Category: Terrorism

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Bush Pardons

You undoubtedly remember vividly the apoplectic outrage of conservative commentators when Bill Clinton issued his list of pardons just before leaving office. That outrage, of course, is reserved only for occasions on which the Democrats appear to be doing what the Republicans think the Democrats would do if they had the ethics of Republicans.

I might be wrong, but I believe we are about to see George Bush make Bill Clinton look like a piker when it comes to pardons. I’ll even stick my neck out and predict it: George Bush is going to have to issue a large number of pardons… for people who will not admit to having committed any crimes.

The problem is this: Barack Obama wins the election. Do you think Obama will interpret the constitution to mean that the President of the United States can make torture legal by commanding his minions to torture?

Maybe he will. Or maybe he will feel the same way that most civilized western leaders have felt for 100 years: that the use of torture is repugnant to the fundamental principles of human rights. Okay. So what do all the torturers in the CIA do? Quietly quit their jobs and move to Switzerland or Argentina? Apologize? I’m really, very, very sorry that I tortured you– I had thought it was legal. And resort to the standard “I was only following orders” defense?

I suspect that an understanding might be reached, that would see the federal government under the new administration not ask any embarrassing questions, provided that the violations of fundamental human rights comes to a quick stop. But what if any of the victims are put on trial? What if their lawyers challenge the validity of evidence obtained against their clients because it was adduced under torture? Sticky wicket, isn’t it? What if they call in the FBI witnesses who objected to what they termed “rough treatment” of suspects by their colleagues in the CIA and Defense Department?

Bush is going to have perform that goofy voodoo thing wherein you forgive people for crimes you claim they haven’t committed. He tried to do a similar thing by getting Congress to grant immunity to corporations that he swears were merely obeying the law when they allowed the government to spy on individuals in the U.S. without warrants. If they were obeying the law, why do they need immunity? This kind of hypocritical bullshit should not be allowed to pass: why will anyone need a pardon if, as Bush says, everything they did was legal?

Congress should make a simple demand– it should insist that no one can be pardoned unless they have committed a crime. So Mr. Bush may only pardon torturers if they admit they illegally tortured people. And then we may turn to the President and impeach him in the hour before he leaves office.

By golly– George Bush really does understand the constitution. He just willingly shits on it.

Update

2011-03 I was wrong. George Bush — much to Cheney’s displeasure, apparently– refused to pardon anybody, not even Scooter Libby.

Yes, I do think more highly of him than I did before. Barack Obama, on the other hand, basically continued the same policies. So, yes, I think much less of him for that. By continuing the policies, of course, he erased the possibility of charging members of the Bush Administration with violating the rights of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere. That’s exactly what Bush needed and wanted and I do wonder just how overt this kind of understanding between one President and another is.

Don’t forget Karl! There are strong grounds for suspicion that Karl Rove orchestrated the malicious and false prosecution of Alabama Democratic Governor Don Siegelman. A Republican lawyer has sworn, under oath, that she was told that Rove directed the United States attorney for Montgomery to undertake proceedings against Siegelman though there was no real evidence of any crime.  For a political operative to instigate such an investigation is a felony.

Congress has subpoenaed Rove but he refuses to testify. How on earth can he get away with that? The Attorney General is ultimately responsible for enforcing the law. George Bush appoints the Attorney General. There you go.

We need to start a campaign now to head off the inevitable. The campaign should focus on the demand that no pardons should be issued by President Bush for anyone who has not publicly admitted that they have committed the crimes for which they are being pardoned. (It’s probably too much to ask that they actually be charged with those crimes and put on trial.) It’s simple: no confession, no pardon. So all those intelligence agents who tortured and generals who lied and secretaries of state who lied and phone companies who allowed the government to eavesdrop on conversations without a warrant and so on and so on should have to line up on television and takes turns telling us exactly what they did that requires a pardon. It would be the ultimate reality show, and it would be GREAT for the country. These are the sonsofbitches who have been running your country for the past eight years. What do you think?

But I was only following orders!

Right. America supported the findings of the Nuremburg judges that the “following orders” defense does not exculpate actions that a reasonable person would perceive to be illegal and abhorrent. So Nazi soldiers that participated in atrocities, unless they had good grounds to fear for their lives, were not excused from their sins. The same standard was applied to the William Calley case.

Unfortunately, I’m not sure a judge in the U.S. in today’s political climate would agree with me that anyone participating in the use of torture has no excuse. America is moving backwards, towards barbarism. The idea that torture is “abhorrent” prevails in civilized countries. What is a civilized country?

 

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A “Finding” Does not Make it Legal

You might think that torture is actually presently legal in the U.S., given all the efforts by Bush and his Attorney Generals to make it so. And maybe you just don’t care that it is– or you approve– because you are a God-fearing patriotic American and you don’t take bullshit from foreigners– whatever— I don’t care. Jesus loves you, whatever, because you approve of the use of torture, and you really can’t remember or think of or imagine any reason why that would make you less of a human being than, say, believing in witchcraft or astrology. Whatever.

Back to my point: I don’t believe torture is, technically, “legal”. It is, in fact, quite illegal, no matter what Bush says it is. Then why hasn’t anybody been arrested? Who would arrest who? Because Bush is in command of the only apparatus that can enforce the law: the Attorney General’s Office and the FBI (which is accountable to it) and he has ordered it not to.

[added October 22, 2008: if a New York City cop on the beat, for example, stumbled into a group of men treating an individual the way they are, in fact, treating the detainees in Guantanamo, he would surely make an arrest and lay charges.  Nobody would or could excuse the crime with a “finding”.]

If Bush or his Attorney-General issues a “finding” that torture is legal (he calls it “enhanced interrogation techniques” but no court is so stupid as to not see through that), and thereby instructs federal officials to abide by that “finding”, he hasn’t really changed any aspect of the law. What would it take to activate the apparatus on behalf of the courts? Well, how about a new executive who believes in the constitution?

Take for example any prisoner being held currently in Guantanamo, who had previously been tortured, either through rendition, or by CIA officers at locations outside of the U.S. Bush has succeeded in blocking this individuals access to any court with the power to respond to his circumstances with directives that will actually be obeyed by Federal agencies. At the moment, Bush simply ignores any legal motions he doesn’t like and then obfuscates.

Now suppose a new Chief Executive– a new President– instructs the new Attorney General (John Edwards?) to investigate whether anybody involved in the handling of prisoners by American forces or intelligence agencies or proxies has broken the law, or violated the rights of these prisoners.

I think about this a lot. I can imagine that nothing will happen, if the new President turns out to be gutless and decides that he can live with simply stopping any more torture from happening. That’s hard to imagine, however, because the lawyers for all of the prisoners being held by agents of the U.S. Federal Government will be clamoring for due process and habeas corpus and dozens of other constitutional rights we all used to think Americans treasured dearly. And I can’t see this new President doing what Bush did, which is, instructing his staff to find ways around the courts, so we can suppress the rights of these individuals.  [Update: that is, in fact, exactly what Obama did.]

So imagine instead that President Obama (or Clinton) allows the attorney general to investigate and he finds out that there has been some torture going on… and he decides that his interpretation of the constitution is that torture is never allowed.

Just imagine.

[2011-03: of course, it didn’t happen. Odd, but not really surprising now that I think about it. Would a politician who was seriously intent on enforcing the law survive the primary process in the U.S.? I doubt it. ]

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Torture

“The fact that an act is undertaken to prevent a threatened terrorist attack, rather than for the purpose of humiliation or abuse, would be relevant to a reasonable observer in measuring the outrageousness of the act,” said Brian A. Benczkowski, a deputy assistant attorney general, in the letter, which had not previously been made public.
NY Times, April 27, 2008

This is the Bush Administration at it’s most astonishingly acute. This is from a letter drafted by the Attorney-General’s office to the intelligence services to enlighten them as to how they may torture.

Or was it drafted by the Arch-Bishop of Seville in 1300 to enlighten the Jesuits as to how much torture could be applied to a heretic? Let’s paraphrase: “the fact that an act is undertaken to prevent the spread of heresy rather than for the purpose of humiliation or abuse…” Or if Marxist guerrillas in Guatemala in the 1970’s had captured a suspected CIA mole: “the fact that an act is undertaken to prevent the oppression of the proletariat and exploitation of the working classes…”

Are there any government or military or paramilitary entities out there who only torture for the purpose of humiliation or abuse? Stop that right now– you are violating international law! But if you have some purpose, divine or otherwise, in mind, well, we do it, so why shouldn’t you?

We had formerly thought that such people were monsters of depravity, bereft of all that makes us human and civilized. They used to be our enemies. But now, they are merely like us, as long as their first reason is not “humiliation or abuse”. As long as they do not, as they approach their helpless victims with a tong, or electrodes, or a barrel of water, tell them, “and now I will inflict terrible suffering on you for the sole purpose of humiliation and abuse! Once I have humiliated and abused you, I will stop!

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The Surge

It is quite amazing how many people who never admitted there was anything wrong with the original plan to invade Iraq now claim that the surge has fixed it. Even better, John McCain insists we are “on the precipice of winning a major victory against radical Islamic extremism.” That’s an absolutely amazing statement since it has always been clear that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with “Islamic extremism” and everything to do with “I am the king of the world and I’m sitting on scads of oil”. It’s almost as if America is now in the business of creating its own enemies.

It would be more seemly for McCain to declare that America has destroyed Iraq and in so doing, incidentally, removed a really awful dictator from the face of the earth, at the cost of a trillion dollars, while doing virtually nothing to diminish the growth of extremism in other Islamic dictatorships like Egypt and Saudi Arabia and Syria.

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Hamas

America is in Iraq to bring freedom and democracy.
Why, when I see our boys raise the flag and salute— my heart just cramps all over.

There is only one example, in the Arab world, of a relatively free and fair election in which an autocratic government party was overthrown and replaced with another government that more accurately reflected the will of the electorate. It was Hamas, when, in January 2006, it defeated Yassir Arafat’s old party, Fatah, in elections in Palestine.

The reaction of the United States, which is determined to bring democracy and freedom to the Arab world? It denounced the results of the elections and encouraged Fatah to arm themselves in anticipation of an uprising.

This is not made up. This is not fantasy. This is not some satirical Hollywood movie. This is real U.S. foreign policy in action and if you still like to stand on your podium with your flag and your torch and your patriotic heart and recite all those platitudes about why the West is fighting terrorism, you deserve to be disillusioned.

The truth has always been that America is far more interested in promoting strategic alliances in the middle east than in any kind of democracy or freedom or even capitalism, if that gets in the way of the oil. How else would you explain U.S. policy towards Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Dubai, and so on and so on and so on?

As if the January 2006 election wasn’t ironic enough, the only other Arab government that is even remotely democratic is Iran. You may not like Ahmadinejad but, so far, he hasn’t tried to appoint his own son as his successor (unlike our so-called friends in Egypt, Libya, and Syria).

Hello America…. you help me in so many ways that I cannot even begin to express….

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God Bless Qwest

Let’s say the government hired a burglar to break into your house one night and steal your laptop. No warrant, no subpoena, nothing. Nobody even knows it happens… until, some fink within the government leaks a document to the New York Times: word is out. The government hired a burglar to steal your laptop. You demand that the police arrest the burglar. The police say, by golly, burglary is illegal, and we will immediately arrest this burglar.

The government says, wait. We will pass legislation making it legal for burglars to break into houses when we ask them to. We needed to break into this house because we thought– for reasons we can’t tell you– that you were going to make a bomb and blow it up in a subway station. It would be unfair to charge this man with burglary because we told him that what he was doing was legal. We want to be able to do this frequently, whenever we feel like it, without any tedious oversight from courts or judges.

You say, if you want to break into someone’s house and seize their property– that’s allowed. All you have to do is show a judge that you have strong evidence of a crime being committed and the judge will easily and quickly grant you a warrant. And knowing our judges– they won’t even wait for you to finish your sentence before giving you the warrant.

Oh, you say. That’s too much work, and too hard to do– we want to be able to break in without having the slightest evidence of any crime being committed. Like they do in the movies.

So the government introduces legislation to make it legal for burglars to burgle if the government asks them too. Well… not exactly. It tries to pass legislation that makes it legal, retroactively, for burglars to have burgled for the government. The government makes speeches: You must pass this legislation or America will not be safe.

Would any sensible person support this idea? Are Americans so stupid that they would buy this? This is, however, exactly what Bush is trying to do, and he is half-way there. The Senate– usually the body of “sober second thought” has already passed the measure. Democrats are terrified of being accused of being soft on terror, in an election year.

Okay, so it’s not burglary. It is tapping your phone and listening in on your private conversations. One phone company (Qwest) refused the request. The fact that they were not subject to any legal action as a result shows that the Bush Administration knew what it was doing was illegal, and that the other phone companies should also have known it was illegal.

Infuriatingly, the Bush Administration appears to be getting away with the act of legalizing actions it had already taken— and for which it had not been charged! If there is any need– as Bush claims there is– for this legislation– then the government officials responsible for the actions for which this legislation absolves them should be charged with various crimes related to spying, abuse of authority, illegal possession of private information, obstruction of justice, and whatever the hell else applies to their actions.

What is even more infuriating: the Bush Administration asked for extraordinary powers under FISA to conduct special searches for information related to terrorism. They created extra-constitutional shortcuts that already alarmed most civil libertarians– and then they went ahead and ignored even those compromised rules in demanding access to phone records from these phone companies.

And just to put icing on the cake…. why shouldn’t any American have a right to sue the phone companies for turning over these records? If Bush is right, they will lose in the court: the government had the right to force the company to turn over the phone records. These law suits could only be worrisome to Bush if he knows (damn well) that the courts will find his actions illegal, and will, in turn, find the phone companies at fault for complying with illegal demands from the government.

The rest of the world should sit up and take notice. The one thing you used be able to count on from Bubba and Bobby Sue was their fanatical devotion to their constitutional freedoms and liberties, even if it meant they could be awfully stupid about health insurance and foreign policy. Now, alas, I’m afraid you can’t even count on them to stand up for their own rights. Go back to sleep, Bubba. Resume your Big Mac, Bobby Sue. Scranton Pennsylvania is safe from terrorism tonight.

If I were a burglar serving a sentence in one of America’s prisons, I would start myself a lobby group, and get a lawyer, and go to court, and claim that my rights to equality under the law has been violated because unlike George Bush, I have been denied the privilege of going to the legislature and passing a law making what I did legal, retroactively.

Why the hell have no Democrats started the process of impeaching the lying, scheming, burglarizing scoundrel?

God Bless You Qwest! The only phone company that refused the Bush Administration’s illegal requests for access to their customer’s phone calls was Qwest. Qwest’s lawyers looked at the request and came to the conclusion that what the government was asking was illegal.

Think about that— if it was illegal, then Bush Administration officials broke the law and should be arrested and charged. And then Bush would go, “oh my– I don’t want my officials getting arrested for breaking the law. Let’s change the law.” And maybe he changes the law– but only after his officials have been arrested and prosecuted for breaking it.

Trying to make it legal now– retroactively– means that it was not legal then, and the government knows it.

So why was no one arrested? Because, no government official ever arrests himself for breaking the law.

The NY Times Story

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Now It’s Legal!

I don’t think I’ve read anything in the past five years quite so infuriating as the op-ed piece by John Ashcroft in the November 5, 2007 New York Times. Ashcroft is addressing the legislation introduced by Congress to grant immunity to Telecoms who, obeying the Bush Administration, turned over private telecommunications records to the government without seeing any kind of warrant or court authorization.

Ashcroft says:

Longstanding principles of law hold that an American corporation is entitled to rely on assurances of legality from officials responsible for government activities. The public officials in question might be right or wrong about the advisability or legality of what they are doing, but it is their responsibility, not the company’s, to deal with the consequences if they are wrong.

To deny immunity under these circumstances would be extraordinarily unfair to any cooperating carriers. By what principle of justice should anyone face potentially ruinous liability for cooperating with intelligence activities that are authorized by the president and whose legality has been reviewed and approved by our most senior legal officials?

My God. John Ashcroft has just asserted that the president has the right to require corporations to commit illegal acts whenever he feels like it, without any regard for the law, the courts, or the congress, just because the people he appointed to high public office, did what he told them to do. Because, it is clearly implied, whatever the president does is legal.

Please notice, if you will, the amazing, magical words missing from that last line: “and the courts”. The Telecoms should obey the President not because a judge or a court has legally issue a writ or warrant on the basis of actual evidence that someone might be committing or has committed a crime— oh no! But just because the President and the officials he appointed (and can fire at will) have decided that they would like to have a look. At your phone records.

If the legality of the Executive’s directives to the FBI and CIA have been “reviewed and approved” by our most “senior legal officials”– then there is no need for the immunity legislation. The courts will recognize the legality of the Executive’s actions and the civil actions will be dismissed.

(Has anybody noticed, by the way, that this kind of argument is not accepted by the courts for any other kinds of illegal activity? “A government official said I could.” So how does that change the law? Nor is the argument that any level of government can tell you what is legal accepted by the Federal Government itself: the Bush Administration Justice Department continues to go after marijuana dealers in California even though the State government has made it legal for medical use and allows dealers to operate.)

So if the FBI or the CIA goes to a phone company and says, we’d like to tap a certain individuals telephone, it is no longer incumbent upon the phone company to ask, “and do you have a warrant?” or even, “is this legal”. As long as our “most” senior legal officials– not “some” legal officials, but our “most” senior officials– say it is legal, it is legal.

The trick here, that Mr. Ashcroft wants you to be dazzled by, is the old bait and switch technique of applying one legal principle– that corporations must obey the law– to an action that really has nothing to do with it: the will of the Federal Government– of the Executive Branch, really– to spy on people without having to trouble themselves about getting a warrant and proving they have a legitimate reason to spy.

This is a load of crap. Why does Ashcroft imagine a company like AT&T, Verizon or Bellsouth is too stupid to ask whoever the government sends to their offices: “and where is your warrant? Where is your court order? What judge authorized this breech of personal privacy?”

Which is what one of the telecoms did. Qwest consulted their lawyers who told them that what the government was asking them to do was a felony. Qwest told the government to buzz off. The government, knowing they didn’t have a leg to stand on, did just that. They didn’t arrest Qwest’s chief executive for “breaking the law”. They didn’t seek an injunction from a court (duh!). They went away.

What makes this doubly infuriating is this phrase at the beginning of the quote above: “longstanding principles of law…. ” So Ashcroft is saying that Bush’s actions are already legal. Then why the hell does Congress need to grant anybody immunity! They don’t need it.

If there are lawsuits, they only need to tell the judge: “agents of the Executive Branch of Federal Government told us to do it. That means it’s legal.” And the judge will say, “Oh. If the government did it, that means it’s legal? Let me check the constitution for a minute…”

I think Mr. Ashcroft knows about this problem. Just as Bush is beginning to realize that all the waterboarding… .the torture… the renditions… GEEZ. WHAT IF WE LIVED IN A COUNTRY THAT HAD RULE OF LAW, AND COURTS, AND A JUSTICE SYSTEM… WE COULD BE ARRESTED.

Do you think Rumsveld ever worries? Cheney? Gonzales? I think they do. I think they might just be starting to realize that once the state-induced hysteria is over with and people come to their senses they are going to ask themselves why government officials were authorizing torture and extraordinary renditions and warrant-less surveillance.

The biggest trick here? John Ashcroft knows very, very will that shifting the liability to “senior” (most or not) legal officials will effectively inoculate the Bush administration from any liability at all: I guarantee you that Bush will make lavish, lavish use of the Presidential Pardon in January 2009. He won’t give a damn anymore. There never was any reason to give a damn. There was never the slightest reason to think that accusations of hypocrisy or viciousness would ever detract from that folksy, all-American, evangelistic charm: we are the boys. We handle things. We win.

Someone else will come along and clean all that up. Cash in now, while you have the chance.

In the meantime, John Ashcroft is, hilariously, asking the government to make something legal because it is already legal. He wants it to make it more legal.

If this isn’t disturbing enough, consider the fact that there is some evidence that the Bush Administration initiated at least some illegal surveillance before 9/11. Check this out.

While Ashcroft advises corporations to do whatever the government tells them to do, without question, without regard for the law or morality– Congress chastises Yahoo for turning information over to the Chinese government about the activities of dissident journalist Shi Tao!

2022-05-07:  even more infuriating: the Obama Administration, fearful of provoking a Republican backlash and crying fit, backed away from prosecuting anyone for these crimes.   This, unfortunately, is part of Obama’s legacy: gutlessness.

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Water-Boarding

Up is down and right is left and water-boarding is not torture.

And we have this from the White House:

Dana M. Perino, the White House press secretary, said Democrats were “playing politics” with the waterboarding issue, noting that Mr. Mukasey had not been briefed on classified interrogation methods. “I can’t imagine the Democrats would want to hold back his nomination just because he is a thoughtful, careful thinker who looks at all the facts before he makes a judgment,” Ms. Perino said.
– New York Times, October 31, 2007.

Ah! If only Mr. Mukasey were briefed on the facts, he would be able to render an intelligent opinion on the subject of torture. But until he gets that briefing, he’s not too sure. Did any Democrat think to ask him how he felt about truncheons or cattle prods? Would he have said, “well, I personally would find it unpleasant to zap a prisoner in the genitals with a cattle prod, but I can’t say whether it would actually be illegal or not until I have all the facts.” So once Mr. Cheney assures him that this bad guy has important information that can save American lives– by golly, give me that cattle prod, I’ll do the deed myself.

I refuse to waste even a single punctuation mark on the question of whether or not torture of any kind is morally wrong. I refuse to accept that we have entered an era– only 60 years after the defeat of the Nazis– in which such questions are seriously debated.

On the other hand, the depressing fact is that many Democrats– not most, and not all, but many– have voted in favor of legislative fig leaves to cover the potential liability of high ranking government officials should a future administration actually come to the shocking, devastating, astounding conclusion that torture should be illegal.

On the other hand, be it noted that the Department of Defense has issued an official directive (in the Army Field Manual) that instructs soldiers not to use water-boarding, and the CIA has apparently asked Bush for permission to not have to use it. Why? Did these officials suddenly acquire a smidgeon of decency and humanity? Or did they suddenly realize that a new administration may some day start investigating crimes committed by officials of a previous administration?

It must be acknowledged– hallelujah– that Republicans John McCain, Lindsay Graham, and John Warner, have publicly expressed the wish that Mr. Mukasey will, after confirmed, declare water-boarding illegal. If he does, there will be a lot of itchy hemorrhoids in the Bush Administration. But then, isn’t that what presidential pardons are all about? Just wait for it– that last month before leaving office– Rumsveld, Cheney, Bolten, Wolfowitz– everybody gets pardons for crimes they may or may not have committed.

And maybe this is why John McCain scored at the bottom of the straw poll taken by “Values Voters”, sponsored by Family Research Council. These “Christians” think that God is more concerned with gay marriage than torture. McCain was also high on campaign finance reform– something Jesus was distinctly against, don’t you know.

What happened to soldiers accused of water-boarding in Viet Nam?

In 1947, a Japanese Officer was convicted by a War Crimes tribunal of using water-boarding– torture– against a U.S. soldier.

>
Amazingly, when threatened with physical torture, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed confessed to numerous crimes. Wow. That’s efficient and effective. Let’s use it all the time. We’ll get more truth that way.

Vice President Dick Cheney says that using water-boarding is a “no-brainer”. In his case, that’s exactly right.

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Oh We Forgot About the Shah

This past Sunday, 60 Minutes presented an interview with Mr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iraq.

60 Minutes is a good program– sometimes very good. But one should never forget that it is also completely controlled by a group of old white men (with the exception of the late Ed Bradley) and that, ultimately, like Time Magazine and the New York Times, it is an appendage of the corporate and governmental establishment, and thus can’t stray too far from conventional thinking on certain issues.

For 60 Minutes, it is okay to be different, but not too different. 60 Minutes devoted hours of coverage to jazz greats like Louis Armstrong and Ray Charles, and of course, they adore classical giants like George Solti and Luciano Pavarotti. But they only acknowledged the Beatles and Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen long after their significance was clearly established– but not among old white men. The counter culture was a little too counter for them, the punk movement ridiculous– couldn’t you just organize a petition? Independent films barely rate a mention– where’s the party where I get to have my picture take with Steven Spielberg? Alternative music? Alternative to what? Do you mean Stravinsky?

So Scott Pelley sat down opposite the leader of Iran and spanked him. How dare you supply weapons to Iraq, as George Bush has been telling us? How dare you try to build a nuclear bomb as those old reliables, the CIA and NSA have been telling us? How dare you display ingratitude to the nation that deposed your arch foe?

Here are some questions Scott Pelley could have asked but didn’t:

  • How does an Islamic state fit into the world’s family of nations?
  • Who are opposing you, in your quest to create a more just society that provides more benefits to the poor and disenfranchised?
  • Are there some in your country who exploit Islamic beliefs for the purpose of acquiring personal wealth?
  • What role should Iran play in the future of Iraq?
  • How close are your ties with Shiite tribal leaders in Iraq?
  • Do you believe that the U.S. will invade your country? What evidence do you have that freedom-loving America would ever consider invading an Islamic Arabic State. Oh yeah– other than that.
  • Is Iran a democracy?
  • What is the role of women in Islamic society?
  • Is there any common ground between you and George Bush– are you both religious fundamentalists?
  • Will Iranians ever forgive America for installing and supporting the Shah for all those years from 1953 up to 1979?  Why are you so upset about the torture?
  • We feel that only a subhuman monster of epic malevolence would ever consider exploding a nuclear bomb in a populated area. How would you ever learn to live with yourselves if you did that? Oh…
  • If we agree to allow international inspectors into our nuclear sites will you? Scratch that…

Scott Pelley: but the American people believe your country is a terrorist nation…

I am unaccustomed to 60 Minutes correspondents making that kind of bizarre, blanket statement.

Firstly, if a majority did believe that, it is clearly because they are told that by George Bush and the so-called “liberal” media. Most Americans couldn’t find Iran on a map, let alone know anything of it’s history, or whether it “exports terrorism” (like Saudi Arabia, from where most of the 9/11 hijackers came?)

Secondly, how illuminating is this kind of question? How about, “why does your country support the creation of a Palestinian state…” Or, if you want to be harsh, “why is it that the Islamic states won’t take in Palestinian refugees…”?

Or, even better, how about this:  Is your country still angry that the United States and Great Britain together overthrew your elected government and installed the Shah as dictator in 1953, and supported his regime right up until 1979 even though he imprisoned and tortured all political opposition and threw him incredibly expensive, lavish coronations, at the expense of the citizens of Iran?

 

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It was Always Really About the Oil

In a rather stunning disclosure, Alan Greenspan, former head of the federal reserve, admits that he urged Bush to depose Saddam Hussein for the simplest of all possible reasons: the oil.

Greenspan insists that nobody in the Bush administration agreed: they were only concerned about WMDs and democracy and human rights. But they also told him that nobody here talks about the oil. They knew that if there was the slightest suspicion of it, the other Arab countries, and the rest of the world, would go ballistic. It is quite possible that they never talked about the oil because they didn’t need to. Everyone understood it absolutely perfectly. Except George Bush who, to this day, seems to believe that it was about democracy and the safety of American citizens.

Keep in mind that America doesn’t have to actually hold deed to the oil to take possession of it. They merely have to ensure that whoever controls the oil is friendly to American dollars and technology, like Saudi Arabia.

In Greenspan’s eyes, it is right and good that the U.S. should take oil from where ever it can be found and use it to generate prosperity and a high standard of living for America and Americans. He is a former (?) disciple of Ayn Rand. America must be strong. It must do whatever serves its own interests. It can take the oil. If you’re too weak to take the oil away from America, then that’s just tough.

There is a pretty kind of logic to this spirit of individualism. It is very, very pretty. It is elegant and slim, because strategic decisions are unfettered by moral or ethical considerations, and should be guided strictly by questions of efficiency. How soon can we get rich? How many bodies do we step over to obtain our goals?

To believe in the myths of individualism and capitalism, you have to believe in “finders-keepers”, for there is no way to justify the possession of oil or air or water on any basis other than “might makes right”.

Or you can believe that we are all in this world together and nobody in particular has any kind of magical title to the world’s resources.

Or, like George Bush, you can believe your own spin: God commanded us to destroy Iraq because Saddam Hussein was a great sinner.

The disadvantage of Ayn Rand’s brand of individualism is that eventually someone stronger comes along and knocks you off the pony and takes it away. And you really have no moral grounds upon which to complain. You can only hope to make yourself strong enough so that you can take it back. And to make yourself strong is to make yourself cruel. The suicide bomber is Ayn Rand’s ultimate legacy: not strong enough to take the oil back, but fully comprehending that the world is really about raw power, individual fanatics are easily convinced that there is meaning in flailing against the machine. In George’s Bush’s gentle dreams– which are not Ayn Rand’s dreams– there can be no comprehension of individuals who give up the possibility of enjoying the fruits of raw power. The only explanation is the lamest one: they must be jealous of our affluence and prosperity and freedom.

Patriotism, in the case of Iraq, is an attempt to convince most people– who do believe we are in this together to a great extent– that the war on Iraq is a moral cause. It is a lie. It can’t be anything but a lie because the war on Iraq is about nothing more than “finder’s keepers”. We found your oil. Now it’s ours. Just try to take it from us.

Ayn Rand had nothing but contempt for religion.  Which is odd, because most of Evangelical America believes in Alan Greenspan.

 

The bizarre thing about Ayn Rand’s philosophy, and those backroom fascists who believe in it, is that even the most hard-core capitalist doesn’t practice it when it comes to neighborhoods and families and churches and schools. Everyone knows how long a family would last, or what a neighborhood would look like, or how children at school would behave, if we all actually practiced Ayn Rand’s version of enlightened self-interest. There would be no need to do chores, or clean up your garbage, or keep it quiet after 11:00 at night, or do your homework– if the world works better if I only do what is in my own self-interest.

She is consistent in one respect: there is no need of a god in her scheme of things either. We are quite enough.