Glenn Greenwald's Blog, page 132

Pundit sloth: blaming the Left

(updated below)

Ten minutes was the absolute maximum I could endure of any one television news outlet last night without having to switch channels in the futile search for something more bearable, but almost every time I had MNSBC on, there was Lawrence O'Donnell trying to blame "the Left" and "liberalism" for the Democrats' political woes. Alan Grayson's loss was proof that outspoken liberalism fails. Blanche Lincoln's loss was the fault of the Left for mounting a serious primary challenge against her. Russ Feingold's defeat proved that voters reject liberalism in favor of conservatism, etc. etc. It sounded as though he was reading from some script jointly prepared in 1995 by The New Republic, Lanny Davis and the DLC.

There are so many obvious reasons why this "analysis" is false: Grayson represents a highly conservative district that hadn't been Democratic for decades before he won in 2008 and he made serious mistakes during the campaign; Lincoln was behind the GOP challenger by more than 20 points back in January, before Bill Halter even announced his candidacy; Feingold was far from a conventional liberal, having repeatedly opposed his own party on multiple issues, and he ran in a state saddled with a Democratic governor who was unpopular in the extreme. Beyond that, numerous liberals who were alleged to be in serious electoral trouble kept their seats: Barney Frank, John Dingell, Rush Holt and many others. But there's one glaring, steadfastly ignored fact destroying O'Donnell's attempt -- which is merely the standard pundit storyline that has been baking for months and will now be served en masse -- to blame The Left and declare liberalism dead. It's this little inconvenient fact:

Blue Dog Coalition Crushed By GOP Wave Election

Tuesday was a tough night for Democrats, as they watched Republicans win enough seats to take back the House in the next Congress and began to ponder life under a likely House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). But one group hit especially hard was the Blue Dog Coalition, with half of its members losing their seats.

According to an analysis by The Huffington Post, 23 of the 46 Blue Dogs up for re-election went down on Tuesday. Notable losses included Rep. Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin (D-S.D.), the coalition's co-chair for administration, and Rep. Baron Hill (D-Ind.), the co-chair for policy. Two members were running for higher office (both lost), three were retiring and three races were still too close to call.

The Blue Dogs, a coalition of moderate to conservative Democrats in the House, have consistently frustrated their more progressive colleagues and activists within the party . . . .

Half of the Blue Dog incumbents were defeated. Some of us have been arguing for quite some time that the Rahm-engineered dependence on Blue Dog power is one of the many factors that has made the Democratic Party so weak, blurry, indistinguishable from the GOP, and therefore so politically inept, and would thus be stronger and better without them -- here's a 2008 Salon article I wrote making that case. Despite viewing last night's Blue Dog losses with happiness, I wouldn't point to this outcome as vindication for my argument, as there are many complex factors that account for last night's crushing of Congressional Democrats: widespread economic suffering, anxiety over America's obvious decline, the perception that Obama has done little to undermine destructive status quo forces and much to bolster them, etc. etc.

But for slothful pundits who want to derive sweeping meaning from individual races in order to blame the Left and claim that last night was a repudiation of liberalism, the far more rational conclusion -- given the eradication of 50% of the Blue Dog caucus -- is that the worst possible choice Democrats can make is to run as GOP-replicating corporatists devoted above all else to serving corporate interests in order to perpetuate their own power: what Washington calls "centrists" and "conservative Democrats." That is who bore the bulk of the brunt of last night's Democratic bloodbath -- not liberals.

* * * * *

One other point about the standard pundit line: for all the giddy talk about the power of the "Tea Party" -- which is, more than anything else, just a marketing tactic for re-branding the Republican Party -- the reality is that the Tea Party almost certainly cost the GOP control of the Senate. Had standard-issue GOP candidates rather than Tea Party fanatics been nominated in Delaware, Colorado, Alaska and Nevada, the Republicans would have almost certainly won those seats (in Alaska, rejecting the GOP incumbent in favor of a Tea Party candidates appears to ensured that Lisa Murkowski will return to DC as a GOP-hating reject rather than a loyal Republican). That's not a criticism -- I think it's admirable to support candidates who represent one's views and be willing to take a few extra losses to do so -- but the Tea Party storyline from last night is one that is far from unadulterated success.

 

UPDATE:  On a related note, in The New York Times today, one finds the spectacle of Evan Bayh -- who gave up his Senate seat to a Republican while he frolicks around in the millions of dollars his wife receives from the health care industry -- demanding massive entitlement cuts for the poor and freezes on the pay for government workers, while also blaming the Democratic loss on the alleged fact that "we were too deferential to our most zealous supporters."  Is he referring there to the escalation in the war in Afghanistan, the massive increase in civilian-slaughtering drone attacks, the virtually wholesale embrace of the Bush/Cheney civil liberties architecture, the defense of Don't-Ask/Don't-Tell and DOMA, the multi-billion-dollar bailout of Wall Street, the failure to stem the tide of the foreclosure crisis, and the elimination of the public option?  Apparently, the lesson Evan Bayh -- and most pundits -- took from last night's results is that if only Democrats had suppressed the enthusiasm of their base just a little more, they would have won.

Secretary Clinton: The past must be confronted

(updated below)

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was in Cambodia yesterday and urged its government to proceed with more prosecutions of surviving Khmer Rouge officials.  This is how The New York Times described her visit:

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton visited a former Khmer Rouge torture house in Cambodia on Monday and urged the nation to proceed with trials of the former regime's surviving leaders in order to "confront its past."

The commandant of that prison, Kaing Guek Eav, was sentenced to 19 years in prison last July in the first part of a United Nations-backed trial of leading figures of the Khmer Rouge regime, which was responsible for the deaths of 1.7 million people between 1975 and 1979.

A second trial involving the four most senior surviving leaders has been expected to follow, after they were formally indicted in September. But Prime Minister Hun Sen, who once said that Cambodia should "dig a hole and bury the past," has said that he would not allow any additional prosecutions beyond those four.

Mrs. Clinton repeated an argument that has been used by proponents of the trials, saying that "a country that is able to confront its past is a country that can overcome it."

"Countries that are held prisoner to their past can never break those chains and build the kind of future that their children deserve," she said. "Although I am well aware the work of the tribunal is painful, it is necessary to ensure a lasting peace."

Obviously, few regimes can compete with the Khmer Rouge in terms of the breadth and depth of its crimes, but I trust that everyone sees how irrelevant that is to the point.  Previously, Secretary Clinton instructed Kenya to proceed with war crimes trials of its former officials, while President Obama demanded that Indonesia continue investigating past human rights abuses on the ground that "we can't go forward without looking backwards."  In other news yesterday:  George W. Bush threw out the first pitch at the World Series baseball game while the Texas crowd cheered and chanted: "USA. USA."

* * * * *

I'll be in Madison, Wisconsin later today, where I'm speaking tomorrow night at 7:00 p.m., and will be at Sen. Feingold's campaign headquarters tonight, where I will try to post Twitter updates.  I'll also be on Al Jazeera at 9:30 and 10:30 pm EST talking about the election.

 

UPDATE:  Following up on yesterday's post regarding the evidence-free claims from anonymous goverment officials baselessly blaming Anwar Awlaki for the mailed bomb plot:  Andrew Sullivan today, referencing our recent debate over Obama's efforts to assassinate Awlaki, favorably quotes John Burns, who wrote on Sunday:  "Increasingly, Mr. Awlaki is being depicted by Western intelligence officials as a threat on the scale of Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri."  Right:  because if there's one thing that's reliable, it's anonymous claims about Terrorist threats laundered through The New York Times.  Actual Yemen expert Gregory Johnsen today details how ludicrous are these breathless government and media assertions about Awlaki's role in Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

As for Andrew's citation of a news story today claiming that a man who knifed a member of the British Parliament was "inspired" by Awlaki's sermons:  is that supposed be a justification for killing Awlaki?  The Supreme Court has held that the First Amendment bars imposing punishment or other liability on someone for the actions of others "inspired" by their speech (that ruling was the result of efforts by the State of Mississippi to impose liability on local NAACP leaders in the 1960s on the ground that their incendiary pro-boycott rhetoric "inspired" various individual NAACP members to engage in violence to enforce the boycott).  But if merely "inspiring" violence with incendiary rhetoric is the basis for labeling an American citizen a Terrorist and then killing them, we need not look all the way to Yemen for that.  We can find that right here at home.

Government accusations: No evidence needed

(updated below - Update II - Update III)

The New York Times, October 31:

As investigators on three continents conducted forensic analyses of two bombs shipped from Yemen and intercepted Friday in Britain and Dubai, American officials said evidence was mounting that the top leadership of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, including the radical American-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, was behind the attempted attacks. . . .

Reviewing the evidence, American intelligence officials say they believe that the plot may have been blessed by the highest levels of Al Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen, including Mr. Awlaki. . . . This year, the C.I.A. designated Mr. Awlaki -- an American citizen -- as a high priority for the agency's campaign of targeted killing.

The administration:  Hey:  you know that American citizen whom the President has controversially ordered assassinated with no due process?  Here's the proof that we were right to do that:  he tried to send these bombs from Yemen to the U.S.!!  How could anyone possibly object to our killing a murderous monster like this?  That accusation -- as intended -- produced worldwide headlines identifying Awlaki as the likely Terrorist behind this plot.

The New York Times, today:

American and Yemeni officials still have little hard evidence about who was involved in the thwarted attack. . . . As for who was behind the plot, evidence remains elusive, though officials believe the bombs bear the hallmarks of Al Qaeda in Yemen's top bomb maker. On Friday, the Department of Homeland Security issued a cable saying that the packages might have been linked to two schools in Yemen. . . . But American and Yemeni investigators are trying to determine whether the schools -- listed as the Yemen-American Institute for Language-Computer Management and the American Center for Training and Development -- even exist.  There is a school in Sana called the Yemen American Language Institute, but it is sponsored by the United States State Department.

Wait:  I read in the NYT on Sunday that "evidence was mounting that the top leadership of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, including the radical American-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, was behind the attempted attacks."  Today, however, in that very same paper, I learn that "American and Yemeni officials still have little hard evidence about who was involved in the thwarted attack" and "evidence is elusive."  How can evidence of the culprits simultaneously be "mounting" and "elusive"?

The reality, as today's version of the NYT makes clear, is that the U.S. has no idea who is responsible for sending these bombs.  So in the dark are they that Homeland Security actually blamed two Yemeni schools that don't even seem to exist, with the only one remotely similar to it being one sponsored by the State Department.  But no matter:  within a very short time of the attempted attack's becoming public, U.S. government officials fanned out to anonymously pin the blame on Anwar Awlaki as the Mastermind, and newspapers then dutifully printed what they were told, even though nobody had any idea whether that was actually true.  But when you're trying to justify the presidential seizure of the power to assassinate your own citizens without a shred of due process, what matters is ratcheting up fear and hatred levels against your targets, not evidence or rationality.  Just scream TERRORIST! enough times and maybe everyone will forget how tyrannical is your conduct.

To its credit, even the NYT article originally announcing the administration's accusations that "evidence is mounting" of Awlaki's culpability stated:  "they did not present proof of Mr. Awlaki's involvement."  How surprising.  That same deficiency is true of the general accusation that Awlaki is involved in Terrorist plots as opposed to merely exercising his clear First Amendment right to advocate the justifiability of anti-American violence in retaliation for the violence Americans bring to the Muslim world.  But that complete lack of evidence doesn't deter huge numbers of people from running around proclaiming Awlaki to be a Terrorist and cheering for the presidentially-decreed death penalty based solely on unchecked government pronouncements, so it's unlikely that the lack of evidence in this case will deter his being widely blamed as the Mastermind for this attack either.  If there's one thing many Americans have repeatedly proven, it's that they don't need -- or even want -- to see any evidence before spouting government claims, including -- or, rather, especially -- the most serious and consequential ones.  

* * * * *

To see how thoroughly anti-American advocacy is conflated with Terrorism, see this interview in which CNN's Eliot Spitzer interviewed radical Iman Anjem Choudary and, at the end, spat:  "You deserve to be arrested, prosecuted, jailed for the rest of your life. That is what you, sir, deserve. You are a violent and heinous terrorist."

Choudary's crime?  As CNN put it:  he "has justified the killing over and over of innocent women, men, children, wherever it happens in the world in pursuit of his cause"; told Spitzer of the Yemeni bombing plot:  "When you send bombs over there, what do you expect them to send back to you? What did you expect to find in a package? You know, chocolates? Of course you're going to find bombs. They're going to give you a taste of your own medicine"; and admitted telling Americans that violence against the U.S. is justified in retaliation for American violence against Muslims.  

If that's all it takes to be "a violent and heinous terrorist" who belongs in prison for life, would Spitzer similarly condemn David Broder, the countless others who justified the massacres in Iraq, or other killings of innocents in the name of causes which Spitzer himself supports and which he himself therefore justified?  To ask the question is to answer it, and to reveal how elastic, self-serving and manipulative these terms are.

 

UPDATE:  In the most predictable development ever, The Atlantic reports:  "Foiled Bomb Plot Sparks Calls for Expanded Military Presence in Yemen."  The first line reads:  

The U.S. is seriously considering sending elite "hunter-killer" teams to Yemen following the foiled mail bombing plot by militants in Yemen. The covert teams would operate under the CIA's authority allowing them to kill or capture targets unilaterally, The Wall Street Journal reports.  Support for an expanded U.S. military effort in Yemen has been growing within the military and the Obama administration, according to The Journal.

I'm sure that escalated military activity in Yemen along with roving bands of CIA hit squads will go a long way toward solving the problem of anti-American hatred in that country and the Muslim world generally.  If only we kill more of them and bring more violence to their country, they'll stop wanting to mail  bombs to ours.  See also:  this post from earlier today on the reliance of even the NYT's Public Editor on anonymous military sources to uncritically spout the military line.

 

UPDATE II:  Here's what NPR listeners heard on Friday (h/t Pedinska):

MELISSA BLOCK: Now, Dina, the fact that these packages were coming from Yemen targeting apparently Jewish synagogues in Chicago, that triggers all sorts of connections, doesn't it?

DINA TEMPLE-RASTON: Indeed. I mean, they think that al-Qaida in Yemen is somehow behind this. And the sources I spoke to said that they believe that they saw the fingerprints of the American-born imam that we've talked a lot about, Anwar al-Awlaki, and perhaps he's behind this.

Why not just turn over these media outlets to government officials directly and cut out the middlemen?  I suppose the answer is that doing so would destroy the illusion of independence, which is vital to the effective dissemination of propaganda.  John Parker --former military reporter and fellow of the University of Maryland Knight Center for Specialized Journalism-Military Reporting -- last week mocked NPR's Tom Gjelten for mindless subservience to the Pentagon's line on the WikiLeaks documents.  As he notes, that is not unique to Gjelten but rather illustrative of how our establishment media functions generally.

 

UPDATE III:  Perusing news accounts, it seems the most mystifying aspect of this whole episode -- as always -- is trying so very hard to understand why anyone in Yemen would possibly want to mail a bomb to the United States, of all places?  Why oh why would anyone there want to do that?  It's so puzzling.

Government accusations: no evidence needed

(updated below - Update II - Update III)

The New York Times, October 31:

As investigators on three continents conducted forensic analyses of two bombs shipped from Yemen and intercepted Friday in Britain and Dubai, American officials said evidence was mounting that the top leadership of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, including the radical American-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, was behind the attempted attacks. . . .

Reviewing the evidence, American intelligence officials say they believe that the plot may have been blessed by the highest levels of Al Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen, including Mr. Awlaki. . . . This year, the C.I.A. designated Mr. Awlaki -- an American citizen -- as a high priority for the agency's campaign of targeted killing.

The administration:  Hey:  you know that American citizen whom the President has controversially ordered assassinated with no due process?  Here's the proof that we were right to do that:  he tried to send these bombs from Yemen to the U.S.!!  How could anyone possibly object to our killing a murderous monster like this?  That accusation -- as intended -- produced worldwide headlines identifying Awlaki as the likely Terrorist behind this plot.

The New York Times, today:

American and Yemeni officials still have little hard evidence about who was involved in the thwarted attack. . . . As for who was behind the plot, evidence remains elusive, though officials believe the bombs bear the hallmarks of Al Qaeda in Yemen's top bomb maker. On Friday, the Department of Homeland Security issued a cable saying that the packages might have been linked to two schools in Yemen. . . . But American and Yemeni investigators are trying to determine whether the schools -- listed as the Yemen-American Institute for Language-Computer Management and the American Center for Training and Development -- even exist.  There is a school in Sana called the Yemen American Language Institute, but it is sponsored by the United States State Department.

Wait:  I read in the NYT on Sunday that "evidence was mounting that the top leadership of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, including the radical American-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, was behind the attempted attacks."  Today, however, in that very same paper, I learn that "American and Yemeni officials still have little hard evidence about who was involved in the thwarted attack" and "evidence is elusive."  How can evidence of the culprits simultaneously be "mounting" and "elusive"?

The reality, as today's version of the NYT makes clear, is that the U.S. has no idea who is responsible for sending these bombs.  So in the dark are they that Homeland Security actually blamed two Yemeni schools that don't even seem to exist, with the only one remotely similar to it being one sponsored by the State Department.  But no matter:  within a very short time of the attempted attack's becoming public, U.S. government officials fanned out to anonymously pin the blame on Anwar Awlaki as the Mastermind, and newspapers then dutifully printed what they were told, even though nobody had any idea whether that was actually true.  But when you're trying to justify the presidential seizure of the power to assassinate your own citizens without a shred of due process, what matters is ratcheting up fear and hatred levels against your targets, not evidence or rationality.  Just scream TERRORIST! enough times and maybe everyone will forget how tyrannical is your conduct.

To its credit, even the NYT article originally announcing the administration's accusations that "evidence is mounting" of Awlaki's culpability stated:  "they did not present proof of Mr. Awlaki's involvement."  How surprising.  That same deficiency is true of the general accusation that Awlaki is involved in Terrorist plots as opposed to merely exercising his clear First Amendment right to advocate the justifiability of anti-American violence in retaliation for the violence Americans bring to the Muslim world.  But that complete lack of evidence doesn't deter huge numbers of people from running around proclaiming Awlaki to be a Terrorist and cheering for the presidentially-decreed death penalty based solely on unchecked government pronouncements, so it's unlikely that the lack of evidence in this case will deter his being widely blamed as the Mastermind for this attack either.  If there's one thing many Americans have repeatedly proven, it's that they don't need -- or even want -- to see any evidence before spouting government claims, including -- or, rather, especially -- the most serious and consequential ones.  

* * * * *

To see how thoroughly anti-American advocacy is conflated with Terrorism, see this interview in which CNN's Eliot Spitzer interviewed radical Iman Anjem Choudary and, at the end, spat:  "You deserve to be arrested, prosecuted, jailed for the rest of your life. That is what you, sir, deserve. You are a violent and heinous terrorist."

Choudary's crime?  As CNN put it:  he "has justified the killing over and over of innocent women, men, children, wherever it happens in the world in pursuit of his cause"; told Spitzer of the Yemeni bombing plot:  "When you send bombs over there, what do you expect them to send back to you? What did you expect to find in a package? You know, chocolates? Of course you're going to find bombs. They're going to give you a taste of your own medicine"; and admitted telling Americans that violence against the U.S. is justified in retaliation for American violence against Muslims.  

If that's all it takes to be "a violent and heinous terrorist" who belongs in prison for life, would Spitzer similarly condemn David Broder, the countless others who justified the massacres in Iraq, or other killings of innocents in the name of causes which Spitzer himself supports and which he himself therefore justified?  To ask the question is to answer it, and to reveal how elastic, self-serving and manipulative these terms are.

 

UPDATE:  In the most predictable development ever, The Atlantic reports:  "Foiled Bomb Plot Sparks Calls for Expanded Military Presence in Yemen."  The first line reads:  

The U.S. is seriously considering sending elite "hunter-killer" teams to Yemen following the foiled mail bombing plot by militants in Yemen. The covert teams would operate under the CIA's authority allowing them to kill or capture targets unilaterally, The Wall Street Journal reports.  Support for an expanded U.S. military effort in Yemen has been growing within the military and the Obama administration, according to The Journal.

I'm sure that escalated military activity in Yemen along with roving bands of CIA hit squads will go a long way toward solving the problem of anti-American hatred in that country and the Muslim world generally.  If only we kill more of them and bring more violence to their country, they'll stop wanting to mail  bombs to ours.  See also:  this post from earlier today on the reliance of even the NYT's Public Editor on anonymous military sources to uncritically spout the military line.

 

UPDATE II:  Here's what NPR listeners heard on Friday (h/t Pedinska):

MELISSA BLOCK: Now, Dina, the fact that these packages were coming from Yemen targeting apparently Jewish synagogues in Chicago, that triggers all sorts of connections, doesn't it?

DINA TEMPLE-RASTON: Indeed. I mean, they think that al-Qaida in Yemen is somehow behind this. And the sources I spoke to said that they believe that they saw the fingerprints of the American-born imam that we've talked a lot about, Anwar al-Awlaki, and perhaps he's behind this.

Why not just turn over these media outlets to government officials directly and cut out the middlemen?  I suppose the answer is that doing so would destroy the illusion of independence, which is vital to the effective dissemination of propaganda.  John Parker --former military reporter and fellow of the University of Maryland Knight Center for Specialized Journalism-Military Reporting -- last week mocked NPR's Tom Gjelten for mindless subservience to the Pentagon's line on the WikiLeaks documents.  As he notes, that is not unique to Gjelten but rather illustrative of how our establishment media functions generally.

 

UPDATE III:  Perusing news accounts, it seems the most mystifying aspect of this whole episode -- as always -- is trying so very hard to understand why anyone in Yemen would possibly want to mail a bomb to the United States, of all places?  Why oh why would anyone there want to do that?  It's so puzzling.

NYT public editor only perpetuates bad practices

Controversy erupted last week over the New York Times's editorial decision to cover the WikiLeaks release of the Iraq War documents by prominently featuring a gossip article about Julian Assange's personality traits and alleged mental health conditions, and by downplaying (or, as Columbia Journalism Review put it, "whitewashing") the most damning revelations about U.S. conduct. Yesterday, that newspaper's new Public Editor, Arthur S. Brisbane, purported to address the issue of the NYT's WikiLeaks coverage, but completely ignored those controversies (except to bolster the NYT's smear piece by denouncing Assange's "character" as "increasingly sketchy"). Instead, as NYTPicker points out, Brisbane violated the newspaper's own guidelines, as well as the urgent warnings of his three predecessors, by using anonymity in the most unjustifiable and journalistically reckless way possible. This is what he wrote:

To address the risk to troops and informants, The Times took pains to remove names and other information from the documents it published. Nevertheless, a retired Army general, who asked for anonymity to avoid bringing controversy to the civilian organization he now serves, said the field reports enable Al Qaeda and the Taliban to learn much about the operational practices and mind-set of the coalition's fighting forces.

"Analysis is not nearly as damaging as reports," he said, drawing a distinction between the Pentagon Papers and the WikiLeaks material. Field reports like these make it possible "to get into the mind of the enemy. Anytime you do that you gain a tremendous advantage."

These are powerful arguments.

So here is the newspaper's alleged Voice of the Public -- intended to be a watchdog over its editorial behavior -- himself granting anonymity to a "retired Army general" to claim that WikiLeaks is helping "Al Qaeda and the Taliban" by releasing this material. It's so revealing how inherently hostile so many "journalists" are to disclosure of government secrets, how mindlessly receptive they are to baseless claims that such disclosures will endanger security, and how eager they are to use their platforms to give voice to anonymous military officials. Here, what possible justification exists for that anonymity?

Brisbane's excuse -- he "asked for anonymity to avoid bringing controversy to the civilian organization he now serves" -- is ludicrous. That would justify granting anonymity to every person who wanted to comment on some public dispute without accountability or repercussions. The idea that some "retired Army general" is going to be rendered deeply vulnerable by oh-so-bravely criticizing WikiLeaks on the ground that its leaks are helping The Terrorists -- about as conventional and establishment-serving an opinion as exists -- is laughable on its face. Indeed, Brisbane's entire column is devoted to nothing other than reciting that WikiLeaks-is-Endangering-Us! orthodoxy in the most imbalanced, one-sided manner possible, including by quoting Tom Ricks, the former war correspondent for The Washington Post, making the same accusation with his name attached. Brisbane does not include a single quote disputing this fear-mongering claim, nor does he address the central contradiction at its heart: how can it be simultaneously true that there is Nothing New in these documents and that the Iraq War leak endangers our National Security?

Journalistically speaking, allowing military officials to hide behind anonymity to disseminate the military establishment's party line is about as slothful, low, and corrupted a practice as exists. The fact that the NYT's Public Editor is now not only endorsing that tactic, but himself relying upon it, is a fairly strong statement about the uselessness of this position, at least when occupied by Arthur S. Brisbane. That he's doing so as part of his ritualistic spouting of tepid, formulaic, substance-free defenses of that newspaper makes it all the worse. It looks as though the Times got exactly the person they wanted for this job.

* * * * *

On Saturday night in Washington D.C, at the Online News Associations' Online Journalism Awards, I won the award for Best Commentary for a medium site, with this article on Bradley Manning and WikiLeaks specifically cited. I'm particularly glad that this was the piece that was cited, because it's an important reminder that we still do not nearly know the entire story about how and why Bradley Manning -- who is currently imprisoned in Quantico, Virginia -- ended up communicating with Adrian Lamo, when he allegedly confessed to being the source of the WikiLeaks documents.

As a reminder, I'll be speaking tonight in Olympia, Washington, at the University of Wisconsin in Madison on Wednesday night, and at NYU Law School on Friday. For those interested, details are here.

The wretched mind of the American authoritarian

Decadent governments often spawn a decadent citizenry.  A 22-year-old Nebraska resident was arrested yesterday for waterboarding his girlfriend as she was tied to a couch, because he was wanted to know if she was cheating on him with another man; I wonder where he learned that?  There are less dramatic though no less nauseating examples of this dynamic.  In The Chicago Tribune today, there is an Op-Ed from Jonah Goldberg -- the supreme, living embodiment of a cowardly war cheerleader -- headlined:  "Why is Assange still alive?"  It begins this way:

I'd like to ask a simple question: Why isn't Julian Assange dead? . . . WikiLeaks is easily among the most significant and well-publicized breaches of American national security since the Rosenbergs gave the Soviets the bomb. . . .

So again, I ask: Why wasn't Assange garroted in his hotel room years ago?

It's a serious question.

He ultimately concludes that "it wouldn't do any good to kill him, given the nature of the Web" -- whatever that means -- and reluctantly acknowledges:  "That's fine. And it's the law. I don't expect the U.S. government to kill Assange, but I do expect them to try to stop him."  What he wants the Government to do to "stop" Assange is left unsaid -- tough-guy neocons love to beat their chest and demand action without having the courage to specify what they mean -- but his question ("Why isn't Julian Assange dead?") was published in multiple newspapers around the country today.

Christian Whiton, a former Bush State Department official, wasn't as restrained in his Fox News column last week, writing:

Rather, this [the WikiLeaks disclosure] is an act of political warfare against the United States. . . . .Here are some of the things the U.S. could do: . . .Explore opportunities for the president to designate WikiLeaks and its officers as enemy combatants, paving the way for non-judicial actions against them.

I emailed Whiton and told him I'd like to do a podcast interview with him for Salon about his WikiLeaks proposal and he replied:  "Thank you for the invitation, but I am starting a trip tomorrow and will be on a plane just about all day."  I replied that it didn't have to be the next day -- I'd be happy to do it any day that was convenient for him -- and he then stopped answering.  As I said, the real objective is for them to beat their chest in public and show everyone how tough they are -- take 'em out, Whiton roared -- but they then scamper away when called upon to be specific about what they mean or to defend it (let alone to participate in the violence they relentlessly urge).   Whiton was just echoing his fellow war cheerleader, torture advocate Marc Thiessen, who wrote this in The Washington Post, under the headline "WikiLeaks Must be Stopped"

The government has a wide range of options for dealing with him. It can employ not only law enforcement but also intelligence and military assets to bring Assange to justice and put his criminal syndicate out of business.

"Military assets":  apparently, according to this brave and battle-tested warrior -- Marc Thiessen -- the U.S. can and should just send a drone over London or Stockholm and eradicate Assange, or just send some ground troops into Western Europe to abduct him. 

Speaking of war cheerleaders, The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg today points to an Editorial by The New York Sun's Seth Lipsky which fantasizes -- as Goldberg puts it -- that "Lincoln, and FDR as well, would have pretty much tried to hang the Wikileaks founder for treason."  Apparently, the fact that Assange is not and never was an American citizen is no bar to hanging him for "treason":  when you wallow in self-centered, self-absorbed imperial exceptionalism, everyone on the planet has the overarching duty of loyalty to your own government, and you think everyone is under the auspices of American rule.

There are multiple common threads here:  the cavalier call for people's deaths, the demand for ultimate punishments without a shred of due process, the belief that the U.S. is entitled to do whatever it wants anywhere in the world without the slightest constraints, a wholesale rejection of basic Western liberties such as due process and a free press, the desire for the President to act as unconstrained monarch, and a bloodthirsty frenzy that has led all of them to cheerlead for brutal, criminal wars of aggression for a full decade without getting anywhere near the violence they cheer on, etc.  But that's to be expected.  We lived for eight years under a President who essentially asserted all of those powers and more, and now have a one who has embraced most of them and added some new ones, including the right to order even American citizens, far from any battlefield, assassinated without a shred of due process.  Given that, it would be irrational to expect a citizenry other than the one that is being molded with this mentality.

* * * * * 

One of the most progressive ads of the election cycle comes -- ironically, sadly, and revealingly enough -- from Alaska's GOP incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski, against GOP nominee and tea party candidate Joe Miller:

Job hunting in Washington

(updated below)

On May 4, 2009, Harvard Constitutional Law Professor Laurence Tribe wrote a private letter to his former student, President Barack Obama, urging Obama to select fellow Harvard Law Professor (and Dean) Elena Kagan rather than Sonia Sotomayor to replace Supreme Court Justice David Souter, who had just announced his retirement.  That letter was obtained and published yesterday by National Review's Ed Whelan.  Tribe argued, in essence, that Sotomayor is not particularly bright ("not nearly as smart as she seems to think she is") while Kagan is breathtakingly brilliant.  None of that is surprising:  many liberals in the legal community revealingly looked down in scorn upon the perceived lack of intellect of the highly accomplished and intelligent Sotomayor (as Jeffrey Rosen's dissemination of the smears of his anonymous, cowardly "liberal" friends proved), while many Harvard Law Professors instinctively serve as boosters for their fellow Harvard academics.  That's all par for the course.

What I think is most notable is the last paragraph of Tribe's letter:

For all these reasons, I hope you will reach the conclusion that Elena Kagan should be your first nominee to the Court.  And, if I might add a very brief personal note, I can hardly contain my enthusiasm at your first hundred days.  I don't underestimate the magnitude of the challenges that remain, and I continue to hope that I can before long come to play a more direct role in helping you to meet those challenges, perhaps in a newly created DOJ position dealing with the rule of law, but my main sentiment at the moment is one of enormous pride and pleasure in being an American at this extraordinary moment in our history.

By the time Tribe wrote that gushing fanboy paragraph, Obama had already asserted the Bush-replicating state secrets privilege in order to protect torture, rendition and warrantless eavesdropping from judicial review; had, as the NYT put it, "told a federal judge that military detainees in Afghanistan have no legal right to challenge their imprisonment there, embracing a key argument of former President Bush's legal team"; The NYT's Charlie Savage had warned "of Obama's "continued support for [] major elements of its predecessor's approach to fighting Al Qaeda," including "continuing the C.I.A.'s program of transferring prisoners to other countries without legal rights, and indefinitely detaining terrorism suspects without trials even if they were arrested far from a war zone"; Obama had demanded that there be no investigations of Bush crimes on the ground that we must Look Forward, Not Backward; and the administration had made clear that it intended to preserve and continue Bush's military commissions system (albeit with some revisions).  

Given that liberal opinion leaders like Tribe were falling all over themselves in praise of Obama even as he pursued such policies -- rather than speaking out against them as they did under Bush -- is it really any surprise that Obama continued on this path?  A mere three weeks after Tribe sent his reverent/employment-seeking letter, Obama announced that he would imprison some detainees at Guantanamo without any trials or tribunals at all  -- a policy Tribe had previously denounced as the epitome of tyranny when Bush did it:  "We can't put people in a dungeon forever without processing whether they deserve to be there."  If even the leading liberal Constitutional scholar was sending Obama unqualified love letters as he embraced the worst of the Bush/Cheney policies, why would the President possibly have thought there was any reason to stop?  He obviously didn't, and hasn't.

Not all was lost, though.  In February of this year, Tribe finally got a job with the Obama administration which he had been so eagerly seeking.  It wasn't the one he told the President he wanted -- a position overseeing the "rule of law" (no need for that) -- but rather a newly created position as DOJ adviser "focused on increasing legal access for the poor."  There's no question that's an urgently needed function, but a mere two months later, in April, The New York Times reported that Tribe -- like all of the handful of liberals appointed to the administration -- had been relegated to a position of powerlessness and irrelevance:

For Mr. Tribe, volunteering to answer routine legal questions was a show of grass-roots support that grew out of his new role at the Justice Department, where the 68-year-old liberal legal icon -- who is also President Obama's mentor and former teacher -- is now the "senior counselor for access to justice."

In that position, created especially for him, Mr. Tribe has been asked to suggest ways to improve legal services for the poor, find alternatives to court-intensive litigation and strengthen the fairness and independence of domestic courts. But Mr. Tribe has a small staff, a limited budget, little concrete authority and a portfolio far less sweeping than the one he told friends he had hoped to take on in Washington.

He is also largely invisible. The Justice Department is not allowing him to give interviews, apparently in part because of nervousness in the administration that his unabashedly liberal views might draw criticism or that Mr. Tribe, described by friends as having a big intellect and a healthy ego, might stray from his assigned lane.

One friend and fellow Harvard law professor, Charles J. Ogletree, said he was thrilled that someone of Mr. Tribe's prominence was working on indigent defense issues. Still, he said Mr. Tribe had not been given responsibilities commensurate with his abilities and expressed hope that that would change.

I hope Tribe's expression of undeserved adulation, and his refusal to object to Obama's seriously misguided actions, was worth the "benefit" he received.

* * * * *

The former conservative/libertarian GOP Congressman from Georgia, Bob Barr, endorsed Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold today, illustrating that Barr actually appreciates and understands, rather than politically exploits, the notion of "limited government" (Barr:  Feingold "is a man who understands the Constitution, who supports and fights sometimes against his own party to defend the Constitution").  Nothing is more absurd than watching Tea Party supporters march under the banner of the Constitution and limited government as they support candidates who will expand unrestrained and unchecked federal powers of surveillance, detention, and Endless War, while Democrats (like Tribe) who marched under a civil liberties banner during the Bush years now cheer for the Democratic politicians who have adopted those very policies.  Kudos to Barr for being one of the few national figures to apply his principles consistently and without regard to blinding partisan tribalism.

 

UPDATE:  In comments, David Mizner writes:

It's also worth mentioning that Tribe playing an important role in helping Obama get elected. He cut an ad for Obama and campaigned for him, calling him "the best student I ever had" and saying he would defend civil liberties. Had Tribe spoken out early in Obama's administration, he would've gotten a lot of attention, because he's both the foremost liberal constitutional scholar and a long-time supporter. But then to speak out would've been to admit that he'd been wrong about Obama. It also would've denied him the chance to work in the administration. Self first, civil liberties second.

Anyone who ran around hailing Barack Obama as a would-be champion of civil liberties and who has not by now retracted or at least severely qualified that claim is lacking in the Department of Intellectual Integrity, to put that about as mildly as I can consistent with accuracy.

College events and other matters

(1) Next week, I'll be speaking at several colleges around the country; all events are free and open to the public, so those in these areas are encouraged to attend:

On Monday, November 1, I'll be in Olympia, Washington, speaking about Terrorism and Civil Liberties in the Age of Obama.  It will be held at South Puget Sound Community College at 7:00 p.m.  Details are here.

On Wednesday, November 3, I'll be at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, giving a speech entitled "Wars Without End:  The War on Terror and Against Civil Liberties in the Obama Era," with a substantial Q-and-A session afterward.  Details are here and here.

On Friday, November 5, I'll be at NYU School of Law, speaking at the Center on Law and Security's conference entitled "The Constitution and National Security:  The First Amendment Under Attack."  It will be an excellent event -- the kind I'd attend even if I weren't speaking -- and includes, among others, Dana Priest, Walter Pincus, Marty Lederman, Bart Gellman, Geoffrey Stone, and Burt Neuborne.  My section is from 11:00 a.m.-12:15 p.m. and concerns "Free Speech and Incitement" in the context of Awlaki, Terrorism "recruitment," the Supreme Court's Humanitarian Law decision, and related topics.  Details are here.

Over the past year, I've done more speeches and similar events at colleges than ever before and really enjoy them.  I'm currently planning appearances at several more college campuses for early Spring, 2011 -- including in South Florida and Southern California -- so if you're interested in talking about possible events, please email me.

 

(2) I posted this the other day, but for those who missed it:  I participated in a great event in September at Brooklyn Law School regarding the Israeli flotilla attack, along with fellow speakers Fatima Mohammadi, an Iranian-American lawyer who was on the deck of the Mavi Marmara when it was attacked, and Columbia Professor Rashid Khalidi.  The audio of each of our speeches is here (mine begins at roughly the 17:30 mark).  I wish everyone could hear Mohammadi (who spoke first) narrate what actually happened that night, and compare it to what the American media described for the first several days after the attack (based exclusively on the assertions and highly edited video from the IDF) in order to see the vast discrepancies.

 

(3) Last night, a reader passed along this amazing video of a 1967 appearance by Martin Luther King on The Mike Douglas Show to discuss the Vietnam War; it took place shortly after King had urged Americans to refrain from serving in the war.  Some of you may have seen this already, but I hadn't, and it's really quite extraordinary.  It particularly underscores how little has changed when it comes to our manipulative war discourse (in a surprisingly substantive and serious discussion, King, among other things, is asked by a clearly hostile Douglas whether King's emphatic anti-war position -- which has now largely been whitewashed from his legacy -- raises questions about the "loyalty" of black Americans generally):

Parts II and III of the interview are here and here.  Thanks to Be Scofield for the video, who maintains a website with additional fascinating video links on Dr. King here.

 

(4) A new poll from The New York Times/CBS News is but the latest to find that "critical parts of the coalition that delivered President Obama to the White House in 2008 and gave Democrats control of Congress in 2006 are switching their allegiance to the Republicans in the final phase of the midterm Congressional elections."  Looking at other polling data yesterday, Markos Moulitsas -- while urging Democrats to vote -- wrote:  "I'm with those who think progressives are justified in being pissed and demoralized. I don't have the energy to sugarcoat it or pretend otherwise.  . . . But if Republicans make their expected massive gains, it won't be because America turned against the Democrats, but because Democrats stayed home."  Media stars will predictably announce that the lesson of the 2010 midterm is that Obama must move to the Center/Right, but the real lesson should be that a political party cannot win by continuously alienating and exhibiting scorn for the concerns of its supporters. 

 

(5) In Foreign Policy, Ellen Knickmeyer, The Washington Post's Baghdad Bureau Chief during much of the war, gives the lie to the claim that there was "nothing new" in the WikiLeaks release by elaborating on her excellent Daily Beast article, examining in detail the new documents which prove the extent of the outright lies told by Bush officials about the war.

 

(6) In his NYT column today, Nicholas Kristof advocates for the legalization of marijuana, arguing -- correctly -- that legal prohibitions do far more damage than marijuana itself, and (like the War on Terror) exacerbate the very problems they're allegedly intended to solve.  He includes a citation to my study on the 2001 decriminalization law in Portugal ("there's some risk that legalization would make such dabbling more common. But that hasn't been a significant problem in Portugal, which decriminalized drug use in 2001").  In an election which contains very little to be excited about, the prospect that California may legalize marijuana is worth caring about.

 

(7) The United States of America in one short scene, from Politico:

MILITARY OFFICERS TOUR JPMORGAN -- JPMorgan Chase yesterday hosted about 30 active duty military officers (across all branches and agencies) from the Marine Corps War College in Quantico, Va.  The officers met with senior executives, toured the trading floor and participated in a trading simulation.  They discussed recruitment, operations management, strategic communications and the economy.  Aside from employees thanking them for their service as they passed by, they also received a standing ovation on the trading floor.  Said one officer after a senior JPM exec thanked him for his service: "We promise to keep you safe if you keep this country strong."

You can sleep tight knowing that JPMorgan Chase is keeping your nation strong, and that military officers view JPMorgan Chase as guardians of the nation's strength.

More on the media's Pentagon-subservient WikiLeaks coverage

The New York Times' John Burns yesterday responded to (and complained about) criticisms -- voiced by me, Julian Assange and others -- over his gossipy, People Magazine-style "profile" of Assange, which his newspaper centrally featured as part of its coverage of the WikiLeaks document release.  In a self-justifying interview with Yahoo! News' Michael Calderone, Burns makes several comments worth examining:

Burns said he doesn't "recall ever having been the subject of such absolutely, relentless vituperation" following a story in his 35 years at the Times. He said his email inbox has been full of denunciations from readers and a number of academics at top-tier schools such as Harvard, Yale, and MIT.  Some, he said, used "language that I don't think they would use at their own dinner table." 

This is really good to hear:  quite encouraging.  Apparently, many people become quite angry when the newspaper which did more to enable the attack on Iraq than any other media outlet in the world covered one of the most significant war leaks in American history -- documents detailing the deaths of more than 100,000 human beings in that war and the heinous abuse of thousands of others -- by assigning its most celebrated war correspondent and London Bureau Chief to studiously examine and malign the totally irrelevant personality quirks, alleged mental health, and various personal relationships of Julian Assange.  Imagine that.  Then we have this from Burns:

Such heated reactions to the profile, Burns said, shows "just how embittered the American discourse on these two wars has become."

Oh my, how upsetting.  People are so very "embittered," and over what?  Just a couple of decade-long wars that have spilled enormous amounts of innocent blood, devastated two countries for no good reason, and spawned a worldwide American regime of torture, lawless imprisonment, and brutal occupation.  It's nothing to get upset over.  People really need to lighten up.  And stop being so mean to John Burns.  That's what really matters.   

After all -- as he himself told you just a couple of months ago -- there was just no way that he and his war-supporting media colleagues -- holding themselves out as preeminent, not-to-be-questioned experts on that country -- could possibly have known that an attack on Iraq would have led to such devastating violence and humanitarian catastrophe (except by listening to, rather than systematically ignoring, the huge numbers of people around the world loudly warning that exactly that could happen).  The last thing he should have to endure are insulting emails from people who seem to think that such episodes warrant anger and recrimination.  And that's to say nothing of the obvious irony of a reporter complaining about our "embittered discourse" after he just wrote one of the sleaziest, most vicious hit pieces seen in The New York Times in quite some time.

Then there's this:

The profile, Burns said, is "an absolutely standard journalistic endeavor that we would use with any story of similar importance in the United States" . . . . Burns added that the Times is "not in the business of hagiography" but in the "business of giving our readers the fullest context for these documents" and the Assange's motivations. "To suggest that doing that is some kind of grotesque journalistic sin, and makes me a sociopath," Burns said, "strikes me as pretty odd."

This is the heart of the matter.  What Burns did to Julian Assagne is most certainly not a "standard journalist endeavor" for The New York Times.  If anyone doubts that, please show me any article that paper has published which trashed the mental health, psyche and personality of a high-ranking American political or military official -- a Senator or a General or a President or a cabinet secretary or even a prominent lobbyist -- based on quotes from disgruntled associated of theirs.  That is not done, and it never would be. 

This kind of character smear ('he's not in his right mind," pronounced a 25-year-old who sort of knows him) is reserved for people who don't matter in the world of establishment journalists -- i.e., people without power or standing in Washington and, especially, those whom American Government authorities scorn.  In official Washington, Assange is a contemptible loser -- the Pentagon hates him and wants him destroyed, and therefore the "reporters" who rely on,  admire and identify with Pentagon officials immediately adopt that perspective -- and that's why he was the target of this type of attack.  After I wrote my criticism of this article on Monday, I was contacted by Burns' co-writer, Ravi Somaiya, who defended this article from my criticisms.  I agreed to keep the exchange off-the-record at his insistence -- and I will do so -- but that was the question I kept asking:  point to any instance where the NYT ever subjected Someone Who Matters in Washington to this kind of personality and mental health trashing based on the gossip and condemnation of associates.  It does not exist.

As for Burns' pronouncement that "the Times is 'not in the business of hagiography'," he should probably remind himself of what he himself wrote about the Right Honorable Gen. Stanely McChrystal, after Burns had attacked Michael Hastings for daring to publish the General's own statements that reflected badly on him.  Here's what Burns wrote while falling all over himself in reverence of this Great American Warrior:

[A]ll that I know about General McChrystal suggests that he is, just as the Rolling Stone article suggested, a maverick of high self-belief and intensity, uncautioned in his disregard for the conventional, but for all that a soldier with a deep belief in the military's ideals of "duty, honor, country." Though handed what many would regard as a poisoned chalice in the Afghanistan command, he had worked relentlessly to rescue America's fortunes there. . . . grave misfortune it is, considering what is lost to America in a commander as smart, resolute and as fit for purpose as General McChrystal . . . . 

General George S. Patton Jr. . . .  a man who was regarded at the time, like General McChrystal in Afghanistan, as the best, and the toughest, of America's war-fighting generals. . . . In Iraq, we barely glimpsed General McChrystal, then running the super-secret special operations missions that were crucial in turning the tide against Al Qaeda and the Sunni insurgency under General Petraeus's command; but he, too, continued the pattern of access after he took command in Afghanistan in June 2009. . . .

Reporters, of course, do best when they keep their views to themselves, to retain their impartiality. But it's safe to say that many of the men and women who have covered General McChrystal as commander if Afghanistan, or in his previous role as the top United States special forces commander, admired him, and felt at least some unease about the elements in the Rolling Stone article that ended his career.

It seems Burns wrote that while standing and saluting in front of a large wall photograph of the General, or perhaps kneeling in front of it.  The only hint of a criticism was quite backhanded: that McCrystal  "blundered catastrophically" by failing to exercise sufficient caution when speaking to an Unestablished, Unaccepted, reckless, low-level loser like Michael Hastings, who simply did not know -- or refused to abide by -- the General-protecting rules that Real Reporters use when venerating covering for covering top military officials.  And despite writing 2,700 praise-filled words about McChrystal, Burns never once mentioned little things like his central involvement in the Pat Tillman fraud or the widespread detainee abuse in Iraq under his command, until a reader asked about it, and only then, he mentioned it in passing to dismiss it. Burns' view of McChrystal is the very definition of journalistic hagiography.

Or consider this NYT profile of Gen. McChrystal by Elisabeth Bumiller and Mark Mazzetti, after he was named to run the war in Afghanistan, that was more creepily worshipful than any Us Weekly profile of a movie star whose baby pictures they are desperate to publish.  It goes on and on with drooling priase, but this is how it begins:

Lt. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the ascetic who is set to become the new top American commander in Afghanistan, usually eats just one meal a day, in the evening, to avoid sluggishness.

He is known for operating on a few hours' sleep and for running to and from work while listening to audio books on an iPod. In Iraq, where he oversaw secret commando operations for five years, former intelligence officials say that he had an encyclopedic, even obsessive, knowledge about the lives of terrorists, and that he pushed his ranks aggressively to kill as many of them as possible.

But General McChrystal has also moved easily from the dark world to the light. Fellow officers on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, where he is director, and former colleagues at the Council on Foreign Relations describe him as a warrior-scholar, comfortable with diplomats, politicians and the military man who would help promote him to his new job.

"He's lanky, smart, tough, a sneaky stealth soldier," said Maj. Gen. William Nash, a retired officer. "He's got all the Special Ops attributes, plus an intellect."

That article also never mentioned the issue of detainee abuse -- no need to bother NYT readers with such unpleasantries about the Lanky Smart Tough Warrior who will win Afghanistan -- while the Tillman incident was buried in a paragraph near the end and dismissed as the "one blot on his otherwise impressive military record."  Remember, though:  "the Times is 'not in the business of hagiography'."  Upon McChrystal's firing, the Hillman Foundation's Charles Kaiser wrote a comprehensive piece documenting how the "unspoken rules" cited by Burns to attack Hastings were what led to widespread media protection and veneration of McChrystal, as embodied by the highly revealing though pernicious comments from CBS News' Laura Logan ("Michael Hastings has never served his country the way McChrystal has").

"Hagiography" is exactly what the American establishment media does, when it comes to powerful American political and military leaders.  Slimy, personality-based hit pieces are reserved for those who are scorned by the powerful in Washington -- such as Julian Assange.  So subservient to the Pentagon's agenda was the media coverage of the WikiLeaked documents that even former high-level journalists are emphatically objecting, and naming names.  John Parker, former military reporter and fellow of the University of Maryland Knight Center for Specialized Journalism-Military Reporting, wrote an extraordinarily good letter yesterday:

The sad lack of coverage ("Sunday talk shows largely ignore WikiLeaks' Iraq files") of the leak of unfiltered, publicly owned information from the latest WikiLeak is disturbing, but not historically out of the ordinary for major American media.

The career trend of too many Pentagon journalists typically arrives at the same vanishing point: Over time they are co-opted by a combination of awe -- interacting so closely with the most powerfully romanticized force of violence in the history of humanity -- and the admirable and seductive allure of the sharp, amazingly focused demeanor of highly trained military minds. Top military officers have their s*** together and it's personally humbling for reporters who've never served to witness that kind of impeccable competence. These unspoken factors, not to mention the inner pull of reporters' innate patriotism, have lured otherwise smart journalists to abandon – justifiably in their minds – their professional obligation to treat all sources equally and skeptically.

Too many military reporters in the online/broadcast field have simply given up their watchdog role for the illusion of being a part of power. Example No. 1 of late is Tom Gjelten of NPR. . . Interviewed by his colleague on Oct. 22 about the latest WikiLeaks documents, this exchange happened:

__________

Robert Siegel: And reaction to the release today?

Gjelten: Well, the Pentagon is, understandably, very angry, as they were when the documents from Afghanistan were released. They said this decision to release them was made cavalierly. They do point out - and I can't say I disagree (emphasis Parker's) - that the period in Iraq that these documents covered was already very well chronicled. They say it does not bring new understanding to those events.

___________

There it is in black and white. Gjelten is lending his credibility to the Pentagon as "neutral" national journalist. . . . Gjelten, other Pentagon journalists and informed members of the public would benefit from watching "The Selling of the Pentagon," a 1971 documentary. It details how, in the height of the Vietnam War, the Pentagon sophisticatedly used taxpayer money against taxpayers in an effort to sway their opinions toward the Pentagon's desires for unlimited war. Forty years later, the techniques of shaping public opinion via media has evolved exponentially. It has reached the point where flipping major journalists is a matter of painting in their personal numbers.

Precisely.  The Pentagon has long been devoted to destroying the credibility and reputation of WikiLeaks, and the military-revering John Burns and his war-enabling newspaper, as usual, lent its helping hand to the Government's agenda.  This is what NPR's Gjelten routinely does as well.  The Pulitzer-Prize-winning David Cay Johnston, formerly of the NYT, wrote his own letter yesterday supporting Parker, citing the media's Pentagon-parroting line (from Gjelten and others) that there is nothing new in the WikiLeaks documents, and wrote:  "If you want to ignore the facts or tell only the official version of events get a job as a flack."  That is the job they have, only they're employed by our major media outlets.  That's the principal problem.  They receive most of their benefits -- their access, their scoops, their sense of belonging, their money, their esteem -- from dutifully serving that role.

Of course, another major reason why these media figures are so eager to parrot the Government line -- to try to destroy Assange and insist that there's "nothing new" in these horrifying documents -- is because they cheered for these wars in the first place.  The Washington Post's Editorial Page Editor, Fred Hiatt, was one of the most vocal cheerleaders for the attack on Iraq, and so predictably, the Post (like NPR's Gjelten) ran an Editorial yesterday echoing the Pentagon and belittling the WikiLeaks documents as Nothing New Here.  If that's true, perhaps Hiatt can point to the article where the Post previously reported on the existence of Frago 242, the secret order which instructed American troops not to investigate Iraqi abuse, or perhaps he can explain why the Post's own Baghdad Bureau Chief for much of the war, Ellen Knickmeyer, finds plenty new in the WikiLeaks documents:  "Thanks to WikiLeaks, though, I now know the extent to which top American leaders lied, knowingly, to the American public, to American troops, and to the world, as the Iraq mission exploded."

Media figures like Burns, Gjelten, Hiatt and the NYT want you to think there's nothing new in these documents, and to focus instead on Julian Assange's alleged personality flaws (or the prospects that he -- rather than the criminals he exposed -- should be prosecuted), because that way they hope you won't notice all the blood on their hands.  That's one major benefit.  The other is that they discharge their prime function of currying favor with and serving the interests of the powerful Washington figures whom "cover."

* * * * *

There's one specific inaccuracy in Burns' response to me which I want to highlight.  The Yahoo! article states:  "Burns took issue with Greenwald's suggestion that he's 'a borderline-sociopath' who's now coping with the guilt of having 'enabled and cheered' on the Iraq war."  I didn't actually call Burns that.  What I wrote was that, in light of what these documents reveal, "even" a  borderline-sociopath would be awash with guilt over having supported this war and would be eager to distract attention away from that -- by belittling the importance of the documents and focusing instead on the messenger:  Julian Assange.  In other words, there's only one category of people who would not feel such guilt -- an absolute sociopath -- and I was generously assuming that Burns was not in that category, which is why I would expect (and hope) that he is driven by guilt over the war he supported.  That's the most generous explanation I can think of for why -- in the face of these startling, historic revelations -- his journalistic choice was to pass on personality chatter about Assange.

Inhumane impact of DOMA

In July of this year, a federal judge ruled that the Defense of Marriage Act -- the 1996 law enacted with overwhelming bipartisan support and signed into law by President Clinton -- was unconstitutional.  Among other things, bars the federal government and all federal agencies from issuing any marriage-based benefits -- including immigration rights -- to same-sex couples, even if those couples are legally married in the U.S.  It effectuates that ban by restricting federal recognition of spousal relationships to "a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife."  The court ruled that this provision was unconstitutional because it violates the rights of states under the Tenth Amendment to define "marriage" for themselves, and independently violates the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Barack Obama campaigned for President on a platform of repealing DOMA, and when he was running for the Senate in 2004, he wrote a letter to a gay Chicago newspaper calling DOMA "abhorrent" and its repeal "essential."  Despite those stated positions, and despite large (and growing) American majorities in favor of granting legal rights to same-sex couples on a fully equal basis, a repeal of DOMA was never even brought up for a vote during the last two years, and it's now very difficult to envision legislative repeal of this ban.  Nor was a separate bill to provide same-sex couples with the same immigration rights as opposite-sex couples considered. Additionally -- just as is true for Don't Ask/Don't Tell -- because the Obama DOJ defended the constitutionality of DOMA in court and then obtained a stay of the court's ruling striking down the law while the DOJ appeals, DOMA continues to be enforced as the law of the land, resulting in the active, ongoing denial of a whole slew of vital federal legal rights to same-sex couples in the U.S.

Leaving aside the debate over whether the Obama DOJ should be defending DOMA in court, the human costs from this conduct are severe, though often overlooked.  One of the most destructive aspects of DOMA is that it bars gay Americans who are married to a foreign national -- an increasingly common situation for Americans generally in a globalized world -- from obtaining a marriage-based visa for their same-sex foreign spouse.  By contrast, Americans who are married to a foreign national of the opposite sex receive more or less automatic visas and then Green Cards for their spouse, entitling them to live together in the U.S.

Just please watch this two-minute news report, describing the gut-wrenching (though not uncommon) plight of Josh Vandiver, an American citizen, and Henry Velandia, his Venezuelan spouse.  Despite their being legally married in Connecticut after four years of living together, Velandia, because of DOMA, is about to be deported to Venezuela, where Vandiver is unable to live and work.  In other words, the U.S. Government is about to separate this couple, who want to spend the rest of their lives together, and force them to live on separate continents thousands of miles apart:

Independent of debates over the meaning of "marriage," what kind of person could possibly watch that and support something like this:  the devastating denial of this most basic equality?  And this situation is far from uncommon.  Although it's difficult to quantify exactly, a comprehensive report from Human Rights Watch in 2006 documented that the number of gay Americans barred from living in the U.S. with their foreign national spouse is in the "thousands."  And that's all independent of the denial of a slew of other benefits -- including survivors' benefits for federal benefits -- that impose serious suffering and hardship on gay Americans for absolutely no good cause.

As I wrote about before, DOMA is what prevents me from living full-time in the U.S., as my same-sex partner is a Brazilian national.  But as difficult and anger-generating as it is to be legally prevented from living in my own country with my partner, I'm fortunate enough to have the best possible outcome:   (1) the ability to live outside the U.S. and still work (though not without considerable impediments and losses of opportunity), and (2) a partner who is from a country that grants immigration rights to same-sex couples and thus allows me to live and work there, thus enabling us to live together in the same country. 

But most gay Americans married to a foreign national have no such luck.  Most people don't have careers that enable them to live outside of the U.S., and even for those who do, many are married to foreign nationals from countries which also do not provide immigration rights to same-sex couples.  For the thousands of same-sex couples in that situation, the choices are grim indeed:  they can choose (1) to live illegally in one country or the other, or (2) separate and live thousands of miles away -- for the indefinite future -- from the person with whom they want to share their lives.  As the HRW Report put it:  "thousands of U.S. citizens and their foreign same-sex partners face enormous hardships, separation and even exile because discriminatory U.S. immigration policies deprive these couples of the basic right to be together."

Each time I've written about this issue, I receive emails or comments from Americans in this predicament, and they illustrate how severe is the hardship even for those who are relatively lucky in finding some minimally workable solution.  In December, 2008, I wrote about the prospect that Democrats would use their large majorities to repeal at least the part of DOMA which bans the equal granting of federal marriage rights (a hope which Ann Althouse derided as naive and baseless:  turned out she was right, even though [as polls make clear] she was blatantly wrong in her claim that granting equal benefits to same-sex couples would be politically destructive for Democrats).  In response to that post, I received this comment from a gay American who is married to an Indian national and was forced to move to Canada in order to be together:

I'm one of the people Glenn's writing about, and I'm ready for some change I can believe in.

I'm an American currently living in exile in Canada. My partner is from India. We're both struggling to adapt to the challenges of living in a new country. This wasn't how we wanted things to work out, but it's the best option open to us. I had to immigrate here before I could sponsor his immigration. It was expensive, it took a long time, and was difficult to leave my family and friends behind, but I had no choice. I'll forever be grateful to Canada for giving us this opportunity, but I hope one day to return to the States with my partner.  Repealing DOMA would be big step towards realizing that dream.

It's far, far worse for those who don't have the resources or ability to move to a country that is foreign to both partners:  their lives become harrowing if they try to stay together.  The last time I wrote about this issue, I received this email from a gay American citizen who has been married to a Brazilian national for 13 years; for a variety of reasons, they are unable to live in Brazil, and the Brazilian partner is no longer able to obtain a visa to be in the U.S. legally:

Glenn,

I just wanted to drop you a line and express my deepest, most profound gratitude that you decided to highlight this issue. As is evident by many of the commenters, this is something that almost no one thinks about or even knows about and when you're someone who is affected by it, that can make for some lonely moments as you try to get a handle on your problems.

My husband of 13 years is also Brazilian and since his work visa expired 6 years ago, we've been living both in fear and in debt. Whatever savings we had were wiped out in our futile attempts to find some way - any way - for him to stay in this country legally. Well, it didn't work out (no surprise) and since he is adamant about never wanting to live in Brazil again (for a variety of reasons), here we are. I never thought I'd use this word to describe myself but with the loss of his earnings and the frantic attempts to fix the situation, we are pretty much destitute.

Poverty, I can live with. It's ultimately, for someone like myself (white, educated, middle class background) a solvable situation even if most days that road seems unbearably long. It's the fear and the sadness that is so devastating. Fear that he will somehow be found out and taken away from me and sadness because his family back home is poor and has little opportunity to travel, so he hasn't seen his father or brother in 14 years and has only seen his mother twice in that time. His parents are getting older and always in the back of my mind, I have a cold dread of the day when one of them gets sick or ultimately passes away because psychologically, I have no idea how he's going to be able to handle that or how I'm going to be able to help him through that. In addition, because he can't legally work here, his earnings are practically nil and like many people, that is devastating to his pride and self worth.

I don't know why I'm telling you all this. It's certainly not something you're naive about or need to be told about. I guess I just wanted to tell you how gratifying it was to see someone highlight this issue, especially someone who is so good at explaining complex legal and political issues to his readers. Even better, you're someone who is personally affected by it. You do great work and I wouldn't expect you to become a spokesperson for this sort of thing, but I would urge you to consider writing about it again when circumstances warrant. People just don't know about this and in my experience, even people who are adamantly opposed to gay marriage find this to be cruel and untenable.

So, thank you. For a moment yesterday I didn't feel quite so lonely just knowing that people were gaining an understanding of the issue.

Best Regards,

XXX XXXXX

There are all sorts of excuses offered as to why, two years into Obama's presidency and with a large Democratic majority, these grave injustices (and those brought about by DADT) continue.  There is validity to some of those excuses.  But that doesn't change the fact that gay and lesbian Americans poured enormous amounts of time, energy and money into electing Obama and a Democratic majority, only to watch as the Federal Government discharges gay service members and deports the partners of gay Americans with as much fervor and destruction as ever before, with no real end in sight.  Just watch that above-embedded video again, or read those emails, and ask:  is it really hard to understand why -- rational or not -- there's such a pronounced lack of enthusiasm on the part of that constiuency to do anything to help Democrats remain in power when it's so clear that this won't change (unless courts, over the best efforts of the Obama administration, change it)?

And when one listens to the actual human cost from this legalized discrimination, it's hard to overstate just how malicious and warped are those who support it.  There are 16 countries in the world, spanning five continents, which refuse to force their gay citizens to choose between exile, living illegally or permanent separation, including many which do not recognize same-sex marriage.  Yet the U.S. continues to force that horrific choice on its gay citizens.  Most political debates have reasonable arguments on both sides.  Subjecting gay Americans to self-exile or preventing them from living on the same continent as their spouse is manifestly not one of them.  It's a grave injustice completely bereft of any justification for being allowed to continue.

* * * * *

The premier group working on immigration equality for gay couples is, aptly enough, Immigration Equality, which has substantial resources and information -- and can be supported -- here.

On an unrelated note:  last month, I participated in an event at Brooklyn Law School on the Israeli flotilla attack.  It was an excellent discussion, and audio of the full event is available here, courtesy of WeAreMany.org.  The first speaker was Fatima Mohammadi, an Iranian-American lawyer who was on the deck of the Mavi Marmara at the time of the attack and powerfully recounts what she witnessed; I was the second speaker (beginning at around the 17:15 mark), discussing how this incident was presented in the U.S. and what that reveals about U.S./Israeli relations (see this remarkable news story from this week to underscore several of the points I made); and the third speaker was Columbia Professor Rashid Khalidi, discussing the historical context leading up to this episode.