Rogue States

I've mentioned before Derrida's analysis of democracy, how it bears the seeds of its own destruction, how it is most threatened, not from outside, but from inside. Which is not to say the threat is nefarious "sleeper cells," but simply the idea that democracy is not strong enough to withstand, well, "democracy."

Perhaps this is the moment to recall an example that would appear particularly symptomatic of the current situation we have been discussing regarding Islam and democracy, namely, what happened in postcololnial Algeria in 1992 when the state and the leading party interrupted a democratic electoral process. Try to imagine what the interruption of an election between the so-called rounds of balloting might mean for a democracy. Imagine that, in France, with the National Front threatening to pull off an electoral victory, the election was suspended after the first round, that is, between the two rounds. A question always of the turn or the round, of the two turns or two rounds, of the by turns, democracy hesitates always in the alternative between two sorts of alernation: the so-called normal and democratic alternation (where of one party, said to be republican, replaces that of another be equally republican) and the alternation that risks giving power, modo democratico, to the force of a party elected by the people (and so is democratic) and yet is assumed to be nondemocratic.... The great question of modern parliamentary and representative democracy, perhaps of all democracy, in this logic of the turn or round, of the other turn or round, of the other time and thus of the other, of the alter in general, is that the alternative to democracy can always be represented as a democratic alternation. The electoral process under way in Algeria in effect risked giving power, in accordance with perfectly legal means, to a likely majority that presented itself as essentially Islamic and Islamist and to which one attributed the intention, doubt with good reason, of wanting to change the constitution and abolish the normal functioning of democracy or the very democratization assumed to be in progress.

The Algerian government and a large part, though not a majority, of the Algerian people (as well as people outside Algeria) thought that the electoral process under way would lead democratically to the end of democracy. Thus they preferred to put an end to it themselves. They decided in a sovereign fashion to suspend, at least provisionally, democracy for its own good, so as to take care of it, so as to immunize it against a much worse and very likely assault....[T]he hypothesis here is that of a taking of power or, rather, a transferring of power to a people who, in its electoral majority and following democratic procedures, could not have been able to avoid the destruction of democracy itself."

This "sending off" Derrida labels the "renvoi," the "sending as emission, as a mission that puts one on the path, the sending as legacy....Renvoi as reprieve or deferral as well as exclusion, at the same time murder and suicide....To immunize itself, to protect itself against the aggressor (whether from within or without), democracy thus secretes its enemies on both sides of the front so that it's only apparent options remained murder and suicide; but the murder was already turning into suicide, and the suicide, as always, let itself be translated into murder."

So democracy may sovereignly suspend itself in order to preserve itself; a paradox that may, under certain circumstances, be a necessity. But consider the example of "A Clockwork Orange." In Kubrick's film (and not necessarily Burgess's novel, which I read a few decades ago), Alex the thug is a cultured, violent, amoral monster who is finally imprisoned and subjected to the tender mercies of the state. Thanks to the "Ludovico Technique" he is "reformed," largely through aversion therapy which teaches his body, if not his mind, to react to sex and violence (and the 9th Symphony of Ludwig Van) with feelings that amount to the sickness unto death. Of course, prison is a fairly useless enterprise, where Alex hones his skills of sycophancy (something the prison guards and governor understand about him all too well). The Ludovico technique, it turns out, works all too well, and Alex becomes what he made his victims into: a helpless pawn in the hands of those more powerful. It is the manipulations of Alex which finally win him some freedom in the end, some measure of equity with the powerful who exploit his symbolism. And therein lies the real lesson of the film: government is all about symbolism, because through symbolism, governments manipulate power.

Now regard the words of Mike McConnell this morning on NPR:

Mike McConnell, director of national intelligence, told Renee Montagne the main issue is liability protection for the private sector.

"We can't do this mission without their help," he said. "Currently there is no retroactive liability protection for them. They're being sued for billions of dollars."

He said the lawsuits are causing them to be less cooperative and that their actions are not illegal.

"The Senate committee that passed the bill examined the activities of the telecom companies and concluded they were not violating the law," he said.

If the current law were extended while the House and Senate work out their differences, there would be no retroactive protection for the companies, McConnell said, "and we'd lose the capability to protect the country."

What this brings up, of course, is the question of freedom in society. And that, of course, is the problem:

Freedom is essentially the faculty or power to do as one pleases, to decide, to choose, to determine oneself, to have self-determination, to be master, and first of all matter of oneself (autos, ipse). A simple analysis of the "I can," of the "it is possible for me," of the "I have the force to", reveals the predicate of freedom, that "I am free to," "I can decide." There is no freedom without ipseity and, vice versa, no ipseity without freedom--and, thus, without a certain sovereignty. (Derrida, Rogues, p. 22)

What Mr. McConnell is telling us is that we can longer afford such freedom, that the right to seek damages in a court of civil jurisdiction, a right that goes back into the dim reaches of English history and descends to us through English common law, must now we abandoned in the name of "national security."

We must never forget that this portrait of the democrat associates freedom or liberty (eleutheria) with license (exousia), which is also whim, free will, freedom of choice, leisure to follow one's desires, ease, facility, the faculty or power to do as one pleases. Plato says this explicitly....

But what allows me for the moment to formlate things in this way by making reference to Plato is what the Republic itself draws our attention to just after the passage on the democratic man and his freedoms, eleutheria and exousia. Insofar as each person in this democracy can lead the life he chooses, we find this this regime, this polteia...all sorts of people, a greater variety than anywhere else. (Rogues, pp. 23-24)

Freedom and license, of course, are the issues in "A Clockwork Orange." The government finally curtails Alex's freedom and license to engage in "the old ultra-violence," but the only way they can do that is to engage in violence themselves. The government's solution is power: the use of power to destroy Alex's will. The complaint of the prison chaplain is the closest the film comes to having a moral voice:

Prison Chaplain: Choice! The boy has not a real choice, has he? Self-interest, the fear of physical pain drove him to that grotesque act of self-abasement. The insincerity was clear to be seen. He ceases to be a wrongdoer. He ceases also to be a creature capable of moral choice.

Minister: Padre, there are subtleties! We are not concerned with motives, with the higher ethics. We are concerned only with cutting down crime and with relieving the ghastly congestion in our prisons. He will be your true Christian, ready to turn the other cheek, ready to be crucified rather than crucify, sick to the heart at the thought of killing a fly. Reclamation! Joy before the angels of God! The point is that it works.

The preferred justification of governments throughout time: "The point is that it works!" And when it doesn't, as the Minister assures Alex at the end of the film, an investigation will be conducted, and blame assessed.

License, then, is the problem, and the point is: government must use power in order to curtail license, to control freedom. So, for the Bush Administration, the license of individuals to sue must be abrogated in order to preserve...what? Our way of life? But isn't that license the keystone of our "way of life"? To preserve us from attack, then. But where is the evidence this destruction of what is fundamental to our way of life is necssary to protect that way of life? In the name of national security, in a case where every piece of information that travels electronically is subject to review by the government only with the compliance of corporations, we must ride roughshod over our basic legal rights in order to protect ourselves from prospective terrors. NPR ran a story just after the McConnell interview, in which the government asserts its right to examine any traveller's computer for possible terrorist information based solely on suspicions of the citizen's heritage, or where they have journeyed; and not only to scour your electronic data, but to have a complete itinerary of where you went, where you stayed, and who you talked to. Why? Well, because your 4th amendment right ends at the border, that's why. And it doesn't even exist within these borders, because, McConnell explained, modern technology has erased borders. Electronic communications outside the US can be intercepted inside the US, so the government argues it must be free to examine all electronic communications, because you never know when a terrorist might be on the phone. Or when a US citizen might be travelling back from meeting with terrorists, so all privacy and individual rights must be abandoned in order to be sure we are safe.

Even our right to sue for damages, to hold private actors liable for their deeds, must fall to the need to be safe from a hypothetical, theoretical, possible or even impossible, "act of terrorism." We cannot be too careful. Now our own government is making that argument. What madness is this?

In order to save our freedom, the government tells us, we have to destroy it. Our government is trying to send us on a mission, to put us on a path we should never walk down without knowing precisely what the cost will be. The government wants suicide to be translated into murder, and is even telling us this is what must happen if we are to live. It is being presented in the name of security, but it is actually the only thing government ever wants when it wants to be free to pursue its own interests: power. Those in power are simply hungry for more. Which, now, are we to be more afraid of? The terrorists, who want to use their power to make us leave them alone? Or the government, who wants to take power, and asks us to leave them alone to get on with it?

Valentine's Day 2008

No particular or peculiar knowledge to impart, aside from a note about a peculiar coincidence.

Valentine's Day, of course, is the feast day of St. Valentine. Except there were three "Valentines" in the early martyrologies, and the date probably has more to do with medieval bestiary lore than anything else. Seems the middle of the second month was the time of year associated with birds pairing off for the year, which of course meant everyone else should follow suit. Besides, February is cold, and what better excuse for seeking a bit of warmth? All three martyrs, by the way, were martyred on February 14th.

But the interesting coincidence is that Candlemas was originally celebrated on February 14th. The date was chosen as being 40 days after the birth of Jesus, in accordance with Mosaic law. Which means Christmas was first set on January 5th. It moved back to December 25th sometime in the last 25 years of the 4th century, which drew Candlemas back to February 2nd. Which not only fairly eviscerates the notion that Christmas Day was dropped like a 16 ton weight on some pagan holiday, but raises an even more interesting question:

What was it about February 14th that got so much attention from so many people? I can understand the attachment of three Saints Valentine to the same martyred day, but birds pairing off in the middle of the second month? Or Mary presenting herself and receiving Simeon's blessing? Pity that connection was lost so easily. But what is it about the middle of the second month?

Sometimes history is just so fascinating. Now if we could just rescue the old customs of Valentine's Day which have "of late years fallen into comparative desuetude." Maybe we could even start talking like that again....

And music for the day should be:



Of course.

Snap Judgments

Two books came into the store the other day; which should I add to my reading list?



The Age of American Unreason, by Susan Jacoby. This one, I'm told, combines historical analysis with contemporary observation. Unfortunately, all too true. When I flip the book open (honest! Serendipity! Synchronicity! Moving of the Holy Spirit! I report, you decide!) this is what I read:

In the United States, Dawkins [yes, Richard D.!] has been attacked not only for his general criticism of religion but for his uncompromising defense of Darwin's theory of evolution. One conservative American writer describes Dawkins as a "poor public intellectual" because, in articulating his views on the randomness of nature, he "appears to be utterly indifferent to the spiritual and emotional difficulties that his writings cause for many readers." It is hard to imagine exactly how anyone might function as a public intellectual while taking care to avoid all issues that might trigger a spiritual, emotional, or intellectual crisis among his or her readers. It is not necessary, however, to be concerned about the emotional difficulties of Dawkins's audience to conclude that he is somewhat off the mark in his assesment of the compromise between faith and reason by what is generally called "moderate" religion.

Susan Jacoby, The Age of American Unreason (New York: Pantheon Books 2008), p. 206.

Which sounds semi-reasonable enough, despite all the appeals to vague and glittering generalities. The "American religious right," we are told, rejects what "moderate religion" tries to accomodate: "secular education and secular government." Well, maybe, but that's rather a broad brush, even for H. Richard Niebuhr. Still, it's the conclusion of this chapter that really brought me up short:

A general attention to the supernatural, extending beyond narrowly defined fundamentalism, lies at the heart of the profound divide not only between religious America and secular Europe but also between devout religious believers and secularists wtihin the United States. "People are reaching out in all directions in the attempt to escape from the seen world to the unseen world," George Gallup, Jr. told a correspondent for U.S. News and World Report in 2002. "There is a deep desire for spiritual moorings--a hunger for God." (p. 208-09)

Now, frankly, even attributing that statement to St. Augustine of Hippo would not be enough for me. The statement of George Gallup, Jr., in a newsmagazine, is a valid statement of the state of American thought, or even spirituality? Really? Well, it is for Ms. Jacoby:

The desire to escape from the seen to the unseen world is not confined to Americans who profess an ultra-conservative form of faith or, for that matter, any form of orthodox faith. "Escape" is the key word: the resurgence of fundamentalism in the United States has occurred within the context of a pervasive nonreligious antirationalism taht reinforces extreme forms of religion and also affects the broader public's views about science, education, and reality itself.

This puts me in mind of Niebuhr's comments on monasticism, sprinkled throughout Christ and Culture. Niebuhr has no truck with the monastic life, and it finally becomes clear his knowledge of it is Luther's late-in-life rejection of its validity, where he labelled it a "retreat" from the world. Of course, one need only read Kathleen Norris' work to know the monastic life is still lived among people, strangers mostly, whom one is forced to live on intimate terms with for the rest of one's days. Rather like family, you don't get to pick 'em, not entirely; and anything involving living with other people can't really be called a withdrawal from the world. Still, we are all experts on what we have the least experience with, so Ms. Jacoby sinks to some very risible stuff indeed, and maybe even correct; but I submit, no more grounded in reality than the natterings of David Brooks on American sociology or the pronouncements of any TV pundit on why people are voting for John McCain, Barack Obama, or Hillary Clinton. When in doubt or without data: pontificate! And by the way, how does this desire for "escape" coincide with the resurgent interest of fundamentalists in American politics, an interest which, based on the tallies for Mike Huckabee recently, has yet to abate? And Joel Osteen is still packing them in preaching about what will be seen if you just have as much faith and as kind a smile as he does. God wants you to be rich, is Mr. Osteen's pitch, and there ain't nothin' "unseen" about that appeal.

So I don't really get it.



The other book is: Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam After Iraq, by Michael Scheuer, someone presented as a 20 year veteran CIA analyst and former head of the "Osama Bin Laden" unit. Mr. Scheuer's thesis is encapsulated on the back dust jacket (he lacks the words of tribute from Douglas Brinkley, Marcia Angell, Helen Thomas, Frederick Crews, and Jack Miles that grace Ms. Jacoby's volume; I'm thinking that's probably a good thing.):

As I researched this book, I became fixed on a single question: "Is there protection of U.S. interests and American citizens, and the maintenance of American sovereignty, independence, and freedom of action, any longer the primary, overriding concern of the U.S. federal government?" The answer should obviously be an emphatic yes, at all times and on every issue.

And yet the more I read and researched, the more I encountered the discrepancy betweeen the words and deeds of U.S. leaders, as well as the vast gulf between their description of the world adn the world as I perceived it in my twenty-plus years as a counterterrorism analyst. And, as I looked closely, I became increasingly doubtful if the answer to the pivotal question above could be even a timid yes.

Since 9/11 there has been a war between two opponents. One one side are the Islamists, fighting in deadly earnest for fully explained reasons and limited objectives; on the other, the United States, grandly assuming inevitable victory ove a foe that exists only in its mind.

My aim in writing this book was to point a finger at the unnecessary and self-defeating mistakes the United States has made since 9/11--political, diplomatic, military, and intellectual--mistakes that could have been avoided had our government paid attention to history and put America first.

Michael Scheuer, Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam after Iraq (New York: Free Press, 2008)

The preface to the book makes clear the thesis: that "the much ballyhooed and nearly beatified 'bipartisan approach' to post-Cold War foreign policy played out its string and collapsed" in the sands of Iraq; and, of course, nothing has been learned from that. This book may be as wrong as Ms. Jacoby's may be right. But Mr. Scheuer's book is packed densely with data and details, and proceeds carefully from one well considered proposition to the next, never launching filament purely out of itself (or others) into the air, assuming it has become anchored somewhere across the void. Ms. Jacoby's book just puts me in mind of a lot of what I read already; and Mr. Scheuer's book reminds me of what's missing in the public discourse. I think that's a pretty strong recommendation.

And to bring this back (abruptly) to the other discussion, this gem from Nicholas Kristoff, who surely means well, but who just as surely should know better. His column today is about Gitmo and torture, but on the way he drops this burning insight:

Most Americans, including myself, originally gave President Bush the benefit of the doubt and assumed that the inmates truly were “the worst of the worst.” But evidence has grown that many are simply the unluckiest of the unluckiest.

Which is why, of course, we have a legal system. Because we never assume any one government official is wise enough to know who the "bad guys" are, nor do we give that government official unlimited power to do what he thinks best. Everytime we've done that in American history, we've regretted it. It's always the fact that the evidence shows those declared "evil" (Native Americans; slaves; Japanese Americans during World War II; German-Americans during World War I) are "simply the unluckiest of the unluckiest").

When will we ever turn from vague and glittering generalities to carefully considered facts? Not any time soon, apparently.

Good Grief

Well, the good news is:

The Senate has joined the House in voting to prohibit the CIA from using waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods.

The Senate approved an intelligence bill Wednesday that restricts the CIA to the 19 interrogation techniques outlined in the Army field manual. That manual prohibits waterboarding, a technique that makes a suspect feel he is drowning.

CIA Director Michael Hayden has said waterboarding may not be legal under current law. President Bush has threatened to veto any bill that limits CIA interrogation techniques.

The defense of this practice, however, just continues to go deeper down the rabbit hole.

Dan Froomkin notes that he has "written repeatedly" that Bush "has yet to offer any evidence that intelligence produced by torture thwarted a single plot or saved a single life." His links include this one, with an excellent list of questions, and this one, which notes in December 2007 what is still true in February 2008:

But it all boils down to the fact that, so far, no one from Bush on down has come up with a single documented example of American lives saved thanks to torture.

Jay Rockefeller said he had seen no evidence, even in private briefings, to indicate torture had saved lives or thwarted violent plots. In light of the Senate action, AG Mukasey offers a defense of waterboarding based on the idea that the people it is used on "self-select" for their ability to resist the technique (since, he claims, water-boarding was used on only 3 detainees out of 100. You know, if you don't tell us what we want to hear, it's your fault we have to torture you.). Further, General Mukasey argues that, if waterboarding was outlawed, then only outlaws would waterboard, and that would hamstring the President's ability to...well, to torture people. No, I'm not kidding. Listen to that Mukasey interview. If Congress outlaws waterboarding, then the CIA won't do it, and the President won't be able to order it, which means the President would have to do it himself if he wanted it done. That's Mukasey's argument.

Of course, 2 years ago investigators with the Pentagon:

... argued that abusive interrogations were not likely to produce truthful information, either for preventing more al-Qaida attacks or prosecuting terrorists.

Two years later, we are assured through luminaries like President Bush and Sen. Kit Bond and, of course, Dick Cheney, that attacks have, indeed, been prevented thanks to torture of detainees. Justice Antonin Scalia chimes in that, when it's the "ticking bomb" scenario, who wouldn't allow Dirty Harry to torture the criminal to find the buried girl?* Except, of course, as any first year law student can tell you, that's ex post facto reasoning, and: change the facts, change the outcome. We don't know what the suspect knows until we torture them to get it, and we don't know the information is reliable even then. So can we torture in good faith? Or must we be able to show good evidence derived from the torture?

Which brings us back to Dan Froomkin's question: What attacks?

Well, they can't tell us that.


*Personally, I think Scalia just makes these pronouncements for the publicity value; but opinions, quite reasonably, vary.

Still digging....

Or, riding my newest hobby horse for just one more day:

Qahtani's case drew condemnation in June 2005 when Time magazine published leaked portions of his interrogation log showing that U.S. forces had him bark like a dog and left him to urinate on himself in isolation.

In the log, U.S. interrogators describe how they ratcheted up techniques on Qahtani during 50 days starting in November 2002 to extract a confession -- by using sleep deprivation, leaving him strapped to an intravenous drip without bathroom breaks and having him strip naked.

Monday, he was one of six men named by the Pentagon to face a complex six-defendant war crimes trial for the suicide attacks that slammed aircraft into the Pentagon, World Trade Center and a Pennsylvania field -- killing 2,973 people.

The six men could be executed if they are convicted, and if a Bush administration official approves their trial as a death-penalty case.

The Pentagon has since said that Qahtani's interrogation tactics were personally approved by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

Qahtani's civilian attorney said the captive has since recanted any confessions he made during those interrogations.

Let me say, first, I knew nothing about the IV drip when I first used this picture. Now it seems unfortunately appropriate...

The MSNBC article I'd started with doesn't specify which of the defendants were interrogated by the FBI; it only gives a blanket statement that all of the defendants have given information under FBI questioning similar to that given under torture. There is this interesting link, though, which shows clearly that over 2 years ago, the Pentagon knew a fair trial for Qahtani had been rendered impossible:

Although they believed the abusive techniques were probably illegal, the Pentagon cops said their objection was practical. They argued that abusive interrogations were not likely to produce truthful information, either for preventing more al-Qaida attacks or prosecuting terrorists.

And they described their disappointment when military prosecutors told them not to worry about making a criminal case against al-Qahtani, the suspected "20th hijacker" of Sept. 11, because what had been done to him would prevent him from ever being put on trial.

In other words, even the Pentagon knows this "military tribunal" is a kangaroo court. That article goes on to note something curious: the Pentagon's Criminal Investigation Task Force sent Mark Fallon to Guantanamo along with "General Geoffrey D. Miller, the U.S. Army general in charge of detainees at Guantanamo Bay," in 2003. Why? Because:

Fallon said he feared that the Guantanamo techniques would spread.

"I wanted to tackle the general, anything to stop him from getting on that plane," Fallon said. "The best I could do was to send along a chaperone."

Miller denies this story, in the same article. But why would the Pentagon need to block a General going to Guantanamo? Why is the left hand fighting with the right hand? Because, as The Miami Herald story says, "...Qahtani's interrogation tactics were personally approved by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

Still, as the MSNBC article now notes:

"There's something in American jurisprudence called 'fruit of the poisonous tree': You can clean up the tree a little but it's hard to do," said John D. Hutson, a retired Navy rear admiral and former judge advocate general. "Once you torture someone, it is hard to un-torture them. The general public is going to be concerned about the validity of the testimony."

But of course, that's the standard for a criminal trial.

It is unclear whether that will matter in the military commissions system, which gives prosecutors more leeway than they have in regular criminal courts.

We'll have to wait to see just how clear this process is going to be. But I'm already envisioning something curiously akin to Alice's adventures with the trial of the Knave of Hearts.

While we're waiting for that, we have this prayer, and these thoughts, from r@d@r, to guide us:

god grant me the serenity to accept the things i cannot change, the courage to change the things i can, and the wisdom to buy exclusively from local small-batch roasters.

hey, the kid WANTED me to take those pictures - i offered him a happy meal!

deliver us from evil.

Amen.

And we have a bridge in Brooklyn you might be interested in buying

First the accusations, then the denials, now the "cover":

The Bush administration announced yesterday that it intends to bring capital murder charges against half a dozen men allegedly linked to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, based partly on information the men disclosed to FBI and military questioners without the use of coercive interrogation tactics.

The admissions made by the men -- who were given food whenever they were hungry as well as Starbucks coffee at the Defense Department's Guantanamo Bay prison -- played a key role in the government's decision to proceed with the prosecutions, military and law enforcement officials said.

FBI and military interrogators who began work with the suspects in late 2006 called themselves the "Clean Team," and set as their goal collecting of virtually the same information the CIA had obtained from five of the six through duress at secret prisons.

And, of course, it was all voluntarily offered information:

"They went in and said that they'd love to talk to them, that they knew what the men had been through, and that none of that stuff was going to be done to them," said one official familiar with the program who spoke anonymously because of its secrecy. "It was made very clear to them that they were in a very different environment, that they were not with the CIA anymore. There was an extensive period of making sure they understood it had to be voluntary on their part."

Would they have talked without torture? We'll never know, as the article notes. Were they sure to give up the same stories because they didn't trust their interrogators not to turn them over to the torturers again if there was a question which story was true? Funny, the article doesn't ask that question.

After all, they were given Starbucks coffee when they asked for it. Who would lie when you've gone from being waterboarded to being given lattes? Clearly, now, the torture doesn't taint the confessions, right?

No such niceties observed in getting information for the 9/11 Commission, by the way:

The NBC News analysis shows that more than one quarter of all footnotes in the 9/11 Report refer to CIA interrogations of al-Qaida operatives who were subjected to the now-controversial interrogation techniques. In fact, information derived from the interrogations is central to the Report’s most critical chapters, those on the planning and execution of the attacks. The analysis also shows - and agency and commission staffers concur - there was a separate, second round of interrogations in early 2004, done specifically to answer new questions from the Commission.

Yeah, our hands are clean. Washed 'em in premium coffee, we did!

The First Rule of Holes

continues to be violated:

Military prosecutors have decided to seek the death penalty for six Guantánamo detainees who are to be charged with central roles in the Sept. 11 terror attacks, government officials who have been briefed on the charges said Sunday.

The officials said the charges would be announced at the Pentagon as soon as Monday and were likely to include numerous war-crimes charges against the six men, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the former Qaeda operations chief who has described himself as the mastermind of the attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people.

A Defense Department official said prosecutors were seeking the death penalty because “if any case warrants it, it would be for individuals who were parties to a crime of that scale.” The officials spoke anonymously because no one in the government was authorized to speak about the case.

A decision to seek the death penalty would increase the international focus on the case and present new challenges to the troubled military commission system that has yet to begin a single trial.

“The system hasn’t been able to handle the less-complicated cases it has been presented with to date,” said David Glazier, a former Navy officer who is a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.

But why let that stop us?

“My opinion is,” said [Debra Burlingame, "whose brother Charles F. Burlingame III was the pilot of the hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 that was crashed into the Pentagon"], “if the death of 3,000 people isn’t sufficient for a death penalty in this country, then why do we even have the death penalty?”

The better question is: why do we even have a justice system, if we can't use it? Because the sad irony is: will the death penalty, in any of these cases, ever even be applied? And if it is, will it be justice?

Professor Glazier of Loyola said the military commission system was devised to avoid many of the hurdles that have slowed civilian capital cases. Still, he said, he expected intense scrutiny and criticism of such cases that could slow proceedings.

Well, there's one answer. Why bog down the system with concepts like "due process" and "equal protection of the laws"? Not that jettisoning those things will be easy or, hopefully, even possible.

In any event, vigorous trial battles and appeals would probably mean that no execution would be imminent. “It certainly seems impossible to get this done by the end of the Bush administration,” Professor Glazier said.

People with no experience whatsoever in warfare (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld) created the torture that is now the hallmark of the "War on Terror." Now those same people, with equally no experience in the criminal justice system (none of them are lawyers, and the lawyers they hire, from Gonzales to Woo to Mukasey, are as corrupt and unethical as any to ever shame the profession), are doing to that system what they have done to national security: treating it like a means to greater power.

This is not going to end well for the country.

Economics really is the "Dismal Science"

or at least leads to dismal reasoning:

Income statistics, however, don’t tell the whole story of Americans’ living standards. Looking at a far more direct measure of American families’ economic status — household consumption — indicates that the gap between rich and poor is far less than most assume, and that the abstract, income-based way in which we measure the so-called poverty rate no longer applies to our society.

I spent the weekend thinking this was some kind of "Modest Proposal," largely on the basis of these paragragphs:

The top fifth of American households earned an average of $149,963 a year in 2006. As shown in the first accompanying chart, they spent $69,863 on food, clothing, shelter, utilities, transportation, health care and other categories of consumption. The rest of their income went largely to taxes and savings. The bottom fifth earned just $9,974, but spent nearly twice that — an average of $18,153 a year. How is that possible? A look at the far right-hand column of the consumption chart, labeled “financial flows,” shows why: those lower-income families have access to various sources of spending money that doesn’t fall under taxable income. These sources include portions of sales of property like homes and cars and securities that are not subject to capital gains taxes, insurance policies redeemed, or the drawing down of bank accounts. While some of these families are mired in poverty, many (the exact proportion is unclear) are headed by retirees and those temporarily between jobs, and thus their low income total doesn’t accurately reflect their long-term financial status.

I really thought this was a joke. The real comparison between people who spend roughly 1/2 of their income on consumer goods, and those who spend twice their income on such goods, is the fact that both buy lots of consumer goods? So "poor people" sell off assets, which allow them to spend well beyond their means, on consumer goods (apparently). Or they just flip houses and cars in order to buy more houses and cars? Or more DVD's, videogames, and computer software? Am I getting this right? And retirees' "long-term financial status" is subject to dramatic improvement? Really?

Because the Dow Jones is gonna hit 30,000 someday soon, I suppose.

Of course, none of the income of the poor, apparently, goes to either taxes or savings. How can it, if they are spending twice what they earn on consumer goods. And this model, we are drily told, is sustainable because...well, we aren't told. But apparently the "poor" have an endless supply of houses and cars to sell, insurance policies which, when redeemed, stand ready to be redeemed again, bank accounts which magically re-fill themselves to supply this doubling of income just so it can be spent on consumer goods, and, of course, secuirities. People with incomes less than $10,000.00 a year obviously own lots of securities.

Surely this is a joke.

But the authors of this article work for the Federal Reserve Bank in Dallas, not an institution known for it's dry wit and satirical outlook. And they end their argument with this modest proposal:

Thus there is a certain perversity to suggestions that the proper reaction to a potential recession is to enact protectionist measures. While foreign competition may have eroded some American workers’ incomes, looking at consumption broadens our perspective. Simply put, the poor are less poor. Globalization extends and deepens a capitalist system that has for generations been lifting American living standards — for high-income households, of course, but for low-income ones as well.

I keep looking for the hint of a smile there, a wink, a nod, something to indicate the joke. But I can't find it. Can we go back to talking about morality in economics, now? Please?

Why should it be said among the peoples, 'Where is their God?'

2:1 Blow the trumpet in Zion; sound the alarm on my holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of the LORD is coming, it is near-

2:2 a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness! Like blackness spread upon the mountains a great and powerful army comes; their like has never been from of old, nor will be again after them in ages to come.

2:12 Yet even now, says the LORD, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;

2:13 rend your hearts and not your clothing. Return to the LORD, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing.

2:14 Who knows whether he will not turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind him, a grain offering and a drink offering for the LORD, your God?

2:15 Blow the trumpet in Zion; sanctify a fast; call a solemn assembly;

2:16 gather the people. Sanctify the congregation; assemble the aged; gather the children, even infants at the breast. Let the bridegroom leave his room, and the bride her canopy.

2:17 Between the vestibule and the altar let the priests, the ministers of the LORD, weep. Let them say, "Spare your people, O LORD, and do not make your heritage a mockery, a byword among the nations. Why should it be said among the peoples, 'Where is their God?'"

So I open the New York Times this morning, and immediately I find this:

Military prosecutors are in the final phases of preparing the first sweeping case against suspected conspirators in the plot that led to the deaths of nearly 3,000 Americans on Sept. 11, 2001, and drew the United States into war, people who have been briefed on the case said.

The charges, to be filed in the military commission system at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, would involve as many as six detainees held at the detention camp, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the former senior aide to Osama bin Laden, who has said he was the principal planner of the plot.

There's a reason the Bush Administration wants these trials held in "military tribunals," and it's not because these 6 men are too dangerous for a US courtroom. It's because they have been tortured, and evidence obtained under torture is inadmissable in a US court of law. Or, as Philip Carter put it almost four years ago:

There are plenty of good reasons to avoid using torture in interrogations. It's an immoral and barbaric practice condemned by most Western nations and theological traditions, for starters. International human rights law and U.S. criminal law both outlaw it. And as if that's not enough, there is serious doubt as to whether torture even produces reliable intelligence, as Mark Bowden explains in the October 2003 issue of the Atlantic Monthly.

Add this additional reason to the list: Any information gained through torture will almost certainly be excluded from court in any criminal prosecution of the tortured defendant. And, to make matters worse for federal prosecutors, the use of torture to obtain statements may make those statements (and any evidence gathered as a result of those statements) inadmissible in the trials of other defendants as well. Thus, the net effect of torture is to undermine the entire federal law enforcement effort to put terrorists behind bars. With each alleged terrorist we torture, we most likely preclude the possibility of a criminal trial for him, and for any of the confederates he may incriminate.

Let me use his words once again, to make absolutely clear why the Administration must use a "military tribunal." Thanks to what they've done, it's all the "legitimacy" they have left:

Evidence (such as a confession) gathered as a result of torturing a person like Mohammed will be excluded at his trial, if he ever sees one. This is true both in federal courts, which operate under the Federal Rules of Evidence, and military courts, which operate under the Military Rules of Evidence. Both the Fifth Amendment's right against compulsory self-incrimination and the 14th Amendment's guarantee of due process preclude the use of a defendant's coerced statement against him in criminal court. In addition, any evidence gathered because of information learned through torture (sometimes called "derivative evidence") will likely also be excluded. Furthermore, the Supreme Court suggested in its landmark Fifth Amendment case, Oregon v. Elstad, that it might exclude evidence gathered after the use of any coercion, regardless of attempts by police and prosecutors to offset the coercion with measures like a Miranda warning. If Mohammed were prosecuted, and a court followed the line of reasoning set forth in Elstad, he might well see the charges against him evaporate entirely for lack of evidence.

And what have we gained by this torture? According to the times, Khalid Mohammed has said: "I was responsible for the 9/11 operation, from A to Z." A prosecution of such a man for such a crime in a US court of law would carry tremendous political and moral weight. But 9/11 changed everything, and now the question of culpability may well be lost in the questions of the reliability of the tribunal, and of the evidence presented there:

Gitanjali Gutierrez, one of Mr. al-Qahtani’s [the "20th hijacker"] lawyers at the Center for Constitutional Rights, said she had no information about whether he would be charged. “But if he is,” Ms. Gutierrez said, “I can assure you that his well-documented torture and the controversy over secret trials will be the focus.”

What justice, then, do we even have for the families of the victims of 9/11? And who is to blame for this? The GOP? Bush? Cheney? Remember that line about one finger pointing at you, four pointing back at me?

Neither, I have to say, does Digby:

Considering that all this was done by people who had previously brought us secret wars in Cambodia and sold arms to our alleged enemies to fund illegal wars from a shadow government run out of the white house, it really shouldn't be surprising that they did what they did. And unless there is a reckoning, it would be criminally stupid if we are surprised the next time they get their hands on the white house and do it all again. It's what they do.

There is another branch of government with all the power needed to stop this, and see that it stays stopped, and for the last two years that branch has been under the control of people who say they are opposed to torture, that torture is illegal, immoral, and unacceptable. And yet those same people gave us the current AG, the one who won't call waterboarding "torture," and who won't even tell the Congress, in secret session, what he knows about the facts of waterboarding by US agents or their employees (Digby seems to have discovered the "outsourcing" of torture just recently). But even the reviled (well, in left blogistan it is) Washington Post understood the breadth of the problem almost a year ago:

Two senators who attended Mr. Mohammed's Guantanamo hearing, Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), issued a statement calling for an investigation of the torture charges. Yet any administration investigation -- especially one conducted in secret -- will almost certainly conclude that the waterboarding was approved by senior administration officials. What's needed is a genuinely independent investigation, one that airs Mr. Mohammed's charges and tests the administration's claim that the CIA's actions were legal. Mr. Levin -- as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee -- could conduct such a probe in cooperation with the Intelligence or Judiciary committees. What's stopping him?

What, I ask, have they done to stop this? And the answer is: nothing. Nothing, because while it makes good sound bites for Patrick Leahy to yell at Alberto Gonzales or for Russ Feingold to denounce torture, or for Dick Durbin to demand an answer to a question in a hearing, the political calculus still seems to be our country is ruled by a "24-Kiefer Sutherland-is-our-savior" mentality, and that means no one can afford to appear "soft" on terrorism. Which means torture and secret prisons and Gitmo must continue, and neither party will stop it, because "that's what they do."

And yes, I realize Dahlia Lithwick is right:

Let me say that again, for the benefit of folks who believe this matter might be resolved by the passage of pending legislation to force the CIA to use only those techniques permitted in the U.S. Army Field Manual. It doesn't matter to this president what the laws say. FISA was a law once, too.

But then, Nixon wasn't impeached for that "secret war" in Cambodia, either. This is no longer a question merely of laws. Laws will not save us. Politics will not save us. Process will not save us. Only the enforcement, the requirement, of something akin to morality, will do now. And it isn't a question of "them"=evil, and "us"=true, blue Americans.

Extraordinary rendition began under Clinton. Bush just made refined it. This is not what "they" do, some vague "other" who is not like "us." This is what people in power do. This is what power does. It tends to corrupt. And absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely. Ironically, that phrase was first addressed by a Roman Catholic lay person in response to the promulgation of the doctrine of "papal infallibility." Funny how religion keeps teaching us lessons we don't want to learn. Funny, too, how we overlook the fundamental problem of governance that has now been raised. As Ms. Lithwick puts it:

This is not simply the theory of a unitary executive at work; this isn't the notion that the president makes the law, and acts of Congress are legal elevator music. This vision of executive power is that the law not only emanates from the president but also ebbs and flows with his hunches, hopes, and speculations, on a moment-to-moment basis. What we are hearing now from senior Bush administration officials is that if the president thinks someone looks kinda like a terrorist and the information sought from him seems kinda worth getting, it will be legal to torture him. And it's legal no matter who justified it, regardless of the supporting legal doctrine, because, well, the president just had a feeling that the information would prove valuable.

That's not an imperial presidency. That's the kind of presidency Yahweh might establish. I'm sure there's some law professor out there who can make the legal argument that executive power in wartime encompasses even the reckless guesses and impressionistic whims of a single man, as they arise. At which point, that too will become an "open question" on which "reasonable people will differ." And the dance will begin again.

It's not longer a question of what is "Reasonable," but of what is "right," and by "right" we have to mean "moral." Digby ends her post pessimistically, saying: "Sadly, very few people seem to think it's a problem." Very few people leaves a lot of people, in both parties, covered in this disgrace. But that's what they do; and, apparently, what they will keep doing. And very few people can be enough to see the truth:

Well, it's official: We are no better than the terrorists who blow themselves up to kill us.
This week's admission that the CIA has used waterboarding will have some easily foreseeable consequences, but none of them will make America safer.

Most obviously, it will help inspire thousands more terrorists who can't wait to kill us.

And don't count on any sympathy from the world for the next 9/11-style attacks on the United States. Instead, what we're going to hear will be more like, "Serves them right." As the Bible suggests, he who sows the wind will reap the whirlwind.

William Smith
Baltimore

Isaiah 58:1-12
58:1 Shout out, do not hold back! Lift up your voice like a trumpet! Announce to my people their rebellion, to the house of Jacob their sins.

58:2 Yet day after day they seek me and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness and did not forsake the ordinance of their God; they ask of me righteous judgments, they delight to draw near to God.

58:3 "Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?" Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day, and oppress all your workers.

58:4 Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist. Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high.

58:5 Is such the fast that I choose, a day to humble oneself? Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush, and to lie in sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the LORD?

58:6 Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?

58:7 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?

58:8 Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you, the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.

58:9 Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am. If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,

58:10 if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday.

58:11 The LORD will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail.

58:12 Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.

Same Song, Second Verse

Digby:

Do you get the feeling that the conservatives are gaming this thing? I knew that you would.

They know they are going to lose. They will blame the loss on the fact that McCain wasn't a real conservative (just like Bush.) They know when to fall back and regroup. They're already playing for the next election.

Everybody sing: Conservatism can never fail, it can only be failed.

Not to pick on Digby, but this phenomenon is neither new nor noteworthy. It's the seductive lure of the Big Idea. Whether you are Dawkins or Dobson, the only significant question is: what do you worship? The Big Idea trumps all. To listen to conservatives at CPAC in this NPR report is to listen to liberals denounce the failure of a Democratic candidate who fails to meet their ideals. Replace "conservatism" in Digby's final sentence with "liberalism" or "progressivism," it would be just as true. Regular folks call it the "purity battle." But it's actually all about power; when you lose it, the failure is not due to the limitations of your idea, but the limitations of the earthly vessel you housed it in. Thus do people say things like this to the current occupant of the White House:

But a telling moment came when Bush was talking about people "swept up in a cycle of addiction, and crime, and hopelessness." Said Bush: "We know that people can change their behavior. Sometimes all it takes is the help of a loving soul -- somebody who puts their arm around a troubled person and says, I love you, can I help you."

Suddenly, as Gillman reported, a woman shouted out very loudly, "I love ya Dubya!"

Bush responded: "My soul is not that troubled, but thank you."

Even as they rally, per Digby's original post, to denounce McCain and so spare themselves from embarassment. As Kierkegaard noted: "The condition for man's immortality is that life is uno tenore." Just a question, then, of which tenore is uno for you. Thus does Ronald Reagan ascend toward political sainthood in some circles, even as we get further and further away from his death. After all: "In recollection, a person draws on the eternal." And nothing is so eternal as death, nothing so unchanging as the eternal. Thus do we all hope our one course will be the path to our immortality.

Christianity calls it "original sin." Same as it ever was.

Lapham's Quarterly

I picked up the first issue yesterday, in a fit of curiousity. I'm a Lewis Lapham fan. More than anyone else he taught me the value of history, so a journal about "finding the present in the past, the past in the present", is something I wanted to read.

This first issue is devoted to "States of War." It is largely a collection of writings about war, throughout time and from around the world. Included, among other things, are George S. Patton's speech to the Third Army before the invasion of Northern France, known to most of us as the opening speech (in parts; the movie actually cleaned it up quite a bit) from "Patton;" Twain's familiar "War Prayer;" and this, an excerpt from War and Peace. There's a new translation of this out. I think I'm going to get a copy:

War is not a polite recreation but the vilest thing in life, and we ought to understand that and not play at war. Our attitude towards the fearful necessity of war ought to be stern and serious. It boils down to this: we should have done with humbug, and let war be war and not a game. Otherwise, war is a favorite pastime of the idle and frivolous … there is no profession held in higher esteem than the military. And what is war? What makes for success in warfare? What are the morals of the military world? The aim and end of war is murder; the weapons employed in war are espionage, treachery and the encouragement of treachery, the ruining of a country, the plundering and robbing of its inhabitants for the maintenance of the army, and trickery and lying, which all appear under the heading of the art of war. The military world is characterized by the absence of freedom—in other words, a rigorous discipline—enforced inactivity, ignorance, cruelty, debauchery, and drunkenness. And yet this is the highest caste in society, respected by all. Every monarch in the world, except the Emperor of China, wears a military uniform, and bestows the greatest rewards on the man who kills the greatest number of his fellow creatures. Tens of thousands of men meet—as they will tomorrow—to massacre one another: to kill and maim, and then they will offer up thanksgiving services for having slain such vast numbers (they even exaggerate the number) and proclaim a victory, supposing that the more men they have slaughtered the more credit to them. Think of God looking down and listening to them!” cried Prince Andrei in a shrill, piercing voice.

The Battle of Carnival and Lent, or: Why Blogging Sucks!

In response to this:

Without taking away from the activities other left wing media and interest groups, I think the lefty blogosphere has managed to create something which previously did not exist, a sustained and consistent liberal perspective on and critique of American politics and media.

I worked up this really clever post, which for posterity's sake and my own sanity, I'm going to leave in a footnote* (veritable scholar that I am) and instead quote The Editors from their new book (which I will now have to download, as I'm too cheap to pay for the dead tree version. Hey, they made it big in blogging! Me, I'm still an envious "C"-lister. And if I'm not even on the "C" list, don't tell me; I don't wanna know.), because they are wiser and funnier than me, and besides, In satiro veritas (yes, I know it's basically pig Latin; it's a joke! It's the best in get around here, so shut up! Whaddya want from a "C"...okay, okay, "X" list blog?!):

Has this weblog changed the media in America? You bet it has. It used to be all about the news, and what the media thinks about the news, and what the media thinks about the media, and so on. Incestuous, cliquey, shallow, and fake. Now it's all about what I think about what you think about what the media thinks about the news. That's a major improvement. If we can just get rid of all that crap about the media, and the news, and you, it would be even better.

And, of course, it's all about the community!

Busey: What do you get out of reading weblogs?

The Editors: Reading them gives me a sense of community, and a sense of understanding that, yes, there are other people out there who are going through the same things that I'm going through, and thinking the same thoughts I'm thinking, and that everybody's kind of struggling with these things together. I think there's something about them--something timeless, yet timely, if you see what I mean--that separates them from other reading material out there. They center me, and they make me whole.

No, I'm sorry, that's what I got out of reading Sweet Vally High novels. I don't really read weblogs. Why would I care what a bunch of internet losers think?

It wouldn't be funny if it weren't true! Commence le guerre!


*viz:

The evidence for this assertion [in the quote] is about as strong as the evidence that John McCain is a "maverick." Saying it, in other words, doesn't make it so.

Considering that long before blogs there were magazines such as Ramparts, which championed the environmental movement which even Richard Nixon had to accept (the EPA dates to Nixon's Administration); that Pacifica has been around since after World War II; that most of the changes in society prompted by the civil rights and anti-war movements of the '60s got by fine without blogs; that most of the changes in America today still seem goaded more by Bush and Cheney (the irony of "Be careful what you ask for, you might get it." Bush, it turns out, is a uniter. He has united a country against him and what he stands for.), it's a bit presumptuous to think, on no more evidence than self-interest and self-awareness, that one is an essential pivot point of history, or a necessary cause of the "revolution."

Much of the radical change of the '60's can be directly related to the "button-down conservatism" of the '50's; and much of the '80's and '90's can be fairly attributed to a reaction to the '70's, where the excesses of the '60's overflowed. It's easier and probably more accurate to see American culture as reactive, but much harder to assign agency to any one institution as the necessary force on the lever of change. Did blogs instigate? Or did they merely facilitate?

Might as well ask if the printing press was the reason for the American Revolution. Personal essays spread the ideas of the Enlightenment (especially the importance of the individual, and individual experience) in the 18th century, but were they the cause of its acceptance, or merely the instrument of transmission? Instruments are important, but to confuse them with sources is to confuse cause and effect.

As Chou En-Lai reportedly said when asked his opinion of the French Revolution: "It's too early to tell." Who are we, then, to rush to a declaration that "Blogs did this!" Rallied the troops, yes. But caused the rally? I think not. And the only place the troops rallied? Hardly.

See? Risible stuff, huh? Truly worthy of inclusion in the canon of Great Thoughts of Western White Men. But lacking the ol' snap, the pizzazz, the je ne sais quoi, as we say 'round here, that raises it to the level of satire. Of course, that could be because it isn't satire, but merely dull, pedantic, and uninspiring whinging. Still, a high colonic for the mind; a rousing, sprawling, lusty chronicle of our times, sort of. Of just the caliber you've come to expect from a blog of this quality, huh? 'Course, it won't merit mention by the sainted Digby, like some people who will go unmentioned. But that's only because this blog does not lower itself to cater to popular tastes and passing whinging fads! We chart a new course, and dare others to follow! Straight on 'til morning! Or until we go over the edge, whichever comes first!

Ash Wednesday, 2008

You can't conceive, my child, nor I nor anyone, the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God.--Graham Greene

Joel 2:1-2, 12-17
2:1 Blow the trumpet in Zion; sound the alarm on my holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of the LORD is coming, it is near-

2:2 a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness! Like blackness spread upon the mountains a great and powerful army comes; their like has never been from of old, nor will be again after them in ages to come.

2:12 Yet even now, says the LORD, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;

2:13 rend your hearts and not your clothing. Return to the LORD, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing.

2:14 Who knows whether he will not turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind him, a grain offering and a drink offering for the LORD, your God?

2:15 Blow the trumpet in Zion; sanctify a fast; call a solemn assembly;

2:16 gather the people. Sanctify the congregation; assemble the aged; gather the children, even infants at the breast. Let the bridegroom leave his room, and the bride her canopy.

2:17 Between the vestibule and the altar let the priests, the ministers of the LORD, weep. Let them say, "Spare your people, O LORD, and do not make your heritage a mockery, a byword among the nations. Why should it be said among the peoples, 'Where is their God?'"

Isaiah 58:1-12
58:1 Shout out, do not hold back! Lift up your voice like a trumpet! Announce to my people their rebellion, to the house of Jacob their sins.

58:2 Yet day after day they seek me and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness and did not forsake the ordinance of their God; they ask of me righteous judgments, they delight to draw near to God.

58:3 "Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?" Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day, and oppress all your workers.

58:4 Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist. Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high.

58:5 Is such the fast that I choose, a day to humble oneself? Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush, and to lie in sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the LORD?

58:6 Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?

58:7 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?

58:8 Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you, the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.

58:9 Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am. If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,

58:10 if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday.

58:11 The LORD will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail.

58:12 Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.

Psalm 51:1-17

1:1 Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.

1:2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.

1:3 For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.

1:4 Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are justified in your sentence and blameless when you pass judgment.

1:5 Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me.

1:6 You desire truth in the inward being; therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.

1:7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

1:8 Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have crushed rejoice.

1:9 Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities.

1:10 Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.

1:11 Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me.

1:12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit.

1:13 Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you.

1:14 Deliver me from bloodshed, O God, O God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of your deliverance.

1:15 O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise.

1:16 For you have no delight in sacrifice; if I were to give a burnt offering, you would not be pleased.

1:17 The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10

5:20b We entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.

5:21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

6:1 As we work together with him, we urge you also not to accept the grace of God in vain.

6:2 For he says, "At an acceptable time I have listened to you, and on a day of salvation I have helped you." See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!

6:3 We are putting no obstacle in anyone's way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry,

6:4 but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities,

6:5 beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger;

6:6 by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love,

6:7 truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left;

6:8 in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true;

6:9 as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see--we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed;

6:10 as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

6:1 "Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.

6:2 "So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward.

6:3 But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing,

6:4 so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

6:5 "And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward.

6:6 But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

6:16 "And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward.

6:17 But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face,

6:18 so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

6:19 "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal;

6:20 but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal.

6:21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

All the triumphant Christianity should die right here. It should crumple against these words like a speeding car against a brick wall. If it sees itself as an unstoppable force, this is the immovable object it impacts, and who wins? And all the obsequious, timid, too scared to speak itself to anyone Christianity, should accept the mark of ash with pride, and get off its knees, and stand up and blow the trumpet in Zion, and sound the alarm on God's holy mountain, and remember the Lord is gracious and merciful and slow to anger and full of steadfast love, should remember that even humility can be selfishness, that too much contrition can make must as much a stone of the heart as too much triumph. No, this is not a day for humiliation, nor for victory. This is a day for restoring the balance. This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it, and accept our ashes as the turn from Epiphany to responsibility. We must accept them graciously. By the end, we will have too much responsibility to bear. This is not a day for weeping, This is a day the Lord has made. This is a day to begin, again.

Someone challenged me, once, when I had used the 51st Psalm in worship. They challenged me about verse 15: "Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me." They wondered if that meant an infant was born in sin, born damned, corrupted, doomed from birth to hell. I didn't give a very good answer then. I can give a better one now. We have made sin the essential postulate of salvation, and so over centuries have put such a burden on the word as to make it a concept we dare not mention. "Sin" is ultimate condemnation. But it isn't. Sin is error; sin is doing what does not promote life. Sin is mistake and misdirection. If I am a sinner from my mother's womb, it is not because I participate in sin by the act of procreation, nor that sin is passed to me as my blue eyes and brown hair were from my parents. If I am born into sin, it is because I am prone to error, born in a condition in which mistakes will be made, created in a world in which I need direction, but am unlikely to take it. That's why I need to be purged with hyssop and washed clean, so my light will break forth, so the goodness that God gives will glow on the paths of all those who know me, all those who see me. I need to come and confess and be made clean, so I can be made whole. And I need to do this in the presence of the blessed community, in the public act of worship. I need to share this.

Christ be with me, Christ within me,
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me,
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

This is the fast God chooses; the fast that means I am sharing with my brother and sister, not hoarding while I pride myself on my self-restraint, on my ability to know what it is to go hungry when my pantry is full, to be thirsty when I have more cups than I can drink from in a day, more plates than I can use in a week, so much food I will throw some out if I don't stuff myself with it now. That is why I need guidance, direction, to be washed clean by God: so I will see and know my sister and my brother and share my food with them, bring Carnival to my soul by sharing panem and carnem with those who have neither. Farewell to me, but hello to them. This is the feast the Lord desires.

Humility that is aimed at me is now that God desires. Humility that is aimed at hospitality, at opening my home to the stranger, at making what is mine available to someone else in need, that is the wisdom of God. "You desire truth in the inward being; therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart." That is the wisdom God would teach to my secret heart, if I will only open it, if I will only humble it and listen.

What reward then, should I look for? Feasting and drinking and celebration are their own reward, but the works of humility are done in secret, so that God and not humankind will reward me. But what reward will that be? In the hereafter, in the sweet bye and bye, in the kingdom yet to come? Perhaps. Seems a long time to wait, and the rewards here are so plentiful and so easily taken. But what greater reward is there than kindness and openness and hospitality? If we have to account for every good thing we might have enjoyed and did not, what reward will we have for that? Pleasures are neither sins nor selfish, but selfish pleasures are sins indeed.Can I be washed of my sins and still enjoy my pleasures? Can I be led by God and still be free?

We are putting no obstacle in anyone's way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry,

but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities,

beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger;

by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love,

truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left;

in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true;

as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see--we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed;

as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.

But this everything is clearly "a condition of complete simplicity,/ costing not less than everything." That is quite a price to pay. Surely Ash Wednesday is about the price to pay, too. Surely that is the obstacle in the way. Surely there is no such thing as a free lunch!

Of course, there is not. But think of the price you are paying now, the interest accumulating on the debt you owe each other that can never be paid in full, the endless rounds of gift and exchange that can never be ended except by a violent irruption into the cycle! And how do you ever do that?! Without a complete interruption, without festival and celebration leading to humility and penitence, what hope is there?

Who is this who has said:
The house of God is a House of Sorrow,
We must walk in black and go sadly, with longdrawn faces,
We must go between empty walls, quavering lowly, whispering faintly,
Among a few flickering scattered lights?
They would put upon GOD their own sorrow, the grief they should feel
For their sins and faults as they go about their daily occasions.
Yet they walk in the street proudnecked,like thoroughbreds ready for races,
Adorning themselves, and busy in the market, the forum,
And all other secular meetings.
Thinking good of themselves, ready for any festivity,
Doing themselves very well.
Let us mourn in a private chamber, learning the way of pentitence,
And then let us learn the joyful communion of saints.--T.S. Eliot

Mourning we can do in private; indeed, when we mourn for ourselves, we have been instructed to keep it a secret. But the communion of saints can only be shared, can only be public. We cannot commune privately, individually, in our closed rooms. And we cannot learn from the saints by cutting ourselves off from the sinners, from the others as miserable and joyful, as misery-making and inspiring, as we are. Even Ash Wednesday is a day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it, and the pleasures it offers.

In some monastic communities, monks go up to receive the ashes barefoot. Going barefoot is a joyous thing. It is good to fell the floor or the earth under your feet. It is good when the whole church is silent, filled with the hush of people walking without shoes. One wonders why we wear such things as shoes anyway. Prayer is so much more meaningful without them. It would be good to take them off in church all the time. But perhaps this might appear quixotic to those who have forgotten such very elementary satisfactions. Someone might catch cold at the mere thought of it.--Thomas Merton

Rune before prayer (from Carmina Gadelica)

I am bending my knee
In the eye of the Father who created me,
In the eye of the Son who purchased me,
In the eye of the Spirit who cleansed me,
In friendship and affection.

Through Thine own and Anointed One, O God,
Bestow upon us fullness in our need,
Love towards God,
The affection of God,
The smile of God,
The wisdom of God,
The grace of God,
The fear of God,
And the will of God.

To do on the world of the Three,
As angels and saints
Do in heaven;
Each shade and light
Each day and night,
Each time in kindness,
Give Thou us Thy Spirit.

Amen.

The painting is "Ash Wednesday" by Carl Spitzweig.

Mardi Gras 2008

There is nothing better for mortals than to eat and drink and find enjoyment, for these are from the hand of God.--Ecclesiastes 2:24

"Carnival celebrates the unity of our human race as mortal creatures who come into this world and depart from it without our consent, who must eat, drink, defecate, belch, and break wind in order to live, and procreate if our species is to survive. Our feelings about this are ambiguous. To us as individuals, it is a cause for rejoicing that we are not alone, that all of us, irrespective of age or sex or rank or talent, are in the same boat"--W.H. Auden

We shall have mead,
We shall have wine,
We shall have feast.
We shall have sweetness and milk,
Honey and milk,
Wholesome ambrosia,
Abundance of that,
Abundance of that.

We shall have harp,
We shall have lute,
We shall have horn.
We shall have sweet psaltery
of the melodious strings
and the regal lyre,
Of the songs we shall have
Of the songs we shall have.

And the King of kings,
and Jesus Christ,
and the Spirit of Peace,
and of grace be with us,
Of grace be with us.--Celtic Blessing on Ash Eve

One will have to give account in the judgment day of every good thing which one might have enjoyed and did not.--The Talmud

Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace

Reading this:

The belief that the ethic of force will last forever is a presumption of the totalitarian mind. It says: none of the lights of the old morality can guide us through our latest plans. It says: our dangers are unprecedented, and so are the methods we must employ. This cry is heard on many sides, in America, while the world looks on dismayed, because they have never seen us like this before, and they can trace no proportion between the cause and the effects.

At the end of an otherwise excellent analysis of Attorney General Mukasey's "legal analysis" of torture, all I can think is: "Oh, please."

Start with the Native Americans, who were here and treated to every form of brutality we could muster for over 400 years. One of Columbus's first acts was to make slaves of the people he found here. Slavery became the theme of this country, and we soon had to import them, running a profitable trade in rum from the West Indies to Europe, and slaves from Africa to America. (Makes that logo bitterly ironic, doesn't it?) That lasted 300 years, and we're still working out the consequences of it. Then there is the sordid history of the Cold War, and what we did in Central and South America. School of the Americas ring a bell for anyone? That's their logo at the top of the post. And while the name has changed, the school still functions.

The world has never seen us like this before? No; finally, we see ourselves as the world sees us. Finally the part of the world that matters, i.e., Europe, Australia, Japan, sees us for what we are. Finally, we are beginning to care. Or are we? Anyone calling for Mukasey's impeachment? Any Senator denounce him last week?

I didn't hear about it, either.

Would it be torture if it were done to you? Is that what it takes to make us see? At least Simeon was a good and holy man, and when he saw the truth, it was a blessing.

Candlemas 2008

I almost let the day slip by without recovering this (those who don't live in God's Time Zone, i.e., Texas, will say I'm too late! Hah!, sez I!) There is, as usual, some information out there which strikes me as ridiculous about the origins of this day, one I know more from the Church of England than any other source, and that only because I have a copy of The Oxford Book of Christmas Poems which includes this Robert Herrick poem about the custom of taking down the greenery on Candlemas Eve (and not before!).

CEREMONY UPON CANDLEMAS EVE

Down with the rosemary, and so
Down with the bays and misletoe;
Down with the holly, ivy, all
Wherewith ye dress'd the Christmas hall;
That so the superstitious find
No one least branch there left behind;
For look, how many leaves there be
Neglected there, maids, trust to me,
So many goblins you shall see.

From the ridiculous to the sublime, Google presents me with this link which attaches Candlemas rigidly to two "pagan" holidays out of Ireland, and to St. Brigit. Well, maybe, except for the fact New Advent links the date of Candlemas to Mosaic law, which seems a slightly more plausible reason for making it February 2nd. As New Advent notes, the earliest attestation to any observation of the day is in the Jerusalem church, where the event was observed on February 14th, meaning Christ's birthday was, as at least one version of The Cherry Tree Carol has it, on Epiphany, not December 25th. (Interestingly, that carol has roots in Pseudo-Matthew, where it's a palm tree, not a cherry tree (of course), something I didn't know, but suspected. Chapter 20, if you're wondering. Interesting how these "apocryphal" stories persist, isn't it?)

Anyway, the folklore connected with this day is that now, finally, Christmas is over, because the last public act of Christ the child is conducted. This is a very appropriate day for the Nunc Dimmitus, the last song of Luke's four songs related to the nativity, which Luke originally wrote like this:

Νϋν άπολύεις τον δοϋλον σου, δέσποτα,
κατά τό πήμά έν είρήνη
οτι είδον οί όφθαλμοί μου τό σωτήριόν σου
ό ήτοίμασας κατά πρόσωπον πάντων τώυ λαϖν
φϖς είς άποκάλυψιν έθνϖν
καί δόξα νλαοϋ σου ‘Ισραήλ

I mention this because here, at the end of the celebration, comes the άποκάλυψιν, the apocalypse, again. What Simeon sings is that this child, presented at the Temple, will be a revelation, an "apocalypse," to the έθνϖν, the "ethnown," the Gentiles. People like Luke. People like most of us. Lord, now let us depart in peace.

And Ash Wednesday already just around the corner I do not hope to turn....

Ecce Homo

It was 40 years ago today...


The famous image from Vietnam that "helped change American opinion of the Vietnam War."

Steve Inskeep ended his comment on this picture and its history saying it showed Americans "the brutality of war." As if war were a natural disaster, like a hurricane or a tornado or an earthquake. When, in fact, war is human; all too human.

It isn't war that is brutal. It is our acceptance of war that is brutal. After the debacle of Vietnam, I was sure this country would think long and hard before going into war again. Instead, it is as we'd been warned: when you have a standing army, you have to find something to do with it. If you don't have a war, you start one. All those soldiers standing around, and all that weaponry, makes the trigger finger itchy. Even our "liberal" Democratic candidates now have to vie for the coveted title of "Commander in Chief." I don't remember Kennedy, or LBJ, or Nixon, or even Reagan, Bush, or Clinton, running to be "Commander in Chief," but that has become the distinctive designation of the President now. It's only the last inevitable shift following our decades long, now generations long, insistence on having a standing army and keeping the weapons of war primed and ready.

It isn't war that is hell. It's our acceptance of war. It isn't war that is brutal. It is people who are brutal; and our acceptance of war as a condition of our existence; the same way we accept poverty, and hunger, and homelessness. It doesn't have to be this way. That we let it be this way, is what is brutal.

"We have met the enemy, and he is us."