Nation on the Verge

Ungovernable

2011-07-30T13:42:00.001-04:00

It is the essence of a constitutional democracy that all viewpoints are invited and considered. Representing hundreds of millions of individuals, it is expected, indeed required, that those persons elected to represent, consider not only their insular interests, but the interests of the population as a whole. Compromise, in this context, is a virtue and a requirement of a successful democracy, not a sign of weakness. Somewhere along the way, this concept not only lost it's central role but became anathema to the role government is to play in our lives. Indeed, in many Congressional districts, the word itself has become tantamount to a four-letter word to be hurled with the same vile contempt that many (often in these same districts) use to describe those ascribing to a progressive political view. Indeed, in many of these districts and the States in which they are situated, even the mention of a willingness to listen and consider an opposing view has garnered threats of political retaliation that all but guarantees months of abuse ultimately culminating in an electoral loss to someone more "pure" in his/her thinking.

Such is the world we now live in, brought to you by those who created the Tea Party and by their followers. So long as this extremist world view continues to dominate our political landscape (and there is no sign that this political terrorism will cease anytime soon) there is simply no chance that the principles underlying the Constitution...a vigorous democracy where all viewpoints are invited in order to arrive at a governing decision that provides for the well-being of the entire population...can and will be realized.

Bin Laden Getting the Last Laugh?

2011-07-30T13:18:00.001-04:00

Say what you will about Bill Clinton's presidency, he managed to leave us with a budget surplus so flush that it was expected that by 2009 we would have no debt whatsoever. Since then, and more particularly as a result of George Bush' election and the attacks of September 11, 2001, that surplus has not only been squandered, but we have been driven to a multiple-trillion dollar deficit that has left us virtually unable to pay to run the government without help from the Chinese and Saudis. It is a popular notion, driven by Tea Party extremists (and their lackies in the more mainstream Republican party) that our current economic and political morass is the result of unrestrained spending by Barack Obama. Nothing could be further from the truth. Putting aside recriminations about Bush' negligence in committing us to an unnecessary war in Iraq, that venture, waged in purported response to the attacks of September 11th, started us on this inexorable march toward economic and political ruin that now consumes the nation. Viewing the surplus as a blank check, the Bush administration poured trillions of dollars into the Iraq war leaving virtually nothing left of the Clinton surplus. Compounding the erosion of our national savings, Bush, riding an early wave of popularity resulting from his "mission accomplished" proclamation, cut off revenues that would have offset the economic erosion he unleashed by enacting severe tax cuts for the wealthiest individuals and the largest corporations and then, of course, doing away with whatever modicum of regulation of the financial markets remained.

The current conflagration, unleashed by Tea Party Republicans, promises to dominate the discussion for months to come. It's roots, however, can clearly be traced to Bin Laden's vision of a smoldering World Trade Center. Congratulations to the Tea Party and it's followers. Even in death, you continue to give life to Bin Laden's goal of bringing the west, and in particular, the United States, to economic ruin. Osama Bin Laden would proud.

Osama Bin Laden is dead

2011-05-03T10:56:00.001-04:00

This is becoming rather unseemly, don't you think? It's one thing for the President to announce that a Special Ops mission successfully - and finally - located Bin Laden and killed him. It's a whole other matter to be dancing in the streets, wildly celebrating a death no matter how vile the decedent. Not even the guardsmen protecting the Wicked Witch of the West continued to celebrate after handing Dorothy the witch's broom. Are we not better than this? Should we not to be measured as a society by how we respond to the killing of another human being? Is not the out-pouring taking place throughout the country precisely the type of public rejoicing often seen in the Arab world in response to a successful attack on western or Israeli interests that we are so quick to condemn? On some levels, I suppose, the nation's exuberance may be the result of a perceived unburdening of the chains thrust about our collective souls as a result of the events of September 11, but even were that the case, that exuberance has to be tempered with some degree of understanding that gaining revenge for a despicable act does not give license to relieving us of our moral imperatives.

Obama's Long-Form Birth Certificate Released - NYTimes.com

2011-04-27T12:34:00.000-04:00

Why on God's green earth would Barack Obama accede to the utter stupidity surrounding his birth by releasing his birth certificate? Does he really believe that anyone who is stupid enough to buy into the conspiracy theories surrounding his birth would be satisfied by his releasing this information? The only thing that the release of this document has done is make Donald Trump actually look important. Instead of keeping Trump and the lunatic fringe at arm's length and simply paint them as detached from reality and not interested in the Country's well-being and the difficult issues we are facing. the release of the document actually legitimizes the discussion. To see the Times' coverage of the release click on the link that follows. Obama's Long-Form Birth Certificate Released - NYTimes.com.

This is a real head scratcher. Nothing gained but much lost.

Today's Commentary

2011-03-27T11:36:00.004-04:00

The Middle East

While the uprisings which have swept across the region suggest a yearning by the populace for a real voice in their governance I can't help but wonder who or what is at the root of the discontent. One of the major failings of the war in Iraq was its having created an open invitation to Islamists to spread fundamentalism from Pakistan to Iran; that by removing Hussain we remove es the most viable obstacle to the spread of fundamentalist Islam through the region That invitation continues to be accepted wear speak.

Certainly a yearning for true democracy in the affected countries can only be a good thing for the region and our national interests. If, however, the movement which has swept across the region, swept Mubarek out office and threatens Assad in Syria and Abdullah in Jordan is simply a cover for a radical Muslim agenda then we are looking at a major shift of power that threatens our interests and, of course, threatens the very existence of Israel. Indeed even those espousing democratic ideals have already expressed their intention to dismantle whatever peace has been negotiated by the current government.

Case in point is the current engagement in Lybia. While ground forces have not been committed we and the rest of NATO have committed to suppressing Gaddafi's forces for supposed humanitarian reasons and while that cause may be well-intentioned the real and most direct beneficiaries are the so-called "rebels" who have been offering organized resistance to government forces. The problem, of course, threatens is that no one seems to know precisely who the revelation are or what their ultimate intentions are. Given that the bulk of the fighting has taken place in the region which produced the largest number of foreign fighters at work in Iraq it is likely that these rebels are fervently anti-US and anti-west.

It is a delicate balance facing Obama but through supposedly good intentions we may be very well be aiding the very cause which continues to threaten our interests.

Japan

As the Japanese people continue to struggle to recover from the earthquake and its aftermath, the response of this country to the disaster cannot go without comment. No, I'm not talking about the usual out-pouring of support, the donations to the often-suspect Red Cross, the albums cut so proceeds can be donated...Rather, I'm the the fact that so many people, famous or not, have seen fit to use this evolving disaster as the butt of their jokes. Whether its the idiot valley girl from UCLA who thought this the perfect time to unload her racist anger toward the Asian population and, in particular, the Japanese population in Los Angeles to Gilbert Gottfried to other twitter celebrities who have crawled out of the wood-work, like someone named, "50 Cent" to a Haley Barbour staffer to a writer for "Family Guy". What is it about dead Japanese bodies that spurs one to comic commentary or racist rant? None of these morons was alive in 1941 and, I dare say, knows anything about the Japanese role in World War II so what is it? I don't recall jokes about the disaster in Thailand and certainly not an unkind word was said about the Haitians who suffered through a disaster which continues to consume their lives. Certainly we can do better. Certainly we can aspire to a higher standard than that espoused by bottom feeders like Rush Limbaugh who takes joy in mocking the pain of others.

Thank You, Rush

2009-09-05T11:58:00.001-04:00

Over the past several months, since President Obama's election, every time email arrived from MoveOn, PFAW or the Obama organization itself, asking for contributions to keep up the fight, I passively read and then deleted them without response. After months and months of increasing tension, worry and angst over the outcome of the 2008 election, I, and I suspect many people, were exhausted. Our goals had been met, the President, while seemingly everywhere and applying a full-court press to policy, seemed to have momentum and widespread support as he confronted the political and economic morass he had inherited. Things seemed so under control that there was simply no need to keep contributing. After all, with batteries re-charged there would be plenty of time to give anew as the mid-term elections and 2012 presidential elections approached.

Somewhere along the way, things changed and changed drastically. The last few months have revealed the very worst of what we are as a nation and what we can be. Having lost control of the discussion, seeing themselves marginalized and their base dwindling, hate-filled demagogues like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Sarah Palin, the "birther" movement, have decided that this is the time to make their stand and, to that end, have unleashed their minions on what otherwise should have been an intelligent, thoughtful discussion of health care and how to ensure no one is left unprotected. One can only imagine the self-satisfaction these "Americans" draw from watching a wheelchair-bound woman being shouted down and threatened for simply stating aloud that she is afraid of losing her insurance. One can only envision the shrug of shoulders when one of their "birther" minions kills a guard at the Holocaust museum to garner attention for his and their hatred of Barack Obama and all that he represents.

So while we are besieged with reports that Obama's speech to school-children telling them to work hard, stay in school and listen to their elders -- certainly all radical ideas -- will not be carried in schools throughout the country because extremist demagogues have complained of its socialist content, I can only respond with hardy congratulations and a big thank you to Rush, Sean, Sarah, Betsy and the "birther" boys. Thank you for reawakening the grass roots organization which pushed you to the brink of extinction. The next push will hopefully be the last. Enjoy the ride.

Way to Go, George…Way to Go

2006-11-21T11:56:00.000-05:00

Not a single shot has or ever will be fired, yet we have finally and unwittingly already lost a war with Iran that we have been waging since 1979. Throughout that time, the foreign policies of Messers Reagan, Bush and Clinton have been one of containment, at least maintaining a sort of status quo with the Iranians that has seen our relations with its government ebb and flow with the ascension and decline of both moderate and radical mullahs in Tehran and Qum. The one constant that marked each administration’s approach to Iran was a wary diplomacy that understood the need to maintain a dialog with Tehran without losing sight of the undercurrent of hatred and resentment amongst Iran’s more radical mullahs toward the West that drove much of that country’s foreign policy. At its worst, the relationship (since the end of the hostage crisis in 1980) was an ostensible standoff. Never…until now…was that policy dominated by one country or the other.

As I have suggested on numerous occasions, the blueprint for the destruction which has been wrought by the Bush administration is found in the September 2000 Project for a New Century white paper, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century” which was co-authored by a number of persons who were or are members of the Bush team including Rumsfeld and Cheney surrogates, Paul Wolfowitz and I. Lewis Libby. It is in that paper that the triumvirate of Iraq, Iran and North Korea are grouped together and identified as the object of our scorn and later branded by Bush as the “axis of evil” in his 2002 State of the Union address. It is in that paper that the framework for the war which was launched in March 2003 was laid out in some detail, positing the need for the United States to establish forward military positions in the Persian Gulf in order to help foster a western-style democracy and to protect U.S. (oil) interests in the region. Positing that the United States could not permit a few small “rogue” powers with arsenals of ballistic and nuclear weapons to threaten our security, its authors wrote, “We cannot allow North Korea, Iran, Iraq…to undermine American leadership, intimidate American allies or threaten the American homeland itself. The blessings of the American peace, purchased at fearful cost and a century of effort, should not be so trivially squandered.”

Well, the implementation of the PNAC strategy has succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of its authors. I would suggest, however, that those wildest dreams are waking nightmares not only for the strategy’s neocon authors, but for this nation and its allies. Indeed, what we are witnessing is the unfolding of the most poorly conceived and dangerous foreign policy in my lifetime…one that has not only failed to secure the peace for the United States and its allies, but succeeded in reducing the United States to a bit player in the drama that is unfolding in the Persian Gulf and across Asia.

With war drums beating in the background, flushed with memories of quick victory in Kuwait and Iraq in 1992 and in Afghanistan in 2001, Mr. Bush, time and again, took to the podium to describe Iran as a member of the evil triumvirate, to describe the threat posed by Iran to American interests and to make clear that he and his government would never deal with Iran so long as it supported and fomented terrorism in the Gulf region, the Middle East and throughout the world. Unwittingly or otherwise, these speeches served to galvanize the Iranian electorate (who historically are very heterogeneous and not overly enthusiastic about the teachings of their radical mullahs) and made possible the election of the very conservative, very radical and quintessentially anti-American, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the Presidency of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Unfortunately no one in the Bush administration seems to have recognized the threat that this little man posed to Western interests. Indeed, it is still not clear whether anyone in this administration fully understands how this megalomaniac has turned the tables and usurped control over western and Persian policy in the region and policy through much of Asia and the world. In a word (or two), Mr. Ahmadinejad has and continues to play Mr. Bush like an old, finely tuned Gibson twelve string.

Understanding the western and Asian (particularly Chinese) dependence upon oil, Ahmadinejad has pressed his insistence upon developing Iran’s nuclear capability, playing the United States and Western Europe against Russia and China, with the expectation that a consensus could and would not be reached concerning sanctions that might interfere with Iran’s nuclear aspirations. When things began to look bleak for Iran (that is, that the Russians and Chinese began to indicate their willingness to support some sanctions and controls of and toward Iran), Iran unleashed Hezbollah to begin its assault on Northern Israel. Though, I suspect, neither Iran nor Hezbollah fully expected the violence and duration of the Israeli response (itself acting as a surrogate for the United States in the region), the point was nevertheless made: if you push or threaten us with sanctions and possible military action, Mr. Ahmadinejad says, we can very easily instigate violence any where and at any time of our choosing. The tactic worked. There was little talk of sanctions while the world’s attention was drawn to Lebanon during the summer of 2006 and little talk of sanctions since.

Moreover, with the Bush administration having been repudiated by the American electorate and unable to fashion a strategy for extricating ourselves from the quagmire it created in Iraq, the administration is now anxiously awaiting the report of James Baker’s, “Iraq Study Group” which will strongly recommend that the United States seek the assistance of Iran and Syria in trying to bring the sectarian violence under control in order to allow us to begin to withdraw our forces from the country.

What a mess Mr. Bush has made of our policies and standing. After years of criticism and condescension, how dangerous…how degrading…how embarrassing for this nation to now try to repair its relations with Iran by asking it to help us put out a conflagration that we started but cannot stop. Would it certainly have been better for all concerned to have continued the dialog (albeit an arms length one) with Iran that had been started by the three presidents who had preceded Mr. Bush in the White House so as to not lose the policy stand-off that has prevailed since Mr. Reagan took office in January 1981?

Instead, because of this nearly catastrophic policy to isolate rather than contain Iran, we now find ourselves in the extraordinary position of asking our avowed enemy (at least in the eyes of the PNAC neocons) to help us get out of Iraq. The consequences of our going, hat in hand, to Mr. Ahmadinejad under these circumstances, will be far-reaching, to say the least and unquestionably not in concert with our security interests at home and abroad. With question, the issue of Iran’s nuclear aspirations will be put on hold for the foreseeable future giving Iran the time it needs to complete its nuclear (weapons?) program. given that Mr. Ahmadinejad will certainly be an even more significant player on the world stage if and when the issue of Iran’s nuclear program is next before the United Nations, the likelihood of the UN or anyone else agreeing upon and enforcing a strategy for limiting Iran’s aspirations is likely nil.

Moreover, as I’ve written in the past, the United States’ ill-conceived strategy for removing Hussein and inserting a Western style democracy has not only failed but resulted in the election of a Shiite-led government that has concluded that its best chance for success lies with establishing relations --- nay, an alliance --- with the Shiite-based governments in Iran and Syria. Rather than an ally in the so-called, “war on terror”, we have likely given voice to a government that has and will find more in common with other Shiite-based led governments. Indeed, to avoid appearing as though they’re involvement in the region is dependent upon US policy and the recommendations of the Baker report, Iran has invited both the Maliki and Assad governments to meet with him in Tehran this weekend to “discuss” how to bring the sectarian violence to an end. Given that both Iran and Syria have both supported and fomented that violence through the insertion of weapons and foreign-born fighters into Iraq, bringing the violence to an end, though not a simple task, is likely to meet with far more success than the United States “stay-the-course” strategy of recent years. Further still, Syria and Iraq, this morning, announced a resumption of diplomatic ties that had been severed more than twenty years ago.

These formalized ties, as I’ve argued, will create a swath of anti-West/anti-American/anti-Israeli governments from the West Bank to Afghanistan making the PNAC strategy for global domination by nation building a reality. What our place will be in this burgeoning reality remains to be seen. It will, under any circumstance, be a messy and complicated reality that Mr. Bush will leave behind when his reign comes to an end in 2008 making the choice of his successor a messy and complicated one…and a critical one.

We Must Be Stupid, Stupid, Stupid

2006-11-15T01:11:00.000-05:00

Watching Don Rumsfeld deliver his reproachment to the American people last week in the White House, I was reminded of Dot Black’s testimony before John Grisham’s fictional Tennessee jury in “The Rainmaker”. Reading a letter from the insurance company which was denying her claim on behalf of her dying son, the company’s claims adjuster scolded Mrs. Black for her simply not understanding the reasons for the repeated denial with the reproachful, “You must be stupid, stupid, stupid”.

In case any of you missed Rumsfeld’s performance, you can still catch it on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NTEDfAHo2U. In a rather disjointed, short-but-rambling comment, the Secretary essentially blamed the American public for his dismissal/resignation because the public lacked the intelligence to understand exactly what it is that we’re doing in Iraq:

These six years…its been quite a time….The great respect I have for your leadership, Mr. President in this little understood, unfamiliar war, the first war of the twenty first century. Uh, it is not well known, it is not well understood, it is complex for people to comprehend and I know with certainty that over time the contributions you’ve made will be recorded by history.”

Complex for us to understand? Explain it to us, Don, please help us to understand. Explain to us which part we don’t understand and haven’t understood. If you’re referring to your decision to fight the war with too few troops to actually secure the peace, you’re absolutely right. We don’t get it. If you’re talking about so over-extending our military as to render us incapable of even responding adequately to domestic crises, you’re right again. We don’t get that either. If, instead, you’re referring to your failure to provide the troops with adequate armor from the outset with its antecedent wasting of our best and brightest, right again, Don…we don’t understand that one, either nor did we understand your scolding of an enlisted man when he had the audacity to ask about the lack of body armor. Didn’t get that one though it did make for good theater. I know…it must be your decision back in 2003 to cut the pay of the service men and women serving in Iraq and to cut benefits due to the families of those troops…things like health benefits and death benefits at the very moment that your troops were being shredded day in and day out by IDEs and sniper fire. Right again, Don. We never understood that one, either.

This woeful litany of public ignorance is too long for our purposes here. Suffice it to say, Don, you are right. We don’t get any of it…way too complex.

Putting aside the fact that we shouldn’t have been in Iraq in the first instance, once committed to going forward am I to understand that it is we, the People, who do not now understand that the entire strategy for prosecuting this outrage was ill-conceived and so poorly executed as to raise the question of criminal conduct on the part of you, Mr. Rumsfeld and the President for whom you expressed such great respect last week.

In truth, Mr. Secretary, the only thing that we did fail to understand in time is that your incompetence, your arrogance and your hubris would take such a human, political and economic toll.

Indeed, Mr. Rumsfeld, you must be stupid, stupid, stupid.

Good riddance.

The Rats Deserting the Ship?

2006-11-04T19:16:00.000-05:00

Just how bad have things gotten for George W? Now Richard Perle and Ken Adelman are going public with their strenuous criticism of the administration’s handling of Iraq. You remember Richard and Ken, don’t you? Perle was the author of the January 26,1998 PNAC letter to President Clinton castigating the President for failing to take a harder line with Hussein and later a principle author of the Rumseld strategy for deposing Hussein and inserting a democratically-elected government in Baghdad.

Ken Adelman not only joined Perle, Rumseld, Cheney and Scooter Libby as signatories to the PNAC mission, but joined the likes of Joe Lieberman and other conservative luminaries in revitalizing the Committee on the Present Danger (see my prior posting, “Don and Dick’s Excellent Adventure” and "What's Driving Senator Joe?"). Still don’t remember Ken? He was the author of the February 2002 Washington Post op ed piece which vigorously took issue with those who raised alarm about the Rumsfeld plan for invading and occupying Iraq (the small matter of troop numbers, for example) with the dismissive retort: “I believe that demolishing Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk … This President Bush does not need to amass rinky-dink nations as ‘coalition partners' to convince the Washington establishment that we're right”. Mr. Adelman was not simply commenting in the abstract. He was, in fact, a participant with Perle, Wolfowitz, Rumseld and Cheney in the development of the plan to “liberate” Iraq.

Now both Perle and Adelman say that dysfunction within the the Bush administration has rendered the Iraq policy a disaster. In an upcoming interview in Vanity Fair, Perle tells the interviewer that he would have considered other strategies for dealing with Hussein had he known how poorly Bush et al were to handle the effort to change the Hussein regime. Moreover, Perle lays blame squarely on Bush’s shoulders saying that W has to be held responsible for failing to understand and recognize that the strategy was poorly conceived and poorly executed. For his part, Adelman concedes that his “cakewalk” commentary was mistaken.

Said Adelman: "They turned out to be among the most incompetent teams in the postwar era," he said. "Not only did each of them, individually, have enormous flaws, but together they were deadly, dysfunctional."

Do you think they make life vests small enough for these rats and will there be enough to go around for all those to follow? Inquiring minds want to know.

Will Your Vote Count?

2006-10-26T21:03:00.000-04:00

The polls, the pundits and the prognosticators tell us that the public’s anger about the war in Iraq and the country’s direction as a whole will turn the Republicans out of office from both the House and Senate and vote in a Democratic majority in both houses. But lest those yearning for change place those chickens before the cart (a joke, son) and contemplate a world where there exists a true check and balance to Bush policies which have wrought so much carnage and incompetence at home and abroad, understand that the election and its outcome are not a foregone conclusion. It is not that the polls, the pundits et al are wrong. Indeed, I truly believe that the public is yearning for a change in Washington and will vote for that change. It is that because the mechanism of the election is so fraught with potential for abuse and manipulation as to raise the real possibility that its outcome, regardless of how the votes are cast, will produce a result that will likely ensure that there remains a Republican majority in both houses.

The problem lies with the electronic voting machines which will see their wide-spread use for the first time in the 2006 mid-term elections. You need look no further than Robert Kennedy Jr.’s brilliant article in the October 12, 2006 edition of Rolling Stone Magazine (http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/11717105/robert_f_kennedy_jr_
will_the_next_election_be_hacked) to begin to understand the nature of the problem and extent of its threat to our democracy. The problem, as he writes, is that we, the citizens of the United States, have vested nearly sole responsibility for counting our votes to four private concerns, Diebold, Election Systems & Software, Sequoia Voting Systems and Hart InterCivic , which currently count eighty-six percent of all the ballots cast in the United States. Of these four companies, three – Diebold, ES&S, Hart InterCivics and Diebold, have very close ties to the Republican Party. Chuck Hagel, for example, was the Chairman of ES&S before becoming the senior senator from Nebraska; Tom Hicks, to whom George Bush sold his controlling interest in the Texas Rangers baseball team, is a principal investor in Hart InterCivics. As for Diebold, consider that when Bush signed into law the “Help America Vote Act” (HAVA) in 2002, committing $3.9 billion to upgrade the nation’s voting system, the Act’s prime sponsor was the now-infamous Bob Ney of Ohio (he of the Abramoff influence-peddling scheme and one of the first House members to plead guilty for his acceptance of Abramoff money) and that Abramoff apparently received at least $275,000 from Diebold to lobby Ney and others for the voting machine contracts which were to be let under the HAVA mandate. Begin to see the dimensions of the problem?

The problem described by Mr. Kennedy and others involves Diebold and the other Republican-connected machine vendors embedding small software applications on the memory cards that are inserted into the voting machines to tally election results. Those “applets” can be pre-programmed to ensure that voting favors one candidate over others by the use of complicated software-based algorithms and have already apparently affected the outcome of voting in Georgia for both Governor and Senate in 2004 with Republicans prevailing in both races when their Democratic opponents, according to polls taken on or just before Election Day, found both Republican candidates trailing badly in those polls. The problem is further complicated by the failure of Diebold and the other companies to provide for a paper receipt for the vote cast in order to permit a recount in the event of machine failure.

With so much at stake this November, it does not take much imagination to expect that the Republican party will not go quietly into the night as the populace demonstrates its anger in the polling booth. It and its candidates will predictably use every available resource to ensure that it and they not lose control of Congress. As the Times reported on October 19^th, Arizona, California, Georgia, Indiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania are expected to experience the most problems with the vote because of electronic voting technology whether those problems are the result of manipulation or a simple failure to function as intended. Research finds Diebold machines turning up in vast numbers in all of these states raising the specter of voting irregularities in each jurisdiction that may raise serious concern about the outcome of the vote totals. At the very least, one can expect that if the outcomes do not match the results on November 7^th, the entire election process will likely not find resolution without judicial intervention and if the 2000 election has shown us anything it is that the Courts simply do not belong in the election process.

It is not an exaggeration to suggest that the very essence of our democracy is at stake. I would urge you to let Congress know that the current situation is not acceptable and requires more oversight and accountability than is currently provided.

Please go to moveon.org at http://pol.moveon.org/repairthevote/ and sign the petition asking Congress to support electoral reforms. Your vote depends upon it.

The Devil You Know...

2006-07-16T15:08:00.000-04:00

In addition to all of the justified and justifiable reasons why this country should never have entered Iraq or perhaps central to all of those reasons is that Saddam Hussein provided the world and the West, in particular, with the security that is blatantly lacking as we today face a conflagration of unmatched proportions. Sure, Hussein was a despot with dreams of asserting himself as a player on the world stage. Sure, he was a mass murderer who killed without conscience or remorse. Sure he was and is the head of a criminal enterprise intent upon gutting his own economy for personal financial gain. Sure, all of these horrific attributes are true, but Saddam Hussein was a devil we knew and understood; a big man with big dreams and aspirations but lacking the capacity to do anything more than bully his own people. In truth, Hussein posed no threat to anyone other than the Iraqis he ruled, lacking the resources and wherewithal to do anything more than draw attention to himself through his propaganda machine. What Saddam Hussein was, however, was our best protection against the spread of Islamo-terrorism in Asia and the Middle East. He was assuredly no friend of the radical Islamist. Try as Bush/Cheney might to connect Hussein with Osama Bin Laden and the attacks of September 11th, Hussein had as much use for Bin Laden and his ilk as he had for the Kurds who inhabited his northern provinces. Moreover, as a Sunni Muslim, he had and would have had no interest in aligning himself with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and likely would have viewed him with suspicion as a potential threat to the stability that he had created (albeit through terror) throughout much of Iraq. Hussein stood between Islamic radicals to his east in Iran and to his west in Syria and, with support from the west (in the form of a package of incentives that would have permitted Iraq to emerge from years of economic isolation imposed by the allies following the 1991 Gulf War), would have continued to provide a nearly impenetrable barrier to the type of regional domination by radical Islam that has pushed us toward the precipice of a global conflict.

Instead, we have and continue to bear witness to a global upheaval that is unmatched in our history. The list of failures that have come to dominate our ill-conceived venture into Iraq has become almost (quite unfortunately) clicheic. Chief among them is that Iraq predictably became a breeding and training ground for Islamo-terrorism, something that certainly never would have happened had Hussein remained. Urged on by a Bush doctrine that believed that Iraq was ready for the application of a western version of Democracy, the Iraqi people have elected a Shiite government that certainly will eventually find that its best chance for success lies with developing strong alliances with the Shiite-based governments in Iran and Syria. Regardless of the grandiose ideals which may have guided the Bush doctrine in Iraq, no one can take comfort with a Shiite government in Iraq that is likely already taking its leads from Mr. Ahmadinejad and the radical mullahs in Iran. It is likely irrelevant to the Iranians, in particular, whether Mr. al-Maliki is able to bring about a consensus among the various warring factions in Iraq and put an end to the unrelenting cycle of violence that has caused so much death and destruction throughout the country. Indeed, it may very well be that the violence is being fomented and directed from Tehran and that, in truth, the interests of both Iran and Syria are best served by chaos and not stability.

In any event, with Hussein’s removal and the events which followed and continue to unfold, the political map of the region has changed dramatically and with it, the security that so many in this country bought into by so blindly vesting in Mr. Bush et al a trust he never earned. Today radical Islamic fundamentalism enjoys control of a nearly unimpeded swath of territory that stretches from Iran’s western border with Afghanistan through Iraq and Syria to the West Bank and Gaza strip, interrupted, albeit briefly, by what remains of Israeli territory. If the Taliban are successful in resurrecting their government in Afghanistan and driving out Mr. Karzai from Kabul, this vast swath of territory will stretch all the way to Tajikstan and China. Certainly, the Chinese cannot be happy to observe Mr. Ahmadinejad and Tajik President Emomali Rakhmonov reaching bilateral agreements last January to share hydroelectric power as it puts the Iranian president on China’s western doorstep.

The effect of this spreading Islamic state is most readily apparent in the conflagration spreading through the Middle East. It is, after all, Iran (and perhaps to a lesser extent, Syria) which has struck the match which is having such an explosive effect in the region. Let no one believe it a coincidence that while Iran sought (innocently) additional time to respond to western proposals concerning its nuclear aspirations that this conflagration has taken root.

All that we observe in the region today is directly the result of arrogant, ill-advised and mis-guided decisions by Messers Bush, Cheney, Rumseld et al. We are now confronted with a devil (whether it be Mr. Ahmadinejad or all that he stands for) that we do not know...a devil that we have consistently misunderstood and under-estimated. The price of those decisions will be with us for a long time to come.

My Apologies

2006-07-16T15:03:00.000-04:00

It’s been a while since I last put fingers to keyboard to vent my spleen over the state of the world. That’s not to say that I haven’t sat with my ThinkPad considering what to say and how to say it. It’s just that for so long, the story remained the same -- Over- reaching by the Bush administration, abuse of personal freedoms, trampling on the Constitution.... Having said my piece in a series of essays during the fall and winter of last year, I found myself almost exhausted by how repititious, unrelenting and seemingly unending the story had become.

For succumbing (however briefly) to my own ennui, my profound apology.

"The Cartoon Controversy"

2006-02-11T13:22:00.000-05:00

The following is my letter to the editor of The Nation. The articles at issue can be found at www.thenation.com/doc/20060227/younge and www.thenation.com/doc/20060227/editors.

At the outset, let me say that I am an avid reader of The Nation's print and web publication and share most of the opinions offered in both media. That said, I must take issue with both Gary Younge's article and your recent editorial commentary concerning the Jyllands-Postem cartoons. Both pieces appear to not only validate to some degree the Muslim response to the Danish cartoons, but offer apology and excuse for the emotions which have prompted and promoted that response. While it is certainly true that the emotions which are giving voice to tens of thousands of Muslims throughout the world have a historical and, in some instances, legitimate basis, it is also true that this most recent demonstration of Islamic "muscle" is being driven by forces that have far more to do with politics than genuine religious belief. While it is true that the demonstrations in response to the cartoons were limited and peaceful, it is equally true that in those demonstrations, the more radical leaders of the Muslim world, most notably Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad saw in those demonstrations a platform for vitriol that has emerged from Teheran since he came to power several months ago. As has so often been the case over the past several decades, Arab leaders have seen those with legitimate concerns (i.e. the Palestinian people) as pawns to be employed and deployed throughout Europe and the Middle East (and the American media) in their never-ending war with the West to gain respect and leverage. That war, in truth, has far more to do with political and economic power than with any religious ideal that might be driving the "man in the streets" of the West Bank, Cairo, Teheran and Damascus and to ignore that reality is simply naive. It is no coincidence that this conflagration was truly ignited when Mr. Ahmadinejad and his cohorts walked out of the Organisation of the Islamic conference (OIC) held in Mecca last December. From that point on, what had been a peaceful albeit legitimately determined protest, became a tour de force, engineered by Mr. Ahmadinejad, in particular, who saw the controversy as a way of responding to and diverting attention away from the European (including Russian) and American concerns over Iran's likely intention to develop a nuclear weapon. That both Mr. Younge's article and your editorial focus upon "the causes" of the controversy without making any mention whatsoever of the complicity of Iran and other more radical elements of the Islamic political landscape is to ignore the political realities of the growing tension between the Muslim world and the West.

Opportunities Lost

2006-02-09T00:30:00.000-05:00

Every administration will face any number of domestic and international crises during the course of its tenure which will have the potential of dramatically affecting and possibly changing the course of human events. If the response is inadequate, it can have longstanding and tragic effects on our lives and the lives of our children. In the case of the current administration, its tenure has been marked by a seemingly endless litany of crises, both domestic and global, which have been mis-judged and mishandled. The first such mis-step may very well have been the government’s failure to recognize signs of an impending attack by Al Qaeda which were apparent during the summer of 2001. The latest, at least through the last week of January, was the failure…admitted by the nation’s Secretary of State…to recognize the possibility of Hamas’victory in the recently concluded Palestinian elections. That victory, unanticipated by Ms Rice and Mr. Bush, certainly poses a risk to Israel and any hope for some sense of peace and stability in the Middle East. However, the Hamas victory and its implication for that region, provides but a sidelight to the forces which have been unleashed in Iran as a result of the Bush administration’s failure to understand and anticipate the consequences of their ill-advised invasion of Iraq in March 2003; that in destabilizing Iraq, they and we were not saving, but actually destabilizing the entire region and giving license to creatures like Iran’s Ahmadinejad to gain currency not only within in his borders but throughout the Muslim world.

Like a series of dominoes, the administration’s failure to anticipate the risk we faced in the summer of 2001 has led to a series of decisions and resulting events which has spawned a shift in the fundamental intercourse between this nation and those it considers both its allies and enemies. Like those falling dominoes, the policy decisions made by Messers Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld in the aftermath of the 2001 attacks has triggered a series of crises, one set off by its predecessor, that has ultimately de-stabilized regions at risk and, in turn, the world as a whole.

They created a paper tiger, lied about the threat he posed to the United States and its allies and insisted that the only way to secure a lasting peace in the region was to invade and remove the tiger from his lair. At no time does it appear that the Bush administration understood or even considered that there would be dangerous consequences for displacing the paper tiger. Never expected or understood, for example, that our invasion of Iraq would so destabilize the region that there would be little left to govern by the time the Iraqi people fully embraced democratic principles; never understood or expected that our troops would not be greeted in the streets of Baghdad by Iraqi citizens waving American flags and offering flowers like some movie from a by-gone era; never anticipated or expected that after George stood on the deck of the Abraham Lincoln and declared victory, that the war was, in truth, only then just beginning and that rather than flowers, the Iraqi people would greet our troops with IEDs and RPGs that would take its toll with thousands of our finest horribly maimed and killed; never expected or understood that Iraq’s economy would not be up and running within weeks or months and that its failure would, in turn, lay waste to our own economy; never apparently anticipated that whatever democracy might take root in Iraq would be fundamentalist in nature and have more interest in rekindling its long dormant relationship with Iran than in furthering its relationship with the West; and, of course, never anticipated that by removing Hussein from the scene they were removing the biggest check against the true gathering storm in the region -- the developing turmoil in Iran.

Was Hussein a tyrant and a criminal? No question. Did he pose a threat to the United States and his allies? No, and, more importantly, as a Sunni, he had as much in common with fundamental Islam as Ariel Sharon. He was no friend of Osama Bin Laden and certainly would not have looked favorably upon an Islamic fundamentalist like the newly-elected President of Iran. Indeed, he, as we, would have looked upon Mr. Ahmadinejad as a threat to a then-stable (albeit hostile) Iraq because his vitriolic rhetoric would certainly have stirred the passions of the repressed Iraqi Shiite majority and urged them to insurrection. With Hussein removed, however, Iraq’s first foray into genuine democracy has produced a Shiite-dominated government that is already establishing close ties to the Ahmadinejad regime.

As for the Iranian tyrant, as Newsweek reports in its current issue, Ahmadinejad is someone who harkens his people back not only to the revolution which overthrew the Shah, but to their long fight with Hussein’s army. He and they are a people who feel themselves entitled to mount the steps of national and global leadership having paid their dues on the battlefields of the Iran-Iraq war. Though the recent publication of cartoons characterizing the Prophet as a terrorist (among other images) which have ignited Muslim violence throughout the world was itself not foreseeable, the groundswell of violence certainly has been brewing for years and should have been very much expected by the West. If it were not the Danish cartoons which set off the latest conflagration, it would have been something else, spawned by the rhetoric of the increasingly popular Ahmadinejad who speaks not to the West with his anti-Jewish and anti-west diatribes but to the millions of young fundamentalist Muslims who appear increasingly hell-bent upon demonstrating their strength in numbers and their religious intolerance through rioting, terrorism and war.

While these fires of hatred were being fanned in Iran, George, Dick and Don fiddled, their backs to the fire, ignorant to the events unfolding behind them.

There are without question lessons that need to have been learned from the last several years; lessons about the need for consensus, lessons about understanding who and what poses the greater threat to our safety and security, and an understanding that there are consequences, both expected and unforeseen, that must be accounted for before embarking upon any policy with such far-reaching effect.

What is not clear is whether the lack of foresight and lack of understanding has unleashed forces which we will no longer be able to control.

The Worst is Yet to Come

2006-01-15T17:31:00.000-05:00

As painful and distasteful as election campaigns have become over the past several years, I fear that the upcoming mid-term elections may prove to be the bloodiest in our long history for what is at stake is not simply the balance of power in both chambers of Congress, but the viability of the Bush Presidency. Each day we bear witness to mounting evidence that this President and his advisors either lied or conspired to mis-lead the nation in virtually every aspect of its agenda, whether it be the war in Iraq, the so-called, “war on terrorism”, taxes, healthcare, social security or education. Indeed, in some instances, the conduct of this administration has bordered on the treasonous if the suspicions about the leaking of Valerie Plame’s identity are born out and traced to the Vice President himself.

At the very least, this administration has been grossly negligent in its conduct of the nation’s business, both home and abroad, and should be called to task for that negligence and the damage that it has caused now and for much of the foreseeable future.

Ultimately, however, it may be the administration’s warrantless wiretapping of US citizens that provides the strongest argument for proceeding to impeachment proceedings. The FISA legislation makes clear that any person who willfully engages in electronic surveillance in any fashion other than that prescribed by the legislation is subject to criminal prosecution. That language would certainly extend to anyone who orders another to engage in such illegal surveillance and that would certainly place Bush in jeopardy of impeachment under the “high crimes and misdemeanors” clause of the Constitution.

The question, of course, is not whether an argument can be made that Bush is guilty of criminal conduct under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, but whether there are reasons to believe that a prosecution will be successful. The arguments, unfortunately, are not as clear as one would hope and expect given the amount of attention that this issue has and is continuing to receive.

On the one hand, on their face, neither the FISA legislation or the Authority for Military Action (AUMF) granted by Congress on September 18, 2001 would appear to give the executive the authority to spy on his constituents without warrant. That interpretation has received wide-ranging support throughout the political and apolitical landscape including, interestingly enough, the Congressional Research Service, the public policy research arm of the Congress. The CRS, in a January 5, 2006 Memorandum proffered the opinion that the President is without authority to ignore the limitations imposed by Congress in enacting AUMF and amending FISA noting, however, that the Supreme Court has yet to take a position on Congressional authority in the acquisition of foreign intelligence.

Bush, on the other hand, through his Attorney General, of course, takes a very expansive view of his role as described by the constitution, particularly that of Commander-in-Chief, believing that that status somehow imbues him with sweeping power to reinterpret and ultimately disregard established civil and criminal law in the name of national security. The argument, however, ignores the very basic principle that the commander in chief’s authority is limited to his command of the military and its affiliated agencies. He is otherwise simply an elected official occupying one of three equal branches of the government and without the right or authority to ignore or evade laws enacted by and at the will of the People. While the President may have broad and perhaps unlimited authority to direct and control the military, including establishing and defining the rules and laws under which the military operates, he enjoys no such authority over the general population.

There are without question ambiguities and gaps in the legislation and judicial interpretation of the authorities and limitations imposed by the legislation. The CRS Memorandum makes this reality abundantly clear. Consequently, it may ultimately come to pass that whether these criminal violations are, in fact, confirmed as such will rest in the hands of the Justices of the Supreme Court and its newly appointed Chief Justice Roberts and soon-to-be confirmed Associate Justice Alito. Given that both men share an expansive view of executive authority with Justices Scalia and Thomas, it is certainly unlikely that neither man was nominated and pushed to confirmation and appointment at this precise moment in time by happenstance. It is indeed ironic that Mr. Alito will be replacing the Justice who authored the Court’s seminal decision on Presidential authority after the enactment of the AUMF and made clear in her plurality opinion that a state of war is not a blank check for unlimited executive authority.

Were the Court to rule in the President’s favor it would certainly damage, though not irreparably, any move toward impeachment, particularly on the basis of his having engaged in the unlawful surveillance of his constituents. Whether and to what extent the nation has the stomach to press on toward impeachment in the face of a judicial acknowledgment of the President’s nearly unlimited authority over his citizens remains to be seen. Unfortunately, incompetence in itself is not a basis for impeachment as contemplated by the Constitution and whether Congress will be of a mind to pursue impeachment will depend, in large measure upon the composition of Congress and, in turn, the interpretation of the facts which underlie the gross incompetence that has dominated so much of the Bush Presidency. It is not enough to simply say that we were misled by this President into going to war. It is not enough to simply say that we invaded Iraq without a strategy for success. It is not enough to simply say that we threw our troops into harms way without the basic resources to protect themselves against the onslaught which has produced so much death and destruction. It is not enough to simply say that Mr. Bush appears to care more about rewarding political cronies with jobs for which they are unsuited than in protecting and preserving the Republic. There has to be a provable belief that those acts rise to the level of a high crime and misdemeanor. The current Congress can be expected not pursue the type of accountability from our executive that we are entitled to even if the Court, for example, were to opine that the President acted without authority under FISA and is thus indictable for a criminal violation of its provisions. While one would expect the vast majority of Democratic legislators to take issue with the expansive view of executive prerogative adopted by Mr. Bush, it is remarkable (though in this climate not surprising) that Republican and Conservative Democratic legislators seem untroubled by Mr. Bush’ abject disregard for the authority and responsibility imposed upon Congress by the Constitution. Perhaps it is the expectation that through their support for this unsupportable view of executive authority (and concomitant denigration of their own authority) that these legislators stand the best chance of surviving the electoral process they face in the Fall.

It will certainly require a manifest change of the political landscape in order to bring Mr. Bush to account and the first opportunity for that change lies in the Autumn of the year. It would not be far-fetched to expect that with a change in the majority of either or both houses of the legislature, articles of impeachment would likely occupy much, though not all of the Congressional agenda during 2007 and beyond. At the very least, a change would subject Mr. Bush to the bright light of accountability that he has long avoided.

Yes, the stakes are high though not without reward. Let us hope for the strength to endure what promises to be a very rough journey.

When Will It End, George, When Will It End?

2005-12-21T11:55:00.000-05:00

Let me ask those of you who grew up during or because of the ‘60s whether you find comforting or unsettling revelations that the Bush administration is engaged in warrantless electronic surveillance of American citizens and that it has directed the FBI to spy on domestic activist groups? It goes without saying that we should all feel unsettled and very concerned about the administration’s decision to spy on PETA and Greenpeace as well as organizations that are certainly on the forefront of pushing for a change of policy toward Iraq. At the same time, however, having grown up learning to be suspicious about everything the government does, I have to admit to a bit of nostalgia and…yes…comfort in a return to the way things used to be. After all, there’s nothing wrong with not taking everything at face value and questioning the goals and motives of the government when those goals and motives appear to be having such dire consequences. Indeed, were it not for the fact of Nixon’s campaign against organizations that opposed the war in Viet Nam, we would never have had confirmation that the opposition was actually having its desired effect. Why else would the seemingly impregnable United States government have devoted so many resources to maintaining watch over peace organizations large and small were it not afraid that those organizations were actually making progress toward turning the nation against the war.

In all seriousness, however, in the current climate there is every reason to be very concerned about the Bush administration continuing to expand the limits of the executive beyond the confines of the law as defined by both the constitution and the Congress. Time and again, we have seen this President and this administration abuse or ignore the limits set or proscribed by the Constitution, treating its fundamental principals as nothing more than an advisory opinion. The Sixth Amendment says what? “What do you mean, submitting a nomination for associate justice of the Supreme Court because she is “one of us” isn’t allowed?” “The Fourth Amendment prohibits warrantless eavesdropping? The hell you say”.

And now we come to Article II, Section 2 – the framework for functioning of the executive. This seems to be the biggest problem for Georgie boy. He just doesn’t seem to like the idea that his job description is actually encompassed and limited by the Constitution. This latest revelation is an obvious case in point. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I just don’t seem to see any evidence in the Constitution of the President’s right to order warrantless electronic spying on his own citizenry no matter how broad a reading you give to it. I understand that he was able to gain the support of Congress to use all necessary force against those responsible for the attacks of September 11th and has, as a consequence, committed us to the wars now raging in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the detention of hundreds if not thousands of people around the world suspected of having ties to Osama Bin Laden (whether actual or simply because his first name is Abdul). However, nowhere in the Constitution nor anywhere in the legislation now being cited by Bush and his Attorney General does it support the kind of domestic spying that is now taking place. Indeed, the legislation that does exist has actually prescribed a process for Mr. Bush to obtain the type of covert intelligence of persons and/or organizations in this country that are believed to pose a threat to our security. However, a piece of legislation like FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillence Act) in the hands of the Bush administration invariably turns into an invitation to excess and abuse and that appears to be precisely what is happening.

The question, of course, is why Bush, already possessed of the power to obtain electronic surveillance of our presumed enemies operating within our borders would nevertheless simply ignore those broad though admittedly somewhat proscribed powers for limitless power? The question is being posed by so-called “Liberals” and “Conservatives” alike including George Will in a recent Op-Ed piece in the Washington Post. The Constitution spells out in great detail the natural and necessary inter-relation of the branches of government and the necessity that each act as check on the other? Whatever limitations that FISA imposed on the President required only that the executive make a good showing to a secret court of the need for the surveillance and little more. In doing so, the Congress left to the President (through his Attorney General) complete control over the when, why and who of the application for surveillance without any requirement that Congress be consulted. Yet even these broad powers are not enough for our President and, again, the question is “why”? Would it not have been appropriate for the executive to return to Congress and ask that the already loose leash attendant to FISA be loosened further to permit him to conduct the type of surveillance we are now being made aware of and let Congress fulfill its “advise and consent” responsibilities on the subject? One can only conclude from the fact that this President chose to go with a secretive, extreme legal interpretation of FISA rather than asking that the law be further amended given the exigencies of the day because he has no regard or understanding of the Constitutional limits placed on his office and because this abuse of power is but the tip of the proverbial iceberg and such an application to Congress would likely lead to revelations about other illegal activities being carried out by this administration all in the name of national security.

With George Bush at the helm, we have been on a journey to undermine and destroy everything that this country has come to stand for. On the afternoon of September 10, 2001, we stood atop the moral high ground embraced by the world community as the victims of an unspeakable act. When Mr. Bush stood on the smouldering pile in the ruins of the Trade Center, we cheered the resolve to make those who brought us so much despair pay from what they had wrought. Our regrettable mistake was believing that Mr. Bush was capable of a measured and appropriate response to the horrors of that day. Instead, we opened a pandora’s box of violence and despair that has effectively yanked us off that high ground and lowered us to the level of those who intend us so much harm. Left to their own devices, the collective imaginations of George Bush, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld et al have produced innumerable unimaginable practices from torture at Abu Ghraib to foreign nationals being kidnapped and held in secret prisons to the “rendition” of supposed terror suspects to foreign countries known to practice torture as part of its interrogation practices and now electronic surveillance of American citizens without warrant or credible justification.

And, yet again, the question is “why”? We are, above all else, a nation of laws that are not intended to reveal themselves only in times of peace and succumb in the face of terror and tyranny. It is the very fact that those laws prevail regardless of circumstance that has permitted us to assume and maintain the moral high ground. That fact, however, seems to have escaped Mr. Cheney, for one, a master of inference and innuendo who (not surprisingly) implied that the death of more than 100 people in US custody, many of which are being investigated as homicides, were acceptable and justified as a reminder to the American people that the pain of September 11th should never be far from their collective conscience.

When you think about it its an astonishing statement for one so close to the pinnacle of power in this country. It certainly makes one wonder what other reminders Messers Bush and Cheney have in store for us and the rest of the world.

George and His Toy Spyglass

2005-12-21T11:17:00.000-05:00

What a country we live in, eh? Apart from the multitude of problems which have beset us over the past several years --- war, crushing budget deficits, a shift toward theocratic rule – we now learn that we’ve become the object of George’s curiosity. Living in the bubble that separates our chief executive from the rest of us, W has apparently seen fit to find out just what’s going on in the world around him by unleashing the NSA, the FBI and God knows what other acronyms to listen in on the telephonic and cyber conversations of his constituents and to surveil and gather intelligence on groups and organizations that were viewed as posing a threat to the nation’s security…like PETA and Greenpeace and….

It appears that in giving this direction to his law enforcement agencies, Mr. Bush may have misunderstood the mandate given to him by Congress in the days following September 11th. You may recall, after his return from the smoldering ruins of the World Trade Center, Mr. Bush, with nary a protest from anyone on either side of the aisle, secured authority from Congress to use all necessary force against those responsible for the attacks of September 11th. Somewhere along the line, however, that supposed mandate became confused in George’s mind with the belief that no law should limit the executive in such dangerous times. And so Mr. Bush, with the obvious support of Messers Cheney and Rumsfeld and the tenuous legal support of AG Gonzalez and a law professor at Berkeley, John Yoo, embraced the idea of expanding the reach of his office into the homes and offices of his fellow citizens.

As for the spying itself, it is beyond my understanding how one gets from the legislation permitting the President the use of all necessary force against those responsible for the September 11th attacks to spying on people who oppose the inhumane treatment of animals or oppose deforestation or other abuses of the environment? Unless I’m missing something none of those organizations had anything to do with the attacks in 2001 or any other attacks for that matter unless you count throwing red paint on a fur coat being worn by one of Bin Laden’s cousins as she fled the country on September 12th.

The ultimate hypocrisy of all this, I suppose, derives not from the list of organizations which are under surveillance, but those which are not. As between PETA and Operation Rescue, for example, which poses the greater threat to the safety of the nation and its populace: one that opposes the butchering of mink to be used as expensive clothing by splashing red paint on starlets on some Hollywood red carpet or one that advocates and executes the planting of bombs in public areas to announce its opposition to abortion? Yet nowhere in this discussion do we find any evidence that anyone or anything connected with the anti-abortion movement is falling under the government’s gaze. If this program of domestic spying was truly intended as an extension of the mandate Bush believes he received back in October 2001, certainly the domestic threat posed by Operation Rescue and like-minded terrorist organizations would be included among the organizations viewed as posing a threat to our security. That the anti-abortion industry has managed to escape the government’s scrutiny makes clear, at least to me, that it is not security that George is concerned about, but suppression of views that just don’t sit well with him.

Whats Driving Senator Joe?

2005-12-17T17:19:00.000-05:00

Joe Lieberman’s recent campaign to support the Bush administration’s Iraq policy and take issue with those, particularly within his own party, who take exception to his positions and support of the administration’s policies, raises a number of interesting issues about the Senator’s motives and aspirations. First, it needs to be said that these recent public statements about Iraq are not the pronouncements of someone who has come late to the game and prone to shifting his views depending upon how the wind is blowing. Lieberman’s position, most recently offered to the Wall Street Journal, is a reiteration of a position that the Senator has taken well before the drums of war began to echo across the nation’s political landscape. Indeed, one need only look at the Senator’s work on behalf of “The Committee on the Present Danger” (www.fightingterror.org) to understand the breadth and intensity of his devotion to his hawkish philosophy, particularly as it relates to Middle Eastern policy. That he has chosen to frame his support in the context of the opposition undermining Bush’s credibility certainly leaves one wondering precisely how Senator Joe defines credibility in the context of the current debate. Nevertheless, in much the same fashion that we have consistently decried the administration’s failure to understand and encourage the exercise of our right and responsibility to question and protest, Mr. Lieberman’s statements must be accepted and embraced as embodying, again, the reasons why the Constitution is worth fighting to protect and preserve.

For those not familiar with Mr. Lieberman’s views, take a look at either or both Hernandez and Yardley’s article, “Lieberman’s Iraq Stance Brings Widening Split With His Party” which appeared on the front page of the New York Times on December 10, 2005 or Shailagh Murray’s piece in the Washington Post of the same day. Both pieces iterate Lieberman’s contention that Bush does have a strategy “for victory” in Iraq, that there should not be a timetable of any kind for the withdrawal of troops from the war front and his admonition to the loyal opposition – particularly those within the Democratic party – that they (and I suppose we) need to get used to the idea that Bush will be the commander-in-chief for another three years and that the opposition which has certainly been gaining strength over the past many months only serves to undermine Bush’ “credibility” at home and abroad. So strong has been the Senator’s support for the administration’s policy that he has drawn enthusiastic praise from Bush/Cheney as a shining example of how a bipartisan approach to Iraq should work (note that that bipartisan approach embraces only unwavering support).

Needless to say Mr. Lieberman’s support within his own party – which peaked with his nomination to run as Al Gore’s running mate in 2000 – has dwindled considerably as a result of his increasingly public debate with the leadership of his own party over a number of policy issues including, but not simply limited to the war policy.

As for the question about what might be driving Mr. Lieberman, certainly given his earlier foray into Presidential politics it is likely that in some way he fashions himself a viable candidate for another run for the Presidency though given the ever-increasing void that has arisen between the Senator and the majority of the Democratic party, its likely that he will gain the nomination of the Republican Party before he is again embraced by his colleagues on the minority side of the aisle. Indeed, given the current climate, it seems that Mr. Lieberman has more in common with former Senator “Ranting” Zel Miller than either Harry Reid, Joe Biden or Chuck Schumer.

The explanation for the Senator’s hawkish philosophy toward Iraq and the Middle East may, in truth, have more to do with his spiritual than his political life. The Senator, as is widely known, is not simply Jewish, but orthodox in the observance of his faith and thus may believe that the best chance of gaining support for policies that are important to the Orthodox Jewish community lies with his aligning with the more strident elements of the Republican party.

It goes without saying that the term “religious fundamentalism” has gained increasing currency in the political debate that has consumed this country over the past two decades. Indeed, one need only consider the lengths that the Bush administration goes to satisfy the most conservative and religiously fundamental elements of his constituency to understand how embedded the idea of a conservative devotion to G_d has become in virtually every aspect of our lives. I have, in fact, repeatedly expressed the belief that it is the increasing influence of religious fundamentalism that poses a far greater threat to the nation than any of the extra-national issues (e.g. terrorism) that dominate the current debate. One need only look at the pressure being exerted by the so-called, “religious right” to shape the judiciary to ensure that the nation’s laws receive treatment favorable to its agenda or the allocation of billions of dollars to so-called “faith-based” organizations to understand the direction in which we are being driven and the threat posed to a Constitutional framework by which this democracy has flourished, nearly unfettered, since its inception.

When we speak of religious fundamentalism, however, it is not simply the so-called, “Christian Right” to which the appellation applies, but the conservative elements of every religion that has been permitted by the grace of our founding fathers to exist and flourish in this country. For the American Jewish community, it is within its orthodox base that it finds its most ardent supporters of the type of conservative and fundamental doctrine that has gained so much currency in this country through the political activism of the Christian Right. For Orthodox Jews, their dogmatic view of their role in the nation’s political debate begins and ends with the impact of that debate upon the State of Israel. While it is admittedly somewhat unfair to paint the entire community with so broad a brush, nevertheless it is first and foremost about Israel and how a policy or a particular candidate will effect the existence of the Jewish State that dominates the talk in shul and in the community at large when either electoral decisions are to be made or there is national debate such as that involving Iraq and the Middle East.

From this confluence of fundamental religious ideas and ideals has grown a seemingly close relationship between religious Jews and Christians that would have been unthinkable no more than twenty years ago. With the nation’s heartland less familiar with Jews and Judaism than its urban centers along both coasts and thus historically prone to an anti-semitism born as much from religious teaching as with simple ignorance, it is ironically in the bible belt where a true religious-based connection between Judaism and Christianity has grown. This affinity finds its nexus in the debate and dialog over the nation’s policies toward Israel with each seeming to tolerate and embrace the other in the short-run because of the benefits to be gained in the long-run from the relationship. Both the Orthodox Jewish community and the Christian right believe that the land of Israel was given to the Jews by G_d and that the Jews are not simply entitled, but obligated to live on the land we know as Israel (including territories which have or are about to be ceded to a new Palestinian state). It is with the establishment and preservation of a Jewish state that the confluence of interest ends. So-called, “Christian Zionists” premise their belief that G_d has ordained that the land known as Israel belongs to the Jews as a pre-condition for the second coming of Christ. As such the ultimate goals of fundamental Jews and Christians is obviously vastly different, particularly when one considers the teaching of many such Christian Zionists to envision converting Jews to Christianity after Christ’s return and slaughtering and condemning to hell all remaining Jews who refuse Christianity’s pull. The Orthodox Jewish community, presumably aware of what lurks in the hearts of their brother and sister fundamentalists, chooses to ignore the religious rhetoric for the benefits to be gained from their unwavering mutual interest in ensuring Israel’s survival. The ultimate in ignoring long-term consequences for short term gain.

So…where does Joe Lieberman come into all this? The Senator’s record makes clear his unabashed and steadfast support for Israel and in this context it is not difficult to appreciate that he would pursue the support of constituencies that reflect his devotion to Israel and belief in its primacy. Nor is it difficult to recognize that in this context, as an Orthodox Jew, Senator Lieberman would not only seek common ground with the Christian Right in this country, but seek to preserve and protect that relationship and its benefits – both political and religious – against those who might raise a protest against the overt agenda pursued by Christian Fundamentalist advocacy groups like the Family Research Council and the Christian Coalition.

With this dynamic in play, was it then a mere coincidence that the Senator sought a more public spotlight for his support for Bush’s policies within days of two speeches given by prominent leaders of the Jewish community, Abraham Foxman and Rabbi Eric Yoffe, both directly confronting the Christian Right and its injection of religion into politics, the Bush administration’s use of tax-payer money to fund religious charities (which tend to be almost exclusively Christian and evangelical in their teaching) and the atmosphere of religious intolerance that has increasingly permeated our culture. It is not mere happenstance that both Mr. Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League, and Rabbi Yoffe, president of the Union of Reform Judaism are far more secular in their observance than Mr. Lieberman and that their retort to the religious right and to the Christian right, in particular, has drawn so much derision from the more observant elements of the Jewish community in this country. (The debate between Christians and Jews and within the Jewish community was well framed by Michelle Goldberg in her recent article appearing on the Salon.com website, “Jews and the Christian right: Is the honeymoon over? Worried by increasingly strident evangelical rhetoric, Jewish leaders have finally dared to criticize conservative Christians. Will an alliance held together only by a shared support for Israel survive?” which can be found at http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/11/29/foxman/ and should be required reading for anyone concerned about the lessening separation between religion and state in this country).

Both speeches took direct aim at the very constituents that Mr. Lieberman undoubtedly believes he needs in order to realize a stridently pro-Israel policy and one can only imagine his reaction to the clearly inflammatory language by both Foxman and Yoffe and the rather pointed and almost threatening tone of the response from his “friends” at Focus on the Family, the Alliance Defense Fund, the American Family Association and the Family Research Council, all of which were singled out by Mr. Foxman for criticism.

Both speeches also clearly exposed a very raw nerve in the Jewish community which has existed over these past months and years like a family pariah…always present but rarely spoken of --- never completely comfortable with our seeming acceptance into American culture and thus not wanting to do anything to either draw attention to ourselves or say anything that our “hosts” will find unsettling or distasteful. There are, as Ms Goldberg describes, now cries emanating from the ranks of the both the secular Jewish community, in particular, that the Foxman and Yoffe speeches are going to trigger a new age of anti-semitism in this country and complicate our lives just when it appeared that we had gained so much acceptance.

For Senator Lieberman, the speeches pose a greater threat as they not only raise the specter of anti-semitism, but undermine years of work cultivating relationships with those who may best be able to help him continue to press for policies that ensure Israel’s survival.

The problem, of course, is that the issues and problems identified by Messers Foxman and Yoffe are real and pose a greater threat to this country than the less tangible and more abstract issues that derive from foundering policies abroad. This is a nation of laws, founded upon very concrete principles that have well withstood the test of time. Chief among them is a very fundamental decision to separate religion from government and politics. I am not talking about whether there should be a crèche or a Menorah on government property or whether its okay for the President or any government official to wish someone a Merry Christmas. Such observances hardly pose a threat to anyone’s right to worship (or choose not to worship) in peace and simply distracts from our ability to observe and contest the insidious infiltration of religion into politics and, in turn, into our lives whether it is welcomed or not.

The danger posed by Senator Lieberman is not his support for the Bush administration’s policies toward Iraq, but his seeming willingness to trade that support for a concession to an agenda which threatens our very way of life. Concessions to fear that speaking out, whether against religious intolerance or an intolerable war, has no place in the current debate. Our mandate as citizens requires vigilance and the courage to meet head on those who would seek our silence by concession.

Don and Dick's Excellent Adventure

2005-11-23T13:26:00.000-05:00

There are many who would argue – and I include myself among them – that the over-arching strategy of the current government is to instill enough fear into the populace that implementing both domestic and global strategies that would otherwise be viewed with skepticism and concern will be readily accepted. The belief, of course, is that the route to those strategies lies in making the people fearful enough that they will not only be easily amenable to ceding individual freedoms, but insist that they be stripped of their hard-fought-for rights, all in the name of being protected from evil. The best example of the benefits of this fear-mongering is the invasion of Iraq and the arguments for our indefinite presence on its soil. So, too, was the passage of the Patriot Act, detention policies that allow the government to hold American citizens without charging them or providing access to courts,  and,  legislation that, by its silence, allows and hence condones physical torture of prisoners of war and anyone unlucky enough to be labeled an “enemy combatant”.

It is not a coincidence that we find Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney at the apex of these policies. Theirs has been a close relationship bred of a mutual belief in American military, political and economic supremacy and a myopic assurance that the best way to accomplish the realization of policies intended to facilitate this supremacy on a global level is to create an environment of fear that welcomes with open arms these designs on global dominance.

The factual distortions and inflammatory rhetoric that are part of the Bush administration’s strategy to win the hearts and minds of the American people are but echoes of a past that because of the players and strategy draw remarkable parallels (and hopefully provide lessons) between the events of forty years ago and today.

The month after Gerald Ford was sworn in as the thirty-eighth President in September 1974, he brought Donald Rumsfeld back from NATO as the White House chief of staff. Rumsfeld quickly installed his protégé, Dick Cheney, as his deputy, the same aide-de-camp role that Cheney had played under Rumsfeld in the Nixon administration. The two men held these positions for more than a year, until 1975 when Ford appointed Rumsfeld his secretary of defense and named Cheney to be Rumsfeld's successor as White House chief of staff.

Rumsfeld, already possessed of a reputation as one of the toughest “in fighters” in government, quickly turned his attention to undoing some of the mistakes he believed to have been committed during the Nixon presidency, most notably, the lessening of tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union. In late 1975 and early 1976,  Rumsfeld began a frontal challenge to then-Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger's policies of dÈtente and arms control (SALT) with the Soviet Union that he had negotiated while in the Nixon White House by claiming, without valid bases, that the Soviet Union remained a significant and gathering threat to the United States. In a press conference given at the DOD in 1976, for example,  Rumsfeld told the media:

“The Soviet Union has been busy. They’ve been busy in terms of their level of effort; they’ve been busy in terms of the actual weapons they’ve been producing; they’ve been busy in terms of expanding production rates; they’ve been busy in terms of expanding their institutional capability to produce additional weapons at additional rates; they’ve been busy in terms of expanding their capability to increasingly improve the sophistication of those weapons. Year after year after year, they’ve been demonstrating that they have steadiness of purpose. They’re purposeful about what they’re doing."

Replace the words, “Soviet Union” and “they” with “Saddam Hussein” and “the Iraqis”, and you have one of the speeches Don delivered from the same podium twenty five years or so later. Remarkable.

A major component of Rumsfeld’s strategy was the creation of Team B, a committee comprised of “outside experts” gathered to assess the quality and validity of threat assessments being circulated by the CIA. Ironically, it as W’s father, as then-director of the CIA who approved the creation of Team B at the behest of a number of conservative cold warriors and hard liners,  chief among them, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Cheney, Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz (might we call them Bush’ “A” Team?).

Given the opportunity to undertake an objective analysis of the data being produced by the CIA, Team B consistently interpreted the information in its worst light drawing conclusions that invariably led to a near-Dooms Day scenario. It reported, for instance, that the Soviets would have 500 intercontinental Backfire bombers capable of striking the United States by 1984. In reality, only 235 were ever deployed. Team B also claimed that the Soviets were working on an anti-acoustic submarine, though they failed to find any evidence of one. The hawks of the time explained away this lack of evidence by stating that ‘the submarine may have already been deployed because it appeared to have evaded detection.’" (“Its Time To Bench ‘Team B’”, Lawrence Korb, Aug. 18, 2004, Center for American Progress)

Team B also contended that the CIA was consistently underestimating Soviet military expenditures. With the advantage of hindsight, we now know that Soviet military spending increases began to slow down precisely as Team B was writing about "an intense military buildup in nuclear as well as conventional forces of all sorts, not moderated either by the West's self-imposed restraints or by SALT." Although Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld's assertions of powerful new Soviet WMDs were unproven - they said the lack of proof proved that undetectable weapons existed - they nonetheless used their charges to push for dramatic escalations in military spending to selected defense contractors, a process that continued through the Reagan administration. Trillions of dollars were poured into the military-industrial complex. It was ultimately proven, however, that they --  Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Wolfowitz -- had been wrong all along about Soviet weapons of mass destruction and their intention to use them and that the CIA had been right. Not only do we now know that the Soviets didn't have any new and impressive WMDs, but we also now know that they were, in fact, decaying from within, ripe for collapse any time, regardless of what the US did - just as the CIA had indicated in its threat analyses and National Intelligence Estimates. “For more than a third of a century, assertions of Soviet superiority created calls for the United States to "rearm." In the 1980s, the call was heeded so thoroughly that the United States embarked on a trillion-dollar defense buildup. As a result, the country neglected its schools, cities, roads and bridges, and health care system. From the world's greatest creditor nation, the United States became the world's greatest debtor--in order to pay for arms to counter the threat of a nation that was collapsing.” (“Team B: The trillion-dollar experiment”, Anne Hessing Cahn, April 1993 pp. 22, 24-27 (vol. 49, no. 03) © 1993 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists).

The suspicions and fear-mongering that surrounded the deliberate over-estimate of the Soviet threat during the ‘70s and early ‘80s morphed into the fear mongering by many of the same persons about the threat posed by Iraq we are currently facing. Though Team B’s work ultimately ended during the Clinton administration, its effort to impose its distorted world view was taken up by “The Committee on the Present Danger” and ultimately by the “Project for the New American Century” (PNAC). As with Team B’s advocacy during the ‘70s and ‘80s, PNAC, in 1998, urged then-President Clinton to recognize the threat posed by Saddam Hussein and immediately remove him from power by strategic means. The signatories of that letter included old Team B’ers, Don Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle with an assist from the now notorious, John Bolton. Though PNAC has sponsored the authorship of a large number of position papers since its inception in 1997, it was its blueprint for global domination, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century”, authored by former Team B member, Wolfowitz and others in 2000, which has garnered the most attention for PNAC because of its contention that an overthrow of Hussein and the establishment of an American presence in Iraq was essential first step to preserving and protecting American interests and superiority abroad.

Most assuredly, the echoes of the past are continuing to reverberate through our lives. If there is a distinction to be drawn it is in the success realized by Rumsfeld and Cheney in gaining access to an administration that is not simply open to their ideology but one that embraces its principles and the means of imposing this ideology upon the American people by any means necessary including fear, intimidation and demagoguery.

One can only hope that as with any echo, its reverberations will grow faint and eventually become silent.

Ray of Light

2005-11-19T16:42:00.000-05:00

There is so much that is negative and so much negativity about our world today and I admit to both falling prey to and perpetuating both with the essays and commentary in this blog. In many respects, if you care…if you are concerned, it is easy to get swept up in the foul energy that pervades so much about the world and easy to forget that there may just be an escape from this potentially consuming sense of … what…despair (is that too strong an emotion)? Easy to forget that there is a way to live without intolerance, without hate and without ignorance….until something like “Paper Clips” comes along to remind us that there is hope for us after all if we are simply willing to stop for a moment and allow for the kind of renewal that this brilliant film instills in anyone lucky enough to see it.

If you’re not familiar with the film, “Paper Clips” is the story of several middle school teachers in Whitwell, population 1600, an entirely Christian and almost exclusively white community in rural Tennessee who sought a way to expose their students to ideas and experiences that they would never encounter in their very insular and isolated small community and, in doing so, impart to them a lesson about hate, intolerance and prejudice. The event that they chose could not have been more removed from their existence --- the Holocaust and the six million Jews who were exterminated in death and work camps throughout Europe. That none of them…students, teachers, principal, had likely ever met a Jew, let alone experienced anything in their lives that could provide a context or framework to even begin to understand what had happened during those dark years makes the project all the more remarkable. Trying to come to grips with the sheer enormity of the loss – how to understand just what six million means – they learn that the Norwegians wore paper clips on their lapels as a way to show their resistance to Hitler’s policies and so decide to honor the six million by collecting paper clips, one for each soul that was lost at the hands of the Nazis. Over the next several years, because of the relentless dedication of school principal, Linda Hooper and teachers, David Smith and Sandy Roberts, the project continued and gradually gained national and international attention and, in doing so, eventually accumulated more than 29 million paper clips from all over the world, many donations accompanied by letters from Holocaust survivors or the children of Holocaust survivors and many simply accompanied by notes from strangers who were touched by the effort and wanted to make some sort of contribution. Indeed, one such gift came in a small valise which contained handwritten notes from German school children apologizing to Anne Frank for that which she and her family had endured. The words and pictures that provided the group with a basic understanding of the horrific event were transcended by a visit from four survivors who spoke first in a local Methodist church and then at a school assembly, giving voice – thick with Eastern European and Yiddish accents – to the horrors that they witnessed and ultimately survived and it is certainly the visceral impact of their individual and collective stories which finally and for once drove home the true impact and import of the images – so alien and distant – that the students and educators had viewed to acquaint themselves with the object of their lesson.

Ultimately, the teachers and students decide that the best way to bring closure to the project is to create a memorial to the victims and, with the aid of two visiting German journalists, Dagmar and Peter Schroeder, locate a rail car in Germany that was used by the Nazis to transport Jews to death camps in Eastern Europe. The Schroeders arrange to have the car brought to the United States and finally to Whitwell where its journey finally ends. In the words of Linda Hooper, it would no longer be a symbol of death, but one of hope. With a memorial garden surrounding it, the car becomes the final resting place for eleven million of the paper clips, one each for the Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and intellectuals who met their end at the hands of the Nazi regime. There is an unmistakable spiritual quality to the memorial that is palbable on the screen and one can only imagine the power of standing in the boxcar where so many met their end.

It is difficult to say exactly what it is about the film that provides such a powerful response to the world we have created for ourselves. Perhaps it is the genuine innocence of those 8th and 9th graders juxtaposed against the horrors that befell countless children like themselves or the realization…certainly for the first time…that words, however innocently uttered in ones’ community and among friends and family, can have tragic consequences when the stereotypes and prejudices that hide within those words are played out to their most illogical and horrible conclusion.

What is most telling and most powerful about the film is the unmistakable sense that it is the innocence and not the evil that wins in the end.

The film is available on HBO on Demand and certainly can be rented from your local video store. See it.

Darth Cheney

2005-11-19T12:42:00.000-05:00

One of these days, Dick Cheney is going to slip and invoke Jack Bauer’s name in the middle of one of his diatribes against his critics for certainly it is with the fictitious CTU officer whom Mr. Cheney best relates. One can only imagine the Vice President pining for a world like the one in which Bauer operates, unfettered by limitations imposed by moral code or law in which the government’s efforts to secure information from the enemy are limited only by the ingenuity of the interrogator. In lobbying to remove any limitations imposed by the McCain-sponsored anti-torture legislation upon the CIA’s ability to secure information from “enemy combatants”, Mr. Cheney certainly has in mind “24’s” second season, among others, in which Bauer coerced a confession from a Middle Eastern terrorist by showing him a live video feed of his children being shot one by one until the terrorist “gave up” the information Bauer sought (the terrorist is not told that the killings had been staged and that his children were actually alive) and later murdered a suspected terrorist during interrogation (he simply pulled his weapon and executed the shackled suspect) in order to re-establish his undercover status and make contact with the target of the investigation. Mr. Cheney’s lobbying efforts and rhetoric make clear his conviction that the CIA requires the same freedom afforded Mr. Bauer in order to carry out its mandate. Most assuredly, Mr. Cheney shares Jack’s firm belief that the ends justify and excuse the means.

It may very well be that Dick Cheney is crazy. Yet, given that it is Cheney and not Bush who is generally believed to be the de facto leader of the free world, the thought that the behavior that we have witnessed over the past five plus years is driven by insanity rather than a perverse sense of right and entitlement is so frightening that one almost embraces the idea that the Vice President has simply perfected the art of demagoguery and political vitriol rather than being driven by inner demons. Nevertheless, his recent efforts in support of torture and characterization of claims by Senate Democrats that he and the President misled the country about pre-war intelligence as “one of the most dishonest and reprehensible charges ever aired in this city” does raise concern about the man’s health and, consequently, that of the country.

In discerning the state of Mr. Cheney’s mental health and his often acerbic oratory, let us consider, for the moment, his latest charges about the honesty of those who press for an explanation from the administration about its use of intelligence to support its invasion of Iraq in March 2003. It is indeed with some gratification that Mr. Cheney’s accusations are comparative in nature, leaving room for acts of dishonesty that exceed those of his critics. While one might be tempted to accord the likes of Tom DeLay, Jack Abramoff or his own “Scooter” Libby as title holder of “dishonest” and “reprehensible”, it may very well be none other than the Vice President himself who wears that crown proudly.

Even before considering his conduct during his Vice Presidency, it is important to know who it is we are dealing with.

For example, beyond the damage wrought by Halliburton during his tenure at the company’s helm, Cheney negotiated the disastrous (for Halliburton) acquisition of Dresser Industries in 1998 (disastrous because in doing so Halliburton also acquired more than $700 million of Dresser’s asbestos-related liability), and then used two Dresser subsidiaries, Dresser-Rand and Ingersoll Dresser Pump Co., to sell water and sewage treatment pumps, spare parts for oil facilities and pipeline equipment to Baghdad through a foreign intermediary in violation of UN sanctions. Not surprisingly, in a July 30, 2000 interview on ABC’s “This Week”, Cheney steadfastly denied that Halliburton or its subsidiaries did any business with Baghdad.

As for his behavior since the 2000 elections?

Continuing to use intelligence received from a captured Al Qaeda operative, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, concerning Iraq training Al Qaeda agents in the use of biological and chemical weapons in 2003 and 2004 to suggest to the American people that there was a connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda despite being told in February 2002 that the intelligence was wrong;

Perpetuating mis/dis-information that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction when it was clear that none existed;

Continuing to suggest that there existed a connection between the attacks of September 11th and Hussein, repeatedly referring to a meeting between one of the hijackers, Mohammed Atta and Iraqi agents in Prague weeks before the attacks without any basis in fact for doing so;

Conducting secret meetings with executives from several of the largest oil producing companies in the world during which the Vice President promulgated administration policy concerning drilling, exploration and pricing. Significantly, not only has Cheney steadfastly refused to share any information about the meeting, but just this past week we witnessed the spectacle of the very oil executives who either attended the meeting or were represented at the meeting denying that they attended the meeting during Congressional hearings;

Pushing for legislative exemptions to permit the CIA and Army intelligence to torture enemy combatants and captured insurgents; and,

The Pentagon, acting under instructions from Vice President Dick Cheney’s office, has tasked the United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM) with drawing up a contingency plan to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States. The plan includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons. Within Iran there are more than 450 major strategic targets, including numerous suspected nuclear-weapons-program development sites. Many of the targets are hardened or are deep underground and could not be taken out by conventional weapons, hence the nuclear option. As in the case of Iraq, the response is not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States. Several senior Air Force officers involved in the planning are reportedly appalled at the implications of what they are doing—that Iran is being set up for an unprovoked nuclear attack—but no one is prepared to damage his career by posing any objections. (First reported in Philip Geraldi in the Aug 1, 2005, issue of The American Conservative)

If the Vice President is not responding to his inner demons, then why have we been subjected to this type of abuse of power? In the words of Joshua Marshall in his Washington Monthly piece, “Vice Grip: Dick Cheney is a Man of Principles. Disastrous Principles” (Jan/Feb 2003):

“Cheney is conservative, of course, but beneath his conservatism is something more important: a mindset rooted in his peculiar corporate-Washington-insider class. It is a world of men--very few women--who have been at the apex of both business and government, and who feel that they are unique in their mastery of both. Consequently, they have an extreme assurance in their own judgment about what is best for the country and how to achieve it. They see themselves as men of action. But their style of action is shaped by the government bureaucracies and cartel-like industries in which they have operated. In these institutions, a handful of top officials make the plans, and then the plans are carried out….In such a framework all information is controlled tightly by the principals, who have "maximum flexibility" to carry out the plan. Because success is measured by securing the deal rather than by, say, pleasing millions of customers, there's no need to open up the decision-making process. To do so, in fact, is seen as governing by committee. If there are other groups (shareholders, voters, congressional committees) who agree with you, fine, you use them. But anyone who doesn't agree gets ignored or, if need be, crushed. Muscle it through and when the results are in, people will realize we were right is the underlying attitude”.

Righteousness and entitlement...entitlement and righteousness.

The question Marshall ultimately poses, “Why, though, has the press failed to grasp Cheney's ineptitude” is at the core of why we find ourselves in this mess. Revelations this week that Bob Woodward was apparently the first (at least this week) member of the fourth estate to obtain information from a highly placed source (and did so before “Scooter Libby” apparently shared the information with Judy Miller, Bob Novak or Matt Cooper) simply reinforces the now-realized understanding that the press has existed to serve rather than report upon this government; that driven by corporations more interested in the money that so-called, “inside information” will generate rather than in the veracity of the information and the motives of those sharing the information, the press – the print media in particular – has come to be viewed by this administration as its voice and ally rather than its watchdog. Consequently, rather than raising concern about Cheney’s words and actions, people like Woodward and Miller willingly pass along the VP’s comments without comment of their own simply to maintain access at the risk of their own journalistic integrity. That no one in the media, for many months, said nary an unkind word about Mr. Cheney has damaged this nation, and by extension, the world as much as Mr. Cheney’s words and conduct.

Deeds and Words

2005-11-13T12:45:00.000-05:00

I am admittedly very frustrated with the direction that the country has taken (as these posts will attest) and with Bush’ apparent ignorance about his responsibilities as defined by the Constitution and by the precedents set by his predecessors. Out of curiosity, I spent some time looking at how several of our more prominent Presidents have viewed their responsibilities as manifested by their words, more than their deeds. While there are glimpses of their philosophies in mid-term speeches, it is invariably in the Inaugural Speech that you find the President in his most eloquent discourse about the Presidency and his duty as principal guardian of the rights granted and protected by the Constitution.

Working my way back through time, I looked at the first time speeches given by Clinton, Reagan, Kennedy, Roosevelt (Franklin, not Teddy), Lincoln, Monroe, Adams, Jefferson and, of course, Washington and surprisingly found relatively little lengthy discussion about how the then newly-elected standard bearer viewed his duty to his constituents. Lincoln, for example, was understandably consumed with the then-imminent destruction of the Union (first term) and the need for healing (second term). Jefferson spoke at some length about the relatively new Constitution in terms of the freedoms it conveyed, most notably (are you listening George?), religious freedom and the imperative that church and state be kept separate. Washington, humbled by his selection as the nation’s first leader, sounded tired and overwhelmed by the task that lay before him. While nearly all, of course, described an agenda for the succeeding four years, none spoke at length about the Presidency in terms the President’s responsibility to unify the citizenry behind the common goal of establishing and perpetuating America’s responsibility to lead at home and abroad with honesty, integrity and civility …until I came across these words:

Our unity, our union, is the serious work of leaders and citizens in every generation. And this is my solemn pledge: I will work to build a single nation of justice and opportunity.

I know this is in our reach because we are guided by a power larger than ourselves who creates us equal in His image.

And we are confident in principles that unite and lead us onward.

America has never been united by blood or birth or soil. We are bound by ideals that move us beyond our backgrounds, lift us above our interests and teach us what it means to be citizens. Every child must be taught these principles. Every citizen must uphold them. And every immigrant, by embracing these ideals, makes our country more, not less, American.

Today, we affirm a new commitment to live out our nation's promise through civility, courage, compassion and character.

America, at its best, matches a commitment to principle with a concern for civility. A civil society demands from each of us good will and respect, fair dealing and forgiveness…..

We must live up to the calling we share. Civility is not a tactic or a sentiment. It is the determined choice of trust over cynicism, of community over chaos. And this commitment, if we keep it, is a way to shared accomplishment…..

The enemies of liberty and our country should make no mistake: America remains engaged in the world by history and by choice, shaping a balance of power that favors freedom. We will defend our allies and our interests. We will show purpose without arrogance. We will meet aggression and bad faith with resolve and strength. And to all nations, we will speak for the values that gave our nation birth.

That the speaker of these grandiose ideals was none other than George W. in his first inaugural address makes what has transpired over the past four plus years all the more difficult to accept.
Putting aside the real possibility that these ideals were uttered by Mr. Bush with tongue firmly planted in cheek and accepting, for the moment, that there was actually an element of belief in what he said on the steps of the Capitol nearly five years ago, it is indeed astonishing that his deeds not only failed to live up to those ideals, but have made a mockery of the very principles that he espoused that day.

“And this is my solemn pledge: I will work to build a single nation of justice and opportunity….America, at its best, matches a commitment to principle with a concern for civility. A civil society demands from each of us good will and respect, fair dealing and forgiveness…”? While the nation has most assuredly been fractured and divided during its life, those divisions have invariably been driven by events and not by or at the urging of its President. Yet, if there is anything that defines Mr. Bush and all that he is about, it was his pandering to the fundamentalist religious right in the wake of the Miers’ nomination. His is not a world defined by unity or good will or respect or fair dealing unless each of those virtues is proffered for the purpose of furthering his own fundamentalist view of the world. There is, in fact, no room for civility or forgiveness or any these values (undoubtedly learned through his “Twelve Step” program and new found belief that Jesus Christ is his savior and the answer to all questions) unless you are “one of us” for indeed if you are not one of George’s “us”, you are, by definition, one of “them”. Us versus them? Red state versus blue state? Republican versus Democrat? Liberal versus….well liberal is too dirty a word to even provide a counterpoint to anything in W’s world. This divisiveness has not evolved independently of the man sitting in the Oval Office, but, again, borne of a world view that defines itself by the divisiveness it creates. Whether it is in his dealings with many of our former (and hopefully future) allies abroad or with vast segments of the population which never accepted George Bush into their lives, if you are not with George, you are against him.

It remains to be seen how widespread and long-lasting the damage is. Certainly for the families of the dead and wounded, the damage will never see an end. It is also likely that the damage to the world community will not see an end for many years to come. Hopefully, as the standard bearer for Jesus’ newly gathering army on these shores, Mr. Bush does not see himself as a modern day Richard the Lionhearted launching a new Crusade to take on the Muslim infidel, Saladin north of Jerusalem yet one does get the distinct impression that indeed that is precisely how Mr. Bush envisions his legacy unfolding. At home, the vision has taken many forms: voucher programs built into the “No Child Left Behind” legislation; the expressed support for “intelligent creation” which has already led the Kansas school board to again change its curriculum to emphasize religious over scientific explanation and, of course, the religious litmus test for the selection of judges to all levels of the Federal judiciary to name but a few examples.

Where does it leave the rest of us (who, by the way, I suspect are actually the majority of populace) who actually believe in the efficacy and guiding principles of the Constitution and continue to resist the demagoguery of this evangelical President? Take solace and know that you have the full faith and support of our founding fathers who, having only then recently been denied fundamental freedoms by the Crown, spent considerable time and energy drafting the rules of governance and required that the nation’s leadership not only espouse religious and political freedom, but guard it above all. As Jefferson put it in his first inaugural address:

“[L]et us reflect that, having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions”.

Are you listening, George?

Clinton and Bush: Differing Responses to the Same Intelligence

2005-11-13T00:01:00.000-05:00

What follows is my email response to Jonah Goldberg’s op-ed piece in the St. Louis Post- Dispatch, “Democrats’ Hypocrisy is Hurting America” though the response is intended for all those Bush apologists who defend Bush’s conduct by pointing to Clinton’s reliance upon the same intelligence about Hussein’s capacity to wage war.

What you failed to note or acknowledge is that what Clinton was advocating in response to the then-available intelligence was not war but more strenuous sanctions and inspections. Iraq, during the nineties, as a result of Bush I and Clinton, was isolated and largely impotent. The only people pushing a different viewpoint about Iraq's capacity were Iraqi ex-patriots like Chalabi and the authors of PNAC's 2000 paper, "Rebuilding America's Defenses" (Wolfowitz, Libby, Zackheim, the Kagens and Schmitt). Clinton, to his credit, did not succumb to these PNAC ideologues and their 1998 letter urging a more aggressive response to the then-available "intelligence" about Hussein's capacity to wage war and was certainly roundly criticized by PNAC and its followers (and, I suspect, by you, as well) for not acting. It is misleading (and does a great dis-service to the discussion about Bush' push to war) to simply point out that Clinton "believed" the intelligence about Hussein; the point is not what may have been known, but what was done about that intelligence and what both Presidents did with the information. Clinton, again, pushed for more sanctions and more inspections; Bush took the "intelligence" and ran with it, picking and choosing his way through the intelligence to make his case for war. There is no question that he and/or his advisors chose to ignore intelligence that undercut the initial assumptions. It was incumbent upon Mr. Bush to make absolutely certain that the intelligence he was acting on was accurate before he decided to throw so many lives into the meat-grinder that has become Iraq. That he didn't is nothing but arrogance and utter incompetence. With so many dead and wounded (Iraqi, American, British, Italian et al), I think we owe it to ourselves and to our allies to understand why we now find ourselves in this situation. If, as it appears, the reasons include mis-information and dis-information, Mr. Bush owes it to the dead and wounded to acknowledge his culpability.

The Man Behind the Curtain Wins

2005-11-01T00:08:00.000-05:00

So, how does a sitting President make one of the worst betrayals of public trust and possible acts of treason magically disappear? Well, you take full advantage of a fourth estate that is so eager to please that it will fall over itself chasing its own tail.

You keep a close eye on the comings and goings of the Special Prosecutor, fully aware that indictments against members of your team are likely and that they are just as likely to be handed down before the grand jury disbands on October 28, 2005.

You devise a strategy to use the nomination process to divert attention from the coming indictments by asking one of your loyalists to agree to “accept” a nomination to become an associate justice of the supreme court with the understanding and expectation that the nomination will be withdrawn well before the "nominee" is to be questioned by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

You thereupon have the loyalist “withdraw” her nomination on the pretense that continuing her nomination will neither serve the interests of the country or the post to which she has been nominated. In truth, again, it was never the intention to allow Harriet Miers to get anywhere near the Senate Judiciary Committee as it is readily understood that she has neither the legal qualification or political muscle necessary to satisfy even the most ardent of supporters; that being the good soldier, hers was the unenviable task of absorbing punishment from every quarter until the day it became clear that indictments were near and her services were no longer necessary. The timing of the "withdrawal", however, is actually not intended to coincide with the expected indictments or to compete with if not completely divert attention away from the pending criminal prosecution. It is rather the eventual nomination of a new associatejustice which is expected to distract the media and public from the soon-to-be-announced indictments.

You either have foreknowledge that the indictments will not be handed down until Friday or simply catch a break because Fitzpatrick is not ready to go public until Friday afternoon. As a result, whereas Libby’s indictment and the shroud of corruption that the indictment would otherwise throw over the White House would have dominated the news had the indictment been handed down earlier in the week, the Friday disclosure allows the shroud to dissipate over the ensuing weekend despite extensive coverage by the Times, The Post and other news outlets.

You then announce the nomination of Samuel Alito to succeed the Miers’ “nomination” at 8am on the Monday following the Libby indictment. By doing so, it is the Alito nomination and not the Libby indictment which immediately becomes the news of the day as the morning talk shows are coming on the air. In doing so, you choose someone who you know will appease your base and, at the same time, antagonize the moderates in your party as well as nearly the entire Democratic party. The resulting firestorm of protest -- the likely threats of a filibuster and the ensuing implementation of the dreaded "nuclear option" -- and the media attention is receives further serves to put distance between the Libby indictment and talk of the corruption reaching Big Karl and the VP and the day's discourse.

You unleash your minions -- the Pat Buchanans, the Bill Kristols and the rest of the gang -- to take to the airwaves and proclaim the whole thing much ado about nothing and, with little or no response invited or provided, the "fair and balanced" characterization morphs into a generally accepted view of the indictment and the events that led up to it.

In the meantime, the resulting media attention and hysteria surrounding Judge Alito -- who he is, what he stands for and how he is likely to vote once he takes his seat on the court -- dominates the print, television and internet media for weeks if not months to come as the nomination process drags on. Scooter who?

Alls well that ends well, eh?

Miers Withdraws?

2005-10-27T10:39:00.000-04:00

Was she ever truly a nominee? If you will forgive a bit of paranoia for a moment, is it possible that it was never the intention of the Bush administration to advance her nomination? Is it possible that in their distorted and perverted view of the world, the nomination was offered with the expectation that it would be withdrawn just as Pat Fitzpatrick’s presentation to the grand jury was drawing to a close? It would not be the first (and unfortunately likely not the last) time that the Bush administration abused its responsibilities to the electorate and its broader constituency by playing games with the mechanisms of government.

I can certainly be accused of being paranoid and my suppositions plainly absurd. Nevertheless, this administration has done nothing to earn the right to proclaim with certitude that it would never stoop to such an abuse of process. It may very well be that there is nothing more at play here than the arrogance and ever-increasing incompetence of a lame duck President who hasn’t a clue about his responsibilities under the Constitution to the Country and to the integrity of the Court. This was, after all, a President who either was so full of his self-righteousness or so incredibly incompetent as to defend and support the nomination of his personal lawyer by pointing not to her qualifications as a lawyer but to her qualifications as a Christian. Assuming, again, that this was not entirely a sham nomination, there can be no doubt that when the President announces that, “She’s one of us” in defense of his long-time friend and supporter all Americans lose because we are subject to a President who either cares nothing for the Constitution or is simply so ignorant of the Constitutional limits imposed on his office that he was unaware that is pronouncement violated Article IV, Clause 3 prohibiting the use of a religious test to gauge a nominee’s qualifications. This is, after all, a President who views the government as his personal play thing for rewarding his most loyal friends and supporters with government positions for which they hold no qualification other than their undying loyalty to Mr. Bush and his family and Ms Miers -- in both her loyalty and lack of qualification -- would snuggly fit this mold.

On the other hand…..is it not also reasonable to believe that Bush and his advisors never intended to go through with the Miers’ nomination? Clearly, they must have known that the nomination was doomed from the outset. Beyond the obvious…that she had never served as a judge and provided no indication that she was sufficiently conversant in the Constitution to interpret and apply its anachronistic pronouncements…Bush and his must have known that her service as personal counsel to Bush both before and during his presidency would present a nearly-impenetrable obstacle to overcome. Are we to believe that they only today or recently came to realize that her advice to W would become an issue and that they would never be able to share that information with the Judiciary Committee or was it always and ultimately that stumbling block that Bush intended to use to pull the plug on the nomination. Are we to believe that Miers and her handlers were so inept as to believe that the questionnaire answers submitted to the Committee were genuinely intended to fully respond to its inquiries or were they submitted knowing that because the answers were so obviously superficial and evasive that the questionnaire would be rejected by the committee in order to delay the nomination hearing and buy additional time for W. If all this is true, why would she subject herself to the derision and ridicule directed at her --- particularly by the extreme right --- over the past several weeks? She is, of course, a good soldier in the Bush army and does appear prepared to throw herself in the way of any political bullet aimed at her client and friend and it is not too hard to imagine that that loyalty would have included enduring those slings and arrows of [out]rageous fortune that have been aimed in her direction since her nomination.

To what end has this all been played out we may never know. The timing of all of this does again raise some index of suspicion that there is a whole other game being played out that we are simply not privy to. Whether this has something or anything to do with Rove, Libby, Hadley et al (whether they are indicted or not there is certainly going to be some criticism leveled in the administration’s direction involving the Plame affair and its manipulation of intelligence to control the debate during the run up to the war) or some gambit involving the nomination itself is not clear and, again, may never be known. Nevertheless, the whole thing seems too absurd, even for W and Big Karl, to be what it appears. As always, ignore the man behind the curtain….

Harriet Miers and the Religious Right

2005-10-05T11:25:00.000-04:00

Are we to take solace from the “fact” that Harriet Miers decided to accept Jesus Christ as her savior in 1979? After a bit more than a day of hand wringing by the conservative wing of the Republican Party about Bush’s failure to fulfill their lifelong dream of putting a “real” conservative on the bench, Mr. Bush sought to allay their fears that she wasn’t “one of them” by assuring his extremist constituency that she shared his views. That pronouncement was followed in short order by the beginnings of a certainly careful media campaign to assure and reassure Bush’s core support of counsel’s Christian and conservative pedigree with the release of articles detailing her private, late night soul searching conversations with fellow law partner, Nathan Hecht that ultimately resulted in her rebirth as a Christian.

While that may be good news to the Richard Vigueries of the world and the religious fundamentalists who comprise the bulk of Bush’s support, the news should not be taken well by the majority of Americans who simply believe in the integrity of our Constitution and in a democracy that has been able to survive -- quite well, thank you -- without shifting the government to a theocracy.

I do not raise these concerns because I have pre-judged Harriet Miers or the judicial philosophy she will follow as she evolves as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. I was not one who joined in the knee-jerk reaction in opposition to Bush’s selection of John Roberts to initially replace Sandra Day O’Connor and then William Rehnquist. If nothing else, ascension to the High Court has had a most sobering effect upon virtually all those nominated to its service, forcing most to recognize that the Court represents the very essence of the law and the means by which a dispute is resolved. It is that recognition above all else which led jurists like John Paul Stevens, Anthony Kennedy and others – all envisioned by the right to be standard bearers on the court – to recognize first, foremost and forever that it is to the Court and to the rule of law that they owe their only obligation. John Roberts would appear to recognize and understand that responsibility even before he donned his robs on the first Monday of this October. Harriet Miers, should she survive the nomination process, may also come to understand the enormity of her responsibility to the constitution and distance herself from any political agenda which prompted the submission of her name to succeed Justice O’Connor.

That Bush feels the need to defend her nomination by emphasizing her religious devotion rather than her legal skills should give one more than a moments’ pause and raise concern about her capacity to understand and honor her commitment to the law and jurisprudential processes which dominate the disposition of cases which come before the Court. There is, after all, perhaps no greater principle built into the Constitution which defines our democracy and distinguishes it from every other social experiment that exists today or has gone before than our agreement to separate religious observance from social governance. Those on the right who demand that religion play a greater role in our governance simply do not understand the Constitution and why this democracy has succeeded when so many others have not. The alternative to that which has guided us over the past two hundred thirty years is the type of theocracy which took hold in Afghanistan after the Soviet Union was forced out and in Iran following the fall of the Shah in 1980 – a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam that enforced theocratic principals and, in the process, led to much suffering at home and abroad. The religious right in this country seeks to impose its will upon the general population along the same lines as the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Shiites in Iran by pushing for legislation that blurs the lines between Church and State and reshaping the Courts to ensure that when challenged those laws will be survive in the context of a new interpretation of the First Amendment. One need only to look at the chaos and turmoil that surrounded the effort to “save” Terri Schiavo’s life to understand what this political and social shift would mean to the country and our ability to govern as we have since the inception of the our democracy. Is it truly in our best interest for judge’s to live in fear that they will be subject to recall and impeachment if they fail to rule as the religious right believes they should?

There is, of course, nothing wrong with a Justice of the Court, regardless of its level, being religious and seeking solace and guidance from G_d. The problem for any government is when that solace and guidance finds its place in the interpretation of legislation and the resolution of disputes. It is first, last and always the Constitution which must control all decisions by the Court. That Ms Miers has found Jesus, I’m sure, is of great comfort to her, to Mr. Bush and to the religious right (at least the Christian religious right). Ultimately, however, it must be the Constitution and not the writings and pronouncements of Jesus which must guide her. She must understand and accept that by becoming a Supreme Court judge her first responsibility is to safeguard the Constitution, even at the expense of her own convictions.

The Greatest Threat

2005-10-04T14:08:00.000-04:00

The greatest threat to our country lies not in the sands of Iraq and its gathering insurgency or in the foothills of Tora Bora, but in our nation’s capital. The world has become a far more dangerous place for its inhabitants because of policies advanced by the Bush administration that on their face purport to offer safety and security for the nation, but, in truth, offer something quite different. That which we are witnessing is nothing short of a political and societal revolution that will leave us less secure, less safe and less prosperous than any point recent history. This is an administration that views the government as a personal playground to reward party loyalty at the expense of its obligation to protect and defend the constitution and its broader constituency. It gives refuge to and encourages an ideology that blatantly seeks to re-write the basic principals that have allowed this democracy to survive and prosper for more than 230 years. I am a life long Democrat, but, like most of the country, am neither liberal nor conservative in my views. I want to be safe, secure and prosperous and share a very real concern that the hole we have dug for ourselves will be difficult to overcome and that the damage inflicted upon us by those sworn to protect and defend us, while hopefully not irreparable, may be nearly so.

I’ve only walked the earth for a bit more than fifty years and thus can’t say with any certainty that we as a nation have seen a worse time in the nation’s life. Certainly the threats posed by both world wars represented unprecedented threats to our nation’s survival yet in both instances those threats were imposed by forces beyond our borders and, in many ways, galvanized a response which permitted the country to emerge stronger and positioned in the new global paradigm as the world’s first and now only surviving super power. Unlike that which has come before, what we face now is of our own doing and, more to the point, the doing of the Bush administration and all those who support it. Never in my lifetime have I seen a government as arrogant, so incompetent, so deceitful, so insensitive and so out of touch with the hopes and aspirations of its constituents as that which controls our lives as we go to bed this night.

We are, as well, witnessing a cultural shift by that leads creatures like Bill Bennett to believe he has license to very publicly state that the best way to reduce the crime levels in this country is to abort all black babies. As with so much about this cultural shift and its proponents, it is not so much an absolutist view of the world as it is a view that picks and chooses its way through its social agenda to produce an outcome that simply serves their end. It is not that abortion is wrong in all its forms, but that when applied in the fashion advocated by Mr. Bennett, it can actually serve a social end. I suspect that Mr. Bennett, an ardent anti-abortion activist is not the only one of his ilk to share this view concerning the selective use of abortion to further a political end. The view, in fact, seems to have been embraced in less strident terms by many Republicans in Congress who view the Diaspora created by Katrina as a way to re-create the character of New Orleans by controlling the numbers of black families returning to the City and, in turn, redistricting the City to limit the effect that a black vote would have both locally and state-wide. While it’s certainly not the same as killing black babies, the effect, in many ways, is unfortunately the same.

Ultimately, I suspect that Mr. Bennett’s perverse views will not prevail and that the de-minoritization (admittedly not a word) of New Orleans will be resisted and fail. The point, however, is that the culture created by and surrounding Mr. Bush invites, encourages and ultimately protects this type of philosophy and therein lies the danger.