Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Ahmadinejad *Hearts* Bush (Nadelhoffer)

A recent report by the Chatham House--aka The Royal Institute of International Affairs--suggests that the quagmire the Bushies have created in Iraq has strengthened rather than weakened the Iranian leg of the so-called 'axis of evil' (see here).  Here are some noteworthy excerpts:

• "There is little doubt that Iran has been the chief beneficiary of the war on terror in the Middle East."
• "The United States, with coalition support, has eliminated two of Iran's regional rival governments - the Taliban in Afghanistan in November 2001 and Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq in April 2003 - but has failed to replace either with coherent and stable political structures."
• "The US-driven agenda for confronting Iran is severely compromised by the confident ease with which Iran sits in its region."

It appears that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad--who is obviously smitten with our "freedom agenda"--owes our "war president" a thank-you card.  Ahmadinejad just needs to make sure he keeps it simple--everyone knows how poor Georgie has a hard time with big words and difficult concepts.  Perhaps the hardest concept of all for him to keep straight is "moral universalizability"--something he clearly never learned while cheer-leading at Yale. 

I suppose W should have spent less time doing cartwheels and learning secret handshakes with John Kerry and more time paying attention in political science, history, biology, English 101, and philosophy.  If he had, perhaps we would not be foolishly considering going to war with the very country we have strengthened by our already foolish war-mongering.

When Justice Crosses Borders (Nadelhoffer)

Yesterday there was an interesting article posted at Alternet by Jay Walljasper about the European  Court of Human Rights (see here).  Here is an excerpt:

Even more unique is the basic premise of the court: that individuals have the right to bring human-rights cases before these judges if they believe that justice has not been served in national courts -- even going so far as to challenge the rulings of their own governments. Equally startling is the way the court works: Judges from across Europe pass judgment on the actions or laws of a nation, and that nation must abide by their ruling. This seems astonishing in an era when the world's dominant power, the United States, acts as though it is not bound by any treaty or convention, and routinely defies judgments of international bodies.

As Walljasper points out, the ECHR has had a positive influence on Europe including:

1. "Abolishing the death penalty, based on 1983 and 2002 revisions of the European Convention on Human Rights."
2. "Confirming gay rights, based on judgments throwing out anti-sodomy laws in the UK and Ireland."
3. "Expanding freedom of the press, based on a Danish case where a reporter was charged with hate crimes simply for interviewing racist skinheads on television."
4. "Establishing the precedent that European nations will not extradite criminal suspects to the United States if those people face the death penalty in American courts."
5. "Outlawing excessive force by police, based on a French case."

If only America were equally committed to human rights, perhaps we, too, would be witnessing these kinds of positive moral trends.  Instead, we are still dragging our feet concerning joining yet another important world court--namely, the International Criminal Court.

You see, America is one of only 7 nations (China, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Qatar and Israel--quite illustrious moral company indeed!)--to vote against the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court in 1998.  American hostility towards the ICC only increased when Bush came to power in 2002.  As a result of American foot-dragging concerning the ICC--an expression of our unwillingness to be held to the same standard to which we hold other countries--we have ended up with "a two-tiered rule of law for the most serious international crimes: one that applies to U.S. nationals; another that applies to the rest of the world's citizens" (see here for details).

To see just how serious our government has been in their efforts to undermine the ICC, consider the American Servicemembers' Protection Act (ASPA), which was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Bush on August of 2002. The major anti-ICC provisions in ASPA include:    

1. "a prohibition on U.S. cooperation with the ICC;"
2. "an 'invasion of the Hague' provision: authorizing the President to 'use all means necessary and appropriate' to free U.S. personnel (and certain allied personnel) detained or imprisoned by the ICC;"
3. "punishment for States that join the ICC treaty: refusing military aid to States' Parties to the treaty (except major U.S. allies);"
4. "a prohibition on U.S. participation in peacekeeping activities unless immunity from the ICC is guaranteed for U.S. personnel."

And to think that our fumbling and mumbling "war president" has the audacity to talk about his Orwellian "freedom agenda" (see here) and to brag about his purported goal of spreading democracy, liberty, and the rule of law throughout the Middle East. 

The Bushies no more want the rule of law in the Middle East than they want it here at home.  After all, when we are engaged in a "war" with both terrorists (see here) and Islamo-fascists (see here), who has time for the niceties of democracy--which we magically attempt to spread while side-stepping it all the while ourselves.  In this respect, the current administration is like an  incompetent parent--always admonishing others to do as we say, not as we do.  After all, when countries act like we do, they get branded as terrorists or threats to democracy.

*Cross-posted at truth to power

If You Can't Beat Em', Stone Em' (Nadelhoffer)

As everyone knows, public schools are the tools of the Devil--that fiendishly educated tempter.  So long as we keep our children locked in their rooms and scared to death of the world outside their insulated bubbles, we can keep Satan out of their tender little hearts and minds.  Of course, we end up keeping history, science, and other inconvenient truths out of their minds as well, but it's a small price to pay for salvation, no?  Plus, who needs a well-rounded education when memorizing the Bible suffices?  And while several corrupting subjects need not be taught to our children (history, geology, philosophy, biology, astronomy, etc.) they must at least be taught how to play baseball or softball--otherwise, they won't be able to hurl stones at all of the infidels.

Does this sound crazy to anyone but me?  Surely it does.  Unfortunately, some Americans actually take this stuff seriously.  Consider, for instance, a recent story by John Suggs over at Alternet (see here) about the Reconstructionist movement that is picking up political steam in this country (especially in the South where home schooling has been a particularly effective tool for indoctrination!).  Here is a frightening and alarming excerpt:

Two really devilish guys materialized in Toccoa, Ga., last month to harangue 600 true believers on the gospel of a thoroughly theocratic America. Along with lesser lights of the religious far right who spoke at American Vision's "Worldview Super Conference 2006," Herb Titus and Gary North called for nothing short of the overthrow of the United States of America.

Titus and North aren't household names. But Titus, former dean of TV preacher Pat Robertson's Regent University law school, has led the legal battle to plant the Ten Commandants in county courthouses across the nation. North, an apostle of the creed called Christian Reconstructionism, is one of the most influential elders of American fundamentalism.

"I don't want to capture their (mainstream Americans') system. I want to replace it," fumed North to a cheering audience. North has called for the stoning of gays and nonbelievers (rocks are cheap and plentiful, he has observed). Both friends and foes label him "Scary Gary."

Are we in danger of an American Taliban? Probably not today. But Alabama's "Ten Commandments Judge" Roy Moore is aligned with this congregation, and one-third of Alabama Republicans who voted in the June primary supported him. When you see the South Dakota legislature outlaw abortions, the Reconstructionist agenda is at work. The movement's greatest success is in Christian home schooling, where many, if not most, of the textbooks are Reconstructionist-authored tomes.

Moreover, the Reconstructionists are the folks behind attacks on science and public education. They're allied with proselytizers who have tried to convert Air Force cadets -- future pilots with fingers on nuclear triggers -- into religious zealots. Like the communists of the 1930s, they exert tremendous stealth political gravity, drawing many sympathizers in their wake, and their friends now dominate the Republican Party in many states.

[...]

A Harvard-bred lawyer whose most famous client is Alabama's Judge Moore, Titus told the Toccoa gathering that the Second Amendment envisions the assassination of "tyrants;" that's why we have guns. Tyranny, of course, is subjective to these folks. Their imposition of a theocratic state would not, by their standards, be tyranny. Public schools, on the other hand, to them are tyrannical.

[...]

Among North's most quoted writings was this ditty from 1982: "[W]e must use the doctrine of religious liberty to gain independence for Christian schools until we train up a generation...which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God." Titus followed that party line when he proclaimed that the First Amendment is limited to guaranteeing "the right to criticize the government," but "free expression is not in the Constitution." When I asked him if blasphemy -- castigating religion -- was protected, he shook his head.

Like North, Titus sees public education as decidedly satanic. Also, welfare. He contended the Founding Fathers -- and Americans today -- owe their "first duties to God. It's not just worship. It's education... welfare to the poor. Welfare belongs exclusively to God. Why do schools fail? They're trying to do the business of God. Medicaid goes. Education goes. The church gets back to doing what it should do." And what should the church be doing According to these self-appointed arbiters of God's will, running our lives. And stoning those who disagree.

You see folks, if God wanted poor children to be fed and educated, he would miraculously make food and books appear.  Yet, God has not made food and books appear.  Therefore, God does not want poor children to be fed and educated.  Of course, if your church wants to help out in this regard, that's fine by God.  But if anyone else tries to help, it's blasphemy! 

That people walk around with beliefs such as these in their head is truly staggering.  That they have stones in their pockets is terrifying.  Most frightening of all, however, is that they, too, have votes to cast.  I suppose that's why we live in a democratic republic rather than a purely majoritarian theocratic regime.

Cross-posted at truth to power (with open comment thread)

Alternatives Other Than Democracy? (Nadelhoffer)

Over at The Progressive, Matthew Rothschild has an interesting commentary on the recent suggestion by the Bush administration that they are looking into "alternatives other than democracy" as a possible solution to the quagmire in Iraq (see here).  Here is an excerpt:

There was a big clue planted at the bottom of the very long lead article in The New York Times of August 17. That story noted the alarming rise in insurgent attacks against American and Iraqi forces. The number of IEDs in July was 2,625, just about twice what it was back in January, when Zarqawi was still prowling around. Clearly, his death did nothing to slow the pace down or snuff out the insurgency.

[...]

But back to the clue. The last three paragraphs of this story revealed that “senior administration officials . . . are considering alternatives other than democracy,” according to a military expert who was just briefed at the White House.

Hmmm, “alternatives other than democracy.”

My, what can those be?

Monarchy? Dictatorship?

[...]

That may have been what Cheney and Rumsfeld had in mind all along. From the very beginning, they wanted to install in power Ahmad Chalabi and his groups of exiles roosting in the Iraqi National Congress, writes George Packer in his book The Assassin’s Gate. When the situation in Iraq began to deteriorate, Cheney blamed those in the Administration who refused to go along with this plan.

“In the fall of 2003, Dick Cheney approached his colleague Colin Powell, stuck a finger in his chest, and said, ‘If you hadn’t opposed the INC and Chalabi, we wouldn’t be in this mess,’ ” Packer reports.

Maybe Chalabi is waiting in the wings still—or some other Saddam wannabe. Bush appears to be taking applications.

Of course the Bushies never wanted a democracy in Iraq.  After all, a truly free Iraqi people may oust we liberators and seize control of their own oil supplies.  And since this administration has had its eye on the oil along, the thought of letting silly democratic principles get in the way must surely be as distasteful to them as the thought of an alliance between Iraq and Iran (see here and here)--which would thereby leave the two countries sitting on 245 gigabarrels of conventional crude oil (see here). 

When dictatorships are so much easier to install and control, why bother with democracy?  Indeed, our Commander and Thief has already expressed his preference for dictatorships to democracy before (see here and here).  Why would we expect anything more from him now?

*Cross-posted at truth to power (with open comment thread)

Is Our "War" President HAR1 Deficient? (Nadelhoffer)

A recent scientific discovery may help fill in some of the remaining gaps in our understanding of human evolution (see here details). 

Scientists from the United States, Belgium and France identified 49 "human accelerated regions" (HARs) showing a lot of genetic activity. In the most active, identified as HAR1, they found 18 out of the 118 nucleotides had changed since evolutionary separation from chimps some 6 million years ago, while only two had changed in the 310 million years separating the evolutionary lines of chimps and chickens.

"Right now we have very suggestive evidence that it might be involved at a critical step in brain development, but we still need to prove that it really makes a difference," team leader David Haussler from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the University of California, Santa Cruz told Reuters.

This research may also hold the key to understanding why George Bush often seems more chimpanzee-like (physically, verbally, and mentally) than presidential (see here). You see, his brain may simply be less evolved.  How ironic given that Bush himself has suggested that the "jury is still out on evolution" (see here).  Perhaps this kind of willful ignorance is itself the result of a deficient HAR1!

Slight Improvements on the Ground? (Nadelhoffer)

Tony Snow--the Bushie mouthpiece du jour--is once again trying hard to avoid speaking the truth (see here).  Just days after we learned that July was the deadliest month for Iraqi civilians since their liberation (3,400+ dead in July alone, see here and here), and in the wake of news that the insurgents are blowing things up more frequently now than ever before (1,660+ explosive devices detonated in July alone, see here), Snow nevertheless had the audacity to not only deny that Iraq is experiencing a civil war, but he also suggested that:

[T]he other thing that's happening is that there has been -- there has been some improvement at least in the situation on the ground, slightly. Yes, you have a number of sectarian violence operations going on, but you've also seen now in targeted neighborhoods in Baghdad, there has been a notable decrease in violence in three of the neighborhoods that have been targeted in the last week, and that's obviously a promising sign; that's not a victory lap.

Not a victory lap indeed!  Consider, for instance, the following assessment of what's happening on the ground in Iraq by a  senior Defense Department official (see here):

The insurgency has gotten worse by almost all measures, with insurgent attacks at historically high levels...the insurgency has more public support and is demonstrably more capable in numbers of people active and in its ability to direct violence than at any point in time.

And while the number of American soldiers killed in Iraq during the month of July was "merely" 38, the number of wounded soldiers was a staggering 518!  Good thing our politicians are busy cutting the funding for research into the type of brain injuries that are quickly becoming the hallmark of Operation Enduring Freedom (see here)!

Where's the outrage from those who "support our troops"?  This war has been bad for us, bad for the Iraqi's, and bad for the world.  And we owe it all to our deceitful, war-mongering, dolt of a president--a president that prefers slogans to substance, and photo-ops to effective policies.  We can no more rhetoric our way out of this mess than he can bamboozle his way out of eventually being saddled with responsibility with the quagmire unfolding in Baghdad.  History will prove to be his cross to bear rather than his saving grace.

*Cross-posted at truth to power (with open comment thread)

Oh, the Irony (Nadelhoffer)

It appears that Dick Cheney and Karl Rove may be forced to testify in the civil suit filed by former CIA operative Valeria Plame and her husband Joseph Wilson (see here).  The irony is two-fold: first,the legal precedent Plame's lawyer is relying on to try to force Cheney and Rove to testify stems, in part, from the Paula Jones sexual harassment case against Bill Clinton; second, one of the lawyers Cheney has selected to help him with the case is none other than Emmet T. Flood of Williams & Connolly (see here)--a former member of the Clinton impeachment team.  Apparently Mr. Flood has gone from defending a man who lied about a blow job to defending a man who is an evil blow hard.  How fitting.

*Cross-posted at truth to power

Santorum Confesses to Treason (Nadelhoffer)

Last week U.S. Senator Rick Santorum suggested that the individuals who leaked information about our domestic and international surveillance programs were traitorous (see here).  Moreover, he claimed that, "If leaking this information is traitorous, then publishing it is also complicit with that activity."  Just to be clear, his first claim is that the act of leaking information about these surveillance programs amounted to treason--presumably because it involved divulging information that was supposed to be kept secret (i.e., outside the eyes and ears of the public and beyond the scope of the law).  His second claim is that the news agencies that published the information that had been leaked were themselves complicit with treason--presumably because they made the public aware of the information that should have been kept secret in the first place. 

For now I want to set aside the tricky issue of determining precisely what complicity involves (see here for an earlier discussion).  Instead I simply want to suggest that if one takes Santorum's reasoning seriously, then it appears that he, too, is being complicit with treason.  After all, if he had not brought the subject up yet again, the issue would be getting less public attention.  Instead, Santorum's comments make the issue even more visible--which in turn means that the secrets that were improperly leaked and published are more visible.  And, based on his own reasoning, bringing attention to the secrets is treasonous.  Hence, Santorum is a traitor who by his own standards "must be pursued aggressively."  Luckily, I just moved to Pennsylvania.  So, I get to play a part in kicking him out of office in the fall.

*Cross-posted at truth to power (with open comments thread)

Sacrificing Freedom for Security (Nadelhoffer)

On Friday Jack Balkin posted something over at Balkinization about the relationship between surveillance and the so-called 'war on terror' that I think merits attention (see here).  You see, according to Balkin, the fundamental issue is not whether more surveillance is either necessary or prudent--he thinks it is--but rather whether it should be brought within the scope of the law--he thinks it should.  As he says:

The foiled London airport bombing plot yesterday reminded us that surveillance and intelligence will be necessary to prevent future attacks on Americans. The choice is not whether we should or should not engage in such surveillance and intelligence. The choice is whether we will do so legally.

I don't know whether NSA domestic surveillance programs were important in providing needed intelligence to stop the bomber's plot. I will assume that they were. What lesson should we draw from that fact? The right lesson is that these programs are important and that some version of them will be part of our country's governance for the foreseeable future. The wrong lesson is that because they helped us they should continue to operate outside the law.

As we move toward a national surveillance state, government officials will convert what began as emergency strategies into long term forms of governance. Domestic surveillance in some form is here to stay. It is not a temporary or emergency measure. Because it is here to stay, it must be placed firmly and squarely under the rule of law. If we do not do so: if we say to ourselves-- "how wise our leaders were to break the law so that we could be safe"-- we will create a Frankenstein monster. Again, I repeat: The issue is not whether our government should engage in information collection and analysis to safeguard us against asymmetric warfare and terrorist plots. It should. It must. The issue is whether we will let the executive do so without legal accountability, without the checks and balances necessary to ensure that people who believe they are acting in the country's best interests do not abuse their authority because they are so certain that they alone know how to keep us safe , and refuse to listen to anyone else-- or even feel that they must be accountable to anyone else.

While I obviously agree with Balkin that if far-reaching surveillance programs are here to stay, they ought to be brought within the confines of the law, I disagree with him that, "the issue is not whether our government should engage in information collection and analysis to safeguard us against asymmetric warfare and terroristic plots." 

As far as I can tell, the question of whether surveillance is both necessary and prudent is the most fundamental issue at hand.  After all, even if Balkin is correct that these programs are here to stay, it is unclear whether they should be here to stay.  To think otherwise is to assume from the start that the benefits of the spying programs--whether domestic or international--outweigh the costs.  By my lights, it is at least an open question whether this assumption is correct. 

Of course, if we follow Balkin's lead and simply agree with the administration that these programs are necessary for our safety and security, we should also follow him in rejecting the administration's view that these programs (and the people who implement them) ought to be above the law.  Balkin is clearly correct that if we are going to give our government such an awesome power, we certainly ought to make sure that the uses (and misuses) of this power are subject to checks and balances, due process, the rule of law, judicial review, etc. 

But am I the only one who thinks more thought ought to be given to the antecedent question concerning the necessity and prudence of these programs in the first place?  After all, this is not about whether I am allowed to carry shampoo onto my next flight or whether I have to take my shoes off before going through the metal detector at the airport.  This is about whether the government should have the power to collect data concerning all of my emails, phone calls, web-browsing habits, financial transactions, etc. 

Is it truly worth sacrificing one's privacy if all one gets in return is a little security?  Surely the citizens in Orwell's Oceania are safer than they were before INGSOC--but is the price for this security too high?  I, for one, might prefer to run the risk that I could be the victim of a future terrorist attack to allowing my government--run as it is these days by the war-mongering and liberty-hating puppets of big business--to peer into every facet of my personal life all in the name of my supposed safety. 

That someone as important as Balkin dismisses this issue from the start is an ominous sign of things to come.  I, for one, take seriously Benjamin Franklin's well-worn admonition that, "they that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."  This is not simply some cliche dredged up for rhetorical purposes.  It is a penetrating observation that strikes at the very heart of the issue that we should all be taking very seriously indeed--the very issue Balkin would have us entirely ignore.

*Cross-posted at truth to power (with open comment thread)

Leaving Soldiers in the Lurch (Nadelhoffer)

It's bad enough when Congress blindly goes along with a deceitful war-mongering president when he decides it's time for regime change in the Middle East.  But to then underfund research that would help the soldiers whose lives are destroyed as the result is simply inexcusable.  You see, having already caved in to the hawks at the Pentagon--who are loyal to the military-industrial complex and the oil industry not the American people--concerning the decision to go to war in the first place, now the Republicans who control Congress are going along with the Pentagon once again by cutting the budget for the Brain Injury Center--a research institute whose stated goal is to treat and understand war-related brain injuries--from $14 million to $7 million (see here for details).   

When asked to defend this unpardonable decision, Jenny Manley--spokeswoman for the Senate Appropriations Committee--had the following to say, "Honestly, they would have loved to have funded it, but there were just so many priorities...they didn't have any flexibility in such a tight fiscal year."  I wonder what priorities Manley had in mind.  Perhaps she was thinking about the palace in Baghdad that is costing an estimated $600 million to build (see here for details). 

No, the real reason funding has been slashed is that the Center's researchers have had the audacity to suggest that between 10%-20% of the soldiers fighting this administration's ill-conceived "war on terror" end up suffering from concussions, and "many experience headaches, disturbed sleep, memory loss and behavior issues after coming home." 

As a result of these findings, the Center recommended that the Pentagon screen all troops returning from Iraq in order to treat victims and to collect important data about brain-related injuries--an admittedly costly suggestion the Pentagon has predictably rejected until more research is conducted.  Ironically, the research they say they need is now less likely to be conducted given Congress's shocking willingness to support the Pentagon lock and step.  If nothing else, it makes their constant flag-waving all the more disingenuous and distasteful.  After all, it turns out that our elected officials are more than happy to send soldiers off to war, they just don't want to pay to take care of the ones who get broken along the way.  What could possibly be less patriotic than that?

*Cross-posted at truth to power

On Banning Good Heartedness (Nadelhoffer)

I meant to post something a few weeks ago when the story first broke--but I suppose I naively thought that the good people of Las Vegas would come to their senses.  You see, the city of Las Vegas passed an ordinance that makes it illegal to feed homeless people in public spaces--an ordinance that anti-poverty and civil rights activists have correctly challenged (see here for details).  After all, it is bad enough to penalize people who already occupy the lowest and least-respected rung of American society, but penalizing people who are willing to lend a helping hand simply adds insult to injury. 

If I lived in Las Vegas, I would put into action the following plan: First, I would make myself look as disheveled as possible, and I would encourage all of my friends to do the same.  Then, we would spend as much time in the public parks as possible in the hopes that it will become impossible for charitable organizations and law enforcement officials to distinguish those who really are homeless from those of us who only appear to be homeless.  After a few weeks, the number of bogus tickets and arrests will make it clear just how unenforceable the ordinance really is--after all, enforcing it involves leaving it up to police officers to decide who is homeless based on their judgment concerning who looks homeless. By making sure that far more people in the park who receive meals from charities look homeless than actually are homeless, enforcement thereby becomes impossible. 

Of course, one might object to my plan on the grounds that those of us who are merely pretending to be homeless in order to protest the city's ordinance would be consuming food that is supposed to benefit the homeless.  Fair enough.  The solution is simply to make sure that each of us who receives a free meal donates five dollars to whichever organization supplied the meal--thereby making sure that we do not free ride while undermining the city's ability to enforce such a mean-spirited ordinance.

"Independent of Reality" (Nadelhoffer)

A recent poll revealed that 50% of Americans still believe that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (see here for details)--prompting Charles Hanley of The Associated Press to suggest that people's beliefs somehow tend to become "independent of reality."  Over at The Progressive,  Amitabh Pal had the following to say about the truly staggering ignorance of half of the citizens of this country (see here for details):

On the other hand, maybe this isn’t so surprising. After all, in a poll last December, a full sixty-one percent of Americans said that they believed in the devil, forty percent of Americans admitted that they think that ghosts surround us, while one-third even accepted the existence of UFOs. Maybe there’s some overlap between these people and those who still believe in those spectral WMDs.

Seriously, let’s start apportioning blame for this state of affairs.

At the top of the list is the Bush Administration. It has mouthed this nonsense of “mushroom clouds” and “nuclear weapons” so insistently that it is hard for its supporters to admit to themselves that the White House took them for a ride. The closest Condoleezza Rice has come to admitting, for instance, that she and her colleagues were wrong is to say that WMDs were “perhaps” not present in Iraq. One hell of an admission.

Next on the list are the Bush Administration’s foot soldiers in Congress. Senator Rick Santorum and Representative Peter Hoekstra triumphantly released a report recently that supposedly proved that 500 chemical munitions had been gathered in Iraq since the invasion. The only problem was that these were long degraded and unusable.

Who pays attention to the likes of Santorum and Hoekstra? Who takes them seriously?

Of course, the Republican echo chamber in the right-wing media is also to blame for the mass delusion among half the American public. FOX News is the leading weapon of mass deception. As a poll famously revealed three years ago, forty-five percent of FOX viewers believed that weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq and that Saddam had ties to Al Qaeda and that global opinion supported Bush’s Iraq invasion. An incredible 80 percent believed at least one of these fibs.

What are we supposed to do to reclaim our democracy from the willfully deceptive administration that peddles nothing but lies and the willfully ignorant masses who accept them on faith?  How do you go about shedding the light of truth into the fantastical black hole that is the mind of the average viewer of Fox News?

Snowjob's Lecture On Democracy (Nadelhoffer)

In a press conference yesterday, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow--aka Snowjob--managed to say something insightful, even if he obviously lacks the foresight to see just how ironic it is (see here).  Here is an excerpt:

Democracies operate on different principles than totalitarian states. In a democracy, you have to respond to the will of the people. In a democracy within the United States, whether it be Joe Lieberman and Ned Lamont competing for votes in Connecticut or on the local level dealing with the needs for people to have safe streets, good schools and services they can depend upon, those are the things -- you respond to the state desires of the people. In totalitarian states, the despot alone has the opportunity to declare what he or she wants to do, and frankly, quite often they are much more war-like.

Of course, as far as it goes, he is entirely correct about the differences between democracies and totalitarian regimes.  Unfortunately, he apparently fails to see how undemocratic the administration he blindly defends really is. 

Consider, for instance, the inconvenient fact that a recent poll showed that 60% of Americans oppose the war in Iraq and that 57% support a time-table for withdrawing our troops (see here).  Given that Snow himself explicitly rejected any such time-table in the aforementioned press conference (indeed, the possibility of a time-table is what prompted his lecture on democracy), we can only assume that Snow is an enemy of democracy, a fan of totalitarianism, and a supporter of the world's leading war-mongering despot.  After all, given that (a) Snow says that the hallmark of democracy is attentiveness to the will of the people, (b) the will of the people involves a time-table, and (c) Snow rejects a time-table, it follows that (d) Snow does not believe in democracy.  Sadly, this surely does not come as surprise to anyone who has been paying attention.

*Cross posted at truth to power

truth to power (Nadelhoffer)

I wanted to take this opportunity to engage in a bit of shameless self-promotion.  You see, given how much fun I have had this summer guest-blogging here on Leiter Reports, I have decided to start my own blog on things socio-political (see here).  I already have two other people on board with more in the works.  So, if you have enjoyed my posts here, perhaps you will enjoy similar posts at truth to power.  I will be cross-posting some things, but I will also write some posts exclusively for each blog.  For now, I just wanted to thank Professor Leiter once again for giving me the opportunity to guest-blog this summer.  It has been quite cathartic.  Had Professor Leiter not graciously provided me with the opportunity to spread my proverbial wings, I would not have ventured into these new waters.   

Blame It On The...Weather? (Nadelhoffer)

As if denying the U.S. ever had a civil war was not enough to establish how stark raving mad Rumsfeld has become (see here), he has recently blamed the problems in Iraq on...the weather (see here).  I have already suggested that once Rummy finally gets his well-deserved pink slip from the Pentagon he should consider applying for a job at INGSOC, but perhaps Comedy Central will give him a chance as well.  After all, rather than blaming the quagmire in Iraq on his own incompetence, he seriously blamed in on the weather. The weather! Take a minute to let that sink in just for good measure.

You see, Iraq is not descending into civil war because of our hopelessly misguided attempt to 'liberate' them but because it's so damn hot outside.  If we can just 'stay the course' until the weather cools off a bit, they should go back to loving both their liberators and their neighbors.  Even if we were able to take his suggestion seriously--which, of course, no rational human being could--it would not get the Bushies off the hook for what is going on in Iraq. 

Keep in mind, one thing we were sure of before invading Iraq--besides the fact that they had oil we wanted and that they may still have had all the weapons of mass destruction that we sold them in the 1980's--was that it is pretty damn hot there year round.  So if we go along with the 'they only hate us and kill one another because of the humidity' theory that Rummy has floated, we should have been able to predict that this would happen.  For surely we knew it would be hot in Baghdad even if we did not know their reception of we liberators would be so painfully cool.  Perhaps the Pentagon should consider hiring some meteorologists with the money they free up when they finally fire Rummy for embarrassing us for all the world to see with his 'candor', stupidity, and gross imcompetence.

Barrett Speaks Out (Nadelhoffer)

In the past few weeks, I have posted a few things (see here and here) about the unfolding battle in Wisconsin over academic freedom that was sparked by Kevin Barrett's suggestion on a radio talk show that 9/11 was an inside job (Barrett is an adjunct instructor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison).  On Tuesday The New York Times ran a piece on Barrett which contained the following (see here):

Mr. Barrett, a co-founder of a group called Muslim-Jewish-Christian Alliance for 9/11 Truth, argued that he had never presented his personal opinions in class and that he was free to offer those opinions on his own time outside the classroom.

Some of you may recall that I made the following observations in one of my earlier posts:

The main problem with this line of reasoning is that Barrett's course--which is entitled, "Islam: Religion and Culture"--will focus on "the history of Islam, the Koran and the faith's effect on modern-day U.S. society."  Absent seeing the syllabus for the course, why would anyone think he would be teaching the students his views concerning 9/11?  After all, Barrett never said he was going to teaching his views about 9/11 in the classroom at all--his comments were made during a radio talk show and they were about his personal beliefs.

It appears the good lawmakers of Wisconsin are operating under the following assumptions:  (1) If P says x in public, then clearly P will teach x to her students.  (2) If most people believe x is false and P is going to be teaching x to her students, P ought to be fired.  The unfolding debate seems to focus on the merits of (2)--which is pretty bad as far as it goes--but we need to be focusing on (1) instead.  After all, absent evidence that Barrett will be teaching his students his views concerning 9/11--we have no way of evaluating the merits of the argument the legislators have put forward.

It appears that either Barrett is lying (something only his students are in the position to know--hopefully, they will step forward to defend him) or we finally have the evidence we need to reject the Wisconsin lawmakers' argument for firing Barrett. 

They want to fire Barrett not for what he does inside the classroom but rather for what he says outside the classroom.  This is not just an encroachment on academic freedom--it is something else entirely.  It amounts to an attempt to have someone fired merely for speaking his mind in public concerning beliefs that those in power happen not to share--all in the name of protecting the impressionable young minds of college-aged 'children' in Wisconsin. 

It appears that the good people of Wisconsin really need to be protected from the authoritarianism of the politicians they have elected.  Perhaps they will decide that there are other people in Wisconsin who are are more deserving of a pink-slip than Barrett.  Rep. Steve Nass would be a good start.

 

Rumsfeld Declares U.S. Never Had A Civil War (Nadelhoffer)

OK. OK. That's not quite what Rummy said.  Rather he used the following argument to support his otherwise fantastical view that what's going on in Iraq is not a civil war (see here):

So there's a number of good things happening. There are four provinces in the country where almost all the violence is occurring, and there are 14 where there is relatively little violence. And so, amidst all of this difficulty, the currency is fairly stable, the schools are open, the hospitals are open, the people are functioning.

If we generalize this line of reasoning in order to come up with a 'continuum of civil warnality' --a la Dershowitz's recent 'contribution' to the debate about the un-war between Israel and Lebanon (see here)--it would look something like this:

A battle between fighting factions composed of members of the same nation does not count as a civil war if the fighting only occurs in 1/4 of the nation's regions and if schools, hospitals, and banks are open in most areas.

Now when we input the salient information from the supposed U.S. Civil War--e.g., 40% of the fighting occurred in Tennessee and Virginia (see here for a helpful map)--we quickly see that one of the biggest lies ever fed to the American people--bigger in fact than the claim that Iraq posed a threat in 2003--is that America experienced a civil war from 1861 to 1865.  See, when you live in Rummy's fantasy world--black is white, defeat is victory, war is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength.  Perhaps when he finally gets kicked out of the Pentagon, he can send his resume to INGSOC (or more likely, Halliburton).

Rummy is as detached from reality as he is evil, uncaring, cocky, and dangerous.  That Bush has yet to fire him is evidence of his own incompetence.  History will show that Bush and his cronies have done more damage to both this country and the world than any group of cronies in American history--and that's saying something impressive indeed. 

 

A Cease Fire That Will Last? (Nadelhoffer)

If only innocent Lebanese children would quit getting in the way of Israel's attempt to entirely destroy Hezbollah (see here and here for details)--perhaps the 'lasting' cease-fire the Bushies are after would be possible (see here).  In the meantime, it's worth pointing out how curious the administration's line on this really is.  You see, it's apparently better to have no cease-fire at all than a temporary cease-fire.  It's as if you would prefer a raging fire to intermittent fires so long as you can't make the fire entirely go away. 

The logic here is as outrageous as the deaths of so many innocent Lebanese children yesterday.  Of course, this is not to minimize the tragedy of the deaths of innocent Israelis--even if the ratio of Lebanese civilian deaths to Israeli civilian deaths is disproportional.  Now if only Dershowitz's "continuum of civilianality" made sense, we could make the events of the past few days less tragic simply by linguistic fiat (see here).  For my take on Dershowitz as well as the ominous cloud spreading over the middle East, see here, here, and here.

Academic Freedom Revisited (Nadelhoffer)

A few weeks ago I posted something (see here) about the showdown in Wisconsin over academic freedom that was sparked by Kevin Barrett's suggestion on a radio talk show that 9/11 was an inside job (Barrett is an adjunct instructor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison).  At the time I pointed out that Representative Steve Nass--who was chiefly responsible for trying to get  Barrett fired--has subsequently vowed to use the “power of the purse-string” to seek administrative cuts in the state-funded university budget.  See here for an update concerning Nash's latest crusade. 

On a related note, Stanley Fish attempted to shed light on the issue in yesterday's New York Times (see here).  Jennifer Hansen--of Mad Melancholic Feminista fame--has posted an interesting response here.  I am no less skeptical than she is about the tenability of Fish's analysis.

UPDATE: Today's Los Angeles Times has yet another article about the Barrett affair (see here).  Apparently 61 of Wisconsin's 133 lawmakers have given the university an official ultimatum--either fire Barrett or reap the financial consequences in terms of budget cuts.  What is their justification for the ultimatum?  The tax-payers of Wisconsin purportedly don't want to pay people like Barrett to teach lies to their children. 

The main problem with this line of reasoning is that Barrett's course--which is entitled, "Islam: Religion and Culture"--will focus on "the history of Islam, the Koran and the faith's effect on modern-day U.S. society."  Absent seeing the syllabus for the course, why would anyone think he would be teaching the students his views concerning 9/11?  After all, Barrett never said he was going to teaching his views about 9/11 in the classroom at all--his comments were made during a radio talk show and they were about his personal beliefs. 

It appears the good lawmakers of Wisconsin are operating under the following assumptions:  (1) If P says x in public, then clearly P will teach x to her students.  (2) If most people believe x is false and P is going to be teaching x to her students, P ought to be fired.  The unfolding debate seems to focus on the merits of (2)--which is pretty bad as far as it goes--but we need to be focusing on (1) instead.  After all, absent evidence that Barrett will be teaching his students his views concerning 9/11--we have no way of evaluating the merits of the argument the legislators have put forward. 

Vote for the People Who Created the Quagmire? (Nadelhoffer)

The Bush administration's real decider--Dick Cheney--slithered out from under the oiligarchic rock he normally hides under yesterday to suggest that the quagmire in the Middle East is evidence that the American people should vote for Bush's friends in November (see here for details).  In a speech that would have made the writers at Comedy Central proud, our war-mongering and war-profiteering Vice President had the audacity to suggest that it is Republicans and not Democrats who "protect the American people" and who "support the men and women who defend us in time of war."  You see, they "protect us" by destabilizing an entire region--thereby breeding more hatred for America than has ever existed.  And they "support" our soldiers by sending them off to die in Iraq so that we can liberate the Iraqi people from their oil.  So, we should vote them all back into office because now that they have made a mess of things, they alone are tough-minded enough to get us out of the quagmire they created? 

Not All Civilians Are Created Equal (Nadelhoffer)

In yesterday's Los Angeles Times, Alan Dershowitz suggested that it is time to update our definition of 'civilian' in light of the complexities of the current situation in the Middle East (see here).  Here is an excerpt:

The new is filled these days with reports of civilian casualties, comparative civilian body counts and criticism of Israel, along with Hezbollah, for causing the deaths, injuries and "collective punishment" of civilians. But just who is a "civilian" in the age of terrorism, when militants don't wear uniforms, don't belong to regular armies and easily blend into civilian populations?

We need a new vocabulary to reflect the realities of modern warfare. A new phrase should be introduced into the reporting and analysis of current events in the Middle East: "the continuum of civilianality." Though cumbersome, this concept aptly captures the reality and nuance of warfare today and provides a more fair way to describe those who are killed, wounded and punished.

[...]

Turning specifically to the current fighting between Israel and Hezbollah and Hamas, the line between Israeli soldiers and civilians is relatively clear. Hezbollah missiles and Hamas rockets target and hit Israeli restaurants, apartment buildings and schools. They are loaded with anti-personnel ball-bearings designed specifically to maximize civilian casualties.

Hezbollah and Hamas militants, on the other hand, are difficult to distinguish from those "civilians" who recruit, finance, harbor and facilitate their terrorism. Nor can women and children always be counted as civilians, as some organizations do. Terrorists increasingly use women and teenagers to play important roles in their attacks.

The Israeli army has given well-publicized notice to civilians to leave those areas of southern Lebanon that have been turned into war zones. Those who voluntarily remain behind have become complicit. Some — those who cannot leave on their own — should be counted among the innocent victims.

If the media were to adopt this "continuum," it would be informative to learn how many of the "civilian casualties" fall closer to the line of complicity and how many fall closer to the line of innocence.

Every civilian death is a tragedy, but some are more tragic than others.

The suggestion that the civilians in Lebanon who 'voluntarily' stayed behind despite well-publicized Israeli warnings for them to flee thereby become complicit with terrorism is particularly problematic given that Israel specifically targeted the kinds of civilian infrastructure that would have made it possible for them to leave (e.g., airports, bridges, highways, etc.).  This reminds me of the people who blamed the citizens in New Orleans who did not make it out in time for their dire situation.  In both cases, a myriad of personal and economic factors which could explain why citizens might understandably stay behind are entirely ignored in order to legitimate not caring about their plight. 

But setting that aside for present purposes, does it seem to anyone else that Derschowitz is essentially saying that the death of Israeli citizens is more tragic than the death of their Lebanese counterparts?  After all, don't Israeli citizens have the ability to flee as well?  The only way Dershowitz can justify placing the onus entirely on the shoulders of the citizens of Lebanon is if he assumes from the start that Israel is entirely in the right.  At least for many people, that is an open question--a question that Dershowitz begs as usual.

UPDATE:  See here for an interesting account of why Faerlie Wilson--a 24 year old American student working for Executive Magazine--is remaining in Lebanon.  I suppose Dershowitz is committed to concluding that Wilson is complicit with terrorism, and hence if Wilson happens to get killed as the result of an Israeli bombing, it will certainly be less tragic than we might otherwise have thought.

UPDATE: It's probably worth pointing out in this context that the estimated ratio of Lebanese civilian casualties to Israeli civilian casualities (see here for details) is roughly 16:1 (or 280/17).  As such, in order for Dershowitz's attempt to show that the death of Israeli civilians is somehow more tragic than the death of their Lebanese counterparts, he would need to show that at least 15 out of every 16 Lebanese civilian casualties are of the "complicit" variety.  Otherwise his so-called "continuum of civilianality" doesn't do the work he needs it to do.

Greeted with Open Arms Revisited? (Nadelhoffer)

It is always unclear whether William Kristol of The Weekly Standard(less) actually believes the incredibly stupid things he says or if he just says them in jest in order to justify otherwise unjustifiable policies to the weak-minded people who take his views seriously (e.g., our commander and thief).  This recent interview is a case in point.  Just as Kristol--like many of his war-mongering neo-con brethren--once suggested that we would be greeted with open arms once we 'liberated' Iraq, he now suggests that the same thing would happen in Iran.  Here is an excerpt:

QUESTION: You know, the down side, though, you know very well, to all of that being that we’re involved in Iraq and Afganistan. Also that Iran is much different than Iraq. It’s huge and more formidable.

KRISTOL: It is, but also the Iranian people dislike their regime. I think they would be – the right use of targeted military force — but especially if political pressure before we use military force – could cause them to reconsider whether they really want to have this regime in power. There are even moderates – they are not wonderful people — but people in the government itself who are probably nervous about Ahmadinejad’s recklessness.

This is why standing up to Iran right now is so important. They’re overreached. They and Hezbollah have recklessly overreached. They got cocky. This is the moment to set them back. I think a setback to Hezbollah could trigger changes in Iran. People can say, wait a second, what is Ahmadinejad doing to us. We’re alone. The Arab world is even against us. The Muslim world is against us. Let’s reconsider this reckless path that we’re on.

That Kristol would dismiss Iran as overreached and cocky is as ironic as it is frightening.  That he would suggest that the people of Iran should realize that the Arab and Muslim worlds are against them is laughable.  Perhaps psychological projection is at work here.  Or perhaps it's just unthinking and uncaring greed supplemented by a large dose of testosterone-driven arrogance.

 

The Kind of Force that Makes Sense? (Nadelhoffer)

After dismissing a cease-fire in Lebanon yesterday as a "false promise," Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice suggested that, "we are looking at what kind of international assistance force makes sense" (see here). Well, we can quit holding our collective breath--it is now clear what kind of 'force' we have in mind (namely, precision-guided missiles).  See here for details.  The only thing more predictable than American and Israeli war-mongering is the backlash it creates.  When will the world learn that "peace" and "missiles" don't go hand-in-hand?   

Yo, We Have A Third Grader for President (Nadelhoffer)

In the wake of Bush's latest round of embarassing antics at the G8 Summit--from "Yo, Blair" to "Oh Baby, Baby, Chancellor Merkel--let me rub your shoulders"--Bush has taken another well-deserved round of beatings by the pundits.  One of the better lashings comes from Cenk Uygur over at Alternet (see here).  Here is an excerpt:

You know it, I know it and the American people know it. But everyone is afraid to say it. They say it privately, but people are afraid of saying it publicly because you will be branded as a liberal, elite, intellectual snob. But believe me, you don't have to be an intellectual to see how painfully stupid our president is.

[...]

This guys sounds like a third grader. Do you know anyone who would have a conversation like this with their neighbor, let alone a business associate, let alone a world leader? Who's proud to know that Russia is big and so is China?

Can anyone now credibly claim that Bush is secretly working on a master plan behind the scenes and that he's just playing cowboy for the cameras? I hope the master plan doesn't involve figuring out how long it takes to get to China.

If someone is this ignorant, they're usually embarrassed and try not to talk much. But this guy is so dumb he has no idea how dumb he is. This sounds like a conversation you might have with a child, a mentally challenged child. Johnny, do you know how big Russia is? How about China?

This would all be unfortunate if George was your dentist, or worse yet, your accountant. But he is the leader of the free world. This man makes life or death decisions every day. If you say you're not scared about that, you're lying.

Would you let him do the books for your business? Would you trust your company in his hands for eight years? (No matter how Republican you are, you know you just said no to that question.) Would you trust him to be your kids' guidance counselor and take his advice seriously? If your kids were in the Army and he was their field commander, would you feel good about putting their lives in his hands?

Come on, no one is crazy enough to say yes to that. Yet, he has all of our lives in his hands. The emperor has no clothes. The emperor has no clothes. It's about time someone in the mainstream media said it.

Mr. Uygur goes on to point out that the rest of the world now pities us for having a "third grader for president."  And while he is certainly correct about the perceived maturity and intellectual capacity of King W the Second, I think Uygur is wrong to suggest that the world pities us.  They fear us--and understandably so.  After all, unlike China and Russia, George W. Bush's brain is not big.  What's worse is that his heart isn't big either--just his vacant stare and his foolish global ambitions.   

 

The Great Scientist in the Sky (Nadelhoffer)

Karl Rove defended Bush's decision to veto the bi-partisan stem-cell legislation that recently passed through Congress by suggesting that "recent studies" have shown that adult stem cells are more promising than embryonic stem cells anyway (see here for details).  Setting aside the sickening PR photo-op (see here) that followed Bush's brave defense of the sanctity of life in the face of the evils of scientific progress--surrounding himself as he did by yet more children that will eventually be left behind by his education policies--one might wonder which studies Rove was talking about.  After all, just last year 80 Nobel laureates sent Bush a letter suggesting that research involving embryonic stem cells is more promising than research involving adult stem cells (see here).  Since White House spokesperson Ken Lisaius was unable to specify which studies Bush and Co. are relying on (see here for details), I thought I would fill in the blank.  You see, the great Scientist in the Sky--our Lord and Savior--has whispered the truth directly into Bush's ear while he was sleeping.  Fortunately, this divine revelation interrupted Bush's dreams of world domination.  Unfortunately, when he awoke, he got right back to work. 

Caving In On Cue (Nadelhoffer)

In the wake of the Hamdan decision, I have often worried that Congress would simply cave in to the Bush administration's executive power grab (see here, here, here, and here).  As was both feared and expected, that is precisely what they have done (see here for details).   Last week Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Arlen Specter proposed legislation that would essentially give Bush and his ilk the blank check they wanted.  In response to the proposed legislation, ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero had the following to say: "The president could still choose to ignore the optional court oversight on the program...this new bill would codify the notion that the president is not bound by the laws passed by Congress or the Constitution. It would reward his abuse of power."  Given Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez's previous suggestion that the Geneva Conventions are "quaint" (see here) and Judge Richard Posner's recent suggestion that requiring warrants for snooping is "obsolete" in the wake of the so-called war on terror (see here), it is clear that the legal asylum is slowly being taken over by its wards.  Before long, our liberties and rights will be quaint and obsolete as well--all in the name of national security. Do none of our "elected" public officials have the courage to stop this madness?

On-Line Philosophy Lectures (Nadelhoffer)

The good folks at A Brood Comb have put together a list of on-line philosophy lectures here.  If you know of others, feel free to email me and I will update this post.  In this context, it's worth reminding everyone that the second installation of the On-line Philosophy Conference (OPC)--tentatively planned for February 2007--will kick off with a webcast as well! 

Charges of Authoritarianism from the Right? (Nadelhoffer)

A few days ago John Dean--former Nixon White House counsel--had an interesting article in The Boston Globe entitled "Triumph of Authoritarians" (see here).  Here is an excerpt:

Today's Republican policies are antithetical to bedrock conservative fundamentals. There is nothing conservative about preemptive wars or disregarding international law by condoning torture. Abandoning fiscal responsibility is now standard operating procedure. Bible-thumping, finger-pointing, tongue-lashing attacks on homosexuals are not found in Russell Krik's classic conservative canons, nor in James Burham's guides to conservative governing. Conservatives in the tradition of former senator Barry Goldwater and President Ronald Reagan believed in ``conserving" this planet, not relaxing environmental laws to make life easier for big business. And neither man would have considered employing Christian evangelical criteria in federal programs, ranging from restricting stem cell research to fighting AIDs through abstinence.

Candid and knowledgeable Republicans on the far right concede -- usually only when not speaking for attribution -- that they are not truly conservative. They do not like to talk about why they behave as they do, or even to reflect on it. Nonetheless, their leaders admit they like being in charge, and their followers grant they find comfort in strong leaders who make them feel safe.

[...]

Authoritarian conservatives are, as a researcher told me, ``enemies of freedom, antidemocratic, antiequality, highly prejudiced, mean-spirited, power hungry, Machiavellian and amoral." And that's not just his view. To the contrary, this is how these people have consistently described themselves when being anonymously tested, by the tens of thousands over the past several decades.

Authoritarianism's impact on contemporary conservatism is beyond question. Because this impact is still growing and has troubling (if not actually evil) implications, I hope that social scientists will begin to write about this issue for general readers. It is long past time to bring the telling results of their empirical work into the public square and to the attention of American voters. No less than the health of our democracy may depend on this being done. We need to stop thinking we are dealing with traditional conservatives on the modern stage, and instead recognize that they've often been supplanted by authoritarians.

It appears that even someone who played a role in Nixon's "imperial presidency" is capable of seeing that W and his ilk are taking us down a dangerous path to authoritarianism--something that gets mentioned a lot here on this blog.  Does that mean Dean is anti-American as well?

Lack of Proportionality? (Nadelhoffer)

One of the primary tenants of just war theory is the jus in bello principle that the amount of force used must be proportional to the amount of harm suffered.  Critics of the recent Israeli attacks on both Palestine in the Gaza Strip and on Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon charge that Israel has violated the principle of proportionality (see here for details).  After all, one recent body count generated the following figures: since the beginning of the conflict, 230 Lebanese (mostly civilian) and 103 Palestinians (30% civilian) vs. 25 Israelis (50% civilian) have been killed. 

And yet rather than demanding that Israel cease and desist, the West has demanded that it is the Lebanese and Palestinian governments who are responsible for bringing the conflict to an end.  Given that the kidnapping and murder of a handful of Israeli soldiers  served as the most immediate spark for the conflict--it was an open question from the start whether the Israeli targeting of civilian infrastructure and centers of mostly civilian populations was proportional. 

Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni had the following response to this line of criticism: “Proportionality is not compared to the event, but to the threat, and the threat is bigger and wider than the captured soldiers.”  If one fleshes out the principle of proportionality in this way, is there anything that the principle could not justify?  Traditionally, the "harm suffered" part of the principle of proportionality was backward and not forward looking--i.e., in order to see whether a military response x was proportional, one had to look to the past to see how serious the original harm y had been.  For instance, if five soldiers of country A were killed by B and A responded by killing a 1000  civilians from B, this would obviously run afoul of the principle of proportionality.  Of course, figuring out precisely when the principle has been violated is an admittedly tricky affair. 

For present purposes, that need not concern us as much as the implications of Livni's aforementioned remarks.  What she seems to be suggesting is that in judging a country's response to a harm, it is not to the actual harm suffered that we must look, but to the harms that could be suffered in the future.  In many respects, this very liberal interpretation of the principle of proportionality shares an affinity with the Bush doctrine of preemption--both of which essentially enable governments to side-step the mandates of traditional just war theory while nevertheless maintaining the surface appearance of moral acceptability. 

My question to the readers is the following: Is there a way of defending the recent Israeli attacks on Palestine and Lebanon that does not require us to entirely redefine the principle of proportionality?  It's worth pointing out in advance that simply criticizing Israeli policies no more makes one an anti-Semite than criticizing American foreign policy makes one an anti-American (see here for my earlier discussion of this issue).  The issue is not whether Israel should be able to defend itself against aggressors.  Rather it is whether their current actions satisfy basic principles of justice. 

For more information about the conflict, see here and here.

While I have allowed comments on this post because I think philosophers have something to contribute to the debate about proportionality, I nevertheless reserve the right to close the comment thread in the event that is becomes unnecessarily abusive and/or hostile. There is a time and place for personal attacks, but this thread is not one of them.  So comments will be monitored for relevance and appropriateness.  Please post only once; comments may take awhile to appear.

UPDATE: Thom Brooks has brought the following commentary on the conflict to my attention.

UPDATE: There is an interesting database of bloggers on the conflict here.

UPDATE: Ruchira Paul has brought the following two commentaries--one from the left, one from the right--to my attention.

UPDATE:  Over at The Nation, there is the following interesting editorial.

Nussbaum on MacKinnon (Nadelhoffer)

Over at The Nation, Martha Nussbaum has a book review of Catharine MacKinnon's recently published Are Women Human? While I have yet to read this important collection of MacKinnon's essays and speeches, Nussbaum has convinced me to place it at the top of my summer reading list. 

The War President (Nadelhoffer)

Scaring Up the Vote (Nadelhoffer)

Newt Gingrich has apparently figured out how to ensure that Republicans remain in power after the upcoming elections--namely, scare tactics (see here for details).  You see, the easiest way to guarantee a Republican victory in November--besides vote stealing machines and Jim Crow era voting laws--is to use the dirty W word.  No, not that W silly--the other one, WW III!  If we can only shift Americans' attention to the supposed fact that we find ourselves in the first stages of WW III, perhaps they will conveniently forget that W and his ilk are largely to blame for the current quagmire.  It's like a fireman starting a series of fires in order to convince people that we need more firemen.  Fairly clever, but sinister and morally bankrupt--just like Gingrich himself.

News Flash (Nadelhoffer)

After a "massive" fifty year study into the authoritarian personality--involving interviews with hundreds of thousands of people--social scientists have made the following shocking discovery:  authoritarianism is an "overwhelmingly conservative orientation."  Who'da thunk it?  Perhaps they could have just skipped the study and watched the news.  See here for details.

W's Real Agenda (Nadelhoffer)

There was an interesting editorial in The New York Times yesterday entitled, "The Real Agenda."  Here is an excerpt:

It is only now, nearly five years after Sept. 11, that the full picture of the Bush administration’s response to the terror attacks is becoming clear. Much of it, we can see now, had far less to do with fighting Osama bin Laden than with expanding presidential power.

Over and over again, the same pattern emerges: Given a choice between following the rules or carving out some unprecedented executive power, the White House always shrugged off the legal constraints. Even when the only challenge was to get required approval from an ever-cooperative Congress, the president and his staff preferred to go it alone. While no one questions the determination of the White House to fight terrorism, the methods this administration has used to do it have been shaped by another, perverse determination: never to consult, never to ask and always to fight against any constraint on the executive branch.

One result has been a frayed democratic fabric in a country founded on a constitutional system of checks and balances. Another has been a less effective war on terror.

[...]

The president’s constant efforts to assert his power to act without consent or consultation has warped the war on terror. The unity and sense of national purpose that followed 9/11 is gone, replaced by suspicion and divisiveness that never needed to emerge. The president had no need to go it alone — everyone wanted to go with him. Both parties in Congress were eager to show they were tough on terrorism. But the obsession with presidential prerogatives created fights where no fights needed to occur and made huge messes out of programs that could have functioned more efficiently within the rules.

Jane Mayer provided a close look at this effort to undermine the constitutional separation of powers in a chilling article in the July 3 issue of The New Yorker. She showed how it grew out of Vice President Dick Cheney’s long and deeply held conviction that the real lesson of Watergate and the later Iran-contra debacle was that the president needed more power and that Congress and the courts should get out of the way.

To a disturbing degree, the horror of 9/11 became an excuse to take up this cause behind the shield of Americans’ deep insecurity. The results have been devastating. Americans’ civil liberties have been trampled. The nation’s image as a champion of human rights has been gravely harmed. Prisoners have been abused, tortured and even killed at the prisons we know about, while other prisons operate in secret. American agents “disappear” people, some entirely innocent, and send them off to torture chambers in distant lands. Hundreds of innocent men have been jailed at Guantánamo Bay without charges or rudimentary rights. And Congress has shirked its duty to correct this out of fear of being painted as pro-terrorist at election time.

We still hope Congress will respond to the Supreme Court’s powerful and unequivocal ruling on Guantánamo Bay and also hold Mr. Bush to account for ignoring the law on wiretapping. Certainly, the president has made it clear that he is not giving an inch of ground.

Not giving an inch?  W just can't get a break these days--poor guy!  After all, he and his ilk have graciously agreed to allow their surveillance programs to be reviewed--albeit once and only once.  And if the administration doesn't like the outcome of the review, they have invested themselves with the power to ignore it (see here for details).  So quit your liberal whining for a change.  At least we get to pretend to curb his power--just like he pretended to win the last two elections.