Seer. n. 1. One that sees. 2. A clairvoyant. 3. A prophet.
From Tiresias to Nostradamus, from Cassandra to Jeane Dixon -- a seer for every age. I'd like to propose adding another name to the long list of prophets: Bob Dylan. On the basis of what, you ask? The following, a stanza from his song "Clothes Line," off the 1967 Basement Tapes:
The next day everybody got up
Seein' if the clothes were dry.
The dogs were barking, a neighbor passed,
Mama, of course, she said "Hi!"
"Have you heard the news?" he said, with a grin,
"The Vice President's gone mad!"
"Where?" "Downtown." "When?" "Last night."
"Hmm, say, that's too bad!"
"Well, there's nothin' we can do about it," said the neighbor,
"It's just somethin' we're gonna have to forget."
"Yes, I guess so," said Ma,
Then she asked me if the clothes were still wet.
Thus our latter-day Tiresias anticipates -- by forty years! -- the present moment, the moment wherein the public shrugs its collective shoulders and, taking the advice of the Obama administration, decides to "move forward," to "look ahead, not behind," in other words to just forget about the madness of Dick Cheney.
And how did that madness most forcibly manifest itself? In two contexts: in the treatment of war prisoners held in our detention facilities across the world and in the illegal surveillance of American citizens by the National Security Agency.
Madness, indeed, that, in the wake of the attacks of 9/11, Dick Cheney -- a walking allegory of rashness -- rushed to "take the gloves off," to "turn to the dark side," in other words to utilize torture. An understandable misstep taken taken in the heat of the moment, you say? If so, why, despite the fact that no intelligence of value was produced by this coercive interrogation (as any expert on torture could have predicted -- torture being a notoriously unreliable method of eliciting truth), and, despite the fact that the torture the Bush administration authorized, once revealed in the infamous Abu Ghraib photographs, incited countless young Arab-Muslim men to fight and kill hundreds of American soldiers -- why, in the face of these hard facts, and against all reason, does Cheney continue to defend this policy today? To defend the manifestly indefensible? Our ex-Vice President, now the world's foremost proponent of torture. Madness.
Again, Dick Cheney, as leader of those implementing the NSA warrantless wiretap program, become Eavesdropper in Chief! Why worry, America, that Uncle Sam is listening in on your phone conversations? That he is perusing your email? That he has set up a peephole camera in your privy? After all, he's doing this to protect you, not violate you! As long as you are doing nothing wrong, what do you care that a benevolent government (a kind of big brother, as it were) is keeping a close eye on you? Ought you not to be grateful?
The above argument is that of an incorrigible peeping tom representing himself as a guardian of public safety and virtue. Insanity.
And yet, again, what is the public response to this madness? "Well, there's nothing we can do about it . . . It's just somethin' we're gonna have to forget." It's embarrassing for America to admit that, for eight years, our country was run by a man who ought to have been fitted for a strait-jacket, whose "undisclosed location" should have been a rubber room. It is particularly embarrassing for the mainstream media, which, rather than admit its error in taking this monomaniac seriously for so long, continues to give both him and his daughter Liz (who appears to have inherited the lunatic gene, is like her father an outrageous, pathological liar) as much air time as they wish.
Yes, that is the most insane thing of all: that not only do we not prosecute Cheney for his many crimes against humanity and the Constitution, but the media continues to be willfully blind to his madness, to take him seriously as a statesman!
Do I exaggerate? On August 31, 2009, the venerable Wall Street Journal, without apparently an ounce of irony, opines that, if the war on terror continues (as it surely will, this "forever war"), then the best man to serve as the next Commander in Chief may well be -- you guessed it -- Richard B. Cheney.
As Mr. Dylan might put it: Mama, spruce up the tricorn hat.
Friday, September 18, 2009
Friday, July 24, 2009
Transparency versus Secrecy
About the Obama administration's view that we should not try terrorism suspects in our federal courts because it might jeopardize national security. This argument is based on the commonly-held assumption that our leaders know "stuff" that allows them to keep us safe, stuff we don't know and can't know. If we knew it then we would be less safe. So better to leave it alone.
A real leap of faith here. Kinda like saying, in the face of some personal catastrophe, that God's ways are not our ways, that He has a plan that we can't possibly fathom, so better to just not worry our tiny little heads about it and place our trust in God. "He won't give you any more suffering than you can bear." Yea. Right.
Very convenient for politicians, of course, who more often than not are up to no good behind our backs and so have every reason to discourage transparency in government. Yes, let's not try these alleged terrorists in public, lest we discover that many of them are innocent, have been treated abominably, and that the officials responsible for this travesty are known.
A real leap of faith here. Kinda like saying, in the face of some personal catastrophe, that God's ways are not our ways, that He has a plan that we can't possibly fathom, so better to just not worry our tiny little heads about it and place our trust in God. "He won't give you any more suffering than you can bear." Yea. Right.
Very convenient for politicians, of course, who more often than not are up to no good behind our backs and so have every reason to discourage transparency in government. Yes, let's not try these alleged terrorists in public, lest we discover that many of them are innocent, have been treated abominably, and that the officials responsible for this travesty are known.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Response to Mr. Cohen
In today's Washington Post, an editorial by Richard Cohen entitled "On Higher Ground, but Not Safer'" wherein he argues that Obama's announcement that we will not longer torture does not make us safer from terrorism. At the following link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/27/AR2009042702692.html
My response:
Mr. Cohen obviously adheres to the view that radical Muslims are absolutely evil and only understand the argument of the club. Therefore our ceasing to torture will have no effect on their behavior. It will not make us safer.
Never mind that according to our most expert interrogators a good many of the young men who came to Iraq to kill Americans did so because of their outrage over the Abu Ghraib snapshots, that this evidence of torture radicalized them -- weaponized them, as it were. Never mind that. Mr. Cohen knows ceasing to torture won't make us safer.
Never mind that a good many of our potential allies have refused to work with us because of the sleaziness of Bush administration interrogation methods, and that this refusal on their part obviously makes us less secure overall. Ceasing to torture does not make us safer.
"If the threat of torture works -- if it has worked at least once -- then it follows that torture itself would work." Very logical, Mr. Cohen. Yes, torture always works. It always works to degrade and ultimately harm the people who authorize it and the public that countenances it. That's how it always works.
"They can't all be fools and knaves." Oh really? Why not?
The claim that the Clinton administration did nothing to provoke anger on the part of militant Muslims, therefore we can conclude that they will hate us and try to kill us no matter what we do -- this claim is so ludicrous as to stun one into not even attempting to answer it. I’ll ask one question and leave it at that: Did the Clinton administration continue the Reagan/Bush policy of supporting unconditionally the Israelis in their ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians?
"If Obama thinks the world will respond to his new torture policy, he is seriously misguided. Indeed, he has made things a bit easier for terrorists who now know what will not happen to them if they get caught."
Thank you, Mr. Cohen, for stating so clearly what many of us have thought from the start: that the Bush administration was using torture not as a tool of interrogation but as a weapon of terror -- sending the message to the rest of the world not to mess with us or else. Cohen here assumes we can terrify potential enemies into submission by threatening to torture them. Idiocy.
"The horror of Sept. 11 resides in me like a dormant pathogen. It took a long time before I could pass a New York fire station -- the memorials still fresh -- without tearing up. I vowed vengeance that day -- yes, good Old Testament-style vengeance -- and that ember glows within me still."
Thanks again, Mr. Cohen, for the confession. For confessing that torture appeals to you, not as a means of collecting intelligence, but as a means of revenge. Making the bastards pay. The same reason most people favor capital punishment. Lex talionis, the old eye-for-an-eye kind of justice.
Say, Mr. Cohen, have you ever heard of the Rule of Law?
It's clear that Mr. Cohen is in the camp of those who would oppose prosecution of the Bush torture crew. He probably sees the call for prosecution as purely partisan -- a get-even on the part of the Democrats. I'm sure that there are a great many Dems out there who would relish seeing Dubya and Dick get their comeuppance. Yet this is not a partisan issue; it is a question of, once again, the Rule of Law, of crime and punishment. Those who broke the law need to be brought to justice, period.
What if a Bush administration official had been filmed pouring gasoline on a ten-year-old child and setting him on fire? Would there be people who would characterize the demand that this criminal to be brought to justice a "partisan witch hunt"?
You can bet on it.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/27/AR2009042702692.html
My response:
Mr. Cohen obviously adheres to the view that radical Muslims are absolutely evil and only understand the argument of the club. Therefore our ceasing to torture will have no effect on their behavior. It will not make us safer.
Never mind that according to our most expert interrogators a good many of the young men who came to Iraq to kill Americans did so because of their outrage over the Abu Ghraib snapshots, that this evidence of torture radicalized them -- weaponized them, as it were. Never mind that. Mr. Cohen knows ceasing to torture won't make us safer.
Never mind that a good many of our potential allies have refused to work with us because of the sleaziness of Bush administration interrogation methods, and that this refusal on their part obviously makes us less secure overall. Ceasing to torture does not make us safer.
"If the threat of torture works -- if it has worked at least once -- then it follows that torture itself would work." Very logical, Mr. Cohen. Yes, torture always works. It always works to degrade and ultimately harm the people who authorize it and the public that countenances it. That's how it always works.
"They can't all be fools and knaves." Oh really? Why not?
The claim that the Clinton administration did nothing to provoke anger on the part of militant Muslims, therefore we can conclude that they will hate us and try to kill us no matter what we do -- this claim is so ludicrous as to stun one into not even attempting to answer it. I’ll ask one question and leave it at that: Did the Clinton administration continue the Reagan/Bush policy of supporting unconditionally the Israelis in their ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians?
"If Obama thinks the world will respond to his new torture policy, he is seriously misguided. Indeed, he has made things a bit easier for terrorists who now know what will not happen to them if they get caught."
Thank you, Mr. Cohen, for stating so clearly what many of us have thought from the start: that the Bush administration was using torture not as a tool of interrogation but as a weapon of terror -- sending the message to the rest of the world not to mess with us or else. Cohen here assumes we can terrify potential enemies into submission by threatening to torture them. Idiocy.
"The horror of Sept. 11 resides in me like a dormant pathogen. It took a long time before I could pass a New York fire station -- the memorials still fresh -- without tearing up. I vowed vengeance that day -- yes, good Old Testament-style vengeance -- and that ember glows within me still."
Thanks again, Mr. Cohen, for the confession. For confessing that torture appeals to you, not as a means of collecting intelligence, but as a means of revenge. Making the bastards pay. The same reason most people favor capital punishment. Lex talionis, the old eye-for-an-eye kind of justice.
Say, Mr. Cohen, have you ever heard of the Rule of Law?
It's clear that Mr. Cohen is in the camp of those who would oppose prosecution of the Bush torture crew. He probably sees the call for prosecution as purely partisan -- a get-even on the part of the Democrats. I'm sure that there are a great many Dems out there who would relish seeing Dubya and Dick get their comeuppance. Yet this is not a partisan issue; it is a question of, once again, the Rule of Law, of crime and punishment. Those who broke the law need to be brought to justice, period.
What if a Bush administration official had been filmed pouring gasoline on a ten-year-old child and setting him on fire? Would there be people who would characterize the demand that this criminal to be brought to justice a "partisan witch hunt"?
You can bet on it.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
droning on and on and . . .
From today’s NYTimes, an article on high-tech war:
Air Force officials acknowledge that more than a third of their unmanned Predator spy planes — which are 27 feet long, powered by a high-performance snowmobile engine, and cost $4.5 million apiece — have crashed, mostly in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Pilots, who fly them from trailers halfway around the world using joysticks and computer screens, say some of the controls are clunky. For example, the missile-firing button sits dangerously close to the switch that shuts off the plane’s engines. Pilots are also in such short supply that the service recently put out a call for retirees to help.
But military leaders say they can easily live with all that.
***
Sure, we can afford to drop 4.5 million here and 4.5 million there, as long as we are killing an endless succession of terrorists – I say an endless succession, because every time one of our “surgical” strikes kills innocent men, women, and children (more often than not, it seems), we create a fresh batch of terrorists.
How about taking that 4.5 million here and 4.5 million there and using it as economic aid to the Afghan people, to give them some incentive not to turn to the Taliban? But no. As the old saying goes, Give a man a fish, he eats for a day; blow a man to smithereens, and he no longer annoys you
Air Force officials acknowledge that more than a third of their unmanned Predator spy planes — which are 27 feet long, powered by a high-performance snowmobile engine, and cost $4.5 million apiece — have crashed, mostly in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Pilots, who fly them from trailers halfway around the world using joysticks and computer screens, say some of the controls are clunky. For example, the missile-firing button sits dangerously close to the switch that shuts off the plane’s engines. Pilots are also in such short supply that the service recently put out a call for retirees to help.
But military leaders say they can easily live with all that.
***
Sure, we can afford to drop 4.5 million here and 4.5 million there, as long as we are killing an endless succession of terrorists – I say an endless succession, because every time one of our “surgical” strikes kills innocent men, women, and children (more often than not, it seems), we create a fresh batch of terrorists.
How about taking that 4.5 million here and 4.5 million there and using it as economic aid to the Afghan people, to give them some incentive not to turn to the Taliban? But no. As the old saying goes, Give a man a fish, he eats for a day; blow a man to smithereens, and he no longer annoys you
Monday, February 09, 2009
From today's NYTimes:
Between platters of lamb and rice, Mr. Biden and two other American senators questioned Mr. Karzai about corruption in his government, which, by many estimates, is among the worst in the world. Mr. Karzai assured Mr. Biden and the other senators that there was no corruption at all and that, in any case, it was not his fault.
The senators gaped in astonishment. After 45 minutes, Mr. Biden threw down his napkin and stood up.
"This dinner is over," Mr. Biden announced, according to one of the people in the room at the time. And the three senators walked out, long before the appointed time.
There once was a leader named Karzai
Whom diplomats caught in a fat lie
This ended the feast
All aid quickly ceased
Which led to that poor Afghan's banzai.
Between platters of lamb and rice, Mr. Biden and two other American senators questioned Mr. Karzai about corruption in his government, which, by many estimates, is among the worst in the world. Mr. Karzai assured Mr. Biden and the other senators that there was no corruption at all and that, in any case, it was not his fault.
The senators gaped in astonishment. After 45 minutes, Mr. Biden threw down his napkin and stood up.
"This dinner is over," Mr. Biden announced, according to one of the people in the room at the time. And the three senators walked out, long before the appointed time.
There once was a leader named Karzai
Whom diplomats caught in a fat lie
This ended the feast
All aid quickly ceased
Which led to that poor Afghan's banzai.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
smokescreens about smokescreens
From Haaretz.com:
A medic's imagination is stalked by two things - What you've seen already, and what you hope you never will. What was going through my mind was one thought alone: Let it not be phosphorus. They taught us to dread zarchan [from the Hebrew root to shine or glow]. They taught us, as medics, that if we treated a phosphorous wound, prepare for the worst. It doesn't merely burn, they taught us, it burns first through the skin, then through the soft tissue, until it reaches bone. They taught us to take an instrument, or, in its absence, a stick, to dig out the phosphorus crystals from the flesh, or the burning would go on and on. --Bradley Burston
From today's London Times:
After weeks of denying that it used white phosphorus in the heavily populated Gaza Strip, Israel finally admitted yesterday that the weapon was deployed in its offensive.
The army’s use of white phosphorus – which makes a distinctive shellburst of dozens of smoke trails – was reported first by The Times on January 5, when it was strenuously denied by the army. Now, in the face of mounting evidence and international outcry, Israel has been forced to backtrack on that initial denial. “Yes, phosphorus was used but not in any illegal manner,” Yigal Palmor, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, told The Times. “Some practices could be illegal but we are going into that. The IDF (Israel Defence Forces) is holding an investigation concerning one specific incident.”
The incident in question is thought to be the firing of phosphorus shells at a UN school in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip on January 17. The weapon is legal if used as a smokescreen in battle but it is banned from deployment in civilian areas. Pictures of the attack show Palestinian medics fleeing as blobs of burning phosphorus rain down on the compound.
So: lie, retreat, qualify, and, as a last resort, self-investigate.
Is Dick Cheney advising the IDF?
A medic's imagination is stalked by two things - What you've seen already, and what you hope you never will. What was going through my mind was one thought alone: Let it not be phosphorus. They taught us to dread zarchan [from the Hebrew root to shine or glow]. They taught us, as medics, that if we treated a phosphorous wound, prepare for the worst. It doesn't merely burn, they taught us, it burns first through the skin, then through the soft tissue, until it reaches bone. They taught us to take an instrument, or, in its absence, a stick, to dig out the phosphorus crystals from the flesh, or the burning would go on and on. --Bradley Burston
From today's London Times:
After weeks of denying that it used white phosphorus in the heavily populated Gaza Strip, Israel finally admitted yesterday that the weapon was deployed in its offensive.
The army’s use of white phosphorus – which makes a distinctive shellburst of dozens of smoke trails – was reported first by The Times on January 5, when it was strenuously denied by the army. Now, in the face of mounting evidence and international outcry, Israel has been forced to backtrack on that initial denial. “Yes, phosphorus was used but not in any illegal manner,” Yigal Palmor, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, told The Times. “Some practices could be illegal but we are going into that. The IDF (Israel Defence Forces) is holding an investigation concerning one specific incident.”
The incident in question is thought to be the firing of phosphorus shells at a UN school in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip on January 17. The weapon is legal if used as a smokescreen in battle but it is banned from deployment in civilian areas. Pictures of the attack show Palestinian medics fleeing as blobs of burning phosphorus rain down on the compound.
So: lie, retreat, qualify, and, as a last resort, self-investigate.
Is Dick Cheney advising the IDF?
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Which will it be, Barack Hussein Obama?
From today's Washington Post:
Yedioth Ahronoth, Israel's largest newspaper, published a front-page opinion column Tuesday by senior writer Eitan Haber, in which he reflected the trepidation many Israelis have for Obama. "We, in our little corner here in the Middle East, are anxious to see whether you shall continue the tradition of American presidents in recent generations and view us as an ally, your front-line aircraft carrier in this bloody region of the world," Haber wrote. "Or whether, heaven forbid, you will see us as just one more nation among all the others."
Yes, will you continue to employ us as the bloody truncheon with which you threaten mangy Arab countries into cringing submission (as well as continue to support us in our ongoing pesticide against the Palestinian cockroaches), or will you reject the example set by American presidents in recent generations and, heaven forbid, require that we behave like a civilized nation, abiding by international humanitarian law?
Yedioth Ahronoth, Israel's largest newspaper, published a front-page opinion column Tuesday by senior writer Eitan Haber, in which he reflected the trepidation many Israelis have for Obama. "We, in our little corner here in the Middle East, are anxious to see whether you shall continue the tradition of American presidents in recent generations and view us as an ally, your front-line aircraft carrier in this bloody region of the world," Haber wrote. "Or whether, heaven forbid, you will see us as just one more nation among all the others."
Yes, will you continue to employ us as the bloody truncheon with which you threaten mangy Arab countries into cringing submission (as well as continue to support us in our ongoing pesticide against the Palestinian cockroaches), or will you reject the example set by American presidents in recent generations and, heaven forbid, require that we behave like a civilized nation, abiding by international humanitarian law?
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