I protest.

He said, she said.

From the "useless politician" category of public discourse comes a letter from California Senator Dianne Feinstein about, um, "the future of Iraq." This was supposedly in response to the following letter which I wrote at the instigation of the ACLU:

As your constituent, I strongly urge you to oppose the practice of indefinite detention of so-called 'enemy combatants' without charges, without a trial and without a right to a lawyer, and to oppose any legislation that would endorse this practice. By detaining individuals without charging them with a crime, the Bush Administration is violating international law and the U.S. Constitution.

Indefinite confinement of a so-called 'enemy combatant' without charge in a military brig violates the Constitution even in wartime. Our system of checks and balances was designed to ensure that individual liberty does not rest on the good faith of government officials. The rule of law assures us that proper checks and balances are placed on the exercise of government authority.

Prisoners who are detained in a zone of combat operations, such as those captured in Iraq and Afghanistan, apparently need not be criminally charged but can, consistent with the Geneva Conventions, be held as prisoners of war or as 'civilian internees.' While temporary military detention may be lawful for U.S. citizens who are captured fighting for the other side, they must promptly be taken out of the combat zone and given judicial review (as occurred, for example, with John Walker Lindh). The Bush Administration's treatment of other prisoners, even those in the United States, as 'enemy combatants' violates both the U.S. Constitution and the Geneva Conventions and must be ended.

I believe that access to a lawyer and a trial is critical to ensuring innocent people are not unfairly detained. If the government has evidence an individual is involved with terrorist activities, it can charge the person with a crime under existing law. By not giving these people a fair trial, the government is not only committing a grave injustice but is violating the principle of presumed innocence.

Once again, I urge you to oppose the Bush Administration's practice of indefinite detention and to oppose any legislation that would endorse or support this practice. I believe that individuals should never be denied their Constitutional rights, that they should not held without access to a lawyer or the requirement that the government prove their guilt at a trial.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this matter.

Here is Feinstein's (form letter) reply:

Thank you for writing me regarding the future of Iraq. I appreciate hearing from you on this important issue.

Throughout the majority of Iraq, the regime of Saddam Hussein has been defeated and removed from power. Despite our success in freeing the Iraqi people, our military continues to encounter resistance throughout the country and must maintain a presence until an interim authority can be established to restore order and begin helping the Iraqi people reconstitute their basic social services.

So, as the fighting stops and as the remnants of the regime are removed, we must take the lead in rebuilding the Iraqi nation, in stabilizing its new government, in providing interim security to prevent the emergence of tribal hostilities and to see that Iraq is no longer a producer of weapons of mass destruction.

I am hopeful that all Iraqis of every ethnic and faith group, large and small, will be engaged in the process to establish a new Iraq. I firmly believe that the U.S. should work closely with the United Nations and our allies in the reconstruction of Iraq.

It is essential to demonstrate to Muslims everywhere that the United States, while a powerful nation, is motivated by a sincere desire to one day see the entire world safe, prosperous, and free.

Again, thank you for writing. I hope you will continue to keep me informed of your views and concerns. If you should have any further questions or comments, please do not hesitate to contact my Washington, D.C. staff at (202) 224-3841.

Sincerely yours,

[etc.]

Hum. So I write about a fairly strictly domestic issue regarding "enemy combatants" and her staff replies with a form letter about the future of Iraq? Jesus H. Christ on a pogo stick! Were not all the realistic alternatives worse, I would be voting against her come the next time she's up for reelection. While I do tend to agree with her regarding a few social issues and a few more fiscal issues, as far as I'm concerned Feinstein's best days are long over. At this point she's pretty much indistinguishable from many California Republicans. She may still be to the left of Richard Nixon, but not by much.

Were it not for the fact that there are a hundred hungry, sharklike Republican ultraconservatives just waiting for an opportunity to grab that Senate seat, I would suggest she step down and let someone younger and somewhat more liberal take over. As it is, I can only suggest that she buy a clue, preferably by speaking with people like Al Gore and Nancy Pelosi. She also needs to fire whoever it was who chose to answer my "enemy combatant" letter with a canned "future of Iraq" form letter.

Feh. This is why I generally despise politicians.

No good war.

Jeanne at Body and Soul reminds us in Generations that the "greatest generation" wasn't so great and that war is invariably something to be avoided if at all possible. Go read it.

Agreeing with a libertarian?

Normally I rarely if ever agree with any libertarian viewpoint, but in this particular case Jim Henley nails it:

But the big thing is this: President Bush is absolutely responsible for everything that happens in his administration, and to the extent that the Pentagon memo conditioned policy, he is first in line for blame. HOWEVER. President Bush is no one's idea of a legal mind. He may have initiated the project that became the memo, but he didn't draft the thing. High-level government lawyers, most of them undoubtedly political appointees, did that. What that means is that there is systemic corruption in the Republican Party as an institution - "Bush's Willing Torturers" we might call them. These are people that came up with the idea that the Constitutional phrase "he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed" meant

authority to set aside the laws is "inherent in the president."

They represent a deadly danger to the American system and they are multiple. It's not one guy somewhere, it's a movement. Until the Republican Party roots them out, that Party is the enemy, not just of libertarians, but of anyone who values individual freedom and republican government. From the standpoint of liberty, there can no longer be any justification for preferring the Republicans to the Democrats.

Politically, I'm no libertarian by any stretch, but I am very much a civil libertarian. This issue strikes to the heart of the liberties of each and every one of us. Today it's a purported "Al Qaeda terrorist." Tomorrow it's you.

Not if I can help it.

Thuggery.

Last December, it was an Australian. Last month, it was a reporter from the Guardian: American homeland security. Again, a journalist without an "I-Visa" was arrested, held, treated inhumanely and finally deported, all because she was honest when she told the Customs agent who she was and why she was here.

You know, if I were a British terrorist trying to sneak into the United States, of course I would, first, pretend to be a journalist, second, forget to bring my "I-Visa" and, third, tell the Customs agent this.

If there are any foreign journalists reading this who want to avoid this particular problem, it's simple: Lie. You're a tourist visiting LA for the weather. Hell, them them you're coming to visit me! I only live about twenty minutes from the airport. But whatever you do, don't tell them you're a journalist. Oh, and fuck their god-damned "I-Visa."

The United States has joined the exalted ranks of countries like Cuba, North Korea and Iran in requiring special visas for journalists.

Yeah, you gotta watch those foreign journalists. They might actually write about what they see. Well, this woman did.

… For the first time, I raised my voice: "How dare you touch my private things?"

"How dare you treat an American officer with disrespect?" he shouted back, indignantly. "Believe me, we have treated you with much more respect than other people. You should go to places like Iran, you'd see a big difference." The irony is that it is only "countries like Iran" (for example, Cuba, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe) that have a visa requirement for journalists. It is unheard of in open societies, and, in spite of now being enforced in the US, is still so obscure that most journalists are not familiar with it. Thirteen foreign journalists were detained and deported from the US last year, 12 of them from LAX.

How dare she "treat an American officer with disrespect?" Maybe because he was treating her with disrespect. She was charged, tried and found guilty without ever having a chance to defend herself. She was deported and now has a criminal record in the United States. All for telling the truth that she was here, as a journalist, to interview someone.

Though my experience was far removed from the images of real torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, it was also, as one American friend put it, "conceptually related", at distant ends of the same continuum and dictated by a disregard for the humanity of those deemed "in the wrong". American bloggers and journalists would later see my experience as reflecting the current malaise in the country. Dennis Roddy wrote in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: "Our enemies are now more important to us than our friends ... Much of the obsession with homeland security seems to turn on the idea of the world infecting the US."

Indeed. Unfortunately, systematic harassment of foreign journalists is in the same realm as using torture as a matter of course. When did we become Iraq?

As documented by Reporters Without Borders and by the American Society of Newspaper Editors (Asne) in letters to Colin Powell and Tom Ridge, cases such as mine are part of a systemic policy of harassing media representatives from 27 friendly countries whose citizens - not journalists! - can travel to the US without a visa, for 90 days. According to Asne, this policy "could lead to a degradation of the atmosphere of mutual trust that has traditionally been extended professional journalists in these nations". Asne requested that the state department put pressure on customs and immigration to "repair the injustice that has been visited upon our colleagues". Someone must have listened, because the press office at the department of homeland security recently issued a memo announcing that, although the I-visa is still needed (and I've just received mine), new guidelines now give the "Port Directors leeway when it comes to allowing journalists to enter the US who are clearly no threat to our security". Well, fine, but doesn't that imply some journalists are a threat?

(Emphasis mine.) Of course it does. Remember, those journalists might not be as tame and quiet-like as our homegrown variety. They might actually report the truth.

Maybe we are. During my surreal interlude at LAX, I told the officer taking my fingerprints that I would be writing about it all. "No doubt," he snorted. "And anything you'll write won't be the truth."

Oh, really? As opposed to what, Fox News?

It is time, and past time, that this kind of crap was stopped. In the meantime, though, there's always the way of civil disobedience. It's simple: Lie. While I have a firm and unshakable belief in the value of honesty, in this particular case, the only right thing is for foreign journalists coming into the US to lie about their intentions. If they can come in as citizens, then that's what they should do, and deny those petty tyrants their victims.

(Found via Natasha at Pacific Views, Torture and Humiliation.)

Welcome to the New Amerika.

In the BBC article "Librarian's stand against federal law" their correspondent Humphrey Hawksley interviews a Berkeley librarian about the so-called "USA PATRIOT" act. The librarian, Jacky Griffin, is director of the Berkeley city library; she says what most of us already know, that not only can the FBI now demand any information at all from her, but she is prevented from even mentioning that they've made that demand:

"All of this is secret," she says. "All the courts operate in secret.

"The subpoenas are done in secret and any librarian who is approached is not allowed to talk about it under penalty of going to jail."

With her is Linda Maio, a soft-spoken city councillor who technically is Jacky's boss.

"But couldn't the city stand behind you on this," she says "and defend you?"

Jacky cuts her off. "I'm not a lawyer, but my guess is that I would be rotting in jail while you and the FBI are arguing it out in court."

My fairly educated guess is that Jacky is right.

At the other extreme, Hawksley stopped for a few interviews in the town of Alliance, Nebraska, population 10,000. According to the city manager,

"We all support the Patriot Act here" ... "And we watch out for any strangers coming into town too."

There's a reason Nebraska is known by the more sophisticated as a "flyover" state. Reading this, I would certainly not want to drive through it. With my long hair and California license plates, I could very easily end up among the disappeared. And if you think I'm being "shrill" or "paranoid," consider Jose Padilla, who has been held without charge, trial, access to a lawyer or to his family for more than two years.

As if the city manager wasn't enough, though, we have this blinkered idiot:

As he was speaking a young woman in jeans and denim jacket, her hair tied decisively back, got out her four wheel drive and came across.

"I think it's right," she said. "Terrorism has gone too far overboard and I will give up some of my freedoms to know that I am safe."

For her, I of course quote that noted terrorist Benjamin Franklin:

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

She wants safety? I'll give her safety! She would probably be very safe in the cell next to Padilla! How dare she advocate trading not only her own liberty but mine and that of my children for some illusory "safety?" When she has traded her freedom away entirely, who will then keep her "safe" from those who purport to provide that safety? The citizens of North Korea are pretty "safe," too, for some definition of "safe." Safe to starve to death, anyway.

Hawksley ends his report

in the Arab quarter of Brooklyn, where stories are plentiful about harassment of the Arab-Muslim community.

The talk is not only about Guantanamo Bay, but also about young men disappearing for weeks on end, forced deportations, being hauled in for questioning for speaking out of line.

They talk in detail about Section 215 - the bit which deals with personal records, and of the Metropolitan Corrections Facility on the corner of 29th Street and Third Avenue, where people are held without trial and access to lawyers.

"I don't know what's happening to this country," said Ihab Tabir, a Brooklyn immigration lawyer who is originally from Jordan.

"If you say anything against what is happening in Iraq for example, you can be arrested.

"You can't speak openly on the street anymore. I tell you, everyone is afraid."

Let me repeat this: "If you say anything against what is happening in Iraq for example, you can be arrested."

This is what Franklin meant. Is this "the land of the free?" Is this the country that embraces "freedom of speech?" Apparently not. Many have claimed that this is the United States which is somehow "special" and therefore "it can't happen here." Well I'll tell you that it is happening here. When an Arab immigrant in Brooklyn can't freely express himself in public, how long is it before they get to the rest of us? How long will it be before they shut me down for daring to criticize their actions? And by "they" I of course mean our so-called "Justice" Department, under the direction of John Ashcroft, religious zealot and would-be student of Heinrich Himmler.

This is why I'm a member of the ACLU. As I've written here before, it was only when the ACLU formally announced their opposition to the so-called "USA PATRIOT" act that I joined. Since then I've seen them steadily working to defeat Ashcroft and the Act itself. The ACLU is one of the tiny number of organizations actively working for, rather than against, our liberties. Actively opposing this kind of abuse of power is the only way we will keep the freedom we tend to take for granted. Despite the ignorant assertions of that stupid woman in Nebraska.

Or, alternatively, we could all find ourselves living in something very like Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia. Or perhaps like the Islamic theocracy in Iran, only in our case it would be a Christian theocracy.

Personally, I would rather not be jailed, tortured or executed for my beliefs.

Would you?

The better man.

Atrios catches the explanation of the small crocheted bracelet that Bill Clinton has been seen wearing. He refers to an article in the Mail and Guardian Online about the Clinton's interview for the Guardian. Atrios chose this from the article:

We ask him about the red and blue crocheted band around his right wrist -- an incongruous clash with the statesman attire. For the first time in the interview he becomes emotional, the voice catching and his eyes redening. "I've worn it for two years. I went there [to Colombia] and met these unbelievable kids from a village on the edge of the rainforest where the narco-traffickers are dominant," he says. "They sang and danced for peace and I fell in love with these kids. I asked them to perform at the White House one Christmas. They came with the culture minister, a magnificently attractive woman called Consuelo. The bad guys hated these kids because they made them look like what they are. The guerillas couldn't kill these children, so they murdered her ... I can still hardly talk about this.

"Two years ago they asked me back and I said, 'I'll come, but you've got to bring those kids to see me.' So I turn up -- and the children greeted me at the airport, along with the new culture minister -- the niece of the murdered woman. And they gave me this bracelet, which I've never taken off."

This little story ended the interview, by the way.

Now, can you imagine George W. Bush doing this? Or even seriously considering doing this? Can you imagine him getting choked up about it? Or actually wearing the little, ratty-looking bracelet for two years, continuously, just because he cared about those kids and about the murder of the former culture minister?

I certainly can't. I can imagine him making nasty jokes about them, but I can't at all imagine him really caring about them.

No matter how stupid Clinton was to cheat on his wife, to abuse his position for sex and then to lie about it when he got caught (and as he admits, he was pretty damned stupid for doing all this), he is by far the better man than George W. Bush, for this reason if for no other. One measure of a human being is the compassion they have for those less fortunate than themselves. Bill Clinton has that compassion. George W. Bush doesn't even know the meaning of the word.