When the Idiots Turn against Each Other

Richard Perle, neoconservative icon who resigned last year from his position as Chairman of the Defense Policy Board, has turned against the administration that once was believed to be an indispensable home to all his ilk. According to today's Toronto Star, Perle

described U.S. policy in post-war Iraq as a failure. "I would be the first to acknowledge we allowed the liberation (of Iraq) to subside into an occupation. And I think that was a grave error, and in some ways a continuing error," [...]Perle said the biggest mistake in post-war policy "was the failure to turn Iraq back to the Iraqis more or less immediately. "We didn't have to find ourselves in the role of occupier. We could have made the transition that is going to be made at the end of June more or less immediately," he told BBC radio, referring to the U.S. and British plan to transfer political authority in Iraq to an interim government on June 30. This public criticism of U.S. policy from one of the leading advocates of the war - and a firm political ally of U.S. President George W. Bush - indicates just how much Bush's political fortunes are being damaged by post-war chaos.

The same article mentions that Tony Blair and Colin Powell are at odds over what the U.S.-led occupation's exit strategy really is. Blair insists that the new government of Iraq will have the power to order foreign troops to leave the country, while Powell says troops will still be under U.S. command and will do whatever they need to protect themselves. The position that Iraq can order troops out of the country is not, however, mentioned in the new UN Resolution, although China, Russia, France and Germany have proposed changes to the resolution that will allow Iraq to do just that.

The normally complacent and cheerleading mainstream media has also turned against Bush's seeming assumption that anything the administration, or major agencies say about terrorism must be automatically assumed to be true. For months, I have been asking the question: Why is it that whenever this administration is in political trouble, the terror alert level increases, or some videotape is conveniently found, or, in general, the terror-talk rhetoric goes up? Well, this time, Reuters ain't buying it. According to Caroline Drees, Security Correspondent:

A vague new U.S. warning that al Qaeda may be planning a massive attack smacks of political back-covering and campaigning, not just a call for heightened vigilance, analysts and former government officials say. [...]One former national security official in the Bush administration told
Reuters: "This is more butt-covering than anything else."
Critics say the new threat warnings may also just be a ploy to shore up the president's job approval ratings or divert attention from the increasingly unpopular Iraq campaign.
[...] But beyond urging citizens to be on their guard, officials failed to suggest what Americans should do to help mitigate the threat. They said the government had no plans to raise the terror threat level or announce new precautions, and gave no details on when, where or how it might occur.
[...]Some critical voices say the government may also be hoping the warnings could score political points on national security that could boost President Bush's flagging popularity ahead of the November elections.[...]One prominent terrorism expert, who would only speak on condition of
anonymity, said Bush may also be trying to staunch increasing criticism of the Iraq campaign by underlining the link in the public's mind between Iraq and security at home. "The president is running as a war president, so the timing is
interesting," he said, pointing to a speech by Bush on Monday that made frequent references to terrorist threats. "I wonder if there's not a connection to the president's speech when he
mentioned terrorism 18 times in the context of Iraq. Isn't this a very convenient way of linking back to the United States that Iraq is part of the broader war on terrorism?" he said.

Of course, we can delightedly add to this the Chalabi fiasco, wherein Ahmad Chalabi, the gangster-embezzler who, along with his faux Iraqi National Congress, had been championed by American neoconservatives, who goaded the U.S. into funding Chalabi and the I.N.C. in return for lies about Iraqi WMD and exaggerated speculations about a successful invasion of Iraq. Chalabi has now hopped on the anti-U.S. bandwagon, apparently incensed that he's lost his sugar daddy.

Is the house of cards falling down? Well, let me make two caveats here:

1. Islamo-fascism is certainly alive and well, and U.S. capitalism is its sworn enemy (ironic that Islamo-fascism is funded by Islamo-capitalists). Its preferred method is terrorism, a morally and politically bankrupt strategy that utilizes innocent life as a weapon in a much more brazen way than capitalism does. Terrorism is absurdly wrong on more levels than I could possibly cover here. It strengthens U.S. imperialism by turning public opinion against genuinely oppressed peoples (unlike millionaires like Bin Laden), and justifying repressive police-state measures. Each instance of terrorism, or even the ongoing threat of terrorism, undermines the creativity and revolutionary vision needed to transcend the dichotomy between corporate brutality and Islamo-fascism.

2. Some progressives are taking delight in Bush's plummeting approval ratings, as well as some surveys that show John Kerry leading Bush in the race for the U.S. presidency. But Kerry does not, in any meaningful sense, offer an alternative to Bush that would be optimal for the kind of world progressives want. He is not the "peace" candidate McGovern supposedly was. He would make U.S. intervention cleaner and less controversial by using the United Nations as a stalking horse for that wonderfully innocuous term, "U.S. interests." As one group puts it, better than I could:

The UN and its Security Council is only a space of bargaining between rival imperialisms using the smaller states as proxies and weapon to legitimate the aggression against an oppressed country. [...] The line proposed by pacifist organizers and sections of the Left [...] produces deadly illusions and adaptation to European, particularly French and German, imperialisms and to the "kitchen of the thieves", the UN, guilty already for a series of disasters from Korea, Cyprus and Congo to the Balkan wars in the 90s and Iraq itself.

So yeah, Kerry might be a little better on the environment, workers' rights, and a few other things (and I don't mean to trivialize those things), but fighting against war itself is going to require an independent course, one that rejects all extremism and manipulation by the powerful, all deployment of human beings for purposes in which they have no control. The fact that neither side makes it particularly easy to chart an independent course is no reason to reject the indisputable fact that such a course is necessary.

So where does this all cohere with Perle (and other former Bushies) attacking Bush, or Reuters calling B.S. on the administration's brilliantly-timed terror threats? Those battles, those revealed inconsistencies, can, with some germination and propagation, slowly whittle away confidence in ruling ideologies. We should celebrate news that Powell can't get along with the neocons, or that folks like Perle, and Richard Clarke, and others, leave the administration and then backbite. They aren't heroes (there are few heroes at that level of material power), but they are barometers. And there are more barometers every day.

Is cheering for Bush's misfortunes equivalent to cheering for the death of U.S. soldiers, or the triumph of backwards, medieval-minded terrorists? Of course not. That assumes the very dichotomy both sides insist we buy into. It means that Bush, who is quite possibly the worst of the worst among U.S. presidents, can hold us hostage, hold our common sense and critical thinking hostage, to a world that his cronies have been busy creating for the past thirty years. "You have to take sides sometimes," cry the shallow pragmatists. I do take a side. The side I take is the side of U.S. soldiers, Iraqi soldiers, and the men, women and children who are losing their lives because we live in a mean world, an uncreative world, a world where a few rich people make all the decisions, and where those decisions are increasingly brutal, violent, and short-sighted. There has got to be another way, and that way can only be found among those who yearn for empowerment and enlightenment. In the meantime, enjoy how the fearless leaders stumble and fall.

We "do not flee from being deceived as much as from being damaged by deception..."

[The Nietzsche quotes in this column come from "Truth and Lies in the Moral Sense," available at this link.]

Check out John Tierney, "The Hawks Loudly Express Their Second Thoughts," New York Times, May 16, 2004. I'm not going to do the NYT any favors by linking to their subscription-only site (you can get a free subscription, yada yada), but yeah, the pro-war crowd is pretty contrite these days.

Lots of illusions have come crashing down in the last several weeks.

David Sirota, Christy Harvey and (former Claremont debater) Judd Legum chronicle the sudden fall of Ahmad Chalabi, former right wing hero of the Iraqi National Congress who is now being raided by U.S. troops and vilified by coalition spokespersons and conservatives at home.

What will be lost on pro-war and pro-Bush folks is that progressives actually called this one years ago. We said Chalabi was a shady gangster, a consumate liar, possibly even worse. Sirota, Harvey and Legum (it's great to see Judd doing such good work) chronicle this history of lies and deceptions better than I could, so hit the link and read the article.

Barbara Ehrenreich shows contriteness of a different kind in her article "What Abu Ghraib Taught Me."

For Ehrenreich, pictures of Megan Ambuhl, Lynndie England Sabrina Harman engaged in brutal acts against Iraqi prisoners reminded her that women should not automatically be held up as kinder, more progressive, or more humane than men. Now, as a socialist concerned about feminist issues, Ehrenreich has never been publicly guilty of radical feminist essentialism. She's no Mary Daly, and that's good. But I love her honesty, because she admits that, like many of us, her private thoughts did sometimes assign to women an expectation of progressiveness, humane-ness, a kind of hope for a humanity with women at the helm. She writes:

Secretly, I hoped that the presence of women would over time change the military, making it more respectful of other people and cultures, more capable of genuine peacekeeping. That's what I thought, but I don't think that anymore. A certain kind of feminism, or perhaps I should say a certain kind of feminist naiveté, died in Abu Ghraib. [...]
The struggles for peace and social justice and against imperialist and racist arrogance, cannot, I am truly sorry to say, be folded into the struggle for gender equality.

This reminds me of a question I threw out to the edebate community a few weeks ago--a question that remains largely unanswered by those obsessed with identity politics:

What would happen if Condoleeza Rice were elected president, and Colin Powell elected Vice President? Would this make America less racist? Would it change the way America treats the rest of the world? Should I trust Condoleeza Rice more than I trust George Bush? Why or why not?

To me, the answers to those questions are obvious. But they also underscore my problem with any progressive critique that ignores class and materiality.

The crashing of illusions is important, but there's always the skeptic in me, the Nietzschean who wonders whether (especially in the political realm) illusions are stripped away only to reveal more illusions.

We still do not know where the urge for truth comes from; for as yet we have heard only of the obligation imposed by society that it should exist: to be truthful means using the customary metaphors—in moral terms: the obligation to lie according to a fixed convention, to lie herd-like in a style obligatory for all.

But we should have outgrown Nietzsche by now. Understanding Marx's project should have taught us that there are material referents, external environments, of which we are part, and we don't merely create them with our discourse and our thoughts. In fact, thinking that ideas matter more than materiality is a kind of ideological suicide; not merely because it buys into a bourgeois postmodernism that encourages fragmentation and opium trips in the face of genuine physical oppression, but also because it encourages a self-centeredness whose culminatory ethic is not just an ignorance of materiality, but an ignorance of other people, and their legitimate needs--needs that are often very much like our own.

A class/materialist perspective can also reveal something else about the political reaction to this recent unfolding of facts. Many self-proclaimed "leftists" take visible delight at the failure of the administration to successfully prosecute the Iraq war. Well, clearly the war was a horrible policy, and clearly it was driven by the worst, and most predictable, of motives. But the delight revealed by these "leftists" is targeted at the administration and its lies, while ignoring the fact that every one of these "failures" involves a massive loss of life--the lives of workers--our fellow workers--who happen to be wearing uniforms. And the lives of ordinary Iraqi working people as well. At least two or three times a week I read a post on the LBO-talk listserve expressing giddy delight at the death of U.S. troops, an explosion somewhere, a failed battle, whatever. I think this kind of attitude is a pretty obvious instance of bourgeois (non)radicalism. It's a manifestation of the fundamental alienation of a self-proclaimed enlightened "left" intelligensia from the everyday struggles and concerns of working people. I'd like to see those bloated false radicals laugh like that in the presence of parents, spouses, and family members of dead U.S. soldiers--however politically misinformed those loved ones might be. That kind of anti-cheerleading doesn't just play into the hands of pro-war demogogues who routinely vilify the left. It's also just flat-out elitist, bourgeois, and aloof from the everyday perspective of the poor and working people--the chief victims of Bush's reign of terror.

One of the most eloquent expositions of what I am trying to say is David North and David Walsh's now classic essay "Anti-Americanism: The Anti-Imperialism of Fools."

Analyzing the rhetoric of those who took delight in the September 11th attacks, and saw in those attacks some kind of progressive strike against imperialism, North and Walsh say:

The socialist future of mankind [sic] depends upon the awakening of the most humane and generous instincts of the working people of the world. What happened on September 11—the awful deaths of thousands of innocent people, among them office workers, firemen, janitors, and business people—profoundly offends those instincts. [...]
What does it mean to “dislike the US”? What sort of social element speaks like this? The United States is a complex entity, with a complex history, elements of which are distinctly ignoble, elements of which are deeply noble. [...]
All this of course is a closed book to the smug middle class philistine and snob, satisfied to make use of words and phrases that come most easily to hand...It is available cheaply and in large quantities in middle class circles in Britain, France, Germany and, for that matter, in the United States. It is available, so to speak, “on tap.” Such an outlook has the virtue of appearing oppositional, while not committing its adherent to any course of political action that might cause inconvenience. It is a form of pseudo-socialism, the phony “anti-imperialism” of cynics and fools.

Thinking of the Bush administration (and bourgeois politics in general), but also thinking of our sometimes hostile reaction to the gradual unfolding of the facts in the past several weeks, there is one quote by Nietzsche that does seem all too appropriate:

The liar uses the valid designations, the words, to make the unreal appear as real; he says, for example, 'I am rich,' when the word 'poor' would be the correct designation of his situation. He abuses the fixed conventions by arbitrary changes or even by reversals of the names. When he does this in a self-serving way damaging to others, then society will no longer trust him but exclude him. Thereby men do not flee from being deceived as much as from being damaged by deception: what they hate at this stage is basically not the deception but the bad, hostile consequences of certain kinds of deceptions. In a similarly limited way man wants the truth: he desires the agreeable life-preserving consequences of truth, but he is indifferent to pure knowledge, which has no consequences; he is even hostile to possibly damaging and destructive truths. And, moreover, what about these conventions of language? Are they really the products of knowledge, of the sense of truth? Do the designations and the things coincide? Is language the adequate expression of all realities?

May the illusions continue to fall, and rather than replacing them with more bourgeois illusions, may we replace them with the shared vision of genuine human solidarity. We may still wrestle with conflicting appearances; we may not reach some "transcendent" anti-imperialist truth, but whatever we find or lose, we'll do so together.

IT IS A TALE TOLD BY AN IDIOT

The Media Research Center, an organization dedicated to "documenting, exposing, and neutralizing liberal media bias," released a report May 12 lamenting that the prison abuses at Abu Ghraib have received more network news coverage than the mass graves full of Saddam Hussein's victims, unearthed in 2003 and 2004. There were vastly more news stories on the prisoner abuses than the unearthing of mass graves; this stands, with little further commentary, as obvious proof of bias:

To illustrate a fraction of the bias problem, we counted the number of prisoner-abuse stories on NBC’s evening and morning news programs (NBC Nightly News and Today) from April 29, when the story emerged, through May 11. There were 58 morning and evening stories. Using the Nexis news-data retrieval system, we counted the number of stories on mass graves found in Iraq from the reign of Saddam Hussein in 2003 and 2004. The number of evening and morning news stories on those grim discoveries? Five.

The MRC's lucid conclusion?

There is a vast difference between sexual humiliation and brutal murder. But to the national media, there is also much greater outrage for U.S. prisoner abuse than there is for the enemy’s murders. Viewers received a false picture of moral equivalence, with only American offenses amplified.

I came upon this data through some well-meaning debate folks over at Net Benefits (check out the "mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners" thread if you're interested). However, the mark of good debaters and good debate coaches (and more importantly, the mark of good political analysts) is the ability not merely to throw pieces of evidence at an audience, but to analyze that evidence, even above and beyond the often shallow self-analysis submitted by the source of the evidence in the first place.

In this case, unfortunately, that analysis was lacking. Let me offer some of my own:

1. With few exceptions, the entire world already knew Saddam Hussein was a murderous dictator who killed hundreds of thousands of his own people. The "outrage" these well-meaning proponents of "balanced news" insist upon had already manifest itself for several years. There was nothing new about the news that mass graves had been unearthed; this news was merely the verification of something we knew all along.

2. The political implications within the United States, of revelations of prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib far outweighs the domestic (U.S.) political implications of Saddam's murderous past. No U.S. political or military leaders stood to lose their jobs based the (admittedly horrific, but, again, well-established) news that Saddam was an evil, murderous dictator. No U.S. soldiers will go on trial over the latter revelation. No U.S. leaders' credibility was on the line.

3. Those who did try to exploit the revelation of Saddam's mass graves to the end of somehow establishing legitimacy for the U.S. invasion of Iraq were, let's be frank, changing the initial justification for going to war against Iraq. The "outrage" they were seeking (an outrage easily found in the hearts of anyone who despises murderous dictators) was a very unique, functional outrage in their minds: They hoped such outrage would eclipse the questions about inconsistencies in U.S. intelligence reports, distorted and exploited by a war-hungry administration for the purpose of gaining public support for a dubious case for war.

4. In one case (the Abu Ghraib revelations), news reports revealed a scandalous inconsistency between the way U.S. troops have been represented by the Bush administration, and the reality that at least some military personnel have been behaving. In the other case (Saddam's mass graves), no inconsistencies were revealed. Again, we have known for years that Saddam was murdering a lot of people. No misrepresentations have occurred; only nutcases would have denied Saddam's evil ways.

In short, seeing fewer news stories about mass graves than about prisoner abuses can only lead to the MRC's conclusions if one looks at that quantitative comparison from the most shallow lens possible--one that asks us to believe that someone, somewhere, is making the argument that prisoner abuse is worse than mass murder. What an incredible insult to our intelligence. What an inexcusable implication about our moral vision.

The same goes for the rather reactionary argument that the prisoner abuse story has received more coverage than the tragic murder of Nicolas Berg. Both stories have been in rotation for several days now, and any attempt to establish one as more "covered" than the other is little more than a tasteless exercise in quantitative reductionism. The bigger story, of course, is which interests are trying to deploy which story (or stories), and to what ends.

In fact, those with genuinely critical and comprehensive moral vision would be asking even bigger questions, using this nonsensical MRC argument as a springboard to ask the most obvious one:

How much news coverage do murderous dictators elicit when those dictators have been historically supported by the United States government--dictators such as: P.W. Botha of South Africa...Fulgencio Batista of Cuba...Sani Abacha of Nigeria...the Duvaliers of Haiti...all the kings of Saudi Arabia...Spain's Franco...Turgut Ozal of Turkey...the Shah of Iran...General Pinochet of Chile...??? The list goes on...and that list includes Saddam Hussein prior to 1990. Saddam committed some of his most atrocious crimes in the 1980s with the full knowledge of U.S. officials (including Rumsfeld and Cheney), and you can bet your Aunt Fanny there was neither extensive U.S. media coverage, nor moral disgust on the part of any right wing media watchdog groups for said lack of coverage.

So my concluding question is: If groups like the MRC, and well-meaning self-styled "moderates" at Net Benefits, are so angry at the current manifestation of "selective outrage," why does their own outrage seem so incredibly selective? And why does it come at the expense of any attempt to examine the differences between those contingencies that feed media coverage of any given set of atrocities? For an answer, those folks may want to examine their own agendas before claiming to know the agendas of others.

CELEBRATING BEAUTIFUL LYRICS

Following Emily's example over at her "fiercely feminist" blog, I present below one of the most beautiful songs ever written. Ironically, the lyrics to "Stockton Gala Days" are overtly feminist, while Emily's choice (the very fine "Wish You Were Here" by Pink Floyd) is not. Next thing you know, Emily will be writing about socioeconomic and class issues (wishful thinking, perhaps...). I read these lyrics and literally feel tears welling up in my eyelids...and when I hear the song (studio version on "Our Time In Eden," live version on "MTV Unplugged"), forget about any semblence of dignity...I dance AND cry at the same time. Ann watches, amused, bemused...

STOCKTON GALA DAYS--by Natalie Merchant and 10,000 Maniacs

That summer fields grew high with foxglove stalks and ivy. Wild apple blossoms everywhere.
Emerald green like none I have seen apart from
dreams that escape me.
There was no girl as warm as you.
How I've learned to please, to doubt myself in need, you'll never, you'll never know.

That summer fields grow high. We made garland crowns in hiding,
pulled stems of flowers from my hair.
Blue in the stream like none I have seen apart from dreams that escape me.
There was no girl as bold as you.
How I've learned to please, to doubt myself in need,
you'll never, you'll never know.
You'll never know.

Violet serene like none I have seen apart from dreams that escape me.
There was no girl as warm as you.
How I've learned to please, to doubt
myself in need.
You'll never, you'll never know. You'll never know.

That summer fields grow high.
We had wildflower fever.
We had to lay down where they grow.
How I've learned to hide, how I've locked inside,
you'd be surprised if shown.
But you'll never, you'll never know.

ON THE LATEST NEWS OF A BEHEADED AMERICAN SOLDIER

I am not a poet...the thoughts below that manifested themselves in verse came out in verse, but I wanted to say something about the horrible video released from Iraq today, and the attempt of conservative pundits in America to extract from this tragedy some kind of moral lesson about the ongoing investigation of American atrocities against Iraqi detainees.

Violence is violence. Violence on this scale is a symptom of two things: (1) a profound lack of creativity and original thinking on the part of all sides, leaders, commentators, and participants in this war and every war; and (2) a world where the rich and powerful deploy non-rich, non-powerful human beings to fight their material and ideological battles. So long as those two conditions exist, there will be more torture, more beheadings, and worse. It just won't ever stop, no matter how many times "our troops" are deployed to stop "their violence," no matter how many needles we stick in murderers' arms, no matter how many bombs we drop, prisons we build, smart bombs we make smarter...

My heart aches, my anger rises, my mouth numbs in misery--
but not because of the side you are on...
but because you are human--
because you are young--
because you were full of life--
because you have a family who loves you--
who will die a hundred times for your one death--
not because you are American...
but because you are human.

To the pundits, the bloodthirsty cheerleaders, the sowers of hateful rhetoric:
No matter how hard you try--those of you on either side--
to convince us that there is an "us" and "them"--
an "ours" and theirs"--
framed in the context of religion, race, or chosen tactics--
I will stand against you.
I will speak against you.
I will invoke history against you.
I will not take sides in a war between hegemonic imperialism,
and Islamo-Fascism.
I will not take sides between the uncreative ruling class that invades,
and the reactionary hyperreligious, cynical class that pretends to offer genuine resistance.
I will not sanction the uncreative, old world solutions of war,
simply because you offer them as the only alternatives
to the uncreative, brutal tribalism and terrorism of Islamo-Fascism.
There is an Us and Them, but not in the way you think--
or rather--
not in the way you want us to think.

As Arrested Development sang,
"Because I exist, I resist."
There has got to be another way.
That way is found, now, perhaps,
only in speculation and song--
in protest and intimate discussions--
in imperfect blueprints and real, dirty struggles--
That way is found in the Iraqi unionists and communist workers,
who have already made overtures and built bridges with unionists and communists in Iran--
who were the first to speak out against the attempt to impose Sharia law in Iraq--
who were the only voice rejecting terrorism in Iraq and across the world,
while simultaneously rejecting US invasion, occupation, and war.

Hamid Taghvaie writes:

"The question of power can only be resolved by expelling the US forces from Iraq in the interests of the people and this is only possible by the power of the people in defence of civilisation, life and a humane society. In contrast, the nationalists and Islamists' confrontation with the USA drives society deeper into barbarity and darkness. From our point of view, the people's and the communists' fight against the USA on the one hand and political Islam and Arab nationalism on the other, is not a fight on two fronts; it is rather one unified fight in opposition to the dark scenario and in defence of civilisation and humanity. "

HEY ANDREW SULLIVAN: WHY SHOULD WE CARE ABOUT WHAT YOU THINK?

My reactions to some passages from Andrew Sullivan's condescending "I'm really close to saying the U.S. invasion of Iraq was a mistake" column. As if we ought to stand or fall on Andrew Sullivan's bourgeois convictions...those bourgeois convictions are in italics below.

it has destroyed this narrative. It has turned the image of this war into the war that the America-hating left always said it was: a brutal, imperialist, racist occupation, designed to humiliate another culture.

I don't really care what the "America-hating left" allegedly said. I'm on the America-loving left, deeply unsatisfied with the way both major parties have misrepresented and misappropriated what I love about America, and the Iraq fiasco is simply one manifestation of said misappropriation. The ingenuity of this great nation could have been deployed to find far more creative, ethical, and effective solutions to conflicts and tyrants, but the blind-spots created by vast inequalities and wealth and power preclude that ingenuity. We should not be surprised at the micro-instantiations of macro-level uncreative brutality.

Shock has now led - and should lead - to anger. And those of us who support the war should, in many ways, be angrier than those who opposed it...

An interesting, subtle slight against the moral sincerity of those who opposed the war. Essentially, he is saying that war opponents ought to be pleased that these things are happening. Speaking for myself, I deplore the fact that mistreatment occurred, but celebrate the fact that it was revealed to the outside world. And of course Sullivan and other liberal supporters of the war ought to be angry, but that anger is constructive only if it functions in the same way as our anger when we were seven or eight years old and realized our parents had been lying to us about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.

To my mind, these awful recent revelations - and they may get far worse - make it even more essential that we bring democratic government to Iraq, and don't cut and run. Noam Chomsky is wrong. Abu Ghraib is not the real meaning of America.

First of all, what a terribly predictable and uncreative conclusion--but at the same time, what a brilliant "heads I win, tails you lose" rhetorical strategy.

I am not sure if by "the real meaning of America" the author means the ideal meaning of America, but the following data at least shows that the violation of that "real meaning" is deeply embedded in the American corrections system:

"Physical and sexual abuse of prisoners, similar to what has been uncovered in Iraq, takes place in American prisons with little public knowledge or concern, according to corrections officials, inmates and human rights advocates.

"In Pennsylvania and some other states, inmates are routinely stripped in front of other inmates before being moved to a new prison or a new unit within their prison. In Arizona, male inmates at the Maricopa County jail in Phoenix are made to wear women's pink underwear as a form of humiliation."

...

"The corrections experts say that some of the worst abuses have occurred in Texas, whose prisons were under a federal consent decree during much of the time President Bush was governor because of crowding and violence by guards against inmates. Judge William Wayne Justice of Federal District Court imposed the decree after finding that guards were
allowing inmate gang leaders to buy and sell other inmates as slaves for sex."

[full: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/08/national/08PRIS.html?hp]

Okay, these anecdotes aren't "America" in some idealistic sense either, but many Americans don't care that these things happen, just as many of those who've posted on various message boards say that the offenders in Abu Ghraib deserve medals, since the Iraqis aren't human anyway.

I'll say something else: America has multiple, often contradictory meanings. I am uncomfortable giving Chomsky, Parenti and others unfettered license to assign America a unitary meaning in exploitation and colonialism, but Sullivan and other liberals (including my friend Russell Arben Fox) often write with the unspoken assumption that America was not also a process of colonialism, that we did not displace its previous residents using tactics that the Nazis later emulated, ignoring the argument eloquently made by M. Annette James that, in a sense, the foundational stone (I would amend only to say ONE foundational stone) upon which American arrogance rests is, in fact, genocide against indigenous people; or the argument less eloquently (but more forcefully) made by Ward Churchill that, even among "progressives" and do-gooders, there is a universal tendency to ignore the historical fact that the resources with which we promote our visions of the good are resources we stole from other people.

Rush Limbaugh quoted some mid-level American bureaucrat in Iraq, who had in turn quoted a mid-level Iraqi bureaucrat, who allegedly said "educated" Iraqis didn't care what happened at Abu Gharaib, that they were "non-plussed" about the whole thing. Riiiiiight. Here's what Riverbend has to say about it:

People are seething with anger- the pictures of Abu Ghraib and the Brits in Basrah are everywhere. Every newspaper you pick up in Baghdad has pictures of some American or British atrocity or another. It's like a nightmare that has come to life.

Everyone knew this was happening in Abu Ghraib and other places… seeing the pictures simply made it all more real and tangible somehow. American and British politicians have the audacity to come on television with words like, "True the people in Abu Ghraib are criminals, but…" Everyone here in Iraq knows that there are thousands of innocent people detained. Some were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, while others were detained 'under suspicion'. In the New Iraq, it's "guilty until proven innocent by some miracle of God".

People are so angry. There’s no way to explain the reactions- even pro-occupation Iraqis find themselves silenced by this latest horror. I can’t explain how people feel- or even how I personally feel. Somehow, pictures of dead Iraqis are easier to bear than this grotesque show of American military technique. People would rather be dead than sexually abused and degraded by the animals running Abu Ghraib prison.

Last thought: What happened at Abu Gharaib is obscene, but bourgeois liberals who can handle the macro-violence of war but not the micro-violence of prison brutality are just plain disgusting. They make me want to cry into my soft little hanky. They make me want to vomit up my martinis.

A very personal and undeveloped collection of thoughts on why I like "The Last Temptation of Christ" so much and why it's so much more significant to free-thinking christians than Mel Gibson's sadomasochistic tripe "The Passion of the Christ."-----

Nikos Kazantzakis wrote _The Last Temptation of Christ_ in the late 1950s. It cost him his membership in the Greek Orthodox Church, of course, but he didn't care, just as I wouldn't care what theological court would condemn me for loving the book and the movie more than any other fictionalization of the life of Jesus. Martin Scorsese turned it into a movie in 1988. Willem DaFoe was brilliant as a mild-mannered revolutionary Jesus, Harvey Keitel was a subtle gangsta Judas, David Bowie a cynical and intellectually curious Pilate...the characters are all terribly compelling, and the film makes me cry every time I see it.

The initial gesture of "Last Temptation" that sets it apart from other Jesus interpretations is that the Christ is an imperfect, self-conscious man; although this never makes him less the unique son of god, it can be painful to listen to lines like this:

Jesus: "I'm a liar. A hypocrite. I'm afraid of everything. I don't ever tell the truth--I don't have the courage! When I see a woman, I blush, and look away. I want to, but I don't dare!--for God....I don't steal, I don't fight, don't kill--not because I don't want to, but because I'm afraid. I want to rebel against you, against everything, against God! But, I'm afraid! You want to know who my mother and father are? Want to know who my God is? Fear. You look inside me and that's all you find....Lucifer is inside of me..."

Writing for _First Things_, Carol Iannone pointed out that "Last Temptation" became the poster-child for anti-christianity films, largely because of the mundane and dark way the film portrayed Jesus:

Jesus is shown at the outset as a lonely, masochistic soul full of self-contempt, plying his carpenter's trade making crosses for the Romans to use to crucify zealous Jews. He writhes and agonizes in fear and doubt over the voices and visions to which he is subject, whether from God or Satan he knows not. At one point he is shown watching while prostitute Mary Magdalene services a string of clients. Finally, he is shown tempted to leave the cross for the life of an ordinary man who knows the felicities of marriage, sex, and family: this is the "last temptation" that nearly wrenches away the meaning of his sacrifice.

Like "The Passion," Scorsese's project was also attacked critically, though in my view the attack was overblown and unwarranted.

The film drew criticism not only for its affront to conventional piety but also for aesthetic reasons, as Scorsese's usually sure artistry seemed to falter. Certain features of the film-such as Harvey Keitel's Judas with a Lower East Side accent-were extravagantly mocked by critics. The whole thing seemed a textbook case of blasphemy and artistic failure-a film both "silly and offensive," as reviewer Bruce Bawer put it.

The climax of the film has DaFoe's Jesus sucked into a Satanic fantasy, where he rejects his role as savior, marries and has a family.

The unsaved world, the world without the Cross, although still part of Jesus' fantasy, is rendered convincingly bare and desolate. After his mostly satisfactory life as a paterfamilias, Jesus grows old and is near death. Forty years have passed and Jerusalem is burning-the march of history has continued without any change of course. Paul, because he feels that people need to believe in something, is preaching a false gospel based on the incomplete crucifixion that Jesus apparently underwent. The Apostles come to see Jesus and they are old, broken men. They reproach him for descending the Cross and leaving mankind without hope, kept going by lies and fictions during the brief, sometimes pleasant, sometimes miserable interlude before oblivion. It is then that Jesus sees Satan behind his fantasy and rejects it, begging the Father in a deeply affecting scene to take him back to the Cross, to "make a feast." In a moment, with complete and eager willingness, he is back, and "it is accomplished." The film memorably ends here, while the novel continues for one more sentence: "And it was as though he had said: Everything has begun." And one can believe that it has.

For me, a shorter, more important moment in the film occurs when Jesus tells Judas: "You will betray me." The prediction of traditional scripture becomes a tactical order from one spiritual (and political) revolutionary to another. Judas argues, based both on his love for Jesus and on the tactical viability of the idea. He relents. Judas is portrayed as serious, militant, and loyal to the end. The dialogues between Jesus and Judas are so simple and plain, so beautiful as such.

Jesus: Listen, at first I didn't understand myself.
Judas: No, you listen. Every day you have a different plan. First it's love, then it's the axe, and now you have to die. What good could that do?
Jesus: I can't help it. God only talks to me a little at a time. He only tells me as much as I need to know....
Judas: We need you alive!
Jesus: Now I finally understand. All my life, all my life I've been followed by voices, by footsteps, and by shadows. And you know what the shadow is? The cross. I have to die on that cross and I have to die willingly....

and...

Jesus: ...Judas, stay with me. Don't leave me!
Judas: I won't let you die.
Jesus: You have no choice. Remember, we're bringing God and man together, and they'll never be together unless I die. I'm the sacrifice. Without you there can be no redemption. Forget everything else. Understand that.
Judas: No, I can't. Get somebody stronger.
Jesus: You promised me. Remember once you told me that if I moved one step from revolution, you'd kill me. Remember? I've strayed, then. You must keep your promise....
Judas: If that's what God wants, then let God do it. I won't.
Jesus: He will do it--through you!...You can't leave me. You have to give me strength.
Judas: If you were me could you betray your master?
Jesus: No. That's why God gave me the easier job, to be crucified.

For me, _The Last Temptation of Christ_ does the same thing for me that Robert Eisenman's _James the Brother of Jesus_ does. It makes the story of Jesus's struggle against the Romans real to me. (I met Eisenman while I wasa grad student at Long Beach State, and read his book a few months later.) I will never believe the fairy tales and magic shows. I don't care if he could heal the lame or if he rose from the dead. He probably didn't, and like Kierkegaard I refuse to give in to expectations of super powers as a prerequisite for faith. I do believe in revelation, though, always have, and see how God might favor one or another side in a struggle. _Last Temptation_ makes me feel the dialectic between one person's internal struggle and the external political struggle that contextualizes it. And the sacrifice, the real sacrifice, of Kazantzakis's Jesus is not merely pain and blood and gratuitous flaying, as in Gibson's pornography. Instead, it's Jesus giving up the simulation-reality of love and family, sex and romance and the mundane, in order to be a god. That's more real to me than the Jesus-as-sadomasochistic-fantasy I was fed throughout my childhood.

Correction

A few days ago I quoted Nick Zukin taking me to task for my dogmatism regarding same-sex marriage. Nick wished to point out the following:

"It should be noted that a) I'm not a conservative, and b) I am an admitted
relativist."

My apologies, Nick. I shouldn't have pigeon-holed you at all, especially incorrectly. Feel free to apply your relativism to either or both sides of the marriage debate.

Haiti Update

Yep, if there's any doubt this was a right wing coup that occurred with the blessing of ruling class interests in Haiti, the U.S. and elsewhere...

Haiti's army turns back the clock

Red Pepper magazine - April 2004 --

Article by Charles Arthur

It didn't take long for the new order in Haiti to
reveal itself. The day after President Aristide 'left'
for exile, 34 union members at the Ouanaminthe garment
assembly factory run by the Dominican Grupo M company,
were fired. The next morning, when the 600-strong
workforce decided to strike, a group of armed men
launched a violent attack. Some unionists were
handcuffed, many others were beaten up, and the
workers were forced back inside the factory.

The aggressors were members of the so-called rebel
force, fresh from their victory over the government of
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. They said they had
been called to the factory by management, to deal with
workers "causing trouble".

As in so many Haitian towns, the Ouanaminthe
insurgents had taken over from the police. Their
leaders say they are former members of the Haitian
Army, the FAD'H, a force demobilised by Aristide in
1995. Some, such as Guy Philippe and Gilbert Dragon,
were trained by the US in Ecuador and flown home to
senior positions in the new Haitian police force in
the mid-1990s.

[...]

full at -

< http://www.nosweat.org.uk/print.php?sid=860 >

The freedom to brutally union-bust. American-inspired values at their very best, folks...

One of the stated purposes of this web journal is "Research Clearinghouse." One of the points I have tried to make over and over again is that we ought not frame the situation in Iraq as "U.S. versus terrorists" with no other side being represented. Indeed, in my opinion, the healthiest position for progressives to take is a skeptical refusal to align ourselves with either side when both sides are, essentially, using terror and violence as their primary tools...and when neither of those sides will outright reject the loss of innocent life as a side-effect of their politics.

I think there's a chance that in posting Falah Alwan's speech below, a few more people will read it than if I didn't, so here it is, courtesy of the English version of the web page for the Workers' Communist Party of Iraq.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Falah Alwan’s speech, leader of the Federation of Workers’ Councils and Unions in Iraq at the demonstration held in Bern-Switzerland on March 20, 2004

A year of war against the Iraqi Masses

A year of living under dark scenario

On Behalf of the Iraqi workers, the Federation of Workers’ Councils and Unions in Iraq and on my own behalf, I extend warm greetings to everyone in this demonstration.

I take this opportunity to thank all freedom-loving people, civilised humanity, antiwar activists and opponents of terrorisms and occupation for their support for the Iraqi people.

Human tragedies and destruction caused by the latest war by the USA and its allies against Iraq are enormous. This war not only devastated the infrastructures but also caused deep suffering and human catastrophes across the country.

People around the world saw through the media coverage, how innocent people, including children, the elderly, and women were killed. We have once again seen the scene of corpuses and destroyed buildings lying everywhere as the result of this barbaric war.

America lunched its war in the name of democracy and fighting terrorisms.

However, what kind of democracy has America created for the Iraqi people?

The result was thousands of innocent victims as the direct result of American war and occupation or as the result of the daily bombings as a consequence of this occupation, insecurity, uncertainty, millions of unemployed and thousands of displaced people, the rise of extremely reactionary and terrorist forces which are trying to impose their reactionary policies on the society, and possibility of ethnic and sectarian wars.

Amid these horrible circumstances, the Iraqi workers are standing up to the USA policies and the policies of the Iraqi Governing Council hand picked by the USA and formed of the most reactionary religious, and ethnocentric groups, head of tribes and mercenaries.

The progressive section of the Iraqi workers is in the forefront of the fight against war, and occupation and for freedom and civility.

While the bourgeois forces are in fierce fight on power and to define the society along religious, racial and ethnic lines, the Iraqi workers have demonstrated that they are the only force which strugglers for the unity of the society and against ethnic and sectarian conflicts.

The USA wants to enforce its New World Order and is trying to make Iraq a model. This has been through two destructive wars, which turned Iraq to a field for settling international conflicts and striking new balances among international forces and reactionary poles.

The labour movement should also set its model in Iraq and world widely which defends civility and save the humanity using civilized and humanist methods.

The progressive workers and freedom loving people in Iraq have been in frontline in the struggle against the policies of the USA and the reactionary forces in Iraq.

Let’s make Iraq the starting point for building such powerful labour movement

Lets escalate our protests for brining an end to the war of terrorists and for a better world. A world where people are free and equal. A world free of exploitation, poverty and deprivation, free of reactionary movements and thoughts, free of national and religious discrimination and free of reactionary ideas and thoughts.

Lets escalate our struggle for building a world of unconditional freedom of belief, expression and thinking. A world of full and unconditional equality between men and women. This can only be achieved by a strong freedom loving movement on the scale of the world united on the basis of these humanist aspirations.

Support the labour movement in Iraq

Support its representative, the Federation of Workers’ Councils and Unions in Iraq

Long live the international movement for freedom and equality.

Falah Alwan

Federation of Workers’ Councils and Unison in Iraq

March 20,2004

REACTIONS TO "BIGOTRY AND THE GAY MARRIAGE QUESTION"

My friend Scott wrote me this email:

"Relating to consent, you write: "Those who ask, seriously or ironically, why promoting same-sex marriage won't open the door to legal incest, interspecies marriage, child rape, and the like are not merely committing a slippery slope fallacy of the worst kind. Nor are they only guilty of a failure to consider the difference between agency and non-consent, or in the ability and inability to communicate that consent in the public forum." Gay marriage critics may be guilty of the failure to differentiate as you do. But their understanding of consent is probably closer to our legal and cultural traditions than yours. You may readily grant that (and even consider it a root of the problem). But, if so, then the burden should be upon you, rather than them, to articulate and defend your theory of consent.

"As for the slippery slope, let me add some other considerations. Let's grant that there are "effective consent" problems with incest, bestiality, and statutory rape. Assume that in each of the following scenarios (a) there is effective consent between the parties and (b) no third party is directly harmed. Should unregulated boxing be legal? How about dueling? Assisted suicide? (In the assisted suicide category, include cases such as the recent one in Germany where a man responded to a cannibal's classified ad and consented to be slaughtered and eaten.) Prostitution? Suttee? Sado-masochism? Why or why not? My point isn't to provide an alternative slippery slope. (I'm no opponent of gay marriage.) It's to get you to think about and clarify your theory of consent."

And re-think consent I certainly will. In reality, my own theory of consent (if I have one) is much more grounded in materialism than liberalism. Russell Arben Fox, whose link is on this page, says my arguments for gay marriage have a strong liberal tone, and it's true that I am appropriating Rawls and applying a liberal interpretation of both Habermas and even Marx in trying to find a language justifying equal access to state-sanctioned partnerships. In an email, Russell reaches similar critical agreement with me, but is, as always, honest about his caveats:

"I'm critical enough to secularist conception of the public square to distrust the Rawlsian lines you invoke to distinguish private belief from public reasons. That being said, it isn't as though "private beliefs" can't and shouldn't themselves be subjected to public critique; they should be, and in my view, most of the "private" conceptions, such as those employed by OSC above, have a serious lack of support. He goes on to say that accepting a "redefinition" of marriage to include homosexual declarations would be at "the expense of the common language, democratic process, and the facts of human social organization." Strong claims, but I doubt there is anything substantive there backing them up. The "common language" of marriage? The common language of marriage, as anyone can see, is exactly what you assume it to be: a public declaration of attachment and commitment. The "democratic process"? This actually holds some weight for me, since I don't like judicial fiats...but I'm not sure I like constitutional fiats any better. And "the facts of human social organization"? How can a "human social organization" which allows for no-fault divorce, adultery without sanction, and a powerful notion of a right to "privacy" possibly articulate an argument against the recognition of homosexual affection?

"In other words, in the Western world today, there simply isn't a readily available and widely accepted philosophical or moral framework which would treat homosexuality the same as tree-love. We don't talk that way, don't act that way, don't vote that way. One of the reasons that so many opponents of same-sex marriage have scrambled to appropriate traditionalist Catholic reasoning about marriage is because that line of argument does have some substance behind it--it really does treat marriage as something other than a public declaration of attachment and commitment. For orthodox Catholics, marriage--and the sexual act in marriage--is a sacrament which has everything to do with God's relationship to creation and a telos for humankind; that is why Catholicism denies the validity (not to mention the morality!) all forms of contraception, the act of divorce, and many other modern innovations which are taken for granted today. In other words, against truly believing, pious, anti-modern Catholics, and few other believers like them, I would say that your ascription of "bigotry" fails, because they honestly reject the premise of "competent consent." But for anyone who does not embrace that whole line, who does in fact think marriage is about love (but, er, just not that sort of love), I'd say your ascription of bigotry would be a difficult to reject."

Somewhat more skeptical is Nick Zukin, who responded:

"I don't care if you use the word "bigot" really. The effects of such
language are yours to live with, and that's the real problem with throwing
it around. But I think "tangible state interest" phrase is an interesting
bit of libertarian rhetoric that could unravel the argument. Why is the
search for a "tangible state interest" any less based in "private,
metaphysical beliefs" that those who just say the law should be God's law or that laws should be based on communal beliefs, traditions, etc?"

I think many thinking conservatives collapse into relativism as a reaction to strong spiritually-based arguments in favor of same-sex marriage. They say "see--you're being dogmatic too!" An interesting and troubling strategy.

BIGOTRY AND THE GAY MARRIAGE QUESTION

As a heterosexual male, I naturally wonder sometimes why the issue of same-sex marriage pushes such intense buttons within me. I know that I am concerned about justice (both in the sense of giving each their due and in the concerns over procedural justice I share with Habermas and Rawls, and the distributive justice I derivatively identify with the Marxist tradition), but that alone doesn't explain it. I get passionate about a good many issues of justice, but none so much as this. Perhaps I even get angrier about it than some of my gay friends, but I think that's more due to my confrontational nature and fundamental immaturity than to our relative levels of concern.

But I think that, for me, the issue is irreducible to ethical systems of justice or political struggle, although both are vitally important components in winning an eventual victory in the fight. No, I think it's about love. I think the combination of being an incurable romantic and a dogmatic deliberative democrat (the idea, not the party) means that I will and have ended friendships, polemicized loudly, and felt my heart race over the gay marriage question. And the combination of understanding love and failing to understand why I would deny my responsibility for others compels me, insistently, to believe in allowing responsible moral agents to enter into mutually consented, and constructed, covenants.

Those who ask, seriously or ironically, why promoting same-sex marriage won't open the door to legal incest, interspecies marriage, child rape, and the like are not merely committing a slippery slope fallacy of the worst kind. Nor are they only guilty of a failure to consider the difference between agency and non-consent, or in the ability and inability to communicate that consent in the public forum. I can't marry a tree, and when we get to the point where I could, we'll talk again.

Instead, I believe those who make the slippery slope argument are cursed with an inability or unwillingness to extend fellow human agents basic moral consideration and are therefore resorting to ill-conceived and disingenuous arguments (after all, if the threshold is competent consent, none of their arguments are true) as a substitution for deliberative reasoning. And those who would deploy their religious principles on the unwilling for the purpose of defining that unwilling out of the scope of moral agency, are likewise cursed. That foundational insensitivity is not something any government, state, or collective can instantly eradicate, but when governments and other collective entities are presented with a choice between defining moral agents in or out of access to social goods, and when the choice to deny access is based on private, metaphysical beliefs rather than tangible state interest, we call such governments --and the people who support them-- bigots.

Already, those of us who've used that word in this debate have been chastised for it, and I'll concede that it's a powerful, damning term. It is, however, worth a second look, if only to contextualize the struggle for moral recognition and the arguments and images normally invoked against whatever differential traits separate the majority from the minority. Bigotry isn't just about the clearest or starkest differences among us. Most of those differences --race and ethnicity, gender, class, and even religion-- are as problematic to pin down as sexual orientation is. The scientific consensus is that race is largely a construct, and even gender is an unstable term in a world of contingent gender roles and bodies that don't fit the norm. Those who would balk at calling gay rights-deniers bigots should remember that whatever the antecedent causes of homosexuality, we routinely decry bigotry against Mormons, Catholics and Jews, and surely religion, if not religious heritage, is at least as much a choice as sexual orientation--and probably much more so.

While I am not making a positive argument for some kind of obligation to call gay rights-deniers bigots, I am unconvinced by any argument I've heard thus far against the use of the term. Some argue that it's inappropriate because the denial of same-sex marriage rights is a reasonable belief, whether ultimately defensible or not. Some concede that those who would actively persecute or shun homosexuals can reasonably be called bigots, but those who oppose same sex marriage don't necessarily support persecution or shunning. Although I understand the sentiment, its resultant argument is unpersuasive. For we (those in favor of such rights) would--and did--call those people bigots who opposed interracial marriage, whether or not said opponents believed in the racial superiority of whites. In fact, it is more reasonable to withhold the term bigot from someone who privately believes in racial superiority but publicly supports interracial marriage rights, because that person has exercised an important democratic obligation: They have refused to make their private metaphysical beliefs the basis of public policy.

Still others argue that calling people bigots will make them angry and hurt, and undermine the struggle for acceptance by alienating potential supporters. I suppose that it's a given that people will get angry if we call them bigots, and I suppose there's a possibility that some of those people would otherwise, eventually, come to their senses and allow consenting agents to enter into mutual agreements. But I don't think it hurt the civil rights struggle to call white racists bigots, and there's at least as much of a chance that such stark and honest language will provide all of us with a clarity unavailable in terms such as "heterosexist," or "advocate of traditional marriage." In a world where various rhetorical actors struggle for legitimacy, dominance, emancipation or repression, calling things as we see them can sometimes be both a cogent and self-consistent strategy.

It's a rather simple matter: If you believe, as I do, that there is, in a democracy based on procedural equality, no reason to deny people the ability to access state sanction and legal benefits for their mutually consentual relationships, then you also believe that the denial of such access is arbitrary and capricious, that it is based on a private and ultimately subjective belief that ought not be the basis of public policy. When, in the face of such a situation, some people continue to oppose that access because they feel that some people have an innately superior right to access than others, such beliefs can be called prejudicial, and thus their adherents can accurately be called bigots. Thus, there is a defensible argument for calling them bigots, although one needn't feel compelled to do so.

Coming soon: A review of The Economist's case for gay marriage.

Thoughts on Haiti

Whether covertly or indirectly (and the events of the recent weeks have "covert action" written all over them), the United States is now presiding over a turkey shoot, a coup whose "rebels" are killing Aristide supporters at will, a betrayal on par with the betrayal of the Spanish Republicans in their fight against Francisco Franco, and a huge, loud, bloody rejection of leftist leadership in the hemisphere.

One could grant all of the allegations against Aristide, rumors and facts, those that have been floating around for years (he's self-obsessed, irrational, brutal to his opponents) and those that are fairly recent (he's wrecking the economy) and those things, if all true, still wouldn't justify the U.S. supporting a coup led by the old Duvalier regime's death squad leaders. And guess what? Baby Doc is going back to Haiti. That's right. He feels safe now. Things have changed for the better, he says.

Here's what the WSWS's Bill Van Auken says today about these better days and heroic coup leaders:

Led by former death squad members and soldiers linked to previous coup attempts, the well-armed thugs quickly took over the barracks facing the National Palace and declared their intention to reconstitute the Haitian Army. This corrupt and brutal force—a legacy of the first US occupation of Haiti from 1915 to 1934—was disbanded by Aristide in 1995. According to some reports, the army’s former commander, General Herard Abraham, is preparing to return from exile in Miami to resume his post.Among the first acts of the right-wing gunmen was the storming of the penitentiary in Port-au-Prince, freeing some 2,000 prisoners. Apparently, the main aim of this action was to liberate a number of notorious killers from previous dictatorships, including Prosper Avril, who headed a military junta that ruled the country from 1988 to 1990 and was convicted on charges of illegally imprisoning and torturing political dissidents. The action also provided a fresh group of recruits for the terror squads from among the criminals who were let loose.Guy Philippe, a former army officer and police chief who was charged with drug trafficking and conducting summary executions, is a leader of the “rebels.” On Tuesday, he proclaimed himself Haiti’s “military chief” and announced his intention to arrest Prime Minister Yvon Neptune, who has remained effectively imprisoned in his office. Other members of Aristide’s cabinet fled Haiti, seeking asylum in the neighboring Dominican Republic.In a telling indication of the political forces unleashed by the US-backed coup, Haiti’s former “president for life” Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, who has lived in exile in Paris since 1986, announced that he intends to return to Haiti as soon as possible.

And, in greater detail:

The “rebels” include such elements as Louis Jodel Chamblain, who led the Tontons Macoute death squads during the waning years of the Duvalier dictatorship in the 1980s and then returned as one of the heads of the Haitian Front for Advancement and Progress, or FRAPH.The FRAPH, a paramilitary group formed under the military regime that took power when Aristide was first overthrown in a US-backed coup in 1991, received financial support and political guidance from the US Central Intelligence Agency and is blamed for the murder of at least 3,000 Haitians.


Aristide maintains he was forced into exile. The important point for me is that even if he was not forced to resign in some immediate manner (and I can't imagine under what other circumstances he would have left office), the larger, material forces were bearing down on him, and those forces were contingent arms of both American and Hatian elites.

Much of the information concerning the role of the CIA, and the U.S. in general, in perpetuating elite rule in Haiti was buried back in 1994, during the height of the original coup. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting detailed it back then:

Some major media -- including the Washington Post, New York Times, CBS and NBC -- did pick up on Allan Nairn's reporting in The Nation (10/24/94) about U.S. ties to the Haitian death squad FRAPH. But an interesting pattern was noted by Village Voice press critic James Ledbetter (10/18/94): Most outlets covered Nairn's revelation that FRAPH leader Emannuel Constantwas a paid informant of the CIA. But Constant's statement that he was encouraged to form FRAPH by the U.S. military intelligence attache, who wanted a "balance" to forces seeking the return of ousted President Aristide, was reported only "sporadically," Ledbetter noted. And Constant's charge that this same U.S. intelligence official, along with the top-ranking CIA officer in Haiti, were both present in Haiti's military headquarters the day that Aristide was overthrown, was almost totally ignored.This pattern suggests that the mainstream press is not ready to fully discuss U.S. intelligence involvement with the forces that the U.S. military is supposedly in Haiti to displace. It's OK to admit that the CIA is getting information from unsavory organizations, but looking into whether those unsavory organizations were set up by the CIA? They'll leave that to The Nation.

I'll make no arguments or conclusions about this situation just yet, other than the obvious fact that the forces ousting Aristide are about a hundred times more brutal and are connected to about a thousand times more money than Aristide himself ever has been. Whatever the pretext, it's obvious that this is a class war.

New Marxism Essay

From Michael D. Yates, in the new Monthly Review, an impressive plea for working-class internationalism (what's that???) in the struggle against capitalism--a struggle Yates judges to be alive and well, and very, very necessary.

Gay Marriage: Too Much Happening

Still no more essays attacking same sex marriage in a face-to-face format. Meanwhile, Jason West got charged, and more and more mayors are performing the ceremonies or declaring their intent to do so.

I feel like I have a responsibility to write an essay entitled "How Not to Argue about Same Sex Marriage," but I can't be that objective. I am missing the essential necessity for heteronormativity in this conversation. If Al Simpson can get it, if my mother can get it, if Dick Cheney, in his more private moments, can get it, why can't [fill in the blank].

A good debate weekend for the Pokes

Chris Crowe and Brian DeLong beat Weber's Shackelford and Roake twice, and provided Idaho State's Dewey and Dewey with their only loss, to win a spot at the 2004 National Debate Tournament, the Big Dance of American-style policy debate. Chris and Brian were aided by another Pokes team, Josh Schmerge and Jess Ryan, who knocked out Arizona State's Russell and Gray to capture a run-off spot, then sacrificed to Chris and Brian who were the higher seed. Chris was also named the tournament's second best speaker, quite an accomplishment for a sophomore.

The clinch players during this two-day quest for qualification in Las Vegas were UW assistant coaches Sarah Stone Watt and Jimbo Maritato. Chris and Brian were down 0-2 (surprisingly so, but we needn't discuss that) when Sarah and Jimbo rallied them and scouted info, helped them research answers to new strategies, and in general never stopped believing in them. It was inspiring to see the teamwork this weekend, including by another Wyoming team, Will Jensen and Seth "Pinto" Ellsworth, who had a rough tournament competitively, but whose hard work also benefitted Chris and Brian.

Meanwhile, up in Salem, OR, UW's Joshua House and Kristen Barton managed another stellar tournament at the Hatfield Debates sponsored by Willamette University, where they were third overall out of nearly 70 teams. Josh and Kristen have won the largest parliamentary tournament of the year (Point Loma's Sunset Cliffs Classic) and have been in quarter-finals or better at every large invitational in the nation. Josh and Kristen showed, once again, why they are ranked fifth in the nation out of over 1000 teams in the National Parliamentary Tournament of Excellence rankings.

Emily Cram and Angela Granum also managed to break out of the field for Wyoming at the Hatfields, advancing to the first elimination round. Go pokes!


Update on New Paltz and Jason West

Christopher Cooper writes on edebate:

"I don't think Jason is in trouble. As I understand it, the charges he is facing have nothing to do with the same-sex issue (on face), but whether he is allowed to marry folks without licenses.

"Interestingly, the section of the state domestic relations law cited by West as justification for his actions says in part that ''nothing in this article contained shall be construed to render void by reason of a failure to procure a marriage license any marriage solemnized between persons of full age.''

"And...the law firm Heller, Ehrman, White and McAuliffe has agreed to handle the case pro bono should the marriages be challenged in court, West said. The law firm has offices in New York City, San Francisco and other cities across the country."

Essay Contest Update

So only one writer has taken my challenge to compose a face-to-face rejoinder of same sex marriage to a gay couple. I'll talk later about the implications of this lack of interest. I posted this challenge to hundreds of people...

In the meantime, here is the essay, and we'll call the writer "Entry #1" for now. Perhaps we could name the essay "Incrementalism," but I don't want to second-guess the writer or this well-constructed essay:

(The following views are not endorsed by this web journal or its author)

Dear Patricia and Rosemary,

Of course its hard for me to explain to you why I would support something that you perceive as discriminatory. But I need to assure you that my opposition to same-sex marriage is not because I question your morality or fidelity. I don't adhere to grotesque stereotypes about predatory "gays" out trying to recruit children nor do I hold to literal interpretation of obsolescent Old Testament injunctions against homosexuality. Even if I believed in the precept that homosexuality was intrinsically immoral, I would still oppose the state acting as enforcer of personal morality.

So, if that's the case, why would I oppose your "right" of gay marriage? Quite simply, it is because we as a society aren't there yet -- we're not culturally able to make an immediate shift to gay marriage.

In the public debates, people argue over whether marriage is an institution of the state or an institution of religion. Of course, marriage encompasses aspects of both, with different couples partaking in religious and state aspects seperately. Some couples are only married by the state (I was married by a judge) while others embrace forms of marriage that are explicitly religious (such as the Mormons' "temple marriage").

But I think we can agree that "marriage" is fundamentally a cultural institution -- it is a concept that is deeply imbued with cultural and emotional meaning. It is a foundational building block for the conceptual map that people use to see the world.

This is important to recognize because this means that people's reactions towards the institution of marriage are not entirely rational. "Marriage" is a symbol that strikes deeply into people's ways of viewing the world. Indeed, this is probably precisely why you want to get married -- you have a completely understandable and legitimate desire to access that symbol and integrate it into your lives.

There, now since I've explicitly endorsed the legitimacy of your desire to get married, you're probably wondering how I could possibly have a coherent reason for still opposing gay marriage. But please hear me out.

Since marriage is such a conceptually foundational symbol in our culture and since people's reactions to it are not completely rational and are imbued with emotional overtones that are only partially consciously recognized, when a proposal comes up -- like gay marriage -- that suggests important changes to how that institution will be defined it is felt by many as "threatening". Such people will often be unable to articulate precisely what is "threatening" about the proposed change and they will also be unable to state explicitly how it even affects them. But the "this just isn't right" feeling is very powerful.

Accordingly, when people have these inarticulate feelings of "threat" to something (like marriage) that is fundamental to their conceptual map, they often respond emotionally, even angrily, to defend the conceptual map -- the "traditional way" from the perceived threat. This is the source of the anti-gay marriage backlash -- people's natural unease and discomfort with a fundamental alteration (however well-justified) in an institution that is perceived as extremely important.

So, then, we are left with two things in deep tension with each other. On the one hand, we have your legitimate and important desire to be married to the person of your choice. On the other hand, we have the legitimate and important perceptions of a "threat" against the fundamental cultural institution of marriage. Our important challenge is now to figure out how to reconcile these conflicting imperatives.

The overriding imperative that I think almost everyone would agree to is the importance of non-discrimination. The state should not seek to impose one group's morality upon another in a way that infringes upon their equal protection under the law. Thus, our goal is to seek equality for same-sex couples. But the question is how to get there and, strongly related, how to obtain incremental gains in that direction as quickly as possible.

Gay marriage imposed by court fiat is precisely the wrong way to go right now. Because it provokes the feelings of "threat" in the strongest way, it guarentees the strongest backlash and the strong likelihood of additional barriers and new types of discrimination and even violence arising from the irrational reaction to the "threat" of gay marriage. Reform of the cultural concept of marriage is like a Chinese finger puzzle -- the more one moves directly, the more the goal is frustrated.

What we need to do instead is to assuage people's fears about cultural change and demonstrate publicly that same-sex couples are not a genuine threat to society or to the institution of marriate. Civil unions are the best available institution to do this.

Civil unions would allow you to publicly declare and legally enact your commitment to each other. Civil unions would also ensure access to the important legal benefits from the state, such as inheritence, health care benefits, and next-of-kin rights. In this way, civil unions would serve as a major step towards non-discrimination that solves almost all of the discriminatory aspects that you have been living with for a long time now.

Of course, I understand that the access to the cultural symbol of marriage in civil unions is only partial. "Seperate but equal" status is, as the courts have observed, rarely equal in social status. But it is important for you to realize that change is hard. Whether we like it or not, people's minds are not going to be altered overnight no matter what we do. And moving to override people's cultural queasiness about gay marriage only guarentees frustration and failure, along with an unnecessary and tragic increase in overt discrimination.

However, civil unions offer a ray of hope in that they are a transitional institution. As the institution of civil unions became common and mature, people would be able to observe for themselves that there was no massive outbreak of new sexual immorality, polygamy, bestiality, pedophilia or any of the other grotesque predictions about what would result from legally recognized same-sex unions. Instead, people of good faith (which I think most people are) would begin to see that same-sex couples in civil unions had the same kind of lives, concerns, problems, and joys that married couples had. Thus, the institution of civil unions would serve to progressively undermine the conceptual distinction between "civil unions" and "marriages". After a relatively short period of time -- probably merely a couple of decades -- we would wake up one day to find that the cultural symbol of "marriage" had already been redefined in people's minds in a way that judicial fiat could never, ever do. At that time, the seperate institutions could be joined.

Patricia and Rosemary, no one can deny your joy at being together or your legitimate desire to enshrine your union within the symbol of marriage. Unfortunately, we also cannot deny the current state of our culture, where "marriage" exists as a fundamental cultural symbol that beyond the power of any court or legislature to modify directly. Thus, my opposition to gay marriage is grounded in the question of timing and method -- how do we properly change our society to make it more open and non-discriminatory? We can agree on the goal of non-discrimination and tolerance and I hope we can also agree that civil unions offer the best path to get there even though it may not be all that you want for yourselves and all your friends want for you.

(the preceding was an essay contest entry and the following is me again)

I think this is a well-written response, and that's all I will say for now. I am interested in what others have to say. Send comments to stannard67@aol.com.

The writer makes a great effort to distance the position of this letter from the position of anti-gay conservatives. I still wonder what the Christian will say (and what's frustrating is I have asked a number of Christians to respond and they have all refused). The lack of response tells me --disturbingly, because these are mostly people I know personally-- that the priority of those intelligent conservatives out there who want to restrict marriage is to be correct rather than to be good; to be right about their arguments and secure in their comfortable, self-contained belief systems rather than face those to whom they wish to deny access to a part of their beloved contract-based minimal state.

I'm drawn once again to Emmanuel Levinas, not because I think Levinas would have been at all comfortable with same sex marriage, but because his foundational beliefs about communication and justification would compel him to at least face the "gay other" and attempt to explain his position...as well as concede the ultimate problematicity and incompleteness of such an ethical doctrine.

I'm troubled about it (the lack of interest in justifying restrictions to the face of those restricted) because each and every person who refuses such engagement knows someone who is gay.

Interesting Comments

All that said, I have to share some comments anonymously from some Christians (Mormons, actually) who won't commit to the essay, but who are honest about their feelings on the issue:

This email in particular is funny, self-aware, and makes an important point that restricting types of marriage is the province of religious covenants. The writer is explaining his dilemma in talking about gay marriage to a non-christian friend:

To me homosexual practices in themselves aren't de facto wrongs, but rather engaging in homosexual practices when one has promised to refrain from homosexuality is wrong. (Call me a Pharisee, but I'm kinda contractual about the gospel.) I could tell her that her behaviors are inconsistent with the teaching of my church, indeed, most churches, but, as you said, I don't think that would get me anywhere.

The other argument would be to suggest that homosexuality is somehow un-natural. On this score, however, I recently had the misfortune to see a JPEG of a monkey sipping his own urine as he was peeing. I can only conclude that nature, as such, is truly sick and two women engaged in a sexual relationship is pretty far down on the "against nature" list.

Which leaves me with my "no-need-to-stick-your-neck-out" argument. Kinda weak, but, in the context of this particular couple, probably justified. Of course, this line of reasoning has the same fault as the thinking of the Weimar legislators -- maybe if we just elect him Chancellor, he'll just shut up.

Jason West and New Paltz

I'll just provide some exerpts from articles about Jason's work as mayor of the village of New Paltz. Jason has been performing marriages there for a week and has caused all hell to break loose. Jason is a former Marist debater! Last weekend he took time out from national attention to judge at the CEDA East Regionals. He's good friends with my friends Max, Andy, and Jimbo. I haven't met him personally, but I look forward to it when I do. He has instantiated something I hoped would happen and if he goes to jail, watch this site for continued updates and channels of material and rhetorical aid.

Here is Jason West's most recent statement to the press:

"Marriage is a declaration of love, devotion and commitment. It is a public acknowledgement of a couple's willingness to share their lives and to love, trust and compromise. It is also an important civil institution that provides legal protections, benefits and responsibilities. The couples who were recently married have made this important commitment, and we join them in celebrating their loving unions.

"Upon becoming mayor of the Village of New Paltz, I took an oath of office to uphold the Constitution of the State of New York. I take this oath very seriously, particularly as it relates to my duty to conduct marriages. I firmly believe that it would be both unfair and contrary to the New York Constitution to deny the benefits and responsibilities afforded by marriage to same-sex couples. Two adults who decide to make the commitment of marriage should not be denied the protections of marriage."

Now this got big when Gov. Pataki told NY AG Eliot Spitzer (who I am told is a pretty straight guy and a hard ass) to go stop Jason West from performing these marriages. According to today's New York Daily News:

"State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer declared yesterday that
same-sex couples should be allowed to wed - openly defying Gov. Pataki's stance on the controversial issue.

"I have no problem with gay marriage," Spitzer told the Daily News. "I think the law has moved to a point where people are comfortable that [marriage] can be extended to people of the same sex," he said."

The plot thickens. Now, the Mayor of Ithaca is going to do it too...according to today's New York Times:

"Carolyn K. Peterson, the mayor of Ithaca, told a packed news conference at City Hall that the clerk would accept marriage applications by same-sex couples and forward them to the state's Department of Health for a ruling on whether they could be granted. In doing so, she said, she would force the issue into the courts."

The best evidence that Jason West has really accomplished something is that the Reverend Fred Phelps is going to New Paltz. Phelps, a traveling fire-and-brimstone hater based in Topeka, has made several trips to Wyoming advancing the incredibly uninsightful notion that Matthew Sheppard is burning in hell. Wyoming has used those visits as rallying points to build an impressive public image of tolerance. I am sure that came in handy when lawmakers rejected a Wyoming Defense of Marriage Act last month.