Terrorism in Palestine

In order to understand what is happening in Israel and Palestine today, think about the following hypothetical scenario: A group of American extremists kidnap an Iranian diplomat, and the next day a power plant and two bridges are destroyed in America with explosives, leaving hundreds of thousands without power and others without water. Imagine, then, that the Iranian regime explained to Americans that they were not punishing Americans collectively for the kidnapping, but rather "applying pressure" to convince the extremist group to release their hostage.

Obviously the act of kidnapping is wrong, however no one would claim that such a crime justifies collective punishment of hundreds of thousands of completely innocent civilians. Americans would rightly decry these attacks as acts of terrorism. Furthermore, it would be easy to see the absurdity of any claim that collectively harming hundreds of thousands of people ("pressuring them") was in any way not a horrific crime.

This series of events is almost exactly what has occurred in Israel and Palestine in the past week. Members of the Palestinian extremist group Hamas kidnapped an Israeli soldier, and Israel responded with air strikes against a power plant (the main source of power for Gaza) and two bridges. Furthermore, the Israelis have moved tanks into the Palestinian territories, and have been continuously shelling the towns of Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahia in northern Gaza.

Yet despite the clearly immoral nature of such collective terrorizing and punishment of innocents, few Americans -- and virtually no one in the U.S. government -- will admit that Israel's actions amount to state terrorism. I have not been one to criticize Israel in the past, and I believe that many of their past responses to Palestinian terrorism have been understandable. The recent actions of the Israeli government, however, seem to be completely indefensible, and would be instantly labeled as terrorism had they been carried out by any other group.

Partisanship and the Erosion of Civil Liberties

An interesting trend recently came to my attention regarding the constant erosion of civil liberties within the United States. In the past 6 years, Americans have grown accustomed to viewing conservatives as the defenders of a supercharged executive and a number of unprecedented, questionable national security measures. From the NSA eavesdropping and phone record revelations to Attorney General Gonzalez's dismissal of the international laws against torture; from increasingly militarized police to national ID cards -- conservatives have quickly jumped to defend virtually every action of the Bush administration (even where they had previously been adamantly opposed, such as with national ID cards), no matter how seriously the new programs threatened civil liberties.

In the short collective memory of American politics, this seems to have always been the case. To most people, these programs are a natural extension of the ideas of conservatism, which have always called for strong national defense. There is however much to suggest, contrary to popular belief, that conservatives' support of these programs and claims to absolute executive power have less to do with principle and more to do with partisanship.

Throughout the presidency of Bill Clinton, conservatives regularly decried what they viewed (rightly, in my opinion) as unacceptable expansion of presidential power and disregard for civil liberties. Among the best-known cases of such conservative concerns was the response to Executive Order 12949, which extended the role of the FISA court to include physical searches as well as electronic ones. This vast increase in the power of the extremely secretive FISA court was viewed (again, rightly in my opinion) as a serious threat to civil liberties, since the secrecy of the court made any kind of oversight or check against abuse impossible. Furthermore, evidence obtained through secretly issued warrants could be used against accused criminals in court. Even proponents of the program admitted that it amounted to an obvious contravention of 4th Amendment safeguards. According to an article (link here) on the right-wing site FreeRepublic.com:

[Deputy Attorney General Jamie] Gorelick recently conceded that the government could not gather as much evidence under the traditional standard of the Fourth Amendment.

Contrast this widespread opposition to any challenge to civil liberties by conservatives to the current attitude espoused by most Bush supporters. The same people once outraged with a mere expansion of FISA courts' power are now defending the Bush administration's complete contravention of that entity, an act far more dangerous to civil liberties. The logical conclusion to be drawn from this disparity is that conservatives are only against violations of civil liberties if the person doing the violating is a Democrat.

Some claim that "9/11 changed everything", and that this reversal is merely a logical reaction to the "new world" we live in. While the heightened sense of vulnerability after the 9/11 attacks has certainly contributed to conservatives' newfound disregard for civil liberties, it is hard to believe that Bush supporters would support similar programs had they been initiated by Al Gore. Also, it is hard to explain away such a complete reversal on such a fundamental issue by simply referencing 9/11. The 9/11 attacks could reasonably lead conservatives to view more intrusions on civil liberties as justified up to a point, but not a single one of President Bush's egregious civil rights violations has been widely opposed by conservatives. This total reversal is made more suspicious when one considers the long history of both Democrats' and Republicans' blind partisanship, which has often manifested as hypocritical reversals just like this.

President Clinton justified the expansion of FISA power by pointing to the terrorist attack at Waco, just as President Bush constantly uses 9/11 as a justification for his secret, dangerous programs. While 9/11 was of course larger in scale than the Waco bombing, terrorism had been a major national security concern long before Bush became president. Despite this, conservatives never took the bait, and consistently opposed Clinton's record of disregarding basic freedoms.

No matter what threats were used as justification, conservatives solidly rejected Clinton's intrusions on fundamental freedoms, with some even accusing Clinton of attempting to subvert the Constitution and establish a police-state. Now that President Bush has taken Clinton's disregard for civil liberties to unprecedented new heights -- and especially in our political atmosphere of often malicious partisan division -- one must question to what degree conservative support for these programs is the result of blind partisanship.

Miami's "7 Boobs"

After the Bush administration trumpeted the arrest of 7 terrorism suspects in Miami as a major victory, claiming that the group had ties to al Qaeda and was plotting attacks on the Sears Tower and government buildings, a slightly different story is emerging as more details come to light.

Recent pieces in the New York Times, the New York Daily News, Time magazine, and the Washington Post suggest that the "Miami 7" were nothing more than blundering malcontents who posed no real threat. The group had no weapons, explosives, money, or other means to carry out a terrorist plot, and was described as being "embryonic at best". Reflecting their utter incompetence and stupidity (many of the men talked openly with strangers of their excitement to be "waging jihad" against America), the New York Daily News has titled the group the "7 Boobs". Furthermore, the "al Qaeda ties" of the group were actually ties to an FBI informant posing as an al Qaeda member -- no one in the group ever made contact with an actual al Qaeda member.

Of course it was good that these men were arrested, as they certainly had every intention of causing harm to innocent Americans. It was good to arrest them, even if the odds of them causing serious harm were pretty slim, since they are the type of people who are willing to do terrible things, given the right supplies and funding.

The questionable aspect of the operation isn't in the way it was actually conducted, but in the way it was spun by the Bush administration, who seems ever more desperate to claim victories and stoke people's fears, making more of the threat than really existed. The group has been repeatedly referred to by administration officials as if it was a highly disciplined and well organized group close to launching attacks, when in fact just the opposite has turned out to be true. Dick Cheney, for example, claimed that the group was a "very real threat". With what we know now about their lack of resources and preparation, as well as their utter stupidity, this kind of characterization is a bit much.

The Carpetbagger Report blog has a good roundup with links to the above-mentioned stories, along with some interesting thoughts on the Bush administration's record of exaggerating their counterterror achievements, as in the cases of Jose Padilla, the Brooklyn Bridge torch scheme, and many other cases (link here).

Criminal Investigation of the Press?

Every day, more and more right-wing figures are jumping on the anti-media bandwagon and calling for criminal investigations of the New York Times for its role in revealing the White House's SWIFT bank data collection program. On Fox News, representative Pete King (R-NY) claimed that the NYT had violated the Espionage Act, and called for the Attorney General to begin criminal investigations targeting media outlets who reveal secret government programs (video here).

What we have here is the confluence of a number of disturbing trends in national politics that threatens to change longstanding relationships between the people, the media, and the authority of government. The same voices who have championed Bush's claim to "plenary" (the term used in a legal briefing by former Assistant Attorney General John Yoo, which literally means limitless) executive powers are now directly attacking the people's ability to reveal and counteract executive overreaching.

Those who invoke the Espionage Act presumably do so knowing the shameful history of the law, which was used during WWI to broadly silence legitimate dissent. In the case of Schenck v. United States, the law was used to convict and jail a man for publishing pamphlets that encouraged draft resistance. It was also used to silence 75 newspapers for criticism of government policies, and the editor of the Milwaukee Leader was sentenced to 20 years in prison not for actually publishing criticisms of the government, but for conspiracy to violate the Espionage Act.

Silencing voices who would oppose the evolution of the presidency into despotism is clearly a necessary complement to the president's assertion of unrivaled power. Even those who oppose the NYT's recent outing of the SWIFT bank data program should realize the dangers inherent in such an overly-powerful executive, and should see that minor setbacks caused by unwise publications do not make necessary the forfeiture of our First Amendment rights to an executive branch of limitless powers.

NYT & the SWIFT Program

The New York Times recently published a story, titled Bank Data Sifted in Secret by U.S. to Block Terror, which revealed the existence of a secret U.S. government program dealing with the international banking records, made possible through access to the massive Belgian SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) network (story here):

Under a secret Bush administration program initiated weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, counterterrorism officials have gained access to financial records from a vast international database and examined banking transactions involving thousands of Americans and others in the United States, according to government and industry officials.

While the program's scope is reportedly limited to analysis of the financial records of "people suspected of having ties to al Qaeda", the program raises questions of legality.

The revelation of this program has been met immediately throughout the U.S. with condemnations from various parties, since the program had reportedly been successfully used in a number of terrorism cases. Furthermore, the SWIFT network -- which deals with financial transaction records from over 200 countries -- does not for the most part include records of American financial transactions.

New York Times executive editor Bill Keller defended the publishing of the story -- which had proceeded despite requests from the White House and various Congressmen for the story not to be published -- saying that he believed the story to be "in the public interest".

The most impassioned rebuke of the story has come from the right, with National Review and The Weekly Standard both publishing scathing criticisms (here and here) accusing the NYT of aiding terrorists and working against the national security interests of the nation. Even among those who supported the Times' earlier outing of the NSA's secret wiretapping and phone record monitoring programs, there has been criticism as many fail to see the SWIFT program as illegal or as a threat to Americans' privacy.

From a political standpoint, publishing this story was probably unwise of the NYT, since there seems to be little interest in the program among Americans (probably mostly due to the fact that most American financial records were not involved in the program). As a result of this lack of interest, Americans will likely not demand any sort of inquiry into the legality of the program, and any possible abuses or illegalities will remain unknown. What the story has done is further enrage certain elements (mostly on the right) who have been pushing for harsher punishment of "leakers", even suggesting bringing criminal charges against reporters who reveal secret government programs.

On a more global scale, however, the outing of the program is much more meaningful. The citizens of the 200+ countries whose records were subject to examination by the U.S. government are much more likely to be concerned with a foreign government having extralegal access to their records. Also, contrary to the claims of critics of the story, there is a potential for abuse of the program that merits consideration, as well as a number of significant questions regarding the program's legality.

Supporters of the story have often cited the Supreme Court decision establishing that bank records held by a third party are not constitutionally protected private information, however there are a number of U.S. and European financial privacy laws concerning the dissemination of such information which may conflict with the program (since the information of Europeans and the European SWIFT network were involved, both U.S. and European laws could be relevant). Also, financial information was accessed through the use of administrative subpoenas, rather than warrants, which effectively removed any judicial oversight from the program. This raises questions of the constitutionality of the program, since individual search warrants are usually required in comparable situations.

While there is not enough detailed information at this point regarding the nature of the program to determine whether or not it runs afoul of the Constitution or other laws, the program could, upon further inquiry, be found to be unlawful. Taken at face value, the program appears to be more legally sound and more useful than the two NSA programs revealed before it, however further inquiry into its nature -- in order to determine its legality -- would be justified.

More as the story develops...

Bush Does Something Right

President Bush just announced the signing of a new executive order (text of EO here) relating to the shameful Kelo v. New London Supreme Court case (case details here) that approved government seizure of land under eminent domain, not for "public use" as has been the standard, but for private development.

The executive order is basically a rejection of the verdict reached in the Kelo case:

It is the policy of the United States to protect the rights of Americans to their private property, including by limiting the taking of private property by the Federal Government to situations in which the taking is for public use, with just compensation, and for the purpose of benefiting the general public and not merely for the purpose of advancing the economic interest of private parties to be given ownership or use of the property taken.

While I'm not sure exactly what sort of effect this will have in practical terms, it is at least a show of support for those who were outraged by the court's ruling. As far as I can tell, the order doesn't claim to usurp the authority of the courts in deciding the matter, but rather establishes a general policy of the executive branch, since the executive can exercise a good deal of discretion in its enforcement of laws.

I'll post anything more I hear about the practical effects of this, or any comments from the media.

"Enemy Jurisprudence"

Hanno Kaiser has an excellent blog posting over at the Law and Society blog. The entry discusses the case Arizona v. Berger, in which of a 52-year-old man was sentenced to 200 years in prison for possessing 20 images of child pornography (link here). Clearly this kind of excessive punishment -- the sentence is more severe than those for rape, assault and second degree murder -- makes a mockery of the idea of justice in our courts.

Kaiser talks about how, especially in emotionally touchy situations, the law sometimes acts as an expression of moral outrage, rather than an agent of justice. Kaiser cites the work of Michel Foucault, which I am quite familiar with, calling this form of excessive punishment a "celebration of moral hatred". Foucault's work Discipline and Punish, from which the term "moral hatred" is taken, is a penetrating analysis of the structures of control and punishment within our societies, from the legal system to more "soft" forms of control, such as education and social pressure.

There is surely something wrong with our legal system when such extreme forms of punishment are approved, even when challenged as conflicting with the Constitution's protection against cruel or unusual punishment. Without a doubt, the punishment of this man was extremely unusual and excessive -- this case shows the injustice that can result from a societal obsession with moral retribution, when combined with a lack of concern for individual rights. I highly recommend reading Kaiser's blog.

Colbert on Snake Marriage

Steven Colbert had a hilarious piece on people marrying snakes, which he says is a step up from gay marriage:

"I have no problem with people marrying snakes as long as they're not marrying gay snakes. We must marry limbless reptiles of the opposite sex. Otherwise, its just unnatural."

I definitely recommend watching the whole piece (link here). Good stuff. Its definitely worth it just for the Snakes on a Plane reference.

Santorum's Magical WMDs

Republican Senator Rick Santorum has, since yesterday, been parading around cable news networks with a declassified report from Iraq claiming that 500 WMDs had been found in the country since the invasion. The only problem is that Santorum is twisting the content of the report beyond recognition in order to make it seem that these WMDs had something to do with the American invasion in 2003 (story here).

In fact, the "WMDs" were found buried near the Iranian border, where they had been abandoned in 1988 and had since completely degraded, making them unusable. Everyone knew that Saddam had WMDs in the war against Iran in the 80s, so this is nothing new. Furthermore, the presence of old, rusted, degraded weapons would almost certainly not even be considered a violation of UN resolutions regarding Iraq -- i.e. the find does not prove in any way that Saddam "hadn't gotten rid of his weapons" -- because the weapons were completely non-functioning and were effectively destroyed.

Nevertheless, Santorum and his little puppy Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich) continue to make appearances on cable news touting their amazing find. As might be expected, Sean Hannity spun the find into much more than it was, claiming this to be a vindication of Bush's pre-war claims of WMDs (link here).

A certain amount of the insanity regarding this can be attributed to the extremely exaggerated report by Fox News, which buried qualifications regarding the uselessness of the weapons far into the story and parroted most of Santorum's fantastic claims (link here).

Despite the obvious meaninglessness of this find, no doubt hardcore Republican apologists will continue to pretend that these WMDs are in some way a vindication of their stubborn insistence that Saddam had WMDs. Like most dubious claims by Republicans, these lies need not have any basis in reality, nor will they always be rebutted by rational argument. Insofar as Santorum has given the loyal Republican base something to have faith in, he has succeeded with this pathetic ploy, however these claims are unlikely to win over anyone not previously drinking the GOP Kool-Aid.

Way to Go George!

For some reason, pictures taken in 2003 are now surfacing in the blogosphere of Bush signing small American flags for supporters in Livonia, Michigan after a speech there (link here). Liberals are pointing to the absurdity of conservatives pushing for a "flag burning amendment" to the constitution, while the president is defacing the American flag with his signature. Over at AMERICAblog, they even went to the trouble to look up the relevant sections of the U.S. Code, one of which which reads:

TITLE 4 > CHAPTER 1 > § 8

§ 8. Respect for flag

(g) The flag should never have placed upon it, nor on any part of it, nor attached to it any mark, insignia, letter, word, figure, design, picture, or drawing of any nature.

The sad thing, however, is that even while liberals mock the stupidity of proposing a "flag burning amendment", they seem to be holding onto the timeless, creepy tradition of flag-worship in their own ways, as they reference the nonsense of the U.S. Code and its prescriptions for "Respect for flag". If anything, we should support Bush in defacing these flags, as he might start a trend that harms the cult of patriotism that gave birth to this flag hysteria in the first place.

Ok, Bush probably isn't going to ignite a firestorm of rational anti-patriotism. Hopefully, though, something good can come of this whole debate, if people are willing to speak honestly about the absurdity of flag-worship and state-worship, and how they would be more at home in Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany than in a "free country". Lets start a debate on all this patriotic garbage -- lets start questioning the state indoctrination of children with the Pledge of Allegiance from a very young age. What about our sorry excuses for history classes in public schools that wildly distort America's bloody history and reinforce harmful ideas of exceptionalism? The day Americans are ready to take on these real questions is the day things might start getting better in this country. Its always good to hope, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

Negotiating with Iran

Even as the Bush administration pursues a diplomatic solution to the issue of Iran's uranium enrichment program, critics on the right are pushing for a "tougher approach", saying that Bush is being "soft" on the "enemies of freedom". This "tougher" approach, which is being proposed by some in Congress -- along with the usual suspects on the hawkish right -- would consist of harsh sanctions and most likely some form of military action.

This criticism comes at a time when Iranian officials appear to be split between moderates who seek reconciliation with the West, and the more nationalist elements in the country who insist on the sanctity of Iran's uranium enrichment program as a symbol of national pride and independence from Western control. If there is indeed serious debate occurring within the halls of power in Iran regarding this issue, it further reveals an important split between moderate and extreme factions within the government. It is well known that president Ahmadinejad lacks broad support within the government, and that his incendiary rhetoric has been widely criticized by the other branches of Iranian government.

Given these internal divisions, the worst thing the U.S. could do at this point would be to take an overly-aggressive, militant stance towards Iran. Harsh sanctions would likely not do much to hurt Ahmadinejad's popular support, while the suffering that resulted would likely be blamed on America and the West. Military action against Iran would even more certainly result in a firestorm of anti-Americanism, and would also serve to stifle those voices dissenting against Ahmadinejad's brand of extremism. Nothing eliminates internal divisions better than an external threat.

More on the Iran situation as things develop...

The One-Dollar Gas Tax and Idiot Economics

There seems to be an epidemic of sorts sweeping the American political scene, with a number of writers calling for a dollar-per-gallon national tax on gas. Among the more well-known writers who are calling for the tax are Thomas Friedman and Andrew Sullivan, however the idea has more than a handful of proponents.

The case for the tax is usually presented in much the same way that other taxes are proposed -- that is to say, without much serious thought and saturated with oversimplifications, omissions, and flat-out lies. As an example, lets look at Andrew Sullivan's posting Tax Gas More, which can be found on his blog (link here).

Sullivan first proposes that gas prices are too low (he never explains exactly how this judgement is made) and that this problem can be rectified by an new tax: "...gas is woefully under-taxed in this country - a state of affairs that is both bad for the economy, bad for drivers, and bad for our foreign policy." Of course Sullivan never explains how the lack of a tax on gas is "bad for the economy" or "bad for drivers". Instead, he says that, "by adding a cost to the wanton consumption of gasoline, you actually encourage conservation, accelerate fuel efficiency, reduce pollution, cut traffic..."

First off, Mr. Sullivan ignores the fact that any rise in gasoline prices translates directly into a rise in prices in virtually every single good in our economy -- from bread to TV's -- because food, appliances, and almost everything else you've ever bought was shipped from factories far away, usually in trucks that consume large amounts of gas. Any increase in the costs of transporting goods will have to be offset by an increase in the price charged at the supermarket.

With prices for transportation and goods rising across the board, the economy will slow considerably. Contrary to Sullivan's unsubstantiated claim that low gas prices are "bad for the economy", a $1/gallon tax on gas (effectively a 30% tax) would be extremely harmful to the economy. Transportation is the lubrication for the economic engine of our country, and any tax that increases the costs of transportation will bog down the "engine" as it becomes more expensive for producers to provide goods and services to consumers.

If low gas prices are bad for the economy, as Sullivan claims, why aren't low car prices, low food prices, low natural gas prices, or any other kind of low prices bad for the economy? How can people being able to get where they want to go and transport goods where they are needed cheaply be a bad thing? Sullivan never even attempts to back up this absurd claim, which is natural since even a high school level familiarity with economics shows it to be total nonsense.

When Sullivan talks of encouraging conservation, accelerating fuel efficiency, and cutting traffic, he really means that everyone will have to decrease their mobility and pay for expensive new cars that get better gas mileage just to offset the cost of the tax. This is not to say that increasing fuel efficiency isn't good, but rather that forcing such advancements by increasing everyone's cost of living doesn't benefit anyone. Similarly, if individuals want to conserve more and drive less, they will save money and will be better off for it. However, if people are forced to drive less because they find themselves unable to pay the rent because of a huge increase (and 30% is a huge increase) in necessary transportation costs, it is obvious that such a tax is making things worse, not better.

In response to objections that the tax would unfairly burden the poor, Sullivan says that "the truly needy tend to consume less gas than their middle-class compatriots". This is nothing but an admission that current gas prices are sufficiently high that the "truly needy" cannot afford to drive very much, and Sullivan wants to make them worse off with this tax. What of the poor who must drive a distance to work, and whose gas spending already cuts into their earnings? An even more absurd response is given to the objection that the tax would unfairly burden those living in rural areas (who are often poor as well) -- Sullivan simply says "So what? Very few taxes are perfect..." In other words, Sullivan says screw poor people, whether they live in rural or urban areas.

Overall, Sullivan approaches the issue with a complete lack of common sense or economic knowledge, and completely fails to present a single way in which low gas prices are bad or a tax would be good. After this total failure to support the tax, Sullivan falls back on the well-worn argument that people should be forced to "sacrifice" because we're at war. That is to say, Sullivan believes that people should unnecessarily suffer economically so that the world can be in accordance with his moronic vision of what a nation-at-war should be.

If Sullivan, Friedman, or the other pro-gas-taxers get their way, our country may quickly find its way into a deep recession, with the poor, elderly, and other most vulnerable members of society suffering the most. It is easy for wealthy talking heads to throw around silly ideas, but not so easy for the rest of us to pay for their foolishness.