Dana Blankenhorn

Iraq Just A Battle

Let's assume for a moment that there is a Global War on Terror, and that Iraq is a key battle within that war.

If your tactics are proven not to be working, should you not change the tactics?

This has been American doctrine since the Civil War (which I, living in Atlanta, still feel moved to call The Recent Unpleasantness).

During that conflict, President Abraham Lincoln had to change tactics many times. Most notably he replaced the man who built his army, George McClellen (left).

No Immunity For War Crimes

There is no immunity for war crimes.

If Saddam Hussein had his legislators, and courts, rule that his gassing of the Kurds was meaningless, he was still liable.

If what has happened at Abu Ghraib, at various detention camps, and elsewhere constitutes war crimes, then George W. Bush is still liable. Personally liable.

It doesn't matter how many laws he passes claiming that he isn't liable. It doesn't matter what Congress says about the Geneva Convention not counting, or re-interpreting it to make torture legal.

There is no immunity for war crimes.

This Week's Clue: Out Everybody

Update: When I wrote this, over a week ago, I honestly had no idea there was a closeted gay predator on Capitol Hill. But I can't say I'm surprised.

Following is the lead item in this week's issue of my free weekly e-mail newsletter, A-Clue.Com.

Unlike the items you see here, A-Clue.Com columns are usually written at least a week before they are published. They have to stand the test of a little time.

You can subscribe to A-Clue.Com by following this link. Enjoy.

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Let me start this week by saying I'm straight, married, happy with myself, but that my best friend in college was gay. His coming-out changed me, because I still loved him afterward.
Still do.

History tells us that gays who are honest with themselves, and others, pose little threat to society, no matter how much some hate groups may disagree.

Closeted gays, on the other hand?

Very dangerous. That makes this an issue for straights as well as gays. Finding, naming, shaming, and preventing evil are in everyone's interest. Self-hating, closeted gay people do tremendous damage. Self-hating closeted people no matter what their trips cause tremendous damage.

Back when I was young the best example of this was Roy Cohn (above). Cohn was Joe McCarthy's chief lawyer. He came up at a time when to come out meant to lose everything you had. He was a bully.  While his homosexuality was an open secret, and he even went to gay bars in the 1970s, he never admitted to the AIDS which killed him in 1986. His life was fictionalized in Tony Kushner's Angels in America. 

He was an archetype. He hated himself and so practiced hate on others. Pretty good definition of evil in my book.

 

ESPN Mobile:When Will They Ever Learn?

Despite an enormous campaign of house ads ESPNMobile is going under. (Hat tip to Francase Place for the link. And to Gizmodo for the illustration.)

My favorite ESPN Mobile ad just played recently. It featured Seattle running back Shawn Alexander, trying to mix himself an energy drink, then falling to the floor after getting tangled-up with his little dog. Immediately the phone rang and it was a video message with ESPN talent John Clayton saying “this just in, Shawn Alexander is doubtful for Sunday's game after an accident involving a lemon and a wiener dog.” Alexander looks around, wondering who's spying on him.

Who's Dred Scott Now?

Everyone.

The 1857 Dred Scott decision galvanized Republicans. The party which had been founded just three years earlier and finished a distant second in 1856 was transformed by the decision.

Even its more conservative leaders, such as former Whig Congressman Abraham Lincoln of Illinois, would later center their arguments on a repudiation of Dred Scott, even while renouncing extremists such as John Brown. It was this moderate course which won Lincoln nomination, but it was moderation founded on what southerners considered an extreme principle, the idea that black men were men and as such had inalienable rights, just as whites did, if they were not themselves slaves.

This week sees the passage of what I believe history will call our time's Dred Scott. It claims to be an anti-terror bill,  but what it really does is allow George W. Bush, if he wishes, to become Joe Stalin.  No habeus corpus, and plenty of torture, for anyone deemed an enemy combatant by the government -- including you, including me. No more Constitutional Rights. No more Geneva Convention.

Conservatives for Rockefeller?

Markos Moulitsas wrote a post for his community site recently that really took me back.

He was asking his members, who identify themselves as netroots activists, to forgive Washington Democrats their transgressions (like supporting torture) and work hard for the ticket.

He concluded, “What annoys me is when people threaten to leave the party. As though that will somehow make things better.”

All this took me back to my childhood, during the birth pangs of the modern conservative movement.

In my home state of New York that movement was a reaction to the “liberal Republican” party of such people as Nelson Rockefeller and Jacob Javits. Conservatives finally opted-out. They formed a Conservative Party which could endorse Republicans or endorse someone else. And when Rockefeller ran in 1966 they put up their own guy, a tweedy professor named Paul Adams.

These New York Conservatives were major funders of the Goldwater wing of the party outside New York. And they finally got their own form of justice, when their James L. Buckley beat a nominal Republican, Charles Goodell, and Democrat Richard Ottinger in 1970. Of course by that time they had the White House. Nixon's people supported Buckley, who created a “temporary” third party so that Republicans wouldn't have to build the new party in order to get their guy in.

The point is that American political parties are enormous beasts. Much of what we call politics happens inside the parties, and those who opt-out of that, in a competitive state, have to know what they are risking. Those who choose not to participate in intra-party politics of any type, meanwhile, simply give their primary votes to those people who do participate.

Back in 1966 there were two Republican parties in New York, the “official” party that leaned against the Johnson-Truman-Roosevelt New Deal thesis, and the “conservative” party that refused to go along locally and concentrated on ideological combat. History says the conservatives won – game, set, and match.

Days of Denial

There comes a time at the end of every political Thesis where denial becomes so ritualized you feel like your head is going to explode.

We have now reached this point with the Nixon-Reagan-Bush “Thesis of Conflict,” the political assumptions that have dominated this country since the late 1960s, the assumptions of our lifetime.

The Secretary of State denies Clinton left a plan against Al Qaeda even after it's published. The Republican leadership denies an Intelligence Estimate calls the Iraq War a failure even after it's quoted to them. (The “quotes” they want to use which show things are rosy are all conditional – if this happens maybe that will.) The proof of global warming is denied, and a report showing hurricanes relate to it is suppressed.

Yet it's still out there. Reality is still out there.

It's Washington that has gone all Red Queen on us. And not just the powerful. The pundits and the press are acting in the same way. This morning, for instance, the lead interview on NBC (about the intelligence report) was with Newt Gingrich. The lead interview on CBS (about the same report) was with William Bennett. Does either know anything about the subject? No. But they could be relied upon to deliver White House-approved spin on the subject.

Liberals would like to believe this is all part of some great conspiracy of evil, in which everyone in Washington participates. It's not. It's the habits of a lifetime, being shown to be lies. It's people seeing that the rock they stand on is actually sand, unable to comprehend it. A natural disaster on this scale, like Katrina, will leave you to rage, to bitterness, to depression, to suicide, but it can't be denied. A political disaster on this scale, on the other hand, can be denied, and will be denied, until the votes come in.

 

On Evil

Everyone knows Google's corporate slogan – Don't Be Evil.

Note, it's not don't do evil. It's not an absolute. We often face hard choices as adults and corporations. Absolute good vs. evil choices are rare.

Still, the effort is worthwhile, on the bottom line. Because Google is perceived as being ethical, as doing its best not to “be” evil, a lot of people (me included) cut it a lot of slack. And the more slack you earn as an Internet company, the more credibility you have, the more money you can make.

It should also be noted that evil is a relative variable here. Evil compared to what?

Well, Yahoo for one.

A decade ago, Yahoo made a Clued-in move when it bought Seth Godin's company, Yoyodyne, and made him (briefly) its chief marketing yahoo. But Godin's ethics soon grated on the higher-ups, and Yahoo has been in the ethical gray area ever since.

I would argue that this, along with its decision to become a “media company” or portal, taking its eye off the search ball, enabled Google to come into being in the first place.

But that's how Yahoo defines itself, as a “media company.” It now has a market cap of $35 billion. Are they glad they dissed Godin and do business with slime? Maybe they are. But Google is worth almost $124 billion.

 

Net Neutrality Fight Moves to States, Courts

It seems likely that the Bells' attempt to write net neutrality out of law has failed for this Congress. Or course, net neutrality language did not pass, either, so technically both the Bells and cable operators are free to hose you. Stay on guard.

Does this end it? Not at all. These guys are pros. They're paid to come up with stuff, and execute on what they come up with.

(To the left is someone you will meet soon enough, Randolph May. Yes, he does look like Orwell's image of Big Brother, doesn't he?)

So even with Congress still in session they're off in two different directions:

1. The States -- Verizon is trying to get statewide cable franchise legislation passed in the largest states, figuring it can then ignore the issue.  In Pennsylvania this goes by the name of SB 1247. It's a veritable Verizon wish list. There is no obligation to serve poor people or rural people, which was not only a basic tenet of the Bell experience, but of the initial cable build-out as well. Hey, they're writing it, why not make it as one-sided as possible? A hearing is scheduled for tomorrow.
2. The Courts -- The Bell sockpuppets calling themselves the Progress & Freedom Foundation (even the name is Orwellian)  are now claiming that net neutrality violates the First Amendment. Because the so-called BrandX decision removed the Bells from the "Common Carrier" status they once had, you see, they're now media companies.  Any limit on what they do is thus a violation of "their" free speech rights.

This Week's Clue: The Politics of Open Source Software

Sorry this is a bit late. It's the lead item to this week's issue of A-Clue.Com.

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Hope your like it.

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Many times over the last few months I have written here about open source politics.

But there is politics involved in open source as well.

The open source movement is divided into two main strains. The free side, represented by Richard Stallman, focuses on the mutual obligations of those who get open source software, to give as they get.

The true open source side, represented best perhaps by Jonathan Schwartz of Sun Microsystems, emphasizes business issues, business models, finding ways to make money despite showing the code and giving it away.

Open source, in turn, is in conflict with the proprietary world. Not just proprietary software but because of Digital Rights Management (DRM) the world of proprietary content as well.