By William Fisher
Well, our Pentagon rock star is gone.
President Bush’s encomium to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld after firing him last week was among the most predictable – and utterly forgettable – remarks ever to come out of a White House famous for its predictable and forgettable statements.
The president said the SecDef’s leadership in Iraq and Afghanistan “drove Saddam Hussein from power and helped the Iraqi people establish a constitutional democracy in the heart of the Middle East.” On his watch, the president said, “the men and women of our military overthrew two terrorist regimes, liberated some 50 million people, brought justice to the terrorist Zarqawi and scores of senior al Qaeda operatives, and helped stop new terrorist attacks on our people.”
Rummy’s response was perhaps less predictable and less forgettable. America’s misadventure in Iraq, he said, was “a little understood, unfamiliar war, the first war of the 21st century.” The war was “not well-known, it was not well-understood, it is complex for people to comprehend.”
So it’s our fault, right?
The people just don’t get it. The images of carnage we see 24/7 on our TV screens were all produced with PhotoShop on Osama Bin Laden’s laptop. The “revolt of the Generals” was a fiction concocted by Harry Reid. The $20 billion we wasted on Iraqi reconstruction resulted in schools and hospitals and electricity and increased oil output – it’s just that the vast leftwing media conspirators aren’t bringing us the good news stories (so the Pentagon better get busy and bribe more journalists to publish more of them). We’re really defeating the Taliban (again). The people we hold at Guantanamo are “the worst of the worst.” And our near-3000 dead soldiers and marines are only a tiny fraction of the 145,000 troops deployed to the Iraqi killing ground.
How is it we don’t understand all this stuff?
Well, American citizens don’t pretend to be military experts. But Mr. Rumsfeld does. And maybe, if we have sometimes found ourselves unable to comprehend all these foreign policy triumphs, Mr. Rumsfeld’s imperious rejection of the realities experienced by the uniformed military is largely responsible.
After all, wasn’t he the guy whose comment on our slain service members was,
“Death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war?"
Wasn’t he the guy who told us in 2003 that, “It is unknowable how long (the war in Iraq) will last. It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months?”
Wasn’t he the guy who said about our troops’ lack of armor, “You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time."
Wasn’t he the guy who told us a year earlier that the situation in Afghanistan was “encouraging. They have elected a government through the Loya Jirga process. The Taliban are gone. The al Qaeda are gone.”
Wasn’t he the guy who was asked by Jim Lehrer on PBS’ The News Hour in 2003 whether a US invasion would be welcomed by the majority of the civilian population of Iraq?’ To which Rummy replied, “There is no question but that they would be welcomed.”
Wasn’t he the guy who told NBC News the same year, “We know where (the weapons of mass destruction) are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat?”
Wasn’t he the guy who attributed the looting and lawlessness after the fall of Baghdad to “stuff happens?”
Wasn’t he the guy who confused even the White House’s professional obfuscators by declaring, “"The message is that there are known knowns - there are things that we know that we know. There are known unknowns - that is to say, there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns - there are things we do not know we don't know. And each year we discover a few more of those unknown unknowns."
And wasn’t he the guy who testified that he'd "never painted a rosy picture" of Iraq and that he hadn't been "overly optimistic."
Well, the question about who’s now going to confuse the public and amuse the stenographic Pentagon press corps remains unknown.
But there are a few things we do know. First, our people are not confused. We may not all be political junkies, but we’re not stupid either. And we showed that last week in the best American tradition: We rejected the spin, the lies, the death, the obfuscation, with our feet – on the way to the polling place.
Second, we know there can be no more conclusive evidence that the Bush administration is utterly incapable of crafting any viable strategy for “winning” in Iraq than the very existence of the Iraq Study Group, now widely known as the Baker-Hamilton commission.
The Constitution gives the President, as Commander-in-Chief, the responsibility for waging war and protecting our citizens. And that doesn’t mean any previous Commander-in-Chief.
W., like all former presidents, has always had virtually instant access to the world’s most thoughtful and knowledgeable experts on virtually any subject. But The Decider didn’t care much for listening. After all, he answers to a higher power.
Well, the higher power at the moment is the Baker-Hamilton Commission, co-chaired by his daddy’s secretary of state, James A. Baker, and Lee Hamilton, the former Indiana congressman and co-chair of the 9/11 Commission. The other members are a group of other ultimate Washington insiders, including the one the president just nominated to be Rummy’s successor, Robert M. Gates, former CIA director.
Because this inside-the-Beltway bunch has little Middle East experience, it is being helped by four different think tanks. But despite lack of Middle East experience, we should all pray that the recommendations of this group will be substantive, not just more cosmetics. And that the president will be listening.
Aside from substance, however, this Commission is about giving the president the political cover to admit, by changing his policies, that he got it wrong. Perish the thought that our Commander-in-Chief would ever confront that fact in full frontal mode, as John F. Kennedy did after the Bay of Pigs fiasco!
And if the Baker-Hamilton recommendations go wrong, W. will have a convenient scapegoat to swiftboat.
The one thing we poor confused, uninformed citizens can cling to is that Mr. Bush is now all about legacy. He doesn’t like the idea of being remembered as the president who made arguably the most egregious mistake in American foreign policy history.
The third thing we know is that, even in the event that the president announces some major new initiatives to extricate us from our Middle East quagmire, his government appears to lack the competence to execute those new initiatives. On the basis of this administration’s record, all of us can be excused for being just a tad skeptical – and very afraid.
One final thought about the Baker-Hamilton Commission: Can anyone imagine that it would ever have occurred to Franklin Roosevelt to outsource the decision about the Normandy landing in World War Two?
Monday, November 13, 2006
Sunday, November 05, 2006
GET OVER IT, JACK!
By William Fisher
In 1969, at the end of my first full year of what became a 20-plus-year residence in Britain, I recall jotting down what I found to be the defining characteristics of the UK at that time. They were:
1. Suspicion of people who weren’t “them.”
2. Fear of change.
3. A class-structured society, where the “working class knew its place” and was always reluctant to challenge the old “upper class” power establishment.
What brought this musing back to me was the recent rant by former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw about his Muslim women constituents being covered up. Straw claimed he would be better able to respond to their needs if he could see the expressions on their faces.
Mr. Straw, who is a Labor Party Member of Parliament for Blackburn, where between 25% and 30% of residents are Muslim, explained the impact he thought veils could have in a society where watching facial expressions was important for contact between different people. “Communities are bound together partly by informal chance relations between strangers -- people being able to acknowledge each other in the street or being able pass the time of day," he said. That's made more difficult if people are wearing a veil. That's just a fact of life.”
Mr. Straw added, "What I've been struck by when I've been talking to some of the ladies concerned is that they had not, I think, been fully aware of the potential in terms of community relations."
Could this just be a contemporary version of my 1969 note, “Suspicion of people who weren’t ‘them’?” Which raises the question about just who is being unaware of “the potential in terms of community relations.”
In 1969, Britain had a relatively miniscule Muslim population. Today, its Muslim population is estimated to be 1.3 million, or three per cent of those who said they adhered to any religion.
This is undeniably a different dynamic for Brits, especially given their traditional fear of change and the glacial pace of their ability to accept and absorb it. But it isn’t as if Muslim immigration happened suddenly, all at once. The number of Muslims in the UK has grown gradually over the past generation.
To make the controversy even more heated, the veil controversy landed smack in the middle of the arrest of the gang of (Muslim) men alleged to have plotted to blow up U.S.-bound flights from the U.K. Following the subway bombings of last July, the fear of so-called homegrown terrorists in the UK is now palpable. And made far more scary by Britain’s participation in the Coalition of the Willing in Iraq, which many in Britain – and not only Muslims – see as a reflection of what they see as President Bush’s war on Islam.
But the dis-integration of Muslim minorities didn’t begin with the invasion of Iraq. Its been happening for years. Muslim immigrants and British-born Muslims from various countries have, like most new immigrants to most countries, tended to want to live in the same neighborhoods – a development encouraged by the block-busting and red-lining practices of banks and real estate brokers. Entire cities have become “Muslim Cities.” In the process, they have displaced “regular” Brits. With UK property prices off the charts and a relatively slow renewal of the housing stock, the “regulars” have come to resent the immigrants.
Like most immigrants, children in Muslim communities attend de facto segregated schools, and their parents start their work life at the bottom of the economic ladder. Many have by now climbed a bit up the ladder, most notably opening small shops and other small businesses. But most of these are situated in the ghettos inhabited by their countrymen.
That raises the question of what successive British governments have done over the years to anticipate an oncoming train wreck and what policies it has put in place to avoid it.
The answer, lamentably, is virtually nothing. Predictably, there are all manner of inter-faith organizations, headed by well-known clergy and other senior figures. But few of these effectively reach the rank-and-file of Muslims, Christians, or Jews.
The situation is similar elsewhere in Europe. The recent riots in the public housing projects dedicated largely to immigrants on the outskirts of Paris demonstrate the bankruptcy of current European efforts to help to integrate their Muslim populations into the life of the nation. But France is but one example among many.
In the United States, Muslim population counts are hard to come by. Estimates range from 2 to 8 million. Whatever the number, Muslim-Americans have become well integrated into the fabric of our society. Like traditional immigrants, beginning with the great wave of the mid-19th century, they first gravitated toward living areas where they could be among their own, speak the same language, eat the same foods. But over the years, they have morphed into a community that speaks English, owns prosperous businesses, serves in elected office and in our government, joins our armed forces, and participates more in public life than their counterparts in Europe.
Perhaps one of the reasons is that Americans, unlike Brits and other Europeans, are less fearful of those who are “not like us,” and more optimistic about understanding and accepting change. And perhaps because of our nation’s struggles with black-white racial issues, we have come to be a bit less paranoid – though our current immigration debate presents yet another challenge.
But the strong and sustained Muslim-American identification with the rest of our country is not immutable. It could change. One of the things that might hasten that change is the current government harassment of this segment of our population. Another is the xenophobia that followed 9/11 – in which, sadly, our right-wing religious leaders have been all too willing to participate.
The bottom line is that, despite President Bush’s many statements in support of Muslim-Americans, some in this community are beginning to feel almost as estranged from their country as their European counterparts. The more that feeling grows, the more likely it is that we will find ourselves unwittingly breeding the anger and resentment that ends in homegrown terrorism.
The issue is not whether Muslim women prefer to cover themselves. Personally, I find the practice demeaning to women. But that’s a view through Western eyes. If they don’t mind, why should we? Do we demand that Christian and Jewish women remove the crosses and stars of David from the necklaces they wear? Do we insist that our Amish people behave like most of the rest of us? Do we rant against Hassidic Jews who wear fur hats, prayer shawls, and funny hair-dos?
I have had the opportunity to spend a good deal of time talking with and listening to Muslim women in the Middle East who wore face veils, or niqabs, covered head to toe, except for their eyes and mouths. I can tell you that, once you get used to the absence of body language as a conversational indicator, how a person happens to be dressed quickly gets trumped by what she has to say.
This is something Jack Straw needs to understand. Maybe he needs to spend a bit more time with each of his constituents. My advice to him is to just to learn and get over it.
In 1969, at the end of my first full year of what became a 20-plus-year residence in Britain, I recall jotting down what I found to be the defining characteristics of the UK at that time. They were:
1. Suspicion of people who weren’t “them.”
2. Fear of change.
3. A class-structured society, where the “working class knew its place” and was always reluctant to challenge the old “upper class” power establishment.
What brought this musing back to me was the recent rant by former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw about his Muslim women constituents being covered up. Straw claimed he would be better able to respond to their needs if he could see the expressions on their faces.
Mr. Straw, who is a Labor Party Member of Parliament for Blackburn, where between 25% and 30% of residents are Muslim, explained the impact he thought veils could have in a society where watching facial expressions was important for contact between different people. “Communities are bound together partly by informal chance relations between strangers -- people being able to acknowledge each other in the street or being able pass the time of day," he said. That's made more difficult if people are wearing a veil. That's just a fact of life.”
Mr. Straw added, "What I've been struck by when I've been talking to some of the ladies concerned is that they had not, I think, been fully aware of the potential in terms of community relations."
Could this just be a contemporary version of my 1969 note, “Suspicion of people who weren’t ‘them’?” Which raises the question about just who is being unaware of “the potential in terms of community relations.”
In 1969, Britain had a relatively miniscule Muslim population. Today, its Muslim population is estimated to be 1.3 million, or three per cent of those who said they adhered to any religion.
This is undeniably a different dynamic for Brits, especially given their traditional fear of change and the glacial pace of their ability to accept and absorb it. But it isn’t as if Muslim immigration happened suddenly, all at once. The number of Muslims in the UK has grown gradually over the past generation.
To make the controversy even more heated, the veil controversy landed smack in the middle of the arrest of the gang of (Muslim) men alleged to have plotted to blow up U.S.-bound flights from the U.K. Following the subway bombings of last July, the fear of so-called homegrown terrorists in the UK is now palpable. And made far more scary by Britain’s participation in the Coalition of the Willing in Iraq, which many in Britain – and not only Muslims – see as a reflection of what they see as President Bush’s war on Islam.
But the dis-integration of Muslim minorities didn’t begin with the invasion of Iraq. Its been happening for years. Muslim immigrants and British-born Muslims from various countries have, like most new immigrants to most countries, tended to want to live in the same neighborhoods – a development encouraged by the block-busting and red-lining practices of banks and real estate brokers. Entire cities have become “Muslim Cities.” In the process, they have displaced “regular” Brits. With UK property prices off the charts and a relatively slow renewal of the housing stock, the “regulars” have come to resent the immigrants.
Like most immigrants, children in Muslim communities attend de facto segregated schools, and their parents start their work life at the bottom of the economic ladder. Many have by now climbed a bit up the ladder, most notably opening small shops and other small businesses. But most of these are situated in the ghettos inhabited by their countrymen.
That raises the question of what successive British governments have done over the years to anticipate an oncoming train wreck and what policies it has put in place to avoid it.
The answer, lamentably, is virtually nothing. Predictably, there are all manner of inter-faith organizations, headed by well-known clergy and other senior figures. But few of these effectively reach the rank-and-file of Muslims, Christians, or Jews.
The situation is similar elsewhere in Europe. The recent riots in the public housing projects dedicated largely to immigrants on the outskirts of Paris demonstrate the bankruptcy of current European efforts to help to integrate their Muslim populations into the life of the nation. But France is but one example among many.
In the United States, Muslim population counts are hard to come by. Estimates range from 2 to 8 million. Whatever the number, Muslim-Americans have become well integrated into the fabric of our society. Like traditional immigrants, beginning with the great wave of the mid-19th century, they first gravitated toward living areas where they could be among their own, speak the same language, eat the same foods. But over the years, they have morphed into a community that speaks English, owns prosperous businesses, serves in elected office and in our government, joins our armed forces, and participates more in public life than their counterparts in Europe.
Perhaps one of the reasons is that Americans, unlike Brits and other Europeans, are less fearful of those who are “not like us,” and more optimistic about understanding and accepting change. And perhaps because of our nation’s struggles with black-white racial issues, we have come to be a bit less paranoid – though our current immigration debate presents yet another challenge.
But the strong and sustained Muslim-American identification with the rest of our country is not immutable. It could change. One of the things that might hasten that change is the current government harassment of this segment of our population. Another is the xenophobia that followed 9/11 – in which, sadly, our right-wing religious leaders have been all too willing to participate.
The bottom line is that, despite President Bush’s many statements in support of Muslim-Americans, some in this community are beginning to feel almost as estranged from their country as their European counterparts. The more that feeling grows, the more likely it is that we will find ourselves unwittingly breeding the anger and resentment that ends in homegrown terrorism.
The issue is not whether Muslim women prefer to cover themselves. Personally, I find the practice demeaning to women. But that’s a view through Western eyes. If they don’t mind, why should we? Do we demand that Christian and Jewish women remove the crosses and stars of David from the necklaces they wear? Do we insist that our Amish people behave like most of the rest of us? Do we rant against Hassidic Jews who wear fur hats, prayer shawls, and funny hair-dos?
I have had the opportunity to spend a good deal of time talking with and listening to Muslim women in the Middle East who wore face veils, or niqabs, covered head to toe, except for their eyes and mouths. I can tell you that, once you get used to the absence of body language as a conversational indicator, how a person happens to be dressed quickly gets trumped by what she has to say.
This is something Jack Straw needs to understand. Maybe he needs to spend a bit more time with each of his constituents. My advice to him is to just to learn and get over it.
GET OVER IT, JACK!
By William Fisher
In 1969, at the end of my first full year of what became a 20-plus-year residence in Britain, I recall jotting down what I found to be the defining characteristics of the UK at that time. They were:
1. Suspicion of people who weren’t “them.”
2. Fear of change.
3. A class-structured society, where the “working class knew its place” and was always reluctant to challenge the old “upper class” power establishment.
What brought this musing back to me was the recent rant by former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw about his Muslim women constituents being covered up. Straw claimed he would be better able to respond to their needs if he could see the expressions on their faces.
Mr. Straw, who is a Labor Party Member of Parliament for Blackburn, where between 25% and 30% of residents are Muslim, explained the impact he thought veils could have in a society where watching facial expressions was important for contact between different people. “Communities are bound together partly by informal chance relations between strangers -- people being able to acknowledge each other in the street or being able pass the time of day," he said. That's made more difficult if people are wearing a veil. That's just a fact of life.”
Mr. Straw added, "What I've been struck by when I've been talking to some of the ladies concerned is that they had not, I think, been fully aware of the potential in terms of community relations."
Could this just be a contemporary version of my 1969 note, “Suspicion of people who weren’t ‘them’?” Which raises the question about just who is being unaware of “the potential in terms of community relations.”
In 1969, Britain had a relatively miniscule Muslim population. Today, its Muslim population is estimated to be 1.3 million, or three per cent of those who said they adhered to any religion.
This is undeniably a different dynamic for Brits, especially given their traditional fear of change and the glacial pace of their ability to accept and absorb it. But it isn’t as if Muslim immigration happened suddenly, all at once. The number of Muslims in the UK has grown gradually over the past generation.
To make the controversy even more heated, the veil controversy landed smack in the middle of the arrest of the gang of (Muslim) men alleged to have plotted to blow up U.S.-bound flights from the U.K. Following the subway bombings of last July, the fear of so-called homegrown terrorists in the UK is now palpable. And made far more scary by Britain’s participation in the Coalition of the Willing in Iraq, which many in Britain – and not only Muslims – see as a reflection of what they see as President Bush’s war on Islam.
But the dis-integration of Muslim minorities didn’t begin with the invasion of Iraq. Its been happening for years. Muslim immigrants and British-born Muslims from various countries have, like most new immigrants to most countries, tended to want to live in the same neighborhoods – a development encouraged by the block-busting and red-lining practices of banks and real estate brokers. Entire cities have become “Muslim Cities.” In the process, they have displaced “regular” Brits. With UK property prices off the charts and a relatively slow renewal of the housing stock, the “regulars” have come to resent the immigrants.
Like most immigrants, children in Muslim communities attend de facto segregated schools, and their parents start their work life at the bottom of the economic ladder. Many have by now climbed a bit up the ladder, most notably opening small shops and other small businesses. But most of these are situated in the ghettos inhabited by their countrymen.
That raises the question of what successive British governments have done over the years to anticipate an oncoming train wreck and what policies it has put in place to avoid it.
The answer, lamentably, is virtually nothing. Predictably, there are all manner of inter-faith organizations, headed by well-known clergy and other senior figures. But few of these effectively reach the rank-and-file of Muslims, Christians, or Jews.
The situation is similar elsewhere in Europe. The recent riots in the public housing projects dedicated largely to immigrants on the outskirts of Paris demonstrate the bankruptcy of current European efforts to help to integrate their Muslim populations into the life of the nation. But France is but one example among many.
In the United States, Muslim population counts are hard to come by. Estimates range from 2 to 8 million. Whatever the number, Muslim-Americans have become well integrated into the fabric of our society. Like traditional immigrants, beginning with the great wave of the mid-19th century, they first gravitated toward living areas where they could be among their own, speak the same language, eat the same foods. But over the years, they have morphed into a community that speaks English, owns prosperous businesses, serves in elected office and in our government, joins our armed forces, and participates more in public life than their counterparts in Europe.
Perhaps one of the reasons is that Americans, unlike Brits and other Europeans, are less fearful of those who are “not like us,” and more optimistic about understanding and accepting change. And perhaps because of our nation’s struggles with black-white racial issues, we have come to be a bit less paranoid – though our current immigration debate presents yet another challenge.
But the strong and sustained Muslim-American identification with the rest of our country is not immutable. It could change. One of the things that might hasten that change is the current government harassment of this segment of our population. Another is the xenophobia that followed 9/11 – in which, sadly, our right-wing religious leaders have been all too willing to participate.
The bottom line is that, despite President Bush’s many statements in support of Muslim-Americans, some in this community are beginning to feel almost as estranged from their country as their European counterparts. The more that feeling grows, the more likely it is that we will find ourselves unwittingly breeding the anger and resentment that ends in homegrown terrorism.
The issue is not whether Muslim women prefer to cover themselves. Personally, I find the practice demeaning to women. But that’s a view through Western eyes. If they don’t mind, why should we? Do we demand that Christian and Jewish women remove the crosses and stars of David from the necklaces they wear? Do we insist that our Amish people behave like most of the rest of us? Do we rant against Hassidic Jews who wear fur hats, prayer shawls, and funny hair-dos?
I have had the opportunity to spend a good deal of time talking with and listening to Muslim women in the Middle East who wore face veils, or niqabs, covered head to toe, except for their eyes and mouths. I can tell you that, once you get used to the absence of body language as a conversational indicator, how a person happens to be dressed quickly gets trumped by what she has to say.
This is something Jack Straw needs to understand. Maybe he needs to spend a bit more time with each of his constituents. My advice to him is to just to learn and get over it.
In 1969, at the end of my first full year of what became a 20-plus-year residence in Britain, I recall jotting down what I found to be the defining characteristics of the UK at that time. They were:
1. Suspicion of people who weren’t “them.”
2. Fear of change.
3. A class-structured society, where the “working class knew its place” and was always reluctant to challenge the old “upper class” power establishment.
What brought this musing back to me was the recent rant by former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw about his Muslim women constituents being covered up. Straw claimed he would be better able to respond to their needs if he could see the expressions on their faces.
Mr. Straw, who is a Labor Party Member of Parliament for Blackburn, where between 25% and 30% of residents are Muslim, explained the impact he thought veils could have in a society where watching facial expressions was important for contact between different people. “Communities are bound together partly by informal chance relations between strangers -- people being able to acknowledge each other in the street or being able pass the time of day," he said. That's made more difficult if people are wearing a veil. That's just a fact of life.”
Mr. Straw added, "What I've been struck by when I've been talking to some of the ladies concerned is that they had not, I think, been fully aware of the potential in terms of community relations."
Could this just be a contemporary version of my 1969 note, “Suspicion of people who weren’t ‘them’?” Which raises the question about just who is being unaware of “the potential in terms of community relations.”
In 1969, Britain had a relatively miniscule Muslim population. Today, its Muslim population is estimated to be 1.3 million, or three per cent of those who said they adhered to any religion.
This is undeniably a different dynamic for Brits, especially given their traditional fear of change and the glacial pace of their ability to accept and absorb it. But it isn’t as if Muslim immigration happened suddenly, all at once. The number of Muslims in the UK has grown gradually over the past generation.
To make the controversy even more heated, the veil controversy landed smack in the middle of the arrest of the gang of (Muslim) men alleged to have plotted to blow up U.S.-bound flights from the U.K. Following the subway bombings of last July, the fear of so-called homegrown terrorists in the UK is now palpable. And made far more scary by Britain’s participation in the Coalition of the Willing in Iraq, which many in Britain – and not only Muslims – see as a reflection of what they see as President Bush’s war on Islam.
But the dis-integration of Muslim minorities didn’t begin with the invasion of Iraq. Its been happening for years. Muslim immigrants and British-born Muslims from various countries have, like most new immigrants to most countries, tended to want to live in the same neighborhoods – a development encouraged by the block-busting and red-lining practices of banks and real estate brokers. Entire cities have become “Muslim Cities.” In the process, they have displaced “regular” Brits. With UK property prices off the charts and a relatively slow renewal of the housing stock, the “regulars” have come to resent the immigrants.
Like most immigrants, children in Muslim communities attend de facto segregated schools, and their parents start their work life at the bottom of the economic ladder. Many have by now climbed a bit up the ladder, most notably opening small shops and other small businesses. But most of these are situated in the ghettos inhabited by their countrymen.
That raises the question of what successive British governments have done over the years to anticipate an oncoming train wreck and what policies it has put in place to avoid it.
The answer, lamentably, is virtually nothing. Predictably, there are all manner of inter-faith organizations, headed by well-known clergy and other senior figures. But few of these effectively reach the rank-and-file of Muslims, Christians, or Jews.
The situation is similar elsewhere in Europe. The recent riots in the public housing projects dedicated largely to immigrants on the outskirts of Paris demonstrate the bankruptcy of current European efforts to help to integrate their Muslim populations into the life of the nation. But France is but one example among many.
In the United States, Muslim population counts are hard to come by. Estimates range from 2 to 8 million. Whatever the number, Muslim-Americans have become well integrated into the fabric of our society. Like traditional immigrants, beginning with the great wave of the mid-19th century, they first gravitated toward living areas where they could be among their own, speak the same language, eat the same foods. But over the years, they have morphed into a community that speaks English, owns prosperous businesses, serves in elected office and in our government, joins our armed forces, and participates more in public life than their counterparts in Europe.
Perhaps one of the reasons is that Americans, unlike Brits and other Europeans, are less fearful of those who are “not like us,” and more optimistic about understanding and accepting change. And perhaps because of our nation’s struggles with black-white racial issues, we have come to be a bit less paranoid – though our current immigration debate presents yet another challenge.
But the strong and sustained Muslim-American identification with the rest of our country is not immutable. It could change. One of the things that might hasten that change is the current government harassment of this segment of our population. Another is the xenophobia that followed 9/11 – in which, sadly, our right-wing religious leaders have been all too willing to participate.
The bottom line is that, despite President Bush’s many statements in support of Muslim-Americans, some in this community are beginning to feel almost as estranged from their country as their European counterparts. The more that feeling grows, the more likely it is that we will find ourselves unwittingly breeding the anger and resentment that ends in homegrown terrorism.
The issue is not whether Muslim women prefer to cover themselves. Personally, I find the practice demeaning to women. But that’s a view through Western eyes. If they don’t mind, why should we? Do we demand that Christian and Jewish women remove the crosses and stars of David from the necklaces they wear? Do we insist that our Amish people behave like most of the rest of us? Do we rant against Hassidic Jews who wear fur hats, prayer shawls, and funny hair-dos?
I have had the opportunity to spend a good deal of time talking with and listening to Muslim women in the Middle East who wore face veils, or niqabs, covered head to toe, except for their eyes and mouths. I can tell you that, once you get used to the absence of body language as a conversational indicator, how a person happens to be dressed quickly gets trumped by what she has to say.
This is something Jack Straw needs to understand. Maybe he needs to spend a bit more time with each of his constituents. My advice to him is to just to learn and get over it.
Friday, November 03, 2006
POLITICAL AMNESIA?
By William Fisher
Unless you happen to live in Southern Louisiana, Mississippi, or Alabama, you’re unlikely to have heard from office holders or their challengers the one word that was supposed to be a defining issue of the 2006 mid-term elections.
The word is Katrina.
During late August of 2005, and in the months following, virtually every news cycle led with graphic, grisly accounts of the death and suffering caused by the hurricane and subsequent flooding.
House and Senate Committees held dozens of hearings and issued blistering reports on the failures of “all levels of government” to anticipate and prepare for this unparalleled natural disaster. Lawmakers rushed to the floors of their respective houses to inveigh on the subject and spread the blame around by pointing fingers at the many who they thought culpable.
Billions of dollars were appropriated for relief. After he finally got around to putting his feet on the ground in New Orleans, President Bush praised the then head of FEMA, Michael Brown, for doing “a heck of a job.” The President then told the nation he accepted full responsibility and ordered his Homeland Security assistant to produce a report detailing “failings at every level of government.” She did.
But only one person was ever held accountable, the same Michael Brown, who was fired (and claimed he was made the scapegoat de jour). The hapless mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, who hunkered down in a hotel suite while his people drowned, was reelected. Mr. Brown’s boss, Michael Chertoff, the head of the Department of Homeland Security – who decided to go to a conference in Atlanta the day the hurricane struck and the levees were breached – is still in his job (and keeping a lower-than-low profile in this political season.) His boss, Mr. Bush, is also still in his job. This is the “decider” who was in such an extreme State of Denial in his presidential bubble that his staff had to prepare a CD to show him the extent of Katrina’s devastation.
A little more than a year ago, Katrina, and our public response to it, became metaphors for the gross incompetence of our government. How, people asked, could we respond to a terrorist attack if we couldn’t handle a hurricane and a flood?
Well, the question remains unanswered, but the voters seem to have forgotten it was ever a concern. Political amnesia!
In poll after poll, the electorate says its top ten issues are Iraq, illegal immigration, the economy and jobs, defense and the military, terrorism, education, foreign policy, and environment.
These are certainly important issues that voters should indeed be concerned about. And perhaps U.S. government incompetence in prosecuting the war in Iraq and in the so-called Global War on Terror have become proxies for U.S. government incompetence generally.
Most of the money President Bush promised to deliver to the Gulf Coast during his carefully choreographed appearances in the area is still bottled up in the Federal treasury. And much of the money actually released has gone to the same big out-of-state contractors who have so screwed up our Iraqi reconstruction programs. Where are the shiny new “ownership” programs the President promised to spur Gulf Coast economic recovery and growth? Where are the demands for progress reports from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which is charged with rebuilding New Orleans’ levees?
People from NOLA are still scattered around America. Mayor Nagin keeps urging them to “come home”, but there are no homes for them to come to and few jobs to help them feed their families. In some Mississippi Gulf Coast towns, the landscape is still decorated by mountains of debris that have never been moved.
And when was the last time you read a headline or saw a TV soundbite about the incessantly promised reorganization of FEMA?
Our voters seem to have the attention span of three-year-olds. Katrina has gone away, but its aftermath – and the underlying problems that enabled it to have such a devastating impact – haven’t. It’s the media attention that’s gone away. If it doesn’t bleed, it doesn’t lead!
But media or no, it’s well past time for our electorate to demand that their representatives implement a new kind of “Southern Strategy” -- starting with holding our government accountable for keeping the promises it made. And being transparent about it.
Unless you happen to live in Southern Louisiana, Mississippi, or Alabama, you’re unlikely to have heard from office holders or their challengers the one word that was supposed to be a defining issue of the 2006 mid-term elections.
The word is Katrina.
During late August of 2005, and in the months following, virtually every news cycle led with graphic, grisly accounts of the death and suffering caused by the hurricane and subsequent flooding.
House and Senate Committees held dozens of hearings and issued blistering reports on the failures of “all levels of government” to anticipate and prepare for this unparalleled natural disaster. Lawmakers rushed to the floors of their respective houses to inveigh on the subject and spread the blame around by pointing fingers at the many who they thought culpable.
Billions of dollars were appropriated for relief. After he finally got around to putting his feet on the ground in New Orleans, President Bush praised the then head of FEMA, Michael Brown, for doing “a heck of a job.” The President then told the nation he accepted full responsibility and ordered his Homeland Security assistant to produce a report detailing “failings at every level of government.” She did.
But only one person was ever held accountable, the same Michael Brown, who was fired (and claimed he was made the scapegoat de jour). The hapless mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, who hunkered down in a hotel suite while his people drowned, was reelected. Mr. Brown’s boss, Michael Chertoff, the head of the Department of Homeland Security – who decided to go to a conference in Atlanta the day the hurricane struck and the levees were breached – is still in his job (and keeping a lower-than-low profile in this political season.) His boss, Mr. Bush, is also still in his job. This is the “decider” who was in such an extreme State of Denial in his presidential bubble that his staff had to prepare a CD to show him the extent of Katrina’s devastation.
A little more than a year ago, Katrina, and our public response to it, became metaphors for the gross incompetence of our government. How, people asked, could we respond to a terrorist attack if we couldn’t handle a hurricane and a flood?
Well, the question remains unanswered, but the voters seem to have forgotten it was ever a concern. Political amnesia!
In poll after poll, the electorate says its top ten issues are Iraq, illegal immigration, the economy and jobs, defense and the military, terrorism, education, foreign policy, and environment.
These are certainly important issues that voters should indeed be concerned about. And perhaps U.S. government incompetence in prosecuting the war in Iraq and in the so-called Global War on Terror have become proxies for U.S. government incompetence generally.
Most of the money President Bush promised to deliver to the Gulf Coast during his carefully choreographed appearances in the area is still bottled up in the Federal treasury. And much of the money actually released has gone to the same big out-of-state contractors who have so screwed up our Iraqi reconstruction programs. Where are the shiny new “ownership” programs the President promised to spur Gulf Coast economic recovery and growth? Where are the demands for progress reports from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which is charged with rebuilding New Orleans’ levees?
People from NOLA are still scattered around America. Mayor Nagin keeps urging them to “come home”, but there are no homes for them to come to and few jobs to help them feed their families. In some Mississippi Gulf Coast towns, the landscape is still decorated by mountains of debris that have never been moved.
And when was the last time you read a headline or saw a TV soundbite about the incessantly promised reorganization of FEMA?
Our voters seem to have the attention span of three-year-olds. Katrina has gone away, but its aftermath – and the underlying problems that enabled it to have such a devastating impact – haven’t. It’s the media attention that’s gone away. If it doesn’t bleed, it doesn’t lead!
But media or no, it’s well past time for our electorate to demand that their representatives implement a new kind of “Southern Strategy” -- starting with holding our government accountable for keeping the promises it made. And being transparent about it.
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
THE PRESCIENCE OF JFK
By William Fisher
Religious and ethnic bigotry has long been among the most heinous abuses of America’s freedoms. For years, Jews were the targets: They controlled the banking system, the press, and all the other levers of power. Absurdly, they were also Bolsheviks and Communists.
Bolsheviks and Communists were, of course, the bullseyes in later episodes of government target practice. During the 1920s, American fears were whipped up by Attorney General Mitchell Palmer, who rounded up and deported hundreds of U.S. citizens and legal residents. Thirty years later, The House Un-American Affairs Committee and Sen. Joe McCarthy famously dragged the nation into a scary and pathetic “Red Scare.”
Then there was Papism. Espoused by many prominent Protestant clergymen and embraced by millions of their followers for more than a century, Papists equated the Roman Catholic Church with the absolute obedience of its adherents to the orders of the Pope.
It was against this background that, on September 12, 1960, presidential candidate John F. Kennedy decided to take the bull by the horns and deliver his now-famous speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association.
He told the group he believed in “an America where the separation of church and state is absolute--where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act…For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew -- or a Quaker -- or a Unitarian -- or a Baptist…Today I may be the victim -- but tomorrow it may be you -- until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great national peril.”
I wonder if JFK realized how prescient he was. The Cold War is over. Anti-Catholicism and anti-Semitism are of course still with us, but have been largely marginalized to the lunatic fringes of our society. But today – post 9/11 -- we have a new target of hate: Islam. And there is ample evidence that it is being embraced not only by the lunatic fringe of America, but by a majority of our people – including clergymen on the religious right and by the U.S. government.
In the hysterical days and weeks following 9/11, hundreds of Muslims – along with South Asians incorrectly mistaken for Arabs – were rounded up and imprisoned by John Ashcroft’s Justice Department, though not a single person was ever charged with any terror-related crime.
Sadly, many prominent members of America’s evangelical community have joined the Muslim-bashing crowd. Evangelical leaders, such as the Rev. Franklin Graham, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, and the Rev. Jerry Vines, past president of the Southern Baptist Convention, have publicly branding Islam, or Islam's prophet Muhammad, as inherently evil and violent.
Graham, son of the evangelist Billy Graham and head of a global missions agency, Samaritan's Purse, said that Islam was ''a very evil and wicked religion.'' Vines described Muhammad as ''a demon-possessed pedophile.'' Falwell said in a ''60 Minutes'' interview that ''Muhammad was a terrorist.''
According to a nationwide survey conducted by Cornell University, nearly half of all Americans believe the U.S. government should restrict the civil liberties of Muslim Americans. Our Treasury Department’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence has shut down five major Muslim charities in the United States since 2001, and seized millions of dollars in assets. As of today, not a single officer or organization has been convicted of any crime connected to terrorism. But charitable giving – one of the pillars of the Muslim faith – has fallen precipitously out of prospective donors’ fear of becoming a target of government investigation.
President Bush has lavished praise on Muslim-Americans. But simultaneously, the FBI and our Departments of Justice and Homeland Security are clearly practicing ethnic profiling and conducting surveillance at Mosques and other Muslim gathering places. At the same time, they are actively conducting “outreach” programs to Muslim-American communities in the US.
They are also aggressively attempting to recruit Arab and other Muslim-Americans into the CIA, FBI, and other national security agencies (these recruiting programs have largely failed because, when the agencies learn that many of these prospective employees have friends and family in the Middle East, they are denied security clearances).
Many other forms of more and less subtle discrimination are taking place. For example, seven Muslims who have been waiting years to become U.S. citizens were finally notified that their applications had been approved, but only after they joined a lawsuit accusing immigration officials of illegally delaying background checks and allowing applications to linger indefinitely. In Texas, three Muslim Americans wrongly accused of planning a terrorist attack on a Michigan bridge, and having their bank accounts closed and their neighbors accuse them of being terrorists, demanded that authorities issue a public apology for targeting them because of their race. And an internal investigation by the Justice Department concluded there was "reasonable cause" to believe that senior FBI officials retaliated against the bureau's highest-ranking Arabic speaker for complaining that he was cut out of terrorism cases despite his expertise.
The academic community has suffered as well. For example, for more than two years, Tariq Ramadan, a prominent Muslim scholar, has been denied a visa to teach at Notre Dame. First he was told he had endorsed terrorism and violated the USA Patriot Act. Later, after filing a lawsuit against the government and having a federal judge force the State Department to reconsider his application, his visa was again denied because between 1998 and 2002, he had contributed small sums of money to a French charity supporting humanitarian work in the Palestinian territories.
Is this Islamophobia working? Is it smart? Is it helping us to find and prosecute terrorists?
My view is that we’re using some pretty primitive blunt instruments to conduct our search for the bad guys. In the process, we’re alienating the very people who probably could help us most – the millions of law-abiding Muslim-Americans who live among us – and who are just as terrified of terrorists as the rest of us.
I suppose I might be able to understand our approach if we were still back in 2001. But 9/11 happened five years ago. Isn’t it long past time that all the clever folks in our government came up with something that actually works?
Religious and ethnic bigotry has long been among the most heinous abuses of America’s freedoms. For years, Jews were the targets: They controlled the banking system, the press, and all the other levers of power. Absurdly, they were also Bolsheviks and Communists.
Bolsheviks and Communists were, of course, the bullseyes in later episodes of government target practice. During the 1920s, American fears were whipped up by Attorney General Mitchell Palmer, who rounded up and deported hundreds of U.S. citizens and legal residents. Thirty years later, The House Un-American Affairs Committee and Sen. Joe McCarthy famously dragged the nation into a scary and pathetic “Red Scare.”
Then there was Papism. Espoused by many prominent Protestant clergymen and embraced by millions of their followers for more than a century, Papists equated the Roman Catholic Church with the absolute obedience of its adherents to the orders of the Pope.
It was against this background that, on September 12, 1960, presidential candidate John F. Kennedy decided to take the bull by the horns and deliver his now-famous speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association.
He told the group he believed in “an America where the separation of church and state is absolute--where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act…For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew -- or a Quaker -- or a Unitarian -- or a Baptist…Today I may be the victim -- but tomorrow it may be you -- until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great national peril.”
I wonder if JFK realized how prescient he was. The Cold War is over. Anti-Catholicism and anti-Semitism are of course still with us, but have been largely marginalized to the lunatic fringes of our society. But today – post 9/11 -- we have a new target of hate: Islam. And there is ample evidence that it is being embraced not only by the lunatic fringe of America, but by a majority of our people – including clergymen on the religious right and by the U.S. government.
In the hysterical days and weeks following 9/11, hundreds of Muslims – along with South Asians incorrectly mistaken for Arabs – were rounded up and imprisoned by John Ashcroft’s Justice Department, though not a single person was ever charged with any terror-related crime.
Sadly, many prominent members of America’s evangelical community have joined the Muslim-bashing crowd. Evangelical leaders, such as the Rev. Franklin Graham, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, and the Rev. Jerry Vines, past president of the Southern Baptist Convention, have publicly branding Islam, or Islam's prophet Muhammad, as inherently evil and violent.
Graham, son of the evangelist Billy Graham and head of a global missions agency, Samaritan's Purse, said that Islam was ''a very evil and wicked religion.'' Vines described Muhammad as ''a demon-possessed pedophile.'' Falwell said in a ''60 Minutes'' interview that ''Muhammad was a terrorist.''
According to a nationwide survey conducted by Cornell University, nearly half of all Americans believe the U.S. government should restrict the civil liberties of Muslim Americans. Our Treasury Department’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence has shut down five major Muslim charities in the United States since 2001, and seized millions of dollars in assets. As of today, not a single officer or organization has been convicted of any crime connected to terrorism. But charitable giving – one of the pillars of the Muslim faith – has fallen precipitously out of prospective donors’ fear of becoming a target of government investigation.
President Bush has lavished praise on Muslim-Americans. But simultaneously, the FBI and our Departments of Justice and Homeland Security are clearly practicing ethnic profiling and conducting surveillance at Mosques and other Muslim gathering places. At the same time, they are actively conducting “outreach” programs to Muslim-American communities in the US.
They are also aggressively attempting to recruit Arab and other Muslim-Americans into the CIA, FBI, and other national security agencies (these recruiting programs have largely failed because, when the agencies learn that many of these prospective employees have friends and family in the Middle East, they are denied security clearances).
Many other forms of more and less subtle discrimination are taking place. For example, seven Muslims who have been waiting years to become U.S. citizens were finally notified that their applications had been approved, but only after they joined a lawsuit accusing immigration officials of illegally delaying background checks and allowing applications to linger indefinitely. In Texas, three Muslim Americans wrongly accused of planning a terrorist attack on a Michigan bridge, and having their bank accounts closed and their neighbors accuse them of being terrorists, demanded that authorities issue a public apology for targeting them because of their race. And an internal investigation by the Justice Department concluded there was "reasonable cause" to believe that senior FBI officials retaliated against the bureau's highest-ranking Arabic speaker for complaining that he was cut out of terrorism cases despite his expertise.
The academic community has suffered as well. For example, for more than two years, Tariq Ramadan, a prominent Muslim scholar, has been denied a visa to teach at Notre Dame. First he was told he had endorsed terrorism and violated the USA Patriot Act. Later, after filing a lawsuit against the government and having a federal judge force the State Department to reconsider his application, his visa was again denied because between 1998 and 2002, he had contributed small sums of money to a French charity supporting humanitarian work in the Palestinian territories.
Is this Islamophobia working? Is it smart? Is it helping us to find and prosecute terrorists?
My view is that we’re using some pretty primitive blunt instruments to conduct our search for the bad guys. In the process, we’re alienating the very people who probably could help us most – the millions of law-abiding Muslim-Americans who live among us – and who are just as terrified of terrorists as the rest of us.
I suppose I might be able to understand our approach if we were still back in 2001. But 9/11 happened five years ago. Isn’t it long past time that all the clever folks in our government came up with something that actually works?
Monday, October 30, 2006
THE MORALITY OF CAMPAIGN ADS
By William Fisher
The Republican challenger for the Wisconsin House seat of Rep. Ron Kind runs a TV ad headed, “Ron Kind Pays For Sex!” with "XXX" stamped across Kind's face. It turns out that Kind -- along with more than 200 of his colleagues in the House -- opposed an unsuccessful effort to stop the National Institutes of Health from pursuing peer-reviewed sex studies.
In New York, the National Republican Campaign Committee runs an ad accusing Democratic House candidate Michael A. Arcuri, a district attorney, of using taxpayer dollars for phone sex. The seductive voice at the other end of the line answers,"Hi, sexy, you've reached the live, one-on-one fantasy line." The facts are that one of Arcuri's aides had tried to call the state Division of Criminal Justice, which had a number that was almost identical to that of a porn line. The misdial cost taxpayers $1.25.
In Ohio, GOP gubernatorial candidate J. Kenneth Blackwell runs a TV spot accusing Democratic Rep. Ted Strickland of failing to support a resolution condemning sex between adults and children. The truth: Strickland, a psychiatrist, objected to a line suggesting that sexually abused children cannot have healthy relationships when they grow up.
In Washington, DC, a black conservative group runs a radio ad proclaiming that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican. Fact: Liberals, who make up the overwhelming majority of black voters, have long disagreed with conservatives over ideology, public policy and economic strategies to better the lives of African Americans.
A spot in the 2002 Georgia Senate race invokes the image and words of Osama bin Laden to accuse the Democratic incumbent of being weak on national security.
In Tennessee, former Chattanooga Mayor Bob Corker runs an ad claiming his opponent attended a party at a Playboy Club and suggesting a flirtation between a young bare-shouldered white woman, played by a blond actress, and his challenger for a Senate seat, Rep. Harold Ford, who is African American. The ghost of Emmett Till still lives!
This is just small sampling of some of the more outrageous political ads being run in this mid-term election. This phenomenon didn’t begin with the 2006 campaign, but arguably it is more toxic this year than ever before. And some of it, inexplicably, is coming from religious groups whose commitment to truth is supposed to come from The Scriptures.
Professional political strategists say they continue to engage in this politics of personal destruction because “the ads work.” But this is a little like working in the PR department of a cigarette manufacturer and feeling proud of the syntax and structure of a press release you just wrote – even though the subject matter conveys dangerously false information.
Perhaps, as the gurus claim, some of these ads may help candidates in desperately close races. But negative ads have a negative impact on our politics. They reduce public discourse to bumper stickers. They reduce honest differences to contests between good and evil. They stifle real debate on real issues. They play to what divides us, not what we agree on. They pander to our basest fears and prejudices. And they make it even more difficult for voters to make rational, informed decisions.
American voters are, most of the time, largely disinterested in politics. Which means they are also uninformed. The toxic environment created by negative campaign advertising does nothing to help them and everything to further emasculate the electoral process.
But their impact goes far beyond this campaign or that. They say to our society that it’s OK to lie, to twist and distort the truth. The justification, as Bill Clinton recently put it, is that “politics is a contact sport.”
But that’s not good enough. We kid ourselves if we think it’s OK to lie if we only do it for a few months every two years. Because we don’t. The impact goes far deeper.
The politics of personal destruction undermines public confidence in our constitutional institutions. It discourages young people from entering public service, once a proud aspiration. No wonder public approval of Congress is at an all time low.
Most importantly, lying in politics gives a green light to lying, period. And the more we tacitly buy into this Faustian bargain, the more it helps to destroy the character of our country and the culture of our society. We see this process already well underway in our docile acceptance of “commercial speech” – non-political ads that defy even the most charitable interpretation of “truth in advertising.”
Peddling falsehoods leads to a gradual erosion of our values. We lose trust in one another. We lose trust in our institutions. We become overwhelmed by the supposedly savvy political machines and corporations that spend billions to spin us. We lose faith in our ability to change anything. And then we drop out of the process altogether, leaving the field to those with political or ideological or corporate agendas.
The rest of the world also watches American elections and American culture. Despite the precipitous decline in overseas respect for our country, and despite the spin that comes relentlessly from politicians and private sector shills, many around the world still view our system as the fairest and most open in the world. Today, there is a clear and present danger that our persistent lying is destroying the model and the reputations of those who are supposed to be living by it.
This may be the most naive column I ever wrote. And I confess that I don’t have a clue about how to change the status quo. That’s always been the job of ordinary Americans, but that job is becoming more impossible exponentially.
I’m just old-fashioned enough to believe that elected and aspiring public servants, as well as those trying to sell us products, have a responsibility to speak truth to those whose support they seek.
The stakes couldn’t be higher. The price of failure is a nation unable to distinguish truth from spin. The price of failure is to further divide an already dangerously divided nation.
The Republican challenger for the Wisconsin House seat of Rep. Ron Kind runs a TV ad headed, “Ron Kind Pays For Sex!” with "XXX" stamped across Kind's face. It turns out that Kind -- along with more than 200 of his colleagues in the House -- opposed an unsuccessful effort to stop the National Institutes of Health from pursuing peer-reviewed sex studies.
In New York, the National Republican Campaign Committee runs an ad accusing Democratic House candidate Michael A. Arcuri, a district attorney, of using taxpayer dollars for phone sex. The seductive voice at the other end of the line answers,"Hi, sexy, you've reached the live, one-on-one fantasy line." The facts are that one of Arcuri's aides had tried to call the state Division of Criminal Justice, which had a number that was almost identical to that of a porn line. The misdial cost taxpayers $1.25.
In Ohio, GOP gubernatorial candidate J. Kenneth Blackwell runs a TV spot accusing Democratic Rep. Ted Strickland of failing to support a resolution condemning sex between adults and children. The truth: Strickland, a psychiatrist, objected to a line suggesting that sexually abused children cannot have healthy relationships when they grow up.
In Washington, DC, a black conservative group runs a radio ad proclaiming that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican. Fact: Liberals, who make up the overwhelming majority of black voters, have long disagreed with conservatives over ideology, public policy and economic strategies to better the lives of African Americans.
A spot in the 2002 Georgia Senate race invokes the image and words of Osama bin Laden to accuse the Democratic incumbent of being weak on national security.
In Tennessee, former Chattanooga Mayor Bob Corker runs an ad claiming his opponent attended a party at a Playboy Club and suggesting a flirtation between a young bare-shouldered white woman, played by a blond actress, and his challenger for a Senate seat, Rep. Harold Ford, who is African American. The ghost of Emmett Till still lives!
This is just small sampling of some of the more outrageous political ads being run in this mid-term election. This phenomenon didn’t begin with the 2006 campaign, but arguably it is more toxic this year than ever before. And some of it, inexplicably, is coming from religious groups whose commitment to truth is supposed to come from The Scriptures.
Professional political strategists say they continue to engage in this politics of personal destruction because “the ads work.” But this is a little like working in the PR department of a cigarette manufacturer and feeling proud of the syntax and structure of a press release you just wrote – even though the subject matter conveys dangerously false information.
Perhaps, as the gurus claim, some of these ads may help candidates in desperately close races. But negative ads have a negative impact on our politics. They reduce public discourse to bumper stickers. They reduce honest differences to contests between good and evil. They stifle real debate on real issues. They play to what divides us, not what we agree on. They pander to our basest fears and prejudices. And they make it even more difficult for voters to make rational, informed decisions.
American voters are, most of the time, largely disinterested in politics. Which means they are also uninformed. The toxic environment created by negative campaign advertising does nothing to help them and everything to further emasculate the electoral process.
But their impact goes far beyond this campaign or that. They say to our society that it’s OK to lie, to twist and distort the truth. The justification, as Bill Clinton recently put it, is that “politics is a contact sport.”
But that’s not good enough. We kid ourselves if we think it’s OK to lie if we only do it for a few months every two years. Because we don’t. The impact goes far deeper.
The politics of personal destruction undermines public confidence in our constitutional institutions. It discourages young people from entering public service, once a proud aspiration. No wonder public approval of Congress is at an all time low.
Most importantly, lying in politics gives a green light to lying, period. And the more we tacitly buy into this Faustian bargain, the more it helps to destroy the character of our country and the culture of our society. We see this process already well underway in our docile acceptance of “commercial speech” – non-political ads that defy even the most charitable interpretation of “truth in advertising.”
Peddling falsehoods leads to a gradual erosion of our values. We lose trust in one another. We lose trust in our institutions. We become overwhelmed by the supposedly savvy political machines and corporations that spend billions to spin us. We lose faith in our ability to change anything. And then we drop out of the process altogether, leaving the field to those with political or ideological or corporate agendas.
The rest of the world also watches American elections and American culture. Despite the precipitous decline in overseas respect for our country, and despite the spin that comes relentlessly from politicians and private sector shills, many around the world still view our system as the fairest and most open in the world. Today, there is a clear and present danger that our persistent lying is destroying the model and the reputations of those who are supposed to be living by it.
This may be the most naive column I ever wrote. And I confess that I don’t have a clue about how to change the status quo. That’s always been the job of ordinary Americans, but that job is becoming more impossible exponentially.
I’m just old-fashioned enough to believe that elected and aspiring public servants, as well as those trying to sell us products, have a responsibility to speak truth to those whose support they seek.
The stakes couldn’t be higher. The price of failure is a nation unable to distinguish truth from spin. The price of failure is to further divide an already dangerously divided nation.
Thursday, October 26, 2006
BLAME AND RUN?
By William Fisher
Tony Snow and Keith Olbermann may disagree on how many times President Bush has used the phrase “stay the course” but, whatever the number, it probably pales when compared to the number of times we’ve heard the president tell us “As they stand up, we’ll stand down.”
That phrase has always spooked me because it conjures up memories of Vietnam. Those of you old enough to remember that war may recall that eerily similar language became the mantra of President Nixon, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and Defense Secretary Melvin Laird, as they tried to sell the notion of “Vietnamization” to a deeply divided Congress and a war-weary public.
That strategy was designed to transfer full responsibility for the defense of South Vietnam to the South Vietnamese. It was to be achieved over time, with the U.S. continuing to provide logistical support and air cover to the Vietnamese military. That gradualist approach would allow the U.S. to withdraw “with honor” and to avoid the “cut and run” charge. To achieve this goal, America poured millions of dollars into training and equipping the South Vietnamese military. The U.S. quickly began the drawdown of its troops.
But Vietnamization was doomed from the get-go. Experts agree that it started far too late. Kissinger’s secret peace talks with the North Vietnamese in Paris bought the enemy time to regroup and reequip. The South Vietnamese administration of President Thieu opposed the plan. Thieu’s government was riven with corruption and bitter power rivalries. Corruption was also rampant in the South Vietnamese military. Inexperienced South Vietnamese soldiers bribed their superiors to obtain high-level commissions, and were ill prepared when they had to face combat. Millions of dollars in U.S. aid simply vanished and no one was ever held accountable. Compounding the dilemma was Nixon’s preoccupation with the gathering Watergate nightmare.
Sound familiar? Comparisons between the wars in Vietnam and Iraq can be stretched too far, but Vietnamization and Iraqification could be twins.
On “The News Hour With Jim Lehrer” last week, Jimmy Carter’s former National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, was outlining possible options for an American exit strategy from Iraq. He called one of them “Blame and Run.” It was an option he didn’t recommend, but he meant we should set goals – benchmarks -- for the Malaki government in Iraq, blame them when they failed to achieve these goals, then use their failures as justification for pulling our soldiers out.
I could be dead wrong, but I have to wonder if we’re not seeing the beginnings of a “blame and run” strategy already emerging in the country. Public opposition to the war is at an all-time high and, if Vietnam taught us anything, it’s that we cannot sustain a war in the face of widespread public and Congressional opposition.
Today, that opposition seems to be jelling. The President announces at a news conference that the U.S. and the Iraqi Government have agreed on benchmarks for achieving “victory” – though it remains unclear what the benchmarks are or what might constitute victory. The Iraqi president almost simultaneously objects; the U.S., he says, can’t dictate strategies, tactics, or timing to a sovereign state.
Meanwhile, members of the president’s own party, faced with a mid-term election disaster, are frantically distancing themselves from Mr. Bush and his war. Prominent and well-informed Republican leaders such as Senator John Warner are insisting that Iraq’s so-called Government of National Unity start meeting its obligations: Disarm militias, provide basic public services, get busy with reconstruction, curb corruption, create jobs, purge death squad members from the ill-equipped police, and begin to establish some modicum of security for their people. In other words, replace democracy with security.
All of this reminds me of Colin Powell’s famous Pottery Barn analogy. “You break it, you own it,” he told the president before the invasion. Well, if we own it, achieving all the above goals were and are America’s responsibility. We have spent – and wasted -- billions to meet these objectives but have precious little to show for it.
Despite testimony from a small army of retired military officers, the president insists he will send more troops to Iraq when his generals ask for them. Just where they will come from remains unclear.
So Iraq looks into the abyss of a civil war, Iraqis and Americans and Brits continue to die in record numbers, everyone agrees there is no military solution, but there is no evidence of any other strategy.
The president strains credibility by insisting he is open to ideas and new approaches. He had lots of them before we invaded in 2003, but listened only to those coming from Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, et al. Now he says he welcomes recommendations from the Baker-Hamilton Commission (which none of us will see until after the elections). Maybe they’ll give him a way out of his mess “with honor.” But don’t hold your breath.
And if the Democrats end up controlling Congress, the president’s may not have much time to consider new ideas and approaches. His position could become even more untenable if, as during Vietnam, Congress uses its power of the purse to block further funding for the war. Thirty years ago, it was Congress that voted to cut off money for U.S. air and logistical support for the South Vietnamese, thus hastening the collapse of Vietnamization. Vietnam's President Thieu resigned,
accusing the U.S of betrayal. Thieu said his forces had failed to stop the advance of the Vietcong because of lack of funds promised to him by the Americans.
But even if that should happen in Iraq, my guess is that this president is so messianicly consumed with “victory” there that he will remain in his “State of Denial” and leave it to his successor to clean up his mess – as JFK did to LBJ, as LBJ did to Nixon, and as Nixon did to Jerry Ford.
President Bush is at that time in office when he must be giving serious thought to his legacy. I suspect his worst nightmare is the idea of Iranian tanks rolling into Baghdad as North Vietnamese tanks rolled into Saigon thirty years ago.
So my guess is that he’s not likely to be influenced by the semi-tongue-in-cheek strategic prescription offered during Vietnam by the late Sen. George Aiken, a Vermont Republican: “Declare a victory and get out.”
Aiken gave that advice to both Presidents Johnson and Nixon when their war was collapsing. Predictably, they ignored him.
So will Bush.
Tony Snow and Keith Olbermann may disagree on how many times President Bush has used the phrase “stay the course” but, whatever the number, it probably pales when compared to the number of times we’ve heard the president tell us “As they stand up, we’ll stand down.”
That phrase has always spooked me because it conjures up memories of Vietnam. Those of you old enough to remember that war may recall that eerily similar language became the mantra of President Nixon, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and Defense Secretary Melvin Laird, as they tried to sell the notion of “Vietnamization” to a deeply divided Congress and a war-weary public.
That strategy was designed to transfer full responsibility for the defense of South Vietnam to the South Vietnamese. It was to be achieved over time, with the U.S. continuing to provide logistical support and air cover to the Vietnamese military. That gradualist approach would allow the U.S. to withdraw “with honor” and to avoid the “cut and run” charge. To achieve this goal, America poured millions of dollars into training and equipping the South Vietnamese military. The U.S. quickly began the drawdown of its troops.
But Vietnamization was doomed from the get-go. Experts agree that it started far too late. Kissinger’s secret peace talks with the North Vietnamese in Paris bought the enemy time to regroup and reequip. The South Vietnamese administration of President Thieu opposed the plan. Thieu’s government was riven with corruption and bitter power rivalries. Corruption was also rampant in the South Vietnamese military. Inexperienced South Vietnamese soldiers bribed their superiors to obtain high-level commissions, and were ill prepared when they had to face combat. Millions of dollars in U.S. aid simply vanished and no one was ever held accountable. Compounding the dilemma was Nixon’s preoccupation with the gathering Watergate nightmare.
Sound familiar? Comparisons between the wars in Vietnam and Iraq can be stretched too far, but Vietnamization and Iraqification could be twins.
On “The News Hour With Jim Lehrer” last week, Jimmy Carter’s former National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, was outlining possible options for an American exit strategy from Iraq. He called one of them “Blame and Run.” It was an option he didn’t recommend, but he meant we should set goals – benchmarks -- for the Malaki government in Iraq, blame them when they failed to achieve these goals, then use their failures as justification for pulling our soldiers out.
I could be dead wrong, but I have to wonder if we’re not seeing the beginnings of a “blame and run” strategy already emerging in the country. Public opposition to the war is at an all-time high and, if Vietnam taught us anything, it’s that we cannot sustain a war in the face of widespread public and Congressional opposition.
Today, that opposition seems to be jelling. The President announces at a news conference that the U.S. and the Iraqi Government have agreed on benchmarks for achieving “victory” – though it remains unclear what the benchmarks are or what might constitute victory. The Iraqi president almost simultaneously objects; the U.S., he says, can’t dictate strategies, tactics, or timing to a sovereign state.
Meanwhile, members of the president’s own party, faced with a mid-term election disaster, are frantically distancing themselves from Mr. Bush and his war. Prominent and well-informed Republican leaders such as Senator John Warner are insisting that Iraq’s so-called Government of National Unity start meeting its obligations: Disarm militias, provide basic public services, get busy with reconstruction, curb corruption, create jobs, purge death squad members from the ill-equipped police, and begin to establish some modicum of security for their people. In other words, replace democracy with security.
All of this reminds me of Colin Powell’s famous Pottery Barn analogy. “You break it, you own it,” he told the president before the invasion. Well, if we own it, achieving all the above goals were and are America’s responsibility. We have spent – and wasted -- billions to meet these objectives but have precious little to show for it.
Despite testimony from a small army of retired military officers, the president insists he will send more troops to Iraq when his generals ask for them. Just where they will come from remains unclear.
So Iraq looks into the abyss of a civil war, Iraqis and Americans and Brits continue to die in record numbers, everyone agrees there is no military solution, but there is no evidence of any other strategy.
The president strains credibility by insisting he is open to ideas and new approaches. He had lots of them before we invaded in 2003, but listened only to those coming from Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, et al. Now he says he welcomes recommendations from the Baker-Hamilton Commission (which none of us will see until after the elections). Maybe they’ll give him a way out of his mess “with honor.” But don’t hold your breath.
And if the Democrats end up controlling Congress, the president’s may not have much time to consider new ideas and approaches. His position could become even more untenable if, as during Vietnam, Congress uses its power of the purse to block further funding for the war. Thirty years ago, it was Congress that voted to cut off money for U.S. air and logistical support for the South Vietnamese, thus hastening the collapse of Vietnamization. Vietnam's President Thieu resigned,
accusing the U.S of betrayal. Thieu said his forces had failed to stop the advance of the Vietcong because of lack of funds promised to him by the Americans.
But even if that should happen in Iraq, my guess is that this president is so messianicly consumed with “victory” there that he will remain in his “State of Denial” and leave it to his successor to clean up his mess – as JFK did to LBJ, as LBJ did to Nixon, and as Nixon did to Jerry Ford.
President Bush is at that time in office when he must be giving serious thought to his legacy. I suspect his worst nightmare is the idea of Iranian tanks rolling into Baghdad as North Vietnamese tanks rolled into Saigon thirty years ago.
So my guess is that he’s not likely to be influenced by the semi-tongue-in-cheek strategic prescription offered during Vietnam by the late Sen. George Aiken, a Vermont Republican: “Declare a victory and get out.”
Aiken gave that advice to both Presidents Johnson and Nixon when their war was collapsing. Predictably, they ignored him.
So will Bush.
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