Redemption for our sins

A good reason to let immigrants in more easily (and for people to sneak in, if they have no other option).

Persecuted Gays Seek Refuge in the U.S., Foreigner's Abuse Increasingly Seen as Grounds for Asylum

One of the reasons why freedom should be taken seriously, as the most important "rule", I think, is because we really, generally, have no clue what is going on in peoples' lives and what they have been through. If I had a friend in this situation - s/he's been abused or persecuted in another country and he needs to get somewhere to escape that abuse or persecution - I would encourage him to seek asylum. But I would have no issue, at all, with him living in the U.S. and would take him in until he could complete asylum petitions. And I'd let them stay if there was any realistic reason that they might be rejected.

I hope people can understand, then, given the risks that come with applying for asylum in such cases or a million such cases, why people would rather live under the radar rather than making themselves visible and therefore more likely to be sent back to so many miserable conditions that they might be subject to if sent home.

We are a mean-spirited lot, often, aren't we? People, I mean.

We get better. Slowly. We hear more stories like this. We develop more empathy and compassion and, maybe, if our tiny little hearts can bear it, love. We become more decent. We identify with peoples' humanity and not just our sad, small little slice of it. Why would anyone identify with "Americans" but not with "humanity"? What purpose could such a narrow idea of common identity have for any of us?

Our best humanity is not found in liberals or conservatives or Democrats or Republicans or socialists or religious folks or radicals or terrorists. And our worst humanity is not found in liberals or conservatives or Democrats or Republicans or romantic communists or racists or Clintonistas or the Bush Administration.

Our best and worst humanity is found in all of us. Without exception, really. It's the one rule of humanity I can count on. All that is best and worst in humanity is in all of us. Which makes it all the more important for us to embrace what is best and worst in us, not try to repress it.

And it makes it all the more incumbent for us to embrace the compassion that makes us stronger and more decent and more loving and more functional and better people for it. None of us are or should try to be superior to others. But all of us aspire or should aspire to be better than we were the day before and to be the best human being we can be and the best possible in our lifetimes.

And no matter how we might try to make excuses otherwise, that means having a heart. And being decent to people because it's the right thing to do, regardless of what the law or the rules say.

I have no truck with people who use laws like fugitive slave laws and the Nuremberg laws and laws against adultery, sodomy, homosexuality, race mixing, and so many laws that have represented everything that is ugly about humanity to justify their ugliness.

Justify your ugliness all you want, I say. You'll find no justification with me.

Follow the law as best you can, is the only advice I can give. But take that conscience of your's more seriously than any law could ever offer any of us.

Because when the Nazis come to my hometown, I'm hiding Jews. And when the South rises again, I'm helping slaves escape. And when Islamic Fundamentalists or Communists are successful in outlawing every decent impulse that people might have in the name of ridding the world of its various ills, I'm resisting, legal or not.

The law is not the final arbiter of morality or decency or goodness. The law is an all-too-neutral arbiter of whatever prejudices or impulses or ugliness guide us this week or this year or this historical period.

I wish law reflected reason. I would like for that to be so. I will work for that to be so.

But you only have to watch the political process for a few evenings a week to see what a godforesaken, foolish, dysfunctional, repressive mess the whole exercise is, as a rule.

And it's not a mess because politicians in Washington are uniquely a mess and us noble savages in the citizenry are really where decency and goodness is found.

It's a mess because we're a mess. Humanity. One long, foolish, repressive mess.

We get better. Slowly. Very slowly.

And then we have periods like this one where we kind of go off the rails.

Maybe showing some decency to gay people escaping persecution is the least we can do to make up for our shittiness.

Love,
Ben

The price of "progress"

Reading this headline was shocking and disturbing enough.

China executes ex-food and drug chief

Then the journalist who wrote this report spends one paragraph talking about the injustice and excessiveness of killing this man.

"His death sentence was unusually heavy even for China, believed to carry out more court-ordered executions than all other nations combined, and indicates the leadership's determination to confront the country's dire product safety record."

Which is just peachy, of course, because then the Chinese leadership doesn't have to take responsibility for the fact that it is their cynical, repressive leadership that makes such corruption so likely and that this execution just entrenches and reinforces that same ugly cycle.

One paragraph about how the state killing this man was "heavy" and the rest of the article seeming to justify his execution in the name of safety concerns?

Eye for an eye, I suppose. How ugly.

I don't think I can handle anymore of this progress. The world has seriously gone off the deep end here in the last few years. It's not just the execution that bothers me. It's the fact that this journalist spent one paragraph talking about the human rights abuse that occurred here and that I can see so many people nodding in agreement, "He got what he deserved."

Then this from the Carl Minzer at the Council on Foreign Relations in a May 29th, 2007 International Herald Tribune editorial.

Corruption in China: The anger boils over

"For the past two months, local officials in the southwestern Chinese province of Guangxi have pursued a harsh campaign aimed at enforcing China's population planning laws.

In order to meet targets for allowable births, they forced pregnant women to have abortions. They threatened to demolish homes to make residents cough up fines demanded for excess children.

This month citizen anger boiled over. Thousands of angry rural residents took to the streets, smashing cars and sacking government offices."

The Chinese government claims that it didn't want to use harsh measures to force women to have abortions. They wanted to give incentives to enforce the law that women have abortions to enforce compliance with their population control measures. What nice guys, huh?

Repression breeds retaliation and rebellion. Rebellion often breeds greater repression. Repression breeds retaliation and rebellion. And so the cycle goes, on and on and on and on until we decide to break it.

The price of progress is getting pretty high, these days.

Bit by bit, we chip away at our souls. Soon enough, we won't have souls to sell off, at all.

We got to get this turned around.

Love,
Ben

H.L. Mencken, 1880-1956

"Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood."

"The men the American public admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth."

"All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it."

"It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place."

"For it is mutual trust, even more than mutual interest that holds human associations together. Our friends seldom profit us but they make us feel safe... Marriage is a scheme to accomplish exactly that same end."

"A home is not a mere transient shelter: its essence lies in the personalities of the people who live in it."

"Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy."

"Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them."

"The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught."

"It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office."

"Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule - and both commonly succeed, and are right."

"Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages."

"Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public."

"The most common of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind."

"The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery of truth--that the error and truth are simply opposite. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, when it is cured of one error, is usually simply another error, and maybe one worse than the first one."

"There is always a well-known solution to every human problem--neat, plausible, and wrong."

"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all."

"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard."

-H.L. Mencken
U.S. editor, 1880-1956

Maybe I care about politics and this war too much

I was little down this 4th of July.

OK, I was a lot down. I didn't go out with friends that I made plans with. And I didn't even watch fireworks, this year, by the river here in Lawrence, an annual tradition.

The kind of down I was feeling is supposed to happen around Christmas or Thanksgiving for most people, usually due to some unresolved but painful relationship in their families or their lives.

I was down for a different reason. I was down, largely, because I've just been so disappointed with the democratic conversation over the course of this war.

I'm not disappointed because so many people are involved, which I think is a good thing and a promising sign of progress that the internet, especially, has offered so many people a more engaging opportunity to take part in serious, deeply considered thought and discussion and debate on all of the issues of the day, especially the war.

What I've been disappointed with is just how narrow and partisan and fruitlessly vitriolic the discussion has been. How it has focussed on personalities rather than policies. How it has gotten lost in pressure politics rather than more thoughtful discussion. How so many of the even the most responsible people - the activists, the journalists, the politicians, and even too many of the scholars - have gotten lost in partisan or far too homogenous outlooks on the war rather than engaging in more serious thought and discussion about how, if we are going to facilitate a successful transition to democracy for Iraqis, that might be done.

Frederick Kagan, to my mind, has had the most consistently knowledgeable, wise, and thoroughly analyzed political and military perspective that I have encountered, thusfar.

But too much of this all-too-important discussion - which holds in the balance many Iraqi and American lives - has gotten lost in a less thoughtful discussion of how much patience Americans will have for this war rather than the more important discussion of how much patience Americans should have for the sake of the security and democratic future of an Iraqi people who did not ask for an invasion that has seriously disrupted their country.

I hope, I can only hope - and talk, and write, and do everything I can to persuade folks - that we will make our decisions in Iraq based on a genuine commitment to the Iraqis and American soldiers, with a commitment to thoroughly and rigorously and deeply engaged policy thought and discussion, and with a commitment to making good on what we initiated, here (all of us; I didn't even favor this godforesaken war going in, but I know better than to think that just pulling out with solve all the problems we need and want resolved) rather than based on expedience and weariness with the war and with the debate and with the politics and with all of the very strong feelings that everyone legitimately brings to the table on this war.

I've felt that more thoughtful, engaged discussion get overwhelmed, in the last few months, by a war weariness and a pressure politics that seems to blind too many of us to all of the options that we need to explore to handle this situation we've created in Iraq with integrity and not just yet one more political reaction substituted for more serious political thought.

And this 4th of July, I was just feeling kind of discouraged, I suppose, that a more engaged discussion of what might and what needs to happen in Iraq is getting overwhelmed by a much more crass political discussion of what people will support, independent of what the Iraqi people need.

The America I love is bigger than that. And I want it to be bigger than that. But I've been feeling kind of discouraged, lately, that it will be bigger than that, even with so many Iraqis and American soldiers risking and sacraficing their lives for the chance of a democratic, free, and secure Iraq.

I love my country. But it's been disappointing me, here, lately, I've got to admit. People feel overwhelmed, I know, by all of the information and ideas and perspectives and pressure and so much that makes it very difficult to engage this Iraq war discussion without wanting to bow out quickly from the discussion nevertheless the war.

But the stakes are just too high to take our convenience more seriously than our responsibilities and, most importantly, our responsibility to engage in a broad, open-minded, open-hearted, serious discussion of policy alternatives that focus on empirical arguments about what can be done and do not get lost partisan vitriol that has been crippling this discussion, lately.

All of this is evidence that I probably care too much about politics, I suppose. I probably should have been out watching the fireworks and loving America with my friends, this 4th. But I just didn't have the energy, feeling kind of down and disappointed with the state of the democratic discussion about this war and so many issues, this period.

I probably need a better hobby. And to learn to go hang out with friends, even if I'm not in tip-top shape. I didn't even make it down to talk with my uncles who I am sure would be pleased as punch to know that their nephew, who for the bulk of their lives has the been the young liberal kid haranguing them about racism and the environment and every issue that a young liberal kid cares about, is passionately committed to sticking it through in Iraq and getting out the case by the best minds about how and why we must create enough security in Iraq for a political settlement to be reached and for the Iraqi military and law enforcement to feel prepared and confident and comfortable with their role securing the country with minimal American military support.

I promise to have a better 4th of July, next year. But this year, I just needed the time to think and reflect and process it all, I suppose.

Let's hope the next 4th of July brings a lot more news of positive developments in Iraq and an America looking more ready to live up to its ideals and engaging with more honest and genuine concern and appreciation for the efforts of everyone involved - politicians included - rather than live down to its reactions of the moment.

Happy 4th of July, everyone.

Love,
Ben

Bryan Caplan (remember that name)

George Mason economist Bryan Caplan has a really fascinating book out that I have got to check out.

The Myth of the Rational Voter

It has been my central frustration with democratic politics this period, as so many issues get decided based on peoples' fears and frustrations rather than based on what I, at least, in all of my not-so-infinite wisdom think should at least guide a more reasonable democratic discussion and debate, nevertheless policies that I favor.

But this guy also seems to share my political and economic instincts, the economic instincts, at least, that embody the current and emerging mainstreams of economists but are often less appreciated if known at all by people less familiar with serious economics.

Bryan Caplan. Look out for that name. Looks like it will be a good read. And a seriously favorable Economist review can't hurt either.

The difference between men and women

Larry the Cable Guy brings us this gem from Morning Constitutions:

"Women say funny stuff together when shop. They always got fun conversations.

I overheard this conversation once.

This girl goes, 'My boobs is too big. I've got to get 'em reduced."

And I was like, 'Come again.'

'Your boobs is too big?'

'I'll help you tote them around the mall for a few hours. You need a spotter, you give me a holler.'

You never hear dudes dude stuff like that.

'What's wrong, Jim?'

'My wiener's huge. I don't know what I'm going to do about it.

'Uh, I swear, it's like an albatross down there. I don't know what I'm going to do. I can't sleep. My back hurts. I got strap marks right here. Uh, it is like a piece of timber just hanging down from there. I think I'm going to get it reduced. That's what I'm going to do. I have had it with this ungodly large penis that I carry with me every day of my life.'"

Libby and mercy

Andrew Sullivan has the best argument I have read for why people might be plausibly angry about the Louis Libby commutation.

Bush's Record on Mercy

"There is none. Part of what makes the commutation of Scooter Libby's sentence for perjury so transparently corrupt is Bush's long and remarkable record as Texas governor of denying clemency to almost anyone, and the contempt he expressed for even the process of reviewing appeals for mercy from death row. These were not white-collar criminals threatened by 30 months of jailtime. These were often individuals with very few resources facing the direst sentence imaginable: the death penalty. The massive discrepancy between the brusqueness with which Bush dismissed their pleas for mercy and the hours of careful study he cites in relieving Libby of inconvenience is proof positive to my mind of this president's reflexive sense of privilege, and profound moral and ethical corruption. Here's a devastating article from the Atlantic archives detailing Bush's clemency "decisions" while Texas governor. To give you a flavor:

On the morning of May 6, 1997, Governor George W. Bush signed his name to a confidential three-page memorandum from his legal counsel, Alberto R. Gonzales, and placed a bold black check mark next to a single word: DENY. It was the twenty-ninth time a death-row inmate's plea for clemency had been denied in the twenty-eight months since Bush had been sworn in. In this case Bush's signature led, shortly after 6:00 P.M. on the very same day, to the execution of Terry Washington, a mentally retarded thirty-three-year-old man with the communication skills of a seven-year-old.

Gonzales's summaries were Bush's primary source of information in deciding whether someone would live or die. Each is only three to seven pages long and generally consists of little more than a brief description of the crime, a paragraph or two on the defendant's personal background, and a condensed legal history. Although the summaries rarely make a recommendation for or against execution, many have a clear prosecutorial bias, and all seem to assume that if an appeals court rejected one or another of a defendant's claims, there is no conceivable rationale for the governor to revisit that claim. This assumption ignores one of the most basic reasons for clemency: the fact that the justice system makes mistakes...
The record as a whole is one of a human being utterly indifferent to the fate of others, especially those without money, connections or political value. The number of people George W. Bush sent to their deaths without a second's thought is higher than any living governor in the United States. And yet it took a perjury conviction of a white, wealthy, connected apparatchik to awaken the president's sensitivity to injustice:

A close examination of the Gonzales memoranda suggests that Governor Bush frequently approved executions based on only the most cursory briefings on the issues in dispute. In fact, in these documents Gonzales repeatedly failed to apprise the governor of crucial issues in the cases at hand: ineffective counsel, conflict of interest, mitigating evidence, even actual evidence of innocence.

Gonzales declined to be interviewed for this story, but during the 2000 presidential campaign I asked him if Bush ever read the clemency petitions of death-row inmates, and he equivocated. "I wouldn't say that was done in every case," he told me."

While the President may not have a glimmering record of mercy, I, on the other hand, have a long history of favoring mercy as a rule and prison for people who are dangerous, not just for revenge. And the hypocrisy on the Hill of who people favor prison time for and who they favor mercy for means that Americans should start facing up to their vindictive tendencies in matters of justice and law and get honest about the need to go deeper and find a more genuinely consistent and constructive approach to such matters. Everyone keeps flinging around "rule of law" like they actually take it seriously, which they do, until they find a freedom or someone's freedom, and particuarly their own freedom, which they favor and which they think the law should leave alone.

Is the freedom to engage in heterosexual or homosexual sodomy or oral sex really in the 14th Amendment's guarantee of due process as Anthony Kennedy asserted in Lawrence v. Texas? Of course not. We just get so full of our bullshit that we start to believe that our less that fully honest assertions of law and politics are more than they really are. Was Lawrence v. Texas good law. Of course it was, if you care in the least about human dignity and peoples' freedom to live their lives as they see fit without everyone deferring to enforcement of even the most foolish and intrusive laws. Lawrence v. Texas and Griswold v. Connecticut and so much of our best juris prudence (I know all the arguments for why Griswold v. Connecticut is not narrowly construed enough as a legal verdict; but Bill Douglas was right in a big way on the larger matter of whether the Constitution should protect a right to privacy, even if he probably should have referred to the 14th or 9th Amendement or any other more narrowly construed means of ruling in favor of a right to privacy) is predicated on argument more than law.

The Constitution said nothing about the equality of the races, explicitly, except that slaves, who were generally African American, should be counted as 3/4 of a man for purposes of a census and that Federal voting rights could not be denied on the basis of skin color. It implies that African Americans should be regarded as equal when the 14th Amendment proscribes that neither the Federal nor state government can "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." But then the Supreme Court interprets under Plessy v. Ferguson (with the power to do so under Marbury v. Madison) that such protection does not necessarily mean equal treatment as we understand it today.

The Warren Court, in Brown v. Board of Education, Topeka, rightly, argued that principles of equality in the Constitution should apply to African Americans. The Constitution had not explicitly regarded African Americans as equal except as it concerned voting rights in the 15th Amendment and as a part of broader equality that was guaranteed under the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments and the 14th Amendment, in particular, but which has been interpreted under Plessy as regarding African Americans as equal with limitations we would never accept, today. What the Warren Court affirmed is what the law should embody, not what it explicitly did embody. And a more honest reflection on the law must reflect that this is the rule of legal interpretation, especially around issues that matter to us most, and should be. And, regardless of what should or should not be, most certainly is more often than not.

I don't give a shit what Dred Scott said. There is no way on God's green earth that you could have with my own free consent gotten me to return a fugitive slave or turn in Harriet Tubman, whose entirely legacy was built on violating fugitive slave laws. As as brilliant legal debate I just watched in C-SPAN exemplified, I don't give a shit what the law says. I will look for reasons as narrowly within the law as possible to invalidate the re-enslavement of Dred Scott and the fugitive slave laws that made them possible, but I will not sit and pretend like a narrow reading of those laws is somehow the right thing to do because I want to cover my hind end and keep my cooshy little prosecutorial or judicial employment. Because I know and believe that the highest political and moral principles put doing right by people above narrow interpretations of the law. And people who think otherwise have no serious interest in doing right by people, as far as I'm concerned, and thus have no claim on my conscience and should have no claim on the consciences of anyone.

There are a lot of people in Washington and America who want to see Libby and anyone they can get their hands on to go down for this war in Iraq, for allegations that the Administration was going after Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame (a claim I am still not convinced of, though reading widely arguments and theories and reports to the effect). There are others who take the law too seriously and want to use Libby as some sanctamonious stand on how purely and stridently the law must be taken seriously even when it supports our less noble insticts and conflicts with our most noble instincts. Most of those same people wanted to help Bill Clinton escape a similar fate for a virtually identical crime, namely a crime about lying when no underlying crime had taken place. And most others are so full of themselves, the law, and all their bullshit around the sacred nature of the Holy Trinity of the law, their prefered political party, and their backsides that they can't even make the distinction anymore between the law and doing the right thing because doing the right thing doesn't always keep you prepped for your next government appointment. I'm sure many people really believe that strict enforcement of the law is what keeps people in line. I am open and familiar with arguments for why they believe this to be the case. I have not heard one yet that convinces me that this is case, however.

My record on mercy as a rule and prison as a place for people who are dangerous until we can be confident that they are not dangerous anymore and not a place for revenge, especially on your political enemies, is almost completely consistent (I say "almost completely" because it is possible that I have had a vengeful bone in my body at some point, but I couldn't name it for you now).

I'm tired of cynicism, hypocrisy, bloodthirst, political venom, and pious ideological and self-serving sanctimony ruling the day in Washington, especially when a man's freedom is at stake.

The law says President Bush has the right to commute or pardon any case that his judgment thinks warrants such commutation or pardon. Libby's attackers argue from a more narrow interpretation of the law, nevertheless what is the right thing to do, because it suits their venom for Libby and the President, not because it affirms the law. And others favor the verdict because of their pious indignation about the law as not an expression of the will of political interests but as the expression of everything that is right and true in their aspirations for power and access. Andrew, in particular, argues, rightly, for laws such as those against gay marriage, homosexual and heterosexual sodomy, marijuana use and a whole host of laws not be taken seriously, with full knowledge that people do and have regularly violated those laws and with no serious desire to see them enforced. And he's right to do so. Because they are foolish, bad laws.

And this prosecution was a foolish, bad prosecution for a crime around an investigation into a crime that the prosecutor knew full well, at the time, was not a crime that Libby had committed.

This prosecution is not about the narrow politics of Democrats taking down Republicans. This prosecution is about the narrow politics of angry Bush Administration detractors taking down someone, anyone, for what they see as abuses of power rather than disagreements with the judgments of the President and his Administration over the course of this war and power-obsessed observers who take the whole business of power and law far more seriously than it warrants. I've shared many of those disagreements people have with the Bush Administration. But I've done so without the venom or the vitriol that seems to have perpetually blinded the Administration's critics to how to correct or improve the sitaution in Iraq rather than how to take down the President or his loyalists, all in the name of the nobility of disinterested political virtue. It's all enough to make you cry, isn't it? The heroism of the Administration's detractors and the demonic nature of George Bush, Lewis Libby, Dick Cheney, and the rest of the Administration. It's a morality play of good critics versus an evil Administration. And my favorite part is how many Iraqis' and American soldiers' lives are saved by all of this nonsense and how much the American democratic discussion is uplifted, enlightened, and otherwise improved by this disinterested, noble witchhunt for the hide of Lewis Libby.

Lewis thought he was lying to make sure his friends didn't get in trouble for something that he didn't know would get them in legal trouble or not, even though there is no conclusive evidence that I have seen that they meant to do harm to Joseph Wilson or Valerie Plame, all assertions otherwise to the contrary. Lewis Libby's not a rapist or a murderer or someone dangerous who needs to be behind bars. He's a high level political official who is being used by a lot of people feeling hateful for the Administration and trying to prove how tough they are, in general, to use him as part of a morality tale about the uses and abuses of power. Except I've seen no evidence that he was actually trying to abuse power, yet. There's no reason he should do another day of jail in the name of this vitriol.

Lewis Libby's commutation and hopefully pardon offer some glimmer of hope, for me, that, perhaps, in the midst of all this cynical, high stakes hypocrisy and bullshit that, just perhaps, we might move in the direction of some simple decency while we sort out of what self-centered dicks we all are, even those who claim to only have the interests of the country at stake.

President Bush should think long and hard about all of those folks he executed in Texas and whether they, too, should have gotten the same consideration that he is giving his friend, right now. But that is the way forward. Considering more mercy for all people, not treating everyone equally shitty and with little regard for the destruction we wrought on peoples' lives in the name of our cynicism and bullshitting ourselves and one another about our truer motives and truer selves.

The truth is that we are all going to need an awful lot of mercy after this whole period is through. Because no matter how much we bullshit otherwise, like so many other regressive periods and policies in the past - Japanese internment, segregation, intidimation of political dissidents, and a million other examples - our get tough attitudes have had as much to do with us making excuses for what shitheads we are as it is had anything to do with decency or justice. We interpret law and politics thought arguments and ideas, whether we want to face that or not. Some of those arguments and ideas are better and some of worse. But the worst arguments and ideas are those which seek retribution on people for its own sake rather than saving prison for people who are really dangerous. We're just all so full of our own bullshit and propaganda and long-internalized, decent and higher purposed arguments for law to serve higher purposes and not just narrow legalisms that we forget that the Constitution and the law has not actually said half the shit we've asserted that it's said. We just say it does because we want to do what's right. And know, deep down in our shriveled little hearts, that this is the right way to treat one another and not enforcement of narrow legalisms that we know do wrong by people.

And that is what makes America and democracy great, much more than any narrow reading on getting tough or the rule of law.

Love,
Ben

Leadership is telling people what they need to hear and doing what needs to be done

David Broder and Richard Cohen have been showing a bit of liberal leadership, lately, at the Washington Post, these days. A refreshing departure from the blind and mindless partisanship of E.J. Dionne and his nasty, pressuring, sanctimonious ilk.

David writes a piece, today, that begins to get at exactly why I am so unenamoured with the pressure politics at the Post and by manipulative partisans like Dionne.

A Mob-Rule Moment

Someone needed to say it.

I'm not as hip to David's insistence on broad border control. I want to see more concentration on strategic border control; everbody should cross the border legally and orderly, as reasonably as possible. But there is no reason that we should waste precious immigration service manpower and resources on deporting illegals who want to work and raise families in America instead of searching out true bad guys, like terrorists and violent criminals likely to reoffend.

And I'm not as keen on labor and environmental regulations that don't take into account legitimate needs for flexibility on the part of American businesses and unions, businesses and unions abroad, environmental leaders and heads of state from countries beyond our borders, and other participants in trade and labor and environmental issues who should have a say about specific needs in specific industries and in specific countries that broader and stricter regulations from Congress may or may not be able to address.

But here is where David gets exactly the problem with the current political moment and why pressure politics is such a poor substitute for real leadership:

"The point is pretty basic. Politicians are wise to heed what people want. But they also have an obligation to weigh for themselves what the country needs. In today's Washington, the "wants" of people count far more heavily than the nation's needs.

You can win elections by promising people what they want. But you win your place in history by doing what the country needs done."

Exactly. What we need, right now, in Washington, on the war in Iraq, on immigration, on trade and the economy, and on so many issues that face the country is leaders who exercise their independent judgments and who have better policy ideas to navigate our way through the serious problems we face, especially the war.

Sam Brownback and I disagree about outlawing abortions, even as we agree about wanting to reduce the number of abortions to as close to zero as is reasonably and justifiably possible.

But one thing I respect about Sam, right now, is that when he talks about being pro-life, he talks about it as a debate of ideas, not a moment for bullying the consciences of those we disagree with. Sam and I may disagree about the regulation of abortion. But something I agree with him fervently about is that his nor my conscience should be bullied or bludgeoned into taking a position that I think is wrong. People who do so are cowards who lack conviction in the real substance and better direction of their policy proposals. I don't lack that confidence. So I have no need to bully or bludgeon. I am just fine with persuading and leading.

And that is what America needs, right now. It doesn't need more pressure politics. It needs leadership. Generally, that means engaging people from all sides, those who agree and disagree, to arrive at the best, most thoughtful and well planned policy ideas. And other times it means, as with the case of Scooter Libby, telling the pressure groups to go fuck themselves. As Byron York accurately describes the hypocrisy and politics at play above any real substantive concern, "People who in 1998 argued that lying under oath didn't really matter, at least if it was about sex, will passionately argue that lying under oath really, really matters now. And people who in 1998 argued that lying under oath mattered very much will argue that it is not such a big deal today." Some issues, like a man's freedom becoming the plaything of vindictive partisans, are just too important to treated like haggling for trinkets in Mexico.

Especially on the war, right now, what America needs is less pressure, more thoughtful engagement from everyone on all sides with one another, and leadership by someone who has gotten or who is getting their heads wrapped around that situation. Frederick Kagan, David Kilcullen, David Paetreus, and Robert Gates seem to get it better than most, right now, by my lights. Joe Nye and Francis Fukuyama have important international policy insight that should be solicited. But Frederick Kagan is really the man with his mind wrapped around this situation, that I've seen, thusfar.

And we need political leaders who can try to understand the situation as well or better than these guys, to articulate that understanding publicly for the American people, and to show some leadership in this war and for the country, whether it squares, right now, with the thinking (and, really, the lack thereof, generally) of the American people or not.

Leaders are not called leaders because they follow the whims of pressure groups. They are called leaders because they take stands and lead others independent of the pressure. And that is what we need in Washington, right now.

And it is nice, after a long hiatus, to hear a liberal in Washington say that again.

Love,
Ben

Cynicism and meanspiritedness as organizing ideas of American life

It's starting to occur to me that the much broader generalization that can be said about this period is that Americans figured out that what they all have in common is cynicism and meanspiritedness.

How noble, huh?

We get better.

We just confuse all that cynicism and meanspiritedness with something more noble than it is.

And then the cynicism that nice guys finish last and that you have to be a tough sum bitch to get by in this world is rationalized by this very cynicism and meanspiritedness. Convenient, huh?

As long as we define being and doing good as kicking each other when we are down and imposing on one another and otherwise making excuses for our shittiness, then good people are good the more we want to kick the shit out of whomever we don't like. And nice guys finish last, not because we're so fuckin' shitty, but because they're too fuckin' naive and stupid to see how shitty people are, meaning us.

I've watched people my whole life engage in that bullshit reasoning. I had a group of friends who reasoned this way as the core of the way that they looked at the world, as some kind of sorry substitute for being more thoughtful.

People get hurt. Then they get bitter and cynical. And then they get mean.

I've felt it. I've known that feeling. I think it'd be hard to live long in this world and not feel it. We shit on each other so regularly, it would be hard for people not to feel or get bitter or cynical or mean, at some point in their lives.

It's when it gets confused with being good that it's a real problem.

That's when what is noble and decent in life and in our attitudes toward our most important issues in life get distorted into something meaner and more cynical.

It gets better. We get better. But only after we've done a lot of damage.

Our only hope is in the idea that we get more decent and more loving and more thoughtful, over time.

And this period has been one where we've even wanted to try to define our progress by just how meanspirited and imposing that we become. It's really the most cynical of all ideas that we could have. It also happens to be the cynicism that has rationalized all of the worst attrocities of human history - Nazism, Communism, despotism of all kinds, genocide, slavery, the most unspeakable tragedies of life.

And we have had the audicity, this period, to call it progress. As did the Nazis. As did the Communists. As does every despot and defender of all that is illiberal and repressive.

When, really, it's just ordinary cyncism and meanspiritedness. It's not a governing philosophy. It's just a way of keeping our more cyncial and meanspirited ways in place without ever having to really reconsider them.

We get better. Slowly. We hurt enough people. We start to feel bad. And we get better. Slowly. Slowly.

Love,
Ben

David Kilcullen and the progress in Iraq

Bill Kristol, at the Weekly Standard, alerts me to this really remarkably thoughtful and powerful description of surge efforts in Iraq by David Kilcullen at Small Wars Journal that should give anyone pause who is so sure that this war is lost that they are not willing to give it a chance.

Understanding Current Operations in Iraq

I am reprinting that post, here, in its entirety.

"I’ve spent much of the last six weeks out on the ground, working with Iraqi and U.S. combat units, civilian reconstruction teams, Iraqi administrators and tribal and community leaders. I’ve been away from e-mail a lot, so unable to post here at SWJ: but I’d like to make up for that now by providing colleagues with a basic understanding of what’s happening, right now, in Iraq.

This post is not about whether current ops are “working” — for us, here on the ground, time will tell, though some observers elsewhere seem to have already made up their minds (on the basis of what evidence, I’m not really sure). But for professional counterinsurgency operators such as our SWJ community, the thing to understand at this point is the intention and concept behind current ops in Iraq: if you grasp this, you can tell for yourself how the operations are going, without relying on armchair pundits. So in the interests of self-education (and cutting out the commentariat middlemen—sorry, guys) here is a field perspective on current operations.

Ten days ago, speaking with Austin Bay, I made the following comment:

'I know some people in the media are already starting to sort of write off the “surge” and say "Hey, hang on: we’ve been going since January, we haven’t seen a massive turnaround; it mustn’t be working". What we’ve been doing to date is putting forces into position. We haven’t actually started what I would call the "surge" yet. All we’ve been doing is building up forces and trying to secure the population. And what I would say to people who say that it’s already failed is "watch this space". Because you’re going to see, in fairly short order, some changes in the way we’re operating that will make what’s been happening over the past few months look like what it is—just a preliminary build up.'

The meaning of that comment should be clear by now to anyone tracking what is happening in Iraq. On June 15th we kicked off a major series of division-sized operations in Baghdad and the surrounding provinces. As General Odierno said, we have finished the build-up phase and are now beginning the actual 'surge of operations'. I have often said that we need to give this time. That is still true. But this is the end of the beginning: we are now starting to put things onto a viable long-term footing.

These operations are qualitatively different from what we have done before. Our concept is to knock over several insurgent safe havens simultaneously, in order to prevent terrorists relocating their infrastructure from one to another, and to create an operational synergy between what we're doing in Baghdad and what's happening outside. Unlike on previous occasions, we don't plan to leave these areas once they’re secured. These ops will run over months, and the key activity is to stand up viable local security forces in partnership with Iraqi Army and Police, as well as political and economic programs, to permanently secure them. The really decisive activity will be police work, registration of the population and counterintelligence in these areas, to comb out the insurgent sleeper cells and political cells that have 'gone quiet' as we moved in, but which will try to survive through the op and emerge later. This will take operational patience, and it will be intelligence-led, and Iraqi government-led. It will probably not make the news (the really important stuff rarely does) but it will be the truly decisive action.

When we speak of 'clearing' an enemy safe haven, we are not talking about destroying the enemy in it; we are talking about rescuing the population in it from enemy intimidation. If we don't get every enemy cell in the initial operation, that's OK. The point of the operations is to lift the pall of fear from population groups that have been intimidated and exploited by terrorists to date, then win them over and work with them in partnership to clean out the cells that remain – as has happened in Al Anbar Province and can happen elsewhere in Iraq as well.

The 'terrain' we are clearing is human terrain, not physical terrain. It is about marginalizing al Qa’ida, Shi’a extremist militias, and the other terrorist groups from the population they prey on. This is why claims that '80% of AQ leadership have fled' don’t overly disturb us: the aim is not to kill every last AQ leader, but rather to drive them off the population and keep them off, so that we can work with the community to prevent their return.

This is not some sort of kind-hearted, soft approach, as some fire-breathing polemicists have claimed (funnily enough, those who urge us to “just kill more bad guys” usually do so from a safe distance). It is not about being “nice” to the population and hoping they will somehow see us as the “good guys” and stop supporting insurgents. On the contrary, it is based on a hard-headed recognition of certain basic facts, to wit:

(a.) The enemy needs the people to act in certain ways (sympathy, acquiescence, silence, reaction to provocation) in order to survive and further his strategy. Unless the population acts in these ways, both insurgents and terrorists will wither, and the cycle of provocation and backlash that drives the sectarian conflict in Iraq will fail.

(b.) The enemy is fluid, but the population is fixed. (The enemy is fluid because he has no permanent installations he needs to defend, and can always run away to fight another day. But the population is fixed, because people are tied to their homes, businesses, farms, tribal areas, relatives etc). Therefore—and this is the major change in our strategy this year—protecting and controlling the population is do-able, but destroying the enemy is not. We can drive him off from the population, then introduce local security forces, population control, and economic and political development, and thereby 'hard-wire' the enemy out of the environment, preventing his return. But chasing enemy cells around the countryside is not only a waste of time, it is precisely the sort of action he wants to provoke us into. That’s why AQ cells leaving an area are not the main game—they are a distraction. We played the enemy’s game for too long: not any more. Now it is time for him to play our game.

(c.) Being fluid, the enemy can control his loss rate and therefore can never be eradicated by purely enemy-centric means: he can just go to ground if the pressure becomes too much. BUT, because he needs the population to act in certain ways in order to survive, we can asphyxiate him by cutting him off from the people. And he can't just 'go quiet' to avoid that threat. He has either to come out of the woodwork, fight us and be destroyed, or stay quiet and accept permanent marginalization from his former population base. That puts him on the horns of a lethal dilemma (which warms my heart, quite frankly, after the cynical obscenities these irhabi gang members have inflicted on the innocent Iraqi non-combatant population). That's the intent here.

(d.) The enemy may not be identifiable, but the population is. In any given area in Iraq, there are multiple threat groups but only one, or sometimes two main local population groups. We could do (and have done, in the past) enormous damage to potential supporters, 'destroying the haystack to find the needle', but we don't need to: we know who the population is that we need to protect, we know where they live, and we can protect them without unbearable disruption to their lives. And more to the point, we can help them protect themselves, with our forces and ISF in overwatch.

Of course, we still go after all the terrorist and extremist leaders we can target and find, and life has become increasingly 'nasty, brutish, and short' for this crowd. But we realize that this is just a shaping activity in support of the main effort, which is securing the Iraqi people from the terrorists, extremist militias, and insurgents who need them to survive.

Is there a strategic risk involved in this series of operations? Absolutely. Nothing in war is risk-free. We have chosen to accept and manage this risk, primarily because a low-risk option simply will not get us the operational effects that the strategic situation demands. We have to play the hand we have been dealt as intelligently as possible, so we're doing what has to be done. It still might not work, but 'it is what it is' at this point.

So much for theory. The practice, as always, has been mixed. Personally, I think we are doing reasonably well and casualties have been lower so far than I feared. Every single loss is a tragedy. But so far, thank God, the loss rate has not been too terrible: casualties are up in absolute terms, but down as a proportion of troops deployed (in the fourth quarter of 2006 we had about 100,000 troops in country and casualties averaged 90 deaths a month; now we have almost 160,000 troops in country but deaths are under 120 per month, much less than a proportionate increase, which would have been around 150 a month). And last year we patrolled rarely, mainly in vehicles, and got hit almost every time we went out. Now we patrol all the time, on foot, by day and night with Iraqi units normally present as partners, and the chances of getting hit are much lower on each patrol. We are finally coming out of the 'defensive crouch' with which we used to approach the environment, and it is starting to pay off.

It will be a long, hard summer, with much pain and loss to come, and things could still go either way. But the population-centric approach is the beginning of a process that aims to put the overall campaign onto a sustainable long-term footing. The politics of the matter then can be decisive, provided the Iraqis use the time we have bought for them to reach the essential accommodation. The Embassy and MNF-I continue to work on these issues at the highest levels but fundamentally, this is something that only Iraqis can resolve: our role is to provide an environment in which it becomes possible.

All this may change. These are long-term operations: the enemy will adapt and we'll have to adjust what we're doing over time. Baq’ubah, Arab Jabour and the western operations are progressing well, and additional security measures in place in Baghdad have successfully tamped down some of the spill-over of violence from other places. The relatively muted response (so far) to the second Samarra bombing is evidence of this. Time will tell, though....

Once again, none of this is intended to tell you 'what to think' or 'whether it’s working'. We’re all professional adults, and you can work that out for yourself. But this does, I hope, explain some of the thinking behind what we are doing, and it may therefore make it easier for people to come to their own judgment.

David Kilcullen is Senior Counterinsurgency Adviser, Multi-National Force—Iraq. These are his personal views only."

Thanks, David, for some powerfully thoughtful reflections and commitments in our effots in Iraq. I count myself among those who are behind you.

Politics

Politics - the committed effort to avoid responsibility for a favored cause.

A political education

It is fascinating watching these Iraqi legislators learning about democratic government as they work to develop one of their own.

Iraqi parliament speaker suspends legislative session due to dispute over draft bill promoting federalism

It's an interesting lesson in the role that an education - especially a political education - plays in our lives. If these Sunni leaders understood federalism, better, I don't think they would feel so strongly that it threatened Iraqi national unity. It's a valuable and utterly relevant, to the Iraqi cultural and political landscape, means of dividing government and separating powers to prevent monopolies of power or domination of one ethnic group over another. Especially following a sectarian civil war, such a measure may create the breathing space necessary for Iraqis to heal their wounds with less of a propensity or ability to impose upon or oppress one another in the wake of their bitterness and antagonism.

If the Sunnis understood that better, I imagine they would sense some serious self-interest in giving less power to their Shia brethren/rivals to exact revenge for their repression under Saddam Hussein's regime and since the 30's and pave the way to a more genuinely democratic - meaning not just a government with regular election or universal suffrage, but division of powers as well - Iraqi government.

Politics seems to regularly be a enterprise where players are learning as they go, if they learn, at all. It's nice to see some legislators making an effort.

Superior

Trying to prove that you are superior to others is a losing gambit out the gates. There is no nobility in trying to be superior. Excelling is someone being better than they were the day before and doing better than others have done. Trying to be superior is a sure sign that someone doesn't know who they are very well at all and are trying desperately to get others to confirm for them that this is exactly as things should be.

Sinning

Sinning is generally the notion that armed with the knowledge that one can do what is wrong, one will, or armed with the knowledge that one can have what is excessive or foolish, one must.

And so it goes

"The capacity for discerning the essential truth, in fact, is as rare among men as it is common among crows, bullfrogs and mackerel. The man who shows it is a man of quite extraordinary quality— perhaps even, a man downright diseased. Exhibit a new truth of any natural plausibility before the great masses of men, and not one in ten thousand will suspect its existence, and not one in a hundred thousand will embrace it without a ferocious resistance. All the durable truths that have come into the world within historic times have been opposed as bitterly as if they were so many waves of smallpox, and every individual who has welcomed and advocated them, absolutely without exception, has been denounced and punished as an enemy of the race. Perhaps "absolutely without exception" goes too far. I substitute "with five or six exceptions." But who were the five or six exceptions? I leave you to think of them; myself, I can’t."
-H.L.Mencken, Meditation on Meditation


"Time is a great legalizer, even in the field of morals."
- H.L. Mencken, A Book of Prefaces

Being careful of what we wish for

Michael Gerson has an excellent reminder for us, today, in the Washington Post, of the terrible tragedy that awaits an effort to take the easy way out of Iraq.

An Exit to Disaster

It is the most tragic fact of all in this terrible, terrible period of action and reaction, without regard to vision or deeper thought about our actions.

We invade a country with very little thought or discussion or debate given and with much pressure for Americans to shut up and get with the bandwagon.

Then, when things don't go as planned, we clamor and pressure to abandon the security responsibilities of a country that didn't ask for the security nightmare that we created for it, again with very little seriously and honestly engaged thought or discussion or debate.

It is the single most important reminder for me for why popular moments and popular reactions are not the same thing as good, decent, and thoughtful choices in my lifetime. There have been many times in my life when I have made choices that were not popular that would only show fruits years later and would involve some sacrafices of immediate gratification in the moment.

But I have never faced a time when it has been so clear to me that Americans are persistently choosing and pressuring for options that address their immediate fears and frustrations, but which do not give enough thought to the longer term consequences of those actions.

I have made similar choices in my own life. So I know what it's like to act foolishly without enough thought.

But we will be responsible for the consequences of a precipitous withdrawal, at this point, whether we want to face those consequences or not.

We seem to have become a nation that wants and will pressure for what it wants when it wants it, consequences be damned. We are facing the likelihood of the most dangerous consequences we have risked yet: the inexplicable tragedy of plunging a country into a civil war and then attempting to wash our hands clean of that responsibility by abandoning our subsequent security responsibilities in that country before the governing authorities are ready to take over those responsibilities.

Doing so would not satisfy the Iraqis, nor the activists clamoring for such a withdrawal, nor the American people reacting to the political moment. It will only make the tragedy all that more inexplicable.

And the only good that will come of it, in the face of so many unnecessary deaths that America will have on her hands, will be the opportunity for Americans, all Americans, rich and poor, liberal and conservative, intellectuals and average citizens, to face our hubris and the failures wrought by our self-righteous ideological power struggles and our belief that we, finally and always, know what is best for others enough to force them into submission.

It is a tragedy too great to ignore. I can only hope that we will find courage, which, up till now, we have confused with our cowardice.

Surely we can be worthy of more faith than that.

Love,
Ben

Thank goodness

President Bush Commutes Libby's Sentence

And fuck the Huffington Post and Democrats in Washington for their bloodlust in this case.

I can't stomach this godforesaken political era anymore. Is cynicism and revenge the only prevailing values in Washington and America these days?

And if so, why in the world would Washington and America think that they have earned the right to lead the world? And why would Washington believe that Americans would or should look to Washington for leadership?

Perhaps our lust for power has so blinded us to decency that we can't tell the difference anymore.

One thing is for sure. Cynicism does not grow anything. So eventually Americans and the world will have to look to where they can find ideas with which they can lead their lives as they discover that they cannot count on Washington to lead their lives.

Thankfully, there are too many signs that they are looking beyond Washington to lead their own lives to ignore. Those close to power may miss those signs in their efforts to rationalize it. But its pretty clear that this last gasp for force and power to rationalize itself as decency and better ideas for living will not outlive the next generation.

The great part about working with young people is having an ear to how they think about the world. And one thing is for sure: force will not be the governing philosophy of Americans for very long. Ideas about governing and the use of force will be necessary. But force as a blunt tool has lost much serious support among average people, in my experience, especially young people, during this period. Which is to their credit. George Orwell would be proud.

And the most hopeful fact that arises out of that trend is that people may then begin to try to do what they have needed to do all along: to lead their own lives, independently and together, without looking to Washington, government, or anyone beyond their own developing judgments and consciences, independently and together.

And that is a future that might transcend the moral and intellectual bankrupcy of power and its obsession in Washington D.C., which this convinction was a function of much more than anything good or decent.

We can only hope that it signals a better, more honest and genuine liberal democratic future for America. But, in the meantime, it means something almost as meaningful. It means that a decent man doesn't lose his freedom.

Love,
Ben

The tragic consequence of our romanticism of the law

Radley Balko writes in Reason magazine about the most tragic consequence of both our romanticism of the law and the most recent moral panic we've experienced around sex and sex crimes.

Blinded by the Law

A 17-year-old boy, Genarlow Wilson, is sentenced to 10 years in prison for oral sex with a 15-year-old girl at a New Year's Eve party. The sentence was overturned. But the prosecutor will appeal arguing, "It is my responsibility to follow the laws of Georgia as they are written, not how some may wish they were written."

As Balko argues:

"In other words, as the Charles Dickens character Mr. Bumble famously proclaimed in "Oliver Twist," "the law is a ass." And it's Thurbert Baker's job to slavishly follow that ass wherever it may lead.

That, unfortunately, is an increasingly common sentiment among many prosecutors-"I don't make the laws, I just enforce them." It's also not entirely honest.

Prosecutors have enormous discretion in when and how and against whom they bring charges. They can overcharge and pressure the defendant to plea bargain. They can undercharge if they feel there are mitigating circumstances associated with the crime. Or they can determine that despite the fact that a crime has been committed, in the interest of justice, charges ought not be brought at all.

What's more, every prosecutor's office battles with limited resources. A prosecutor can't possibly enforce each law against each person who breaks it. So prosecutors set priorities. And in choosing which laws they will enforce vigorously and which laws they will let slide, they make public policy.

It's entirely appropriate, then, for citizens to question those policies.

So why were the charges against Wilson brought in the first place? Why would Wilson's prosecutors choose to pursue a charge of "aggravated child molestation"-a law clearly aimed at pedophiles-against a teenage boy who had consensual oral sex with a teenage girl? And why would Georgia's attorney general continue to expend taxpayer resources to ensure that Wilson stays in prison?

Part of the answer may lie in the crime's sexual nature. Whether because of latent Puritanism, moral panic or the media's infatuation with them, prosecutors seem particularly aggressive in prosecuting sex crimes. This, of course, is what we want when talking about actual sexual predators. But that clearly is not the case here. And there has been a rash of stories of late about similar overreaches.

In one of the more egregious examples, in February, the tech news site CNET reported a case in Florida in which a 16-year-old girl and 17-year-old boy were prosecuted for producing and distributing photographs depicting the sexual exploitation of a child. The two had photographed themselves having sex. The distribution charge came when the two e-mailed the photos from the girl's computer to the boy's. Inexplicably, a state appeals court upheld the conviction.

From silly anti-sodomy laws, to prostitution stings, to prosecutions of consenting minors, sex seems particularly adept at clouding a prosecutor's judgment.

More generally, after 40 years of "get tough on crime" rhetoric, many prosecutors and politicians have unfortunately come to measure success in our criminal justice system by the number of people they put in jail. Criminal laws-particularly those pertaining to drug and sex crimes-are increasingly written with extraordinary breadth and reach. Police officers typically are rewarded for arrests, not for preventing crimes. Prosecutors tend to be promoted or re-elected based on their ability to win convictions, not their fairness or sense of justice. Appeals courts, meanwhile, generally focus on constitutional and procedural issues. Only in extreme cases will an appellate court review the appropriateness of a verdict.

From the writing of laws to their enforcement and prosecution, our system has evolved to the point where justice, mercy and fairness often go overlooked. It's no surprise that the U.S. leads the world in its rate of incarceration, and by a wide margin.

Polls show that most Americans think our criminal justice system usually gets things right. Yet we're finding through the use of DNA evidence just how alarmingly often it doesn't. Sometimes the culprit is incompetence. Sometimes it's malfeasance or corruption among forensics experts, police officers, DNA lab technicians and other criminal justice gatekeepers.

But as the Wilson case shows, even when there is no corruption, no lying and no shortcuts taken-even when everything is done by the book-you can still get a result that's far from just.

Traditionally, that is why we grant executives the power to issue pardons and clemency. It's why the Founders gave those powers to the president. As Alexander Hamilton explained in Federalist No. 74, "The criminal code of every country partakes so much of necessary severity, that without an easy access to exceptions in favor of unfortunate guilt, justice would wear a countenance too sanguinary and cruel."

Unfortunately, we've drifted from that notion. Today, governors (and the president), loath to appear soft on crime, tend to be stingy with their pardon power, using it more for political patronage or to bestow mercy and forgiveness on repentant lawbreakers than to seek out and correct real injustices. (Georgia's pardons are granted by an appointed pardons board, not the governor.)

That makes it essential that prosecutors choose cases in which there is a clear demonstration of guilt, where the crime caused real harm to another person and where the potential punishment is proportional to the crime. The ability to secure a conviction isn't enough.

In the Genarlow Wilson case, there was no question of the teen's guilt. Yet the jury's forewoman shed tears as she read the verdict. Other jurors expressed regret after the trial, outraged that they weren't told their verdict would result in a 10-year sentence. The point here is that the prosecutors should have shown the good judgment never to have brought the molestation charge in the first place.

Prosecutors need to be more than inveterate slaves to the (often poorly written) law. And more broadly, we need to stop gauging our criminal justice system's effectiveness by how many people it puts in jail. We need to measure it by how well it metes out justice."

That's been my favorite part of this whole period. Noone is responsible. No matter how ugly and wrong the consequences, noone is responsible. Because, as in Nazi Germany, everyone is afraid of the consequences they will face if they do not mete out the consequences that they believe that everyone else wants.

That is one of the most tragic consequences of our romaticism of the law. That it makes cowards of us all, and unwilling to face our own cowardice.

But it is not the most tragic consequence of this godforesaken political period. The most tragic consequence is 16-year-old and 17-year-old kids going to jail for our pride and cowardice and unwillingness to acknowledge our failure to do much good at all with all of this fear and prosecution and bullying in the name of doing good in the world.

The saddest tragedy of the old Soviet Union and Nazi Germany was that so many Russians and Germans cheered and actively supported or said nothing and followed orders towards the ugly ends of those regimes.

And the saddest tragedy of the 21st century is that we are repeating their mistakes out of our own fear and ignorance and cynicism and cowardice.

We have seen the enemy and he is us.

The question is whether we will summon the courage to face our cowardice and the tragedy that it has produced.

Love,
Ben

Dick Lugar and the war

I respect Dick Lugar a lot. As someone who grew up very liberal, in a family of peace activists and poverty lobbyists, Dick Lugar - like Ben Gillam and Mark Hatfield - was a Republican I could trust.

As I get older, and my politics becomes more thoughtful, less ideologically narrow, and more independent, I have more reason to respect Dick Lugar. Because that's the kind of politics he practices. And that's why everyone respects Dick Lugar so much. That and because he's one of the keenest minds on international policy issues on the Hill. And since I'm someone who opposed this war, up front, publicly and with plenty of thoughtful and vocal opposition, you would think that I would welcomeDick Lugar's comments that the President needed to start looking towards a draw-down.

I have to admit, Dick's speech was very smart. Far more thoughtful than the typical boilerplate that fills the halls of Congress. This is a speech you should read, not just read me bragging on it. It is a thoughtful assessment of the risks and benefits, the various interests, a long-term diplomatic and security strategy for the Middle East and Iraq, and a brilliant assessment of so many overlapping and complicated issues related to this war.

I agree with Dick about the constraints on policy that we face and about the need to use diplomacy more assertively and more readily and with more long-term dialogue forums and opportunities more readily available and established. I also agree with him that the most serious and underdeveloped work in the Middle East is more diplomatic efforts that have much more likelihood of earning friends and allies and moderating more the more radical, murderous tendencies of many terrorist groups and winning friends to coordinate military and law enforcement efforts to arrest or, when arrest is not possible, kill terrorists who murder innocent civilians. I wholeheartedly agree with Dick and with the findings of the Baker report and the support from folks like Henry Kissinger and others for a more established, long-term dialogue with Middle East governments and political players around future Mideast policy, especially Arab-Israeli peace.

But I do think that on one major policy issue that Dick is mistaken. I don’t dismiss the Baker report or the need for diplomacy like too many conservatives I read dismiss such efforts for fear that they are too weak to resolve all of our problems associated with terrorism. It is true, as many conservatives argue, that there are many terrorist groups with him negotiation is not likely to be fruitful unless and until they show indications of genuine commitment to laying down their arms. And for many terrorists and terrorist groups, that is not a risk that we should take lightly or pretend that the likes of Al Queda or Hamas or Hezbollah will do so without the risk that military personell or innocent civilians will be used as pawns in game of cynical pressure politics that terrorism is meant to reinforce. Neither, of course, should we take lightly the risk associated with continuing down a road of more militarism that has clearly increased our risks associated with terrorist violence, which has spiked substantially during this period. Nor should be dismiss, lightly, the success of efforts in Northern Ireland to end terrorist campaigns through diplomatic means and the much more substantial steps toward success in Spain and Palestine to do the same, even as those efforts have not ended violence in those areas.

Military and law enforcement efforts will be needed in situations like dealing with Al Queda and Hamas, in all likelihood, and might be needed in dealing with Hezbollah in Lebanon (though there are differences in those situations which make me more hopeful for political and diplomatic efforts to be more fruitful and make military efforts less necessary in Lebanon than, say, with our dealings with Al Queda) as well as diplomacy. Efforts by the Israelis to win support from moderates associated with or responsible for governing in countries that are home to terrorist groups to initiate home-grown efforts to use military and law enforcement in efforts those countries, that respect the sovereign jurisdiction of states and which support the self-determined efforts of populations that live in state-less terrorities like Palestine are a good model of how such efforts might look. Such efforts should operate under the highest integrity – meaning they should seek to arrest and try those who murder for political ends, with truth and reconciliation efforts between populations and within those criminal justice efforts, as much as possible, as a part of that strategy, and kill only as is needed in genuine self-defense in carrying out such law enforcement measures – and should serve as a model of the practical security details that will be necessary to make such diplomacy and negotiations workable.

So, around the broad vision of diplomacy playing a more assertive and necessary role in resolving matters around much terrorism and otherwise potentially violent conflicts between states, Dick and I are in full agreement.

Where I think Dick is mistaken is getting the politics backwards with the substance of this godforesaken situation in Iraq. Dick's explanation for the need for a drawdown was that the country would not support the war into perpetuity, and that the President needed to accept that reality. Meaning, Dick's explanation puts the domestic politics of how long Americans want to support this effort in Iraq above the substantial operational and security needs of Iraqis and a democratically-elected government in Iraq who have made clear that they still need American support, who did not ask for this war and who, all of a sudden, have been thrust into a situation where they have the most serious security emergency that a government can face, without the developed capacity, at this point, to maintain that security, and an American people and government who have basically said, "Sorry we fucked up your country. But we didn't anticipate what a fuck-up this would become when our people supported with huge majorities as we went into this thing. And now that same majority of Americans whose only and most important concern is the security of the Iraqi people that they have stuck with this situation have decided that we just don't want this responsibility on our plates any more. In other words, 'Sorry. Our bad.'"

It's so noble, that sentiment, isn't it? We're such noble defenders of democracy aren't we? And I don't mean President Bush. I mean us. I mean Americans. It's just all so noble, I could cry.

What Dick Lugar said today was, essentially, "I don't have any confidence in this effort anymore. The American people don't have any confidence in this effort, anymore. And we're not going to support it for forever."

Which would be fair enough, except...

Except that Iraqis didn't initiate this thing. We did. And I don't mean President Bush. I mean the robust majority of Americans who supported this war, up front, when it was really difficult for folks like me to oppose it publicly without looking like the biggest pusses in the world and virtually in league with Osama Bin Laden.

And that same mass of noble Americans has now decided, "Sorry bout that. We didn't realize it would be this hard. I know we risk plunging your country into sectarian warfare and genocide - the kind that the very same people who are begging for a pullout are simultaneously and with a straight face begging our government to engage in to intervene in the civil war in Sudan - but we just didn't realize it would be this hard. And while we'd like to help, and we're sorry about the mess, we've got other things to do."

It's all so noble, isn't it? It just inspires the soul, doesn't it?

And Dick essentially argued, today, that this terribly noble - if utterly logically inconsistent - sentiment was more important than the express wish of the Iraqi executive branch (who are clearly in better faith than the Al Sadr-led sectarian Shiite parliamentary majority who voted for an American pull-out for obvious reasons) to have Americans stay until they can handle this situation on their own.

If that government - who is clearly in better faith than any of the other representatitives we've seen in Iraq and represent less than ideal but more noble concerns than Al Sadr or his sectarian Shia representatives in parliament - says, "Americans, we're ready for you to leave," I'm all for it.

But if Americans leave, after plunging Iraq into this insane situation, before the Iraqi government has established substantial enough security that a political solution has enough safety and psychological space to negotiate a workable democratic settlement, and this situation devolves into more serious sectarian warfare and whatever brutal, ugly consequences might come from that, then the Iraqi people and the Muslim world will have reason in the world to look at America and say, "Those are the assholes who threw our country - that Muslim country, for other Arabs and Muslims - into chaos and then bailed and let things devolve into a blackhole of destruction, and wiped their hands clean. Because they stopped feeling like helping us. Oh, and then they moved onto Sudan."

Nothing in this godforesaken political period makes any sense to me at all, is the truth.

FUBAR.

If you haven't seen Saving Private Ryan, in awhile, I recommend it. This whole godforesaken political period. FUBAR. Fucked up beyond all recognition. Doesn't make any goddamn sense.

I don't know if I've ever lived through any political period where I had less respect for the American people. I love 'em. But I've lost a lot of respect for them, right now. Because at every point when they can lame out and choose cowardice over more genuine courage, they take the easy way out. Because it's easier, of course. I've been that kind of coward in my life. I know what it's like to not want to admit when you've fucked up. But as someone who regularly takes the hard route, sometimes the too hard route, I can't respect when people are always taking the easy way out instead of doing the right thing.

And Americans have the gall, right now, to look at the Iraqis and the Muslim world and say, "I know we were all too cowardly to dissent from this war when it needed dissent and we invaded your country because it was the popular sentiment after our country was attacked by people who kind of looked like you, but, really, ideologically, are very different from you and for which there is no substantial evidence (that I've seen, at least) that they were alligned with the asshole who ran your country. And, now, today, I know we are all too cowardly to take responsibility for that mistake and ante up when we created this godforesaken mess for your country."

"But, despite all that. You should follow us. Because all we care about is you and your interests. Oh, and by the way. We're going to force you to follow us, even if you don't want to. Because you've got to agree that we've done a pretty fuckin' marvelous job of leading you up to this point."

It's all so noble, isn't it? Doesn't your soul just sing with all the nobility in America's leadership and the American people, right now.

Dick is trying to address a political reality in domestic American politics, right now. He's trying to acknowledge a reality so we can forge better policy.

But what we need Dick Lugar - above anyone in the U.S. Senate that I can think of, at this moment - to do is not just to acknowledge the reality. We need Dick to lead.

We don't elect leaders so they can pander to our every prejudice and impulse, in the moment. Especially on the big things. We elect leaders to lead.

That's why I don't trust Hillary Clinton. Because at every chance that she has to lead, she panders. At every point that she might show some genuine courage - which involves risk - she hedges and does whatever she thinks the American people want. Hillary Clinton plays consumer politics. What the American people want, the American people get.

And that's why I don't trust her. And that is why I typically trust Dick Lugar. Because he doesn't typically play that kind of politics.

And, these days, what America needs more than anything elss is a leader.

Dick is our best possibility for that in Washington, right now, I think, of the people I am familiar with in positions of leadership.

What we need from our political leaders so desperately, right now, is not people who will do what we demand from them, pressure them, and otherwise bully then into doing.

What America needs, right now, is leadership. We need leaders on this war who will be guided by the most noble concern for the Iraqi people and American forces that we all plunged into this bloody mess and not by more cowardly impulses to do whatever our finicky, whiny, self-centered, child-like, popular moods dictate.

I have confidence that David Petraeus is that kind of leader. I have confidence that Robert Gates is that kind of leader. I have confidence that Frederick Kagan is that kind of leader. I have confidence that John McCain is that kind of leader. And I have confidence that every Republican candidate in the primary will stick with this situation in Iraq, even as they scare the shit out of me with their get tough attitudes on every other question.

I better start feeling some confidence that some Democrats are committed to making sure that we take care of our own mess, here. Because if I don't, I will likely be casting my first vote for a Republican for President in 16 years, 4 elections after my fatal and foolish first vote in my life for President George H.W. Bush over a stronger, if somewhat self-centered President in William Jefferson Clinton.

If we want to do the right thing in Iraq, what we need to do is ask ourselves, "Who in Iraq do we trust most to lead this country out of this mess? And what do they tell us they need from us to make sure that this thing doesn't go more sour than it has already gone?"

To my mind, that is the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Malaki. And I haven't heard them give word that they are ready to take over security without American help yet.

So my vote, and I think the right thing, is that we stay. Even if it is hard. Even if we're not sure, at this point, where this thing is headed. Even if it means a leap of faith that we're having a hard time mustering, right now.

As far as I'm concerned, every American soldier who doesn't want to do this duty should be able to stand down with no shame or dishonor. They should be able to follow their consciences and thanked with deep appreciation for the service they've give their country.

But every man and woman who wants to make sure that the most trustworthy and democratic folks, here, don't get overrun by those with less noble, more power-hungry, and more sectarian and murderous motivations should be supported by the American people until this job is done, which is when the Iraqi government tells the Americans, "We've got it. We'll handle it from here."

Read Frederick Kagan if you want to understand the military and political situation, better, in Iraq, and the specific political realities that American support for the security situation in Iraq will support: a workable negotiating environment for a democratic future in Iraq, a reconciliation process that will be needed to move Iraq beyond the ugly mess that is has devolved into today, and an environment that is more genuinely open for legitimate and honest discussion of what a more ideal democratic government and society in Iraq might look like rather than a democratic compromise manipulated by the military maneuvers of various sectarian militias, insurgents, and terrorist groups for more narrow political advantage. Those are the best reasons for sticking around until the Iraq government says that this situation is under control.

But my reason is a more personal one. For me, it's a matter of owning our fuck-up. As Colin Powell has remarked, these are Pottery Barn rules. You break it, you own it. And we need to own this thing until the Iraqis responsible for the security of their country say they don't need our help anymore.

I didn't favor this war going in. But it's our mess now. It's an American mess, now, no matter how much we may try to pretend that the Iraqi people invaded their own country and just won't get their shit together after all the brilliant and selfless and noble leadership from the American government.

This is our mess. And if we leave, it's still our mess, whether we want to take responsibility for that fact of life or not.

And no amount of domestic political reality will make that larger and much more important reality reality go away. No matter how much we might wish that it would.

Dick Lugar is right to acknowledge the political realities that we face in this war. But we still have work to do. I think every day about joining up in a military capacity in this war, if only to put my money where my mouth is. But I certainly hope that we aren't going to walk away from this thing with me losing respect for the American people because they just can't own up and do the right thing on this one. Because I've faced quite enough FUBAR to last me a lifetime on this war, as it is.

Love,
Ben

A sign of hope

David Broder reaffirms for me that, perhaps, some liberals might have some humility to acknowledge that perhaps, just perhaps, liberals sometimes have illiberal insticts too.

A Victory for Free Speech

The Roberts Supreme Court decision validating Wisconsin Right To Life's right to engage in public discourse about a policy issue they care about was a fine decision and an important rebuke to the illiberal instincts of liberals, these days, when it comes to speech from people they don't like or from sources they find tainted with money or influence they are unduly afraid of.

I don't know if I trust, yet, or not, that liberals or conservatives in established or non-established circles will ever acknowledge their hypocrisies on so many such issues of free speech and issues of freedom, generally.

I do have faith they will do so long after I'm dead. Because it's obvious to anyone not trying to defend those hypocrisies that most political folks have people they identify with whose freedoms they often defend to the ends of the earth and others who they don't identify with for whom they will advocate incursions on their freedoms often seemingly without end.

And it's pretty plain to me, at this point, that the only consistent way out of both this mess of hypocrisy and authority that people have trouble trusting because of the hypocrisy and the many lines of rationalization that it offers illiberal folks - terrorists, despots, secular or religious autocrats, those with theocratic impulses here or abroad - for their illiberal ways - the single most important rationalization for terrorism is that it is a more "committed" - read: stubbornly homocidal - form of political pressure that folks in liberal societies are just too pussy and cowardly to engage in.

And, sadly, many cowardly people in liberal societies think this about themselves, so they romanticize the "courage" of radicals of all stripes who act out murderous plans in the name of political ends. It's all fairly sordid, really, since those who claim the strongest religious or ideologically pure affiliations also often give the strongest support to radicals of various stripes - socialist radicals, pro-life activists who murder abortion doctors, militant environmentalists, Islamic radicals, radicals and militants of every shape and color.

How people who rationalize murder could ever consider themselves moral or right or decent in any way, shape, or form is completely beyond me. But, sadly, it happens all over the political spectrum, in the name of so many different causes.

But the source of so many of their rationalizations is that their more moderate brethren in more established circles are persistently rationalizing more illiberal efforts to deal with difficult issues - pressure politics, the ugliest of political attacks and cynical power politics, the use of radical pressure to warrant "moderate" ends, hyperventalating rhetoric that shuts out more reasonable debate and discussion. Radicals reason that they just have the balls to do what moderates don't have the balls to do. And, too often, moderates will hang their heads in shame at what cowards they are afraid that they are for not joining their more illiberal brethren.

It is the most important dynamic that drives Middle East terrorism, I believe. And it is the explanation for terrorism that is the most overlooked, I think: power. Terrorists want power. Such an explanation would have all of us looking at ourselves in the mirror, which might be why we are so late coming to it.

I've been a more conventional liberal in my life. I've never really rationalized radicalism, because I was quite aware and disgusted with all of the violence and ugliness and murder it wrought in the 1960's and 1970's in America (and long after; the 1992 L.A. riots were a symptom of similar sympathies for revolution and mayhem running under the surface of political life in Los Angeles, I think). But I've known the frustration of wanting a political end so badly - even one that may turn out to be a case of "be careful of what you wish for," since many of the ends in my more conventionally liberal days I am far from enamoured of today, knowing better the limitations of those ideas and liberalism and conservativism and any ideology).

So I know what it's like to rationalize just about anything in the name of being the right ideology with all of the right thinking on any particular issue. And I know what it's like to root for my guys at every point and to root against the other guys at ever point.

I just know from much experience and reflection and thought and engagement with others, today, that it's bullshit, largely because it avoids difficult, thoughtful, engaged discussion of important issues that might resolve problems with more integrity to all people involved. And I want nothing to do with that self-righteous bullshit except to encourage people to come down from their high horses and take some time to take an honest look at so much of the destruction that it has wrought today and over the centuries.

I want us to stop.

And little signs like David's column, today, give me heart that perhaps, one day, it will.

I wonder aloud, all the time, why I still choose to do work that has not really lined my pockets and created plenty of problems for me when I feel so unsure of how quickly people in liberal cultures, nevertheless people in illiberal cultures, will give up all this nonsense.

And the answer I always come back to is that if I had to choose a life where I was rich and famous and had all kind of luxury and celebrity-hob-knobbing available to me and a life where maybe I could contribute some thinking that might help end so much if not all of the needless violence and bloodshed and murder and even the needless incursions on peoples' freedoms, which I think offer all of us the best hope of being responsible for our lives, not because we will do so without making mistakes but because freedom is, in my study and experience, the much more likely route by which people will take responsibility for their lives, and, in doing so, open up visions and opportunities and dreams that can become realities for themselves that could make this world that much better for everyone, well then, I'd rather have a life where, perhaps, we could lessen and maybe remove altogether the sources of the most dangerous and bloody and illiberal rationalizations in the world.

I need financial and personal security in my life, as well, obviously. We all do, when we're not taking for granted what we have available to us.

But my strongest commitment is to a world where my children and my grandchildren will ask me, more, "Why did we all behave like that?" rather than "Why do people continue to behave like that?"

I'm tired of radicalism and the violence and bloodshed and illiberal impositions on the lives of good people that go with it getting truck in Western societies. I'm tired of terrorism and illiberal revolution having supporters that give it political oxygen. I'm tired of self-righteous politics, religion, even philosophy under the auspices of scholarship, dominating and being destructive of so much that is good and needs our appreciation and support rather than our ugly impositions in the liberal democratic world.

And freedom is the most important of these values, because it makes all of the rest of our values available to us, for real, and not just abstractions that we rationalize our basest instincts in the name of. Freedom and liberal values allow us to be more honest with one another, and, more importantly, more honest with ourselves, about who are and who we've been. And, out of that, to acknowledge our failures in our efforts to be better people. And our ability to acknowledge those failures is critical to working toward doing and being better.

Perhaps we will inch forward towards a world where that will be more possible.

Love,
Ben

Good luck

The Washington Post argues, today, that the next step in Iran, after what, to their credit, they acknowledge is the clear failure of the current strategy for the 3 years it has been tried, is, of course...to do more of the same.

Meanwhile, 2005 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Mohamed ElBaradei, says the obvious:

"For his part, the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, has begun arguing that the Security Council should simply concede that its three legally binding, unanimous resolutions ordering an end to Iranian enrichment have been "overtaken by events" and that it should give up the effort to enforce them."

And the post villifies ElBaradei as "an unelected international civil servant whose mission is to implement the decisions of the Security Council -- and who proposes to destroy the council's authority by having it simply drop binding resolutions."

You know, I have to have respect for any public servant who puts independent, empirical analysis above the partisan whims of either the liberal Washington Post, convinced of ElBaradei's suggestion that "any chance to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons through diplomacy would be lost" (apparently oblivious to the fact that their current suggestion means more of the same strategy that has all too clearly failed, for those, like ElBaradei and myself, who are not trying to defend the failure but just face it) or the conservative Bush Administration, who has tried to repeatedly remove ElBaradei from his post when he didn't give them the advice they wanted to hear on Iran, Iraq or wherever in the world they wanted to dominate events.

This is the same public servant who, a year before the International Atomic Energy Agency he represents won the Nobel Peace Prize, was treated thusly by President George Bush:

"The United States helped install ElBaradei in his job eight years ago, but his refusal in 2003 to confirm White House allegations that Iraq had rebuilt its nuclear weapons program lost ElBaradei the American support he had enjoyed.

When he began openly resisting U.S. calls to intensify pressure on Iran, Washington responded by trying to prevent him from taking a third term as agency director. But the effort, led by John R. Bolton, who was in charge of nuclear issues during President Bush's first term, was abandoned in June when no candidate emerged to challenge ElBaradei."

That's my kind of public servant. And was for the world. Except when his honesty challenged any ideology's sacred cows, that is.

This is all I have to say about this, anymore, for the Washington Post, the Bush Administration and every liberal and conservative who is having a hard time facing up to the failure of force to accomplish your ends.

When you're done failing and you want to face the failure more honestly and stop scapegoating Mohamed ElBaradei for the country's failure to face its aggressive, controlling, and otherwise illiberal ways, there are folks like ElBaradei and myself who might have one or two suggestions to get us moving in a better direction.

In the meantime, good luck. You're gonna need it.

Love,
Ben