What Murtha meant; what Krugman says

So, did Rep. John Murtha call for a quick withdrawal from Iraq or not?

In Slate, Fred Kaplan makes a pretty good case that he did not:

Take a close look at Murtha's now-infamous statement of Nov. 17. You will not find the words "withdrawal," "pullout," or their myriad synonyms. Instead, he calls for a "redeployment" of U.S. troops—which may seem like a euphemism for withdrawal but in fact is very different. Toward the end of his statement, Murtha lays out the elements of what he calls his "plan":

To immediately redeploy U.S. troops consistent with the safety of U.S. forces.
To create a quick reaction force in the region.
To create an over-the-horizon presence of Marines.
To diplomatically pursue security and stability in Iraq.

He doesn't elaborate on any of these ideas, but it's clear they don't add up to "cut and run." True, his final line reads, "It is time to bring them home," but his plan suggests he wants to bring, at most, only some of them home. The others are to be "redeployed" in the quick-reaction forces hovering just offshore.

Murtha stressed this point Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press, saying he wanted to "redeploy the troops to the periphery." He used that phrase—"to the periphery," meaning just offshore or across the border from Iraq, not all the way home—three times during the interview.

Kaplan also points out that, interestingly enough, Murtha's proposal looks like a Cliff's Notes version of a recent report, Strategic Redeployment: A Progressive Plan for Iraq and the Struggle Against Violent Extremists, published by the Center for American Progress and co-authored by Lawrence Korb, assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration, and Brian Katulis.

The Truth Laid Bear disagrees (hat tip: Instapundit), stressing the words "immediately redeploy" and also pointing to the conclusion of Murtha's speech as posted on his website:

Our military has done everything that has been asked of them, the U.S. can not accomplish anything further in Iraq militarily. IT IS TIME TO BRING THEM HOME.

(All caps in the original.)

So, which is it? "Cut and run" or phased redeployment?

It's pretty clear that Murtha's plan envisions a continuing role for the U.S. military in the region. Yet his concluding line seems to contradict that. Could it be that he let his rhetoric run away with him, and sacrificed a credible plan to a good slogan?

I don't think Murtha is a "cut and run" guy, though I do think that his proposal is in some ways naive. For instance, he says that ending the occupation "will send a signal to the Sunnis to join the political process for the good of a 'free' Iraq." From everything we know, I'd say that the Sunni Arabs in Iraq are at least as nervous and resentful about getting shafted by the Shiites and the Kurds as they are about the presence of the American troops. (Most of their violence is directed at the Shiites, not the Americans.) I'm also not sure why Murtha thinks it's so important that we announce our withdrawal before the election scheduled for mid-December. I would say that, on the contrary, it would be a good idea to wait and see if the election results in some stabilization before annoucing any drastic moves.

In sum, on Murtha, I agree with Andrew Sullivan: Murtha is wrong, but so are the attempts to smear and belittle him.

Meanwhile, in yesterday's New York Times, Paul Krugman heaps praise on Murtha -- "a much-decorated veteran who cares deeply about America's fighting men and women" -- in a column bluntly titled, "Time to Leave." Since Krugman is now trapped behind the solid walls of TimesSelect, some excerpts:

[D]efenders of our current policy have had to make a substantive argument: we can't leave Iraq now, because a civil war will break out after we're gone. One is tempted to say that they should have thought about that possibility back when they were cheerleading us into this war. But the real question is this: When, exactly, would be a good time to leave Iraq?

The fact is that we're not going to stay in Iraq until we achieve victory, whatever that means in this context. At most, we'll stay until the American military can take no more.

... And time is running out. With some military units on their third tour of duty in Iraq, the superb volunteer army that Mr. Bush inherited is in increasing danger of facing a collapse in quality and morale similar to the collapse of the officer corps in the early 1970's.

So the question isn't whether things will be ugly after American forces leave Iraq. They probably will. The question, instead, is whether it makes sense to keep the war going for another year or two, which is all the time we realistically have.

Pessimists think that Iraq will fall into chaos whenever we leave. If so, we're better off leaving sooner rather than later. As a Marine officer quoted by James Fallows in the current Atlantic Monthly puts it, "We can lose in Iraq and destroy our Army, or we can just lose."

And there's a good case to be made that our departure will actually improve matters. As Mr. Murtha pointed out in his speech, the insurgency derives much of its support from the perception that it's resisting a foreign occupier. Once we're gone, the odds are that Iraqis, who don't have a tradition of religious extremism, will turn on fanatical foreigners like Zarqawi.

The only way to justify staying in Iraq is to make the case that stretching the U.S. army to its breaking point will buy time for something good to happen. I don't think you can make that case convincingly. So Mr. Murtha is right: it's time to leave.

Note that Krugman may be endorsing a more radical plan than Murtha is proposing. And note how Krugman simultaneously marshals two contradictory arguments to bolster his case: things in Iraq are likely "turn ugly" after our departure in any case, so we'd better leave soon; our departure is likely to make things better.

Is the state of the military as grim as Krugman suggests? There is no doubt that the engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan are a major strain on our armed forces. But the reports on recruitment and reenlistment are somewhat contradictory. Furthermore, according to a recent Pew Research Center poll, military officers (admittedly a fairly small sample) are considerably more likely than members of the news media, academics, and foreign affairs experts to believe that the effort to establish a stable democracy in Iraq will succeed.

And there is something else. Krugman quotes the marine from James Fallows's article in The Atlantic Monthly; but he does not say that Fallows' long essay (available to subscribers only) takes the opposite of a "cut and run" approach. An excerpt:

Let me suggest a standard for judging endgame strategies in Iraq, given the commitment the United States has already made. It begins with the recognition that even if it were possible to rebuild and fully democratize Iraq, as a matter of political reality the United States will not stay to see it through. ... But perhaps we could stay long enough to meet a more modest standard.

What is needed for an honorable departure is, at a minimum, a country that will not go to war with itself, and citizens who will not turn to large-scale murder. This requires Iraqi security forces that are working on a couple of levels: a national army strong enough to deter militias from any region and loyal enough to the new Iraq to resist becoming the tool of any faction; policemen who are sufficiently competent, brave, and honest to keep civilians safe. If the United States leaves Iraq knowing that non-American forces are sufficient to keep order, it can leave with a clear conscience—no matter what might happen a year or two later.

In the end the United States may not be able to leave honorably. The pressure to get out could become too great. But if we were serious about reconstituting an Iraqi military as quickly as possible, what would we do? Based on these interviews, I have come to this sobering conclusion: the United States can best train Iraqis, and therefore best help itself leave Iraq, only by making certain very long-term commitments to stay.

Fallows, it should be noted, is highly critical of the way the U.S. has handled the training of the Iraqi military so far, and he makes a number of specific suggestions for what we should do. "Leave now" is definitely not one of them. Is it, perhaps, a tad disingenuous for Krugman to enlist Fallows to his side without disclosing that Fallows's position differs so dramatically from his own?

Krugman, I think, is the kind of war critic who truly gives war critics a bad name, and who gives weight to the notion that opposition to the war is driven mainly by hatred for Bush. Remember, Krugman is the guy who once managed to blame Bush for the rise of virulent anti-Semitism in the Muslim world.

We need a debate about an exit strategy in Iraq, and about the best way to ensure that the sacrifices made so far are not in vain without sacrificing thousands more lives. As I have argued here over the past few days, rhetoric demonizing war dissent is not helpful in this debate. But when it comes to Krugman -- not to echo the White House, but the word 'irresponsible" does come to mind.

Torture, again

On my thread about torture and the issue of "keeping our hands clean" while fighting wars, "anonymous" writes:

Let me clarify: getting our hands dirty in terms of forming alliances with brutal tyrants or fanatical kooks has indeed paid off. In WWII, in Korea, in Afghanistan, and so on.

But getting our hands dirty in terms of torturing people has not paid off. The intel that is gained that way is not reliable.

Now, Matt Welch addresses this issue at Hit & Run:

[W]ater boarding elicited the "vital" information from Ibn al Shaykh al Libbi that "Iraq trained al Qaeda members to use biochemical weapons." As a CIA-sourced ABC News investigation reports, "al Libbi had no knowledge of such training or weapons and fabricated the statements because he was terrified of further harsh treatment."

The administration's position is now crystal clear. "We do not torture," we water board; we do not use Soviet-style imprisonment/interrogation tactics, we just secretly use former Soviet facilities and Red Army false-confession techniques. And if some detainees die in the process, well, bad apples and all that.

It's easy to get distracted by the semantics and immorality of it all, but the ABC News story suggests a very pragmatic rebuttal to the administration: By whatever name or euphemism, water boarding seems like one of the worst methods possible of obtaining quality information. And treating water-boarded data either as a strong basis for policy, or as a prop to make a political argument, seems unwise at best.

The argument against torture (and, pace The Wall Street Journal, any interrogation techniques that rely on physical suffering are torture) seems devastating, on both moral and pragmatic grounds. One can argue that when fighting a war for survival, we should not be afraid to "get our hands dirty" if that's the only way we can win. But in this case, it looks like we've got a lot of dirt on our hands, and we're none the safer for it.

More wonders from Women's Studies

Still perusing the past week's archives of the Women's Studies List.

Janelle Hobson, assistant professor of Women's Studies at SUNY-Albany, posts this inquiry on "teaching [about] Afghan women":

In keeping with the listserv's guidelines about focusing our discussion to issues of teaching and research, I would like to tie this issue concerning "feminist rhetoric" and Westernized constructions of the Afghani woman (especially in her burqua) back to strategies for feminist teaching.

In the aftermath of September 11, I made the wise decision to clear my syllabus and place current events at the center of our studies in an undergraduate Feminist Theory class. Teaching in New York state and dealing with the presence of students directly impacted by the tragedy, I had to find a way to encourage students' development of feminist thinking and, at that point in time, help them create a more nuanced global consciousness.

No sooner did the War in Afghanistan start than images of burqua-covered Afghan women started dominating our TV screens. It was oh-so-easy for my students to fall into a "The West is Liberated" /"The East is Barbaric" and "Western Women are Liberated"/"Eastern (especially in their burquas) Women are Oppressed" view of the world. ...

So, I created a Media Watch assignment: I titled it "Where are the Women?" I asked students to pay attention to various media coverage of the 9-11 and War in Afghanistan events and the ways in which gender intersects with race, class, and nationality. As a result, students discovered the heightened objectification of women's subjugation in the Middle East but also right here in the U.S. They discovered the ways in which American women were silenced in similar ways that Afghani women were and that national/patriotic rhetoric advanced deeply entrenched, white compulsory heterosexuality which encouraged an uneven view of the world that literally told "bikini-clad beauty queens" (yes, I remember this one newspaper clipping from a student project) that baring their flesh for patriotism's sake was far more "liberating" than covering up in a burqua!

I am grateful that students, during a moment when they were encouraged by everyone to check their brains at the door, did the necessary work in recognizing parallel, cross-cultural objectification efforts occurring in war rhetoric rather than collapse into some sense of "we're more liberated," or "they're more oppressed."

Had I not assigned this particular project, I imagine I would've had a terrible time, descending into arguments over the "appropriateness" of antiracist, anti-imperialist feminist discourse in a time of war (and having spoken with different colleagues who did face these struggles in the post-9/11 aftermath, I have no doubt that I would have had a very different class).

The point in sharing this: we can have a fruitful conversation that recognizes transnational feminist struggles for a just world that does not descend into feelings of personal attacks. It seems to me that we are all being asked (as I had asked my students, or rather, had assigned them the task of doing) to think critically, from a non-ethnocentric feminist perspective, about how to effectively build coalition with Afghan feminists that does not subordinate them or unwittingly join forces with an imperialist agenda that does nothing to improve their lives.

No, of course we wouldn't want students thinking that American women are more liberated than Afghan women, or that Western involvement can improve the lives of Third World women, or that bikini-clad beauty contestants (whom no one forces to parade around in bikinis) are not quite as oppressed as women who are beaten if they let a bit of their feet or hair show from under the mandatory covering. Perish the thought. "Nuanced global consciousness" requires spouting nonsense about how women's "subjugation" in the United States is essentially no different than in the Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.

Predictably and depressingly, this nonsense gets a few sympathetic replies, followed by a bit of mild heresy from Hannah Miyamoto, a graduate student at the University of Minnesota, who writes that the 1986 book The Creation of Patriarchy by Gerda Lerner examines the history of "veiling" as "a symbol of male control over female sexuality":

In particular, she relies upon ancient Middle Assyrian law that not only required women and girls considered under the control of patriarchs to be veiled, but expressly required "harlots" and other sexually-available women to be unveiled, and providing dire punishments for either group of women.

I suspect that few non-experts in the Islamic world--particularly the proverbial "man on the Arab street"--knows that the modern practices that he considers a matter of devout faith are but an extension of practices that pre-date present Islamic practice by thousands of years, practices that now do not really achieve the original function of veiling/non-veiling laws in Assyria or elsewhere.

Here is another example of how western viewpoints are actually superior, in certain aspects, to indigenous viewpoints, principally due to the cultural distance of western scholars.

Needless to say, the heretic is promptly slapped down. Tamara Agha-Jaffar, Professor of English Kansas City Kansas Community College, writes:

I find your statements below to be culturally insensitive. First of all, while the majority of Arabs are Muslims, the majority of Muslims are not Arab. Furthermore, are you suggesting that this "man on the Arab street" is incapable of knowing that while the practice of veiling pre-dates Islam, it was also adopted by the wives of the Prophet and later Muslim women as a means of distinguishing them from non-Muslim women? If so, this "man on the Arab street" must indeed be in desperate need of Western enlightenment and its "superior" viewpoint.

In her next post, Miyamoto defends herself, explaining that veiling is about male control of women of female sexuality. Somewhat amusingly, however, she feels compelled to preface this with a discussion of an Ellen Goodman column which equates the American religious right's opposition to a new vaccine that prevents cervical cancer caused by a sexually transmitted virus to the Taliban's stoning of women who have extramarital sex. And she adds this qualifier:

I'm not picking on Islam; although it provides a very dramatic example, most world religions--especially Christianity (Catholic, Orthodox, and many Protestant sects) and Judaism--expressly reinforce sexism. If you want proof, just try to argue that sexism is contrary to God and Jesus; when was the last female Pope? Right! Furthermore, due to monogamy and marriage, heterosexism is a key element in the maintenance of male control over female sexuality.

In other words: we can't criticize the Taliban without giving equal time to criticism of the all-male Catholic priesthood and of monogamy and marriage.

As a sane feminist friend of mine quipped upon reading this: "Groupthink is restored. All's right with the world."

Am I focusing too much on a marginal phenomenon? Unfortunately, I don't think so. The resistance to acknowledging that compared to the rest of the world, the West holds the moral high ground when it comes to women's rights is deeply entrenched in academic feminism -- which means that a lot of students get pushed in this direction, not just in women's studies but in English and other disciplines. As a result, some are alienated from feminism, and others are successfully brainwashed into knee-jerk anti-Westernism. What's more, as I have previously discussed, this attitude spills over into more mainstream feminism as well.

Update: Can't recall if I've shared this anecdote before, but I'll never forget a comment made by Deborah Rhode, a law professor at Stanford University and one of the leading lights of feminist jurisprudence, at a feminist conference I attended at Radcliffe College in 1992. I don't remember the exact context, but Rhode said (to appreciative laughter from the audience), "Only 8% of the world's population are white males. I find that to be a very encouraging fact." Because, of course, all those non-white males around the world are such great friends of feminism and women's rights, dont'cha know.

More on Breaking the Silence

My column on the PBS documentary Breaking the Silence: Children's Stories, which deals with abusive husbands/fathers who win custody of their children after divorce (and manages to insinuate that most men seeking custody of their children are abusers), is now up at the Boston Globe.

For more on the subject, see this post.

Update: RADAR (Respecting Accuracy in Domestic Abuse Reporting) is another website that has provided excellent analysis of Breaking the Silence.

Do I contradict myself? Very well....

In my post on torture the other day, I noted:

I think that for some people in what one might call the anti-anti-torture faction, this is a moral issue rather than a pragmatic one. They're offended by what a few of Stephen Green's commenters call "moral preening" on the part of those denouncing torture. They think the absolutist opposition to torture comes from weaklings who don't have the fortitude to do what needs to be done, and who would rather allow a lot of innocents to die than dirty their hands (not literally, but by having nasty things done in their name).

I strongly disagree with that position, of course. As I say in my post, I think that we must take a firm stand against torture in the same of our self-respect.

And yet ... and yet.

There are times when I wonder if our insistence on keeping our hands clean, and on a high degree of openness about what our military is doing in our name, may seriously hamper our ability to win wars that are essential to our national security.

It is often said that we were able to win World War II and the Cold War without resorting to torture. True enough. But in both instances, we did things that, by purely moral standards, shock the conscience. Even leaving aside Hiroshima, there was the bombing of Dresden, in which tens of thousands of civilians, including children, died. And there was our alliance with Stalin, a dictator as murderous as Hitler, into whose bloody hands we ceded Eastern Europe after the war. During the Cold War, we allied ourselves with some very brutal right-wing dictatorships and supported some resistance movements that, to put it mildly, did not fight by gentlemen's rules (Jonas Savimbi in Angola and the mujahedeen in Afghanistan, to name two).

In both of these conflicts with the twin evil empires of the 20th Century, could we have prevailed if we had not made all these rather serious moral compromises? I'm not sure. Jean-François Revel, the French political theorist, used to argue in the days of the Cold War that Western democracies had grown too self-critical and squeamish to survive the historic confrontation with communism. That time, we won, mainly because communism crumbled from the inside. Now, we're facing an enemy that is less powerful, to be sure, but in some ways more dangerous because more amorphous and more flexible. Are we going to have to face, at some point, a choice between either fighting dirty, or accepting either defeat or mind-boggling civilian casualties on our side?

Just asking.

Political correctness run amuk (2)

It's been a while since I've checked out the Women's Studies List. (I subscribe but do not receive the messages in my mailbox; some things go beyond the call of duty.) It does not disappoint.

In a thread called "Teaching Baghdad Burning," a University of Central Florida professor posts to ask:

Has anyone taught _Baghdad Burning: Girl Blog from Iraq_ by Riverbend (Feminist Press)? I'm planning to use it for several of our sections of the Intro course next semester and wonder what kind of strategies you all have used. I'm a little concerned about students' negative responses to what they will surely see as "Bush bashing," but not enough to use another text. Thanks.

There follows this reply from Chithra KarunaKaran, co-chair of the "Anti-White Supremacy Task Force" in the National Women's Studies Association:

I have not included the girl blog to which you refer in my courses (yet!), but it seems to me important to contextualize and historicize both Iraq and the US so that the blog -- and Bush's "shock and awe" -- may be appropriately situated. When that is done, your students might be less likely to see see either the Iraqi girl or Goerge Bush as merely individual actors, stripped of their history and their divergent racial/ethnic identities. Aren't the Iraqis being referred to as 'sand niggers' deserving of dehumanization?

I would go so far as to state that your students need some framing theoretical discussion of marcostructure/microstructure, the politics of partiarchy-driven whiteness in the US instance, and colonial domination and the multiple trajectories of postcolonial nation-states, in the instance of Iraq.

I also wanted to offer a example from one of my courses. Last week, in my beginning PSY 100 course, in a discussion of Personality, I utilized trait theory and humanistic theory, in particular the 5 Factor Personality Model and the concept of self-actualization respectively to illustrate trait attributes of one of their own fellow students at The City University of New York (where I teach). This student, Miguel Malo, an Ecuadoran immigrant and young father, was arrested by campus police to one of our community colleges, because he protested the rise in biligual education tuition fees. Four years later, he has now appeared 36 times in Bronx criminal court because CUNY took him to court. Can I also , in addition to making extremely relevant personality theory, observe that CUNY at the microstructure, reflects the US Whiteness macrostructure of dominant, coercive power? Both Miguel Malo and the Iraqi girl are victims of the same macrostructure.

I became very familiar with Miguel Malo's case, because I was one of eight faculty that undertook a 4 day hunger strike at CUNY to protest the arrest of students and a staff member who nonviolently contested the presence of military recruiters on one of our campuses during a college career fair. For me the university's repressive policies, once again illustrated the coercive, dominant power of US macrostructure/microstructure Whiteness and the global threat of that patriarchy driven Whiteness. I think Women Studies throughout the US has an opportunity to teach resistance to Whiteness.

There are, it should be noted, two dissenting voices. Daphne Patai, a frequent critic of Women's Studies whose postings on WMST-L are usually either attacked or ignored, posts this:

Is "resistance to whiteness" the current aim of women's studies courses? or "the politics of patriarchy-driven whiteness"? Do you as teachers seriously believe these categories explain the problems of the world and that evil and good are so easily meted out?

I should think teaching about the middle east (like teaching about any other part of the world) might offer some other lessons -- such as what happens in societies in which resistance to power is simply obliterated by fear and torture, or how non-whites are equally capable of oppressing people, or even how the world's problems are not reducible to awful whiteness and patriarchy and its sequelae.

When did women's studies turn into this simplistic, tendentious, field totally committed to those supposed demolished binaries (white/non-white; oppressor/oppressed; evil/good, etc., etc.? I certainly hope students have the good sense and gumption to have serious reservations about this sort of teaching, and to see it for what it is. A frightening degradation of education is going on before our very eyes.

Another poster, who is not a professor but apparently works for a consulting firm, writes:

I completely agree with Daphne....Women's Studies in the 1980s when I was a student took on all angles of women's lives (and all cultures). Since I have been on this list, I have been very discouraged by the monovision of who's important to study, what's important to examine, what "ideology" should be adopted. What happened to independent scholarly pursuit? What happened to scrutinizing our own biases/blindspots? As women writing, studying and teaching about women's lives/thoughts, why be narrow in our pursuit of knowledge???

KarunaKaran, meanwhile, retorts that "Patai's position reinforces Whiteness."

It is interesting to note that Riverbend's book is criticized even in the not-exactly-conservative San Francisco Chronicle for its sunny view of life under Saddam.

Political correctness run amuk (1)

The Week in Review section of the New York Times has a story about the dilemmas posed by prenatal testing and women increasingly choosing abortion when they find out that the fetus has severe disabilities. (It is estimated, for instance, that about 80% of Down's Syndrome fetuses are now aborted.) The article, by Amy Harmon, raises some valid and important questions: if children with serious mental and physical disabilities become increasingly rare and -- well -- preventable, then those who are born are likely to face far greater social isolation, as well as loss of public support for programs designed to help them. Harmon notes that even the search for cures for certain diseases, such as cystic fibrosis, may be seen as far less urgent and far less worthy of funding if, due to prenatal testing and abortion, very few babies with cystic fibrosis are born anymore.

So far, so good. But in the middle of this very interesting article, there is this line:

If no child is ever born again with the fatal childhood disease Tay-Sachs, many might see that as a medical triumph. But what about other conditions, including deafness, which some do not consider to be a disability .... ?

I can suggest some good lines for Ms. Harmon's future articles. For instance:

... sexual intercourse, which some consider to be inherently oppressive to women...

or:

... Southern slavery, which some regard as a benevolent paternalistic institution...

or:

... wife-beating, which some believe is a husband's rightful prerogative...

or maybe this:

the moon, which some believe is made of green cheese...


You get the picture.

Mind you, I am not denying that deaf people can and do lead rich and satisfying lives (as do people with many other kinds of disabilities). And I would certainly never argue that a woman who learns that her child will be born deaf should have an abortion. However, as I said in my post on identity politics the other day, I think that the "Deaf pride" movement -- which holds that deafness is a cultural identity to be cherished, and that wanting to cure deafness is akin to wanting to cure homosexuality or to turn black people white -- is an example of identity politics at its most grotesque and destructive. (I wrote a column on this topic in 2002.) It's pretty obvious that hearing is one of the basic human (and mammalian) faculties, and that the inability to hear is a serious disability, even if its effects can be largely alleviated by technological and social improvements. Can any sane person doubt that the eradication of deafness would be a medical triumph and a great boon for humanity?

Most deaf people don't subscribe to militant "Deaf" ideology. (Only a quarter of profoundly deaf people in the U.S., for instance, use American Sign Language.) The position that deafness is not a disability and should not be eliminated is held by a small group of hardcore extremists. Why, then, is their position dignified by the Times? As I said in my 2002 column: "There is no reason for the news media and other cultural institutions to be deferential toward crackpot beliefs that come with the cachet of 'diversity.'" The "paper of record" has just provided us with a striking example of such misguided deference.

The Prisoner revived, and Sherlock Holmes Mysteries

Interesting news via Julian Sanchez: the British satellite channel Sky One is planing a remake of the 1960s cult classic The Prisoner. This show, which lasted only one season and stars the wonderful Patrick McGoohan, deals with a secret agent who resigns his job, and is abducted and taken to a strange Village where he is henceforth known as "No. 6." In the Village, cheerful surroundings mask a system of totalitarian control, and anyone could be either a victim or an agent of the mysterious forces that run the place. The result is a fascinating exploration of individuality, trust, paranoia, freedom, control, and other issues. It's probably my all-time favorite TV show next to Xena.

Julian -- a fellow Prisoner fan -- is somewhat alarmed by executive producer Damien Timmer's comment that "the new series would take 'liberties with the original' and would not retain its arty feel." Says Julian:

"Taking liberties" is fine—I'm as big a fan of the show as anyone, but it's fairly seriously dated at this point, and you'd expect a lot of changes in a remake. But "would not retain its arty feel" sounds an awful lot like exec-speak for "we're going to turn it into a generic spy show with a few witless, predictable 'twists' thrown in as a gesture toward the original." I am holding out a little hope, though, in that Granada's also responsible for the excellent Jeremy Brett/Edward Hardwicke Sherlock Holmes Mysteries series.

I get the same vibe from that quote as Julian does. But more importantly: this is my chance to rant about the Sherlock Holmes Mysteries series.

I think the series started out excellently, and had many terrific episodes. But in the final years, it really went off the rails as its creators began to get further and further away from the source material. Holmes (due, I think, more to the producers' "vision" than to the interpretation of the always-superb Jeremy Brett) became a twitching neurotic plagued by psychic visions. The elegantly, deceptively simple plots of Conan Doyle's stories were bloated with melodramatic and utterly superflouous subplots.

The worst of the lot, perhaps, was "The Eligible Bachelor": an amusing story about a British aristocrat jilted by his rich American bride was transformed into a Gothic tale of villainy in which the aristocrat was revealed to be a latter-day Bluebeard who kept his first wife locked up in the cellar of his castle and had murdered an inconvenient mistress. Nearly as bad was "The Master Blackmailer" (based on "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton", in which Holmes must get a lady's letters back from the loathsome blackmailer Milverton). In the story, Holmes casually informs Watson that he has becomes engaged (in the guise of "a plumber with a rising business)" to Milverton's housemaid in order to gain information and access to the house. When the virtuous Watson exclaims, "But the girl, Holmes!", the great detective replies with a shrug, "You can't help it, my dear Watson. You must play your cards as best you can when such a stake is on the table. However, I rejoice to say that I have a hated rival who will certainly cut me out the instant that my back is turned." In the screen version, Holmes actually finds himself falling for the lovely housemaid, and is torn by regret and remorse at the end after his mission is accomplished. (As if.) Also tacked onto the story is a subplot about a homosexual man who is victimized by Milverton's blackmail and commits suicide.

From those later episodes, I definitely got the impression that the producers at Granada wanted to "humanize" Holmes and to make the stories more relevant to modern-day social issues. I hope that's not an idication of where they're going with the Prisoner remake; otherwise, the new No. 6 might turn out to be a New Sensitive Man, as concerned about getting in touch with his feelings as he is about getting away from his captors. The horror!

More on demonizing war dissent

In an earlier post, I discussed the "war critics are unpatriotic" meme. Now, there is another argument being made: that critics of the war, should they succeed, will be responsible for the death and misery and will befall the Iraqi people.

The Anchoress -- echoed by neo-neocon -- writes:

Right now, the insurgents are being vastly encouraged by what they read coming out of the mouths of Democrats and reporters, and even, sadly the Republicans. The message they are being given is: Just be patient. Just hold out a little while, and America will be gone, and you will re-gain control.

.....

If America pulls out without victory - without the Iraqis being capable of defending themselves - then every death from insurgents or terrorists - all over the world - will have to be a death counted upon the heads of those who would not allow a serious War on Terror to continue and succeed, simply because to do so would "reflect too well" on a man they hate.

I myself strongly oppose a pullout before the Iraqis can defend themselves, but I think that the "their blood will be on your heads" argument is a below-the-belt tactic that should be off-limits in civil discourse. True, the Anchoress's ire is ostensibly directed at those who talk about a quick pullout, but how many war critics are really in that category? Not even many Democrats are backing John Murtha's 6-month withdrawal timetable; methinks the Anchoress's broad brush tars all those who talk about the need for an exit strategy, or criticize the conduct of the war in general, or raise too many questions about the way we got into the war.

What's more, the "blood on your heads" argument is too easily turned around. There is little doubt that at present, the war in Iraq has resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqis who would have been alive had the war not taken place. Yes, of course other Iraqi lives were saved from the killing machine that was the Hussein regime. But even an author who argues that the invasion, on balance, saved Iraqi lives admits admits that the Hussein regime carried out no mass murders after 1991 (his argument includes the premise that "events might well have been building to another round of mass murder"). Are all these excess deaths on the heads of those who supported the war? Or on the heads of those who trusted this administration with conducting a war it mismanaged?

Furthermore: what if we pull out and leave an Iraqi government securely in place, and then the U.S.-backed government turns into another dictatorship with a killing machine of its own? The Anchoress's post ends with an interesting observation:

This underreported story is why we cannot leave: 173 Sunnis freed from secret Iraqi torture bunker.

The story she links to is about the fact that U.S. troops recently discovered and freed 173 mostly Sunni Arab men beaten and malnourished in an Iraqi Interior Ministry jail. There is now a call for an investigation of alleged torture. In other words, the U.S.-backed government of Iraq is apparently torturing and terrorizing people. (For more on such allegations several months ago, see this article.) So it seems that now, the goalposts are being moved. Not only do we have to stay in Iraq long enough to ensure that the government we are backing is strong enough to defeat the insurgency; we have to stay long enough to ensure that the government we are backing isn't torturing and killing people. And how long is that?

If we go down the road of arguing that Americans who take a particular political position are stained with the blood of all those whose deaths may be attributed to that position ... well, let's just say that road has no end in sight. There is, for instance, a good argument to be made that the war in Iraq has diverted resources from Afghanistan, resulting in rampant chaos and bloodshed there. More blood on the heads of Iraq war hawks?

Let me make this clear: I think a lot of people in the anti-war movement are reprehensible. I believe many of them do hate American power, and would have been devastated had the war in Iraq been a success (both for the Americans and for the Iraqis). Many of them fail utterly to recognize the fact that it's the so-called insurgents (Michael Moore's "Minutemen"), not the U.S. troops, that are responsible for most civilian deaths in Iraq.

I also agree with The Anchoress when she says that, regardless of whether this was the right war or not, we are there now and we owe it to the people of Iraq to do our best to ensure their safety and freedom. But that is not a reason to delegitimize all criticism of the way the war is being waged (on the grounds that such criticism emboldens the insurgents), or all discussion of an exit strategy.

Furthermore, I take issue (once again) with the indiscriminate attribution of malign motives to war critics. Is The Anchoress really lumping Chuck Hagel and John Murtha together with those who don't want the war in Iraq to succeed because they hate Bush?

Update: Neo-neocon replies:

But I wanted to clarify something for Cathy (and others) about my own post: I am not talking about war critics in general. I was speaking of one thing only: those critics who want to leave Iraq before it is ready to defend itself. Those critics who want to set a timetable for that pullout. Those critics who, like Tom Hayden, truly do consider the Vietnam abandonment by the US as something of which they are very proud, and who've been planning almost from the start to attempt a repeat in Iraq. ... My main point is quite a simple one: advocating a pullout--or even a timetable for a pullout--without understanding or recognizing the probable consequences of such action is utterly irresponsible.

I think neo-neocon makes some excellent points here. I agree that we shouldn't set a withdrawal timetable. But I would add that most people who are advocating a withdrawal (a) are not suggesting a specific timetable, and (b) are not calling for a total abandonment of Iraq. Even John Murtha, for instance, argues that we should be emphasizing political solutions. I believe that he's wrong and that our military presence is still required; but I still don't think Murtha's position can be fairly described as "cut and run." As John Moulder points out in the comments on neo-neocon's initial post, the collapse of South Vietnam was brought about not only by the U.S. withdrawal, but by Congress cutting off all funding to South Vietnam. I think it's important to point out that while quite a few Vietnam war opponents in the early 1970s cheered for a Viet Cong victory, you will not find too many war critics today who would like to see the "insurgency" win.

One more thought. While I think that neo-neocon makes some very strong points, and I do not for a moment suspect her of wanting to demonize dissent on the war, I tend to be wary of arguments along the lines of "I'm not attacking all war critics, only those who criticize the war for partisan reasons/would rather see America lose than see Bush do well/do not consider the consequences of their actions." The reason is that, in the hands of some people, such disclaimers can become an easy "out" and an excuse for tarring all war critics with a broad brush. (It's a bit like, "I'm not accusing all affirmative action opponents of racism, only those who are against affirmative action because they secretly hate or despise blacks/because they want a return to white supremacy/because they fail to consider the consequences of going back to nearly lily-white elite universities.") Clearly, if someone makes irresponsible antiwar statements that include attacking our troops, comparing Bush to Hitler or Saddam Hussein, calling Zarqawi's insurgents "freedom fighters," or advocating an immediate pullout with no alternative plan, they should be condemned. What I found troubling about The Anchoress's statement is that, to me, it definitely came across as a generalized condemnation of all those who are advocating an exit strategy in Iraq.

The Althouse/OSM/LGF dustup

I was hoping to avoid commenting on the strange feud between Ann Althouse and Open Source Media, which is rather dull (to me, at least) and is taking up entirely too much space on Ann's usually very readable blog. I haven't been following the OSM launch too closely, and I don't quite get what it's all about. (Apparently, I'm not the only one.) But Ann's complaint about sexist attacks on her in the comments at Little Green Footballs piqued my interest.

In a post titled, "Can I get a feminist?", Ann writes:

[M]ale attacks on women are not so much of a food fight as a sex fight. Blogosphere-strength fighting with a woman takes on an outrageous sexual tone, aggressively declaring that that this is a boy's game. Are there any feminists around to see when it's happening and say a little something?

(She adds that, in her view, this is one of the reason there aren't more women in political blogging.)

Now, here's what happened, in case you (wisely) haven't followed the brouhaha.

Ann made an OSM-bashing post in which, commenting on Jeff Goldstein's (joke) reference to a beer glass with the inscription "Bloggers do it in their pajamas" spotted at the OSM launch party in New York, she said:

Would you drink a fluid out of something that said "Bloggers Do It In Their Pajamas"? I think of bodily fluids. But no matter, now the bloggers can do it in their Open Source Media. Or as somebody already quipped: Open Sores Media. Swapping semen for pus, bodily fluids-wise.

One of the OSM co-founders, LGF's Charles Johnson, reposted that last line at LGF under the heading, "The Epitome of Taste" and with the comment, "Althouse jumps the shark."

A lot of LGF commenters then took whacks at Althouse. Some of the comments were pretty nasty. It should be noted, however, that some of the people who used nasty language made it clear that they were responding in kind ("well, if she wants to be childish..."). To me, the most telling thing about the thread was that most LGF-ers automatically assumed that Ann Althouse was a leftist, and the most amusing (and depressing) comment was this one:

BTW folks - Ann is no lefty. She may be a tad bitter and jealous - but she's no lefty.

So be nice.
show some class.

(Obviously, in LGF world, civility and class toward a "lefty" are unnecessary.)

As for sexism: by the time Ann posted her plea for feminist intervention, the LGF thread had over 300 posts. One of them referred to to Ann as a "dumb slut" and a "Berkley house whore." Two or three made fun of her appearance. Another, subsequently deleted, riffed on Ann's "swapping semen for pus" joke (which, by the way, I still don't get) by saying, "Perhaps she's dyslexic and intended to say that she wants her puss swamped with semen?" -- which is pretty nasty all right, but strikes me as less a display of misogyny than an unfortunate attempt to play on Ann's already unfortunate wordplay. I should add that unlike some of Ann's commenters, I don't see "bitch" as a sexist insult. It's gender-specific, but so is "bastard" or "jerk."

I also have to take issue with the notion that somehow, women in the blogosphere are uniquely targeted for sexual insults. On sites that don't discourage flaming, for instance, is it unusual for men to be called names like "d*ck" or "d*ckhead"? Is it unusual for male posters to have their manhood called into question?

I'm not a fan of LGF; and I am, generally, a fan of Ann Althouse's. But I simply don't agree with Ann that the tone of the entire thread is "egregiously sexist." Nasty, yes, but to be fair -- Ann's own attack on OSM was hardly nice. I think Baldilocks sums it up well: if you make jokes about pus and semen to attack a venture you don't like, don't complain about the "outrageously sexual tone" of the response. And asking for feminists to step in and protect you really does not look good. Sorry, Ann, but in this case, you can't get this feminist in your corner.

Note: As I said, I am a fan of Ann's, and I want to take note of an excellent post of hers that I should have linked to, but didn't -- pointing out that in today's climate, reporting on scientific evidence of sex differences is "safe" as long as it's "spun" in a way that's flattering to women.

The torture debate: Just say no

Some would say that the very title of this post indicates the depravity to which our country has sunk: are we seriously, in 2005, discussing whether it's all right for us to sanction torture of prisoners?

Others would say that it's a post-9/11 world, and desperate times demand desperate measures.

"Thou shalt not torture" should be, in my opinion, about as close as there is to a moral absolute. I agree with Andrew Sullivan when he writes:

I draw the line at cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of people who are defenseless. And I draw the line at conflating the guilty with the innocent. Right now, we are crossing both lines - and severely damaging our cause because of it.

Admittedly, the prohibition on "degrading" treatment (contained in the Senate anti-torture bill sponsored by John McCain) could be construed broadly so as to prohibit even psychological techniques that do not cause physical pain. Perhaps that part of the bill needs some fine-tuning and clarification. But it simply won't do to say that "we do not torture," and then to say, in the next breath, that we can't ban torture because it would tie our hands in extracting information.

A few things to ponder. First, torture reduces a human being (the one being tortured) to a subhuman level, when his existence is defined entirely by physical pain and suffering. Second, it degrades the torturer accordingly; and it creates the very real danger that at least some of the torturers will enjoy it, particularly if they have been primed to see the one being tortured as an evil person getting his just deserts. Never underestimate the dark corners in the human soul.

There is, of course, the classic "but what if we've captured a terrorist who knows the location of a nuclear bomb set to go off in a major city in 24 hours" scenario.

Kevin Drum deals with that. So does Stephen Green (Vodkapundit). Both essentially come to the same conclusion, summed up by Green:

A) That's unlikely as hell. B) Torture still might not get us any usefull information. C) If it somehow did, then there's probably not a DA who would indict our torturer, and there's certainly no jury that would convict.

I should note that (C) seems to invalidate the anti-torture argument, since it implies that it's sort of okay to torture sometimes, and to get away with it. In practice, though, the deterrent would still exist, since any would-be torturer would know that if the torture doesn't reveal any useful information, he (or she) is in major trouble.

By the way, let's not forget what a "ticking time bomb" exemption would likely mean in practice. Let's say that we do know that there's a nuclear device planted in a major American city. How likely is it that in the panic, some innocent guy -- maybe more than one -- would get grabbed and tortured by mistake? And how likely is it that the list of acceptable circumstances for torture would broaden to include less extreme scenarios?

Also, let's not forget that none of the prisoner abuse allegations so far has involved this kind of scenario. In fact, there's absolutely no evidence that the "coercive interrogation" techniques some defend have produced any useful information at all.

And yet we have people defending torture; some openly, such a few commenters on Stephen Green's thread, and some euphemistically such as the Wall Street Journal editorial page, which prefers to speak of "aggressive interrogations." The Journal's editors would have us believe that such things as exposure to extreme heat or extreme cold, or even "waterboarding" (which induces a drowning sensation) are not really physical torture but "psychological techniques designed to break a detainee."

Paradoxically, I think that for some people in what one might call the anti-anti-torture faction, this is a moral issue rather than a pragmatic one. They're offended by what a few of Stephen Green's commenters call "moral preening" on the part of those denouncing torture. They think the absolutist opposition to torture comes from weaklings who don't have the fortitude to do what needs to be done, and who would rather allow a lot of innocents to die than dirty their hands (not literally, but by having nasty things done in their name).

In an excellent column at reason.com, Julian Sanchez makes an interesting point:

Even if we believe torture—or, if you prefer, "aggressive interrogation" that occasionally leaves the suspect a habeas corpse—is likely to produce useful intelligence rather than whatever story the questioner wants to hear; even if we believe that it is only ever used against the most vile; there is something odd about the rhetorical frame in which torture apologists operate. Implicit in many of their arguments is the notion that there's something contemptibly fainthearted about those who want to hew to the principles of basic decency fit for a nation that styles itself primus inter pares of the world's liberal democracies, even if foreswearing the most brutal tactics means accepting some additional risks. The apex of resolute manliness, on the other hand, consists in begging the government to dilute traditional liberties at home and ape our enemies' barbarism abroad, if only we might feel a bit safer.

That said, some liberals probably exaggerate the extent to which the torture scandals are contributing to anti-American sentiment in the Arab and Muslim world. If the Abu Grahib debacle did not exist, the America-haters would no doubt have invented it. And I think that The Washington Post's Richard Cohen fails to appreciate the irony when his Jordanian driver Bassam tells him how appalled he is by the abuse and degradation of Muslims at Abu Grahib and Guantanamo: far worse abuses, after all, are common under most Arab regimes. (Was Bassam equally appalled by Saddam Hussein's atrocities?)

But while that should be an issue for Bassam, it should not be an issue for us. "We're not as bad as Saddam Hussein" is hardly a standard to measure ourselves by.

Saying no to torture probably won't make America-bashers love us any more. But it will certainl make things easier for America's supporters around the world. And besides, this isn't about being loved by our enemies or even our friends; it's about respecting ourselves.

Politics, patriotism, and facts

As the Bush administration goes on the offensive against war critics, the debate rages in the mainstream media and the blogosphere. Is it "irresponsible," "dishonest" and "reprehensible," as Bush and Cheney have charged, to say that the administration deliberately misled the American people and manipulated intelligence data to make the pitch for the war in Iraq? Are Democrats who voted for the war but have now come out against it cynically pandering to their base? Or are the Bush Administration and its minions trying to suppress dissent by labeling it unpatriotic?

Some of the debate can be found here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Of course, the charge that the Bush administration manipulated intelligence data either is true, or isn't true. There's no such thing as an unpatriotic fact.

And here's the reason I hate this kind of debate. To have a truly informed opinion on this topic would probably take months of meticulous research, and probably some specialized knowledge as well. That means most people commenting on the issue tend to form their opinion based on selective information and based, at least in part, on their political biases. It's just a little too convenient that nearly everyone who opposes the war thinks the Bush administration cooked the intelligence, and nearly everyone who supports it thinks that's a cynical lie.

There is, for instance, this new article by Norman Podhoretz in Commentary, purporting to be a conclusive debunking of the "Bush lied" meme. Podhoretz's argument is that many Democrats, and many people in the mainstream media, believed Saddam Hussein had a weapons of mass destruction program and posed a serious threat. Almost without exception, pro-war commentators think Podhoretz makes a devastating case. Equally without exception, those on the other side are not convinced.

I think it's overwhelmingly obvious that a lot of people other than the Bush administration believed Hussein was working toward rebuilding his WMD program. Robert Kagan, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, details these facts in a recent Washington Post column. Among other things, both he and Podhoretz refer to a January 29, 2001 Washington Post editorial which said, in part:

Of all the booby traps left behind by the Clinton administration, none is more dangerous -- or more urgent -- than the situation in Iraq. Over the last year, Mr. Clinton and his team quietly avoided dealing with, or calling attention to, the almost complete unraveling of a decade's efforts to isolate the regime of Saddam Hussein and prevent it from rebuilding its weapons of mass destruction. That leaves President Bush to confront a dismaying panorama in the Persian Gulf [including] intelligence photos that show the reconstruction of factories long suspected of producing chemical and biological weapons...

True enough. But does that mean the situation was urgent enough to justify war? The Post editorial concludes thus:

In all this, the option the Bush administration can least afford is Mr. Clinton's inaction. Saddam Hussein -- who tried to assassinate Mr. Bush's father after losing the Persian Gulf War to him -- is likely to challenge the administration soon; among other things, Iraq has been laying the groundwork for an attempt to disrupt world oil markets by withholding its production as OPEC tightens supplies. To be sure, it will take considerable time and effort to roll back Saddam Hussein's gains. But in the short term, some steps can be taken. Pressure can be focused on Syria, as well as on Turkey and Jordan, to stop the illegal export of Iraqi oil. And the administration can take a clear stand: If new Iraqi production facilities for weapons of mass destruction can be identified, the United States quickly will take action against them -- with or without its allies.

Of course, no such production facilities were identified by 2003; in fact, Kevin Drum makes this point, which seems to me to be worth considering:

Nor does Podhoretz apply himself to the entire period before the war. He stops his investigation at the end of 2002. But that's not when we went to war. We went to war in March 2003, and by that time UN inspectors had been combing Iraq for months with the help of U.S. intelligence. They found nothing, and an increasing chorus of informed minds was starting to wonder if perhaps there was nothing there. In response, President Bush and his supporters merely amped up their certainty that Saddam was hiding something.

And another point. Podhoretz cites this article by the Brookings Institution's Kevin Pollack as proof that prewar intelligence data bolstered -- wrongly, as it turned out -- the case for Iraq having WMDs, and that reliance on them was an error made in good faith. Yet Pollack also writes:

The one action for which I cannot hold Administration officials blameless is their distortion of intelligence estimates when making the public case for going to war.

As best I can tell, these officials were guilty not of lying but of creative omission. They discussed only those elements of intelligence estimates that served their cause. ...

....

Some defenders of the Administration have reportedly countered that all it did was make the best possible case for war, playing a role similar to that of a defense attorney who is charged with presenting the best possible case for a client (even if the client is guilty). That is a false analogy. A defense attorney is responsible for presenting only one side of a dispute. The President is responsible for serving the entire nation. Only the Administration has access to all the information available to various agencies of the U.S. government—and withholding or downplaying some of that information for its own purposes is a betrayal of that responsibility.

That's not very exculpatory.

A news analysis in The Washington Post also points to holes in the argument that "Congress saw the same intelligence the administration did before the war, and that independent commissions have determined that the administration did not misrepresent the intelligence."

Of course, many Bush supporters will no doubt say that the Post critique is driven by ideological bias and the desire to take down Bush. And so we're back to square one: it all depends on the political lens through which different commentators view the evidence.

My own tentative conclusion (as someone who still thinks that the Iraq invasion may well ultimately prove to have been justified, in terms of its net effect) is that while the Bush administration did not deliberately lie, it almost certainly believed what it wanted to believe, and presented the evidence accordingly.

I also think that Democrats, or Republicans, have the right to change their mind about the war without being labeled unpatriotic or accused of pandering to the base (unless there is evidence that that is indeed their motive for the switch). There are many honest reasons a politician could reverse himself, from concluding that the Bush administration manipulated pre-war intelligence to being disenchanted by the post-war handling of the occupation. And John Cole's new liberal co-blogger Tim F. makes another interesting point:

Is it possible that some may have supported the war in Iraq for political gain?

If anybody used support for the war for political gain, would that make them less patriotic?

Again, this is not simply a Republican vs. Democrat issue. Here's conservative Republican Chuck Hagel:

The Bush Administration must understand that each American has a right to question our policies in Iraq and should not be demonized for disagreeing with them. Suggesting that to challenge or criticize policy is undermining and hurting our troops is not democracy nor what this country has stood for, for over 200 years.

(Hat tip: Hit & Run)

Amen to that. I find it revolting when opponents of the war in Iraq demonize war supporters, accusing them of being driven by greed or of wanting to slaughter "brown people." But it's just as revolting to hear the pro-war faction toss around charges that war critics are, in effect, giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

Bush-hatred and Clinton-hatred

The always interesting neo-neocon has a good post on "Bush Derangement Syndrome." She explains:

I'm not talking about mere disagreement with Bush. I'm referring to the sort of visceral demonization of the man that clearly seems out of touch with any reality, and which has gripped so many people I personally know and turned them into something unrecognizable and ferocious when they even mention his name--which they do with some regularity.

I know what neo-neocon means. I have seen BDS in action; a friend of mine, a once-rational person and a New Republic-type Cold War liberal, quite seriously assured me in 2004 that if it looked like Bush was going to lose the election, he and his minions would find some pretext to declare a state of emergency -- perhaps by staging another major terrorist attack -- and call off the election. And I think neo-neocon is right that part of the reason for this loathing is a purely stylistic distaste for Bush:

The way he talks, the way he smirks, the frat-boy persona--he represents the kind of person they simply detested in high school and college (particularly if they were the intellectual or literary sort). They distrust and dislike him in a very visceral way.

I wish, however, that neo-neocon had paid more attention to Clinton Derangement Syndrome, a.k.a. Clintonophobia. Not just for the sake of being "fair and balanced," but because there are some genuinely interesting parallels there.

And please, don't tell me that Clinton hatred wasn't as extreme. Have we forgotten so soon that some conservatives including Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Rush Limbaugh were trying to connect Bill and Hillary Clinton to a string of murders? There is simply no question that for large numbers of conservatives, the Clintons were not just wrong but Evil.

I explored some of the parallels in a 2003 column:

Why the hatred? Partly, it's the change in the political climate, which has become nastier and more polarized over the past decade. Partly, it's that the Internet and talk radio have made it easier for marginal and extreme voices to be heard (and to affect mainstream discourse). But the phenomenon also has to do with the personalities of Clinton and Bush, and with the circumstances of their rise to power.

Both presidents are widely perceived by their political opponents as illegitimate. Clinton got only 43 percent of the popular vote in the 1992 election but nonetheless won the presidency in a three-way race between himself, the first President Bush, and H. Ross Perot. Bush, of course, not only lost the popular vote to Al Gore in 2000 but won the electoral vote after a protracted, bitter election dispute in Florida. Many Democrats, including some who cannot in any way be classified as right-wing extremists, sincerely believe that the election was "stolen" by Bush and his cronies.

Another element is the kinship between the two presidents' political strategies. Both have borrowed liberally from the other side's issues and agendas. Clinton ran as a centrist, pro-business, law-and-order Democrat; Bush, as a "compassionate conservative." To the haters, that makes them wolves in sheep's clothing.

The hatred is personal as well as political. Clinton was (and still is) seen as "Slick Willie," the artful dodger who gets away with everything, from draft evasion to sexual shenanigans, thanks to his cleverness and lack of scruples. Bush is perceived as the ultimate rich kid who has everything handed to him on a silver platter and gets away with everything because of his privileged status.

Finally, on both a personal and political level, the conservatives' revulsion against Clinton and the liberals' revulsion against Bush has to do with the "culture wars." To the conservatives, Bill and Hilary Clinton embodied the ethos of the '60s with its emphasis on personal liberation and its rejection of traditional gender norms, which the right regards as permissive and destructive. To the liberals, Bush embodies the cultural conservatism of "middle America" with its traditional religious and social norms, which the left regards as oppressive and hidebound.

Thinking about it now, there is another parallel as well. Bush and Clinton have both been perceived by their opponents as uniquely power-hungry, and imbued with a virtually unprecedented arrogance of power.

To some extent, Clinton-hatred paved the way for Bush-hatred. In the 1990s, wild and vitriolic accusations against the President became a regular feature of public discourse. The Republicans now have to live with that.

In praise of "identity politics"?

The brouhaha over the racially charged attacks on black Republican pol Michael Steele for not being "authentically" black has led John Cole and Jeff Goldstein to criticize "identity politics" (a term, nearly always used as a pejorative, denoting political demands, political committments and political activism based on group identity such as race, gender, sexual orientation, disability, etc.) In response to John's comment that "this brand of politics will lead to nothing but rancor and should end now," Ampersand (Barry) comments at Alas, a Blog:

Yes, because what good has identity politics done so far? I mean, aside from ending Jim Crow, bringing voting rights to minorities and to women, creating a nationwide network of rape crisis and battered women's resources, removing laws against sodomy, vastly increasing Deaf rights, changing homosexuality from a sickness to an orientation, making much of society more accessible to the disabled, wage equality laws, giving married women the right to own property, and a thousand other changes that have helped the disabled, the non-white, the queer and the female, when has identity politics ever done anyone any good?

John's right - putting every social improvement this country has made in the last century aside, identity politics leads to nothing but rancor.

I think Barry rather oddly and sweepingly conflates social and political equality movements with "identity politics." The leaders of the civil rights movement did not say, "We should be allowed access to public facilities, the voting booth, jobs, and housing because we're black"; they said, "We should be allowed equal access to public facilities, the voting booth, jobs, and housing because we're human beings and American citizens." The feminists who won equal property and employment rights for women did not ask for special gender-based privileges; rather, they challenged gender-based restrictions on their rights. The same goes for gays who challenged anti-gay bigotry and discriminatory laws. A demand for simple equality is the opposite of identity politics.

Identity politics, on the other hand, has given us far more questionable phenomena. In the area of race, it has given us things like demands for an "Afrocentric curriculum," the resegregation of blacks on college campuses via black dorms and minorities-only freshman orientation sessions, the lionization of a wife-beater and murderer as an African-American hero and an alleged victim of white persecution, and sundry other things including Louis Farrakhan and Al Sharpton. In the area of gender, it has given us "scholarship" that repackages old sexist stereotypes (e.g., women are less logical than men) into "women's ways of knowing" and activism that demands female privilege rather than equality in such areas as child custody. (For an excellent account of the destructive influence of identity politics on women's studies, read Professing Feminism: Education and Indoctrination in Women's Studies by Daphne Patai and Noretta Koertge.)

Since Barry specifically mentions battered women's resources, I will add that while feminists have certainly done a lot of good in bringing public attention to domestic violence, identity politics, in my view, has been the fatal flaw of the battered women's movement. Because of identity politics, many domestic violence activists have downplayed the plight of battered gays and lesbians (which doesn't fit into the feminist paradigm of oppressed women abused by patriarchal males) and have reacted with active hostility to any attempts to bring up the issue of female violence toward men, or to recognize the role of mutual violence in domestic abuse situations.

Since Barry also mention "Deaf rights," let's not forget the militant "Deaf Pride" movement which opposes efforts to find a cure for deafness as well as existing remedies such as cochlear implants, on the grounds that deafness is not a disability but a "different" cultural identity to be respected and cherished. (My 2002 column on the subject can be found here.) There are deaf parents who, in the name of such cultural "pride," have denied their congenitally deaf children implants that would enable them to hear. It's hard to think of a more grotesque excrescence of identity politics than that.

Also, let's not forget what brand of "identity politics" Jeff Goldstein and John Cole were discussing: the use of racist slurs by blacks against other blacks whose political views don't conform to presumed group ideology. What good, exactly, has this kind of identity politics ever done?

Update: Excellent post on the subject at Heretical Ideas, differentiating between "identity politics" and "equality politics."

"Breaking the Silence": Sorting out the facts

In recent weeks, fathers' rights groups have been agitating against a documentary, Breaking the Silence, which has been airing on various PBS stations since October 20. Here's how the film is described on its producers' website:

This powerful new PBS documentary chronicles the impact of domestic violence on children and the recurring failings of family courts across the country to protect them from their abusers. In stark and often poignant interviews, children and battered mothers tell their stories of abuse at home and continued trauma within the courts. The one-hour special also features interviews with domestic violence experts, attorneys and judges who reveal the disturbing frequency in which abusers are winning custody of their children and why these miscarriages of justice continue to occur.

I have not yet seen the film, which airs in my area on November 20 (I have only just received a copy), but so far, what I have read on the producers' own site does not inspire confidence. For instance, here's how the producers justify their decision to focus solely on women:

Some individuals have expressed concern that the documentary only features the stories of women as the victims of domestic violence. Research shows that "while women are less likely than men to be victims of violent crimes overall, women are five to eight times more likely than men to be victimized by an intimate partner." (U.S. Department of Justice, Violence by Intimates: Analysis of Data on Crimes by Current or Former Spouses, Boyfriends, and Girlfriends, March 1998). If we had featured the stories of one man and five women who had been victims of domestic abuse, statistically we would have overstated the problems of men in this area. Nevertheless, we recognize that men are also victims and men are also sometimes victimized by family courts, but the fact is that many more women are victims. In all cases, the children suffer.

First of all, if the producers had been making a documentary about occupational safety which featured five cases of workplace fatalities one of which involved a woman, would they have been concerned about disproportionate representation of women (since 90% of workers killed on the job are men)? Second, there is a lot of research (including the National Violence Against Women Study) showing a substantially higher percentage of abused men, even as measured by injuries and not just assaultive acts.

The producers' own page of resources contains the assertion, based on the 1990 "Report of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Gender Bias Study Committee," that "fathers who actively seek custody [8.75% of fathers] obtain either primary or joint physical custody over 70% of the time." This is a highly misleading claim which implies that men usually win custody battles when they go to court. In fact, the majority of these cases are uncontested -- the fathers have sole or joint custody with the mother's consent. (See my 1999 Detroit News column for a deconstruction of the claim that fathers have the edge in custody disputes.)

Right now, a lot of the debate over the film has focused on one of the cases it profiles: that of Fatima Loeliger and her mother Sadiya Alilire, who lost custody of Fatima to her father Scott Loeliger in 1998 but eventually regained it. Men's rights advocate Glenn Sacks asserts that Alilire, far from being the heroic and victimized mother she is made out to be in the PBS film, is actually a known child abuser. He has collected a number of documents supporting this claim.

Feminist blogger Trish Wilson replies here and also posts a statement from Alilire (with links) here. Alilire claims that the charges of abuse against her are false and the result of Scott Loeliger's relentless campaign to portray her as an abuser.

At least so far, the most explosive charge on Glenn Sacks's site -- that in August 1998, a juvenile court found Ailire guilty of eight counts of child abuse against Fatima and her younger daughter, and removed both children from her care -- is uncorroborated. It is not mentioned in any of the documentation. not fully substantiated; see the update at the bottom of this post.

Ironically, however, some pretty damning information emerges from the documentation posted by Trish Wilson.

For instance, Wilson's page contains this item:

Court-Ordered Psychological Evaluation By Dr. Karen J. Quinn, Dated 1994. Dr. Quinn describes Scott Loeliger's desire to relocate to Hawaii (which Dr. Quinn recommended be denied), Scott Loeliger's bigamy (he was married to another woman when he married Sadiya.), Sadiya's difficulty adjusting to America and the acrimonous court battles, the endless court records filed by mostly by Scott Loeliger, normal maladaptive behavior on Sadiya's part that anyone subjected to long and intense custody battles would exhibit, Sadiya's bond with Fatima being stronger than Scotts, Scott Loeliger's obsessive fixation with Sadiya's whereabouts (he harassed babysitters to find out where Sadiya was and he followed her through the hospital where she worked. Security guards had to escort her to her car.), Scott Loeliger takes no responsibility for problems between he and Sadiya, Scott Loeliger's "passive-aggressive and paranoid tendencies", and other controlling and manipulative behavior designed to push Sadiya's buttons. Dr. Quinn notes the importance of Fatima identifying with her African cultural descent, and that she is stressed by the post-divorce conflict. Dr. Quinn also recommended that Fatima have more time with her mother, and that the current custody order should be reversed.

If you follow the link, however, you'll find out a few other things as well. Such as, for instance, the fact that Sadia Ailire-Loeliger had a documented history of physical assaults against Scott Loeliger (on one occasion, she was arrested after she attacked him and scratched his neck, and spent a night in jail but the charges were subsequently dropped) and against his babysitter. Or that a therapist who had examined Fatima, Mary McDonald, had reported the girl's allegations of fairly serious physical abuse by her mother (burning Fatima's foot with a match). Or that two of Fatima's day care teachers said the girl fared much better when staying with her father. Or that Sadia is also described as having "hysteroid, paranoid and histrionic" personality elements. In fact, Dr. Quinn emphatically stated that neither parent was blameless and that both "behave abominally (sic) with each other." It should also be noted that the statement about Sadiya having a closer bond with Fatima than Scott came from a 1990 evaluation when Fatima was one year old, and that Dr. Quinn's conclusion was that "a reversal of the custody order should be considered" (in part because she felt that Fatima needed to bond with her mother more).

Incidentally, both Wilson and Alilire claim that the therapist who accused Sadia of child abuse, Randi Gottlieb Robinson, was a closer personal friend of Scott's (and possibly his adulterous lover); neither of them mentions Dr. McDonald's statements three years before Robinson first examined Fatima. Alilire claims that a teenage cousin who accused her of abuse later recanted, but cites no evidence to support that. She also claims that a babysitter who made similar charges, Doris Nava Arellano, had been fired by her for stealing, and that she "initiated and won a small claims action against her for that theft." But the linked form does not say what the judgment was for; Ali-Loeliger (as she is known in the document) is named as the defendant, while Arellano and a male residing at the same address are the plaintiffs. (However, the plaintiffs were ordered to pay Ali-Loeliger $517.78 while she was ordered to pay them $324.)

In a 2002 letter also linked by Alilire, therapist Helen Clarke clearly blames both parents for the situation; she also notes that Fatima "had clearly made dad the bad guy and mom the good guy," which was "the exact opposite position [to what] she held one year previous where dad was the good guy and mom was the bad guy."

Glenn Sacks's version of the events contains some inaccuracies and omissions as well. For instance, he refers to the babysitter's statement as "court testimony," when in fact it was a sworn affidavit and Arellano was never cross-examined. Update: According to a document now posted on Glenn's site, Arellano is on the "anticipated witness list" for juvenile court hearings on July 14 and 15, 1998. There is no proof that she actually testified, however; at the moment, it is Sadiya Alilire's word versus Scott Loeliger's.

Sacks also quotes from a judge's 1991 statement: "I agree that Dr. Loeliger [Scott] appears to be a reasonable man, the most rational of the two...She [Sadia] is extremely intense, inflexible, has a tremendous hatred and animosity that overrides everything else in her life, and it is all directed at him. She is obsessed with this child, having custody and him not having visitation." But here's what's behind that ellipsis, after the description of Scott as appearing to be "the most rational of the two": "But I think he can systematically push every button, and she reacts and over reacts (sic)."

So, what's the bottom line here? It looks to me like the PBS documentary has taken a very complicated and messy situation in which both parents are at fault (though the mother is the only one with a fairly clear record of phsyical violence), and transformed it into a melodrama about a villainous father and a wronged mother. And this melodrama is put into the service of a narrative that vilifies fathers, most explosively suggesting that the majority of fathers who seek custody of their children are abusers.

And that's just wrong.

Update: Wendy McElroy and Mark Rosenthal, here and here, look at the controversy.

Update: Glenn Sacks emails to inform me that the "eight counts of child abuse" charge is corroborated, and sends links to this juvenile court judgment and this explanation of the welfare and institutions code. (If I'm not mistaken, the juvenile court judgment form, currently linked from the second page, wasn't there yesterday. If I somehow overlooked it, my apologies to Glenn; I did email him yesterday some time before putting up my post, but he did not get back to me until today.)

The judgment says that both Fatima and her younger sister were adjudged dependents of the juvenile court under Section 300, subdivisions a, b, c & j of the Welfare and Institutions Code. According to Glenn, "These sections contain physical abuse, neglect and emotional abuse." I assume he is saying that since each of the girls was adjudged a dependent of the juvenile court under four subdivisions of the code, each of these represents a "count of child abuse." But in fact, the codes require a finding either of actual abuse (physical and emotional) and neglect, or of the risk of abuse and neglect. According to Alilire, the actual findings were that she "threw a shoe at Fatima" and "spanked her with a plastic coat hanger" (which Alilire denies).

Glenn's page about the child abuse findings contains another significant inaccuracy. The heading on the page is: "Juvenile Court Finds Sadia Abused Children Under Her Care, Removes Them." But in fact, with regard to Fatima's then three-year-old sister, the document clearly states: "The minor is to reside with the mother subject to Family Maintenance Services." (Fatima, likewise, was to reside with her father subject to Family Maintenance Services.) So at least on this point, Sadiya Alilire's account is correct: her younger child was never removed from her custody. Update: Glenn says that the younger sister was initially removed from the mother and placed in the custody of her father, but returned to the mother (prior to the juvenile court ruling) because the father's schedule did not permit him to care for her. He says there are documents supporting this claim, which he plans to fax to me.

Another disputed fact is whether Sadiya Alilire-Loeliger's younger daughter was ever removed from her custody as well by court order. Alilire denies this in her statement, and the judgment of the juvenile court (rendered on August 19, 1998) says that while the younger child is also adjudged a dependent of the court, she "is to reside with the mother subject to Family Maintenance Services." However, a March 24, 1998 social worker's report, now also posted at glennsacks.com, says that that both daughters have been removed from the home and that the younger daughter is "currently placed with her father." By the time of the judgment handed down in August, the younger daughter was back in the mother's house, and there are no allegations that Sadiya ever abused her younger daughter.