Month: July 2009

Doing 55 in a 54

Kelley Vlahos has a great piece today on the Henry Gates affair and the larger problems of which it’s a symptom. One such problem is the ever increasing number of pretexts on which the authorities can interrogate, search, assault, and arrest citizens. The authority figure, equipped with endless excuses to initiate an interaction with the citizen, from an expired tag to a false burglar alarm to an alleged whiff of what might be a controlled substance, uses his or her superior knowledge of legal arcana to find some way to put the citizen behind bars.  For instance, what struck me when reading the policeman’s account of the Gates incident was a small detail: the repeated use of the term “tumultuous.” It appears three times in the brief report in descriptions of Gates’ behavior. Why was the cop fixated on this SAT word?

Turns out, it appears in the Massachusetts statute defining disorderly conduct. The cop goaded the agitated Gates into stepping outside of his house (he made sure to give a reason for this in the report – poor acoustics in Gates’ kitchen!) to create the grounds for an arrest.  The cop already knew the specific – though vague and debatable – adjective he should use in his report to make the charge sound incontestable to the lawnorder crowd.

The proliferation of new laws in the wake of 9/11, all full of vague and debatable terms, has given the authorities infinite points of entry into all of our lives. They truly can arrest first and read the statutes later; you’re sure to have done something wrong. Even if they eventually drop the charges or fail to convict you, don’t count on getting any compensation for your anxiety, lost time, injuries, or legal fees.

An analogous situation prevails in international affairs, where the global police churn out endless legal pretexts for subjecting whole countries to full body-cavity searches, house arrest, assault, and capital punishment, and we’re watching it play out yet again in the case of Iran. But that’s a post for another day.

‘Which country is more open and transparent?’

Via John McGlynn comes this exchange at the State Department press briefing on Monday:

MR. KELLY: Good afternoon. Let me start off by just kind of updating you where we are today in terms of the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue, which you all know started today. The Secretary hosted a dinner last night for Chinese State Councilor Dai Bingguo. They discussed the agenda for today. And as you know, this dialogue is being co-hosted with the Department of Treasury. …

The Secretary will hold a private meeting with State Councilor Dai tonight, following the conclusion of today, the first day of the S&ED.

And this meeting, again, will allow them to review the day’s discussions, today’s discussions, and look ahead to the work tomorrow.

I think, as you also know, we’re going to arrange a conference call with a few officials from State and Treasury. That’ll be at 4:45. I think you’ve gotten that – the details on how to sign on and participate in that call.

QUESTION: That call is on the record?

MR. KELLY: That call, I believe, is on background.

QUESTION: Just a point of order here: The Chinese officials who are briefing
are briefing on the record.

MR. KELLY: Mm-hmm.

QUESTION: Which country is more open and transparent? (Laughter.)

MR. KELLY: I take your concerns on board and I’ll see what we can do.

QUESTION: I hope you do, because I think you should be embarrassed, actually.

MR. KELLY: Well, I don’t know if we’re embarrassed, but I do take your concerns very seriously. And with that, I’ll – I will answer your questions seriously.

Those who make up America’s imperial court are so routine in their habits now, they apparently don’t even know how crooked they appear.

We’ve Always Been at War With… Line, Please

Poor John Cornyn. It’s tough to keep track of all the people we may have to murder indiscriminately.

A key US Senator who has extensively supported India, including the passage of the nuclear deal, stunned his Indian and Indian-American supporters this weekend when he identified India as a US national security threat and clubbed it with North Korea and Iran, while arguing for continuing the F-22 fighter jet programme, which would keep up to 100,000 jobs going in the US.

”It (the F-22 program) is important to our national security because we’re not just fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq,” Texas’ Republican Senator John Cornyn said in a TV interview. “We’re fighting – we have graver threats and greater threats than that: From a rising India, with increased exercise of their military power; Russia; Iran, that’s threatening to build a nuclear weapon; with North Korea, shooting intercontinental ballistic missiles, capable of hitting American soil.”

Turns out the Senator had a ‘slip of the tongue.’

”Senator Cornyn misspoke saying ‘India’ when he meant to say ‘China.’ As Founder and Co-chairman of the Senate India Caucus, no Senator has greater respect or admiration for India or values our relationship with them more. Sen. Cornyn regrets the mistake and apologizes for any misunderstanding this may have caused,” his spokesman Kevin McLaughlin clarified after the remarks were brought to his notice.

Well, let’s not be so hasty. After we go to war with China (yes, that really was the soothing clarification), we’ll have to stop the Indians from supplying the insurgents across the border.

Conference of Presidents Parrots Avigdor Lieberman

On Wednesday, Ha’aretz reported on the Netanyahu government’s latest spin in its clash with the U.S. and the international community over planned settlement construction in East Jerusalem: change the subject to the Nazis.

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has ordered diplomats to use an old photograph of a former Palestinian religious leader meeting Adolf Hitler to counter world criticism of a Jewish building plan for East Jerusalem.

Israeli officials said on Wednesday that Lieberman told Israeli ambassadors to circulate the 1941 shot in Berlin of the Nazi leader seated next to Haj Amin al-Husseini, the late mufti or top Muslim religious leader in Jerusalem.

One official said Lieberman, an ultranationalist, hoped the photo would “embarrass” Western countries into ceasing to demand that Israel halt the project on land owned by the mufti’s family in a predominantly Arab neighbourhood in East Jerusalem.

Lieberman’s transparent attempt to divert attention from the East Jerusalem controversy was widely derided across the political spectrum. It is, of course, a complete non sequitur — why would the mufti’s Nazi ties have anything to do with the status of Jerusalem under a peace deal? (Al-Husseini died in 1974.) As with Netanyahu’s implied accusation that Obama wants to make the West Bank “Judenrein,” the operative political strategy seems to be “when in doubt, bring up the Nazis.” Even among hardliners, few seemed inclined to take Lieberman’s ploy seriously.

Few, that is, except for the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the powerful and hardline Washington group whose policies generally track those of the Israeli right. Earlier this week, Conference of Presidents chairman Alan Solow and executive vice-president Malcolm Hoenlein issued a statement defending Netanyahu and calling the Obama administration’s objections to the proposed building project “disturbing”. It included this key paragraph:

It is particularly significant that the structure in question formerly was the house of the infamous Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseni who spent the war years in Berlin as a close ally of Hitler, aiding and abetting the Nazi extermination of Jews. He was also linked to the 1929 massacre in Hebron and other acts of incitement that resulted in deaths and destruction in what was then Palestine. There has been an expressed desire by some Palestinians to preserve the building as a tribute to Husseini.

The Conference of Presidents is perfectly free to side with Netanyahu over the U.S. government if they so desire — although in that case they should stop claiming to speak for all their member organizations, not all of which agree with their pro-settlement stance. But regardless, shouldn’t the group at least make an effort to pretend that it isn’t cribbing its talking points straight from Avigdor Lieberman?

[Cross-posted at The Faster Times.]

Levy vs. Frum on the US as an ‘Honest Broker’

The Economist is hosting a debate on the proposition: “This house believes that Obama’s America is now an honest broker between Israel and the Arabs.”

The online debate includes comments and voting by the readers.

Daniel Levy of J-Street and the New America Foundation is taking the affirmative, and David Frum of the America Enterprise Institute is taking the negative.

While many Antiwar.com readers might, on the surface, say that the US is not an honest broker, and many would argue that the US should not be a broker at all, this is quite an interesting debate.

Levy is clearly trying to frame the question that Obama is trying to be more of an honest broker than the alternative which, in this case, is Frum, who’s arguing the position that Obama is an anti-zionist Arab/Iran/Muslim-lover.

I urge readers to check out and participate in the debate.

Comments to this blog item will be closed at Antiwar.com. Instead, please comment at The Economist.

All the Wrong Reasons

There’s a lot to ponder in this open letter to Barack Obama from Vaclav Havel, Lech Walesa, et al., but I’ll stick to this part:

We have to cherish and protect the multitude of educational, professional, and other networks and friendships that underpin our friendship and alliance. The U.S. visa regime remains an obstacle in this regard. It is absurd that Poland and Romania — arguably the two biggest and most pro-American states in the CEE region, which are making substantial contributions in Iraq and Afghanistan — have not yet been brought into the visa waiver program.

I’ve seen variations on this theme many times over the years: the U.S. government should do something for such and such country because that country’s government contributed troops to some U.S.-led war. I sometimes agree with the policy change suggested, as in this instance. It’s absolutely ridiculous that my Romanian mother-in-law was recently denied a non-immigrant visa on a whim from a sour embassy employee. (An immigration official here in the U.S. even told my sister-in-law that the visa should have been granted.)

But of all the reasons this or any other policy should change, the fact that Romania’s handout-hungry leaders assisted in a war of aggression (when less than half of Romanians supported it) should not count for much – to libertarians, at least.