January 2006 Archives
BushCo tells us that we are in war that is "different" from anything we have ever fought before and places this war above all other priorites. The administration and its supporters use this apparently to-be-endless state of war to justify: circumventing important aspects our liberties, the president being above the law, the expenditure of what will be at least one trillion dollars and the killing of Americans and Iraqis in a war of choice that is un-related to the action of the 9/11 terrorists.
The events of 9/11 were tragic and deserve to have a profound effect on the world’s thinking. Undoubtedly there will be other terrorist acts in the future. But while this is fact of life in the 21st century there needs to be rational thought applied to our circumstances.
Historian Joseph J. Ellis wrties an op-ed piece in Saturday's New York Times.
... where does Sept. 11 rank in the grand sweep of American history as a threat to national security? By my calculations it does not make the top tier of the list, which requires the threat to pose a serious challenge to the survival of the American republic.Here is my version of the top tier: the War for Independence, where defeat meant no United States of America; the War of 1812, when the national capital was burned to the ground; the Civil War, which threatened the survival of the Union; World War II, which represented a totalitarian threat to democracy and capitalism; the cold war, most specifically the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, which made nuclear annihilation a distinct possibility.
Sept. 11 does not rise to that level of threat because, while it places lives and lifestyles at risk, it does not threaten the survival of the American republic, even though the terrorists would like us to believe so.
...
What Patrick Henry once called "the lamp of experience" needs to be brought into the shadowy space in which we have all been living since Sept. 11. My tentative conclusion is that the light it sheds exposes the ghosts and goblins of our traumatized imaginations. It is completely understandable that those who lost loved ones on that date will carry emotional scars for the remainder of their lives. But it defies reason and experience to make Sept. 11 the defining influence on our foreign and domestic policy. History suggests that we have faced greater challenges and triumphed, and that overreaction is a greater danger than complacency.
Wise words. Wouldn’t it be great if instead of criticism of the administration being considered sacrilege and off-limits, a rational discussion could take place? “ You may say I’m a dreamer ...” - la la la.
I have just finished reading Barack Obama's memoir Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
Obama's father was a black Kenyan economist, who he only met once when he was about 10 years old, and his mother a white Kansan anthropologist. He was born in Hawaii and spent a number of his early years in Indonesia. After graduating from college he spent a number of years working as a community organizer in the south side of Chicago.
His memoir explores and questions, in an honest and searching way, the meaning of community, race, identity and family. While I admire what I know of Obama's politics, in the paperback edition I read there is, tacked on to the end, the text of Obama's keynote address to the 2004 Democratic Convention. It is kind of sad to contrast the seriousness, sincerity and sensitivity of the memoir with the calculating and overt use of his history in the speech. Not hypocrisy exactly, but disappointing nonetheless.
That being said, the section of the book where he finds the truth behind his father's and grandfather's lives is deeply affecting and makes universal the complexities that are present in everyone's history which transcend race and culture. Obama is a smart and self-reflective guy who I came to admire in reading this book.
Here's a profile of Obama from the New Yorker.
BushCo keeps trying to justify their illegal wiretapping and each day the explanations get more and more absurd. The justifications for their actions change and expand from day to day.
In a press conference on january 23, General Michael V. Hayden, former head of the National Security Agency, serving at the time that the Bush administration started its illegal wiretapping, appears to be ignorant of the Constitution's requirement that searches need to be based on "probable cause". From Daily Kos :
GEN. HAYDEN . . . Just to be very clear -- and believe me, if there's any amendment to the Constitution that employees of the National Security Agency are familiar with, it's the Fourth. And it is a reasonableness standard in the Fourth Amendment. And so what you've raised to me -- and I'm not a lawyer, and don't want to become one -- what you've raised to me is, in terms of quoting the Fourth Amendment, is an issue of the Constitution. The constitutional standard is "reasonable." And we believe -- I am convinced that we are lawful because what it is we're doing is reasonable."
And the text of the Fourth Amendment:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
In another revelation posted at a valuable new blog, Unclaimed Territory - by Glenn Greenwald, Greenwald explains:
... the Administration had already been engaging in eavesdropping outside of the parameters of FISA, and yet the DoJ itself was expressing serious doubts about the constitutionality of that eavesdropping and even warned that engaging in it might harm national security because it would jeopardize prosecutions against terrorists. Put another way, the DoJ was concerned that it might be unconstitutional to eavesdrop with a lower standard than probable cause even as the Administration was doing exactly that.
BushCo is justifying their actions in any way they can, even if they contratdict each other. In a "reality-based" world this should lead to their being called to account, but what are the chances of that ?
Because they exaggerate the scale of the conflict, and because they use it cynically, Bush and Cheney have grossly mismanaged the struggle against al-Qaeda and Muslim radicalism after September 11.
From Juan Cole's Informed Comment blog here are the Top Ten Mistakes of the Bush Administration in Reacting to Al-Qaeda.
I saw this bumper sticker on a car today:
Note that the sticker on the other end of this minivan's bumper was for KPFK.
Apparently this is a part of a larger campaign to subvert our nation's babies.
While I've never been, I suspect that the closest one could get to being on another planet would be to visit Antartica. And while I much prefer to be warm I would really like to go there, before all the ice melts :-(
Related to my interest in photography there are a few sites I regularly visit. One is The Luminous Landscape, which is run by the iconoclastic Michael Reichmann. He has published a portfolio of photographs of his visit last year, from which the image above comes from. Click on the image to see a larger version of the picture above, and visit the portfolio site to see some truly amazing images.
I love reading, love the news and I have a long, but fading relationship with newspapers. Increasingly I get my news on-line, but I still like holding a paper in my hands.
In Michael Kinsley's column in the Washington Post Black and White and Dead All Over he writes:
Once, I would drive across town if necessary. Today, I open the front door and if the paper isn't within about 10 feet I retreat to my computer and read it online. Only six months ago, that figure was 20 feet. Extrapolating, they will have to bring it to me in bed by the end of the year and read it to me out loud by the second quarter of 2007.
I don't know about the "reading it out loud" part, but this is close to my experience and feelings. In the old days when it the New York Times wasn't easily available, I would make the effort to seek it out, and reading the LA Times has been a life long habit bordering on a deep seeded need. But with inconsistent delivery and questionable editorial policies, among other things, I recently have seriously considered cancelling my subscription.
Reading on-line and listening to audio books (which I did for the first time last month) are not the same "quality" experiences from a tactile/sensory standpoint, but I think that things obviously and increasingly trending away from our participating with information in those ways. The newspapers have much to fear from the internet if they don't respond creatively, and I think we will look back in five years to see a drastically different landscape. Some of it is scary to think about because further media consolidation is bound to take place.
From the New York Times:
A secret Pentagon study has found that as many as 80 percent of the marines who have been killed in Iraq from wounds to the upper body could have survived if they had had extra body armor. Such armor has been available since 2003, but until recently the Pentagon has largely declined to supply it to troops despite calls from the field for additional protection, according to military officials....
"Our preliminary research suggests that as many as 42 percent of the Marine casualties who died from isolated torso injuries could have been prevented with improved protection in the areas surrounding the plated areas of the vest," the study concludes. An additional 23 percent might have been saved with side plates that extend below the arms, while 15 percent more could have benefited from shoulder plates, the report says.
Putting aside the fact that they shouldn't have been there in the first place, according to the unfortunately valuable Iraq Coalition Casualties site, as of january 6, 2006, 2193 US soldiers have been killed in Iraq. With adequate body armor, how many of them might still be alive?
In a related story today from Reuters:
Paul Bremer, who led the U.S. civilian occupation authority in Iraq after the 2003 invasion, has admitted the United States did not anticipate the insurgency in the country, NBC Television said on Friday.
Back in junior high school we all learned “how a bill becomes a law”. Well folks, it appears that things apparently don’t operate as we were taught. From the Washington Post:
In the 1980s, the Reagan administration, like other White Houses before and after, chafed at the reality that Congress's reach on the meaning of laws extends beyond the words of statutes passed on Capitol Hill. Judges may turn to the trail of statements lawmakers left behind in the Congressional Record when trying to glean the intent behind a law. The White House left no comparable record.In a Feb. 5, 1986, draft memo, (current Supreme Court Nominee Samuel) Alito, then deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel, outlined a strategy for changing that. It laid out a case for having the president routinely issue statements about the meaning of statutes when he signs them into law.
Such "interpretive signing statements" would be a significant departure from run-of-the-mill bill signing pronouncements, which are "often little more than a press release," Alito wrote. The idea was to flag constitutional concerns and get courts to pay as much attention to the president's take on a law as to "legislative intent."
"Since the president's approval is just as important as that of the House or Senate, it seems to follow that the president's understanding of the bill should be just as important as that of Congress," Alito wrote. He later added that "by forcing some rethinking by courts, scholars, and litigants, it may help to curb some of the prevalent abuses of legislative history."
...
President Bush has been especially fond of them, issuing at least 108 in his first term, according to presidential scholar Phillip J. Cooper of Portland State University in Oregon.
...
The Bush administration "has very effectively expanded the scope and character of the signing statement not only to address specific provisions of legislation that the White House wishes to nullify, but also in an effort to significantly reposition and strengthen the powers of the presidency relative to the Congress," Cooper wrote ..
Bush may be acting without fanfare for a reason. As Alito noted in his memo, the statements "will not be warmly welcomed" on Capitol Hill.
"The novelty of the procedure and the potential increase of presidential power are two factors that may account for this anticipated reaction," he wrote. "In addition, and perhaps most important, Congress is likely to resent the fact that the president will get in the last word on questions of interpretation."
As I read this, it is further evidence that we truly are moving towards a government in which BushCo does what ever it thinks right and ignores the laws passed by the legislative branch whenever it suits them.
For example read “Bush could bypass new torture ban“ from the Boston Globe.
It gets scarier every day. Will these guys ever be held accountable?
During the King's Christmas vacation he visits the troops. From Maureen Dowd's column (requires NYT subscription):
He left the ranch for a brief visit at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, where he kidded in a way that again showed his jarring lack of empathy with the amputees from Iraq and Afghanistan: "As you can possibly see, I have an injury myself - not here at the hospital, but in combat with a cedar. I eventually won. The cedar gave me a little scratch. As a matter of fact, the colonel asked if I needed first aid when she first saw me. I was able to avoid any major surgical operations here, but thanks for your compassion, colonel."
