The development of a nuclear weapon by Iran is the great, glowing, neon "red line" of American politics today, one that every single major player in the American power structure says cannot be crossed. An ironclad bipartisan consensus has formed on the issue: Iran will not be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon. Period. End of discussion. "All options are on the table" to prevent this from happening, George Bush has repeatedly declared, with John McCain singing along. Meanwhile, Barack Obama has hammered home the point even more forcefully: "I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon -- everything."
"Everything" in a president's power includes the largest military machine in human history and the largest nuclear arsenal on earth, so this is not exactly an idle boast. In fact, the American bipartisan political consensus on Iran amounts to precisely this: putting a gun to someone's head and saying, "If you don't do what I want, I'm going to blow your goddamn brains out."
This Bush-McCain-Obama line was underscored this week by one of Obama's top foreign policy advisers, Anthony Lake, who said "the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran is the biggest threat facing the world," the Financial Times reports.
Think of that: the biggest threat facing the world. Bigger than global climate change. Bigger than poverty and disease. Bigger than growing conflicts over shrinking resources. Bigger than terrorism (which was the last greatest biggest threat facing the world). Bigger than organized crime. Bigger than the Terror War operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and Somalia, which continue to spawn so much death, ruin, extremism and economic turmoil. Bigger than all of these -- and all other threats facing the world -- is the prospect that Iran might, in Lake's words, "get on the edge of developing a nuclear weapon."
This is certainly a remarkable state of affairs, and one which provokes a very simple question: Why? Why is an Iranian bomb (or even the prospect of Iran "getting on the edge" of having one) the ultimate danger facing the world today -- a prospect so dire, so infinitely evil that even the most "progressive" operators in the power structure insist they would be willing to use nuclear weapons to stop it?
Nothing in the modern affairs of nations has been more exhaustively analyzed and debated than the utility and dangers of nuclear weapons, and yet the dangers posed by Iran with a bomb have been barely discussed. They are treated as a given. The core idea is that Iran cannot be trusted because the country is run by religious fanatics crazy enough to use a bomb if they had one. This is not the first time such arguments have been made. Some Americans, including Air Force generals, believed in the late 1940s that a pre-emptive war against the Soviet Union was justified by the peril of Moscow with a bomb. Twenty years later the Russians, in their turn, were so alarmed by the prospect of Beijing with a bomb that they quietly proposed to the Americans a joint effort to destroy the Chinese nuclear development effort with a pre-emptive attack.
The world's experience with nuclear weapons to date has shown that nuclear powers do not use them, and they seriously threaten to use them only to deter attack. Britain, France, Russia, China, Israel, South Africa, India, Pakistan, and North Korea have all acquired nuclear weapons in spite of international opposition. None has behaved recklessly with its new power. What changes is that nuclear powers have to be treated differently; in particular they cannot be casually threatened....
We must demur slightly from this excellent analysis to note that one nuclear power has in fact used its nuclear weapons: the United States. Back to Powers:
So set aside the question of whether Iran wants an enrichment program to make bomb-grade material or only for the production of electricity... What we ought to ask, then, is why Iran wants its own production capacity for making the stuff of bombs?
What US officials say, when they say anything at all, is that Tehran wants a bomb in order to dominate the Persian Gulf region and to threaten its neighbors, especially Israel. This is a misreading of how other nuclear powers have made use of their weapons. As tools of coercive diplomacy nuclear weapons are almost entirely useless, but they are extremely effective in blocking large-scale or regime-threatening attack. There is no evidence that Iran has a different motive, and plenty of reason for Iran to fear that attack is a real possibility.
Indeed, the Bush administration, far from trying to quiet Iran's fears, makes a point of confirming them every few months. These threats are not limited to words, but are supported with practical steps....
The seriousness of American threats is confirmed by the fact that no significant national leader in the United States has ever disowned or objected to them in clear, vigorous, principled language. It is as if the whole country listens to the administration's threats with breath held, wondering if Bush and Cheney really mean to do as they say, and in effect leaving the decision entirely to them. Americans may count on the President to think twice, but why would leaders in Tehran, responsible for the lives of 70 million citizens, want to depend on President Bush's restraint for their survival and safety? Bush has a history. On his own authority, without the sanction of any international body, he attacked Iraq five years ago and precipitated a bloody chain of events that shows no sign of ending. It would be natural, indeed inevitable, for any government in Tehran, seeing what has happened next door, to ask what could save Iran from a similar fate. An answer is not far to seek: nuclear weapons with a reliable delivery system could do that.
Powers then considers the possibilities of an imminent American strike on Iran:
Bush and Cheney prefer the language of flat command that implies "or else." A long list might be appended here of their frequent warnings that the United States does not trust Iran with the knowledge to enrich bomb-grade uranium and will not tolerate an Iranian bomb. Many of these warnings have been issued in the last month or two and we may expect a continuing barrage until their final days in office. The President's frustration is plainly evident: Saddam Hussein may be gone, but Iran remains defiant, and more powerful than ever. The President's male pride seems to have been aroused; he said he was going to solve the Iranian problem and he doesn't want to back down. The intensity of Bush's desire to crush this final opponent is evident in his words and his body language, but does he retain the power to carry out his threats?
From one point of view the answer seems obvious. It is too late. With the exception only of the neoconservative faithful, every close observer of the American–Iranian standoff says that the administration's threats are empty, that the United States does not have the military resources, or the political support at home, or the agreement of allies abroad, to carry out a full-scale air attack on Iran's nuclear infrastructure, much less to invade and occupy the country. Two of the skeptics, Gates and Mullen, are running the Pentagon, and their cautioning remarks, only a step this side of insubordination, would seem to make attack impossible. But if attack is impossible, why does Bush talk himself into an ever-tighter corner by continuing to issue threats? Does he believe Iran will cave? Are these the only words he thinks people will still listen to? Is he hoping to tie the hands of the next president? Or is he preparing to summon the power of his office to carry out the last option on the table? One hardly knows whether to take the question seriously. It seems alarmist and overexcited even to pose it when the realities are so clear. But it is impossible to be sure—Bush has a history.
Bush indeed has a history. He has a history of launching military aggression. He has a history of launching military aggression on the basis of manufactured threats. He has a history of launching military aggression without the agreement of allies abroad. He has a history of launching military aggression against the advice of "military skeptics," whom he either "retires" or sidelines or ignores when he launches the aggression. He has a history of launching military aggression regardless of the strain it puts on the armed forces or the national treasury.
And he does not need "political support at home" to launch another act of military aggression, if by "political support" Powers means popular backing from the public. Bush is not facing re-election, and never will again. And he has already been given full support from the Democratic-controlled Congress in a series of measures which fully embrace Bush's bellicose stance toward Iran, as well as the specious casus belli he has advanced.
We are indeed simply waiting to see if Bush decides to carry through with his clear intent -- and waiting helplessly, for exactly the reason that Powers outlines: because "no significant national leader in the United States has ever disowned or objected to [the threat of war on Iran] in clear, vigorous, principled language." Indeed, as noted above, all of our "significant national leaders" are in lockstep on this issue, and in their willingness to do "everything in [their] power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, everything in [their] power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon -- everything."
So yes, Bush has a history of military aggression. And the United States has a history of incinerating civilians with nuclear bombs. What seems to be forgotten in all the bloodlusting furor is that Iran has a history of neither.
Stephen Cohen is right on Russia in "Wrong on Russia." After first outlining Russia's global importance and then the vast dangers of the accelerating deterioration in US-Russian relations, Cohen notes in the International Herald Tribune:
How did it come to this?
In the U.S. policy elite and media, the nearly unanimous answer is that Russian President Vladimir Putin's antidemocratic domestic policies and "neo-imperialism" destroyed that historic opportunity. You don't have to be a Putin apologist to understand that this is not an adequate explanation.
During the last eight years, Putin's foreign policies have been largely a reaction to Washington's winner-take-all approach to Moscow since the early 1990s, which resulted from a revised U.S. view of how the cold war ended.
In that new triumphalist narrative, America "won" the 40-year conflict and post-Soviet Russia was a defeated nation analogous to post-World War II Germany and Japan - a nation without full sovereignty at home or autonomous national interests abroad.
The policy implication of that bipartisan triumphalism, which persists today, has been clear, certainly to Moscow. It meant that the United States had the right to oversee Russia's post-Communist political and economic development, as it tried to do directly in the 1990s, while demanding that Moscow yield to U.S. international interests. It meant Washington could break strategic promises to Moscow, as when the Clinton administration began NATO's eastward expansion, and disregard extraordinary Kremlin overtures, as when the Bush Administration unilaterally withdrew from the ABM treaty and granted NATO membership to countries even closer to Russia - despite Putin's crucial assistance to the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan after 9/11. It even meant America was entitled to Russia's traditional sphere of security and energy supplies, from the Baltics, Ukraine and Georgia to Central Asia and the Caspian.
Such U.S. behavior was bound to produce a Russian backlash. It came under Putin, but it would have been the reaction of any strong Kremlin leader. Those U.S. policies - widely viewed in Moscow as an "encirclement" designed to keep Russia weak and to control its resources - have helped revive an assertive Russian nationalism, destroy the once strong pro-American lobby, and inspire widespread charges that concessions to Washington are "appeasement," even "capitulationism." The Kremlin may have overreacted, but the cause and effect threatening a new cold war are clear.
Yes, it's our old friend American Exceptionalism again: we are imbued with divinity (or blessed by history for the secular exceptionalists), so everyone must hew to Washington's paternalistic line -- or else Daddy spank. American elites can never comprehend the reality of the outside world because they are too busy admiring their special, exceptional selves in the mirror.
Cohen then outlines some immediate steps we could take to reverse the dangerous situation:
Three are essential and urgent: a U.S. diplomacy that treats Russia as a sovereign great power with commensurate national interests; an end to NATO expansion before it reaches Ukraine, which would risk something worse than cold war; and a full resumption of negotiations to sharply reduce and fully secure all nuclear stockpiles and to prevent the impending arms race, which requires ending or agreeing on U.S. plans for a missile defense system in Europe.
Sounds like a good plan. What do our wannabe leaders have to say? Uh oh:
American presidential campaigns are supposed to discuss such vital issues, but neither John McCain nor Barack Obama has done so. Instead, in varying degrees, both have promised to be "tougher" on the Kremlin than George W. Bush has allegedly been and to continue the encirclement of Russia and the hectoring "democracy promotion" there.
Great. Not only more of the same disastrous course -- but even more of more of the same.
As a follow-up to the two previousposts, John Pilger reports on the treatment meted out to a young Palestinian journalist, Mohammed Omer, who, despite seeing family members killed and maimed by Israeli forces, "is a moderating voice, urging Palestinian youth not to court hatred but seek peace with Israel."
Here's what Israel's security organ, Shin Bet, does with moderating voices who seek peace with Israel.
Yesterday's post on the rise of racism in Israel drew this comment:
I don't think it affects your larger point, but "Hitler's Willing Executioners" is, at best, controversial. (Personally I think it's mostly crap.) Check out "A Nation on Trial" by Finkelstein and Birn in English or "Ein Volk von Moerdern" in German while Goldhagen is still fresh in your mind.
I don't speak German, but I am aware of the work by Norman Finkelstein and Ruth Birn, and of the controversies surrounding Goldhagen's book. Some of the latter stem, I believe, from a misreading or over-interpretation of Goldhagen's work, which states repeatedly that is dealing with one narrow, specific aspect of the Nazi phenomenon and the Holocaust: namely, the actions of the people who actually inflicted the torments and perpetrated the killings (and those who administratively facilitated these actions). It deals with the fact that almost all of the perpetrators acted of their own free will -- very often with enthusiasm and initiative, above and beyond the call of duty -- even when, in many if not most cases, they could have refused such duties without penalty.
Goldhagen also deals with the anti-Semitism that soaked German society, the obsessive idea that there was a "Jewish problem" that needed to be solved in one way or another, and the overwhelming acceptance of the notion that Jews should be segregated and removed, in one fashion or another, from German society (which Finkelstein also acknowledges). Goldhagen states repeatedly that this pervasive anti-Semitism was not the sole and inevitable cause of the Holocaust; but he does assert that it was an indispensable element in the development of the "Final Solution" of mass deportation, mass suffering, and mass murder. Without this baseline, without the pervasive belief that Jews were somehow lesser beings, were destructive, poisonous "Others" whose very presence caused terrible harm to the German nation, then the Nazis would not have been able to move from the Nuremberg Laws (which, as Finkelstein notes, were met with overwhelming public approval) to the death-camps.
Goldhagen also makes clear that even with the pervasive anti-Semitism -- "eliminationist" in that it wished and approved the removal of Jews from the life of German society -- the mass killing and worst depredations would not have occurred if not for the war, and the savagery it unleashed. (Unleashed on all sides; the indiscriminate Allied bombing of German cities and the resulting mass civilian deaths were repeatedly cited by death-squad leaders and other officials as "justification" for their own killing of unarmed, non-combatant civilians, especially Jews, who, in the widely-accepted Nazi mythology, had somehow "caused" the war.)
The heart of Goldhagen's book are the hundreds of pages of descriptions of the activities of the perpetrators, told often in their own words, and the direct evidence of their positive attitude toward their activities -- activities which were more widely known in society than is generally assumed. As he notes, many of these testimonies have been ignored or under-utilized in examinations of the Holocaust, and thus the focus of his book is filling out this neglected niche in the vast field of Nazi-era studies. Goldhagen also makes clear, repeatedly, that these events had nothing to do with any racial, biological, national, spiritual or any other inherent quality in the German people; they arose out of a certain specific set of historical conditions.
Nor does he say, anywhere, either directly or by implication, that "the Germans are a species apart with their pathological anti-Semitism, [which] absolves them of all normal standards of moral culpability," as Birn alleges. She accuses of Goldhagen of having a "sugar-coated version of the Holocaust" (!), "which eliminates the need for people to constantly think about the ethical choices of right and wrong. " This conclusion simply cannot be supported by a reading of the book. Goldhagen repeatedly and explicitly rejects this thesis, and instead points out, over and over and over again, that the atrocities were carried out by individual moral agents, who were responsible for their actions, and who had to make constant ethical choices of right and wrong every single day -- especially given the fact, as Goldhagen demonstrates, that many if not most of the perpetrators could have stopped taking part in the atrocities at any time. Indeed, the moral culpability of individuals is in many ways the whole point of the book.
What Goldhagen is trying to do is to understand why so many Germans in that era made the choices they did to take part in such a monstrous activity. To try to understand a motive is not the same as explaining it away or absolving the perpetrator of his or her moral culpability. The latter is the argument made by apologists for the Terror War -- that you are "pro-terrorist" or "blaming the victim" or "absolving the terrorist" if you try to understand what motivates someone to take such an extreme action. It is also the argument made by apologists for Israel's manifold depredations against the Palestinians. And Finkelstein and Birn -- especially Finkelstein -- obviously do not fall into the camp of such apologists. Yet they are using a version of that discreditable argument in the case of Goldhagen's book.
Again, this is not to endorse every single conclusion that Goldhagen draws from the evidence and the testimonies he examines. Nor do I have the slightest desire to wade into what is in many ways an academic cat-fight, and one which has more to do with present-day politics than historical truth. (On the political side, I am much in sympathy with Finkelstein, who has been subjected to censorship, prejudice and banishment (from Israel) for his own scholarship; including his critiques of Goldhagen.) I don't know what Goldhagen's politics are. I don't doubt that the book has been put to partisan use, or that it contains conclusions and interpretations open to dispute or refutation. What work of history doesn't? But I am not an academic, or an intellectual, or an ideologue. What I am interested in are the historical facts that he presents, and what they say about human nature, and the patterns and dynamics of human behavior, especially in the context of large-scale actions initiated by a powerful state.
With the backing and the blessing of local government and the police, the anti-Semitic organization takes its program into the local schools, to hammer home its stern, unyielding message: Girls, do not give your bodies to the racial enemy! Do not let them seduce and defile your innocence with their devious ways!
The city's own welfare representative heads up the program of the "Anti-Assimilation Department." He shows the schoolgirls a film -- "Sleeping with the Enemy" -- which dramatizes how the filthy Semite worms his way into the affections of an innocent girl then cruelly abandons her. This "abnormal phenomenon" is plaguing several cities in the area, says the police chief; there have already been many cases of racially pure girls "joining with" Semite men. The propaganda efforts of the Anti-Assimilation Department are aimed at eliminating the sexual machinations of the "exploitative" Semites.
Even though these Semites are citizens of the country -- indeed, many of them serve in the armed forces -- the Anti-Assimilation Department's view is gaining wider and wider acceptance in the nation at large. Racial consciousness has reached new heights in the country, a recent study shows: more than half the population now favors the removal of these minority Semite citizens. And 74 percent of the nation's youth now believes that these Semites are "unclean."
Another new study shows that dozens of these Semite citizens have been killed by police, military and private security forces in the past seven years, with almost no legal repercussions for the killers.
*** A report taken from the crumbling pages of Der Stürmer or some other German paper of the 1930s? No; it all comes from Haaretz, the liberal Israeli paper, and is happening right now. The Semites now being accused as sexual predators, racial defilers, devious operators and "unclean" subhumans who should be removed from the land are the Arab citizens of Israel.
As Haaretz reports this week, the Anti-Assimilation Department of the religious group Yad L'ahim -- "which works to prevent Jewish girls from dating Muslim men" -- has taken its "Sleeping With the Enemy" program into the schools of Kiryat Gat, where the city fathers also fret about local Jewish girls "joining with Bedouin men."
The Anti-Assimilation Department says its relentless efforts to prevent sexual contact between Jews and Arabs "is not racism, because it is not mutually exploitative, "says Chaim Shalom, the presenter of the program."This is a matter of racism on their end," because it is "the exploitative Arab, the exploitative Bedouin," who pursues the Jewish girls.
The Kiryat Gal program comes in the midst of a steep rise in racism among Israelis, as Haaretz noted a few months ago, citing a report by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel:
"Israeli society is reaching new heights of racism that damages freedom of expression and privacy," [ACRI president Sami] Michael said. The publication coincides with Human Rights Week, which begins Sunday. "We are a society under supervision under a democratic regime whose institutions are being undermined and which confers a different status to residents in the center of the country and in the periphery."
The number of Jews expressing feelings of hatred toward Arabs has doubled, the report stated...Among Jewish respondents, 55 percent support the idea that the state should encourage Arab emigration from Israel and 78 percent oppose the inclusion of Arab political parties in the government. According to a Haifa University study, 74 percent of Jewish youths in Israel think that Arabs are "unclean."
In March, a report by Mossawa, the Advocacy Center for Arab Citizens of Israel, also detailed the increasing support for "the delegitimization, discrimination and even deportation of Arabs," Haaretz notes:
The report, written by Mossawa director Jafar Farah and others, mainly examines racism against Arabs in Israel, using criteria taken from the anti-Semitism reports in Europe.
The report covers Arabs killed by the security forces and by Jewish citizens, anti-Arab incitement by leading Jewish public figures, workforce discrimination by private Jewish organizations, the barring of Arabs from public places, and the destruction of Arab property. The report particularly highlights what it calls the government's helplessness in the face of the problem.
The report lists Arab citizens killed by police, soldiers, security guards and Jewish civilians over the past seven years. It notes that only one Jewish citizen, of Ethiopian origin, was killed under similar circumstances during this period. Indictments were issued in only seven cases, the report states. In two cases, the assailants were found not guilty, and the State Prosecutor appealed the verdict in one of these cases.....
We've said it before and we'll say it again: there are no exact historical parallels, but there are resonances that can be instructive. As Arthur Silber notes (in explaining the nature of his questions and warnings about the thrust of the Obama campaign):
NO, I do NOT think Obama is Hitler reincarnated. I must note, however, that his full embrace of the U.S.'s truly insane foreign policy of aggressive, non-defensive war is not precisely unHitlerian, just as his full embrace of corporatism bears a rather disturbing resemblance to aspects of Hitler's political program. But the same could be said of every major American politician.
...What I have been getting at are very broad cultural and political dynamics, general patterns that repeat throughout history, assuming one studies and understands history. [emphasis mine] So, no, Obama is not a Hitler duplicate, but, to a readily noticeable and troubling extent, he is someone riding a similar kind of cultural wave and response, and he may well use an already existing authoritarian-surveillance state that repeatedly engages in aggressive war to wreak great destruction both at home and abroad.
I came upon the Kiryat Gal story just hours after finishing a most instructive work of history examining cultural and political dynamics: "Hitler's Willing Executioners," by Daniel Goldhagen. And no, I do not think Israel is Nazi Germany reincarnated, despite its many brutal policies; a reading of Goldhagen's book, with its copious detailing of what the hands-on perpetrators of the Holocaust -- most of them "ordinary" Germans, non-Nazis, good family men, thousands and thousands of them -- actually did, would make anyone wary of hair-trigger equations of other regimes to the Nazis.
But equation is not the issue; as Silber notes, it is resonance, pattern, the dynamics of human behavior in certain particular configurations of political, social, cultural and psychological currents. Israeli society is clearly sliding toward something similar to the "eliminationist anti-Semitism" that permeated -- saturated -- German society in both the pre-Nazi and Nazi eras. Israel has already walled off the "unclean" Arabs in horrendous ghettos where they must live degraded lives, subjected them to collective punishment and repeated military attacks, forced them from their homes, and so on. The resonances of Israeli policy with other race-based oppressions in modern history have long been painfully clear.
The increasing brutalization and coarsening of Israeli political culture has also long been evident, as well as the inexorable, apparently irresistible rise of extremist sectarian factions whose obsessions and strictures mirror those of some Islamic extremists and, yes, have strong resonances with the German anti-Semitic extremists who rose to state power in the 1930s.
There is no good destination at the end of such a road. There is no good outcome to the dynamic of eliminationism and dehumanization. It leads, quite literally, to madness and death and ruin. Israel is not the only nation on that road; the dynamic is not specific to any country, creed, race, religion or polity. It belongs to all of us, it's a danger we all face. And it requires vigilance, skepticism, action and awareness to break up these patterns as they rise among us, to derail the dynamic -- before it's too far gone and must play out, in one way or another, in the given extent and circumstances of the historical moment, to the bitter end.
Three Amigos: Bush, McCain, Obama Draw a Blood-Red Line on Iran What are they waiting for? What is going to be different in the near future that will make it possible or 'necessary' to attack?
Antifa, you are right. We've got to follow the capitalist imperialist dream wherever it may lead.
Russian Roulette: A Bipartisan Consensus for Disaster What in the hell are you talking about? Your first post is still up there. I'm looking at it right now. I went in "under the hood" of the site on the technical side just to confirm it's still there. You do understand how comments work, don't you? Go ...
Russian Roulette: A Bipartisan Consensus for Disaster BTW Chris,
I'm impressed. You simply took down my first post. I didn't use any foul language and yet you appear to be unables to tolerate any serious disagreement.I think it was complacent and I think it is lamentable that you both neglected to giv...
Russian Roulette: A Bipartisan Consensus for Disaster Chirs,
"You do understand that the Cohen article refers to America's dealings with Russia AFTER the collapse of the Soviet Union -- the political entity which oppressed the now free and sovereign East European nations to which you refer, don't you?[...
Elimination Round: Hurtling Down History's Dark Roads I wonder to what degree the "coarsening of Israeli political culture" might be an export of our own racist ghetto wars in the likes of Bed-Stuy and Dorchester.
Come to think of it, didn't the "Stern Gang" owe some of its political refinement ...
Three Amigos: Bush, McCain, Obama Draw a Blood-Red Line on Iran And, oh, you're right about Iran not having engaged in military aggression against another nation-state, but haven't they been behind terrorist attacks abroad? Not to mention domestic repression at home. I am not disputing your opposition to an attac...
Three Amigos: Bush, McCain, Obama Draw a Blood-Red Line on Iran Chris,
Given the irrational religiosity of Bush, I can see a fundamentalist Christian like Bush carrying out an attack regardless of rational concerns. After all, this is a supposed "war for civilization", right? And Bush is the allegedly divinely i...
Three Amigos: Bush, McCain, Obama Draw a Blood-Red Line on Iran Andrew Bacevich writes in the July 1 2008 Boston Globe:
[quote]By showing that Bush has put the country on a path pointing to permanent war, ever increasing debt and dependency, and further abuses of executive authority, Obama can transform the elec...
Three Amigos: Bush, McCain, Obama Draw a Blood-Red Line on Iran Ever since North Korea blew up that nuke they went from being part of the 'Axis of Evil' (God, our president is retarded) to being our bestest buds.
I can't imagine why Iran would want to follow suit...
Three Amigos: Bush, McCain, Obama Draw a Blood-Red Line on Iran Gentle reader, imagine the consequences of America NOT pursuing military dominance of the oil-producing regions of the planet, and you will immediately perceive why America absolutely WILL use its military everywhere it can to claim resources it can ...
Follow the Leader: In Defense of John Yoo
Tuesday, 08 April 2008
John Yoo has been getting a bit of guff in the liberal media recently for some legal memoranda he wrote a while back defending the president's right -- and duty -- to protect the American people from terrorism. This criticism is as short-sighted as it is pernicious -- and we are here today to defend this good and faithful public servant against the unwarranted calumnies that have besmirched his name.
Fortunately for the security of our Republic, the far left's attempt to turn Yoo's patriotic labors into yet another persnickety"moral outrage," a la Abu Ghraib or My Lai or Wounded Knee, hasn't really taken off. The usual suspects -- Washington Post, New York Times -- have put out a few stories, usually buried, quoting a few so-called legal "experts" wringing their hands -- while sitting comfortably on the backsides that President Bush and Vice President Cheney have kept safe for them all these years -- about Yoo's allegedly "unconcionable document."
And of course, some of the radical far left socialist "bloggers" like Scott Horton -- who used to work with the "father of the Commie A-bomb," Andrei Sakharov (need we say more about Horton's pinkish tint?) -- have been throwing the usual BDS hissy fits about how Yoo's memoranda constitute part of a "joint criminal enterprise" on the part of the Bush Administration, whose members, says Comrade Horton, had to know that "these memoranda would result in serious harm, including assault, torture and death, to protected persons in the custody of the United States."
[Hey Scott – enough with the Atticus Finch act already! This ain't good old Tom Robinson you're sticking up for here -- it's worthless scum who hate our freedoms and want to kill us all. Let's see what you say about the "rule of law" when some Islamofascist is killing your wife and breeding 15 more Islamocommies with your enslaved daughter, eh? You'll be sorry you tied our interrogator's hands then, won't you? You'll be wishing we'd had a bit more of the eye-gouging and acid-throwing and waterboarding and strappado and beating nearly to the point of death or organ failure -- and crushing the testicles of children -- that Yoo has stoutly defended as the president's prerogative, won't you?]
In fact, some extremist terror-symp America-hating moonbats have even gone so far as to say that the Bush Administration memoranda and directives on enhanced interrogation literally constitute a form of perverse pornography, lingering in great, obsessive detail over the specific methods of pain and humiliation that can -- and should -- be inflicted upon a captive. This "pornography of power," say the fifth columnists, is characterized not only by its fascination with violent, punishing contact with human flesh (preferably naked), but also -- perhaps chiefly -- by its maniacal insistence that the captives be rendered completely helpless, without the slightest shred of legal cover or due process to shield them from interrogators -- and their well-informed superiors -- who have been absolved in advance of any culpability for their actions.
All of this remarkable outpouring of traitorous filth is being laid directly at John Yoo's door. Indeed, General Secretary Horton and the rest of the pinkblogger Politburo are demanding that Yoo -- now a rightly honored professor of law at one of the nation's most respected educational establishments -- be disbarred for his alleged "complicity" in this "criminal conspiracy"; a conspiracy which according to Commissar Horton includes such other outstanding defenders of America's freedom as Doug Feith, Stephen Cambone, Steven Bradbury, Michael Chertoff, Alice Fisher, Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, I. Lewis Libby, Jay Bybee, Jim Haynes, Richard B. Cheney, John Ashcroft, Donald Rumsfeld, William Boykin, and Major General Geoffrey Miller, among others.
Well, I call BS on these bat-brains. John Yoo is not to "blame" for these torture memos. And neither is Mr. Addington or Mr. Feith or Mr. Gonzales or any of the other honorable, hard-working public officials caught up in the far left's mile-wide net of "conspiracy." John Yoo served at the pleasure of George W. Bush: the President of the United States, the Commander-in-Chief of our armed forces, and the Chief Executive of our Republic. John Yoo wrote those memos at the request and direction of the White House and the Pentagon. Even Comrade Horton himself makes this crystal clear:
According to the official narrative, the Bush Administration turned to the Justice Department for legal guidance on what could be done to give interrogators the latitude they were demanding in dealing with prisoners taken in the war on terror. However, not a single element of the official narrative is entirely true. The interrogators were not "pushing for broader authority." Indeed, the pushing was all coming out of the White House (from Vice President Cheney, to be specific), and the intelligence professionals were actually pushing back. Moreover, torture was being used almost from the start of the "war on terror." Special operations units operating under the authority of Dr. Stephen Cambone, the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, had been authorized to use torture techniques from the opening of the war, and they used them with gusto.
The real story, pieced together from many hours of interviews with most of the people involved in the decisions about interrogation, goes something like this: The Geneva decision was not a case of following the logic of the law but rather was designed to give effect to a prior decision to take the gloves off and allow coercive interrogation; it deliberately created a legal black hole into which the detainees were meant to fall. The new interrogation techniques did not arise spontaneously from the field but came about as a direct result of intense pressure and input from Rumsfeld's office. The Yoo-Bybee Memo was not simply some theoretical document, an academic exercise in blue-sky hypothesizing, but rather played a crucial role in giving those at the top the confidence to put pressure on those at the bottom. And the practices employed at Guant·namo led to abuses at Abu Ghraib.
The fingerprints of the most senior lawyers in the administration were all over the design and implementation of the abusive interrogation policies. Addington, Bybee, Gonzales, Haynes, and Yoo became, in effect, a torture team of lawyers, freeing the administration from the constraints of all international rules prohibiting abuse.
Hah! To paraphrase their great hero, Vladimir Lenin, if you give the Pinko Taliban enough rope, they will always hang themselves. The evidence laid out in their own propaganda rags clearly shows that the enhanced interrogation techniques -- which, as we all know, are the only things standing between us and the horde of super-potent overbreeding Muslims who have already taken over Europe -- were instigated at the direct order of those at the very top level of our freely elected democratic (small D, thank God!) government. John Yoo always was -- and always will be -- nothing but the faithful factotum of those who hold the power in our system.
So let's quit kicking John Yoo around, all right? He was only following orders. He did what he was told. He carried out the arbitrary will of our Leader, without question, without hestitation, without any quibbling over the rule of law. And isn't that the American way?
If you have some kind of problem with the President of the United States being able to order his flunkies to throw acid on a naked, chained-up captive -- who might have been sold into custody by a bounty hunter or rounded up in a random sweep or denounced by a business rival or snatched off a city street for having the wrong name, the wrong religion, the wrong skin; if for some reason it bothers your delicate liberal sensibilities that the President of the United States claims the power to hold any person on earth for as long as he likes, on no evidence or charges at all, and then slit the captive's ear or piss down his throat -- or grind the testicles of prisoner's five-year-old child under a bootheel; if you're such a big girl's blouse that you get all wiggly at the thought of the President of the United States claiming the arbitrary, unchecked power to kill any person on earth that he -- or his designated agents -- declares an "enemy combatant" or even a "suspected terrorist" -- then don't blame John C. Yoo. For God's sake, have the balls to put the responsibility squarely where it belongs: on the President of the United States, George Walker Bush, and the Vice President of the United States, Richard Bruce Cheney. Have the guts to demand their impeachment, now -- yes, now, right in the middle of a presidential election campaign, right in the middle of their last year in office -- for the capital crime (by U.S. law) of torture.
If you believe that what the Bush Administration has done is torture, then you have no other choice. And any elected officials in the national government -- including Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama -- who do not call for the immediate impeachment of Bush and Cheney on these charges, and the subsequent prosecution of their myriad minions who carried out their orders, are implicity condoning these crimes and acting as willing accomplices for them.
But as we see, no Democratic leaders are calling for impeachment; in fact, time and again, they specifically and adamantly rule it out. What's more, they are not even launching any formal, full-scale, high-profile investigations of the "torture memos" and the entire apparatus of enhanced interrogation, indefinite imprisonment and rendition that the leftist jihadis liken to the gulag -- even though they control both houses of Congress and could make life a living hell for the Bush Administration and John McCain, the loyal little lapdog who hopes to follow in the Leader's footsteps. But it is obvious that, deep down, the Democratic leaders agree with the President's actions and policies; they recognize the deep wisdom behind the aggression in the name of liberty in Iraq, the surveillance in the name of freedom at home, and the torture in the name of civilization that the Leader has made a hallmark of our enlightened age.
How then do they differ from the honorable John Yoo? They too are countenancing, assisting and following the arbitrary will of the Leader. They too look at the murder of a million innocent civilians in Iraq and refuse to treat it as a crime. They too look at the torture of helpless, uncharged, unprotected captives and refuse to treat it as a crime. Oh, they may preen and posture, they may lay some hot and heavy rhetoric on the rubes out there; but they DO nothing. And these are crimes which they actually have the power to investigate and prosecute.
Where then is the actual moral difference between these progressive paragons and John Yoo? He is simply more honest about his bootlicking servility to abitrary, brutal – and avowedly, unashamedly unconstitutional -- power, that's all. He has the courage of his lawless convictions. What do those Democratic leaders who claim allegiance to the rule of law and the Constitution of the United States have? The cowardice of their ambitions.
A true patriot will understand that constant surveillance and the utmost measures are necessary for the defense of the Fatherland, or Homeland, or whatever it is we're calling it now.
A strong leader is the true father of the nation, and must be obeyed without question.
The individual citizen has the right to obey, and nothing more.
Those who, by their actions or their beliefs or their origins rule themselves outside the State are non-persons for every practical purpose, and may be dealt with accordingly. There will be no consequences for doing your duty.
Those who fail to grasp these simple concepts are scum, and deserving of whatever happens to them now, and in future.
Dammit Mr Floyd, I'm only two paragraphs into it and I'm ready to elect you President of the World. I agree with Antifa, only I take it further and I think the world needs a strong global leader that all of us can obey and worship.
It matters not what "They"" do, it is what YOU do, that You will answer to God for. Just because "they" do evil does not absolve you. America went 230 years without countenancing torture, but in come all the Draft-Dodging "wanna-be" heroes, and the judgment of TRUE Warriors is discarded. Cowards torture, maim, find Homosexual Pleasure in the agony of OTHER MEN, why are you so eager to join them?
Reminds me of a while back when Colbert called Democrats "pussies" on the air for not impeaching Bush.
Yes, but Mr Floyd is funnier and more accurate than Colbert.
Tthe problem with making that comparison is that the Democrats ARE pussies. For not impeaching. For going along with Bush-Cheney every step of the way.
Satire via irony requires inversion and there's no inversion there. I think that's likely because Colbert's mainly a Dem apologist, and not a skeptic who will skewer anyone who deserves it.
Undoubtedly Chris's column will be cited by rightwingers who don't understand words like "irony" and "parody" and "wit" -- which is to say it'll probably get honorable mention on a lot of talk-radio shows.
The courage of lawless convictions, enabled by the cowardice of ambition. I really like the way Chris has that framed.
In a nutshell, that is exactly how impeachment came to be taken off the table as the remedy for the Bush/Cheny regime's multiple high crimes and sordid misdemeanors. Karl Rove is still at large, with a twinkle in his eye, just thinking about how it came about.
Roll the clock back to the fall of 2006. The war is going very badly, and the empire seems to be teetering. The natives are getting restless. The polls don't look good for the GOP. Even the Iraq Study Group, with heavy hitters like James Baker oozing smart money gravitas, appear to be going wobbly on Little George's war.
As the November Congressional elections approach, a coordinated campaign emerges out in Limbaugh Land, its theme repeated countless times on the hate talk end of your radio dial, later to be picked up and reported as well-placed rumor on the Faux News media megaphone: Nancy Pelosi is plotting a coup. The Democrat Party plans to immediately impeach George Bush and Dick Cheney if they gain majority control of the House and Senate, so that Pelosi can become president. This will be their revenge opportunity, so rabid is the liberal hatred of George W. Bush and all the goodness that he represents.
I heard this bullshit percolating around on Rush and Hannity's call in programs with my own two ears, while driving in northern Michigan. The accusations bordered on the hysterical.
Congressman John Conyers, who would become chair of the House Judiciary Committee if the Dems took over, was absolutely demonized as a fellow traveler and agent of the radical left, determined to shove articles of impeachment down Congress's throat at the earliest possible opportunity. Nancy Pelosi was depicted as a megalomaniac, hell bent to become the first woman president by hook or by crook, in order to advance the feminazi, homosexual agenda and pave the way for Hillary Clinton to ascend to power.
Pelosi laid low a long time, avoiding the media trap that was being set. She did not want her person, or her personality, to become a foil for cheap partisan attack by the Bushies, diverting attention from issues (like the war, the economy, and the Republican sex and lobbyist corruption scandals) that would otherwise be foremost on voters' minds. But eventually Nancy Pelosi surfaced, just long enough to try to squelch the crazed disinformation campaign by issuing a denial. No, impeachment was not being plotted.
The denial morphed into a committment, defusing impeachment as a viable campaign issue for the mainstream media, and relegating the coup narrative out in Archie Bunkerville into a lower volume dispute over whether that Pelosi woman could ever be trusted to keep her word.
When the 2006 votes were tallied, the Dems had gained clear control of the House, and maybe even the Senate (unless the Republicans challenged several close, key races in the courts, like that Al Gore fellow once did). When the victors and lame ducks reassembled inside the DC beltway in the Congressional election aftermath, and Ms. Pelosi emerged as House Speaker, impeachment was formally declared "off the table." The Republicans did not contest the contestable races in court, and handed over control of the Senate, too, by a Lieberman-thin, one vote margin.
Yes, the cowardice of ambition was very much in play. But so too was some really deft baiting of the Democratic establishment by Karl Rove's media operatives. I suspect impeachment finally came fully off the table alongside a bipartisan gentlemens' handshake taken underneath.
Now my only source of proof for all this is just public source materials I heard or read. If somebody out there can correct my chronology, please do so - a lot of things were going on at the same time in the fall of 2006.
But until and unless shown otherwise, I think the Dems largely just got snookered again. Once the threat of impeachment vanished by getting Nancy Pelosi to publicly renounce it, Bush was free to tell the loyal opposition to go take a hike on the war, on torture, on wiretapping, and on everything else, brandishing his veto threats for the balance of his second term like a brave warrior would fondle his codpiece.
nice try Bill from Saginaw but only in dreamland the dems fully countenance the administrations activities and have always largely done so. show me proof to the contrary
Swiftian brilliance, savage, and magnificent, Chris! And yeah I think the fatheaded warcrimals and their robotic lackeys and slaves will take it literally, as usual, it's the only amusing thing about them. Their witless stupidity, credulity and utter lack of critical capacity is bottomless. Of course, sociopaths are incapable of irony...
"John Yoo is not to "blame" for these torture memos. And neither is Mr. Addington or Mr. Feith or Mr. Gonzales or any of the other honorable, hard-working public officials caught up in the far left's mile-wide net of "conspiracy." ---and other such passages will have them swooning with joy.
One of the great points of optimism in my life is the hope that you will some day grasp the fact that your beloved Democrats have you duped, and that they are willingly helping Bush-Cheney. WILLINGLY, Bill. As in, they want to do it.
My optimism remains. I've seen other die-hards see the truth.
When the 2002 AUMF to invade and occupy Iraq was being shoved through Congress for a rubber stamp vote, over half the House dems and nearly half of the Senate dems voted nay. Only Lincoln Chaffee in the Senate broke from the GOP's parliamentary lockstep to oppose Bush/Cheney's plan to finish the job begun on Saddam, but prematurely abandoned by George I. To justify violation of clearly defined international law and the UN Charter, the neo cons conjured up a neo-fascist doctrine of preventative war that Senator Levin's AUMF amendment at least tried to contain within the UN Security Council legal framework, but failed (on a nearly identical straight party line vote).
On the specific issue of torture and John Yoo's legalisms, I remain mystified why the Dems generally and the Kerry campaign in particular gave Little George a pass. But I think it's a real moral stretch to interpret the muted protests of guys like Dick Durbin, Russ Feingold, Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd as evidence that they, too, silently approve of stomping on the testicles of detainees' children as an acceptable interrogation device.
Drawing no moral distinction between those who actively advocate the commission of war crimes and those who fail to prevent the carnage is like blaming the Fire Department for failing to put out the fire. There is still a difference between being an arsonist and lacking the the courage to do what's right because it's too painful and risky to take the heat.
Bill, your arguments remain very apologetic for the Democrats, and they continue to obscure reality. If they work for you, I guess that's some comfort to you. But please do not ask me to accept them.
It is utter fantasy to imagine that the Democrats in the US Congress are opposed to Bush-Cheney. There is absolutely no evidence of them being so opposed. NONE.
When you have that evidence, Bill, please provide it for us. Don't give us your language of hope, your convoluted apologies, or your opinions based somewhere out there in the ether.
Meanwhile, let's remember a few things.
The Democrats have had control of the whole Congress since November 2006. Since that time they have never done anything to stop Bush-Cheney. I repeat, they have not done anything to stop Bush-Cheney. NOTHING.
Even before they had the majority control of the Congress in 2006, the Democrats had a significant number among the 535 members. Of those Democrats, only Cynthia McKinney made any outward showing of wanting to stop Bush-Cheney, only she vigorously criticized them, only she made serious efforts against them. And you should notice what that got her -- her own party, YOUR HEROES the Democrats, railroaded her out of the Congress via a smear campaign that lied about her, and sold puffery about her challenger, the pro-business, pro-Bush/Cheney, pro-war candidate that is the sort the Democrats love these days.
The Democrats have done NOTHING against the attack on the civil rights of the average American citizen. They have done NOTHING to stop the distortion of the FISA courts procedures. They have done NOTHING to stop the immunities for the telecom industry's spying on Americans.
The Democrats did not stop the immunity for Blackwater and other contractor mercenaries.
The Democrats have done nothing.
Bill, you would have us pay attention to the "worse" crimes of the GOP. That's pure partisanship. This is not a question of who is "worse." This is a question of WHO WILL STOP IT. And from where I sit, reading the facts, reading the history -- the Democrats do NOT want to stop it.
You are either deluded, or you are engaged in a very questionable game of distorting the truth. You seem sincere, so I tend to assume you are merely deluded, because you admire the Democrats for reasons which escape me and reasons which, I would argue, defy logic and experience.
The "moral distinction" is irrelevant. They are both immoral. Whether one is more immoral than the other is merely wordplay, Bill. It distracts from the critical point -- that we need to end the Iraq war, that we need to restore civil rights, that we need to get rid of Blackwater and other highly-paid and immunized mercenaries, that we need to close down the 5 bases (and growing) in Iraq, that we need to quit making military overtures toward Iran, that we need to quit being Imperialists.
There is NO evidence that the Democrats are willing to help do those needed things.
One of the commonest arguments on the Democrats' behalf is that the Congress cannot pass any legislation because Bush simply will veto whatever they send him.
This is a hollow argument. The Congress may over-ride the president's veto, and with a majority in both houses, the Democrats can easily achieve that over-ride -- if they want to.
Here's the relevant text from the US Constitution:
Section 7. All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with amendments as on other Bills.
Every bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a law, be presented to the President of the United States; if he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the objections at large on their journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If after such reconsideration two thirds of that House shall agree to pass the bill, it shall be sent, together with the objections, to the other House, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two thirds of that House, it shall become a law. But in all such cases the votes of both Houses shall be determined by yeas and nays, and the names of the persons voting for and against the bill shall be entered on the journal of each House respectively. If any bill shall not be returned by the President within ten days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the same shall be a law, in like manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress by their adjournment prevent its return, in which case it shall not be a law.
Every order, resolution, or vote to which the concurrence of the Senate and House of Representatives may be necessary (except on a question of adjournment) shall be presented to the President of the United States; and before the same shall take effect, shall be approved by him, or being disapproved by him, shall be repassed by two thirds of the Senate and House of Representatives, according to the rules and limitations prescribed in the case of a bill.
The points in bold text indicate how the Congress may get around a Presidential veto.
And for a cowardly Congress that refuses to impeach because there supposedly isn't a good enough case, what better case is there than the President defying the Congress under a clear provision of the US Constitution?
The Dems are afraid of riling up the my country right or wrong crowd.There seems to be a great number of them, many of them handing out stacks of cash to like minded individuals. Why rock the boat? The cowardice of ambition, indeed.
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