Ve vas only folloving orders

On the day that the Obama Administration released for memos from the Department of Justice that justified torture and read like something out of the Nazi archives, the President also announced that no CIA employee will be prosecuted for such crimes as waterboarding, repeatedly dousing prisoners with cold water, depriving detainees of sleep for up to eleven days, or other brutal and degrading acts.

Why no prosecutions? Because the interrogators were following interpretations of the law that were binding on them.

I thought we settled this issue at Nuremburg: it is no defense to say that you followed a lawful order.

And none of the Justice Department memos required the interrogators to torture; they merely offered a fig leaf for practices that the Agency voluntarily carried out.

The President was closer to the mark--although still wrong--when he said, “nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past.”

This was a political decision, taken to avoid prolonging the deep divide between those who believe that what the United States does is, per se, right and those who believe that if we aspire to lead the world, we Americans must show that we really are better than our adversaries.

The Bush Administration subverted the Constitution and traduced our legal traditions. Expiation for the nation's sins is not necessary just to cleanse our consciences, but to help us regain our moral ascendancy over those who have declared themselves our mortal enemies. This, in abjuring prosecution for crimes against humanity, Mr. Obama is not merely wrong morally, he is making a serious political mistake as well. The President should have listened to Dean Acheson.

Not one cent for tribute

Some thoughts on curbing piracy, principally in Somalia, but applicable, I hope, to wherever the scourge is endemic:

As in so many of our problems, the essential question is whether we have the will, not the means. We may not be able to eliminate piracy, but we can surely reduce it to a manageable annoyance if we exercise the will to do so. For instance, one idea that's been bruited about is to go in and clean out the pirate havens on the Somali coast. But whenever that is brought up, someone is sure to murmur, "Blackhawk Down." While the deaths of 18 American soldiers in Mogadishu was an unspeakable tragedy for them and their families, in the scale of war that firefight was a minor engagement. It became a major embarrassment for the United States not because of any intrinsic factors--although it did reveal a want of planning and command response--but because we, principally President Clinton, permitted it to become so.

Fortunately, we can probably curb pirates around the Horn of Africa without having to go ashore. Here are a few approaches:

It's not just business: Stop permitting shipping companies and insurers (or anyone else) to pay ransom for ships and crews. The problem goes beyond the individuals and the ships involved. Misplaced feelings of sympathy, and the desire for corporate profit, only make things worse. If shipping companies, their agents or insurers pay ransom, provide that the ships in question will be forfeited and sold, with cargo, in a prize court. Shippers and insurers will try to find third-party fronts so that they can keep paying ransoms--it's cheaper and easier than resisting--so efforts will have to be made to keep them from getting away with that.

Convoys: Convoys worked in both World Wars and they would work off Somalia. True, they would be inconvenient, as ships would have to wait for the convoy to assemble and then travel at the speed of the slowest vessel. On the other hand, given the nature of the threat and today's military technology, escorts could offer almost complete protection. Fortunately, convoys through the seas off Somalia would not have to be as large as those in the Atlantic during WWII, because they get much more complex as the number of ships grows.

Guards on Shipboard: We should have squads of Marines and/or sailors on board vessels traveling through the threatened areas. Think of 12 to 15 men (and possibly women) armed with a couple of machine guns, some shoulder-fired missiles and assault rifles. Pirates have threatened merchant ships with automatic rifles and RPGs. I think it's safe to say that a TOW missile would do a lot more damage to a pirate skiff than an RPG can do to a 15,000 ton ship. A recent story said that 20,000 ships pass by the Horn of Africa each year. That is a large number, but it comes down to around 55 per day. A few battalions of Marines, stationed on Amphibious Assault Ships, could rotate squad-sized units on and off ships passing through the lower end of the Red Sea, off the Horn of Africa and the southern border of Somalia. Not all ships passing through would have to be given armed guards for them to be a powerful deterrent. This kind of duty, by the way, is exactly what marines have been doing for hundreds of years. It's a lot more in the Marine tradition than slogging through Fallujah or Tora Bora. Other nations that have naval vessels patrolling of Somalia should be asked to contribute to the guard force. (I am resolutely against private armed forces on ships. If there are any core government functions, law enforcement and national defense are among them. Privatization has an even worse record in those areas than in others.)

Broaden the Military Response: The Amphibious Support Ships mentioned above can dominate a large area. They carry helicopters, Harrier aircraft and small seacraft. Unfortunately, the latter have been landing craft, which are relatively slow. For anti-pirate patrols these need to be replaced with fast, maneuverable boats that can match, or even outrun and out maneuver pirate craft. Some of the larger commercially-available RIBs can probably be outfitted with machine guns and in any event can carry sailors or Marines armed with the kind of light weapons that the pirates have. Better would be the kind of high-speed patrol boats that the Coast Guard employs.

Prosecute the Pirates: Pirates captured by US forces should be prosecuted in US courts here in the United States. The prospect of long prison terms in the States would be another strong deterrent to turning pirate, even though the food in our penitentiaries is probably more plentiful and of better quality than what a lot of the pirates are now getting. The French are already prosecuting pirates that they have captured.

Many authorities have pointed out that the real solution to piracy off the Somali coast lies in creating a working state in Somalia. True. But that could take decades. The steps that I have outlined can be taken the next few months, some in just a few weeks. They would be relatively inexpensive (by the standards of military operations), require relatively few resources (though now than we have dedicated now), and would as a side benefit provide valuable experience for the kind of small-unit actions that our military is likely to see a lot more of in the next few years.

We always knew it

The NYT had an interesting story in its Science section yesterday, pointing out that socially-compelled sharing of resources (i.e. taxation) is not only nearly universal among humans, but also exists in many other social species. As the writer, Natalie Angier, put it, "It turns out that giving up a portion of one’s income for the sake of the tribe is such a ubiquitous feature of the human race that some researchers see it as crucial to our species’ success."

What does this mean? That Republicans are not only bad for the nation, they threaten human existence! Take that, Newt Gingrich.

Did you spot the howler?

Our unplanned hiatus (I've been too busy and/or lazy to post) meant that we did not answer the question in "Can you spot the howler?" Time to catch up.

The passage in question, from Scott Turow's Ordinary Heroes (a book I recommend highly, despite the howler) was:

"The C rations are terrible," she said. "They are the best thing the American Army brought with them." She actually hugged her green pack of Luckys to her breast. "In Vichy, the women were banned from buying cigarettes altogether. Martin says that is why I had no choice but to join the resistance." She laughed at herself.

The key to this is that the action takes place in October 1944. But Lucky Strikes had lost their green packaging in 1942. All Americans who had reached maturity by WWII knew that, because one of the most famous advertising campaigns of the time was, "Lucky Strike Green Has Gone to War!" By 1944, any cigarettes in a green Lucky Strike pack had long since gone stale.

One of the great questions

We celebrate our return with one of the great, unanswered, existential questions that comes up every year at this time:

Why did the Creator (God, or whatever) make it so that all the lovely flowering trees come into full bloom while it's still cold enough to freeze your butt off?

No good deed goes unpunished

Last week, on Israel's annual Good Deeds Day, a youth orchestra from Jenin, in the West Bank, played a concert for a group of Holocaust survivors in a suburb of Tel Aviv. The symbolism was powerful, although the actual message was much more muddied and complex: None of the children spoke Hebrew, the elderly survivors spoke no Arabic, and apparently the children knew almost nothing of the Holocaust. (I assume as well that the survivors know little or nothing of the Palestinian version of Israel's birth.) Still, it was a nice gesture, a ray of light.

A gesture that has now been condemned by political "leaders" in the refugee camp from where the children come.

Makes you think that if we could get the adults out of the way....

Bankruptcy for GM?

In today's NY Times Magazine, Matt Bai has the best argument I've seen for letting GM go into bankruptcy. The heart of his argument comes in response to the shibboleth that no one would buy a car (or an extended warranty) from a company in Chapter 11:

This argument underscores the deeper problem afflicting G.M. over a period of decades now — not simply soaring labor costs or global competition but also an inability to grasp underlying changes in American culture. There probably was a time when a well-publicized bankruptcy would, in fact, have destroyed the viability of a brand. But in the 20 years since Silicon Valley start-ups began transforming the workplace, younger Americans — in other words, those who now make up the heart of the consumer market — have largely dispensed with the mythology of the infallible institution. Transparency and reinvention, rather than stability and regality, are the more valued assets in an economy where entrepreneurs expect to stumble more often than they succeed and where employees expect to have to change jobs (if not careers) multiple times.

Which led me to think about United Airlines, which went into and came out of bankruptcy intact. Indeed, almost all major US airlines (including US Airlines) have done so. Now it's true that buying an airline ticket is not like buying a car: for one thing it's cheaper, and even if you--like the lovely Diane and me--are addicted to buying well in advance to save money--that ticket is not something you expect to keep and use for years. On the other hand, airlines take you really high in the sky and transport you really fast in a extremely inhospitable atmosphere, frequently over very remote places. (If you think the United States is thickly settled, take a plane from coast to coast and gaze down at the vast expanses of the nation that seem not only to be uninhabited, but uninhabitable.)

So maybe we have matured to the point where the public would view Chapter 11 as a sign of stability, not ultimate failure. Would bankruptcy be cheaper than a government bailout? That's for better minds than mine.

A few thoughts on the Middle East

This post is occasioned by my friend Leanderthal, the Lighthouse Keeper. You can find his blog here.

Lee first came to my attention with a comment he posted about some of my thoughts on Israel. He is very concerned about war and peace in the Middle East (as we all should be), and particularly by the influence he sees in what he and others call the Israel Lobby. More particularly, he is concerned that in his view the Israel Lobby has a lock on American policy toward the region, preventing the United States from staking out any new position. That's a valid point.

What is the "Israel Lobby?" Not surprisingly, it is defined by its critics. It's centerpiece is AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. AIPAC doesn't make any bones about its stance: go to its website and you'll see that it bills itself as "America's Pro-Israel Lobby." Another part of what is often considered the Israel Lobby, although perhaps not so strident as AIPAC is the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations. (I can't help but wonder if anyone has been turned down for membership, because he or she is the president of a minor Jewish organization.) Then there is a less formal network of intellectuals and pundits (the terms may be partially interchangeable) and other machers. They are, of course, allied with many members of Congress, and have had the ear of vital members of all administrations as well.

One thing that ought to be noted is that most of those who raise alarums about the Israel Lobby oppose American policy in the Middle East more than they care about those who speak for Israel; I don't place Leanderthal in that group, but it would be fallacious to deny that they exist. The real objection of such people is not so much the Israel Lobby as its effectiveness. In the end, many of them are not friends of Israel.

Let me hasten to make clear that no one need be a friend of Israel to be a responsible participant in the debate over Middle East policy, although I have trouble taking seriously those who wish for the elimination of Israel from the list of the world's nations except, perhaps, as part of a very long-range hope that someday Israelis and Palestinians will freely and peacefully choose to be part of a single state. I don't happen to think that is likely to happen, ever (the dissolution of the Netherlands into what is now that country and Belgium, in 1830, was over issues not nearly as deep as those that divide Palestinians and Israelis, and I haven't heard calls for re-unification of the Low Countries), but one could make an intellectually respectable argument for it.

I should also note that debate over the role of the Israel Lobby, and the making of American policy, are perfectly legitimate topics. Indeed, American Jews debate them fiercely. Check out the Israel Policy Forum and the writings of blogger M.J. Rosenberg, who frequently differ with and often vociferously criticize the doings of the lobby. I have also disagreed frequently with the chauvinistic and unthinking attitude of some of Israel's more vociferous supporters.

But here's the thing: Right now, how much can US policy change? Don't the realities on the ground trump the desire for a bold new direction and push a debate about how Israel tries to affect American policy into the background?

For many years, I would daydream about what I would say to Israelis and Palestinians if I were the occupant of the Oval Office. As the first Jewish president, I would have some extra weight with the Israeli prime minister, and I would use it to tell him or her a few home truths. I would say that the time for settlements in the West Bank had passed, and that the time to remove them had arrived. I would tell the prime minister that the Palestinians have to get a state that pretty much runs along the borders of the West Bank in 1967, artificial as those were. For the settlers, I would suggest cash incentives and land--to the extent that a tiny state like Israel could find some--to induce them to move. For those who refused, I would advise telling them that, from a certain date a few years hence, they could live under Palestinian rule. I would make clear that Israel has to treat its Arab citizens the same way that it treats its Jewish ones. To the Palestinian prime minister--undoubtedly suspicious of this Jew in the White House--I would offer friendship and firm support for a Palestinian state. But I would tell him (it is hardly likely to be a woman at any time in the near future) that he had to suppress the violent elements in the Palestinian polity. No peace deal will work if people are firing rockets into Israel. And those who are still refugees in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan more than sixty years after the division of the British mandate have to give up the hope of return. Perfect is the enemy of good enough. Half a loaf is better than none, and so is half a land.

Would this frank talk prove the key to peace? Questionable at any time. (You may note that my home truths did not include Jerusalem, about which I have some ideas, but which is the hardest nut of all to crack.) But now? For the present, at least, my ideas are those of a dreamer at best, or maybe a crackpot. Given what happened in Gaza when Israel abandoned it, who could expect the Israelis to give unfettered domain in the West Bank to the Palestinians. Given the actions of Israeli settlers and police in the West Bank, how long a road must be traveled be before Palestinians find enough hope, let alone trust, to live in peace with their neighbors? Yet how can we expect Israel to give up security in the hope of peace? And all that is without regard to the recent fighting in Gaza. Given the power of the rejectionists of Hamas, Hezbollah and the right wing in Israel, who can envision a stable peace?

In the Middle East today, the parties, with the U.S. as the essential intermediary, need to devise the first small steps toward an ultimate accord. That will entail a complex, difficult and probably slow process that needs ingenuity and much patience.

But beside that, debates over the Israel Lobby seem like a distraction.

If you're so smart, why aren't we rich?

I'm no economist, but the Treasury's new plan looks like a reasonable approach to repairing the financial system. Yes, it is in many respects a re-run of the Bush administration's original proposal. And, yes, taxpayers will be subsidizing the same financial institutions that got us into this fix. But what else are we going to do? I don't see anyone proposing that we create a whole new banking system. Would nationalization--which is probably the way I would go were I in the Oval Office--really create a new group of banks? Or would it reshuffle the old ones?

What does bother me is not so much the idea of public-private partnerships or low interest loans to investors, but the administration's unwillingness to tell Wall Street that this is a new day. The AIG bonuses, tiny as they were compared to the amount that the company has received from us taxpayers, showed that the old culture remains all too intact. If we are to make basic, long-term progress, that needs to change. The people in charge of banks, hedge funds, stock brokerages and insurance companies need to learn an old truth: No one is irreplaceable.

Bernie's not so different from the rest of us

Thanks to Talkingpointsmemo.com for this one.

In case you haven't been to TPM, it seems that before Bernie Madoff's plea, the US Attorney's office for the Southern District of New York sent the judge a collection of emails from his victims. (Given that the US Attorney's office knew that the sentencing would not be that day, it's not clear what the purpose of forwarding the emails was.) You can find the cover letter here, with the emails attached.

Now, here's the reason for posting this: go to Page 36 of the document and read the email there.

See, Bernie really isn't all that different from you and me. Well, not in one respect, anyway.

Can you spot the howler?

Today, we're starting an occasional challenge: to spot the howler in a passage from a book or article. The answer will be published in a few days or perhaps a week.

Our first howler comes from Scott Turow's Ordinary Heroes. The woman referred to is a young woman in the liberate part of northern France, in October 1944. See if you can spot the howler. (Hint: this is a double howler; something Turow intended to give his work verisimilitude that was actually wrong.)

"The C rations are terrible," she said. "They are the best thing the American Army brought with them." She actually hugged her green pack of Luckys to her breast. "In Vichy, the women were banned from buying cigarettes altogether. Martin says that is why I had no choice but to join the resistance." She laughed at herself.

Can you spot the howler? If you think you have, post a comment below to tell us what it is. If your idea agrees with a prior comment, feel free to say so. There's no point in being different and wrong! All correct answers will result in a glow of satisfaction.

The President's interview

I watched President Obama's interview on 60 Minutes tonight. Nothing especially new in it, but I for one was reassured by his calm, and I wonder if that was not the main purpose of the appearance.

Mr. Obama's repeated declarations that he is the one finally responsible are heartening, given his predecessor's refusal to accept responsibility for anything, but sadly they are also made necessary by the lack of confidence that so many are expressing. In the last few weeks, Congressional Republicans seem to have found new energy; clearly, they believe they are getting traction with their negative campaign. Too little attention has been paid, as yet, to how much of that campaign, in addition to its negativity without any plan for the future, relies on the American people having such a poor collective remedy that we do not remember how much of what they now inveigh against were articles of Republican faith just a few months ago.

Regular readers will know that this page has been critical of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, and has questioned whether he can survive (or should). But I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that a year from now, while we are certainly not going to be in a time of prosperity--or even, perhaps, on the clear road back to good times--the American people will have accepted Mr. Obama's policy prescriptions and the Republicans will be seen as nothing more than a doomsday chorus.

Good news

Most of the people who routinely complain that the media concentrate on bad news will probably consider this more of the same, but in a step forward the state of New Mexico has abolished capital punishment. Gov. Bill Richardson, who has supported the death penalty in the past, signed a bill establishing life-without-parole as the state's most severe punishment.

Civilization advances slowly and with halting steps.

Borrowed time?

The Times joins the list of those questioning whether Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner can long endure.

From the article: "Fair or not, questions about why Mr. Geithner did not know sooner about the A.I.G. bonuses and act to stop them threaten to overwhelm his achievements and undermine Mr. Obama’s overall economic agenda."

What are the Secretary's achievements? Either because they have been slim, or hard to describe, or have not yet come to fruition, or because neither Treasury or the White House have been effective in getting them out to the people, they are hard to discern. That needs to change.

The Treasury Secretary's political weight needs to be heavy if the administration is going to get us out of our plight on its terms. Remember a few months ago, when Hank Paulson (Hank Paulson!) seemed to be running the country? Yes, I know, in those days of yore the Oval Office was for all intents and purposes vacant, but even a strong President needs a strong lieutenant at the Treasury. President Obama can't afford to spend his political capital on building up Tim Geithner's credibility; the Secretary will have to do that for himself. We need leadership, and not just from the President. If Mr. Geithner is not going to be an asset, he needs to get out of the way.

(And this from someone who paled at the thought of Larry Summers as Treasury Secretary in the Obama administration.)