spinning

william safire once again reveals that he cannot view foreign policy except through a pro-bush lense. in today’s column he lists all the reasons that the bush foreign policy is succeeding, or, as he puts it, spinning into control.

i don’t buy any of it. let’s start at the beginning. before the list even begins safire writes that he will “Set aside the tens of thousands of lives saved each year by ending Saddam's sustained murder of Iraqi Shia and Kurds, which is of little concern to human rights inactivists.” thus safire implies that saddam was murdering tens of thousands of people every year, right up to the present. but this is not true. while opponents of the regime would continue to disappear each year, saddam’s mass murder tended to happen in spurts. first there was the slaughter of the kurds in the 1980s and then there was the slaughter of shiites in 1991. you can also throw in all the people who died during the iran-iraq war if you want (although death in war, even a useless war is not generally considered to be “murder.” if it were, president bush would be a murderer too). so if you average the deaths over the course of his rule you may get into the “tens of thousands,” he hasn’t come close over the last decade or so. also, saddam’s various massacres do have some common characteristics, all were done with either the tacit support of the u.s, or at least with signals that the u.s. would not act to oppose him. thus, in 2003 and 2004 there was little realistic chance that saddam would have murdered thousands more people. safire’s implication to the contrary is simply wrong. (furthermore, the massacre of the kurds, shiites and the casualties of the iran-iraq war were all heavily covered by international human rights groups. safire’s slap at them is totally unfounded).

so then safire goes into his formal list of accomplishments. number 1 is qaddafi’s decision to abandon nuclear weapons and to allow international inspectors in. safire writes: “The notion that this terror-supporting dictator’s epiphany was not the direct result of our military action, but of decade-long diplomatic pleas for goodness and mercy is laughable.” when i read this paragraph i couldn’t help but think that safire stopped following libya’s political development sometime around 1989. the 1989 lockerby bombing was the last time libya made a big splash in the american news media, so in one sense i can’t really blame safire for not keeping up with stuff after that. but before he dismisses other viewpoints as “laughable” he should consider qaddafi’s almost desperate attempts at international acceptance in the past 15 years while most of the u.s. media was not looking. since safire stopped paying attention, libya has made several attempts to remake its image from what it had in the 1980s. the country has, as far as anyone can tell, not sponsored any terrorist attacks since the 1980s and it agreed to turn over its own citizens (and probably its agents) to an international tribunal concerning the lockerby incident. it has virtually dropped out of the arab league (although it is still technically a member) and instead libya has tried to rebrand itself as an african country. in fact, the “african union” (modeled after the european union and a successor to the organization of african states) is basically qaddafi’s brainchild. libya has sponsored peace talks for virtually every conflict in africa over the past decade. after 9/11 libya has been extremely cooperative with the u.s in sharing information about al qaeda.

all of the above took place before the american invasion of iraq. qaddafi’s decision to let nuclear inspectors in, must therefore be viewed as part of a long term strategy by libya to rebrand itself to the outside world. while i think that particular choice (nuclear inspectors) at this time was influenced by the whole iraq thing, i do not think that libya did it because it thought it may be next on the invasion list as safire and others have implied. rather, qaddafi chose to announce a change in its nuclear policy because he (correctly) calculated that after iraq it would get more attention that his other efforts to normalize relations. from what i have read, it seems that libya’s nuclear program was pretty rudamentary in any case, so qaddafi figured by letting inspectors in he was giving up very little for a relatively large p.r. payoff. even if we had never invaded iraq, qaddafi would have tried something to further normalize relations with the outside world. It may not have been nuclear related, but it would have been some gesture. and make no mistake, this is really merely a gesture. libya’s nuclear program was a long way off from being a threat to anyone. the only laughable part is how safire and other hawks are buying into qaddafi’s latest p.r. that he is a new man.

next safire sites the recent constitutional convention in afghanistan as something that is “spinning into control.” while it is important that the loya jurga came up with a constitution, the real test is putting the thing into effect. it’s simply too early to applaud afghan democracy when there is no such democracy except on paper. and as mustang bobby has pointed out afghanistan is still a dangerous violent place and it is unclear whether anywhere outside of kabul is getting more or less stable. the place is spinning alright, but it remains to be seen in what direction.

safire also argues that the reopening of secret peace talks between israel and syria are a direct result of the iraq adventure. he claims that the talks “would not have happened while Saddam was able to choke off illicit oil shipments to Syria.” here safire is simply wrong. this is not the first time that israel and syria have engaged in secret peace talks. previous talks took place while saddam ruled iraq even though iraq could have choked off oil shipments to syria. saddam did not because his regime was completely dependant on the revenue the shipments produced.

the fourth numbered accomplishment that safire cites is the strangest of the bunch. i really have no way of summarizing this one, so i will simply quote the whole thing:

On the West Bank, incipient Israeli negotiations with Syria — on top of the overthrow of the despot who rewarded Palestinian suicide bombers — further isolates the terror organizations behind Yasir Arafat. Under the pressure of Israel's security fence, and without the active support of Egypt and Saudi Arabia (each eager to retain protection of a strong-willed Bush administration), Palestinians now have incentives to find an antiterrorist leader who can deliver statehood.

notably, this paragraph does not explain how the arafat isolation as a palestinian leader is related to america’s adventures in iraq. that was the whole point of the column, right? the only connection i can see is his attempt to created link between arafat’s political strength and the israeli negotiations with syria. as explained above, safire has not convinced me that the syrian negotiations are related to iraq, so this point about arafat is all the more tenuous. in addition, safire’s conclusion in this paragraph doesn’t really make much sense when he writes: “Palestinians now have incentives to find an antiterrorist leader who can deliver statehood.” does that mean they didn’t have an incentive before? what about the embarrassing fact that palestinians have not actually replaced arafat. even if we assume that getting rid of arafat would be a good thing, can we really say that anything has actually been accomplished on this point? having more incentive really doesn’t say much when you think about it.

next he moves onto iran. what safire and most conservatives are blind to is that the reform movement in iran has been active for the past 7 years. in 1997 the current reformist president was elected and the reformers and hard-liners have been battling it out ever since. in 1999 there was a major series of demonstrations, just as there was last year. the wingers, of course, attributed all of last year’s political activity to the bush administration, but that ignores what happened in 1999. the democracy movement there long predates “the presence of 130,000 U.S. troops near the border.” if anything, the presence of u.s. troops strengthens the hard liners, not the democrats in iran. the mullahs only consolidated power during the iranian revolution when iraq attacked the country. for years they have clung to power by citing threats to the country from the outside, usually threats originating from the u.s. over time the younger generation has ceased to believe their religious leaders, and is slowly but surely rebelling against the mullah’s authority. but when the u.s. actually does threaten the regime, it only plays into the mullah’s hands

here’s another example of how u.s. strong arm tactics are hurting not helping the democracy movement there: for years the iranian government has been sponsoring anti-american demonstrations on the anniversary of their revolution. by the mid-1990s these demonstrations were sparsely attended and, in fact, encouraged a people who opposed the regime to adopt a more pro-u.s. stance. after 9/11 there was a large spontaneous pro-american candle-lit vigil in central tehran. then bush listed iran as part of the “axis of evil” in his 2002 state of the union address. that came as a blow to the reform movement. anti-american demonstrations suddenly reappeared in tehran and the reform movement took over a year to recover. the democracy demonstrations in 2003 in tehran probably would have occurred earlier if bush had not been so stupid with that “axis of evil”. the democracy movement there marches on despite, not because of, bush’s policies.

next safire repeats what has become a conservative mantra as violence continues in iraq: “In Iraq, where casualties in Baghdad could be compared to civilian losses to everyday violence in New York and Los Angeles, a rudimentary federal republic is forming itself with all the customary growing pains.” add safire to the list of people who do not understand the concept of a ratio. safire, like others, compates the gross number of people killed in iraq and comparing it to the gross number of people killed in new york and los angeles. but that’s not fair. there are only 130,000 troops in iraq and over 8 million people in new york. even if new york has a greater gross number of deaths, the odds of actually getting killed if you serve in iraq is much much greater in iraq as ntodd points out. using ntodd’s figures, a soldier is 53 times more likely to be killed in iraq than in new york. maybe that’s why i didn’t see anyone in body armor when i was there last weekend.

safire’s seventh and last point is the least coherent of the bunch. let’s face it, north korea is not a success story any way you try to spin it. the question here is not whether safire is right in seeing a causal connection between a development in the world and iraq, but rather whether these is anything good to see. when bush came into office, north korea was a non-nuclear power. now it probably has two nuclear weapons and is plugging away at getting an arsenal of about 20 warheads. the bush administration has done nothing to stop it and in fact, seems pretty powerless in the face of what is becoming a real WMD threat as opposed to the fantasy threat that was iraq.

safire claims that all of this adds up to a foreign policy that is spinning into control. none of his claims withstand any sort of methodical scrutiny. i can’t see how anyone could agree with safire unless they were pre-disposed to find foreign policy successes for this administration.

o'neill

i just saw the 60 minutes piece on former treasury secretary paul o'neill. actually, all the best bits (e.g. president bush's lack of attention during meetings, the allegation that the war in iraq was planned long before 9/11, etc.) have been leaked out over the past 2 days. although the allegations are big news. if true, they do not really tell us anything all that new. in my mind, at least, o'neill's claims really just confirmation of what i've always suspected but feared was the case in the bush white house. the only surprising bit on 60 minutes was the end, when o'neill was asked if he was ready for the administration's reaction to his interview. he seemed genuinely surprised that anyone would try to smear him for speaking out critically about the bush administration. "Why would I be attacked for telling the truth?" he asked. maybe he should ask valerie plame.

i'm back!

had a good weekend. we went to a few smallish galleries in chelsea, such as the photos of angkor wat at the sepia international gallery and the andres serrano portrait series america at the paula cooper gallery (my wife and i have been serrano fans ever since we saw a larger exhibit of several of his photo series at the museum of contemporary art in chicago several years ago).

on saturday night we finally saw avenue q, a musical that 1/2 the people i know have seen already. and now they can all now stop bugging me to see it. also on the train to new york i finished after jihad. overall a nice relaxing weekend.

"jihad" was an interesting book, essentially arguing that islam and democracy are not incompatable and then advocating how the u.s. could help bring about an islamic democracy. what was interesting was trying to figure out if feldman, the author, would have been for the iraq war. the book was written at some time in late 2002, clearly before the administration had openly admitted that it would definitely attack iraq but when it was pretty clear things were going in that direction. feldman classifies the various arab governments into groups and places baathist iraq in the dictators-with-oil catagory, the catagory he argues is least susceptable to pro-democracy pressure from within or without. he presents violent regime change as a legitimate option for dealing with such regimes. but he also notes that the dictator's oppression of the country's people alone cannot be enough to justify an invasion because dictators are so common worldwide and to overthrow them just for that reason would effectively slippery slope us into war with most of the world. so feldman says regime change to install democracy is justified is you have dictatorship-plus. the "plus," presumably can be the threat posed by WMDs or connections with al-qaeda. but neither of the "plus" reasons cited by bush have panned out in the iraq case. so does that mean that feldman would not think the war was sufficiently justified? the implication i got from the book is that feldman would probably consider the iraq war as unjustified. (he also cleary expected the u.n. to play a greater role than it has). i wonder whether the bush insiders who are working with him now in baghdad have drawn the same conclusion?

so now i'm reading the x president, a science fiction book for political wonks. it takes place in the year 2050 and the main character is the biographer of an 109 year old former president who is only called "bc" and who spends his days hanging around his presidential library in little rock. i'm not that far into it yet, but what i've really is pretty amusing, filled with odd references to minor incidents that happened during the clinton presidency. (as i read the book i keep saying things like "oh yeah, i remember when that guy flew the plane into the white house." its amazing how many big news stories of the day are now so obviously minor bits of history when viewed in retrospect).

i'm off!

going to nyc tonight. i won't be back or blogging until sunday.

bloggy's got a point

why don't we hear about spontaneous human combustion anymore?

immigration again

my support of the bush administration's new guest worker proposal has caused some controversy in the below comments. hydro directs my attention to this page from the afl-cio working families site. as a union-side labor lawyer, the afl-cio's opinion holds a lot of weight with me, but i still think i disagree with them on this one.

the afl-cio site quotes its president john sweeney as saying that the guest worker plan would "create[] a permanent underclass of workers who are unable to fully participate in democracy." but that's not really true. there already is a permanent underclass of workers who are unable to fully participate in democracy--illegal aliens. while it's true that the plan does not make illegals citizens (the only way the could fully participate), its doesn't make them any worse off than they already are. in fact, if what is proposed actually happens, i think it will make things incrementally better for the former illegal alien who becomes a guest worker.

the afl-cio site also quotes seiu executive vice president eliseo medina criticizing the plan because it "tells immigrants you have no right to earn citizenship." but that is not true either. as i understand the plan, while the guest worker program itself would not be an avenue to citizenship, guest workers would be allowed to apply for permanent resident alien status (otherwise known as a "green card," usually a step along the way to citizenship) or apply directly for citizenship if they marry an american. (see the 14th "SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL" statement in this post on josh marshall's site). in other words, holding a guest worker visa is no barrier to citizenship. it just will not automatically lead to citizenship either. on the other hand, a guest worker will not have any of the usual hindrences to citizenship an illegal alien has. absent an amnesty, illegal aliens cannot apply for citizenship without lying on their application. thus, by turning an illegal alien into a guest worker, it actually will make it easier for theformer illegal to become a citizen than it is for them as an illegal alien under the status quo.

one question about this proposal is whether the guest worker will come from the pool of people who are currently illegal and people who would become illegal absent a guest worker program, or whether it will come from the pool of people who would otherwise become permanent residents. much of the criticism of the policy seems to contrast the proposed guest worker status with the rights of permanent residents. there is no question that the guest worker is worse off than a permanent resident. on the other hand, there is also no question (in my mind) that a guest worker is better off than an illegal alien. because the program seems to be designed to move people who would otherwise be illegal (and not permanent residents) into the guest worker program, it represents an incremental improvement from the status quo. and that is why i am in favor of it.

this controversy also raises the issue of incrementalism. ideally, i am for virtually open borders (by virtually, i mean i approve of a few barriers to movement that i don't want to get into here). a guest worker visa, like any visa requirement, clearly falls short of that. but i am also enough of a realist to recognize that it is politically impossible for my ideal to be enacted anytime soon, so i am willing to settle for incremental reform that moves things slightly closer to the ideal by legalizing, in at least a limited sense, the movement of more people to this country. incrementalism has its dangers. there is always the danger that the restrictions inherent in the incremental reforms will become entrenched, thus making it more difficult to move further towards the ideal. i recognize that there is a real danger of this in a guest worker program (for example, consider germany's guest worker program which has created an entrenched disenfranchised class of turkish "immigrants," many of whom actually were born in germany. reform of this system, which is currently at least four decades old, has proved extremely difficult. note, however, that the 14th amendment would prevent us from having the same problem as the germans). nevertheless, even considering the danger of entrenchment, i think this proposal would improve the lot of illegals and that promise of even slight improvement outweighs my reservations.

i welcome anyone to convince me otherwise. i also recognize that i could be getting some of the factual details of the proposal wrong. please feel free to correct me. until then, however, i remain in favor of bush's guest worker proposal.

crap

i just wrote a long post about the immigration issue and blogger apparently ate it. if it doesn't reappear magically, i guess i will try to rewrite it

bush administration gives up on finding WMDs in iraq: tacit admission that there are none to be found

that could have been the front page new york times headline this morning.

instead this article about the decision can be found on page 14.

it absolutely blows my mind how little the american public seems to care that the primary reason for invading another country has turned out to be baseless. the most frightening thing is the precedent this could set with this and future presidents. when there is so little accountability about the decision to go to war in the long term and given the inevitable boost to popularity immediately after hostilities commence, how can any president be expected to resist the temptation? it's startling how easily bush seems to be getting away with what, if measured by the goals he set forth pre-invasion, has turned out to be a total failure.

at least so far. i admit that the jury is still out on what kind of government the future iraq will have. but the invasion clearly has had no effect on keeping WMDs out of the hands of terrorists (in fact, if the hussein government actually had them in the pre-war days (which looks pretty unlikely now, but is a possibility that has not been totally ruled out) their post-war disappearance probably means they are in the wrong hands now. so in that sense the invasion could have facilitated arming terrorists groups. there has yet to be any non-discredited al qaeda connection even though the u.s. now controls all of the hussein government records. meanwhile, the dead keep piling up without any end in sight. meanwhile, the our relationship with our closest allies is shakey, al qaeda is resurgent (we provided it with a handy recruitment video in the form of iraq) and we have a brand new reason to lose even more credibility in the mideast. and foreign policy is supposed to be this administration's strong point! i don't understand why the president has more than an 8% approval rating right now. his half-brained policies have endangered us all.

credit where credit is due

this is actually a good thing. i thought i should point out those rare occasions when i approve of what the president is proposing. as i read the article about the immigration law changes, i kept expecting to find that the administration snuck in something really sucky in the middle of the proposal. but if that happened, there was no mention of it in the article. for once, i applaud what the president is doing.

sharia and arbitration

several years ago i was hanging around with my arabic teacher and her husband (who is also a professor at a local college and a convert to islam). the husband got wind of what i do for a living, especially the part about all the arbitration cases i handle (disputes concerning collective bargaining agreements almost always end up in arbitration) and asked me whether it would be possible to set up a system of sharia courts in philadelphia. the plan was ask for members of the local muslim community to sign an arbitration agreement which would appoint local muslim scholars as arbitrators to decide any disputes which may arise concerning inheritance or family law. as he described the plan, it became clear that they had already done some research into the idea, but he was concerned that a sharia arbitration decision would be found to be unenforceable if challenged in court. like most times when people ambush me with legal questions, i had no idea what the answer was. as much as i dealt with the pennsylvania arbitration act, it was always in the narrow sphere of employment questions, i simply had never thought of using the arbitration act so creatively.

later i thought about it and two problems popped in my mind: (1) arbitration agreements are only binding on those who agree to them. minor children can't agree to arbitrate disputes over them and in family law the interest of children is considered separately from the interests of their parents (so the parent cannot give consent for a child). so the arbitration agreements would probably be unenforceable to the extent they involved children.
(2) there was a real possibility that a judge reviewing an arbitration decision would simply rule that sharia is against public policy even if all parties had agreed to be bound by it and were capable of giving such agreement. (this was pre-9/11/01, but it seemed like a possibility then too). i passed on my thoughts, adding the disclaimer that i had not actually researched the issue and it was not the type of law i usually deal with, then forgot about it.

today, i was catching up on my blog reading and found this entry over at echidne of the snakes that something like the arbitration idea has been up and running for some time in ontario. the article echidne cites does not directly address either of my reservations about the idea. (although it alludes to my second reservation in this sentence: "According to Ontario's Arbitration Act, an arbitrator's ruling is not enforceable by a court of law unless it supports the principles of fairness and equality."). i wonder if any of these arbitration cases have withstood a court challenge in canada? the fact that the article doesn't say probably means there have not been any court challenges yet.

okay okay

so hydro wants me to comment on the latest from david brooks. i don't want this to turn into brooks-watch, but his column was pretty egregious today. the thing is, lots of people already beat me to the punch of this one. the best analysis i saw today was josh marshall's.

see also: mustang bobby, lambert, ntodd, and peter (hey, does that count as my first LC blogaround?)

many of the above comments focused on brooks' claim that the "neo" in neo-con mean "jewish." ("con," as brooks notes, means conservative) "neo" as a prefix really means new, modern, or a revived form of something. i've always suspected that the phrase is sometimes intended to echo "neo-nazi," but this neo=jewish idea really is just an attempt to scare critics of the administration off from talking openly about the fact that a certain type of conservatism usually represented by cheyney, kristol, wolfowitz, rumsfeld, and perle is dominant in the bush white house (as opposed to the non-neo-cons in the administration like powell). it's odd because pulling the jew card like that is just the sort of p.c. non-argument that the right has been accusing the left of doing for the past decade or so.

books

in addition to not blogging, i've been reading a lot lately. in the last week or so i read the kite runner, a novel about a boy who flees afghanistan during the soviet invasion for america and then returns ro rescue an old friend when the taliban are in control. it was good, except the ending worked out a little too perfectly for my tastes. considering this was the author's first novel, it was really impressive how polished it seemed, at least to my amateurish eyes.

after that i read vernon god little about a teenage kid who is accused of a columbine-style massacre simply because he was the only friend of the killer. it was pretty funny to read, mostly in how it lampooned the media and public's obsession with a sensational story even when there are no hard facts to back up anything up.

now i'm reading after jihad: america and the struggle for islamic democracy by noah feldman. feldman is a pretty interesting guy. he was raised an orthodox jew. he holds both an american law degree and a doctorite in islamic law that he got at oxford. he teaches at nyu but us currently in iraq consulting on reforming the legal system there. from what i can tell, he is the most high profile democrat working in baghdad for the occupational forces. i heard an interview with him on npr several weeks ago and was intrigued enough to add his book to my list.

arriving in the mail today was selah a book of poetry by my old friend and fellow blogger josh corey. i want my autograph josh!

blog updates

okay, so i said i was back and then i didn’t post for a while. as usual all kinds of blog ideas have swum (swam? swammun?) around my brain. i was going to blog yesterday, but played civilization instead. you’ll be happy to know that my neglect was for a good cause: my arab armies managed to hold persia at bay. so my conscience is clear.

but now down to business. first i gotta catch up on my blog maintenance. i have updated my blogroll again. another real life (if you can call this real) person i know has a blog. baj is a friend from law school and a fellow world traveler. in fact, we have had an unofficial competition to see who can visit the most countries. she is kicking my ass pretty badly these days, but i will link to her anyway. if you’re currently incarcerated, make sure to send her a love letter.

i also added intl news to my blogroll. i was unaware of his site until he emailed me the other day. i am sure it will quickly become one of my daily reads.

as for the liberal coalition i’ve updated the links to keep up with membership changes. i’d like to welcome steve gillard, echidne of the snakes, and collective sigh to the coalition. You’ve probably been in there for weeks, but, well... i’ve been a little out of it. i’m catching up now.

meanwhile the tao of dowingba has been removed from the list as he has been thrown out of the coalition. i missed much of the back channel communication about the matter because i was away, so i can’t say i know the whole story. generally i am not for throwing anyone out, even if they turn out not to be that liberal. when i first got wind that he would be leaving the coaltion, i planned to keep dowingba on my blogroll anyway. then i read more of his blog. it wasn’t the conservative ideology or his extreme rhetoric (he likes to refer to anything he disapproves of as a “rape”). what got me was his attempt to extort money from the farmer in the comments to this entry. that’s what convinced me that there really is no point in ever referring anyone to this guy. and that, my friends, is probably the last time i will ever link to dowingba’s site.

one-third

one-third of americans think bush should be impeached for his decision to go to war in iraq. as atrios notes, this is approximately the same percentage as those who favored clinton's impeachment. atrios claims this says more about the media than anything else, but i don't totally agree. while the media certainly jumped on the impeachment bandwagon, it was not instigated by them (whatever "them" means when you are speaking of something as nebulous as the media). the impeachment frenzy was pushed relentlessly by conservatives in congress even as polls repeatedly showed that they did not have support of the public. (clinton's approval rating was in the mid-60s when he was impeached, a number that is higher than bush's present rating). the media just followed along. sure, they didn't have to, but the republican leadership was really good at creating the appearance of blood in the water. it was inevitable that the media would be drawn to the spectacle.

as far as i know no democrat in congress has called for bush's impeachment. is that because democrats don't have enough votes to pull it off? or because they are too high-minded to resort to such a low tactic? or because they believe the clinton impeachment was damaging to the country and don't want to put us through that again? or because they fear that to make such a call would be political suicide in these times of war and they think that the president should be allowed to do whatever crazy shit he dreams up so long as he chants "war war war" as he does it? or just because they are a bunch of big wussies? we report, you decide.

this is a new one

i got an email this morning with the following subject line: ‘Concerning the manufacture of Rubber Hose parts and Automobile rubber parts." the message is from a turkish rubber manufacturer who, i guess, thinks i am a rubber hose retailer. clearly turkish t.v. has dropped the ball here. don't they show "welcome back kotter" reruns in bursa?

no news is good news?

no new york times delivery today, so that means i am crabby. our newspaper delivery is really spotty here. about 5-10% of the time it either doesn't arrive at all or arrives too late for me to read it on the train to work. our neighbors used to subscribe to the philadelphia inquirer but canceled because the delivery was so bad. service actually improved after they canceled. they got a free paper most days for the rest of the year that they lived here. even now, three years later, we get an inquirer fairly often. (but not today)

i will give our paper delivery person one thing, he/she has balls. a few weeks ago our paper did not show up one day and then was too late for me to read before i left on the next. when it finally did arrive (around mid-day, i am told) there was a little card tucked in with the paper instructing us where to send a christmas bonus. i think the paper was late the next day too.

crab crab crab!

the star chamber

surprise! it looks like saddam's trial will not be public because of "the possibility that he will mention the names of states and the names of persons to whom he has given bribes and wealth." at least so says iyad alawi, a member of the iraqi interim governing council. alawi claims that secrecy is necessary to avoid poisoning relations between iraq and other states who may have supported iraq in the past, but its pretty obvious that a secret trial would also prevent saddam from mentioning american patronage of his regime during the time he was gassing kurds.

furthermore, alawi himself has much to gain from a secret trial. alawi is a former baathist and no doubt is someone who was "given bribes and wealth" by the hussein government. so while alawi held open the possibility that other countries such as kuwait and iran could indict saddam in their own courts, but only "after the Iraqi trial had finished" and added that he expected saddam would be executed soon after the iraqi trial. the foreign trials, especially an iranian trial, would be out of the control of the iraqi governing council and the u.s. occupying power. so i expect that saddam's execution will take place before anyone else gets a chance to get him in court. the only question is whether the results of the secret trial or the execution itself takes place in October 2004. i'm sure karl rove is trying to puzzle that one out right now.

back in the saddle again

i had a good holiday, but it's good to be home. this should be a nice quiet short week at work and the after work craziness is probably a thing of the past.

the weekend was good fun, albeit totally internet-free. in addition to eating too much and loading up on gifts, i managed to hook some of my wife's relatives on settlers of catan. we also played samarkand. it was my first time playing since visiting samarkand. the game really has nothing to do with the uzbek city (the islamic-style art on the board is more arabian and turkish than uzbek or tajik), but i like it anyway. the important thing is that they are both fairly simple games and thus good gateway games for non-playing relatives. next year maybe i will hit them with something a little harder.

orange

yesterday we flew home from minneapolis to philadelphia. between when we flew to minnesota on friday and our return on monday, the powers-that-be upgraded the security alert to an "orange" level on that be-afraid-be-very-afraid terrorism alert scale.

despite all the excitement on cnn about the new color, there was no noticeable difference at the airport aside an occasional recording advising travelers that we were now at "orange" alert. the recording ran every 20 minutes but did nothing to explain what, if anything, we were supposed to do differently. in fact, my wife and i did nothing differently and it went fine. we got through security no slower than before the alert level was raised (in fact, a little faster. but i think that was due to the fact that the minneapolis security people seemed to have their act together more than their colleagues in philly) even though i had no valid photo i.d. with me.

while in line for security i noticed that my driver's license had expired three weeks earlier on my birthday. i should note at this point that not noticing that your license is expired for three weeks is not stupid. why would i ever bother to read my own driver's license? i'm a busy guy, what with my blogging and all. the security line, however, was boring enough so that i finally had a chance to catch up on my driver's license reading. thus i noticed the date in the upper right hand corner. after i read the date, i imagined myself being pulled out of the security line and started mentally cataloguing all of the stuff written in arabic that i happened to be carrying on my bag. would they be able to tell the difference between simple conjugation exercises and love letters to osama?

but in fact, there was no need for concern. the security people looked at my license and let me through without comment. no one at the airport seemed any more vigilant than before, including the people behind the x-ray machines.

touching base

we got back from minnesota late last night and tomorrow we leave for central pennsylvania. i was able to do some stuff on the internet from minnesota, but i highly doubt that i will in central pa. so after whatever i write in the next 24 hours (if anything. no promises here) there probably won't be anything else until sunday or after. somehow i am sure you will survive. merry/happy/mubarak whatever-the-hell-you-celebrate!

we're number one!!!

this site is the number one hit if you google: swan hose seattle

who says i'm not making a difference with this site

time (or lack thereof)

i don't think i've ever been as busy with non-work things as i have been these last two weeks. it will continue for one week more, at least. it's so odd, because work is actually slow these days. i got plenty of cases on my desk, but as opposing counsel, judges, and clients disappear for some holiday-related vacation, most of my work has stalled as i wait for one or more of those people to return. for the last week, i have mostly been dredging through THE PILE. THE PILE is a pile of things that i never had time to deal with before, a real chamber of neglected horrors. nothing in THE PILE is a serious problem (the work can only enter THE PILE if there is no real deadline). but there usually is a reason i originally tossed a particular piece of work into THE PILE rather than just doing it. so dealing with THE PILE, while a good thing to do now and then is a real slog. procrastination is always a tempting option (you may note from the time stamps of my blogging that i have been doing most of my posts during work hours lately). at least i don't have to stay late at work these days.

when i leave work, however, i've been crazy busy. i've had an executive board meeting, several holiday parties, a bowling party where we did not bowl, arabic study sessions, the arabic final exam and post-exam boozing with classmates, dental appointments, a sneak preview of monster, people coming over to play board games, a birthday brunch for my mother, and, of course, the opening night viewing of return of the king. tonight, we are hosting another holiday party at our apartment, followed by my firm's party tomorrow night, then we wake up bright and early saturday to fly to minnesota to visit my father-in-law and assorted family members. we fly back from minnesota monday night, i go to work on tuesday, the next day we leave again for central pennsylvania to spend christmas with my mother-in-law and another bunch of my wife's family.

that brings me to sunday, december 28th. after that, things may finally calm down. or maybe not. our post-12/28 time is filling up fast. every time some new social event comes up we push it back to the other side of christmas when we will finally have time. except that soon we won't have time. there is no escape from this cycle

don't get me wrong. all of the things that are keeping me busy are fun (except for the dental appointments. damn that sweet tooth of mine!). i am enjoying myself. but i am also wearing down. i've barely seen my wife over the past few days (last night i didn't get home until 12:30, only to wake up early this morning for work). it's been weeks since i simply left work and went home without having guests show up or immediately leaving for somewhere else. at least in minnesota there will be some down time.

but blogging. well, i've only been able to continue with my erratic posting lately because work is slow. when i go away to various in-laws, it will likely stop. i really can't blog when i should be spending quality time with the relatives. i realize i also said that i might not be able to blog when i was in uzbekistan, but then ended up posting a lot. yeah, i was a dirty liar back then. but this time i really mean it. i just hope that my political rants don't build up to dangerous levels in my brain when i have no blogging outlet.

maintenance

i just played catchup with my links to add various the new additions to the liberal coalition. (that auto link script is seeming more and more appealing as we grow). i also updated my new blog showcase vote, an entry by one of the new coalition members. check out what's so wrong about peace, love and higher taxes?

will the capture of saddam hurt the president politically?

juan cole summarizes how this could bite president unelectable in the ass in the long run. juan has also argued that the capture could increase the violence in iraq, not decrease it. apparently a u.s. intelligence report agrees as it argues that "seizing Hussein could provoke more attacks by making the insurgency more acceptable to Sunni Muslims who were not members of Hussein's Baath Party elite." (article via joshua marshall).

as i noted in my "captured" post below, saddam's capture is more of symbolic victory than a substantive one and symbolic victories have a way of backfiring in the long run. it remains to be seen what the long-term effect of saddam's capture will be.

me and arabic: a longwinded history

tonight is my final exam in my arabic class. unfortunately, it's uncertain whether there will be a class next semester. the whole thing can be quite frustrating. i have been trying to learn this language for 5 years now and despite my dedication to the language, it is extremely difficult to ever achieve fluency even though i have lived only in major metropolitan areas and i have been determined to continue with my studies despite each dead end i run into. if you want one example of why this country is so woefully short on arabic speakers despite a good higher education system and several large arab immigrant communities, here is my story:

i first decided i wanted to learn arabic in 1998. initially i tried to teach myself the language. i managed to master the alphabet (though not the pronunciation) and a few simple words, but i quickly discovered that it is impossible to learn a language without interacting with others to develop an ear for the sounds. so in the summer of 1998, i signed up for an intro to arabic class that met once a week out of a community center on the north side of chicago. the class sucked. the teacher was an iraqi immigrant and all he had us do was memorize phrases from an arabic phrasebook interspersed with lectures about how great life was in iraq. (the guy was a christian who was a big fan of the hussein government because saddam's strict secularism kept the fundamentalists at bay. i wonder what my old teacher is thinking these days).

after that, i began to seriously search for a real class in arabic. i did a blind call to "american islamic college," a school i learned about just because i happened to pass the building while driving around chicago and found out that they offered night classes in arabic. the classes were amazingly cheap ($100 a semester) and featured a real professor teaching a real college level class. we learned "fuus-ha" or high arabic, the language of the qur'an and the educated classes in the arab world. the rumor was that the college was subsidized by the saudi government, hence the low tuition. most of my classmates were muslims who were taking the class for religious reasons, but not all. one of my classmates, jesus, was a mexican linguist. we joked that we had both jesus and mohammed in our class (actually, several mohammeds). so i wasn't the only non-muslim in the class, but i was the only atheist jew. no one seemed to care. in fact, i was briefly mentioned (though not by name) in an interview with my professor in the chicago tribune when noted that the college was open to students of all backgrounds and religions.

i took my first year of arabic at american islamic college and really learned to love the language. in 1999, however, my wife was offered her current job outside philadelphia. it was tenure track and we could not seriously consider turning it down, so we moved here, causing an interruption in my arabic studies. the interruption lasted for a full year. first, i had to concentrate on passing the pennsylvania and new jersey bar exams (remarkably, an illinois law license was not that marketable in philadelphia). in the summer of 2000, we went to tunisia for vacation. i was hoping to practice arabic there, but the street arabic in north africa is quite different from fuus-ha so i could not get very far. also everyone in tunisia spoke french, a language i have studied for seven years. so whenever i wanted to interact with anyone i could either struggle through articulating what i wanted to say in arabic or say it in french and it would instantly be done. the easier french route was hard to resist and within a few days i stopped even trying to do anything in arabic.

i came back, however, determined to pick up my arabic studies. i found a night class at philadelphia community college and took a year of arabic there. i had to start over with first year again–the year gap had cost me a bit of my language ability, plus at PCC they taught a different kind of arabic, a sort of fuus-ha colloquial arabic hybrid (which is actually a lot more useful since, in effect, i was learning two languages at once). the PCC class moved very slowly, there was a wide range of seriousness and ability among my classmates and the speed of our progress was determined by the slowest in the class. but i still got a lot out of it, and became good friends with several of my classmates and my professor. at the end of the first year, the core group of serious students scattered. one went to cairo, another north jersey, another just decided he needed a year off. in the end, there were not enough students to justify a second year class, i was the only one left who was really pushing for it.

when September 11th happened, there was much talk about new enthusiasm for the arabic language. according to news reports, colleges and universities were adding arabic programs left and right responding to a surge of interest among both students and the government. contrary to those news reports, i went the entire year unsuccessfully looking for a second year arabic class i could take in the evening after work. intro to arabic classes may have been crammed, but there were no second year classes. and one year of arabic is pretty useless when you consider how much time is spent at the beginning just trying to master the sounds and alphabet. i told myself that once the crammed first year classes graduated to the next level, more second year classes would open and i would find something.

i finally found a class in the fall of 2002. the university of pennsylvania had a 2 year arabic sequence at night. unfortunately, i would have to start over with the first year again and the first year class was full (about twice as many people had registered for the class as there were slots). i tried to talk my way in, i met with the professor and the head of the program. i talked them into giving me a placement test which indicated that i could skip the first semester if i wanted. but they would not agree to let me join in the second semester unless a whole lot of people dropped out during the first. the class was just too full.

a lot of people did. one thing about arabic is that it is an extremely hard language to learn. that's what i find so fascinating about it. it's filled with bizarre grammatical rules and a complex system of roots and patterns. the u.s. military rates arabic as among the hardest languages that it teaches. as a result the casual enthusiasm that drives people to decide to take arabic generally does not carry them far once they realize how much work it will be. at the beginning of the first semester 45 people had registered for a class that was capped at 21 slots. by the second semester when i joined, there were 12 people in the class, half of whom, like me, were not part of the original 45 who registered at the beginning of the year. so the huge surge in interest in arabic is not generating a huge number of arabic speakers. the drop off rate is so high, only a minuscule portion of the people who register for the intro class will ever develop any meaningful speaking or reading ability. and there is no reason to believe that the total number of people who are willing to go the distance is any more than the pre-9/11 numbers. in my experience, the people driven by 9/11 to take the class are the first to drop out. for some reason, one seems to need a different motive to carry through.

anyway, because of the large drop out rate, i managed to get into the second year for the first time after four years of trying in two different cities. once again, i got along well with a core group of serious students from my class. several of them had similar stories of unsuccessful attempts to learn arabic over the previous few years. when the class ended last spring, three of us continued to meet all summer once a week to study on our own. we worked our way ahead in the text book so that we were far ahead of the second year class when it started last September. (which was good, for it allowed me to go off to uzbekistan early in the semester without falling behind).

now that the first semester of the second year class is over, there are questions again about whether there will be enough people to have a class in January. we are now down to 5 people, right around penn's minimum threshold for a class. i just learned that one of my classmates accepted a job with the state department and is moving to washington at the end of the month (government recruitment is an ongoing hazard for arabic students. i have been spoken to about joining the military and foreign service several times now. we are a hot commodity, after all) even if we pull off a second semester class, there is always the problem of what to do after that. i'm trying to talk penn into adding a third year class at night. there really won't be enough students for a third year, but i am hoping that they will schedule their third year graduate level class in the evening so i can attend.

i don't know if i will be able to continue my arabic studies after tonight. but even if i find a way, i expect it will be a constant struggle to find a way to learn the language, just as it has been so far. there is clearly a broad consensus that our country is desperately in need of more people who know arabic, but in my experience nothing has been done to make learning the language much easier. while my reasons for taking arabic have nothing to do with the reasons this language should be a national priority, it really is surprising how limited the resources for learning arabic there are here.

lovecraft time!

what if jack chick worshipped the elder gods
(via pen-elayne)

and

a very cthulhu christmas
(via the gamer's nook)

woo-hoo!

a few weeks ago i won a geography contest in the lonely planet email newsletter, then i promptly forgot about it. i just got home from work and my prize, a trekking in east africa guide book was waiting for me.

captured

i had a really busy weekend, but i thought i should at least make some comment about saddam hussein's capture. basically, it's a good thing. one less murderous leader running around is always a good thing. what else is there to say, really? perhaps it will reduce the amount of violence against u.s. forces there, perhaps not. we will find out, i suppose. i personally doubt that saddam was in charge of the resistance so i don't think his capture will do much but boost soldiers' morale and take away one excuse for why the violence continued after the war was supposedly over. so it really cuts both ways. i could be wrong, of course. none of us really knows. we all have to wait and see.

which is why i find some of the what-does-it-all mean analysis so difficult to take. also it seems to me that saddam's capture is being turned into a bigger thing than it is. i suppose he is a symbol of resistance to america, so his capture is at least symbolically a big deal. but the story is totally drowning out real big news that is happening elsewhere. like the loya jurga in afghanistan. is anyone even covering afghanistan anymore? the loya jurga convened yesterday to draft a new constitution for afghanistan. what happens at that conference may determine whether the country becomes a stable republic or whether its remains a lawless haven for terrorists groups. unlike the capture of saddam, the loya jurga represents a real potential turning point in the so-called "war against terrorism." its success or failure could have real consequences for the future safety of people in the u.s. but it seems like anything relating to afghanistan is automatically assigned to the back burner of american news sources, no matter how potentially important it is.

meanwhile, i keep reading speculation about how the capture of saddam will effect the ‘04 presidential race. the likely effect is absolutely nil. that seems rather obvious. the election is eleven months away and the capture is really just a symbolic victory, not a substantive one. symbols are good at boosting short-term popularity, but usually don't help much in the long term. sometimes they can even hurt a candidate once it becomes clear that symbolism does not mean substantive progress (for example the "mission accomplished" aircraft carrier landing).

i also don't understand how saddam's capture validates anyone's position on the war in iraq. i don't think critics of the war ever said they were against going to war in iraq because we would never be able to capture saddam. in fact, i think most people (both pro and anti war) assumed that he would be killed or captured at some point and were surprised that saddam evaded capture for so long. personally, i don't see any relation between my position on the war and his capture.

okay, i will make one prediction: saddam will be put on trial which will be, at least partially, televised. and the trial will be scheduled for next october, just before presidential elections in the u.s.

blog maintenance

i've updated my LC blogroll this morning and added a new blog showcase vote link on the sidebar (this week i'm voting twice. ya got a problem with that?). i got more plans. big plans! but, let's be honest, i probably will never get around to doing any of them.

meanwhile atrios seems to be leading an effort to get google to classify president bush as unelectable just as he is a miserable failure. i am always a strong supporter of abusing the internet so i urge everyone else who has a site to help make him unelectable too.

unelectable unelectable unelectable!

upyernoz gets uppity

i had a trial yesterday and while i would love to tell the tale, this clearly falls into the unbloggable category (like virtually everything that happens at work). i'm only bring it up as an explanation for why i didn't post anything yesterday. real life things get busy now and then.

which begs the question why i feel compelled to even provide an explanation. i don't need to justify anything here. this is my site. i can do whatever i want. sometimes maybe i won't post for days just because i don't want to. so there.

whew!

david brooks is pissing me off again. i guess i no longer have to worry about losing my liberal coalition decoder ring.

for the record, i am not a dean supporter... yet. i might be in the future. i have remained agnostic about the whole democratic primary so far. in the end i will support basically anyone against bush. i won't commit to anyone this early as part of an almost silent, and rather pathetic when you think about it, protest against the whole primary system. as the primary campaign season gets earlier and earlier, the race seems to be decided before anyone actually casts a vote. dean may well emerge the winner, but i want to pretend that voters decide this rather than some polling firm. if you think diebold voting machines are subject to manipulation, reflect for a minute on the potential with private (and sometimes ideologically committed) polling companies.

so why am i bothered by brooks's column about dean? because brooks, like virtually every columnist i have read, has not noticed what most strikes me about dean, he is running a campaign like the republicans do. when republicans run for president, they portray themselves as farther to the right than they actually are during the primary season. that's called "playing to your base" and they do it to garner the favor of the right wing of the party who have a large turn out rate and who hold a majority votes within the party. when the primaries are over and some republican is nominated, then the candidates unveils his (for it is always a "his") "middle-of-the-road" positions to win the center. for while the right wing base can carry a republican through the primary, it is but a minority of the general electorate (and not a particularly well-liked minority in the general population). that is how republicans win elections and the press seems to understand that. when the last primaries were covered, they regularly noted how bush's pandering to the crazy right was just a necessary evil for him to get nominated.

dean is positioned to follow the same strategy. as the anti-war guy, he has gotten a solid lead among the more left wing side of the party, even though he has pretty solid centrist credentials from his record as governor of vermont. he just isn't emphasizing them yet for strategic reasons. i predict he won't emphasize his more moderate side until after he has the nomination wrapped up. this confuses brooks, just as it confuses many columnists. brooks's column is really nothing more than an attempt to play a game of gotcha! with dean. he contrasts the views of the "old" dean with that of the "new" dean. but much of his portrayal of the "new" dean is simply not accurate. for example, brooks writes "The old Dean was a free trader. The new Dean is not." meanwhile, the "new" dean said the following:

Capitalism is the greatest system that people have ever invented, because it takes advantage of bad traits, as well as our good traits, and turns them into productivity. But the essence of capitalism, which the right-wing never understands - it always baffles me - is, you got to have some rules. Imagine a hockey game with no rules...Nobody benefits. Nobody benefits. So you have got to have reasonable rules. And the rules have to protect everybody in the game.

(thanks to ntodd for pointing out the quote on his site). clearly dean is not the communist radical some people are trying to make him out to be.

dean's strategy of playing to the left while he campaigns for primaries should be familiar to political watchers like brooks. but instead, he is feigns confusion by it and uses it to point out such illusory contradictions. the contradictions, however, seem to be mostly in brooks' head. although, to be fair to brooks, the stereotype of dean as a left-winger seems to be in a lot of people's heads these days.

the misconception that dean is a radical leftist seems to come from his association with the anti-war crowd. for whatever reason, there seems to be a two dimensional stereotype of who the anti-war people are which draws of picture of them as radical 20-something hippy wannabes. the stereotype seems to assume that all protesters are essentially the same people. so when someone marches against the war in iraq, they are conflated with the anti-globalization protesters in seattle. reality, of course, is a bit more complex. dean was not at seattle. as far as i know dean has never made any statement supporting the anti-globalization cause. there is no logical connection that would link opposing the war in iraq with anti-globalization. no doubt some of dean's supporters are anti-globalists, but that does not mean dean is.

there's another reason that i didn't like brooks' column. it's not just the fact that brooks' misrepresentation of dean offends me a little. more importantly, this particularly pisses me off because as a member of the crazy left, i want to be pandered to. is that too much to ask? if bush bends over backwards for the black-helicopter-watching types, why can't any politicians pay attention to me? so i say, let dean follow the pander-to-the-left-during-the-primary-season strategy. it's about time that someone does.

swan king i

Which Historical Lunatic Are You?
From the fecund loins of Rum and Monkey.
(via blogAmy who even ended up being the same lunatic as me!)

felber

i love his letter to club guantanamo vacationers.

full moon

when i got off the train tonight i noticed there was a full moon. i have noticed the full moon each month since september. it never really happened before that. tonight when i saw it, i thought: three months ago i was in khiva. that's what i thought last time too. only then it was two. i wonder for how many months this count will continue.

it seems like a lot longer. that night in khiva i wandered the streets in short pants with a desert wind blowing on my face. tonight, i was crunching over snow with my briefcase in my hand. it's like a different planet.

kucinich ad

check out this. it’s the strongest political ad i have seen so far. i wonder if it will actually get any airtime. if it does i predict a lot of sanctimonious complaints that kucinich is using the deaths in iraq for political gain, as commercials of bush visiting the troops on thanksgiving flood the airwaves.
(via atrios)

blogroll crap again

whenever blogger comes back online, i will enter the new coalition members onto my blogroll. there is a script i could paste in that would automatically do it for me, but i didn’t like the way it looked when i did a test run. we’ll see how long this dedication to aesthetics lasts.

nbs vote

by the way, by the power vested in me, i hereby vote for More On Moore, Who Is No More in the new blog showcase.

blogger’s out

i just wrote the previous long post and i can’t post it. i guess i’ll have to save it on a word processor document and then past it in when blogger comes back. kinda feels like blogging from uzbekistan. except it’s colder. and i’m poorer. and the food is different here. and there don’t seem to be any uzbeks about.

al-3aql al-arabiyya

every now and then someone uses the phrase “the arab mind,” usually in a sentence like: “i don’t understand the arab mind.” or worse, “you don’t understand the arab mind.” i’ve never heard of the russian mind or uzbek mind, or chinese mind. it’s always the arab mind and it’s always got something to do with understanding, or lack thereof. (There’s apparently even a book with that title). my own mother has used it with me. so, i have developed an intense hatred for the phrase. it taps into every stereotype of the inscrutable easterner that has plagued the west’s relations with the middle for the last few centuries, implying that the arab mind is somehow alien and needs a special skill to understand. they are the “other” with brains that are just somehow fundamentally different from us. so today the phrase appeared in the new york times:

"You have to understand the Arab mind," Capt. Todd Brown, a company commander with the Fourth Infantry Division, said as he stood outside the gates of Abu Hishma. "The only thing they understand is force — force, pride and saving face."

our political leadership, which began this war because they were unable (or unwilling) to discern the difference between religious fundamentalist arabs and secular nationalist arabs has now put people in charge of winning the hearts and minds of the iraqi people in the hands of bigots like captain brown. ironically, the understanding of the arab mind is staring people like captain brown in the face. the very same article describes how u.s. forces have collectively punished entire towns of 7000 for the actions of 7 individuals, how they have bulldozed the houses of family members of suspected militants, required all males to get a special i.d. card that is printed only in english (and thus obviously not intended to be of any use to iraqis), surrounded towns with barbed wire fences, etc. these harsh policies are the product of captain brown’s attitude. but if he paused to think about how he would feel if he and his family were subjected to those same conditions, maybe he would realize why iraqis are acting so ungrateful towards the u.s. occupation. the solution to the puzzle of the arab mind is that there is no puzzle. they are just reacting in the way anyone would act if you put them in the same situation. as the article notes, the u.s. military is essentially borrowing tactics in iraq from what israel uses in the west bank and gaza. but just as israel has not won over the residents of the occupied territories over the past 36 years, by adopting their tactics the u.s. has effectively given up on creating a meaningful democracy in iraq. viewing arabs as understanding only “force, pride and saving face” will lead to policies that may be able to maintain tenuous control of the country, but it will not create a stable democracy, and it will have the inevitable side-effect of never-ending casualities and growing resentment against the u.s. both inside and outside iraq. the thing that pro-iraq war types don’t seem to understand is not just that the war is not over in iraq, but also that it is possible for the u.s. to lose. sure, the u.s. will win every battle, if for no other reason than because it so severely outguns any possible opposition. but the u.s. won ever battle in vietnam, but yet it lost the war because the vietnamese simply refused to give up. when you treat iraqis under your control like caged animals who understand nothing but punishment, they have no incentive to give up and nothing to lose by continuing to fight. any human mind put in such a situation would inevitably reach the same conclusion. UPDATE: chris at see why was also struck by the same "arab mind" bit in today's times.

this might get me thrown out of the liberal coalition but

i actually liked david brooks' column this morning. he usually pisses me off, but today i found him to be pretty funny. plus, the whole thing is really making fun of tom delay, which is really never a bad thing in my book.

i haven't gone out to read what other bloggers thought of it yet. maybe i will now. or maybe not. it's pretty and snowy out and i am itching to play (and the union x-mas party is officially snowed out).

yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!

it's snowing!

i love the winter. in fact, my biggest gripe about the philly area is that the climate is too warm for me. whenever i wake up and look out the window to see snow on the ground part of me screams "snow day! no school!" (i don't actually scream, i just do in my head). this happens even when the snow comes over the weekend and there would have been no school anyway (the voices in my head apparently don't look at a calendar, just as they never got word about my graduation), and dispite the fact that i usually have to go to work anyway when it snows. but even when i have to work, it puts me in a good mood all day.

today, it may have the added bonus of getting me out of going to a certain union christmas party. said union is a client and i should start by saying that the party is not bad. it's just that when i am there i am really working, so it's not like a normal party. which means i have to be on my best behavior and try not to insult anyone. so last year, for example, when i was at the table with a particularly conservative union member, i had to bite my tongue when he talked about why it was such a good idea to invade iran. also, the party is a one hour drive from my place., which means it takes 2 additional hours out of my evening and i can't drink when i'm there. later this afternooni will call a fellow lawyer in my office to see if i can skip it this year.

i have rejiggled

visiting my fellow coalition members just got easier

more of a coalition than we have in iraq

i just got invited to join the liberal coalition, a group blog for other wackos like me. i'm at work now, so i do not have time to mess with my links. but some day (maybe even soon) i will rejiggle my links to direct both of my readers to the other fine blogs in the coalition.

in the mean time, i urge both of you to follow the coalition link, lap up all the words of wisdom there, and then follow all the other links to the various coalition members for further lapping.

mmmm, wisdom.

p.s. i almost forgot, thanks to ntodd for inviting me to join

p.p.s. i know the liberal coalition link is not working this morning. i have checked and rechecked the url and i think the problem is blogger glitches rather than my inability to type links correctly the first time around. but i can't say i am positive it's not somehow my fault. in either case, it still doesn't work when you read this, just wait and either i or the fine folks at blogger will eventually make things right.

p.p.p.s. okay now it works.

don't ask don't work

i suspect there is a connection between the ongoing deaths of american soldiers in iraq and the military's don't ask don't tell policy.

ten years ago, when the gays in the military controversy first erupted, conservatives portrayed the issue as a conflict between political correctness and miliary readiness. they argued that to allow gays to openly serve in the military would risk the lives of soldiers in combat because it would ruin unit cohesion.

i think our experience in iraq shows precisely the opposite is true. the military's actions in enforcing the policy illustrate it will discharge anyone who it determines is gay regardless of their strategic importance. currently, the military is in desperate need of arabic translators. because of the shortage, u.s. troops are regularly getting into conflicts with iraqi people that are often no more than simple misunderstandings. sometimes these conflicts have resulted in fighting at the time of the misunderstanding, but other times they just breed resentment that further encourages iraqis to participate in future attacks against the u.s. the campaign to win over the hearts and minds of iraqis cannot succeed when americans cannot even communicate with the people they want to win over. although it is really impossible to say for sure, i believe that the shortage of arabists in the u.s. military is significantly contributing to the number of deaths

the military's shortage of arab translators is very real. hell, the state department apparently has only 402 arab speakers, and that includes all of the personnel in all of the embassies and consulates in 15 or so arab-speaking countries. if anything, the discharge of gay arab linguists has accelerated. meanwhile, the government's shortage has come up in every arabic class i have taken since 9/11. it even came up when i was in tashkent. while wandering one night, i met a guy who did I.T. work for the u.s. embassy. during our conversation he asked me what languages i knew and when i mentioned arabic, he tried to talk me into either joining the military or foreign service because both were facing such a dire need.

in one sense the "political correctness versus military readiness" formulation touted by the military during the original debate was accurate. but the political correctness that interfered with military readiness turned out to be the military's kowtowing to it own anti-gay culture. (see this article for an example of the wasted potential that results from this policy (via bark bark woof woof)).

guantanamo

i've said it before, but i think that the bush administration's policy with regards to those people held in guantanamo is probably the worst thing the administration has ever done. in one fell swoop, the administration destroyed any pretense that this country stands for justice or the rule of law, undermined our treaty obligations, jeopardized american military and civilians serving abroad (creating a precedent allowing a country to disregard the geneva convention at will), creating a rallying cry for islamic fundamentalists that is sure to encourage more terrorism against the u.s., and alienated our allies (almost all of those held are nationals of allies in the so-called war against terror and yet no american citizens are held in guantanamo). on the whole, i simply cannot see how it can be effective in decreasing the risk of terrorism either. if we had any proof that any of those people were involved in terrorism against the u.s, we could hold them legally under the geneva convention, or even regular criminal law. the fact that the administration decided that they did not want to follow those procedures suggests that they have no such proof.

in a few years, i expect that guantanamo will be uttered in the same breath by historians as japanese interment during world war two, the palmer raids during the 1920s, lincoln's decision to suspend habeas corpus, and the alien and sedition act. while the decision to create "camp x-ray" in november 2001 could, at least initially, be explained as a knee-jerk reaction by a traumatized nation, there simply is no excuse for the fact that these people are still detained two years later. even worse is the fact that the american news media's coverage of the detentions has been sporadic.

while most information about the detainees and the conditions they live in has not been publicized, what little has leaked out is pretty bad. some of the detainees are children, and there have been a remarkable number of suicide attempts among the detainees (remember, these people are supposedly islamic fundamentalists, a religion that strictly condemns suicide). for a while we have known that most of the detained were detained for the most part on the word of locals in afghan. but this article mentions that the u.s. military was paying locals to find detainees. thus some of the detained, not because of any connection to terrorists, but "were kidnapped for reward money offered for al Qaeda and Taliban fighters."

while the u.s. media looks the other way, the guardian has published good article in which it interviewed the few detainees that were released (all were held for more than a year and none were ever found to be dangerous or connected to terrorists in any way).

as the guardian article notes, the detentions in guantanamo are entirely unnecessary. the stated purposes of the detentions could have been met while complying with existing international law. instead, the bush administration made up the concept of "illegal combatants," a new class of detainees who have all of the disadvantages of prisoners of war, but none of their rights:

Practical templates were available in international law that, on the face of it, would have allowed Washington to satisfy its aims. It remains a mystery as to why the Bush administration chose not to follow international law, but to make up its own. Its first step away from international norms was to refuse to categorise the Afghanistan captives as prisoners of war. One source told me of a - possibly apocryphal - story that Bush and his aides were going through the Geneva convention when the president came to the part that declares PoWs must be paid between eight and 75 Swiss francs a day. At this point, the story goes, Bush lost his temper and ordered his people to find a way for the captives not to be PoWs.

Officially, the US hides behind the fact that the resistance in Afghanistan didn't dress like soldiers. It is true that, like CIA operatives in the field in Afghanistan and Iraq, and like many of the Northern Alliance allies of the US, the Taliban and non-Afghan fighters didn't wear uniforms, but that does not prevent them being declared prisoners of war. Article 5 of the Third Geneva Convention is clear: any captured belligerent whose status is uncertain should be considered a PoW until their status is settled by a 'competent tribunal'. The US carried out hundreds of these tribunals during the 1991 Gulf war and in the recent Iraq war. In Afghanistan, it didn't. Asked why there hadn't been any tribunals for the Afghan captives, Major John Smith, a military attorney in the Pentagon department organising the forthcoming trials of Guantanamo detainees, says it is because the president decided there was no need.

'The president's decision was that there was no doubt these individuals did not qualify for PoW status and a tribunal wasn't required,' he says.

most damning of all, comes from the recent news that the u.s. is contemplating releasing 140 of the detainees because they have determined that they pose no threat. but if the government has determined they pose no threat why haven't these people been released yet? why because the bush administration is "waiting for a politically propitious time to release them." in other words, they admit that there is no basis for holding them any longer and yet they are still detained because bush is worried about how it will play politically. another political consideration going into when they will be released is the supreme court's decision to hear whether a court has jurisdiction to decide on the the legality of the detentions. when the court decided to take the case, it "accelerated" the time table for the release. ironically, this is precisely the reason why judicial review is so serious. when the deprivation of people's rights depends upon the sole discretion of the executive branch–the only branch of government which is always exclusively controlled by a single party and which, like the other political branch, is always concerned with reelection–it is only natural that those rights become nothing more than a political football.

i am somewhat hopeful now that the supreme court has decided to review the matter. this type of detention without any court access is so unprecedented that even conservative justices are likely to greet the administration's argument with a high degree of suspicion. also, the fact that the court will hear arguments on the case and issue a decision within the next nine months practically guarantees that the story will reach the front pages of americans newspapers on at least two days, the day of argument and the day of the decision. i don't think the detentions can withstand any outside scrutiny, whether by the media or the courts. hopefully they will finally be brought into the light of day soon.

irony is dead, part 32,234,455,321

one of the things i wanted to post about when i was away for thanksgiving was the paul bremer's clashes with the grand ayatollah ali sistani over democracy in iraq. bremer, leader of the occupying force that is supposedly there to "bring democracy to iraq," is pushing an undemocratic caucus-style election in which the people designated by american forces would have the right to attend the caucus and vote. sistani, on the other hand, is pushing for a one-person-one-vote style election. i wonder if the bush administration has heard of that concept?

meanwhile, in another sign that democracy is marching along in iraq, the occupying authority raided the baghdad offices of al-arabiyya (an arabi television network) and banned its broadcasts because it was too critical of the u.s. and the occupying authority's rule. (see helen thomas's criticism of the decision here).

crank

this morning all of the attorneys, except me, had a explicit threatening voice mail message. the female attorneys each had more than one, each threatening them personally with sexual assault. the male attorneys had only one each. their messages similarly explicit except that they were directed at the attorney's mother. each message was obviously from the same person, although he tried to do a different accent on each one. in the longer messages his accent fades away by the end. our voice mail time-stamped the messages as being recorded between 11:52 and 12:15 last night.

it really (and understandably) freaked out one of the other young attorneys here. she got three messages, more than anyone else.

oddly, our crank did not leave any messages for any non-attorneys. plus he skipped me. when i heard the messages, i assumed that it was one of our clients, but no one has been able to identify the voice. the police are coming to listen to the messages. i don't expect that they will do much, but we do not have caller i.d. in the office and so the phone company won't release their records unless we file a police report.

strange morning.

one more thing (in english too!)

for those of you who are wondering, the great rematch with sarah took place last night. we did not play kahuna this time, but rather settlers of catan so that we could include both my wife and sarah's sister amy. amy won, a result that both sarah and i could accept.

that's it. now i'm gone. political posts will probably return when i do

eid al-shukr

al-aan, sanadh-hab ilaa wilkes-barre, pennsylvania bisabab eid al-shukr. ghadan, sanusaafir ilaa lewisburg, pennsylvania ilaa beyt waalidat zowjatii. sanabqaa fiihaa Hattaa yowm al-aHad, thumma sanarji3 ilaa shaqqatii.

so i won't be posting until then. eid al-shukr mubarak everyone!

a first

my birthday is on friday. i turn 34. it occurs to me that this upcoming presidential election is the first one ever in which i am eligible to be a candidate. sure, i won't quite be 35 by election day next year, but i will turn 35 before inauguration. so i think i, just barely, qualify to run.

not that i want the job, mind you, or even have any chance of winning. there's no need to start any panics.

silber on why they hate us

my friend hydro has been trying to get me to read the light of reason, a libertarian blog by authur silber, for a few weeks now. the last time hydro emailed me a link to the site, i clicked on it only to find that the silber was going on a short hiatus because of economic difficulties. i didn't go back and then promptly forgot about it.

anyway, today hydro tried again and emailed me an essay posted on the light of reason a few days ago called you want to know why they hate us? you're the reason they hate us. it's a few days old now, and over that time i have seen a few other blogs link to it, but i never bothered to read it until hydro emailed it to me.

i'm glad he did. it's really good. silber says that people who read blogs don't follow links. go prove him wrong.

the medicare bill

it's already passed, so why am i suddenly writing about it now? well, it was such a rushed job, i really didn't have much information before this week. over the past few days the more i read about the bill, the worse it seems. i can't even identify a single reason anyone would vote for such a bill if they were serious about improving medicare, let alone provide a new prescription benefit that is at all meaningful. here's one example that by itself undermines the entire purpose of the bill:

the bill would prohibit the u.s. government from negotiating any lower prices with pharmaceutical companies (something that every private insurance carrier does to keep down costs). thus, if the pharmaceutical industry decided to double the amount they charged medicare to make up for the concessions they give to private insurance carriers, the government would not be allowed to protest. the bill, in a sense, is an incentive for drug costs to increase. because even with the new benefit, the u.s. government will only pay a percentage of drug costs for medicare recipients, with the remaining costs paid out of pocket by the beneficiary, such increase will result in more costs being passed on to medicare recipients. as this study by the consumers union suggests, prescription costs for seniors are likely to increase rather than decrease, because the percentage of drug costs paid for by the government under the plan will likely be overwhelmed by the increase in the overall costs of drugs.

obviously this is not an issue that is easily explained to the general public or reduced to simple sound bites. to explain the problems with this bill, you need careful analysis and complicated explanations. which is why the leadership in congress insisted on a quick vote, to be held less than one week after the bill was introduced, even though the drug benefit will not take effect until 2006. if the effective date is two years away what is the hurry? someone, it seems, did not want this bill read too closely before it passed.

gay marriage

there's a "man in the street"-style article in today's new york times about the massachusetts court decision gay marriage ruling. the reporter apparently wandered around ardmore, pa asking random people what they thought about gay marriage. despite the fact that ardmore is right next-door to me (my back window looks into ardmore), i was not interviewed for the article, but i nevertheless feel entitled to throw in my two-cents as an almost ardmore resident.

the thrust of the article is that while people seemed to be evenly split on whether to allow gays to marry, many of the people who opposed gay marriages did not have a problem with private gay relationships or even extending some benefits of marriage to gay couples. in my opinion the people interviewed were kind of missing the point. gay marriage already happens. for years, in massachussetts and all around the country, gay couples have held wedding ceremonies. these ceremonies have happened long before massachussetts decision, and will continue to take place regardless of how this debate plays out politically. while it's not clear to me what percentage of gay people get married, or even want to get married, there is undeniably some portion of the gay population that wants to get married and will do so. there is no way to prevent them from doing so, as long as the first amendment right to free association exists in the constitution.

so the issue is not whether gays will marry, but only whether the government will recognize the couples as married afterwards. the main reason that anyone would care about governmental recognition are the benefits that go along with being a spouse under the law. spouses legally have a say in their partner's medical treatment, are entitled to survivor's benefits, have inheritance rights in the absence of a will, and have certain rights if the relationship should end through divorce proceedings.

thus the only practical issue in this debate is whether gay couples should get the public benefits of marriage or not. again, gay people already get married. so everyone who says they are for some kind of civil partnership that gives the benefits of marriage to gay couples but are not for gay marriage itself, are really missing the point. if they could just get over their fear of the words "gay marriage"maybe they would see that.

that's the rant the new york times missed out on when they did not interview me yesterday.

busy weekend

dinner guests friday night, saturday morning i slept in, then rushed off to see the girl with the pearl earings with talk cinema, then dinner with my parents, and after that i finally saw the pianist. sunday morning i did laundry then conducted 3 college interviews for my alma mater (it's early decision season and i am co-in charge of coordinating the local interviews of applicants), then came home, had dinner, then joined our neighbors in watching the fellowship of the rings (or most of it, it got too late, so we will finish it tonight). after that, i went to bed, realizing that i never got around to much of what i planned to do this weekend: review my arabic, finish my book, decide where to hang up those persian miniatures i hauled back from uzbekistan, read the newspaper, and yes, blog.

i did find time to call sarah to plan when i will see her when she is in town this week. while we did not manage to come up with a plan, we did establish that i will kick her ass in some boardgame at some date this week (she's been bragging for the past year about her alleged victory over me in kahuna). sarah also said that she wants to sit through all of my uzbek photos, god help her.

get me out of here

i spent all day today pushing papers around. and yet i feel like nothing was accomplished. not the most productive day

still, it's better than yesterday. the other side did not show up to my hearing and i still think i may have lost. when i told a partner at my firm about what happened she said "anyone can win by default, but it takes a special kind of person to have the other side default and still lose." i don't get an official decision for several weeks. i can't wait to see it.