Glenn Greenwald's Blog, page 105

U.S. not "standing idly by" in Bahrain

President Obama, March 19, 2011:

We cannot stand idly by when a tyrant tells his people there will be no mercy.

President Obama, September 20, 2011, to the U.N.:

The United States will continue to support those nations that transition to democracy -- with greater trade and investment, so that freedom is followed by opportunity. We will pursue a deeper engagement with governments, but also civil society -- students and entrepreneurs; political parties and the press. We have banned those who abuse human rights from travelling to our country, and sanctioned those who trample on human rights abroad. And we will always serve as a voice for those who have been silenced.

BBC, February 18, 2011:

Bahraini security forces have opened fire on anti-government protesters, witnesses and opposition activists say.

The protesters were fired on after they had gathered in the capital Manama from the funerals of demonstrators killed in a security crackdown earlier this week.

Witnesses said the army fired live rounds and tear gas, and officials said at least 120 people had been hurt.

Reuters, March 16, 2011:

At least five protesters have been killed and hundreds wounded in a crackdown by Bahraini forces on Wednesday, the head of the Shi'ite Muslim opposition bloc in parliament said.

"This is a war of annihilation. This does not happen even in wars and this is not acceptable," Abdel Jalil Khalil, a senior politician in Bahrain's largest Shi'ite party Wefaq, said.

The Guardian, May 11, 2011:

Bahrain's oil company has fired almost 300 employees for taking part in anti-government protests and general strikes in recent weeks, the Gulf kingdom's energy minister has said.

Abdulhussain bin Ali Mirza -- who also serves as the chief executive of the state-owned Bahrain Petroleum Company (BAPCO) -- said 293 employees have been dismissed since the King declared martial law on 15 March to quell weeks of demonstrations.

New York Times, August 5, 2011:

Bahrain, the tiny but strategically important Persian Gulf monarchy that has sought for months to suppress an Arab Spring-inspired uprising, is engaged in a heated dispute with one of the world's foremost medical relief organizations, which has stopped working there after accusing Bahraini security forces of raiding its premises last week.

The accusation by the organization, Doctors Without Borders, has been challenged by Bahrain's Health Ministry. But the sensitivities surrounding the dispute over the July 28 raid speak to what human rights activists call a particularly odious aspect of the Bahraini protests: the government's systematic effort to deny medical services to wounded protesters -- partly by jailing or intimidating the doctors, nurses and paramedics who have tried to treat them.

Many medical workers in Bahrain are often too frightened to help protesters, activists say, and the wounded themselves are often too frightened to seek help, fearing they will be arrested.

At the height of the protests, led by the kingdom's Shiite majority, seeking more rights from the Sunni monarchy, security forces commandeered the Salmaniya Medical Complex, Bahrain's largest public hospital. Dozens of doctors and nurses who treated protesters were arrested.

In a report last month, Human Rights Watch said the crackdown included "attacks on health care providers; denial of medical access to protesters injured by security forces; the siege of hospitals and health centers; and the detention, ill-treatment, torture and prosecution of medics and patients with protest-related injuries." It called the attacks "part of an official policy of retribution against Bahrainis who supported pro-democracy protests."

Human Rights Watch, yesterday:

Authorities then initiated a large-scale campaign of retribution in which more than 2,500 people were dismissed from their jobs, including teachers, medics, and other professionals. The special military court established under the decree has convicted more than 100 people, most of them for patently political offenses such as criticizing the ruling Al Khalifa family. Many of those detained have alleged that they were subjected to torture, and four people died in custody, apparently from torture and medical neglect. Leading political opposition figures have been sentenced to long prison terms, in some cases for life, solely for their role in organizing the large street protests; their trial record does not link them in any way to acts of violence or any other recognizable criminal offense. . . .

The government has prevented Human Rights Watch from visiting the country since mid-April, and tightly restricts access for journalists and other rights groups.

The Pentagon's Defense Security Cooperation Agency, September 14, 2011:

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In fairness, the U.S. is fulfilling President Obama's pledge that it will "not stand idly by" in the face of a tyrant's oppression of his own people, as the U.S. is actively feeding that regime new weapons; that, by definition, is not "standing idly by."  In his U.N. address, President Obama praised the regime ("steps have been taken toward reform and accountability") but then powerfully added: "more are required"; he also then equated the two sides: the government's security forces and democracy activists on whom they're firing and otherwise persecuting ("America is a close friend of Bahrain, and we will continue to call on the government and the main opposition bloc – the Wifaq – to pursue a meaningful dialogue").  I think it's important to remind everyone that the reason there is so much anti-Americanism in that part of the world is because they're primitive, ungrateful religious fanatics who Hate Our Freedom.

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Three related notes: 

(1) Joe Trippi, the former campaign manager for Howard Dean and now a Fox News Democrat, is on the payroll of the regime in Bahrain, doing P.R. work for them; Trippi told Salon's Justin Elliott that he "had no problem working for them" because "this is one of the progressive countries in the Middle Eastern Gulf"; Trippi -- who now also works for Massachusetts Democratic Senate candidate Bob Massie -- also touted the fact that on his Twitter avatar, he shaded his face with the color green to express solidarity with Iranian protesters, which is proof of how much he loves democracy;

(2) as the regime in Yemen continues to slaughter protesters, it's worth reviewing this recently released WikiLeaks cable from 2005 detailing the mighty impressive list of weaponry supplied by the U.S. to that regime; it's important to remember, though, that WikiLeaks and Bradley Manning are the real criminals and it would be better for us not to know;

(3) Newsweek's Eli Lake reports that in 2009, as President Obama was publicly pressuring Israel to stop settlement building, he "secretly authorized significant new aid to the Israeli military that includes the sale of 55 deep-penetrating bombs known as bunker busters," which could be "potentially useful in any future military strike against Iranian nuclear sites" and thus might "be seen [by Israel and/or Iran] as a green light for Israel to attack Iran's secret nuclear sites one day."  The Bush administration rebuffed Israel's requests for those weapons but ultimately indicated it might deliver them in 2009 or 2010, which is why Obama's authorization was necessary.

Dennis G. Jacobs: Case study in judicial pathology

The last decade has spawned a massive expansion of the domestic Surveillance State.  Worse, the U.S. Government has vested itself with the virtually unchallenged ability to operate this surveillance regime in full secrecy and even beyond the reach of judicial review, which is another way of saying: above and beyond the rule of law. 

Each time U.S. citizens in the post-9/11 era have accused government officials in federal court of violating the Constitution or otherwise acting illegally with how they spy on Americans, the Justice Department employs one of two secrecy weapons to convince courts they must not even rule on the legality of the domestic spying: (1) they insist the spying program is too secret to allow courts even to examine it (the Bush/Obama rendition of the "state secrets" privilege); and/or (2) because the spying is conducted in complete secrecy, nobody can say for certain that they have been subjected to it, and the DOJ thus argues that the particular individuals suing the Government -- and, for that matter, everyone else in the country -- lacks "standing" to challenge the legality of the spying (because nobody knows on whom we're spying, nobody has the right to sue us for breaking the law). 

A government that can spy on its own citizens without judicial review is a government which, by definition, operates outside of the rule of law; as Alexander Hamilton put it in Federalist 15:

It is essential to the idea of a law, that it be attended with a sanction; or, in other words, a penalty or punishment for disobedience. If there be no penalty annexed to disobedience, the resolutions or commands which pretend to be laws will, in fact, amount to nothing more than advice or recommendation.

These are the two secrecy doctrines which the Bush and Obama DOJ have repeatedly invoked to shield even the Bush NSA warrentless eavesdropping program from all forms of legal accountability, notwithstanding the fact that three separate federal judges ruled (ultimately without consequence due to reversals on secrecy grounds) that the program violated the Constitution and/or criminal laws such as FISA.  Most amazingly, the Obama DOJ has aggressively used these same secrecy doctrines to ensure that no courts ever review or adjudicate any government surveillance programs, including Bush's NSA warrantless program, even though then-Sen. Obama -- when opposing the 2005 nomination of NSA Chief Michael Hayden to become CIA Director -- accused Bush of breaking the law in spying on Americans without warrants and then said this on the Senate floor:

We don't expect the President to give the American people every detail about a classified surveillance program. But we do expect him to place such a program within the rule of law, and to allow members of the other two coequal branches of government - Congress and the Judiciary - to have the ability to monitor and oversee such a program. Our Constitution and our right to privacy as Americans require as much.

In 2008, the Democratic Congress enacted the FISA Amendments Act, which not only retroactively immunized telecoms from all liability for their role in Bush's illegal eavesdropping programs (thus terminating all pending lawsuits and ensuring no judicial adjudication of that program), but also, going forward, legalized much of Bush's previously illegal warrantless spying activities.  The FAA was the most drastic expansion of government eavesdropping powers in decades.  Numerous scholars documented how blatantly the new surveillance powers it vested violated the Fourth Amendment (the FAA was the bill which candidate Obama, when seeking the Democratic nomination, had unambiguously promised to filibuster, only to turn around, once he secured his Party's nomination, and vote against a filibuster and then in favor of the underlying bill). 

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When Congress enacts a law vesting new domestic spying powers in the NSA that very likely violate the Fourth Amendment, the only solution -- at least in theory, as the American system is designed -- is for citizens to sue the Government in federal court and argue that the new law is unconstitutional.  The Supreme Court unanimously explained back in 1803 in Marbury v. Madison (emphasis added):

It is emphatically the duty of the Judicial Department to say what the law is. . . .If courts are to regard the Constitution, and the Constitution is superior to any ordinary act of the legislature, the Constitution, and not such ordinary act, must govern the case to which they both apply. . . .

[W]here a specific duty is assigned by law, and individual rights depend upon the performance of that duty, it seems equally clear that the individual who considers himself injured has a right to resort to the laws of his country for a remedy.

That's as basic as it gets to the ostensible American design.  If citizens are not able to do that -- if they have no mechanism to deny the Government the power to transgress the limits imposed by the Constitution -- what is the point of even having a Constitution?

Immediately after Bush signed the FAA into law, numerous journalists, human rights activists, and groups such as Amnesty International -- represented by the ACLU -- adhered to this design by suing the U.S. government, claiming that the FAA was unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment.  They argued that although the secrecy behind which the program was conducted prevented them from proving that they were subjected to it, their well-founded fear that they would be (and the steps they were forced to take in response) was enough harm to confer "standing" on them and allow them to challenge the law's constitutionality.

In response, the Bush DOJ raised its standard secrecy claims and convinced a lower court judge to dismiss the suit based on "standing."  When the ACLU appealed this ruling to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York, the Obama DOJ raised the same arguments to demand dismissal.  But in March, a unanimous three-judge appellate panel rejected the Bush/Obama argument and reinstated the ACLU's lawsuit, holding that the plaintiffs' credible fear of being subjected to the FAA's eavesdropping power entitled them to proceed with their claims that the new law was unconstitutional.  The Obama DOJ then sought a review of that decision by the entire Circuit, insisting that plaintiffs should be barred from contesting the constitutionality of the FAA.

Yesterday, the full Second Circuit panel issued its ruling on the Obama DOJ's request.  Six of the judges voted against a full review of the decision by the three-judge panel, while six voted in favor of reviewing it.  Because a majority is needed for a full-circuit review, the 6-6 tie means that there will no further review, and the March decision of the three-judge panel -- allowing the lawsuit challenging the FAA's constitutionality to proceed -- will stand.  This significant victory for the rule of law may well be temporary, as the unusual 6-6 vote (and the numerous contentious opinions accompanying the vote) makes it likely (though by no means guaranteed) that the Supreme Court will accept this standing dispute for resolution.  But at least for now, this is a good and important development.

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The bulk of the opinions issued by the Second Circuit judges were devoted to fairly standard arguments over the requirements of "standing."  Here, for instance, was the crux of the argument for recognizing plaintiffs' standing, as expressed by Judge Gerard Lynch after he reviewed the Goverment's substantive arguments for why the FAA was constitutional:

The dissenting judges argued that mere fear of being subjected to this spying was insufficient to allow plaintiffs to sue; instead, they must prove they have been or will be spied upon (that nobody can prove this, due to the secrecy in which the program is shrouded, is a Kafkaesque Catch-22 of no apparent concern to these jurists).

But by far the most remarkable aspect of this ruling was the dissenting opinion issued by Dennis G. Jacobs, the Chief Judge of the Second Circuit.  Notably, no other judges joined the Chief Judge's opinion, and it's not difficult to see why.  Jacobs' opinion is one of the most intemperate, childish, nakedly ideological, and just plain obnoxious judicial outbursts you will ever encounter in writing.  But it highlights some important facts about the federal judiciary that make it worth examining.

After accusing the plaintiffs of harboring anti-Americanism for daring to enforce the mandates of the United States Constitution against precisely the activities most feared by the American Founders: unchecked domestic government spying (Jacobs announced his discovery that the plaintiffs' argument rests on a "buried assumption that the United States is the only threat to liberty that anyone anywhere needs to worry about"), he turned his scornful ire to the ACLU for the crime of representing these plaintiffs -- for free -- in a lawsuit to enforce the privacy rights of all American citizens.  Unprovoked, Jacobs posed the question of what could possibly motivate the ACLU and its clients to bring this lawsuit -- apparently, an actual belief that the law is unconstitutional and dangerous could not possibly be the real motive -- and this is the answer he supplied:

At the risk of being obvious, the purpose of this lawsuit is litigation for its own sake -- for these lawyers to claim a role in policy-making for which they were not appointed or elected, for which they are not fitted by experience, and for which they are not accountable. As best I can see, the only purpose of this litigation is for counsel and plaintiffs to act out their fantasy of persecution, to validate their pretensions to policy expertise, to make themselves consequential rather than marginal, and to raise funds for self-sustaining litigation.

Apparently, only "fantasies of persecution" -- as opposed to the most basic knowledge of history -- can lead someone to believe that spying powers conducted in secret will be abused.  He then added that this Constitutional challenge to the Government's secret spying powers "bears similarity to a pro se plaintiff's allegation that the CIA is controlling him through a radio embedded in his molar."  Not content with maligning their motives and patriotism, he then all but accused the ACLU and its clients of lying in order to sustain the lawsuit ("these affidavits employ all the lawyer's arts to convey a devious impression . . . affidavits that are craftily worded to skirt actual falsehood").

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Let's spend a moment comparing Dennis G. Jacobs to the ACLU lawyers whose alleged motives he just smeared based on his armchair assessments of their psychology (all while ironically criticizing them for "pretenses" to "expertise" for "which they are not fitted by experience").  This comparison not only demonstrates how deceitful and malicious is his attack, but it also speaks volumes about the corrupted role the federal judiciary is playing in our system of government.

Virtually every ACLU lawyer is very smart and well-educated; for instance, the lead ACLU lawyer in this case, Jameel Jaffer, is a graduate of Cambridge University and Harvard Law School, where he served as an editor of its law review.  Every one of these lawyers could therefore easily have joined (and could still join) the nation's most lucrative Wall Street law firms, or enter government and serve in various functionary capacities -- presumably what they would do if actually motivated by a need for self-importance, policy influence or financial gain, as Jacobs accuses. 

Instead, they labor very long hours in exchange for a salary that is a small fraction of what they could earn at any moment they choose.  They work for a non-profit organization that is systematically excluded from the halls of Washington power, often representing the most marginalized, powerless, and scorned segments of society (which, by definition, are most vulnerable to rights abridgments).  They do so knowing that they will be continuously smeared and maligned in the most vicious, McCarthyite and public ways by the Dennis Jacobses -- or the Lee Atwaters and Weekly Standards -- of the world.  Nobody with their background and opportunities would do that for any reason other than genuine convictions about basic Constitutional liberties and a passionate commitment to defending them, thus fulfilling what Thomas Paine, in his 1790 Dissertations on First Principles in Government, described as the prime duty for preserving freedom for everyone (a passage Dennis Jacobs, if he would ever read it, would likely castigate as "fantasies of persecution"):

An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.

All of that stands in very stark contrast to Dennis G. Jacobs.  Immediately after graduating law school, he went to work for a large Wall Street law firm -- Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett -- and stayed there for the next 19 years, until George Bush 41 appointed him to a life-tenured federal judgeship.  How noble.  So the entirety of Jacobs' law career before becoming a judge was devoted to snorting up as much cash as he could as he represented large corporations and banks.  That's the person who just anointed himself the arbiter and smearer of the integrity, psychology and motives of ACLU lawyers and their human-rights-activists clients for daring to challenge a government spying law on Fourth Amendment grounds.

But far more notable is that Jacobs has remained every bit as loyal -- indeed, more so -- to these large corporate institutions as a federal judge.  He has developed a bizarre contempt for pro bono legal work: i.e., lawyers who work for free on behalf of poor and otherwise marginalized clients against the types of clients Jacobs enriched himself representing, in order to provide some minimal degree of fairness and balance in the justice system.  In 2008, Jacobs delivered a speech to the right-wing Federalist Society mocking and scorning pro bono work -- he entitled the speech "Pro Bono for Fun and Profit" -- and began by depicting himself as some sort of courageous, politically incorrect martyr for bravely attacking pro bono lawyers in front of this right-wing audience:

When lawyers gather and judges speak, you can count on hearing something on the subject of pro bono service. It is always praise of all that is done, with encouragement to do more.  This evening I am going to articulate a view that you may not have heard: I will touch on some of the anti-social effects of some pro bono activity.

He then devoted his entire speech to attacking lawyers who challenge government acts as unconstitutional and those who bring civil rights cases on behalf of large numbers of discriminated-against citizens.  Most of the rhetoric he spat yesterday at the ACLU, Amnesty and others in his "judicial opinion" was just pre-packaged politicized tripe that he delivered years ago to the Federalist Society.  He's on a one-man ideological crusade to convince the nation of the evils of pro bono work and, especially, effective challenges to government and corporate power.

In 2010, Jacobs again appeared before the Federalist Society's annual conference and delivered the "Barbara K. Olsen Memorial Lecture," named after the Fox News legal scholar who spent the 1990s churning out every tawdry allegation against Bill and Hillary Clinton before she died in the 9/11 attack.  Ironically, Jacobs delivered a 2006 speech -- entitled "The Secret Life of Judges" -- in which he purported to reveal a pervasive "bias" among the judiciary: reliance on law and legal procedure in lieu of policy judgments. 

Of course, Jacobs is the living, breathing embodiment of judicial bias: a devoted servant to corporate and government power, a right-wing hack who barely attempts to hide his political loyalties, and -- most of all -- a declared enemy of the very few mechanisms that exist to enable the poor and marginalized to receive competent legal representation and for political power to be subject to some minimal checks (what we call "the Constitution").  It should be anything but surprising that a corporate-serving, political-power-revering, highly politicized figure like this produces judicial opinions that are slightly more restrained versions of a Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly rant.  He churns out right-wing agitprop masquerading as legal reasoning.

But the reason he's worth examining is because he's anything but aberrational.  He's the Chief Judge of the second- or third-most important court in the country.  He works in a judicial system that more and more does the opposite of what it was ostensibly designed to do: it is now devoted to shielding political officials from legal accountability and transparency rather than exposing them to it, enabling rather than halting transgressions of the Constitutional limits imposed on them, and most of all, further empowering the most powerful factions against the least powerful rather than equalizing the playing field.  In that regard, the life of Dennis G. Jacobs -- and his slanderous, contemptuous outburst of yesterday -- should be studied as a perfect embodiment of how the American judicial branch has become so corrupted as a tool for the nation's most powerful factions.

Jose Padilla and how American justice functions

(updated below - Update II)

The story of Jose Padilla, continuing through the events of yesterday, expresses so much of the true nature of the War on Terror and especially America's justice system.  In 2002, the American citizen was arrested at Chicago's O'Hare Airport, publicly labeled by John Ashcroft as The Dirty Bomber, and then imprisoned for the next three years on U.S. soil as an "enemy combatant" without charges of any kind, and denied all contact with the outside world, including even a lawyer.  During his lawless incarceration, he was kept not just in extreme solitary confinement but extreme sensory deprivation as well, and was abused and tortured to the point of severe and probably permanent mental incapacity (Bush lawyers told a court that they were unable to produce videos of Padilla's interrogations because those videos were mysteriously and tragically "lost").

Needless to say, none of the government officials responsible for this abuse of a U.S. citizen on American soil has been held accountable in any way.  That's because President Obama decreed that Bush officials shall not be criminally investigated for War on Terror crimes, while his Justice Department vigorously defended John Yoo, Donald Rumsfeld and other responsible functionaries in civil suits brought by Padilla seeking damages for what was done to him. 

As usual, the Obama DOJ cited national security imperatives and sweeping theories of presidential power to demand that Executive Branch officials be fully shielded from judicial scrutiny (i.e., shielded from the rule of law) for their illegal acts (the Obama DOJ: "Here, where Padilla's damage claims directly relate, inter alia, to the President's war powers, including whether and when a person captured in this country during an armed conflict can be held in military detention under the laws of war, it would be particularly inappropriate for this Court to unnecessarily reach the merits of the constitutional claims" (emphasis added)).  With one rare exception, federal courts, as usual, meekly complied.  Thus, a full-scale shield of immunity has been constructed around the high-level government officials who put Padilla in a hermetically sealed cage with no charges and then abused and tortured him for years.

The treatment Padilla has received in the justice system is, needless to say, the polar opposite of that enjoyed by these political elites.  Literally days before it was required to justify to the U.S. Supreme Court how it could imprison an American citizen for years without charges or access to a lawyer, the Bush administration suddenly indicted Padilla -- on charges unrelated to, and far less serious than, the accusation that he was A Dirty Bomber -- and then successfully convinced the Supreme Court to refuse to decide the legality of Padilla's imprisonment on the grounds of "mootness"  (he's no longer being held without charges so there's nothing to decide). 

At Padilla's trial, the judge excluded all evidence of the abuse to which he was subjected and even admitted statements he made while in custody before he was Mirandized.  Unsurprisingly, Padilla was convicted on charges of "supporting Islamic terrorism overseas" -- but not any actual Terrorist plots ("The government's chief evidence was an application form that government prosecutors said Mr. Padilla, 36, filled out to attend an Al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan in 2000") -- and then sentenced to 17 years in prison, all above and beyond the five years he was imprisoned with no due process.

Not content with what was done to Padilla, the Bush DOJ -- and then the Obama DOJ -- contested the sentence on appeal, insisting that it was too lenient; Padilla also appealed, arguing that the trial court made numerous errors in excluding his evidence while allowing the Government's.  Yesterday, a federal appeals panel of the 11th Circuit issued a ruling, by a 2-1 vote, rejecting each and every one of Padilla's arguments.  It then took the very unusual step of  vacating the 17-year-sentence imposed by the trial court as too lenient and, in effect, ordered the trial judge to impose a substantially harsher prison term:

Padilla's sentence is substantively unreasonable because it does not adequately reflect his criminal history, does not adequately account for his risk of recidivism, was based partly on an impermissible comparison to sentences imposed in other terrorism cases, and was based in part on inappropriate factors . . . .

As the dissenting judge explained, this decision is extraordinary because trial judges -- not judges sitting afterward on appeal -- are the ones who hear all the evidence and thus have very wide discretion to determine the appropriate sentence.  But more so, in this case, a sentence less than the full maximum was warranted because "the trial judge correctly concluded that a sentence reduction is available to offenders who have been subjected to extraordinarily harsh conditions of pre-trial confinement."  About that point, the dissenting judge documented:

Padilla presented substantial, detailed, and compelling evidence about the inhumane, cruel, and physically, emotionally, and mentally painful conditions in which he had already been detained for a period of almost four years. For example, he presented evidence at sentencing of being kept in extreme isolation at he military brig in South Carolina where he was subjected to cruel interrogations, prolonged physical and mental pain, extreme environmental stresses, noise and temperature variations, and deprivation of sensory stimuli and sleep.

In sentencing Padilla, the trial judge accepted the facts of his confinement that had been presented both during the trial and at sentencing, which also included evidence about the impact on one's mental health of prolonged isolation and solitary confinement, all of which were properly taken into account in deciding how much more confinement should be imposed. None of these factual findings, nor the trial judge's consideration of them in fashioning Padilla's sentence, are challenged on appeal by the government or the majority.

Thus: American officials who are responsible for this "inhumane" and "cruel" abuse of detainees act with full impunity, as usual.  Those who are its victims are not merely denied all redress (though they are), and do not merely have the courthouse doors slammed in their faces in the name of secrecy, national security and presidential power (though they do), but they are also mercilessly punished to the fullest extent possible.

It should be said that part of what happened here is just the typical politicization of the judiciary, as the two-judge majority was comprised of a hard-core right-wing Reagan/Bush 41 appointee from Alabama (Joel Dubina), while the other was one of Bush 43's most controversial appointees, the former Alabama Attorney General who was filibustered by the Democrats and allowed onto the bench only by virtue of the "Gang of 14" compromise (William Pryor).  Meanwhile, the dissenting judge was born in Mexico to Syrian parents and, after moving to Miami at the age of 6, became the first female judge (as well as the first Hispanic and Arab American judge) on the Florida Supreme Court (rising to Chief Justice), and was a Clinton appointee to the federal appeals court (Rosemary Barkett); Barkett, incidentally, dissented from an 11th Circuit ruling denying a habeas petition to Troy Davis, the African-American death row inmate scheduled to be executed by the State of Georgia this week despite mountains of evidence showing his innocence.  So this episode highlights one of the few genuine differences that remain between the two parties that can truly impact people's lives: their judicial appointments. 

But the overriding theme is what we have seen time and again, that which -- as it turns out -- is the subject of my book to be released next month: America is plagued by a two-tiered justice system in which political and financial elites enjoy virtually absolute immunity for even the most egregious of crimes, while ordinary Americans (and especially fully stigmatized ones like Padilla) are subject with few defenses to the world's largest and one of its most merciless systems of punishment.  Thus do Jose Padilla's lawless jailers and torturers walk free and prosper, while no punishment is sufficiently harsh for him. 

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Almost immediately after I published this, it was announced that Troy Davis' last chance for clemency has been denied, virtually assuring that a likely innocent man will be killed by the State of Georgia tomorrow.  Obviously, everything I just wrote applies in abundance to that event.

 

UPDATE:  As usual, America's propaganda-spreading, government-serving establishment media spouts blatant falsehoods to justify all this; from ABC News:

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From CNN:

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Padilla was never even charged with, let alone convicted of, having anything to do with a "dirty bomb."  "Dirty Bomber" was the villain nickname given to him by Bush officials and mindlessy repeated by its media to justify the treatment to which he was subjected.  The U.S. Government gave up long ago using this accusation to demonize him (NYT on his conviction: "The dirty bomb accusations were not mentioned during Mr. Padilla's three-month trial here"), but their lying "watchdog media" servants continue unabated.  Who would possibly object to a longer prison term for A Dirty Bomber who tried to detonate radioactive weapons in American cities?  The fact that not even the Government charged with him that is no deterrent to its media continuing to claim he did.

 

UPDATE II:  Padilla was consigned to the SuperMax prison in Florence, Colorado to serve his 17-year sentence.  The New York Bar Association last week issued a comprehensive study of America's SuperMax system and concluded:

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But 17 years in a torture system like that -- on top of the 5 years of abuse he endured -- is insufficient: "too lenient."

U.S. to build new massive prison in Bagram

As the Obama administration announced plans for hundreds of billions of dollars more in domestic budget cuts, it late last week solicited bids for the construction of a massive new prison in Bagram, Afghanistan.  Posted on the aptly named FedBizOps.Gov website which it uses to announce new privatized spending projects, the administration unveiled plans for "the construction of Detention Facility in Parwan (DFIP), Bagram, Afghanistan" which includes "detainee housing capability for approximately 2000 detainees."  It will also feature "guard towers, administrative facility and Vehicle/Personnel Access Control Gates, security surveillance and restricted access systems."  The announcement provided: "the estimated cost of the project is between $25,000,000 to $100,000,000."

In the U.S., prisons are so wildly overcrowded that courts are ordering them to release inmates en masse because conditions are so inhumane as to be unconstitutional (today, the FBI documented that a drug arrest occurs in the U.S. once every 19 seconds, but as everyone knows, only insane extremists and frivolous potheads advocate an end to that war).  In the U.S., budgetary constraints are so severe that entire grades are being eliminated, the use of street lights restricted, and the most basic services abolished for the nation's neediest.  But the U.S. proposes to spend up to $100 million on a sprawling new prison in Afghanistan.

Budgetary madness to the side, this is going to be yet another addition to what Human Rights First recently documented is the oppressive, due-process-free prison regime the U.S. continues to maintain around the world:

Ten years after the September 11 attacks, few Americans realize that the United States is still imprisoning more than 2800 men outside the United States without charge or trial. Sprawling U.S. military prisons have become part of the post-9/11 landscape, and the concept of "indefinite detention" -- previously foreign to our system of government -- has meant that such prisons, and their captives, could remain a legacy of the 9/11 attacks and the "war on terror" for the indefinite future. . . . .

The secrecy surrounding the U.S. prison in Afghanistan makes it impossible for the public to judge whether those imprisoned there deserve to be there. What's more, because much of the military's evidence against them is classified, the detainees themselves have no right to see it. So although detainees at Bagram are now entitled to hearings at the prison every six months, they're often not allowed to confront the evidence against them. As a result, they have no real opportunity to contest it.

In one of the first moves signalling just how closely the Obama administration intended to track its predecessor in these areas, it won the right to hold Bagram prisoners without any habeas corpus rights, successfully arguing that the Supreme Court's Boumediene decision -- which candidate Obama cheered because it guaranteed habeas rights to Guantanamo detainees -- was inapplicable to Bagram.  Numerous groups doing field work in Afghanistan have documented that the maintenance of these prisons is a leading recruitment tool for the Taliban and a prime source of anti-American hatred.  Despite that fact -- or, more accurately (as usual), because of it -- the U.S. is now going to build a brand new, enormous prison there.

One last point: recall how many people insisted that the killing of Osama bin Laden would lead to a drawdown in the War on Terror generally and the war in Afghanistan specifically.  Since then -- in just four months since bin Laden's corpse was dumped into the ocean -- the U.S. has done the following:  renewed the Patriot Act for four years with no reforms; significantly escalated drone attacks in Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan; tried to assassinate U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki with no due process; indicted a 24-year-old Muslim for "material support for Terrorism" for uploading an anti-American YouTube clip after he talked to the son of a Terrorist leader; pressured Iraq to keep U.S. troops in that country; argued that it has the virtually unlimited right to kill anyone it wants anywhere in the world; and now finalized plans to build a sprawling new prison in Afghanistan.  If that's winding things down, I sure would hate to see what a redoubling of the American commitment to Endless War looks like.

The Geithner mystery solved

(updated below - Update II)

Reviewing "Confidence Men" -- Ron Suskind's new book critically examining President Obama's management of the financial crisis -- The New York Times' Michiko Kakutani ponders this mystery raised by Suskind:

[] Mr. Suskind suggests that the administration's problems in dealing with the fiscal crisis began with the president's choice of his economic team. He wonders why Mr. Obama turned away from the advisers who had seen him through the campaign (including more progressive thinkers like Mr. Stiglitz, Robert Reich and Austan Goolsbee), and relied instead on two men associated with the deregulatory policies of the past, Mr. Geithner, the Treasury secretary, and Mr. Summers, the chief economic adviser. Both men had served in the Clinton administration (with Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin, who would later join Citigroup as a senior adviser and board member); their actions, Mr. Suskind contends, "had contributed to the very financial disaster they were hired to solve."

Of course, one might ask the same of Obama's penchant for filling the most important positions in his administration -- including his Vice President, Secretary of State, and Defense Secretary -- with supporters of the Iraq War.  But about Geithner, Suskind unwittingly solved the mystery he raised: Kakutani notes that "one top banker quoted in these pages refers to [Geithner] as 'our man in Washington' for helping avert more systemic changes affecting Wall Street."

Geithner wasn't chosen and hasn't remained despite being "associated with the deregulatory policies of the past" and despite being the bankers' "man in Washington."  He is empowered precisely because of those facts, as was pointed out even before Obama's inauguration.  That Geithner and Summers were empowered after enabling the financial crisis through Wall Street subservience isn't a mystery; it's the explanation. (And just by the way, replacing the word "despite" with the phrase "because of" is -- in general -- one of the most valuable tools for translating Washington propaganda into reality; here is an excellent example showing how that works, from the first paragraph of a New York Times article two weeks ago:

Documents found at the abandoned office of Libya's former spymaster appear to provide new details of the close relations the Central Intelligence Agency shared with the Libyan intelligence service -- most notably suggesting that the Americans sent terrorism suspects at least eight times for questioning in Libya despite that country's reputation for torture.

Note how the paragraph instantly transforms from misleading nonsense into obvious truth simply by changing "despite" to "because of"; this repeatedly is an effective instrument for deciphering propaganda -- e.g., the U.S. continues to brutalize people in the Muslim world "despite" the fact that doing so produces more Terrorism and thus ensures Endless War.)

Perhaps most notable about the Suskind chapter on which Kakutani focuses is the process by which Obama featured progressive economists during the campaign, only to immediately subordinate them to Wall-Street-subservient officials once in power.  Feigning progressive leanings for political gain is Obama's modus operandi; as Matt Taibbi recently put it in explaining why he no longer listens to Obama's speeches:

I remember following Obama on the campaign trail and hearing all sorts of promises before union-heavy crowds. He said he would raise the minimum wage every year; he said he would fight free-trade agreements. He also talked about repealing the Bush tax cuts and ending tax breaks for companies that move jobs overseas.

It's not just that he hasn't done those things. The more important thing is that the people he's surrounded himself with are not labor people, but stooges from Wall Street. Barack Obama has as his chief of staff a former top-ranking executive from one of the most grossly corrupt mega-companies on earth, JP Morgan Chase. He sees Bill Daley in his own office every day, yet when it comes time to talk abut labor issues, he has to go out and make selected visits twice a year or whatever to the Richard Trumkas of the world.

Listening to Obama talk about jobs and shared prosperity yesterday reminded me that we are back in campaign mode and Barack Obama has started doing again what he does best -- play the part of a progressive. He's good at it. It sounds like he has a natural affinity for union workers and ordinary people when he makes these speeches. But his policies are crafted by representatives of corporate/financial America, who happen to entirely make up his inner circle.

That's why -- after 2 1/2 years -- we suddenly see an outburst of "fighting for jobs" and, now, a call to raise taxes on the rich.  He does that precisely because everyone -- especially the rich -- knows it will not and cannot happen.  We're now formally in (re-)election season, so it's time again to haul out the progressive music.  Some Democrats are honest and cynical enough to acknowledge that Obama is doing all these things purely for political gain and -- because his re-election is their top priority -- to celebrate it even while acknowledging it will never become reality (see here and here as examples).  From that perspective, I suppose having him give speeches where he advocates for jobs and taxes on the rich is preferable to his endorsing austerity and Reaganomics as he had been doing for months  But whatever else is true, none of this presages an actual change in how the government functions or, especially, on whose behalf it labors.  That's precisely why he feels free to advocate such things without alienating his funding base.  It's still the government of Tim Geithner and his bosses/owners; election season (combined with rising elite fear of social unrest) just requires a bit more pretense to obscure that fact.

 

UPDATE:  In November 2008, when progressive economists and opinionists were warning that Geithner and Summers were far too subservient to Wall Street, the prescient geniuses at The New Republic produced this (more text here):

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That writers at the pro-war, Lieberman-revering, party-apparatchik TNR have again become the leading lights of progressive punditry -- watch how often Obama-supporting Beltway pundits cite and echo them -- speaks volumes about where establishment progressive opinion is in the Age of Obama.

UPDATE II: VastLeft expresses some of this in cartoon form:

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As indicated, I at least appreciate the candor of those (such as the above-linked commentators) who acknowledge that this will not become reality and is not even designed to, but celebrate it because it will help Obama get re-elected by making the GOP (rather than him) look like the servants of Wall Street.  It's the ones pretending that this eleventh-hour election-time awakening is reflective of some sort of substantive significance that are hard to bear.

 

The mainstreaming of Walt and Mearsheimer

There were numerous reasons that Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer were accused in prominent venues of all sorts of crimes -- including anti-Semitism -- when they published The Israel Lobby, but the most common cause was the book's central theme: that there is a very powerful lobby in the U.S. which is principally devoted to Israel and causes U.S. political leaders to act to advance the interests of this foreign nation over their own.  In The New York Times today, Tom Friedman -- long one of Israel's most stalwart American supporters -- wrote the following as the second paragraph of his column, warning that the U.S. was about to incur massive damage in order to block Palestinian statehood:

This has also left the U.S. government fed up with Israel's leadership but a hostage to its ineptitude, because the powerful pro-Israel lobby in an election season can force the administration to defend Israel at the U.N., even when it knows Israel is pursuing policies not in its own interest or America's.

Isn't that exactly Walt and Mearseimer's main theme, what caused them to be tarred and feathered with the most noxious accusations possible?  Indeed it is; here's how the academic duo, in The Israel Lobby, described the crux of their argument as first set forth in an article on which the book was based:

After describing the remarkable level of material and diplomatic support that the United States provides to Israel, we argued that his support could not be fully explained on either strategic or moral grounds  Instead, it was due largely to the political power of the Israel lobby, a loose coalition of individuals and groups that seeks to influence American foreign policy in ways that will benefit Israel . . . We suggested that these policies were not in the U.S. national interest and were in fact harmful to Israel's long-term interests as well.

Is that not exactly the point which The New York Times' most "pro-Israel" columnist himself just voiced today?  This thesis has long been self-evidently true.  Indeed, many of the same Israel-loyal neoconservatives who accused Walt and Mearsheimer of promoting an anti-Semitic trope of "dual loyalty" -- by daring to suggest that some American Jews cast votes based on what's best for Israel rather than the U.S. -- themselves will explicitly urge American Jews to vote Republican instead of Democrat because of the former's supposedly greater support for Israel (you're allowed to argue that American Jews should make political choices based on Israel but you're not allowed to point out that some do so).  Ed Koch just ran around the 9th Congressional District in New York successfully urging American Jews to vote for the GOP candidate based on exactly that appeal ("Koch, a Democrat, endorsed [the GOP candidate] in July as a way to 'send a message' to Obama on his policies toward Israel").  And in The Wall Street Journal this week, Rick Perry excoriated President Obama because of the small handful of instances where Obama deviated ever-so-slightly from the dictates and wishes of the Israeli government.

Walt and Mearshiemer merely voiced a truth which has long been known and obvious but was not allowed to be spoken.  That's precisely why the demonization campaign against them was so vicious and concerted: those who voice prohibited truths are always more hated than those who spout obvious lies.  That the foreign affairs columnist most admired in Washington circles just expressed the same point demonstrates that recognition of this previously prohibited fact has now become mainstream.  

Unfortunately, though, it is still a fact.  While there is little doubt that blocking Palestinian statehood will damage the U.S. in substantial ways, there is a reasonable debate to be had about whether Palestinian statehood is actually beneficial to the Palestinians.  But American politicians won't be entertaining that debate as they exercise their veto because, as The Israel Lobby documented and Tom Friedman today put it, "the powerful pro-Israel lobby . . . can force the administration to defend Israel at the U.N., even when it knows Israel is pursuing policies not in its own interest or America's."  Obama officials recognize how vital it is to improve how the U.S. is perceived in the Muslim world and go to great lengths to achieve that goal -- including, supposedly, just fighting a war in Libya in part to accomplish that -- yet (predictably egged on by Democratic Congressional leaders) are prepared/required to throw all of that away because of the imperative of honoring the Netanyahu government's obsession with denying Palestinian statehood.

Major discovery: a purpose of the war in Afghanistan

The Washington Post today describes the failure of regimented programs in Afghanistan to reintegrate Taliban teenagers ("Taliban" (alt.: "Terrorist") means "any Afghan who fights against the presence of foreign military forces in their country" and "reintegrate" means "persuading or compelling them to passively acquiesce to those forces"):

The teenage insurgents spend their days learning to make shoes and bookshelves, listening to religious leaders denounce the radical interpretation of Islam they learned as children.

But when they return to their cells at Kabul's juvenile rehabilitation center, the boys with wispy beards and cracking voices talk only of the holy war from which they were plucked and their plans to resume fighting for the Taliban.

As the Taliban presses its efforts to recruit teenage fighters, Afghan officials and their international backers have crafted a program to reintegrate the country's youngest insurgents into mainstream society. But that ambition is coming up against the intransigence of the teens, who say they would rather be on the battlefield.

"We'll fight against America for a thousand years if we have to," said Ali Ahmad, 17, sitting at a desk that has hearts and Koran verses scratched in the wood . . .

"They bring us here to change us," said Nane Asha, in his late teens. "But this is our way. We cannot be changed." . . .

The Taliban visited Asha's school when he was about 13, preaching the evils of American interlopers and the value of violent jihad. Asha approached the speaker after the sermon ended. "How can I join you?" he asked. . . .

Within a few weeks, Asha was enrolled in a six-month training course, learning how to fire a Kalashnikov and to connect a nest of wires and explosives that could take out a U.S. tank. He studied the material obsessively. . . .

Reintegration is at the heart of U.S. and Afghan government strategies to wind down the war, with schooling and employment being offered to coax fighters away from the insurgency. 

To summarize: our invasion and occupation is what enables the Taliban to recruit massive numbers of Afghan teenagers into their cause.  And now, we have to stay until we either kill all the people who hate us and want us gone from their country or propagandize deradicalize them into meekly accepting our presence.  Once there are no more Afghans left who want us gone, then we can leave.  For those of you who have been cynically claiming that this war has no discernible purpose other than the generalized benefits of Endless War for political officials and the Security State industry, now you know.

(Of course, the goal of ridding Afghanistan of all those who want to fight us will never happen precisely because the American military presence in their country produces an endless supply of American-hating fighters -- just as the Soviet military presence there once did, and just as the general War on Terror [and its various bombings, detentions, occupations, assassinations and the like] ensures that Terrorism never ends by producing an endless supply of American-hating Terrorists -- but that's just a detail.  All wars have challenges.  At least we can now see the very important purpose of the war in Afghanistan: we stay until there's nobody left who hates us and wants us gone, then we triumphantly depart.)

The perils of partisan punditry in the Obama age

Democratic strategist and CNN pundit James Carville has written an article declaring Obama's political and policy approaches to be abject failures and advising several steps to correct course, such as: fire large numbers of his advisers, "make a case like a Democrat," and "Panic."  At the end of his list of serious grievances against the White House, he includes this paragraph to make clear that he's still a Good Democrat and is offering the advice only because he wants to help the President win re-election:

As I watch the Republican debates, I realize that we are on the brink of a crazy person running our nation. I sit in front of the television and shudder at the thought of one of these creationism-loving, global-warming-denying, immigration-bashing, Social-Security-cutting, clean-air-hating, mortality-fascinated, Wall-Street-protecting Republicans running my country.

Those first three adjectival accusations against the Republicans -- "creationism-loving, global-warming-denying, immigration-bashing" -- are fair enough, but let's look at the last four:

"Social-Security-cutting":

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"Clean-air-hating":

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"Mortality-fascinated":

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Wall-Street-protecting:

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Indeed, the second item on Carville's own list of advice was "Indict," as he complained that the DOJ has not investigated the Wall Street criminals responsible for the 2008 collapse.  So, just as Carville laments, it sure would be horrible if we had a "Social-Security-cutting, clean-air-hating, mortality-fascinated, Wall-Street-protecting Republican running my country."

What Carville's confused, contradictory screed highlights is the difficulty of trying to understand American political conflicts through an exclusively partisan prism of Democrats v. Republicans.  Some issues are properly assessed via that dichotomy, but many -- a growing number -- are not.  Nonetheless, confining oneself to Democrat v. Republican bickering is the admission price to establishment media access -- that is the only prism they understand or permit -- and most pundits thus happily cling to it; indeed, partisan pundits take the lead role in enforcing this orthodoxy and trying to marginalize anyone who deviates from it or resides outside of it.  Political issues insusceptible to this two-team mindset are deemed fringe and rendered invisible.  The result (by design) of this narrow, stultifying framework is that many -- perhaps most -- of the most consequential political developments are ignored.

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Just as a few recent, illustrative examples of how the strictly partisan prism distorts rather than clarifies political realities, consider: 

(1) this Washington Post Editorial lambasting the GOP presidential candidates for being insufficiently pro-war (less pro-war than the Obama administration);

(2) this New York Times article on how the bulk of Sarah Palin's political message is hostile to GOP orthodoxy and the GOP itself, and even likely to appeal to liberals: 

She made three interlocking points. First, that the United States is now governed by a "permanent political class," drawn from both parties, that is increasingly cut off from the concerns of regular people. Second, that these Republicans and Democrats have allied with big business to mutual advantage to create what she called "corporate crony capitalism." Third, that the real political divide in the United States may no longer be between friends and foes of Big Government, but between friends and foes of vast, remote, unaccountable institutions (both public and private). . . .

Her second point, about money in politics, helped to explain the first. The permanent class stays in power because it positions itself between two deep troughs: the money spent by the government and the money spent by big companies to secure decisions from government that help them make more money.

Ms. Palin's third point was more striking still: in contrast to the sweeping paeans to capitalism and the free market delivered by the Republican presidential candidates whose ranks she has yet to join, she sought to make a distinction between good capitalists and bad ones. The good ones, in her telling, are those small businesses that take risks and sink and swim in the churning market; the bad ones are well-connected megacorporations that live off bailouts, dodge taxes and profit terrifically while creating no jobs.

Are there any prominent Democrats Party officials voicing that critique? 

(3) this new report on the thousands -- literally -- of ex-Hill staffers who now work as lobbyists, and the hundreds of lobbyists who now work as Hill staffers; the lobbying firm with the greatest number of ex-Hill staffers is the Obama-connected Podesta Group, co-founded by former Clinton White House aide and current CAP Executive Director John Podesta and run by his brother (the Podesta Group spent years lobbying for the Mubarak regime to make sure the money and weapons kept flowing); in second place behind the Podesta Group is the GOP-allied Chamber of Commerce; and congratulations are in order for Jim Manley, Harry Reid's long-time spokesman, who yesterday annonced he was joining the bipartisan lobbying firm of Quinn Gillespie;

(4) the Obama administration ran to the Washington Post Editors yesterday to assure them that they wouldn't be violating Obama's oft-stated pledge to remove all troops from Iraq by the end of 2011 by leaving 3,000 troops there, but would instead . . . almost certainly leave far more in Iraq; and,

(5) this extraordinary and very insightful endorsement of Elizabeth Warren's Senate candidacy from Rod Dreher, a long-time, hard-core conservative and former National Review writer (via Andrew Sullivan):

Unless Jeff Jacoby tells me something bad I don't know about her -- and what I don't know about Elizabeth Warren is a lot -- I'm rooting for her. I can understand her holding her fire (for now) against the Democrats, for tactical reasons, but if she wins -- and I hope she does -- then I hope she goes to DC with both barrels blazing, and with the understanding that the enemy of the financial interests of ordinary Americans is the capture of both parties by Wall Street and the banks. If she goes to DC and gets captured by Democratic partisans, it will be a colossal waste.

These are the vital truths that have nothing to do with -- indeed, are continuously obscured by -- the repetitive, shallow, cable-news-staple of R v. D punditry.  And it's why partisans of both parties have the same interest -- and work so hard together -- to ensure that it is the only framework that is heard.

The meaning of political rituals like 9/11 Day

On 9/11 Day, Paul Krugman provoked a wave of petulant, angry condemnation for pointing out just some of the valid reasons that day is now inextricably linked with the shameful acts done in its name by the U.S.  Though I continuously defended Krugman on Twitter, I had no intention of writing about this pseudo-controversy because it was little more than what Digby describes as a standard formulaic "hissy fit" from right-wing warmongers who long ago ceased having the power to stigmatize people for such heresies (the apex of this absurd spectacle occurred when the man widely admired around the world as The Nation's Moral Conscience -- Donald Rumsfeld -- announced that he was cancelling his subscription to The New York Times in protest of Krugman's "repugnant" post).

But then yesterday, I read what is one of the most self-evidently inane posts the Internet has ever produced: this must-be-read-to-be-believed sermon from Mother Jones' Rick Ungar condemning Krugman and demanding that other progressives join with him and the Right in these denunciations.  Just for sheer entertainment, I really encourage you to read the whole thing; my favorite part is when Ungar decrees that 9/11 Day is "a day when Americans of all stripes should have been giving thanks to both President Bush and President Obama for doing whatever it is they do that has protected us from a tragic repeat of the events of September 11, 2001."  On so many levels, that's just the funniest sentence ever (and we now bow our heads in reverent gratitude toward our Leaders, George Bush and Barack Obama, and solemnly thank them for doing whatever it is they do  -- no matter what that might be -- to Keep Us Safe).

But there is a point raised by Ungar's finger-wagging that I do actually think is worth addressing.  He writes that while he agrees with the substance of Krugman's criticism, it was his timing that was so offensive, because 9/11 Day "was decidedly not a day that needed to be about politics."  This notion -- that 9/11 Day was nothing more than an apolitical grieving ceremony, akin to a private funeral, and Krugman's sin was one of etiquette: it just wasn't the day for politics -- is a common one.  But it's completely wrong, and quite destructive to accept.

Everything about 9/11 Day -- like all political rituals -- was deeply politicized to its core.  It was imbued with political meaning, political messaging, and controversial claims, both implicit and explicit.  Almost every speech given that day made claims about the meaning and "legacy" of 9/11, what caused it, and what the nature of the American response was.  President Obama proclaimed that "our character as a nation has not changed," that "these past 10 years have shown that America does not give in to fear," that "these past ten years have shown America's resolve to defend its citizens, and our way of life," and that "these 10 years have shown that we hold fast to our freedoms."  Vice President Biden boasted that "The terrorists who attacked the Pentagon . . . sought to weaken America . . .  But they failed," and that Al Qaeda "never imagined the sleeping giant they were about to awaken."  Those are all highly politicized claims. I happen to disagree with each of them.  Others of course agree.  But there's no denying that all of that -- and much more in those speeches -- is consummately political.

Not just 9/11 Day but everything connected to it was constructed to deliver and implant a very politicized message, over and over.  Consider this email I received from a friend in South Florida after he attended an NFL football game last night in Miami:

Let me describe the patriotic display at last night's NFL opener. Men with machine guns at all entrances, to scare off the terrorists. Pat down on the way in, to make sure [my wife] and I weren't carrying plastic explosives. A moving national anthem with troops out on the field spelling out U.S.A. A moving tribute to the thousands who perished in 9/11 and to our nation's brave response to that atrocity (which was, of course, the worst thing that ever happened in the history of the world). A U.S.A., U.S.A. chant. Then a Stealth B2 Bomber flew over the stadium, followed by fireworks. At half time, a US Army paratrooper squad jumped out of a plane and landed on the field. Maybe next week they'll shoot some missiles from unmanned drones.

Does anyone want to claim with a straight face that these ceremonies are apolitical, devoid of political messaging?  Everything about 9/11 -- how it's talked about, how it's described, how it's commemorated -- is all designed to impart very specific political messages, and that's been true since the day it happened.

In fact, literally countless writers other than Krugman seized on 9/11 Day to make very politicized points.  Here, for instance, is The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg, from his lead essay in his magazine's special 9/11 Anniversary issue:

What we saw on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, was evil made manifest. The terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon (and tried to destroy the Capitol) claim to have been motivated by a theology of restoration -- a dream of restoring Islam to a position of global supremacy - and by the politics of grievance. . . . The souls of men like Mohamed Atta and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Osama bin Laden are devoid of anything but hate, and murder is what erupted from these voids. . . .

Westerners are gifted in the art of slashing self-criticism, and so much of our discussion about 9/11 in the intervening years has centered on our failures . . . The mistakes we made were sometimes terrible (and sometimes, as at Abu Ghraib and in the CIA's torture rooms, criminal) but they came about in reaction to a crime without precedent.

When we made our "mistakes," we were merely responding to "a crime without precedent."  "A crime without precedent."  That's written by a person who not only joined a foreign army that spent years (both before 9/11 and after) killing civilians in all sorts of gruesome ways with the multi-layered help of the U.S., but who also played a lead role in enabling a war of aggression that killed (at the very least) one hundred thousand innocent Iraqis, a war about which Christian Science Monitor's Dan Murphy observed (on 9/11 Day):

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The very idea that 9/11 was a "crime without precedent" is as politicized a claim as it gets, as is the notion that our (much more pervasive) slaughter is well-intentioned and noble while theirs is "evil incarnate."  That's particularly true when such claims emanate from someone with a history like Jeffrey Goldberg (his fellow Iraq War cheerleader, Christopher Hitchins, also exploited 9/11 Day to make similar self-justifying claims). Agree or disagree with their claims, no reasonable person can deny that they are exploiting this occasion to advance a slew of political beliefs.  And that's what was done over and over in the days leading up to 9/11 Day and on the day itself:  hordes of writers, pundits, and politicians politicizing the day as much as possible to depict the U.S. and their own favored policies in the most favorable light possible.

Yet nobody criticized Goldberg, Hitchins, or, for that matter, Obama and Biden for using 9/11 Day to advance political claims.  That's because nobody -- least of all those shrieking about Krugman's "impropriety" -- believes that 9/11 Day is meant to be apolitical.  They know that it's deeply political -- primarily political -- and want it to be that.  That day has became so important precisely because it enables all sorts of consequential messages to be delivered -- about the U.S., its role in the world before 9/11 and after, who is Good and Evil, the need for our Endless Wars and Surveillance State -- all with a very emotional punch backing them up: the emotions prompted by the attack that are exploited to reinforce those messages and place them beyond the realm of questioning for decent people.  

Krugman's sin wasn't that he inappropriately politicized what was otherwise an apolitical day.  His sin was the opposite.  He deviated from the approved, mandatory political script for that day: by pointing out that it isn't only the Terrorists but also ourselves who engaged in deeply shameful crimes.  He didn't politicize an apolitical day; to the contrary, he subverted the most politically propagandistic day that now exists in American political culture.  It's unsurprising that the American Right wants to demonize him for that; they've long viewed themselves as the Owners of 9/11 who, as such, can dictate how we talk about that event.  But to watch a writer at a liberal journal demand that progressives join in the bashing -- based on this blatantly false pretense that these types of propaganda rituals are devoid of politics -- was ultimately too extreme to ignore.

How a normal, healthy government behaves

Relations between Israel and Turkey have become increasingly strained ever since Israel attacked the Mavi Marmara last year, shot and killed 9 people aboard (8 Turkish citizens and 1 American teenager), and then steadfastly refused to apologized.  That's because normal, healthy governments get angry when foreign armies shoot and kill their unarmed citizens for no good reason:

Once a close ally of Israel, Turkey accelerated its growing stature across the Arab world -- and further upended the regional order -- when it downgraded diplomatic relations with Israel and expelled its ambassador early this month after Israel refused to issue an apology for a deadly commando raid last year aboard an aid ship trying to break the embargo of the Gaza Strip. . . .

[Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip] Erdogan seemed to present himself as a spokesman for the backlash against Israel unleashed by the revolts across the region.

"Israel is the West's spoiled child," he said, "to this day it has never executed a decision by the international community."

Asked about Turkey's downgrade of diplomatic relations with Israel, he vowed that his nation would not back down until Israel apologized for its forces killing eight Turkish citizens and an American of Turkish decent aboard an aid flotilla seized in international waters on its way to the blockaded Gaza Strip. "Israel cannot play with our dignity," he said.

That reaction stands in very stark contrast to the response to that Israeli attack from the Obama administration, which not only isolated itself from the rest of the world to defend Israel (as usual), but actually took this repellent position even in the face of the Israelis' killing of 19-year-old American Furkan Dogan (click image to enlarge):

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Watching the U.S. Government refuse even to pretend to care that Israel killed one of its unarmed citizens was one of the most glaring episodes yet demonstrating how defending Israel is prioritized by the U.S. above even a defense of its own citizens.  Prime Minister Erdogan himself noted that bizarre behavior:

He faulted the United States, as well, for failing to demand a similar apology for the killing of its citizen in the commando raid. "One of the victims was an American from Turkish origin, but America did not protect the right of its citizen after that," he said.  

A far bigger test still of the U.S. Government's willingness to prioritize its own citizens' interests above Israel's will come with the expected U.N. vote this month on whether to recognize Palestinian statehood.  Most of the world is expected to vote in favor and its passage is virtually guaranteed, unless the U.S. vetoes it.  Long-time U.S. ally, Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal, this weekend credibly detailed the multiple, serious harms to U.S. interests if it exercises its veto.  But if past is prologue, those interests will pale in the face of the political imperative of supporting this foreign government.

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For several months, praising the Arab Spring was mandated in American political circles even though it's long been obvious that the U.S. vehemently opposes democracy in that region -- and has long craved compliant dictators -- as the best means for suppressing popular opinion that is highly critical of the U.S. and Israel.  Now that it is clear that more democratic responsiveness in the Muslim world means less subservience to the U.S. and Israel, the nation's most neoconservative media organs -- which ironically pretended for years to favor the spread of democracy -- are now confessing their concerns about it.  The Washington Post Editors today lament that the Arab Spring is resulting in greater criticism of Israel, while their columnist Richard Cohen openly longs for the days of Mubarak, the Shah of Iran and a less democratic (though more "Westernized") Turkey.  "Spreading democracy" is but the pretext for the wars they crave in that region; the last thing they want is for public opinion to have any relevance at all.