Why Are They Saying Those Things?

by hilzoy

Below the fold, to spare those with dial-up.

h/t to The Editors, as always.

Read more

by hilzoy

Via Glenn Greenwald, an absolutely surreal op-ed by Shelby Steele, in which he argues that “since Vietnam, America has increasingly practiced a policy of minimalism and restraint in war”, that this restraint is why we can’t seem to defeat the insurgency in Iraq, and that the reason we practice it is … white guilt!

“Today, the white West–like Germany after the Nazi defeat–lives in a kind of secular penitence in which the slightest echo of past sins brings down withering condemnation. There is now a cloud over white skin where there once was unquestioned authority.

I call this white guilt not because it is a guilt of conscience but because people stigmatized with moral crimes–here racism and imperialism–lack moral authority and so act guiltily whether they feel guilt or not.

They struggle, above all else, to dissociate themselves from the past sins they are stigmatized with. When they behave in ways that invoke the memory of those sins, they must labor to prove that they have not relapsed into their group’s former sinfulness. So when America–the greatest embodiment of Western power–goes to war in Third World Iraq, it must also labor to dissociate that action from the great Western sin of imperialism. Thus, in Iraq we are in two wars, one against an insurgency and another against the past–two fronts, two victories to win, one military, the other a victory of dissociation. (…)

White guilt makes our Third World enemies into colored victims, people whose problems–even the tyrannies they live under–were created by the historical disruptions and injustices of the white West. We must “understand” and pity our enemy even as we fight him. And, though Islamic extremism is one of the most pernicious forms of evil opportunism that has ever existed, we have felt compelled to fight it with an almost managerial minimalism that shows us to be beyond the passions of war–and thus well dissociated from the avariciousness of the white supremacist past. (…)

Possibly white guilt’s worst effect is that it does not permit whites–and nonwhites–to appreciate something extraordinary: the fact that whites in America, and even elsewhere in the West, have achieved a truly remarkable moral transformation. One is forbidden to speak thus, but it is simply true. There are no serious advocates of white supremacy in America today, because whites see this idea as morally repugnant. If there is still the odd white bigot out there surviving past his time, there are millions of whites who only feel goodwill toward minorities.

This is a fact that must be integrated into our public life–absorbed as new history–so that America can once again feel the moral authority to seriously tackle its most profound problems. Then, if we decide to go to war, it can be with enough ferocity to win.”

Gosh: where to begin?

Read more

by hilzoy

Via AmericaBlog, here’s the Concerned Women for America:

“The iconic Barbie Doll has become another tool for promoting gender confusion among children. On the Barbie Web site, www.Barbie.com, there is a poll that asks children their age and sex. The age choices are 4-8, but as Bob Knight, Director of CWA’s Culture & Family Institute, notes children are given three options for their choice of gender.”

On the audio link from the web page, which contains a faux news piece on the subject of Mattel’s perfidy, they say:

“And this is directed at children aged four through eight. Those are the only age options in this poll. that’s a really young age to be directing something along the lines of bisexuality, gender confusion.”

Guess what the third option is? Do they give children the option of saying they’re androgynous? Hermaphrodites? What one of the guys in the biker bar I used to work at called “She-males”? The horrifying answer is below the fold…

Read more

by hilzoy

Victor Davis Hanson thinks — and I use that term generously — that those of us who believe that the war in Iraq is going badly do so only because we have no sense of history and are unwilling to accept success when it stares us in the face:

“The same paradox of success is true of Iraq. Before we went in, analysts and opponents forecasted burning oil wells, millions of refugees streaming into Jordan and the Gulf kingdoms, with thousands of Americans killed just taking Baghdad alone. Middle Eastern potentates warned us of chemical rockets that would shower our troops in Kuwait. On the eve of the war, had anyone predicted that Saddam would be toppled in three weeks, and two-and-a-half-years later, 11 million Iraqis would turn out to vote in their third election — at a cost of some 2100 war dead — he would have been dismissed as unhinged.

But that is exactly what has happened. And the reaction? Democratic firebrands are now talking of impeachment.

What explains this paradox of public disappointment over things that turn out better than anticipated? Why are we like children who damn their parents for not providing yet another new toy when the present one is neither paid for nor yet out of the wrapper?

One cause is the demise of history. The past is either not taught enough, or presented wrongly as a therapeutic exercise to excise our purported sins.

Either way the result is the same: a historically ignorant populace who knows nothing about past American wars and their disappointments — and has absolutely no frame of reference to make sense of the present other than its own mercurial emotional state in any given news cycle.”

Also, we thought we weren’t going to take any casualties at all:

“After Grenada, Panama, Gulf War I, Serbia, Kosovo, Bosnia, Afghanistan, and the three-week war to remove Saddam, we decreed from on high that there simply were to be no fatalities in the American way of war. If there were, someone was to be blamed, censured, or impeached — right now!”

Let’s just pass over the last point in silence — the idea that anyone thought that the war in Iraq would not involve casualties is too ludicrous a straw man to waste time on. Let’s also pass over the fundamental incoherence of Hanson’s basic argument, which as best I can tell goes like this:

(1) Liberals expected the war to go badly.

(2) It didn’t.

(3) Liberals are very disappointed, because, having no sense of history, they expected everything to be perfect.

(Huh?)

Let’s talk, instead, about who in this debate has a good sense of history and its disappointments.

Read more

by hilzoy

In the National Review, James Robbins (h/t cleek) claims, about the NSA surveillance of US citizens, that “the legality of the acts can be demonstrated with a look through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).” His arguments are completely disingenuous, and as a public service, I thought I’d say why. Robbins says:

“For example, check out section 1802, “Electronic Surveillance Authorization Without Court Order.” It is most instructive. There you will learn that “Notwithstanding any other law, the President, through the Attorney General, may authorize electronic surveillance without a court order under this subchapter to acquire foreign intelligence information for periods of up to one year” (emphasis mine).

Naturally, there are conditions. For example, the surveillance must be aimed at “the acquisition of the contents of communications transmitted by means of communications used exclusively between or among foreign powers.” Wait, is a terrorist group considered a foreign power? Yes, as defined in section 1801, subsection (a), “foreign power” can mean “a group engaged in international terrorism or activities in preparation therefore,” though the statue language would explicitly apply to “a faction of a foreign nation or nations.””

The actual text from FISA that Robbins refers to says:

“(A) the electronic surveillance is solely directed at —

(i) the acquisition of the contents of communications transmitted by means of communications used exclusively between or among foreign powers, as defined in section 1801(a)(1), (2), or (3) of this title; or

(ii) the acquisition of technical intelligence, other than the spoken communications of individuals, from property or premises under the open and exclusive control of a foreign power, as defined in section 1801(a)(1), (2), or (3) of this title;

(B) there is no substantial likelihood that the surveillance will acquire the contents of any communication to which a United States person is a party; and …”

Note the references to “a foreign power, as defined in section 1801(a)(1), (2), or (3) of this title”. Here is sec. 1801 on ‘foreign powers’:

“(a) ”Foreign power” means —

(1) a foreign government or any component thereof, whether or not recognized by the United States;
(2) a faction of a foreign nation or nations, not substantially composed of United States persons;
(3) an entity that is openly acknowledged by a foreign government or governments to be directed and controlled by such foreign government or governments;
(4) a group engaged in international terrorism or activities in preparation therefor;
(5) a foreign-based political organization, not substantially composed of United States persons; or
(6) an entity that is directed and controlled by a foreign government or governments.”

So: what Robbins has done is: leave out the part of the text that restricts the use of ‘foreign powers’ by adding ‘as defined in section 1801(a)(1), (2), or (3) of this title’; then saying ‘in sec. 1801, foreign powers includes terrorists’, without noting that that’s in 1801(a)(4), and is thus not relevant to the statute he’s discussing.

Later, he says:

“O.K. fine, but what about the condition that there be “no substantial likelihood that the surveillance will acquire the contents of any communication to which a United States person is a party?” Doesn’t that necessarily cut out any and all communication that is domestic in origin or destination? Well, not quite. Return to section 1801, subsection (i): “United States person,” which includes citizens, legal aliens, and businesses, explicitly “does not include a corporation or an association which is a foreign power.””

Here’s the actual definition of US person:

“(i) ”United States person” means a citizen of the United States, an alien lawfully admitted for permanent residence (as defined in section 1101(a)(20) of title 8), an unincorporated association a substantial number of members of which are citizens of the United States or aliens lawfully admitted for permanent residence, or a corporation which is incorporated in the United States, but does not include a corporation or an association which is a foreign power, as defined in subsection (a)(1), (2), or (3) of this section.”

Note that 1801 specifically includes any citizen or legal permanent resident, and specifically excludes not ‘agents of foreign powers’, but “a corporation or an association which is a foreign power, as defined in subsection (a)(1), (2), or (3) of this section.” So there are several things wrong with Robbins’ point here:

(a) Your average US citizen or permanent resident is not a corporation or association, but a human being, and this the exemption has nothing to do with him or her.

(b) Robbins has left off “as defined in section 1801(a)(1), (2), or (3) of this section”, which makes it clear that the corporations and associations in question do not include terrorist groups (who are under 1801(a)(4).)

Robbins goes on to say that being an agent of a foreign power makes you stop being a US person:

“Well sure, but does that mean that even if you are a citizen you cash in your abovementioned rights by collaborating with terrorists? Yes you do. You have then become an “Agent of a foreign power” as defined under subsection (b)(2)(C). Such agents include anyone who “knowingly engages in sabotage or international terrorism, or activities that are in preparation therefor, for or on behalf of a foreign power,” and even includes those who aid and abet or knowingly conspire with those engaged in such behavior.”

Again, this is false: the definition of ‘United States person’ noted above does not say that no agent of a foreign power can be a United States person. It says that no corporation or association that is a foreign power as defined under subsection (b)(2)(C) can be a United States person. That means that US citizens and permanent residents who are agents of foreign powers can be US persons. And therefore the authorization to conduct warrantless wiretaps when “there is no substantial likelihood that the surveillance will acquire the contents of any communication to which a United States person is a party” is not affected by the fact that the US person in question might also be an agent of a foreign power.

Sloppy reporting or deliberate misinformation? We report; you decide.

Read more