The case of British seapersons and marines supposedly captured in Iranian territorial waters continues to, how can I say this, roil the waters of international relations. As I understand it, last time this happened the British apologized relatively quickly and just as quickly the Iranians released the captives with cries of "go, and sin no more!" What's different this time?
Well, a few years ago Iran was helping the West. They had no use for the sunni Taliban regime in Afghanistan, and were being overwhelmed by Afghan refugees, and were glad to see the U.S. and Britain go in and clean out that country (they may be less glad now, when it's apparent that the cleansing of Afghanistan was far from complete). Today Iran and the West are hardly even talking to each other. Partly this is due to the election of President Ahmadinejad, who is not appreciated west of the Shatt al-Arab (except, perhaps, by others who have been alienated by the antics of the White House, such as Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez or, more recently, our supposed ally Saudi King Abdullah). Furthermore, we have the situation of Iranian uranium enrichment. The Iranians assert, rightly, that they have the right to enrich uranium even under the nuclear non-proliferation pact. The West insists that they must be engaging in this process for the sole purpose of building bombs. Never mind that, even if they were (they claim that they're not), (1) they're years away from a bomb — we refuse to even negotiate with them on anything until they surrender to Western demands — a current attempt to reimpose the "unconditional surrender" demands of World War II. This apparently relates to captured British seamen and marines, as well.
Latest apparent insult to Iran: when the question of sanctions was before the Security Council, the United States (according to Iran) neglected to provide President Ahmadinejad with a visa in time for him to come speak before the U.N. (The U.S. insists that the visa was prepared in plenty of time.)
The Iraq study group recommended that the United States begin to engage in direct negotiations with Iran and Syria. The White House has refused to do this so far, and apparently the British are following suit. Nancy Pelosi's trip to Damascus, which has upset the White House no end, may be a start in the right direction. Who's going to go and "open up" Tehran?
Note: just as I finished the above, I heard on TV that President Bush has now put his oar into these troubled waters, referring to the interned British seamen and marines as "hostages" — though what they are hostages for was not made clear.
I read today in the Center for American Progress Action Fund's daily report that "[t]he inspector general of the Department of the Interior found this week that Julie MacDonald, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks and a senior Bush political appointee, 'has repeatedly altered scientific field reports to minimize protections for imperiled species and disclosed confidential information to private groups seeking to affect policy decisions.'"
So what else is new? It's been apparent for some time that this administration has no use for science, as long as it gets in the way of some contributor's profits. This has been most obvious with the question of global warming, where government scientists have had reports changed, observations changed to hypotheses, and have generally been forbidden to talk about the subject in any way that the administration didn't like.
If this administration were to be around long enough (perish the thought!), we all know what the results would be — the first time ten thousand Americans died in an unprecedented summer heat wave (as happened in France two or three years ago), the administration would immediately turn to the scientists, hoping that they would find a solution. But scientists don't find solutions — they find explanations. We would be in a sad situation indeed if we were to depend on science to solve our problems. It won't. Now technology, maybe ...
The opening of a new, inexpensive rail link from East China to Tibet is apparently going to speed up the process of "sinification" of the sometime Hermit Kingdom. Apparently many Han immigrants have already invaded the country, making the native Tibetans a minority in their own land. The Dalai Lama's Lhasa of 20,000 people now houses a population of more than 300,000, according to some figures.
This has happened before. Several years ago I read an article about the Manchu language in the Esperanto monthly with the appropriate name Monato ("Monthly"). The Manchus, as you may remember, ruled China clear up until 1911. Do you know how many people can speak the ancestral Manchu language today? You can apparently count them on the fingers of two hands.
I suspect that the result of Chinese policy toward Tibet (including the opening of the new rail link) is that the Tibetans will, in a couple more generations, like the Manchus be absorbed into the Han majority and will effectively disappear as a separate people and culture.
I surely would like to criticize the Chinese for implementing policies that not only permit but encourage this. But there's a minor problem for us Americans. Chinese policy toward Tibet, it seems, is not much different, historically speaking, from American policy towards the entire continent. Andrew Jackson would have had no problem identifying with the current leadership in Beijing, at least on this topic. The main difference is that in the 19th century we tended to exterminate those who got in our way; the Chinese are simply absorbing them. So for Americans to criticize Chinese policy toward Tibet would be almost the ultimate in hypocrisy.
I haven't written anything about this firestorm in a teapot yet, because I'm not sure I have anything to say, but I guess I can express a couple of opinions about certain aspects of the case.
(1) I heard someone say that "this is normal operating procedure; after all, Bill Clinton fired all 93 of his local prosecutors, so the current administration hasn't done anything unusual." Yes, Clinton fired all 93 of his local prosecutors; so, for that matter, did Ronald Reagan. Both men did this at the time they took office, which is indeed SOP, at least when the White House changes parties. On the other hand, firing a big clump of prosecutors in the middle of their period of service is not SOP; it has rarely if ever been done (though I suppose that the occasional prosecutor gets dumped for poor performance).
(2) Alberto Gonzalez, our Attorney-General, seems basically to be saying: "Yes, I'm the guy at the top, so I'm ultimately responsible; but in fact I carefully kept myself out of the loop so I wouldn't know what was going on, therefore please don't hold me accountable, punish my underlings who did the actual drudge work." Does anyone have any use whatsoever for this guy?
(3) The original story was that these were performance-related firings. Unfortunately, some of the fired prosecutors seem to contest any slurs on their performance, and their recent job-performance reviews seem to uphold their positions.
"It has been decided to ... uh ... ask for your resignation," the President announced at last."Save your breath," Kinnison advised. "I came down here to do a job, and the only way you can keep me from doing that job is to fire me."
"That was not ... uh ... entirely unexpected. A difficulty arose, however, in deciding what reason to put on your termination papers."
"I can well believe that. You can put down anything you like," Kinnison shrugged, "with one exception. Any implication of incompetence and you'll have to prove it in court."
Since that time, there's been a whole farrago of nonsense over who in the Justice Department initiated this operation, who carried it out, who in the White House may or may not have taken a hand in the matter, who in the White House may in fact have initiated the matter, etc., etc. We can only hope that Senator Leahy and his companions will, during the coming weeks, get to the truth of the matter to that the rest of us can sleep well o' nights.
Congress is wasting much time debating timetables, funding, etc. for the conflict in Iraq. Many Democrats would like to see a pull-out as soon as possible. This will not happen, certainly not before January, 2009, when someone else — hopefully, someone with some sense, but I'm not holding my breath — replaces George W. Bush as President of the United States. Bush can veto any bill that Congress passes, and on this particular topic the Democrats won't be able to put together a veto-proof majority in either house.
What Congress should be doing is passing something like the following:
The President of the United States shall not, without explicit concurrence of both Houses of Congress, initiate overt military action against any nation which has not previously and demonstrably initiated overt military action against the United States or its forces abroad.
This would probably be known as the "Iran" resolution, since it would be aimed at short-circuiting the Administration's obvious and ill-conceived desire to attempt régime change in Iran through a bombing campaign. It, too, might have difficulty in collecting a veto-proof majority, but the difficulty would, I think, be less (there are at least some sensible Republicans who know what a third concurrent war on the ground would mean to our military), and at least Congress would be on record.
I enjoyed reading (sporadically) about President Bush's recent tour of several Latin American nations because it gave me a chance to see our president doing his clown-thing — a very subdued clown, however. He seemed to spend much time going out of his way not to offend anyone, acting like the representative of a micronation rather than a superpower, and he was generally successful. Indeed, foreign heads of state were encouraged to believe that they could behave as though they were in charge of things and not the Colossus of the North. I notice in today's paper the headline: "[Mexican president]Calderón admonishes Bush". Viva el Presidente!
Much more successful as a clown was Bush's Latin nemesis, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. I get the impression that Chavez knows he is a clown and plays it for all it's worth. And the public seems to eat it up. Massive crowds turned out for both men, but while Bush's seemed less than admiring — the president's security was constantly tight, and it looked as though it had to be — the crowds that turned out for Chavez cheered the man. (One may suppose that it helped that in many cases Chavez offered the countries he visited real aid, whereas such American offers were, as usual, largely pro forma.)
I read Stephen King's clown-oriented horror story It many years ago, and it sort of fixed my opinion of clowns in the unfavorable area. The movie Killer Klowns from Outer Space didn't do much to change that opinion. Nevertheless, one has to appreciate the tomfoolery of Bush and Chavez.
Our local newspaper, for the Saturday forum, wants readers' takes on the miserable situation at Walter Reed Hospital — and perhaps in the Veterans' Administration in general.
No question that the current administration, in its zeal for cost-cutting and privatization, has short-changed wounded veterans of the Iraq and Afghan wars. But would any other administration have done otherwise? Give me leave to doubt. Anyone who expects wounded veterans, or any other kind, to be given good treatment is naive, ignorant of history, or both. This is true not only of the United States; there are indications that British wounded vets are also getting less than class A treatment.
A hundred years or more ago, Kipling wrote his poem "Tommy", which describes the current attitude towards soldiers and veterans to a T. I won't quote the whole poem, which you can easily find on the internet, but perhaps the last verse will give some idea:
For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Chuck him out, the brute!"
But it's "Saviour of 'is country," when the guns begin to shoot;
An' it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please;
But Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool — you bet that Tommy sees!
Though Tommy doesn't always see, and often continues to expect the sort of treatment his behavior deserves. But, when it comes to governments, it seems that vets, and particularly injured vets, are more of a liability than an asset. "Yes, you sacrificed your youth and your health and maybe your life for your country. But what have you done for us lately?"
While I'm on the subject of clueless letter writers, I should mention one from two or three weeks ago whose name I have charitably forgotten. In a letter about the war in Iraq, and in passing, he mentioned as known fact the belief that Moslems cannot go to Heaven unless they kill an Infidel (read: Christian).
One has to feel sorry for those Moslems, since as far as I can tell 99.999% of them have never killed an Infidel, and so are relegated to Hell. Oh, I suspect that most of them have had thoughts of killing somebody at one time or another, but the object of their homicidal thoughts is far less likely to be some unknown Infidel than it is the equally Moslem kid next door who plays his boom box at top volume until three in the morning.
We also tend, these days, to equate "terrorism" with "Moslems". True enough, far more Moslems are involved with terrorism than any other group; but the vast majority of these are not themselves terrorists but the innocent victims of terrorism, those hundreds (by now, thousands, perhaps tens of thousands) of innocent people blown up in marketplace suicide bombings and the like. By contrast, the terrorists themselves are a tiny minority, even among Moslems.
I sort of enjoy poking fun at some of the clueless people who write letters to the editor of our local newspaper (West County Times), but occasionally it's nice to find somebody there who has a clue — even if it's only a clue, not the whole truth. In today's paper Charles T. Smith of Richmond, California, addresses a Times editorial worrying about why so many people, in our scientific society, believe in "space aliens, astrology, lucky numbers, psychics etc." Smith, who apparently can make a link where other people prefer to miss one, suggests that "Perhaps the editors should review the Religion section of the Saturday edition of the Times. In case you haven't noticed, you will find articles about the fantasies you failed to mention, such as angels, devils, heaven, hell, transubstantiation, people rising from the dead, miracles, visions, and 'sacred images' appearing on trees, windows and tacos."
(One may suppose that the editors would reply: "But this is not superstition, like astrology; this is religion, a fundamental part of life." At which Smith — and I — would laugh out loud.)
Having said which, and being myself a devotee of certain aspects of the supernatural, I should point out that the problem with belief in the supernatural in a scientific-technological society does not come with the belief itself. Science does not address the supernatural, and some of what people believe that lies outside science may be true. More people, after all, have seen ghosts than have ever seen an electron.
No, the problem arises when the believer in the supernatural decides — or, more commonly, lets someone else decide for him — that if some tenet of the supernatural creates a conflict with some tenet of science, then science must be wrong. I have no problem believing simultaneously that some tenets of astrology may be correct and that the earth revolves around the sun; the problem would arise if I suddenly decided (or let someone else decide for me) that the tenets of astrology preclude the earth revolving around the sun, and that therefore the sun must revolve around the earth. Well, astrology remains largely an unknown field; but it's been well demonstrated over the years that the earth goes around the sun and not vice versa (1) When science and the supernatural come into conflict, it's the supernatural, not science, that has to yield, because science is demonstrated fact while the supernatural remains conjectural.
Interestingly, the following letter, from one Gary Herbertson in beautiful downtown Berkeley, addresses a similar flight of fancy published a couple of weeks ago by one Paul Radliff. Radliff pooh-poohs the idea of global warming for the following reasons:
(1) Al Gore uses a private jet and owns several houses. This disproves global warming? More likely, it proves that Gore, good intentions notwithstanding, contributes at least as much to it as any of the rest of us.
(2) The director of the Weather Channel may have made a mistake. ?
(3) Not all scientists agree. No, but on this one the figure seems to be somewhere between 97% and 99% ߞ close enough to consensus for government work.
(4) 30 years ago it was thought that our atmosphere was going to leak out into space. Huh? Given the gravitational potential field of the earth, I can't imagine any reputable scientist making such a comment. But, assuming that some reputable scientist, who was in his cups because his wife just left him for a successful used-car salesman, made such a comment as a wish rather than a prediction, what would it have to do with global warming anyway?
(5) Finally, Radliff apparently expressed a wish for "hard facts, absolute proof and a controlled experiment". Bad news, Mr. Radliff. We're undergoing such an experiment right now, the facts as they are developing are as hard as you could wish for, and believe me, you don't want the absolute proof you're looking for — it looks as though it's going to turn out to be very painful for all concerned. Science wins again — and this time the rest of us lose.
(1) Actually, neither one is true; the earth and the sun both go around a common point which is not the center of the sun — but, if I remember correctly, and based on the relatively tiny mass of the earth, lies inside the sun somewhere.