"In the past, even presidents were not above the law."

the quaint, good ole days...

January 31, 2007

Op-Ed Contributor

Bush Is Not Above the Law

By JAMES BAMFORD

Washington

LAST August, a federal judge found that the president of the United States broke the law, committed a serious felony and violated the Constitution. Had the president been an ordinary citizen — someone charged with bank robbery or income tax evasion — the wheels of justice would have immediately begun to turn. The F.B.I. would have conducted an investigation, a United States attorney’s office would have impaneled a grand jury and charges would have been brought.

But under the Bush Justice Department, no F.B.I. agents were ever dispatched to padlock White House files or knock on doors and no federal prosecutors ever opened a case.

[...]

George Washington and the Middle East

from Glenn Greenwald:

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

George Washington and the Middle East

George Washington's 1796 Farewell Address is an amazingly prescient warning to the U.S. to avoid certain dangers with regard to foreign policy. As we become more and more entangled in the intricacies not only of regional politics in the Middle East, but also in the domestic political conflicts of virtually every significant Middle East country, it almost seems as though we have purposely set out to violate every principle of foreign affairs which Washington articulated:

[...]

The Moustache of Understanding strikes again

I find Tom Friedman to be among the most pernicious and odious of the basking sycophants in our nation's press corps. He has been wrong about everything (e.g. the world is not flat, no matter what the taxi drivers of Bangalore tell you) and has aided the Bush administration in perpetrating their crimes against humanity by layering a liberal gloss on the efforts to kill brown people. At least people like Bill Kristol admit they want to kill more brown people (well, not they, themselves, actually -- they want our hired guns to do so).

Friedman's latest effort is a call for a Muslim Martin Luther King, Jr.

Now, MLK. Jr. is one of those names we invoke when we want to feel good about ourselves. In death and mythology we all love MLK, Jr. I wish they would make a MLK, Jr. teddy bear that would intone his dulcet cadences soothingly as we drift off to sleep.

But if you have ever read him -- or even anything in depth about him -- you will know that he was a brave and fierce warrior for the cause of justice. He put himself on the line time after time, and ultimately gave his life for the cause. King pissed people off, and not just white supremacist extremists. Read his Letter from a Birmingham Jail for a taste of his uncompromising spirit.

Even better, read his speech from April 4, 1967 at the Riverside Church, Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence where King finally, belatedly comes out against the Vietnam War.

I tried to read through for easily digestible excerpts to post here, but I really cannot do that in fairness to the speech or to the reader.

As I read my rage, my sadness, and my hopefulness rise and fall with the waves of his words. At the end I am left with one conclusion:

What this country needs right now is an American Martin Luther King, Jr.

Not my Commander in Chief

Garry Wills addresses a pet-peeve of mine in today's NY Times:

January 27, 2007

Op-Ed Contributor

At Ease, Mr. President

By GARRY WILLS

Evanston, Ill.

WE hear constantly now about “our commander in chief.” The word has become a synonym for “president.” It is said that we “elect a commander in chief.” It is asked whether this or that candidate is “worthy to be our commander in chief.”

But the president is not our commander in chief. He certainly is not mine. I am not in the Army.

[...]

[...] The president is not the commander in chief of civilians. He is not even commander in chief of National Guard troops unless and until they are federalized. The Constitution is clear on this: “The president shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several states, when called into the actual service of the United States.”

When Abraham Lincoln took actions based on military considerations, he gave himself the proper title, “commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States.” That title is rarely — more like never — heard today. It is just “commander in chief,” or even “commander in chief of the United States.” This reflects the increasing militarization of our politics. The citizenry at large is now thought of as under military discipline. In wartime, it is true, people submit to the national leadership more than in peacetime. The executive branch takes actions in secret, unaccountable to the electorate, to hide its moves from the enemy and protect national secrets. Constitutional shortcuts are taken “for the duration.” But those impositions are removed when normal life returns.

But we have not seen normal life in 66 years. The wartime discipline imposed in 1941 has never been lifted, and “the duration” has become the norm. World War II melded into the cold war, with greater secrecy than ever — more classified information, tougher security clearances. And now the cold war has modulated into the war on terrorism.

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Columbus, American Identity, and Iraq

some thoughts I posted on my us history survey blackboard:

One way that I make a connection between Columbus and who we are today involves the ideological process at work that allowed the Europeans to feel superior and thus engage in brutal behavior.

I see a great deal of dehumanization of Iraqis in our public discourse. While some of it is straight out racism, there are other ways that we make the victims of our occupation less than human, or at least not worth our concern.

How can we justify invading a country that posed no threat to us, was successfully contained, a country whose skies were already patrolled by US planes over 2/3 of the land – in violation of the principles of international law? How can we justify the bombing from the air we continue to do into residential neighborhoods? The estimated 650,000 dead?

How can we justify firing missiles into Somalia to strike terrorists (and then hit the wrong people)? How can we justify or accept people being kidnapped, tortured and killed all over the world – paid for by our taxpayer dollars? How can we justify a concentration camp where people who are known to be innocent, and who have no legal recourse, have been held for five years? How can we justify kidnapping a Canadian citizen and sending him to Syria – a country supposedly so evil that we cannot even deign to negotiate with them – to be held in a boxlike cell and tortured? How can we justify holding a brown-skinned man with a Spanish sounding name in solitary confinement -- without any human contact – in a secret brig in South Carolina for two years – long enough to drive him out of his mind?

Well, I think the first way we justify and accept all this – to ourselves – is to ignore it all, at least in the details.

But an essential element in our rationalization is the thought or feeling that the people who are dying do not count for much. We may not see them as less-than-human, like Spanish explorers and priests often did, and this attitude may not be “racist,” but there is a similar psychological process going on within individuals and as a society.

We are able to accept the mythology of Columbus – or minimize the significance of his actions (“he was just a man of his time”) – and maybe that is okay. But when our national identity begins with him, that mythology provides the basis for action.

I guess the simple way to explain this is to say that it is no coincidence that thousands of people have to die while we spread freedom.

I am not even arguing the merits of the Bush policies – I am not getting into whether these things really need to be done in the name of “national security” -- I am simply saying that this dehumanization and violence have evolved in tandem with ideas of freedom and American mythologies.

girl in water

My wife is a writer who is currently finishing a book. So naturally she is doing a lot of something else. Since it is too cold for gardening, she is left with cleaning and, now, drawing -- which reminds me that Leonard Lopate had a segment about procrastination today which I hope to listen to some day.

Turns out she is extremely good at it. Or so I think.

You can see more here.

“Because I told them it had to."

From Think Progress:

“He’s tried this two times — it’s failed twice,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) says of President Bush’s escalation plan.

“I asked him at the White House, ‘Mr. President, why do you think this time it’s going to work?’

And he said, ‘Because I told them it had to.‘”

Pelosi reportedly then asked, “Why didn’t you tell them that the other two times?“

End of Vietnam War

I was talking today in class about the end of the Vietnam war, the lessons learned (or not), and the mythologies that permeate our popular memory of the war (e.g. we lost because of the media, the liberals, the congress, -- we didn't have the "stomach" to fight, as Cheney says now.

Digby, who I think is the smartest analyst of the impact of what we think of when we think of "the sixties," has a great post today commenting on two Rick Perlstein articles:

Can We Win this Time?

What TR said

Glenn Greenwald has a great discussion of the authoritarian Bush cultists and the Federalist Papers that deal with Congress and the military.

He also highlights this quote that Teddy Roosevelt wrote in an editorial for the "Kansas City Star" during World War I.

The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole.

Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile.

To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.

"Roosevelt in the Kansas City Star", 149
May 7, 1918

maybe starting up again

am toying with starting this thing up again. playing with the design.

here is something worth looking at:

Israelis, America and Iran

It sounds like the stuff that conspiracy theories are made of. In a coastal resort near Tel Aviv, senior Israeli politicians and generals confer with top officials and politicians from Washington to discuss the threat of a nuclear Iran. In any good conspiracy theory, however, these talks would be going on in secret – preferably in an underground bunker. In fact the Herzliya conference on “Israel’s national security” is taking place perfectly openly in a smart hotel. And I am in the audience.

more here...