Maybe this is all we can hope for–warcrimeswise. UPDATE III!!!
Shoe-Hurling Iraqi Becomes a Folk Hero
“Hitting someone with a shoe is a deep insult in the Arab world, signifying that the person being struck is as low as the dirt underneath the sole of a shoe. Compounding the insult were Mr. Zaidi’s words as he hurled his footwear at President Bush: “This is a gift from the Iraqis; this is the farewell kiss, you dog!” While calling someone a dog is never polite, among Arabs, who traditionally consider dogs unclean, the words were an even stronger slight.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/16/world/middleeast/16shoe.html?hp
Cat lovers please take note.
Update:
“The senior lawyer, Dheyaa Saadi, head of the Union of Lawyers in Iraq and one of the country’s most high-profile lawyers, said that he had volunteered to defend Mr. Zaidi if the judge elects to detain him pending further court hearings.
“I will introduce myself as his lawyer and demand the case be closed and Muntader be released because he did not commit a crime,” said Mr. Saadi. “He only freely expressed himself to the occupier, and he has such a right according to international law.”
“Under Iraqi law, Mr. Zaidi could face up to seven years in prison for the crime of initiating an aggressive act against a head of a foreign state on an official visit.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/17/world/middleeast/17iraq.html?_r=1&hp
On the street in Baghdad:
The next day, Lt. Miller told me that, out of nowhere, the man in the last house had announced that he wanted to apologize for the Shoe Incident, insisting that it not reflect poorly on all Iraqis.
I asked Lt. Miller what he said in return. He assured the man that it was OK, that they do not consider one Iraqi’s behavior indicative of the country, that this was what democracy can look like, etc.
And, he said, “I told him that a lot of the soldiers thought it was pretty funny.”
http://baghdadbureau.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/16/gis-in-sadr-city-laugh-off-shoe-hurling/?hp
On Wednesday, the Iraqi prosecutor called for a seven year prison term for al-Zaidi. Maybe Bush could issue one of his departing presidential pardons!
Also: “Iraqi journalist Muntazar al-Zaidi suffered, according to his brother, “suffered a broken hand, broken ribs and internal bleeding, as well as an eye injury” and had to go to hospital after he protested Bush’s press conference in Baghdad by throwing shoes at the president.” http://www.juancole.com/
Margaret, what point are you trying to make?
The point I got from the post was that after losing 4000+ American lives, several hundred thousand Irqai lives, the shoe throw seems to be Bush’s ‘greatest punishment’ disgrace so far.
That’s the point!
I was impressed, not for the first time, by the President’s unexpected ability to bob and weave.
And to round that off with a dismissive joke: “All I call tell you: it was a size 10.”
Yeah, that was a real thigh slapper, wasn’t it?
An American visitor to a school in Beirut’s southern suburb, where the Shiite militant group Hezbollah is popular, was besieged with questions from teachers and students alike, who wanted to know what Americans thought about the insult.
This American, who believes the United States had no just cause for invading and occupying Iraq, still wants to know whether there would have been any journalists who would have dared to throw shoes at (or even direct hostile questions to) a world leader visiting Saddam Hussein, and what would have happened to a journalist if he had.
From accounts I’ve read it sounds like the journalist was beaten by the Iraqi somebodies (perhaps directly outside of the press conference), just as he would have been under Saddam, and was thrown in jail, where, as far as I know, he remains. Under Saddam he probably would have been tortured and executed–let’s hope that is not his fate.
Hurling the shoe seemed — how shall I say it? — just so right!
Fortunately, the President wasn’t physically hurt, but I sure do hope this incident makes the history books someday.
Men make wars while women, children and the poor suffer in them. This young man deserves a lot of credit. He knew he was risking his life and limbs. Most importantly; what he said was true. The U.S, never more than under these hoods, has become determined by the politics of empire. John Paul II must get credit for his opposition as well as the American bishops. No tears were shed for all those women, orphans and children who were brutalized during this power motivated war. Sadly there is too much of a Christendom history to justify this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUDlV8B1aHw
Thanks for the Schussler Fiorenza link — she is right on target — we must recover Scripture as a power of salvation and break with those aspects of Scripture not connected therewith. Scripture has become a powerful bulwark of “power over…” in recent years, America’s power over the Middle East, straight power over gays, fundamentalists power over the bulk of Christians.
Bush will never be punished, he will be an eminence grise like Kissinger. The time to punish him was 2004 when he should not have been reelected. Those who reelected him were consenting to the death of 100,000s of Iraqis.
If someone had been hotheaded enough to throw shoes at Saddam Hussein, I imagine the word “shoes” would have been replaced with something more poetic — “wreaths of flowers,” perhaps? — by the time the story was reported in the press!
This young man deserves a lot of credit.
I don’t think I’d go that far. Just because you can throw things doesn’t mean you should… and journalists shouldn’t have to resort to throwing things. Of course, if this guy (or anyone) had thrown out pointed questions instead of shoes, we probably wouldn’t have heard much about it… But we also wouldn’t have the discomfiting image of an angry young man shouting in Arabic while throwing things at the president (and plainly intending to hit him). I think it’s fortunate Bush didn’t forget to duck, as it were.
I’ll be interested to see what kind of attack you will “hope for” against President Obama for his crimes against humanity.
Most people I’ve talked to found the incident somewhat humorous, saying that the Iraqi journalist was only doing what nearly everyone in America has wanted to do to Mr. Bush at some point in the past eight years.
Another Iraqi journalist who wrestled the shoe-thrower to the floor, however, took the incident more seriously. He said he feared that the show-throwing might have been a precursor to a suicide bomb attack that would have blown everyone in the room to smithereens.
Interesting how those of us who live safely away from the war and the widows and orphans have the luxury of humor.
Totally off-topic, but re Muslims and cat lovers–there’s an apocryphal story that Mohammed’s pet cat once fell asleep on the wide sleeve of his robe, and rather than wake the cat, the prophet cut off his sleeve. One of the tidbits I picked up about cats while looking for info about something else. Like all cat lore (not to mention cats themselves), it’s useless but endlessly interesting.
” and journalists shouldn’t have to resort to throwing things.”
Mollie, if you want to talk about journalists, they are one of the biggest reasons the Bush enclave were able to sell this war. Intimidated by the flag waving of Fox News, other media outlets followed suit in admiring preemptive war, idolizing its shock and awe.
Not that American journalists need to throw shoes. They could use a lot more integrity and courage.
A counter-intuitive suggestion – what if Bush had stopped the press briefing; reached out to the reporter; listened to his grievances; and showed him respect in the midst of this person’s frustrations. What if he had actually agreed with the suffering, loss, pain that these people have experienced and then directed the Iraqi’s to let him go home.
There is currently a lot being written about the go forward plans of the administration – divided between the hard school projecting US military might and the soft school which hopes to capitalize on Obama’s family history, Islamic roots, name, race, etc. Dating back to the 1980′s experts had warned against relying solely upon military might – it did not work for the English in Northern Ireland; it did not work for the Israeli’s in Palestine; etc.
It took courage for that reporter to do what he did.
I agree with you on that, Bill M. And that’s part of why I suspect we wouldn’t have heard much about it if Bush faced tough questions about the situation in Iraq and his responsibility for same, instead of projectiles. (The lack of a sensational visual is the other big reason.)
Matt B: I’m afraid you’ll have to wait at least until the man takes office!
Bill DeHaas expressed what I was thinking. What if, instead of joking as the man was beaten, Bush stopped and actually took in what was happening. I think Bush should ask for amnesty for Mr. Zaidi. Bush says he is a Christian. Whatever happened to “turn the other cheek”?
This harks back to an earlier discussion about “prophetic rhetoric” perhaps. Hurling a shoe is a prophetic gesture. And it has been appreciated as more “truth telling” than any news conference on the subject yet.
Today’s Times states that the Arabs have found a hero. People are even bidding for those shoes.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/16/world/middleeast/16shoe.html?_r=1&hp
Unbelievable.
This reminds me of when Reagan was shot – there was applause in my dining commons at college.
Everyone has personalized politics to the extent that they don’t understand that this was not just a personal assualt and insult to a man. Matt’s question is entirely appropriate. At some point the new president will do something that offends or alienates some one – what insults or assaults will be “understandable” then?
As for the “war crimes” angle, I ask a simple question. Were the people of Iraq better off under Sadaam?
Bill: That’s the story Peggy linked to in the post.
Jean: That’s a good point. And I don’t think it’s just our security that keeps us from seeing this story as more grave than humorous. No matter how many times I read that “Calling someone the ‘son of a shoe’ is one of the worst insults in Iraq,” as the NYT puts it, I still can’t quite lose my own sense that throwing shoes is silly and calling someone the “Son of a shoe” is sillier still. In the same way, as Michael Peppard’s cover story in the Dec. 5 Commonweal explained, it’s difficult for Christians to really understand what the Koran means to a believing Muslim.
Sean: Do you really think that’s a “simple” question?
What’s unbelievable, Sean, is that you would find the two incidents comparable. What kind of assault was it? How would you classify it legally? Assault with an orthopedic weapon? Even the president joked about it. Is he confused about the true nature of the incident too? That Iraqi was not simply insulted (although the president surely was). The Iraqis have not simply been insulted. That view, too, is unbelievable.
Even the president joked about it.
But, at least according to legend, so did the just-shot Reagan! That’s the one point on which I think it might be fair to compare these two incidents. Otherwise, though, no equivalency. (I’d also like to add that Bush has been known to joke about things I’d prefer him to take seriously.)
“A counter-intuitive suggestion – what if Bush had stopped the press briefing; reached out to the reporter; listened to his grievances; and showed him respect in the midst of this person’s frustrations. What if he had actually agreed with the suffering, loss, pain that these people have experienced and then directed the Iraqi’s to let him go home.”
Bill, I like the way you think.
“As for the “war crimes” angle, I ask a simple question. Were the people of Iraq better off under Sadaam?”
Here’s a simple answer.
The several hundred thousand Iraqis killed since we started the war were better off under Saddam. I hope I can say that without you accusing me of being a supporter of Sadaam Hussein.
Bush doesn’t get a pass on his crimes just because Sadaam was a bad man.
I don’t know, Mollie. I just can’t get the scales to balance. How seriously are we to take this? I don’t know. There is something distressing about the time it took for Secret Service agents to move in. But does the president understand why that Iraqi threw his shoes?
No, I agree with you, Grant — the scales don’t balance, and I can’t express how I feel about this whole incident in simple terms. (Whereas I can say I’m against presidents, or anyone else, being gunned down in the street, full stop, no qualifications.)
I don’t think we have any reason to believe that Bush gets, or cares, why that particular man was angry. If the man had expressed his anger in words (that Bush could understand) instead of throwing things, I still don’t know that Bush would have listened or cared. I like a good sense of humor as much as anybody, but part of me suspects that Bush was able to joke about this because he didn’t get it, the way he joked about “Oh, where are those WMDs?” Reagan’s pluckiness when wounded seems much simpler to me, because there was nothing for him to get in that particular instance.
It’s funny because it’s incongruous, but it’s not silly. It’s about honor and shame. The lowly Iraqi journalist shamed the American president. That’s what is being enjoyed. In a situation of irretrievable losses, what’s left? Honor and shame. And if we can’t see the situation “from below” enough to get this, we’re missing much.
BTW, the Iraqi Christians were definitely better off under Saddam Hussein. There is no one to protect them now that his secular regime is out, and they are getting persecuted right and left. Which doesn’t make me a supporter of Saddam either. Unagidon’s point is on target.
Not to worry:
“White House Press Secretary Dana Perino insisted Tuesday that President Bush has “no hard feelings” toward Muntazer al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist who threw a shoe at the president during remarks Sunday with Iraqi leader Nouri al-Maliki in Baghdad.
“I can’t tell you exactly what the shoe-thrower was thinking, but I can tell you what the president thought, was that he was fine. And he said immediately, you saw his reaction was, ‘Don’t worry about it’; it was OK,” Perino said during the White House briefing. “We hold no hard feelings about it, and we’ve really moved on.”
Perino was injured by a swinging microphone after the incident and still showed signs of bruising around her right eye.
The spokeswoman said Bush is “satisfied” with the Secret Service’s response, despite suggestions by some that the president’s security detail was slow to react. “He was well-protected by the Secret Service, as he always has been,” she said.
She was not asked specifically about reports that al-Zaidi was beaten up while in the custody of Iraqi police but did say that Bush told al-Maliki to not “worry about it” following the incident.
Perino added that the White House understands frustration among Iraqi civilians, but does not think the incident reflects the overall sentiment of the country.
“I know that there are people in Iraq who are angry, angry at their situation. It’s been a very rough five years,” she said. “I don’t think that you can take one guy throwing his shoe as representative of the people of Iraq.”
“The president just thinks that it was just a shoe; people express themselves in lots of different ways.”
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1208/16640.html
We’re not going to have WWIII over the shoe throwing; that’s good. But this comment from Dana Perino affirms suspicions that Bush didn’t get it–just a frat boy gesture, throwing shoes.
People, I understand that almost everyone on this blog thinks Bush is a moron – except of course when he is an evil genius. He understands all too well what this represents, I am sure. But what good would it do to dwell on it?
As for my question – I can make the argument – most certainly accurate – that more people died between 1939 and 1945 than otherwise might have because the Allies chose not to appease Hitler, but that doesn’t answer whether the world was better off with him gone. The same is true of Saddam.
Sean: “What good would it do to dwell on it?”
You’re joking, right?
Sean said: “People, I understand that almost everyone on this blog thinks Bush is a moron – except of course when he is an evil genius. He understands all too well what this represents, I am sure. But what good would it do to dwell on it?”
We dwell on it in part because there are people out there who still think that Bush was making sound decisions, both in principle and in practice with the Iraq War.
Sean said: “As for my question – I can make the argument – most certainly accurate – that more people died between 1939 and 1945 than otherwise might have because the Allies chose not to appease Hitler, but that doesn’t answer whether the world was better off with him gone. The same is true of Saddam.”
The same is not true for Saddam. First, no one was “appeasing” Saddam in the first place. Second, there is no parallel between Hitler and Saddam other than the fact that the two of them were bad men. Iraq in 2002 was not in any way like Germany in 1933 or 1939. There was no Iraqi political movement that any other country was trying to imitate nor was Iraq in any danger whatsoever of coming to dominate its region. Third, Iraq was not a threat to the United States.
But I think you know all of this and we have certainly hashed this out many times already.
I find it very American (and not very Catholic; I’ll get to why in a second) that Bush’s supporters try to outline extenuating circumstances in support of Bush that would exonerate him for this war. They will contrast Bush to Hussein (and in your case, you are doing this by drawing a parallel between Hussein and Hitler). They will talk about Bush’s “good intentions” in attacking Iraq. They will talk about some “principle” of “nation building”. This is the way that American criminal lawyers argue. We have become very used to this sort of thinking in the US and don’t think any more about the implications.
But as Catholics, we are said to believe in transcendent moral values. The question of whether Bush is guilty of war crimes and is culpable for the murder of innocents has nothing to do with whether Hussein was guilty of the same things (or worse), nor does it have anything to do with whether what Bush did seemed like a good idea to him at the time. These sorts of considerations are things that might mitigate punishment, but not expunge the crimes themselves. To claim that they do is, in my opinion, cowardice, not bravery. A brave person will admit that because of some principle they did the wrong thing and they will step forward and take their punishment for it. That is what moral courage really is.
This American confusion between conscience and morality (and we all do it) is what makes our moral discussions so incoherent. I am not saying that we should therefore dispense with conscience and apply ourselves to somebody’s idea of a Transcendent Moral Order rooted in the Truth. But if we don’t recognize the difference between the two AND take responsibility for our actions in this regard, we are going to continue to dance in all of this “wiggle room” that that I have heard some people claim that we have in regard to moral injunctions wherever the Pope has failed to speak ex cathedra. This wiggle room may very well just be the slack in the rope before the fatal snap.
What good does it do to dwell on it? Well, it’s like dwelling on a sore tooth. It’s there and it won’t go away.
What is it with Bush? Moron or evil genuis? Neither, I would guess. He is reported to be smarter than he seems. Reading Scott McClellan’s book I have the impression he has a modicum of native intelligence, but that he is not well-educated and not given to thinking through the complex issues he faced as president. He prefered to delegate to Cheney et al. And then act as “The Decider,” of policies others created.
His response to the shoe throwing was dismissive (showing, I suppose, that he’s a good guy), and humorous. That suggests to me an appallingly superficial grasp of his understanding about what the Iraqis have gone through and the degree to which he refuses to accept responsibility for their sufferings, the sufferings the occupation brought to them, and the sufferings that continue. Much the same personality emerges in his departure interviews–”so what”, etc.
Sean: Do you think the French or the British or the Dutch or the German Jews would have thrown shoes (or anything else handy) at FDR or Truman or Eisenhower? Your analogy doesn’t limp; it actually can’t crawl.
Unagidon
The fact is that around 2 million people died violently as a result of Saddam’s Bathist rule. He ran a police state in which institutionalized rape, torture, and murder were common. Not to mention the absence of niceities like free speech and freedom of religion, and the institution of a kleptocracy that kept the country impoverished. He regularly defied UN mandates which he had accepted with no consequence.
What I find confusing is the attempt to completely divorce the consequence, and in fact the aim, of removing Saddam and the Bathists from power from any discussion about this war. If you oppose the war, you must also admit that a possible, indeed a likely, outcome of that position is that Saddam would still be in power. It is not a question of camparing “badness” it is simply the common sense conclusion of that position. That being said, it seems to me that anyone opposing this war has to accept that outcome as at least a possibility, if not a likelihood, in explaining their position – and typically they don’t. It is easy to say, I oppose this war, but that doesn’t mean I support Saddam. Fair enough. But what you really should say -I oppose this war and accept as a potential outcome that Saddam would remain in power indefinitely.
David,
In July 1946 the Irgun bombed the King David Hotel – killing dozens of Brits – but I don’t know about shoes.
Sean said: “The fact is that around 2 million people died violently as a result of Saddam’s Bathist rule. He ran a police state in which institutionalized rape, torture, and murder were common. Not to mention the absence of niceities like free speech and freedom of religion, and the institution of a kleptocracy that kept the country impoverished. He regularly defied UN mandates which he had accepted with no consequence.”
It has been interesting to watch the number of Saddam’s murders rise as the number of Iraqis we have killed rises. In 2002, people were talking about 500,000.
Sean said: “What I find confusing is the attempt to completely divorce the consequence, and in fact the aim, of removing Saddam and the Bathists from power from any discussion about this war. If you oppose the war, you must also admit that a possible, indeed a likely, outcome of that position is that Saddam would still be in power. It is not a question of camparing “badness” it is simply the common sense conclusion of that position. That being said, it seems to me that anyone opposing this war has to accept that outcome as at least a possibility, if not a likelihood, in explaining their position – and typically they don’t. It is easy to say, I oppose this war, but that doesn’t mean I support Saddam. Fair enough. But what you really should say -I oppose this war and accept as a potential outcome that Saddam would remain in power indefinitely.”
I don’t know whether Saddam would still be in power and neither do you. So it doesn’t follow that we had to kill a couple of hundred thousand people to remove Saddam. Or to put it another way, even if there had been a pressing need for us to kill Saddam (and him being a bad guy does not constitute a pressing need for us to kill people) it does not follow that everything that happened after we killed him was inevitable nor that we get a pass for any of it whatsoever. We don’t accept “mistakes were made” as an excuse for people over the age of 12, even in the United States. At least we’re not supposed to.
“I don’t know whether Saddam would still be in power and neither do you. So it doesn’t follow that we had to kill a couple of hundred thousand people to remove Saddam. ”
Those couple of hundred thousand, of course, are attributable to the war and its aftermath (not all of which should be laid at the feet of the Bush Adminisration, btw, but there is still plenty of blame left for them). But probably we should also count the hundreds of thousands, perhaps as many as one million, Iraqis that are said to have died as a result of the UN’s misbegotten sanctions, supported by the United States (both Democratic and Republican administrations), throughout the 1990s.
http://www.globalissues.org/article/105/effects-of-sanctions
Needless to say, the sanctions failed to remove Saddam from power.
FWIW – I opposed the Iraqi invasion. But there are situations that seem to call for … something. How much longer is the world going to countenance Mugabe’s misrule? It seems that Zimbabweans are incapable of removing him from power. Does the rest of the world have any just options?
Far be it from me not to be a wet blanket on the discussion about Iraq, but is there some one on this blog who is knows a great deal about the country? about Islam? about Iran? about the political situation in the Middle East? Anyone who knows the languages? Anyone who knows a detailed history of the area? What of Kuwait? of Dubai? of the Arab emirates? Of the role of Saudi Arabia?
What information was supplied by the generally accurate Israeli services?
Or is all the information derived from newspaper and television accounts?
It seems to me that one may pay one’s money and pick whatever professor’s opinion one chooses. But is anyone dealing in certifiable facts?
We live in a democracy. That democracy’s representatives voted to move into Iraq – twice. As Chesterton pointed out, the fact of being a democracy does not include automatically include morality.
Far be it from me not to be a wet blanket on the discussion about Iraq, but is there some one on this blog who is knows a great deal about the country? about Islam? about Iran? about the political situation in the Middle East? Anyone who knows the languages? Anyone who knows a detailed history of the area? What of Kuwait? of Dubai? of the Arab emirates? Of the role of Saudi Arabia?
Well, it’s hard to figure out any specific area of expertise for most of the blog’s contributors, given that there seems to have been a 100-character limit on their biographies. :)
Gabriel, there is no shortage of in-depth book treatments and government documents, both internal and public, that show that we were misled into war and that the prosecution of the war and its aftermath were a debacle that could have been avoided at almost any step in the process. I don’t think you could find anyone who could make an argument to the contrary, and no one this side of Hugh Hewitt who would try.
I thought it was a frightening security breach – embarrassing for the Secret Service, which has a lot of explaining to do. How did the man manage to throw a second shoe? I appreciated the wordplay of some of our local headlines (“Lame Duck” – NY Post; “Shoe-icide Attack,” NY Daily News), but it’s a serious issue. The LA Times explored this:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/washingtondc/la-fg-secretservice16-2008dec16,0,3021640.story
Gabriel said: “It seems to me that one may pay one’s money and pick whatever professor’s opinion one chooses. But is anyone dealing in certifiable facts?
We live in a democracy. That democracy’s representatives voted to move into Iraq – twice. As Chesterton pointed out, the fact of being a democracy does not include automatically include morality.”
I suppose that one could make a case that voting on anything other than on what one is an expert on is a coin toss. And since the facts of faith are even less “certifiable” the same case could be made in spades for whatever morality you might choose.
But here is a certifiable fact for you. We can now see much of this thing in hindsight. We can use what we see to sharpen our foresight, which we are going to need to do I’m pretty sure that all of your professors (including the relativists) think that we are going to be in that part of the world for a long time to come. And maybe you can help Bush develop his “who knew?” defense. It sounds like a very good one.
“Matt B: I’m afraid you’ll have to wait at least until the man takes office!”
Actually, I don’t believe that is correct. President-Elect Obama could be prosecuted right now for statutory conspiracy to anticipatorily breech the Geneva Conventions, The United Nations Charter, and the Nuremberg Principles, as well as U.S. law (e.g. the US Army Field Manual 27-10) for that matter, for his multiple public statements during the presidential campaign regarding his intent to plan attacks intended to assassinate civilians and non-uniformed alien combatants.
And regarding President Bush, shouldn’t we deal with prosecuting President Clinton for war crimes first? Why the rush to try President Bush when President Clinton is still allowed to go unprosecuted?
MAT et al. It’s a sad day for our country when conservatives and neo-cons are just getting plain silly! Get a grip!
I didn’t realize the “sill”[iness] of war crimes is a function of one’s political party affiliation. That’s what is sad in my view.
MAT said: “And regarding President Bush, shouldn’t we deal with prosecuting President Clinton for war crimes first? Why the rush to try President Bush when President Clinton is still allowed to go unprosecuted?”
This should be addressed relative to my points on American styles of moral thinking.
This statement does two things. It tries to derail the conversation by accusing what MAT thinks are partisan Democrats by calling them hypocrites. Second, by trying to transform this into a partisan issue, he implies that Bush’s war crimes are simply a secular problem of political realism. “Everybody does it” moves the discussion out of the ethical sphere. A sub-species of this is the (currently all too “conservative” argument) that we see here frequently that in a real world with real enemies it’s all fine and good to have moral principles, but hard nosed realism sometimes requires that we dispense with them. We see this sort of argument on the Left as well; it’s a common modern rationale for the use of violence.
I think for a moral argument point of view both the attempt to derail a discussion by claiming hypocracy and by recasting the argument as a secular problem of power are both degenerate arguments.
Finally, since MAT is saddened by what he thinks is political partisanship in the discussion of war crimes, something that he could not claim unless he thinks that (in this context) Bush is guilty of war crimes, I wonder if he could expand on his understanding of Bush’s guilt?
Unagidon: I have no understanding of President Bush’s guilt. However, he can certainly be tried for violations of the Geneva Conventions, The United Nations Charter, the Nuremberg Principles, and American law. The low-hanging fruit are certainly the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – they both clearly violate Chapter 1, Article 2 of the UN Charter as well as Principle VI (a) of the Nuremberg Principles. Also, the assassination of members of Al-Qaeda, along with the ongoing conspiracy to do so, constitutes violations of U.S. law as well as the Geneva Conventions.
“This statement does two things. It tries to derail the conversation by accusing what MAT thinks are partisan Democrats by calling them hypocrites. Second, by trying to transform this into a partisan issue, he implies that Bush’s war crimes are simply a secular problem of political realism.”
I never called anyone a hypocrite, but yes, of course this is a partisan issue about punishing your political enemies and has nothing to do with justice or the law. That’s why there is no outcry for a trial for President Carter for selling weapons to Suharto knowing he was using them to commit genocide in East Timor or for President Clinton’s bombing and occupation of Muslim Bosnia or his war crimes in Kosovo. What else explains the silence regarding the torture safe-houses of JFK and LBJ in Maryland and Virginia where, just to pick-out one famous example, Nosenko was tortured for 1,300 days using techniques which include drug-induced psychosis, electrocution, and physical beatings resulting in near organ-failure and whose documentation was finally released in 2007 with the Family Jewels? Or the manual on torture (KUBARK) which JFK and LBJ wrote and was also revealed in 2007? Or how about the ICTY – why is it that nobody is writing blog postings about over nearly a half-dozen innocent people who died in incarceration there, including 3 by suicide, in The Hague (out of about 100 – that’s 6% or 36x the rate of 0.2% – 108 deaths out of 65,000 processed – in the GWOT) without being convicted of any crimes?
No, this isn’t a partisan issue if we take your own example. There is no reason whatsoever why partisans of Bush or of the GOP wouldn’t be blogging about the things that you mention, yet they don’t seem to be. You are, in fact, about the only person I have seen suggesting that Carter be tried. JFK and LBJ, of course, are a bit dead to be hauled to the dock at this point. Now it could be that thicker mud would stick to the GOP in the matter of war crimes. But I just don’t see a partisan conspiracy in a climate where people are still actively promoting the nonsense that Obama is not an American citizen.
But even so, on this particular blog, why wouldn’t it be licit to talk about war crimes as such?
The collection of political cartoons dealiing with this issue over at the Slate is worth a look.
See http://cartoonbox.slate.com/static/51.html
But even so, on this particular blog, why wouldn’t it be licit to talk about war crimes as such?
I could be wrong, but I see him as arguing not that it’s illicit to talk about war crimes per se, but that it’s wrong to profess interest only in putting your political opponents on trial, while saying that it’s “silly” even to wonder whether your own team has been clean. Note: I’m sure you could find any number of examples of the exact same hypocrisy from Republicans who conveniently came up with principles by which Clinton, and only Clinton, engaged in behavior worthy of impeachment and removal from office.
Do we need to parse the issue a bit finer?
War crimes are committed in all wars. The bombing of Nagasaki (after seeing what an atom bomb could do in Hiroshima) was a war crime. Robert McNamara as Secretary of Defense during Vietnam presided over a number of military decisions that probably constituted war crimes (about which he seemed oblivious in Errol Morris’s documentary “Fog of War”), ditto LBJ. I don’t see the Carter crime; what am I missing? Ronald Reagan’s administration indulged in various illegal military activities in Central America and probably elsewhere; these were treated as domestic crimes; there were some convictions (Poindexter, North, Abrams), but as I recall no jail time. Clinton and Serbia? There was “collatoral damage” that’s for sure, but war crimes, I don’t see it.
Why is the Bush Administration different, if it is? It’s different because it repudiated an array of international and domestic legal restrictions that permitted war crimes to be carried out by the military and by intelligence agencies. It established a “legal” illegal framework that permitted, encouraged, and perhaps even forced U.S. military and civilian to commit acts that constitute war crimes. In all of the cases cited above (except perhaps Iran-Contra, etc.), I don’t see that an administration mounted a wholesale effort to legalize war crimes. That’s what makes this administration different, and which distinguishes it from previous ones.
As Ross Douthat points out today, it’s worth recalling where the practice of extraordinary rendition started. The quote is from Richard Clarke’s book:
So here we have Gore on record “repudiat[ing] an array of international and domestic legal restrictions.” War crime, or not? Parse away.
I think that the Iraqi reporter, rather than expressing his contempt in a manner meaningful to Iraqis, should have flipped Dubya the bird and then said what he said. What a more American act that would have been and all of our righteous indignation would have given way to a good old “Kewwwwwwwwwl”