Les Gelb, I hate to see see you like this. Whence this tone, as though from the crypt of American-heyday diplomacy, warning in Cheney-like fashion of the dark forces that should make us afraid? You’re better than that. Yes, the world’s a scary place. You’ve been a senior mandarin of US foreign policy over many decades and evidently believe it your duty to remind everyone Just. How. Scary.
But I’m sorry, it’s inconceivable that anyone who understands the world today could recommend that the US stand on the WRONG side of the brightly-defined issue, what to do about Egypt. Yes, the Muslim Brotherhood could turn out to be really really bad and yes, Eypt will face a dangerous vacuum of political and civil institutions if and when this hated regime falls. But it’s not only the character of the Egyptian regime that’s laid bare for the world to see right now. It is a defining moment for the United States, too. The US cannot choose alliance here with brutal and loathsome governance.
I’ve heard your cranky kind of advice before. Many pundits made cautionary arguments about the US losing the Philippines back in 1986.( I covered the story.) But Ronald Reagan knew when to fold ‘em – he had Orrin Hatch call Ferdinand Marcos and tell him the jig was up. Remember, Les? American helicopters landed on the roof of Malacanang Palace and took him and his family away. And like Egypt, Manila was a strategic ally, too: the US had a naval and an army base there for decades, including at the moment Reagan made his fateful decision.
Reagan had the ability to call bad things bad; like Bush, he did not shrink from grand moral argument, even from using the tendentious term “evil.” And that’s a word that could surely apply to Hosni Mubarak’s regime. Please remember that the Egyptian government routinely and systematically uses torture to silence its critics (and even just its ordinary criminals). The whole world knows it now – foreign journalists plucked off the streets of Cairo have themselves heard the screams inside the detention centers. Let’s not lose sight of how utterly disgusting that is.
There are moments when American policy needs to sing in the world, to strike a long, clear note that everyone hears and understands. This is one of those moments. It calls for leaders who do more than “craft policy,” but who act as a beacon for future generations.
You’re probably relishing your curmudgeonhood, Les. You’re putting “universal rights” in quotation marks to show off your hard-headedness. You’re loving being the not-Nick Kristof. But you’re wrong here. And millions of Americans wil live for decades with the mess you’ll make if the Obama administration follows your advice.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Saturday, September 12, 2009
The Tree House
Uncle Warren was renowned in our family for his intelligence, his knowledge, his argumentativeness, his intellect. He was the uncle most likely to be caught reading the ancient Greeks and like Socrates, he loved to probe and challenge people’s assertions.
His brain was impressive, there’s no doubt. But what really impressed us kids was his handiwork. Uncle Harold played a mean game of tennis and Unkie Bud planted pachysandra on the bluff and Uncle Paul could transplant a new kidney in you and my dad, well, he couldn’t screw in a light bulb. But Uncle Warren could do just about anything, it seemed, with his hands.
He had a well-stocked and well-organized workshop in the Meadow House, and a real toolshed outside, and axes and awls and electric saws and wooden measuring sticks that folded back and forth on themselves and all manner of fascinating and faintly dangerous tools and gadgets. He designed the Meadow House himself.
He was a woodsman. He wore an olive drab woodsman’s suit and strode out into the forests to cut down trees, which he chopped into pieces and split into logs for the fireplace with a gigantic and terrifying sledgehammer and an adze. For most of my childhood, I thought Warren’s Woods over in Three Oaks was his. He was a man of the woods.
Most important, Uncle Warren built the tree house.
It was tucked among four sassafras and oak trees that grew alongside the road to the Big House, and consisted of two triangular platforms connected by a half-dozen open steps. The lower platform was sort of like an open-air deck, but the upper platform was a proper house, with a flat roof, and half-walls up to our waists, and two open doorways, front and back.
Two magnificent things about that tree house. First, it had no right angles. The floor plan and the dimensions and the way it all fit together were totally idiosyncratic. For a very simple structure, it encompassed great variety. The division into upper and lower halves facilitated that most basic of childhood games, Us Against Them. The front ladder and back ladder meant that as you chased someone into the tree house, they could be escaping out the other way. Chris, Nat, Jared, Nina, Paul, and I, along with sometimes Laird Koldyke or the Pinc brothers or John Purdy the younger and even that little weenie Peter Russell or the heralded and exciting Boston Russells found and explored every permutation of play that that unusual construction allowed us.
The second excellent thing about the tree house is that it was basically dangerous. Even if someone in the family had the talents of Uncle Warren today, we wouldn’t build a tree house that way. The world has grown more cautious in the last forty years. And anyway, our insurance company probably wouldn’t let us, because we have renters nowadays, and if someone fell off it they could of course sue us.
I’m pretty sure one of us did fall off it, at some point or another, but I can’t remember who. There were no guard rails or restraining netting or anything. The whole thing was solidly built, but a ladder is a ladder. And if Nat is standing over you threatening to step on your fingertips, it is indeed quite conceivable that you will fall off and hurt yourself. That was the thrill, of course. Yet somehow, here we all are, survivors into adulthood.
The message your uncle sends when he builds you a tree house is that he loves you. When he builds you a dangerous tree house, it’s that he trusts you. Summers at Lakeside were three long months in those days, and we spent them spinning in and out of each other’s houses, sustained by and largely oblivious to our aunts and uncles. We scrambled in and out of the tree house nearly every day, ran running through the woods pelting each other with acorns, shouting and hooting and forgetting our tennis rackets on the lawn. We dug in the sand and swam and turned the metal canoe upside down in the lake. We floated in a warm and imperceptible bath of love and trust. We never questioned our luck or even thought about it. We knew Uncle Warren built the tree house but we certainly never thanked him.
Uncle Warren invented the wagon train, too. He tied the red wagon – and if there were enough cousins, TWO wagons – to the back of the lawn mower and drove it around the property with all the cousins in the back, emitting loud monotones through our open mouths to enjoy how the pitch varied as we jounced over rocks and potholes. It was one of our most beloved pastimes. Uncle Warren sat ahead of us on the mower, and behind his benign and undemanding back we were alone together in the wagon, in our children’s world.
He was a man with a good handle on what makes childhood fun. A slightly dangerous tree house, a wagon ride, a lake. That’s really about all you need. On the beach, Uncle Warren didn’t throw a ball with us or engage much in our games. He lay back on the sand, put his white tennis hat over his face, and napped. He loved us, and trusted us, and left us alone to be the happy children we were.
In loving memory, September 12, 2009.
His brain was impressive, there’s no doubt. But what really impressed us kids was his handiwork. Uncle Harold played a mean game of tennis and Unkie Bud planted pachysandra on the bluff and Uncle Paul could transplant a new kidney in you and my dad, well, he couldn’t screw in a light bulb. But Uncle Warren could do just about anything, it seemed, with his hands.
He had a well-stocked and well-organized workshop in the Meadow House, and a real toolshed outside, and axes and awls and electric saws and wooden measuring sticks that folded back and forth on themselves and all manner of fascinating and faintly dangerous tools and gadgets. He designed the Meadow House himself.
He was a woodsman. He wore an olive drab woodsman’s suit and strode out into the forests to cut down trees, which he chopped into pieces and split into logs for the fireplace with a gigantic and terrifying sledgehammer and an adze. For most of my childhood, I thought Warren’s Woods over in Three Oaks was his. He was a man of the woods.
Most important, Uncle Warren built the tree house.
It was tucked among four sassafras and oak trees that grew alongside the road to the Big House, and consisted of two triangular platforms connected by a half-dozen open steps. The lower platform was sort of like an open-air deck, but the upper platform was a proper house, with a flat roof, and half-walls up to our waists, and two open doorways, front and back.
Two magnificent things about that tree house. First, it had no right angles. The floor plan and the dimensions and the way it all fit together were totally idiosyncratic. For a very simple structure, it encompassed great variety. The division into upper and lower halves facilitated that most basic of childhood games, Us Against Them. The front ladder and back ladder meant that as you chased someone into the tree house, they could be escaping out the other way. Chris, Nat, Jared, Nina, Paul, and I, along with sometimes Laird Koldyke or the Pinc brothers or John Purdy the younger and even that little weenie Peter Russell or the heralded and exciting Boston Russells found and explored every permutation of play that that unusual construction allowed us.
The second excellent thing about the tree house is that it was basically dangerous. Even if someone in the family had the talents of Uncle Warren today, we wouldn’t build a tree house that way. The world has grown more cautious in the last forty years. And anyway, our insurance company probably wouldn’t let us, because we have renters nowadays, and if someone fell off it they could of course sue us.
I’m pretty sure one of us did fall off it, at some point or another, but I can’t remember who. There were no guard rails or restraining netting or anything. The whole thing was solidly built, but a ladder is a ladder. And if Nat is standing over you threatening to step on your fingertips, it is indeed quite conceivable that you will fall off and hurt yourself. That was the thrill, of course. Yet somehow, here we all are, survivors into adulthood.
The message your uncle sends when he builds you a tree house is that he loves you. When he builds you a dangerous tree house, it’s that he trusts you. Summers at Lakeside were three long months in those days, and we spent them spinning in and out of each other’s houses, sustained by and largely oblivious to our aunts and uncles. We scrambled in and out of the tree house nearly every day, ran running through the woods pelting each other with acorns, shouting and hooting and forgetting our tennis rackets on the lawn. We dug in the sand and swam and turned the metal canoe upside down in the lake. We floated in a warm and imperceptible bath of love and trust. We never questioned our luck or even thought about it. We knew Uncle Warren built the tree house but we certainly never thanked him.
Uncle Warren invented the wagon train, too. He tied the red wagon – and if there were enough cousins, TWO wagons – to the back of the lawn mower and drove it around the property with all the cousins in the back, emitting loud monotones through our open mouths to enjoy how the pitch varied as we jounced over rocks and potholes. It was one of our most beloved pastimes. Uncle Warren sat ahead of us on the mower, and behind his benign and undemanding back we were alone together in the wagon, in our children’s world.
He was a man with a good handle on what makes childhood fun. A slightly dangerous tree house, a wagon ride, a lake. That’s really about all you need. On the beach, Uncle Warren didn’t throw a ball with us or engage much in our games. He lay back on the sand, put his white tennis hat over his face, and napped. He loved us, and trusted us, and left us alone to be the happy children we were.
In loving memory, September 12, 2009.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
The trouble with Mexico's army
Drug-related violence has taken the lives of more than 7,000 people in Mexico in the last eighteen months. The crisis in public security has put serious pressure on Mexican President Felipe Calderón, who cannot fail to respond to violent turf battles among powerful drug cartels, an influx of sophisticated weapons into the hands of criminals, and a large number of kidnappings and executions in several states. Under the $1.4 billion Merida Initiative, the US government has pledged to help.
The crisis is one of law enforcement. But with Mexico’s police evidently incapable of combating the drug violence, Calderon has turned to the country’s armed forces instead. Their scorched-earth tactics have included enforced disappearances, killings, torture, rapes, and arbitrary detentions – themselves horrific crimes. The result is an erosion of public trust that undermines rather than furthering efforts to curb drug-related violence and improve public security.
At the core of the issue: the military has grabbed the task of investigating itself. Out of 17 cases that Human Rights Watch examined from 2007 and 2008, not one military investigation of army abuse led to a single criminal conviction of even one soldier on human rights violations. (The only civilian investigation into any of these cases led to convictions of four soldiers.)
Civilians prosecutors tend back off when the military claims jurisdiction. But does that comport with Mexican law? The Mexican constitution allows for military jurisdiction only for “crimes and faults against military discipline.” The Code of Military Justice says that military courts hold sway when military officers commit common crimes while “in service” – that’s hardly rape and killing. A recent Supreme Court decision defined military service as “performing the inherent activities of the position that [he or she] is carrying out.” The court did not explicitly state that all military abuses against civilians should be sent to civilian prosecutors and courts, but serious abuses such as enforced disappearances and torture clearly cannot be considered “inherent activities” of the military.
The problem is that the secretary of defense wields both executive and judicial power over the armed forces. Military judges have little job security and may reasonably fear that they will be removed if they adopt decisions that the secretary dislikes. Meanwhile, civilian review of military court decisions is very limited, and there is virtually no public scrutiny of military investigations and trials. At its heart, the issue is political. Back to you, President Calderón.
The crisis is one of law enforcement. But with Mexico’s police evidently incapable of combating the drug violence, Calderon has turned to the country’s armed forces instead. Their scorched-earth tactics have included enforced disappearances, killings, torture, rapes, and arbitrary detentions – themselves horrific crimes. The result is an erosion of public trust that undermines rather than furthering efforts to curb drug-related violence and improve public security.
At the core of the issue: the military has grabbed the task of investigating itself. Out of 17 cases that Human Rights Watch examined from 2007 and 2008, not one military investigation of army abuse led to a single criminal conviction of even one soldier on human rights violations. (The only civilian investigation into any of these cases led to convictions of four soldiers.)
Civilians prosecutors tend back off when the military claims jurisdiction. But does that comport with Mexican law? The Mexican constitution allows for military jurisdiction only for “crimes and faults against military discipline.” The Code of Military Justice says that military courts hold sway when military officers commit common crimes while “in service” – that’s hardly rape and killing. A recent Supreme Court decision defined military service as “performing the inherent activities of the position that [he or she] is carrying out.” The court did not explicitly state that all military abuses against civilians should be sent to civilian prosecutors and courts, but serious abuses such as enforced disappearances and torture clearly cannot be considered “inherent activities” of the military.
The problem is that the secretary of defense wields both executive and judicial power over the armed forces. Military judges have little job security and may reasonably fear that they will be removed if they adopt decisions that the secretary dislikes. Meanwhile, civilian review of military court decisions is very limited, and there is virtually no public scrutiny of military investigations and trials. At its heart, the issue is political. Back to you, President Calderón.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Tiananmen Could Happen Again
What we too often forget about Tiananmen Square is the joy. It seems almost unseemly to mention it, in light of how many people died and how many lives were ruined by the crackdown that came later. But in those heady, early days when Mikhail Gorbachev’s historic visit made the students bolder than ever, this was the fizziest, most exuberant story I’d ever covered in China.
I had been a correspondent in Beijing for two years in the mid-80’s and landed in Moscow just as Gorbachev’s perestroika and glasnost were getting really interesting. My Newsweek editors, in their infinite wisdom, were evidently reckoning that I’d covered one big, nasty, Communist country and could be trusted to cover another. In fact, the two were mirror images of each other: China’s economic reforms were vibrant and its politics dull, while Russia’s economy was gasping for breath and its political class couldn’t stop babbling.
Now Chinese politics had come alive. The weather was great and the square was thronged. The students sang The Internationale and really meant it (“Masses, slaves, arise, arise”); they erected a replica of the Statue of Liberty without a trace of irony. We cynical old hacks scratched our heads and pinched ourselves. Or as the correspondent for the London Observer put it on a brilliantly sunny day in May, turning his beaming face to me as we strolled through the square, “We’re getting paid to do this!”
The demonstrations felt especially meaningful to those of us who had listened, over the years, to countless endless lectures about how happy and satisfied the Chinese people really were. They didn’t want political freedom. They were satisfied with economic progress. Chinese officials were intent on purveying this explanation for their country’s political quiescence compared to, say, the Soviet Union at the time. And, absent any real manifestation of political engagement from the Chinese people, some of us had begun to believe it.
The size of the demonstrations grew and grew. The elite students were joined by office workers, factory workers, and even government bureaucrats. Together they put the lie to the Chinese government’s Big Lie. Chinese people had quite a few grievances, as it turned out, both economic and political, and they wasted no time in seizing this unprecedented moment to express them. This was a story that we correspondents always knew was percolating quietly below the surface. To put it on the cover of Newsweek magazine, week after week, was to vindicate not only the hopes and desires of the Chinese people, but also our own convictions about the truth about their country.
You have to remember how closed China was then, and how scared most people were. Foreigners were still a jaw-dropping rarity. We correspondents had no freedom of movement around the country – every trip outside of Beijing required special dispensation from the Foreign Ministry. Ordinary Chinese could get in huge trouble just for having unauthorized contact with foreigners. Our ability to know what was really happening in China was pathetically limited.
Tiananmen burst all those strictures. Suddenly, Chinese people were babbling about politics (just like Russians! it seemed to me). Their feelings and opinions were emblazoned on placards for all the world to see. Those few weeks of freedom were heaven for frustrated correspondents who felt they’d never really gotten the full story.
That the story ended in violence surprised no one, even while it shocked us all. And perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised, either, that twenty years later, the Big Lie has taken hold again. Chinese people just aren’t interested in politics. Economic progress has left them satisfied.
Don’t believe it for a minute. Yes, personal freedoms are much more extensive and yes, people are pleased with the country’s economic success. They are also prouder of their country now than they were then, I think. But still, not far below the surface, China simmers with political discontent. The issues that sparked Tiananmen -- corruption, labor exploitation, the lack of free speech – still plague China today. It wouldn’t take much to bring about some kind of mass protest again. I’ve seen it happen before, and seeing it once made me surer than ever that it could happen again.
I had been a correspondent in Beijing for two years in the mid-80’s and landed in Moscow just as Gorbachev’s perestroika and glasnost were getting really interesting. My Newsweek editors, in their infinite wisdom, were evidently reckoning that I’d covered one big, nasty, Communist country and could be trusted to cover another. In fact, the two were mirror images of each other: China’s economic reforms were vibrant and its politics dull, while Russia’s economy was gasping for breath and its political class couldn’t stop babbling.
Now Chinese politics had come alive. The weather was great and the square was thronged. The students sang The Internationale and really meant it (“Masses, slaves, arise, arise”); they erected a replica of the Statue of Liberty without a trace of irony. We cynical old hacks scratched our heads and pinched ourselves. Or as the correspondent for the London Observer put it on a brilliantly sunny day in May, turning his beaming face to me as we strolled through the square, “We’re getting paid to do this!”
The demonstrations felt especially meaningful to those of us who had listened, over the years, to countless endless lectures about how happy and satisfied the Chinese people really were. They didn’t want political freedom. They were satisfied with economic progress. Chinese officials were intent on purveying this explanation for their country’s political quiescence compared to, say, the Soviet Union at the time. And, absent any real manifestation of political engagement from the Chinese people, some of us had begun to believe it.
The size of the demonstrations grew and grew. The elite students were joined by office workers, factory workers, and even government bureaucrats. Together they put the lie to the Chinese government’s Big Lie. Chinese people had quite a few grievances, as it turned out, both economic and political, and they wasted no time in seizing this unprecedented moment to express them. This was a story that we correspondents always knew was percolating quietly below the surface. To put it on the cover of Newsweek magazine, week after week, was to vindicate not only the hopes and desires of the Chinese people, but also our own convictions about the truth about their country.
You have to remember how closed China was then, and how scared most people were. Foreigners were still a jaw-dropping rarity. We correspondents had no freedom of movement around the country – every trip outside of Beijing required special dispensation from the Foreign Ministry. Ordinary Chinese could get in huge trouble just for having unauthorized contact with foreigners. Our ability to know what was really happening in China was pathetically limited.
Tiananmen burst all those strictures. Suddenly, Chinese people were babbling about politics (just like Russians! it seemed to me). Their feelings and opinions were emblazoned on placards for all the world to see. Those few weeks of freedom were heaven for frustrated correspondents who felt they’d never really gotten the full story.
That the story ended in violence surprised no one, even while it shocked us all. And perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised, either, that twenty years later, the Big Lie has taken hold again. Chinese people just aren’t interested in politics. Economic progress has left them satisfied.
Don’t believe it for a minute. Yes, personal freedoms are much more extensive and yes, people are pleased with the country’s economic success. They are also prouder of their country now than they were then, I think. But still, not far below the surface, China simmers with political discontent. The issues that sparked Tiananmen -- corruption, labor exploitation, the lack of free speech – still plague China today. It wouldn’t take much to bring about some kind of mass protest again. I’ve seen it happen before, and seeing it once made me surer than ever that it could happen again.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Torture and the world out there
What motivated many Americans to turn against George Bush’s counter-terrorism policies was, in part, a realization that the rest of the world had turned against them already. President Barack Obama’s decision to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay and renounce the use of torture have proved enormously popular with America’s closest allies, and even some not-so-close. By the same token, his unwillingness to investigate and prosecute the perpetrators of torture has important international implications that have not so far been part of the debate.
US policy on torture directly affects criminal culpability in other countries. Take the case of Binyam Mohamed, a British resident who was arrested by Pakistani authorities in Karachi in 2002 and spent seven years in detention in Morocco, Afghanistan, and ultimately Guantanamo Bay. He claims to have been beaten, repeatedly cut on his genitals and threatened with rape, electrocution and death by Moroccan interrogators who were acting at the behest of the CIA, and being fed questions by British intelligence.
Washington’s much more direct responsibility for the unlawful rendering and torturing of Mohamed has hardly created a ripple in the United States. But Britain’s more tangential complicity has generated a fierce outcry in the UK and resulted in an official criminal investigation. How strange that the mere fallout from US torture policy has done more abroad than the actual genesis and execution of the policy has done here in Washington. That fact will not be lost on Obama’s international constituency.
The unwillingness to prosecute Americans for torture will have a deleterious effect on efforts to prosecute dictators around the world for their crimes. Along with European governments, Washington is currently engaged in a fierce battle for international public opinion over the indictment of Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir for crimes against humanity and other grave offenses against the people of Darfur. Governments in Africa and the Middle East are trying to portray the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court as a tool of imperialist powers who are targeting Third World countries in a phony campaign for “justice.”
Unfortunately, this specious argument is gaining adherents. It will gain even more if the United States refuses to bring its own perpetrators of major crimes to account; the alleged double standard will be proven. At risk is a steadily developing system of international justice that has ended impunity for tyrants from Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia to Charles Taylor of Liberia.
And international justice will, in the end, catch up with America’s own alleged criminals. Efforts to indict Bush administration officials such as Donald Rumsfeld and George Tenet have gotten underway in German and Spanish courts only because they haven’t gotten any traction in American courts. Foreign prosecutors are much more likely to claim universal jurisdiction if American prosecutors are believed not to have done their job.
Unless European authorities obtain custody of the accused, torture prosecutions in Europe will not deliver real justice (though it might affect some of their travel plans). They could also deepen an isolationist strain in the United States that fails to understand international justice as founded on respect for the same human rights principles that Americans themselves profess.
In the debate over torture, Human Rights Watch’s position in favor of prosecution, and of the release of an additional tranche of photos, has been described as criticism from “the left.” That’s true only if being “left” in the United States today means having a decent respect for the opinions of mankind, which possibly it does. President Obama came to power promising to close the gap between America and its international partners on the neuralgic issues of fighting terrorism. His latest decisions will widen them.
US policy on torture directly affects criminal culpability in other countries. Take the case of Binyam Mohamed, a British resident who was arrested by Pakistani authorities in Karachi in 2002 and spent seven years in detention in Morocco, Afghanistan, and ultimately Guantanamo Bay. He claims to have been beaten, repeatedly cut on his genitals and threatened with rape, electrocution and death by Moroccan interrogators who were acting at the behest of the CIA, and being fed questions by British intelligence.
Washington’s much more direct responsibility for the unlawful rendering and torturing of Mohamed has hardly created a ripple in the United States. But Britain’s more tangential complicity has generated a fierce outcry in the UK and resulted in an official criminal investigation. How strange that the mere fallout from US torture policy has done more abroad than the actual genesis and execution of the policy has done here in Washington. That fact will not be lost on Obama’s international constituency.
The unwillingness to prosecute Americans for torture will have a deleterious effect on efforts to prosecute dictators around the world for their crimes. Along with European governments, Washington is currently engaged in a fierce battle for international public opinion over the indictment of Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir for crimes against humanity and other grave offenses against the people of Darfur. Governments in Africa and the Middle East are trying to portray the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court as a tool of imperialist powers who are targeting Third World countries in a phony campaign for “justice.”
Unfortunately, this specious argument is gaining adherents. It will gain even more if the United States refuses to bring its own perpetrators of major crimes to account; the alleged double standard will be proven. At risk is a steadily developing system of international justice that has ended impunity for tyrants from Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia to Charles Taylor of Liberia.
And international justice will, in the end, catch up with America’s own alleged criminals. Efforts to indict Bush administration officials such as Donald Rumsfeld and George Tenet have gotten underway in German and Spanish courts only because they haven’t gotten any traction in American courts. Foreign prosecutors are much more likely to claim universal jurisdiction if American prosecutors are believed not to have done their job.
Unless European authorities obtain custody of the accused, torture prosecutions in Europe will not deliver real justice (though it might affect some of their travel plans). They could also deepen an isolationist strain in the United States that fails to understand international justice as founded on respect for the same human rights principles that Americans themselves profess.
In the debate over torture, Human Rights Watch’s position in favor of prosecution, and of the release of an additional tranche of photos, has been described as criticism from “the left.” That’s true only if being “left” in the United States today means having a decent respect for the opinions of mankind, which possibly it does. President Obama came to power promising to close the gap between America and its international partners on the neuralgic issues of fighting terrorism. His latest decisions will widen them.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Ahmedinejad's rant and what it means
The footage of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad haranguing a Geneva assembly hall is already becoming the iconic image of the latest international conference on racism. His speech sent Western diplomats scurrying for the exits in an effort to disassociate themselves from denials of the Holocaust. The immediate question is how far the United States overreacts to this unfortunate, but isolated, incident. The larger issue for Washington is how to navigate the terrain of international human rights that the Obama Administration says it wants to reclaim.
A lot of hard diplomatic work went into making sure that this week’s Geneva conference on racism did not go off the rails. More than seven years ago, the genuine accomplishments of a previous UN conference on racism, held in Durban, South Africa, sank into obscurity after some non-governmental organizations made anti-Semitic statements, and the international media could seemingly focus on nothing else. Early negotiations on this round did not look promising, either, and the Bush Administration effectively dropped out months ago in protest.
But wonder of wonders, the document that has been agreed in Geneva isn’t half bad. It contains no reference to Israel or the Middle East and rejects the dangerous concept that religions, as opposed to individuals, can be defamed or have their rights violated (a provision that many Islamic countries were backing). The document also reaffirms the tragedy of the Holocaust and condemns anti-Semitism.
So, now that it has won virtually all the concessions that it was seeking, what should the US do? Having refused on the basis of concrete objections to participate, Washington can hardly keep refusing to participate once those objections are met. Or can it?
Enter Mr. Ahmedinejad, a Midas with a radioactive touch. His anti-Israel comments actually received precious little support in the hall, and did not succeed in changing a single comma in the conference’s final document. The Norwegian Foreign Minister got it right when he urged conference participants to “not accept that the odd man out hijacks the collective efforts of the many.” And yet White House spokesman Robert Gibbs insisted that Ahmedinejad’s speech has showed that the Administration “made the right decision to not go forward with attendance.”
Right-wing bloggers are eagerly linking this latest dust-up to US participation at the United Nations Human Rights Council, where repressive governments are trying to keep a focus on Israel, not least in order to keep the focus off themselves. A deplorable development indeed. But is it an argument for the United States to disengage, or to re-engage? Diplomats from countries with very poor human rights records grow bolder in direct proportion to the waning of diplomatic energy from governments who are serious about human rights protection.
Barack Obama has vowed to break that cycle and become full participants at the United Nations. Renouncing torture and vowing to close Guantanamo Bay within a year were critical first steps toward engagement, and they have made it likely that the US will win a seat on the Human Rights Council again next month. If Obama is serious (and intellectually consistent) the US government should endorse the conference’s final document. Twenty-two of the countries who walked out of the Iranian president’s speech have already done so. That would demonstrate that the Obama Administration is making human rights policy on the merits -- and not letting Mahmoud Ahmedinejad do it for them.
A lot of hard diplomatic work went into making sure that this week’s Geneva conference on racism did not go off the rails. More than seven years ago, the genuine accomplishments of a previous UN conference on racism, held in Durban, South Africa, sank into obscurity after some non-governmental organizations made anti-Semitic statements, and the international media could seemingly focus on nothing else. Early negotiations on this round did not look promising, either, and the Bush Administration effectively dropped out months ago in protest.
But wonder of wonders, the document that has been agreed in Geneva isn’t half bad. It contains no reference to Israel or the Middle East and rejects the dangerous concept that religions, as opposed to individuals, can be defamed or have their rights violated (a provision that many Islamic countries were backing). The document also reaffirms the tragedy of the Holocaust and condemns anti-Semitism.
So, now that it has won virtually all the concessions that it was seeking, what should the US do? Having refused on the basis of concrete objections to participate, Washington can hardly keep refusing to participate once those objections are met. Or can it?
Enter Mr. Ahmedinejad, a Midas with a radioactive touch. His anti-Israel comments actually received precious little support in the hall, and did not succeed in changing a single comma in the conference’s final document. The Norwegian Foreign Minister got it right when he urged conference participants to “not accept that the odd man out hijacks the collective efforts of the many.” And yet White House spokesman Robert Gibbs insisted that Ahmedinejad’s speech has showed that the Administration “made the right decision to not go forward with attendance.”
Right-wing bloggers are eagerly linking this latest dust-up to US participation at the United Nations Human Rights Council, where repressive governments are trying to keep a focus on Israel, not least in order to keep the focus off themselves. A deplorable development indeed. But is it an argument for the United States to disengage, or to re-engage? Diplomats from countries with very poor human rights records grow bolder in direct proportion to the waning of diplomatic energy from governments who are serious about human rights protection.
Barack Obama has vowed to break that cycle and become full participants at the United Nations. Renouncing torture and vowing to close Guantanamo Bay within a year were critical first steps toward engagement, and they have made it likely that the US will win a seat on the Human Rights Council again next month. If Obama is serious (and intellectually consistent) the US government should endorse the conference’s final document. Twenty-two of the countries who walked out of the Iranian president’s speech have already done so. That would demonstrate that the Obama Administration is making human rights policy on the merits -- and not letting Mahmoud Ahmedinejad do it for them.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Prosecuting for Torture: A Little Help from the NYTimes
Hosannas to the New York Times today for giving American policy-makers a huge shove in the direction of a Torture Commission. The Sunday op-ed page devotes a giant piece of real estate to journalist Mark Danner for a recapitulation, with pointed commentary, of the heretofore-secret interviews that Red Cross officials conducted with “high-value detainees” at Guantanamo. The information soberly recounted in these memos leaves no doubt that US government officials committed multiple and grievous acts of torture.
This piece testifies bracingly to the enduring relevance of the American newspaper – and of the New York Times in particular.
We read a lot about the demise of newspapers today – including, poignantly, in the New York Times itself this week. But where else but a newspaper could this information come to light? Let’s examine the options.
Radio couldn’t break this story – there’s no “actuality,” no-one to interview. The Red Cross has strict rules about confidentiality and wouldn’t go on the record for a piece like this (God knows how Danner squeezed the documents out of them); the detainees themselves are inaccessible; and the government officials responsible for the torture are not, I’m guessing, giving interviews.
Ditto TV. No pictures. Television has struggled with this for some time; waterboarding is too creepy, and too staged, to be broadcast. Even Brian Ross of ABC, the TV reporter who has most consistently followed the torture issue (including, not helpfully, to argue that waterboarding works), had trouble illustrating his pieces on the subject.
The internet can help Danner’s piece achieve some prominence, and I hope it does. But how viral is torture? The social media sites are too busy trafficking in cute videos of dogs singing “I love you” (my 13-year-old loved it). If Danner’s piece were originally published in a blog or an online magazine, it wouldn’t have nearly the same impact. With all due respect to bloggers, nobody out there is pulling in the right audience -- neither in terms of seniority in policy-making, nor in concentratedness, by which I mean that everyone who's anyone on the torture issue will see this piece.
So we’re left with newspapers. And how many of them are there, with any heft or reach? Aside from the NYT, only the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post have real national exposure. The Wall Street Journal op-ed page would not run such a piece for ideological reasons. I’d like to think Don Graham would use his newspaper to crusade against torture, and certainly the Washington Post editorialized early and well against its use. But the entire Post op-ed page also came out strongly in favor of the war in Iraq and the paper has never really expiated that error, or the general sense that it is wrapped a little too tightly around the decaying corpse of Bush’s “war on terror.”
The NYTimes supported the war in Iraq too, of course, but it also issued a major mea culpa for the real deficiencies in its reporting on the issue. And in recent years, its editorials have been among the strongest calls in the country for accountability for the Bush Adminsitration’s crimes. One senses a real quest to make up for earlier credulity (like burying its first Abu Ghraib story on page A15).
Lord knows, there's still plenty to criticize in the Times' coverage on a variety of subjects. But if you want to see senior Bush Administration officials investigated and prosecuted for torture, then you've got to be thankful, today, that the NYTimes still has clout.
This piece testifies bracingly to the enduring relevance of the American newspaper – and of the New York Times in particular.
We read a lot about the demise of newspapers today – including, poignantly, in the New York Times itself this week. But where else but a newspaper could this information come to light? Let’s examine the options.
Radio couldn’t break this story – there’s no “actuality,” no-one to interview. The Red Cross has strict rules about confidentiality and wouldn’t go on the record for a piece like this (God knows how Danner squeezed the documents out of them); the detainees themselves are inaccessible; and the government officials responsible for the torture are not, I’m guessing, giving interviews.
Ditto TV. No pictures. Television has struggled with this for some time; waterboarding is too creepy, and too staged, to be broadcast. Even Brian Ross of ABC, the TV reporter who has most consistently followed the torture issue (including, not helpfully, to argue that waterboarding works), had trouble illustrating his pieces on the subject.
The internet can help Danner’s piece achieve some prominence, and I hope it does. But how viral is torture? The social media sites are too busy trafficking in cute videos of dogs singing “I love you” (my 13-year-old loved it). If Danner’s piece were originally published in a blog or an online magazine, it wouldn’t have nearly the same impact. With all due respect to bloggers, nobody out there is pulling in the right audience -- neither in terms of seniority in policy-making, nor in concentratedness, by which I mean that everyone who's anyone on the torture issue will see this piece.
So we’re left with newspapers. And how many of them are there, with any heft or reach? Aside from the NYT, only the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post have real national exposure. The Wall Street Journal op-ed page would not run such a piece for ideological reasons. I’d like to think Don Graham would use his newspaper to crusade against torture, and certainly the Washington Post editorialized early and well against its use. But the entire Post op-ed page also came out strongly in favor of the war in Iraq and the paper has never really expiated that error, or the general sense that it is wrapped a little too tightly around the decaying corpse of Bush’s “war on terror.”
The NYTimes supported the war in Iraq too, of course, but it also issued a major mea culpa for the real deficiencies in its reporting on the issue. And in recent years, its editorials have been among the strongest calls in the country for accountability for the Bush Adminsitration’s crimes. One senses a real quest to make up for earlier credulity (like burying its first Abu Ghraib story on page A15).
Lord knows, there's still plenty to criticize in the Times' coverage on a variety of subjects. But if you want to see senior Bush Administration officials investigated and prosecuted for torture, then you've got to be thankful, today, that the NYTimes still has clout.
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