Winners and Losers

This has just been a law heavy series of posts that have come through the woodwork hasn’t it? I mean it’s pretty unavoidable with a blog like this and the subject of most news stories recently, even as Iraq descends into further chaos.  But I still have at least one big story to talk about concerning the Supreme Court’s series of decisions that came out this pas week.  And this is the one that has probably gotten the biggest amount of attention payed to it in my circle of friends.  Yes today we’re going to talk about the issues we face by living in a society that prizes personal liberty above all else, even when it is at the expense of the privacy and desires of other people.  The courts have ruled in a unanimous decision that the 2007 law enacted by Massachusetts to provide  35 foot buffer zone between anti-abortion protesters and facilities that offer abortion services put too great a burden on the first amendment rights of the protesters.

Although I do understand the rationale that went into the decision that was passed, I was more than a little surprised that there wasn’t at least one dissenting voice in the high court.  After all the law that was passed in Massachusetts, and then mimicked in other states, was not created in a vacuum.  See, despite claiming to be “pro-life” some of the most extreme activists on this issue have committed murder to fulfill what they believed was their duty to society.  And not merely limiting their attacks to the doctors who actually provide these services to women, in 1994 a shooter killed two staff members of Planned Parenthood in Brookline, Massachusetts.  The shooter then went down to Virginia to attack another clinic, and in response to this violence there was a call for some level of safety from the most violent elements of the anti-abortion movement.  But it’s not even as simple as that.

For anyone who hasn’t seen the types of protests that are held outside of Planned Parenthood facilities, let me just say they are vile.  Even setting aside the legitimacy of using those horrid pictures and yelling obscene things at employees, patients, and onlookers it is truly repugnant what these protesters do when there is no buffer at all.  Private property laws do allow clinics to keep the protestors off their grounds but the moment you get to the pavement on the other side of that property it is a public space, a public space filled with protestors who will do every thing in their power to keep people from entering the clinic.  Planned Parenthood, as I’ve discussed before, is not a company defined by abortions, which account for about 3% of its total services.  But the hoards of protestors who attend this blockade for patients and employees of all stripes who try to go in or out to pass a barrier of insults, shame, and hate called love by the other side.  Having worked in Virginia and seeing these groups constantly outside clinics I would find it an act of courage just to go in for a check up, let alone if you went there having made the difficult decision to have a safe and legal abortion.

In Massachusetts these groups have been kept at a distance of 35 feet from the facility, which for many who are making that hardest choice still makes the process harder, but creates an unforeseen consequence.  If you listen to some of the proponents of this Supreme Court decision, they say that now they will be able to have the calm and quiet conversations that weren’t possible before.  It is true that many anti-abortion activists want to talk quietly with women who are about to undergo an abortion to convince them not to go through with it, as if it were their place to get in between a woman and her doctor.  But I will certainly grant the argument that it would be preferable to have calm conversations over the screaming and vitriolic protests that occur when people are kept far away and feel that the only way they can be heard is by turning up the volume.  And yet I feel as if I’m only giving half the story so far.

There is a reason why so many different, and often opposed, groups lift up the first amendment to the Constitution as the most important.  “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”  That covers a lot of ground in a very short space.  By creating these great buffers the government, although not specifically Congress, had abridged the freedom of speech and peaceable assembly for those who are against safe and legal abortions.  And as much as we may dislike the choices people make with their rights, we have to accept that they are entitled to them.

The Supreme Court made the technically correct position that the rights of these activists must be upheld, even though they have thus taken away a great measure of security from those who go to these clinics.  Like the Westboro Baptist Church(WBC) they are entitled to say truly horrific things in accordance with their first amendment rights, but I find it odd that the courts have yet to make a strong comment about buffers before this.  Those same WBC protesters won their legal battle, in part, because their protests are generally hundreds of yards away from the funerals they target.  So it seems that it is much simpler to defend their rights, as they already accept a respectful distance, than it would to defend protesters who literally get right up in the faces of the people and clinics they target.  What’s more, so far as I know, WBC has never been involved with any violent attacks on others, much less murder.  And this is why I am uncomfortable with the full ruling and skeptical of why the conservative Justices ruled the way they did.

Whereas the liberal Justices were clearly ruling against groups that they would tend to favor, and some would argue thus defending liberties for liberal protest groups as well, the conservative Justices were certainly on the side of those who won in this decision.  I find it hard to believe that it would have been the same 9-0 decision had the protesters in question been environmental activists aligned with people who may have attacked various businesses and research facilities.  I would tend to believe that this was an opportunity for conservatives, not to defend personal liberty, but to advance the agendas of people who are closing down clinics all over the country and seeking to dismantle Roe v Wade.  After all the response to eco-terrorism was not simply limited to the actual perpetrators of the crimes, whereas police response to anti-abortion terrorists has been strictly limited to just those who actually perpetrate the crime, and as far as I know that inconsistency remains unresolved.

So although it could be said that this decision was a win for anyone who values personal freedom, particularly the freedom to express unpopular opinions, it can also be seen as a potential loss of other freedoms down the road.  I can only hope that my suspicions about the conservative Justices is unfounded and they were simply living up to the full measure of freedom that has been carefully carved out for every person within our borders.  What’s more, I hope that the staff and patients of Planned Parenthood clinics across this country will remain safe in spite of this decision.  If not then I would have to conclude that it is a decision that ensure that women will ever be the losers at the hands of a judgmental few.

Vengeance of the Law

I was going to write about one of the other big decisions made by the Supreme Court in the past week, namely the one about buffer zones around Planned Parenthood facilities in Massachusetts, but I’m actually going to save that one for tomorrow.  The reason being is that I saw a video that reminded me of a subject that I really wanted to talk about a while back.  Because of a few different issues concerning my work schedule, the functioning(or lack there of) of my laptop, and just absent mindedness, I forgot to actually write about it.  So as to avoid making that mistake again, today I want to talk about what we think justice is in response to truly vile crimes.

After the George Zimmerman trial came to a close there was a brief moment where the crowd on the side of Trayvon Martin were understandably devastated, but then life moved on.  And during the whole preceding I tried my best to keep from passing judgement of my own because I am a firm believer that everyone, regardless of the person or the crime, is entitled to their day in court and the presumption of innocence until proven otherwise.  Even then you are completely within your right to continue to believe in someone’s innocence because, let’s face it, the courts do get it wrong on occasion.  But then, as now, I think that there was definitely a case to be made that Mr Zimmerman got away with a truly horrendous act, killing if not murder, and I wondered to myself was justice done?  More specifically I thought about the signs that people carried “Justice for Trayvon,” was this justice for Trayvon and more importantly is justice due to him?

If a person is wronged, society should work to try and atone for this, but I think we all understand that atonement does not mean answering a wrong with a wrong.  In the case of theft the victim is entitled to their property returned as well as compensation for the injustice and inconvenience done, but what happens when a person takes a life?  On the one hand if we were following the same model as theft, the perpetrator should have to give back the life and then some, but this is clearly not possible.  A murderer, even if they are truly repentant, cannot give back the life they took, and for that reason many people accept the idea of them paying with their own life, either by spending the rest of it in prison or by capital means.  But again, I think that the majority of people understand that this too isn’t right.  Regardless of who you are, you must have heard some variation of the phrase “an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.”

We understand that retribution is not the same thing as justice, but when we see such injustice we can’t help but give in to our basest instincts.  If it were your child, surely you would want the person who took that precious life to pay dearly, but I ask you is that justice?  By taking another life you are not given back the life that was taken, and nothing more is given to try and make up for the injustice done.  Surely then this is a lesser compensation for theft and all the more cruel because it assumes that theft from another makes it alright.  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmrMwYDlVDo

This is the video that reminded me of the topic in the first place, and I have to say that he is wrong for all the right reasons.  It is a cruel and disgusting thing to take a life, all the worse when the life taken was already so burdened, and still worse that it was done in such a particularly brutal way.  Even if it was simply an accident, and how could you come to the conclusion that it was an accident, it is only natural to believe the people who killed Steven Simpson deserve a harsher punishment than three and a half years.  But as you listen to his voice it is clear that what he wants is not justice but vengeance, which as so many defenders of Mr Zimmerman pointed out are not the same thing.  It only gets worse when you look at the comments, all the people who want so much worse for the perpetrator, including ending his life as well.  And although in general I really like this Youtubers videos in general I have to say that although I empathize with the sentiment I have to disagree with the implied conclusion.

We can’t bring ourselves down to the level of the worst of our society.  It must always be our goal to lift them up wherever they are.  And here I’m not talking about simply refraining from the death penalty for murderers and worse, but as the way we treat all the worst off in our society.  I am a progressive, and I firmly believe that any society must be judged by how we treat our poor and needy, our defenseless and sick, and yes even our most wicked.  And although this does mean that those with means should be expected to contribute more to the society that allows for their existence it doesn’t mean punitive taxation to bring them down to the level of those without.  So too with our criminals, our goal should always be to lift them out of their crimes and not to bring ourselves to their level in the first place.  This is why I believe it’s time we consider how we think about prisons and the role of incarceration in the pursuit of justice.

Undoubtedly, the man who killed Steven Simpson deserves to spend time in jail, but our goal should never be to make that time as large as possible.  The role of prison as a punishment is important, but not as important as the reformation of the criminal.  Even if you take it simply as a cold economic matter, we gain little by promoting a system that keeps people locked up, at public expense, while making their contributions to society impossible.  What’s worse is that in many systems we do force prisoners to “contribute” to society by forcing them to work for pennies on the dollar, and then when they do leave create a system that makes it nearly impossible for them to find legitimate work.  

I’ve made several posts about similar issues regarding the conditions that lead to crime, the problems of privatizing prisons, the alternative system of Norway, etc.  And it is because I remain firm in my belief that there is nothing a person can do to be any less than that.  Humanity is defined both by our greatest achievements and our most shameful crimes, and criminals are thus exemplary of only one side of that spectrum, but still human.  Justice for the slain can only come by giving back a life, not by taking another away.  Our goal needs to be the reformation of criminals, thus returning a life, and then requiring a service from the reformed criminals to be payed back to the families they wronged if the families accept it  I can understand why a family would never want to interact with a person who so wronged them, even if he/she has been completely reformed, so it should be their choice.  But beyond that our goal should be to treat those who exit the prison system as citizens like any other, with voting rights and working rights restored.

To paraphrase what a famous president said in his ambition to make a country that was capable of doing unthinkably great things, We choose to do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.  We must never settle for the imperfect systems of the past and the compromised justice of earlier people.  And even though it will hurt, and even though it may seem impossible, we must remain convinced that it and anything that we commit ourselves to is possible.  Humanity has done so much ill and so much good, but we should settle for nothing less than the pursuit of a humanity where we can proudly claim that we did not give in, but overcame. 

The Rules of the Game

I’ve been mulling over the idea of going case by case with the decisions that the Supreme Court of the United States(SCOTUS) has made over this past week, and although I still am considering that I feel that at the very least to start with I should discuss an issue that kind of blankets all of them.  You see it is not a particularly common event that all the Justices agree on an issue and even rarer that they would all agree repeatedly in a short amount of time.  I think it’s worthwhile to point out the rules that guide how these decisions are made, both the written rules and the less tangible ones, because I don’t think it’s a coincidence that these decisions occurred under a Democratic presidency.

I give my audience the credit enough to understand the purpose of SCOTUS but how they come to make their decisions is a much more difficult subject.  Although we like to think of a urge as an impartial witness, blindly doling out the correct judgment as prescribed by the law, the constant disagreements between them show that it is not always so cut and dry as all that.  At this point I think most people are well aware that there is something of a conservative advantage in SCOTUS, and in spite of this the world keeps spinning.  there are nine Justices of SCOTUS and they are usually broken up into the conservative: Scalia, Thomas, Alito, and Chief Justice Roberts: the liberals: Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan: and the supposed tie breaker: Kennedy.  Now Justice Anthony Kennedy actually tends to have something of an economic conservative streak to him, but he does usually end up on the more moderate side of things over all.  And of course with the battle over the ACA, it was actually Chief Justice John Roberts who ended up being the deciding vote.  But it is almost always an easy bet exactly where Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito will end up on a given issue, that is to say far to the right.

With these recent decisions though there has been an odd wrench thrown into the works, the issues hit on the ground where conservatism and liberalism meet, that is to say personal liberty.  I should be, perhaps, a little more specific here, as it is really the ground that shows the common ancestor between liberal and libertarian. I’m not trying trying to say that conservatism and libertarianism are the same thing, though they do share a lot in common, because these Justices are certainly conservative before libertarian as their record on gay rights, birth control, and minority rights tend to show.  But I’m drifting slightly off topic, the point is that the majority of these decisions focus on some of the most fundamental rights we hold dear, that is to say those that are highlighted within the Bill of Rights.

SCOTUS was presented with with a case centering around the right to privacy as defined in the 4th Amendment.  Basically the fact that cellphones are such a recent invention has made them, up to now, fairly overlooked in discussions about search and seizure.  When a police officer arrests you they check you for anything that you may be carrying, but once they have your cellphone do they have the right to search it?  The response of the Court has been a resounding “No,” but not necessarily for the same reasons.  The conservative Justices have been itching for the case to come up where they would be able to start defining what, in the digital age, will be protected by the rights to privacy that are outlined int he Constitution.  And this is one of those occasions where they are actually right and not simply far Right.  Although the liberal Justices were thinking of it more in the context of protecting the rights of the accused and arrested as well as broader implications of the decision, the conservative Justices were much more focused on the idea of protecting personal property.  And although I might argue that they came to the decision for the wrong reasons, they did come to the right decision so who’s going to complain.  The consensus of the Court remains, if the police want to rifle through your personal property they have to obtain a warrant first, unless there is a reasonable exception where the lives of the officers are in clear and present danger.

But where as this decision is an example of the Justices coming together for a good decision based on the personal values of freedom that are held in common among all Americans, the decision concerning presidential appointments is something a little different.  See I’ve been thinking it through and the only conclusion I can come to is that this decision could only occur under a Democratic president, and not for the reasons Tea Partiers might expect.  The Democrats have been lampooned for a while now as being rather spineless, as opposed to the brainless or heartless label that is pinned on the GOP, and there is some truth to all of that.  Democrats, as a result of being a very diverse party, tend not to make the big waves that Republicans do when it comes to confronting the highest office, and I think this is almost a compliment for the GOP so enjoy it.  I’m not opposed to the idea of the Legislature being antagonistic to the Executive, it’s part and parcel of the balance of power that was created to ensure that no one person could take control of the government, but there’s a line between antagonism and obstruction.

The GOP had made it its mission to keep President Obama from winning a second term, and they failed, but their strategy to accomplish this has been and continues to be to keep the president from getting anything done.  I applauded the message of this year’s State of the Union Address, in which President Obama vowed to use his full Executive authority if the Legislature was going to continue their obstruction.  Part of the way he was able to get things done, even routine things like appointing people to positions, has been by waiting for periods of recess from Congress to use a slight loophole that grants the president the authority to do so without congressional approval.  This privilege has been extended to every president, but you know what, he did actually make a mistake.  Congress was technically in session at the time of some appointments, though an outside observer could be forgiven for not being able to tell the difference.  But here’s where the party affiliation thing becomes important, although they’re technically right, only the GOP would actually go after the president for this.

Democrats give in at nearly every opportunity and the result is that even Republican presidents get away with just about anything unless they literally commit a crime, e.g. Watergate.  So you just don’t see the need, if you are a Republican president, to go through all these extra hoops to get things done, though occasionally it can grease the wheel a bit.  But for a Democratic president, particularly this Democratic president, good luck getting the Republicans to do anything, and I mean anything that might be considered in your favor.  But now that it is an issue how does SCOTUS respond?

Well the conservative Justices ruled against Obama basically because they wanted to and the liberal Justices ruled against him because he was technically in the wrong, but I wonder how it would be if there was an R after the Presidents name.  See, I don’t claim that the liberal Justices lack any sort of bias, we all do, but they have proven that they are willing to put aside personal motives and biases when it comes to making their rulings.  The conservatives on the other hand can’t help but give into their most base feelings.  Even when he has a fairly well known conflict of interest Justice Thomas has shown no indication that he would ever recuse himself.  Ditto Justice Scalia, but Justice Kagan recused herself when it came to the highly divisive Arizona illegal immigrant legislation case.  So I’m not just blowing smoke when I say that if it were a Republican administration in the same position it would not have been a 9-0 decision.  I’m not saying that justice would have been avoided, but there would have been a dissenting opinion written.

So now I’ll let you in on the real rules of the game that I hinted to in the title: The Democrats will play ball and the Republicans will cry until the rules change in their favor and then still refuse to play.  And since that is the case, my fair and balanced decision would have to be, if you can’t play fair you can’t play at all. 

Football Politics

So everyone’s least favorite conservative pundit is making her rounds again because of a short piece she wrote in response to the World Cup mania that has certainly taken hold of most of the world and even a surprising amount of America.  And before I get going I feel I should tip my hand on this front, I’m just not a big fa of soccer myself.  I mean let’s be really honest, I’m not the biggest fan of professional sports in general, but I do like to catch the occasional hockey game, I’ll watch football(American football) with some interest, and heck if it’s a nice day and beer is served I’ll even watch baseball.  Soccer just isn’t my cup of tea, but you know what, who the hell cares?

Soccer, and I am going to continue to use this term because I am American and I think many countries get away with the lie that all countries other than the USA refer to it as some derivation of football(Australia, Japan, etc.), is a game that means a great deal to many people.  For some soccer is something of a sport of necessity as all you really need is a space to play and a ball, the rest can basically be agreed upon by the people playing.  Football requires a specific ball, volleyball needs a net, baseball demands a bat if not gloves as well, hockey needs ice and sticks and a puck and skates and if you want to play it right enough padding to get in a few good hits.  And for some soccer is a sport of opportunity in a way that it simply isn’t in the United States right now, and that is basically the reason why Ms Coulter has gotten herself so hot and bothered over nothing.

Football, Basketball, and baseball attract a part of our population that finds itself pretty disenfranchised from the rest of society.  These sports are raised up as a way for the talented few to gain fame and fortune, an opportunity that is simply not afforded to the countless other people in their neighborhood that simply don’t play at that level.  Certainly as an alternative to a life working minimum wage jobs or less than legal practices, the opportunities presented by the NFL and the NBA seem to be a lifesaver.  But soccer in the US has been for a long time the sport of the suburbs.  Soccer remains for many in the US the sport that parents encourage their kids to participate in to get off the couch on the weekends.  By the time you get to high school there usually is a division between the varsity team and the rest, but the rest certainly fits the previously mentioned mold.  For the rest of the world, though, soccer fills the role of all the other major sports in America, with some notable exceptions, I don’t want to piss off rugby teams after all.

Soccer is the sport of the disenfranchised portions of most the rest of the world, with exceptions of course just as there are exceptions in the other American sports.  And even though I’m not the biggest fan of soccer, even I have a hard time identifying the sport she describes in her bizarre attempt at, for lack of a better term, analysis.  The complaint she begins with it that it is not a sport in which individual achievement matters.  Ok, if she means that it is a team sport, then that would certainly count against what she calls “real sports.”  But she clarifies that there are moments in a “real sport” where players fumble or fail, as if the same thing doesn’t happen in soccer.  Teamwork is indeed crucial to a successful team, but I find it hard to believe that even she is stupid enough to not see the importance of individuals as certain ones get lifted up and the rest rarely talked about, e.g. Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi.

But instead of going point by point with this, let’s just focus on her conclusion.  That because this sport doesn’t have the same popularity here as elsewhere it is an un-American sport, that the only “Americans” who watch it are immigrants with un-American beliefs, and that if they want to be American that they need to stop liking soccer and start learning English.  Let’s just set aside the idiotic irony of saying the only way a person can be American is by speaking English, and narrow in on the real problem here, her idea that there is an ideal American standard that we all need to mimic.  I’m sorry Ms Coulter, but aside from being simply heartless and stupid, you are the truly un-American one if you actually belief that crock you spew.

America’s greatest asset has always been that we are a nation of mutts and proudly so.  We eat spaghetti, tacos, mapo tofu, sushi, hot dogs, and apple pie which are not at all “American” in the sense that she uses the word and yet are uniquely American because we claim them as our own.  Some Americans speak Spanish, some Portuguese, some German, some Mandarin, and some French.  Some Americans eat Kimchi and others eat, however unfortunately, Lutefisk.  We are more than the stereotype of the loud American that she seems to hold as the ideal.  In some bizarre inversion of the eugenic idea of a master race, she seems to believe that the obnoxious, uncultured, xenophobic, aggressive brute is what we should all aspire to.  We shun the idea of the metric system because foreigners made it up, as if we came up with imperial measurements.  We disdain foreign cultures, as if our founding myth don’t involve a group of religious refugees barging into a completely foreign land.

America is a land of diverse people spread over enormous stretches of land each with their own histories and traditions.  Unlike more homogenous nations it is in our differences that we are unified, giving meaning to what was once our national motto E Pluribus Unum, Out of Many One.  Americans come in every size, shape, color, and creed and if you think otherwise then I’m sorry it’s because your head has been so long up your own ass that you have lost the ability to see.  Don’t worry once you pull it out, your eyes will adjust to the sunlight again.

And yes, Americans like all sorts of things.  Some like opera or musical theater, some like Game of Thrones or Star Wars, some like wine others whiskey, some like MMA still others think that professional wrestling is real, some like to keep up with trends and some think that’s just too mainstream, some like the Red Sox and some people are wrong, and yes some Americans like soccer.  In fact it seems a great number of people like to cheer for their own country when we compete on a world stage, strange I would have thought the conservatives would be first in line to do so.  And perhaps best of all, our team is as international as our nation.  There are guys from England, Germany, Turkey, Netherlands, and Mexico alongside others born within the States, but whereas on any other team it would seem odd that they all play on this one national team in America it makes perfect sense.

That’s because America is more than the old white men she suckles to stay well paid and even more than the rational people who are both disgusted by her and yet responsible for her notoriety, guilty.  America is a land where you are free to pursue your own idea of happiness, to commune with your friends and family at a sports bar to watch the game or not.  America is a land where you are free to live as best suits you, to find the person who completes your life, regardless of gender, and settle down to watch the game or not.  And yes America is a country where you are free to say ignorant and distasteful things and to even get paid for it all before settling into your dungeon to shove your fingers in your ear and shout yourself horse or not.  But my dear Ms Coulter, please don’t be surprised when you find that the rest of America, the real America where people actually live, leaves you back in the annals of history where you so richly deserve to spend the rest of your miserable life.  Cheers.

Defenders of Capitalism

Eureka, I have figured it out.  I finally understand what the cause of the great disconnect between me and so many conservative commentators is.  The reason it’s taken me so long to figure out exactly what the sticking point was, is because it was shrouded in a lost in translation thing.  Whereas I understood capitalism as an economic system that is based on the principles of supply and demand, private ownership, and personal incentive the spokespeople of the Right seem to believe that capitalism is any system where the state has absolutely no power or influence full stop.  See the problem was that I had always considered this to be anarchy or at the very least anarcho-capitalism, but clearly any time a state exists(regardless of what services are or aren’t provided) and collects taxes this is socialism.  Well golly, color me embarrassed, here I was thinking that the United States was the capitalist power in the Cold War, but it turns out we were red-socialist bastards too.

See here’s the thing, I know that there are a lot of intelligent, good-natured people out there who consider themselves to be economically conservative, some of them are even my friends.  But the people they listen to are more than a little cuckoo and it makes me just a little bit worried that this is the stuff that they really believe.  Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but I hear a lot of “government can only get money at the barrel of a gun, whereas in a free market you have to make transactions where every party goes home richer.”  This is a wonderfully warm, fuzzy story about how the good and virtuous private sector has to always fight the big, bad government, but it really is more fairy land than reality.  In the real world, some of us like the idea that the government, i.e. the aggregation of all the citizen’s, mediating the occasional follies of private transactions by providing a national defense, education for all, regulations to control pollution and tainted foods, and maintenance of roads to name a few.  What’s more we recognize that things like provisions of healthcare for people who have worked all their lives and now need to retire in their sunset years do not come free so we pay taxes to cover those expenses.  I used to think that the conservative position was that these are necessary services, but we should limit the government to the absolute bare bones things we need, but now I’ve learned that this is apparently considered socialism by the “real” conservatives.

I mean you can forgive a comment like “I want to shrink government to the size where we can drown it in a bathtub,” if it’s simply the musings of a clearly addled mind, but when it becomes an essential part of a party’s platform you start to have your doubts.  And perhaps this is merely because I’m an outsider looking in, but I think that the lunatics are now running the asylum we call the GOP, because their standard bearers seem to no longer be discussing reform or repeals but the outright disintegration of the government altogether.  All of this stems from the basic idea that taxes bad, my stuff good.  So let’s go back to the basics because I think these people need a little context before they go on about the virtues of a world without taxes and governments.

When I wake up in the morning I like to have a glass of water, in part to choke down my medications but that’s really beside the point.  The water I drink comes from the tap connected to a public water supply.  Now I will admit that I run my water through a Brita Filter, but I do it for flavor rather than safety, not that a Brita filter would really be that useful against tainted water anyway.  The reason I don’t fear consuming heavy metals or raw sewage in my water is because I know that there is a government agency that monitors water quality regularly.  This is something so commonplace that many people simply don’t think about it anymore.  But as you’ll recall from the news West Virginia has had some recent water problems because of private industries that had a little accident… that spoiled the water for hundreds of thousands of people.  You know in a cost benefit analysis what the loss of one customer is compared to the cost of waste management and clean up?  A tolerable loss.  However, because each of those individuals is backed up by the collective power of the state, they are able to dictate some terms about the use, or in this case misuse, of their water supply.  And the regulations that keep our drinking water safe are not enforced without a cost.  We chip in through our taxes because we recognize that it’s better to turn your taps on and not see black sludge coming through, and yet the kind of deregulation that is called for by the most extreme elements of conservatism are already bearing fruit in the form of flammable water.  Some of the more veteran citizens of Ohio might remember that entire rivers can be made flammable if private industry doesn’t have to answer to regulations.

When I drive to work I do so on paved roads that are well kept, admittedly sometimes to a slight annoyance.  I did not pay a toll to use these roads, so long as I kept of the heaviest use roads on the turnpike, and as far as I know on that drive the whole thing is done for free.  Except it’s not done for free.  Those roads cost money, the people that pave the roads need wages, and there’s a reason we don’t expect private industries to pony up on their own.  We all chip in through our taxes to pay for the roads that we use to get to work, to church, to weddings and funerals,to  our friend’s place, and to grandma’s house.  I can understand why a private business might want to invest in roads that go to and from businesses, but the smaller roads that go everywhere else not so much.  We understand this and we’re willing to pay for it and it just so happens that a government can be a really useful medium for this.

When I go to sleep at night I do so in security.  I am secure from outside threats thanks to our national military and from internal threats thanks to our police forces and fire departments to name just the most visible.  I furthermore rest secure in the knowledge that when I grow old and retire that there will be some provisions for me.  But most importantly I rest easy knowing that the rest of the society around me is educated.  People overlook so many things that our taxes pay for and I think the most basic is education.  Even if you’re simply looking at it from the lens of property values, education is huge.  More fundamentally, however, that education is what allows for our ever more advanced society and the competitiveness of our economy.  Today’s students are tomorrow’s entrepreneurs, doctors, and yes politicians.  To use a famous quote, “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.”  These are the investments we make as a society and yes they come from our taxes.

Now I’m more than willing to have the debate that the government goes too far on some things and is too inefficient in other areas, because let’s face it, it’s true.  But there is no room in the 21st, I didn’t think there was room in the 20th century but there, for the opinion that government is THE problem and must be gotten rid of full stop.  The balance between the power of public and private sectors is always going to be a problematic exercise.  But if you think we can get rid of the only thing that balances out the worst parts of the private sector, however imperfect it can be, then I’m sorry but you’ve lost it.  And believe me, I understand the accusations that the government is full of plutocrats and tends toward nepotism, they aren’t baseless; but the alternative is apparently to let these plutocrats rule by the power of their own pockets without even the mediating power of courts.  The wealthy are always going to have a disproportionate amount of power, but at least with a government based on the rule of law sometimes Bernie Madoff goes to jail as well.

But here’s the overarching point I want to make here, however clumsily I may have been in doing so, the existence of a government does not negate capitalism.  In fact government can be the best friend of capitalism.  By enforcing regulations to make sure all cars have seat belts in them, the government has probably saved auto-industries untold losses from litigation and loss of brand appeal due to accidents in unsafe vehicles, and yet these same companies fought tooth and nail to keep from having to install them in the first place.  Consumer protection and regulations of al stripes can be and are good for everyone because we are all consumers, we are all breathers of air, we all are living beings.  It’s nice to know that there might be someone keeping tainted beef from the UK from getting in Stateside.  And yes that does mean paying a little bit in taxes, but really if you think its not worth it try finding a society that doesn’t choose public well being as a priority.  I hear Somalia is beautiful this time of year.

The Role of Education

    Maybe it’s just the people that I listen to, but I hear a lot about what people think the role of education is.  Lately this conversation has been getting lumped in with discussions about the new Common Core requirements and slightly farther back with the No Child Left Behind Act.  In either case, the conversation usually boils down to a few basic arguments including but not limited to the importance of teachers in molding the minds of children, the damage caused by bad teachers and the problems caused by tenure programs, whether or not public schools are the best way to teach the greatest number of children, and the way that education tends to try and stymie the imaginations of children.  It is this last point that I want to address because I think we’ve deluded ourselves on many issues regarding education, but this one has always struck me as a particularly egregious misapprehension.  

    We do not go to schools to get a pat on the back and be shielded from new information, we go to schools to learn rules.  School is, perhaps merely in the ideal, the place where we learn the basic building blocks that allow us to be able to learn, communicate, and coexist.  I mean no one can rationally think to themselves that school is the place where you go to learn facts at this point, right?  The moment you reach summer break, i.e. right now, everything the kids have learned over the course of the year begins to pour out: the facts, the figures, the dates, the algorithms, etc.  But you know what doesn’t slip out of people’s memories?  The essential parts like being able to research, write, and interact with other people.

    You may not remember the exact character involved with the Battle of Hastings, but you know how to find out and you know what the important parts look like when you find them, if you’ve been well taught.  You learned the rules of writing and language not so you can annoy people on internet forums about their dangling participles, but so that you can effectively express your thoughts and opinions to the world.  And it is these lessons that demand a certain level of ruthlessness on the part of teachers, in spite of a child’s or young adult’s inclination to do things their own way.

    The repeated refrain I see on the internet are comments that accuse schools of taking the individuality of a person and crushing it into a uniform cube of conformity.  One need look no further than Pink Floyd to get the picture of what artists have against schools.  But here’s the thing, that harsh influence is, at least in part, what made them great in the first place.  I really can’t think of a way that you can crush a child’s ability to dream and imagine and wonder and play.  Regardless of what situation they are in, even truly horrific ones, children find ways of getting into trouble and learning their own lessons.  These are great ways for children to learn about themselves and even the world, but it does very little to teach them how to make something complex that can be appreciated by people beyond their immediate reach.

    We learn the building blocks of communication in school both as lessons in and of themselves and as the staging grounds for greater exploits.  A person doesn’t learn the rules of writing to blindly obey them for all time, but to understand how to make themselves understood.  From there, if they are taught well, they can bend or even break those rules that they learned once they find the limits of the rules.  This is why an artist like Pablo Picasso is so beloved by so many.  If you’ve ever seen his younger works then you know that it’s not out of a limited imagination or skill that he adopted his later styles.  When you realize that it’s not simply the simplistic drawings of an uninformed child you can look at a painting like Guernica and see the real meaning there.  In the moment of panic, amid the terrifying destruction and pain of war, the scene isn’t a pretty landscape but the stark tableau that he created.  And I would argue that the depth of thought that separates Picasso from a child’s drawings comes uniquely from learning the rules, letting yourself fully learn the lesson, and only then breaking those rules.

    Nobody, or rather very few people, simply want to be told what to do and how to act, but at a certain stage in development it is crucial that this is done, otherwise you limit the children to what they can learn on their own, instead of being able to use the whole of society’s knowledge as the framework from which those children can raise themselves up higher.  And yes this does mean that the teacher can’t simply give in to whatever the student wants, not that a teacher should be callous.  See, I think we have left behind the notion that there is anything valuable in having a stern teacher, because we want to believe that there is no love or kindness behind it.  I can remember one teacher in particular who I absolutely loathed as a person.  He was blunt to the point that if he thought you weren’t taking notes he would stare directly at you and repeat over and over that you need to write this down, stopping the entire class to do so.  He was more than a little right wing, he had every biography of both Presidents Bush, and was quite ruthless with his deadlines and requirements.  And although I really didn’t like him very much as a person, he was a fantastic teacher.

    A teacher isn’t stern for the sake of sadism, but because students are obnoxiously stubborn, particularly teenagers.  When we’re young we think that we know it all and what we need more than anything is a person who is willing to stand up and put us in our place.  Again this isn’t so that we will remember a set of facts and do well on a test, although being able to perform on a test can be an important part of learning, but to break through our thick skulls and give us the hard learned lessons of countless generations that came before us.  But so many people worry that teaching lessons inhibits a child’s ability to be creative, and I for one am calling bull on that.

    If you’ve ever experienced or witnessed what the French education system is like, then you know what a harsh system it is.  And before I continue let me just make it known that I don’t think the French system should be a model for the world as it creates some other big problems.  Almost all grades are given out of 20 and grades 19 and up are literally impossible, while 17-18 are virtually impossible.  This means that the best grade you can really expect from a fantastic student is 16/20.  This combined with the much harsher, almost antagonistic, relationship between teacher and students, makes for a stern learning environment.  This line of thought runs so deep that even coloring books for toddlers are set up so that the student learns to fit the mold.  The coloring books come with two images the blank, which is just like any other coloring book picture, and the model which is the same picture but colored in.  The job of the child is to match the colors, and parents will then comment on how well, or more often how poorly, they did in this task.  This seems brutal to Americans, but let’s look at the accusation that it stymies individuality or imagination.  I ask you, do the French, the culture that gave us Monet, Manet, Duchamp, Sartre, Camus, Bizet, Berlioz, Gauguin, Seurat, Proust, Hugo, Chamoiseau, Balzac, Flaubert, Sand, Duras, etc seem like they are particularly lacking in creativity?

    Again, this isn’t to say that we need to start making systems that treat children as factory material deserving of a one size fits all approach to education, but we need to stop being so squeamish of the idea that children might be told they’re wrong and have to learn.  This is the most fundamental part of an education, but we seem so willing to throw teachers under the bus if the child is failing.  You know what, it could be the teacher, but it could also be the lack of supervision in the rest of their life, a bad environment at home, and yes it could be the student’s fault.  We want so badly for their to be simple answers and single persons that we can put all the blame on, but it’s rarely that simple.  Schools and teachers need to be free to do the work that needs to be done, even if at times it can seem like it’s simply homogenizing the children, because there’s a lot more going on there.  I’m not saying teach to the test, but teach first and worry about perception later.

Respectability

As we’ve already gotten into the political season where various candidates and officials are debating each other, I’d like to have a brief talk about what we look for in a candidate and what role debates have in weeding out these qualities.  As I’ve said before, I think that a large part of the problem we have in keeping our politicians honest comes from the lack of a real backbone on the part of the media.  Every so often we get an exception and it truly is a breath of fresh air, but more often than not we get news casters who are unwilling to ask tough questions and more importantly to make sure that the interviewee actually answers the question that was asked and not the hypothetical one they were prepared to answer.  But this, however important, is not the focus of today’s post.

I find it remarkable how much people forget over the course of just a few years, which only makes discussions of any time before that next to impossible.  Nonetheless I want people to just briefly think back to the 2004 election between George Bush and John Kerry.  Yes it’s been a whole decade since their ads were on the screens and the whole country, or the four people that actually cared, were considering who was going to be their choice for president.  In that election in particular there was a focus on an aspect that would seem, by any objective standard, to be the one that was of primary importance.  With which candidate could you most see yourself having a drink?  And for some reason an overwhelming majority of people said that they could see them selves knocking back a few with a recovering alcoholic rather than the dull John Kerry.

Now let’s face it, perhaps the least of John Kerry’s problems in that election had to do how down to earth he seemed, and yet that was one of the major issues that people kept focussing on in debates, in punditry, in conversations, etc.  I mean come on, it’s not like these guys are running for the most powerful position in the government and arguably the world.  But for whatever reason we seem set on choosing candidates, perhaps not entirely but by no small measure, based on how cool or relatable we find them.  And it is on this basis that I am continually stumped, both by how asinine of a metric it is and how increasingly important it seems to be becoming on a world stage.

I was watching some BBC coverage of the German elections last year and I was struck by how banal the British have become in their political analysis as well.  After the fact, they were interviewing one of my favorite comedians Henning Wehn, a German.  And the focus of the segment was all about “coolness.”  The most amusing part of the whole exchange was that Wehn made the rational point early on that “coolness” is not the most important aspect of a politician and that the continued elections of Angela Merkel shows that even the people on the opposite side of the spectrum in Germany cared less about looks or popularity than they did about getting the job done.  I suppose that is, in its own way, the most German thing he could have said.  But instead of listening to his valid point the news caster went on for the rest of the segment spouting off the importance of popularity and “coolness” to politicians like David Cameron.

Look, I’ll grant you that a certain modicum of charisma and style can be effective in winning people over to your point of view.  It can be a fairly effective means of getting work done, but that is the long and short of it.  There are incredibly frumpy looking, soft-spoken politicians who get things done and there are a heck of a lot of politicians who look like the stereotypical sort with a nice suit that get fuck all done.  In these cases style could be the cherry on top at best or the facade of substance at worst, and yet this tends not to be a conversation that is had at broader levels.  More often than I’d like debates include “quick-fire” rounds as if running for elected office were a type of game show.  At the best of times it is a way to get succinct answers out of politicians, but that is rarely the result or even the intended result.  

Yes or no questions do not yield the kind of depth of thought that we should expect from our politicians.  And no, I’m not saying that we want leaders that will churn out theses and mull over every decision for years at a time before making any comment, but why do we want or expect the person in charge of leading the most powerful military in the world, the person responsible for the execution of laws in our country to have the thoughtfulness of a cashier at Walmart.  I want to know why a politician thinks the way they do, in part because it serves as a metric for how I think they will lead, but because sometimes they disagree with me.  In those occasions I want to know that the reason that they differ with me is because there is some thought behind, thought perhaps enough to sway me, but at very least to show that their dissenting point of view didn’t come out of a gut instinct or worse.

And these are all in the best of cases with the “quick-fire” round.  How many people remember the debates between the Republican presidential candidates of 2012?  “Elvis or Johnny Cash?”  And then of course the most vacuous response to that most vacuous question, “both.”  Thank you Mrs. Bachmann.  These absolutely substance-less moments were supposed to help people make the decision of which would be the best representative for the whole country?  I like to let my hair down and all that good stuff as much as any other person, certainly as much as any politician, but that isn’t important or really even relevant.  I’m not a fan of soccer, but I don’t care if my elected officials share my opinion or not.  There are few things I care less about than these types of personal questions, and yet we insist on making them front and center at all times.

Kerry was attacked for going windsurfing and speaking french, Sacrebleu!  In the same way one of the biggest reasons why people have completely panned the idea of Senator Marco Rubio running in 2016 is because he got thirsty on camera.  Now I’ll grant you both of these things are snort worthy, but they have little to now bearing on the capabilities of either man as a leader.  There’s a line if the awkwardness of a person keeps them from being able to get a job done.  We can’t expect a president who is focused at all times on avoiding personal scandals or recovering from vomiting on a prime minister, but come on.  We shouldn’t be demanding “coolness” from politicians, we should be demanding respectability and efficacy.  In the same way we should demand the same respectability from the people who claim to be keeping us informed, but oh look there’s a squirrel on a jet ski, so let’s forget this whole election thing and watch that video.

The Old New Face of War

Ok so now that I’ve gotten the personal rants out of me for the moment, let’s focus on why any and every option in Iraq(also Syria, Thailand, Libya, CAR, South Sudan, and more) is doomed to failure.  It remains anathema to me just why something so obvious remains so overlooked in discussions about foreign policy like this, but it’s because the nature of war drastically changed.  And I’m not talking about something as recent as say since the turn of the Millennium, I’m talking about the fundamental shift that happened with the advent of repeating firearms.  It was something that we learned about the hard way in the time between and during two World Wars, but also something we never took to the logical extension that we have arrived at, since at least the Vietnam War.

Before you had the repeating firearm one person is very limited in the amount of damage they can do.  Arguably the advent of firearms in the first place revolutionized warfare in a greater way, but even then the structure of war and conflict was virtually unchanged.  To be effective in a campaign you needed a sizable military force and almost all the effort and money was thus put into supplying and keeping up with the movements of those forces.  Napoleon Bonaparte put it “An army marches on its stomach,” but it’s more basic than even that.  An army is a force that is able to deal vastly more damage than any of the individuals would be able to do separately.  What happens when you take the effective firepower of a small group of soldiers and put it in an easily carried, one man operated package?  You take away the need for a marching army altogether.

One person, or more often a very small group of soldiers, equipped with machine guns and capable of blending in with the rest of the crowd is the most dangerous revolutionary change to warfare in recent memory… to a moral force.  Now I do have to clarify something at this point, the commentary I’m making assumes that our goal in fighting is not simply to get rid of the opposing force full stop.  If it were then we should simply detonate enough nuclear weapons to make the Roman practice of plowing salt into the earth seem dainty.  Our goal is to stop the opposition forces while creating as few innocent casualties as possible and that is what makes this new type of warfare a game changer.  ISIS is so effective because they have two incredibly important advantages, aside from the military leadership and sectarian fervor.  First they are able to blend in with the communities that they attack and rule, in part because there are a number who are sympathetic to them, but more fundamentally because many of them are from the area, speak the language, wear the clothes of a native.  So forget trying to make a foreign military force try and tell the difference between groups in the area, for many of the locals it is unclear if the person is simply of a different sect of Islam or a partisan fighter for the extreme wing of that sect.  And Second is the point that is most crucial to this post, they have mobility.

The United States does have far and away the most technologically dominant military in the world.  We have aircraft carriers, which in and of itself puts us on an international shortlist of military powers, capable of putting fifth generation fighters over the heads of our enemies in a matter of hours if not minutes.  We have artillery and missile technology capable of putting devastating anti-armor and anti-bunker munitions on target without even seeing it with our own eyes.  BUT even these warhawk-boner inducing technologies are not designed to fight the wars that we keep getting into.  Big ship navies have been on their way out for a long time, and although retrofits with newer technologies are lengthening the lifespan of some of these beasts of war, most of them are going the way of the Dreadnaught.  Long range weapons are great for taking out a tank or a jeep that is identified as hostile, but they can’t pick out one individual who may or may not be hostile from another civilian who is just driving around in a civilian vehicle.  And as individual combatants or small groups they could pile into a mini-van right into the center of town and then open fire.

Short of setting up a police state of our own where every person is patted down upon entering and/or exiting a building, stopping any and all traffic(see commerce), and stripping the people of the “protected” country of all rights, there is little we can do to get rid of these groups as a foreign military.  ISIS combatants need few things: a gun, some ammo, and perhaps some improvised explosives.  The rest, e.g. food and water, they can pick up/steal along the way to attacking and then clear out if things don’t go well, which more often than not it does.  The Shi’ite militias that are forming to combat ISIS operate in much the same way, and the standing military forces Iraq does have, have proven utterly impotent in response.  We were able to stop the violence in Iraq after the surge simply by driving these groups to the fringes, but that’s curing the symptoms and not the underlying illness.  Unless we want to be stationing troops in Iraq until the end of time we need a different strategy, and the answer isn’t pretty.

As I said in my previous post “End of the Line” the least bad option for us and the Iraqis is, unfortunately, to sit this one out.  I don’t disagree with President Obama’s decision to send in military advisors, particularly as a first step to getting the kind of intelligence that would allow us to use drone based weapons, but there’s little good to be done by sending in troops of our own.  Our mission is to hit the targets that are accurately identified as support for the Iraqi government, but we will only do as much harm as good if we set up shop in Iraq again.  Incidentally I think the warhawks secretly know this, but they recognize that there is no consequence in calling for a war that won’t happen and they score points against Obama in doing so.  Or at least I hope that’s the case and not that Senator McCain has completely lost it in his desire to attack every last country in the world that isn’t the United States.

The way wars are waged has fundamentally changed, so long as we are attacking terrorist groups and not other countries.  Our military greatness is just not up to the task of defeating the rope-a-dope of these groups.  Unless and until the local population can effectively weed out these groups by taking away the support that allows them to fill their ranks, there is little we can do but sit and wait.  Well, I say little but air support and military advice isn’t nothing.  We need to recognize the way the weapons that were developed decades ago changed the way military forces are formed and how they are used most effectively.  If we don’t, then we can expect to get bogged down in quagmire after quagmire.

Dick Cheney

    Do you know who really needs to shut up and slink into a pit of darkness so that the world can forget about him?  No, it’s not Justin Bieber, although I have been enjoying the lack of him in the news cycle.  It’s former Vice President Dick Cheney.  Mr Cheney epitomizes just about everything that is wrong with the GOP and adds to it a little something extra.  Comedians got a lot of material out of lampooning him as a dark lord of the sith become incarnate, and in so many ways this seems to have been a very generous interpretation of this, for lack of a better word, man.

    Let’s take just a moment why so many people got so much pleasure in making such fun of such a heartless bastard.  I mean there are the easy pot shots, like when he literally shot a “friend” of his in the face.  Don’t worry he survived, and then inexplicably apologized to Mr Cheney for the inconvenience of all the attention this incident had caused.  But heck that kind of thing could happen to anyone, with a gun.  How about that time, by which I mean his entire political career, when he went out of his way to pursue legislation that was anti-gay despite the fact that one of his daughters is a lesbian.  Don’t worry though, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree as she was an active participant in the campaigns and the spin that allowed the conservatives of America to dance on the graves of dead LGBT children.  Oh but it’s ok now, because now that they don’t have any power or responsibility they are more willing to pretend to be allies of the LGBT community.

    But of course if Mr Cheney had to focus on one and only one part of politics it would certainly concern “defense.”  After all his role in Daddy Bush’s Administration was as Secretary of Defense.  At that time his biggest concern was the conduct of the Persian Gulf War, which would be instrumental in the next Bush Administration.  And here’s where I will pay him as close as I can to a compliment, the Sr Bush Administration’s decision to not embroil ourselves in the task of regime change and nation building was correct.  In his own words “It’s a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq.”  And if his loathsome career had ended there, then I certainly wouldn’t be writing this and history would more than likely have a generally positive view of him.  However, ignoring every hint the universe sent him, via heart problems, he continued to live and it is the life after that point that becomes something of a mess.

    In the aftermath of 9/11 America was thoroughly shaken up and we wanted to crush those who had hurt us so deeply.  For that reason we went into Afghanistan to take out the Taliban and Al Qaeda groups that were responsible for the attack.  But for so many reasons, both real ones and the ones that were presented to the public, the Bush Administration decided that we should also attack Iraq.  And the Congress, still feeling the thrills of high approval ratings, rushed to do whatever seemed patriotic.  Now I don’t think that there is a person alive in America who mourns the death of Saddam Hussein, that genocidal dictator, but it seems odd that we went after him and not Kim Jong Il, Muammar Gaddafi, or some other equally evil person, like say Osama Bin Laden.

    But we went to war, regardless of the false pretenses, that is a fait accompli.  And every step of the way the Bush Administration seemed to go out of its way to make this war a travesty for all parties involved.  Soldiers were sent in ill-equipped, prisoners were tortured and physically/sexually abused in Abu Ghraib, the Iraqi Army was disbanded, and so on.  Then after so fracturing the nation victory was declared, and I’m not even talking about the aircraft carrier now, because a surge of US troops had brought down violence and led to a peaceful Iraq.  With that context the Bush Administration signed agreements to begin the withdrawal process and the reigns were handed over to the newly elected President Obama.

    Now I think that there is blame enough to share with all parties involved, but there is a reason officials from the Bush and not Obama Administration are continually called to answer for war crime allegations.  And since the time Mr Cheney has left his office and slunk back into obscurity, he has made continual attempts to remain relevant by giving his, at this point utterly devalued, two cents on defense.  I’m sorry Mr Cheney, but you have so thoroughly discredited yourself that even Fox News is taking pot shots at you.  And this is one of those occasions where I have to give credit where credit is due and say to Megyn Kelly, well done.  And if you are wondering what that foreign smell that is now wafting through the air of the Fox headquarters is, it’s the smell of journalism.  She quoted a dissenting opinion and then hammered it home by using Mr Cheney’s own words against him.  
    
    “But time and time again, history has proven that you got it wrong as well in Iraq, sir.  You said there were no doubts Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.  You said we would greeted as liberators.  You said the Iraq insurgency was in the last throes back in 2005.  And you said that after our intervention, extremists would have to, quote, ‘rethink their strategy of Jihad.’  Now with almost a trillion dollars spent there with 4,500 American lives lost there, what do you say to those who say, you were so wrong about so much at the expense of so many?”
    
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2014/06/19/megyn_kelly_dick_cheney_interview_fox_news_host_slams_former_vice_president.html
    Now if you haven’t seen this clip it is worth it just to see him stumble over his words immediately after this, because he really wasn’t sure he was still talking to a Fox News presenter.  But really if there’s any person who should learn to take a hint right now it should have to be mister Cheney.  Mr Cheney, the man who loves the military so much that he dodged the draft.  Mr Cheney, who is able to articulately dissent against the person in the highest office, unless it actually has any consequences for him.  Mr Cheney, a man so heartless he had to have a new one surgically transplanted.  Mr Cheney, a man so utterly lacking in any sort of class or perspective that the only title he has truly earned is his nickname, Dick.

War Crimes

History is truly written by the victors and not merely in the literal way that it is the survivors of wars who physically get to pen the words that will eventually make up our history books.  We get to form the narratives that are taught to future generations, and we do this at our own peril.  The risk of white washing the past is in obscuring the lessons that should be learned from our terrible mistakes.  Every civilization and every country has its sins that they need to remember, so let’s not make an equally ignorant narrative of saying that there is a innocently primitive culture, a nobly savage people that we should emulate. But we need to be completely honest about our history because the things I hear in speeches and blogs and editorials indicate that there is at least one big sin that many of us seem unwilling to admit.
Again, the media is at least complicit in the unfounded belief that America and the West are uniquely pure when it comes to warfare, if not in general then certainly in the specific context of WWII.  Tom Brokaw, although a decent journalist over all, is particularly guilty of this.  His label “The Greatest Generation,” comes from genuine admiration of the fortitude and patriotism of those who not only endured the Great Depression but, through the dogged determination in a terrible war, created an unparalleled nation.  But I think there is a danger in this label, as it obscures the fact that this generation, as with all generations, was imperfect, to be generous.  I do not wish to disparage this generation that defeated the evils of fascism and the imperialistic ambitions of Japan, but I think the volume of literature that puts forward all the good of this generation has been set out ad nauseam and that one post offering some depth to these accolades can’t take away from that.
The “Greatest” Generation was not the most egalitarian nor the most moral.  Like the people we fought, there were those on our side who were clearly guilty of war crimes and the only reason they were never put on the other side of the prosecution was because we won.  We attacked civilian targets and not simply because the accuracy of weapons at the time was so limited, but out of the same spirit as the Battle of Britain, to break the backs of the people we fought.  The United States remains the only country in the world to ever use atomic weapons to attack an enemy, and we did it twice.  The rationale for why we leveled Hiroshima and Nagasaki, along with the conventionally destroyed Tokyo, Dresden, Hamburg, etc, is well known at this point.  And although it remains unclear how many net lives may well have been saved by using such harsh tactics, we should not be so callous as to think that this hypothetical lesser of two evils argument somehow completely justifies the crime.
Furthermore we need to consider why it was Japan that was the target of two nuclear blasts.  There are logistical reasons why Germany was never a target, including the time frame of the completion of both the weapons and the delivery system and the fact that to use it on Germany may have been too close to where our troops were.  But still why did we need to actually carry out an attack and not say make a public demonstration, or simply conclude the war by the conventional means that were working?  At least part of the reason has to include bigotry.
It’s telling that during the War we rounded up Japanese-Americans and not German-Americans.  If you look at media, especially propaganda, at the time then you’ll notice that there is a heavily racist overtone to the conflict against the Japanese in a way that never happened with the Germans.  In WWI there was anti-German sentiment, but the level of admiration of the Nazis specifically and the Germans more generally made it unclear to some on what side we would end up at the onset of WWII.  In fact one of my favorite films, “The Great Dictator,” was initially panned and even used as justification for the trial against Charlie Chaplin later on, despite the fact that it clearly took the correct moral stance against Nazi Germany.  However, the treatment of Japanese in media was nearly on par with the way Jews were treated in Nazi propaganda, and the treatment of real Japanese-American citizens was abhorrent.   But we did eventually try to repent for our internment of Japanese-American citizens in the mid to late 70s.
Why, you may very well ask, go after the people who defended the country we love and call home?  The simple answer is because I hold the United States to a higher standard, that is to say the highest standards.  In all our rhetoric we say to ourselves that we are the land of the free and the home of the brave, that we are the shining city on the hill, and all I want is for us to live up to that rhetoric.  What I see instead is the inclination to rewrite history to put us up on that hill, instead of earning our place there.  And the “Greatest Generation” is not alone in the mindset of the US as untouchable.  In the Vietnam War there was a conviction against an American, William Calley, and President Nixon decided to tell the world that we do not hold ourselves to the same moral standards to which we hold the rest of the world by pardoning him.  There have been repeated calls to try other Americans, but time and again we do not even entertain the thought of living up to our own moral code.  
Ultimately all I want to say in this post is that history is not black and white good versus evil.  The Nazis were just as bad as all our rhetoric, but setting aside just the America crimes in the world, just think how willing we were to cuddle up next to Joseph Stalin because he seemed to be one shade of gray lighter than Hitler.  There are important questions that we need to ask, particularly if we are going to maintain our image as the “world police.”  We need to defend our country not only from the external threats of foreign powers and terrorist groups, but our inner demons that call for us to abandon everything we supposedly fight for in the fight.  And this is a discussion that needs to remain at the front of people’s minds so long as the Texas School Board is going to be in charge of our history books, so long as we have “detainees” in Guantanamo Bay, so long as we use unmanned drones to attack targets surrounded by civilians, so long as war criminals breathe free within our borders.