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While we’re on the subject of civil liberties violations (see the post below), here’s one that should grieve every American. An innocent man — first sentenced to death, and now facing life in prison — has had his motion for a new trial denied.
To learn the details of Cory Maye’s tragic story, listen to this Cato podcast:
ABC News:
In yet another moral blow to Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong, the North Carolina Conference of District Attorneys called for the prosecutor to step down from the Duke lacrosse case.
The group, which represents district attorneys from across North Carolina, said in a statement that “it is in the interest of justice and the effective administration of criminal justice that Mr. Nifong immediately withdraw and recuse himself from the prosecution.”
“It’s extraordinarily unusual and it means a great deal,” said Joshua Marquis, a district attorney in Clatsop County, Ore.
The district attorney group also called for the case to be reassigned and handed over to “another prosecutorial authority.”
We’ve heard now from the North Carolina Bar and Mike Nifong’s peers. We need next to hear from the U.S. Justice Dept. on when Nifong will be prosecuted for maliciously violating the civil rights of three innocent men.
Relatedly, Dahlia Lithwick is appallingly obtuse. How do you write a column on the “10 most outrageous civil liberties violations of 2006” and not include the Duke lacrosse case?!
A U.S. court of appeals has ruled that three Michigan universities must do as the state’s voters have demanded — and as the 14th Amendment was previously understood to require — and end the race-based classification of citizens:
A federal appeals court ruled Friday night that Michigan’s three largest universities must immediately remove race and gender consideration from their admissions and financial aid decisions and fully comply with Proposal 2.
The ruling of the three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals effectively overturned the six-month delay a lower court judge granted last week to the University of Michigan, Michigan State University and Wayne State University.
[…]
On Nov. 7, 58 percent of Michigan voters passed Proposal 2, a constitutional amendment that bans race and gender preferences in university admissions and government hiring and contracting.
If there’s to be a delay in implementing Prop. 2, it must come from the state courts and not the federal ones, the appeals court said:
While the Michigan state courts remain free to suspend enforcement of Proposal 2 under state law for all manner of reasons, including those urged upon us here — uncertainty about the meaning of the law, uncertainty about the law’s impact on current admissions policies and uncertainty about changing admissions policies in the middle of the current enrollment season — we are unable to identify any tenable basis under federal law for suspending the law’s enforcement. The First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, to be sure, permit States to use racial and gender preferences under narrowly defined circumstances. But they do not mandate them, and accordingly they do not prohibit a State from eliminating them. [Italics in original.]
The plaintiffs contended that Prop. 2 violates the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. The court of appeals disagreed:
In contending that the Equal Protection Clause compels what it presumptively prohibits, plaintiffs face an uphill climb. The Clause prevents “official conduct discriminating on the basis of race,” Washington v. Davis, 426 U.S. 229, 229 (1976), and on the basis of sex, United States v. Virginia, 518 U.S. 515 (1996), not official conduct that bans “discriminat[ion] against” or “preferential treatment to” individuals on the basis of race or sex — as Proposal 2 does.
If “[d]istinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry are by their very nature odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality,” Hirabayashi v. United States, 320 U.S. 81, 100 (1943), and if racial distinctions “threaten to stigmatize individuals by reason of their membership in a racial group and to incite racial hostility,” Shaw v. Reno, 509 U.S. 630, 643 (1993) (citations omitted), a state constitutional amendment designed to eliminate such “distinctions” in state government would seem to be an equal-protection virtue, not an equal-protection vice. After all, the “color-blind” goal of the Equal Protection Clause, Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537, 559 (1896) (Harlan, J., dissenting), is “to do away with all governmentally imposed discrimination based on race,” Palmore v. Sidoti, 466 U.S. 429, 432 (1984) (citation and footnote omitted), making it difficult to understand how the same constitutional provision could prohibit a State from doing away with race- and sex-based classifications sooner rather than later.
The panel’s opinion, in pdf, is here.
New York Times:
The hanging death of Saddam Hussein tonight ended the life of one of the most brutal tyrants in recent history and negated the fiction that he himself maintained even as the gallows loomed — that he remained president of Iraq despite being toppled by the American military …
Reportedly, Hussein dropped at 10:05 p.m. EST: “… witnesses to his execution danced around his body.”
Cheers.
ADDED —
What arrogance! In the hours before his death, Hussein’s American attorneys filed for a stay of execution … in United States District Court!
The judge with whom the motion was filed acknowledged the obvious: “… this Court … has no jurisdiction over the Iraqi officials who will carry out the execution of an Iraqi citizen pursuant to a sentence of death issued by an Iraqi court for violations of Iraqi law …”
What’s more, said the judge, prior to his transfer to the Iraqis, Hussein was not in the custody of the United States Government:
Petitioner is not being held under the custody of the United States, and as a result, this Court lacks habeas corpus jurisdiction. Petitioner’s counsel agreed that, while Petitioner may be held by members of the United States Military, it is pursuant to their authority as members of the MNF-I [Multi-National Force-Iraq]. The MNF-I derives its “ultimate authority from the United Nations and the MNF-I member nations acting jointly, not from the United States acting alone.” As such, it is clear that petitioner is either in the actual physical custody of the MNF-I or in the constructive custody of the Iraqi government, and not in the custody of the United States. [Citations omitted.]
I’d wager heavily that Hussein’s American lawyers are liberals. Only American liberals believe that the United States is responsible for, and in control of, everything that happens at anytime, anywhere in the whole world.**
Yes, there are people with brown skin who didn’t go to Harvard; they don’t read Bob Woodward; and they don’t wind surf. Still, they have their own thoughts, act of their own volition and exist independent of you and me!
No, I am not making this up. I tell you truly: it’s not all about us. And we don’t run every goddamn thing.
Mr. Bush’s left-leaning critics are ironically right: Americans could do with more humility.
(**I am exaggerating — but not, I think, by much.)
Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein will swing no later than Sunday, NBC News reports.
Fox News reports the North Carolina Bar has filed an ethics complaint against Durham prosecutor Mike Nifong.
Details to follow.
UPDATE —
Fox News:
RALEIGH, N.C. — The North Carolina State Bar filed an ethics complaint Thursday against Duke lacrosse prosecutor Mike Nifong, accusing him of breaking four rules of professional conduct when speaking to reporters about the sensational case.
The punishment for ethics violations can range from admonishment to disbarment.
Among the rules the district attorney was accused of violating was a prohibition against making comments “that have a substantial likelihood of heightening public condemnation of the accuser.” [This is wrong. See the correction below. — Ed.]
ADDED —
Smoking Gun has the complaint here. And contrary to the Fox News report quoted above, the complaint alleges Nifong “made extrajudicial statements that had a substantial likelihood of heightening public condemnation of the accused,” not the accuser. [Emphasis added.]
The North Carolina Bar opened its investigation in March, well before the revelations of Nifong’s most egregious misconduct. Mike Nifong should be disbarred, and then imprisoned. And with his colleagues now in hot pursuit, I trust one or both of these shall come to pass.
A superior described him as perhaps the best narcotics officer in the country. Now former Texas drug warrior Barry Cooper “plans to market a how-to video on concealing drugs and fooling police,” MSNBC reports:
Cooper, who said he favors the legalization of marijuana, made the video in part because he believes the nation’s fight against drugs is a waste of resources. Busting marijuana users fills up prisons with nonviolent offenders, he said.
“My main motivation in all of this is to teach Americans their civil liberties and what drives me in this is injustice and unfairness in our system,” Cooper told the newspaper.
Cooper said his Web site should be operating by Tuesday.
Some of Cooper’s former colleagues are unhappy. At least one of them also lacks a sense of irony:
News of the video has angered authorities, including Richard Sanders, an agent with the Tyler Drug Enforcement Agency. Sanders said he plans to investigate whether the video violates any laws.
“It outrages me personally as I’m sure it does any officer that has sworn an oath to uphold the laws of this state, and nation,” Sanders said. “It is clear that his whole deal is to make money and he has found some sort of scheme, but for him to go to the dark side and do this is infuriating.” [Emphasis added.]
Of course, the drug war itself is in part a full-employment project for the police, prison guards and construction contractors. But apparently Officer Sanders doesn’t appreciate the “scheme” in his own work.
I haven’t seen Barry Cooper’s video and can’t vouch for its usefulness. But Flex Your Rights has produced a highly instructive video — “Busted: The Citizen’s Guide to Surviving Police Encounters” — that every American should watch. (See it below for free.)
Recently I saw an episode of “Cops” and was struck that not one of the suspects knew he had a right to keep his mouth shut. If we don’t know our rights, we don’t exercise them. And if we don’t exercise them, we lose them.
Let me say again, for the umpteenth time, that I neither use drugs nor condone their use. And I freely admit that for individuals who are using anything other than recreational marijuana, the odds are good they need help. Prison just isn’t my idea of help.
This isn’t all about the war drug, though. It’s also about the limits of government power in a free society.
Technorati tags: War+on+drugs, civil+liberties
During his two years in office, President Gerald Ford vetoed sixty-six bills. By comparsion, Mr. Bush has vetoed only one bill in six years.
Our forces in Iraq are holding at least four Iranians, including “senior military officials,” the New York Times reports. We arrested the Iranians Thursday in raids directed at fighters attacking Iraqi security forces. But note how deep the rabbit hole goes:
At least two of the Iranians were in [Iraq] on an invitation extended by Iraq’s president, Jalal Talabani, during a visit to Tehran earlier this month. It was particularly awkward for the Iraqis that one of the raids took place in the Baghdad compound of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, one of Iraq’s most powerful Shiite leaders, who traveled to Washington three weeks ago to meet President Bush.
[…]
In one raid, which took place around 7 p.m. [Thursday], American forces stopped an official Iranian Embassy car carrying the two Iranian diplomats, one or two Iranian guards and an Iraqi driver. Iraqi officials said that the diplomats had been praying at the Buratha mosque …
All in the car were detained by the Americans. The mosque’s imam, Sheik Jalal al-deen al-Sageir, a member of Parliament from Mr. Hakim’s party, said the Iranians had come to pray during the last day of mourning for his mother, who recently died.
Mr. Hakim heads a Shiite political party called Sciri:
Many Shiite political groups are now suspected of having ties to Iran, and Sciri is no exception. Senior party leaders lived in exile in Iran for years plotting the overthrow of Mr. Hussein.
Deeper:
The predawn raid on Mr. Hakim’s compound … was perhaps the most startling part of the American operation. The arrests were made inside the house of Hadi al-Ameri, the chairman of the Iraqi Parliament’s security committee and leader of the Badr Organization, the armed wing of Mr. Hakim’s political party.
According to the Times, “The United States is now holding, apparently for the first time, Iranians who it suspects of planning attacks:”
One senior administration official said, “This is going to be a tense but clarifying moment.”
Yes, but for whom? Maybe for us:
Iraqi leaders appealed to the American military, including to Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the senior American ground commander in Iraq, to release the Iranians, according to an Iraqi politician familiar with the efforts.
[…]
Hiwa Osman, a news media adviser to Mr. Talabani, said, “The president is unhappy with the arrests.”
[…]
The Shiite-led government has begun to chafe under the control of the Americans, pressing for more control of its army and for greater independence from what it says is unilateral American decision making.
Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times reports that “[o]ne of Iraq’s most influential Shiite clerics rejected a U.S.-backed proposal to isolate Shiite extremists in the national government, saying the country should govern itself with the help of anti-U.S. firebrand Muqtada Sadr, according to politicians who spoke with the cleric Saturday:”
Shiite politicians met with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani in this Shiite holy city, and then said they had thrown their support behind Sadr, who demands a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq rather than the temporary increase under consideration in Washington.
“The Sadr movement is part of Iraqi affairs,” said Haider Abadi, a leader of Shiite Prime Minister Nouri Maliki’s Islamic Dawa Party. “We won’t allow others to interfere to weaken any Iraqi political movement.”
Sadr, a Shiite cleric, controls one of Iraq’s largest militias and has traveled to Tehran to meet with officials there. We have allowed Sadr to remain alive and at liberty even though he led weeks of fighting against U.S. troops at Najaf.
What in hell is going on here?
Michael Ledeen suggests (correctly, I fear) that Iraqis leaders have decided to cast their lot with a winner — and it ain’t us:
We can only win the war — the real war, the regional-or-maybe-even-global war — if we stop playing defense in Iraq and go after regime change in Damascus and Tehran. Everyone in the region, above all, the Iraqis, knows this. And everyone in the region is looking for evidence that we might be able to muster the will to win this thing.
But dumping responsibility for dealing with Iran in the quivering laps of the Iraqi leaders is precisely the wrong thing to do. We have to lead this war, we have to go after the Iranians. Otherwise, surge or no surge, fifty or a hundred thousand troops more or less, we’re gonna lose. Because the peoples of the Mideast, who have seen many armies come and go over the centuries, are going to throw in with the likely winners. And we can’t win if we refuse to engage the main enemy, which is the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Some members of the “reality-based community” think war with Iran is exactly what the Administration has planned. But I think reality lies elsewhere:
It’s been the world’s worst kept secret that Iran is actively supporting Shia militias in Iraq, and otherwise stoking the troubles. If Iranian military officials have been caught actively supporting militant activities, and this can be proven, it will actually place the US administration in something of a quandry. There is simply no support for serious [U.N.] sanctions in Russia and China, and the Bush administration has absolutely no domestic political capital to launch anything resembling a military response.
What to do?
Iraqi blogger Omar Fadhil writes in Opinion Journal that we must kill Muqtada Sadr:
If the way forward requires maintaining the basic course of the political process and empowering (and cleaning) the current government and its head then the only way to do this is to relieve Mr. Maliki, his party and the rest of the Shia alliance from the dominance and influence of Sadr, and there are two ways to accomplish this: either persuade Mr. Maliki and his team and promise them great support and protection from Sadr’s reach, or deal a lethal blow to Sadr and his militia in order to render him unable to inflict harm on Mr. Maliki and other members of the United Iraqi Alliance.
Now really, it shouldn’t be that difficult to figure out that the first way isn’t working out right; what’s needed now is to take the decision to try the second way and deal with the biggest threat to stability in Iraq in the way we should.
[…]
The members [of Sadr’s militia] were recruited by either fear or persuasion, and these bonds that still keep some units highly loyal will fall apart once the head is taken. Ideological fighters constitute a minority in my opinion and those, along with presumed Iranian and Hezbollah fighters who are assisting Sadr will represent the bulk of the remaining actual force that U.S. and Iraqi troops would have to fight and eliminate. Those are highly organized, but they are not invincible.
Together we succeeded in reducing the threat posed by al Qaeda when it was identified as the biggest threat to Iraq’s stability and security. Now together we can do the same with Sadr and other thugs.
If we’re not going to challenge Iran directly, we must challenge her proxies and allies. Mr. Bush speaks to the Nation in January regarding his plans for the war. We’ll know he’s serious about winning if he identifies Sadr by name and announces that it is U.S. policy to kill him and all those loyal to him.
If Mr. Bush is not serious, then it will be time for us to leave Iraq — and time for Republicans to say so.
Technorati tags: War+in+Iraq, Iraq, Muqtada+Sadr
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Southwest view of downtown Houston, Christmas Eve 2006, 6:15 p.m. |
They’re burning up in California.
Upon the recommendation of a friend, I read Joseph Rago’s denunciation of bloggers and I have only one question: Is Mr. Rago serious?
He tells us that in contrast to political blogs of every sort — which are “written by fools to be read by imbeciles” — the MSM has it going on:
The technology of ink on paper is highly advanced, and has over centuries accumulated a major institutional culture that screens editorially for originality, expertise and seriousness.
Like this?
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Time displays the MSM’s originality, expertise and seriousness. |
Despite opposition from their superiors at the Pentagon, American combat commanders in Iraq will recommend a “surge” in the number of U.S. troops in theatre, the Los Angeles Times reports:
The approval of a troop increase plan by top Iraq commanders, including Gen. George W. Casey Jr. and Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, comes days before Bush unveils a new course for the troubled U.S. involvement in Iraq. Bush still must address concerns among some Pentagon officials and overcome opposition from Congress, where many Democrats favor a blue-ribbon commission’s recommendation for the gradual withdrawal of combat troops.
But the recommendation by commanders in Iraq is significant because Bush has placed prime importance on their advice. The U.S. command in Iraq decided to recommend an increase of troops several days ago, prior to meetings in Baghdad this week with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates …
And what, you ask, will the new troops do? Good question:
Within the military, some officers favor using a buildup of forces to confront radical Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr, perhaps by moving forces into Sadr City, the Shiite slum in Baghdad where he has his political base.
Other military leaders say a larger force should be used to improve the U.S. counterinsurgency strategy and take more effective measures to protect Iraqis. These officers favor a plan developed by retired Gen. Jack Keane and Frederick Kagan, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, to use the extra troops to secure mixed Shiite and Sunni neighborhoods where most of the sectarian violence is taking place.
Perhaps I’m missing something, but these two schools of thought don’t seem all that far apart:
The U.S. military now considers forces loyal to Sadr to be the top threat to the security of Iraq. [Emphasis added.]
Wouldn’t there be less sectarian violence in Baghdad if Muqtada Sadr — the “top threat to the security of Iraq” — didn’t have a base of operations in Baghdad? At the very least, Sadr’s sudden incapacitation could hardly be disabling to Keane and Kagan’s goal of securing mixed neighborhoods.
When deploying your armed forces, the relevant question is always, “Who needs killing?” (If no one needs killing, you require the services of a diplomat or politician, not a soldier.) It appears we have here at least a partial answer to that question.
By the way, I didn’t know this. Did you?
Because the Joint Chiefs are not part of the military’s formal chain of command, the recommendation to increase or decrease [the number of troops] will go from commanders in Iraq to [SecDef Robert] Gates and then to Bush. [Emphasis added.]
That made me curious about the chain of command, and upon further reading I found this, which I also didn’t know:
The SecDef and the President of the United States together constitute the National Command Authority (NCA), which has sole authority to launch strategic nuclear weapons. All nuclear weapons are governed by the two-man rule, even at the highest levels in government. Both individuals must concur before a strategic nuclear strike may be ordered. [Emphasis in original.]
Los Angeles prosecutor Patrick Frey “thanks” Durham prosecutor Michael Nifong: “And thank you especially for spreading the image of prosecutors as people who withhold exculpatory evidence.”
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| The face of prosecutorial misconduct: Durham, NC District Attorney Michael Nifong |
Suppose the alleged victim in this case had been white and the alleged perpetrators black and that Nifong had treated them the way he’s treated these Duke boys. Do you doubt for a minute that the U.S. Justice Dept. would by now be all over Nifong like stink on shit, or that he’d be “perp walked” out of his office in handcuffs?
Technorati tags: Michael+Nifong, criminal+misconduct, Duke+lacrosse+cock+and+bull+fiction
He’s robbed and assaulted five young men, all apparently straight, that the police know of.
Here’s hoping his next would-be victim has one of these.
HT: Jeff Gannon
Matthew Continetti says the real divide in American politics isn’t over class or religion. It’s over security:
The great divisions in American life — between low- and upper-income voters; those who attend religious services weekly and those who do not; people who are married and people who are single; voters with a postgraduate education and those without — are often less predictive of voting patterns than one’s stance on the use of American power abroad. The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press concluded in 2005 that “foreign affairs assertiveness now almost completely distinguishes Republican-oriented voters from Democratic-oriented voters.” Together, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the March 20, 2003 invasion of Iraq seem to have accelerated a shift begun some 30 years ago: The Democratic party is increasingly linked with the attitudes, tendencies, and policies of peace, whereas the Republican party is increasingly linked with the maintenance and projection of American military power.
That sounds right, doesn’t it?
I know the chief reason I’ve stayed loyal to the Republicans is that I believe they’re more likely than the Democrats to kill the Islamofascists before the Islamofascists can have me and my kind beheaded.
Technorati tags: Politics, Republicans, Democrats
This is so wrong. But it’s also funny as hell.
“… nor do they have a federal constitutional right to facilitate their customers’ rights to engage in consensual homosexual sex acts”
Howard Bashman:
A unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit today rejected due to lack of standing an appeal taken by a Phoenix-based gay men’s social club that was seeking to assert a constitutional challenge to a city ordinance prohibiting the operation of “live sex act” businesses.
What Mr. Bashman and the court of appeals refer to euphemistically as a “gay men’s social club,” you and I would call a bathhouse. The bathhouse in question here is Flex, operated by Fleck and Associates Inc.
In 2004, Fleck brought suit in U.S. district court against a Phoenix ordinance that bans “live sex act businesses,” defined as those “in which one or more persons may view, or may participate in, a live sex act for a consideration.” Fleck asserted that the ordinance violates the company’s privacy rights as well as the privacy rights of its customers.
According to the court of appeals, “The city filed a motion to dismiss pursuant to [Federal rules of civil procedure]. On February 15, 2005, the district court granted the motion, ordered the complaint dismissed with prejudice, and entered judgment for the city. The court treated the complaint as raising two distinct claims, one predicated on an invasion of the rights of Fleck’s customers (“the customers’ claim”) and another based on the invasion of Fleck’s rights as a corporation (“the corporate claim”).” [Citations omitted.]
The court of appeals held that Fleck could not assert a corporate claim to sexual privacy:
It is hard to imagine a constitutional guarantee that could be more inherently personal and therefore unavailable to a corporate entity, “an artificial being, invisible, intangible, and existing only in contemplation of law.” Corporations are not self-defining autonomous creatures worthy of respect and dignity in the relevant sense. Neither do they have private lives, let alone “private lives in matters pertaining to sex” as Fleck would have it. Because the right to privacy described in Lawrence is purely personal and unavailable to a corporation, Fleck failed to allege an injury in fact sufficient to make out a case or controversy under Article III. [Citations omitted.]
Therefore, Fleck lacked standing to sue.
Nor, said the court of appeals, could Fleck sue on behalf its of “members,” who are really nothing more than its customers:
Under the doctrine of “associational” or “representational” standing an organization may bring suit on behalf of its members whether or not the organization itself has suffered an injury from the challenged action. The district court directed most of its standing analysis to this doctrine and correctly held that Fleck has no associational standing to assert the rights of its customers.
To obtain associational standing, the entity must show that (1) at least one of its members would have standing to sue in his own right, (2) the interests the suit seeks to vindicate are germane to the organization’s purpose, and (3) neither the claim asserted nor the relief requested requires the participation of individual members in the lawsuit.
Fleck’s complaint fails to demonstrate associational standing. First, Fleck does not have any “members” in the sense required by the doctrine. Associational standing is reserved for organizations that “express the [ ] collective views and protect the [ ] collective interests” of their members. Here, the allegations in the complaint make clear that “members” of Flex are merely customers. Fleck does not allege that its customers in any way have come together to form an organization for their mutual aid and benefit. (“[T]he doctrine of associational standing recognizes that the primary reason people join an organization is often to create an effective vehicle for vindicating interests that they share with others.”) Second, the purpose of the “association” here (Fleck & Associates, Inc.) is to turn a profit. Fleck’s suit seeks to vindicate the putative privacy interests of its customers. This is clearly not germane to the purpose of the organization.
The court of appeals returned the case to the district court under instructions that leave open the possibility the “members” of Flex could sue on their own behalf. But you have to wonder: What claim would the “members” assert? That they have a constitutional right to commercially facilitated sex? I wouldn’t hold out a lot of hope for that.**
Fleck and Associates Inc. v. City of Phoenix, on appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit from the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona; vacated and remanded with instructions.
**To be clear: I have no objections to commercially facilitated sex, provided it’s subject to reasonable zoning regulations. But I don’t imagine the Nation’s judges are prepared to recognize a constitutional right to it.
R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. on wedding America’s impatience with the devastating power of her military:
The Democrats’ abandonment of this war makes it apparent that an entirely new strategy is necessary if our military is to be used to achieve our diplomatic goals. The military has demonstrated that it is sufficiently powerful to smash any aggressor anywhere on earth, but American public opinion is not sufficiently resolute to sustain a commitment of American troops in hostile environs. Thus we must adopt a strategy that recognizes the impatience of public opinion, as well as public opinion’s enthusiasm during the initial stages of combat.
My suggestion is that the Pentagon, the State Department, and the White House adopt what might be called the Strategy of the Bar Room Brawler (SBRB). According to SBRB, if a foreign government is not amenable to our diplomatic requests we simply bust the joint up. Photographs of what we accomplished in Serbia merely with airpower and in Iraq with airpower and armor ought to persuade even a stubborn fellow like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that if he continues to displease us his office will be a wreck. And if he plans to drive home or even take public transportation, forget about it. Tehran’s infrastructure will be a mess overnight. Within a few months our lightning-quick military could turn much of Iran into a ruin, and according to the protocols of SBRB our troops would be home in no time.
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton would still be in her cheering stage as our troops headed home. And with our troops safely home from Iran we would not even have to clean the place up. Leave that thankless task to the French and the Germans. With the money we save we could get on with busting up Syria.
I have long wondered whether our Nation’s military commanders didn’t ask for more troops in Iraq because they truly believed that more were unnecessary, or because they knew they weren’t supposed to ask for more.
Here, apparently, is the answer: Without an articulable military objective, our commanders are actively, and uniformly, opposed to more troops for Iraq. Unless Mr. Bush can satisfy the Joint Chiefs’ objections, I think he’s prudentially required to treat their oppostion as dispositive. (That an American president is commander in chief of the Armed Forces is, of course, a function of constitutional design and not professional expertise. Although a few presidents have been military experts in their own right, Mr. Bush isn’t one of them.)
Now I wonder: If the president doesn’t tell our generals what they want to hear and decides to send more troops anyway, will the Joint Chiefs resign? That is what they should do. But first, they should warn the president: “Sir, if you don’t provide coherent answers to our questions, we’ll resign en masse if you overrule us.”
I wonder about something else, too: We already have 140,000 troops in Iraq. Is it true that their combat commanders feel hamstrung by the extant rules of engagement? If so, have they communicated this to their superiors? And have their superiors in turn communicated this to the president? If not, why not? And if so, what was the president’s reply?
The Joint Chiefs have apparently put it to the president: What is it, exactly, that you want our military to do in Iraq now? You and I should ask the follow-ups: Are you willing to let our soldiers act as soldiers — soldiers kill people, Mr. President — and not as emissaries of the State Department? And if not, where is the value in sending more troops? Or in retaining the ones already there?
The consequences of an American defeat in Iraq would be catastrophic. You may begin your post-defeat thought experiment with this: What will be the fate of all the Iraqis who cooperated with us? And what message will those atrocities send, except that “America is harmless as an enemy and treacherous as a friend”? We’ve sent that message before, haven’t we? Do you think we can send it again without implicating our national security?
We must win in Iraq. But we will not win unless Mr. Bush gives our generals a clear mission and the leeway to effect it. Send more troops, or don’t. Tell our generals, Mr. President, to do whatever they think best. But describe the military objectives with precision, and then give our Armed Forces permission to do what they exist to do: locate the enemy and kill him.
Technorati tags: War+in+Iraq
If we’re going to send more troops to Iraq, we must first decide exactly what they will do:
What would the specific tasks be? “Restore security” is too vague — we need to identify no-nonsense objectives. And which new tactics would be authorized? Would the rules of engagement change?
How would we handle prisoners, given that a crackdown would generate tens of thousands (and the Iraqi system releases the worst offenders)? What if the Maliki government rejects our plan?
At that point, the think-tank boys give you a deer-in-the-headlights look and spurt empty generalities. Our military is supposed to figure out the pesky details.
But it’s the details that make the difference between succeeding and failing. If you don’t nail down the goals — and the methods to reach them — you’re ducking the make-or-break issues.
Retired Army Lt. Col. and New York Post columnist Ralph Peters offers these suggestions:
We must also tell Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki that either we do things our way, or else we will leave him to figure out the safety of the Green Zone, as well as his own, on his own:
If we’re unwilling to take such stern measures, we won’t make durable progress, no matter how many troops we send.
Who would resist such a program? There’s the problem. The partisan Maliki government would refuse to go along with a crackdown on Shia militias. Unless we’re willing to overrule the regime we recently celebrated, none of this can happen.
As we say in Texas, it’s time to shit or get off the pot.
Technorati tags: War+in+Iraq
If you’d like a preview of what the president may propose in early 2007 regarding the war in Iraq, here it is: “Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq.” (Link opens pdf document.)
Fred Barnes provides the backstory:
Last Monday Bush was, at last, briefed on an actual plan for victory in Iraq, one that is likely to be implemented. Retired General Jack Keane, the former vice chief of staff of the Army, gave him a thumbnail sketch of it during a meeting of five outside experts at the White House. The president’s reaction, according to a senior adviser, was “very positive.” Authored by Keane and military expert Frederick W. Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute, the plan is well thought-out and detailed, but fundamentally quite simple. It is based on the idea — all but indisputable at this point — that no political solution is possible in Iraq until security is established, starting in Baghdad. The reverse — a bid to forge reconciliation between majority Shia and minority Sunni — is a nonstarter in a political environment drenched in the blood of sectarian killings.
Why would the Keane-Kagan plan succeed where earlier efforts failed? It envisions a temporary addition of 50,000 troops on the ground in Iraq. The initial mission would be to secure and hold the mixed Baghdad neighborhoods of Shia and Sunni residents where most of the violence occurs.
Historian Victor Davis Hanson, whom the White House would do well to consult, has additional suggestions, including “Putting Iran and Syria on notice that we will bomb terrorists flocking across their borders.”
Technorati tags: War+in+Iraq
James Dobson, chairman of Focus on the Family, advances what could be the strongest argument against same-sex marriage and adoption by same-sex couples: “… public policy as it relates to families must be based not solely on the desires of adults but rather on the needs of children and what is best for society at large.”
But public policy — for reasons that have nothing to do with gays and lesbians — no longer places the needs of children above the desires of adults, as Mr. Dobson notes:
This is a lesson we should have learned from no-fault divorce. Because adults wanted to dissolve difficult marriages with fewer strings attached, reformers made it easier in the late 1960s to dissolve nuclear families. Though there are exceptions, the legacy of no-fault divorce is countless shattered lives within three generations, adversely affecting children’s behavior, academic performance and mental and physical health. No-fault divorce reflected our selfish determination to do what was convenient for adults, and it has been, on balance, a disaster.
Let’s give Mr. Dobson’s assertion a second, critical read. No-fault divorce is, he writes, the product of “our selfish determination to do what was convenient for adults.” Who is our? And to which adults is Mr. Dobson referring?
Our law allows for no-fault divorce because the same heterosexual majority that approves bans on gay marriage is now, and has been for decades, unwilling to subordinate its own happiness to the needs of its children.No-fault divorce was not the brain child of gays and lesbians. Indeed, the “homosexual agenda” was barely nascent when the drive for easy divorce began. Our law allows for no-fault divorce because the same heterosexual majority that approves bans on gay marriage is now, and has been for decades, unwilling to subordinate its own happiness to the needs of its children.
True, the call for same-sex marriage is equally selfish, as the vocabulary of its advocates reveals. We talk about gay marriage as a “civil right,” as a putative guarantee of the Constitution’s equal protection clause and as an affirmation of the love between two adults. We do not talk about it as dispassionate observers interested in the welfare of children. In fact, we will not even entertain the mere possibility that same-sex marriage, or adoption by same-sex couples, could be harmful to children. Nothing can stand between us and our “rights.”
But it’s fair to ask: From whom did we learn this rights-based, adult-centered vocabulary?
Call for the status quo ante — if you get married, you stay married; and if you commit adultery, you risk social stigma and perhaps prison — and you will know who taught us our vocabulary. Even Mr. Dobson, while decrying the effects of no-fault divorce, does not advocate its repeal. Why lobby for the impossible?
Conservatives like Mr. Dobson say that gay marriage will be the end of traditional marriage. But America has already witnessed the end of traditional marriage. And as the Rev. Donald Sensing notes, gay marriage was not the cause of that end, but the result of it.
Mr. Dobson could argue convincingly that marriage was of necessity, and by definition, an institution for one man and one woman if it aimed, still and yet, to provide children with a permanent home headed by their biological parents. But there’s nothing uniquely heterosexual about an institution selfishly committed to the convenience of adults.
Technorati tags: Same-sex+marriage, gay+marriage
The bill extends to gay and lesbian couples marriage in all but name.
Confirmation of the obvious:
Democratic campaign operatives pushed newspapers to write about then-Rep. Mark Foley’s e-mails to teenage pages in the hope that a scandal would emerge before the midterm elections, according to a House ethics report.
The findings were bolstered when an aide to Rep. Rahm Emanuel, Illinois Democrat, said the congressman also knew about the e-mails, which were dubbed “inappropriate” by the ethics panel. Mr. Emanuel, who was chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) when Mr. Foley’s sex scandal broke in late September, had denied knowledge of the Florida Republican’s e-mails.
The House ethics panel, which is formally called the Standards of Official Conduct Committee, Friday released its final probe into Mr. Foley’s behavior, scolding Republicans for failing to act on years of troubling signs and naming Democrats who knew about the e-mails.
Of course, the Democrats’ behavior doesn’t excuse the GOP’s negligence in allowing Mark Foley to run riot. But it was never credible that congressional Democrats were worried about the moral welfare of young people. They had, after all, tolerated the screwing of a page by one of their own. The Democrats were just shopping a story.
What’s more, now that Congress has changed hands, you have to wonder: If another Democratic member bangs a page, will that get a tenth of the media attention Foley’s e-mails got? And will the Democrats even ask the member to resign?
More on the other war, the one we can’t win.
Jeff Stein of Congressional Quarterly reports that Silvestre Reyes, incoming chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, thinks al Qaeda is Shiite. That’s awful. al Qaeda is, of course, Sunni, and Rep. Reyes should know that.
But there’s another, even more unedifying nugget in Mr. Stein’s report:
On the day in 2003 when Iraqi mobs toppled the statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad, [President] Bush was said to be unaware of the possibility that a Sunni-Shia civil war could fill the power vacuum, according to a reliable source with good White House connections.
If that’s true, it’s appalling.
Mary, please:
According to the new NEWSWEEK poll, Americans back the [Iraq Study Group’s] recommendations by a two-to-one margin. In interviews with 1,000 adults done Dec. 6 and Dec. 7, 39 percent of Americans said they generally agree with the group’s 79 recommendations, while 20 percent said they disagree. (Twenty-six percent said, in effect: “Report, what report?”)
Good on the twenty-six percent who told the truth!
As Newsweek notes, the ISG issued exactly seventy-nine recommendations. (You can download the report, in pdf, here.) To the 39 percent of Americans who say they agree with those recommendations — all 79?! — I’d love to put it to them: “Name three. Discuss.”
I’d bet the equity in my home that those 39 percent have no idea what they’re agreeing to! What’s more, the ISG made its report public on Wednesday, Dec. 6. Newsweek conducted its poll on Dec. 6 and 7. Are we supposed to believe that nearly two-fifths of the American public downloaded and read the report on either the day of its release or the next day?
Now four days from its release, have even 5 percent of the American people read the report? Will more than 5 percent ever read it? I’m being wildly generous here. Nearly 218 million adults live in the United States. Five percent of that number is 10,900,000. A book makes it to the New York Times bestseller list if it sells a 100,000 copies.
I wish pollsters would stop asking questions that people can’t answer intelligently. It’s an unenlightening practice.
Technorati tags: Iraq+Study+Group, polls, polling, pollsters
When the history of our times is written, this week will be remembered as the week that Washington decided to let the Islamic Republic of Iran go nuclear.
Caroline Glick, columnist for the Jerusalem Post, writes that in his testimony before the Senate, Defense Secretary-designate Robert Gates “unceremoniously removed four decades of ambiguity over Israel’s nuclear status.” According to Glick, Gates “casually mentioned that Israel has nuclear weapons.”** But, she writes, “perhaps Israel should see this as an opportunity,” especially since the Baker Commission is calling for the sacrifice of Israeli security interests in exchange for sucking Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s cock:
With the threat of nuclear destruction hanging over us, it makes sense to conduct a debate about an Israeli second strike. While such a discussion will not dissuade Iran’s fanatical leaders from attacking Israel with nuclear weapons, it could influence the Iranian nation to rise up against their leaders.
Moreover, such a debate could influence other regimes in the region like Saudi Arabia which today behave as if Israel’s annihilation will have no adverse impact on them. Americans like Baker, Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and their European friends need to understand that as goes Israel so go the Persian Gulf’s oil fields. Such an understanding may influence their willingness to enable Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. [Emphasis added.]
I don’t share Ms. Glick’s view that Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons was heretofore ambiguous. That Israel has the bomb — bombs, plural — is the world’s worst kept secret. But I agree that Israel would do well to adopt publicly a policy of full retaliatory strike against any nation that strikes her first.
That is, after all, presumably the purpose of Israel’s Dolphin-class submarines, which are “capable of firing nuclear missiles.” More than just “capable,” one suspects. Loaded and ready to “plot a solution” seems more likely.
Technorati tags: Israel, Iran, US+foreign+policy, nuclear+weapons
**When asked about the reasons for Iran’s interest in nuclear weapons, Gates replied: “They are surrounded by powers with nuclear weapons — Pakistan to their east, the Russians to the north, the Israelis to the west and us in the Persian Gulf.”
Jesus Christ:
Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback, a potential presidential candidate, said Friday he would lift his hold on a federal judicial nominee if she agrees to step aside from any case dealing with same-sex unions.
Brownback, a Republican raising money for a possible White House bid, has stalled the confirmation of Michigan Court of Appeals Judge Janet Neff to the federal bench because she once attended a lesbian commitment ceremony. [Emphasis added.]
President Bush nominated Neff to the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan on June 26, and the Senate Judiciary Committee subsequently approved her nomination. But the full Senate hasn’t held a confirmation vote because of Brownback’s hold.
Sen. Brownback: Whatever happened to the notion, widely trumpeted by Republicans, including you, you hypocritical piece of shit, that every presidential nominee to the bench deserves an up-or-down vote?**
Technorati tags: Sam+Brownback, judicial+nominees
A call for conservatives to be consistent.