The strange case of Peter Gingold, Milosevic petitioner number 872
I decided to take up Matt Welch on his challenge to research the pro-Milosevic petitioners. Scanning the German entries, one fairly leapt off the page:

872. Peter Gingold, Speaker of the Association of Persecutees of the Nazi-Regime - Leage of Antifascists, Member of the Main Board of Auschwitz-Committee, Frankfurt, Germany

Googling for "Gingold Auschwitz" got me a number of additional links detailing Mr. Gingold's opposition to the Kosovo intervention. But it also yielded this April 6, 2001 "Forward" news article: Survivors' Lawsuit Seeks $40 Billion From U.S. for Not Bombing Auschwitz:

In a bizarre addition to the Holocaust-related suits now winding their way through the courts, two German-Jewish survivors of the Auschwitz death camp are suing the American government for its failure to bomb the camp.

The plaintiffs in the class-action suit, Kurt Julius Goldstein, 87, and Peter Gingold, 85, are asking for $40 billion in compensation for survivors and the descendants of the Jews killed in Auschwitz in the closing months of World War II. They claim that a decision to bomb the camp would have rescued some 400,000 Hungarian Jews who were deported there in 1944 and 1945.

According to Yad Vashem the principal Allied justification was that concerted efforts in this direction would have diverted resources from the overall war effort. While this may seem unsatisfactory, there are real questions about what low-precision bombing could have accomplished in any event against relatively hard targets like crematoria, and easily replaceable facilities such as the gas chambers. Given the infamous "death marches" at the end of the war, it seems arguable to me that these would simply have occurred sooner had the Allies bombed Auschwitz and other death camps.

But reasonable people can differ on all of this; googling "bomb Auschwitz" reveals a boiling controversy about this issue that I hesitate to weigh in on any further. It seems likely, at minimum, that there was also a good deal of indifference to the fate of European Jews up and down the Allied chains of command (why not sue the United Kingdom and Russia, too, by the way?) in the World War II European theatre.

What makes the lawsuit doubly interesting, of course, is Gingold's subsequent support for Milosevic. That support was not limited to signing a petition; Gingold was a very active anti-Kosovo intervention activist in Germany, as suggested by this April 1999 open letter to German defense minister Scharping, who had suggested that the German army was already in Bosnia to help prevent another Auschwitz, and would probably go to Kosovo for the same reason. Mr. Gingold took great exception to this:

We survivors of Auschwitz and other extermination camps condemn the misuse of the dead of Auschwitz, with the genocide committed by the Hitler fascists against Jews, Sinti, Roma, and Slavs in the name of the German racial supremacists. What you are doing is a banalization of a unique crime in human history out of a lack of better arguments for your ominous policies.

On the face of it, this seems like a classic case of "damned if you do, damned if you don't." As an Auschwitz survivor, Mr. Gingold deserves wide latitude, yet it seems to me an open question whether it's Scharping or Gingold who is more guilty of misusing the memory of Auschwitz. It seems contradictory to condemn the Kosovo intervention, clearly motivated by a desire to intervene on humanitarian grounds, and a bare two years later sue the U.S. government for not bombing Auschwitz in the midst of its largest intervention ever. Unless, of course, the Holocaust is so utterly unique in human history that nothing even approaches it, so that nothing need be done but remember the past and ignore the present. Or unless the survivor of an unspeakable crime must lash out not just at his tormentors, but at the whole world that allowed his torment to happen. posted by Thomas Nephew at 3:53:00 PM -- |    

 

The kids are all right?!
Via the Wall Street Journal's "Best of the Web", edited by James Taranto, this article from the Indianapolis Star about anti-war protesters at Indiana University being harassed and even shot at with BB guns. The protesters' peace memorial is being torn down, leading to this obtuse conclusion:

We strongly disapprove of the vandalism, of course, but it's nice to know that these peacenik wackos are a beleaguered minority, even on campus.

To headline this with "The kids are all right" is incredible for a paper by grownups for grownups. It's not as if Taranto didn't know about the BB guns; he directly quotes this part of the Star article: "Vandals have started taking aim--at times literally taking aim with BB guns--at a group of war protesters ..." Maybe he didn't read the whole thing, although it's pretty short. The "vandals" are doing more than taking aim, according to the news story:

[Antiwar protester Jeff] Gates said BBs have been shot at peace campers ...

I know, BB guns are not likely to injure people -- but to those blowing it off, imagine if your son's or daughter's eyes were involved. Why should these protesters have to wonder if that's a BB gun or not someone's pointing at them? Why should these protesters have to fear anything at all in expressing their political opinions? Why should a leading national newspaper encourage the yahoos who are doing this? With all due sympathy for the Wall Street Journal on a terrible day for them, this is writing they should be ashamed of. posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:41:00 AM -- |    

 

Cloning opponent makes case again, considers eugenics objection
Glenn Reynolds weighs in on FOXNews.com with his latest pro-reproductive cloning article: Cloning Opponents Haven't Made Their Case. Well, I've tried, and tried, and tried. To revisit my arguments:

Reproductive cloning of humans will inevitably be an experimental process when it is first attempted. This is an extremely serious objection to making those first attempts, especially given the utter inability of the subjects to withdraw from the experiment. Without first attempts, of course, there can't be subsequent ones, which is simply too bad for human reproductive cloning supporters.

Federal intervention against human cloning experimentation can and should happen as a defense of basic human rights afforded by the Bill of Rights. The inability of the federal government to control intrastate commerce (an issue Mr. Reynolds has raised) is beside the point.

Reynolds rightly dismisses a number of arguments against cloning that simply work backward from a discomfort with the process or the result, often based on a kind of instinctive theology that I don't subscribe to. He also takes up my arguments, to some extent:

[Argument 1 against cloning]: Cloning doesn't work well enough. It's too dangerous and is likely to produce deformed babies. Deliberately producing a child that will suffer serious genetic problems is unspeakable.

This is the best argument. But it's not an argument against cloning, just an argument against cloning with poor technology. If cloning worked perfectly every time, this argument wouldn't hold at all. Secondly, we don't consider it "unspeakable" for people who are at risk of spreading hereditary disease to have children — in fact, the Catholic Church, a major opponent of cloning, does not endorse birth control in order to prevent such an event. Nor are there laws against such couples having children. If there were, people would consider those laws to be "eugenics" laws, which are bad.

I agree, if it worked perfectly every time, I'd be for it. But there's no way it will, and particularly not in the early going. This is an advances-in-technology-proof argument, in my view: no matter how well we may be able to model the process with cats, sheep, or cattle, in the end we'd still be rolling the dice when it comes time for a human trial, and a "trial" is precisely what that would be. The scientists involved would arguably be on a par with Josef Mengele in their disregard for human life.

In an exchange with Jason Soon, he also raised the eugenics objection, (while sidestepping, I think, my main point). I appeared to punt on this in a brief reply with the comment, "good point! But I'm willing to distinguish between "unskilled labor" and laboratory techniques for making babies."

I'm willing to stick with that distinction. It's OK for humans to engage in non-laboratory-assisted acts that may well produce a congenitally deformed child; that is, it's not OK for society to try to keep them from doing so, because that brings with it the force of law about what is and is not considered deformed and, of course, who gets to determine that. But it's not OK for parents to ask for outside help with the process, and it is OK for society to proscribe avoidable experimental harm to infants even more deserving and in need of protection than their parents are.

A second point in this regard is that there is no question of the "unskilled labor" itself causing the defect, it's a question of the genetic and physiological characteristics of the parents. The case is different for reproductive human cloning, where the physical technique itself will introduce serious genetic errors in many, even most of the fertilized eggs involved. While the overwhelming majority of these defective embryos may be spotted and aborted before (your definition of infant personhood here), others will not.

Back to you, Mr. Reynolds; again, thank you for the link on Instapundit.

posted by Thomas Nephew at 5:03:00 PM -- |    

 

We're not in the same boat...
And now for a completely different take on recent mouthing-offs by Chris Patten, Hubert Vedrine, Joschka Fischer et al. These thoughts were prompted in part by a "Le Sofa Blog" commentary I threatened to write about a week ago or so. That commentary, by the estimable Peter Praschl, was a puzzled-to-ticked-off review of a Jane Kramer article in the New Yorker, "Private Lives: Germany's troubled war on terrorism."

As perhaps befits a "Letter from Europe," Ms. Kramer's article meanders here, dallies there, stops at a bar to look at a poster and share a beer with Otto Schily (German justice minister), sprays conclusions with a "we're no different" protective coating, and is generally hard to pin down to a single theme or definite insight. Mr. Praschl, understandably vexed with a wordy article that has trouble coming to a point, writes "what on earth does she want," and focuses on her discussion of "Rasterfahndung" (roughly, "array dragnet": computer profiling/database mining for criminal investigative purposes), which he finds wanting; he concludes "9/11 has apparently also wrecked a mind that used to be reliable." That was so harsh I had to take a look for myself. It took me several re-readings to come to a somewhat different conclusion: Kramer has written two or three good articles disguised as a single unwieldy one (something I often seem to aspire to as well).

Kramer uses 8 Prinz Albrecht Strasse, and a permanent exhibit now housed at the site (Topography of Terror), as her essay's touchstone. The address is infamous in German history: Gestapo headquarters, Berlin, 1933-1945. But Kramer sees how it is used differently today: as an explanation, if not excuse for an ineffective German police and intelligence response to 9/11. She is told frequently that it's German history that works against effectively streamlining and centralizing Germany's criminal investigative apparatus. Yet it's also true that when faced with a direct, if relatively small threat to its own survival -- the Baader-Meinhof or Red Army Fraction gang of the 1970s -- German government and society wasted little time in going after these terrorists (with a grand total of a "close to" a dozen casualties to their discredit) hammer and tongs. In fact, computer profiling and many other antiterrorist measures now in use against Al Qaeda -- however fitfully -- saw their genesis in this first Bundesrepublik war on terror. In the end, the republic survived, democracy survived, the gang did not: so far, so good in the German democratic experiment.

It's hard not to honor the impulse to say "never again" when faced with the documentary evidence of the Gestapo's absolute powers and hideous abuses. Yet the Gestapo did not arise in a vacuum, much less in a nation with fifty years worth of democracy under its belt. Kramer wastes a good deal of time on a concept of "Transparenz", which is ostensibly Germany's guiding "sunshine law"ish principle that all government processes should be transparent and open. To me, Germany's guiding democratic principle can simply be summed up as "never again." Like anything else, though, this is a principle that can be taken to extremes. That train wreck of a confidence vote following Schroeder's pledge of troops to Operation Enduring Freedom; later opposition (including Schroeder's Green coalition partners) to Justice Minister Otto Schily's domestic anti-terror package both have their political origins in "never again": anything that merely arguably smacks of the Third Reich galvanizes righteous opposition.

It's as if Germany has never legitimately needed to defend itself. Smack head. It never has needed to defend itself, barring that semi-ridiculous confrontation with RAF terrorists who obligingly starved themselves to death or committed suicide. Smack head a second time. Germany may still not need to defend itself. As Jane Kramer writes,

...one reason Germans do not have foreign terrorism in their cities is that the terrorists passing through on their student visas and business visas have not been willing to risk that protection by blowing up something here. [...]

"...Germany stopped taking a lot of serious things seriously [the day the Wall fell]. Not just militant fundamentalism but things connected to militant fundamentalism, like the proliferation of nuclear or biological weapons in the Muslim world. "Germany felt peaceful and secure," [Tagesspiegel editor Robert von Rimscha] told me. "It was the end of history. We didn't feel the obligation to monitor. We didn't have embassy bombings. We didn't have the U.S.S. Cole. Why turn ourselves into a target?"

With that, this American's feelings gelled that we're simply not in the same boat with the Europeans. In the game we're playing today, it's arguably good to be the weakest link, and it's bad to make the link stronger. What incentive could Bin Laden, Hussein, or their ilk possibly have for attacking a European target? Many Europeans are busily arguing Al Qaeda's case from Camp X-Ray to Kandahar, paying Hussein "how do you do" visits in Iraq, propping up Arafat in the West Bank, and generally triangulating away from the United States like mad. But mad isn't the word for it, simple self-interest is, the more so since Muslim minorities have become significant voting blocs in their own right in countries across Europe.

...so we won't be rowing together?
This is arguably the underlying point of Kramer's article, but that's not to say that craven self-interest is the only political impulse among Europeans. Schroeder's own prompt "unconditional solidarity" statement seems heartfelt to me; Joschka Fischer's outburst is likely best understood as tacking back to the left in advance of a make-or-break election for him and his Green Party and is at least balanced by his solidarity -- at some cost to himself and his party -- with Americans in the aftermath of 9/11. Great numbers of average Europeans instinctively, I think (or hope), see a common cause with the United States from a shared history reaching back hundreds of years, and from a common democratic and cultural outlook. But such sentiments will contend with simple calculations of safety, which may conspire to undo or stall reforms such as overhauling Germany's banking secrecy regulations. Of these Kramer writes,

..the German banking system is so archaic that no one besides the bankers has that intelligence to give. Banking was only minimally covered in Schily's anti-terrorism packages, and foreign police are astounded to learn that a German policeman or intelligence agent trying to trace money or identify a suspect's accounts still has to submit a request to every one of the country's three thousand banks—a procedure that is unlikely to inspire much efficiency, let alone much interest, in your average investigator. A lawyer who covers money-laundering issues for the Association of German Banks told me that, with four hundred million bank accounts in the country, there was simply no available technology for constructing a central computerized data base, but his argument—which is the argument of most German bankers—seems a little ingenuous in a world where computers are tracking the universe and describing the human genome.

Likewise, even Der Spiegel recently published an article ("Investigators are getting lost in a data mess") betraying some impatience with the slow progress of "Rasterfahndung" work and noting,

Following three verdicts in different states which strongly curtailed computer profiling of so-called "sleepers", the whole data collection effort is becoming ever more of a farce. [...]

A run-of-the-mill computer sits in a locked room [in Berlin] with sensitive data on its hard disk: tens of thousands of personal record extracts from the population bureau [Landeseinwohneramt], Berlin utilities, the three universities, or the airport authority. Investigators at the State Security Department aren't currently allowed to use them, because the Berlin District Court [Amtsgericht] declared computer profiling in Berlin to be over for the time being. The reason: there was no "present danger" that justified the extensive data matching effort. [...]

The decisions may apply to just three German states, but the work of other state agencies is stalled by the verdicts. This is due to one trait in particular that all three terror pilots studying in Germany shared: high mobility. They may have lived in Hamburg, but they traveled throughout the republic. That's just why data was to be exchanged between states for computer profiling purposes. ... The verdict of the district court has made [interstate data inquiries to the city/state of Berlin] useless, because the data are under lock and key.

Reasonable people can differ about the efficacy of computer profiling, or the protocols to follow in implementing the tactic. But what seems to be happening in Germany is a piecemeal, state by state "policy" that defeats the freely made national choice to pursue terrorists with the tools at hand. The question is whether such national choices will be allowed to die with a whimper, or whether they will be pressed with new legislation that can withstand court challenges.

Recently I noticed German columnist Josef Joffe's main argument why the United States would still need to work with its militarily undersized European partners in the fight against terror: all the nonmilitary details of investigation, sanctions, surveillance, and intelligence. If it turns out the Germans and Europeans aren't much good at those either, the United States is left with little but military and U.S. homeland defense alternatives in its self-defense, and with little but "ethics commission" use for European voices. The incentives for Germans and Europeans to improve and streamline their intelligence and crime-fighting services are nowhere near as strong as they are in the United States. In Germany, at least, this may combine with the useful slogan of "never again" to slow the pace of improvement to a crawl.

Americans and Europeans aren't in the same boat in this new war, so we won't be rowing together. It would be nice if we were at least rowing in the same general direction; but that is as much in European hands as it is in American ones. Americans might acknowledge that we've seen some real solidarity and meaningful help across the pond. We might do well to think how to encourage more, since the more help we get from Europe (and elsewhere), the less draconian our own homeland security may have to be, and the fewer bludgeoning wars we may have to fight. Europeans might acknowledge, for their part, that "minutes of silence", Keystone Kop criminal investigations, and puny military contributions to a deadly fight don't entitle them to an honored seat at the table in the conduct of this war, or the undying gratitude of the American people. In other words, it will be up to Europeans to calculate whether they've already done as much as they're comfortable doing for their transatlantic brethren, or whether more demanding sacrifices are in order. posted by Thomas Nephew at 5:11:00 PM -- |    

 

Jürgen Todenhöfer: German, conservative, flop
Lest we believe that Euro-critics of the American war in Afghanistan are confined to the left, German CDU has-been Jürgen Todenhöfer wants to make sure the right wing gets some credit, too. Todenhöfer is interesting for having visited Afghanistan in the 80s (German netzine "Jungle World") back when Afghans were fighting the good fight against the Soviet Union. He was also the development and foreign aid speaker of the CDU/CSU in the Bundestag from 1972 to 1990. Via Stefan Knecht of the German blog Le Sofa Blog, I was directed to Mr. Todenhöfer's recent article titled "Der Flop: Über den Umgang mit der Wahrheit im Antiterrorkrieg " ("The flop: on the handling of truth in the war on terror") in the Munich daily Süddeutsche Zeitung.

Todenhöfer's CDU (center-right) credentials, in Knecht's view, help to immunize Todenhöfer against charges of "anti-Americanism." Mr. Todenhöfer's remarks in this and earlier op-eds at least point to a kind of bipartisan Euroskepticism, or Euro-resentments. Mr. Todenhöfer may have saved his real beef for the end of the article, when he complains:

"Unconditional solidarity" has turned into "unconditional submissiveness", and that's unconditionally sad.

To set up this outburst, Todenhöfer asks:

What would our fabulous security experts think of a police chief, who while searching for a terrible terrorist who had hidden himself among drug dealer friends in the Kreuzberg [Berlin neighborhood] after a devastating attack on a high-rise apartment, had Kreuzberg bombed and in the process killed hundreds of civilians, among them many children, let the terrorist get away and nevertheless proudly proclaimed to the public that the whole thing was a great success, because at least the drug dealers had been knocked out by the bombing?

(For one thing, they'd ask for another week or two to re-read that sentence.) Todenhöfer goes on:

Why is it that something that would be a domestic catastrophe, a crime, becomes a heroic act in foreign affairs? Why may one do things as soon as one has crossed the borders of one's own country that would be criminal at home? Are 5000 innocent killed Afghan civilians worth less than 3000 innocent killed Americans? Does the American Declaration of Independence now say, instead of "All men are created equal," just "All Americans are created equal“?

It's hard to know where to begin with nonsense like this. Note the ever-popular simplistic use of American political documents and principles. The Declaration of Independence is more a revolutionary document than a constitutional one, but even were "all men created equal" a constitutional principle, the question remains what to do when they "turn out differently," some opting for instance to be firemen or bankers, while others opt to blow them up with jet planes full of passengers.

Moreover, the Declaration and the Constitution have always applied to "us," not "them." They are how Americans have declared themselves and ruled themselves. You'd think Todenhöfer would be relieved that we don't extend the Constitutional blanket willy-nilly over the whole world. Were the world a big happy family, no independence would have been necessary, and 9/11/2001 would have been just another glorious, sunny day in New York City. But the world is anything but a big happy family.

It's hard to know whether Todenhöfer is being disingenuous or merely foolish by arguing that foreign affairs and domestic affairs should be governed by the same rules. Affairs within a nation can be settled by law freely agreed to by the people of that nation. But across the border, there's no reason to expect the home country's laws apply, or its warrants will be honored. Todenhöfer's hapless Kreuzberg police chief doesn't have jurisdiction in Kabul; nor should he (or she). Recall that the Taliban were offered the chance to turn Osama in, and "honor the warrant". They didn't. Although he professes disdain for the Taliban and Bin Laden, Todenhöfer essentially seems to argue that's where the matter should have ended. With the silly "police chief in Kreuzberg" analogy and sloppy political reasoning, Todenhöfer repeats the common error of seeing this as a criminal case rather than a war.

In this he joins a number of Germans and Europeans who seem to believe that their struggles with Baader-Meinhof, ETA, the IRA and the like are in some way commensurate with what happened on 9/11. They aren't. Scale matters. In criminal cases you gather evidence about who committed a crime in the past. In war you go after people who have attacked you, to prevent them from doing it again. Todenhöfer's new-found expertise in fighting terrorists notwithstanding, that includes killing them where they are and destroying their resources, which were clearly substantial in Afghanistan.

Unfortunately, Americans had to do this regardless of the possibility of unintended casualties. Not that I care, frankly -- as long as the casualties were unintended -- but those casualties are likely much lower than the numbers Todenhöfer uses. Todenhöfer cites "an American professor in New Hampshire," i.e. Mark Herold, to support the 5000 Afghan casualties figure, proving there is no information like disinformation -- as noted earlier, more reliable estimates put the figure much lower. (I thought even Herold put the count at 4000, but whatever.)

Also, Afghan, American, and (who knows) European lives saved should also be counted in any honest analysis of the war so far. And while I agree with Todenhöfer that it's merely a by-product, replacing a despicable regime with the hope of something better is no mean accomplishment. You're welcome, world. Once again.

But regardless of such analysis: the right to self-defense is non-negotiable for Americans, as I think it would be for Europeans. Even though he seems to essentially deny Americans the right to self-defense, I'm not willing to argue that Todenhöfer's views are run-of-the-mill anti-Americanism. But I am willing to suggest that he can take a hike.

(adapted from comments posted on Le Sofa Blog) posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:42:00 AM -- |