Dick Cheney is a War Criminal

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, the former Vice President is a war criminal, and he should be brought to justice. This past Sunday, Dick Cheney took aim again at the Obama administration's investigation of CIA abuses. In his comments (see today's New York Times piece for a rundown), Cheney freely admitted that he knew about waterboarding as a general technique, and that he supported officers who used unauthorized techniques because they did so to protect the U.S. Cheney also claimed that the Obama administration's investigation was partisan motivated.

How about responsibility motivated? Normally I'm a fan of complexity, but there is no gray area on this issue, and if you think there is, I hope there is a special place in hell reserved for you (and by hell, I mean I hope you accidentally go for a hike in a civil-war-torn part of Pakistan and get kidnapped and tortured by the Taliban). After millennia of countless human cruelties, the Geneva Conventions set up a framework for how we can treat prisoners of war (and I don't care how you class the people interrogated by the CIA, they deserve to be treated the way you would want to be treated if you were captured). Torture is wrong. It is wrong when done to U.S. citizens, and it is wrong when undertaken by U.S. citizens.

First, we have the fact that "enhanced interrogation techniques" achieve limited success, even in the rare "ticking-time-bomb scenario." The most successful long-term interrogation techniques involve making someone feel safe, not abused. I don't know about you, but I would say anything you wanted me to if you started waterboarding me, whether it was true or not. Second, Cheney, and that weaselly Dianne Feinstein (see Los Angeles Times piece today) both suggest that this investigation may harm the U.S.'s current fight against terror. As far as I can tell, things like Abu Ghraib increased hatred of the U.S. and thus made terrorist recruitment that much easier. Perhaps if we proved that we were a country that respected international law, that we're willing to hold our own citizens accountable (no matter how wealthy or powerful), then we would gain back some of the international respect lost in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. In both of those locations, people were detained and abused because they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. That's right, U.S. interrogators didn't just torture terrorists, they also just tortured random people. Obviously Cheney defends these torture techniques (and they are torture, whatever words he uses) because Cheney never has to worry about an al-Qaeda operative capturing and torturing him, unlike our soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan who do have to fear these things. Ultimately, however, whether abusive interrogation techniques work is beyond the moral point. That Cheney is willing to justify torture policy proves that he is precisely the imperialist barbarian, the Great Satan, that al-Qaeda recruits against, and it proves just how much he believes himself to be above international law. The U.S. Constitution is based on the premise that, unlike medieval European monarchs, no person in the United States, including the president and vice president, should be above the law. We haven't always honored that ideal, but in a case as clear cut as this, we should.

Some have advocated for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission that will lay bare the tragic mistakes of the Bush administration. I would be happy for such a thing to work through what lower level interrogators did at the behest of and with the support of the Bush administration's Justice Department, but for someone like Cheney, we have no choice but to prosecute him for his crimes against a Constitution he swore to defend. And as punishment following such a case, Cheney should be delivered to the Hague and made to answer for his crimes before the International Criminal Court, because his crimes were not only against the citizens of the U.S., but against those citizens of the world who were detained and abused while they were, unlike Cheney, not guilty.

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On a side note, I am terrible at smiling in photographs, but I have always been amazed that in Dick Cheney's official White House photo, for which you know they took at least 200 shots, that this leer was the closest to a smile he could approximate. I mean seriously, the man is his own cartoon.

Saint Teddy vs. Saint Junípero. I vote for Teddy.

Yesterday I blogged my sorrow over the loss of Ted Kennedy. Reading Religion Dispatches today, I realized this may have a lot to do with my U.S. Catholic background. Frances Kissling describes Kennedy as a Catholic we could canonize because he really did take up the fights for social justice, even when they were unpopular. Kissling linked to another blog post in America: The National Catholic Weekly that pointed out how special Kennedy was to U.S. Catholics, many of whom have pictures of the Kennedy family hanging in their homes next to the cross. My birth name speaks to my mother's love for the Kennedy clan. So yes, my fondness for Ted Kennedy no doubt owes to my U.S. Catholic context.

Was Kennedy a saint? Yesterday, I would have answered, certainly not. Yet today's Los Angeles Times reminded me that all it takes to become a saint is a little bit of luck and a really good campaigner. The fight to get Junípero Serra, unintentional co-perpetrator of genocide (and just because it's unintentional doesn't make it okay), canonized lives on. The founder of the Alta California (the contemporary state of California) mission system in the late eighteenth century, Serra was one intense character. He regularly whipped himself with chains, beat himself with a stone and a crucifix, and burnt himself with flaming candles. Publicly. As a follow-up to sermons to get his point across; a congregant actually died while trying to imitate Serra during a Mass. Thus, it should come as no surprise that Serra had no problems with the use of corporal punishment against indigenous Californians in his missions. These same missions basically imprisoned thousands of native Californians, and Serra strove his whole life for their spiritual and cultural conversion, which maybe some people think is a good thing, but I quite disagree (and so does Native American scholar and theologian George Tinker in his book Missionary Conquest: The Gospel and Native American Cultural Genocide). Serra is one official miracle shy of sainthood, and there is a Panamanian artist, Sheila E. Lichacz, who says she can prove the venerable Serra saved her life. People have fought for Serra's sainthood since shortly after his death when Francisco Palóu, his confessor, friend, and pupil, took up the cause for Serra's sainthood in his hagiographical biography published in 1787.

Palóu's work coupled with the fact that California became California are the only reasons that anyone discusses Serra's sainthood. If Serra had spent his whole life in the Sierra Gorda, we would not have this conversation; it's just so California can have a saint. Fr. John Vaughn continues the fight to this day, telling the Times that you just can't judge someone from the eighteenth century by our standards. His rebuttal being that the Founding Fathers had slaves. And they did, and no one is fighting for Thomas Jefferson or George Washington to be declared a "saint," which, as scholar James Sandos points out to the Times, is a category for someone whose holiness can transcend time. I think Jefferson's owning slaves would disqualify him for sainthood, but at least with him, as with Ted Kennedy, I would say that the long-term effects of his work have indeed made the world a better place. I'm not sure that is saintly "holiness." Yet, we should all be grateful that Jefferson and Kennedy lived the lives of public service they led. I just can't say the same thing about Serra. I don't think we're better off for his life of service, and the Catholic Church should be ashamed to canonize someone just because he was a religiously devout man (unless they want to send the message of rah rah, religious mania and genocide) who happened to found missions in a now wealthy and famous place. Of course his religious devotion was more in an al-Qaeda-style maniacal character (Mike Davis made that comparison first, not me); Serra hoped to die a martyr (his words) converting indigenous Americans, and his main goal in life was the spiritual and cultural conversion ("conquista," conquest, would be the actual word Serra used in his own writings) of indigenous peoples. Conquest is not now, nor should it ever be again, viewed as saintly behavior. Worse than that, to make Serra a saint is to insult anyone on this continent descended from indigenous Americans by spitting on the graves of their ancestors.

So, today, do I think the late Edward Kennedy is a saint? Given this information about Serra, I say, let's fight to canonize Ted Kennedy. Surely politically minded, Irish American Catholics deserve their own icon as much as California does. I'll get started on the hagiography. My mother would be the first to testify to the miracles he wrought in her life. Plus we probably already have an image somewhere, making him easy to pray to for aid. Sure, he killed one person in a car accident, but if Serra can be a candidate for sainthood in the face of a 90% drop in native Californian population in the eighteenth century, I think one person in a car accident is no big deal. So here's to Saint Teddy in 300 years!

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Image of Junípero Serra comes from the PBS page, New Perspectives on the West. Kennedy's image comes from Kissling's Religion Dispatches essay.

I'll miss Ted Kennedy

It is not often that I really care if a U.S. senator lives or dies (a cold statement I know, but really, I don't find them to be a terribly admirable crowd). For the last year, we have all known that Ted Kennedy only had a short time to live, that soon John Kerry would be the senior senator from Massachusetts. Still, living a day without Ted Kennedy in this world has been sadder than I was prepared for. I join the rest of the liberal wing of this country in mourning a great legislator. For all of my life (he had been a senator since well before I was born), Kennedy was a uniquely powerful senator, championing legislation that helped people, and fighting with backbone while other Democrats cowered in corners. I think he was an admirable senator despite some significant human shortcomings, especially in those years before I was born. Ted Kennedy's passing does truly mark the end of an era (not just because he was a "Kennedy"), and some of us miss him already.

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Picture from abc.com's slideshow of Kennedy through the years.

When walking around New Jersey is a crime and other strange news

Yes, that's right, Bob Dylan got stopped by New Jersey police just for walking around a neighborhood and killing time before the show. Apparently, he was super polite and everything, but I want to know, when did taking a walk become the kind of suspicious activity that requires the questioning of a 68-year-old man?

Oh, and one other random piece of news today, I was not the least bit surprised to see Charles de Gaulle top an informal internet survey of worst airports to sleep in. While I think Paris is a great city and that people in the U.S. should make fewer jokes at the expense of French citizens, I have to admit, Charles de Gaulle is hands down the worst airport I have had to travel through. I was also not surprised to see Amsterdam near the top of the list; that is one super nice airport (which is kind of ironic since Air France is an infinitely better airline than KLM).

Of Health Care, Socialism, and Economic Recovery

I had a student once who critiqued an article's incorrect use of capitalism. She defined capitalism as the non-interference of the state in corporate interests. Since her definition did not mesh with mine, I realized that defining capitalism is tricky business, and I went to an economics professor. He pointed out, and I quite agree, that capitalism is like many terms in the English language, too dangerous to define specifically. It's best just to highlight general characteristics but try not to pin it down too neatly. That said, I want to sit briefly with a broad definition that must be widely held in public as it is on the public encyclopedia, wikipedia: "Capitalism typically refers to an economic and social system in which the means of production (also known as capital) are privately controlled; labor, goods and capital are traded in a market; profits are distributed to owners or invested in new technologies and industries; and wages are paid to labor." My student's definition of capitalism would certainly fit under this rubric, but so would a number of other definitions that might not sound like hers. Every term in that definition is debatable, but generally capitalism is opposed to "socialism," which supports some form of public or shared ownership of resources and means of production. Since preserving "capitalism" against "socialism" seems to be part of the healthcare debate, I think that the problem we have is this: can a system still be capitalist and involve government control? And if not, do we really want to live in such a capitalist system?

Based on the recent healthcare debates, obviously a significant and vocal portion (though, polls suggest, not a majority) of this country seems to think that the slightest slip toward socialism would damage our great capitalist tradition (while crying keep your government hands off my Medicare, the government-run program; and while I could talk about the use of race-baiting and fear of change in these town hall meetings, I will leave that to other commentators). First of all, Democratic Party Health Care proposals have so far left out the proposal I most support (to paraphrase Jimmy Smits from the final season of the West Wing), removing "over 65" from Medicare, thus making Medicare available to everyone. Why have they avoided this? Because somehow it might be socialism to have a government, single-payer health insurance option that competes with private insurance and that regulates health care costs. Socialism, by the way, would mean complete government control of the health care system, from nurse to hospital to insurance. No Democratic proposal supports a socialist health care system; the hospitals and doctors remain private, and private insurance options would remain (and if they think they can't compete with a public, single-payer option, then that should tell you something about what kind of crappy job your private health insurance does for you). In the 1100-page House bill, there is no mention of "death panels" or "communal standards." The bill and many health care reformers do advocate government regulation of health care. If you're a libertarian, that will piss you off, but for the rest of us, that should be fine. It is not socialism, it barely qualifies as a mixed economy, it's just government intervention in the capitalist market place for the sake of the consumer, something that we should support if we think that cars should be safety-tested before they are sold.

If we are to accept the libertarian definition of capitalism, and we think the U.S. should be a pure capitalist state, then there should be no tax-payer-paid police, no state-supported military, no public schools, no public libraries, no regulation on any industry whatsoever (including the FDA that tries to keep lead out of baby formula), and we, as individuals, should pave our own roads. If you are a libertarian, then you would find the U.S. government has disgustingly indulged in a "mixed economy" since its inception. If capitalism means a complete lack of state intervention in anything, I don't think most of us, when it comes down to it, want to live in such a country. If you like that a government agency won't let poison be packaged as medicine, then you like the FDA, and you like government regulation in the pharmaceutical industry (and I wish there was more of it, personally). So the debate should not be how to keep socialism out of our capitalism, rather how mixed should our economy be and in what places. This, of course requires that "socialism" not be treated as a demonic concept; it requires that we live in a world filled not with black (capitalism) and white (socialism), but shades of gray where we pick which blend works best for us as a nation and a society.

Just so you know, countries that have been sporting more mixed economies are faring better than us these days. The WHO rankings are well known; the U.S. healthcare system comes in at a staggeringly low 37 (if you consider how much richer the U.S. is than #36, Costa Rica). France is #1; the U.K. is #18. While conservatives in the U.S. have been making digs at the British NHS, the British blogosphere has fought back in defense of their system. It is imperfect they note, but a hell of a lot better than the U.S. system. Even Canada is ranked higher, at #30, than the U.S.

And those mixed economies of France and Germany have actually exited the recession. We are still in a recession for reasons similar to the BBC's explanation for the U.K. Finance was too big a chunk of our economy, but, and the BBC notes this as well, our economy was not the right mix of capitalism and socialism in a time like this. France and Germany's mixed economy had social safety nets that better protected their economies, and so their economies are growing again. Ours is still shrinking, and there are people for whom unemployment protections are running out. So the next time someone demands that we preserve pure capitalism at all costs, I hope that they can also think about their support for the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan (paid for by that socialist defense budget of ours) and how we got stuck in a recession longer than states with more mixed economies.

On the plus side (responding to my own previous post)

Both Sonia Sotomayor and Miguel Diaz have been confirmed and now go out to their respective posts. The first Latina on the Supreme Court, and the first Latino Ambassador to the Vatican. President Obama's Latin@ Outreach moves have had some marked success.

Life in the Racialized United States of America

In case some of you out there still want to argue that we are somehow "post-race," I have found events of the last few weeks to be quite instructive on this front. Famously, of course, we have the beer summit attempting to resolve a conflict between a black academic and the white police officer who arrested him, a police officer who apparently survived a bunch of racial sensitivity training yet was unprepared to face an angry black academic. That Glenn Beck can then call Barack Obama "racist" for saying the Cambridge police acted "stupidly" (and by the way, there is no other way to describe Officer Crowley's arrest of Gates, aside from either "acting stupidly" or "acting on the basis of testosterone and ego," i.e. acting without consulting one's rational faculties, i.e. acting stupidly) is proof that we are a long way from the postracial utopia.

But nothing has galled me more than the "birther" controversy, in which a collection of idiotic conservatives appear intent on proving that racism is still a severe problem. It seems to me that they refuse to admit that someone who isn't white-enough-looking can be a natural-born citizen (to which I refer you to the Fourteenth Amendment or the 1898 Supreme Court decision regarding Chinese Americans or the 1917 law making Puerto Ricans into U.S. citizens for the purpose of the draft). So there can be absolutely no doubt as to where I stand on this, I have included a picture of Barack Obama's birth certificate, certifying his birth in Hawai'i (on U.S. soil) to a U.S. mother, both of which make him incontrovertibly a natural-born U.S. citizen (see the Los Angeles Times "Top of the Ticket" blog post from which I pulled the birth certificate if you don't believe me). And no, I do not think the state of Hawai'i, currently governed by a Republican, could be conspiring with Kenya to keep a non-U.S. citizen in the White House. I am writing because I am taking up Bill Maher's challenge to do what I can, in my small way, to fight this absolute inanity.

The question of whether Barack Hussein Obama, now president of the United States of America, is a "natural-born citizen" is possible only because of the racist and xenophobic history of this country. As much as I would never want Governor Schwarzenegger to be president, I do think it's plain xenophobia not to allow a naturalized citizen, someone who has probably had to express more commitment to this country and its ideals than your average "natural-born citizen," to be president. But the constitution says "natural-born citizen," so then who is naturally born a citizen? Well, U.S. legal history is complicated on this issue because of a history of racism, racism about whether formerly enslaved Africans were citizens, about whether Mexicans resident in territories stolen from them were citizens, about whether Native Americans were allowed to vote in a land wrested from their own ancestors as part of U.S. conquest, of whether people born to Chinese or Japanese parents on U.S. soil actually could consider themselves to have the same rights as U.S. citizens born on the same soil to European parents. These are all questions that laws or supreme court decisions have been issued to decide. So no wonder some crazy right-wing nutjobs feel the need to protest that Kenyans, in some long-term strategy reaching back to the era of Jim Crow, conceived a plan to hijack the U.S. presidency by impregnating a "white" U.S. citizen. The U.S. has had a long history of not recognizing anyone as a U.S. citizen who doesn't look like George Washington (and that means women too, who couldn't vote, and thus couldn't be president either before 1920).

That said, the facts are simple. Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawai'i in 1961, which is one of the 50 United States of America. And even if he wasn't, he is the son of a U.S. citizen and has lived his life as a U.S. citizen, receiving a U.S. passport because no one at the state department ever found reason to question his citizenship. He was never naturalized as a U.S. citizen because he was naturally born one. That "birthers" refuse to recognize that Barack Obama could possibly have been born a U.S. citizen is because, on some level, they are racist and xenophobic, and they are just sore losers. And I can't help but feel, as I have felt before, that we idealize different things about this country. I, for one, think it speaks well for the U.S. that the president can have a mixed ancestry and specifically does have relatives from a small town in Kansas and a village in Kenya.