This is Why We Have Trials

Via the excellent Obsidian Wings. The New York Times demonstrates a simple principle: This is why we have trials. This is why everyone gets a trial. Even if you think or all your neighbors think, or the whole government and all the citizens think that it is a certain fact that a man or a woman is guilty of a heinous crime, that man or woman--regardless of alleged crime or particular citizenship or affiliation--is properly guaranteed a trial under our system of laws. That is what the rule of law is. That is what civilization is. That is what freedom is.

"Abdul Razzaq Hekmati was regarded here as a war hero, famous for his resistance to the Russian occupation in the 1980s and later for a daring prison break he organized for three opponents of the Taliban government in 1999.

But in 2003, Mr. Hekmati was arrested by American forces in southern Afghanistan when, senior Afghan officials here contend, he was falsely accused by his enemies of being a Taliban commander himself. For the next five years he was held at the American military base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where he died of cancer on Dec. 30. (...)

Several high-ranking officials in President Hamid Karzai’s government say Mr. Hekmati’s detention at Guantánamo was a gross mistake. They were mentioned by Mr. Hekmati in his hearings and could have vouched for him. Records from the hearings show that only a cursory effort was made to reach them.

Two of those officials were men Mr. Hekmati had helped escape from the Taliban’s top security prison in Kandahar in 1999: Ismail Khan, now the minister of energy; and Hajji Zaher, a general in the Border Guards. Both men said they appealed to American officials about Mr. Hekmati’s case, but to no effect.

“What he did was very important for all Afghan people who were against the Taliban,” Hajji Zaher said of Mr. Hekmati’s role in organizing his prison break. “He was not a man to take to Guantánamo.” (...)

The 1999 escape was a deep humiliation for the Taliban government, which blocked roads and searched houses across the country for days afterward and offered $1 million for the capture of the escapees. Two of Mr. Hekmati’s relatives were badly tortured by the Taliban after the prison break as the Taliban looked for information.

Two of the men Mr. Hekmati freed, Mr. Khan and Hajji Zaher, returned to the battlefield to lead forces against the Taliban. They both received significant American support in 2001 and worked with Special Forces units.

A third man who escaped with them was another commander of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, Gen. Mohammed Qasim.

According to Mr. Hekmati’s account in his hearing in September 2005, he organized the escape because he opposed the Taliban’s “ruthlessness and injustice.” (...)

The men escaped to Iran, where Mr. Khan provided Mr. Hekmati and his family with a house and financial support in return for his daring. Mr. Hekmati said he returned to Afghanistan only in 2002, after the Taliban were toppled and Mr. Karzai’s interim government was installed. Within a year, he was arrested."

This is the 5th Amendment to the United States Constitution:

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

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Brothers and Sisters...

We are headed into The Iowa Caucus. And I have my problems with all of the top three Democrats: HRC is too hawkish, Edwards is too light on foreign policy, and Obama is to conciliatory and bipartisan when the modern Republicans need to be crushed (serious, bring back the Whigs). And I think we're looking at a primary fight that will lead into Super Tuesday, which I am excited about. But I firmly believe that one of them will be our next president. And all three are more liberal than any one since LBJ or possibly FDR. And I am pumped for that. We might be looking a Democrats, and liberal Democrats at that, gaining in the Congress too. All of which is the work of grass roots organizing and an American people waking up to the power of progressive, social democratic politics. Which to that say that the Revolution Will Not be Televised, Brothers and Sisters.



It will be LIVE.

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So this is the new cliche

This is the new cliche, but it is apt. It is apt!
The Weimar era cabaret acts in Berlin was the greatest political satire ever. Boundary pushing: sexually, politically, culturally. Drag queens making fun of fascism while spoofing Wagner. I mean, Bertold Brecht, bitches! But it didn't make a difference. Did it? In fact the absolute opposite happened.
I'm just saying.

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Something that I've been kicking around

I'm a fan of the blogs of economists Paul Krugman and Brad DeLong. Krugman teaches at Princeton and writes for the New York Times Op/Ed page while DeLong teaches at Berkeley and is a formal Clinton administration Treasury official. Both are illuminating and at ease writing about technical economic matters, politics, and culture. I've been trying to read more mainstream economic writing in the last year or so and both of these blogs are invaluable educational resources from well respected and reputable economic scholars.

All of this introduction is preamble to the following observation: both are extremely shrill in their opposition to the Bush administration. I mean, Professor DeLong even maintains Shrillblog, a roundup of "shrill" anti-Bush writing on the web.

My question is: why?

Neither of these guys is in any danger of voting for the Green Party candidate for any office. I doubt if either have ever attended any kind of demonstration or ever carried a picket sign. Both are pro-free markets, pro-free trade. Krugman is one of the centrist neo-liberal thinkers for whom the Washington Monthly coined the term "neo-liberal" in the late '80s/early '90s to distinguish them from actual left-liberals. These guys are the dictionary definition of "sensible" "establishment" figures. But to read their political writing you'd think that they were editors for the Socialist Workers newsletter. They hate this president and his party. Professor DeLong often ends posts with the phrase, "Impeach George W. Bush. Impeach Richard Cheney. Do it now." Krugman is one of the few mainstream media figures willing to use words like "lie" and "illegal" when describing the action of the Bush White House.

I'm interested in the sheer divisive power of the President. If middle of the road, pro-market moderate economists are driven to "shrill unholy madness" in DeLong's memorable phrase, then we are truly witness to one of the sorriest White Houses in years.

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So that Lincoln, some America-hating hippie right?

"Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that "all men are created equal." We now practically read it "all men are created equal, except negroes." When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read "all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and catholics." When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty — to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy [sic]."

--Letter to longtime friend and slave-holder Joshua F. Speed (24 August 1855)

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The Stories We Tell

Those of you who know me know that I idolize a certain 19th Century Illinois attorney by the name of Lincoln. And I also know that so much of what we say about him is steeped, even now, in myth and poetry. But I think that it is good for a nation to have one or two heroes that are only spoken of as heroes despite their "real world" flaws. We must make saints of men for educational purposes and I can think of no greater candidate. This is my favorite story. Here related by Harvard historian Doris Kearns Goodwin in her book Team of Rivals:

In 1908, in a wild and remote area of the North Caucasus, Leo Tolstoy, the greatest writer of the age, was the guest of a tribal chief "living far away from civilized life in the mountains."

Gathering his family and neighbors, the chief asked Tolstoy to tell stories about the famous men of history. Tolstoy told how he entertained the eager crowd for hours with tales of Alexander, Caesar, Frederick the Great, and Napoleon.

When he was winding to a close, the chief stood and said, "But you have not told us a syllable about the greatest general and greatest ruler of the world. We want to know something about him. He was a hero. He spoke with a voice of thunder; he laughed like the sunrise and his deeds were strong as the rock...His name was Lincoln and the country in which he lived is called America, which is so far away that if a youth should journey to reach it he would be an old man when he arrived. Tell us of that man."

"I looked at them," Tolstoy recalled, "and saw their faces all aglow, while their eyes were burning. I saw that those rude barbarians were really interested in a man whose name and deeds had already become a legend." He told them everything he knew about Lincoln’s "home life and youth…his habits, his influence upon the people and his physical strength." When he finished, they were so grateful for the story that they presented him with "a wonderful Arabian horse."

The next morning, as Tolstoy prepared to leave, they asked if he could possibly acquire for them a picture of Lincoln. Thinking that he might find one at a friend's house in the neighboring town, Tolstoy asked one of the riders to accompany him. "I was successful in getting a large photograph from my friend," recalled Tolstoy. As he handed it to the rider, he noted that the man's hand trembled as he took it. "He gazed for several minutes silently, like one in a reverent prayer, his eyes filled with tears."

These Caucasian tribesmen (Muslims all) are the ancestors of so many of our "enemies" today. But they recognized the power of a good man. A man who laughed at the thunder, whose voice was like the sunrise, and whose deeds were as strong as the rock. Oh, Mr. Lincoln, that we had a thousand of you today! I fear that the old chieftain was right, and that even today if a youth was to set out for your country, he would be an old man when he found it, even though he starts in the heart of this country today.

As Tolstoy went on to say:

Washington was a typical American. Napoleon was a typical Frenchman, but Lincoln was a humanitarian as broad as the world. He was bigger than his country -- bigger than all the Presidents together.

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Just disgusting.

Today the Republicans filibustered Democratic measures in the U.S. Senate that would have 1) restored habeas corpus protections to enemy combatants (I remind you that American citizens can be unilaterally declared enemy combatants and imprisoned without access to courts to challenge that imprisonment--you just go to jail indefinitely on the President's say so, nothing else, it's literally what we fought the Revolution against); and 2) the amendment to the appropriations bill introduced by Senator Webb of Virginia (who I think may be the baddest ass in these United States, no joke) that would merely require that active duty soldiers get a day of rest at home in between tours for every day spent in Iraq. Wouldn't limit the duration or number of tours, just ensure that soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines can't be sent home from a long tour only to be called back to Baghdad in a couple of months for another year in that god-forsaken quagmire. You know, God forbid we let them see their kids (or parents) once in a while.
The Republicans didn't defeat these measures, they didn't even let them come for a vote. They would have lost a vote, so they stalled and filibustered. Because the health of our troops and the sanctity of our laws are of no importance to the Republican Party. They are un-American, they are a cancer on the Republic, and they make me sick. Literally. Just disgusting. I'll be writing my Senator before the day is out. Probably won't do anything. my Republican Senator, Wayne Allard, is literally one of the worst Senators out there. I don't mean that I disagree with him politically, though I do very much on this issue, but that he is bad at his job. He can't even bring home pork, or get his name on a major piece of legislation. He is bad at Senating, and this is just one more example of that.

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Things that are unacceptable

I'm not going to really talk about this because I don't have anything constructve to say and it fills me with rage and shame and neither of those things are conducive to quality thinking on any subject. All I'm going to do is write a sentence with links to two things in that sentence, and then you can follow those links and figure it out for yourself. My only commentary is in the form of a disclaimer: No historical analogies are to be taken literally, I'm not calling anybody anything specific, I just think that we should think about the road we've apparently chosen to go down. Anyway, here you go:

We are doing this, and we are doing it here. I'm honest-to-God sick to my stomach right now.

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Apparently 30% of Americans (and 100% of public officials) are affected

If you have this problem...Please, for your family's sake, get help.

Ask your doctor today.

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Me? Why, I'm a Gravel man myself.

I'm totally on board with Mike Gravel.
Why will putting the Iraq war to a series of daily votes in Congress eventually wear down Republican legilslators and force them to support withdrawal? "They will, because politicians generally are gutless." That's awesome.

Also: "The sooner we put some of our leaders in jail for what they do to the people, the sooner we stop [them] from doing [those things]." It's both extreme, yet oddly sensible. Start an illegal war, go to jail. Awesome.

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SOTU

The President's speech was better than I thought it would be. But...that's not saying much. And really, why listen to me? Here's Joshua Micah Marshall, proprietor of talkingpointsmemo.com, which is the best political blog out there. I pretty much agree with him. About everything.

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He served when called and he served with dignity.

Though I myself am an Ann Arbor liberal, bred and raised with the papers to prove it, and President Gerald Ford was a Grand Rapids conservative, and we are natural enemies like the cobra and the mongoose, well, he was a pretty good guy, and a not bad President. He was pro-choice, and he was pro gay rights, and he was the only President to ever say in his State of the Union that the state of the union was not strong (and by that admission, tell the truth). He was the very picture of decency. R.I.P. Gerry Ford. Go with God Mr. President.

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Hey Kids!

Wanna see a man who has spent his life in service to his country, has been decorated for his heroism, and has served--despite political differences with the president who asked for his service--as a cabinet officer, and has decided to stick his neck out and become a US Senator in the hopes of improving the lives of the poor? Well I give you Senator-Elect (D-VA) Jim Webb.

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Congress will excercise oversight over the Executive? What crazy colonial thought that up?

CNN is now projecting Democratic control of the House of Representatives. I congratulate Speaker Nancy Pelosi and wish her good hunting.

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Worst. Congress. Ever.

If you're anyhting like me (embittered, a little drunk) you're already aware of most of the stuff in this Rolling Stone article about The Worst Congress Ever because you've been following the last six years like the progress of a tumor that finally spead to your heart and lungs. But it's still galling to see it in one place. I particularly commend to your attention the second major point of the article: the Republicans are bad at this. It's not just the terrible policies and the outright lies, it's that they are not good at doing their jobs: bills aren't passed on time, hearings go unscheduled, the simple logisitcs of running the nation elude them. We are being run by sociopaths, bigots, liars and crooks--this is all true--but worst of all, they're dumb. Dumb like that kid in your geometry class that, try as he might, just could not figure out the difference because isoceles and right triangles. Teacher would explain over and over again, but he just wouldn't pay attention long enough to learn it. Unfathomable dumb.

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We need a better government. Now.

Today the United States Senate voted to give a level of power to the Executive that exceeds the normative ideas of republican government. (They also retroactively immunized the President from conviction for war crimes--war crimes.) The President of the United States now has unreviewable power to secretly detain even US citizens indefinitely without recourse. It effectively overturns the Writ of Habeas Corpus--which is unconstitutional, "unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it." And if you think that those conditions are being met by terrorism then you are a coward who overestimates our enemies. I mean it. A coward. I will fucking fight you about this. This is literally one of the reasons we rebelled against King George III. The Declaration of Independence enumerates among the grievances against the British Crown: "For depriving us [that is, insurrection prone foreigners], in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury." This is a dark day. This is our generation's Korematsu, our Alien and Sedition Acts. I don't want to talk about it anymore. So just read this for background and watch this for the proper reaction a real American should have. "What are we becoming?" indeed.

UPDATE: The suspension clause in Article I of the Constituion that I reference above is probably enough that the courts won't overturn it. That is to say that they'll defer to Congress on what is and is not rebellion or invasion. My point is that Congress is wrong to say that in this case, and that while the passage of the law is practically within its power, it is morally wrong and unAmerican.

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History of Oil.

While I'm posting video, please enjoy the comedy and critical history stylings of Robert Newman in his History of Oil. It's both hilarious and informative. Also, I'll bet you didn't know that shit about the start of WWI.
I came across it a few months ago and recently had reason to remember it.

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Fuck yeah.

One is, on rare occassions, heartened by the conduct of those men and women in blue and black suits that stand in front of us on the TV of an evening and tell us about he world that we were too busy in our workplaces to see that day. For the most part, they are scoundrels and have taken refuge in the infernal box the way a drunk takes his refuge in prayer, satisfied that whatever they say is not their fault. But some take the awesome priviledge seriously. Keith Olbermann of MSNBC (go watch him whenever you can) is one of those good kind. Rest a little easier America, but do never slumber too deep.

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I'm not even angry anymore, just sort of dejected.

One can be struck on the back of the head with a roll of quarters by the terrifying truth of the world we live in. A new Senate report has once and for all just ruined the idea that Saddam Hussein had any operational--or even ideological--relationship with Al-Qaeda. From the Associated Press.

The report, released Friday, discloses for the first time an October 2005 CIA assessment that prior to the war Saddam's government "did not have a relationship, harbor or turn a blind eye toward" al-Qaida operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi or his associates.

As recently as an Aug. 21 news conference, President Bush said people should "imagine a world in which you had Saddam Hussein" with the capacity to make weapons of mass destruction and "who had relations with Zarqawi."

...

The report said that al-Zarqawi, the al-Qaida leader killed by a U.S. airstrike last June, was in Baghdad from May 2002 until late November 2002. But "postwar information indicates that Saddam Hussein attempted, unsuccessfully, to locate and capture al-Zarqawi and that the regime did not have a relationship with, harbor or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi."

The 9/11 Commission report already pointed this out. The State Department's Intelligence Bureau said so too, before the war. I mean, you just have to pay attention.

Of equally stupefying character, former CIA Director George Tennet testafied that he caved to the administration in not exposing this lack of a connection.

"Tenet admitted to the Intelligence Committee that the policymakers wanted him to 'say something about not being inconsistent with what the president had said,'" Intelligence Committee member Carl Levin, D-Mich., told reporters Friday.

And lest you think that this has nothing to do with the war I would merely point out to you that 43% of Americans in general and 85% of troops in Iraq believe that Saddam was responsible for 9/11. They got that idea somewhere. And that idea served the political purposes of the White house. The cynical, even dangerous, manipulation of foreign intelligence and domestic opinion in order to implement policy whose cheif aim is the political survival of the Republican Party rather than positive substantive outcomes for American interests is the hallmark of the Bush Administration and it's dangerously imperilling the nation. And we swallow this shit like ice-cream. It makes me despair.

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Are they drinking Victory Gin?

I think that comparing government actions--any actions of any government--to George Orwell's 1984 is cliche and lazy. And the adjective "Orwellian" is so overused as to be almost meaningless. When people use Orwell metaphors and analogies my reaction is often, if not always, along the lines of, "Way to go, you read exactly one political book (or more likely saw the movie, or even more likely have absorbed the basic outline of the plot through cultural osmosis), I now think that you are smart and will respect your soon-to-follow analysis as though you were a serious thinker and not just someone who reads the local alt-weekly newspaper...douche."

But here's the thing. The current administration is so sophmorically--even cartoonishly--shitty that hackneyed phrases are in fact perfectly apt. (I like that phrase, "in fact perfectly apt," it sounds so sharp, say it out loud...There you go, nice huh?)

Ken Mehlman, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, said on NBC this last Sunday that no Republican advocates "staying the course" in Iraq, but rather that the Republican line has always been to adapt the strategy to changing circumstances. According to Mehlman no Republican has ever advocated "staying the course" as a strategy for the Middle East, that such a characterization is the work of people that are trying to undermine the Republican plan for adaptive and successful Iraq policy.

Mehlman (8/13/06): "But look, we’re not coming in and saying 'Stay the course.' The choice in this election is not between 'Stay the course' and 'Cut and run,' it’s between 'Win by adapting' and 'Cut and run.'"

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-TN (7/27/06): "We're for staying the course in Iraq and the war on terror."

So why all the stuff about Orwell and 1984? Because, dear reader, Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.

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