The World is Awash in Enemies of Humanity

It is always a joy to see vicious criminals brought to justice (assuming the trial is genuine), but ultimately it means nothing. History is not made by one person, and to claim that putting Saddam on trial is somehow an important victory shows how little we've learned.

Saddam isn't the first dictator to come to a bad end; it wasn't a lesson to him and it won't be a lesson to any would-be tyrants in the future. That's the thing about madmen: they're mad, and don't learn from the past. Even Saddam might've gotten away with it if Bush I hadn't given him permisison to invade Kuwait.

The victims of the Saddam regime know he couldn't have devastated the country alone; the hundreds of thousand of people who worked ceaselessly to enhance Saddam's power are mostly still at large, and many of them are either in the employ of the United States or running the US government.

Besides, what are the chances it'll be a real trial? Saddam knows too much about the workings of American foreign policy for him to be simply put in prison - who knows what his memoirs might reveal? My money is on either acquittal or that he'll be found strangled in his cell the day before the verdict is announced.

After WWII, the Nazi war criminals ought to have been tried for their crimes, and they were. But no one would say that is was anything more than the smallest fraction of the work that needed to be done.

Down, Pat

When a strapping young man named Pat Tillman turned down a mutlimillion dollar contract to play footbal for the St. Louis Cardinals to enlist in the U.S. Army, there was an outpouring of national pride in the sense of duty 9/11 had inspired in Americans. Pat himself was determined to fight the terrorists where he believed they were: Afghanistan.

But that's not what happened. Tillman was first sent much against his will to Iraq, but then in 2004 he was indeed sent to Afghanistan, where he was killed by friendly fire.

That's the story. But it has only recently come forward. You see, when Tillman was killed, the pro-war crowd struggled to outdo themselves in denouncing those who questioned the meaning of Tillman's death and in lauding Tillman's every attribute. His patriotism, his unquestioning self-sacrifice, his willingness to take on any task America might set him to. Frontpagemag.com, Little Green Footballs, and Ann Coulter (and many more) publsihed articles elevating Tillman and blasting the Left which supposedly despised him.

It was soon revealed that Tillman had not died heroically fighting al-Qaeda, but had been shot by his own men who mistakenly thought he was a member of the Taliban. The Army covered this up, even going so far as to release a detailed description of the non-existent battle and to burn Tillman's body armor. The fratricidal elements of the story didn't deter the Right, though; Tillman still believed in the same things they did, no matter how he died.

Now, however, an article has appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle which contain some revelations that the Right finds it difficult to take. Among other things:

Interviews also show a side of Pat Tillman not widely known — a fiercely independent thinker who enlisted, fought and died in service to his country yet was critical of President Bush and opposed the war in Iraq, where he served a tour of duty. He was an avid reader whose interests ranged from history books on World War II and Winston Churchill to works of leftist Noam Chomsky, a favorite author.

*snip*

“I can see it like a movie screen,” Baer said. “We were outside of (a city in southern Iraq) watching as bombs were dropping on the town. We were at an old air base, me, Kevin and Pat, we weren’t in the fight right then. We were talking. And Pat said, ‘You know, this war is so f— illegal.’ And we all said, ‘Yeah.’ That’s who he was. He totally was against Bush.”

Another soldier in the platoon, who asked not to be identified, said Pat urged him to vote for Bush’s Democratic opponent in the 2004 election, Sen. John Kerry.

And, most 'shocking' of all:

Mary Tillman said a friend of Pat’s even arranged a private meeting with Chomsky, the antiwar author, to take place after his return from Afghanistan — a meeting prevented by his death. She said that although he supported the Afghan war, believing it justified by the Sept. 11 attacks, “Pat was very critical of the whole Iraq war.”

Then he would disagree with Chomsky about the Afghanistan war, then, but presumably their article would be about Iraq.

Reaction from Tillman's former defenders has ranged from silence to slack-jawed denial from those who simply refuse to believe it. And why not? In modern politics, no one must believe anything they don't wish to.

Just What the Region Needs

It was considered a major gaffe on Bush's part when he reffered to what was then the War on terror (and is now the Global Struggle Against Religious Extremism) as a 'crusade'. Apparently, though, he really meant it (courtesy of the BBC):

President George W Bush told Palestinian ministers that God had told him to invade Afghanistan and Iraq - and create a Palestinian State, a new BBC series reveals.

In Elusive Peace: Israel and the Arabs, a major three-part series on BBC TWO (at 9.00pm on Monday 10, Monday 17 and Monday 24 October), Abu Mazen, Palestinian Prime Minister, and Nabil Shaath, his Foreign Minister, describe their first meeting with President Bush in June 2003.

Nabil Shaath says: "President Bush said to all of us: 'I'm driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, "George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan." And I did, and then God would tell me, "George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq …" And I did. And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, "Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East." And by God I'm gonna do it.'"

Abu Mazen was at the same meeting and recounts how President Bush told him: "I have a moral and religious obligation. So I will get you a Palestinian state."

Striving for peace and security in the Middle East is a noble goal, but telling people about your divine inspiration to invade another country isn't exactly a prime example of the ideological 'fresh air' that is needed to help the region's moderates take control. Especially, you know, when much of the fundamentalist terrorism arises from their belief that God has given them a heavenly mandate to invade and conquer other countries.

Oh, but it doesn't end there. Karen Hughes is now the Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy, and she has recently embarked on a 'listening tour' of the Muslim world, in which she's trying to improve America's image by recounting trite anecdotes about the wonders of American freedom.

Triteness, of course, doesn't equal falseness or even insincerity. But man, I don't know how many people are going to be won over by this tale told to a gathering of Turkish feminists:

"I am a mom, and I love kids. I love all kids. And I understand that is something that I have in common with the Turkish people."

Then there was the infamous incident in Cairo where she informed a group of Egyptian journalists that "'Under God' is in the US Constitution" which is not only wrong but a fairly seirous slander against the character of the US government.

Clearly, Hughes knows absolutely nothing about either Arab/Muslim culture, and she appears equally ignorant of how to make American culture appealing. Fred Kaplan of Slate remarked that "Let's say some Muslim leader wanted to improve Americans' image of Islam. It's doubtful that he would send as his emissary a woman in a black chador who had spent no time in the United States, possessed no knowledge of our history or movies or pop music, and spoke no English beyond a heavily accented, 'Good morning.'"

I have my doubts about this whole scheme. It seems that if the Middle East and the Muslim world is ever going to look on the U.S. with favor, both parties are going to have to change signigicantly. It'll take more than cheesy propoganda to achieve that.

Workers of the World, Harmonize!

I'm not much for musicals. I can enjoy a decent musical experience such as 'West Side Story' or 'Fiddler on the Roof', but the snob in me (and on the surface) rebels against the routine 'showstopper' solos and endless ensmeble scenes. And Andrew lloyd Webber? Forget about it.

Recently, however, an old friend of my grandfather's stopped by for a visit. Despite being 86 years old and a having suffered a recent collision with a motorcycle, Jim was still raring to go, having dropped by DC for the September 24th anti-war march. His love of political leftism, however, was only outweighed by his love to express it in song and verse, as evidenced by his voluminous collection of Gilbert & Sullivan tapes as well as volumes and volumes of song parodies; two of which he had written himself. Disappointed to find me still at school, he left me a tape with a semi-random collection of Tom Lehrer, old comedy routines, bits and pieces from socially-conscious singing grous, and significant excerpts from a show called 'Pins & Needles'.

Premiering in 1937 with music and lyrics by Louis Schaffer and Harold Rome, 'Pins & Needles' was less a straight musical than a series of sketches satirizing the politcal climate of the day, with the main focus being on the state of the labor movement, problems of class and capitalism, and the rise of fascism.

The show was cast with all union performers from the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union and rehearsed for a full year (they had, after all, full-time jobs) before it opened at the Labor Stage (formally the famed Princess Theater). The show played only on weekends, its cast and crew keeping their full-time employment as pressers, dressmakers and cutters. It ran for 1,108 performances.

The show opens with an always-topical ditty (sweetly sung by a young Barbara Streisand):

Sing me a song with social significance
or you can sing til you're blue.
Let meaning shine
from every line
or I won't love you.

Other numbers include Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, and Chamberlain singing 'Four Little Angels of Peace' and a Park Avenue matron crooning 'It's not Cricket to Picket', in which she scolds the striking workers for their lack of manners and vulgar preoccupation with being able to feed and clothe themselves. Probably my favorite, though, is 'Bertha, the Class-Conscious Sewing Machine Girl; or, It's Better With a Union Man'. In which the aforementioned Bertha falls in with a leering non-union cad (who was thoroughly bad) only to discover that, as one can only expect from a non-union man, he's a polygamist. The theatergoers are thus reminded:

It's better with a union man
It's better with a union man
You'll live to regret
if you ever forget
This motto pro-let-ar-i-an!
So always be upon your guard
Demand to see a union card.
You'll never go wrong if you follow this plan
It's better with a union man!

Now, if I actually belonged to some kind of union this might work.

Vaclav & Me

Last Friday I had the opportunity to attend a lecture (and then briefly interview) czech president Vaclav Klaus. Here's the article that will appear in the school newspaper:

On Friday the 23rd at the Shapiro Center theater Vaclav Klaus, current president and former prime minister of the Czech Republic, addressed a packed gathering of press, faculty, and students from colleges from around the Boston area.

In a brief biographical sketch delivered before the president himself spoke, International Business School dean Peter Petri described how Klaus was born and educated in Prague, where he graduated from the University of Economics. Klaus then rose to prominence after the 1989 Velvet Revolution which toppled the Communist regime in a bloodless coup. He served as chairman of the democracy-promoting Civic Forum after Vaclav Havel resigned the chairmanship to become the Czech Republic’s first president in 1990. Klaus later broke with the Civic Forum and founded the right-of-center Civic-Democratic Party (ODS). In 2003 he was elected president, where he remains to this day.

In his talk, “Why Europe Must Reject Centralization” Klaus spoke proudly of the Czech Republic’s advances in integrating itself into Europe after the fall of the Soviet Union but stressed the danger he felt was represented by the expanding power and influence of the European Union. The EU came to dominate the lecture, as he explained how the advance of that organization has created what he called a ‘democratic deficit’ in which the Brussels-based European Parliament destroyed national sovereignty by submitting directive after directive to national parliaments (including that of the Czech Republic) which they than had to implement. This he viewed as an effort to make all European countries the same, characterizing his struggle against such efforts as “the battle between liberalism (in the European sense) and homogenization.” Klaus stressed that there was no such thing as a culturally or socially coherent ‘Europe’ which could be formed into a single standard entity; at most, he would prefer an ‘Organization of European States’ on the model of the OAS.

On economic matters, he denounced social-democratic welfare states as rigid “even though many people like them” and expressed his total opposition to all government subsidies and control over the economy, while also advocating a flat tax. he also expressed disbelief at the idea that countries compete with each other; only corporations do that.

In the question-and-answer session followed, Klaus denied that the rise of the EU was due to a desire to oppose the US, but was simply born out of the ideology of regulation and ‘Europeanism’. In an entity as large as Europe, he said, public participation in the governmental process was simply not possible; the nation-state was just the right size for the right amount of democracy. As for Turkey’s desire to join the EU, he admitted that Turkey may enter into the European Union, but it could never be part of Europe. He denounced multiculturalism as “a terrible mistake” and said that the immigrants to Europe shouldn’t be accommodated in any way. “After all,” he said “When you join a golf club, you can’t change the club charter the next day.”

In a brief interview granted to members of the press (including The Hoot) after his lecture, Klaus reiterated his opposition to a unified Europe and centralization of all types, but stressed that for a country to transition smoothly out of the Communist era they required a leader with three things: vision, a coherent plan to implement that vision, and the trust of the people. “But;” he added, “that really needs a two-hour lecture to answer, and I really must be going.”

The event was hosted by the Brandeis International Business School as part of their Rosenberg Institute Distinguished Lecture series.

Frankly, I'm disappointed it wasn't Vaclav Havel, but you can't have everything.