Code Pink’s Medea Benjamin says “We feel that it’s our obligation because of this war to shut down the recruiting station.” That’s silly. When you focus your protesting on the military, you distract from the argument over the war. It’s a staggeringly bad idea.

True (the [...]]]> Ezra Klein on Code Pink’s protest of a military recruiting station:

Code Pink’s Medea Benjamin says “We feel that it’s our obligation because of this war to shut down the recruiting station.” That’s silly. When you focus your protesting on the military, you distract from the argument over the war. It’s a staggeringly bad idea.

True (the political fallout, etc.), if all you care about is this war. But remember, that Code Pink “Calls on women around the world to rise up and oppose the war in Iraq and future wars.” If you want to reduce the future ability of the US to conduct wars of choice (a laudable goal), then decreasing the size of the military makes a lot of sense.  I think this makes it just a bad idea (the political fallout, etc.), with no staggering.

A better plan, that might be effective and consistent with the broader goals of the anti-wars movement would be to set up anti-recruitment stations (comprehensively, not just in liberal enclaves) that made their case to individuals considering military service.  You know, we report, you decide.  Less confrontation, more respectful — and it would lead to metrics by which we could judge its effectiveness (personal contacts, recruits turned around, army recruiting stations closed).

Despite the political reality of runaway nationalism that make this impossible to say by anyone with power, individual soldiers do have agency and are responsible for choosing to sign on to this war, in the same way as someone who goes to work for Enron or a Pregnancy Crisis Center is responsible for their work.  You can’t know enough about someone’s individual situation to judge their livelihood decisions (the only potential recruit I’ve ever given shit to is my brother), but I choose to believe that there’s some other, less messed-up opportunity for the two hundred thousand recruits signing up every year.  So: bad choices are being made; it’s legitimate to try to convince people of said badness; more power to Code Pink.

But, for the sake of your goals, try to Code Pink smarter.

Given that, surely no one would try to defend the regime…but wait here’s John O’Sullivan making an ass of himself in the Chicago Sun-Times back [...]]]> Pinochet was bad. Really, really bad. To recap:

• Minimum number of executions: 3,000
• Number of people imprisoned for their political beliefs: 27,000
• Number of elected governments overthrown: 1
• Years without democratic elections: 17

Given that, surely no one would try to defend the regime…but wait here’s John O’Sullivan making an ass of himself in the Chicago Sun-Times back in 2000. I know I’m borrowing trouble from way back, but this article is ridiculous. O’Sullivan’s main points?

• The left are evil hypocrites who will send Elian back to Cuba when they would never have sent a child to Pinochet’s Chile. Huh? Are you really criticizing the left for being Castro-apologists in a Pinochet-apologist article?

• 3,000 murders isn’t really that many. Besides the Black Book told me that evil leftists in other countries killed more. What? Two murders make a right? Besides, much of the Black Book of Communism was based on the Nobel Prize winning work of Economist Amartya Sen who compared deaths during the China’s Great Leap Forward to deaths in India do to lack of health care (as both represent structural problems of the countries economic model. Short story: communism was less deadly.

• If Pinochet hadn’t had a coup those evil commies would have. Even though said commies had already been elected to power?

I can’t believe that even simple statement like “evil dictators are bad” provoke argument. Right-winger hatred for the communist strawman surpasses all logic.

To my knowledge, there [...]]]> Reading Klein’s and Meginnis’s posts on the US & Co. giving away other people’s land for a Jewish state, I wanted to note that it seems likely that Holocaust survivors themselves would have preferred American to Palestinian land. An extended footnote in Chomsky’s Fateful Triangle (pg. 92) lays out the evidence:

To my knowledge, there has been no serious study of this question. For conflicting opinions, see Lieut.-General Morgan, British Chief of Staff to the Supreme Allied Commander, 1943-44, and Chief of UNRRA (the UN Relief and Rehabilitation Administration) Operations in Germany, 1945-46; and Yehuda Bauer, a well known Israeli historian.

Morgan believes that what “was represented as being a spontaneous surge of tortured and persecuted people toward their long-lost homeland” was in fact the result of superb Zionist organization and “iron discipline” in the camps, misrepresented by “the skill of the Zionist propaganda campaign.” “I fancy that, in reality, there were few among the travelers [Jewish refugees from Easterm Europe] who, of their own free will, would have gone elsewhere than to the U.S.A.”

…

Bauer, in contrast, concludes that the vast majority of the refugees preferred to go to Palestine, citing a UNRRA questionnaire indicating that 96.8% preferred to go to Palestine with only 393 of 19,311 wanting to go to the U.S.

…

He also concludes that by late 1947 about half would have preferred to go to the U.S., though after establishment of the State of Israel in May 1948 “most Jews chose it” — no alternative was in fact available.

The Report to President Truman by his envoy Earl G. Harrison on the conditions and needs of displaced persons concluded that Palestine was the first choice of the Jewish DPs, noting however that many want to go there “because they realize that their opportunity to be admitted into the United States or into other countries in the Western hemisphere is limited, if not impossible.”

I also like how well this recaptures the spirit of the Emancipation Proclamation, this time ceding uncontrolled land rather than out-of-jurisdiction slaves.Brilliant!

Anyway, assorted thoughts:

Will you [...]]]> Posts like this are how I know that when there’s a Democratic president, this indefinate detainment farce will have to stop. It’s unquestionably a completely morally bankrupt problem policy, and people will point it out, again and again, until it stops. In fact, this needs to be asked of every Democratic candidate:

Will you promise to release or try every detainee in your first year of office?

Maybe they’ve all already made statements on this, but this should be a clear requirement to recieve the nomination.

When that happens, there will [...]]]> What I don’t understand about Bush’s strategy of indefinate detainment in Guantanamo for political reasons (as outlined by Brian Beutler) is that at some point, there will be a Democratic administration that will release people. Possibly not in 2008, but certainly by 2040s when detainees start dying of natural causes.

When that happens, there will be lots of stories of unjust imprisonment and torture, and there will be nasty political fallout. Unless Bush’s secret plan is to disappear the whole prison, the stories will eventually be told. So what’s the gain in procrastination?

Bush’s popularity is already down to the Republican base that has decided it’s fine with torture. How could the actual stories of torture hurt him?