Usually I avoid employing overt religious references in these blog pages, mostly for reasons of [attempted] intellectual honesty, which would be well-nigh impossible owing to my admitted fierce Judeocentrism. I write another blog [“Yeshivas Ye-ush Mi-Da’as”] in which I constrain myself less in that regard.
Yet, when discussing the ongoing issue of the legality of “enhanced interrogations” that now threatens to become an all-out war between Justice and Intelligence [Panetta’s gonna protecting his territory--who woulda thunk it?] and viewing it from my perch as the paradigmatic self-hating conservative [where are the rest of ‘em?], I couldn’t resist using both Biblical and Talmudic references to [further] elucidate my position.
In fact, I don’t think I could have found a better way to explain it.
The verse that comes to mind is from II Kings 10:18: “And Jehu gathered the nation together, and said unto them, Ahab served Ba'al a little, but Yehu shall serve him much”.
The Babylonian Talmud [Tractate Pesachim folio 87b, for those who might actually want to look it up], based on a verse in Hosea [(1:3-4): “…for in a little while I will visit the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Yehu”] relates that, when Jehu’s descendants themselves proceeded to serve the Baal as Ahab had, Jehu’s slaughter of Ahab and his household was retroactively counted as murder, despite the fact that G-d himself had commanded Jehu to wipe out the house of Ahab—for the offense of Baal worship.
The lesson herein is that sometimes, to save a society at large, drastic action must be undertaken in which people will get hurt [or, in the parlance of Dirty Harry Callahan’s commanding officer, “get dead”, though doctrinaire pacifists usually are more perturbed by the infliction of pain rather than death, for unexplained reasons]; however, at the same time, the party inflicting the pain better be certain that they act on the side of the angels.
Dick Cheney may have been on the side of the angels in a case like this, even more than Abraham Lincoln was when he suspended habeas corpus in the months leading up to the Civil War: back then, Lincoln was fighting to preserve an ideal, and here Cheney was preventing apocalyptic mass murder. [And anyone who thinks that Islamic terrorism is anything but theologically-justified apocalyptic mass murder deserves to be their next victim.] That would have been the case—until the techniques were employed to further the prosecution of what was, for all intents and purposes, an economically-driven voluntary war. [If it was anything but that, a draft would have—or should have—been called.]
I have been open about favoring all sorts of “enhanced” methods of interrogation, and that the methods of eradicating piracy in the 18th and 19th centuries provide a much more salient analog for guidelines regarding the prosecution of “War on Terror” [or whatever its being called nowadays] that the Geneva Conventions, which in any case, certainly in their 1949 edition, serve as more of a “this is how we coulda/woulda/shoulda fought the last two world wars” than as a true legal mandate for militarily “playing nice”. I have been equally open about the need for some kind of legal repercussions for those employing the techniques described above—not because they shouldn’t be used when needed, but that they should absolutely not be used at any other time.
It’s doubtful that any legal action initiated by this Administration would be anything but politically motivated. However, Cheney and his ilk have no “kick”: when they applied these techniques to preserve their own political and material positions, they indicated they were playing the same game. You don’t get to be selective about the rules, particularly after you’ve been repeatedly called on it by the electorate.
Additionally, I don’t know if any conservatives—particularly those who believe G-d Himself is conservative—would appreciate the irony of one of their own sacred texts being used to teach them such a lesson. I would reckon they do—and don’t like it.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Monday, August 17, 2009
Obamacare: Two-Strike Breaking Pitch
I’m 0-for-2. At least.
First, I was bamboozled by Sarah Palin and what she ostensibly represented…until I saw the Katie Couric interview and realized what she represented was the impossibility of her credibility as long as they were inexorably associated with such unadulterated brainlessness. Additionally, she also represented the inability of the GOP team to find good people to work for them, which would have portended another term of W.-like incompetence in a McCain administration; they wouldn’t have been able to execute, even if their principles were correct.
Then came Obama’s inaugural address, and I like everyone else except for the true doctrinaire right-wingers assumed from the combination of that speech and his Cabinet appointments of Rahm Emanuel, Larry Summers, Arne Duncan and their ilk that he planned to govern from the center, as opposed to adopting the ”socialist” and “pro-terrorist” policies the GOP tried to tag him with. Alas, the only one privy to the definition of said “Center” was the new President himself; more specifically, it seems as if he considers his policy regimen to be the true centrism.
While many on the right cried “socialism” with the stimulus package and the governmental net cast over the banking and automotive industry, even such free-market personages as Alan Greenspan had publically admitted that some intervention was needed, rendering that argument less than salient, so if the economic center had moved left, it had dome so on its own accord, if not a result of deregulatory-elicited messes. And, while certainly every foreign policy move Obama has made, from Gitmo to Cairo to Mary Robinson, belies any true centrist—even “realist”—mindset, and is a blatant attempt to centralize appeasement/”America First—In Guilt” policy, I would have been called on my politics being inexorably biased by my Judeocentrism. [Not that there’s anything wrong with that, or being Israel-centric; more that there are people who defend the state from Obama and his ilk better than I would, without necessarily preaching to the choir.]
That’s why Obamacare and its concomitant raising of the spectre of 1993 and 1994 theoretically had, at least initially, handed me—and other conservatives, self-hating and otherwise—a policy against which one could be truly opposed in principle. Never mind the nuances; this was going to involve an imposition of governmental control regarding issues of supply and demand where there was no real mandate for it. As Jon Meachem pointed in Newsweek, unlike social security or voting rights, universal health care doesn’t have the same sui generis moral imprimatur that would otherwise make it amenable to such a policy imposition; there was no reason that Obama wouldn’t fail as his attempt to become FDR and LBJ the way Bill Clinton did in 1994. Additionally, as David Gergen theorized in Rolling Stone, as Obamacare would be the one issue that could not be hung upon the previous administration with any degree of credibility, failure to implement it in at least some degree would lead to the Democrats being punished at the polls in 2010.
So, expecting a fastball down the middle [an Obamacare more or less analogous to Hillarycare], we get a breaking pitch way too close to take: Obama announces that the “public option” may be taken off the table.
Brilliant?
Not necessarily; it’s more that, people keep forgetting that Obama doesn’t feel like he owes anyone anything, so he can manipulate his policy to suit himself and his aim of keeping his [and liberals’] power. Those on the further left are angry, sure; but where else can they go? The conservative Democrats are more likely to support his legislation, and GOP’ers really now have lost possibly their most salient reason for continued intransigence [though one shouldn’t count against their propensity to continue as such.]
This guy will do anything to make sure he won’t lose, and he won’t even have to triangulate.
First, I was bamboozled by Sarah Palin and what she ostensibly represented…until I saw the Katie Couric interview and realized what she represented was the impossibility of her credibility as long as they were inexorably associated with such unadulterated brainlessness. Additionally, she also represented the inability of the GOP team to find good people to work for them, which would have portended another term of W.-like incompetence in a McCain administration; they wouldn’t have been able to execute, even if their principles were correct.
Then came Obama’s inaugural address, and I like everyone else except for the true doctrinaire right-wingers assumed from the combination of that speech and his Cabinet appointments of Rahm Emanuel, Larry Summers, Arne Duncan and their ilk that he planned to govern from the center, as opposed to adopting the ”socialist” and “pro-terrorist” policies the GOP tried to tag him with. Alas, the only one privy to the definition of said “Center” was the new President himself; more specifically, it seems as if he considers his policy regimen to be the true centrism.
While many on the right cried “socialism” with the stimulus package and the governmental net cast over the banking and automotive industry, even such free-market personages as Alan Greenspan had publically admitted that some intervention was needed, rendering that argument less than salient, so if the economic center had moved left, it had dome so on its own accord, if not a result of deregulatory-elicited messes. And, while certainly every foreign policy move Obama has made, from Gitmo to Cairo to Mary Robinson, belies any true centrist—even “realist”—mindset, and is a blatant attempt to centralize appeasement/”America First—In Guilt” policy, I would have been called on my politics being inexorably biased by my Judeocentrism. [Not that there’s anything wrong with that, or being Israel-centric; more that there are people who defend the state from Obama and his ilk better than I would, without necessarily preaching to the choir.]
That’s why Obamacare and its concomitant raising of the spectre of 1993 and 1994 theoretically had, at least initially, handed me—and other conservatives, self-hating and otherwise—a policy against which one could be truly opposed in principle. Never mind the nuances; this was going to involve an imposition of governmental control regarding issues of supply and demand where there was no real mandate for it. As Jon Meachem pointed in Newsweek, unlike social security or voting rights, universal health care doesn’t have the same sui generis moral imprimatur that would otherwise make it amenable to such a policy imposition; there was no reason that Obama wouldn’t fail as his attempt to become FDR and LBJ the way Bill Clinton did in 1994. Additionally, as David Gergen theorized in Rolling Stone, as Obamacare would be the one issue that could not be hung upon the previous administration with any degree of credibility, failure to implement it in at least some degree would lead to the Democrats being punished at the polls in 2010.
So, expecting a fastball down the middle [an Obamacare more or less analogous to Hillarycare], we get a breaking pitch way too close to take: Obama announces that the “public option” may be taken off the table.
Brilliant?
Not necessarily; it’s more that, people keep forgetting that Obama doesn’t feel like he owes anyone anything, so he can manipulate his policy to suit himself and his aim of keeping his [and liberals’] power. Those on the further left are angry, sure; but where else can they go? The conservative Democrats are more likely to support his legislation, and GOP’ers really now have lost possibly their most salient reason for continued intransigence [though one shouldn’t count against their propensity to continue as such.]
This guy will do anything to make sure he won’t lose, and he won’t even have to triangulate.
Sunday, August 2, 2009
I'm With Stupid. Gimme A Beer.
The incident at the home of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and the President’s series of responses have been designated as Obama’s first “racial crisis”, as the proof that this Administration has not quite reached the level of “post-racial”.
While that might be somewhat of an exaggeration, the theories regarding the incident as a symptom of Obama’s messianic dirigible having sprung more than a few leaks, as evidenced by his poll numbers’ entering their post-steroid era.
The sad thing is, in this case, he may actually have been right. The officer was certainly within his bounds to answer the break-in call and question Prof. Gates, but once it had been established that the residence was, in fact, Prof. Gates’, the matter should have been left at that, irrespective of what ever tirade Prof. Gates may or may not have launched, short of an outright assault. Additionally, one would think that it would behoove police departments to actually know who the more prominent citizens in their neighborhoods are, particularly if they are prominent and connected ethnic minorities…and the police are on said person’s property WITH said individual in question present. [Did ANYONE learn ANYTHING from the OJ case?]
Of course, its no accident the loudest protests nationwide have come from police departments and their conservative leaning law-and-order allies, complaining of a possible “slippery-slope”: is our black President going to find all arrests of blacks “stupid”, ipso facto? Especially when the arresting officer was white? While that may not have been as explicitly stated as Obama’s “stupid” comment, the implication was pretty clear.
A perusal of a number of high-profile cases should indicate that we are far from that, particularly cases where an offending party AND officers on the case were both minorities and the complaints of a “racist” police action were just as shrill [most specifically, the incidents involving Patrick Dorismond and Sean Bell]. And, when Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney punched a [white] Capitol police officer in 2006 after he stopped her for not carrying the requisite ID, it was McKinney who was forced to apologize.
Of course, Obama wasn’t in office yet. And, as far as we know, McKinney isn’t the friend [or fundraiser…or Vineyard neighbor…] that Gates is. And that’s the point. An Obama frustrated by the fact that all his “Yes We Can”’s are eliciting equal and opposite “No You Don’ts”’s [especially from within his own party] reacted on a personal level to a question where the answer, if not the descriptive term used, was going to be a foregone conclusion, as were the partisan reactions to whatever comment he was going to make.
Ironically, it seems that, having been invited to beer with the President, Prof. Gates and Officer Crowley may become drinking buddies [bloggers’ “evidence” that the two may be distant cousins notwithstanding] after all this.
[Officer, this beer is courtesy of that gentlemen over there surrounded by heavily armed well dressed men with earpieces and sunglasses….]
While that might be somewhat of an exaggeration, the theories regarding the incident as a symptom of Obama’s messianic dirigible having sprung more than a few leaks, as evidenced by his poll numbers’ entering their post-steroid era.
The sad thing is, in this case, he may actually have been right. The officer was certainly within his bounds to answer the break-in call and question Prof. Gates, but once it had been established that the residence was, in fact, Prof. Gates’, the matter should have been left at that, irrespective of what ever tirade Prof. Gates may or may not have launched, short of an outright assault. Additionally, one would think that it would behoove police departments to actually know who the more prominent citizens in their neighborhoods are, particularly if they are prominent and connected ethnic minorities…and the police are on said person’s property WITH said individual in question present. [Did ANYONE learn ANYTHING from the OJ case?]
Of course, its no accident the loudest protests nationwide have come from police departments and their conservative leaning law-and-order allies, complaining of a possible “slippery-slope”: is our black President going to find all arrests of blacks “stupid”, ipso facto? Especially when the arresting officer was white? While that may not have been as explicitly stated as Obama’s “stupid” comment, the implication was pretty clear.
A perusal of a number of high-profile cases should indicate that we are far from that, particularly cases where an offending party AND officers on the case were both minorities and the complaints of a “racist” police action were just as shrill [most specifically, the incidents involving Patrick Dorismond and Sean Bell]. And, when Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney punched a [white] Capitol police officer in 2006 after he stopped her for not carrying the requisite ID, it was McKinney who was forced to apologize.
Of course, Obama wasn’t in office yet. And, as far as we know, McKinney isn’t the friend [or fundraiser…or Vineyard neighbor…] that Gates is. And that’s the point. An Obama frustrated by the fact that all his “Yes We Can”’s are eliciting equal and opposite “No You Don’ts”’s [especially from within his own party] reacted on a personal level to a question where the answer, if not the descriptive term used, was going to be a foregone conclusion, as were the partisan reactions to whatever comment he was going to make.
Ironically, it seems that, having been invited to beer with the President, Prof. Gates and Officer Crowley may become drinking buddies [bloggers’ “evidence” that the two may be distant cousins notwithstanding] after all this.
[Officer, this beer is courtesy of that gentlemen over there surrounded by heavily armed well dressed men with earpieces and sunglasses….]
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