Edward _

There’s one thing I know. People learn how to hate those different from them: the other. I know this because my parents did an exemplary job of raising me without prejudice. It wasn’t until I reached high school that I first heard many of the stereotypes most kids my age had accepted as truths about different ethnic or racial groups. They’d tell a joke, and I wouldn’t get it because it relied on a shared understanding that all the people within this group were cheap or all the people within that group were stupid, or whatever.

I was shocked to hear an African American teacher I had explain some of the stereotypes she had to live with. “Where do they get that stuff?” I thought. Slowly I realized, because I had not been, that other people were deliberately taught these things. I had certainly met plenty of African Americans, or Greeks, or Scottish, or Polish, etc, but I didn’t associate their race or ethnicity with a particular set of personality traits or habits, because no one had taught me to do so. I accepted each person as a blank slate—someone who would reveal their character to me through their actions.

Much later I realized my parents do associate certain traits/habits to people within different groups. They are just as prejudiced as the average person in our hometown. I was surprised to learn this, but actually very impressed that they had been so careful about not passing those prejudices along to their children.

I thought about this while reading an op-ed piece in The New York Times by Waleed Ziad:

How the Holy Warriors Learned to Hate

I’ve gone rounds and round with folks who want to discuss the War on Terror as a religious war. I’ve been insisting all the while that we’re dealing not with a clash of civilizations or ideologies, but rather a clash of social classes and a thirst for power.

In as much as this involves Afghanistan and Pakistan, Waleed Ziad agrees:

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Maybe I haven’t been called a “lefty moonbat” enough recently, but I’m going to throw this out there before I forget why it seemed like such a good idea in the middle of the night last night.

On the DVD for “City of God” is a documentary film about the drug wars in Rio De Janeiro titled “News From A Personal War.” Interviews with police, drug dealers, prisoners, and favela (slum) dwellers paint as bleak a picture of urban violence as I’ve ever seen. This film is from 1997, so some of the circumstances may have changed…anyone knowing that to be the case, please don’t be shy about sharing.

In the documentary, the former police chief of Rio is interviewed extensively and (probably because he was just about to take another job when interviewed) offers some stunningly frank assessments of why his force is unable to make a dent in the ongoing war. Essentially, the problem boils down to easy access to guns. He draws a chilling parallel between the US government and its desire to close down the Columbian drug manufacturing plants from which deadly products find ways, despite supposedly earnest efforts, through customs and onto American streets and the US and European gun manufacturing plants from which deadly products find ways, despite supposedly earnest efforts, through customs and onto Brazilian streets.

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The Wall Street Journal has offered up free portions of the “Working Group Report on Detainee Interrogations in the Global War on Terrorism: Assessment of Legal, Historical, Policy, and Operational Considerations” (or in other words, the legal boundaries of “successful interrogations” of “[unlawful] enemy combatants”).

It’s 49 pages long, and the best bits have been reported in the press, but this part jumped out at me:

(U) Any effort by Congress to regulate the interrogation of unlawful combatants would violate the Constitution’s sole vesting of the Comander-in-Chief authority in the President. There can be little doubt that intelligence operations, such as the detention and interrogation of enemy combatants and leaders, are both necessary and proper for the effective conduct of a military campaign. Indeed, such operations may be of more importance in a war with an international terrorist organization than one with conventional armed forces of a nation-state, due to the former’s emphasis on secret operations and surprise attacks against civilians. It may be the case that only successful interrogations can provide the information necessary to prevent the success of covert terrorist attacks upon the United Sates and its citizens. Congress can no more interfere with the President’s conduct of the interroration of enemy combatants than it can dictate strategy or tactical decision on the battlefiled. Just as statues that order the President to conduct warfare in a certain manner or for specific goals would be unconstitutional, so too are laws that seek to prevent the President from gaining the intelligence he believes necessary to prevent attacks upon the United States.

(U)As this authority is inherent in the President, exercise of it by subordinates would be best if it can be shown to have been derived from the President’s authority through Presidential directive or other writing.

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Samuel Johnson noted that “Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions.”

Iraq’s Kurdish leaders seem to understand that, and, despite being so much closer to having the pieces in place to make democracy work than the rest of the country (and plenty o’ oil), they continue to compromise toward a unified, democratic Iraq, including “concessions in the interim Constitution over the oil-rich city of Kirkuk [and] acceptance of a new government with no Kurds in top positions.”

But while the US and other nations of the UN Security Council congratulate themseleves on their unanimous vote yesterday, the concession it took to get there may just be the one the Kurds are unwilling to make.

As William Safire notes in his column today:

In his eagerness for the approval of the Shiite religious leader — and driven by desperation to get yesterday’s unanimous U.N. resolution in time for the G-8 meeting — President Bush may be double-crossing the Kurds, our most loyal friends in Iraq.

[…]

In February, the Iraqi Governing Council, which included all religious and ethnic groups, hammered out its only memorable work: a Transitional Administrative Law, which laid the groundwork for a constitution to be adopted later by elected officials in a sovereign state. Most important for Kurds, who have long been oppressed by an Arab majority, it established minority rights within a federal state — the essence of a stable democracy.

But as the U.N. resolution supporting that state was nearing completion, the Shiite grand ayatollah, Ali al-Sistani, suddenly intervened. He denounced the agreed-upon law as “legislated by an unelected council in the shadow of occupation.” He decreed that mentioning it in the U.N. resolution would be “a harbinger of grave consequences.”

The U.S. promptly caved. Stunned Kurds protested in a letter to President Bush that “the people of Kurdistan will no longer accept second-class citizenship in Iraq.” If the law guaranteeing minority rights was abrogated, Kurds would “have no choice but to refrain from participating in the central government, not to take part in the national elections, and to bar representatives of the central government from Kurdistan.”

Now there’s one big deterence to the Kurds forming their own government, and that’s Turkey’s promise to smash it to bits if they do. However, the Kurds may just be willing to risk that, and they may just be stronger than anyone thinks they are. Consider the following from Bartle Breese Bull’s opinion piece in the Times today:

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