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From the washington post, via Hit and Run:
"We don't lack for people to go thump in the night," said Brig. Gen. Carter Ham, who commands the task force responsible for the Mosul area in northern Iraq. "The challenge is getting the intel."
But officers noted that linguistic and cultural factors limit the ability of U.S. troops to interact with Iraqis and develop their own actionable intelligence.
"Where we're going to get a lot of this is from the Iraqis," Casey said. "They know themselves, and we have to leverage that."
Other officers, however, described Iraq's reconstituted intelligence service as poorly organized and short of resources. Its capabilities remain immature and will take time to develop, the officers said.
The United States is the first global megapower, but in some ways there is nothing global about Americans at all--even or especially in contrast to the Brits in the days of their empire. Americans tend to act like they're in Bloomington, Indiana or someplace like that--or they'll get back there as quickly as possible.
They have spread an economy they are used to all over the world; American technology has probably changed family life all over the world as much as any single factor; and if the U.S. succeeds in Iraq, or anywhere else, it will be by making it as much as possible like home.
By comparison, the Brits always accepted, expected, even encouraged a certain amount of real diversity in their empire. Not necessarily a better or worse approach, but in an obvious sense less imperialistic, and more conservative.
It's still almost unheard of for an American to "go native" in any foreign country. Maybe Padilla is an example (Hamdi, although a U.S. citizen, has Saudi parents and has largely lived in Saudi Arabia). It's still difficult, it seems, for the CIA and the military to find people who speak any language other than English.
A nice post from Ann Althouse on the departure of Brokaw, planned departure of Rather, etc., ending with this:
By the way, I couldn't care less about losing Brokaw and gaining Williams. I don't watch any of the nightly network news shows, and I could easily TiVo them and watch them at my leisure. I dislike the hammy tone of the presentation. I'd rather read the news or just catch up with the news on one of the cable news networks.
Surely this is a thought that unites a lot of folks in the so-called "blogosphere." Who can stand factory-issue TV news any more? Anchors who are idiots, or are trained to sound that way (Rick Salutin has said he has heard of anchors working on getting an appropriately stupid yet engaging expression on their faces); the slowly paced delivery, maddening even without commercials; the inane, programmed variety--one baby animal, one human interest, preferably with females/children/little old lady, sobering/hard news probably leads, with anchor looking like he's going to a funeral.
Who can take this seriously, or believe these overpaid idiots have any kind of authority? Walter Cronkite was a fairly hopeless individual with a pleasant voice, face and manner, who discovered that people were attributing "authority" to him, and who then became a whole-hearted fraud. The same may be true of Edward R. Murrow. David Brinkley had this cynical worldliness about him, but what did it add up to?
When we lived in the States, we had friends who said the only reason to watch Rather was to make sure not to miss the broadcast when he finally does a Howard Beale.
By comparison, the web lets you work pretty much at your own pace, pick and choose stories and features, read as much or as little as you want.
My daily fare? I read the Toronto Star (dead tree) five days a week. I no longer read the Globe and Mail. I surf Drudge, Slate and Instapundit several times a day. From Instapundit, I usually go to Atrios, the Corner, Kevin Drum, Josh Marshall, Hit and Run, and a few others. Two or three times a week I go to Ann Althouse and Colby Cosh.
Through these sources I can usually read the news stories I actually want to read, at length, as well as some commentary from people who are not idiots.
My American Constitutional Law class extends for two semesters, with a final exam at the end. A paper of roughly 5 pages was due last week.
This coming Thursday is the last class of the semester. I've promised a summary of the first semester, some study questions for the exam, and a conclusion on this long chapter in Mason and Stephenson, "Property Rights and the Development of Due Process."
So I'll work on my class as I blog.
The Constitution was basically an attempt to replace an ineffective national government with an effective one. There were fears that an "effective" new government would threaten the existing rights and privileges of both individuals and states. Some people found it convenient to argue that state legislatures were better protectors of individual rights than the new Congress would be, even though there are good reasons--now buttressed by historical examples--to expect more successful demagoguery and mob rule at the state level.
John Marshall, not the first Chief Justice but an early one who left behind some lasting decisions, was mainly concerned to ensure that Congress could act effectively on a national scale, and the Supreme Court, presumably with some national government bias, would be the final arbiter as to what the Constitution actually meant. Marbury v. Madison: Court loses the battle over Marbury's job, but wins the war as to whether Congress can actually pass a certain piece of legislation or not. McCulloch v. Maryland: Congress wins, state loses. Gibbons v. Ogden: Commerce power of Congress construed very broadly (Marshall actually criticizes "strict construction").
On the latter case, M and S say: "Marshall could have resolved the case simply by finding that both state and nation hd acted within their powers, but because the state law conflicted with the federal licensing act, it must give way." He made it questionable (and a colleague went further) whether the states truly had any independent authority, that could be defended against Congress, when it came to commerce. "Though the states retained authority to enact inspection, pilotage, and health laws, even here Congress could enter the field if it chose." Marshall uses the word "enumeration"; does he agree witih defenders of the states that Congress and the national government have only "enumerated" powers, with the residuum always belonging to the States--arguably because it is what remains of the "sovereignty" they had before the Constitution?
Marshall delicately outlines an argument for the states: that they may exercise the commerce power within their own jurisdictions; that this was an inseparable attribute of their previous sovereignty; that they have only surrendered those parts or aspects of sovereignty that are specified in the Constitution; that all of this is "secured" by the 10th Amendment. Marshall indicates that for now defenders of Congress can concede all of this, but still argue that "full power to regulate a particular subject implies the whole power, and leaves no residuum...."
He discusses an analogy between regulation of commerce, and taxation (another big subject). He says the difference is that states could not exist at all without some independent taxing power. "Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States." (He doesn't mention direct vs. indirect taxes, or whether there is more of a limit on the kinds of taxes available to Congress than are available to the states).
In this case one can see the argument coming that if almost everything that has any material value is part of the economy, Congress can regulate almost everything; Marshall does not admit that he is going that far. (I often repeat to my class Lincoln's line that no state was ever sovereign except Texas. He meant, I believe, that it was the people of the United States who rebelled against Britain, and tried various constitutional experiments. No individual state ever had the veto over any of this, and it is doubtful that individual states chose to join in or not.)
In Gibbons, New York state had tried to grant a somewhat corrupt monopoly over a vital kind of transport. When the Court struck down the monopoly, and opened up competitition (and brought down prices) all over the country, this was a popular move. M and S say: "With the exception of monopolists and southern slave owners who feared the consequence of a broad definition of national power over commerce, public opinion welcomed...."
In a way, the federalism cases were a bit academic until the development first of a modern industrial economy, then of the welfare state. The Court struck down an act of Congress in Marbury (1803), and didn't do so again until Dred Scott v. Sanford in 1857.
M and S say Gibbons (1824) was "the first important case in the Supreme Court concerning the meaning of the commerce clause." The Taney court, coming after Marshall, struggled to define what kinds of regulation states could and could not carry out, often using the commerce clause as a standard, but the reality was that if states did not regulate a certain area of life, it would probably not be done. "Dual federalism" was established, although it was not exactly clear where the lines were being drawn. Taney clarified the "police power" which was widely thought to belong to states as a carry-over from pre-Constitution days: "'police power' came to mean not only legislative authority to remove government-created privilege, but also sanction for state legislation having broad social purpose." At a minimum "police power" included measures to provide for the health and security of the public, including water and sewer, police, and public health (epidemics/quarantines). It might have seemed natural to build on these accepted legislative powers and use the states as the main vehicle for the welfare state in the 20th century. This is roughly what happened with Canadian provinces. Instead, using the commerce power, the power to collect income taxes established by constitutional amendment in 1913 (16th amendment), and political frustrations over the Great Depression, it was Congress that led the way. The Court behind the famous Lochner decision (1905) prepared for massive Congressional action by arguing that New York could not protect working conditions for workers--and again, that implied that Congress couldn't, either.
Of course the Civil War made a huge difference, and the post-Civil War amendments to the Constitution have had a huge effect. Something had to be done about individual rights, particularly for former slaves and their descendants, and it seemed that only Congress and the Supreme Cout could do it. Of course this conclusion was not accepted overnight.
An underlying issue all along--perhaps the issue that gave the federalism cases so much bite--was: are there fundamental individual rights that must be protected against any and all governments and legislatures? Didn't individuals choose to form a government (even, perhaps, leave a state of nature) in order to defend their "natural rights"? Isn't there a residuum or trace of these individual rights, much more than of the "sovereignty" of the states, under the Constitution? Shouldn't it be the courts that recognize them and limit government action accordingly?
In Fletcher v. Peck, Marshall launched one of his more daring decision in protecting the status of a contract--and therefore, the status of parties to a contract as free agents exercising their rights. As M and S say, Marshall's first argument was that the parties had vested rights, part of the underlying principles of society, and these cannot be violated by a state legislature voiding the contract. Then Marshall tried to move to the text of the Constitution. The biggest problem was that some government would normally be called on to enforce a contract; who is going to enforce a contract to which a state is a party? Marshall wasn't sure that he could rely either on "general principles" or the Constitution, so he kept referring to both. In Dartmouth College v. Woodward, he was clearer: "any ambiguity in a charter must be construed in favour of the adventurers and against the state." This gave "vested rights" clear protection from the Constitution.
What is so great about M and S chapter 8 is that they really try to cover this topic from beginning to end: beginning with property and contracts, then moving to the slow development of "substantive due process," which later became so important to the "incorporation" of the original Bill of Rights into the 14th Amendment. The original 7 amendments, in particular, generally say what Congress and the national government shall not do; the post-Civil War amendments, especially the 14th, limited the actions of the States.
In the Slaugherhouse cases (1873), the Court insisted that the "privileges and immunities" clause, which might seem to protect U.S. citizens against all excessive government action, had a very limited application. They were worried that if the monopoly established by Louisana was struck down, the court would become "a perpetual censor upon all legislation of the States, on the civil rights of their own citizens, with authority to nullify such as it did not approve as consistent with those rights, as they existed at the time of the adoption of the amendment."
A nice, clear use of the phrase "civil rights," in an argument that the individual cannot appeal beyond the state for protection of individual rights. Remarkably, that is what the great O.W. Holmes (a hero to intellectuals for his language, derived from Mill, on free speech) says in his dissent in Lochner. He defends the New York legislation, which in this case protects workers, on the ground that virtually any legislation with democratic support must be upheld by the Court: "my agreement or disagreement [with economic theory] has nothing to do with the right of a majority to embody their opinions in law...[state laws and Constitutions may be "tyrannical" or], equally with this [law], interfere with the liberty to contract. Sunday laws and usury laws... the prohibition of lotteries. The liberty of the citizen to do as he likes so long as he does not interfere with the liberty of others...is interfered with by school laws, by the post office, by every state or municipal institution which takes his money for purposes thought desirable."
Once the federalism questions (and questions about Congress, President, and the courts) are settled somehow, do individuals have any protection against tyranny of the majority? Are welfare state programs supported more by the mere desires of the majority than by the Constitution?
The power of that question, to which Holmes seems oblivious here, explains why a lot of old property and contract cases, including the much criticized Lochner, remain relevant. As M and S say: the right defended in Lochner--liberty of contract--is not mentioned in the 14th amendment, and was probably not intended by those who drafted the amendment. Yet the Court decided that application of the amendment required defence of this right. This anticipates the "right to privacy."
The Court in Lochner also "attributed substantive, not merely procedural, content to the concept of due process of law" and treated the right it was emphasizing as fundamental.
In some ways the best known story of the U.S. Constitution is of how progress was made in ensuring African-Americans enjoyed the same rights as others--no more, and no less. Some "novel" arguments, such as those for affirmative action, are still justified as a way to correct for the lingering results of past injustices. (For a while "school busing" cases and voting "apportionment and districting" cases were both seen as opportunities to help African-Americans, but those developments have died down).
The bigger story is how Americans in general see themselves, the institutions of government, and the Constitution. Do they think that in general they must submit to the majority, as the best way to protect the rights of most individuals, most of the time? Or do they think they as individuals have rights that must be protected, even at some cost to the majority? Obviously they think both, but it is helpful to try to clarify this further.
Ann Althouse has blogged on the "medical marijuana" case that is going to the Supreme Court soon. On drugs (as on gay marriage and other social issues), it seems there is now some room for states to take diverse approaches, and to emphasize individual freedom if they so choose. To the extent there is a national approach, it is likely to remain "Just Say No." Liberals are used to being suspicious of states' rights, and state legislatures, and more inclined to see national policies. What if the Republican majority in Congress becomes more puritanical or restrictive, on some issues? Won't federalism take on new life as a quest for more individualistic or libertarian policy approaches moves to the state level?
Many aspects of this story are hard to believe, especially if one takes at all seriously Canadians' claims to be morally superior.
The Minister of Immigration, Judy Sgro, granted a temporary resident permit to a Romanian stripper who was in Canada on an expired visa which restricted her to stripping for a living. The new permit is for two years during which she can look for work in a variety of fields. It turns out the stripper actually worked on the Minister's re-election campaign--although the Minister says she was unaware of this.
Greg Weston of the Sun chain here.
It seems no one has ever really explained why Canada has a program to ensure strippers are admitted on work visas--as if this is a skilled trade of which there is a shortage. Sgro repeats the message that the exotic dancing business is a legitimate, tax-paying business, like it or not, and people in that business keep telling the government there is a shortage of strippers.
The goverment requires proof that a woman is able/willing to dance nude--or experienced at doing so. One memo has surfaced in which an official boasts that a nude photo can be demanded. About 90% of the strippers who enter the country this way are from Romania.
Obviously, this could all be a front for organized crime. Canadian politicians might go along with it because the "business owners" come up with campaign donations, and ask no questions about any policies other than the "import a stripper" policy.
Do bureaucrats go along with it to prove they are somehow hip?
More
here. Some articles say it is difficult for researchers to find out exactly what goes on with the Romanian strippers, but one study has surfaced:
A July 4, 2000, internal cable message from Canadian immigration enforcement officer Dorothy Christie to Kenneth Hosley, a counterpart at the Canadian embassy in Mexico, described how entry visas for almost all East European dancers were fraudulently obtained.
"Most of the contracts submitted by dancers and agents are bogus, they claim to pay the girls, but no money has changed hands. The girls are paid by patrons to the bars and prostitution is being done in small VIP rooms," she wrote in a memo obtained under the Access to Information Act.
"We have also found that none of the girls are submitting income tax returns, which is against the law and the RCMP have contacted Revenue Canada and investigators will be attending clubs with us," she added.
Ms. Christie wrote that a joint law enforcement crackdown code-named Almonzo had arrested 500 women, including 140 who left Canada voluntarily under deportation orders. A slew of charges was also laid against strip club owners and the number of visas issued to dancers cut back by 50%.
But since then she said, East European dancers were using every trick in the book in order to enter Canada. "The girls are now attempting every way possible. Some applied as nuns, some actually got here to be folk dancers at restaurants and clubs that don't exist," she wrote.
Immigration Canada had sent letters to any dancer with a suspicious application to appear for interview at a government office but "to date, no one has appeared and warrants for their arrests have been issued."
As the Globe and Mail has said (registration wall), if there is a shortage of strippers, this is probably only because they are paid nothing in wages, and told to perform as prostitutes to get paid. If their immigration papers are totally under the control of one employer, they are indentured servants at best, slaves at worst.
This is beyond Monty Python; it is crazy.
Back-to-back posts on Tapped that are pretty good.
Nick Confessore suggests there is something to the "bad popular culture" theme or meme after all. Distrusting or disapproving of a lot of TV and movies, objecting to public immorality, seems to be about the only domestic "issue" on which a majority of Americans actually agreed with Bush over Kerry.
As I've said, it is hard to believe there was such a great difference between Bush, father of two New York party girls, and Kerry, father of pretty studious types, on the issue of "does popular culture go too far?" But voters seem to have decided there was a real difference, and John Ellis mentioned this right after the election in his somewhat rude phrase "the pimp and ho culture."
Perhaps Kerry's events with rock stars were generally a mistake, if voters assume that people in entertainment, like theatre people in the old days, are not reliable morally? Confessore thinks Democrats would be foolish to ignore all this.
Even more subtle observations from Grance Franke-Ruta. She says there may actually be more indications of social decline, including divorce and violence, in red states than blue. The insistence of red states on law and order, Christian fundamentalism, and "return" to social norms, then, may not be simply hyprocisy, but self-defence.
A further twist: the violence may be concentrated in the "blue" or Democratic-voting big cities within red states. The Republican-voting suburbanites and rural folk may have moved out of the corrupt city, and may want some kind of crackdown on "them."
In the case of the deep South, Glenn Reynolds linked to a discussion a few months ago about how the qualities that seem most Southern today, including church-going, were decidedly northern, even associated with New England, and decidedly non-Southern, a fairly short time ago. Is it possible that as segregation came under attack, the white South wanted to be able to say: nobody here but us patriotic Christians?
I've borrowed a book on Lord Salisbury, something I've wanted for a long time. He was an intelligent Conservative Prime Minister of Britain toward the end of the Victorian era. I've read a short biography, and I want to read a longer one. But I'm also interested in his own writings; he was praised for commentary on foreign policy, before he was praised for his practice of it.
The book is Lord Salisbury on Politics, edited by Paul Smith.
For now I want to focus on this.
[blockquote]He was one of those human beings who have serious difficulty in coming to terms with the world around them and in achieving a tolerable mode of living. As a child, losing his mother before he was ten, he was solitary and starved of the affection which his nature demanded. [After being bullied at Eton] he lived in real fear of a childish brutality to which he could offer no reply beyond a violent but impotent rage, and the experience may well, as his daughter suggests, have done permanent harm both to his nerves and to his capacity for personal relations...a somewhat isolated fugure, reserved, painfully fastidious, and so absolute in his moral and intellectual attitudes and opinions as to make friendship with those who disagreed with them virtually impossible....almost pathetically under-equipped to cope with adult life....Even routine social intercourse was a trial....a neurotic of the first water....liable to the crises which he called 'nerve storms', bringing depression, lassitude, and a hypersensitiveness of touch and hearing....The exhilaration of battle overrode his habitual intellectual pessimism...[he criticized political movements as if they were a threat to his personal physical security]...an almost morbid diffidence...an ideal of moral perfection....He had in many respects a very limited direct experience and perception of [the reality outside himself]. His sensory receiving apparatus...was conspicuously defective...remarkably lacking in visual sense and in powers of direct observation....Nor could imagination supply what he failed to sense, for that faculty was not, except in moments of nervous excitement, strong in him....lack of capacity for making contact with other people....self-centred indifference to them...did not possess the power of animal apprehension of another personality...could not make an instinctive judgment of character....His intuitive understanding of others was so weak that their motives and feelings were frequently incomprehensible to him....[/blockquote]
In today's world we tend to react to descriptions like this by saying this may be high-functioning autism--perhaps Asperger's Syndrome in particular.
Canadian golfer Moe Norman died recently, and several people, including Colby Cosh on his blog, have made that suggestion about him.
Some have made the same suggestion about the late Canadian pianist Glenn Gould.
In the article I just linked to, a psychiatrist says categorically Gould did not have autism. The main reason is that autism--even the high-functioning variety of Asperger's syndrom, displays a "triad" of linked or overlapping "impairments": "reciprocal social interaction, verbal and nonverbal communication and a restricted range of imaginative activities." Gould did not show these, particularly in early childhood when, according to the classic accounts, they would be at their most severe.
Here is what Oliver Sacks says in his great essay on Temple Grandin, "An Anthropologist on Mars": the triad of impairments "is only one hypothesis among many; no theory, as yet, encompasses the whole range of phenomena to be seen in autism."
It does seem that it many cases autism is severe in early childhood (perhaps beginning about age 2); with Asperger's we may be seeing people who are always less severe, and who use their intelligence and support from others to adapt.
[blockquote]But though there may indeed be a devastating picture at the age of three, some autistic youngsters, contrary to expectations, may go on to develop fair language, a modicum of social skills, and even high intellectual achievements; they may develop into autonomous human beings, capable of a life that may at least appear full and normal--even though, beneath it, there may remain a persistent, and even profound, autistic singularity. Asperger had a clearer idea of this possibility than Kanner [the two described autism, by this name, independently]; hence we now speak of such "high-functioning" autistic individuals as having Asperger's syndrome.[/blockquote]
Here is the part of Sacks' essay that always gets to me the most:
Whether Asperger's syndrome is radically different from classical infantile autism (in a child of three, all forms of autism may look the same) or whether there is a continuum from the severest cases of infantile autism ... to the most gifted, high-functioning individuals, is a matter of dispute....It is also unclear whether this continuum should be extended to include the possession of isolated "autistic traits"--peculiar, intense preoccupations and fixations, often combined with relative social withdrawal or remoteness--such as one encounters in any number of people conventionally called "normal" or seen, at most, as a little odd, eccentric, pedantic, or reclusive.
Maybe Sacks goes to far in trying to blur the distinction between the normal and the abnormal, or in finding "a person just like you and me" behind complex neurological symptoms. I basically buy it--or rather, I start to think that the huge category of the "normal," almost any time before the 20th century, included lots of "medical conditions" that no one had diagnosed. Neurological conditions are fascinating because they are difficult or impossible to separate from "personality."
Moody people, people with short tempers, and extreme loners all give the impression, at least at times, of not being able to stand "ordinary life"--or of having impossibly high standards for themselves and others. What is primary: a kind of physiological response, like not being able to stand a noise or a smell, or a moral or intellectual judgment, which might be at least somewhat independent of bodily condition or pressures from the material world? I guess at the most general or stupidest: does the material world, including the brain and body we are born with, shape personality, or do we have a personality which at least to some extent can shape the world?
This is the kind of thing that drives bloggers to their computers, questioning the mainstream media.
A new film about the Rosenbergs, "Heir to an Execution: a Granddaughter's Story," by their granddaughter Ivy Meeropol.
Everyone...tiptoes...so...carefully. Were they guilty, yes or no? It's not really a big mystery, and there aren't really two equally smart or equally stupid sides to the story. It isn't just a shouting match involving people with different emotional stakes. Of course one wants to respect the feelings of the family, but still.
The NYT says Ethel's brother, (Julius's brother-in-law) David Greenglass "said that he had obtained crude sketches of a cross-section of the bomb and a crucial device known as a high-explosive lens mold and passed them to Julius." Julius then allegedly passed the information to the Soviets. There is far more evidence today that Julius actually spied for the Soviet Union, and handed over information on the bomb in particular, than there was in the early 50s.
"Despite various disclosures during the years about Julius Rosenberg, defenders have argued that the information he passed was inconsequential and was already known by the Soviets."
The Toronto Star today says the evidence used at the trial was "thin." It also says evidence that emerged much later from the VENONA project strongly indicated that Julius was guilty of different (though not unrelated) acts of espionage for the Soviet Union.
On the VENONA files, the NYT refers vaguely to CIA files that were released about a decade ago, and says:
Since then, "my brother and I have had to live with the possibility that unlike the lies told about them before, this could be true,'' Michael Meeropol, now 61 and a professor of economics at Western New England College in Springfield, Mass., said in an interview before the film was shown. "And we've asked ourselves, what does it mean if it is true? We can live with that and we can live with the ambiguity of never being sure."
Well, I guess if the family had hired a PR firm to defend Julius and Ethel, that's what they would have come up with. But: the New York Times?
I don't think this even counts as honest effort. True: the only evidence against Julius or Ethel at their trial concerned those sketches from Greenglass. It might seem hard to believe that the sketches would be of any use to the Soviets, especially since British physicist Klaus Fuchs was passing them detailed plans of the entire bomb, which he understood and had access to, whereas Greenglass did not.
But this was all dealt with in the great book that opened up the question of the Rosenbergs' guilt: The Rosenberg File, by Ronald Radosh and Joyce Milton (1983, 1997). I can't find two crucial things quickly on the web, but here is a good overview, including recent evidence and debates.
Yes, the Soviets were getting real plans for a plutonium bomb, from real physicists. But: Fuchs in particular had spied for them earlier, then stopped for a period of years. They had not heard from him, then suddenly he is at Los Alamos and wants to share plans for an unprecedented new weapon. He sends plans for a plutonium bomb. The Soviets were working on a bomb, but their work was going more slowly, and they were still working on a uranium bomb. The U.S. had made one uranium bomb (I believe--one of the two dropped on Japan)--and had moved on to plutonium believing rightly it would be more effective. Greenglass's sketches, almost no matter how crude, probably confirmed that Fuchs' detailed plans for a science fiction weapon were the real thing, and saved the Soviets the trouble of spending any more time on a uranium bomb.
There are two or three last gasps for Rosenberg defenders. The spy ring which was confirmed by VERONA may have existed only in WWII, when the Soviet Union was an ally. What's the harm etc... But when the Rosenbergs were arrested, several of their old friends, with jobs in sensitive facilities, travelled as quickly as they could to Mexico and/or behind the Iron Curtain. Some of them made it. Were they just trying to hide what they had done in WWII?
Ethel may have been innocent of any crime. The FBI only wanted her to face the death penalty so that they could pressure either her or Julius to talk. This didn't work, but they killed her any way--virtually the murder of a person against whom there was no solid evidence. That's what Radosh and Milton said in the 80s (the FBI had questions they wanted to ask Julius; No. 1 was "did your wife have any knowledge of your activities?"); but by the 90s they had started to think Ethel was part of a conspiracy.
Was it overkill--sorry--to execute people--something that was done to anyone else in the West--including Fuchs--in the Cold War?
Prince Charles faced questions from a junior staffer about whether there were opportunities for promotion within "the organization." Apparently she wasn't even asking on her own behalf. Charles wrote to someone he trusted:
In the memo, the prince wrote: "What is wrong with everyone nowadays? "Why do they all seem to think they are qualified to do things far beyond their technical capabilities? "This is to do with the learning culture in schools as a consequence of a child-centred system which admits no failure. "People think they can all be pop stars, high court judges, brilliant TV personalities or infinitely more competent heads of state without ever putting in the necessary work or having natural ability. "This is the result of social utopianism which believes humanity can be genetically and socially engineered to contradict the lessons of history."
The Globe and Mail (probably behind a registration wall by now) added the delicious detail that Charles is himself "genetically engineered"--and, er, not a brilliant success.
I was reminded of a song from Camelot. This is not a great musical. Lerner and Loewe had done very well, after years of work, with My Fair Lady, and my sense is that they were pressed to come up with another show, quick, to strike while the iron was hot. There are several strong tunes in My Fair Lady: "Take Me to the Church" got a nice rendition from Sinatra, "I Could have Danced All Night" is kind of standard (not a favourite of mine), and Dean Martin did a really lovely job of "I've Grown Accustomed to her Face."
By comparison, it's hard to think of a really strong song in Camelot, and all too easy to think of poor Bob Goulet singing "C'est Moi, C'est Moi." No, it ain't Bob, and it never was. It all tends toward the ... silly. The association with JFK came because he honestly couldn't think of any aspect of culture, popular or not, that he liked or had any real interest in; in desperation, to answer a question from a reporter, he said something about Camelot--at the time, probably the biggest hit on Broadway. Oh, they might have said, you mean adultery and all that.... No, forget it.
UPDATE: I have the sequence slightly wrong here. L and L collaborated on Brigadoon (1947), which yielded "Almost Like Being in Love" (I remember Sean Connery singing this to Dustin Hoffman in a movie about a family of thieves--hilarious). Then came Paint Your Wagon (1951)--I would say fairly weak music. Then MFL (1956), then Camelot (1960). Somewhere in there was the movie of Gigi, with "Thank Heaven for Little Girls"--Maurice Chevalier, of course, and again hilarious.
The song is "What Do the Simple Folk Do?"
When they/'re beset and besieged
The folk not noblessly obliged
However do they manage to shed their weary lot?
Oh, what do simple folk do we do not?
Juan Cole very judiciously explains that the U.S. is now fighting in Fallujah with the support of international law--the Allawi regime is recognized as the government of Iraq, and a series of Security Council resolutions now support the attempt to defeat those who are trying to prevent the establishment of a democracy--or even of a stable state.
He also says there is no real comparison, much less a moral equivalence, between what a specific Marine did in killing someone who had recently been an enemy combatant, and what the insurgents did in slaughtering a famous aid worker (Margaret Hassan).
Cole is still worried that U.S. actions have been rife with incompetence from the beginning. He worries about ongoing violations of international law by the U.S., and he worries that Mosul will actually be a bigger fight than Fallujah. But his words about Sunni insurgents ring out strongly:
But the basic idea of attacking the guerrillas holding up in that city is not in and of itself criminal or irresponsible. A significant proportion of the absolutely horrible car bombings that have killed hundreds and thousands of innocent Iraqis, especially Shiites, were planned and executed from Fallujah. There were serious and heavily armed forces in Fallujah planning out ways of killing hundreds to prevent elections from being held in January. These are mass murderers, serial murderers. If they were fighting only to defend Fallujah, that would be one thing; even the Marines would respect them for that. They aren't, or at least, a significant proportion of them aren't. They are killing civilians elsewhere in order to throw Iraq into chaos and avoid the enfranchisement of the Kurds and Shiites.
In other words, many Sunnis remember the glory days, when they were kind of a ruling class in Iraq, regardless of the exact government, despite being a minority of the population. A sizable number of Sunnis--obviously a number that continues to astonish the brain trust around Bush--is willing to commit extreme violence simply to prevent a new status quo from being born--a status quo in which Shiites would be recognized as a majority, and Kurds would have a definite constitutional role. Do the insurgents actually have any postiive alternative in mind? It's difficult to know. No well informed person seems to think they really have much to do with Al Qaeda, or Syria, or any outsider--again, to the apparent amazement of Washington.
Not that Fallujah is completely resolved but: next, Mosul. Matthew Yglesias summarizes, drawing on an article from a few months ago by Peter Galbraith. "You have an ethnically mixed city in which Sunnis Arabs are fighting against a combined Kurdish/American force. The distinction between 'government' and 'insurgent' is less relevant than the simple ethnic divide."
The bad news: there may be a bigger, tougher fight than Fallujah ahead for the U.S. The good news (I guess): the Sunnis (or the radical Sunnis) have once again isolated themselves as, really, enemies of ordinary Iraqis who want peace and prosperity. This should mean that in principle the enemy can be treated as an enemy.
Juan Cole, in the post linked to above, also says that while elections should go ahead as quickly as possible, Sunni areas of the country shouldn't be simply left out. If there is no law-abiding way of choosing Sunni representatives, some may have to be practically appointed to a new legislature.
I think this is in the same spirit as David Adesnick, who says a war against insurgents is only likely to succeed if it is a serious attempt to promote democracy. Propping up a more or less friendly dictator won't cut it. (via Kevin Drum).
We should all fervently hope that the U.S. keeps on promoting democracy in Iraq.
Suddenly Slate seems to have time for voices you might expect from the red states.
Their series written by former members of the armed services (although it began before the election), now asks us to see the fighting in Fallujah from the Marines' perspective, and argues there is a good chance that the killing carried out by the now infamous Marine was justified. For good measure, the authors argue that the American method of fighting in Iraq is much more defensible than what the insurgents are doing.
Even more startling, Emily Yoffe, who is making herself "the human guinea pig," discovers that she likes shooting various guns at various shooting ranges--and that men who are shooting, even when she can't see their faces, are attractive. This is a bit like discovering the visceral red-stater in all or most of us.
When Slate had their staff say how they were going to vote, just before the election, almost all of them said Kerry. Maybe they are making a sincere effort to break out of the coccoon.
This may also be the kind of thing Garance France-Ritka means when she says Democrats should actually listen to the voters they claim to speak for. (The article she links to is behind the registration wall at TNR).
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