Swingin' With Saddam

George W. Bush has finally gotten his way, and his puppets in Iraq have put to death the man who tried to kill his daddy -- and it only cost 3,000 American lives, as well as the lives of 655,000 Iraqis.

That seems fair, doesn't it?

The fact that Saddam richly deserved to be executed has kept many people from questioning the justice of his execution, but some -- ranging from Human Rights Watch to the Vatican -- have pointed out that the verdict, as well as the overly hasty way it was carried out, was more redolent of vengeance than justice.

Richard Dicker, director of Human Rights Watch's International Justice Program, was quoted by the Associated Press as saying that, "The test of a government's commitment to human rights is measured by the way it treats its worst offenders. History will judge these actions harshly."

The same AP piece quotes Curt Goering, senior deputy executive director of Amnesty International USA, as comparing the rush to death of Saddam's Shiite handlers with the more measured approach used by the Americans when they tried Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg after World War II. "We look back on the Nuremberg trials as a model. We're likely 60 years from now ... to see this as victor's justice."

According to the Los Angeles Times, Pope Benedict XVI, through a spokesman, said that the execution of Saddam was "tragic news … that risks feeding the spirit of revenge and sowing new violence."

Let's be honest about at least two things: 1) If anyone deserved to be executed for his crimes, Saddam Hussein did. I'm shedding no tears for him. But the fact is that: 2) His trial was not about justice. It was about Shiites getting revenge on a Sunni leader for his persecution of them over a period of 35 years.

It was about vengeance, not justice.

Another fact to keep in mind is that the specific charges for which Shiites killed Saddam amounted to less than 150 deaths (148 Shiite deaths, to be specific).

George W. Bush is responsible for 655,000 deaths in Iraq.

When will Bush be held to account for his crimes against humanity?

Tom Moran

Gerald R. Ford 1913-2006

The image at left is a drawing I made of Gerald Ford on the day he became president back in 1974, when I was 14. At various times over the 32 years since I made that drawing I thought about trying to get former President Ford to sign it, but the opportunity never presented itself. Now, of course, it never will.
President Ford died last night of undisclosed causes at the age of 93. He was the oldest living former president in U.S. history, beating out John Adams and Ronald Reagan. Historians will debate what if any impact this man, our only unelected president, will have on the history of our country. but right now I just want to jot down some random impressions.

I don't know if Gerald Ford "healed the wounds of Watergate," as some people have been saying on the morning shows, but he was certainly a breath of fresh air after the glowering atmosphere of the Nixon years. Ford and his wife Betty had an inherent decency about them that made people think that things might turn around after all the months of Constitutional crisis caused by Nixon's paranoia and desire to crush his enemies at all cost, and his family came off as refreshingly normal after the way-too-tightly-wound Nixons.

Something about Gerald Ford that most people forget is how close he came to being elected president in his own right. In fact, President Ford came very close to pulling off a Truman-like upset against Jimmy Carter in the 1976 election. If a couple of factors had been different -- if Ford had not lost his voice towards the end of the campaign or if (and granted, this is a big if) Ford had not pardoned Nixon two years earlier -- Ford would have been the winner. I've always thought as a result that the entire Carter Administration was a bit of a fluke.

But mostly what I think of when I think of Gerald Ford is what a contrast he makes with the man currently sitting in the Oval Office. This may not be the time to point out the contrast. but then, do I really have to?

Gerald Ford was a good and decent man, and with any luck we'll have another such man in the White House soon.

Rest in peace, Mr. President.

Tom Moran

A Thought for Christmas

In this joyous holiday season I just wanted to share a thought with all good Christians out there in what Gore Vidal likes to call (over and over and over again) "Freedom's Land":

The Lancet, the most respected medical publication in the world, has recently completed a study on post-invasion fatalities in Iraq. Their study has the following finding:

"We estimate that as of July, 2006, there have been 654 965 (392 979–942 636) excess Iraqi deaths as a consequence of the war, which corresponds to 2·5% of the population in the study area. Of post-invasion deaths, 601 027 (426 369–793 663) were due to violence, the most common cause being gunfire."

That's nearly 655,000 dead -- or more than double the number of deaths that caused the United States to brand Saddam Hussein a mass murderer. That's enough dead bodies to fill up Yankee Stadium to capacity 12 times.

And that's as a result of a war we started. A war that was unprovoked and undeclared. A war that has turned public opinion against this country and tarnished its reputation in the eyes of the world. A war that has turned us into an aggressor nation -- the kind of nation that throughout history we have fought wars against.

So think about those 655,000 dead bodies while you're having your Christmas dinner tonight.

And have a Merry Christmas!

Tom Moran

What a Day! What a Day! For an Auto Da Fe!

I read a letter in the New York Times about a profile of Harvard Professor Helen Vendler and it inspired me to go back and read the original article, which I had not seen before.

In the article Professor Vendler harshly criticizes the recent publication of "Edgar Allan Poe & the Jukebox," a collection of previously unpublished poems by Elizabeth Bishop.

The Times piece reads:

Even as other critics — including David Orr, in these pages — welcomed the book as an important addition to the Bishop oeuvre, Vendler, writing in The New Republic, said the volume “should have been called ‘Repudiated Poems.’ For Elizabeth Bishop had years to publish the poems included here, had she wanted to.” It would have been far better, in Vendler’s view, for Quinn to have published the drafts that went into Bishop’s published, polished “real poems” rather than “their maimed and stunted siblings,” adding: “I am told that poets now, fearing an Alice Quinn in their future, are incinerating their drafts.”

The point here is that while it is true that, as Vendler says, Bishop had years in which to publish the poems included in "Edgar Allan Poe & the Juke Box," it is also true that she had the same number of years in which to burn them if she chose -- and she chose not to, knowing full well (if literary history is any guide) that those poems would be published eventually.

But that's not all. Professor Vendler goes even further:

“I would rather have had the drafts of the finished poems well before you got the rejected stuff from the trash can,” Vendler said, sitting on a chair facing the window and a life mask of Keats. “If you make people promise to burn your manuscripts” — as Kafka and (by legend) Virgil did — “they should,” Vendler insisted. “I think the ‘Aeneid’ should have been burned and Kafka’s works should have been burned, because personal fidelity is more important than art,” she said in her quiet, direct manner. “If I had asked somebody to promise to destroy something of mine and they didn’t do it I would feel it to be a grave personal betrayal. I wouldn’t care what I had left behind. It could have been the ‘Mona Lisa.’ ”

What are we to make of this? Does this attitude make Vendler more rigorous ethically than the rest of us? Or just a nascent cultural vandal, like the people who burned Byron's Memoirs?

First of all, Professor Vendler is wrong on the facts. Kafka did not "make [someone] promise to burn [his manuscripts]." If we are to believe Max Brod, he specifically told Kafka to his face that he had no intention of carrying out any such request. So if Kafka had really wanted his unpublished manuscripts (which included both "The Trial" and "The Castle") to be burned, then he should have either chosen someone who would agree to the immolation or carried it out himself.

As far as Virgil goes, the order to destroy "The Aeneid" (which Virgil ordered from his deathbed, reportedly feeling that it was not in a finished state) was countermanded by the order of the Emperor Augustus, so there was no question of betrayal there. One did not disobey the emperor in Imperial Rome.

And what is one to make of those so-called friends that I alluded to before, who burned Byron's supposedly salacious "Memoirs" after his death? Did they act in the best interests of their dead friend -- or were they merely cultural vandals?

As you may have guessed, I disagree strongly with Professor Vendler here. While I wouldn't make an absolute law in all cases (Hemingway's widow, for example, didn't do him or his literary reputation any favors by allowing his letters to be published), I don't think the wanton destruction of literary works by friends and executors should be encouraged.

After all, that's what critics are for.

Tom Moran

You Go, Girl!

Reuters is reporting that Monica Lewinsky has graduated from the London School of Economics.

When Lewinsky, 32, received her Masters of Science degree in Social Psychology last Thursday "the audience of students and parents erupted in spontaneous applause. ... It was a very emotional moment for her," [publicist Barbara] Hutson said in a statement.

Hutson said Lewinsky spent the past year studying and "staying away from the London social scene."

She completed a thesis entitled "In Search of the Impartial Juror: An exploration of the third person effect and pre-trial publicity."

The report says that Lewinsky is interviewing for jobs in Britain, which makes those of us who live in New York very sad. But as they say across the pond, well done, Ms. Lewinsky!

Tom Moran

Will He Or Won't He?

Recently on Huffington Post I responded to a post by Norman Lear in which he said that he would be giving money to all the Democratic contenders in 2008.

This is what I wrote:

I like the idea of supporting all the candidates -- assuming that you can afford it. It's a great way to make sure you're backing the eventual winner.

My way is a little bit different. I look at each candidate one at a time and evaluate them both according to their intrinsic merits as people and politicians and also more calculatedly, in terms of whether I think they can win.

And my calculations go like this:

Barack Obama: Very charismatic, but not enough experience. My hunch is that he'll use 2008 to test the waters for a further national run down the line and possibly for a spot on the ticket. I think his chances of being VP on the ticket are 50/50.

Hillary Clinton: The Democratic nominee is determined by 200,000 voters in Iowa and New Hampshire, and I don't think they'll vote for Hillary Clinton. I think she'd make a good president but I don't think she can win on a national level.

John Edwards: Very charismatic. I like both him and what he stands for. But I don't think he can get the nomination and I don't think he can win -- when he was on the ticket in 2004 he couldn't even deliver his own state.

Tom Vilsack: Him I know nothing about. However, he has two big advantages over the rest: 1) He has a leg up on Iowa, and 2) He's not a sitting Senator.

In the last century only two men went from being sitting senators to being president. Since JFK was the last one to do it, more than 50 senators have tried -- they've all failed.

I want a ticket that can win. And I know the ticket that I would put my money on, if I had any money.

Gore/Richardson. Gore can win both Iowa and New Hampshire -- and whoever wins both wins the ballgame. And if Gore in the general election wins the states that Kerry won last time and Richardson gives him New Mexico, that gives them the White House.

Let me elaborate on that just a little.

Gore is sending mixed signals about 2008, according to a recent AP piece by Beth Fouhy. He's been on Leno, Oprah and The Today Show, all ostensibly to promote the upcoming DVD release of his film "An Inconvenient Truth," which he hopes will win him an Oscar nomination if not the Oscar itself. But questions about running for the White House in 2008 still dog him.

From the AP piece:

"I am not planning to run for president again," Gore said last week, arguing that his focus is raising public awareness about global warming and its dire effects. Then, he added: "I haven't completely ruled it out."

Those words make Gore the 800-pound non-candidate of the Democratic field. The possibility of another presidential bid delights many Democrats still steamed over the disputed 2000 election, in which they argue a few more votes, a state other than Florida and a different Supreme Court could have put Gore, not George W. Bush, in the White House.

Gore's in a delicate position here. He doesn't want to appear to be chasing the nomination, and yet if he starts too late he might never be able to catch up in terms of money and organization. Wesley Clark has said that starting too late was a fatal mistake for him in 2004 -- a mistake he will not repeat this time.

But is Gore the exception that proves the rule? After all, my hunch is that the 200,000 voters in Iowa and New Hampshire who will decide the eventual Democratic nominee would jump at the chance to vote for Al Gore, regardless of whether he has the money and/or organization or not. And if Gore puts Bill Richardson on the ticket, I think he would be a lock to win the general election no matter who the Republicans threw at them.

I have nothing against any of the potential Democratic candidates, but I think the ticket that will wn the White House is Al Gore and Bill Richardson. I would understand if Gore decided not to run (running for president is a demented process that no sane man would willingly undergo), but I think that if he ran he would win -- and think about it. How much better off would this country be if Al Gore and not George W. Bush had been in the White House for the past six years?

Tom Moran

Bye Bye Bolton

John Bolton's out at the U.N.

Bowing to reality for once, the Bush Administration has realized that, with a new Democratic Congress about to take power, this craven bully is not about to be confirmed. So Bolton has resigned as U.N. Ambassador, a job he was about as suited for as I am to be the head of the RNC (or a prima ballerina, for that matter).

TIME.com reports that:

A longtime critic of the U.N. and its bureaucracy, Bolton was opposed by Democrats, and even a few Republicans, who regarded him as too confrontational for the job, and he was unable to win support in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when Bush first nominated him last year. Rather than accept that rejection, however, the President gave Bolton a "recess" appointment in August 2005, allowing him to take up the high-profile U.N. post without Senate approval.

But with that appointment set to expire at the end of the current Congress and a new Democratic majority about to take control, Bolton announced his resignation Monday. President Bush, in a statement, continued to express support. "I am deeply disappointed that a handful of United States Senators prevented Ambassador Bolton from receiving the up or down vote he deserved in the Senate," Bush said. "They chose to obstruct his confirmation, even though he enjoys majority support in the Senate, and even though their tactics will disrupt our diplomatic work at a sensitive and important time. This stubborn obstructionism ill serves our country, and discourages men and women of talent from serving their nation."

What a crock of pious crap.

Bolton's departure will not, no matter what the White House says or may believe, discourage men or women of talent from serving their nation. What it says is that President Bush can't violate the will of Congress and the procedures set out in the Constitution and try to sneak an unsuitable appointment in through the back door. John Bolton was a symbol of this administration's arrogance and hubris -- its feeling that they can do anything they want without having to be accountable to anyone for their actions.

Well, they learned otherwise, and John Bolton is now leaving, hopefully to replaced by someone more suitable for the position -- presumably someone who doesn't violently abuse his subordinates while servilely sucking up to his superiors.

It's a huge (albeit mostly symbolic) victory for democracy in this country.

Tom Moran

The Mote in Will's Eye

George Will in his latest column takes on Senator-Elect James Webb (D-VA) for what Will considers his boorish behavior in confronting President Bush on Iraq at the White House recently. Fine. I don't agree with him, but he's entitled to his opinion. Like Robert George (from whose Ragged Thots blog I got this little item), I tend to agree more with Peggy Noonan's assessment of the Bush-Webb confrontation (and don't think it doesn't pain me to say that I agree with Peggy Noonan about anything).

But that's not the part of Will's column that I want to discuss [full disclosure: although I've never met George Will in the flesh, one of my jobs at Newsweek years ago was answering his hate mail which, as you can imagine, kept me mighty busy].

Later on in the same column, Will pedantically discusses a recent Wall Street Journal editorial by Webb.

This is what Webb wrote:

"The most important — and unfortunately the least debated — issue in politics today is our society's steady drift toward a class-based system, the likes of which we have not seen since the 19th century. America's top tier has grown infinitely richer and more removed over the past 25 years. It is not unfair to say that they are literally living in a different country."

And this is what Will had to say about it:

"In his novels and his political commentary, Webb has been a writer of genuine distinction, using language with care and precision. But just days after winning an election, he was turning out slapdash prose that would be rejected by a reasonably demanding high school teacher.

Never mind Webb's careless and absurd assertion that the nation's incessantly discussed wealth gap is "the least debated" issue in American politics.

And never mind his use of the word "literally," although even with private schools and a large share of the nation's wealth, the "top tier" — whatever cohort he intends to denote by that phrase; he is suddenly too inflamed by social injustice to tarry over the task of defining his terms — does not "literally" live in another country.

And never mind the cavalier historical judgments — although is he sure that America is less egalitarian today than it was, say, 50 years ago, when only about 7 percent of American adults had college degrees? (Twenty-eight percent do today.) Or 80 years ago, when more than 80 percent of American adults did not have high school diplomas (85 percent have them today), and only about 46 percent owned their own homes, compared with 69 percent today?
But notice, in the same sentence that the word "literally" appears, the word "infinitely." Earth to Webb: Words have meanings that not even senators can alter. And he has been elected to be a senator, not Humpty Dumpty in "Through the Looking Glass." ("When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.") America's national economic statistics are excellent; Webb could actually tell us how much richer the "top tier" has become, relative to other cohorts, over a particular span. But that would require him to actually say who he is talking about, and that takes time and effort, and senators — Webb is a natural — often are too busy for accuracy."

Now, is it my imagination, or is George Will making a pedantic horse's ass of himself picking apart Webb's prose while doing his best to ignore or at the very least avoid discussing the pretty much unassailable point that Webb is making?

Let me answer Will's questions with questions:

Will says that 50 years ago, seven percent of Americans had college degrees and that 28 percent do so today. But this begs a lot of questions. For example: how many of those people with college degrees 50 years ago got those degrees through the GI Bill, and therefore did not have to start their careers with a staggering amount of debt incurred in order to get that degree, as young people have to do today?

Will leaves that out.

Again, more people today have high school diplomas -- and yet high school diplomas are not worth nearly as much on the job market what they were then. Back in the day a high school diploma could get you a manufacturing job the likes of which no longer exist in this country, because the CEOs who make hundreds of times what an average worker makes (another point that Will does not address) have shipped all those jobs overseas to people who can be paid pennies for what an American would expect to be paid a living wage for.

Did I just end a sentence with a preposition? Sorry, George. My bad.

George Will's pedantic posturing notwithstanding, the fact is clear: we are living in a far less equitable society than was the case several decades ago. The top one-tenth of one percent have benefitted greatly under this administration, while the working man has gotten screwed -- Ford's recent announced layoffs of 38,000 workers (that's not a typo, folks) is just another indication of just how badly skewed our nation has become economically. The rich have become obscenely rich, and the middle class and the poor are, respectively, struggling either to get by or to survive at all.

And if Will can't see that, perhaps it's because he's part of the problem.

Tom Moran