Cheney

Okay. You know what this post is going to be about.

I genuinely believed that Dick Cheney's "hunting accident" over the weekend would be beyond satire. One-liners? Not a problem. There will be a million of them floating around by the time the late-night comics have finished with the story. But some things (like Henry Kissinger winning the Nobel Peace Prize, at least according to Tom Lehrer) just appear to be beyond satire.

Clearly, I underestimated Tom Borowitz. His column today begins with these words:

Vice President Dick Cheney revealed today that he shot a fellow hunter while on a quail hunting trip over the weekend because he believed the man was the fugitive terror mastermind Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Mr. Cheney acknowledged that the man he sprayed with pellets on Saturday was not al-Zawahiri but rather Harry Whittington, a 78-year-old millionaire lawyer from Austin, blaming the mix-up on “faulty intelligence.”

Go ahead. Read the whole thing. Then come back. I'm not done with this yet.

Here are my modest contributions to the Cheney-palooza:

• So Cheney shot a lawyer. What's the big deal? The legal limit in Texas is ten.
• In spite of the fact that there was an ambulance present in the vice president's entourage, Cheney insisted on carrying Whittington to the hospital strapped to the hood of his pickup truck.
• Of course, most Americans were simply relieved that Cheney wasn't the one shot. If anything were to happen to him, George Bush would become president.
• Before Whittington was taken to the hospital, Cheney insisted that the ambulance driver stop at a taxidermist's so he could get an estimate.
• I'm not suggesting anything, but doesn't Dick Cheney sometimes go hunting with Antonin Scalia?

Foreign newspapers and on-line news sites got a little more creative with their headlines about the Cheney story than most American papers did, but it's worth noting that the Washington Post seems to have loosened up a bit. Columnist Eugene Robinson's comment on the episode ran under the headline "Ready, Fire, Aim." Dan Froomkin criticized the slow response of the White House in a column entitled "Shoots, Hides and Leaves."

Care to see what the professionals said? Read on.

Jon Stewart: "Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot a man during a quail hunt ... making 78-year-old Harry Whittington the first person shot by a sitting veep since Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton, of course, (was) shot in a duel with Aaron Burr over issues of honor, integrity and political maneuvering. Whittington? Mistaken for a bird."

Jay Leno: "I think Cheney is starting to lose it. After he shot the guy he screamed, 'Anyone else want to call domestic wire tapping illegal?'"

David Letterman: "But here is the sad part: before the trip Donald Rumsfeld had denied the guy's request for body armor."

Jon Stewart (again): "Now, this story certainly has its humorous aspects. . . . But it also raises a serious issue, one which I feel very strongly about. . . . Moms, dads, if you're watching right now, I can't emphasize this enough: Do not let your kids go on hunting trips with the vice president. I don't care what kind of lucrative contracts they're trying to land, or energy regulations they're trying to get lifted, it's just not worth it."

The Nation notes that it is now obvious that Cheney's five draft deferments were a good thing: "It has become clear that Cheney was doing the country a service when he avoided service."

Just don't forget to read Borowitz.

[Update: Borowitz does it again. Here's the opening line of his second Cheney column: "Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced today that his department would immediately implement a “Cheney Alert” system to warn Americans if an attack by Vice President Dick Cheney is imminent."]

America's Shame

An investigation by the widely respected National Journal of government records relating to 446 detainees at Guantanamo has uncovered a shameful story of official lies, routine abuses of due process rights, and, not surprisingly, the long-term detention of many innocent people. Stated briefly, the facts are these:

1. Contrary to frequent assertions that the prison at Guantanamo holds only the worst terrorists--those who would be killing Americans in Afghanistan or plotting the next 9/11 if freed--most are victims of mistaken identity or are, at worst, low-level Taliban or Al Qaeda soldiers with no knowledge of operational issues.
2. Due to the frustration that Pentagon officials felt over their inability to gain information from these prisoners (who, of course, had no useful information to provide in the first place), increasingly harsh interrogation techniques were authorized by the Pentagon and employed at Guantanamo.
3. Torture produced information--almost all of it false.
4. On the basis of false accusations, innocent people being held at Guantanamo were "proved" to be dangerous terrorists.

If this sounds far-fetched, please read the story. Or at least consider some of these excerpts, which, I remind you, are based on government files and Combatant Status Review Tribunal records:

A. False Accusations

Much of the evidence against the detainees is weak. One prisoner at Guantanamo, for example, has made accusations against more than 60 of his fellow inmates; that's more than 10 percent of Guantanamo's entire prison population. The veracity of this prisoner's accusations is in doubt after a Syrian prisoner, Mohammed al-Tumani, 19, who was arrested in Pakistan, flatly denied to his Combatant Status Review Tribunal that he'd attended the jihadist training camp that the tribunal record said he did.

Tumani's denial was bolstered by his American "personal representative," one of the U.S. military officers--not lawyers--who are tasked with helping prisoners navigate the tribunals. Tumani's enterprising representative looked at the classified evidence against the Syrian youth and found that just one man--the aforementioned accuser--had placed Tumani at the terrorist training camp. And he had placed Tumani there three months before the teenager had even entered Afghanistan. The curious U.S. officer pulled the classified file of the accuser, saw that he had accused 60 men, and, suddenly skeptical, pulled the files of every detainee the accuser had placed at the one training camp. None of the men had been in Afghanistan at the time the accuser said he saw them at the camp.

The tribunal declared Tumani an enemy combatant anyway.

B. Flimsy Evidence

"There is no smoking gun," said John Chandler, a partner in the Atlanta office of Sutherland Asbill & Brennan. One of his Guantanamo clients, picked up in Pakistan, is designated an enemy combatant in part because he once traveled on a bus with wounded Taliban soldiers in Afghanistan. The prisoner denies it, saying it was only a public bus. But then there's the prisoner's Casio watch. According to the Defense Department files, his watch is similar to another Casio model that has a circuit board that Al Qaeda has used for making bombs. The United States is using the Qaeda-favored Casio wristwatch as evidence against at least nine other detainees. But the offending model is sold in sidewalk stands around the world and is worn by one National Journal reporter. The primary difference between Chandler's client's watch and the Casio in question is that the detainee's model hasn't been manufactured for years, according to the U.S. military officer who was his personal representative at the tribunal.

C. Coerced Statements

One man slammed his hands on the table during an especially long interrogation and yelled, "Fine, you got me; I'm a terrorist." The interrogators knew it was a sarcastic statement. But the government, sometime later, used it as evidence against him: "Detainee admitted he is a terrorist" reads his tribunal evidence. The interrogators were so outraged that they sought out the detainee's personal representative to explain it to him that the statement was not a confession.

A Yemeni, whom somebody fingered as a bin Laden bodyguard, finally said in exasperation during one long interrogation, "OK, I saw bin Laden five times: Three times on Al Jazeera and twice on Yemeni news." And now his "admission" appears in his enemy combatant's file: "Detainee admitted to knowing Osama bin Laden."

I continue to wonder why Americans aren't outraged. More and more, I'm being forced to conclude that Americans' commitment to human rights may be, on the whole, very weak.

(For two appropriately outraged reactions, see Stuart Taylor's editorial in the National Journal and this commentary at Body and Soul, where I first saw the story.)

Muslim Protests

Muslims all over the world have joined in an increasingly violent series of demonstrations protesting a set of cartoons that depict the prophet Mohammed. The cartoons, which originally appeared last September in a Danish newspaper, have recently been reprinted throughout Europe and elsewhere.

One explanation for the spread of the protests was offered by an unidentified government official in the United Arab Emirates: "You have no choice but to join the chorus. Anyone who doesn't speak up will look as if they tacitly accept the prophet to be insulted."

This situation brings to mind Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. Huntington, arguing that conflict between Christians and Muslims has very deep roots, states that conflict is "a product of difference, particularly the Muslim concept of Islam as a way of life transcending and uniting religion and politics versus the Western Christian concept of the separate realms of God and Caesar" (210).

However offensive the cartoons may be, the Muslim world's reaction can't help but baffle most Westerners. Muslim anger and Western bafflement together lend support to the notion of a "clash of civilizations." And that, in turn, lends support to the forces of reaction on both sides.

Bono in D.C.

In a sermon--yes, a sermon--reminiscent of the speech he gave at the Labour Party Conference at Brighton in September 2004, Bono yesterday challenged an audience that included President Bush and many members of Congress to view aid to Africa as a matter of justice, not charity:

Justice is a higher standard. Africa makes a fool of our idea of justice; it makes a farce of our idea of equality. It mocks our pieties, it doubts our concern, it questions our commitment.

Sixty-five hundred Africans are still dying every day of a preventable, treatable disease, for lack of drugs we can buy at any drug store. This is not about charity, this is about justice and equality.

Take a few minutes to read Bono's sermon. It's important. It's what we once called "speaking truth to power."

[Via Sojourners.]

"Addicted to Oil"

These words were spoken by President Bush in his State of Union address earlier this evening. He said, "Keeping America competitive requires affordable energy. And here we have a serious problem. America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world."

Several points that Dan Caldwell and I make in Seeking Security in an Insecure World support the concern expressed by President Bush:

• "The extent of American dependence on oil can best be captured in two key numbers. Petroleum accounts for 40 percent of the energy consumed in the United States; in the transportation sector, the figure is 97 percent." (p. 160)
• "Questions surrounding the dependability of oil-exporting countries (that is, the combination of their internal stability and their willingness to supply particular customers, including the United States, Japan, and the European Union) take on considerable urgency when one looks at who the leading oil exporters are. The top ten net petroleum exporters are Saudi Arabia, Russia, Norway, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Venezuela, Kuwait, Nigeria, Mexico, and Algeria. Only Norway and Mexico are considered 'free,' according to the annual assessment of political liberties and civil rights conducted by Freedom House. Saudi Arabia's monarchy, in contrast, is considered one of the world's most repressive regimes. Several countries on the list are also among the world's most corrupt business environments." (p. 161)
• "The dilemmas associated with petroleum politics are becoming more, not less, difficult to address, because oil consumption continues to increase worldwide. The U.S. Department of Energy projects global oil consumption to grow an average of 1.9 percent per year between 2003 and 2025. For its part, the United States, which used 19.71 million barrels of oil per day in 2001, will be consuming 28.30 million barrels per day by 2025. The annual rate of growth in petroleum consumption in the United States from 2003 to 2025 is projected to be almost double what it was from 1980 to 2003. Meanwhile, domestic production peaked in 1970 at 9.6 million barrels per day and has been slowly declining ever since." (pp. 161-62)

This last point describes the problem that President Bush seeks to address through his proposals for new fuel technologies designed to reduce American dependence on imported oil. His prescription is good--as far as it goes.

If only he could have also brought himself to mention conservation--the one solution that doesn't require years of research and development.

Tonight's SOTU

According to the Borowitz Report, the White House has decided to simulcast tonight's State of the Union address in English in an effort to boost President Bush's sagging approval ratings.

Are We at War?

James Carroll asks an important question in his column in today's Boston Globe: "Is America actually at war?"

Certainly there is a war ongoing in Iraq, but Carroll suggests that we have no enemy there: the insurgents who almost daily attack American troops merely want the invader and occupier to leave. With respect to the broader "war on terror," Carroll notes that the United States is not actually engaging its real enemy "because Al Qaeda is a free floating nihilism, not a nation, or even a network."

The nature of the insurgency in Iraq is more complicated than Carroll suggests, but it's hard not to be struck by the fact that the most serious part of the conflict there began only after President Bush proclaimed "Mission Accomplished" almost three years ago. It's equally difficult to ignore the fact that Osama bin Laden and his associates continue to taunt the United States via videotape over four years after the 9/11 attacks prompted Bush to proclaim a "war on terror."

Declaring a "war on terror" was a mistake in part for what it has done for bin Laden. Carroll makes the point well:

Bin Laden was a self-mythologized figure of no historic standing until George W. Bush designated him America's equal by defining 9/11 as an act of war to be met with war, instead of a crime to be met with criminal justice. But this over-reaction, so satisfying at the time to the wounded American psyche, turned into the war for which the other party simply did not show up.

Saddam Hussein is on trial, but what no doubt amazes observers in the Muslim world is that Osama bin Laden is not.

Holocaust Memorial Day

Today is Holocaust Memorial Day--the Day of Remembrance. It commemorates the victims of the Holocaust on the anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz on January 27, 1945.

For more on the anniversary, and for a moving poem by Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi, go here.

HRW World Report 2006

Human Rights Watch released its annual report on human rights last week. The United States comes in for significant criticism. The press release accompanying the report's publication states,

New evidence demonstrated in 2005 that torture and mistreatment have been a deliberate part of the Bush administration’s counterterrorism strategy, undermining the global defense of human rights, Human Rights Watch said today in releasing its World Report 2006.

The evidence showed that abusive interrogation cannot be reduced to the misdeeds of a few low-ranking soldiers, but was a conscious policy choice by senior U.S. government officials. The policy has hampered Washington’s ability to cajole or pressure other states into respecting international law, said the 532-page volume’s introductory essay.

For an overview of the report's conclusions regarding human rights practices in the U.S., go here. To order the report or download the PDF version, go here.

[UPDATE: Today the International Herald Tribune discusses the Human Rights Watch World Report 2006 in an editorial entitled "An Indictment of America." It begins:

When Human Rights Watch, a respected organization that has been monitoring the world's behavior since 1978, focuses its annual review on America's use of torture and inhumane treatment, every American should feel a sense of shame. And everyone who has believed in the United States as the staunchest protector of human rights in history should be worried.

Many nations--Belarus, Uzbekistan, Zimbabwe, Myanmar, Cuba, Sudan and China to name only some of the worst--routinely trample on human rights in a way that neither the United States nor any of its allies would ever countenance. But the United States wrote the book on human rights; it defined the alternative to tyranny and injustice. So when the vice president of the United States actually lobbies against a bill that bans "cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment," Human Rights Watch is justified in delivering harsh criticism.

The entire editorial is available here.]

Is Bush a Wilsonian?

George W. Bush has spoken grandiloquently about the need to spread democracy throughout the Middle East. He has been pilloried by realists for failing to assess and employ American power effectively. Could it be that he is, in fact, a Wilsonian?

G. John Ikenberry takes up the question in this interesting essay.

"Vast, Lawless Areas"

The lines on a map tell us which state is legally entitled to exercise sovereignty over a particular territory, but they say nothing about whether that authority translates into effective control.

The Rio Grande, from El Paso to the Gulf of Mexico, become the southern boundary of the United States in 1845 when Texas was admitted to the Union as the 28th state. Almost forty years later, the absence of effective control over vast stretches of West Texas was acknowledged when the county commissioners of Pecos County appointed a notorious drunk and small-time thief to be justice of the peace. Thus Judge Roy Bean came to be the "Law West of the Pecos," dispensing beer and frontier justice from the porch of a saloon called the Jersey Lilly.

Developing states, like the United States in the nineteenth century, often include what are effectively ungoverned territories in which lawlessness (or its alternative, frontier justice) is the norm. The same is true of states in the middle of a war.

A story in yesterday's New York Times reminds us that Pakistan is a state lacking effective control over parts of its territory. Carlotta Gall and Mohammad Khan write,

Two years after the Pakistani Army began operations in border tribal areas to root out members of Al Qaeda and other foreign militants, Pakistani officials who know the area say the military campaign is bogged down, the local political administration is powerless and the militants are stronger than ever.

Both Osama bin Laden, who released a new audiotape of threats against the United States this week, and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, are believed to be living somewhere in the seven districts that make up these tribal areas, which run for more than 500 miles along the rugged Afghan border and have been hit by several American missile strikes in recent weeks.

The officials said they had been joined by possibly hundreds of foreign militants from Arab countries, Central Asia and the Caucasus, who present a continuing threat to the authorities within the region.

The tribal areas are off limits to foreign journalists, but the Pakistani officials, and former residents who did not want to be identified for fear of retribution, said the militants--who call themselves Taliban--now dispensed their own justice, ran their own jails, robbed banks, shelled military and civilian government compounds and attacked convoys at will. They are recruiting men from the local tribes and have gained a hold over the population through a mix of fear and religion, the officials and former residents said.

As in Texas west of the Pecos during the 1880s and 1890s, a semblance of government exists in the tribal areas of Pakistan, but it is not an authority that is responsive to Gen. Pervez Musharraf's government in Islamabad and its avowed determination to root out members of Al Qaeda from the border regions. This is why the United States felt compelled to use an unmanned Predator aircraft to attack a suspected Al Qaeda meeting place in Bajaur on January 13. On one level, the attack was a violation of Pakistan's sovereignty (as the anti-American demonstrations that followed pointed out), but on another level complaints about the violation of Pakistani sovereignty are clearly divorced from the reality on the ground.

In what must be considered an early contender for the understatement of the year, an American military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the New York Times, "With vast, lawless areas in which Taliban-style justice holds sway, Pakistan faces serious challenges."

Pakistan's challenges, however, are ones that America and the world also face. In the 1880s, the crime that occurred in ungoverned territories was, for the most part, a local problem. Not any more. Thanks to all those factors that together create what we call globalization, Pakistan's ungoverned tribal regions are right next door to all of us.

An Event at Dutton's

Dan Caldwell and I will be at Dutton's Brentwood Bookstore tomorrow (Sunday) at 2:00 p.m. discussing Seeking Security in an Insecure World. Please stop by if you're in the area.

Iraq: A New Estimate

In Tuesday's Los Angeles Times (I'm still trying to get caught up), Linda Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz presented a brief overview of a paper they recently presented at the annual meeting of the American Economic Association (available here). As entertaining as Freakonomics may be and as helpful as it may be to have some numbers available when arguing public policy, I am generally skeptical of the economists' faith in their own ability to assign particular values to almost everything--including human lives. Still, Bilmes--a former assistant secretary of Commerce--and Stiglitz--winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in economics--make a compelling argument for considering more than just the direct costs of the war, which are currently moving beyond $250 billion.

The argument, reduced to its simplest (i.e., monetary) terms, is this: The final cost to the United States of the war in Iraq is likely to be between $1 trillion and $2 trillion dollars. The wide range of the estimate is primarily due to the war's uncertain duration. The longer the United States is in Iraq, the closer we'll come to the $2 trillion figure.

For those who are inclined to judge the war in Iraq in terms of cost-benefit analysis, having a comprehensive accounting of the costs is an essential starting point.

MLK and Nonviolence

It has been a busy week, so here at the end of it I need to do some catching up.

One thing I failed to post earlier this week was a link to a wonderful essay by Taylor Branch published in the New York Times on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Branch, who has recently published At Canaan's Edge, the third volume in his monumental biography of Dr. King, describes the way that King and the movement he led employed the core values of America and a deep commitment to nonviolence to transform our nation and the world. He laments the fact, however, that we have largely abandoned King's legacy and that we have failed to see the utility of King's methods for our present struggles:

Only hours before his death, Dr. King startled an aide with a balmy aside from his unpopular movement to uplift the poor. "In our next campaign," he remarked, "we have to institutionalize nonviolence and take it international."

The nation would do well to incorporate this goal into our mission abroad, reinforcing the place of nonviolence among the fundamentals of democracy, along with equal citizenship, self-government and accountable public trust. We could also restore Dr. King's role in the continuing story of freedom to its rightful prominence, emphasizing that the best way to safeguard democracy is to practice it. And we must recognize that the accepted tradeoff between freedom and security is misguided, because our values are the essence of our strength. If dungeons, brute force and arbitrary rule were the keys to real power, Saudi Arabia would be a model for the future instead of the past.

Much of this bears repeating, but perhaps no line moreso than this one: "The best way to safeguard democracy is to practice it." The pithy expression is Branch's, but the lesson it conveys is Dr. King's.

It is a lesson that our generation needs to re-learn.

Conference Call

Dan Caldwell and I will be discussing our new book, Seeking Security in an Insecure World, on a conference call tomorrow (Thursday) morning beginning at 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time. The call, sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations, will involve groups from twenty colleges and universities around the country.

If any readers of Swords Into Plowshares have an opportunity to participate in the call, please let us know that you're on. And if you don't have a chance to make your comment or ask your question, feel free to use the comment space here to do so.

Domestic Surveillance and "Necessity"

When legal arguments fail, "necessity" is often the justification of those who are determined to act with or without the law. As Oliver Cromwell put it, "Necessity hath no law." But, as William Pitt (the younger) recognized, because it is unbound by law, necessity is also "the argument of tyrants."

Most of the actions taken by the Bush Administration that have most seriously damaged the reputation of the United States as a nation committed to the defense of human rights and individual freedoms have, at one time or another (and often repeatedly), been presented as being necessary to the defense of Americans. Like all consequentialist claims, these are very difficult claims to assess, particularly when an extraordinary degree of secrecy--extraordinary for a democracy, at least--is also presented as a necessity in the "war on terrorism."

Today's New York Times offers a bit of evidence on which we can begin to assess the argument that the Bush Administration's domestic surveillance program--the one that evades both the Fourth Amendment and FISA--is necessary. Consider this extended excerpt:

In the anxious months after the Sept. 11 attacks, the National Security Agency began sending a steady stream of telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and names to the F.B.I. in search of terrorists. The stream soon became a flood, requiring hundreds of agents to check out thousands of tips a month.

But virtually all of them, current and former officials say, led to dead ends or innocent Americans.

F.B.I. officials repeatedly complained to the spy agency that the unfiltered information was swamping investigators. The spy agency was collecting much of the data by eavesdropping on some Americans' international communications and conducting computer searches of phone and Internet traffic. Some F.B.I. officials and prosecutors also thought the checks, which sometimes involved interviews by agents, were pointless intrusions on Americans' privacy.

As the bureau was running down those leads, its director, Robert S. Mueller III, raised concerns about the legal rationale for a program of eavesdropping without warrants, one government official said. Mr. Mueller asked senior administration officials about "whether the program had a proper legal foundation," but deferred to Justice Department legal opinions, the official said.

President Bush has characterized the eavesdropping program as a "vital tool" against terrorism; Vice President Dick Cheney has said it has saved "thousands of lives."

But the results of the program look very different to some officials charged with tracking terrorism in the United States. More than a dozen current and former law enforcement and counterterrorism officials, including some in the small circle who knew of the secret program and how it played out at the F.B.I., said the torrent of tips led them to few potential terrorists inside the country they did not know of from other sources and diverted agents from counterterrorism work they viewed as more productive.

"We'd chase a number, find it's a schoolteacher with no indication they've ever been involved in international terrorism--case closed," said one former F.B.I. official, who was aware of the program and the data it generated for the bureau. "After you get a thousand numbers and not one is turning up anything, you get some frustration."

Journalists, no matter how resourceful and thorough, will never be able to offer the public a definitive assessment of the efficacy of an operation like this one. What they can do (and, in this case, have done) is to raise questions about the veracity of an important claim being presented to the public. The next step is for Congress to use its oversight function to get to the bottom of the story in a way that journalists, being unable to compel testimony, cannot.

Next month, as the Senate Judiciary Committee takes up the constitutionality of the Bush Administration's domestic surveillance program, Congress also needs to begin asking questions, behind closed doors if necessary, about the claim that the program has saved "thousands of lives."

MLK on Love and Justice

"Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love."

--Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (1967)

[via Central Dallas Ministries]

The Imperial Presidency

An editorial in today's New York Times is unusually blunt in its criticisms of President Bush, who, according to the piece, "seems to see no limit to his imperial presidency." This is a point that has been made previously with respect to President Bush by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., the author of the classic work entitled The Imperial Presidency. Schlesinger's original argument, summarized in a more recent book he wrote entitled War and the American Presidency, is this:

Confronted by presidential initiatives in foreign affairs, Congress and the courts, along with the press and the citizenry too, often lack confidence in their own information and judgment and are likely to be intimidated by executive authority. The inclination in foreign policy is to let the president have the responsibility and the power--a renunciation that results from congressional pusillanimity as well as from presidential rapacity.

The imperial presidency is, or ought to be, a matter of concern to both Republicans and Democrats who believe the system of checks and balances on which the Constitution is based is worth preserving. After all, "congressional pusillanimity" at present is Republican pusillanimity. Thus far, however, most Republicans in Congress--with the noteworthy exception of Sen. John McCain--have willingly acquiesced in almost every post-9/11 expansion of presidential authority. Fortunately, Sen. Arlen Specter has promised to hold hearings in the Senate Judiciary Committee on the legality of President Bush's domestic eavesdropping. But whether those hearings will represent a reassertion of legislative authority or merely the appearance of a genuine check on the executive remains to be seen.

The Judgment of Other Nations

In The Federalist No. 63, James Madison wrote,

An attention to the judgment of other nations is important to every government for two reasons. The one is, that, independently of the merits of any particular plan or measure, it is desirable, on various accounts, that it should appear to other nations as the offspring of a wise and honorable policy; the second is, that in doubtful cases, particularly where the national councils may be warped by some strong passion or momentary interest, the presumed or known opinion of the impartial world may be the best guide that can be followed.

At the White House today, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany reiterated her call for the prison at Guantanamo to be closed. President Bush, still convinced that there is some benefit to the United States to having a prison available beyond the jurisdiction of American courts, demurred.

When "the judgment of other nations" calls the United States to be faithful to its own highest values, it would be good to pay attention.

Syriana

The plot of Syriana brings together a number of touchy issues in American foreign policy--arms transfers, covert operations, and Middle Eastern oil politics, to name but a few. Also included are the income gap in the Middle East, terrorism, torture, and assassination as a tool of state policy. The highly combustible mix has confused some reviewers (those unable to keep up) and offended others (those unable to face reality). Both groups probably need either to grow up or to stick to films from Disney.

Is the plot real? No, not in the sense of being a faithful depiction of historical events. But the significant plot elements all have parallels in the recent history of American foreign policy. The investigation of the U.S. intelligence community conducted by the Church Committee in the 1970s, the congressional investigation of the Iran-Contra affair in the 1980s, and the 9/11 Commission’s investigation of events leading up to the terrorist attacks on the United States in 2001 all could have supplied inspiration for the screenplay (although former CIA agent Robert Baer’s book See No Evil is cited in the film’s credits).

What seems to bother some conservatives most about Syriana is its suggestion that the government of the United States might engage in morally dubious activities for the sake of maintaining American access to Middle Eastern oil. Others seem troubled by the connection drawn in the film between dismal social conditions and the recruitment of suicide bombers. Two very carefully researched books--Michael Klare’s Blood and Oil and Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon’s The Age of Sacred Terror--offer ample evidence to validate both points.

Syriana may lack subtlety and it may have some loose ends in the plot, but its fundamental problem is its message: The United States is heavily dependent on Middle Eastern oil and that dependence necessitates significant compromises with what we proclaim to be our values. Most Americans would rather not be told that.

Coming Attractions

Having given the blog a holiday break, I'm back. This New Year's Day post will, however, be brief--merely a preview of coming attractions. Here are a few of the things I plan to write about in the coming days:

First, two recent movies--Syriana and Munich--are well worth discussing. I plan to look at both from an IR perspective.

Second, I'll be looking back at some of the better books that I read during 2005. Expect a few recommendations.

Third, a play I saw this afternoon at the Mark Taper Forum--Lewis and Clark Reach the Euphrates--suggested some interesting questions about the history of American foreign policy and Thomas Jefferson's notion of an "Empire of Liberty." I hope to look at the historical record and see if we can find some of the roots of what playwright Robert Schenkkan calls "the divided heart of America."

Fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, etc.--there remains much to be said about torture, the Bush Administration's domestic spying, homeland security failures, the disparagement of international law, and the increasingly ambitious attempts by the Bush Administration to revive the "imperial presidency" cut short by the resignation of Richard Nixon in 1974.

The new year may not be pretty, but it will certainly be interesting.

Christmas Break

In spite of the fact that I have a lot more I want to say about the President Bush's determination that the Fourth Amendment doesn't apply to his administration, I must leave the commenting to others for now. The grades are all in and it's time for a break. I'll resume posting on or about January 1.

Thanks for stopping by. Have a very merry Christmas!

Fool Me Once

No matter how things turn out in Iraq--and all people of good will must hope that a generation of Iraqis that has lived through three devastating wars and a long and brutal dictatorship will find peace and freedom--we must not forget that the United States initiated its current war in Iraq under false pretenses. The war, we were told, was necessary (even if preemptive or, more accurately, preventive) because Iraq was building weapons of mass destruction and was in league with Al Qaeda. Iraq, in short, posed a serious threat to the United States--if not directly, then through the medium of transnational terrorist organizations in common cause with Saddam Hussein.

Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction. It did not have ties to Al Qaeda. These facts have been definitively established. For present purposes, it does not matter whether President Bush lied or was merely mistaken. It does not matter because, after the President's defiant admission today during his weekly radio address that he did in fact order surveillance of Americans without judicial authorization, we need only be reminded of the consequences of being wrong--for whatever reason--when dramatic claims are made in the name of national security.

President Bush said today that he had authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans without warrants. He called the secret program "crucial to our national security" and said it was intended to "detect and prevent terrorist attacks against the United States, our friends and allies."

Just to be clear, President Bush acknowledged giving orders that violate the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. His claim that the authorization was "consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution" has no more validity than his administration's many attempts to define out of existence both domestic and international prohibitions against torture. His claim that his action was, and continues to be, "critical to saving American lives" is unverifiable.

The President initiated a war against Iraq in defiance of international law, the United Nations Security Council, and just war principles. He did so on the basis of claims, later proven false, that the war was necessary to protect American lives.

The President has also authorized--by his own admission at least thirty times--a program of domestic surveillance that clearly violates the Constitution (and for which legal alternatives are available). He claims, once again, to be doing so in order to save American lives.

Americans need to remember the President's own words: "Fool me once, shame on--shame on you. Fool me--you can't get fooled again."

Seeking Security in an Insecure World

Seeking Security in an Insecure World has been released. You can order it here from the publisher at a 15 percent discount. (Amazon and Barnes & Noble have not yet updated their information on the book.) It would make a great gift for everyone on your Christmas list!

For Pepperdine's press release concerning the book, go here.

Bush Relents

President Bush has agreed to accept the McCain Amendment barring cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment of detainees.

Unfortunately, some people still don't get it.

Bipartisan, Bicameral Support

The House of Representatives voted today, by a 308 to 122 margin, to support the McCain Amendment. The measure, approved 90-9 by the Senate in October, is part of a $453 billion defense appropriation currently in conference committee. The vote today was on a non-binding resolution to instruct House members of the conference committee to support inclusion of the McCain Amendment in the bill reported out by the committee.

It's a modest step toward restoring America's integrity. Now what will it take to get the Bush Administration to concede that cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment is wrong?

The Right Question

"Cowardice asks the question: is it safe? Expediency asks the question: is it politic? Vanity asks the question: is it popular? But conscience asks the question: is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular--but one must take it simply because it is right."

--Martin Luther King, Jr.

Torture: Recent Comments

Anthony Lewis's recent essay in The Nation, entitled "The Torture Administration," is a must-read piece. Here, via Common Dreams, is a brief sample.

The pictures from Abu Ghraib, first shown to the public on April 28, 2004, evoked a powerful reaction. Americans were outraged when they saw grinning US soldiers tormenting Iraqi prisoners. But it was seeing the mistreatment that produced the outrage, or so we must now conclude. Since then the Bush Administration and its lawyers have prevented the release of any more photographs or videotapes. And the public has not reacted similarly to the disclosure, without pictures, of worse actions, including murder.

Maureen Dowd's skewering of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's doubletalk in Europe is also well worth reading. Here is Dowd parsing the Secretary's assurances regarding torture:

"The United States government does not authorize or condone torture of detainees," [Rice] said.

It all depends on what you mean by "authorize," "condone," "torture" and "detainees."

(This also comes via Common Dreams.)

Finally, Naomi Klein points out (in an article entitled "'Never Before!' Our Amnesiac Torture Debate") that the United States has a history with torture that we ignore all too readily. It's worth a read.

* * *

Why are most Americans so willing to ignore the atrocities--certainly that is what we would call them if any other government were responsible--that are being committed by their government? Is fear really that strong? Or are we just not as good as we suppose ourselves to be?

10,000

This site logged its 10,000th visit at 7:19 a.m. Pacific Time today. Ten thousand visits is a bad day for a lot of blogs, but it's not about the numbers. I'm grateful for all the visitors I get.

Thanks to all of you who stop by from time to time.

Condi and the Media

Tim Rutten, who writes a column on the media for the Los Angeles Times, has an exceptional piece in today's paper in which he laments the tendency of American journalists today to "make a fetish of that faux-fairness that housebreaks reporting by rendering it a subset of stenography."

What is it that provoked Rutten to alliterate? It's the media's coverage of Secretary of State Rice's comments on torture during her European travels.

Secretary Rice has been reported to have set things right regarding torture thanks to her clear condemnations of illegal practices. Rutten suggests, to the contrary, that Rice's words did nothing of the sort and that the only way one would come away thinking they did is by completely ignoring the context of her remarks. As Rutten puts it in his conclusion, "Facts plus context equal truth."

What context does Rutten suggest is missing? He lists some facts to supply context:

Fact: As the [Washington] Post previously has reported, the United States has been operating a network of clandestine CIA prisons in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, where suspected terrorists and adherents of Islamo-fascism are tortured.

Fact: U.S. intelligence agents have repeatedly kidnapped people and handed them over to third countries to be tortured in a process called "extraordinary rendition."

Fact: As the New York Times has reported, U.S. officials believe that information obtained from one of Al Qaeda's most infamous operatives--Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who planned the 9/11 atrocities--cannot be used in American legal proceedings because it was obtained by torture. Similarly, false information regarding purported links between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, which the administration used to make the case for invading Iraq, was obtained under torture from another terrorist, Ibn Al-Shaykh al-Libi, who was captured by the CIA in Afghanistan and turned over to the Egyptians for interrogation.

Fact: As the Post's editorial pointed out, Rice continues to argue that "'It is also U.S. policy that authorized interrogation will be consistent with U.S. obligations under the Convention Against Torture, which prohibit cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.' What she didn't explain is that, under this Administration's eccentric definition of 'U.S. obligations,' cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment is not prohibited as long as it does not occur on U.S. territory."

Rutten then notes, "Had all these facts and voices of rational authority--like [former State Department legal adviser Abraham] Sofaer's--been made part of the day-to-day reporting on Rice's tour, all her deliberate ambiguity would have come into focus for what it was: a convoluted defense of the indefensible."

Parsing the words spoken by the Bush Administration about torture is pointless and unnecessary. Actions speak louder--and far more truthfully--than words.

The UDHR

Today is International Human Rights Day. It marks the fifty-seventh anniversary of the adoption by the United Nations General Assembly of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the seed from which modern international human rights law has grown.

Paul Gordon Lauren, in The Evolution of International Human Rights: Visions Seen (2nd ed.), a magisterial account of the origins of our modern understanding of human rights, describes the signficance of the Universal Declaration this way:

In creating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, an international body representing the community of nations for the first time in all of history agreed on a universal vision of human rights on behalf of all men, women, and children everywhere in the world. The participants remarkably joined together to both reflect and transcend their many different political and economic systems, social and judicial structures, religious and cultural backgrounds, philosophical and ideological beliefs, stages of development and cultural settings, and histories of exclusive national sovereignty in such a way as to create the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that spoke of the "human family" as a whole and to establish a set of normative standards for all peoples and all nations. The fact that there was no single author, but rather hundreds--or, arguably, even thousands--who contributed to drafting the text, gave the proclamation and its vision even greater authority and prestige. . . . This vision proclaimed that all people everywhere possessed certain basic and identifiable rights, that universal standards existed for the world as a whole, and that human rights were matters of legitimate international concern and no longer within the exclusive domestic jurisdiction of nation-states as in the past. Yet, as those familiar with the long struggle for human rights knew from experience, tremendous distances often existed between abstract theory and actual practice. In fact, at the time of the adoption of the Univeral Declaration of Human Rights no state--not one--regardless of location, system of government, level of development, or culture, could meet its standards of achievement. Champions and opponents of human rights alike thus wondered what would happen and what it all would mean. The answer, of course, lay in the future and ultimately would depend on if, when, and how the world decided to transform this proclaimed vision into reality. (232)

"Emissions Accomplished"

You had to read all the way to the end of Andrew Revkin's story in today's New York Times about the American walkout during the climate change discussions in Montreal to find this description of a clever lobbying tactic by an NGO:

The National Environmental Trust distributed custom-printed noise-making rubber whoopee cushions printed with a caricature of President Bush and the words "Emissions Accomplished."

The rest of the story describes the effort made by the United States during the two-week-long Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change to ensure that nothing would be accomplished. "Emissions Accomplished" indeed.

Disgraceful

U.N. Ambassador John Bolton today told U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour to back off. Arbour, in a statement closely related to her recent commentary in the International Herald Tribune, said the United States is eroding respect for the international prohibition of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. Having apparently slipped his leash, Bolton said,

Today is Human Rights Day. It would be appropriate, I think, for the U.N.'s high commissioner for human rights to talk about the serious human rights problems that exist in the world today. . . . It is disappointing that she has chosen to talk about press commentary about alleged American conduct. I think the secretary of state has fully and completely addressed the substance of the allegations, so I won't go back into that again other than to reaffirm that the United States does not engage in torture.

Bolton also said, "I think it is inappropriate and illegitimate for an international civil servant to second-guess the conduct that we're engaged in in the war on terror, with nothing more as evidence than what she reads in the newspapers."

"Alleged American conduct"? "Reaffirm that the United States does not engage in torture"? "Nothing more as evidence than what she reads in the newspapers"? Did Bolton somehow miss the photos from Abu Ghraib? Has he not read the reports conducted by military investigators? Is he unaware that American soldiers have been convicted of charges related to the abuse of detainees? Does he think that hundreds of stories in the world's most respected newspapers are all without foundation?

Or is he just intent on causing American credibility to go even lower?

When the United States Speaks

Skepticism abounds.

Secretary of State Condolezza Rice, currently in Europe, has been telling British and German representatives that "the United States does not condone torture."

Many of those representatives have been skeptical.

"It's clear that the text of the speech [in London] was drafted by lawyers with the intention of misleading an audience," said Andrew Tyrie, a Conservative MP interviewed by the New York Times.

No Exceptions

Louise Arbour, the former chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda and, since July 2004, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, writes today in the International Herald Tribune on torture.

Her argument is not that of an activist, a polemicist, or even a lawyer. Instead, Ms. Arbour writes--simply, dispassionately, and authoritatively--as an expert on international human rights with a single point to make: "The right to be free from torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment . . . may not be subject to any limitation, anywhere, under any condition." The right not to be tortured is, to use the term favored by human rights lawyers, non-derogable.

While Ms. Arbour does not cite the 1984 Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment in support of her position, Article 2 (2) looms large. It states, "No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture."

Ms. Arbour concludes with an admonition:

On Human Rights Day, I call on all governments to reaffirm their commitment to the total prohibition of torture by:

Condemning torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment and prohibiting it in national law;

Abiding by the principle of non-refoulement and refraining from returning persons to countries where they may face torture;

Ensuring access to prisoners and abolishing secret detention;

Prosecuting those responsible for torture and ill-treatment;

Prohibiting the use of statements extracted under torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, whether the interrogation has taken place at home or abroad;

Ratifying the Convention against Torture and its Optional Protocol, as well as other international treaties banning torture.

"He who has ears to hear . . ."

Wikipedia

To be perfectly honest, the real point of this particular post is to make a few comments regarding web-based sources in general and Wikipedia in particular that might be helpful to my students. But because Swords into Plowshares is about international politics, a few preliminary comments may help to keep readers who aren't a part of the student population from tuning out.

Wikipedia, the web-based encyclopedia that is written, edited, and updated by any Internet user who cares to contribute, is an amazing phenomenon. Launched in 2001, the project generated over 20,000 encyclopedia articles in its first year and over 250,000 in English alone by April 2004. Another 600,000 articles in 50 additional languages were also online by that date. Today there are over 800,000 articles in English alone.

As I write this, Wikipedia.org is the 35th most commonly visited web site in the world, according to Alexa.com. It gets more hits each day than the New York Times and the Washington Post web sites put together.

Tom Friedman, in his bestseller The World Is Flat, uses Wikipedia as an example of open-sourcing, one of the "ten forces that flattened the world." On page 95, Friedman quotes Andrew Lih, author of an essay in YaleGlobal, who notes that Wikipedia

provides a manifold view of issues from the World Trade Organization and multinational corporations to the anti-globalization movement and threats to cultural diversity. At the same time malicious contributors are kept in check because vandalism is easily undone. Users dedicated to fixing vandalism watch the list of recent changes, fixing problems within minutes, if not seconds. A defaced article can quickly be returned to an acceptable version with just one click of a button. This crucial asymmetry tips the balance in favor of productive and cooperative members of the wiki community, allowing quality content to prevail.

But is there really quality content in Wikipedia? How trustworthy is the information it dispenses? Anyone wanting a general introduction to any of the hundreds of thousands of topics listed would probably be quite satisfied. But those whose lives (or grades) depended on their research might prefer to consult a more reputable source.

Recently, the Guardian (London) asked a number of experts to check the Wikipedia articles on the subjects they know best. Entries on composer Steve Reich, the Basque people, British diarist Samuel Pepys, and encyclopedias were among those evaluated. Most of the experts found problems with the articles devoted to their specialties. Some were trivial errors, some were more consequential mistakes, and a few of the problems were stylistic rather than factual. (Two evaluators thought the writing was poor.)

Essentially, the problem with Wikipedia from an academic standpoint is the same as the problem with the Internet in general. Its openness (open-sourcing) means that some of its content will be outstanding, some will be mediocre, and some will be very poor. Unfortunately, discerning the difference between the good, the bad, and the ugly may require a level of expertise beyond what is available to a reader who, we shouldn't forget, probably came to the Internet looking to be educated.

In theory, the peer-review process and the editing that occurs in the world of academic publishing serve to ensure that what is published is, if not outstanding, at least reliable. Of course, all scholars can point to peer-reviewed articles or books that they think represent a waste of paper. (I'm reminded of Dorothy Parker's famous comment about a work of fiction: "This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.") But, generally speaking, scholarship is scholarship not because it is produced by scholars but because it is scrutinized (and deemed acceptable) by scholars.

My opposition to the use of Wikipedia as a scholarly source was put to the test at a recent conference. Among the half dozen or so papers that I picked up, two cited Wikipedia articles. Both papers were written by well established scholars. I had to ask myself if my own standards for quality research might be too high. But, after seeing this, I've decided they're not. With Wikipedia, it's caveat lector.

One Thousand Executions

On Friday, December 2, Kenneth Boyd was executed in North Carolina. It was the one thousandth execution in the United States since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.

According to Amnesty International, a majority of the world's states--122 of them--have abolished the death penalty. Only China, Iran, and Vietnam executed more people than the United States last year.

Security and Liberty

Security is like liberty in that many are the crimes committed in its name.

--Justice Robert H. Jackson, dissenting opinion in Knauff v.
Shaughnessy (1950)

Dulce et Decorum Est

[Some great poets emerged during--and in many instances died in--World War I. One of the greatest was Wilfred Owen, the author of the following poem. The final lines, taken from an ode by Horace, are translated thus: "It is sweet and proper to die for one's country." Owen died for England on November 4, 1918--just one week before the armistice ending the war was signed.]

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!-An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,-
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

When Is Torture Not Torture?

David Luban's commentary in yesterday's Washington Post is an excellent starting point for anyone hoping to unravel the twisted logic of the Bush Administration's position on torture.

Holodomor

Today is the day Ukrainians remember Holodomor--death by hunger. In 1932-33, roughly one-fourth of Ukraine's population died of starvation attributable to Josef Stalin's program to collectivize agriculture throughout the Soviet Union.

The plan to replace small family-owned farms with fewer large, mechanized collective farms (kolkhozy) in an effort to improve productivity and simplify the task of moving grain from the farms to the cities had disastrous results almost from the start. Unable to demonstrate to the peasants (kulaks) how they might benefit from turning over their farms to the state, collectivization was dependent on coercion. Thus, collectivization meant "dekulakization."

According to Geoffrey Hosking's The First Socialist Society: A History of the Soviet Union from Within (p. 160), Stalin told a meeting of agronomists in 1929, "Either we go backward, to capitalism, or we go forward, to socialism. . . . What does that mean? It means that we have passed on from a policy of limiting the exploitative tendencies of the kulaks to a policy of liquidating the kulaks as a class."

The outcome of Stalin's policy--perhaps thirty million dead throughout the Soviet Union as a consequence of the forced collectivization of agriculture--combined with the means used to implement collectivization--murder, forced starvation, deportation--suggests that Holodomor may have been, as the Ukrainians insist, a case of genocide. Russia's leaders, perhaps concerned about demands for reparations, are unwilling to concede the point. Regardless, Holodomor stands as one of the greatest atrocities in a century filled with totalitarian crimes.

For more on Holodomor, see this BBC story.

Life Imitates Art (Pirates Edition)

According to an article in yesterday's Times (London), the cast and crew of two Pirates of the Caribbean sequels--apparently Disney is not waiting to see how the first sequel does before filming the second sequel--have been victimized by pirates (or thieves, anyway) on location in the Bahamas. Two unidentified members of the cast "have been forced to flee for their lives," according to the breathless report in the Times.

Maybe Disney needs to spring for an LRAD.

[Thanks to Ian McCollum for the link to the story.]

Pinochet at 90

Former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, who turned 90 today, has been indicted twice this week. The first indictment involves charges of income tax evasion. The second indictment, issued yesterday by Judge Victor Montiglio, alleges that Pinochet was responsible for the "permanent kidnapping" (or disappearance) of three Chilean dissidents in 1975. The three were were among at least 119 who disappeared in a 1975 sweep called Operation Colombo.

Although Pinochet has avoided several attempts to put him on trial for his regime's human rights abuses as a result of his poor health, an examination in September found him fit to stand trial. Still, many question whether Pinochet, who is currently under house arrest in Santiago, will ever see the inside of a courtroom.

Black Friday

Today's New York Times story on "Black Friday"--the day the bottom line finally shifts from red to black for many American retailers--notes how bizarre post-Thanksgiving shopping has become: "Across the country, millions of Americans mobbed discount stores, raced into suburban malls and swarmed downtown shopping districts in a retail ritual whose outlandishness--and sleeplessness--seems to grow with every season." Here in Southern California, stores opening at midnight seemed to be the new thing.

Adbusters--an organization dedicated to challenging consumerism--has declared this International Buy Nothing Day. At a mall in Delaware today, seven people promoting Buy Nothing Day by wearing T-shirts that read "Ask me about nothing" and carrying empty sacks with the words "free samples" were arrested for violating the mall's rules against solicitation. (Is anti-solicitation a form of solicitation?)

Those who are looking to curb their consumerist impulses this holiday season might be interested in this post from Black Friday 2004.

Not Everyone Overeats on Thanksgiving

Perhaps it's not the best time to mention this, but hunger remains a very serious problem at home and abroad. After dessert, consider spending a few minutes helping Bread for the World end hunger.

Reciprocity

In his extraordinary opening statement, Justice Robert Jackson, the chief American prosecutor at Nurmberg, said, "We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants today is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow. To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our lips as well."

Scott Horton at Balkinization explains what this means for Americans today.

Bloody Sunday

A turning point in Ireland's war for independence from British rule occurred on this date in 1920. First, a closely coordinated series of assassinations carried out by members of the (old) Irish Republican Army under the direction of Michael Collins crippled British intelligence in Ireland. Later in the day, British Auxiliaries opened fire on players and spectators at a Gaelic football match in Dublin's Croke Park. The massacre of innocents solidified support in Ireland for the Republican cause and prompted international condemnation of the British.

After another eight months of escalating violence during which the British and Irish Republicans fought to a stalemate, a truce was reached in July 1921. Soon thereafter, the Irish Free State was established under the terms of the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921.

(Another "Bloody Sunday" took place on January 30, 1972, when British paratroopers fired on marchers in Derry. It was this incident rather than the 1920 events that inspired the U2 song, "Sunday Bloody Sunday.")

Former Detainees Speak

The Guardian (London) has recently published transcripts of interviews with the three former Guantanamo detainees. The transcripts (and two audio files) are available here.

Nuremberg, 1945

Sixty years ago today, the International Military Tribunal convened for the first time. Twenty-four high-ranking Nazis were indicted, although only twenty-one appeared in court. (Gustav Krupp was, after a preliminary healing, excluded from the trial because of his health; Martin Bormann was tried and convicted in absentia, and Robert Ley committed suicide.) Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, and Joseph Goebbels, three of the most notorious Nazi leaders, were not included in the indictment. Each committed suicide before the war ended.

View inside the courtroom, International Military Tribunal, 1945. (Photo from the Truman Library.)

Four charges were included in the indictment: crimes against peace, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and conspiracy to commit the three foregoing crimes. The first day of the trial was taken up with the reading of the indictment. On the second day, defendants entered their pleas and the Court ruled on a motion filed by the defense on November 19.

The preliminary motion of the defense argued, inter alia, that certain charges, including the charge of crimes against peace, constituted ex post facto law. The motion was rejected by the Court.

Judgments in the trials were pronounced by the Court on October 1, 1946. Twelve defendants were sentenced to death, three were acquitted, and the remainder were given prison sentences of varying lengths.

Eleven of the twelve sentenced to death were hanged on October 17, 1946. Hermann Goering escaped hanging by committing suicide. The bodies of the twelve were cremated--at Dachau--and, to discourage the establishment of shrines, their ashes were scattered in the Isar River.

For additional information on the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, see these sites:

• The Nuremberg Trials and Their Legacy (USHMM)
• Nuremberg Trials Project (Harvard University Law School)
• The Avalon Project: The Nuremberg War Crimes Trials (Yale Law School)
• Famous World Trials: Nuremberg Trials, 1945-1949 (UMKC School of Law)

Congressman Murtha's Speech

Congressman John Murtha (D-PA), a Vietnam War veteran who served thirty-seven years in the Marine Corps, today called for the United States to pull out of Iraq. He's not the first to do so, but he may be the first member of Congress with a strong pro-defense record to do so. He's certainly the first in that category to call for an immediate withdrawal.

Here are portions of Congressman Murtha's speech:

The war in Iraq is not going as advertised. It is a flawed policy wrapped in illusion. The American public is way ahead of us. The United States and coalition troops have done all they can in Iraq, but it is time for a change in direction. Our military is suffering. The future of our country is at risk. We can not continue on the present course. It is evident that continued military action in Iraq is not in the best interest of the United States of America, the Iraqi people or the Persian Gulf Region.

. . .

Our military has been fighting a war in Iraq for over two and a half years. Our military has accomplished its mission and done its duty. Our military captured Saddam Hussein, and captured or killed his closest associates. But the war continues to intensify. Deaths and injuries are growing, with over 2,079 confirmed American deaths. Over 15,500 have been seriously injured and it is estimated that over 50,000 will suffer from battle fatigue. There have been reports of at least 30,000 Iraqi civilian deaths.

. . .

Our troops have become the primary target of the insurgency. They are united against U.S. forces and we have become a catalyst for violence. U.S. troops are the common enemy of the Sunnis, Saddamists and foreign jihadists. I believe with a U.S. troop redeployment, the Iraqi security forces will be incentivized to take control. A poll recently conducted shows that over 80% of Iraqis are strongly opposed to the presence of coalition troops, and about 45% of the Iraqi population believe attacks against American troops are justified. I believe we need to turn Iraq over to the Iraqis.

. . .

Our military has done everything that has been asked of them, the U.S. can not accomplish anything further in Iraq militarily. IT IS TIME TO BRING THEM HOME.

Asked by reporters about a recent speech by Vice President Cheney that condemned Bush Administration critics, Mr. Murtha said, "I like guys who've never been there that criticize us who've been there. I like that. I like guys who got five deferments and never been there and send people to war and then don't like to hear suggestions about what needs to be done."

The distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania gets it.

"A Bumbled Foreign Policy"

"We're seeing a backlash against a bumbled foreign policy." So said Stephen Van Evera of MIT in response to the news that Americans are becoming more isolationist in their views. I would have used the term "bungled"--or even "mangled"--to describe U.S. foreign policy at present, but "bumbled" (combining "bungled" and "stumbled") works well enough.

But I digress, even before getting started.

The New York Times reports today on a Pew Research Center study of elite and general public attitudes regarding foreign policy issues. Summarizing the report, the Times article states, "The survey, conducted this fall and released today, found a revival of isolationist feelings among the public similar to the sentiment that followed the Vietnam War in the 1970's and the end of the Cold War in the 1990's."

The following chart shows the change over the past forty years in the number of Americans saying the country should "mind its own business."

Among the additional findings of the study are these:

• "Majorities in most groups of influentials say the U.S. should join the International Criminal Court. But military leaders are a notable exception--a narrow majority opposes the U.S. joining the international court."
• "Favorable opinions of the United Nations, which had declined in recent years, have fallen still further. Only about half of Americans (48%) now express a positive opinion of the U.N., down from 77% four years ago."
• "As to public perceptions of the U.S. global image, two-thirds of Americans (66%) say that the U.S. is less respected than in the past. When asked about possible reasons for global discontent with the U.S., overwhelming percentages of Americans (71%) and opinion leaders (87%) cite the war in Iraq as a major factor."
• "The public, on balance, believes cases of U.S. prisoner mistreatment in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay were mostly the result of misconduct by American soldiers rather than the consequence of official policies. Opinion leaders are divided, with solid majorities in five of eight groups saying that the prison abuse scandal was the result of official policies."

Each of these points deserves some analysis and commentary, which I hope to provide when I have a bit more time--in a year or two. Meanwhile, take a look at the report.

Senator Hagel on Dissent

Yesterday, Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) gave a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C. on "U.S. Foreign Policy and the Middle East." While the entire speech is well worth reading, I want to highlight a brief passage that deals with criticism of the Bush Administration's policy in Iraq. Coming from a conservative senator from the President's own party, it strikes me as a particularly important statement.

The Bush Administration must understand that each American has a right to question our policies in Iraq and should not be demonized for disagreeing with them. Suggesting that to challenge or criticize policy is undermining and hurting our troops is not democracy nor what this country has stood for, for over 200 years. The Democrats have an obligation to challenge in a serious and responsible manner, offering solutions and alternatives to the Administration's policies.

Vietnam was a national tragedy partly because Members of Congress failed their country, remained silent and lacked the courage to challenge the Administrations in power until it was too late. Some of us who went through that nightmare have an obligation to the 58,000 Americans who died in Vietnam to not let that happen again. To question your government is not unpatriotic--to not question your government is unpatriotic. America owes its men and women in uniform a policy worthy of their sacrifices.

"To question your government is not unpatriotic."

Don't forget it.

Spreading Like Cancer

The New York Times reports today on new allegations of torture in Iraq, perpetrated this time not by Americans but by some of those we helped bring to power.

Iraq's government said Tuesday that it had ordered an urgent investigation of allegations that many of the 173 detainees American troops discovered over the weekend in the basement of an Interior Ministry building in a Baghdad suburb had been tortured by their Iraqi captors. A senior Iraqi official who visited the detainees said two appeared paralyzed and others had some of the skin peeled off their bodies by their abusers.

U.S. officials issued a disingenuous response:

A joint statement by the American Embassy and the United States military ommand called the situation "totally unacceptable" and said American officials "agree with Iraq's leaders that mistreatment of detainees will not be tolerated."

The American statement apparently omitted the words "by anyone other than us."

The Polls: Americans on Torture

It appears that a majority of Americans are consequentialists when it comes to torture. Recent poll results on the subject are located here. (Scroll down just past the CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll questions.)

"Wondering If It Could Be Real"

Sherzad Khalid, an Iraqi businessman who was subjected to abuse by his American captors in July 2003, said, "I was wondering if it could be real that the American army was acting this way." His friend, Thahe Sabber, also captured and abused by American troops, said, "They just wanted to humiliate us in any shape or form they could. . . . I wish I knew why. I was sure, however, that their actions were not the same as the values and morals of the American people."

Read their story--and Jeanne's thoughtful take on it--at Body and Soul.

Something for Yoo to Think About

Philippe Sands, who spoke at Pepperdine's School of Law two weeks ago, published a piece in yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle that warns John Yoo, David Addington, and others who have offered bad legal advice regarding torture about the risks of traveling to countries that take the Convention Against Torture more seriously than the Bush Administration does. It is well worth reading.

The alternative to participation in the International Criminal Court may not be the impunity for Americans sought by the Bush Administration; it may instead be justice in the courts of other countries.

Why Habeas Corpus Matters

This, from today's Washington Post, is essential reading.

IR Theory and Terrorism

The field of International Relations takes a hit from Kevin Drum at Washington Monthly. He quotes Abu Aardvark's contention that IR scholars have given surprisingly little attention to terrorism since 9/11. I confess that I don't devote large chunks of time to terrorism in my introductory IR course, but much of what I cover relates to the conditions under which transnational terrorism thrives. Discussions of failed states, transnational criminal organizations, ethnic conflict and intrastate war, and (during a recent discussion of international ethics) the problem of "blowback" all terrorism or the conditions conducive to its use. Still, I think that Abu Aardvark's focus on six particularly theoretical journals may suggest an idealized notion of how theory develops. That, however, is a long and boring topic that I will avoid for now.

Take a look at Kevin Drum's post, the Abu Aardvark post that inspired it, and then (if you're really interested in this topic) you can read my comment, which I'll cut and paste below to save you from having to scroll through the hundreds of comments that Kevin Drum gets.

I'm jumping into this conversation very late, but with both cheers and jeers for IR (since I teach the subject). First, IR has indeed been very state-centered since it got its start as a separate, identifiable discipline in the aftermath of World War I. (Incidentally, ever since Jeremy Bentham's comments about international law, the term international has been used to mean interstate. Likewise, the phrase "national security" has almost invariably meant "state security.") During the Cold War, state-centered analyses dominated--arguably for good reason since the big threat was a war like most of the other wars since 1648, only with nuclear weapons thrown into the mix. But, for many of us in the discipline, our failure prior to 1990 to see much beyond states (and the system they operate within) is a source of embarrassment.

The Vietnam War (and a host of other intrastate conflicts) helped some in the discipline to understand that there were important things happening in the shadows beyond the spotlight shining on U.S.-Soviet relations. But only with the end of the Cold War were IR theorists compelled to begin looking seriously at non-state actors. Curiously, some of the traditionalists argued that the post-Cold War focus on non-state actors was more about trying to preserve some relevance (and some jobs) than about a sincere effort to rethink the discipline.

Today, within the sub-field of security studies (to take a particularly relevant case), there are scholars writing about disease and security (and not just since the discoveries of SARS and avian influenza), transnational criminal organizations and security ("drugs and thugs"), environmental problems and security, and, of course, religious fanaticism and security. (Shameless self-promotion, but all of this is surveyed in a book being published next month entitled Seeking Security in an Insecure World.) Scholars generally recognize today that a lot of the most important stuff happening in the world today--both for good and for ill--has very little to do with the foreign and defense ministries of the world's great powers. And that recognition existed well before 9/11.

Those who didn't recognize the rising importance of non-state actors were, in many cases, committed ideologically to traditional ways of viewing international politics. Consider Richard Perle's words in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks: "This could not have been done without help of one or more governments. . . . Someone taught these suicide bombers how to fly large airplanes. I don't think that can be done without the assistance of large governments. You don't walk in off the street and learn how to fly a Boeing 767." (WaPo, 9/12/01)

Having said all of this, it is fair to ask whether IR can retain any coherence as a discipline if it moves from the study of politics among nations (to use the title of Hans Morgenthau's seminal work) to politics among nations, terrorist organizations, drug traffickers, pirates (they're making a comeback in the Indian Ocean), NGOs, international organizations, multinational corporations, influential persons from the pope to Bono, and who knows what else. Some of what those of us in IR are criticized for not knowing probably belongs in comparative politics or sociology or public health or any of a dozen other disciplines. But most of us wish we knew that stuff anyway. And the best students of IR do seem to know a lot about everything.

In Flanders Fields

Veterans' Day. . . . Armistice Day. . . . Remembrance Day.

By whatever name it goes from country to country, today is an appropriate time to post what was almost certainly the most popular poem to come out of the First World War. Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, a Canadian doctor who served the British Empire in both the Boer War and World War I, published "In Flanders Fields" in December 1915. The poem memorializes those who died fighting in the Second Battle of Ypres of April 1915, a battle in which Germany used chlorine gas with deadly effect.

Soon after it appeared, the poem was used on military recruiting posters and in war bond campaigns. Later, after it had become apparent just how costly the Great War had been, "In Flanders Fields" would be read as an anti-war anthem.

McCrae himself died before the war was over, on January 28, 1918. As with so many other casualties of the war, it was disease, not gas or gunshot or shrapnel, that killed him. Dr. McCrae died from complications of pneumonia and meningitis.

In Flanders Fields
John McCrae

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch, be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Armistice Day

It is now known as "Veterans' Day" in the United States, but originally November 11th was "Armistice Day." It marked the end of the Great War, or what, with the benefit of tragic hindsight, came to be called the First World War.

On April 6, 1917, the United States entered a European war that had long been stalemated along the Western Front. In the Senate, the vote for war was 82-6; in the House, 373-50.

At first, the American contribution was limited primarily to naval forces and war materiel. Before military conscription began in the summer of 1917, the United States' Army, with only 130,000 men, was smaller than Belgium's. Before the war ended, however, the United States would have 4.8 million men under arms.

It was not only the American military contribution that turned the tide in the war. On January 8, 1918, President Wilson announced his Fourteen Points, a set of war aims designed to convince the German people, if not their stubborn leadership, that peace might be more palatable than a continuation of the war and its privations. That the Fourteen Points were generally acceptable to Germany was demonstrated by a "prearmistice agreement" under which the Germans, the Allies, and the Americans all agreed to make the Fourteen Points the foundation for the ultimate peace agreement.

On September 29, 1918, General Ludendorff informed the German government that Germany's military situation in northern France had become untenable. The German government communicated its desire for peace to President Wilson, but Wilson insisted that he would only negotiate with a democratic Germany. When his military withdrew its support, Kaiser Wilhelm was forced to abdicate the throne and Wilson's condition for a democratic negotiating partner was satisfied. Meanwhile, to pressure the Allies to make peace on the basis of the Fourteen Points, Colonel House hinted that the United States might negotiate a separate peace with Germany. With modest reservations regarding the Fourteen Points, the Allies agreed to accept Germany's overtures for peace.

On November 8, Germany sent its representatives to northern France. There, in the Compiegne Forest aboard Marshal Foch's railroad car, an armistice was signed at 5:00 a.m. on November 11. It took effect six hours later.

The guns fell silent along the Western Front on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918.