Radical clerics banish Democrats
Dems Booted From N.C. Church Over Politics (AP report, Washington Post):

A pastor of a small Baptist church led an effort to kick out church members because they didn't support President Bush, members said.

The nine members were voted out at a Monday meeting of the East Waynesville Baptist Church in this mountain town about 120 miles west of Charlotte. WLOS-TV in Asheville reported that 40 other members resigned in protest. [...]

Pastor Chan Chandler had told the congregation before last year's presidential election that anyone who planned to vote for Democratic Sen. John Kerry should either leave the church or repent, said Lorene Sutton, who said she and her husband were voted out of the church this week.

Well, the way I look at it, that's 49 people who don't need to put up with this nutball any more. The rest of that congregation can have him. The Post adds that some members left last fall after Chandler's October ultimatum.

Reminds me of another story:

President Bush treated his final visit with Pope John Paul II in Vatican City on June 4, 2004, as a campaign stop. After enduring a public rebuke from the pope about the Iraq war, Bush lobbied Vatican officials to help him win the election. "Not all the American bishops are with me," he complained, according to the National Catholic Reporter. He pleaded with the Vatican to pressure the bishops to step up their activism against abortion and gay marriage in the states during the campaign season.

About a week later, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger sent a letter to the U.S. bishops, pronouncing that those Catholics who were pro-choice on abortion were committing a "grave sin" and must be denied Communion. He pointedly mentioned "the case of a Catholic politician consistently campaigning and voting for permissive abortion and euthanasia laws" -- an obvious reference to John Kerry, the Democratic candidate and a Roman Catholic. If such a Catholic politician sought Communion, Ratzinger wrote, priests must be ordered to "refuse to distribute it." Any Catholic who voted for this "Catholic politician," he continued, "would be guilty of formal cooperation in evil and so unworthy to present himself for Holy Communion." During the closing weeks of the campaign, a pastoral letter was read from pulpits in Catholic churches repeating the ominous suggestion of excommunication. Voting for the Democrat was nothing less than consorting with the forces of Satan, collaboration with "evil."

(Sidney Blumenthal, Salon, 5/21/05)


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EDITS, 5/7: first blockquote shortened, earlier departures summarized below; Salon article dated. posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:51:00 AM -- |  

 
No one must ever again know anything
The National Security Archive, a repository of declassified information obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, reports Bush Administration Claims Presidential Privilege for LBJ Documents:

Legal motions and sworn declarations filed in federal court this week have refuted Bush administration claims that the CIA can never release President's Daily Briefs given to President Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s because that would damage national security and violate presidential privilege...
(emphasis added)

Larry Berman of UC Davis was seeking the Presidential Daily Briefs (PDBs) of 8/6/1965, 8/8/1965, 3/31/1968, and 4/2/1968 for research purposes, but was rebuffed by the CIA's Information Review Officer, Terry Buroker, in mid-April of last year, just days after ascending to that position. The decision was upheld by an agency panel, whereupon Berman took the CIA to court.

In a sworn statement available at the NS Archive site, Buroker essentially takes the position that PDBs are too revealing of U.S. methods and top-level interests to ever be declassified. Any PDB. Ever.

Buroker tries to explain to the court and other lesser beings the holy, sacred, and forever mysterious essence of PDBs:

24. ... The disclosure of the specific information in any individual edition of the PDB reasonably could be expected to result in exceptionally grave damage to national security.[...]

26. While some information in specific PDBs may appear harmless to disclose when read in isolation, such information may be very valuable as part of a "mosaic" of information gleaned from various sources, including multiple PDBs prepared over time. [...]

28. ...The PDB contains information that is often known by only a few individuals at very high level and is often reported to the President on a real-time basis. The release of a PDB, therefore, presents an especially useful means for a foreign intelligence service, a sophisticated international terrorist organization, or other entity hostile to the United States....

Roger that, Terry, I'm right with you: release this stuff, and the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong could win the war! Bastards -- still trying to trick us.

The National Security Archive press release responds,"He did not explain why 30 Briefs or excerpts of Briefs already have been publicly released without any harm." Former LBJ aide Bill Moyers testified that the PDBs involved were not "deliberative" -- rebutting claims of executive privilege -- and that they could be redacted to conceal any sources or methods that were still sensitive.

We can safely discard the theory that the Bush administration is concerned about L.B.J., or Bill Moyers, or about any sources or methods of the mid 1960s. But to the extent any of Buroker's reasoning works for forty year old documents, it will surely help keep more recent ones from public scrutiny.

I think someone decided back in April 2004 that Bush administration PDBs must never, ever, ever again see the light of day. The "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in U.S." PDB* had been released on April 10, 2004, and had a memorable effect on Bush administration prestige. Buroker's decision came on April 15, 2004.


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* Max Sawicky enhanced this version by "connecting the dots" for the Bush administration; it's posted at J. Bradford DeLong's Daily Journal.

UPDATE, 5/12: Stygius picks up the story on his blog, putting it in the context of a similar development -- Condoleeza Rice arguing that 'deliberative privilege' should allow her to refuse Senate requests for information about John Bolton (NYT story). The pattern seems to be that requests for information are punished by the broadest possible refusal -- and it's not just the press getting stiff-armed, it's academics and even the Senate. In comments here, Stygius also points out that some current Bush administration officials (e.g., Rumsfeld, Cheney -- ed.) were in government as long ago as the the Ford administration; protecting old PDBs may also be about protecting their 'privileges' dating back to those years. posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:30:00 AM -- |  

 
Happy Birthday Mission Accomplished
Back on May 1, 2003, President Bush pulled a little carrier-and-a-flightsuit stunt that even embarrassed Glenn Reynolds, and gave the "Mission Accomplished" speech. (That was the backdrop, the main quote was "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended.")

Matt of "Today in Iraq" just republished that speech ... meticulously interspersed with news item after news item after news item contradicting every single element of Bush's message that day. It's one of the more impressive things I've ever seen on a blog. You should read it.

And I should re-read it.

Oh: Glenn, Dean, Jeff, etcetera -- you may feel, or pretend to feel, or have convinced yourself you have always felt, or something, that the war was all about 'bringing democracy to Iraq.' But that's not really how the Bush administration sold it, and more importantly, that's really not what most Americans were buying. No WMD, no case, no sale. You expect anyone to believe the same Bush America that chortles about 'towelheads' or Abu Ghraib really gives two hoots about democracy in Iraq? They barely give two hoots about it in the United States. Just win, baby.

We should surely try to make the best of a bad situation -- stick with the Iraqis worth sticking with, assuming that's ever very clear, not build permanent U.S. bases (oops), leave when asked, that kind of thing.

But it'll be a lot easier if we start by being honest with ourselves -- that's about all most of us can do as far as Iraq is concerned. Sometimes that means you look in the mirror, and you say "I was wrong." It's not so hard. I speak from experience.


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CREDITS: "Today in Iraq" via The Poor Man, Glenn Reynolds via Kevin Drum, opinion surveys via University of Maryland/PIPA,"not really" supplied by Julian Sanchez, who reminds us through the medium of a commenter that the party line before the war was that if Saddam "disarmed," we would not go to war. Right? posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:33:00 AM -- |  

 
The freedom they hate us for
Digby comments on this news item:

Middle aged schoolteachers are being strip searched for protesting at a political rally.

This must be what that freedom they hate us for looks like.

posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:17:00 PM -- |  

 
Jeanne d'Arc on Ratzinger -- a dissent
About a week and a half ago, Jeanne d'Arc ("Body and Soul") wrote an eloquent essay about the new pope's World War II past -- and his current response to that past -- provocatively titled "The German Shepherd and the Salvadoran Pastor." However, while it is nicely written, I disagree with it.

Ms. d'Arc contrasts what she believes is Ratzinger's misevaluation of his past with the story of Oscar Romero, the beloved Salvadoran archbishop who was gunned down in San Salvador 25 years ago by a right wing death squad. Romero had been giving a sermon calling for soldiers to disobey orders violating human rights; he was a brave man, and he was a hero. Jeanne d'Arc contrasts this with Ratzinger:

Joseph Ratzinger became a member of the Hitler Youth in 1941, at the age of 14, the year that joining became compulsory. Two years later -- at only 16, a child soldier -- he was drafted and served in an anti-aircraft unit which guarded a BMW factory that used slave labor from Dachau. ... He was later sent to Hungary, and returned to Bavaria in 1944 , which is when he deserted. [the desertion happened five months later, in spring 1945 -- ed.]

To recap: a 14-year old is involuntarily drafted into the youth wing of what might be the most ferocious military and police state in human experience. Two years later, he is drafted into actual military service. He complies. Not blindingly heroic, it's true. But he was a boy, for crying out loud, and certainly nothing suggests* he was part of any crimes.

Finally, at 18, under a Nazi regime in the end stage toxicity of 1945, the very young man screws up his courage and deserts. And to desert the German armed forces was no small thing. From an Alan Paterson report** for the Independent:

...[Ratzinger] suddenly decided to leave his unit, knowing full well that SS units had orders to shoot deserters on sight. He recorded his terror when, after deserting his unit, he was stopped by other soldiers: "Thank God they were the ones who had enough of war and did not want to become murderers," he wrote in his memoirs.

Ms. d'Arc compares the young Ratzinger's actions to the (without question noble) behavior of an adult Salvadoran archbishop. But as fearsome and ruthless as Romero's opponents were, he knew that they would either hesitate to kill an acting archbishop, or pay a lasting price in public opinion if they did.

Young Ratzinger, by contrast, ran the very real risk of being summarily executed -- and then simply forgotten like thousands of other deserters who suffered that fate in late World War II Nazi Germany.*** While his pointless death might have pleased some stern anti-Nazi sensibilities sixty years later, I feel greater empathy for the 16-, then 17-, then 18-year old's indecision.

Look at him. Multiply him by a thousand, or ten thousand. Then take your leave of him, dead by a roadside or slumped against a courtyard wall, a child who had a gun thrust into his hands, who was sacrificed by his benighted society whether he died for the sin of being a deserter or for the one of being a soldier. You blame the child? You require penance, regrets, or humility of his surviving boy-comrades in arms, just for being there? Of course not. You know they deserve your pity and your love, not your condemnation..

I hold no brief at all for Cardinal Ratzinger, now become Pope Benedict XVI. I think his opinions on homosexuality alone -- indeed and especially his opinions on 'unsurprising' persecution of homosexuality alone -- are both bigoted and strangely unprincipled for someone who claims to stand against "moral relativism." But while I understand the temptation to draw parallels between his choices now and those he made as a boy sixty years ago, I think that is likely untrue and unjust.

This may seem to miss Ms. d'Arc's point. In the critical argument of her essay, she takes issue with Ratzinger's statement (as quoted in a biography by John L. Allen, Jr.) that resistance was "impossible." The contrast between this fatalism and Romero's heroism is the wellspring of d'Arc's essay. She writes,

Nevertheless, I think talking about the pope's past is -- from a moral, if not a political standpoint -- not only fair, but essential, because the way he interprets that experience says a lot about the direction the hierarchy of the Catholic Church is moving in...

Certainly talking about the pope's past is fair and essential. But if Jeanne d'Arc's comparison and analysis fails, I think her conclusions fail with it. And it does fail. To contrast the decisions of an unknown minor with those of an adult archbishop can't do otherwise. Ms. d'Arc writes:

Failing to exhibit extraordinary courage is human and understandable. Denying the extraordinarily courageous their due is shameful. Denying moral agency is surely unworthy of a man who would be pope. The Ratzingers lie about this because if they admit that moral choices were involved, they'd have to explain their choice.

But does Ratzinger do this? Only if he meant that what was impossible for him was impossible for everyone. But in the Times of London article Ms. d'Arc cites, that's not really what his brother Georg was implying:

“Resistance was truly impossible,” Georg Ratzinger said. “Before we were conscripted, one of our teachers said we should fight and become heroic Nazis and another told us not to worry as only one soldier in a thousand was killed.

"Before we were conscripted...."; "One of our teachers..."; "we should fight..." -- to me, these are explanations of the choices of two schoolboys, not sweeping dismissals of the possibilities open to adults, with adult appreciations of what was at stake.

Are we now demanding children's crusades, or do we still decry them? Yet if you do not demand them, what remaining relevance does the child's reaction to oppression have to the adult's opinions?

To acknowledge why I bother with defending someone I don't like all that much, I should say that I have (or had; they're all dead now, and I miss them) uncles and a grandfather who served in the German military during World War II. One in particular, Uncle L, was in a similar position to Ratzinger's, as I understand it, since he was drafted as a teenager into the pitiful last ditch militia called the Volkssturm during the final months of the war.

I'm glad he didn't refuse or get himself executed as a deserter, or I'd not have come to know him, his children, or, someday, theirs. He never owed the world an explanation, much less an apology, nor even a passing regret for being drafted as a boy to fight a tyrant's war -- his elders owed him one for letting that happen. That would be the case no matter what his opinions and actions were later on.

Ms. D'Arc's essay eventually gets where she wants to go: preferring Romero's vision of a church fighting injustice over Ratzinger's vision of one focused on upholding tradition. For what little it's worth, I'd prefer Romero's vision, too, if I were Catholic. But that has nothing to do with Ratzinger's teenage military career, because he bore no responsibility for his situation. Absolutely none.

Judging by the responses to "The German Shepherd and the Salvadoran Pastor," it is right and meet and even "courageous" to pronounce any given Hitler Youth morally suspect for joining a mandatory organization, to ask of the later adult "[d]oubt, hesitation, awareness of one's own fallibility," and to require that he retroactively discover possibilities for schoolboy resistance that were not apparent to him at the time. Even if that means demanding of a teenage boy judgment, independence and heroism that are all too rare in adults. And even if that boy seems to have passed his own test of courage soon enough.

As I said, I disagree. So while Ms. d'Arc has received many accolades for her essay, this is not one of them.


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* The Wikipedia entry for Benedict XVI cautions that "Nearly all information on Ratzinger's wartime activities goes uncorroborated, sourced in Ratzinger's own memoirs and accounts from his brother, Georg." That said, I've come across no quarrels with the detailed account Ratzinger provided.
** As reproduced on a Jamaica Star message board. Paterson wrongly implies the desertion happened in 1944.
*** Armageddon: The Battle for Germany, 1944-1945, Max Hastings, p.168: "In the last months of the war, there was a drastic increase in court-martial sentences on delinquent German soldiers. Beyond 15,000 recorded executions -- and many more unrecorded -- tens of thousands of men were dispatched to penal battalions, where the possibility of survival was no higher than in their Soviet equivalents (I.e., nil -- ed.). A total of 44,955 men were sent for trial in October 1944 alone, and many of these received long sentences at hard labour." An endnote suggests the 44,955 figure may be an underestimate.

UPDATE, 5/3: Billmon contrasted Ratzinger with the members of the White Rose -- a group of Munich students and supporters (most prominently Sophie and Hans Scholl and Christoph Probst) who were arrested for boldly leafleting against the Nazi regime, and executed for treason in February, 1943. As with Archbishop Romero, these were wholly admirable, heroic men and women who should be a model to us all. But as with Romero, the comparison with Ratzinger founders on the issue of age: these students were in their 20s, Ratzinger was a boy and a teenager. In other ways, Ratzinger was similar: Hans Scholl had been in Hitler Youth, and both he and Christoph Probst had served in the German military. posted by Thomas Nephew at 9:35:00 PM -- |  

 
One year after Abu Ghraib
It's been just over a year since the Abu Ghraib scandal broke and Americans were confronted with graphic, irrefutable evidence of prisoner mistreatment by United States soldiers. Since then, even more abuse and torture has come to light. But while there has certainly been a blizzard of reports about it all, there's been very little accountability, and the policies that allow torture (or that outsource it to countries like Uzbekistan) remain unchanged.

Human Rights First wants you to urge Congress to establish an independent commission on torture. As their online video puts it:

Junior soldiers charged: 61
Generals, Admirals, Colonels charged with abuse: 0
Independent investigations: 0
Deaths in US custody: 108

We've managed to convict Chuck Graner and Lynndie England, but we've not even mussed the hair of their superior officers, or reprimanded or prosecuted their civilian overseers in the Pentagon.

In their detailed, extensively footnoted assessment, the organization rightly calls the U.S. government response "grossly inadequate," and points out:

Despite evidence of pervasive abuse, and findings by the Army’s own investigators of “systemic problems” and “leader responsibility” at high levels, most senior officials involved in U.S. detention and interrogation policy setting have not been punished – and many have even been promoted.

Abu Ghraib was but one prison in a wider network of six main detention facilities, about 25 'transient' facilities, and an unknown number of secret facilities where detainees aren't even registered. The 108 known deaths and the abuses (like tormenting children to get their parents to talk) that have come to light in Abu Ghraib, Bagram, Gardez, and Guantanamo are probably only the tip of the iceberg. And there's no reason to think it's over:

The Administration also takes the view that the prohibition against cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment does not apply to non-citizen prisoners the U.S. holds abroad. Attorney General Gonzales asserted incorrectly that “there is no legal obligation ... on cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment with respect to aliens overseas.”^[14]

This country has a choice: Americans can take their lead from sociopaths like Rush Limbaugh, and hoot and laugh about Abu Ghraib. Or we can wake up and realize these abuses and worse are earning us hatred and contempt around the world, and demand that Congress take responsibility for ending these disgraces.

I was watching Nightline tonight; it was about Darfur. When a reporter asked the Sudanese Interior Minister what he'd do if he were put on trial for war crimes, he said words to the effect, "why not have Rumsfeld there with me." That would be fine with me.


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UPDATE, 5/5: CREDIT: Limbaugh link leads to Arthur Silber ("The Light of Reason."): The Viciousness of the "Real America": Celebrating "Abu Ghraib Day." posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:50:00 AM -- |  

 
Maryland Policy blog
The Maryland Budget and Tax Policy Institute , a kind of think tank for Maryland social service nonprofits, "provides independent, nonpartisan research and analysis of state budget and tax policy priorities. Our particular focus is how policy decisions affect low- and moderate-income families, other vulnerable populations, and the important community programs that serve them."

Now they've set up Maryland Policy blog to make their work accessible to more people, and in hopes of starting some discussions about what people want from their government and what they want for their communities.

There's a lot of good information about Maryland issues on the blog, and more good reports at the Institute's web site. The blog author(s) have also commented on the Fair Share Health Care Act, calling it "a baby step toward a solution, and a starting point about how we all get access to health care (and how we pay for it)." I hope it will be more than a baby step, if it re-orients Maryland Wal-Marts to full-time, well paying jobs. If you're interested in Maryland politics and social policy, this is a good place to check by regularly. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:20:00 AM -- |  

 
Turkish author under attack for remembering genocide
Last week, I posted a small commemoration of a terrible event: the beginning of the Armenian Genocide, 90 years ago. I wrote that "What happened was genocide, and Turkey needs to face both that and its coverup to earn a place in civilized society. It appears that will not happen any time soon."

But not everyone in Turkey denies what happened. A friend has pointed out a Guardian article by Nouritza Matossian, about the celebrated Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk (My Name is Red, Snow, Istanbul: Memories of a City), who has got himself into some hot water in his home country with some forthright statements about the genocide:

His crime was one sentence in an interview with the Swiss newspaper Tagesanzeiger this month. 'Thirty thousand Kurds and a million Armenians were killed in Turkey. Almost no one dares speak but me, and the nationalists hate me for that.' All hell broke loose. The press attacked him for dishonouring the Turkish state and incitement to racial violence. He has been called a liar, 'a miserable creature' and a 'black writer' in the daily Hurriyet. Professor Hikmet Ozdemir, head of the Armenian studies department at the Turkish Union of Historians, rejected his statement as a 'great lie'. [...]

Mehmet Ucok, an attorney, filed charges at the Kayseri public prosecutor's office. Another charge was filed by Kayseri Bar Association attorney Orhan Pekmezci: 'Pamuk has made groundless claims against the Turkish identity, the Turkish military and Turkey as a whole. He should be punished for violating Articles 159 and 312 of the Turkish penal code. He made a statement provoking the people to hatred and animosity through the media, which is defined as a crime in Article 312.'

The administrator of the Turkish town of Sutculer went so far as to have Pamuk's books removed from the town library stacks and burned; Qantara.de's Omer Erzeren reports that this, at least, seems to be going too far:

The Ministry of the Interior instituted preliminary proceedings against the overzealous administrator, and even the nationalists who had thoroughly condemned Orhan Pamuk were reluctant to be lumped together with book burners.

Erzeren sees Pamuk's vilification as part of a wider pattern of backlash by Turkish nationalists, who are irked by recent Kurdish demonstrations and the country's efforts to join the European Union. But unlike Matossian, he prefers to argue that the recent Pamuk controversy shows the Turkish glass is half full:

In the 1890s, when the famous novelist Yasar Kemal denounced the practices of the Turkish state in its fight against the Kurdish guerillas, he was fighting for a lost cause. His accusations appeared in foreign newspapers and journals.

He was deprived of the chance to express his views in his own country. Orhan Pamuk fared better in recent months. The educated middle class publicly supported him, and the administrator was branded a "book burner".

The country's highest-circulation newspaper, Hürriyet, published a several-day series on the events of 1915, including statements by Turkish and Armenian historians who described the massacre as genocide. Just a few years ago, this kind of debate would have been unthinkable.

Erzeren is clearly strongly pro-E.U., so his descriptions of somewhat marginalized Turkish nationalists, some people rallying to Pamuk's defense, and some openness in Turkish media about the Armenian genocide may just be his attempt to put the best face on the situation. But for all I know he's describing the beginning of significant change in Turkey; I certainly hope so. The pressure is hopefully on: in her article, Matossian writes, "Recent discussions of Turkey's possible entry into the EU were dominated by France and other countries demanding that Turkey first admit the Armenian genocide." posted by Thomas Nephew at 10:10:00 PM -- |