THE FRIDAY REVIEW: No More Commissions

We live in an age of independent commissions. Bipartisan, non-partisan, or a pragmatic mixture of both, these commissions draw on political figures, civil society groups, charismatic individuals, and professional experts to resolve difficult political issues in a consensual, non-conflictual way. Nowhere have they been more prevalent than the war on terror. Besides the famous 9/11 commission, there has also been the independent commission on pre-war intelligence. In England, the Hutton Inquiry investigated the death of Iraqi arms expert David Kelly, becoming embroiled in the debate about the Iraq War. US Labor and activist groups (like Amnesty International) have called for a commission on Abu Ghraib and torture. Lefty groups have parroted the form, founding a ‘Bush commission’ to try the President for various war crimes and crimes against humanity.

These commissions have the appearance of being critical devices, but they are false friends. No doubt, their independence from any particular party and especially the Bush administration makes them appear like they can uncover the lies and deceptions of all involved. Moreover, they appear to be able to give impartial policy recommendations, untouched by special interests and partisan projects. Yet these very features are what makes them problematic.

First, there is something in bad-faith about hoping independent authorities will uncover hidden hypocrisy and interests. This reflects a presumption that all politics is in some way corrupt, and that the only way to the real truth is through apolitical inquiries. If the very premise of our criticism is that direct involvement in politics is corrupting then we are likely to remain on the sidelines – hollering and pointing, but never effectively intervening.

Second, imbuing these commissions with authority is an abdication of responsibility by the rest of us. Since the authority of these commissions is based on their lack of affiliation, then they are by nature unaccountable. Looking to them to as critical agents is a bit like asking for divine intervention. The most ‘we’ can do is impugn the independence and truly impartial character of the commission, but our role as political agents is essentially passive. Indeed, there is something profoundly undemocratic and conservative about submitting ourselves to these authorities who draw their legitimacy from their un-representative nature.

Third, not only is it an abdication of responsibility on our part, but also reflects a lack of confidence in the strength of our own arguments. Resorting to independent commissions is a way of trying to borrow the authority of moderate, consensual procedures for a particular political project. There is little reason for such timidity. Indeed, it can lead to outright confusion about the nature of the claims we are making. After all, these commissions operate at the level of individual, criminal responsibility or specific mistakes. As such, they can never be the vehicles for addressing systemic, social problems. They are mechanisms of internal reform, not external criticism. Therefore, any appeal to the authority or statements of such bodies makes it appear we are simply interested in impugning the integrity of a particular individual, or reforming the system, rather than developing a truly independent, critical position. Borrowing the authority of others is no substitute for asserting oneself.

Fourth, in actual fact, the recommendations of these commissions are by necessity moderate in character. They function according to the logic of compromise and consensus. The 9/11 commission’s recommendations were a package of reasonable reforms of the intelligence system in the sense that everyone could agree on them. But it said nothing about the war on terror itself. The point is that, part of the way impartiality and objectivity is secured is by including all sides, which ensures that all fundamental points of disagreement are pushed outside or ignored for the sake of building consensus. Indeed, basic premises – like whether there should be a ‘war on terror’ – are tacitly accepted rather than subjected to critical scrutiny.

And when these kinds of commissions do not make specific recommendations, they are still ineffective on their own precisely because they have no affiliation. For example, the Kay Report found that Bush was wrong about weapons of mass destruction, but this was of no consequence because there was no politically organized body to link this particular finding to an overall critique of the administration. Real criticism is not a matter of finger-pointing and revealing lies, nor about giving pragmatic proposals. It is a matter of giving a particular interpretation to facts, and of making such criticisms politically effective through our own activity. The revelation of lies alone might erode the moral authority of those in power, but it does little to develop a real alternative.

Indeed, at heart it is a question of whether a real alternative exists or not. If it does, then there is no reason to resort to apolitical and unaccountable commissions. Rather, this alternative should be asserted directly, on its own terms, and not expect others to do our dirty work for us. Many activists may not see commissions as substitutes for real opposition, but, as noted at the beginning, still advocate for them as part of a general strategy of opposition. Our argument is that, at best, these are a distraction – a waste of time and effort. At worst, they substitute for the development of real arguments against the politics of fear, and lead us to see politics as mere impartial, consensus-building, rather than as a competition amongst alternatives. It is good to have the truth on our side. But this truth is not merely one of the facts – be they prewar intelligence, or who knew what when. It is also the truth of an analysis of the war on terror, and of an independent, critical principle. An independent commission or tribunal might very well indict Bush for crimes, real and imagined. But it will never indict the war on terror itself. That is something that can only be done politically, in a partisan way. Conflict is not in itself good, but nor is impartiality. Principled partisanship is the essence of politics, and is the only means of effective criticism and of affirming the truth.

Ceding the Language of Liberty

We have argued that the war on terror is not simply a plot of the Bush administration, but emerges from deeper problems in our society. We need to analyze and confront the social context in which contemporary anxiety arises. To this end this review of Russell Jacoby’s new book Picture Imperfect: Utopian Thinking in an Anti-Utopian Age covers some useful ground. The reviewer, Ellen Willis, from NYU’s Department of Journalism, writes:

‘Today, anxiety is a first principle of social life.’

The immediate problem is a general acceptance of fear as a founding principle and the consequent abandonment of an agenda based on liberty. As Willis puts it:

the contemporary left has not posed…questions in these terms; on the contrary, it has ceded the language of freedom and pleasure, “opportunity” and “ownership,” to the libertarian right.

We could not agree more. Ceding ‘the language of freedom and pleasure’ is one of the most serious problems facing us, and accounts for much of the political disorientation and scattershot character of the ‘left-wing’ opposition. We might go so far as to say that, with the absence of debates over first principles, it is hard to identify ‘left’ and ‘right’. Trying to recreate a ‘left’ out of shared opposition to Bush is an ad hoc measure, patching over the fraying tatters of an increasingly disorganized and pragmatic opposition. It also forestalls serious thinking about the future. The only way to rekindle our utopian imagination is by critiquing the way ‘anxiety is a first principle of social life’, and creating the space in which a more positive principle can guide our actions. That is why we think the most urgent thing is to develop a coherent and principled opposition to the war on terror, rather than come up with most immediately effective criticisms of Bush.

That Padilla Case

Everybody is reporting that the conservative Fourth Circuit has refused the government’s request to transfer Jose Padilla to Miami. The Bush administration wants to prosecute Padilla for different, lesser, crimes than the original ‘dirty bomb’ charges used to detain him for three and a half years as an enemy combatant. Smelling a rat, the Fourth Circuit seems to have come to the conclusion that the administration was just trying to avoid having the Supreme Court review the Padilla case. This could have lead to embarrassing conclusions about the basis for Padilla’s lengthy (and now continued) detention.

This ruling might be a good thing for Padilla, (who may actually get the Supreme Court review). But for civil liberties generally, this is an example of how judicial restraints are always going to be too little too late. The public has long been wise to the weak basis of the government’s case, not least because the administration’s lawyers never produced a shred of evidence to support its claims. From this perspective, what is notable is not that this court has finally put its foot down, but how permissive it has been in the war on terror.

Courts don’t lead. It is not their job – theirs is to apply the law in a way that ensures maximum consistency and stability, while remaining within a more or less mainstream understanding of justice. Even ‘vanguardist’ moments like Brown v. Board were predicated on decisive social and political changes already happening out in the public sphere. Indeed, the shift in public opinion against many of the current administration’s actions has likely been one influence in the court’s decision. It is on us to change those understandings: to alter views on the relation between liberty and security, and on the proper use of state powers.

Nailing the Hypocrites

Occasionally someone else puts something so well that all we can do is post the link. Antiwar.com has a must read on freedom of the press and the inconsistent position of the liberal-left on intervention.

They Doth Protest Too Much

What are we to make of the tidal-wave of liberal outrage over the ‘imperial presidency’, ‘extra-legal executive’, and ‘unwarranted executive power’? In this blog, we too have objected to President Bush’s anti-libertarian policies, but we must call to account both sides in the debate. Liberal finger pointing should not stop us examining their role in the very enterprise to which they now react with such disgust.

Their current stance absolves liberals and the left of any association with what is now represented as a sudden expansion of presidential powers in the past three to four years. In fact, as the liberal historian Arthur Schlesinger showed in his The Imperial Presidency, presidents have been accruing more and more powers against the executive since the beginning of the 20^th century. And it was the liberal hero, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who did more than any other president to create special powers for the president. Conflating Bush with the deeper, structural problems in our society is disingenuous and misleading.

The many faces of the liberal-left tend to be opportunistic in their criticism of Bush, because they fail to offer a real alternative to Bush’s basic principles. Of course, this doesn’t mean there isn’t something uniquely perverse about the war on terror. As is obvious, we think there is. The problem with the war on terror, however, is not merely with the way Bush fights it, but with its basic premise: the deliverance of total security regardless of the real size of the risk. The one thing that the liberal-left is unwilling to say is that beyond a few shadowy operatives, there is no real enemy to fight in the first place. Terrorism just isn’t the threat it is made out to be (for starters see here, here and here). There are far more important concerns for us to attend to collectively. The abuse of presidential powers does not flow from the peculiarities of the Bush presidency, but from a general acceptance of fear and security as the premise of our political life. If we think the purpose of government is to eradicate risk, then no matter who the president is, we will live in a society that fails to respect our liberty.

Through the Looking Glass

From the surreal world of the Iraq war, one of those headlines that can cause a double take: “U.S., Citing Abuse in Iraqi Prisons, Holds Detainees”. US officials informed the New York Times this week that they refuse to hand prisoners or control of detention centers over to the Iraqi forces, citing recent allegations of torture and mistreatment of detainees in Iraqi-run jails. After events at Abu Ghraib the US is desperate to avoid another such scandal, even one committed by its proxies. Quite apart from the sheer hypocrisy of the claim, this situation reveals the irresolvable paradox of the Iraqi occupation. There is an inevitable tension between the needs of Iraqis trying to rebuild their state, and the US occupation that will always respond first and foremost to the audience back home.

THE FRIDAY REVIEW: Power Without Authority

The classical justification for the system of checks and balances was that it was the best defense of liberty in a large republic. The abuse of power would be prevented, and liberty would be protected, by allowing the different branches of government to overlap enough to keep each other in line. Leaving aside how successful this has been in the past, it is astonishing how badly this process is working today. Rather than protecting liberty, the fragmentation of authority and tangled lines of responsibility in government are being exploited to create an increasingly repressive security regime. All branches are complicit in this process.

Let’s begin with the executive. The Bush administration’s attempts to defend its domestic spying program are a case in point. The hinge of the Administration’s justification is that they haven’t assumed the authority to spy on domestic citizens by themselves. Instead, Congress decided to give it to them. As AG Gonzalez said on Monday’s press briefing,

"Now, in terms of legal authorities, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act provides -- requires a court order before engaging in this kind of surveillance that I've just discussed and the President announced on Saturday, unless there is somehow -- there is -- unless otherwise authorized by statute or by Congress. That's what the law requires. Our position is, is that the authorization to use force, which was passed by the Congress in the days following September 11th, constitutes that other authorization, that other statute by Congress, to engage in this kind of signals intelligence."

In other words, don’t blame us, Congress told us we could do it. While much of the outrage at the Bushies spying program is well deserved, what gets missed in the “King George” style denunciations is the lengths the administration is going to avoid any claims to have independent authority for their actions. Instead, even the kind of ridiculous fear mongering we have become accustomed to with Bush has taken a backseat to the strenuous attempt to pass off authority and responsibility for the extraordinary power they are claiming.

Although some members of the administration are still arguing that the Constitution [Article II] somehow authorizes the president to ignore laws that impinge on whatever the president deems an appropriate course of action in war, this argument has only been asserted in a sporadic and contradictory way (as previous posts on this blog have pointed out).

To be clear, the law that Gonzalez is referring to – the authorization for use of military force, or AUMF was passed on Sep. 19, 2001, and authorizes the president “to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.” It doesn’t take John Yoo to see that this incredibly vague, broad, and sweeping language is a virtual invitation for abuse. But of course any concerns that Congress might have had at the time were overwhelmed by the fit of sound and fury to appear as though they were doing something in the face of the recent 9/11 attacks.

So given this legislative history, what has Congresses response been to Bush’s entirely predictable invocation of the AUMF? Howls of outrage that responsibility could possibly be laid at their feet. Former Congressman Bob Barr, who eagerly voted for the patriot act and the AUMF, insisted that Bush had no right to read the authorization in such a broad way. And today, former Senator Tom Daschle, who also voted for the patriot act and AUMF and was a sturdy supporter of Bush’s war on terror in its early days, was similarly shocked that Bush would claim authorization for domestic wiretaps. Congress, in other words, can pass incredibly broad, vague delegations of authority when politically expedient, so long as they can deny blame, stick their heads in the sand, and look the other way if it happens to be used in an unpopular way. Checks and balances at work.

Moreover, members of Congress can whip themselves into such repressive and demagogic frenzies more easily since they are not responsible for the constitutionality of the laws they pass. That job belongs to the courts. Congress can pass utterly irresponsible legislation like the AUMF without much thought to its potential consequences to liberty or democratic values because those are the concerns of the courts. Congress’s job is to demand action, rave, dodge issues, and appeal to the most irresponsible currents of public discourse, knowing that when it gets too out of hand the courts will step in.

For their part, the Supreme Court has already weighted in on the administration’s stretching AUMF to the breaking point, and it was just fine with them. Two summers ago, in Hamdi v. Rumsfed, Justice O’Connor’s plurality opinion found that AUMF – yes, the same one – in fact authorized Bush to hold Hamdi, an American citizen, on a naval brig in South Carolina for more than two years incommunicado and, for most of that time, without access to a lawyer. So if the Supreme Court finds that AUMF authorizes Bush to throw citizens in legal black holes and try them in kangaroo courts, what’s wrong with a little wire tapping?

What conclusions can be drawn from this? Those who are rightly outraged by Bush’s domestic spying should not let members of Congress off the hook when it throws up its hands and say, “don’t look at us.” This dynamic is precisely the problem at the root of the war on terror: illegitimate power with no authority. Congress must be held accountable for the stupid and pandering laws they pass. Secondly, the separation of powers is an instrument, which can be useful or useless. It should not be fetishized as a panacea of liberal government. Liberty today is not effectively defended – if it ever was – by looking to one branch of government to step in and save us from the other branches. It is just this acquiescence that has led to the paradox we face today: depoliticized liberty, and deliberalized politics.

A Defeat for Bush Not the Patriot Act

Contrary to the Washington Post’s analysis, the Senate’s refusal this week to renew the Patriot Act is no victory for liberty or democracy. Yet the bi-partisan move to delay final renewal of the Act is the closest thing to a defense of civil liberties that the nation has seen in the War on Terror—and that is precisely why we should be worried. The opposition accepts so many tenets of the Act that one can hardly understand why they are bothering to challenge it at all.

Republican John Sununu was explicit in explaining the senators’ limited aims: “There’s no reason we need to leave here without keeping elements of the Patriot Act in place. We support these tools, I certainly do. This isn’t a question of changing or weakening or undermining the tools.” In case we were in any doubt his colleague, Democrat Patrick Leahy, clarified repeatedly: “Our goal has been to mend the Patriot Act not to end it.”

Finally they had the nerve to summon up the words of Benjamin Franklin to their cause “They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security.” But they clearly misunderstand the point BF was making (see Leahy’s appalling paraphrasing of the quote in the transcript); that liberty must have a privileged place over more immediate concerns. Leahy’s desire for: “a consensus Patriot Act, [in which] we balance our security needs with American civil liberties” is exactly the compromise against which Franklin warned. A pragmatic consensus is not a defense of principle. As long as we refuse to take seriously the idea of liberty, any threat, no matter how remote, will be enough to justify the further extension of the government’s police powers.

FISA Judges in an Uproar

The ongoing controversy on FISA and surveillance raises a number of issues that we will return to in this blog. For the moment, we'd like to make one point clear: despite recent moves that might give one a false impression, the FISA judges are no heroes and it's not just Bush that's the problem.

Today the Court's presiding judge requested a briefing from the Bush Administration on its domestic spying program. This follows the resignation in protest of one of the ten sitting members. Not only are the judges skeptical of the legality of the Bush policy, they are also clearly upset that the Administration thought that it could simply ignore the Court's authority. While they obviously have a reason to be angry, the fact that FISA judges are attacking the Administration for trampling on civil liberties amounts to one of the more absurd moments in the War on Terror. As discussed previously, the Court is the closest approximation in the American legal system to the Star Chamber. It operates in secret, can issue warrants for electronic surveillance that are unrestricted, highly intrusive, and apply anywhere in the world and to anyone. The Court's probable cause standard deviates sharply from the traditional law enforcement standard, and its decisions are final and unreviewable. Perhaps, the lack of appeal rights wouldn't be so troubling if in its 30 year history more than ONE warrant had been denied.

In other words, the FISA Court underscores the extent to which unchecked emergency powers have become routinized as part of our constitutional status quo. The judges themselves are participants in a larger legal framework which assumes that the U.S. is under permanent threat and that such necessity requires both secrecy and unlimited discretion. The actions of the Bushies may be technically illegal, but they are perfectly consistent with this constitutional spirit. The Administration is merely extending the logic of the current national security paradigm, and in a sense exposing the judges for what they are -- a rubber stamp justifying executive power and popular silence.

Back to the Future? (Not Quite)

The war on terrorism has been the rubric under which the state has recovered or expanded a number of powers it hasn’t been able to acquire any other way, or lost during the briefly civil libertarian days of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Today’s NYTimes article about under cover police conducting surveillance against protestors, even disrupting events at times, certainly reminds us of times past. What protestors have to do with terrorism is anyone’s guess. The thing is, it’s not as if there is a dynamic and threatening left-wing movement challenging state power in any serious way. Rather, our government seems to have decided that the war on terror means monitoring, regulating, and potentially suppressing, any social activity that raises any uncertainties whatsoever. The exercise of cherished liberties always comes with some degree of uncertainty and risk. It wouldn’t be liberty otherwise. Perhaps the difference with the past is this: This administration isn’t so much ‘anti-left’ as it is anti-liberty.

Talking Circles Around Himself

In the past weeks Bush has made two contradictory arguments about spying and the Patriot Act. On the one hand, Bush has defended the Patriot Act on the grounds that “we must have the tools necessary to protect the American people”. By this argument, it is vital to have the specific, congressionally delegated authority for a number of domestic anti-terrorism initiatives. On the other hand, when criticized even by some of his own party’s senators for authorizing the National Security Agency (NSA) to spy on international calls, the president said ‘the authority to bypass the court derived from the Constitution and Congress' vote authorizing the use of military force after the 2001 terror attacks.’ (That Congressional vote was the vaguely worded bill passed in a rush a week after 9/11.) These two arguments don’t add up and here’s why:

To be clear, Bush is arguing that he now can grant the NSA a spying authority that bypasses even the shadowy Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) courts, created in 1978 for the explicit purpose of granting the government ‘foreign surveillance’ rights on a case by case basis. They grant secret surveillance warrants on terms far more favorable to the government than normal courts with no possibility of the surveilled defending his rights in FISA. Indeed, the FISA courts are so willing to favor the government over civil rights that in 2004 these courts denied none of the 1758 applications for secret surveillance, and apparently have denied only one spying warrant in their history. In this light, Bush’s personal authorization of the NSA to bypass these courts has been such an abuse of executive authority that today one of the members of the FISA court resigned in protest, objecting even to the permissiveness of the FISA courts themselves.

So, taking a step back, Bush is arguing that the Patriot Act is necessary because he needs those legal ‘tools’, but that if he doesn’t have those ‘tools’, he still has the legal authority to do basically whatever he likes. That’s contradictory – he doesn’t need the Patriot Act if he already has the power by the post-9/11 Congressional vote, and if he needs the Patriot Act then he is admitting he doesn’t have unlimited authority to do what he deems necessary. While some enjoy pointing out our president’s verbal mishaps, this is no slip of the tongue. It’s an unjustified expansion of executive powers by any means. Bush should not be allowed to bypass those FISA courts (which shouldn’t exist in the first place), and he shouldn’t have the powers granted under the Patriot Act. The president is abusing the powers he has, and there is no good reason for him to have them in the first place.

Sleep Tight

New York City’s Mayor Bloomberg said that in the event of a transit strike he would spend the night on a cot on the floor of the Office of Emergency Management (OEM) in Brooklyn, and last night he did just that.

The original OEM offices were located on a secure floor in 7 World Trade Center, and were forced to relocate after that building collapsed in 2001. The OEM Charter gives the Mayor all necessary legal authority to handle “threats from natural hazards and natural disasters, power and other public service outages, labor unrest… explosions… transportation and transit incidents… acts of terrorism…”

The Mayor’s Brooklyn sleepover builds on public statements made by him and his office that suggests the strikers are putting the city at risk for terrorism. In his press conference today, Bloomberg said that “We can't let inconveniences, as massive as they are, stop our economy… or jeopardize public safety.” This comes on the heels of a similar remark by the City Corporation Counsel, (the lawyer for the MTA against the union) , Michael Cardozo, “A strike would pose enormous risks to the city and impose serious economic losses…”

Bloomberg’s inability to govern without reference to terror is too blatant to be manipulation. It is something closer to desperation. The willy-nilly use of terrorism by any and all to foreclose serious discussion isn’t just a cheap debating tactic, it’s also the sign of a bad conscience permeating official rhetoric. Lacking any serious political ideas or persuasive arguments, Bloomberg and Co. roll out the war on terror to paper over their visionless rule. Deep down, Mike, we know even you don't buy it.

Prosecuting Vintage Terrorists Will Have To Do

The US authorities announced with zeal today that they will pursue arch-terrorist Mohammed Ali Hamadi, and bring him to justice in the US in an apparent further victory in the war on terror. For close watchers of the administration's 'anti-terror' maneuvers, however, this case fits a long-standing pattern in which the initial fanfare conforms poorly with the actual substance of the case.

In a series of high profile cases - the Lackawanna Six, Jose Padilla and Yaser Hamdi, the Michigan Four (see also here), and James Ujamaa - the initial hype following the indictments has been shown to be just that: hype. Key witnesses have lied, convictions thrown out, government prosecutors investigated for misconduct, convictions achieved on irrelevant (ie document fraud) or highly tenuous grounds, or government promoted plea bargains to avoid the embarrassment of a trial. High profile cases have reflected the general prosecutorial trend: expand terrorist crime definitions, inflate statistics, and include Mexian immigrants, Chinese sailors, and drunken airline passengers in official 'terrorism convictions'. This month’s acquittal of Sami al-Arian is a further embarrassment - with the government hoist by its own petard: the defense called not a single witness, allowing the government's case to simply defeat itself.

So it's not surprising that the government, desperate to show it's on to something, is actually now prosecuting a man, Hamadi, who was just released after serving 19 years in a German jail for the 1985 murder of a US Navy diver. Though at the time the White House claimed that the sentence “satisfies the demands of justice,” apparently the administration's political needs have redefined the demands of justice. If you can't find any new terrorists, just re-prosecute old ones...

Pulling at Our Heartstrings

In his first televised Oval Office address since the Iraq segment of the War on Terror began, President Bush urged listeners to support the work of our soldiers. To pullout, he says, would be a waste of our soldiers' effort and even worse, an insult to those who came back wounded and the families of those who did not come back at all. Sure, Bush has slashed veterans compensation and healthcare, failed to provide body armor and, even as recently as last week, a marine’s body was shipped home freight-rate with ordinary cargo. Specialist Matthew J. Holley was 21 years old when he died from wounds as a result of an improvised explosive device detonated outside his vehicle in Taji last Month. Many were outraged at the lack of official transport, and after calls were put into California Sen. Barbara Boxer’s office, an Honor Guard of the 101st Airborne Division flew in to greet Holley’s crate on the tarmac. Those who support the troops got exactly what they wanted: proper burial.

The Holley case is another in a string of events that come into evidence against the sincerity of Bush’s own support for ordinary soldiers. But somehow the response of protest groups has been an outpouring of support for troops, as if to out-support the supporters of the war—to prove that the chickenhawks are insincere. This line of thinking fails to recognize how Bush rests much of his own political gravitas on the popular image of the soldier-as-savior. The administration constantly draws comparisons between the sacrifices (read: fatalities) of the War on Terror and the sacrifices on the beaches of WWII, and Bush’s recent appearance was no different: “This war, like others in our history…” The Greatest Generation weighs like a nightmare upon the brain of the living. The WWII analogy makes the War on Terror into a simple cost-benefit analysis that can justify any amount of “sacrifice” for what the administration regularly admits is a priceless good: freedom. Both sides are equally guilty of framing the war debate in terms of individual soldiers’ bodies—whether it is Bush celebrating the troops as selfless heroes, or anti-war activists holding them up as victims of a lie, the argument for supporting our troops substitutes the body-count for political arguments about the war.

Support is good. We should support one another. But to “support our troops” is not an act of sympathy with the individuals on the ground, but a blind acceptance of the political conditions that put troops in the line of fire, leave them with life-long injuries that require expensive medical care, or send them home KIA in an undignified way. Opposing the war cannot be a campaign to improve the lives of soldiers, it is foremost a struggle against the political conditions of the war itself. The bodies are a smokescreen: as long as people support the troops, this and future administrations will continue to deploy “boots on the ground”, knowing that all it takes to pull the war debate away from politics is a tug at our heartstrings. Let the fruits of occupation spoil, let our soldiers' efforts be wasted—If the antiwar crowd is tethered to the wrong debate, then it’s time to cut our leading strings.

Democratization or the War on Terror?

Giving us an insight into what Middle East democratization really means, the EU foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, warned that aid to the Palestinian Authority might be cut if Hamas make further gains in the upcoming parliamentary elections. The same concerns were heard in the US House of Representatives Friday. How is this making Middle East governments more accountable to their own people?

And what would it mean if Hamas won anyway? In this excellent contribution to the now sadly defunct Middle East International, veteran correspondent Graham Usher charts the movement's gradual drift toward the center.

It’s more about the President’s Image than Democracy in Iraq

For the past week, Bush has been traveling across the country delivering a set of speeches whose purpose is to set the record straight on Iraq. It is easy to show that the President never had a clear plan for occupied Iraq, and still doesn’t seem to have many good ideas. But the problem is deeper than simply coming up with a technical fix to a tumultuous reconstruction. President Bush’s interest in Iraqi democracy is not really about Iraqis but about his political image. His traipsing around last week, giving speech after speech on what’s happening in Iraq, only points up that the real campaigning and politics is happening over here not over there. The cynical take on the war – that it is about oil, or broader imperial designs, or corrupt corporate influence – misses the point. Bush has instrumentalized the war, from start to finish, but not for the sake of hidden interests, so much as to prop up an increasingly isolated and precarious presidency. Basking in the reflected glow of these elections is a tacky attempt at making a single, successful election half a world away stand in for the absence of any real project to offer those of us here in the US. The more Bush insists this is about the Iraqis, the clearer it becomes that this war is about Bush himself.

Whose Sovereignty?

The President is not the only member of the administration on the move this week. The same day that Bush gave his Oval Office address, Vice President Cheney made a surprise visit to Iraq. These surprise visits have been a somewhat regular occurrence in Iraq even after the oddly staged ‘transfer of sovereignty’ in June 2004, with Bush, Rumsfeld, and Rice, along with Cheney, each making unannounced visits to the troops throughout the past two years of occupation. These fly-by-night junkets only expose the emptiness of the rhetoric of democracy and self-determination permeating the Bush administration’s spin. What kind of sovereignty does a country possess when its own prime minister is surprised to find out that the vice president of an occupying power is in his country?