My nephew in Iraq says that these dogtags are a big hit with the troops. A little donation can bring a lot of good cheer.
You Can’t Please Some People
Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr called for an anti-American occupation rally in Baghdad yesterday, which was the fourth anniversary of the coalition takeover of Baghdad.
The ever-accommodating Associated Press emphasized that the rally was a celebration of the fall of Baghdad. The first sentence: “Tens of thousands draped themselves in Iraqi flags and marched peacefully through the streets of two Shiite holy cities Monday to mark the fourth anniversary of Baghdad’s fall.” There are variations on this article drizzled about the web; this one doesn’t mention the anti-American aspect of the demonstration until the third paragraph. If you want to study how the AP has revised this story today, go to The Huffington Post and check out the “compare other versions” feature.
Then compare the Associated Press story to how other news bureaus reported it. For example, the Chicago Tribune headlined its article “Sadr stokes anti-U.S. fervor / Thousands head to rally; 10 GIs killed.”
Calling the United States the “great evil,” powerful Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr on Sunday ordered his militiamen to redouble their effort to oppose American troops and argued that Iraq’s army and police force should join him in defeating “your archenemy.”
The cleric’s verbal assault came as the U.S. military announced that 10 American soldiers were killed over the weekend, including six Sunday in attacks north and south of Baghdad. At least 69 Iraqis also were killed or found dead across Iraq.
Even so, the comparatively mild Associated Press story drew the wrath of the rightie blog Newsbusters.
The Associated Press reported rallies celebrating the fourth anniversary of the liberation of Iraq from Saddam Hussein — without ever mentioning Saddam Hussein. Lauren Frayer’s article makes it sound like the American forces deposed a city, not a dictator: “Tens of thousands marched through the streets of two Shiite holy cities Monday to mark the fourth anniversary of Baghdad’s fall.” Nowhere in the article is Saddam even mentioned. The headline was also “Rally marks anniversary of Baghdad’s fall.”
Like I said — there’s no pleasing some people. If one were trying to be accurate, calling yesterday the “anniversary of the fall of Baghdad” should be perfectly acceptable, since it’s a bit hard to pin down exactly when the Iraqi dictator was officially deposed. Taking a capital city doesn’t automatically depose a dictator. Hussein still had some protection and influence in part of Iraq for a few more days, maybe weeks, even though his attempts to rally support for his dictatorship didn’t go anywhere. I would argue that he wasn’t officially deposed until July 2003, when the Iraqi interim council began meeting. But that’s a meaningless technicality, IMO.
Anyway — how ’bout that surge, huh?
The New York Times reports that the “new security push” is changing patterns of violence, and reducing it in some places, but the “push” doesn’t seem to be reducing violence overall. We’re just moving it around, in other words. And the rate of American deaths has gone up. See the BooMan and Paul Kiel for commentary.
See also yesterday’s Frank Rich column, “Sunday in the Market With McCain.”
It can’t be lost on those dwindling die-hards, particularly those on the 2008 ballot, that if defending the indefensible can reduce even a politician of Mr. McCain’s heroic stature to that of Dukakis-in-the-tank, they have nowhere to go but down. They’ll cut and run soon enough. For starters, just watch as Mr. McCain’s G.O.P. presidential rivals add more caveats to their support for the administration’s Iraq policy. Already, in a Tuesday interview on “Good Morning America,†Mitt Romney inched toward concrete “timetables and milestones†for Iraq, with the nonsensical proviso they shouldn’t be published “for the enemy.â€
As if to confirm we’re in the last throes, President Bush threw any remaining caution to the winds during his news conference in the Rose Garden that same morning. Almost everything he said was patently misleading or an outright lie, a sure sign of a leader so entombed in his bunker (he couldn’t even emerge for the Washington Nationals’ ceremonial first pitch last week) that he feels he has nothing left to lose.
Incredibly, he chided his adversaries on the Hill for going on vacation just as he was heading off for his own vacation in Crawford. Then he attacked Congress for taking 57 days to “pass emergency funds for our troops†even though the previous, Republican-led Congress took 119 days on the same bill in 2006. He ridiculed the House bill for “pork and other spending that has nothing to do with the war,†though last year’s war-spending bill was also larded with unrelated pork, from Congressional efforts to add agricultural subsidies to the president’s own request for money for bird-flu preparation.
Mr. Bush’s claim that military equipment would be shortchanged if he couldn’t sign a spending bill by mid-April was contradicted by not one but two government agencies. A Government Accountability Office report faulted poor Pentagon planning for endemic existing equipment shortages in the National Guard. The Congressional Research Service found that the Pentagon could pay for the war until well into July. Since by that point we’ll already be on the threshold of our own commanders’ late-summer deadline for judging the surge, what’s the crisis?
The president then ratcheted up his habitual exploitation of the suffering of the troops and their families — a button he had pushed five days earlier when making his six-weeks-tardy visit to pose for photos at scandal-ridden Walter Reed. “Congress’s failure to fund our troops on the front lines will mean that some of our military families could wait longer for their loved ones to return from the front lines,†he said. “And others could see their loved ones headed back to the war sooner than they need to.â€
His own failures had already foreordained exactly these grim results. Only the day before this news conference, the Pentagon said that the first unit tossed into the Baghdad surge would stay in Iraq a full year rather than the expected nine months, and that three other units had been ordered back there without the usual yearlong stay at home. By week’s end, we would learn the story of the suspected friendly-fire death of 18-year-old Pvt. Matthew Zeimer, just two hours after assuming his first combat post. He had been among those who had been shipped to war with a vastly stripped-down training regimen, 10 days instead of four weeks, forced by the relentless need for new troops in Iraq.
Most of the United States is no longer talking about whether to withdraw military from Iraq, but when. The real debate these days — everywhere but in the White House, anyway — is whether to withdraw all military personnel from Iraq or leave some sort of non-combat personnel to advise and train Iraqi security forces. I say that anyone who wants to carry out the second option had better get behind pulling combat troops out asap. I suspect the longer we’ve got combat troops patrolling the streets in Iraq the more likely it is that, someday, Iraqis will chuck us out of their country entirely.
Update: See also —
Juan Cole (at Salon) “John McCain’s Iraq Problem”
Mark Benjamin (at Salon) “Injured troops shipped back into battle“
Bloggers Behaving Goodly?
The front page of the New York Times today features an article by Brad Stone titled “A Call for Manners in a World of Nasty Blogs.” In brief, some techie bloggers have thought up code of conduct rules intended to make the web a little less hostile.
It strikes me that many of their supposedly brand-spanking-new recommendations are things that I and other political bloggers started doing a long time ago. The techies need to catch up.
One of the techies, Tim O’Reilly, summed up the recommendations thus:
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1. Take responsibility not just for your own words, but for the comments you allow on your blog.
2. Label your tolerance level for abusive comments.
3. Consider eliminating anonymous comments.
4. Ignore the trolls.
5. Take the conversation offline, and talk directly, or find an intermediary who can do so.
6. If you know someone who is behaving badly, tell them so.
7. Don’t say anything online that you wouldn’t say in person.
The first two items already are in effect here and on many other leftie blogs. As you know, I keep a pretty tight lid on comments here. Some hostile commenters take offense when I delete their comments and accuse me of “censorship.” But as I see it, this blog is not a public utility; it is my personal property. I pay for the bandwidth, and I’ve worked damn hard for nearly five years to build up a readership. I feel no obligation to allow anyone to piggyback on my work to publish smears, vulgarity, lies, or anything else I find offensive. Anyone who is deleted or banned from this site can start his own blog.
This policy has paid off, IMO. I love it that you regulars often write long, thoughtful comments, whereas comments on some other blogs are mostly one-liners. There are plenty of other places on the web in which to indulge in flame wars, if that’s what you like.
There are many blogs on Right and Left that don’t allow comments at all, or hold comments in a moderation queue for approval, or that don’t allow comments without prior registration. I think that’s fine; individuals need to do what feels best for them. If I’m getting a lot of hostile traffic from a link on a right-wing site I sometimes suspend comments on a particular post, or I’ll turn on the moderation queue for a while so that nothing gets posted until I approve it. Usually in three or four days the flamers get discouraged, lose interest, and go away.
I think if I allowed flamers to post here freely they would have taken over the comments a long time ago. Allowing a pack of bullies to dominate comments is not “free speech.” It’s “mob rule.”
Regarding #3 — I don’t mind if someone is anonymous if his/her comments are within comment guidelines. I require commenters to provide an email address (which could be bogus, I suppose), but this is mostly to discourage spam. I get thousands of spam comments every day, most of which are filtered out automatically without my having to deal with them. Sometimes legitimate comments get caught in the spam filter and are not posted, and I’m sorry about that, but without the spam filter I’d have to turn off comments altogether. Technically, I wouldn’t know how to ban anonymous posters. I could require registration, but lately there have been many new registrants that I believe to be bots. I assume this is part of an attempt to circumvent the spam filter.
Regarding #4 — I don’t ignore trolls. Trolls are disruptive. If I conclude a commenter is a troll, I ban that commenter.
Regarding #5 — No, sorry, I don’t like to take conversations offline. I’ve got other things to do with my life that carry on ceaseless email arguments. I respond to emails about my posts once in a blue moon, but mostly I ignore them. I want all comments and discussions about my posts to be in the comments. If someone’s arguments are so offensive I delete them from the comments, this is probably someone I don’t want to waste time arguing with, period.
Regarding #6 — Occasionally I do caution people they are skating on thin ice and risk being banned. Or sometimes I just ban people outright; it depends on how nasty the comment is, what mood I’m in, the weather, the phase of the moon, etc.
Regarding #7 — That I do not do; I am much snarkier on the blog than I am in person. Good blogging is being gut-level honest about what one really thinks. Face-to-face discussion has a bigger element of social interaction that must be respected.
I do wonder why the New York Times thought this story was so important it deserved being on the front page. I guess the (formerly) Gray Lady just couldn’t pass up a chance to wag her finger at us unwashed peasants and tell us to mind our manners. ‘Twould be nice if the Times and other news outlets showed as much concern for the quality of their own work.
Update: While we’re talking about blogging — why I’ve got no respect for the TTLB Ecosystem.
Update2: What Digby says.
Global Idiots
Will someone please explain to these scientifically illiterate twits that the phenomenon of global warming doesn’t mean the planet is getting warmer in a uniform way. My understanding is that climate changes are causing shifts in long-established patterns of air circulation around the planet as well as disrupting ocean current patterns like the Gulf Stream. These changes are causing some places to get colder because air is moving more directly from the poles to those places that it used to. But it’s the warming of the oceans, among other things, that is causing the changes in wind and current patterns. Hence, global warming is causing some parts of the planet to be cooler. Some scientists argue that we ought to be talking about “global climate change” rather than “global warming” to avoid confusion.
Every time I see some dimbulb rightie hoot because there’s a cold snap in his neighborhood (hence, global warming is a myth) I feel embarrassed for our species.
Update: The same scientifically illiterate twits turn out to be economically illiterate twits as well.
Update2: As Atrios would say … the stupid! It burns!
Discover Jesus
Easter is a bipolar holy day, in which the faithful commemorate Jesus’ transcendence from fleshly corruption and death with pagan fertility symbols — bunnies and eggs. That’s genuinely weird, if you think about it.
The Venerable Bede, a sixth-century theologian, was the one who claimed the name Easter came from an Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring, Eostre, who was associated with eggs and bunnies. However, I understand there is no earlier record of an Anglo-Saxon goddess named Eostre, and some people think ol’ Bede made her up.
Regarding Jesus — Historian Paula Fredriksen argued (persuasively, IMO) that the historic Jesus was a devout Jew who did not claim to be a Messiah. I’ve come to agree with Thomas Jefferson that Jesus’ life story is more compelling without the miracles, and with Richard Rubenstein that the deification of Jesus is an unfortunate distraction from his remarkable teachings.
But that’s me. For those who have faith in the Resurrection — happy Easter.
Which takes me to the topic of today’s sermon — “Religion: What Is It Good For?”
This essay by James Randerson asks the question, “Would we be better off without religion?” I agree with Randerson that many of the supposed benefits of religion are questionable. For example, it’s true that religion inspired much great art and music, but there’s plenty of great art and music inspired by other stuff.
Randerson quotes the Baroness Julia Neuberger: “In my view if we didn’t have religion, we would be more selfish, self interested, certain and cruel.” So what about the hordes of religious people who are selfish, self interested, certain and cruel? It seems to me that for every Mohandas Gandhi, Albert Schweitzer, or Aung San Suu Kyi there must be thousands of selfish, self-interested, certain and cruel little creeps like Ralph Reed or Pat Robertson, not to mention some standout evildoers like Torquemada or Osama bin Laden.
I think the real basis of most moral behavior is good socialization and the ability to feel empathy for others. A religious sociopath is not cured by his faith. Rather, religion becomes the context, and excuse, for his sociopathy; cruelty is OK if you’re doing it for God.
It’s assumed that religion causes people to be virtuous, but philosophical Taoism says it’s the other way around — religion is what you fall back on when you lose virtue (see, for example, verse 38 of the Tao Teh Ching). Religion in ancient China was more about ceremony and ritual than it was about faith, but I don’t believe the old Taoists would have had much use for faith, either. Anyway, I question whether morality and ethics developed from religion, or whether they developed out of some shift in human consciousness during the Axial Age that subsequently reformed religion.
Put another way, did religion cause our species to (mostly) transcend barbarism, or did we transcend barbarism through other means and then drag religion along after us?
“The real question,” Mr. Randerson says, “is whether the best of humanity is already inside us or whether it needs faith to bring it out.” That’s a good question. I think faith does bring out the best in some people, but it seems to inspire the worst in others.
In America, it always seems that the people who blather on most about “God’s love” and “Christian values” are the same ones who promote homophobia and harass women outside abortion clinics. I can’t blame the non-religious for being distrustful of religion. But I don’t think religion, including Christianity, by itself is to blame. If you look at the long history of Christianity, you might notice a pattern — Christianity tends to get ugly when it becomes The Establishment. The worst things done in the name of Jesus were truly done to defend or strengthen a political or social authority in which religious institutions had become inextricably embedded. Grand Inquisitors like Torquemada were working on behalf of the monarchy as much as for the Church.
In spite of official (not always enforced) separation of church and state, Christianity is The Establishment in America. Particularly in conservative parts of the country, the large evangelical and pentecostal denominations are accustomed to being the dominant, privileged tribe. When Christians are denied use of government resources for the purpose of maintaining their dominance, or when Christianity is not given special deference or privilege above other religions, it is perceived by some Christians as oppression. To non-Christians, this whining about the oppression of Christians is just plain irrational. It’s like a whale complaining that a minnow is taking up too much ocean space.
I think much of what this essay by Simon Barrow says about the established church in Britain applies to the U.S. also.
I think the reason for mostly conservative Christians feeling discriminated against is this. They have grown up accustomed to the idea that Britain is a “Christian country” and that Christian institutions, symbols, representatives and (what they take to be) Christian values have a fixed place at the centre of our national culture.
Others now point out that practising Christianity is a minority pursuit in a multi-conviction society. They say that, in any case, Christians are a mixed bunch who disagree among themselves pretty vociferously. So privileging one outlook (particularly, one faith) is no longer tenable.
This means that Christians no longer automatically set the ground rules. They have to negotiate with others – and their Christian identity is not necessarily the ground on which this will happen. … to those who have been used to their cherished ideas holding sway in the public square, the removal of the ground from under their feet appears pretty threatening.
I think that’s exactly right, although I have no idea how to get the whiners to understand this. Simon Barrow calls for “reasoned argument.” Yeah, right. Good luck with that, dude.
But then Barrow goes on to say this —
For my part, I’d like to argue that Christians are entirely on the wrong track trying to defend the vestiges of a “Christian nation”. The gospel message, long submerged by the churches’ collusion with the state, is one of radical equality, a reversal of social norms, even. It argues that the first shall be last and the last first.
For this reason, Christians should not be out to defend their institutional privileges, let alone denying equal rights. On the contrary, they have an opportunity to embrace (rather than fear) a new status as a creative minority within a society which, helpfully, tries to offer a place for all. That fairness is something worth arguing for. But it cannot coexist with privilege.
E.J. Dionne wrote something along these same lines last week.
As for me, Christianity is more a call to rebellion than an insistence on narrow conformity, more a challenge than a set of certainties.
In ” The Last Week,” their book about Christ’s final days on Earth, Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan, distinguished liberal scriptural scholars, write: “He attracted a following and took his movement to Jerusalem at the season of Passover. There he challenged the authorities with public acts and public debates. All this was his passion, what he was passionate about: God and the Kingdom of God, God and God’s passion for justice. Jesus’ passion got him killed.”
This speaks to why a mortal Jesus is a more interesting, and compelling, figure to me than a divine one. Here was a man who, after a dark night of the soul in the wilderness, realized something wonderful. And he went out and tried to explain this something to people, and maybe his followers understood him, and maybe they didn’t. Maybe his words are pretty much faithfully recorded in the synoptic gospels, and maybe much of what he said got scrambled. And much of institutional Christianity seems unconcerned about what Jesus was trying to teach. Instead, Jesus became a blank slate onto which generations of saints and sociopaths projected their deepest desires for transcendence or dominance.
(And might I add that I realize there may not have been a historical Jesus; maybe his story is a fabrication. You can say the same thing for the Buddha, and in a sense it doesn’t matter. What’s important are the teachings. But especially in Jesus’ case it makes more sense to assume the teachings originated with some guy whose followers revered him and attempted to preserve what he taught. If later generations of people projected miracles and eventually godhood onto the guy’s memory doesn’t mean Jesus never existed.)
Thus, you get people like Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-Georgia), who supported a bill to display the Ten Commandments in the U.S. House chamber, but could only name three commandments (sort of) when challenged to do so. This suggests the congressman cares about the 10Cs as a symbol of something, not for what they actually say. And I think what they’ve come to be symbolic of is more about worldly power and authority than about God.
And this, children, is why Christianity is bleeped up.
Let’s go back to what religion is good for. If Jesus’ message was primarily about radical equality and justice, then we’re still not finding something unique to religion. Although radical equality was Out There in the first century, today lots of non-religious people promote it or something like it.
So we come to religion as comfort. Faith, and reliance on a higher power, is a great comfort to people who are troubled and afraid. One might argue that religion in this sense is just an emotional crutch. And if the higher power is imaginary, it’s a placebo.
Belief in a higher power that looks out for his followers also gave us George W. Bush, who has mistaken his own almighty ego for God, with disastrous consequences.
There is confusion, I think, about what religion actually is. These days people use the word faith as a synonym for religion, and I don’t think that’s accurate for many religions. In the West, when people want to learn about a foreign religion the first thing they ask is “What do the followers of this religion believe.” When you are dealing with most of the Asian religions, that’s the wrong question. You can memorize the entire panoply of Hindu gods, for example, and still not understand Hinduism. The point is not to believe this or that, but to realize the true nature of everything that is, including yourself. In this sense, belief in gods and myths is not the point of the religion, but rather are means to an end that transcends gods and myths.
Google “etymology religion” and you get all manner of answers. The most common answer is that it comes from the Latin word religio, meaning “to bind.” But another source says it comes from relegere, “to treat carefully.” So it could refer to a discipline, or a submission to rules, or binding to God. It might refer to something that needs your attention and careful treatment. It could mean a lot of things that may or may not involve beliefs.
Jesus went on and on about the Kingdom of Heaven and how people should be seeking it. “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. [Matthew 13:44, English Standard Version]” Much church dogma claims this Kingdom is something that will happen in the future, or perhaps is where you go when you die, but I think an unprejudiced reading of the gospels suggests Jesus taught the Kingdom is here-and-now; we’re just not seeing it. I don’t think Jesus wanted people merely to have faith in it; he wanted people to see it.
Finally we stumble onto what religions is good for. I say it is a means to the realization of something dangling just outside the scope of conceptual knowledge, something unreachable by logic or cognition. And that something, when seen, changes everything; it transforms how you understand yourself and everything else. In human history teachers and mystics from myriad religious traditions have had transformative realizations. And all the gods and rituals and beliefs and dogmas of all the religions of the earth are just provisional means for achieving this transformation. As the Buddha said, once you’ve reached the other shore you don’t need the boat any more.
But religious institutions, particularly powerful ones, in time become more interested in maintaining power than in religion. Then people who are selfish, self interested, certain and cruel come along and put religion to their own ego-driven uses. This happens in all religions; Christianity is no more or less susceptible than any other, I don’t think.
Maybe someday conservative Christians will stop trying preserve the vestiges of a “Christian nation.” When they do, maybe they’ll rediscover Jesus. That would be nice.
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- Therefore, the full-grown man sets his heart upon
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- the substance rather than the husk;
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- Upon the fruit rather than the flower.
- Truly, he prefers what is within to what is without. — Tao Teh Ching
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I posted the photo of Grace Coolidge because it cheers me to think there was once a First Lady who kept a pet raccoon in the White House. I don’t think much of Calvin, but I believe I would have liked Grace. The lady in the stained glass window at the top of the post is Mary Magdalene.
Saturday Cartoons
Here’s the link to Bob Geiger’s Saturday cartoons, plus one more cartoon from the Boston Globe.
Pelosi: Bushies Threw “Tantrum”
Helene Cooper and Carl Hulse write in today’s New York Times:
Ms. Pelosi, in a telephone interview from Lisbon on Friday, said she could not account for the Bush administration’s assault, which she at one point equated to a tantrum. (She said her children were teasing her about Mr. Cheney’s accusation of bad behavior.) Defending her trip, Ms. Pelosi said that members of Congress had a responsibility to play a role in national security issues and that they needed to be able to gather information on their own, and not be dependent on the White House.
“I am used to the administration; nothing surprises me,†she said. “Having said that, I hope we can have the opportunity to convey to the president what we saw.â€
Heh.
Righties are acting as if congress critters aren’t allowed to go talk to foreign heads of state, but of course they do it all the time and have for generations. My understanding is that no one unauthorized by the White House can negotiate treaties or enter into any sort of agreement with a foreign government on behalf of the United States, but they certainly have every right to go talk to heads of state whenever they get in the mood. They have a duty, in fact, to be informed on foreign policy.
The Constitution, Article II, Section 2, paragraph 2:
He [the President] shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.
[Update: I forgot this — In Article I, Section 8, Congress also has power to regulate foreign commerce and define and punish offenses against the law of nations, not to mention its several enumerated war powers.]
So, you see, the White House does not have exclusive authority in foreign policy matters. The idea is that the President and Congress should work together on this foreign policy stuff. But Bush won’t work with anybody; he wants to be dictator. So he’s throwing a temper tantrum because Pelosi is carrying out the normal functions of a member of Congress.
Today righties are linking to an article that calls Pelosi a “dilettante.” If Pelosi, who was “the longest-serving member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence” according to her bio, is a dilettante, what does that make Bush? I’d guess he’s a cross between an amateur and a snapping turtle.
Later in the New York Times article:
Democrats say the complaints have a certain political expediency to them [ya think? — maha], and note that many of the same people criticizing Ms. Pelosi’s decision to delve into foreign policy were fine when Newt Gingrich, then the Republican speaker of the House, made his own foray into foreign policy back in 1997.
The Republican House leader, John A. Boehner of Ohio, criticized Ms. Pelosi’s trip, telling reporters that she was in Syria “for one reason, and that is to embarrass the president.†In 1997, Mr. Boehner accompanied Mr. Gingrich to China, and called the trip “very educational.â€
You might remember that Glenn Greenwald blogged about the 1997 trip to China earlier this week. On this trip Gingrich attempted to countermand Clinton Administration policy, which exceeded his constitutional authority. And yesterday I quoted this bit from an article by Scott Lilly:
Unlike Pelosi, [former Republican House Speaker Dennis] Hastert and his staff were not reticent to speak on behalf of the United States government, nor were they worried about negotiating as though they were official emissaries of the president. But unlike Pelosi, they were not accompanied by officials of the embassy and often did not inform the embassy of their visits. On occasion they even denied embassy requests to attend the meetings they were holding with officials of the Colombian government.
Over the course of several years, Hastert’s aides negotiated billions of dollars in U.S. arms assistance to elements of the Colombian military for specific weapons chosen as a result of meetings between Hastert’s staff and Colombian officials. Following the negotiations, Hastert would insist that the funds be inserted in appropriation bills; after the weapons were purchased, Hastert’s staff would show up for their delivery.
Hastert got away with this behavior because officials in the Clinton administration knew he and his staff could wreak havoc on a wide range of administration priorities. Clinton officials decided to look the other way rather than confront this outrageous intrusion into the constitutional powers of the president.
By contrast, Pelosi and a group of other congresspersons talked to President Assad of Syria for “more than an hour.” At least one Republican admitted that Pelosi didn’t say anything out of line to Assad.
Rep. David L. Hobson of Springfield, who joined Pelosi and other lawmakers in a meeting yesterday with Syrian President Bashar Assad, disagreed with Boehner that Pelosi “came here to embarrass Bush. I think she came here to reinforce certain policies, understand the region better and have the region understand her better.â€
In a telephone interview last night from Saudi Arabia, Hobson said Pelosi “did not engage in any bashing of Bush in any meeting I was in and she did not in any meeting I was in bash the policies as it relates to Syria.â€
Instead, Hobson said, Pelosi and the congressional delegation urged Assad to curb the number of suicide bombers who cross the Syrian border into Iraq to “murder our troops and the Iraqi people.â€
For this, the Right has worked itself into an inchoate rage. They are, we might say, unhinged.
Update: See also this NY Times editorial:
There is at least one point on which we and the critics of Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Damascus can agree: It is the White House, not the speaker of the House, that should be taking the diplomatic lead. But the Bush administration has far more appetite for scoring political points than figuring out whether talking to Syria might help contain the bloodletting in Iraq or revive efforts to negotiate peace.
So long as Mr. Bush continues to shun high-level discussions with this troublesome but strategically located neighbor of Israel, Lebanon and Iraq, such Congressional visits can serve the useful purpose of spurring a much needed examination of the administration’s failed policies.
Ms. Pelosi and the five Democrats and one Republican who accompanied her are scarcely the first to raise such questions during the three years that Mr. Bush has instructed his top envoys — and reportedly Israel as well — to avoid negotiations with Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad. Plenty of other Republicans and Democrats have been taking similar trips and offering similar advice. They were ignored, but spared the White House’s ridicule.
I didn’t know Bush was The Decider for Israel as well. Weird.
In the administration’s perverse view, the only legitimate time for negotiations would be after the most contentious and difficult issues — Syria’s support for Hamas and Hezbollah, its meddling in Lebanon and open border with Iraq — have already been resolved. Thus, what ought to be the main agenda points for diplomatic discussions have been turned into a set of preconditions designed to ensure that no discussions ever take place.
It seems Bush learned all he thought he needed to know in kindergarten. “Do what I want or I won’t talk to you” might be acceptable on a playground but not, I think, in international relations.
Update2: The Heretik says, “Bush believes all conversations end at the barrel of a gun, which is one reason he has shot himself in the foot.”
Update3: The graphic is a hoot. See also Scott Lemieux on “collective guilt.”
Pelosi in Syria
The Right continues to work itself into higher and higher pitches of hysteria over Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Syria. Today the Wall Street Journal editorial page is shrieking that Pelosi committed a felony by traveling to Syria. The story is that Rep. Pelosi violated the Logan Act:
Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.
If in fact Citizen Pelosi violated this Act (which has been on the books in one form or another since the John Adams Administration) then a large part of Congress, living and dead, also violated it. However, the only Logan Act indictment ever occurred in 1803 — the case involved a Kentucky newspaper that advocated the western states secede from the Union and form a separate nation allied with France — but no prosecution followed. In all these years not one American has ever been convicted of violating the Logan Act.
One wonders how many Wall Street Journal staffers were put to work finding some obscure law Pelosi might have violated.
The Righties have decided that the President has sole authority to talk to foreign governments. But Scott Lilly writes at the Center for American Progress:
As the White House quite rightly points out, any attempt to conduct diplomacy, speak in behalf of the United States government, or signal a new policy toward a foreign nation, is a violation of the constitutional prerogatives of the president. But the oath of office that the president must take requires that he “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution,†not just when it is in the interest of the presidency, but when there is infringement of the constitutional authorities of any of the three branches.
Neither Kolbe nor Pelosi were impinging on the authority of the executive branch or attempting to do the job assigned to the president. They were merely attempting to fill the role which the Constitution has assigned to Congress.
Members of Congress are charged with the increasingly heavy responsibility of giving or withholding the resources necessary to conduct our nation’s military, diplomatic, and economic relations around the world. To do so, they have an obligation under the Constitution to know what challenges face the country, what the various options are for meeting those challenges, and how effectively the executive branch is performing in pursuing the options they have chosen.
Congress cannot meet that obligation by sitting behind their desks in the Capitol and receiving briefings (from the executive branch) on how effective their strategies are or how well they are executing them. They need to get out and kick the tires.
Despite the inference that the White House has tried to draw concerning Pelosi’s trip to Syria, the administration has failed to produce any evidence that she did or said anything in her meetings in Damascus that went beyond her role or responsibilities as a member of Congress. Indeed, her schedule was arranged by the U.S. Embassy there and diplomatic personnel representing the president were present at all times. It is certain the White House would have known instantly had such a breech of conduct had occurred.
Pelosi, who served for years as the ranking member of the Foreign Operations Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, knows the drill. She can ask questions, listen to observations, and get a measure of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as a person—all of which could be invaluable in grappling with the legislative choice the Congress must make in the months ahead. But she did not go to Syria to speak on behalf of President Bush or the United States government, and the Syrians are far too savvy in the ways of American politics to believe her if she had tried.
Here’s another sign of the Apocalypse — Joe Klein debunks the Logan Act nonsense. He does a pretty fair job of it, too.
Unfortunately, it appears a large part of the “liberal media” is repeating rightie talking points and getting their “facts” from the Republican Noise Machine rather than, you know, what actually happened.
Scott Lilly goes on to describe the foreign relations conducted by Republican Dennis Hastert when he was Speaker of the House.
Unlike Pelosi, Hastert and his staff were not reticent to speak on behalf of the United States government, nor were they worried about negotiating as though they were official emissaries of the president. But unlike Pelosi, they were not accompanied by officials of the embassy and often did not inform the embassy of their visits. On occasion they even denied embassy requests to attend the meetings they were holding with officials of the Colombian government.
Over the course of several years, Hastert’s aides negotiated billions of dollars in U.S. arms assistance to elements of the Colombian military for specific weapons chosen as a result of meetings between Hastert’s staff and Colombian officials. Following the negotiations, Hastert would insist that the funds be inserted in appropriation bills; after the weapons were purchased, Hastert’s staff would show up for their delivery.
Hastert got away with this behavior because officials in the Clinton administration knew he and his staff could wreak havoc on a wide range of administration priorities. Clinton officials decided to look the other way rather than confront this outrageous intrusion into the constitutional powers of the president.
I still say the Pelosi hysteria is really about the “emergency” supplement appropriations bill that Bush expects to veto as soon as he gets it. The White House is trying to soften up Congress so he can blame them for not funding the troops.
Dan Froomkin wrote this week about classic Rovian strategy.
When the president is on the defensive, Rove’s signature move is to disdain the quaint constraints of reality and attack the critics where they are strongest — ideally, by tarring them with Bush’s own weakness. …
… Rove’s approach was very much on display yesterday at Bush’s Rose Garden news conference.
The president’s current weakness is profound. His war in Iraq appears to be a colossal failure, and as a result the public has turned against him and wants the troops home and safe.
But to hear Bush talk, it’s the Democrats who are the party of failure. It’s the Democrats who are defying the will of the people. And in the latest, truly dazzling talking point unveiled by the president yesterday, it’s the Democrats who would keep the troops in harm’s way.
Given the weight of public antipathy toward Bush’s Folly (and Bush’s handling of Bush’s Folly), you’d think Bush would have a hard time fooling anyone. However …
What Rove can still count on, in spite of everything, is that the president’s assertions make it into the headlines no matter how dubious they may be — and that all too many reporters prefer uncritical transcription to the kind of tough but fair analysis that would be required to put what the president says in context.
Ain’t it the truth? And I fear some among us remain susceptible to being snookered.
What the Right is doing is just a political game to discredit Pelosi, and they’re doing it by tarring her with Bush’s own weakness — his inept foreign policy. Turning the public against Democrats in Congress will allow Bush to blame them for his failures. That’s the plan, anyway.
See also Glenn Greenwald.
Salute to Scarves
Since this is scarf week on Mahablog — WaPo fashion writer Robin Givhan praises Nancy Pelosi’s scarf wardrobe.
I see people on the Right are still blasting Pelosi for wearing a scarf in a mosque, calling it a sign of subservience to men. I think Muslims think of it as subservience to God, but never mind. There are several religious traditions that require headcoverings, either during worship or all the time. Many orders of Catholic nuns still require wearing a veil. Amish men and women seem always to be wearing hats or bonnets. Orthodox Jewish men and women also keep something on their heads all day long. Here in the New York City area Jewish women often wear chic berets or retro-chic snoods.
Sikh men are supposed to wear turbans. Apparently there is something of a turban crisis going on, as young Sikh men have decided that keeping 20 feet of cloth wrapped around their heads disrupts their flow.
Religions have all kinds of dress codes; Buddhist temples usually require the removal of shoes. I know of one Buddhist monastery that won’t allow people into the meditation hall wearing jewelry (beyond very modest ear studs) or T-shirts with messages on them, in which case the visitor is asked to wear the shirt inside out.
One point that seems to be lost on some Pelosi critics is that I doubt she would have been allowed into a mosque with her head bare. I suppose she could have not gone into the mosque, but maybe she really wanted to. It’s what we call a “choice.”
Update: Speaking of religion — see E.J. Dionne, “Answers To the Atheists.”
IOKIYAR
Glenn Greenwald writes about a 1997 trip to China by then-House Speaker Newt Gringrich. Vice President Al Gore had been in China one week earlier to discuss the Clinton Administration’s “one China” policy regarding Taiwan and its commitment to peacefully address the Taiwan issue. But Newt bluntly told the Chinese that the U.S. would intervene militarily if China tried to take Taiwan. A week later, China admonished the United States for sending mixed signals and accused Newt Gingrich of making ”improper” statements. Glenn comments:
Back then, the media treated Gingrich like he was the American Prime Minister, and his right-wing supporters had no problem with the House Speaker traveling and expressing his own foreign policy views which deviated from the Clinton administration’s. Quite the contrary, many right-wing leaders — including Grover Norquist, Ralph Reed, and Vin Weber — went on PBS and praised Gingrich’s “aggressive role in China.”
They couldn’t have been more pleased that Gingrich did what, in their minds, the Clinton administration was failing to do — standing up to the Chinese. Gingrich, as House Speaker, was heroic for going on his own and doing that. The same behavior from Pelosi (which I’m sure is, in actuality, completely different for all sorts of unknown and indiscernible reasons) is now both a grave political mistake and a reckless breach of protocol.
All together now — It’s OK If You’re A Republican.
Meanwhile, the Washington Post still struggles with its selective amnesia and publishes a story titled “Speaker’s Role In Foreign Policy Is a Recent, and Sensitive, Issue.” This very weird article by Elizabeth Williamson says, in effect, that even though “Pelosi’s dealings with Middle East leaders have not strayed far, if at all, from those typical for a congressional trip” and that a mess o’ Republican congress critters have been hobnobbing about Syria also, Pelosi was still wrong to go because she’s a Democrat. Seriously.
The Republicans who have also been in Syria are sending mixed signals about what Pelosi did there. House Republican Leader John Boehner is sticking by the party line and whining that Pelosi just went to Syria to embarrass President Bush. This is nonsense; it’s obvious that Bush is incapable of feeling embarrassment. A normal person wouldn’t show his face in public again after screwing up as badly as Bush has screwed up. More on this in a minute. Here’s the other GOP POV:
Rep. David L. Hobson of Springfield, who joined Pelosi and other lawmakers in a meeting yesterday with Syrian President Bashar Assad, disagreed with Boehner that Pelosi “came here to embarrass Bush. I think she came here to reinforce certain policies, understand the region better and have the region understand her better.”
In a telephone interview last night from Saudi Arabia, Hobson said Pelosi “did not engage in any bashing of Bush in any meeting I was in and she did not in any meeting I was in bash the policies as it relates to Syria.”
Instead, Hobson said, Pelosi and the congressional delegation urged Assad to curb the number of suicide bombers who cross the Syrian border into Iraq to “murder our troops and the Iraqi people.”
Back to embarrassment — I looked up embarrassment as a psychological phenomenon and found this:
Human behavior experts who study mortifying moments say four conditions must exist before we blush.
First, there must be a failure for which you feel responsible. Then, the failure occurs suddenly, with no time to prepare or adjust. “And it must take place in public,” says Domeena Renshaw, M.D., professor of psychiatry at Loyola University in Chicago. “Your face gets red because shock instantly increases blood pressure, which helps more blood get to the brain to help you figure a way out of the predicament in which you just found yourself.” The final condition: you must value the opinion of others who witnessed your goof.
“Beware the person who can’t be embarrassed,” says Dr. Gross. “That rare individual may consider his position, intelligence and status so lofty, he cares not what others think.”
See? I say no one need worry about embarrassing President Bush. He can no more feel embarrassment than he can fly.
Update: See also “Pelosi in Syria” at the Center for American Progress.