Eight years later

I was in my office on the morning of September 11, 2001, and the phone rang. It was one of my leading church members, who said: “Go home and turn on the TV, something has happened.” The urgency in her voice was enough that I dropped what I was doing, and a short time later I was standing by the television with my teenage children, watching the news unfold on CNBC: smoke rising from the North tower, news reporters not sure what they were reporting on yet. Watching the screen, at one point I saw something, an airplane flying low, and followed it across the screen with my finger. Then an angry plume of flame burst out the other side of the second tower.

Statement by the President

This post updated April 28, 2009.

I took note of this in September 2006 and posted it here at that time ( Published on: Sep 21, 2006 @ 21:02):

From the official White House website, a reminder of what was advocated by our then- Chief Executive, George W. Bush, in a speech to the United Nations just a little over three nearly six years ago. (the Statement by the President has scrolled off the White House website since the change of administration; but can be found several places on the Web.)  [emphasis added by blogger, April 2009]

Today, on the United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, the United States declares its strong solidarity with torture victims across the world. Torture anywhere is an affront to human dignity everywhere. We are committed to building a world where human rights are respected and protected by the rule of law.

Freedom from torture is an inalienable human right. The Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment, ratified by the United States and more than 130 other countries since 1984, forbids governments from deliberately inflicting severe physical or mental pain or suffering on those within their custody or control. ….[]

[] …..The United States is committed to the world-wide elimination of torture and we are leading this fight by example. I call on all governments to join with the United States and the community of law-abiding nations in prohibiting, investigating, and prosecuting all acts of torture and in undertaking to prevent other cruel and unusual punishment. I call on all nations to speak out against torture in all its forms and to make ending torture an essential part of their diplomacy….[].

…No people, no matter where they reside, should have to live in fear of their own government. Nowhere should the midnight knock foreshadow a nightmare of state-commissioned crime. The suffering of torture victims must end, and the United States calls on all governments to assume this great mission.

[blogger's comment, 2006]: Those are good words, and represent a noble standard. Leading by example is, on this issue, definitely the way to go. Let us both work and pray that the substance of United States policy and practice exemplify such leadership without equivocation.

[same blogger, 2009, under a different administration]:  Amen!

Associative Thinking

Just having noticed something, I thought I would run it by my vast readership. Pay attention, both of you!

It was with some distress and dismay that I observed, back in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, some rhetorical trickery which haunts us to this day, to the extent that there is still some debate about whether the matter should even be looked into. I for one was very cognizant  that in all the talk about “weapons of mass destruction” and the atrocities committed by Saddam Hussein, official pronouncements never included any actual new factual information (the “sixteen words” and the delusions of Dick Cheney notwithstanding), just recycled bits of old information (such as the oft-repeated “used WMD against his own people,” which referred exclusively to the incident in 1983 when during one of the wars against Iran, Kurds in the border area were subjected to mustard gas supplied to Iraq by the United States). What happened was that the constant repetition of these old bits of information was strategically intermingled with discussions of the day’s news, so that a general feeling was aroused in the half-conscious public that all of these things were representative of a “gathering threat” — and the result was an unnecessary invasion of a non-belligerent country which had allowed UN inspectors onto its soil, and had complied (so it turns out) with all demands that it reveal the truth about its WMD programs — the truth being, as George W. Bush has recently admitted was his biggest “disappointment,” that those programs did not exist. But this post is not about all of this old news, it’s about the rhetorical techniques that made it possible, which are being employed anew on a new front.

Here’s how it went in those days, in talking points from any number of official sources: “mumble mumble NINE-ELEVEN mumble mumble SADDAM HUSSEIN mumble mumble TERRORIST ATTACKS mumble mumble IRAQ mumble mumble WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION mumble mumble….” you get the idea. It was never quite denied, in all of that, that no connection existed between the events of September 11, 2001 and the government of Iraq, or between the Saudis and Yemenis who boarded those planes and Saddam Hussein, or between Osama bin Laden’s training and planning operations in Afghanistan and any of those old-news, obsolete weapons programs…. it was enough that, as has been done by me here, all of these unconnected elements appeared near each other in the same sentence.

And never, in the same sentence, were we reminded that the weapons actually used on that fateful day were not chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons, but box cutters.

By this means, an unwarranted association was built up in the minds of people, and crept into daily conversation, both on and off the airwaves, over a period of months, thus making what had seemed unthinkable, that the United States would make an unprovoked attack upon a sovereign nation, appear inevitable, and even morally justified.

This rhetorical technique is designed to narrow the debate on an issue and set its direction. Take notice: on a different issue, the talking points are there. Just pay attention to how often you hear this over the next weeks/months…..

mumble mumble BIPARTISAN mumblemumble TAX CUTS mumble mumble BIPARTISAN mumble mumble TAX CUTS ….

A Change We Need

On this day, December 1, 2008, seven weeks after the death of my mother, it’s time for me to break my self-imposed cyber-silence and talk about current events once more.

Today, President-Elect Barack Obama has announced his national security team. He is laying the groundwork for change by starting out with a strong foundation of people who know how things work, and thus are more likely to be able to actually implement changes system-wide when decisions are made. I want to talk about one very necessary change that has already been made by a number of governments, and should be made by this one on day one. I’m talking about a complete repudiation of the term “war on terror” as a counterproductive way of describing the actions of handfuls of stateless criminals, who act for the most part without the knowledge or support of any government.

By adopting the “war” rhetoric in the first place, the effect has been to elevate Osama bin Laden to the stature of a head of state.

For this and other reasons, it is time to abandon the “war on terror” rhetoric and start treating international terrorism, on every level, as a law enforcement issue of international scope, rather than as a matter of state or of purely military response.

Right now, in the aftermath of sophisticated, coordinated terrorist attacks in the Indian city of Mumbai, the “war” rhetoric about terror seems tragically likely to spill over into actual war between India and neighboring Pakistan, not because of any government action from that country, but because of the mind-set that associates governments, automatically, with the actions of people who come from those places. (Ironically, if such a mind-set had been in place in the U.S. on September 11, 2001, America would have immediately threatened war on Saudi Arabia and perhaps Yemen.) It’s time to re-brand the “war” on terror and call it an international crackdown on a specific kind of organized crime.

So long as terrorists are treated as international players, as opposed to stateless criminals, it can only raise tensions such as we now see between India and Pakistan. While states like Pakistan have tacitly supported militancy in the past, this policy was reversed after 9/11; but that reversal should be reinforced all the more with reminders that Benazir Bhutto, the leader of the now-governing party, was herself a victim of a terror attack.

This should be an occasion for all governments within the region to come together to cooperate on cracking down on this type of criminality, wherever it arises. This will accomplish several goals at once:

• Promoting cooperation at the highest levels
• de-legitimizing the terrorists by calling them criminals
• arriving at more effective anti-terrorist strategies and tactics that work across international boundaries
• and generally restoring the idea of the rule of law to supremacy  for the 21st century.

Under the leadership of the incoming Obama administration, perhaps this could even extend to some internationally recognized protocols governing the activities of clandestine agencies worldwide. Would there be opposition to such an idea? You betcha! But this is a change someone like me could really believe in.

Taking the Wright approach

Yesterday, Barack Obama arrived late to a Philadelphia podium to give a speech that, if he failed to exceed expectations, could have effectively ended his political career. The issue of the day was being spun as: “Will he or won’t he put a sufficient amount of distance between himself and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his pastor for twenty years, his spiritual mentor, who has been shown on videotape saying outrageous, offensive and in some cases just plain untrue things? Will he both reject and denounce the man who led him to Christ, officiated at his wedding, and baptized his children?” The political class loves a good pile-on, and it was hard to see how this was not going to balloon into a ruination of a colossal order.

I watched that speech with considerable interest, tinged with skepticism

Destroying the New Deal

From the “heard it here first” dept…. the following comments were first posted online in February 2002. It is re-posted here at a time when the latest budget proposal has been unveiled, showing with more clarity than ever the nature of the agenda outlined here.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan ran for president promising that he would balance the budget and reduce taxes. His harshest words were aimed at “tax and spend” Democrats, who were responsible for the growth of Big Government and thus the rising federal deficits. Sure enough, within a few months of taking office a massive tax cut was pushed through Congress.

Hard on the heels of tax cuts came calls to cut spending in a large array of government programs, in the interests of balancing the budgets. On a Friday, the White House was heard to say that when it came to looking at things to cut from the budget, there could be no “sacred cows.” The following Monday, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger appeared before a congressional committee to argue that all of the (increased) spending for Defense in the president’s proposal was absolutely necessary. Obviously, the view that Big Government was evil did not extend to include a similar notion about Big Military. The budget, under Reagan, was never balanced; in fact the deficits grew significantly. As his term of office played out, it became evident that the anti-”tax and spend” rhetoric had been followed up by an actual “borrow-and-spend” policy. Much of that borrowing was from the hated Social Security system, whose annual revenue surpluses — enhanced by a payroll tax increase enacted early in Reagan’s first term — were brought on-budget for the first time, effectively hiding the massive scope of the deficits being generated.

To review, let’s outline the nuts and bolts of the Reagan Agenda at that time.

1. Push through huge tax cuts.
2. Push through huge military spending increases.
3. Point out that, hey, we’re short on funds, and it’s the fault of the Liberals who keep spending money on frivolous Big Government programs. You know — the ones that give lazy poor people a free ride by helping them do unnecessary things like eat, go to the doctor and have a place to live.
4. Insist that if the budget is to be balanced, it has to be done without raising taxes or cutting military spending.
5. Keep up the political pressure until Congress trashes most or all of the policies that have been in place since Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal — or at least since Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty.

Reagan succeeded in getting his agenda rolling, but something happened after he left office, namely on the watch of his vice-president and successor, George H. W. Bush; actually, a couple of somethings.

• Number one: the reversals of New Deal programs such as Social Security, or War on Poverty legacies such as Medicare, were shown to be such hot potatoes that even Reagan had to be heard saying he didn’t want to kill them, only “fix” them.
• Number two: Congress and the people were not as quick as the Reaganauts hoped they would be in cutting “discretionary” spending by eliminating whole programs.
• Number three: the Soviet Union (Reagan’s “evil empire” whose existence justified his military budget increases) collapsed under its own weight.

The senior Mr. Bush scrambled to find something to replace this convenient enemy.

Is anyone Listening?

An important speech today by Nobel Prize winner Al Gore. An excerpt:

 

The distinguished scientists with whom it is the greatest honor of my life to share this award have laid before us a choice between two different futures – a choice that to my ears echoes the words of an ancient prophet: “Life or death, blessings or curses. Therefore, choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.”

We, the human species, are confronting a planetary emergency – a threat to the survival of our civilization that is gathering ominous and destructive potential even as we gather here. But there is hopeful news as well: we have the ability to solve this crisis and avoid the worst – though not all – of its consequences, if we act boldly, decisively and quickly.

However, despite a growing number of honorable exceptions, too many of the world’s leaders are still best described in the words Winston Churchill applied to those who ignored Adolf Hitler’s threat: “They go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful to be impotent.”

So today, we dumped another 70 million tons of global-warming pollution into the thin shell of atmosphere surrounding our planet, as if it were an open sewer. And tomorrow, we will dump a slightly larger amount, with the cumulative concentrations now trapping more and more heat from the sun.

As a result, the earth has a fever. And the fever is rising. The experts have told us it is not a passing affliction that will heal by itself. We asked for a second opinion. And a third. And a fourth. And the consistent conclusion, restated with increasing alarm, is that something basic is wrong.

We are what is wrong, and we must make it right.

On Patriotism

“When it is a question of oneself, and even of one’s family, it is a more or less recognized thing that one mustn’t be too boastful; that one must beware of one’s judgments when one is at the same time judge and prosecutor; that one must ask oneself whether opposition on the part of others may or may not be at least partly justified; that one mustn’t try to occupy the whole stage, or think solely of oneself; in short, that limits must be set to egoism and pride. But when it comes to national egoism, national pride, not only is the field unlimited, but the highest possible degree of it seems to be imposed by something closely resembling an obligation. Regard for others, recognition of one’s own faults, modesty, the voluntary limitation of one’s desires–all are now turned into so many crimes, so many sacriliges.”

–Simone Weil, The Need For Roots

What bothers me about Iran

Now that the drums are beating which will eventually make war with Iran look like it was unavoidable, two significant items stick in my brain. First, of course is the nebulous “evidence” which no one has seen about Iran’s nuclear ambitions. I took note last May that one side-effect of the leak of a CIA operative’s name may well have been to degrade the capability we have of knowing whether or not Iran’s nuclear ambitions are for the purposes of developing weapons, or not. On May 1, 2006,

MSNBC correspondent Shuster reported that intelligence sources told him that Wilson was part of an operation three years ago “tracking the proliferation of nuclear weapons material into Iran.” And the sources asserted, he said, “that when here Wilson’s cover was blown, the administration’s ability to track Iran’s nuclear ambitions was damaged as well.”

It’s unthinkable that in the Office of the Vice-President of the United States, there could have been someone who would think it a Good Thing to make us less capable of knowing what Iran is up to — less capable of knowing whether or not Iran’s claims that its nuclear ambitions are for energy, not weapons, comports with the facts. It is unthinkable — isn’t it?

Meanwhile there is a new dribble, dribble, dribble of commentary masquerading as news to the effect that Iran is involved somehow in the guerrilla ground war in Iraq; not implausible, but again, no actual evidence has been produced, and what few, mostly old, bits of information that might be construed as evidence in that direction are being fed through the megaphone and into the echo chamber. Have we seen such a pattern before?

The second thing that bothers me is a short passage from Page 224 of Bob Woodward’s book, State of Denial, which contains the following short narrative. The scene is the White House, after Jay Garner, the first person appointed to run post-invasion Iraq, has returned from Iraq, having been replaced by L. Paul Bremer.

As Garner got up to leave, Rice stopped him and extended her hand. “Jay, you’ve got to stay in touch with us,” she said….

….. On the way out, Bush slapped Garner on the back. “Hey, Jay, you want to do Iran?”

Seemingly, The Decider already had plans on his mind, way back then, for how to administer Iran post-invasion. The same Iran concerning which the official line has been that we want to solve its issues “diplomatically” while at the same time refusing to have an actual conversation with its leaders.

Whaddya bet The Decider “runs out of patience” at some politically convenient time, after concluding that the (non-existent) “diplomacy” has “failed”?

Saddam hanged at dawn as bombs kill more than 60 | Top News | Reuters.com

Saddam hanged at dawn as bombs kill more than 60 | Top News | Reuters.com

Regarding the execution today of Saddam Hussein, I only can quote the prophet Ezekiel:

The LORD takes no pleasure in the death of anyone who dies.

What saddens me is that all parties seem to be agreed that the way to achieve justice is through violence and death.

In this the Shi’as and the Sunnis, the governments of Iraq and the United States, Osama bin Laden and his followers, all are on the same page. They think they can win by bringing death to their enemies.

I refuse to rejoice at anyone’s death, even that of a mass murderer.