by Charles
As Dana Priest well demonstrated, controversial covert ops don’t stay covert for long. After reading this, the question that lingers is why those in CIA custody aren’t taken to Gitmo. Why shouldn’t thirty of the worst-of-the-worst al Qaeda members be put before a competent military tribunal, and if so judged, be left to rot in a jail cell in Cuba. The only reason it seems to exist is turf. This may or may not go over well with my Redstate colleagues, but it seems the political cost of this black op is not worth the benefit, especially now that it’s been outed.
The only reason it seems to exist is turf.
that, and what you can do on said turf.
Boy, the War On . . . well, whatever it’s the War On this week . . . is the gift that keeps on giving, isn’t it? I sure am proud of our country now. First opening up a new torture prison in Hussein’s old torture prison, then opening up secret prisons on the sites of old Soviet secret prisons . . . our moral high ground is so high, I think I can see Forever from here.
Say, I wonder if this has anything to do with the CIA exemption the Vice President was pushing McCain for? Naaaahhhh…
AND DON’T SAY ‘GULAG,’ ANYBODY!
Why shouldn’t thirty of the worst-of-the-worst al Qaeda members be put before a competent military tribunal, and if so judged, be left to rot in a jail cell in Cuba.
Judging by past performance, because assertions that individuals are “the worst-of-the-worst” are usually based on information that’s too sketchy – or derived by torturing other prisoners – to let any competent tribunal condemn them for the crimes of which they accused: let alone to condemn them to a permanent prison sentence.
For the Bush administration to decide that it could disregard the Geneva Conventions, the US Military Code of Justice, and the American justice system, with regard to some of its prisoners, was always, clearly, a moral misjudgement.
It is becoming clearer and clearer, after four years of international, military, and domestic lawbreaking on the part of the Bush administration, that it was not only wrong to do so: it was stupid.
I wonder what our Royal Arab allies think of our Rape Rooms of Freedom?
I think they are thrilled that we finally “get it”?
The WOT is another way of saying “Protect the Royals.”
—————–
Propping-up the Gulf Oil Despots isn’t only about the oil
By greenboy
Nov 1 2005 – 9:10pm
Although the reactionaries like to cast the War on Terror as a struggle between Al Qaeda and ‘The Homeland,’ I’ve always maintained that is really a struggle between Al Qaeda and the Gulf Oil Despots; the U.S. is involved because it is the military force propping-up the various Sheikhdoms, and it is a ‘soft target’ for terrorists.
Our primary interest in the Gulf Oil kleptocracies is obvious; our insatiable thirst for oil and our venal, market-distorting energy policies have joined us at the hip with King Abdullah II and his ilk. This article (courtesy of Spy Buddy), however, clued me in to another vested interest we have in the Gulf – Western Banks like Citicorp dominate their financial services market. That’s right, in addition to reaping rich fees from services ‘transactions’ (exploiting loopholes in Sharia to provide interest-like fees), these banks hold more than $265 billion in Oil Despot deposits. You know, I’m really starting to buy into fubar’s dollars versus euros explanation of Gulf War II.
http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/2225#comment
&
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9775291/site/newsweek
There’s an extremely interesting article about the government’s use of torture (and its abandonment of the Geneva Convention and other standards) by William Pfaff in this month’s Harper’s Magazine. One disturbing feature about the issue of prisoner interrogation is the seemingly broad bipartisan support for torture. As the article points out, only Al Gore has taken a strong stance against it.
BTW, I front-paged this post on Redstate.
Uh, when did we start having competent tribunals at Gitmo? I musta missed the part where we stopped holding taxi drivers and random bystanders at Gitmo without any evidence. Of course, at this point, after torturing and abusing them and others there for years, if we let them go, then yeah, they’d probably try and seek revenge on the US. ‘Cause, y’know, we tortured them.
Charles: “This may or may not go over well with my Redstate colleagues, but it seems the political cost of this black op is not worth the benefit, especially now that it’s been outed.”
Au contraire, CB. By publicly endorsing the divine right of the Bush to torture his^H^H^H^H America’s enemies, he’s enhanced the power and prestige of the Property of the GOP ^H^H^H^H^H^H US Presidency.
And the political cost seems to be minimal;
which says nothing good about the American people.
Didn’t German people believe that the Jews had it coming, anyway…I mean the most radical ideas that questioned German superiority were borne among the Juden, so it was just a matter of putting them in their place?
As long as German Right-Wing nationalists only went after Jews and bad unpatriotic Germans…these brave men of God and character were only protecting the Fatherland…(or was that the Homeland?)
Boy, that Redstate thread is really bolstering my faith in humanity. Explain to me again how putting (most of) those sentiments together in a pamphlet would be distinguishable from something handed out at a Mussolini rally, apart from the primary language.
I’m not sure that the Mussolini rally would have comments advocating near genocide.
Hey Barry, if you’re going to use that ^H thing, keep in mind that it originates from the pre-GUI days when some systems used the keystroke control-H to backspace one character, and certain terminals (and teletypes, of course) weren’t able to render the actual backspacing and just displayed ^H instead. So to do this right, you can’t just throw in as many ^Hs as you feel like — you need to put in exactly one for each character that needs to be erased.
Unless, that is, you’re deliberately applying a “nerd chic” style incorrectly in order to find that delicate balance of signalling that you’re hip enough to be aware of the style but not such a nerd that you always do it right.
Charles:
This may or may not go over well with my Redstate colleagues, but it seems the political cost of this black op is not worth the benefit, especially now that it’s been outed.
I wish you could hear yourself — contemplate this:
Do you have to do a cost-benefit analysis to decide that secret unlawful prisons are a bad idea? It would seem to me that moral and legal outrage automatically resolves this question — you don’t do cost-benefit analysis in deciding when to engage in ilegal torture and prisons.
Of what relevance is the “outing” of the black op in weighing the wisdom of secret unlawful prisons? If they could reliably be kept secret, then maybe they become more appropriate?
At least the Reds Staters would complain about someone outing a secret CIA operation? Uh, in view of Plame, probably not. (You do, although you can’t clear your head of the “Wilson lied” nonsense when expressing the thought)
In a related note, if anyone has ever wanted to see Steven Den Beste get pwned like a redheaded stepchild, read here.
Out of curiousity, scanned some of the RedStaters comments to Charles post. Amazing how many openly support the use of torture by the US.
If Bush does it, it must be OK.
On a separate note, these secret prisons set up shortly after 9/11 seem to add more confirmation to the fact that the US began adopting an official torture policy post 9/11. Is there much doubt that the CIA engages in torture in these secret prisons? And that the source of the torture infection that then spread through more regular armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan was this new CIA culture of explicit approval of torture in its secret prisons?
So many of the torture stories that we do know have a CIA interrogator connection — they are like the typhoid Marys of the torture infection.
It is irrelevant that Bush publicly proclaims that we treat detainees humanely. If anything, this is a deliberate lie since his administration openly seeks to engage in torture and keep it secret.
And yes, the CIA exemption sought by Cheney to the McCain torture bill seems to explicitly seek to legitimize a culture of torture in the CIA. Again, the Bush administration lies when it claims that US policy abhors torture.
Do you have to do a cost-benefit analysis to decide that secret unlawful prisons are a bad idea?
I was never in favor of secret CIA detentions in the first place. The point was to spell out the bad politics of it to those who do.
Torture doesn’t work just like lie detectors. It’s done because then you feel like you are doing something, you are acting.
I was never in favor of secret CIA detentions in the first place.
OK. Maybe its just the way you have to write to post on RedState. It is shocking to see the extent of openly pro-torture advocates there — appeals to morality in order to oppse torture apparently have no effect.
Apropos might be this emptywheel post. I have to admit, the first comment, wondering if the operative was alive when he ‘escaped’, was my first thought as well.
Dirty War …His usual work.
“Until the American people understand (I’m not sure the elites will ever get it) that terrorism can’t be fought, much less defeated, without a sea change in U.S. attitudes — not just towards the Middle East but towards the world — it looks like we’re going to be stuck in the worst of both worlds: too brutal to be respected; not nearly brutal enough to be feared, in the way an empire based entirely on hard power must be feared.
That leaves the third path — the path of endless escalation….” …Billmon
Billmon says he is not sure the elites will ever get it. Not just the elites.
I watch the Congress, the right wing media, RedState.org, and I cannot sanely say the Republican party is “anti-torture” anymore than I could say that the Democratic Party was pro-life. That is not just snark, I am trying to show the left they have something that cannot be escaped, that must be dealt with.
“…without a sea change in U.S. attitudes”
An end to the attitude of “American Exceptionalism” will probably cost the lives of millions.
If I can get anything thru the heads of an Edward, or an Yglesias, or Ezra, or all those on the left:
There is going to be war. A big big war, a horror. If we leave Iraq, we will go back. The terrorists will strike again, next year or in five years, and hell will be unleashed.
Unless there is that “sea change.”
There is going to be war. To pout and mourn and cry is simply irresponsible. There are only two responsible choices:
1) To make sure, as much as possible, the the responsible left and middle control the violence, by fully participating in it. Republicans are crummy at war, in every respect. But they will never stop wanting war. They always have, and always will. At 30-50 percent of us, it must be dealt with. It cannot and will not be ended, at least in our lifetimes. Ever escalating, until we or our enemies are destroyed. Democrats are much more just, merciful, and competent and I want them in charge
2) To bring the war home.
Democracy Arsenal
Some decent Democratic alternatives. A blog that should be followed, if only to see the rational opposition. Two good articles near the top on ME democratization.
But sane foreign policy will not be implemented until Democrats are in control. And Democrats won’t gain and wield power with a sane foreign policy. A dilemma, huh.
“Unless, that is, you’re deliberately applying a “nerd chic” style incorrectly in order to find that delicate balance of signalling that you’re hip enough to be aware of the style but not such a nerd that you always do it right.”
Posted by: kenB
Oh, I know that, kenB – I spent several year commuting between a PC at work and a Unix box at school, always hitting the ‘delete’ key and geting a string of ‘^H^H^H^H^H^H^H’.
I just use it now because I’m too lazy to remember how to do the ‘strikethrough’ format in HTML (which only works on some blogs).
The laziness also explains why I don’t always do it right.
Oh, OK, laziness I can understand. My problem is that I automatically process the backspaces when I see them, and so it throws me off if there are too many.
Why shouldn’t thirty of the worst-of-the-worst al Qaeda members be put before a competent military tribunal, and if so judged, be left to rot in a jail cell in Cuba.
Inadmissibility of evidence obtained under torture. No civilized country allows evidence obtained under torture in a criminal trial. Even if there is some independent evidence that they have that wasn’t obtained under torture — stuff from captured laptops and the like — a trial would still expose the torture, because defendants would testify about it.
Or show the effects of torture. Is KSM a gibbering idiot? Have limbs been broken? We don’t know, and they don’t want to tell us.
[And yes, you can safely assume that virtually all of the prisoners you are talking about have been tortured. With full knowledge of officials all the way up to the CinC. Don’t want to have this assumption confirmed? Then you’d better not have trials . . .]
Of course, they shouldn’t be held in Cuba anyway. Leavenworth is the right place.
There are other problems as well. Like really putting together the evidence against some specific individual for some specific act. The nature of AQ is really pretty different from the common understanding, and plenty of the bad acts were not centrally planned. The fact that Zawahiri puts out a tape taking credit for something doesn’t mean he or anyone he’s in contact with actually had anything to do with it. These people aren’t just zealots, they’re lying egomaniacs.
CB writes: “I was never in favor of secret CIA detentions in the first place. The point was to spell out the bad politics of it to those who do.”
Except all that can accomplish is to convince the American proto-Gestapo that what we really need is an even more secret torture operation.
And maybe restrictions on the media to prevent them from reporting about American torture activities.
If they support torture, then bad political optics will just lead them to shut off the light.
Y’know, this really sounds like you’re trying to justify something to yourself, not to anyone else.
War is never good, and never nice, and never like a basket of sunshine and kittens. But I’d feel much better getting to the end of the war, as and when it erupts (Iran vs Israel is my guess) thinking that “my side” were the good guys.
Because here’s the thing. If I didn’t believe my side were the good guys, they wouldn’t be my side. I refuse to ally myself with a nation just because I happened to be born there. Does that make me a traitor? Perhaps. But if my country sells out my ideals, I will not say “my country, right or wrong.” If the west wants to abandon everything that makes it demonstrably better than Saudi Arabia and Iran, I’m not going down with it.
There are only two responsible choices:
1) To make sure, as much as possible, the the responsible left and middle control the violence, by fully participating in it.
Bob McManus, your arguments sound very like those of the Judenrat. Consider me metaphorically beating you to death after you are finally thrown on the last train with the rest of us.
Your option 2, ‘bring the war home’, is wildly irresponsible, being a recipe for mass repression and implying as it does that there is no possibility of peaceful change in this country. ObWi is an odd forum in which to advocate the violent overthrow of the government, so I assume this is just more macho rhetoric and positing of false choices to get people to sign on to option 1.
2) To bring the war home.
Oh just great. Now I have to worry about an angry mob in Prius’s and Volvos pulling up in front of my house.
bob mcmanus writes: “There is going to be war. A big big war, a horror. If we leave Iraq, we will go back. The terrorists will strike again, next year or in five years, and hell will be unleashed.”
That’s what the left was saying before the morons on the right bumbled into this mess.
It was self-evident, if you had your eyes open and weren’t relying on fairy dust to make everything go well.
Iraq was a war of choice; we had it under control for the forseeable future; 9/11 would have made it easier to squelch the calls for dropping sanctions.
And we were already fighting a war against terror, which an invasion of Iraq would NOT FREAKING HELP AT ALL.
To be perfectly honest, I think the right wing wouldn’t actually mind going back to Iraq yet again. They prefer wars where you get to drop bombs and drive tanks. They don’t so much like the long-term police operations required to fight terrorism.
If we pull out of IRaq, the right wing will be clamoring to go back ASAP, merely because they haven’t the patience for actually fighting international terrorism in substantial ways. They prefer wars that lend themselves to masturbatory “Mission Accomplished” tableaus.
I’ve been following Bob’s argument pretty closely, and I think it is a bit unfair to link it to the Judenrat. The Judenrat were the ones who enabled the Germans to enforce discipline over the Jewish ghetto. Bob is actually, (imo of course) playing the role of the Jewish underground that, in many cases, had to overcome Judenrat opposition in order to fight the Nazis.
I’d also argue that ‘bring the war home’ doesn’t mean violent overthrow of the government, it means that Americans need to come face to face with what has happened in Iraq.
However, that doesn’t supplant the need to send a Birkenstock’d mob over to DaveC’s house. Just saying.
“Bob McManus, your arguments sound very like those of the Judenrat.”
Umm, I am not sure what that is, tho I make look it up later. My paradigm, as many here know, is post-WWII America. Truman moving to right of Republicans, buying the cold war, and building the National Security State; Democrats in Congress controlling the defense budget to ensure pork was distributed widely and to union shops; the draft as a jobs, education, and class advancement mechanism. I believe Nixon ending the draft was part of the “Southern Strategy” and the largest part of the advantage Republicans have on security issues.
“They prefer wars where you get to drop bombs and drive tanks.”
And we don’t have enough troops. Duh. Republican war doctrine and force structure concides with Republican economic policy. Money goes to capital and technocrats instead of to labor. 5 draftees with a years training are, IMO, more generally useful than one superstud SPC with three+ years training at the same cost. You don’t want to waste your professional hanging out on a Baghdad street corner, even if that would be the most productive strategy.
“…implying as it does that there is no possibility of peaceful change in this country.”
There are certainly a very wide range of possible tactics and strategies involved in “bringing the war home.” Harry Reid employed one the other day. I do want the atmosphere to become poisonous and strident.
I do believe violence will always be initiated by the right, and I think it is useful to provoke it. But what Jonah Goldberg just published should not be tolerated. The book is not silly or stupid, it is unspeakably dangerous.
And after 55+ years plus, and an honest study
of history, I do doubt that the South is redeemable. Of course their pathologies spread like a fungus thru the rest of the nation. They ate the Republican Party. The rest of us forced Federal Marshalls on them who are still in place, which is a kind of violence. Secession seems improbable.
My desire for a renewed liberal militarism is intended to be the most peaceful means of taming their atavistic barbarism. Lots of parades and uniforms.
Oh. And for those who don’t know me, I speak as a blue-collar Red Stater. To the core. Yglesias and hilzoy are more alien and incomprehensible to me than DeLay and Rove. And if I seem over the top, maybe it has to do with the strongest emotions being reserved for your relatives.
And the foreign “gulag” and the Bush regime is not a problem to solved, a mistake to be rectified, a matter of incompetent leadership to be replaced. It is a catastrophe, and will require a total rebuilding of the entire political/policy establishment from the foundations up.
The Judenrat were the ones who enabled the Germans to enforce discipline over the Jewish ghetto.
With the argument that “the responsible {Jewish leadership} control the violence, by participating fully in it.”
I stand by the analogy. Bob calls for participation in illegal, immoral slaughter as a way of controlling it. That’s wrong AND it won’t work. Bob, we’re not going back to the 1940s-1950s, however better that era looks to you.
I’m a Southerner, going back all the way on both sides of my family, and although at times I lose hope that our region is ‘redeemable.’ (Did you mean morally? Or politically, in the sense of ‘having the capacity to elect reasonable Democrats’?) I really can’t give up that hope without deciding to leave this country altogether. And recent local events are even giving me optimism about political redemption over the next few years…
“Bob calls for participation in illegal, immoral slaughter as a way of controlling it.”
I have seen a lot of rending and ashes, but I don’t think I have seen anything credible that would have actually prevented the Iraq war. Including any level of protests. I do think, however, that massive support for Shinseki’s position of a much larger war might have saved some lives, in several possible scenarios, including the delay or even possibly the prevention of the invasion.
Perhaps it is more moral to withdraw and resist and become irrelevant. It is no escape from responsibilty. But I see the position of pacifism, however qualified, as ceding power to the right. And inevitably costing lives, at home and abroad. It was tried in the early seventies, and has given us thirty years of conservatism and Central America and Iraq.
“Judenrat” is ridiculous. Assisting in a ghettoized and irrelevant left? That is what you are heading to. I want power. I want the left to rule, not serve.
But there really appears to be a large portion of the left who actually believe war is preventable. I have seen too many, hot and cold. We are not Sweden.
Bob calls for participation in illegal, immoral slaughter as a way of controlling it.
Just to get this straight, do you feel that the illegal immoral slaughter is a) Iraq or b) “advocate the violent overthrow of the government” (by which I assume you mean the US government)?
“I do want the atmosphere to become poisonous and strident.”
I believe the name of the policy you favor, Bob, is “heightening the contradictions.” I assume you’ll let me know if I’ve been misunderstanding you.
If Bob doesn’t, I will. Not very fair to use a Leninist construction to describe Bob’s position.
“Bob, is “heightening the contradictions.””
Good grief, are you just throwing offensive rhetoric at me? What was Harry Reid doing in calling the closed session, which Frist said was unforgivable? Standing “tall and strong” instead of “heightening the contradictions?”
The liberal perspective is inadequately heard out there in MSM land, and getting attention would be a start. I do not think stridency at the top of the party would be ignored
But part of my problem is that I don’t think we have the time to gain a Senator or two for ten election cycles. I think the nation crashes and burns before then. Do you think this country would be bearable after another ten years like the last ten?
And if “heightening the contradictions” mean creating divisive and polarizing objective conditions on the ground, that has obviously been the Republican strategy for at least the entire Bush term of office. A recent example is the “tax reform” bill, proposing eliminating the deductability of state taxes or certain state taxes.
“A recent example is the ‘tax reform’ bill, proposing eliminating the deductability of state taxes or certain state taxes.”
Are you referring to the tax reform commission which reported yesterday, whose report will be duly read and shelved? Or was there a bill I missed?
Anyway, if you say “heightening the contradictions” is not what you’re calling for, than I duly apologize for misunderstanding you. If you’d like to clarify where your preferred policy for Democrats differs, I’d read it with interest, but certainly there’s no obligation, nor rush.
“But part of my problem is that I don’t think we have the time to gain a Senator or two for ten election cycles.”
I’d like to hope for winning back both houses of Congress in 2006, myself, but I’m not exactly going to count on it, or even on winning one. I think that there are lots of grounds for optimism, if one can take any pleasure in a situation that has been so awful, but, on the other hand, how things look a year away isn’t really all that meaningful.
I’m impressed with the way Harry Reid has, to a large extent, gotten the Senate Democrats’ act together under him. (Pelosi has made some strides, as well, but not nearly so impressively or significantly, to my eye.)
The liberal perspective is inadequately heard out there in MSM land, and getting attention would be a start. I do not think stridency at the top of the party would be ignored
MSM must be way different in Texas than Chicago. Probably country music overwhelms CBS, CNN, ABC, NBC, PBS, NPR, a whole bunch of movie producers, rock stars, etc., etc. All I can say is “God Bless Texas”
I watch TV very very little but yet I have seen a “Law and Order” episode where the cop characters were complaining about the war in Iraq. I hear tell that there are a couple of shows on the TV box that present an alternative reality where there is a good moral White House administration Rather than the son’obitches that are in there now.
“Anyway, if you say “heightening the contradictions” is not what you’re calling for”
I don’t know, Gary, maybe it is. I would have to go Marxists.org and study the tactic to see if it is always an unethical move.
I would support progressives in Democratic primaries, try to find opponents for the likes of Nelson and Lieberman. (In the general, I would hold my nose and vote for Nelson). Now presuming success, a more progressive party and Congress might be less effective in the short term, but would make the difference on issues and ideology more apparent. Would heighten the contradictions.
@lj: The illegal immoral slaughter I meant is the war on Iraq, which Bob correctly understood me to mean and responded to in his 4:45 message. I can’t agree that it was not preventable. Tony Blair and Jack Straw could have prevented it by isolating our government. Colin Powell could have prevented it, by resigning and denouncing the stretching and fabrication of intelligence.
The Democratic leadership in Congress could have prevented it, by sticking to Daschle’s initial approach of not voting on a resolution of force until after the inspections had begun (Saddam had already agreed to readmit the UN inspectors before the Congressional votes took place).
The New York Times and the TV networks could have helped stop it, by giving equal time to people who were questioning the ‘intelligence’ and arguing against the invasion on the grounds that it would make us less safe, not more, that it could easily result in a wider Middle East conflagration (as it looks about to do), that the true costs and risks were being suppressed.
James Webb and Anthony Zinni and Joseph Wilson were out there; it wasn’t all Quakers and hippies in opposition (not that there’s anything wrong with Quakers or hippies). Anyone who pretends there was no alternative but to go along was supporting the war — out of Sept.11-induced fear, or political calculation/owardice, or credulity.
If the little gang that lied (and intimidated and
Sorry about the sentence fragment at the end there… it was left over from a previous thought, and makes me come across even more foam-flecked than I already do.
Bob, if I’d thought by ‘bring the war home’ you were talking about tactics like Harry Reid’s rule 21 speech, I’d of course have had no objection whatsoever. But that’s way overblown language, and seriously misleading considering the actual history of the phrase.
Nell: Tony Blair and Jack Straw could have prevented it by isolating our government.
I’m not so sure – though I certainly agree that Blair and Straw ought to have refused to join with the US in invading Iraq.
The US appeared to be content with having a “coalition of the willing”, most of whom were “with” the US in pretty much name only (and some of the rest were unwilling to be listed publicly as part of the “coalition”). The Bush administration made a point of informing the UK government that, whether or not the House of Commons voted to endorse the war, it would go ahead and invade.
“I’d of course have had no objection whatsoever”
The Constellation of Impeachment
Stirling Newberry sincerely believes real impeachment is within view.
Nell, I don’t know how bad it is going to get, but I think very bad. I am pessimistic by nature, and like the economists, have predicted nine of the last two violent upheavals. If we are about to lose a war, or if we have already lost one, the war will come home. To give some perspective, I consider the sixties to be very close to a civil war.
I also will not be able to rest my conscience until more than a few Bush administration officials are behind bars. I would go quite far to achieve that goal. I will likely fail, and my spinning body in the grave used as an alternative energy source when the oil runs out.
Nell (and Bob),
It wasn’t my intention to provoke a fight between you two. I’ve followed Bob’s argument pretty closely and, as I’ve said before, I am leaning more and more towards it. I think we will pay a price and I’m not sure how well we can teach people in the future to tune out the noise and move to the heart of matters if we do move to a gloves off sort of mode, but I am beginning to share Bob’s notion that we have to do what needs to be done now (in terms of fighting back politically) and let the future take care of itself. That said, I disagree with Bob (basically along your lines) about Iraq, but I think that the situation is getting critical enough that I will cast my lot with Bob and burn the bridge of the future in Iraq when we come to it. Nothing will happen unless Dems control at least one of the houses.
As always I am late in the thread (different timezone and not much time). But this was a very complex proces. Last year I read the letters of the last secretary of the Amsterdam Jodenraet, and it was very revealing. Also because she wrote them at the time things happened, not afterwards after history changes your perspective.
Unfortunately I don’t think they are translated in English.
Thank you, dutchmarbel. My characterization is without question a harsh, oversimplified judgment made with the benefit of hindsight. While acknowledging that the situation made for agonizing, complex choices (or the illusion of choice), I note that the Jewish communities affected ultimately made the same judgment.
Nell, I’m away for the weekend and didn’t want to turn this into a threadjack.
I know this thread may be dormant, but this essay by Tom Gilroy I think mirrors Bob’s position, but with a bit (well a lot) more sharp elbows.
I’m used to tugging dormant threads in 😉
Strong “Back in Black” echo’s (or are you still not seeing the full daily shows?).