Gonzalez Contradicts Bush Line on NSA Spying

I just stumbled upon a quote by Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez which is very interesting in light of the justifications Bush's administration has offered for the NSA eavesdropping program. Gonzalez, in explaining to reporters why president Bush decided to establish a secret policy via an executive order instead of going through Congress -- for example proposing amendments to FISA -- Gonzalez replied:

"We've had discussions with members of Congress, certain members of Congress, about whether or not we could get an amendment to FISA, and we were advised that that was not likely to be - that was not something we could likely get, certainly not without jeopardizing the existence of the program, and therefore, killing the program."

The administration has claimed that with the passage of the Authorization for Use of Military Force in 2001, Congress granted him the authority to establish the NSA eavesdropping practice under the authorization to use "all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001... in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons." If Bush's administration truly believes that the granting of this power was implicit in the AUMF (i.e. that it was the intention of Congress in passing the bill to authorize the eavesdropping policy), how could they also believe that Congress would have rejected amendments to FISA which would affect the exact same authorization?

If the intentions of the AUMF included authorization for warrantless eavesdropping, then Congress would have been more than willing to legally re-affirm this intention by amendment of FISA. If, on the other hand, Bush's administration was fully aware that Congress would not support such amendment, how could they claim that Congress actually supported the policy via the AUMF?

It seems to me like Bush wasn't counting on his secret program being discovered, and that now the cracks are showing in the flimsy legal justification that was thrown together once he realized he would have to answer for his actions. Bush never wanted the shaky legal grounds of this policy to be tested by Congress or the courts. Why else would he make the program so secretive? Why would he also ban those Congressmen who learned of the program from discussing it with others? Despite Bush's adamant defense of this policy as legal, the more details come out in this scandal, the more it looks like Bush has been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

NSA Spying Lies

The liberal website ThinkProgress has revealed that multiple claims by the Drudge Report and National Review Online dealing with an executive order passed by president Clinton -- that the order established the same practice for which Bush is currently being criticized -- are demonstrably false (article here).

Drudge omitted key language in his presentation of the order in order to create the impression that it established a right of the president (with the aid of the attorney general) to eavesdrop on American citizens without a warrant. In fact, the omitted language made it very clear that the eavesdropping in question could not involve "United States persons" (American citizens and permanent residents). Drudge made similar claims regarding an executive order signed by president Jimmy Carter, omitting details of the order which prohibited eavesdropping on US citizens. Liberal bias or not, the language of the order, revealed in full at ThinkProgress, explodes this defense that has been widely circulated around the conservative blogosphere.

From the analysis by ThinkProgress:

What Drudge says:

Clinton, February 9, 1995: “The Attorney General is authorized to approve physical searches, without a court order”

What Clinton actually signed:

Section 1. Pursuant to section 302(a)(1) [50 U.S.C. 1822(a)] of the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance] Act, the Attorney General is authorized to approve physical searches, without a court order, to acquire foreign intelligence information for periods of up to one year, if the Attorney General makes the certifications required by that section.

That section requires the Attorney General to certify is the search will not involve “the premises, information, material, or property of a United States person.” That means U.S. citizens or anyone inside of the United States.

The entire controversy about Bush’s program is that, for the first time ever, allows warrantless surveillance of U.S. citizens and other people inside of the United States. Clinton’s 1995 executive order did not authorize that.

Examples of this sort of distortion are becoming more and more abundant as Republican groups fabricate justifications for Bush's NSA eavesdropping program, a program thought by many to be obviously unconstitutional and in violation of federal law.

NSA Spying, FISA, and Presidential Authority

Unless you've been living in a cave for the past week, you have undoubtedly heard at least four different justifications for president Bush's eavesdropping on American citizens without warrants via the NSA, and four different explanations of why such an action is not only illegal but unconstitutional. The debate has been lively, yet most readers will be presented with numerous conflicting interpretations of the relevant legal nuances, as well as more than a fair share of outright distortions and lies. In order to come to an informed conclusion about the legality of Bush's NSA policy, Americans should seek a basic understanding of the relevant laws and principles despite the sometimes treacherous terrain of bland legalisms and infuriating nuance.

The debate has largely revolved around three basic areas: 1) the Fourth Amendment, 2) the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), and its relationship to the Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) passed by Congress after 9/11 and 3) the inherent powers of the president under Article II of the Constitution. The debate is further confused by the interplay between these three areas, such as the balance between Article II presidential powers and the Fourth Amendment. To offer a brief outline of the arguments being made:

The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution protects United States citizens from "unreasonable search and seizure" -- a protection put into effect by requiring the executive branch to secure a warrant from a judge before -- as relevant to this case -- wiretapping the phone lines of an American citizen. Of course the issue isn't as clear-cut as that, since the President is widely held to reserve the power to order wiretaps without a warrant. From the Volokh Conspiracy:

Wiretapping to protect the security of the Nation has been authorized by successive Presidents. The present Administration would apparently save national security cases from restrictions against wiretapping. We should not require the warrant procedure and the magistrate's judgment if the President of the United States or his chief legal officer, the Attorney General, has considered the requirements of national security and authorized electronic surveillance as reasonable.

While this is not a completely foolproof legal principle (the Supreme Court has not ruled precisely on it), it is generally accepted as valid, and would probably hold up in court. Given this much, it seems that the President was acting within his rightful authority in ordering these warrantless wiretaps, except for the complication offered by FISA.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, passed in 1978, established a secret court (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court or FISC) through which the executive branch could secure warrants for wiretaps and other sorts of search. The relevant statute, 50 USC 1809, states that "A person is guilty of an offense if he intentionally . . . engages in electronic surveillance under color of law except as authorized by statute." This means that if the executive wiretaps anyone without a warrant secured from the FISC or justification according to another law, they are guilty of an offense. There are exceptions to this law dealing with 'foreign agents' (spies for other countries), however investigation of terrorist suspects is not one of those exceptions.

The relationship between FISA and the Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) is that President Bush is claiming that implicit in the AUMF is the right to wiretap terrorist suspects without a warrant. The language of the AUMF statue is as follows:

AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES.
(a) IN GENERAL.--That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.

The question is if the authorization to "use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines..." includes an authorization to do what President Bush did, that is wiretap American citizens without warrants. Bush claims that such surveillance is "necessary and appropriate" to the execution of the law, and that it fulfills the requirement in FISA "...except as authorized by statute." That is to say, Bush claims that the AUMF is the statute which authorizes this action, so what he did is completely in keeping with FISA.

There are still others who claim that the President has authority through Article II of the Constitution to order wiretaps without warrants, and who claim that FISA is an unconstitutional infringement on his presidential authority in that respect. If such a claim is made, it is then necessary to determine what the balance is between this presidential power and the protection against "unreasonable search and seizure" -- specifically the requirement for warrants established by the Fourth Amendment.

None of this gets us any closer to an answer as to whether or not Bush has violated federal law or the Constitution, however it does present how complicated the issue has become. From what I have read, it seems unlikely that the AUMF is adequate to get around FISA, as Bush is attempting to do. It is very clear, also, that the intent of the Fourth Amendment has been violated, if not the exact letter of the law.

The bottom line is that the President ordered his subordinates to violate FISA by wiretapping without a warrant, and in doing so he also violated the intent of the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure. Many people disagree with this "bottom line" because they have differing views of the extent of presidential authority, however it is seeming more and more likely that the case will be determined by whether the court finds that the AUMF provided sufficient authorization to bypass the normal requirements of FISA. In this sort of case, the court is unlikely to argue from first principles that the President violated the Fourth Amendment, since doing so would be to clearly delineate a serious limitation on presidential power. For some reason the Supreme Court is not very fond of making definitive statements on the limitations of the president. I would love it if they did just that, but not everyone is as libertarian as I am. In the politicized environment of our country, whether Bush walks away scot-free or not will probably depend as much on people's outrage over this as on any legal quibbling, so the best we can do is keep the pressure on.

For much more in-depth analysis of all these issues from someone with formal legal education, check out the excellent (and long) legal analysis at Volokh.com (link here). For more background on Bush's stance on presidential authority, you can read the famous paper by John Yoo claiming "plenary" executive power for the president (link here). There are even more links to the relevant statutes and case law on Volokh.com included in the analysis.

Nothing To Hide...

"You have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide." No doubt you've heard this parroted by virtually every proponent of the president's post-9/11 intrusions on civil liberties. What if this same principle is applied to the federal government?

Counterpunch.org, an admittedly liberal news website (the facts do seem to check out in this case), ran an article today questioning the disappearance of the flight recorders -- commonly called "black boxes" -- from the two airliners that crashed into the WTC towers on September 11, 2001. While the FBI alleges that none of the four devices (two flight recorders per plane) were recovered, two NYC firefighters claim to have recovered the boxes from the wreckage. In addition to this, an anonymous official at the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) claims to have been in possession of the boxes, however the board officially denies that the boxes were ever recovered.

There has always been some skepticism about this assertion [that the boxes from the WTC were not recovered], particularly as two N.Y. City firefighters, Mike Bellone and Nicholas De Masi, claimed in 2004 that they had found three of the four boxes, and that Federal agents took them and told the two men not to mention having found them. (The FBI denies the whole story.) Moreover, these devices are almost always located after crashes, even if not in useable condition (and the cleanup of the World Trade Center was meticulous, with even tiny bone fragments and bits of human tissue being discovered so that almost all the victims were ultimately identified). As Ted Lopatkiewicz, director of public affairs at the National Transportation Safety Agency which has the job of analyzing the boxes' data, says, "It's very unusual not to find a recorder after a crash, although it's also very unusual to have jets flying into buildings."
[...]
A source at the National Transportation Safety Board, the agency that has the task of deciphering the date from the black boxes retrieved from crash sites-including those that are being handled as crimes and fall under the jurisdiction of the FBI-says the boxes were in fact recovered and were analyzed by the NTSB.

"Off the record, we had the boxes," the source says. "You'd have to get the official word from the FBI as to where they are, but we worked on them here.

Why would the main intelligence and law enforcement arm of the U.S. government want to hide from the public not just the available information about the two hijacked flights that provided the motivation and justification for the nation's "War on Terror" and for its two wars against Afghanistan and Iraq, but even the fact that it has the devices which could contain that information? Conspiracy theories abound, with some claiming the planes were actually pilotless military aircraft, or that they had little or nothing to do with the building collapses. The easiest way to quash such rumors and such fevered thinking would be openness.

Instead we have the opposite: a dark secrecy that invites many questions regarding the potentially embarrassing or perhaps even sinister information that might be on those tapes.

Combined with the myriad other anomalies that occurred on 9/11 (why are there gag orders on all firefighters restricting them from talking about what happened that day? Why are 4 of the supposed suicide hijackers alive and well?), and the failure of Bush's administration (or anyone else) to explain these discrepancies, there are more than enough questions regarding what happened on 9/11 to justify a full, independent (meaning not government-run or -funded) investigation.

So far, those backing the official story have silenced questions by calling questioners "conspiracy theorists", however there will eventually have to be a full accounting for what happened on that day, and an explanation for why the truth is being hidden from the American people.

Science, Pseudo-Science, and State Indoctrination

In a landmark case and historic victory of reason over superstition, a federal judge has ruled that a Pennsylvania school district cannot teach intelligent design in public biology courses (story here). So-called intelligent design, the newest angle of creationists in their attempts to have unscientific religious dogma taught in public schools, posits that the complex processes of evolution unfolded according to the plan of some higher power or deity. Proponents of intelligent design claim that the complexity of life on earth could not have resulted from random mutations over vast spans of time -- as theorized by evolutionary theory -- and therefore must have been directed by some sort of rational entity.

Setting aside the fact that there is absolutely no empirical evidence for such a claim (aside from the complexity of life itself, which could easily have resulted from chance mutations as described in evolutionary theory), to replace evolutionary theory with intelligent design would be to replace a scientific account with religious conjecture. Even if (and this if goes against everything we know about evolution) chance occurances could not have led to the degree of complexity in life today, there is no logical step that necessitates an omnipotent deity to have directed the development of life. "Intelligent design" is nothing more than creationism dressed up in the language of evolution, and the Pennsylvania court was correct in banning such religious dogma, even when presented as rational scientific theory.

For more on intelligent design, there is a good debate hosted by Natural History magazine here, and an account of the history of intelligent design, as well as an overview of the theory on the Intelligent Design Wikipedia entry here.

That being said, such a 'victory' also brings to light the potential for disaster in our highly centralized model of education. What is and is not acceptable to be taught to children as history and science is determined almost exclusively by government agents who have a clear vested interest in the propagation of the state and in the distortion of history so as to place the United States in a positive light. In this case, what is to be taught in public schools happens to be scientific and valid, however a great deal of what is taught as 'history' in public schools is just as absurd as the 'theory' of intelligent design.

Consider which presidents are glorified in public school history books: wartime presidents and presidents who oversaw huge expansions of government power. Consider which presidents are belittled and mocked: the "do-nothing" presidents who neither started wars nor pushed for large expansions in government. Every history, government, social studies, and economics course taught in a public school leaves the student with a strong bias in favor of war, government intervention, communalism, bureaucracy, and totalitarian extremes.

A lifelong process of government indoctrination and propaganda begins in the public schools to which Americans are forced to send their young children. Why exactly would the government make school attendance mandatory (in such a way that discourages home schooling and private schooling), unless they had a vested interest in forming the basic prejudices of every child born in the country? The answer is obvious, as are the great benefits to be gained by the government by filling childrens' impressionable minds with patriotic nationalist blather. Without such thorough indoctrination, where would the government find sufficient numbers of volunteers willing to die for the very entity which robs them and restricts their freedom?

The amount of time and dedication it takes to override the subconscious pro-government prejudices instilled in early childhood is amazing. Most Americans can take nowhere near the amount of time necessary to investigate the truth and how it differs from what they have been taught their whole lives, and the result is a populace largely supportive of almost whatever the government puts in front of them. That American teachers can vilify Communist "re-education" and indoctrination while supporting the same sort of propaganda campaign in America is testament to the totality of our government's control over thought.

Next time you catch yourself thinking about some political issue, such as the moral basis for taxation, the government's monopoly on force, or anything similar, take a second to analyze your inner bias and your subconscious emotional responses to anti-government rhetoric. What you find may surprise you.

Try to Think of Something More Unconstitutional

In case you haven't heard the big news, the New York Times has revealed that in early 2002 President George Bush ordered the National Security Agency (NSA) to begin eavesdropping on American citizens within the United States without warrants (story here). When confronted with reports of this egregious violation of federal law and constitutional provision, the president took responsibility for ordering the spying, and defended the measures as both "critical to saving American lives'' and ''consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution.'' He added defiantly that he would continue to support such warrantless eavesdropping.

Surveillance of US citizens without a warrant has long been prohibited by the fourth amendment and Supreme Court precedent, as well as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which was passed in the 1970s. As reported in the Salt Lake Tribune:

Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies, said FISA ''expressly made it a crime for government officials 'acting under color of law' to engage in electronic eavesdropping 'other than pursuant to statute.' '' FISA described itself, along with the criminal wiretap statute, as ''the exclusive means by which electronic surveillance . . . may be conducted.'' (story here)

The secret 2002 authorization by the President does not establish adequate legal grounds for the eavesdropping -- it merely directed NSA officials to act in violation of federal law and constitutional limitation. Oddly, the President claims that the attorney general and his White House counsel had both cleared the order prior to its circulation among NSA officials. If, indeed, the attorney general and Bush's counsel both found the directive to be within the bounds of law, their justification of its legality should be tested in the near future.

It is doubtful that there has ever been such a clear-cut case of a President so shamelessly violating both federal law and his oath to uphold the constitution. If any president has ever been deserving of impeachment, it is president Bush -- right here and right now. Good luck to anyone trying to convince this insane country of something so obvious.

Bush just ripped the constitution to shreds -- for the 10th time since he became president -- and the evidence is staring everyone in the face. He even admits that he did it. He isn't even sorry. Will we do something about it?
But Bill Clinton lied about having sex with a chubby girl!
America, you are pathetic.

Training an Iraqi Army

Bloomberg has an interesting article on the problems that have been plaguing efforts to establish an Iraqi national army (link here). Among these problems is the absence of a monolithic Iraqi identity, and the tendency of military groups to split along sectarian lines. When the members of a military give allegiance to opposing factions above the national entity they are charged with serving, the result can be great instability and an increased risk of civil war.

Leslie Gelb, former assistant secretary of state and former president of the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations, said most of the militias pay first allegiance to their ethnic or tribal group.
"It's not an Iraqi army," said Gelb, who visited Iraq for 10 days earlier this year. Kurds are loyal to Kurds, Shiite militias resembling "mafia operations" run the south, "the central region has the insurgency, and Baghdad is all mixed up," he said.
Patrick Lang, former chief analyst for the Middle East at the Defense Intelligence Agency, said Iraq's different ethnic groups "will not serve together" in national army units.

Tensions caused by these divisions are also heightened by the differing visions held by Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis for the future of Iraq. Sunnis fear that their interests will not be represented fairly in the new government, and that they will be excluded from the benefits of oil revenues. Sunnis favor a strong central government and equal distribution of oil revenues among all the regions of Iraq, since Shiites control the most oil-rich provinces in Iraq and could easily exclude Sunnis from the benefits of oil should regional governments overpower the central government. Kurds are agitating for small central government and highly autonomous regional governments in order to maintain a large degree of independence from the rest of the country. Shiites also favor small central government and autonomous regional government, so they will benefit from their control of oil-rich areas and so as to preclude the ascension of a strong minority-controlled central government as was the case under Saddam.

As I said before in my article "Another Flawed 'National Strategy'", the real test for the Iraqi people will be if these sectarian divisions can be overcome through more inclusive political processes. Failure to do so could result in a split between warring factions, made even more deadly by a fractured Iraqi army that could devolve into numerous well-trained and well-armed militia-like forces. By training a large Iraqi army while bitter sectarian divisions continue to destabilize the country, Bush is risking even greater bloodshed when American troops pull out. Especially since Bush has made virtually the only condition of America's departure the training of these forces (as opposed to the reconciliation of differences between factions), it is even more likely that the power vacuum left by America's pull-out will be filled with the violence of a fractured army. If Bush insists on staying in Iraq, he would increase the chances of peace and stability in Iraq by emphasizing negotiation instead of increasing the potential for large-scale violence.

Iraqi Elections

It seems that the elections in Iraq have gone quite well, with a good overall turnout and generally "light" violence. Early estimates put the Iraqi turnout at "up to 15 million" and most polling stations were able to remain open. One notable exception to this was in the largely Sunni Anbar province, where only 162 of 207 polling stations were opened because of "security fears". No doubt the closing of Sunni polling stations will be touted by opponents of the new government as an attempt to deprive Sunnis of their right to vote.

Fears of large-scale violence failed to materialize, as they have in the past, and the turnout seems to have been good, making the election successful overall. When considering these early estimates, however, it is smart to keep in mind that estimates of turnout in past elections have gone from suspiciously optimistic highs -- up to 87 percent in early estimates sometimes -- to much lower estimates later on. Because of this, it is possible that the "up to 15 million" figure will be adjusted down in the next few days. Even after being adjusted down, however, the turnout should be very healthy.

Bush supporters have jumped at the chance to declare victory with these elections,with John Gibson of Fox News declaring "We Won! We Won! We Won! We Won!". Among those more familiar with the political climate in Iraq, there is good reason to doubt that these elections will affect any large-scale change for the better in Iraq. Juan Cole, in a post (link here) on his blog today, expressed his doubts by referencing the LA Times article on the elections (story here):

The LA Times probably reflects the thinking of a lot of Americans in hoping that these elections are a milestone on the way to withdrawing US troops from Iraq. I cannot imagine why anyone thinks that. The Iraqi "government" is a failed state. Virtually no order it gives has any likelihood of being implemented. It has no army to speak of and cannot control the country. Its parliamentarians are attacked and sometimes killed with impunity. Its oil pipelines are routinely bombed, depriving it of desperately needed income. It faces a powerful guerrilla movement that is wholly uninterested in the results of elections and just wants to overthrow the new order. Elections are unlikely to change any of this.

While Bush supporters have become ecstatic at the Iraqis going through the motions of democracy -- casting ballots, electing representatives, organizing a bureaucracy -- few of them realize that this new government is utterly impotent and lacks the power to make policy or initate change in its own country. What little power it does have it owes completely to the US military. Iraqis of course see this, which only reinforces the impression that the new government is a US puppet regime.

While we can be happy that the Iraqi people are taking their first steps towards self-determination, it is foolish to conflate the empty motions of democracy with freedom or legitimate government. Establishing a thriving democracy is much, much more complicated than just having elections and inking as many fingers as possible. What is being called "democracy" in Iraq today is largely empty ritual. Without legitimacy, political power and the ability to enforce its decisions, the Iraqi "government" is nothing but a PR gimmick for Republicans who want to believe that we have succeeded in Iraq. As a wise man once said, sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken. There's more to democracy than ballot boxes.

New Article on STR

I have a new article on Strike-the-Root.com dealing with Bush's new "National Strategy for Victory" called "Another Flawed 'National Strategy'", which you all should run over and read (link here). For those who haven't read my past articles, my archive is here.

Darwin vs. God?

Every now and then, something so profoundly ignorant and worthless it shocks the conscience makes its way into a relatively respectable news outlet. When this happens, I cannot resist the urge, as a political writer, to wonder at how such drivel finds its way into wide circulation. In an article for RealClearPolitics.com (admittedly not the New York Times, but fairly reputable nonetheless), Carlos Alberto Montaner talks of the evolution/creationism debate, and by numerous incomprehensible leaps of 'logic' (to use the word loosely) equates creationism with belief in natural rights, and evolution with nazism, communist totalitarianism, and generally every cliche of oppression and amorality (link here, if you dare).

Montaner's ignorance becomes apparent in the very first words of his column:

Evolution or creationism? That's the polemic bitterly dividing the intelligentsia once again.

Of course, Montaner betrays himself to be cognitively no where near the level of the "intelligentsia" by the fact that he believes thinking people are seriously torn between the unscientific and irrational belief of creationism and the empirical, scientific theory of evolution. There is no such debate, except between those so blinded by ignorant fundamentalism that they adopt plainly incoherent theories of life on one side, and people capable of rational thought on the other.

From here on, Montaner builds baseless assertion upon baseless assertion until nothing in his writing even seems to correspond to reality. The base of this mass of ignorance is the following:

The whole philosophical and juridical structure that supports liberal democracy hinges on the existence of a superior being from whom emanate the ''natural rights'' that protect individuals from the actions of the state or from the will of other people.

Montaner goes on to state that no other theory of natural rights has ever been derived, nor by extension is morality possible in a society that does not believe that the world was created in 6 days. A simple visit to the Wikipedia article on Human Rights (under the section "Philosophical basis of human rights", link here) would have disabused Montaner of this silly notion, however such extensive research is apparently beyond his capabilities.

Montaner then asserts that:

It was not true, as Aristotle advocated, that ''natural slaves'' existed or that women and foreigners (then called ''barbarians'') were inferior. That's why when Christianity centuries later adopted the philosophical legacy of the Stoics, it opened its arms to all races, nationalities, social classes and both sexes. ''Catholic'' means universal.

According to this history, the rise of Christianity resulted in equality of all the people of earth. This must mean that women and African Americans really could vote in the late Roman empire, and that modern secular freedom movements in the early 1910s and 1960s were nothing more than the continuation of a constant expression of Christian equality, which had been the norm since mere "centuries" (not millennia) after Aristotle.

As Montaner finishes draws his tour de force of history and philosophy to a close, he reminds us that without Christian beliefs, natural rights are impossible, and therefore any society which is not Christian is necessarily evil, genocidal, and more than somewhat likely to commit a holocaust:

Nazism, which also did not believe in natural rights, exterminated six million Jews and one million Gypsies and other minorities because there was no moral or philosophical impediment to curb it.

And of course, no one was ever killed in the name of Christianity...

Christianity is a faith that can help people live great lives and do great good, if taken for what it is, and not transformed into a replacement for reason. People like Montaner, who seem to have read nothing but the Bible in their entire lives, give Christians a bad name. This blog entry is not about hating Christianity, or about insulting those who hold Christian beliefs. It is about not letting anyone get away with spreading absurd lies and outright historical fabrications in the name of a distorted, silly view of Christianity.

Airline (In)Security

Bruce Schneier has a good article on Wired.com about the foolish programs being used in the U.S. for "airline security" which in reality do little to enhance security (story here). Schneier's take on what would help enhance security?

Exactly two things have made airline travel safer since 9/11: reinforcement of cockpit doors, and passengers who now know that they may have to fight back. Everything else -- Secure Flight and Trusted Traveler included -- is security theater. We would all be a lot safer if, instead, we implemented enhanced baggage security -- both ensuring that a passenger's bags don't fly unless he does, and explosives screening for all baggage -- as well as background checks and increased screening for airport employees.

That sure makes more sense than the totalitarian nonsense TSA has been pushing. After all, the 9/11 hijackers were only able to get boxcutters on the flights. "Tightening" of security as initated by TSA is hardly the answer; it was hardly even worth it to ban boxcutters in the aftermath of 9/11. What terrorist is going to try using a boxcutter again to hijack a plane, and more importantly, what passengers will let them get away with it, knowing the potential deadliness of a hijacked airplane? This is the kind of absurd policy that results when the government takes over in place of experts who know what works and what doesn't.

Progress in Palestine

While Democrats and Republicans have kept themselves busy with their signature brand of self-important political bickering, during the past year Israel and Palestine have been making great strides towards a tenable coexistence with the eventual goal of a lasting peace.

Following the death of the militant Palestinian leader Yaser Arafat, the previously inflexible and uncompromising Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has unexpectedly reversed course, peacefully ceding large swaths of West Bank and Gaza territory to the Palestinians in a (mostly) peaceful manner. Like all processes involving high-intensity ethnic and religious tensions, the transfer of these territories back into Palestinian hands has not been completely smooth. Despite some setbacks, Sharon's turnaround and movements towards Palestinian sovereignty have changed the dynamic of the region such that the prospects for peace are better than ever before.

The history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is long and complicated, and attempts to deduce who may have "first claim" to the current territory of Israel can only result in unworkable and mutually exclusive absolutist claims which can only be resolved with violence. In fact, many of the extremist and terrorist Palestinian groups base their politics on ancient historical claims to the land, as do many hardline Zionist elements within Israel. Despite multilateral talks and attempts at peace, the politics of the region had until very recently been dominated by violence between these kinds of uncompromising absolute claims. What Sharon and other moderates are doing, however, is casting aside these irresolvable hardline stances, and basing an outline for peace on practical, current considerations.

The 1948 war, initiated by Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq against Israel, ended with Israel victorious and over three-fourths of the sovereign Palestinian state (which had not attacked Israel) under Israeli control. The remaining 22 percent of Palestine's previous territory -- the West Bank and Gaza Strip -- were put under Egyptian and Transjordanian sovereignty. Though Palestine had not been an aggressor in the war, much of the fighting took place on Palestinian territory and it was seen as necessary for Israel to occupy these territories so as to preclude control by any of the aggressing nations.

As recognized by the United Nations and evident from a basic understanding of the historical basis of Israel's occupation of Palestine, it has been and remains the responsibility of Israel to withdraw forces from the sovereign Palestinian territories that were gained through war in violation of international law. One can sympathize with the need felt by Israel to control these bordering territories in the hostile environment of the Arab middle east after the war, however it is long past due for sovereignty to be returned to the people of Palestine.

Even with the eventual return of the West Bank and Gaza territories to the Palestinians, any Arab state that is developed there would only hold roughly a fourth of the previously drawn territory of Palestine. The difficulty with any attempt to restore the pre-war boundaries, however, is that since 1948 Israelis have become firmly settled in much of the previously-Palestinian lands, making full restoration of the original state of Palestine unworkable. As Sharon takes a more moderate view and learns to respect the right of the Palestinians to self-govern, so too the Palestinians will have to make concessions to the changes that have occurred in the more than 50 years since their territories were taken over by Israel.

While there is still much work to be done to resolve the conflict between these two peoples, and even more work to be done in bringing prosperity to the devastated land of Palestine, these recent changes in policy by Israel and the increasing openness of Palestine are encouraging. If more moderate voices come to prevail among both Israelis and Palestinians, extremist groups like Hamas will lose power and influence. Only then can the people of Israel begin to feel secure and Palestinians begin to build a future for themselves.

More information on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:
Progress in the Mideast by Charles Krauthammer (yes, he finally wrote a good article)
Wikipedia entry on Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
UN page on the history of Palestine
True Colors by Michael B. Oren (about Sharon and his move towards more moderate policies)