Tikun Olam-תקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

Hat tip to Arieh Leibowitz of Meretz who turned me on to this outrageous public statement by IDF chief of staff, Dan Halutz:

“There are two genders – men and women, actually there is another one which you are not allowed to mention,” Lt. General Dan Halutz said in a public speech, coolly referring to gays and lesbians.

His clumsy slip of the tongue, by no means his worst act of public relations recently, has secured him a place in the ever-growing camp of opponents to the…[gay]) community in Israel…

Halutz’ lack of sensitivity and inadequate sense of public morality, which was well demonstrated when he got rid of his stocks at the outbreak of the war, are only shadowed by his poor performance as chief commander of the war. The statement in question, however, only contributes to his public image as a man who fails to think before he speaks

While Dan Halutz’s mind is a deep, dark place I’d rather not plumb the depths of–I think it’s instructive to examine his statement. First, he distinguishes homosexuality as a gender apart from male and female. Second, he pretends that being gay is something “you are not allowed to mention.” While this may be a feeble attempt at humor, it is interesting that Halutz only allows himself to speak about homosexuality in terms that pretend one can’t speak about it at all. Third, what Halutz unconsciously is saying is not that homosexuals are a gender apart from the two human genders; but that they are a species apart from human beings. In other words, gays are altogether alien from us, a figure worthy of mocking laughter and ridicule.

This is a man who could not successfully prosecute a war. He cannot lead an army. And he dare not speak the name “homosexual.” This is a man with whom we wish to entrust the security of the nation and the lives of our young soldiers (including many gays)?

tags dan-halutz-disparages-gays, idf-chief-of-staff, israeli-homosexuals

It would be oh so easy for a liberal Democrat like me to gloat over Mark Foley’s political demise. How ironic that a closeted gay man became a champion for exploited children while himself being a sexual predator. I could say the hypocrite got what he had coming to him. I could rail about the Mark Foleys and Jim Wests of the Republican Party who fulminate against gays while themselves being gay. I could react with glee to the possibility that Democrats have just upped their chances of taking back the House if Foley’s Republican replacement doesn’t win in November.

But I won’t do any of that. What I want to talk about is the sheer utter waste of Mark Foley’s life. Before being outed, he was an up and coming Republican stalwart. Now, he’s just an asterisk in the ponderous Book of Scandal that is the U.S. Congress. Why did Foley feel he could not announce his homosexuality publicly and be done with it? Clearly, a public person who tries to keep a secret like this will not be able to do so long. Why not short circuit the process of flagellation and scandal by getting there first and telling the story yourself and in your own way?

I realize that Foley had a very particular set of issues: he wasn’t just gay, he liked young boys. That’s not something you talk about freely if you’re a public figure. And so possibly Foley had no choice but to keep his secret as long as he could. But one can only react with sadness to someone so addicted to his vices that he threw away his entire professional career and good name. Not to mention how much he’s hurt his party, his family and himself.

And just think about the level of profound psychological denial required for a House Representative to become the champion of the sexually exploited child while himself being a predator. In his twisted mind, I’ll bet he felt he was being solicitous of the welfare of children–at least in his Congressional work. But how in heaven’s name can a twisted mind allow two ideas so diametrically opposite to cohabit in one human being?

Finally, I’d like to say that while Mark Foley is a bad man, and one who possibly might go to jail for some of his actions; he is a man with a mental illness as well. I don’t know if there is any effective treatment for such sexual predators. But if there is Mark Foley would do himself a favor by availing himself of such help.

tags florida-politics, jim-west-spokane-mayor-sex-scandal, mark-foley-resign-House-seat, republican-sex-scandal, sexual-predators-in-u.s.-congress

The Forward reports that our European allies are urging George Bush to reengage with the Israeli-Arab peace process. Further, they are lobbying the Administration to pressure Israel into negotiating with a national unity government should one be formed. I am pleased by the urgency inherent in their efforts; by the recognition that if there are no positive developments that there will undoubtedly be negative ones. Some of those negative developments could include Iran securing nuclear weapons and using them, or threatening to use them against Israel (among many potential negative scenarios). To avert this, they say, drastic measures need to be taken and Israel must be prodded out of its torpor when it comes to negotiating with its enemies.

I found this passage especially intriguing:

The Arab League is leading a move to grant the U.N. Security Council the management and supervision of an expedited negotiation process between Israel and the Palestinians, as well as with Syria and Lebanon. Under the proposal, the Security Council would be granted the authority to impose sanctions on the side that uses violence during the negotiations.

I like the muscularity of this proposal in that it would give the Security Council vastly more direct impact over the parties and their negotiating stances than the current Quartet has had. I just hope that the Arab League propsoal doesn’t go the way of all promising Mideast peace initiatives: Phhht!

tags arab-league-proposes-security-council-supervise-israeli, european-role-in-mideast-peace, forward-newspaper

The NY Times writes about the Democratic vote on the Military Commissions bill in a hopelessly Panglossian manner. The fact that only 32 Senate Democrats voted to oppose the bill somehow shows President Bush’s weakening grip on the national security debate:

The Democratic vote in the Senate on Thursday against legislation governing the treatment of terrorism suspects showed that party leaders believe that President Bush’s power to wield national security as a political issue is seriously diminished.

The most vivid example of the Democratic assessment came from the party’s many presidential hopefuls in the Senate. All of them voted against the bill, apparently calculating that Mr. Bush’s handling of Iraq has undercut the traditional Republican strength on national security and will insulate them from what are certain to be strong attacks from Republicans not only this year but also in 2008.

What this assessment omits is the fact that 12 Democrats (nearly 25%) broke ranks and pussyfooted on over to the Republican side in an act of supreme cowardice. Yes, many of them are in tough re-election fights. But they seem to believe that their constituents would never understand in the heat of an election battle the nuance of such ‘abstruse’ issues as habeus corpus, the Geneva Conventions and torture.

But I liked best Christopher Dodd’s characterization of their gutlessness:

“The only reason to worry about the politics of it is if you don’t understand it and don’t have the guts to stand up and defend your vote,” said Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, who is considering a presidential race.

And I might add: if you don’t have faith in the intelligence of your constituents and their ability to understand fundamental constitutional issues.

I do hope that Ned Lamont has those TV commercials all cued up which will grind Lieberman’s nose in his Aye vote today. May Ol’ Joe live to regret betraying the few Democratic principles he once had with this vote.

The Times tries to argue that today’s vote marks a break from the Democratic acquiescence to the Bush Iraq war resolution. Somehow the fact that only 75% of Senate Dems voted against this is a victory or sign of having a political spine:

It was a stark change from four years ago, when Mr. Bush cornered Democrats into another defining pre-election vote on security issues — that one to give the president the authority to launch an attack against Iraq. At the time, many Democrats felt they had little choice politically but to side with Mr. Bush, and a majority of Senate Democrats backed him.

…Party strategists have concluded, however, that Democrats can hold their own politically with Republicans on security issues and that voters no longer give Mr. Bush such wide latitude in the fight against terrorism. Democrats believe they can rebut the stinging attack to come by persuading Americans that the tribunal bill was rushed for political reasons and overturned basic rights like the ability to challenge one’s incarceration.

SOME “Democrats believe they can rebut the stinging attack to come.” And others still haven’t learned anything from the Iraq war vote. They’re like Bill Murray on Groundhog Day. Every opportunity they get to undo the damage their earlier vote wrought they politely decline in order to cozy up to the national security zealots. It’s downright unseemly.

To be fair, the article did acknowledge the problem of Democratic weakness in one passage:

Yet the minority of Democrats who joined with Republicans in passing the bill again illustrated that the party is unable to speak with one voice on security issues. Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska, a Democrat up for re-election who often breaks with his party, said he was willing to follow the lead of Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, who lent the final legislation his strong endorsement. Mr. McCain is a potential Republican presidential candidate.

“I think people respect Senator McCain on these issues,” Mr. Nelson said, “and I think he probably represents the views of a lot of people in Nebraska.”

When a Democrat has to fawn all over a Republican hawk like McCain in order to win re-election as a Democrat, you know something’s wrong. Maybe Nelson hasn’t yet heard that McCain’s running for president on the other party’s ticket. One wonders whether, if it was a choice between Hillary, Kerry or Gore whether he’d be able to hold his nose and vote against John “What the Hell is Habeus Anyway?” McCain. It’s times like this when you really miss having a man of spine and principle like Bob Kerrey representing Nebraska.

tags christopher-dodd-votes-against-military-commissions-bil, democrats-divided-over-military-tribunals-bill, new-york-times

Now that Senate Democrats have caved, the entire body is set to enact one of the worst pieces of legislation passed in decades (and there have been many bad ones so you know this has to be BAD). Who do you think I quoted in my post title? Ted Kennedy? John Murtha? John Kerry? Hillary Clinton? No, I quoted a Republican: Arlen Specter. Yes, I know for Club for Growth/neocon Republicans Specter is a pinko turncoat from the cause. But if Arlen Specter can make such a sweeping statement, you know it’s bad.

The NY Times has published a savage attack on the legislation, Rushing Off a Cliff which reads in part:

Here’s what happens when this irresponsible Congress railroads a profoundly important bill to serve the mindless politics of a midterm election: The Bush administration uses Republicans’ fear of losing their majority to push through ghastly ideas about antiterrorism that will make American troops less safe and do lasting damage to our 217-year-old nation of laws — while actually doing nothing to protect the nation from terrorists. Democrats betray their principles to avoid last-minute attack ads. Our democracy is the big loser…

It [the legislation] serves a cynical goal: Republican strategists think they can win this fall, not by passing a good law but by forcing Democrats to vote against a bad one so they could be made to look soft on terrorism.

Last week, the White House and three Republican senators announced a terrible deal on this legislation that gave Mr. Bush most of what he wanted, including a blanket waiver for crimes Americans may have committed in the service of his antiterrorism policies. Then Vice President Dick Cheney and his willing lawmakers rewrote the rest of the measure so that it would give Mr. Bush the power to jail pretty much anyone he wants for as long as he wants without charging them, to unilaterally reinterpret the Geneva Conventions, to authorize what normal people consider torture, and to deny justice to hundreds of men captured in error.

And they follow this passage with a comprehensive primer on where the bill would do the most damage to civil liberties and constitutional law:

Enemy Combatants: A dangerously broad definition of “illegal enemy combatant” in the bill could subject legal residents of the United States, as well as foreign citizens living in their own countries, to summary arrest and indefinite detention with no hope of appeal. The president could give the power to apply this label to anyone he wanted.

The Geneva Conventions: The bill would repudiate a half-century of international precedent by allowing Mr. Bush to decide on his own what abusive interrogation methods he considered permissible. And his decision could stay secret — there’s no requirement that this list be published.

Habeas Corpus: Detainees in U.S. military prisons would lose the basic right to challenge their imprisonment. These cases do not clog the courts, nor coddle terrorists. They simply give wrongly imprisoned people a chance to prove their innocence.

Judicial Review: The courts would have no power to review any aspect of this new system, except verdicts by military tribunals. The bill would limit appeals and bar legal actions based on the Geneva Conventions, directly or indirectly. All Mr. Bush would have to do to lock anyone up forever is to declare him an illegal combatant and not have a trial.

Coerced Evidence: Coerced evidence would be permissible if a judge considered it reliable — already a contradiction in terms — and relevant. Coercion is defined in a way that exempts anything done before the passage of the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act, and anything else Mr. Bush chooses.

Secret Evidence: American standards of justice prohibit evidence and testimony that is kept secret from the defendant, whether the accused is a corporate executive or a mass murderer. But the bill as redrafted by Mr. Cheney seems to weaken protections against such evidence.

Offenses: The definition of torture is unacceptably narrow, a virtual reprise of the deeply cynical memos the administration produced after 9/11. Rape and sexual assault are defined in a retrograde way that covers only forced or coerced activity, and not other forms of nonconsensual sex. The bill would effectively eliminate the idea of rape as torture.

The Times rightly reserves some of its fury for Democrats who care more about limiting damage to their election prospects than they do about preserving the bedrock principles of constitutional law in this country.

I understand to an extent Democratic unwillingness to mount serious opposition to the Military Commissions bill. In their view, anything that detracts from their opportunity to win back one or both Houses is a losing proposition. But of what use would those majorities be if we had in place the worst civil liberties legislation since, as the Times puts it, the Alien and Sedition Act? Do Democrats think they’ll just snap their fingers after the elections end and blow the law into oblivion? I don’t think it will be as easy as all that. Have they forgotten the presidential veto? Although Bush was one of the few president’s in history not to use it in his first term, I assure Senate Dems that he’d love to use it to counter any effort to undermine this law (once it’s enacted). Harry Reid may have to wait years for the Supreme Court to receive a case allowing them to rule this execrable bill unconstitutional. YEARS. Do we think the fabric of our Republic is so strong that it can withstand the strain of something as godawful bad as this?

To me, Reid’s “deal” with the Republican leadership allowing the legislation to go forward without mounting a filibuster is a Mephistophelean deal with the devil. Or to use another metaphor, this is Pandora’s box. Once you open it, it will open the floodgates to untrammeled tyranny. We’ve already seen some of the most egregious presidential violations of American civil liberties in decades during this Administration. But what comes in the aftermath of this bill’s passage will be like child’s play compared to what came before.

I do not understand why we’re not hearing more from principled conservatives like William Buckley, Bush pere, the Reaganites, etc. who must be plotzing about this development. And if they’re not, then they’re not true conservatives in the pure sense of the term, meaning those who desire to conserve our bedrock principles.

Those who vote for the Military Commissions Act are bringing about the unmooring of U.S. constitutional law from its foundations. It is one of the saddest days in the history of American legislative politics that I can remember (and I go back to the 1960s).

tags democrats-refuse-to-oppose-republican-terrorism-bill, fighting-terror, habeus-corpus, national-security, senate-nears-passage-of-military-commissions-act

Thank God, the State Department has seen reason and decided that Tariq Ramadan, Europe's foremost Muslim theologian and exponent, isn't a terrorist. But he's still apparently dangerous enough that State defines him as a U.S. 'undesirable' and refuses him entry into this country. What danger does he constitute and on what basis do they continue to deny him a visa? He donated to a French charity that supports needy Palestinians! This from the NY Times via Reuters: A prominent Swiss Muslim intellectual said Monday that the United States government had dropped charges against him of supporting terrorism, but that it had refused to allow him to enter the country. Tariq Ramadan, now an academic at Oxford ...

In a Ynetnews interview, Ehud Olmert derided Hezbollah's recent massive 'victory' rally in south Beirut: Let's turn to the post-war Lebanon. When you saw Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah celebrating in Beirut's Dahiya on Friday – what did you feel? "I did not see it. Had I seen it, I wouldn't have been moved by it. Nasrallah's need of this show of force by the masses is a consequence of the increasing anger toward him and the growing opposition against him in Lebanon. This doesn’t mean a thing. I am not impressed by it. "I must tell you that my natural association is that such declarations and demonstrations by Arab leaders, who live in non-democratic societies, always have something to do with the ...

It looks like they didn't...meet, that is. Haaretz reports that yesterday: ...Officials in Jerusalem had said that Olmert met with a senior Saudi official they declined to identify. Yedioth reported that some of the unnamed Israeli officials who had served as sources for the report said that Olmert had met with King Abdullah, and others hinted the talks were with a senior official close to the king. Ynetnews reported yesterday that the "senior Saudi official" might've been King Abdullah himself. This is a case of the game "Telephone" gone haywire. Today, it appears that Olmert himself not only didn't meet the King (a report he denied in this Ynetnews interview), he didn't meet any Saudi official. But ...

Ynetnews reports that Ehud Olmert met with a high-ranking Saudi official, possibly King Abdullah himself, regarding a new peace initiative promoted by Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia to be discussed at an upcoming UN meeting on the conflict: Prime Minister Ehud Olmert secretly met about 10 days ago with a senior member of the Saudi royal family, the Yedioth Ahronoth daily reported Monday morning. According to several sources, the person Olmert met with was Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah himself. Other sources implied that the meeting was held with a different senior figure in the kingdom. ...The secret meeting...was welcomed by senior American officials. This appears to be the first time an Israeli prime minister holds a direct meeting with such a senior ...

Hat tip to Haaretz for featuring a Der Spiegel interview with Syria's Bashir Assad on the subject of prospects for peace with Israel. In short, they appear dim but mainly because Israel seems unable or unwilling to respond to them. It is important to note the differences between Iran's attitude toward Israel and Syria's: SPIEGEL: At the moment, Syria enjoys excellent relations with Iran. Do you agree with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's demand that Israel be "wiped off the map?" Assad: I don't say that Israel should be wiped off the map. We want to make peace - peace with Israel... SPIEGEL: Under your father, Syria and Israel came very close to a peace treaty. Will you one day sit down at the ...