I currently blog politically/policywise at Obsidian Wings.
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Above email address currently deprecated! Use gary underscore farber at yahoodotcom, pliz! Sanely free of McCarthyite calling anyone a traitor since 2001!
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I've a long record in editorial work in book and magazine publishing, starting 1974, a variety of other work experience, but have been, since 2001, recurringly housebound with insanely painful sporadic and unpredictably variable gout and edema, and in the past, other ailments; the future? The Great Unknown: isn't it for all of us?
I'm currently house/cat-sitting, not on any government aid yet (or mostly ever), often in major chronic pain from gout and edema, which variably can leave me unable to walk, including just standing, but sometimes is better, and is freaking unpredictable at present; I also have major chronic depression and anxiety disorders; I'm currently supported mostly by your blog donations/subscriptions; you can help me. I prefer to spread out the load, and lessen it from the few who have been doing more than their fair share for too long.
Thanks for any understanding and support. I know it's difficult to understand. And things will change. They always change.
I'm sometimes available to some degree as a paid writer, editor, researcher, or proofreader. I'm sometimes available as a fill-in Guest Blogger at mid-to-high-traffic blogs that fit my knowledge set.
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"The brain is wider than the sky, For, put them side by side,
The one the other will include With ease, and you beside"
-- Emily Dickinson
"We will pursue peace as if there is no terrorism and fight terrorism as if there is no peace."
-- Yitzhak Rabin
"I have thought it my duty to exhibit things as they are, not as they ought to be."
-- Alexander Hamilton
"The stakes are too high for government to be a spectator sport."
-- Barbara Jordan
"Under democracy, one party always devotes its chief energies to
trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule --
and both commonly succeed, and are right."
-- H. L. Mencken
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
-- William Pitt
"The only completely consistent people are the dead."
-- Aldous Huxley
"I have had my solutions for a long time; but I do not yet know how I am to arrive at them."
-- Karl F. Gauss
"Whatever evils either reason or declamation have imputed to extensive empire,
the power of Rome was attended with some beneficial consequences to mankind;
and the same freedom of intercourse which extended the vices, diffused likewise
the improvements of social life."
-- Edward Gibbon
"Augustus was sensible that mankind is governed by names; nor was he deceived in his
expectation, that the senate and people would submit to slavery, provided they were
respectfully assured that they still enjoyed their ancient freedom."
-- Edward Gibbon
"There exists in human nature a strong propensity to depreciate the advantages, and to magnify
the evils, of the present times."
-- Edward Gibbon
"Our youth now loves luxuries. They have bad manners, contempt for authority.
They show disrespect for elders and they
love to chatter instead of exercise.
Children are now tyrants, not the servants, of their households. They
no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents,
chatter before company, gobble up their food, and tyrannize
their teachers."
-- Socrates
"Before impugning an opponent's motives, even when they legitimately may be impugned, answer his arguments."
-- Sidney Hook
"Idealism, alas, does not protect one from ignorance, dogmatism, and foolishness."
-- Sidney Hook
"Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"We take, and must continue to take, morally hazardous actions to preserve our civilization.
We must exercise our power. But we ought neither to believe that a nation is capable of perfect
disinterestedness in its exercise, nor become complacent about particular degrees of interest
and passion which corrupt the justice by which the exercise of power is legitimized."
-- Reinhold Niebuhr
"Faced with the choice of all the land without a Jewish state or a Jewish state without all the
land, we chose a Jewish state without all the land."
-- David Ben-Gurion
"...the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him
an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this
or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages
to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right; that it tends also
to corrupt the principles of that very religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing,
with a monopoly of worldly honours and emoluments, those who will externally profess
and conform to it;[...] that the opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction; that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion
and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency is a dangerous fallacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty....
-- Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, Thomas Jefferson
"We don't live just by ideas. Ideas are part of the mixture of customs and practices,
intuitions and instincts that make human life a conscious activity susceptible to
improvement or debasement. A radical idea may be healthy as a provocation;
a temperate idea may be stultifying. It depends on the circumstances. One of the most
tiresome arguments against ideas is that their 'tendency' is to some dire condition --
to totalitarianism, or to moral relativism, or to a war of all against all."
-- Louis Menand
"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis."
-- Dante Alighieri
"He too serves a certain purpose who only stands and cheers."
-- Henry B. Adams
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the
poor to beg in the streets, steal bread, or sleep under a bridge."
-- Anatole France
"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."
-- Edmund Burke
"Education does not mean that we have become certified experts in business or mining or botany or journalism or epistemology;
it means that through the absorption of the moral, intellectual, and esthetic inheritance of the race we have come to
understand and control ourselves as well as the external world; that we have chosen the best as our associates both in spirit
and the flesh; that we have learned to add courtesy to culture, wisdom to knowledge, and forgiveness to understanding."
-- Will Durant
"Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is
but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the wildest
winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore?"
-- Herman Melville
"The most important political office is that of the private citizen."
-- Louis D. Brandeis
"If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable."
-- Louis D. Brandeis
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both."
-- Louis D. Brandeis
"It is an error to suppose that books have no influence; it is a slow influence, like flowing water carving out a canyon,
but it tells more and more with every year; and no one can pass an hour a day in the society of sages and heroes without
being lifted up a notch or two by the company he has kept."
-- Will Durant
"When you write, you’re trying to transpose what you’re thinking into something that is less like an annoying drone and more like a piece of music."
-- Louis Menand
"Sex is a continuum."
-- Gore Vidal
"I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should
make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibit the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state."
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to the Baptists of Danbury, Connecticut, 1802.
"The sum of our religion is peace and unanimity, but these can scarcely stand unless we define as little as possible,
and in many things leave one free to follow his own judgment, because there is great obscurity in many matters, and
man suffers from this almost congenital disease that he will not give in when once a controversy is started, and
after he is heated he regards as absolutely true that which he began to sponsor quite casually...."
-- Desiderius Erasmus
"Are we to have a censor whose imprimatur shall say what books may be sold, and what we may buy? And who is thus to dogmatize religious opinions for our citizens? Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched? Is a priest to be our inquisitor, or shall a layman, simple as ourselves, set up his reason as the rule of what we are to read, and what we must disbelieve?"
-- Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to N. G. Dufief, Philadelphia bookseller, 1814
"We are told that it is only people's objective actions that matter, and their subjective feelings are of no importance. Thus pacifists, by obstructing the war effort,
are 'objectively' aiding the Nazis; and therefore the fact that they may be personally hostile to Fascism is irrelevant. I have been guilty of saying this myself more than once. The same argument is applied to Trotskyism. Trotskyists are often credited, at any rate by Communists, with being active and conscious agents of Hitler; but when you point out the many and obvious reasons why this is unlikely to be true,
the 'objectively' line of talk is brought forward again. To criticize the Soviet Union helps Hitler: therefore 'Trotskyism is Fascism'. And when this has been established, the accusation of conscious treachery is usually repeated.
This is not only dishonest; it also carries a severe penalty with it. If you disregard people's motives, it becomes much harder to foresee their actions."
-- George Orwell, "As I Please," Tribune, 8 December 1944
"Wouldn't this be a great world if insecurity and desperation made us more attractive? If 'needy' were a turn-on?"
-- "Aaron Altman," Broadcast News
"The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand."
-- Lewis Thomas
"To be ignorant of what happened before you were born is to be ever a child. For what is man's lifetime unless the memory of past events is woven with those of earlier times?"
-- Cicero
"Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it."
-- Samuel Johnson, Life Of Johnson
"Very well, what did my critics say in attacking my character? I must read out their affidavit, so to speak, as though they were my legal accusers: Socrates is guilty of criminal meddling, in that he inquires into things below the earth and in the sky, and makes the weaker argument defeat the stronger, and teaches others to follow his example."
-- Socrates, via Plato, The Republic
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, represents, in the final analysis, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower
"The term, then, is obviously a relative one; my pedantry is your scholarship, his reasonable accuracy, her irreducible minimum of education, & someone else's ignorance."
-- H. W. Fowler
"Rules exist for good reasons, and in any art form the beginner must learn them and understand what they are for, then follow them for quite a while. A visual artist, pianist, dancer, fiction writer, all beginning artists are in the same boat here: learn the rules, understand them, follow them. It's called an apprenticeship. A mediocre artist never stops following the rules, slavishly follows guidelines, and seldom rises above mediocrity. An accomplished artist internalizes the rules to the point where they don't have to be consciously considered. After you've put in the time it takes to learn to swim, you never stop to think: now I move my arm, kick, raise my head, breathe. You just do it. The accomplished artist knows what the rules mean, how to use them, dodge them, ignore them altogether, or break them. This may be a wholly unconscious process of assimilation, one never articulated, but it has taken place."
-- Kate Wilhelm
"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed."
-- Albert Einstein
"The decisive moment in human evolution is perpetual."
-- Franz Kafka, Aphorisms
"All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."
-- Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho
"First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you."
-- Nicholas Klein, May, 1919, to the Third Biennial Convention of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (misattributed to Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, 1914 & variants).
"Nothing would be done at all, if a man waited till he could do it so well, that no one could find fault with it."
-- Lecture IX, John Henry Cardinal Newman
“Nothing is more common than for men to think that because they are familiar with words they understand the ideas they stand for.”
-- John Henry Cardinal Newman
"Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives."
-- James Madison
"Our credulity is a part of the imperfection of our natures. It is inherent in us to desire to generalize, when we ought, on the contrary, to guard ourselves very carefully from this tendency."
-- Napoleon I of France.
"The truth is, men are very hard to know, and yet, not to be deceived, we must judge them by their present actions, but for the present only."
-- Napoleon I of France.
"The barbarous custom of having men beaten who are suspected of having important secrets to reveal must be abolished. It has always been recognized that this way of interrogating men, by putting them to torture, produces nothing worthwhile. The poor wretches say anything that comes into their mind and what they think the interrogator wishes to know."
-- On the subject of torture, in a letter to Louis Alexandre Berthier (11 November 1798), published in Correspondance Napoleon edited by Henri Plon (1861), Vol. V, No. 3606, p. 128
"All living souls welcome whatever they are ready to cope with; all else they ignore, or pronounce to be monstrous and wrong, or deny to be possible."
-- George Santayana, Dialogues in Limbo (1926)
"American life is a powerful solvent. It seems to neutralize every intellectual element, however tough and alien it may be, and to fuse it in the native good will, complacency, thoughtlessness, and optimism."
-- George Santayana, Character and Opinion in the United States, (1920)
"If you should put even a little on a little, and should do this often, soon this too would become big."
-- Hesiod, Work And Days
"Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free."
-- Eugene V. Debs
"Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself."
-- Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign
"All that we have to do is to send two mujahidin to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written "al-Qaida," in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses without their achieving for it anything of note other than some benefits for their private companies."
-- Osama bin Laden
"Remember, Robin: evil is a pretty bad thing."
-- Batman
Gary Farber is now a licensed Quintuple Super-Sekrit Multi-dimensional Master Pundit.
He does not always refer to himself in the third person.
He is presently single.
The gefilte fish is dead. Donate via the donation button on the top left or I'll shoot this cutepanda. Don't you lovepandas?
Current Total # of Donations Since 2002: 1181
Subscribers to date at $5/month: 100 sign-ups; 91 cancellations; Total= 9
Supporter subscribers to date at $25/month: 16 sign-ups; 10 cancellation; Total= 6
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...writer[s] I find myself checking out repeatedly when I'm in the mood to play follow-the-links. They're not all people I agree with all the time, or even most of the time, but I've found them all to be thoughtful writers, and that's the important thing, or should be.
-- Tom Tomorrow
"Gary Farber is a gentleman, a scholar and one of the gems of the blogosphere."
-- Steve Hynd, Newshoggers.com
"Well argued, Gary. I hadn't seen anything that went into as much detail as I found in your blog."
-- Gareth Porter
Gary Farber is your one-man internet as always, with posts on every article there is.
-- Fafnir
Guessing that Gary is ignorant of anything that has ever been written down is, in my experience, unwise.
Just saying.
-- Hilzoy
I read Amygdala...with regularity, as do all sensible websurfers.
-- Jim Henley, Unqualified Offerings
Okay, he is annoying, but he still posts a lot of good stuff.
-- Avedon Carol, The Sideshow
Amygdala - So much stuff it reminds Unqualified Offerings that UO sometimes thinks of Gary Farber as "the liberal Instapundit." -- Jim Henley
...the thoughtful and highly intelligent Gary Farber... My first reaction was that I definitely need to appease Gary Farber of Amygdala, one of the geniuses of our age.
-- Brad deLong
Gary is a perceptive, intelligent, nice guy. Some of the stuff he comes up with is insightful, witty, and stimulating. And sometimes he manages to make me groan.
-- Charlie Stross
I bow before the shrillitudinousness of Gary Farber, who has been blogging like a fiend.
-- Ted Barlow, Crooked Timber
Favorite.... [...] ...all great stuff. [...] Gary Farber should never be without readers.
-- Ogged
I usually read you and Patrick several times a day, and I always get something from them. You've got great links, intellectually honest commentary, and a sense of humor. What's not to like?
-- Ted Barlow
One of my issues with many poli-blogs is the dickhead tone so many bloggers affect to express their sense of righteous indignation. Gary Farber's thoughtful leftie takes on the world stand in sharp contrast with the usual rhetorical bullying. Plus, he likes "Pogo," which clearly attests to his unassaultable good taste.
-- oakhaus.com
The only trouble with reading Amygdala is that it makes me feel like such a slacker. That Man Farber's a linking, posting, commenting machine, I tell you!
-- John Robinson, Sore Eyes
Jaysus. I saw him do something like this before, on a thread about Israel. It was pretty brutal. It's like watching one of those old WWF wrestlers grab an opponent's
face and grind away until the guy starts crying. I mean that in a nice & admiring way, you know.
-- Fontana Labs, Unfogged
We read you Gary Farber! We read you all the time! Its just that we are lazy with our blogroll. We are so very very lazy. We are always the last ones to the party but we always have snazzy bow ties.
-- Fafnir, Fafblog!
Gary Farber you are a genius of mad scientist proportions. I will bet there are like huge brains growin in jars all over your house.
-- Fafnir, Fafblog!
Gary Farber is the hardest working man in show blog business. He's like a young Gene Hackman blogging with his hair on fire, or something.
-- Belle Waring, John & Belle Have A Blog
Gary Farber only has two blogging modes: not at all, and 20 billion interesting posts a day [...] someone on the interweb whose opinions I can trust....
-- Belle Waring, John & Belle Have A Blog
Isn't Gary a cracking blogger, apropos of nothing in particular?
-- Alison Scott
Gary Farber takes me to task, in a way befitting the gentleman he is.
-- Stephen Green, Vodkapundit
My friend Gary Farber at Amygdala is the sort of liberal for whom I happily give three cheers. [...] Damned incisive blogging....
-- Midwest Conservative Journal
If I ever start a paper, Clueless writes the foreign affairs column, Layne handles the city beat, Welch has the roving-reporter job, Tom Tomorrow runs the comic section (which carries Treacher, of course). MediaMinded runs the slots - that's the type of editor I want as the last line of defense. InstantMan runs the edit page - and you can forget about your Ivins and Wills and Friedmans and Teepens on the edit page - it's all Blair, VodkaP, C. Johnson, Aspara, Farber, Galt, and a dozen other worthies, with Justin 'I am smoking in such a provocative fashion' Raimondo tossed in for balance and comic relief.
Who wouldn't buy that paper? Who wouldn't want to read it? Who wouldn't climb over their mother to be in it?
-- James Lileks
I do appreciate your role and the role of Amygdala as a pioneering effort in the integration of fanwriters with social conscience into the larger blogosphere of social conscience.
-- Lenny Bailes
Every single post in that part of Amygdala visible on my screen is either funny or bracing or important. Is it always like this? -- Natalie Solent
People I've known and still miss include Isaac Asimov, rich brown, Charles Burbee, F. M. "Buzz" Busby, Terry Carr, A. Vincent Clarke, Bob Doyle, George Alec Effinger, Abi Frost,
Bill & Sherry Fesselmeyer, George Flynn, John Milo "Mike" Ford. John Foyster, Mike Glicksohn, Jay Haldeman, Neith Hammond (Asenath Katrina Hammond)/DominEditrix , Chuch Harris, Mike Hinge, Lee Hoffman, Terry Hughes, Damon Knight, Ross Pavlac, Bruce Pelz, Elmer Perdue, Tom Perry,
Larry Propp, Bill Rotsler, Art Saha, Bob Shaw, Martin Smith, Harry Stubbs, Bob Tucker, Harry Warner, Jr., Jack Williamson, Walter A. Willis, Susan Wood, Kate Worley, and Roger Zelazny.
It's just a start, it only gets longer, many are unintentionally left out.
And She of whom I must write someday.
SENATE DETAINEE HEARINGS were held yesterday, June 15th, 2005, by the Senate Judiciary Committee. I've not spotted a transcript on the web yet, but have been given one (the statements put on the record in advance are here). Some lengthy quotes follow, starting with opening statements, starting with Republican Chair Arlen Spector, and then Democratic Senator Pat Leahy:
SPECTER: The starting point for this issue is the Constitution of the United States. Under Article I, Section 8, Clauses 10 and 11, the Constitution explicitly confers upon Congress the power, quote, "to define and punish offenses against the laws of nations," close quote, and, quote, "to make rules concerning captures on land and water."
The executive branch issued on November 13th, 2001, under the caption "Presidential Executive Military Order: Rules Promulgated for Detention, Treatment and Trial of Certain Noncitizens in the War Against Terror." And that on July 7th, 2004, nine days after a trilogy of Supreme Court cases, the Department of Defense created combat status review tribunals.
The focus of today's hearing is going to be on the procedures used with detainees.
We do not have within the scope of this hearing the issues of torture or mistreatment. The subject we have today is very, very complicated in and of itself, and there will be sufficient time for later hearings on other related matters.
The Supreme Court of the United States, on June 28th of 2004, came down with a complex series of opinions in three cases, one of which only has a plurality opinion, which means four justices agreed on an opinion so there isn't an opinion of the court. The two others were five-person majority opinions. And a total of some 13 opinions were issued at all.
And I think any fair analysis would say that we have a crazy quilt which we are dealing with here. And that's been supplemented by three opinions in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, two of which have said detainees' rights are being violated. One opinion saying detainees' rights are being upheld.
They've been sitting in the Court of Appeals for a very long period of time. They were decided one before 2004 ended, and the other two in early 2005. And the Judiciary Committee is going to consider a touchy subject, but we're going to consider putting time limits on the disposition of these highly sensitive cases.
Judges don't like that. We don't want to interfere with their judicial independence, but the Congress does have the authority to establish time parameters, which we have done in a number of situations.
SPECTER: The only unifying factor coming out of the multitude of opinions of the Supreme Court of the United States, was that it's really the job of the Congress. And I think I made a pretty good case for that.
Senator Durbin and I introduced legislation in 2002 and Congressman Frank introduced legislation, but none of it has gone anywhere and there's a real question as to why Congress hasn't handled it.
It may be that it's too hot to handle for Congress, may be that it's too complex to handle for Congress, or it may be that Congress wants to sit back as we customarily do, awaiting some action with the court no matter how long it takes: Plessy v. Fergusson in 1896 to Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.
But at any rate, Congress hasn't acted, and that's really what the focus of our hearing is today as to what ought to be done.
Justice Scalia wrote in an opinion joined by the chief justice and Justice Thomas, quote, "Congress is in session. If it had wished to change federal judges' habeas jurisdiction from what this court held that to be it could have done so," which is certainly true.
Then Justice Scalia turned his wrath on his colleagues in the Supreme Court of the United States, saying, quote, "and it could have done so by intelligent revision of the statutes instead of today's clumsy countertextual interpretation that confers upon wartime prisoners greater rights than domestic detainees."
I ordinarily stop at five minutes, but this is a complex subject. I'm going to take a very small amount of extra time from my colleagues.
Then Justice Scalia went on to say, in certainly not subdued language, quote, "For this court to create such a monstrous scheme in time of war and in frustration of our military commanders' reliance upon clearly stated prior law is judicial adventurism of the worse sort," close quote.
We constantly complain that the court makes the law and here we are having set back with our constitutional mandate pretty clear.
In more circumspect language, Justice Stevens went on to make a point which is worth emphasizing here this morning. Now, this opinion was joined in by Justice Stevens, in dissent in Hamdi, which may account for Justice Scalia's more temperate language.
He wrote that he could not determine the, quote, "government security needs," close quote, or the necessity to, quote, "obtain intelligence through interrogation," concluding, quote, "it is far beyond my competence or the court's competence to determine that but it's not beyond the Congress'. If civil rights are to be curtailed during wartime, it must be done openly and democratically as the Constitution requires rather than by silent erosion through an opinion of the court."
As noted in the Congressional Research Service, the Supreme Court decisions leave many questions unanswered for lower courts. The definition of the term "enemy combatant," the scope of legal procedures due persons designated as such. Would habeas corpus be foreclosed if a detainee is convicted by a military commission? Would a detainee have access to United States courts where held abroad by the United States military in location where the United States does not exercise full jurisdiction and control?
SPECTER: And then in Judge Green's opinion -- and I won't take much more time -- Judge Green puts on the line many, many other critical issues which have yet to be defined. So that it seems to me that Congress has its work cut out for it as we look at a very, very tough issue on how we handle detainees.
That's a very abbreviated statement of what I'd like to say.
And well said it was. Senator Leahy's statement on the record (I use this version rather than my transcript because, frankly, it's formatted better) follows:
It has been well over three years since the Administration began to hold detainees at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The first batch of 20 detainees arrived in January 2002. There are now more than 500 detainees at Guantanamo, although the exact number remains unclear.
Today’s hearing is a welcome, if long overdue, opportunity to discuss what we should do with the Guantanamo detainees and what role Congress should take in developing long-term policies for detaining and trying terrorism suspects. I commend the Chairman for taking the initiative to confront these important and difficult issues.
No Coherent Process
The Administration’s policies on detainees are clearly not working, and the Administration does not have a coherent theory for how to proceed. Late in 2001, military commissions were defended by our current Attorney General as tribunals that “can dispense justice swiftly, close to where our forces may be fighting, without years of pretrial proceedings or post-trial appeals.” That was more than three years ago. But far from assuring swift justice, there has been no justice at all. We have yet to see a single military commission complete a hearing or convict a suspected terrorist, and the whole process is now hopelessly tied up in litigation.
Until a year ago, the Administration seemed to hold tight to the notion that by detaining prisoners at Guantanamo Bay -- a location where it asserted prisoners had no right of access to the courts -- it could shield itself from judicial challenge. But the Supreme Court decision in Rasul v. Bush rejected this flawed legal theory. Now it seems that all the Administration has left to cling to is the amorphous notion of a “war on terror” that has no end.
If the Administration had applied the Geneva Conventions from the start, as former Secretary of State Powell strongly urged it to do, we would not be in the mess we are in today. Combatants who merited POW status could have been held for the duration of active hostilities. Those who did not meet the POW standards could be prosecuted under our existing criminal laws, or for violating the laws of war. These standards and procedures were used for decades by our military, including in the first Gulf War. Unfortunately, the Administration made its determination on the basis of flawed understandings of the Geneva Conventions and against the advice of military and State Department attorneys. We now see the repercussions of those poorly conceived policies.
Alternatively, if the Administration had made better use of the Federal courts, we would not be in this mess. The handful of suspected terrorists who were indicted for their crimes have been severely punished. Shoe bomber Richard Reid was sentenced to life in prison. John Walker Lindh, the so-called “American Taliban,” was sentenced to 20 years, as was the Ohio truck driver who plotted to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge. Even Zacharias Moussoui, whose case has been complex and challenging for all involved, has now pleaded guilty; the only question remaining is whether he faces life in prison or death.
The Fruits Of Unilateralism
What has become clear over the past three years is that the Administration’s policies were poorly reasoned and extremely shortsighted. The Administration’s insistence on unilateralism – a tendency and a problem that has colored and undermined so many of the Administration’s policies – has led to poor decisions and poor practices in detention policies, as well. From the start, the Administration’s answer to every question about our detention policies has been, “Trust us.” Trust us that we know the law, and that we will comply with it. Trust us to treat detainees humanely and in accordance with our laws and treaties. Trust us that Guantanamo will make Americans safer. More than three years later, the one thing we know for certain is that any trust we may have had was misplaced.
First, the Administration did not know or follow the law. The list of Federal court reversals of this Administration’s policies and practices is long. From the Supreme Court’s rejection of the claim that Guantanamo Bay is a land of legal limbo – or, as one Administration official has said, “the legal equivalent of outer space” – to a recent district court holding that the current military commission regulations are unlawful, there is much that needs attention and correction. The Administration has also flagrantly violated our international treaty obligations. International law, not to mention the Defense Department’s own policies, requires the registration and accounting of all detainees. Yet we know that senior Administration officials approved a policy of keeping detainees off of the official roles in order to hide them from the International Committee of the Red Cross. The Administration also continues to defend its use of extraordinary rendition to transfer terrorism suspects in U.S. custody to the custody of countries where they are likely to be tortured, a patent violation of the Convention Against Torture.
Second, the Administration has not lived up to its promise to treat detainees humanely. Even with the Administration’s continued stonewalling against any independent investigation into the mistreatment of detainees, we continue to learn of more abuses on almost a daily basis. If American POWs were treated in this way, the Administration would be up in arms. Yet when these actions take place in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Guantanamo, the Administration refuses to acknowledge any wrongdoing. The dangerous implications that this posture has for our own troops and citizens are obvious.
Third, and this brings us to the bottom line: The net effect of all of these problems is that Guantanamo has not made our country safer. It is increasingly clear that the Administration’s policies have seriously damaged our reputation in the world and that they are making us less safe. The stain of Guantanamo has become the primary recruiting tool for our enemies. President Bush often speaks of spreading democratic values across the Middle East, but Guantanamo is not a reflection of the values that he encourages other nations to adopt. The United States has often criticized other nations for operating secret prisons, where detainees are hidden away and denied any meaningful opportunity to contest their detention. Now we have our own such prisons. Even if the Administration fails to see the hypocrisy in this situation, the rest of the world does not.
A Festering Threat
Guantanamo Bay – along with Abu Ghraib – is an international embarrassment to our nation and to our ideals, and it remains a festering threat to our security. America was once viewed as a leader in human rights and the rule of law, but Guantanamo has undermined our leadership, damaged our credibility and drained the world’s goodwill for America at alarming rates. Even our closest allies cannot condone the policies embraced by this government, not to mention the significant damage that has been caused by allegations and proven incidents of detainee abuse in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo. These are not the policies of a great and just nation like ours, and this is not the American system of justice.
The 9/11 Commission understood that military strength alone is not sufficient to defend our nation against terrorism; there must also be a role for working cooperatively with the rest of the world. In its report, the Commission stated that “the U.S. government must define what the message is, what it stands for. We should offer an example of moral leadership in the world, committed to treat people humanely, abide by the rule of law, and be generous and caring to our neighbors.” Our current detention policies fall woefully short of this ideal.
The Administration got itself into this mess because it refused to accept Congress as a partner in the war on terror and insisted on acting unilaterally. Following the start of combat in Afghanistan in October 2001, I urged President Bush to work with Congress to fashion appropriate rules and procedures for detaining and punishing suspected terrorists. Our current Chairman, Senator Specter, did the same. We both noted at the time that our government is at its strongest when the Executive and Legislative branches of government act in concert. Unfortunately, the President was determined to go it alone.
Up until now, this Republican-led Congress has been content to go along for the ride. As the Administration dug itself deeper and deeper into a hole, we stood idly by. Instead of providing checks and balances, we wrote one blank check after another.
Congress’s Constitutional Role
This must change. The Constitution provides that Congress, not the President, has the power to “make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water.” Congress, not the President, has the power to “define and punish Offenses against the Law of Nations.” And Congress, not the President, has the power of the purse.
What is the Administration’s plan for Guantanamo Bay, assuming there is one? What does the Administration intend to do with the more than 500 detainees still imprisoned there? How many will be released, and when? How many will be charged and tried, and when?
Chicken Dinners And Other Diversions
The Administration consistently insists that these detainees pose a threat to the safety of Americans. Vice President Cheney said that just the other day. If that is true, there must be evidence to support it. If there is evidence, then they should prosecute these people.
But we also know that some of the detainees have been wrongly detained. And I suspect there are others who have not yet been released, against whom the evidence is weak at best. It is one thing if they are being detained in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. But if not, they do not belong there.
This week the Administration and its defenders have been trying to change the subject from the legal morass that Guantanamo has become, by producing props of chicken dinners and such, seeming to argue that it is more Club Med than prison. Let’s get real. People have been kept in cages for three years, with no end in sight and no workable process to lead us there.
Guantanamo Bay is causing immeasurable damage to our reputation as a defender of democracy and a beacon of human rights around the world. The Administration has yet to articulate a coherent plan to repair the damage. The Congress has abdicated its oversight responsibilities for far too long. The Administration has placed this nation in an untenable situation, and it is time for Congress to demand a way out.
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