Check it out

Matisyahu, Hasidic Jewish reggae/hip-hop star. The link goes to a Quicktime clip of him on the Jimmy Kimmel Show, on the "I Am Bored" blog. This is the second time I've seen him, he was on the Letterman or O'Brien show a while back and just blew me away. He's really good. Via DC blogger D-Train, with the comment "Homeboy's flow is tight."

Motorhomicus Vicaribus : A Universal Touring Machine, or Ehren and Miro's excellent conversion school bus adventure. Ehren sawed the top off the school bus, stilted it up 2 feet higher, wired it up to support a kitchen and computers, and drove off into America. Naturally, there's a blog, complete with how-tos if you want to do this yourself:

Rule Number One
Get a diesel. They're twice as efficient as gas engines (8-10mpg vs 3-6mpg!), and last twice as long. They're less powerful, but you aren't going to race your bus, are you? ...Are you? Our 165 hp Cummins turbodiesel is just barely enough to climb mountains. But it's enough.

Very hot spot in California (Fresno Bee, AP):

The hot spot was discovered by fire crews putting out a three-acre fire last summer in the [Los Padres National] forest's Dick Smith Wilderness.

"They saw fissures in the ground where they could feel a lot of heat coming out," Los Padres geologist Allen King said. "It was not characteristic of a normal fire." [...]

With the help of an air reconnaissance flight and thermal infrared imaging, scientists found that the hot spot covers about three acres. The hottest spot was 11 feet underground, at 584 degrees.

A small puzzle, over at Teresa and Patrick Nielsen Hayden's "Making Light"

Sunset on Mars, May 19th, 2005, photo by NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Spirit

The Atomic Bomb and American Society conference brochure, Oak Ridge, TN, July 15-17

Photo of Trinity Test, July 16, 1945, T +0.025 seconds (via BoingBoing.net)

posted by Thomas Nephew at 10:15:00 PM -- |  

 
United Church of Christ arson hate crime in Virginia
A Shenandoah Valley (Virginia) United Church of Christ (UCC) church was set on fire last weekend and vandalized with anti-gay graffiti. From a report by the Washington Post's Carol Morello ("After Arson, an Outpouring of Comfort"):

The arsonist's message -- and ire -- broke through a hodgepodge of poor spelling and abbreviations: 'Gays lover,' 'Lesb hell,' 'UCC siners' and 'Sinner.'

Five days earlier, the General Synod of the national church announced its endorsement of same-sex marriage, though its decision is not binding on individual churches.

The United Church of Christ is known for a recent campaign -- kept off network TV on spurious grounds -- emphasizing its inclusiveness, and implicitly welcoming gays to its congregations.

As the headline implies, many neighbors and neighboring churches have rallied to the stricken UCC church. But according to Morello, local politicians have not yet denounced the act. A local "Family Forum" leader has an explanation:

Many would consider that grandstanding, said Dean Welty of the Valley Family Forum, a Shenandoah Valley group that promotes policies upholding the sanctity of traditional nuclear families.

"Everyone deplores this," he said of the church vandalism. "To stand up and say it is gratuitous -- it's assumed this is not the character of the valley."

Looks to me like that's not a safe assumption, and that statements deploring the attack are anything but gratuitous.

It's wonderful that others have helped after the church was attacked. It will be more wonderful yet when people, including local leaders, work to prevent future attacks, by saying clearly and in public that homophobic attacks like this are beyond the pale. posted by Thomas Nephew at 2:30:00 PM -- |  

 
On "Apologists among us"
On Thursday, Stygius pointed out a post by Norm Geras titled "Apologists among us." The British professor and blogger objected to attempts by some to locate blame for the London bombings in the British role in Iraq:

It needs to be seen and said clear: there are, amongst us, apologists for what the killers do, and they make more difficult the long fight that is needed to defeat them. (To forestall any possible misunderstanding on this point: I do not say these people are not entitled to the views they express or to their expression of them. They are. Just as I am entitled to criticize their views for the wretched apologia they amount to.) The plea will be made, though - it always is - that these are not apologists, they are merely honest Joes and Joanies endeavouring to understand the world in which we all live. What could be wrong with that? What indeed? Nothing is wrong with genuine efforts at understanding; on these we all depend. But the genuine article is one thing, and root-causes advocacy that seeks to dissipate responsibility for atrocity, mass murder, crime against humanity, especially in the immediate aftermath of their occurrence, is something else. [...]

Geras advances a number of examples designed to show when it is and isn't right to attribute one misdeed to another. All either amount to showing the disproportionality of the misdeed to the grievance (punch in the mouth for liking Bob Dylan, burning down a house to retaliate for a stolen bike), or disputing that the grievance is legitimate in the first place (e.g., Zimbabwe dispatches thugs to retaliate for a hypothetical anti-Mugabe British policy). I don't at all disagree -- but neither approach seems to me to very closely resemble the case at hand. Geras gets more specific with an exacting test for whether the Iraq issue might play a role in the London bombings:

How do they know? What they need to know is not just that Iraq was one of a number of influencing causes, but that it was the specific, and a necessary, motivating cause for the London bombings. Because if it was only an influencing motivational cause amongst others, and if, more particularly, another such motivational cause was supplied by the military intervention in Afghanistan, then we don't have that the London bombings wouldn't have happened but for the Iraq war.

This seems all too carefully designed to yield the desired result. We may not have Iraq as a logical necessity, but we may still have it as a likely, strong contributing factor, depending on what is learned about the bombers and their leadership as time goes on. We can go further, with the familiar "straw that broke the camel's back" scenario, one that seems to be missing from Geras' arguments. To wit, say the bombers were angry about events A, B, and C, but not motivated enough by them to criminally retaliate for them. Then if event D pushes them over the edge to committing crime X, then event D has had a causative role in X, if not a deterministic one.

I don't deny that the London bombers were criminals and villains. Yet Geras makes it far too easy on himself to deny that an Iraq war begun on false premises (and continued on a highly problematic 'flypaper' premise -- one that seems quite ruthless in its own way) may have been a key motive for the bombers and/or their handlers. Does it "dissipate" the wrongdoers' responsibility to discuss that? Or must one button one's lip when a cost of failed policies may have become apparent, lest one give aid and comfort to the enemy? (I agree a decent moratorium ought to be observed, but Geras doesn't leave it at that.)

I won't take up the specific 'apologies' that Geras objects to -- because Geras doesn't himself. Instead, his piece is a jeremiad against the enterprise as such, and as he defines it, that to my eye winds up smearing reasonable arguments in the process of condemning unreasonable ones. In a subsequent post, Geras approvingly cites an article by Tony Parkinson, who argues,

A mindset that can target innocent tube travellers in London is the same mindset that can dispatch a suicide bomber to kill 24 Iraqi children as they accept sweets from US forces in a Baghdad neighbourhood . . . or, indeed, force a Kuwaiti woman to eat her own flesh.

Conceding strategic victories to this mindset will not protect a single innocent life, in Iraq, the West or elsewhere. More likely, it will embolden those behind these acts of savagery.

These are ruthless mindsets, indeed, but they were different ones with different antecedents. I think folding them all into one and effectively ruling it off-limits to discuss why any of these people did what they did is neither democratic nor helpful in the long run. It may objectify the victims of the London attacks quite as much to use them as arguments for "staying the course" in Iraq as it does to use them against that policy -- and Geras and Wilkinson both veer perilously close to that.

I really hate to say this, because I once supported waging war on Iraq, based on my conviction that Saddam could not be allowed to have WMD or WMD programs. But I think whatever the case turns out to be with the July 7 bombers, a new variety of "root cause" arguments are becoming less and less "dodgy" in the wake of the Iraq war: a war waged in large part on false premises going in, a war waged in large part on morally problematic premises ("flypaper") now, and a war waged with methods that denied the human dignity and rights of Iraqis. We are creating reasons to be hated. It won't guarantee safety, and terrorists will continue to plague us, but the sooner we stop that, the safer we'll be.*

We can't honestly object to our foes justifying their misdeeds -- or simply denying that they are misdeeds -- if we are doing the same. But if we are in a struggle with a 'mindset,' hypocrisy doesn't just shame us, it amounts to a strategic error, since it devalues our own mindset in the eyes of the unstable, uncommitted, hostile, and/or disaffected, and even among ourselves. It helps recruit foes and alienate friends.

Conversely, acknowledging (and remedying) our own failings need not amount to apologizing for theirs, even if we reasonably hope that such remedies may reduce hostility. This, I think, is not merely a view -- a "wretched apologium" -- that I'm "entitled to hold." I think it is as important to our eventual success against Al Qaeda-style Islamist terrorism as the equally necessary firm resolve to forcefully oppose those terrorists.


=====
* I'll appear to contradict myself, but I think there are good and honorable reasons to remain in Iraq. But they are purely and simply connected to giving the democratic process there a decent chance -- not to forward bases, permanent bases, oil, or "flypaper." I'm not for a timetable, but I am for milestones -- elections held, units trained, trials completed. We should plan to respond to each milestone with troop reductions, so that everyone sees a way out. posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:30:00 AM -- |  

 
Rove/Supreme Court Watch
On Wednesday I raised the question whether Rove should be involved in the Supreme Court nomination process. Given that the Fitzgerald investigation into the Plame leak may well put Rove's case before that court and that nominee, I asked:

Do the American people really want to wonder whether there's a little quid pro quo going on between someone like Karl Rove and a new Supreme Court justice?

So far, the question has been picked up by The Poor Man, Len Cleavelin, Michael Silence, and Josh Marshall, who had a perhaps more productive way of putting it:

Propriety Watch: Should the selection of the next Associate Justice of the Supreme Court be quarterbacked by a man who is currently the subject of an on-going criminal investigation?

Yesterday raising this question got some indirect support from a surprising quarter:

White House officials weighing the nomination of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales to the Supreme Court are considering whether a federal ethics law would require him to sit out cases of critical importance to the Bush administration once he was on the court, according to Republican sources who have discussed the issue with administration officials.

(Charles Lane, Washington Post: "Question of Recusals Is Raised Against Gonzales") Ironically, it seems likely the question was raised as a gambit by conservative groups like Concerned Women for America, whose chief objection is more likely to be Gonzales' supposed unreliability on issues like abortion. (CWA denies that charge.)

It's true there are differences between the Gonzales objection and the Rove one -- chief among them a specific statute requiring a Justice recuse him- or herself from cases "where he has served in governmental employment and in such capacity participated as counsel, adviser or material witness concerning the proceeding or expressed an opinion concerning the merits of the particular case in controversy." But Lane's report shows the Bush administration is sensitive to questions of conflict of interest for the eventual nominee. posted by Thomas Nephew at 5:30:00 PM -- |  

 
South African police fire on AIDS protesters
This was posted a few hours ago on the GENDER-AIDS eforum at healthdev.org: Forty Injured, Ten Shot at Peaceful Protest to Demand Treatment Action Campaign, Cape Town. The account was posted by the "Treatment Action Campaign," which is working for increased access to anti-retroviral (ARV) treatments for South Africans with HIV/AIDS :

On 12 July 2005, the South African Police Services in Queenstown brutally assaulted and then opened fire on unarmed, peaceful protesters asking for HIV treatment.

Forty people were injured and ten were treated for gunshot wounds. One person, Pumla Xesha had to be admitted to hospital. At least ten of the injured people were people who live openly with HIV/AIDS. The majority of the protesters were women. At no stage was there violence, threat of violence or any form of provocation. No warning to disperse was issued as is required by law. After the assault, as people ran away, the police opened fire with firearms and then used teargas. ...

CBS News reports that the TAC protesters may have resorted to desperate demonstration measures themselves:

Hospital staff called the police when protesters forced their way into wards, intimidated staff and disrupted services, Health Department spokesman Sizwe Kutelo said. The TAC maintained the demonstration was peaceful.

Police spokesman Superintendent Gcinikaya Taleni said organizers did not notify authorities of their intention to demonstrate, as required.

He confirmed rubber bullets and smoke grenades were used to disperse the crowd, which he put at over 1,500, but said any injuries were as a result of the stampede.

I'm not inclined to completely credit the government position after seeing Quicktime video clips of the police assault (1, 2, 3), which I found at the Treatment Action Campaign web site. On the one hand, it's certainly pushing the envelope to protest inside a hospital; on the other hand, breaking up a protest with clubs in a confined space (see first clip) is not going to bring a situation under control, it's going to cause panic. The second clip shows police leveling rifles on the run outside and apparently shooting at a fleeing crowd some thirty yards distant; I don't know whether such rifles fire live ammunition, rubber bullets or both, but these looked like real-bullet-shooting rifles to me -- and the shooting appeared entirely unnecessary at that point, regardless.

The TAC leadership is calling for a peaceful mass protest in Queenstown on July 26. The organization is trying to reverse decisions by South African health officials to not admit additional clients to ARV programs, and is calling for more urgency and accountability as South Africans die while on the waiting list for ARVs.

Both the July 12 protest and the unnecessarily brutal response shine a spotlight on the desperate HIV/AIDS situation in South Africa -- a country whose current leader, Thabo Mbeki, has not distinguished himself in rising to the challenge. This amounts to people trying to climb on lifeboats after the Titanic has hit the iceberg. More lifeboats -- in the form of increased funding for ARVs -- are desperately needed. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:15:00 PM -- |  

 
Baghdad suicide bomber kills over 30 children
The German newsweekly SPIEGEL reports* that a Baghdad suicide bomber killed over 30 children on Wednesday. The children were trying to get candy from American soldiers combing the neighborhood of a suicide bomber.

Many children had run to the soldiers, who were distributing sweets, said the 25 year old [witness]. Suddenly a vehicle shot out of a side street, whose driver then blew himself up.

Distraught parents denounced the deed:

Hussein Radi mourned for his eleven year old son. "Those who did this are no resistance fighters, but criminals," he said. "Why do they attack our children, civilians, Iraqis?" cried Hassan Mohammed, who lost his 13 year old son Alaa.

Even if the bomber didn't see or expect the children -- which seems unlikely -- he was a villain.

But that's not all there is to it. In his recent speech at Fort Bragg, President Bush essentially said that the "flypaper" theory - the notion that the American presence in Iraq lures bad guys to fight American troops there instead of attacking civilians in the West -- is truly the underlying remaining reason for the U.S. presence in Iraq:

After September the 11th, I made a commitment to the American people: This nation will not wait to be attacked again. We will defend our freedom. We will take the fight to the enemy.

Iraq is the latest battlefield in this war. Many terrorists who kill innocent men, women, and children on the streets of Baghdad are followers of the same murderous ideology that took the lives of our citizens in New York, in Washington, and Pennsylvania. There is only one course of action against them: to defeat them abroad before they attack us at home. The commander in charge of coalition operations in Iraq -- who is also senior commander at this base -- General John Vines, put it well the other day. He said: "We either deal with terrorism and this extremism abroad, or we deal with it when it comes to us."
(emphases added)

No mentions of WMD any more, of course, and little mention of Saddam. I'll set aside for now how nonsensical the "flypaper" idea is -- as if Iraqi jihadists and insurgents aren't perfectly capable of changing tactics and trying to wreak havoc in the U.S. someday.

But as yesterday's horror shows, "flypaper" is not even something you ought to wish would work -- because disasters like this are not just a foreseeable consequence, they are literally an intended consequence. After all, terrorists do terrible things -- it's their whole deal. So if one blows up thirty children, you can't just say he's evil if you brought the fight to the country of those thirty children. "Collateral damage" in a just, necessary war is one thing, if you try to minimize it. But to invite a battle on foreign soil for its own sake, as a kind of terrorist pest control measure, is something else and something worse.

And it's something we are doing. To sum up Bush's principal argument at Fort Bragg: we now occupy a country in order to lure ruthless killers to fight us ruthlessly among its people. Mission accomplished.


=====
* This is just where I happened to first see the news earlier today.
UPDATE, 7/14: See also any of several posts by Paperwight making the same basic point. As I say in the comments, he's the person who made me think of 'flypaper' as a moral problem and not just as a logical non sequitur. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:15:00 AM -- |  

 
Should Rove be involved in Supreme Court nominations?
The New York Times' Richard Stevenson yesterday dutifully reported Bush administration claims that Rove is still doing his job at the White House:

A senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the White House now says its official position is not to comment on the case while it is under investigation by a federal special prosecutor, said Mr. Rove had gone about his business as usual on Monday. The official said Mr. Rove had held his regular meetings with Mr. Bush and other top White House aides, and was deeply involved in preparations for the Supreme Court nomination and efforts to push several major pieces of legislation through Congress this month.

(emphasis added) But is this devotion to duty a good thing? Just asking. This is a guy who may be the subject of some serious litigation before too much longer. And this is an administration that believes LBJ-era presidential daily briefings ought to be secret, so they're almost certain to want to block anything incriminating from their own administration from seeing the light of day. Any such assertion of privilege may well reach the Supreme Court.

Do the American people really want to wonder whether there's a little quid pro quo going on between someone like Karl Rove and a new Supreme Court justice?

Personally, I think not. At any upcoming Supreme Court nominee's Senate confirmation hearings, I think the questions should be asked, "Was Karl Rove part of the team that recommended you to the President?", and "Have you made any promises to Karl Rove in return for your nomination?" The second question would be mainly rhetorical, of course, but if the answer to the first question is "yes," I'd say there's a potential appearance of corruption, and the nomination should be opposed and if necessary filibustered. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:05:00 PM -- |  

 
"What's In A Name," indeed
I think Tom Maguire -- who once seemed willing to go where the data led him on Plamegate -- has been reduced to, shall we say, obfuscations in one of his latest posts ("What's In A Name?)" to help him ignore the meaning of the Rove-Cooper e-mail revelations in Newsweek.

His method, such as it is, is to play "gotcha" with two David Corn posts, one from earlier today, and the other when Corn broke the Plamegate story in 2003. To begin with, even the premise is exercise only a wingnut would find convincing -- Corn may have changed his mind or learned something in two years! Across the blogosphere, wingnuts snort "What a moonbat!* That never happens to me!"

But woe to the trusting reader who actually clicks through and reads the supposedly damning posts. Maguire quotes this from Corn's initial report:

His wife's role--if she had one--has nothing but anecdotal value. And Novak's sources could have mentioned it without providing her name. Instead, they were quite generous.

Sadly for Maguire's dimly flickering point, Corn was obviously referring to how little bearing Plame's role in Wilson's selection to visit Niger had on his findings there -- not whether revealing her name and covert status was potentially illegal. Maguire compares this to Corn's statement yesterday:

If Cooper or any other journalist had written that "Wilson's wife works for the CIA"--without mentioning her name--such a disclosure could have been expected to have the same effect as if her name had been used: Valerie Wilson would have been compromised, her anti-WMD work placed at risk, and national security potentially harmed.

... and implies an inconsistency where there is none. As Corn explains on his personal blog:

By the way, the gang at Media Matters makes a good point. They note that Rove's I-didn't-say-her-name defense is a rather thin slice of baloney. If Cooper, after being told by Rove that Wilson's wife was a CIA official, had done a Google search, he would have immediately found a reference to Wilson's wife, "the former Valerie Plame." The name was not the key thing; the CIA affiliation was.

(emphasis added) It's not the Plame-Wilson connection that was secret, it was that a human who had those names in succession was a CIA operative.

Incidentally, while the CIA affiliation was the key thing, handing out Plame's maiden name was icing on the cake, I think. If I were a senior spook at the Pakistani, North Korean, or what have you secret service, and had a passing familiarity with American names, I might feel like "Wilson" wasn't much of a name to work with, if I eventually read Novak's column -- and I might not even bother Googling about her in the first place. "Plame" on the other hand -- I might go ahead and search my files for that one. Knowing her maiden name didn't ultimately change the potential damage done, but it could have accelerated it.

Be that as it may, I think Maguire's post fails to score ad hominem points against Plamegate -- and comes closer to demonstrating bad faith on his part than on Corn's .


=====
* To readers who haven't kept up with the fascinating world of American blogging lingo: "moonbats" are what right wing partisan hacks call reasonable, left-of-center and/or liberal and/or progressive bloggers who think for themselves. "Wingnuts," in turn, is what we call them. The blogosphere is divided between moonbats, wingnuts, "dear diary" bloggers who can't be bothered with any of this, and bloggers who just don't know what they are yet. There! You've learned something. Can't we all just get along? No. posted by Thomas Nephew at 8:45:00 AM -- |  

 
Feingold in Nashville
Senator Russell Feingold (D-WI) visited Nashville last week -- and Tennessee "Rocky Top Brigade" blogger Sharon Cobb interviewed him. Excerpts:

SC: Are you a Presidential candidate for 2008?
RF: Have I ruled it out? The answer is "No." But am I focusing on it? The answer is "No." [...]

SC: What about the Patriot Act? How do we reform it and where do we go from here?
RF: Well we have reached across the aisle on the Patriot Act, and I didn’t have to do it myself. The pressure on a lot of conservatives in their home states became very intense once people realized the points I had made when I voted against the Patriot Act. People found out that their library records were vulnerable…that their houses could be searched without any limit on being told how long their houses could be searched, even if they had nothing to do with terrorism…even if they had done nothing wrong. So our goal here in not to repeal the Patriot Act, but to fix those provisions so that the focus is on terrorists.

There is a bipartisan bill called 'The Safe Act' which would fix many of the provisions that caused me to be the sole vote [in the Senate] against the Patriot Act. [...]

CL [Chris Lugo from Tn.IndyMedia -- ed.]: Turning to Iraq...
RF: ...There is a very fundamental anxiety about this Iraq intervention that the President is trying to repress and deny. But it's real and it's growing, and it's growing in places like South Carolina, not just places like Massachusetts. However, when ever it is mentioned, the President says, "We can’t just cut and run." Of course, that's a false choice. There aren’t just two choices: Stay forever or cut and run. A rational approach that tells not only the American people, but that tells the Iraqi people that we have a plan to leave some day and not just occupy it, is a way to take the wind out of the sails of the terrorists. When I asked one of the Generals there, off the record, "Wouldn't you be better off if there was some vision of when we’re going to leave?" He responded, "Nothing would be better to take the wind out of the insurgence." [...]

We need some kind of a vision of when people are going to leave; otherwise people think we’re going to stay there forever. It's going to help the Iraqi Democracy if the central issue in Iraq isn’t about how they are going to get the Americans out of there. That will be the central issue if we don't have vision of when we're going to leave.

(emphases added, link to Safe Act, S. 737, added) This all seems pretty sensible to me. And I'm glad people like Feingold and Dean aren't just giving up on southern states like Tennessee.

Great job, Sharon! (Via Southknoxbubba) posted by Thomas Nephew at 8:30:00 AM -- |  

 
Srebrenica, ten years later
Ten years ago, the worst massacre in Europe since World War II took place in and around the Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica. The civilized world dithered, did nothing, and let it happen. Almost worse yet, that civilized world often seemed to believe that dithering, inaction, and forlorn, toothless "peacekeeping" missions were in and of themselves civilized behavior to be proud of.

On July 11, 1995, the Bosnian Muslim enclave of Srebrenica fell to Bosnian Serb forces under Ratko Mladic, despite its nominal defense by 600 Dutch peacekeepers. Men and boys -- in uniform or civilian -- were separated from the female inhabitants. A Wikipedia account describes what happened when this group attempted to head towards the Bosnian town of Tuzla:

They were estimated to number about 12,500 in total. In their attempt to escape, they were surrounded by Serb forces who opened fire on them, using anti aircraft cannons and heavy machine guns. Hundreds were killed in the ambush, with many more wounded being systematically executed later on. Those who chose to surrender or were captured were later taken away by Serb forces and executed as well. Serb forces continued to pursue what remained of the group, killing hundreds more until they had escaped to Bosnian government held territory. Of the 12,500 men who attempted the escape, about 5,000 made it to safety.

The two leaders most directly responsible for the massacres, Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic, are said to have carefully planned the aftermath of the fall of Srebrenica, right down to the number of buses needed to transport Muslim men to their deaths, according to a review of a Dutch book on the atrocities.

As brutal as this story is, a recent broadcast -- on Serbian TV -- of portions of a 'training' video shot during the events made Srebrenica inescapably horrifying to many Serbs. In the video, members of a paramilitary Serbian police unit, the so-called "Scorpions," abuse and eventually execute six Bosnian Muslim men. According to one translation, one of the Serbs shouts at a victim, "What are you trembling for?" The broadcast had an effect on at least one Serbian, judging by this Newsweek account comparing the reactions of victims and perpetrators:

While Nura watched her son killed by the man identified as Medic, the accused killer sat in Serbia watching his past unfold before him, with his own daughters sitting at his side. "The police will come," he told his family. "I might not be back." He fled but was arrested a few days later. His teenage daughter, shocked into silence, has been unable to speak since.

Sadly, many of those responsible for the massacres -- most notably Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic -- have not been captured and brought to trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague. May they be apprehended, convicted, rot in jail, and then in hell.

I remember how enraged I was as it became clear that thousands had died after the fall of Srebrenica, right under the *@# noses of their supposed protectors: Janvier, Akashi, Chirac, Clinton, Major, Annan, Voorhoeve, Karremans. I can only imagine how those affected must have felt and still feel.

The United Nations all but died for me then -- an unworthy, worthless tissue of pettifoggery, unable to back up words with deeds or even deeds with words, not merely useless but literally harmful to those who counted on it, its administrators and personnel more wedded to process and protocol than human rights or the simple concept of honor.

That may have been an overreaction, or at least an insufficient one. The bitter truth is that the U.N. may well be the best available political alternative for many of the jobs it tries to do, but it was either poorly designed or has become poorly staffed for the one job so many once hoped was its raison d'etre: world peace.

Even ideals as grandiose as a United Nations or as simple and right as the human rights of a besieged minority will ultimately go undefended and unrespected, if people aren't allowed to actually fight for them when necessary. If it can't answer the "you and what army?" question, a United Nations that purports to be the authority for legitimate military force should probably drop that pretense, stick to issues it can resolve, and concede that it will take men and women with blood in their veins to settle the greater ones.


Links
Srebrenica: A Cry From the Grave (PBS)
Timeline: Siege of Srebrenica (BBC)
Srebrenica massacre (Wikipedia)
Srebrenica: A 'safe' area (Netherlands Institute for War Documentation)
Women of Srebrenica (Bosnian NGO; many eyewitness accounts).
Endgame: The Betrayal and Fall of Srebrenica: Europe's Worst Massacre since World War II (David Rohde; Pulitzer prize, 1996).


=====
EDIT, 7/12: wording rearrangements for clarity in final paragraphs, link to 'trembling' post added. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:45:00 AM -- |  

 
Never mind Rove -- what about Bush?
Let me join many other voices in pointing out that whether or not Rove's actions prove to be technically against the law, they are certainly breathtaking wrongs. Rove, Novak, and an administration source to be named later have given new meaning to the phrase 'fixing intelligence' until it performs as directed -- no matter the cost to WMD investigators or their sources, it would seem.

Digby is right: it's (long past) time for Karl Rove to resign and acquire a new reputation: not just a bastard, but an all but treasonous screwup bastard. John Aravosis and Mark A. R. Kleiman are right: it doesn't matter whether Rove knew Wilson/Plame was ever an NOC undercover agent -- if he didn't, it was criminally negligent of him not to check.

David Corn -- one of the first to point out a crime may have been committed after Novak's July 14, 2003 column -- wrote today:

Fitzgerald is handling the Plame/CIA leak as a criminal matter, as he should. That's his job. But the leak--whether a crime or not--was serious wrongdoing. The White House has taken no steps to address that in the two years since the leak occurred. But it need not wait for Fitzgerald to conclude his investigation. Rove may end up not guilty of a crime, but he is guilty of significant misconduct. With the disclosure of this smoking email, Bush has no excuse for inaction.

Actually, I can think think of one excuse -- make that one motive, given that a serious prosecutor is still conducting a serious criminal investigation, and given what a cold, self-centered fish Rove apparently was with Cooper. I wonder if or when exactly Rove told Bush about the Plame (excuse me, Ms. Wilson) leak, and if or how he got Bush's cooperation in keeping a lid on the story. In other words: what did Bush know and when did he know it? Who knows -- this may actually exceed the moral significance of a stained blue dress.

Even if it doesn't come to that, this is a two year old story by now. So it already has every appearance of Bush running out the clock for Rove -- and finally, a press corps that doesn't appear to want to put up with that any more. And that could have some immediate consequences for the Bush legacy: if things keep falling this way, this could be the worst possible time in the whole George W. Bush era to have a Supreme Court fight.


=====
UPDATE, immediate: Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, this afternoon:

I agree with the President when he said he expects the people who work for him to adhere to the highest standards of conduct. The White House promised if anyone was involved in the Valerie Plame affair, they would no longer be in this administration. I trust they will follow through on this pledge. If these allegations are true this rises above politics and is about our national security.

Via Josh Marshall.

UPDATE, 7/12: Mark A. R. Kleiman asks the same question, and identifies a specific statute that could trip up Rove, Bush, or both: 18 U.S.C 1001, apparently a.k.a. "false statements" or "fraud against the government." If Rove misled Bush, he's a criminal under this statute; if he didn't, but Bush doesn't admit that to the special prosecutor... Kleiman writes: "GWB may, therefore, be in a position where he has to incriminate either himself or Karl Rove, and find himself either a witness against, or a co-defendant with, his chief political adviser." posted by Thomas Nephew at 6:10:00 PM -- |