News from the War Fronts, Present and Future

Out of sight on the front page of the Wall Street Journal on August 31, under a collection of short news items headed, "U.S. Watch," there was a report of former Vice President Cheney’s appearance two days earlier on "Fox News Sunday." During that interview, Cheney had stated that in the waning days of the Bush administration, he advocated a military strike to destroy Iran’s nuclear-weapons program. "I was probably a bigger advocate of military action than any of my colleagues," he boldly announced, causing the WSJ to remark that Cheney’s boast "showed just how seriously George W. Bush’s team was considering a military attack."

The fact of the matter is that we have no idea just how close we came a year ago to getting ourselves involved in still another war, this one also in what has been for the past 20 years anyway our favorite stomping grounds, the Middle East. And though Cheney is gone (somewhat), to what extent do his views on Iran prevail even in the Obama administration? Suggestion: Don’t bet the farm that we’ll continue diplomacy and ignore Israel.

Interestingly, in the same issue of the same paper, an editorial carrying the by-line, "Conflict is inevitable unless the West moves quickly to stop a nuclear Tehran," noted that "preventing Iran from getting the bomb is an Israeli national imperative, not a mere policy choice," and suggested that the U.S. drop its diplomatic initiatives and get more "serious." "[U]nless Mr. Obama gets serious, and soon, about stopping Iran from getting a bomb, he’ll be forced to deal with the consequences of Israel acting in its own defense," said the WSJ.

Now there’s wartime ingenuity for you, and a new reason to go to war — Because if we don’t the Israelis will.

Well, that clears that up.

On another front — the war in Afghanistan — there’s news about what our objective over there really is. This will come as a relief for those of us who are totally puzzled about just how our national security interests are impacted by the occupation by Taliban forces in the mountain recesses of western Afghanistan and eastern Pakistan.

You know, folks, things aren’t going wonderfully over there. On August 22, a bombing in Afghanistan killed four U.S. service members and made August the second-deadliest month since the 2001 U.S. invasion. Nonetheless, General Stanley McChrystal, our head military guy in the country, said that though conditions on the ground were "serious," the war could still be won "if the U.S. and its allies better coordinate their efforts and focus more heavily on protecting the Afghan populace from Taliban violence and intimidation." At the time of that statement, the General failed to mention that his very own formal assessment of the situation in Afghanistan is now on its way to Washington stating, in part, that he "may" ask the Obama administration for as many as eight brigades of reinforcements, that is, roughly 40,000 new troops.

But let’s go back to the rationale for all this, our national security interests in fighting a war in Afghanistan. General David Petraeus, who oversees U.S. combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan (and is McCrystal’s boss), told the American Legion’s national convention in Louisville on August 22, that "growing numbers of American soldiers sent to Afghanistan will encounter tough fighting," but that "improving civilian’s lives is as important to winning the war as defeating militants." I'm sure Afghan civilians will find that reassuring.

Got that? Our objective in Afghanistan is to "improve civilian lives" as well as (duh) to win the war.

(It should be noted that the latter "objective" is surely the objective of any war once you're in it; the question, however, is why are we in it?)

Well, anyway, that clears that up, too. (We're on a roll here.)

Postscript: Senator Russell Feingold, the Wisconsin Dem who has long been a critic of war efforts in both Iraq and Afghanistan, last week called for a "flexible timetable" to withdraw US. forces in Afghanistan. No word as yet from Senator Levin.

The Notre Dame/President Obama Controversy

In the recent issue of The Notre Dame Magazine, which I receive as a graduate of the 1964 class at the Notre Dame Law School, because of President Obama's views on the abortion issue, there appeared a number of letters to the editor criticizing the University for ever having invited him to set foot on campus, not to mention deliver the commencement address to the graduating seniors. I wrote this letter to the editors of the Magazine in response.

To the Editors:

Thanks to Richard Conklin for providing much-needed historical perspective regarding the Notre Dame/Obama controversy that dominated the July issue. Even so, however, it seems doubtful that his contribution to the discussion of the propriety of the President’s visit would pose any significant restraint on those sanctimonious alumni who wrote to declare their intention to cancel their subscription to the Notre Dame Magazine or withdraw financial support to the University, each of whom took a more pious and less tolerant position than either Pope Benedict XVI, who graciously received President Obama and his family at the Vatican on July 11, or Father Hesburgh who was pictured in the Magazine in a warm mutual embrace with the President at the time of the latter’s commencement appearance.

All of which prompted me to wonder whether those who wrote criticizing President Jenkins and the University so vociferously had taken a similar stand when President George W. Bush was awarded an honorary degree in 2000. Did they stop their subscriptions or withdraw financial support back then? Did they yell or picket or stomp on the ground upon Mr. Bush’s arrival on campus nine years ago?

Or didn’t they bother to check the record and learn that George W. Bush, during his six years as governor of Texas, presided over the execution of 131 Texas inmates, more than any other governor in the nation’s recent history? Did they learn that Mr. Bush was advised on many of the executions by his legal counsel, Alberto R. Gonzales, later Attorney General of the United States, in cursory execution summaries usually presented on the day of execution and in oral briefings that usually lasted less than 30 minutes? Did they know that Mr. Bush himself rarely, if ever, personally reviewed a petition for clemency?

Did they know that the most notorious of those executions — that of Karla Faye Tucker in early 1998 — followed upon Mr. Bush’s refusal to consider evidence that Ms. Tucker, though having viciously murdered two sleeping persons with a pickaxe, had in the intervening 15 years in prison become a "born again" Christian, an exemplary inmate, an outspoken opponent of addictive drugs, and a "role model," as it were, for a multitude of depraved and suffering women? Did they know that Mr. Bush ignored evidence that Ms. Tucker had been abandoned by her parents when very young, had first smoked pot with her sisters when she was eight years old, was shooting heroin by the time she was 13, followed her mother into prostitution when only 14, and that from the very beginning her life revolved around drugs and violence? Or that Mr. Bush had turned a deaf ear toward hundreds of clemency pleas for Ms. Tucker from around the world including those of religious leaders (such as Pope John Paul II), foreign heads of state (such as Vladimir Putin), celebrities (such as Bianca Jagger), and even right-wing evangelists (such as Pat Robertson)?

Did they bother to check to find out that Mr. Bush, himself "born again" after overcoming addiction to alcohol and who at the time was widely promoting himself as a "compassionate conservative," publically defended his intransigence toward Ms. Tucker’s case for clemency by saying he was seeking "guidance through prayer," and abjured his statutory responsibilities as governor with the pious pronouncement that "judgments about the heart and soul of an individual on death row are best left to a higher authority"? Did they learn that Mr. Bush had no clue whatsoever about what he was saying, and that if, as he suggested, commutation of death sentences ultimately comes to rest in resort "to a higher authority," then all the clemency statutes in the land have been relegated to the trash heap?

And did they learn that Mr. Bush had told the journalist Tucker Carlson while traveling during the presidential campaign in 1999 that he had refused to speak with Larry King when he had come to Texas for his famous death row interview of Ms. Tucker. Or that when Mr. Bush was asked by Carlson what Ms. Tucker had said in response to King’s question about what she would say personally to the Governor if she had the opportunity, Mr. Bush famously answered by derisively whimpering, his lips pursed in mock desperation, "Please, please, don’t kill me"?

The long and short of it is that George W. Bush personally had his fingerprints all over the execution of a large number of inmates during his six years as Governor of Texas. Whatever his beliefs, or whether or not you agree with them, I don’t think you can say anything comparable about President Obama and the deaths of any unborn children.

Everyone Okay With this Brand of Justice?

I.

Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity. Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually recognize also the voice of justice.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008)
Letter to three students (1967)

Imagine this scenario: The Second World War has come to a conclusion. The Nazis and the Japanese fascists have been defeated, the great powers have met and decided who will occupy and control what territory, and the armed forces of the Allies are returning to their homelands. And so attention is turned to prosecuting those believed to be guilty of war crimes, the trials of which in the European theater are to take place in the German city of Nuremberg. But wait. Representatives of the four major allies — the U.S., Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union — have met with the top 20 defendants and have reported that these guys are not so bad after all, they are very sorry for what they did, and they promise they’ll never do it again. So, the four major allies have decided not to look backwards, but to look to the future. We’ll not hold any of those Nazis responsible for the crimes they allegedly committed in Nazi-occupied countries or in the concentration and extermination camps in Germany and eastern Europe. We'll just send them home.

Everyone okay with this brand of justice?

II.

I beseech your Majesty, let me have justice, and I will then trust the law.

Elizabeth Hoby Russell (1528-1609)
English diarist and courtier
Spoken to King James I, 1603

Or, imagine this scenario: On April 19, 1995, a bomb planted in a panel truck outside the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City goes off killing 168 people and injuring 450 in the deadliest act of terrorism ever to occur within the United States prior to September 11, 2001. Following an amazingly proficient investigation and some very good luck, three days later Timothy McVeigh is arrested and charged with 11 federal offenses. Although federal prosecutors intended to prosecute McVeigh for his crimes and, if convicted, seek the death penalty, just before his trial is to commence, the prosecutors hold a press conference and state that they have talked at length with the subject and found him not so bad after all, that the guy was sorry for what he did, and that he promised never to do it again. So, despite the trauma to the nation, they decided it was best not to look backwards, but to look to the future. Pursuant to a plea agreement, McVeigh would be sentenced to two years probation, required to wear an electronic monitoring device for six months, prohibited from leaving the country, and would be released on his own recognizance.

Everyone okay with this brand of justice?

III.

More than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested in many countries. And many others have met a different fate. Let’s put it this way: They are no longer a problem for the United States. . . . One by one, the terrorists are learning the meaning of American justice.

President George W. Bush
2003 State of the Union Address

Or this one: In March 2004, members of the United States military are found by a commission headed by Major General Antonio M. Taguba to have committed the following acts of “intentional abuse of detainees” at the Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq: “punching, slapping, and kicking detainees; jumping on their naked feet; videotaping and photographing naked male and female detainees; forcibly arranging detainees in various sexually explicit positions for photographing; forcing detainees to remove their clothing and keeping them naked for several days at a time; forcing naked male detainees to wear women’s underwear; forcing groups of male detainees to masturbate themselves while being photographed and videotaped; arranging naked male detainees in a pile and then jumping on them; positioning a naked detainee on a MRE Box, with a sandbag on his head, and attaching wires to his fingers, toes, and penis to simulate electric torture; writing “I am a Rapest” (sic) on the leg of a detainee alleged to have forcibly raped a 15-year old fellow detainee, and then photographing him naked; placing a dog chain or strap around a naked detainee’s neck and having a female soldier pose for a picture; photographing a male MP guard having sex with a female detainee; using military working dogs (without muzzles) to intimate and frighten detainees, and in at least one case biting and severely injuring a detainee; and taking photographs of dead Iraqi detainees.”

Following publication of what became known as the Taguba report, one male military policeman is sentenced to ten years in a military prison, one female military policewoman is sentenced to three years, and a female commissioned officer is demoted. Not one person higher in command, military or civilian, is touched by the military justice system. Meanwhile, the reputation of the United States world-wide is trashed, the military demoralized, the nation embarrassed and outraged, the Bush administration reduced to stupid and inane retorts and excuses — and, oh yes, Major General Taguba forced into retirement for effectively carrying out his assignment. That done, our government decides it’s best not to look backward, but to look to the future.

Everyone okay with this brand of justice?

IV.

We're a nation of law. We adhere to laws. We have laws on the books. You might want to look at these laws, and that might provide comfort to you.

President George W. Bush
after being asked if torture was justified
June 10, 2004

We need to get to the bottom of what happened — and why — so we make sure it never happens again.

Senator Patrick Leahy (D.VT)
Chairman, Senate Judiciary Committee

And how about this one? Following the issuance of legal memoranda by the Office of Legal Counsel of the United States Department of Justice in 2002, the Pentagon and the CIA develop an “enhanced interrogation program” (as former Vice President Cheney recently called it) at several prison sites including Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan, and a number of secret or “dark” sites located elsewhere in the world (Syria, Morocco, Thailand, Poland). The techniques authorized in connection with this system include waterboarding (simulated drowning), walling (use of a plastic neck collar to throw detainees against a wall), head slapping, sleep deprivation, light deprivation, excessive exposure to light, excessive exposure to sound, exposure to extreme hot and cold temperatures, stress positions, removal of clothing, threats to family, wrapping a detainee’s head in duct tape, use of military dogs — the list goes on and on. (Some of these techniques meet the internationally accepted definition of torture, some are referred to cynically as “torture light.”)

After years of detention (often in solitary confinement) without being charged, without the benefit of an attorney, and without trial, and after more than seven years of habeas corpus litigation in federal courts resulting in four important Supreme Court decisions favoring the detainees, as well as continuing requests by the ACLU for the production of documents and photographs pursuant to a federal statute, some of the procedures and some of the persons involved in the development and implementation of these procedures are brought to light. At this point, despite investigations and findings by the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Senate Armed Forces Committee, not one person, military or civilian, responsible for enhanced interrogation practices is touched by either the military or civilian justice systems. Nonetheless, the president states that the CIA operatives who administered torture would not be prosecuted criminally; and, indeed, should they be sued in civil court by their victims for their wrongdoings, the United States would pay any judgment entered against them and pay their attorney fees as well. In addition, although several federal courts order release of the photographs of the acts of torture, the Obama administration announces it will oppose their release in further court proceedings. The reason? It’s time to “move beyond a dark and painful chapter in our history,” said the president.

Everyone okay with this brand of justice?

By using torture, we Americans transform ourselves into the very caricature our enemies have sought to make of us. True, that miserable man who pulled out his hair as he lay on the floor at Guantanamo may eventually tell his interrogators what he knows, or what they want to hear. But for America, torture is self-defeating; for a strong country it is in the end a strategy of weakness. . . . [T]he road back — to justice, order and propriety — will be very long. Torture will belong to us all.

Mark Danner
Author and Journalist
“We Are All Torturers Now”
New York Times (January 6, 2005)



And oh, by the way, as I'm sure you know, the first two scenarios are fictitious. The last two are true (so far).

Where Have All the Protests Gone?

On Monday of this week (May 11), IndyFlix sponsored a showing of “Finding Our Voices” at the State Theater in downtown Traverse City. This is a film about the ways in which Americans expressed their dissent to the war in Iraq over the past eight years. It features the voices of six persons: the mother of a New York City fireman killed on 9/11 at the World Trade Center; the mother of a young soldier who was killed in Iraq, three weeks after he returned, reluctantly, for his second tour of duty; a soldier who was a squad leader in Baghdad who, when furloughed home refused to follow orders to return to Iraq, went AWOL, became a conscientious objector and spent nine months in a military prison; another soldier who became entirely disenchanted with what he saw and did in Iraq and founded an organization of Iraq veterans against the war; a social activist and the founder of Code Pink; and a black Christian minister-activist from New York City. The most recent peace demonstration shown in the film took place at the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis last summer.

The film, and the lives of those it featured, was inspiring. But the predominant feeling I had watching it was sadness, sadness over the fact that we in this country have lost our way and that in spite of the good things that have happened since last November, we still haven’t found it. Dazzled by the election, dazzled by the inauguration, dazzled by the first 100 days, we are, sadly, still lost. I had the feeling that if my one of my highschool-age grandkids would have seen the movie with me, she might have said, “Grandpa, this movie is sooo over, it’s sooo yesterday.”

Which reminded me of the piece by Dexter Filkins that appears in the current issue (May 20) of The New Republic (www.tnr.com). Filkins is a reporter for the New York Times and is one of the most respected war correspondents in the world today; he covered the war in Iraq since its inception (out of which came his acclaimed book, The Forever War) and is now doing it all over again in Afghanistan. I’m not going to tell you what Filkins said in his article (which is a review of Thomas Ricks’ new book on the surge, The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008); I’m going to quote verbatim its first two paragraphs:

“From centrality to banality: perhaps no other event in modern American history has gone from being contentious to being forgotten as quickly as the war in Iraq. Remember the war? It consumed a trillion American dollars, devoured a hundred thousand Iraqi lives, squandered a country’s reputation, and destroyed an American presidency. Given the retreat of the American press — the first American withdrawal from Iraq, you might say — one could almost be excused, in the spring of 2009, for forgetting that 140,000 American troops are still fighting and dying there.

“That an undertaking as momentous and as costly as America’s war in Iraq could vanish so quickly from the forefront of the national consciousness does not speak well of the United States in the early twenty-first century: not for its seriousness and not for its sense of responsibility. The American people, we are told, appear to be exhausted by the war in Iraq. But exhausted by what, exactly? Certainly not from fighting it. The fighting is done by kids from the towns between the coasts, not by any of the big shots who really matter. And they are not exhausted by paying for it, either: another generation will do that. No, when Americans say that they are tired of the war in Iraq, what they really mean is that they are tired of watching it on television or of reading about it on the Internet. As entertainment, as Topic A, the agony has become a bore. 'A car bomb exploded today in a crowded Baghdad marketplace killing 53 and wounding 112.' Click.”

There were about 25 people there to watch the film Monday evening, one of the lowest turn-outs of the IndyFlix series at the State.

“Finding Our Voices.” Ho-hum.

It was so over, so yesterday.

Click.


Postscript

I shouldn’t mislead you. Despite his intelligence and incisive reporting, you’re probably not going to find Dexter Filkins in the front lines of an anti-war demonstration. He’s too much a “realist” for that and, besides, he (and Thomas Ricks) are of the view that the United States has so terribly and so tragically screwed things up in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East that we can’t in good conscience just get up one morning, blow a bugle, and march out of there.

Moreover, he and Ricks are also of the view that, though the results are not all in, the surge appears to have been a success, at least for the short term. Filkins writes: “Today, in the spring of 2009, it no longer really matters whether Bush was brilliant or stupid, a man who listened to reason or an idiot savant struck, Forrest Gump-like, by a fleeting insight. Whatever one’s view of the war, it is impossible to deny that in the eleventh hour Bush was right. The gamble has worked, at least so far.”

Nonetheless, the “greatest irony of the surge,” says Filkins, is that, even if temporary, even if “the outcome of the war in Iraq is still up for grabs,” its success has “all but ensured an even longer American commitment to the people of Iraq. And, we might as well add, to the people of Afghanistan.” Filkins then comes on with this admonition: “America, take note: we are still in the middle of two terrible and complicated wars, and we are likely to be fighting them for many years to come, even if we lose.”

So much for over. So much for yesterday.

Maybe, just maybe, with this realization, the peace movement in this country — and in our community — can find its voice, once again.

Double Standard?

On Friday, April 17, an article appeared on the front page of the local Traverse City newspaper stating that “President Barack Obama absolved CIA officers from prosecution for harsh, painful interrogation of terror suspects,” which is to say, absolved them from prosecution for the acknowledged crime of committing torture. Contemporaneous with this announcement, the White House released four Bush-era legal memoranda graphically detailing — and authorizing — such tactics as slamming detainees against walls, slapping detainees, waterboarding them, and keeping them naked and cold for long periods. A couple of days later it was revealed that waterboarding, which now meets everyone’s definition of illegal torture, was used by the CIA 266 times on just two “key prisoners” alone. It goes without saying that where the tactics amount to torture, their use constitutes a war crime.

In issuing what in effect was a grant of immunity, the president said he wanted to move beyond “a dark and painful chapter in our history.” “Nothing will be gained,” he added, “by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past,” by which he meant the past seven years. Attorney General Eric Holder said, “It would be unfair to prosecute dedicated men and women working to protect America for conduct that was sanctioned in advance by the Justice Department.” Holder, in fact, went a great deal further when he gave assurances that the CIA officials who were involved would be given free legal representation in any legal proceeding or congressional investigation related to the program and would repay any financial judgment reandered against them.

In legal parlance, the Obama Administration has, first, contrary to the precedents emanating from the Nuremberg Trials, recognized the defense of “following orders” as an absolute bar to criminal or civil legal action against those persons who committed torture. Second, it has undertaken not only to hold harmless those responsible for torturing detainees in our name, but will indemnify them for all judgments and costs, including attorneys fees, they may incur in the process of defending themselves for their criminal acts.

✧

Two days earlier, on Wednesday, April 15, the same Traverse City newspaper, this time on page 6A, reported that 89-year old John Demjanjuk, an accused Nazi death camp guard who now suffers from multiple serious health problems, had been removed in his suburban Cleveland home in his wheelchair by six immigration officers. Federal officials planned to place him on a stretcher, sedate him heavily, and, together with a physician, a nurse, and a guard, fly him to Germany. He was to be deported to Munich where he would stand trial for allegedly being an accessory to thousands of deaths committed during World War II at the Sobibor Prison Camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. As the van into which he was placed left his home, Vera, Demjanjuk’s wife, “sobbed and held her hand to her mouth. As the van moved down the street, Vera turned and waved, sobbing in the arms of a granddaughter.”

Later that day, a three-judge panel of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stay of the deportation order. Demjanjuk was returned to his home and, for the time being, that’s where he remains.

Ivan (John) Demjanjuk was born in 1920 in Kiev, Ukraine. In 1940, at the age of 20, he was recruited into the Soviet army and was captured by German troops in May 1942. While in a German prison camp Demjanjuk, allegedly in return for some measure of freedom and security, was either enticed or volunteered to become a German prison guard, for which he was trained in the Trawniki Concentration Camp in eastern Poland. It is alleged that he later spent time as a guard at Treblinka and Sobibor where the atrocities of which he was later charged were allegedly committed. Demjanjuk denied the charges, and asserted that he was imprisoned by the Germans until the end of the war when he was liberated by the Russian army.

After the war, Demjanjuk, his wife, and his daughter made their way to the United States, ultimately residing in Cleveland. He worked for the Ford Motor Company. The family obtained citizenship in the Untied States. But Demjanjuk’s alleged past caught up with him, and after much legal wrangling, he was deported to Israel to stand trial for war crimes. He was convicted in 1988 and sentenced to death by hanging. In 1993, however, his conviction was reversed by a unanimous Israeli tribunal largely on the basis of testimony of other prison guards and the conclusion that his identity as “Ivan the Terrible” had likely been mistaken. By then, Demjanjuk had spent six years on death row and eight years in solitary confinement. Israeli authorities decided not to retry him for the reason, among others, that to do so would constitute double jeopardy.

After his release, Demjanjuk returned to the United States where his citizenship was restored in 1998. However, the Justice Department again filed civil charges against him in 1999 and again in 2001, and, in 2004 the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals again ordered that he be stripped of his American citizenship. A year later, Demjanjuk was ordered deported to Ukraine, a decision which over a couple of years was upheld all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In the summer of 2008, however, Germany’s top Holocaust crimes prosecutor filed extradition papers designed to bring Demjanjuk to Germany for trial, and in March of this year he was formally charged in Germany with being an accessory to the commission of 29,000 murders at the Sobibor extermination camp in eastern Poland in 1943. The United States was in the process of carrying out the German extradition order when the order staying Demjanjuk’s deportation was issued on April 14.

✧

One can only wonder why the United States has such an abiding interest in forcibly sending a seriously ill, 89-year old man, a citizen of the United States, 3,000 miles to another country for what must be about the tenth time he has faced trial for war crimes that were allegedly committed 67 years ago, and for which he has been tried and acquitted by the State of Israel, the nation of the people most affected.

One can only wonder why the United States has such an intense interest in granting immunity and indemnification to an unknown number of United States citizens, operatives of the CIA, for the acknowledged commission of war crimes, the details of which have been documented in detail, against at least 28 citizens of foreign countries, during a war that is still going on and which crimes were committed within the past seven years, for which the perpetrators have never even been charged.

This wouldn't amount to a double standard, now would it?

The Sermon at Mason Temple

On April 3, 1968, forty-one years ago this past Friday, a Baptist minister delivered a sermon at Mason Temple, the world headquarters of the Church of God in Christ. Mason Temple is located in Memphis, Tennessee. It was a rather long sermon. Here’s the last part of it —

“You know, several years ago, I was in New York City autographing the first book that I had written. And while sitting there autographing books, a demented black woman came up. The only question I heard from her was, "Are you Martin Luther King?" And I was looking down writing, and I said, "Yes." And the next minute I felt something beating on my chest. Before I knew it I had been stabbed by this demented woman. I was rushed to Harlem Hospital. It was a dark Saturday afternoon. And that blade had gone through, and the X-rays revealed that the tip of the blade was on the edge of my aorta, the main artery. And once that's punctured, you drown in your own blood — that's the end of you.

“It came out in the New York Times the next morning, that if I had merely sneezed, I would have died. Well, about four days later, they allowed me, after the operation, after my chest had been opened, and the blade had been taken out, to move around in the wheel chair in the hospital. They allowed me to read some of the mail that came in, and from all over the states and the world, kind letters came in. I read a few, but one of them I will never forget. I had received one from the President and the Vice-President. I've forgotten what those telegrams said. I'd received a visit and a letter from the Governor of New York, but I've forgotten what that letter said. But there was another letter that came from a little girl, a young girl who was a student at the White Plains High School. And I looked at that letter, and I'll never forget it. It said simply,

“‘Dear Dr. King — I am a ninth-grade student at the White Plains High School. . . . While it should not matter, I would like to mention that I'm a white girl. I read in the paper of your misfortune, and of your suffering. And I read that if you had sneezed, you would have died. And I'm simply writing you to say that I'm so happy that you didn't sneeze.’

“And I want to say tonight — I want to say tonight that I too am happy that I didn't sneeze. Because if I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been around here in 1960, when students all over the South started sitting-in at lunch counters. . . .

“If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been around here in 1961, when we decided to take a ride for freedom and ended segregation in inter-state travel.

“If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been around here in 1962, when Negroes in Albany, Georgia, decided to straighten their backs up. And whenever men and women straighten their backs up, they are going somewhere, because a man can't ride your back unless it is bent.

“If I had sneezed I wouldn't have been here in 1963, when the black people of Birmingham, Alabama, aroused the conscience of this nation, and brought into being the Civil Rights Bill.

“If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have had a chance later that year, in August, to try to tell America about a dream that I had had.

“If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been down in Selma, Alabama, to see the great Movement there.

“If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been in Memphis to see a community rally around those brothers and sisters who are suffering.

“I'm so happy that I didn't sneeze.

“. . . . Now, it doesn't matter, now. It really doesn't matter what happens now. I left Atlanta this morning, and as we got started on the plane, there were six of us. The pilot said over the public address system, ‘We are sorry for the delay, but we have Dr. Martin Luther King on the plane. And to be sure that all of the bags were checked, and to be sure that nothing would be wrong with on the plane, we had to check out everything carefully. And we've had the plane protected and guarded all night.’

“And then I got into Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers?

“Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop.

“And I don't mind.

“Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!

“And so I'm happy tonight.

“I'm not worried about anything.

“I'm not fearing any man!

“Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!”


At a minute past six the next evening, forty-one years ago yesterday, on the balcony in front of Room 306 at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, a shot rang out. The bullet smashed into his face, shattered his jaw, drove to the back of his neck, down his spinal cord, and lodged in his shoulder.

Minutes later, Martin Luther King, Jr. was dead.

The School of Americas Bites Back

A recent issue of Parade Magazine (March 29, 2009) contains an article entitled “What’s Wrong With Our Prisons?” written by Senator Jim Webb (D. VA) which focuses on two consequences of the drug trade in Mexico and the United States. Curiously, however, just one of the consequences deals directly with our prisons, while the other concerns the enhanced danger to American citizens created by Mexican drug cartels.

First up, Senator Webb tells us that persons imprisoned for drug offenses rose from 10% of the inmate population to about 33% between 1984 and 2002. Moreover, 47.5% of all the drug arrests in our country in 2007 were for marijuana offenses, and nearly 60% of those serving time in state prisons had no history of violence or of any significant drug selling activity. On top of it all, there’s a well-known racial bias built into the system of prosecuting drug offenders in this country in that African-Americans, who comprise about 12% of the U.S. population, account for 37% of those arrested on drug charges, 59% of those convicted, and 74% of drug offenders put in prison.

What this adds up to is that the United States now has the world’s highest incarceration rate, by far. With 5% of the world’s population, we house 25% of the world’s prisoners. We currently imprison 756 inmates per 100,000 residents, more than five times the average worldwide — resulting in the fact that one out of every 31 adults in the US is either in prison, in jail, or on supervised release.

This said, Senator Webb then segues into the second problem — the increase in crime along our southwestern border caused by the traffic in drugs masterminded by Mexican cartels, the profits of which are said to reach $25 billion annually. The cartels, which exert absolute control over certain parts of Mexico and took the lives of more than 6,000 Mexicans last year alone, are also said to be running operations in 230 American cities. With 370 kidnapings last year, they have turned Phoenix, Arizona, into the kidnaping capital of the country, second to Mexico City in the hemisphere. Moreover, according to Senator Webb, the cartels “are known to employ many elite former soldiers who were trained in some of America’s most sophisticated military programs.”

Senator Webb reaches two conclusions which, when combined, create a rather strange tandem. He declares, first, that “we are not protecting our citizens from the increasing danger of criminals who perpetrate violence and intimidation as a way of life,” and, second, that “we are locking up too many people who do not belong in jail.” The remedy for this? The best the Senator can do is: “American ingenuity can discover better ways to deal with the problem of drugs and nonviolent criminal behavior while still minimizing violent crime and large-scale gang activity.”

While I sort of admire Senator Webb, it seems to me that, like a lot of politicians, he’s long on problems and short on solutions. With all due respect, however, when it comes to solutions, partial or otherwise, here are two: First, regarding the drug trade and the high prison population in this country — legalize marijuana, then regulate it and tax it. Second, regarding the involvement of American-trained “elite former soldiers” now working for the Mexican drug cartels, stop training them, Senator — which means closing the School of the Americas where those “elite former soldiers” undoubtedly received their training.

The School of Americas was initially established in Panama in 1946, but was kicked out of that country in 1984 under the terms of the Panama Canal Treaty. In 1984 it was re-established at Fort Benning, Georgia, where, ever since, Latin American security personnel have been trained in combat, counter-insurgency, and counter-narcotics tactics and strategies. The purpose of the School for the most part has been to train “elite” forces which would support American interests by supporting Latin American dictators.

By now it’s clear that graduates of the School of Americas are responsible for some of the worst human rights abuses in Latin America. Among the SOA's nearly 60,000 graduates are notorious dictators Manuel Noriega and Omar Torrijos of Panama, Leopoldo Galtieri and Roberto Viola of Argentina, Juan Velasco Alvarado of Peru, Guillermo Rodriguez of Ecuador, and Hugo Banzer Suarez of Bolivia. Lower level graduates of the School were responsible for the Uraba massacre in Colombia, the El Mozote massacre of 900 civilians in El Salvador, the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero and the massacre of 14-year-old Celina Ramos, her mother Elba Ramos and six Jesuit priests in El Salvador and hundreds of other human rights abuses.

On November 16, 1989, a US Congressional Task Force issued findings that those responsible for the massacre in El Salvador of the six Jesuits, their co-worker and her teenage daughter were trained at the Army School of the Americas. In a tiny apartment in Fort Benning a year later, the SOA Watch designed to monitor the School of Americas was founded by Father Roy Bourgeois. Father Bourgeois is an American Maryknoll priest, former US Naval officer, and a veteran of the war in Vietnam where he was awarded a Purple Heart. He became a Catholic priest in 1972 and went on to work with the poor of Bolivia for five years before being arrested and forced to leave the country, then under the repressive rule of dictator and SOA graduate General Hugo Banzer. Father Bourgeois had become involved in the US policy in El Salvador years before he started SOA Watch after four US churchwomen — two of them Maryknoll sisters and friends of his — were raped and murdered by Salvadoran soldiers in 1980.

Former Panamanian President Jorge Illueca stated that the School of the Americas was the “biggest base for destabilization in Latin America.” Then Congressman Joseph P. Kennedy II, a supporter of SOA Watch and a friend of Father Bourgeois, said, “the U.S. Army School of the Americas became a school that has run more dictators than any other school in the history of the world." Over the years, the School has produced at least eleven Latin American dictators. In 2001, the Pentagon renamed the SOA the “Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation” (WHISC) because of the bad publicity caused by the SOA Watch which, among other things, had effectively renamed it the “School of Assassins.”

On September 20, 1996, after lying about their existence for years, the Pentagon was compelled to release seven training manuals prepared by the U.S. military and used in Latin America and in intelligence training courses at the SOA between 1987 and 1991. The manuals — one of which was entitled, “Terrorism and the Urban Guerrilla” — taught repressive techniques and promoted the violation of human rights throughout Latin America; they contain instructions in motivation by fear, bounties for enemy dead, false imprisonment, torture, execution, and kidnaping a target's family members. Joseph Kennedy said "These manuals taught tactics that come right out of a Soviet gulag and have no place in civilized society." The Pentagon admitted that they were a "mistake" and were merely the product of an unknown lower-level military operative’s excessive zeal. They had never been “officially cleared for publication” declared the Pentagon, so no one was to blame. Appeals to President Clinton, with the weirdest of logic, were referred back to the Pentagon. The SOA manuals were, in a sense, the moral equivalent of those that would later govern the treatment of prisoners at Abu Gahrib and Guantanamo, and their exposure was treated with similar denial and obfuscation by the military.

Protest demonstrations — which are actually peaceful, nonviolent vigils — are conducted every November by the SOA Watch. Over the years, they have grown considerably; a friend of mine who was there reports that 22,000 persons were at the gates of Fort Benning in 2006. As a result of arrests of SOA Watch protesters, usually for trespassing on a federal military installation or “disturbing the peace,” 237 human rights defenders have collectively spent over 98 years in prison, and more than 50 persons have served probation sentences. The protest held this past November resulted in six more arrests, six more convictions, and six more persons serving time in federal prisons.

To give you a flavor of who does the protesting, the “2008 SOA Six” included Father Luis Barrios, an episcopal priest and college professor who teaches courses on gangs, criminal justice, US-Latin American foreign policy, and Latin Studies at City College of New York; Theresa M. Cusimano, a lawyer and public interest advocate for twenty years from Colorado; Kristin Holm, 21, a first year student at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago; Sister Diane Therese Pinchot, of the Ursuline Sisters of Cleveland, a school teacher and sculptress; Al Simmons, 64-year-old retired pre-school teacher and Vietnam vet who has been involved in peace and social justice campaigns “for the past forty years;” and Louis Wolf, 69 years old, a conscientious objector, author, and third-world traveler.

From our area, Kay and Randy Bond have protested the SOA in Fort Benning twice (arrested once), and Sally Neal has been there and done that five times. There may be others. In 2007, Valerie Fillenwarth of Indianapolis, the wife (of 45 years) of a Notre Dame law school classmate of mine, a former Maryknoll sister, the mother of seven and grandmother of 17, served 100 days in the Danbury Correctional Center in Danbury, Connecticut, for trespassing at Fort Benning (a Class B Misdemeanor), though she’d never before received even a traffic ticket. And, of course, Father Bourgeois himself has been imprisoned many times for nonviolent protests at Fort Benning, just as he has been imprisoned many times in many countries throughout Central and South America.

It was only a matter of time, I suppose, that creating a facility like the School of Americas to train soldiers to do the dirty work of American-sponsored dictators south of our borders would result in a situation in which those very soldiers, or others like them, began performing the same kind dirty work for vicious criminal cartels that threaten our own national interests today. The saying may be trite, but it applies: What goes around, comes around.

In 2007, a bill in the US House of Representatives designed to close the School of Americas was defeated by just nine votes, 203 to 214. Representatives Bart Stupak and Dave Camp from northern Michigan voted in favor, and Peter Hoekstra voted against the measure. Overall, with just 76.6% of House Democrats and 11.4% of the Republicans voting in favor two years ago, it’s hoped that a similar bill will pass in the new Congress this year.

By the way, one of the consistent supporters of the effort to close the School of Americas in the United States Congress is Dennis Kucinich. However you may have voted in last year’s primary, Mr. Kucinich has to be the friend of every person in this country who calls him- or herself a liberal.

Anyway, with thanks for his article on the prison problem, as far as it goes, I do have some free advice for Senator Webb — Close the School of Americas, Senator. And have a talk with Dennis. Soon.

Quote of the Day. There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest. — Elie Wiesel

Joke of the Day. How many watched the president’s news conference last Tuesday night? He got a little testy there, you know. When he was asked why he waited three days to speak out against the AIG bonuses, President Obama said he likes to know what he’s talking about before he speaks. So, yet another reversal of the Bush policies. — Jay Leno

"Malapropism" Defined

Former President George W. Bush recently gave his first address since leaving the presidency. He delivered it, not at a military installation in the United States, his favorite venue while in office, but in Calgary, Canada. There were no reporters, no TV, no radio coverage of the speech and, in fact, the whole deal seemed clothed in secrecy. Two things we do know, however: we know that Mr. Bush went to the auditorium from his hotel via an underground tunnel, thereby avoiding a mass of protesters outside wielding, you guessed it, shoes, shoes of the “throw these at George” variety; and we also know he charged his listeners, whoever they were, a ton of money. (George was quite candid about one of the things he planned to do upon leaving office: “refill the ol’ coffers,” he said on several occasions.)

Notwithstanding all the secrecy, there were the inevitable “leaks” regarding the big secret, that is, leaks about what it was he said. One of them is that in the speech he described a book he was writing, or intending to write, the subject of which is something like “the 12 toughest decisions” he made as president. Reportedly, Bush has no interest in (nor, it might be added, the ability for) writing a full-blown, detailed memoir like so many persons do after leaving high office. (Cheney, Rice, and Rumsfeld, among others, are said to be doing that right now. Can hardly wait, can you?) So, he’s content to regale us with a few high points (or, low points, as the case may be) he experienced as “The Decider” over the past eight years. The underlying reason for writing such a book, he went on to say, was that when the history of his presidency is written “at least there [will be] an authoritarian voice saying exactly what happened.”

Whoa. As we must when listening to Mr. Bush for any length of time, in order to figure out what he was trying to say it's a good idea to turn to the dictionary. The word “authority” means “an accepted source of information or advice.” The word “authoritarian” is defined as “characterized by or favoring absolute obedience to authority, as against individual freedom.” And “malapropism” means “ludicrous use of a word, especially by confusion with one of similar sound.” It’s pretty evident that, if there were a Nobel Prize for malapropisms, Mr. Bush would be a shoo-in, after which the Nobel Committee would retire the prize altogether.

As Rachel Maddow, reflecting on Mr. Bush’s speech, remarked: “Not all Freudian slips are created equal.”


You Know It’s Bad When . . . . You know those junk-mail “come-ons” we receive on a regular basis from credit-card companies trying to entice us to join up? Well, American Express has a new spin on that undertaking. Rather than luring new customers with cash rewards as it once did, AmEx is now offering selected customers a $300 prepaid gift card if they pay off their balances and close their accounts. Yep, AmEx is now paying some customers not to do business with it anymore.

“The intention is to help cardholders lower their debt and encourage responsible management of their credit,” said an AmEx representative. “It’s being promoted as a means for customers to 'simplify their finances.'” Yea, right. I’ll bet this type of credit assistance wasn’t on the mind of AmEx when it signed people up in the good ol’ days, encouraging them to spend profligately at every conceivable opportunity and to reward them when they did. What AmEx is actually doing is giving some not-so-good customers 300 bucks as an incentive to "simplify" things by paying off AmEx. This recently adopted strategy is a “huge paradigm shift,” according to CardRatings.com, a credit-card review web site. They expect “other large companies to follow suit with offers to entice consumers to pay off their balances, as card issuers cope with increasing defaults.”

Quite rightly, consumer advocates don’t see it that way. “It’s a nice way of saying, ‘We want you out and we want to entice you financially to get out,” says CardRatings.com. “It’s not about them handing out $300 out of the kindness of their hearts.” Put it this way: say you have a $5,000 credit-card debt (a not unusually high amount). The $300 “gift card” amounts to a 6% discount if you pay it off and don’t come back. (If the credit-card debt is $10,000, the discount of course is only 3%.) In other words, it’s really a device to dump the folks the credit-card companies have decided are dead-beats.

Speaking of dead-beats . . . . AmEx is one of several credit-card issuers that have closed accounts and increased late fees and interest rates for cash advances in recent months. More significantly, AmEx, that model of financial responsibility, after converting into a bank-holding company in late 2008, received $3.4 billion from the U.S. Treasury in Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funds in exchange for a government stake in the company. Okay, TARP was a remedy for the great big dead-beats, but where, we might ask, is the bailout for the little guys — the little dead-beats? Oh, that’s right: they don’t get one because they got themselves into that jam all by themselves. And the big guys didn't. Right.

By the way, you know those ubiquitous credit-card solicitations we receive in the mail I mentioned at the outset? (In the last couple of weeks, I’ve received three just from Capital One.) Harper’s Index says that 5.2 billion such solicitations were sent to Americans in 2008. That means the credit-card people sent out about 20 million each business day, enough to provide every man, woman, and child in the country with 17 solicitations over the period of the year.

And that, folks, on top of the other issues, is a lot of trees.

The Republicans' Man of Steele

I can hardly be called a fan of the Republican Party and normally would relish any form of misfortune that might be visited upon it. But the present state of the Grand Old Party is, well, not so grand; in fact, it’s in such a deplorable condition that it’s embarrassing even for Democrats.

Take a look at the leading major figures in the GOP at this time. They are: Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority Leader who, according to Gail Collins of the Times, has “the natural charisma of an oyster” and often looks like he just swallowed a bad one; John Boehner, the Republican leader in the House, who, best known for his prowess around the tanning salon and his perennial tan, apparently aspires become the congressional version of George Hamilton; Bobby Jindal, Governor of Louisiana, who was given the impossible job of following President Obama’s speech to Congress and whose hapless retort proved beyond doubt that, at least for him, it was impossible; Rush Limbaugh, whose persona is about as ugly as that of Jeffrey Dahmer and who actually claims to be the “defacto” Party head; and, finally, Michael Steele, Chairman of the Republican Party.

Ah, Michael Steele. Now here’s a guy you could really feel sorry for — if he weren’t such an insufferable jerk. Let’s put it this way: Michael Steele is one of just a handful of black persons in the Republican Party, he’s tall and handsome, he dresses well, and his elocution is good — which is to say that, though what most of what he says is bullshit, he says it distinctly. As an example of the latter, Steele, who like most Republicans thinks the President’s stimulus package spends too much money (itself a non-sequitur), claims, rather loudly, that it’s impossible for government spending to create even a single job. “No, Sir,” he has said, “government spending may create work, but it cannot create jobs.” Excuse me? (He actually said this, many times.) And by the way, Michael’s also the guy who, in his speech at the Republican convention last summer gave us that mind-altering slogan, “Drill, baby, drill!” — As Rachel Maddow pointed out recently, Michael loves to use the word, “baby.”)

But poor Michael has other problems. Like paying his sister’s catering business, Brown Sugar Unlimited, $37,262 for services supposedly rendered during Steele’s unsuccessful run for the Senate in 2007; since his sister, once married to the former boxer Mike Tyson, dissolved her company before the payment, some think it’s doubtful the services were ever performed. Or paying more money ($64,000) to a friend’s firm for “political consulting” when the firm turned out to be in the business of trading commodities. Or transferring more than $500,000 in campaign funds without authorization, a claim made by Alan B. Fabian, Steele’s former finance chairman who, incidentally, was sentenced in October to nine years in prison for involvement in a $40 million fraud scheme, unrelated to his work on the Steele senatorial campaign. (These matters are currently being investigated by criminal prosecutors.)

But once on the job at Republican headquarters, Michael did his best to initiate a “change.” Yesssiree, he worked a change alright. Michael, it seems, fired everyone in the office, except for one guy who, apparently finding no one around the water cooler, quit. True. Rachel Maddow reported on March 6 that, except for Michael himself, there is no one working at the Republican Party Headquarters in Washington. It has no political director, no finance director, no communications director, no chief of staff. Just Michael.

So, how does Michael Steele keep busy? Well, for one thing, he’s been trying to do a Republican Party make-over by making it “cool” — that’s right, “cool.” To this end, claiming that “I’m always open to everything, baby, absolutely,” he promised the conservative Washington Times that under his tutelage the Party would come to stand for conservative principles applied “to urban-suburban hip-hop settings.” I don’t know about you, but here in Leelanau County, Michigan, where I’m from, though the citizenry usually votes overwhelmingly Republican (the recent presidential election being a notable exception), “hip-hop settings” are just damn hard to come by. The Republican Party is in dire need of a lot of things, but acquiring a “cool” image is rather far down the list. Maybe they can get Michael off the subject for a while by having the Party regulars all wear Republican baseball caps — with the bills turned backwards.

Michael’s also been busy recently getting into pissing matches with Rush Limbaugh over who’s heading up the Republican Party. In the course of this heady debate, Michael accused Rush of being “ugly and incendiary,” a “smear” for which he was forced to apologize and for which, in fact, he did apologize. Yep, he apologized to Rush for saying something nasty about him! Contrite as an altar boy, Michael said he didn’t mean to question the “leadership” of Rush, for whom he has “enormous respect,” but he’d just been a “bit inarticulate.” Classy guy, this Michael.

Finally, in the weird world of Republican politics, Michael Steele has been trying his best to be an enforcer of the idea that it’s bad for the country for states to accept stimulus funds. This is the reason that the Republican big guns in Congress have uniformly endorsed a “spending freeze,” saying there should be no spending through September, the end of the government’s fiscal year. Now you don’t have to be an expert in Keynesian fiscal policy to know that in a recession or a depression it’s critically necessary to stimulate demand, and that means that somebody out there has to begin buying stuff. We’ve got plenty of supply, as we know: just take a drive by your friendly auto dealer’s lot. But when average folks aren’t buying, then it’s only natural, and necessary, to look to the government to, well, spend; like get involved in public works projects. This is especially helpful when the country is also in need of public works — i.e., new and newly refurbished infrastructure. Need a new bridge, Minneapolis? In passing it should also be noted that in a recent survey 7,500 truckers were asked what they thought were the worst roads in America; they came up with a list of specific highways in six states and “all roads in Michigan, especially I-75 into Detroit.” Need better roads, Michigan?

Anyway, you’ll remember that President Obama was able to garner the necessary sixty votes in the Senate to pass his stimulus package with the help of three Republicans: Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine, and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, all of whom are very highly respected members of the Senate. Well, Michael recently went on record saying that as Party head he would not underwrite any of the re-election campaigns of any Republican member of Congress who voted against the Republican position on this issue. This prompted Senator Snowe to ask, “You don’t really mean that, do you, Mr. Steele?” Michael was quick to back down, and replied to the Senator that no he didn’t. But then, characteristically, the next day Michael repeated his threat to disenfranchise such insubordinate congresspersons. This bright move might just have been the proverbial last nail in the coffin for Michael.

Oh, there’s one Republican “leader” I forgot to mention: Newt Gingrich. Good ol’ Newt. Remember “Contract for America,” which was discreetly placed in the trash bin of history back in the mid-90s? Newt recently sent one of those trial balloons aloft saying something about running for president in 2012. (Just think of the Republican primary in three years: Newt v. Huck v. Milt v. Bobby J., etc., all orchestrated by Michael Steele. — Boggles the mind, doesn’t it?) In a sit-down interview before a speech the other night, Newt, in an unusually familial mood, told the Richmond Times-Dispatch: "Callista and I will look seriously and we'll probably get our family totally engaged, including our two grandchildren, probably in January, 2011." He added, “I see the Party heading for a wholly new generation” (whatever that meant).

I don’t know about Callista, who Newt married in 2000, but his grandchildren are surely part of a new generation. As for Newt himself, sounds like the old generation to me.

If You Think You've Seen Everything . . . .

Over the past several years we’ve watched as colleges and universities have gotten into the travel business. It’s a way some of the faculty can exercise their expertise in history, literature, language, foreign affairs, and the like by conducting seminars during the off-season while students are on summer break. In addition, these tours, which are rather pricey to say the least, are surely a ripe source of income.

Accordingly, from time to time I receive fancy brochures from the alumni societies of both Williams College, where I was an undergraduate, and Notre Dame, where I got my law degree. Ordinarily they quickly go into the circular file without even being opened. However, because I’ve always had a desire to tour Scandinavia and eastern Europe — Poland, the Czech Republic, the Baltic states and eastern Russia — just for the hell of it recently I took a closer look at a brochure entitled “Saxony Cruise plus Prague and Berlin” billed as “an exclusive educational and travel experience.” The tour group will cruise down the Elbe River aboard the “MV Katharina Von Bora,” the base of operations and which, from the brochure, looks to me like a very fancy barge.

The itinerary includes seven cities and towns in Germany and the Czech Republic located on or near the Elbe. One of them is Torgau, a “beautiful Renaissance town dramatically set on a cliff overlooking the Elbe” which is “a monument to the Lutheran spirit of reform.” Even though for the better part of ten years beginning in the mid-80s I was a member of a Lutheran congregation (serving as an acolyte and member of the church council), I never bothered to learn much about Lutheran history or, for that matter, Lutheran theology. Thus I know very little about Martin Luther, except that, as everyone knows, in 1517 he nailed Ninety-five Theses to the door of a church in Wittenberg and initiated the German Reformation.

The tour includes visits to the German cities of Wittenberg and Torgau, both of which are steeped in the history of the Reformation. To be seen are churches, museums, exhibits, the first Protestant place of worship, a Renaissance castle with a chapel consecrated by Martin Luther, the original Gutenberg Bible — all of which are rapturously described. When it comes to the day spent in Torgau, the brochure sets out the following highlight: “View the tomb of Martin Luther’s wife in the Marienkirche.” (Her name, by the way, was Katharina Von Bora.)

But wow! The tomb of Martin Luther’s wife! Just imagine it! To actually see it! I guess that’s enough to get your touristic juices flowing, right? And just to think . . . well . . . err . . . Hell, I didn’t even know the dude was married!


• Is There a Gold Medal for Celebrating? In Val D’Isere, France, last week the United States Ski Team was looking good, seeking another victory on the World Cup circuit. At the top of the list of U.S. skiers was the blonde, attractive Lindsey Vonn, who won the overall World Cup title last season and held a 1,114 to 935 lead over Maria Riesch of Germany in this season’s standings. On Monday, Lindsey had won both the Super-G (the super giant slalom) and the downhill, and was poised for the giant slalom.

But another event intervened — the Monday night victory celebration, an absolute must. Here, as fate would have it, Lindsey didn’t fare too well. She severed part of a tendon in her right thumb as a result of cutting herself on a broken champagne bottle. She was flown to a private hospital in Innsbruck, Austria, for surgery, then spent a day with experts attempting to construct a splint to enable her to grip her pole. Lindsey missed the giant slalom on Friday, but showed up for the regular slalom on Saturday, the final women’s race of the championships. Unfortunately, she fell and Maria Riesch of Germany went on to win.

When she fell in the last race at Val D’Isere, Lindsey landed on her side and held up her injured thumb to avoid damaging it further. “It’s OK,” she said. “It was hurting and then I crashed, so now it’s hurting even more.” So, between now and the next World Cup event in Tarvisio, Italy, this week, Lindsey presumably will be taking it easy on the slopes — remaining at the lodge and devoting her time to practicing drinking, no doubt.

All said and done, however, Lindsey’s indiscretion wasn’t any worse than Mark Phelps’, also an exceptional young athlete who happens to be rather fun-loving. Gee, whaddaya know — young people who are fun-loving? (But does A-Rod fit into this category?) Actually, I hope Lindsey puts it behind her, gets back in shape and does well.

Here’s mud in your eye, Lindsey girl.


• Thanks, Mom. Those of us who have seen “Milk,” the Oscar-bound biographical movie of the activist Harvey Milk, the first gay person in the U.S. to be elected to a major political office, vicariously experienced the ruthless oppression and intense suffering homosexual men and women actually experienced — and in many places continue to experience — pretty much on a regular basis. The movie, by the way, is a must-see; and while everything about the film and everyone in the film is really good, Sean Penn’s performance is over the top.

Which calls to mind a report in the current issue of “Civil Liberties,” the ACLU’s national newsletter, about Brian Carrell of Roscoe, Illinois, a small, conservative town near the Wisconsin border. Brian is a 2008 winner of the ACLU Youth Activist Scholarship Program, which honors graduating high school seniors from around the country who make outstanding contributions to the struggle for civil liberties and the rights of young people.

You see, Brian is gay. Last year he tried to organize his high school’s first Gay Straight Alliance. School administrators sent his proposal to the district school board, where anti-gay groups packed the room at every board and subcommittee meeting, attempting to argue and shout down the start-up of a GSA. Despite the opposition, Brian started an aggressive internet campaign to rally GSA supporters and volunteered to be a plaintiff in a lawsuit against the school (to be brought by the ACLU) if the board voted against the proposal. Thanks in large part to Brian’s efforts, the school board ultimately voted 5-2 in favor of the GSA.

Later, Brian made the following statement: “I believe it is paramount to a free and open democracy that all voices are acknowledged, regardless of age, race, creed, sexual orientation, or social status. . . . Now that I have seen what a group of students working together can accomplish, I am encouraged to stay active in the democratic processes of my community and my nation.”

Oh. There was one other obstacle Brian had to overcome in his effort to create a GSA in his school: speaking against him at all the public meetings was . . . his mom.

Let's Hear It for Bipartisanship. Booooooo!

• For those of you who’d like to know what’s wrong with President Obama’s stimulus bill, here are two suggestions. One, tune into the Rachel Maddow Show week-nights at 9:00 EDT. Two, read Paul Krugman’s column Mondays and Fridays in the New York Times.

In a recent column entitled “The Destructive Center,“ Krugman began by asking, “What do you call someone who eliminates hundreds of thousands of American jobs, deprives millions of adequate health care and nutrition, undermines schools, but offers a $15,000 bonus to affluent people who flip their houses?” The answer: “A proud centrist. For that is what the senators who ended up calling the tune on the stimulus bill just accomplished.”

Krugman, for one, has made it very clear where he stands: and it’s not in the center. In order to extricate ourselves from this mess, he stresses the importance of very large government investments — in infrastructure, healthcare, education, and, yes, autos — “insisting that these be big enough to overwhelm depression, systemic and psychological.” “The worst mistake,” he says, “would be taking a five-foot leap over a seven-foot pit out of fear that acting to save the financial system is somehow ‘socialistic.’”

Krugman blamed the President’s belief “that he can transcend the partisan divide,” a belief, he says, that “warped his economic strategy.” Accordingly, he offered a plan “that was clearly both too small and too heavily reliant on tax cuts. Why? because he wanted the plan to have broad bipartisan support, and believed that it would.” Amazingly, he was listening to Republicans who, like Governor Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, felt that the Obama stimulus bill “wandered off into too much spending.” Excuse me? Too much spending — in a stimulus bill? And this from a Republican, whose president over the past eight years spent us crazy into the biggest deficit in American history. Does this make any sense at all?

And then there was Mitch McConnell, Senate Minority Leader and Republican economic wizard, who, attempting to prove that spending is the way into socialism and not out of a depression, told us with fervor in his voice that “it wasn’t New Deal spending that got us out of the Great Depression, as every historian knows it was the Second World War.” While he’s right about that, what McConnell doesn’t get is that, considered only in economic terms, World War II was . . . well, er . . . government spending. As John Steele Gordon said recently in the Wall Street Journal, “there have always been two reasons for adding to the national debt,” which is, of course, created by deficit spending: “One is to fight wars [and] the second is to counteract recessions.” Deficit spending under Roosevelt did both.

I remember as a kid my father, a staunch Republican, deriding the New Deal by calling it a bunch of “make work” programs and telling me that Roosevelt was paying people to dig holes and then to immediately fill them up — which, by the way, was a conservative fantasy. I wish I had known enough at the time to have asked him what benefit accrued to the U.S. economy from producing a bomb and then dropping it on a German building? Economically, of course, it had the same effect here at home as if it had been dropped in the ocean. Which is to say that producing bombs had everything in the world to do with stimulus, even though economically it was the equivalent of digging a hole and filling it up — or digging a hole, planting a seedling, and filling it up; or building a bridge and letting it stand there while driving cars over it for 50 years; and so on.

And so, events proved President Obama wrong about bipartisanship. Though his advisors at one time thought this bipartisan strategy would gain the happy result of 80 or more votes in the Senate, it wound up eking out a razor-thin 61-36 victory, just one vote more than the required two-thirds to avoid a filibuster. And to do that it was necessary to engage the so-called “centrists.” These were three Republicans (Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, and Olympia J. Snow and Susan Collins, both of Maine) and two Independents (Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Bernie Sanders of Vermont) who, added to the 56 Democrats in the Senate, pushed it over the top, doing so, however, at rather great expense to the stimulus purpose of the package. Thus, at the end of the day, after presenting a somewhat watered-down stimulus package and smoozing at “bipartisan” cocktail parties and the like in order to garner Republican votes, he wound up with three. The American people need to ask: Was that a good deal? Was that in the nation’s interest?

While all this was going on in Congress, Rachel Maddow was insisting that the Democrats should abandon the BS about bipartisanship altogether and call the Republicans on their threat to filibuster. Just let a bunch of them stand there in the senate chamber in the dead of night and read the District of Columbia phone book and see what happens, said Rachel. She’s was betting that the nation wouldn’t stand for it. Invoking the sanctity of Senate Rules, Barbara Boxer, the Democrat from California, made a decent, though conventional, explanation of why that wouldn’t work, but it didn’t convince Rachel, and it didn’t convince me either. The Republicans pulled the same legislative tactic, you may remember, when the Democrats proposed amendments to military appropriations bills in the Senate in 2006 designed to bring the troops home by certain dates. There, however, the Republicans were able to operate under cover of such phony principles as “support our troops or be known as a traitor,” stuff that the Dems, including great minds like Carl Levin, fell for hook, line and sinker.

• Now There’s an Idea. Do you remember George W. Bush’s first big push following his reelection in 2004 — just after he announced, “I earned . . . political capital, and now I intend to spend it.”? It was the Republican’s attempt to privatize the Social Security system which, despite the system’s merits as public policy, is the foundation on which the social programs of the Democratic Party rests. It would have changed the system into one that allowed stock-market accounts for individuals otherwise entitled to social security. Wheeeeee! This at a time when even the guys who knew what they’re were doing didn’t know what they were doing. As Nicholas Lemann mused in The New Yorker recently, can anyone even imagine just how that would have worked out by the end of Bush’s presidency?

• Yes We Can — Keep on Protesting. In a close-up on Pete Seeger and Joan Baez in the current issue of Rolling Stone, Baez says that in January after the start of her current tour she began exclaiming, “Yes we did!” One night a woman yelled back, “Now there’s nothing left to protest against anymore,” to which Baez yelled back, “Oh, no, my good woman — this is where it starts.”

Sean Penn made a similar statement in the same issue of Rolling Stone (he’s on the cover). When asked whether he was politically optimistic, Penn replied: “Yeah, I am. I’m optimistic about this man, not about him by himself, and not about his Cabinet. But I’m optimistic about the people who put in him in office — if they support him first but then challenge him.” (Italics mine.)

Despite, or perhaps because of, the hope and promise Barack Obama brings to the nation and to the heart of each of us, it’s still very important that we challenge him from time to time when the situation demands and to protest his policies when we think they’re wrong. We need to remember that President Obama is not a real liberal; he’s a moderate Democrat, one for whom bipartisanship is part of the program, sometimes — as we’ve seen — even to the detriment of the program.

The bottom line: We need him, and he needs us.

What's this Stuff About the Status Quo Ante?

On Sunday, July 18, 2006, about a week after Israel commenced air attacks and ground operations against Lebanon, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice headed overseas for talks, but played down the possibility of an early end to hostilities. Ms. Rice declared that she would not “try to get a cease-fire that I know isn’t going to work.” About two weeks later, on August 3, in an interview on the Sean Hannity Show, she explained this position by stating that, while the U.S. desired an end to the violence, “we just want to make certain that we have principles in place that will not permit a return to the status quo ante. . . .” On September 25, she repeated herself, saying in an interview with editors and reporters of the New York Times that”I would hope that [the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon] would interpret its mission in a way that allows it to really do what it is supposed to do, which is not to allow a return to the status quo ante in the south [of Lebanon].” Secretary Rice used the phrase status quo ante almost every time she spoke about the Israeli-Lebanese War of 2006.

On Friday, January 2, 2009, about a week after Israel commenced air attacks against Palestinians in Gaza, Secretary Rice emerged from the White House after meeting with President Bush to tell reporters: “We are working toward a cease-fire that would not allow a reestablishment of the status quo ante where Hamas can continue to launch rockets out of Gaza. It is obvious that that cease-fire should take place as soon as possible, but we need a cease-fire that is durable and sustainable.” Secretary Rice has and continues to use this phrase almost every time she is queried about the current Israeli War in Gaza.

So what’s the big deal about the status quo ante? What does it mean? Why does Secretary Rice use the phrase over and over again? Well, other than to convince us that she studied political science in college, she’s using a diplomatic term of art which refers to the status of balance of power dynamics before the outbreak of a war or any form of hostile conflict. Technically, the phrase is a shortened form of “in statu quo ante bellum” (in the state in which it was before the war) or, more simply, “in statu quo ante fuit” (in the state in which it was before).

Thus when Secretary Rice says that the United States opposes a “return to the status quo ante,” she means that the U.S. favors an outcome that will bring about some kind of change. And, in this context, where the protagonists are a Goliath (Israel) and a David (Hamas/Gazian Palestinians) (excuse the wholly ironic metaphor), change inevitably favors the bigger guy. As a consequence of these power dynamics, the approach the United States took in 2006 and is now again taking in 2009 is to back off, do nothing, speak platitudes, let the two fight it out, and then step back in when Israel has decimated its opponent. As Max Rodenbeck, the Economist’s mid-east correspondent, wrote in 2006: “So it is that American lent its diplomacy not to stopping the fighting as soon as possible, but to providing an umbrella for Israel to ‘finish the job’ of crushing Hezbollah.” By that time, when the status quo ante is nowhere in sight, the U.S. — drum-roll please — can step into the role of the Prince of Peace and, with great grandeur and sublimity, establish a cease-fire.

That kind of a cease-fire of course will always favor Israel. In fact, the whole idea of keeping the United States on the sidelines and everyone else well up in the bleachers, thereby allowing Israel to annihilate the opposition down on the playing field, is precisely how Israel wants the game to be played. It’s no surprise that the Israeli foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, following a meeting on January 5 in Israel with officials from the Czech Republic, Sweden and France, said:

In other conflicts, countries send in forces in order to battle terrorism, but we are not asking the world to take part in the battle and send their forces in — we are only asking them to allow us to carry it out until we reach a point in which we decide our goals have been reached for this point.

If the world community will just step back and let Israel do the heavy lifting, Israel should have little trouble achieving its goals and to thereby “change the equation” in the region, as Ms. Livni put it. We should admit up front, however, that it’s hard to criticize a goal designed to “change the equation,” or “alter the balance of power,” for no nation ever commences a war without having in mind some sort of change in the status quo; if it were content with the way things were it wouldn’t go to the trouble. Though I personally am close to being a pacifist and oppose most all wars, what I’m critical of here is the attempt by the United States to disguise its alliance with Israel as a sort of benign policy of cool neutrality, which it’s not. The United States is not neutral in this conflict. By trying to make it seem otherwise, the U.S. winds up achieving little more than proving to the world once again that our policy for Gaza is a transparent fraud and that we are, indeed, just a bunch of inept manipulators.

There are several conclusions to be drawn from this. First, it should by now be clear that the policy of the United States regarding Israel’s incursion into Gaza is in perfect lock-step with that of Israel itself. This is so even though we’ll have to await the historical record to learn exactly what our government knew and what it didn’t know in advance of the current incursion into Gaza, just as down the line we’ll have to consult the historians to learn just how complicit our leaders were in the planning and execution of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 2006. It’s hard to determine sometimes whether the U.S. is Israel’s proxy, or if Israel is ours, though in the final analysis it matters little, for when Israel did what it did, in each instance we were right there to give our unwavering support.

Second, when the U.S. government gives the impression that it is maintaining a neutral “hands off” position, or by saying something silly like, “we don’t have a dog in that fight,” it is being hugely hypocritical. This, for two reasons: number one, our dog has already been there, done its stuff and gone home — which is to say that we’ve already armed Israel to the teeth and, almost on our own, built it into one of the three or four strongest nations in the world in terms of military prowess. Number two, as Foreign Minister Livni candidly admitted, the power differential between Israel and the Palestinians is so great that, unlike other conflicts in the world, Israel has demanded that the U.S. and everyone else stay the hell out of the area, at least for the time being. Israel doesn’t want nor does it think it needs the help of anyone to subjugate the people of Gaza, or even Hamas for that matter (they may be wrong about the latter), and to invite others into the fray would only complicate things and perhaps even require that the Israeli military become accountable. In other words, when playing the role of gentle, benevolent giant and staying out of the “unfortunate mess” in Gaza, George Bush is not doing something high-minded, he’s simply doing what Israel wants us to do.

Third, although Bush, Cheney, Rice et al. are of the view that the U.S. can hide its real intentions behind the smoke screen of pronouncements such as the status quo ante bullshit, the rest of the world has already got the real picture. They see right through the outrageously hypocritical pronouncements our leaders utter that we whole-heartedly support Israel’s “right to defend itself,” and, oh by the way, of course we also “sympathize” with the Palestinian people over the pain and depravation they’re suffering in the event. In this connection, it’s not exactly irrelevant that (as this is being written) it’s reported that the Israeli incursion into Gaza has resulted in the deaths of ten Israelis and 680 Palestinians (mostly civilians), plus substantial destruction of the Gazian infrastructure.

And so once again the Bush administration is viewed around the globe as a sanctimonious, arrogant, malevolent bunch of jerks. In city after city around the world, the popular outrage against the invasion of Gaza has been the focus of demonstrations, not only against Israel, but against the United States. It should come as no surprise that in the Whitehall district of London on January 4, and elsewhere throughout Europe, not to mention the Islamic Middle East, shoe-throwing has now become the demonstration tactic du jour.

We deserve it.

Blaming the Victim, the Homeless Victim

• A few weeks ago I had occasion to talk with a friend with whom I hadn’t been in contact for months. During the conversation he regaled me with the usual elaborate descriptions of his travels, as he travels widely. Highlighting a visit to Vancouver, British Columbia, this past summer, he said he loved the city, which he found cosmopolitan, beautiful, and full of great places to eat. But one thing bothered him. “What was that?” I asked. “The homeless,” he replied. “Oh?” “Yea, the homeless are everywhere in Vancouver.” Citing a discussion of the problem he had with a tour guide, he was informed that “they’re there” because of the extensive medical facilities available, and, as you know, he continued, “the Canadian government pays all the bills.” There was a pause in the conversation. Finally, I said, “Well, that much is good, anyway.” “No,” he rejoined, “that’s not good. The government has no business bailing these guys out. They should be out looking for work rather than sitting around on their butts with their hands out.” He then concluded, “I guess that’s just another point on which you and I differ.” “I guess so,” I said. The conversation ended on that rather unpleasant note.

The conversation left me a little shaken. I wondered how could anyone be so insensitive, so lacking in compassion. I knew what it was that my friend didn’t like about the homeless people of Vancouver: he didn’t like to look at them. They bothered him — they’re not particularly picturesque, and they presented a subjective threat to the good time he and his family planned to have on their vacation. Vacationing in places where the indigenous population is poverty-stricken is not unusual for Americans, and it’s also not unusual for us to feel guilty when we lavish in their beautiful environs while they sweat it out in the kitchen. But my friend was turning his disquiet into anger, blaming these victims of poverty and oppression for laziness, ineptitude, and, well, just being around to look at. Relegating him to an ultra-conservative or extreme libertarian place on the socio-political spectrum was easy, but I was nonetheless saddened by the encounter. I felt compassion not only for the homeless guys of Vancouver my friend complained of, but for my friend himself.

Shortly thereafter, however, and to my chagrin, I learned my friend had real-live, honest-to-goodness support for his point of view — support from no less than a syndicated columnist and faculty member of one of the nation’s leading universities, Thomas Sowell. I found it in Mr. Sowell’s column in the Record-Eagle on December 3 fetchingly entitled, “Freedom and the Lefties.” Now for those of you who do not know this guy, Thomas Sowell is an academic economist, social critic, author, and a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institute at Stanford University. (Personally, however, I’ve never figured out why the Record-Eagle pays him a red cent for the privilege of publishing his opinions.) In this particular column, Sowell rants against the “arrogance” with which school administrators and college admissions committees reward students for performing “community service.” The arrogance to which Sowell objects is that of school officials imposing their “notions as to what is or is not a service to the community” on their students. While I might agree that a wiser school policy would be to provide a menu of community services from which students could chose, that’s not the issue that concerns me at present. What concerns me is Mr. Sowell’s use of aiding homeless persons as a prime example of community service ill spent.

Here’s what Sowell says on the subject: “Working in a homeless shelter is widely regarded as “community service” — as if aiding and abetting vagrancy is necessarily a service, rather than a disservice, to the community. Is a community better off with more people not working, hanging out on the streets, aggressively panhandling people on the sidewalks, urinating in the street, leaving narcotics needles in the parks where children play?” Mr. Sowell’s idea, I guess, is that if we don’t “aid and abet” these dysfunctional, criminal deadbeats, sooner or later they’ll just up and walk across the street and get a job. Reminds me of Jay Leno’s comment about Nancy Reagan’s anti-drug campaign in the 80s — “Just Say ‘No’!” Remember that one? Leno said she was going to start up a similar campaign to eradicate homelessness — she’d call it, “Just Get a House!” Simple as that.

A response to this nonsense was made in the Record-Eagle by John O’Neill, the executive director of the housing council in Benzie County, who, unlike Sowell, actually came up with some facts. “Some people make poor choices,“ O’Neill began, “but most are not homeless due to laziness. Loss of manufacturing jobs, low service-sector wages, and loss of affordable housing strongly correlate to increased homelessness.” Foreclosures, illness, disabilities, immigration and naturalization issues, and other personal crises aggravate homelessness. Far from abjuring work, most homeless people are desperate for a job; O’Neill cited the U.S. Conference of Mayors which found that 17.4 % of homeless adults with children worked while 13 % of singles held jobs. Nearly half of all homeless women are abused; a quarter of homeless men are veterans; two-thirds suffer from addictions; and another third are mentally ill.

Further research reveals that last year 23 % of people seeking shelter were turned away, and 29 % of those were children. As for children, in 2003 children under the age of 18 accounted for 39% of the homeless population, and 42% of these were under the age of five. Unaccompanied minors comprise 5% of the urban homeless population, though the numbers of homeless children in rural areas are much higher. Regarding families, the number of homeless families with children has increased significantly over the past decade and are among the fastest growing segments of the homeless population. In its 2007 survey of 23 American cities, the U.S. Conference of Mayors found that families with children comprised 23% of the homeless population. These proportions are likely to be higher in rural areas where families, single mothers, and children make up the largest groups of homeless persons. Presumably Mr. Sowell figures that along with the other homeless these single mothers and their children will, if left to their own devices, sooner or later become self-sufficient on their own.

So, helping these people is a disservice to the community? Really?

Postscript: As a member of the Board of Directors of Goodwill Industries of Northwest Michigan, I’m aware that, with the economy in the dump, the two major homeless shelters in the Grand Traverse Area — Goodwill and Safe Harbor — are full most of the time. During nights like those we’ve experienced with the temperature in the teens and below which put the homeless in grave danger, the overflow used to be parked for the night in the county jail — at least when Ralph Soffredene was Chief of Police. (Ralph is also a member of the Goodwill Board.) But the current sheriff (current, that is, until January 1) would have none of it: he has consistently refused to allow the city to use any part of the jail as a temporary homeless shelter because “they smell badly” (which is often true). So where do Traverse City police officers now take homeless persons in cold weather? Well, sometimes there’s no place at all to take them, and sometimes they take them to the branch banks in the area that have those little closed vestibules that house ATM machines and are open all night.

One final note: After the first of the year, those of you living in northwest Michigan please join me in sending a letter to the newly elected Sheriff of Grand Traverse County, Tom Bensely, asking him to reinstate the policy of placing homeless persons in the county jail overnight in very cold weather. Sheriff Bensely’s address will be: Grand Traverse County Sheriffs Office, 851 Woodmere Avenue, Traverse City, MI 49686. Thanks.