May I just make one little observation that seems to have escaped those who believe that Democrats should offer an alternative to the Preznit’s Personal Privatized Individual Retirement Account Security plan? We already are offering an alternative. It’s called Social Security. And we have reams of data about how well it works and how well the experts believe it is going to work in the future.
If the Democrats were as willing as Republicans to present a competing discourse to the public and call it “reality” we would simply take Roosevelts plan with all the added tweaking over the years and present it as our “bold, new” alternative saying that it will cover all retirees AND we will be able to add in death benefits and disability payments too! And you won’t have to do anything but let your employer deduct the same amount its already deducting from your check! This is the step forward we’ve been waiting for! We’ll call it… Super Social Security 2.0.
I think our “alternative” is very marketable. After all, we have 45 million customers right now. Let’s just let them tell the nation how much they like it and propose that everybody should get the same thing. Our new and improved Super Social Security is the innovation everybody’s been waiting for. Order yours today.
This pearl clutching about Bush being booed last night is hilarious. The following incidents don’t even discuss the 1998 SOTU when the Republicans were in the midst of their witch trial and a large contingent refused to attend. The president received fellatio and was, therefore, too tainted to be in the presence of the little old lady circle jerk and tatting society known as the GOP. Those who bothered to come booed him.
1999: Republicans Booed Clinton’s Entrance Many Republican lawmakers gave him a cool, though not impolite, reception. There were a smattering of boos when Clinton first entered the House chamber, but they were quickly drowned out by applause. Some Republicans barely applauded, or refused at all to clap. House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas) and U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas) were conspicuously silent. [Boston Herald, 1/20/99]
Clinton’s health-care initiatives, chiefly in the form of a medical bill of rights, found support on both sides, especially his attack on managed-care health-care plans. … Clinton’s proposal to expand Medicare to allow Americans as young as 55 to buy into the system drew shouts of “no” and some boos from Republicans during his speech. [Chicago Tribune, 1/28/98]
1997: Republican’s Booed Clinton’s Opposition to the Balanced Budget Amendment The Republican response was far warmer than perhaps any of Clinton’s previous four State of the Union speeches. Time after time, Republicans jumped to their feet to join Democrats in applauding the president. Only once did they unmistakably and collectively show their disapproval–when Clinton spoke disparagingly of a GOP-sponsored constitutional amendment to balance the budget. Many Republicans hissed and some booed. [LA Times,2/5/97]
1995: Republicans Booed Clinton and Walked Out During Speech
The upheaval wrought by the Republican election landslide was visible throughout the president’s State of the Union address – from the moment Speaker Newt Gingrich took the gavel to the striking silence that often greeted Clinton from the GOP. At one point, Republicans even booed. About 20 of them left as Clinton went on and on for an hour and 20 minutes. [AP,
1/24/95]
The little Claude Raines act they are pulling right now deserves as much derision as we can possibly muster. The Republicans can either call for the smelling salts every time the Democrats get combative or they can be the biggest swinging dicks in town. We shouldn’t let them have it both ways.
When they act like little old ladies we should deride them for being delicate little flowers who can’t play hardball. When they act like thugs we should haul out the phony sanctimony and call them on their uncivilized behavior. Two can play at this game.
The Poorman noticed something that struck me as odd, as well. The Preznit kept saying “rahther” rather than “rather” during his speech last night. There were times he sounded like Madonna during her kabuki period. Or maybe he was doing a Shirley Mclain and actually trying to channel FDR instead of just using his rhetoric to destroy his programs.
I realize that Dear Leader is beyond reproach and all, but don’t you suppose that an All American Nascar Dad or two had a fleeting moment when they wondered why their straight talking cowpoke had turned into Queen Elizabeth?
Not that it matters, because the spin is firmly emplanted in the public’s mind that the Iraq election turnout was phenomenal, but Editor and Publisher shows that the reports are very likely to have been wildly off the mark. Imagine my surprise.
I’ll be delighted if the turnout figure, when it is officially announced, exceeds the dubious numbers already enshrined by much of the media. But don’t be surprised if it falls a bit short. The point is: Nobody knows, and reporters and pundits should stop acting like they do know when they say, flatly, that 8 million Iraqis voted and that this represents a turnout rate of about 60%.
Carl Bialik, who writes the Numbers Guy column for Wall Street Journal Online, calls this “a great question … how the journalists can know these numbers — when so many of them aren’t able to venture out all over that country.” Speaking to E&P on Wednesday, Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post — one of the few mainstream journalists to raise questions about the turnout percentage — referred to the “fuzzy math” at the heart of it.
[…]
“Election officials concede they did not have a reliable baseline on which to calculate turnout,” Kurtz concluded.
He also quoted Democratic strategist Robert Weiner as saying: “It’s an amazing media error, a huge blunder. I’m sure the Bush administration is thrilled by this spin.”
They spun it and the media gladly got spun because it was one of those hallmark card stories that makes Wolf and Kira and Chris just feel so damned good about themselves. Every once in while they need a narrative that allows them to believe that they are part of something gosh darned wonderful.
As I watched the news shows last Sunday, I was struck by the lockstep maudlin sentimentality of the coverage — a sure sign that it is complete bullshit. Apparently, the word went forth that the tone was to be “proud parents” — America herself had just birthed the Iraq democracy in the back of a humvee. The purple thumbs evoked a collective “awwww” as if the Iraqi voters were sheet swaddled newborn babes or a big ole pile ‘o kittens.
One of the most disturbing (and embarrassing) aspects of this entire enterprise is the air of cultural superiority emanating from Americans as we enlighten the primitives, dahling. This coming from a country that produces a president who says things like:
“We’re still being challenged in Iraq and the reason why is a free Iraq will be a major defeat in the cause of freedom.” —George W. Bush, Charlotte, N.C., April 5, 2004
Yeah, we’re very superior people. And we re-elected him too.
Well, the enablers of the so called liberal media have worked their wonders to make sure that they emoted every ounce of the Bush Administration’s ejaculatory load in Iraq…right down to the last little sperm. Judy Miller didn’t even ask for a virtual towel as she got each prescious drop down her vacuum powered 10 amp gullet.
Grooviosity. Reform social security, man, because you can’t trust anyone over 30. Cool.
These doughy, briefcase GOP baby boomer geeks have always had a case of arrested development. They started their “revolution” in their 40’s. In their 50’s they’ve discovered the “generation gap.” The rest of us got over this intergenerational squabbling a couple of decades ago. It’s never too late to act like a teen-age ass.
For younger workers, the Social Security system has serious problems that will grow worse with time. Social Security was created decades ago, for a very different era. In those days people didn’t live as long, benefits were much lower than they are today, and a half century ago, about 16 workers paid into the system for each person drawing benefits. Our society has changed in ways the founders of Social Security could not have foreseen.
Man, if only those old people would just die younger, or at least take less money, we wouldn’t have this problem.
Right now, a set portion of the money you earn is taken out of your paycheck to pay for the Social Security benefits of today’s retirees. If you are a younger worker, I believe you should be able to set aside part of that money in your own retirement account, so you can build a nest egg for your own future.
… instead of having to worry about your revolting, diseased parents.
As we fix Social Security, we also have the responsibility to make the system a better deal for younger workers. And the best way to reach that goal is through voluntary personal retirement accounts.
Awesome. A better deal for me!
It is time to extend [the same] security, and choice, and ownership to young Americans.
Listen kids. Here’s your choice. Either keep social security as it is or plan to have your parents —- people my age — living with you for the last twenty years of our sick, decrepit lives. This will be as you’re putting your kids through the privatized school system and saving for medical expenses with your “medical savings account” while putting something aside for your kids’ college and your own meager retirement. Good luck with that. That’s the “choice” you’re getting here.
Bush says nobody over 55 will see any change. I’m 48. Somehow, I don’t think I’m one of those “younger workers” who is oging to experience the miracle of the market. I’m not the solution, I’m the problem. There are a huge number of people my age out there. We who were born in the mid 50’s are the biggest bulge of the baby boom cohort. And we are the ones who are first in line to get fucked if this social security “reform” is passed.
But the good news is that by that time our children will have these lovely fat portfolios. They’ll be happy to take us in if our “personalized social security” doesn’t stretch quite as far as George W. Bush says is will. Right?
Oh, and by the way, kids. You’ll be the ones stuck with the gazillions of dollars in debtthis whole useless scam is going to cost. Don’t be fools.
the president is now saying — and saying emphatically and militantly, with an eye on his critics — that if you’re 55 you’re home free, nothing to worry about when it comes to phasing out Social Security.
One might observe that this is a rather unfortunate dividing in half of the country. If you’re 50 today, you spent most of your highest earning years not only paying into Social Security, but advance-paying even more, under the 1983 Social Security Commission which put in the extra level of tax to build up the Trust Fund. Now you’re hosed. Too bad.
The important point though is that this is simply not true. And the defenders of Social Security would be straight-up fools to let the president get away with a guarantee as obviously bogus as that one.
Maybe they can try to finesse those older than 55 into believing him with a direct, straight up lie, but he’s not even trying to finesse those of us who are just slightly younger than that. And we are a huge demographic cohort. The transition costs, which the Preznit doesn’t address at all, are going to hit this bulge of the baby boom right between the eyes because most of us are under 55. And ALL of us have been paying “extra” since Uncle Alan Greenspan told us to in 1983.
I think we need to start talking to people my age. We are following this closely because retirement issues in general are beginning to get our attention. We are the biggest single age group in the country and we are about to get fucked.
Update, Update:
Ooooh. I see that we are talking about “benefit offsets” which just means that any “extra” money you make in your “personal” account goes into the pot. No ownership, no guarantee, no nothing.
This is more and more ideological by the day. It’s just about tearing up the new deal and destroying people’s trust in government, period.
Personally, I plan to do both, and maybe a little drunk blogging as well. There’s no way in hell I can get through that mush without a little help from Demon Rum.
Here’s something to think about, however. This is the first speech done by Bush’s new speechwriter William McGurn. David Kushnet wrote about him in TNR recently:
As president Bush begins his second term, he’s likely to sound less affable and more argumentative, reflecting the rhetoric of a new chief speechwriter who has constantly criticized the American Catholic clergy for being too tough on capitalism and too soft on abortion.
[…]
Gerson made Bush sound like a preacher, but McGurn made his name as a polemicist. He’s a Catholic conservative, with a distinctive intellectual pedigree. Liberal Catholics such as E. J. Dionne and even some conservative Catholics such as Pat Buchanan have criticized capitalism’s excesses for weakening families and communities. But McGurn favors free trade, opposes even the most basic regulations of corporate conduct, and has harsh words for an American labor movement that the Catholic Church has historically supported. McGurn’s allies appear to be the late Treasury Secretary William Simon and the theologian Michael Novak, both of whom thought the U.S. Catholic Bishops were too favorably disposed toward the government’s role in regulating the economy and assisting the poor.
When he writes under his own byline, McGurn’s views on economics are just as conservative as, and even more quirky than, The Wall Street Journal’s unsigned editorials. In 2003, he and liberal economist Rebecca Blank coauthored a debate titled, Is the Market Moral?, which was published by the Brookings Institution. In the book, McGurn compares the thriving free-market economy of Hong Kong, where he once worked as a reporter, with the regimentation of old-style Chinese Communism. He contends that capitalism not only creates wealth but also rewards good behavior because it “depends on virtues–self-restraint, honesty, courage, diligence, the willingness to defer gratification.” Presenting himself as both an economic realist and a conservative moralist, McGurn concludes that the best way to make sure that the economy advances social goals is not through government regulation but rather by changing corporate culture. He suggests that moral suasion can discourage executives from cooking their books, exploiting their workers, or despoiling the environment.
Bring it on, baby. We’ll run Elliot Spitzer against Ken Lay.
Displaying talents that will serve him well as a presidential speechwriter, McGurn’s style is eloquent, simple–and slippery. He makes the case against communism, socialism, and the most heavy-handed forms of government regulation in this country; but he also criticizes programs that have existed since the New Deal and have been accepted by Republican as well as Democratic presidents: the minimum wage, job safety standards, environmental protection, and American opposition to child labor overseas. He explains his skepticism about public institutions by citing three of the least popular: welfare as we used to know it, the post office, and urban public schools. While acknowledging that his views contradict many Catholic social teachings, he repeatedly refers to Pope John Paul II to support his arguments, even though the Pope seems to support a much more regulated kind of capitalism than McGurn. And McGurn has also published pieces differing with the Pope’s opposition to the war in Iraq and criticizing Archbishop Renato Martino, head of the Pontifical Council for Peace and Justice, for saying that there is no such thing as a just war anymore.
[…]
Like Gerson, McGurn is a graceful writer, capable of crafting clear and original prose. But unlike Gerson, McGurn is also a brawler who loves to take hard shots at his adversaries and even his allies. He attacked Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu for opposing school vouchers but sending her own kids to private schools. He told the Denver Archdiocese, “On the great issue of life, the bishops failed America’s unborn children at about the same time they were failing the living American children molested by the priests under their charge.”
So while Gerson’s rhetoric soothed, McGurn’s will singe. Writing in The Wall Street Journal five years ago, John Fund credited McGurn with this “iron law of politics”: “Conservatives win by clarifying issues, liberals by fudging them.” Maybe so, but George W. Bush–and Ronald Reagan before him–made warm-hearted arguments for policies that Americans might otherwise have rejected as hard-hearted. Bush couldn’t ask for a writer who’s less likely to fudge distinctions than McGurn. Now let’s see if Bush benefits from clarity.
“Conservatives win by clarifying issues, liberals by fudging them.”
Yeah. Tell it to Frank Luntz. That’s why we are going to hear all about “personalizing” your retirement tonight instead of privatizing social security. They’re “clarifying” the issue.
This could be good. If McGurn has Bush coming out swinging this term it could end up being the Newt Gingrich Story, Part II. Without all those nice little sermons, George W. Bush is a pinched, mean man and it shows. I have a feeling that McGurn may just bring out the real him.
Wampum has all the Koufax semi-final nominations up. I highly recommend that you check out the category for best post. I just spent an hour over there reading the best of the blogosphere over the last year and it was awe inspiring. There are some very, very fine writers in the left blogosphere. (And Hugh Hewitt can kiss my ass*)
Once again, toss some coin to Wampum for doing this thing. It’s a labor of love but nobody should have to pay for the privilege.
* Hewitt claims in his little roll of toilet paper called “Blog” that the only good writers are on the right which I suppose would be true if you consider smug circle jerking and squealing Bush pompom shaking actual writing. Heh. Indeed.
Here’s a new site that serves as a handy primer about the Oil For Food wingnut feeding frenzy called Oil-for-Food Facts.org
If anyone wonders what this ridiculous obsession is really all about, this article by Joe Conason spells it out. It’s the Same Old … Stuff:
If American conservatism is truly the fount of “new ideas,” as its publicists incessantly assure us, why do conservatives constantly promote the stale old ideas that obsessed them in 1962?
Back then, the extremists of the ultra-right regarded the United Nations as the advance guard of the international communist conspiracy. “Get the U.S. out of the U.N. and the U.N. out of the U.S.!” blared the bumper-sticker slogan of the John Birch Society, while the National Review called for the U.N. to be “liquidated.”
Today, although the rhetoric is not quite so shrill, the Birch Society’s ideological descendants still feel the same way. With the U.N. beset by scandal, the right can’t resist the opportunity to sever American ties with the world organization. Heedless as always of damaging traditional alliances and America’s global reputation, they have opened a campaign to undermine and ultimately destroy the U.N. It is a peculiar crusade for Americans to undertake just when the U.S. government is counting on the U.N. to help legitimize the Iraqi elections — the kind of multilateral mission that is becoming even more essential on a planet where failed states threaten the security of everyone.
[…]
For the Bush administration and its conservative allies, the U.N. represents embarrassment and obstruction. Seeing no value in debating and discussing world problems with lesser nations, they regard the U.N. as nothing but an unworthy obstacle to the exercise of American power. To them, the world body symbolizes all that they hate about multilateralism and diplomacy.
Certain starry-eyed neoconservatives broach the idea of a new global organzation that would only admit “legitimate” democratic governments (as defined, perhaps, by the Heritage Foundation or the Wall Street Journal editorial board). In the neocon scenario, the U.N. would be hollowed into a meaningless, impoverished shell, and left to such pariahs as Kim Jong Il and the Iranian mullahs.
As fantasy, this explains much about the mind-set of the neoconservative right in the aftermath of the Iraq debacle. They need somebody to blame, other than themselves, and Annan provides a most convenient target. As policy, however, the abandonment of the U.N. is just as crazy as when the John Birch Society printed its first bumper sticker — as the neocons might acknowledge if they listened to our closest allies.
These guys have an list and they’re checking each item off one at a time. If circumstance change they just find a new rationale and plow on.
The Birchers wanted to destroy both social security and the UN back in 1962. They think their time has come. It’s just that simple.
Kidding On The Square is talking about honor, something our culture seems to have thrown out by mistake when it packed off hats and slavery. This is a very thought provoking post about American heroes, faux and authentic, old and new. Some people are human and they are also leaders. Some people are neither.
As I listen to Teddy Kennedy challenge Gonzales’ “I was out of the loop” defense on the torture memos, it probably pays to remember what those memos actually said. Here’s a good article by the authors of the new book “The Torture Papers.”
The chronology of the memoranda also demonstrates the increasing rationalization and strained analysis as the objectives grew more aggressive and the position more indefensible–in effect, rationalizing progressively more serious conduct to defend the initial decisions and objectives, to the point where, by the time the first images of Abu Ghraib emerged in public, the government’s slide into its moral morass, as reflected in the series of memos published in this volume, was akin to a criminal covering up a parking violation by incrementally more serious conduct culminating in murder.
[…]
Nor does any claim of a “new paradigm” provide any excuse, or even a viable explanation. The contention, set forth with great emphasis in these memoranda, that al Qaeda, as a fanatic, violent, and capable international organization, represented some unprecedented enemy justifying abandonment of our principles is simply not borne out by historical comparison. The Nazi party’s dominance of the Third Reich is not distinguishable in practical terms from al Qaeda’s influence on the Taliban government as described in these memos.
Al Qaeda’s record of destruction, September 11th notwithstanding–and as a New Yorker who lived, and still lives, in the shadow of the Twin Towers, which cast a long shadow over lower Manhattan even in their absence, I am fully cognizant of the impact of that day–pales before the death machine assembled and operated by the Nazis. Yet we managed to eradicate Nazism as a significant threat without wholesale repudiation of the law of war, or a categorical departure from international norms, even though National Socialism, with its fascist cousins, was certainly a violent and dangerous international movement–even with a vibrant chapter here in the United States.
No kidding. The idea that al Qaeda is some unique form of evil that requires we cast out all norms of civilization is simply mind boggling (Indeed, I get the feeling that it illustrates nothing more than ego run amuck — some kind of competitiveness with the Greatest Generation.)
The biggest threat we face is from nuclear weapons in the wrong hands. But we need to remember that this is not a new problem. Nuclear weapons have been in the hands of America’s mortal enemies for more than 50 years and while they may not have been as nihilistic as these terrorists, they were certainly as prone to accident and misjudgment as any group of humans. The stakes were unimaginable. These were not “suitcase bombs” or “dirty bombs”, as awful as those may be, they were ICBM’s aimed at every American city and if they were launched, the result was likely to be annihilation of the planet. That’s the threat we lived with for almost 50 years. We can handle this terrorist threat without completely losing our values, our wits or our moral authority.
But, the administration is listening to ideologues like Robert J. Delahunty and John C. Yoo, who should be cast into the farthest reaches of academia or think tankery where their hysterical ideas can cause no harm to real people:
When the Senate considers Alberto R. Gonzales’ nomination for attorney general this week, his critics will repeat the accusation that he opened the door to the abuse of Al Qaeda, Afghan and Iraqi prisoners. As Justice Department attorneys in January 2002, we wrote the memos advising that the Geneva Convention on prisoners of war did not apply to the war against Al Qaeda, and that the Taliban lost POW privileges by violating the laws of war. Later that month, Gonzales similarly advised (and President Bush ordered) that terrorists and fighters captured in Afghanistan receive humane treatment, but not legal status as POWs.
“Human rights” advocates have resorted to hyperbole and distortion to attack the administration’s policy. One writer on this page even went so far as to compare it to Nazi atrocities. Such absurd claims betray the real weaknesses in the position taken by Gonzales’ critics. They obscure a basic and immediate question facing the United States: how to adapt to the decline of nation-states as the primary enemy in war.
[…]
Shortly after World War II, nations ratified the Geneva Convention in order to mitigate the cruelty and horror of wars between the large mechanized armies that had laid waste to Europe. Now, the main challenges to peace do not arise from the threat of conflict between large national armies, but from terrorist organizations and rogue nations.
To believe that the Geneva Convention should apply jot-and-tittle to such enemies reminds us of the first generals of the Civil War, who thought that the niceties that were ideals of Napoleonic warfare could be applied to battles fought by massive armies, armed with ever more advanced weapons and aided by civilian-run mass-production factories and industry. War changes, and the laws of war must change with them.
[…]
Unfortunately, multinational terrorist groups have joined nations on the stage of war. They operate without regard to borders and observe no distinction between combatants and civilians. Our weapons for controlling hostile states don’t work well against decentralized networks of suicidal operatives, with no citizens or borders to defend.
There is another name that fits these terrorists a little bit better than an “unprecedented, non-nation state decentralized threat that operates without regard to borders and observes no distinction between combatants and civilians.” They’re called “criminals.” These international criminals do not represent a “nation” but what might be called a gang or a syndicate or a “family.” They can be brought to heel the same way criminal gangs can always be brought to heel. One of the ways that you do it is by enlisting the help of other nations in the manhunts with cooperative police and international quasi military investigations.
The fact is that this isn’t a “war” by any reasonable definition. However, the powers that be have deemed it so, in which case they should not be able to change the rules of warfare to accomodate what isn’t a war in the first place. If it’s a war, then it’s a war, which means that quaint little treaties like the GC cannot just be tossed at will. If it isn’t a war then we should follow the criminal model and use the laws and rules that have been established to to deal with this. This is a bullshit flim-flam that should have been nipped in the bud at the very begining, but because the leadership and opinion makers of this country (including you Andy — and you too Tom) decided that this was a good opportunity wallow in their own self righteous bloodlust instead of using their heads, we are stuck in this ridiculous position where we have elevated a bunch of criminal thugs to the status of warrior kings — exactly where they want to be.
And we are further digging ourselves into a hole by endorsing the use of police interrogation methods that experts throughout the world know don’t work. And because we have denied any use of due process there is no corrective mechanism for the mistakes that are being made by the soldiers in far off lands who, with limited understanding of the culture are “capturing” people who have little or no connection to the criminal enterprise, coercing confessions and holding them indefinitely on that evidence. I just don’t know how we could do this any more ineptly.
But Woo and Delahunty aren’t just talking about terrorists when they say the Geneva Conventions are no longer applicable. They go further and claim that “psuedo-states” are also exempt.
The problem of terrorist groups has been compounded by the emergence of pseudo-states. Pseudo-states often have neither the will nor the means to obey the Geneva Convention. Somalia and Afghanistan were arguably pseudo-states; Iraq under Saddam Hussein was another.
Pseudo-states control areas and populations subject to personal, clan or tribal rule. A leader supported by a small clique (like Hussein and his associates from Tikrit) or a tribal faction (like the Pashtuns in Afghanistan) rule. Political institutions are weak or nonexistent. Loyalties depend on personal relationships with tribal chiefs, sheiks or warlords, rather than allegiance to the nation.
Quasi-political bodies such as the Iraqi Baathist Party, the Taliban or even the Saudi royal family exercise government power. Defeat of the “national” leader or clique typically results in the complete disintegration of the regime.
Well, that definition of psuedo state says that any established non-democratic state is no longer a real state. Iraq, you see, was a psuedo state, so when we invaded it wasn’t a typical war of aggression or choice, we were just toppling a “national” leader, which isn’t the same thing at all. (I hate to bring this up, but Hitler claimed that sovereign borders weren’t sovereign for a bunch of bullshit reasons, too. That’s why the whole blanket condemnation of wars of aggression thing came up in the first place. You say Czechoslovakia, I say Sudetenland.)
Multinational terrorist groups and pseudo-states pose a deep problem for treaty-based warfare. Terrorists thrive on killing civilians and flouting conventional rules of war. Leaders like Hussein and the Taliban’s Mullah Mohammed Omar ignore the fates of their captured soldiers. They have nothing riding on the humane treatment of American prisoners.
A treaty like the Geneva Convention makes perfect sense when it binds genuine nations that can reciprocate humane treatment of prisoners. Its existence and its benefits even argue for the kind of nation-building that uses U.S. troops and other kinds of pressures in places like Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq; more nation-states make all of us safer. But the Geneva Convention makes little sense when applied to a terrorist group or a pseudo-state. If we must fight these kinds of enemies, we must create a new set of rules.
Please. The Bataan death march, the holocaust, the fire-bombing of Dresden and Tokyo and the dropping the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were fresh memories when the Geneva Conventions were signed. The people who conceived them had intimate and personal knowledge of the kind of inhumane actions against millions of prisoners, civilians and soldiers the horrors of war can bring. Please don’t say that attacking civilians is unprecedented. It’s just ridiculous. Ill treatment of prisoners? Jesus. Inhumanity wasn’t invented on 9/11 for christs sake.
The reason for the conventions was to establish written civilized norms. There were no illusions about the “binding” of a future Hitler or a future bin Laden, but they sure as hell thought it would bind the United States of America! The idea that 9/11 is something so unique and the hatred of our enemies so threatening that we must discard all the rules that we created in the wake of the most horrifying conflagration in human history is intellectual bankruptcy of the highest order.
Nobody disputes that it was a terrible day or that we had to respond. But this wholesale redefinition of what constitutes torture and what constitutes a nation state in order to accomodate an allegedly unprecedented threat appears more and more like a self-serving excuse to broaden the executive’s power. Re-writing the rules of warfare as necessary to fight this unique threat can then be seen as an extension of that power grab. All the subsequent hemming and hawing is a cover-up of that essential extra-constitutional action.
There are people who have the kind of temperament that is drawn to authoritarian modes of governance. People like John Woo and George W. Bush and Alberto Gonzales. These are people who saw 9/11 as a reason to do what they always do when given the opportunity — make their own rules.
The terrorism that people like these are arguing requires a wholesale rejection of all the norms and rules that have brought us to this point in human history is another of the phony crises, like WMD in Iraq and Social Security solvency that they have perpetuated since George W. Bush took office. Al Qaeda is a serious threat. But it is not so serious that WWI and WWII pale in comparison or that we face an unprecedented existential threat. It’s absurd to put it in those terms and it’s a misunderstanding of the problem on such a vast scale that we are actively making the threat worse instead of better.
We are being led by a man who has been convinced that “his” war is bigger than the big one and anything goes. Yet, the single most searing image of our warrior leadership is the president with a bullhorn leading a cheer. I think that says it all.
