How Dare They?
I'm with Michelle Obama. There really is not a great deal in America today to be proud of. And perhaps it's indicative of the depths to which we've sunk, but I can't help but be proud of my state for it's courage in support of such a controversial concept as equality and justice.
When you talk about equality, and specifically the Fourteenth Amendment, it's beyond my understanding how you could deny the right of marriage to any couple. Particularly when we went through this very same fight so recently with Miscegenation laws. And yet, here we are, with a bunch of Americans so blinded by ancient superstition and tribal hatred of anyone different than them that they are willing to abandon the very values that made America the shining city on the hill. Values, by the way, that these same mindless drones will happily tell you that American soldiers have given their lives to defend.
Like so many current political arguments, this is not a close question. There is no valid argument for preventing marriage. It encourages stability, it's every bit part and parcel of the "stable families" that social conservatives are always wailing about, it solves sticky legal questions that otherwise result in unnecessary confusion and suffering. How can it be in America that you can say "this group of people can get married, this group of people cannot"? For that matter, why would you want to? Why would you even care?
Like abortion, where indeed you are not required to participate if your personal beliefs prevent it, if you are opposed to same sex marriage, don't marry someone of your gender. But unlike even abortion, no case for the slightest harm to anyone can be made. Over the years, my greatest disagreement with religion has not been their silly beliefs, although any grownup who believes in the actual existence of magic and superheros should be embarrassed, but with their abiding desire to force their twisted beliefs and values on everyone else. It's not enough to live in the isolation necessitated by their belief in fairies and angels, they seem to feel the only way to validate their mad fantasies is to require everyone around them to believe the same fantastic stories.
Well, I salute California. And Massachusetts. And Freedom and Equality. For what more basic expression of a functioning democracy than assuring all citizens the exact same set of rights, and identical treatment under the law? For that matter, what better expression of an authoritarian dictatorship than arbitrary exclusion of a specific group of citizens from participation in any legally sanctioned action?
I don't know about you, but I don't want to live in the People's Democratic Republic of Amerika. I want nation that embraces the values in her constitution rather than seeking to constrain and eliminate those values.
I guess it's pretty much what I was expecting
So I got fairly spun up this weekend over the lies and misrepresentations towards Iran and the broad acceptance among the population. One of the things that deeply outraged me is that Barack Obama, who without a doubt knows much better, has adopted this same dishonest line out of fear of being labeled a man of peace or something equally awful.
Now I know that the Obama campaign gets an awful lot of correspondence, and certainly they would not have, nor should they be willing to support, the resources to read and respond to them all. Certainly it only makes sense that they would use some digital solution to parse the emails they receive, and based on keywords found in the text send them an appropriate response from the campaign, or forward them to the FBI as necessary. I understand that. But I was frustrated and angry. So I sent this email to the Obama for President website:
Senator Obama, I have so much respect for your willingness to speak honestly with your constituency. Why have you chosen to pander so venally on Iran?
You KNOW Iran is not a threat to America, nor is she a threat to Israel. You KNOW that all the evidence is Iran is not developing nuclear weapons. You must know that under the NPT, which unlike Israel and India, Iran is a signatory, Iran is perfectly entitled to develop the nuclear fuel cycle, enrich uranium and research and use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. In fact, under the NPT, the IAEA and other nuclear nations are actually obligated to ASSIST Iran in the research and development of peaceful nuclear power. If anyone is in breach of the NPT, it is the US, Russia, England and France for not living up to their obligations under the treaty to reduce nuclear stockpiles.
Indeed, a man of your knowledge and grasp of the issues must understand that to demand a negotiating partner essentially "lose" the negotiation merely to be allowed to participate in a negotiation is unfair and frankly, ridiculous. It is a negotiating position calculated to lead to confrontation, a position I'd expect from Dick Cheney, but one I am deeply disappointed to see from you.
I'd really like to know why you feel you cannot be honest with the American people in matters of Iran's nuclear development program. Do you really think that the Americans that advocate killing Muslims for no other reason than they ARE Muslims are ever going to vote for you?
I was disgusted by your pandering capitulation on FISA, and your dishonesty around Iran is not helping. It is time you went back to being the candidate who could clearly be seen as the one providing a path back to sustainable democracy. Whoever is advising you is failing you badly. You can do better. We can do better.
Yes we can...
mikey
Honestly, I had very little expectation of any response whatsoever. I'm certain that the campaign has already reached the conclusion that most Americans have already become convinced that the Iranians are a very deadly, implacable foe of the US and in some way absolutely must be "dealt with".
So I was a little surprised when I saw an email from the campaign in my inbox this afternoon. My surprise quickly turned to head-shaking bemusement as I read their response:
Given the grave threats that we face, our national security agencies must have the capability to gather intelligence and track down terrorists before they strike, while respecting the rule of law and the privacy and civil liberties of the American people. There is also little doubt that the Bush Administration, with the cooperation of major telecommunications companies, has abused that authority and undermined the Constitution by intercepting the communications of innocent Americans without their knowledge or the required court orders.
That is why last year I opposed the so-called Protect America Act, which expanded the surveillance powers of the government without sufficient independent oversight to protect the privacy and civil liberties of innocent Americans. I have also opposed the granting of retroactive immunity to those who were allegedly complicit in acts of illegal spying in the past.
After months of negotiation, the House passed a compromise that, while far from perfect, is a marked improvement over last year's Protect America Act. Under this compromise legislation, an important tool in the fight against terrorism will continue, but the President's illegal program of warrantless surveillance will be over. It restores FISA and existing criminal wiretap statutes as the exclusive means to conduct surveillance – making it clear that the President cannot circumvent the law and disregard the civil liberties of the American people. It also firmly re-establishes basic judicial oversight over all domestic surveillance in the future.
It does, however, grant retroactive immunity, and I voted in the Senate three times to remove this provision so that we could seek full accountability for past offenses. Unfortunately, these attempts were unsuccessful. But this compromise guarantees a thorough review by the Inspectors General of our national security agencies to determine what took place in the past, and ensures that there will be accountability going forward. By demanding oversight and accountability, a grassroots movement of Americans has helped yield a bill that is far better than the Protect America Act.
It is not all that I would want. But given the legitimate threats we face, providing effective intelligence collection tools with appropriate safeguards is too important to delay. So I support the compromise, but do so with a firm pledge that as President, I will carefully monitor the program, review the report by the Inspectors General, and work with the Congress to take any additional steps I deem necessary to protect the lives – and the liberty – of the American people.
See? It's simple enough. My email mentioned their capitulation on FISA. And their software saw it and figured I was another one of those hippies complaining about their capitulation on FISA. So it sent me their canned response. On FISA. And they will continue to rattle their saber at Iran, because it shows they are serious about defending America from all these gathering threats.
And 99 Red Balloons Go By...
Nuclear Proliferation
This is serious. And every single thing being done to manage and contain proliferation is at best useless, and frequently counterproductive. It's weird, and if it wasn't so serious it would be laughable. Who's in charge here, anyway? How do these supposedly bright international arbiters of nuclear materials and development decide on their strategies and tactics? Throwing darts? Magic 8-Ball?
One of the most intractable problems in the non-proliferation community is the lack of a unified goal. While the IAEA seeks to work with signatories of the NPT in a consistent and ongoing fashion, none of the nuclear weapons states can agree on a single goal. The NPT has within it a goal for the ultimate elimination of nuclear weapons. It also has guarantees that any signatory nation can develop nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. As long as the existing nuclear weapons states can ignore their obligations under the NPT which they chose to sign, how can they demand that other nations live up to their agreements? For that matter, when they demand that certain states not be entitled to the very rights they were granted by signing the NPT, particulary when non-signatory nations achieve statuses beyond legality, one can understand their concern.
And it has been misused, misapplied and unfairly enforced for years. Of course, like so much else, the Bush/Cheney administration has made it into an utter joke, merely an extension of ideology-driven policy. It's hard even to find a place to start. Israel, never a signatory to the NPT, is in possession of hundreds of advanced nuclear weapons. Even as Bush/Cheney call for a denuclearized middle east. How are you to get there without ever suggesting that Israel give up her weapons? And how can you logically insist that her enemies cannot have the very weapons you wink at?
And then there's India and Pakistan. Neither signatories to the NPT, both now officially nuclear weapons states. And of course, both, as "strategic allies" of the United States, must be not only forgiven their transgressions, but in a lesson learned well in Washington of late, those transgressions must be made retroactively legal so as not to cause future legal or political problems. And yet, the 800 pound gorilla in the room is that there cannot be a "small" nuclear exchange. Just a few dozen warheads detonated in South Asia will destroy the Ozone Layer at mid-latitudes, causing the deaths of 50-75% of Americans and Europeans in just a few generations.
What of the lesson of North Korea? When you threaten your enemies collectively, and then proceed to invade and occupy one of them, the rest do learn to take your bellicose posturing more seriously. Of course, the unintended consequences of that is that, rather than bowing to your demands, they seek a way to deter your aggression. And the lesson has been learned, never to be put back in the strategic bottle. A nation with nuclear weapons is invulnerable from conventional invasion, occupation, or "regime change". North Korea can now negotiate with the US from a position of strength, indeed, on the strategic board, as equals, for they have nuclear warheads with which they can threaten South Korea and Japan. Do not for a moment think that this message has not been heard in capitols from Riyadh to Tokyo.
Despite there being no evidence that they have a weapons development program, and the nuclear fuel cycle development program they ARE running is not only entirely legal but specifically allowed under the NPT which they, unlike India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea, signed and have honored, who could blame Iran for feeling threatened and seeking the same nuclear deterrent that has worked so well for North Korea?
There are so many failings in the American approach to non-proliferation, it's difficult to even find a place to start. The definition of "Weapons of Mass Destruction" is foolhardy. To somehow equate and try to manage Chemical, Biological and Nuclear weapons as being essentially the same thing has no value, makes no sense, and makes the undertaking fundamentally impossible. Everybody has chemical weapons. You cannot prevent this, but chemical weapons do not belong in the WMD category. They are primarily a battlefield weapon, albeit one of marginal utility and one that is just as likely to kill your troops, downwind civilians or livestock as it is to kill enemy soldiers. If a nation has a pesticide industry, a pharmaceutical industry, or a chemical industry, they can make chemical weapons. So any definition of WMD that includes chemical weapons is self-defeating on it's face. Bio weapons are not as simple to develop or manufacture as some have suggested. It's certainly possible to visualize a vector that might, if virulent enough, cause widespread death and panic. But it's not controllable, and there's no good way to use it as anything other than a terror weapon. Sure, it would be a damn good terror weapon, and smart people need to be thinking about this, but it clearly has no place in a non-proliferation discussion.
The first step in any serious non-proliferation program would be the unilateral disarmament of the United States. We could easily build down to 1000 warheads. Think about that. 1000 warheads, while a small fraction of what we have in current inventories, would be more than enough nuclear firepower to act as a strategic deterrent. The US would not be threatened, and would have an opportunity to see what the rest of the world might do. Perhaps, and I think it fairly likely, other nations would gladly seize the opportunity to reduce their nuclear stockpiles and the associated wasteful expenditures.
Weapons designs are getting close to a hundred years old. The ability to build a nuclear weapon, given a supply of fissile material, is virtually universal. Therefore, the Bush administration's attempt to embargo
knowledge is doomed to failure. Knowledge can be acquired on the open market. See AQ Kahn. The only real solution is to find a way to control the worlds supply of fissile material. And the only way all nations are going to accept that program is for it to be completely de-coupled from any nation's political agenda. If the system cannot be trusted, it will not be used. Any third grader could come up with a system that would work. The question is, will the existing powers allow it? The answer is obviously no.
Non-proliferation is a problem that the world must confront. But it must be confronted honestly and fairly, with the same options and responsibilities extended to every party. If ideology and political expediency is allowed to interfere with a workable solution, the future is not only ugly, but likely quite short. As long as the likes of Dick Cheney and Vlad Putin are the responsible parties, the human race has very little in the way of a future. And of course, the ones with the weapons make the weapons rules. So check your hope at the door...
There Really is Only One Word for It
So much has become clear recently. So many events that pull the last of the tattered, opaque veil from the seemingly disjoint and odd pronouncements and practices of our political elite.
No Impeachment. Regardless of the monumental monstrosity of the crimes.
No Accountability. Whether for the political operatives that infected our government, serving party rather than people, or for the telecom companies that take your money and don't even pretend to try and protect you, even if the law demands they do, but rush to betray you illegally. Not for the liars, the torturers, the thieves, the murderers. Not even for convicted felons.
No end to the disaster in Iraq. When violence was at it's peak, we had to stay. Now violence is down. And we have to stay.
The blatant nature of the crimes is exceeded only by the audacious cover-ups.
The lies just pile up, one upon the other, and when it is so often made clear and obvious that they ARE, in fact lies, nothing happens. Nothing.
And always, everywhere, it is the weakest, poorest, the innocents who suffer and die. And nobody seems particularly bothered by it.
I'm disgusted. The disgust is broad, omni-directional, and deeply visceral. Somehow, the disgust is beyond the outrage I used to feel. It is the disgust of acceptance. This is the new normal. The trajectory is set, the outcome is no longer in doubt. The winners are greed, paranoia, fear and hatred.
I'm disgusted with bush, cheney and rove. But somehow, less than I was, both because I have realized that the venal, criminal behavior they have demonstrated time and again is so widely shared among our political elite, and because, unlike the liars on the other side, they make no attempt to pretend that it is anything other than their nature. It is like expecting a skunk not to stink, or a bear not fart, or a monkey not to fling poo - there is no point in appealing to their best natures once you realize they do not have one.
I'm disgusted with Pelosi, with Reid and Hoyer. When you are the politcal opposition and you are empowered to bring a halt to at least some of the excesses of the party in power, and then you prostrate yourselves before them and allow them to achieve EVERY one of their politcal goals unchallenged, you have abdicated your responsibilities and should resign in shame. When you are complicit in the crimes to the extent that you cannot oppose them in fear of prosecution FOR them, you no longer have any right to the positions you hold.
I'm disgusted with Gates and Petraeus, with Rice and Crocker, with al-Maliki and al-Sadr and every other participant in that sad charade, playing at political and economic gamesmanship while millions suffer.
I'm disgusted with Mugabe and al-Bashir and Tadić and every other political leader who lets their own people suffer and die while they enrich themselves and indulge their sick tribal hatreds.
I'm disgusted with Brown and Sarkozy and Putin and Hu Jintao who will not take a brave political stance on matters of war, of peace, of freedom and dignity, or even of climate change, but rather all seem to have decided just to "go along to get along".
I'm disgusted with McCain and Obama, lying and posturing, still trying to pander to people's worst hatreds and fears, offering slogans and catch-phrases rather than solutions.
I'm disgusted, I'm tired, I'm soul-sick, I'm resigned. I can't see a sustainable future, I can't see a reason to believe that America might ever again be a constitutional democracy with the values that others could aspire to. It's all wrecked, it's all just ashes now.
I'm old enough that I don't have to worry about the future so much. But I see an ugly descent into a dystopian future of a toxic environment, "small" nuclear wars, wars over resources as basic as food and water and as advanced as plutonium and platinum. I see nationalism, ethnicism, religious fundamentalism and increasing poverty and desperation causing widespread violence. I see the vast and growing divide between rich and poor creating massive refugee events, with the attendant starvation and disease.
I don't know how much the current crop of greedy, venal, lying governments and leaders are responsible for the future that is rapidly coming into terrifying focus, but I do know that in the future, historians will look back at the '90s and '00s and wonder why, with all these problems clearly impending, no one bothered to do anything but get rich and try to stay out of prison.
What Conditions?
McCain keeps echoing the party line. We can withdraw our combat troops from Iraq, but only dependent upon "conditions on the ground". How many thousands of times have we heard this statement? And yet, has anyone ever sought to discover exactly what conditions would have to be extant "on the ground" in order for our troops to come home?
Nope. No one asks. And I think I know why. They already know that the answer, to whatever extent there even is an answer forthcoming, will be vague and utterly free of definitive data. If you are using some set of conditions that are not yet met to support your position that the US military must stay in Iraq in large numbers, the last thing you want to do is describe the conditions under which you would support withdrawal. Because what would you then do if those conditions were met? It's much better for a disingenuous warmonger to hold out hope that at some point, some vague and as-yet undescribed set of conditions will be met and the occupation can end.
This is exactly the same ridiculous dodge they use when they throw around the term "Victory". They love to insist we have to win in Iraq. And it goes utterly unchallenged. Intellectually, everyone listening from either side of the debate knows that the only victory that could possibly be won occurred in the spring of 2003 when American forces routed the Iraqi armed forces, captured Iraq's capitol and deposed their leadership. Criminal or not, pointless and wasteful though it might be, that was victory. You can easily understand this by looking up the meaning of victory in the dictionary.
You cannot "win" an occupation. You can describe a set of goals the occupation is supposed to accomplish and if and when those goals are met, you can say your occupation has been successful. But staying until victory is a mindless, meaningless phrase and should be challenged.
As long as no one in the media or the political opposition holds their feet to the fire and forces them to drive a stake into the ground and say clearly and definitively what conditions on the ground would allow American combat troops to come home, they are essentially complicit in extending this stupid, criminal occupation. When all the warmongers want is the keep American military power on the oil fields, their best political strategy is to refuse to state under what circumstances they would bring those soldiers home. Because that allows them to shake their heads and say "nope, not there yet" and it just grinds on.
It seems to me with his mindless repetition of the phrase "withdrawal based on conditions", John McCain is providing a gigantic opportunity for anyone who questions the value of an ongoing American military occupation of Iraq to insist he describe those conditions. Indeed, to allow him to repeatedly make the statement without clarifying what it means amounts at the very least to journalistic malpractice.
It's a stupid, mindless, dishonest position. It's an easy question. Anyone?
Surge, Lies and Patriotism
It is now an article of faith in the American political discourse that "the surge worked". Of course, anyone with better than passing familiarity with the situation in Iraq knows beyond a doubt that the surge most certainly didn't "work". When announced, the escalation of the number of American combat troops in Iraq, primarily centered around Baghdad was described as having the purpose of reducing violence in order to provide the Iraqi leadership the "breathing space" to create political reconciliation and provide the Iraqi population with desperately needed services. Now, at the end of this so-called surge, violence is certainly down. There are clearly a number of factors contributing to that salutary outcome, but it is certainly fair to say that the additional American troops is one of them. Of course, Iraq is still a basket case, locked in polirtical chaos, without any clear path to becoming a functioning society. And violence, while "down", is still horrendously high, with close to 600 Iraqis killed every month in internecine warfare between at least six different factions. No. The surge didn't work. In Iraq, nothing works.
But the interesting thing is not the broad acceptance of this blatant falsehood. The lies, and the baldly transparent agenda behind them, are every day a greater part and parcel of the political conversation in America. It is a sad, dysfunctional condition, but one we become more inured to every day. Rather, the interesting thing is that our dialog has become so poisoned that it is utterly impossible to state the obvious truth. The wisdom among politicians, press and pundit alike is that the surge worked. In spite of the obvious fact that it did not, nothing even weakly challenging this blatantly false position may be stated. It's this collective, voluntary blindness that prevents the American political process from actually doing it's job, solving problems and addressing events in a rational and realistic manner.
Similarly, there is the unquestioned "knowledge" that the nation of Iran poses a very serious threat to the United States and her interests. This is obviously not the case. Iran has no capacity to threaten the US, and Israel has a qualitative military advantage in addition to 300 nuclear weapons. The accepted wisdom that Iran constitutes a genuine military threat to the US is clearly grounded in the well-documented necessity for an unpopular and authoritarian political leadership to create a terrifying external enemy to justify unpopular, undemocratic and unconstitutional actions at home. Iran is nothing more than "the boogie man", but it is expressly forbidden to say so.
One wonders how we let ourselves get to this point. A point where recognizing or even simply commenting on reality is disallowed from the discourse. This is madness. What could be more important than matters of war and peace? And yet it is in this very arena that lies and distortions carry more weight than the actual analysis and recognition of reality. A political historian, if one were willing to destroy her career to document this descent into fantasy, would probably find deep roots. To me, it goes back to political debates over crime and drugs. No matter how wasteful and ineffectual the program, if it involved criminalizing more activities and harshly punishing offenders, it was politically desirable. Contrarily, no matter how effective alternatives might be, if they could possibly be portrayed as "soft on crime" (think for a moment about how ridiculous that phrase is) they were to be avoided as political suicide. So it began to be necessary to take positions that were utterly antithetical to effective governance, yet all the while proclaiming them to be the polar opposite, paragons of effective leadership. As the years went by, perhaps the clanging discord of these statements began to fade, and we have come to accept the conventional wisdom uncritically.
Today, in the through-the-looking-glass world of bush/cheney/rove political dialog, we are inundated by perfectly mad statements of utter falsehood. Statements that are routinely picked up but the media and repeated until they take on a patina of reality. And of course, with movies and American Idol and Mixed Martial Arts to distract us, it has become too much of a daily challenge to think these things through on our own.
What will it take for America to begin to accept the insertion of reality in her political debates? It may be far too late for that, but there was a certain hope that a President Obama would speak to Americans as adults, in complete sentences, dealing in truths rather than politically expedient distortions. Alas, with his perfectly ludicrous positions on FISA, NATO, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and al-Quaeda, he has demonstrated that not even he has the political will to tell his constituency the truth.
Ultimately, it is necessary for us, as citizens, to try to find a way to inform ourselves. And in many cases, this requires nothing more than thinking carefully about the things they are saying, rather than accepting them at face value...
You can identify a thing by its nature...
War. We know what war is. Intuitively, almost instinctively, the knowledge is as much visceral as it is cerebral.
We know that five years after we invaded another nation, defeated it's military on the field of battle, deposed it's political leadership and occupied it's capital we cannot still be at war with that nation.
We know that it is not possible to be at war with an enemy you can only describe as non-specific and amorphous. We also know that if this enemy does not have soldiers, a conflict with that enemy can be many things, but it cannot be a war.
It is very clear that calling it a "war" as an explanation or excuse when we chose it, started it and are now perpetuating it is disingenuous and self-serving.
What is happening in Iraq is many things. None of them are war. It is not our country. We could end our involvement in any combat in that nation by bringing our occupation troops home. I can guarantee you that no American active duty military forces will be killed by Iraqi insurgents or Shiite militias if they were in America instead of Iraq.
What is happening in Afghanistan might be arguably substantially closer to a war. At least it is the case where an argument can be made that having American combat troops there might actually be contributing to American security, and there are actual military forces deployed against them. But there has to be a minimum threshold where at some point the size of a military deployment, even one that includes combat with specific enemy forces, is so small that it does not rise to the level of "war". And as long as poverty and corruption are the norm, and the entire country outside the capitol is ruled by warlords with no national loyalty and no willingness to operate out of anything but personal greed and the perpetuation of their own local power, there will never be an end to the Islamic Fundamentalists that we currently narrowly describe as our enemies in that blighted place.
It is also important to understand that borders, particularly that of Pakistan, prevent the prosecution of anything even remotely resembling war. We can only place our troops in harms way and wait until the forces opposed to them decide to attack them. It should be obvious that this state of affairs utterly precludes a military solution, but to the mindless, predatory, criminal leadership in Washington DC there is no other expression of American power than bombs and bullets.
Ultimately, we know it. We are not "a nation at war". This is not "a time of war". A part of us is embarrassed when we make the claim. Some people say this is true, but it is only a technical truth, merely the case because there has been no formal "declaration of war". This misses the very important larger point. We are not a nation at war because nothing we are involved in, no military endeavor we labor at, can reasonably be described as a war. It is a politically self-serving delusion, propaganda to support the worst crimes of a deeply authoritarian government. We have allowed our government, post 9/11, to bamboozle us with martial talk, illegal invasions and stupid, wasteful, destructive occupation into allowing them unlimited extra-constitutional powers. The sad thing is that it is entirely unclear why they so deeply and venally desired these unnecessary authoritarian powers. Other than conducting illegal surveillance on their political opponents, the outrageous new powers they have claimed do not empower them in any meaningful way.
Torture, indefinite detention without due process, rendition, bribery, murder, mercenaries - none of these things has yielded positive outcomes, despite vague bleating to the contrary. They could have done a much better job of managing the threats to America after that September day without any of it, and America would be significantly better off politically, diplomatically, militarily and economically.
We have all been ill-served by allowing and enabling the "wartime" fiction. It has been used against us, not to our benefit, and we cannot allow it to survive into the next administration. These lies have have cost so many lives, so much treasure, so much power and prestige - let us reject that contention, and pull away the cloak that "war" gives our government to act in criminal and counterproductive ways. Only by speaking the truth can we force them to acknowledge the truth.
And then there were...
Ariel Sharon in a coma. Henry Kissinger living high, enjoying his sunset years. Mladić is still free, but he is merely the thug, the triggerman, ultimately just a coarse murderer who doesn't matter. I suppose, in the fullness of time, we'll add the names of George Bush and Dick Cheney to the list of the brutal genocidal killers not of people, but of generations, to this sad list of late twentieth and twentyfirst century madmen. But tonight, Radovan Karadžić is in custody, en route to The Hague to stand trial.
No, not Feith, Wolfowitz, Yoo or Powell, enablers have to occupy a lower rung on the ladder of responsibility and accountability. There are many with blood on their hands. They are legion, and we are angered by the unseemly rush they indulged in to murder, to torture, to rape. Like Mladić, they carried out the horrible crimes, they led their men to put the muzzles of their rifles against the necks of their unarmed countrymen and shoot them over open mass graves, but they have an order of magnitude lesser responsibility.
For these decisions, these
strategies, are formulated not in the mud of the field, but rather in paneled rooms, over polished oak conference tables, with telephones and PowerPoint presentations.
No. It is the
design of these crimes, the decisions to bring them to fruition, the hideous calculation that it is murder, and forced displacement, and torture and rape that will yield the desired outcome that must be challenged, and called to account. It is for others, later, to hunt down and punish the murderers, the rapists, the torturers. For if our society is to mean anything, if it is to be seen as something other than a protective veneer for our most base instincts, it must stand up and speak a resonating
NO to those that would use our civilization as nothing more than a cover for their ugly, predatory hatreds.
Politics and public policy are the way we, as humans, have come to understand how we define and advance our societies. They are frequently in conflict, and often are utterly incompatible. Sometimes those disagreements and incompatibilities result in conflict. All these things, stupid and wasteful though they are, are part and parcel of the modern way of life we have established.
But there are lines. And the extent we collectively allow those lines to be crossed is a very good way to define and describe the healthfulness of our global society.
Tonight, I'll sleep well knowing this architect of brutality of the highest order will not be living unchallenged, in wealth and comfort, but rather in a cell in the Hague, contemplating not just his crimes, but his impending mortality.
Sharon sleeps. Kissinger laughs. Justice waits.
But Radovan Karadžić has lost his freedom. It's something...
I'm with Michelle Obama. There really is not a great deal in America today to be proud of. And perhaps it's indicative of the depths to which we've sunk, but I can't help but be proud of my state for it's courage in support of such a controversial concept as equality and justice.
