 24-25 that addresses the issue of human trafficking in the United States. The two-part movie, entitled Human Trafficking, will star Mira Sorvino and Donald Sutherland as Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
Lifetime secured the cooperation of the Department of Homeland Security in making the film. Two nongovernmental organizations that deal with the issue of human trafficking--Equality Now and International Justice Mission--also contributed their expertise.
Today's New York Times notes that Lifetime has engaged a number of political issues in its programming over the past decade. With Human Trafficking, the network hopes to generate support for two anti-trafficking bills currently before Congress.
Anthony Lewis, the distinguished former New York Times columnist, writes today about the responsibility of the Supreme Court to check the president's power as commander-in-chief. He says:
The framers of the Constitution, when they met in Philadelphia in 1787, feared concentrated power. In constructing a new federal government, they divided its powers among three branches: legislative, executive, judicial. The idea, as Madison explained, was that if one branch overreached, another would check it.
The Bush administration has often resisted checks on executive branch decisions taken under the heading of war power. In memorandums in 2002 and 2003 on the torture of prisoners, for example, the administration argued that the president could order the use of torture even if it was forbidden by treaty or by Congressional statute.
When those memorandums leaked out last year, the administration withdrew them. But Alberto Gonzales, who as White House counsel rejected objections to them, is now attorney general. And one of their principal authors, John Yoo, now a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, continues to argue forcefully for dominant presidential power. To hear him tell it, the framers constructed a political system on the model of King George III.
Lewis notes that the Supreme Court has rejected some of the Bush administration's claims of presidential authority, but he wonders--as all who care about the Constitution's carefully calibrated system of checks and balances should--how Chief Justice John Roberts and Harriet Miers, if she is confirmed to fill the vacancy created by Justice O'Connor's retirement, will vote in cases challenging presidential war powers.
Tomorrow's edition of the Guardian (London) reports that President Bush had his sights on Saudi Arabia early in 2003:
George Bush told Tony Blair shortly before the invasion of Iraq that he intended to target other countries, including Saudi Arabia, which, he implied, planned to acquire weapons of mass destruction.
Mr Bush said he "wanted to go beyond Iraq in dealing with WMD proliferation, mentioning in particular Saudi Arabia, Iran, North Korea, and Pakistan," according to a note of a telephone conversation between the two men on January 30 2003.
The note is quoted in the US edition, published next week, of Lawless World, America and the Making and Breaking of Global Rules, by the British international lawyer Philippe Sands. The memo was drawn up by one of the prime minister's foreign policy advisers in Downing Street and passed to the Foreign Office, according to Mr Sands.
Certainly the mention of Saudi Arabia is surprising, but so is the concern expressed over Pakistani nuclear weapons given the "see no evil" policy adopted eleven months later when A.Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, was revealed to have sold nuclear secrets.
Liberians went to the polls today to vote in their country's first elections since the end of a fourteen-year-long civil war. Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, making a bid to become the first female president in Africa, was expected to finish behind 1995 world soccer player of the year George Weah. (Weah played for Chelsea and AC Milan.)
Situated in West Africa between Sierra Leone and Cote d'Ivoire, Liberia has a population of 3.5 million and a GDP per capita of $900. The nation was devastated by a civil war that ended in August 2003 when President Charles Taylor agreed to go into exile in Nigeria. The capital, Monrovia, is still without running water and reliable electricity.
Liberia was colonized by freed slaves from the United States. It declared its independence in 1847, but was not recognized by the United States until 1862.
For 133 years, Liberia was well established as a republic with a presidential system of government based on the American model. in 1980, Samuel K. Doe assassinated Liberia's president during a military coup. A second republic was formed in 1986 with Doe continuing as head of state until his ouster in 1989 by Charles Taylor. For the next fourteen years, civil war raged in Liberia. Plans for today's elections were made when Taylor's departure was negotiated in 2003.
Three weeks after Germany's parliamentary elections left the two major parties virtually even in the Bundestag, Angela Merkel has emerged as the new chancellor (as Germany calls its prime minister). Merkel, leader of the conservative Christian Democratic Union, will head a deeply divided coalition government.
Merkel will also be the first female chancellor in German history. Women have served as prime ministers in the United Kingdom (Margaret Thatcher, 1979-1990), Portugal (Maria de Lourdes Pintasilgo, 1979-80), Norway (Gro Harlem Brundtland, 1981, 1986-89, 1990-96), Yugoslavia (Milka Planinc, 1982-86), Lithuania (Kazimiera Danute Prunskiene, 1990-91, and Irena Degutiene, 1999), France (Edith Cresson, 1991-92), Poland (Hanna Suchocka, 1992-93), Bulgaria (Reneta Indzhova, 1994-95), Finland (Anneli Tuulikki Jaatteenmaki, 2003), Macedonia (Radmila Sekerinska, 2004), and Ukraine (Yuliya Tymoshenko, 2005). The generally ceremonial role of president has also been occupied by a woman in a number of European states, most notably the Republic of Ireland where Mary McAleese succeeded Mary Robinson, but women in political leadership is still the exception to the rule.
Last month, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers--ICANN--created for the first time ever a top-level domain (TLD) for a cultural region. Except for the descriptive TLDs such as .com, .edu, .net, and so on, TLDs are generally abbreviations of the name of the country in which the web site is based. (A complete list of TLDs--although without interpretive information--is available here.) Catalonia (or Catalunya in Catalan, the language of the region) has become the first subnational region (or cultural community) to receive a TLD. Its TLD is, of course, .cat.
Catalonia is, depending on one' s perspective, either the Autonomous Community of Catalonia--one of the regional units of Spain--or a stateless nation of Catalan-speaking peoples in an area straddling the Pyrenees in northeastern Spain and southern France. ICANN took no position on the matter, but one can't help but wonder whether someday the TLD might be regarded as an essential element of statehood--or, in the case of Catalonia and future non-state TLD-holders, a precursor of statehood. One can imagine a future version of Article 1 of the 1933 Montevideo Convention on Rights and Duties of States looking like this: "The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: a) a permanent population; b) a defined territory; c) government; d) capacity to enter into relations with the other states; and e) a top-level domain name."
"The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them."
George Orwell, "Notes on Nationalism," 1945
According to today’s New York Times, the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) is having difficulty raising $100 million from member states to pay for its efforts to slow the spread of avian flu in Asia. Vietnam’s attempts to address the avian flu epidemic have been cut back because insufficient funds are available to compensate farmers whose stocks of chickens are destroyed to prevent the spread of the disease. In Indonesia, the government has begun vaccinating rather than destroying chickens for the same reason. Although cheaper than culling infected flocks, this policy carries the risk of hastening mutations in the disease that might increase its virulence.
The failure of member states to fully fund FAO initiatives is particularly disturbing given the recent news that (1) the Bush Administration is now poised to spend billions of dollars to address the threat of avian flu spreading among humans in the United States and (2) some form of avian flu (although possibly not the Asian strain) has now been reported in Turkey and Romania. Helping the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization slow the spread of avian flu in Asia would be a wise investment for the United States.
Wednesday night, by a vote of 90-9, the Senate approved an amendment to the Defense appropriations bill offered by Senator John McCain that would prohibit the use of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment of any detainee in U.S. custody. It also mandates that the U.S. Army Field Manual be regarded as the authoritative guide for all military personnel concerning which interrogation techniques are lawful and which are not.
The amendment, which is opposed by the Bush Administration and by Duncan Hunter, who chairs the House Armed Services Committee, must survive a House-Senate conference committee to have even a chance of becoming law. Furthermore, President Bush, who has yet to veto a bill, has threatened to veto the entire Defense appropriations bill if it comes to him with the McCain amendment attached.
Has Senator John McCain, who flew combat missions in Vietnam and was held by the North Vietnamese in the Hanoi Hilton, become an enemy combatant? Sadly, yes--at least according to those who espouse the concept of "lawfare."
What is lawfare? According to the Council on Foreign Relations, it is a "strategy of using or misusing law as a substitute for traditional military means to achieve military objectives."
Like terrorism, lawfare is a form of asymmetric warfare in which the weak, seeking a comparative advantage that cannot be found on the traditional battlefield due to the overwhelming military superiority of their opponents, resort to unconventional means of waging war. But while terrorists attempt to sow fear and destruction by blowing themselves up, their allies on the lawfare front do the same thing by filing motions and passing amendments requiring respect for the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. Rather than "Death to America!" the lawfare warrior announces his presence with the words, "May it please the Court."
Absurd? Absolutely. But that hasn’t prevented the concept of lawfare from being carried from the fevered imaginations of wingnuts to the halls of the Pentagon and the West Wing.
In March of this year, a new edition of the National Defense Strategy for the United States of America was issued by the White House. In its description of security threats facing the United States there was this line: "Our strength as a nation will continue to be challenged by those who employ a strategy of the weak using international fora, judicial processes, and terrorism."
I teach a course called "International Organizations and Law." My course was transformed by that statement in the National Defense Strategy. It went from being a routine (although richly rewarding and hugely entertaining) Political Science offering to being a training ground for subversives. (I've just informed the class of this fact and have told them that they can still get out if they want to.)
Just think, if I had assigned The Anarchist's Cookbook along with Inside the UN and Carter, Trimble, and Bradley's International Law, we'd have the anti-American trifecta.
But maybe the wingnuts are on to something. There is, after all, a certain logic--and even some historical continuity--to the view that lawfare is indeed something to worry about.
Can law be used as a political weapon? Can it be used to weaken one’s political opponents? Ask Bill Clinton. Indeed, there's a delicious irony in the fact that some of those who most fear the use of lawfare in the war on terror are the same ones who perfected it in the war on Clinton.
But (to get back to Senator McCain and the other 89 senators who voted to end the deliberate ambiguation of torture) we're witnessing lawfare against the Bush administration, aren't we? Yes, and it's about time, because those who fight on the side of law are defending American values.