Afghanistan
November 28, 2009
A variety of reports indicate that President Obama has decided to accede to the demands of advisors who want to expand the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan. If that's the case, the main question remaining is whether the president is doing it because he believes the increase might be effective or whether he is simply surrendering to political pressure.
It appears to be an article of American faith that a politician will be damaged more by angering war mongers than by incurring the wrath of people who think that war and military occupation are ineffective and brutal. Whether this is true or not no one actually knows because no national politician has dared to challenge the ruling assumption. We can say many things about American politicians but seldom can we say that they are brave. They are surrounded by armies of advisors who specialize in telling them how to win the next election. And that goal seems almost always to mow down any other goal in its path.
The weak rationalization is that if you're not in office you can't carry out policies so the wise thing to do is to make any compromise that will keep you there. It's a vapid way of thinking but it has great influence among the political classes.
The reason I think that political expediency must have played a fairly significant role in Obama's decision is that the arguments for expansion were quite weak. I listened as carefully as I could to the people who were backing the McChrystal plan and not one of them was convincing. When you consider the vast expenditure in money, and probably in lives, that will come from sending thirty thousand more American soldiers to Afghanistan, it's hard to imagine any outcomes that would come close to balancing it.
The argument that adding thousands of Americans to the numbers already in Afghanistan will deny a "safe haven" to al Qaeda, a haven where they could devise plausible schemes to kill lots of Americans, is farcical. There are dozens of places around the world where al Qaeda people can make plans. There's no evidence that Afghanistan is a better place to do it than lots of other spots they might choose.
The contention that probably weighs most heavily in Obama's mind is that withdrawal while Afghanistan is still unsettled would be viewed by many as”defeat." Presidents are very fearful of being tagged with defeat, whether or not the label has any validity. So the expansion has to go forward and the prices have to be paid.
Each citizen will need to make a judgment about whether political realism -- as it's called -- justifies Obama's decision. I don't think it does, but that's because I am unusually concerned about the killings that American soldiers carry out. I think they damage not only the persons who are killed but our country's reputation and its citizens' well-being. Yet, I admit that's a minority opinion -- at least in the United States. It is definitely a majority opinion elsewhere in the world.
I'm not going to turn against Obama for this decision. I think I understand his reasons. But I will be disappointed if he does as most reporters are predicting.
Viewing the Past
November 27, 2009
Shlomo Sand's book, The Invention of the Jewish People, set off controversy in Israel, where it was first published, and now, with its translation into English, arguments about it have spread into the United States.
Sand's thesis is that the genetic descent of the Jewish people is quite different from what has been presumed in legend. Modern Jews, he says, for the most part did not descend from the people who lived in the ancient kingdoms of Judah and Israel. They had their origins in eastern Europe. The people in the Middle East now called Palestinians are just as much descendants from ancient Israel as modern Jews are.
The historical arguments for such claims and for opposing contentions are extremely murky. It is very hard to know what happened to a genetic line over the course of three thousand years. The evidence is seldom clear cut.
What seems to be the case now is that scholars frequently link their historical findings to current political issues. Sand has been quite open about this. His historical studies have been motivated by his desire to show that many of the claims made by the Israeli government are false. He is at least partially backed up by consensus among scholars. For example, not many historians believe any longer that a major portion of the Jewish population was ejected from Palestine after the uprisings against Rome in the first century and the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD. So the great tale that a whole people was forced out of its homeland, wandered for long centuries in exile, was repeatedly mistreated by the populations among whom they journeyed, and then, in the middle of the 20th Century, returned home again is more romance than it is history.
You might wonder why any of this matters very much to modern people. But the founding documents of the modern state of Israel are based to some extent on the story of exile and eventual return. If that story is not historically accurate, then justification for certain political acts is less sound than it was formerly thought to be.
It's pretty clear that none of this will lead to significant modification of the legal system in Israel. But it could, over time, affect how diplomatic negotiations are conducted. And it certainly could influence how the people of Israel view themselves.
This, however, is not simply an Israeli issue. Rather, the concepts that people all around the world hold about their past have major implications for how they conduct themselves in the present. Sand represents a developing phenomenon, that is minorities in many nations who want to tamp down claims of national grandeur in the interest of critical self-examination. The idea that certain nations are destined by fate, or by God, to achieve goals which end up being detrimental to other peoples has been the source of much modern conflict. If we try, say these historical critics, to view the past as honestly as we can we are less likely to get into bloody struggles with other nations because we consider ourselves to be elevated over them.
It's certainly a point pertinent to current American affairs. The notion of American exceptionalism, that is the idea that history has brought forth the United States at the present moment to serve as a model for all the world, forms the core of many of our foreign adventures. We went to Iraq, so say the promoters of that campaign, not for oil, not to eliminate anyone who posed a physical threat to the people of the United States, not to open an area of the Middle East to American investments, but, rather, to teach democracy to the Iraqis, so they could establish a smaller version of the United States in a region that had not been much given to resembling us.
People of critical mind dislike that sort of patriotic promotionalism. They find it suffocating. I suspect that such a reaction has had something to do with Mr. Sand's work and with the attitudes in Israel which support him. After all, governmental proclamations in Israel tend to be hyper-nationalistic, as they are here in the United States. People who are offended by them are still a minority but it's a growing minority. I wouldn't be surprised if the contest between romantic hyper-nationalists and critically-minded citizens turns out to be one of the defining struggles of the 21st Century all around the world.
A Boy in the Arena
November 26, 2009
Joan Biskupic's new biography of Antonin Scalia is receiving considerable attention, which it appears to deserve. The reviews convince me that she did her best to give a balanced picture of the Justice, one that ought to interest anyone concerned about the legal posture of the United States.
My favorite note about the book came from the author herself during a television interview. Scalia told her that during the Nixon/Ford administrations, he was not close to Dick Cheney but they encountered one another enough for Cheney to have an opinion of him. And that opinion was that Scalia was on the right team. The judgment seems still to be a matter of pride to the Justice.
I suspect that playing for the right team is one of Mr. Scalia's principal goals. In that view of things, it doesn't matter what position you play as long you help advance the team towards victory. It's a corollary position to the notion that life is a game which is either won or lost.
It's a clownish idea. "Game" is far from an adequate description for human life. Living to win is an adolescent concept of human existence. When a man holds onto that belief well past his step into nominal maturity, it marks him as a clownish figure, which I think Scalia is.
We have a skewed take on clowns in our society. We tend to think that clownishness removes a man from either influence or depredation. Yet many clowns have played vast historical roles. Their egos drive them to extreme positions.
Consider Justice John Paul Stevens's take on Scalia: "He's got to have the last word. But is it really worth it?"
It is to Mr. Scalia. To win and to shock the enemy while winning is his vision of the good life. His notion of reading the Constitution as nothing more than exactly what was in the minds of the framers works better as a weapon than as anything else. It assists him in attacking on all the fronts he sees as battles to be won. It allows him to be simultaneously cheerful and destructive. It's a teenager's version of cool. He's perfectly content to see an innocent man killed by the state as long as the man had a technically valid trial. Those are the rules of the game. And the game is everything. It is certainly superior to life itself.
Is man an appendage to the Sabbath or does the Sabbath serve man. Jesus and Scalia would play on different teams in resolving that question.
Ms. Biscupic tells us that at Georgetown Scalia learned that religion is a game of rules and that you can't separate those rules from the game of government.
I suppose it's charming that we have justices of the Supreme Court who can't grow up. But it's charming in a deadly fashion.
Scam Artists
November 25, 2009
There's a sign that will tell you beyond doubt that you're a target of deception and manipulation. That's when someone informs you that because you are not an expert like he is you can't understand the implications of what's being discussed and what's more will probably never be able to understand them.
A person who actually does know his subject matter -- and wants to speak truthfully -- is fully able explain anything well enough for generally competent people to understand it sufficiently to make reasonable decisions about it.
There have been at least two sure markers of scams in the news lately.
Ira Casson is a physician who has been the cochairman of the National Football League's committee on head injuries. He has consistently argued that there is not sufficient evidence to conclude that concussions lead to permanent brain damage. When Linda Sanchez, a member of Congress from California, challenged him on his stance, he replied, "I assume that the Congresswoman was not a scientist and not a physician. She is not an expert."
Casson recently resigned as the head of the NFL's committee and won't return phone calls from reporters. His expertise appears to have gone into deep hiding.
The Secretary of the Treasury has answered questions about his bailout of A.I.G., which involved giving the insurance giant full value for dubious securities, by saying that his critics are "untainted by experience." Now his critics are becoming legion, so many in fact that his hold on the Treasury appears threatened. I don't know if Mr. Geithner would say that Neil Barofsky is untainted by experience, but the Special Inspector General has issued a report saying, in effect, that Geithner, when he was head of the New York Federal Reserve, failed miserably to get the best deal for taxpayers and turned over billions to Wall Street that were not needed to stabilize the banking system.
Whether you're an expert or not, you can conclude that President Obama's decision to put Geithner at the head of the Treasury Department is turning out to be a disastrous choice. The non-expert evidence indicates -- and pretty strongly -- that Geithner cares a thousand times more about protecting the wealth of Wall Street plutocrats than he does about making life easier for non-millionaire citizens. In some circles, I'm sure, that's what experts do. But in today's political climate it won't win people at the center of national affairs many accolades.
Anyone who claims sufficient expertise to know for sure how complex affairs are going to turn out is either a fool or a charlatan. The reason complicated decisions are hard to make is that there are always factors present whose effects are extremely difficult to gage. The arrogance that attempts to boost itself by denigrating the intelligence of people who are sincerely trying to avoid unhealthy consequences is an expertise I think we could well do without.
The Inner Condition
November 24, 2009
At a local church I picked up a flyer listing "the seven major thought patterns of a spiritual person." After scanning through them I was left feeling that I must be the least spiritual person on earth. My thoughts don't fit with a single one of the patterns that spiritual persons evince.
"Gosh,” I thought to myself, "you'd think I would make at least one out of seven."
I was off on them all, but the one that really settled my absence of spirit was number 7: "I am one with the One, and with the Whole, and move in the creative flow of love and harmony." I'm not sure what it means to be one with the One because I don't know who he, or she, or it is. But to the degree I have a faint sense of the One, my main impulse is to kick him in the rear end.
Number 3 was also troublesome: "I am at the right place at the right time for the right reason." I suppose at times I've been at the right place, but not often. And I can tell you this for sure: there have been so many times I was in the wrong place that one of my most common exclamations -- to myself -- has been, "Lordy, how can I get out of here?"
The first one struck me as being plain out coarse, maybe even tacky: "I accept my heritage as a spiritual person. I am intelligent, intuitive, and inspired." Now you tell me, what kind of person would say, "I'm intelligent, intuitive and inspired." If you heard somebody say that at a cocktail party you'd think he was the biggest jerk you had ever met.
Being as unspiritual as I am is undoubtedly a pathetic condition but there is one tiny positive glimmer in it. When you go as far off the track as I am, you don't even know you're lost, don't even know there's a track. Not knowing about it relieves you from missing it. A guy told me once that I wouldn't really live until I had tasted a certain kind of wine. He may have been right. Who knows? But since I'm not likely ever to taste the magic nectar I may escape learning that my life is a sham.
Wandering in the wilderness, with no spirit to guide you, can be interesting. Though you don't have the slightest idea of where you are, you can be curious and peer around. Occasionally you see something that repays the watching.
If you tried to cram the entire list of thought patterns of a spiritual person into a single sentence, it would be, "Nothing bad can ever happen to you." That cinches it for me. Bad things have happened to me and those I love. Bad things will happen in the future. That's why I'm so spiritless as to want to head them off.
Inevitability
November 22, 2009
The political decree concerning Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is that, regardless of what is done or said at his trial, the government must kill him. Both the president and the attorney general have, in effect, already said so. Consequently, the judge, being a patriot as all judges must be, will overrule any claim by the defense that might lead either to an acquittal or a diminution of punishment. All these rulings will be appealed to higher courts, which out of their patriotism will confirm them.
As David Feige points out in a brilliant article in Slate, published November 19, 2009, the result of all this will be a batch of bad law. If the government had done to an ordinary murderer all the things it has done to Mohammed, the former would have a fair chance of getting off because his legal rights would have been so systematically and massively violated. But since Mohammed must be killed, the rulings that go along with killing him will enter into legal precedent, thus reducing the prospects of all future defendants in capital cases.
The sagacity of Osama bin Laden becomes ever more evident. He has said that all he and his compatriots needed to do was to make one effective strike against the United States and then sit back and watch the country tear itself apart. When future historians add up the injuries we have done to ourselves as a result of the attacks in September 2001, their work will be a casebook for all small bands of fanatics in how to bring down enemies supposedly much stronger than themselves.
Nonetheless politics must be served. U.S. Senators must pontificate about the evils of terrorism. Segments of our own population must be scrutinized more and more carefully, thus alienating some of them. The public lust for revenge must be placated. Mohammed must be killed.
In my fatuity and my abysmal minority status, I continue to wish that we would approach these problems less passionately and more rationally. The most healthy thing that could be done about Mohammed would be for a court to rule that though evidence shows he is guilty of murderous acts, his illegal treatment by the government takes away the government's authority to kill him. That would raise our stature throughout the world and testify that we are committed to fair treatment even in the most difficult of cases. But that wouldn't be patriotic.
The price of patriotism -- at least as we define it -- is quite high. It decrees that we regularly violate our own stated principles and, fairly often, turn ourselves into monsters. That might be not too bad if after these digressions we then returned to who we say we are. But that's not how things work. Digressions have consequences which linger -- and not just for a few years. Still, we have to be patriots -- most of us, at least -- and Mohammed has to be killed.
Less Than Desired Gap
November 21, 2009
If you think, as I do, that George Bush was about as harmful a president as the American people are likely to elect and that Barack Obama is as intelligent as we in our anti-intellectualism can stomach, then you might be asking yourself why there is not a stronger difference between the two administrations than there is.
We need to face the truth that the president, however influential he might be, can't reverse the direction of the country and the even more unpalatable truth that our national government, whoever the president is, will be a reasonably accurate incarnation of the spirit of the people. George Bush's government was not un-American any more than Barack Obama's is.
There's an inclination among the citizens to believe that their views are the true American stance and that anyone who opposes them is supporting attitudes antithetical to genuine American values. But to say such a thing is both illogical and untrue. Whatever you want to call real Americanism you can find strong forces in this country that are vehemently opposed to it. The liberal Enlightenment spirit of the Bill of Rights, for example, is detested by legions of citizens who are no less American for hating it. The first ten amendments to the Constitution, after all, are more a charter of liberties for all people than they are particular American rights. And there are vast numbers of citizens who think the only purpose of the nation is to privilege them more than other people.
Abraham Lincoln is no more American than Glenn Beck is. Rush Limbaugh is no less American than Ted Kennedy. Those who wish to use "American" as a synonym for anything they consider noble are destined to failure.
This is not to say that it doesn't make any difference who the president is. Actually it makes quite a bit of difference. Those who are disappointed in some of Mr. Obama's behavior since he took office - and that group includes me -- need to ask themselves how the country would be faring, right now, if John McCain were president.
Still, who the president is doesn't determine who we are. There may be some shift in our identity rising out of whom we select for the first office. But basically we remain the same people we were before the election took place. So we shouldn't be all that surprised to find that the government maintains certain fundamental characteristics from one administration to the next. None of the forces contending for power have gone away. None of the attitudes driving public passion have evaporated. All that power-seeking and belief finds a place in the government. There is no way they could not. We can hope for a shift of emphasis and that, indeed, is what we have found. Such shifts are significant. They aren't transformative.
Do you ever wonder why polling on certain matters changes so radically over short periods of time? Does it indicate that people have actually changed their minds? I don't think so. Dramatic poll changes are simply reflective of one wave of Americanism sloshing more to the fore than it did a month ago.
Everything that happens in this country, or that is done by this country, is American. The hospital with teams of physicians and nurses working tirelessly to save the life of a single child is equal in its Americanism to the hidden cells in hidden prisons where teams of government agents torture prisoners just as tirelessly. The predators that blow children off roofs to their deaths are just as American as the helicopters that lift children off roofs to save their lives during a flood.
If we want one sort of action to prevail over another we have to recognize that really changing our government means really changing ourselves. And that's a long, hard pull.
The Heroic Occupation
November 20, 2009
David Livingstone Smith's study, The Most Dangerous Animal: Human Nature and the Origins of War, is at the least graphic. I defy anyone to read it and come away thinking that the actuality of war is anything like what we see depicted by Hollywood. For one thing it always stinks, literally. In the midst of war the odors emerging from bodies that have received war's treatment often cause those who are still alive to vomit.
The book's thesis is that war is ingrained in human nature. We have been programmed by evolution to resort to it. Does that mean it is and will continue to be inevitable? Maybe or maybe not. Smith doesn't offer strong hope that we can either rise above war or put it behind us, but he does suggest that if we are ever going to banish it we have to learn to see it for what it is and to see ourselves for what we are when we engage in it.
Neither of those exercises in truthfulness produces pretty pictures.
The main part of the study is an examination of the self-deceptions we have to embrace to convince ourselves that war is either practical or ennobling. We have to make ourselves into heroes and we have to make the enemy into beasts. All of the enemy's goals and motives have to be evil whereas all of ours have to glorious. No virtue can be accorded to the enemy. An act which when performed by our own forces is brave and valorous becomes fanatical and diabolical when the enemy does it. We have to celebrate, as Albert Einstein put it, "all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism."
Why do we have to twist truth so violently? Because evolution has also taught us to be helpful, cooperative and kind. The parts of our brains which rule in ordinary life find it nauseating to kill another person. In fact, people who do kill other persons, for whatever reason, usually sustain severe and lifelong psychological injuries. The American military is so aware of this it is conducting scientific research to develop drugs that will allow soldiers to kill without guilt. We can only wonder what, when it is developed, its side effects might be.
It has been recognized for a long time that the best soldiers are psychopaths. It has even been suggested, says Smith, that a nation should resort to the psychopathic element in its population to staff its armies. The problem of following that path has been, first, that there aren't enough psychopaths to fill the ranks that nations believe they need, and, second, that there might be difficulties with the heroes after their battle is over and they return to their barracks.
The most intriguing portions of the book describe what combatants do when they have, in one way or another, managed to shed their inhibitions and get into the spirit of things. Here, for example, is one fairly riveting passage:
Mothers were skewered on swords as their children watched. Young women werestripped and raped in broad daylight, then set on fire. A pregnant woman's belly wasslit open, her fetus raised skyward on the tip of a sword and then tossed onto one ofthe fires that blazed across the city.You may think this is an account from one of the assaults of Genghis Khan but actually it's a report from the New York Times of July 27, 2002, treating a clash between Muslim and Hindu forces in India.
We don't have to read about stuff like this in the newspapers, though. We can go to the Good Book itself.
Then Joshua, together with all Israel, took Achan son of Zerah, his sons and hisdaughters, his cattle, donkeys and sheep, his tent and all that he had, to the valleyof Achor. Josuah said, "Why have you brought this trouble on us? The Lord will bringtrouble on you today." Then all Israel stoned him, and after they had stoned the rest,they burned them.Keep in mind that this was called for by no less a figure than God -- that is if we can believe Joshua.
If you believe, by the way, that events of this kind are carried out only by non-Americans, Mr. Smith will pretty quickly disabuse you of that notion.
Smith's style is readable so if you would like to get a reasonably quick take on what sort of creatures you live among, The Most Dangerous Animal is not a bad place to start.
Incoherence
November 19, 2009
The Obama administration, led by Eric Holder, has got itself into a huge mess by deciding to try some suspects from Guantanamo in real courts and some in military tribunals. Holder can't give a rational reason for the division and every time he tries he looks foolish.
How can supposedly intelligent people make such a stupid mistake?
I have a theory.
From the start of his presidency Mr. Obama decided to mollify defense and intelligence agency mad dogs by occasionally tossing them hunks of meat. He didn't want them tearing him down from within his own administration and there were so many of them he couldn't weed them all out. I admit, it's a grievous problem for any president who wants to be sensible.
Obama's error was in thinking that war mongers can be pacified. Their essence leads them to be on the attack always. There is no way to win them over to your side unless you join them. Then, you haven't won them, they've won you.
Defense and intelligence agency zealots want the authority to do anything they wish to anyone they decide to call an enemy of the United States. They don't want to be limited by the Constitution or by international law or by treaties entered into by the United States. When they violate these laws and agreements they want to justify it on the basis of national security. And they want to be applauded for the violations.
You can't give them enough meat.
The only sound strategy Obama could have adopted with respect to them would have been to hold them in check with a firm hand. He chose not to do that.
Holding them in check would not have been easy. It would have been an endless headache. They would continuously have sought to undermine his authority through leaks and connections with right-wing politicians. But that's what they're going to do in any case.
I don't know how Obama can get out of the trouble he has caused himself by continuing cankered Bush policies on war making and spying. To adopt the stance he should have taken from the beginning will be twice as hard now. But at the least he's got to put his foot down on nonsense like military tribunals. As long as he plays around with that sort of tough-guy posturing he will look weak to his supporters. And his inveterate foes will give him no credit for it whatsoever.
The Big Clog
November 19, 2009
It becomes increasingly clear that the principal political problem we face in the United States now is the set of bizarre rules the Senate has somehow adopted for its procedures. They make no sense and they seem to have been designed to make no sense. I don't profess to understand them in detail but their effect is to prevent actions supported by a majority from ever being brought to a vote.
I understand that any legislative body must have procedures for bringing legislation to its official attention. Otherwise it would be swamped with frivolous and greedy proposals. But it is not necessary for a legislative body to tie itself in knots the way the Senate currently does. Bills could be reported out of appropriate committees and then voted on by the whole body.
As far as I can tell, the underlying cause for the tangled procedures in the Senate is an internal faith in pomposity which has seized the whole body. Senators seem to believe that they are so grand and gloriously wise that any one of them should have the right to put the nation on hold while he, or she, preens before special interest groups and sucks money out of them. It's a disgusting situation but one so in the weeds, as we say, that the American public can't take hold of it.
The most offensive procedure now thwarting the public will and undercutting obviously needed action is the silliness of allowing forty percent of the Senators to prevent a vote by threatening to filibuster it. The minority doesn't actually have to conduct a filibuster; they just have to say they will. I have not heard a single senator defend this mode of action in the abstract. But practically all of them are eager to use it when it serves their interests. This they will do within months of having declaimed against it.
When they are presented with their inconsistency, they will say as Alabama's Jeff Sessions said recently, the rules have changed. That's enough. They don't have to say what rules they are talking about, or how they got changed, or who changed them. In other words, they retreat to meaningless blather when they want to get away with the indefensible. That's the way of our august Senate. And we let its members get away with it.
It is wise for a political system to adopt provisions whereby a minority can defend its basic human rights against an inflamed and prejudiced majority. If measures of that sort weren't available certain injustices would persist indefinitely. For example, restrictions denying full civil rights to black citizens would not have been eliminated by majority votes in the House and Senate. That's why careful adherence to basic constitutional rights should be maintained in a democracy regardless of what a majority might wish to do.
On the other hand, ordinary legislation not involving unfair treatment of any definable group should be within the grasp of a majority and should not be undercut just because a financial interest is willing to pay for its blockage. To the degree Senate rules enable that sort of purchase to be made they are destructive of public health.
In this country right now we are close to a situation in which a large portion of the U.S. Senators are little more than commodities. The rules of our national legislature are helping that condition to continue. Citizens need to wake up, see what's going on, and sweep these archaic, corrupt rules into the dust bin.
Actual Motive
November 18, 2009
We need to clarify what the real concern of right-wingers is with respect to the trial of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in New York. It has nothing to do with danger to the American public or threats to New Yorkers.
When the right warns against a cornucopia of intelligence that will be released during a trial they mean only one thing. They're not talking about intelligence in its normal definition. Rather they're worried that the defendants will simply speak of what was done to them.
The common argument on the right is that the trials will give terrorists a soapbox to spread their propaganda. It's a nonsensical charge. Nothing would serve as a greater propaganda coup for Al Qaeda sympathizers than the right-wing desire to try people in hidden kangaroo courts and then kill them. Over and again we have learned that actions of that sort are the most powerful recruiting tool Al Qaeda has.
I just heard Andrew McCarthy being interviewed by John Hinderaker of Power Line, a right-wing web site. McCarthy is a former U.S. Attorney who now writes for The National Review. He has been out loudly beating the drums against the New York trials. He says that we should have accommodated Mohammed's desire to be executed when he admitted planning the 9/11 attacks. He didn't explain, however, why Mohammed wanted to be executed in that fashion. It's interesting that during the conversation Hinderaker blurted out, "Let's just shoot him."
The most interesting thing McCarthy said was that Mohammed's revelations of what was done to him could result in criminal investigations of Bush administration practices. That's what the right wing is afraid of. It's their only genuine concern about the trials. McCarthy and virtually all other right-wing pundits know that what was done was criminal. He would argue it was only technical criminality and more than justified by the circumstances but still it involved breaking the law.
He suggested that danger would come not from the U.S. judicial system, which is probably too timid to bring criminal charges against Bush officials. Instead it could arise in international courts. If prosecutors there have clear evidence of how the U.S. military and the CIA treated prisoners suspected of having some connection to Al Qaeda they could proceed with charges of war crimes.
Evidence of that sort is what the right wing means by a "banquet for intelligence gathering" (McCarthy's words).
You can think what you wish about the justification of criminal acts by the Bush administration. But you ought not let yourself be fooled into believing that the furor over the New York trials is about anything other than that.
©John R. Turner
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