More on Amnesty

This is Iraq. And this.

I've written about the criminal stupidity of the Democratic Party's decision to once again "get to the right" of the Republicans "on national defense," this time by opposing so-called amnesty for the native Iraqi rebellion. Even Russ Feingold, purportedly one of the smarter, marginally less psychotic members of The World's Greatest Deliberative Body (a title on par with gay men's personal ads for its overestimations of bodily prowess and proportion), has come out muttering that we shouldn't forgive "people who kill Americans." The great anti-war hope, that one.

Pat Lang says it rightly:

It is axiomatic that peace must be made with enemies, not friends. If Iraqi insurgents who have fought and perhaps killed Iraqi and coalition soldiers are excluded from the possibility of reconciliation and amnesty, then who will be left to make peace with? The answer is simple. No one. That would mean that the war will go on and on and on. In that case it would prove impossible to withdraw coalition forces for a long time.

That's a very eloquent way of wagging a finger, or a very eloquent way of saying, "What are you people, fucking nuts?"

Nothing works self-identified Democrats into greater self-righteous rage than suggesting that they're not serious about this war--fighting it, winning it, or ending it. What other conclusion can be drawn? Although it's true that Republican interest in Iraq is almost entirely in the service of domestic political concerns, a convenient foil for all sorts of macho-patriotic tough-talkery and the Sunday morning insinuation circuit, they at least demonstrate an interest. As brutal and awful as has been the Republican-crafted policy in Iraq, it is perhaps better to be craven and present than dishonorably absent. Democrats have now taken up a new slogan, something to the effect that crying "Victory, we must have victory!" doesn't constitute a strategy.

Yet when a strategy born of indigenous Iraqi politics presents itself, all Democrats can do is rush into the breach and scream STOP! And then fall back on platitudes about protecting the troops, sending messages, or what have you. A number of prominent Republicans, meanwhile, who have heretofore exhibited only the most crass jingoism, suddenly see through the now-backlit scrim of victoryspeak, that there are only two paths out of the quagmire: to run screaming from defeat, or else to craft a peace, however fragile, however temporary, however illusory.

Democrats are culpable for our invasion of Iraq. They lay supine, and in many cases blithely consented, to this aggression. We invaded Iraq, and made in Iraq an enemy. It isn't a game, Democrats. There are no takebacks, timeouts, or storming from the field whining that it isn't fair.

A Word about Hamdan

One of the most dramatic moments in today's oral argument in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld comes when an uncharacteristically agitated Justice David Souter presses Solicitor General Paul Clement about whether Congress last December effectively stripped the Supreme Court of the right to hear habeas corpus claims from any of the hundreds of detainees being held at Guantanamo Bay. Clement says it's not necessary for Congress to have "consciously thought it was suspending the Writ." Perhaps the lawmakers just "stumbled on the suspension of the Writ," which would also be fine, Clement suggests.

Souter stops him, amazed. "The suspension of the Writ," the justice sputters, is the most "stupendously significant act" Congress can undertake. "Are you really saying Congress may validly suspend it inadvertently?"

-Dahlia Lithwick, "Because I Say So," in Slate

The inadvertant suspension of the Writ of Habeas Corpus. Boggles the mind, doesn't it? I mean, let's just through a fat cliché at it: The cornerstone of Anglo-Saxon justice and common law since the 14th century. Or the 16th. And to be fair, there are several writs. And several habeas corpi (Dear Prof. S, forgive me, I do not recall any of my declensions).

Anyway, I have very little to say about Hamdan that hasn't already been said, except to express what I'd call disbelief if I in fact felt the slightest disbelief: that it required a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States of America to affirm that a man can't be tossed into a hole and forgotten, even if he is, ye gods, "a bad man," "a dangerous man," a "terrorist," or whatever other asserted permutation of "mean and nasty cuz I said so" is in vogue on any given Friday in June.

Vive el Bush!

Over at The Corner, wherein I'm told one simply cannot score any decent rock, resident refugee from a Gilbert and Sullivan dramatis personae, John Derbyshire, weighs in on the fact that, although the Bush family has carved out profitable oil deal with a Latin American robber-minister, the rest of the Hispanics, whomever they are, seem not to care for Republicans. This has something to do with Bill Clinton and also something to do with "the main appeals of the current Democratic Party—big-govt. populism, a zero-sum racial spoils system, victimology, open borders, etc." I admit that I'm not certain what a zero-sum racial spoils system actually is, but then again, I read "victimology" as "the study of victims," making me about a thousand literalisms beyond the rhetorical universe of Derbs, whose meanings roil indeterminately like quantum foam.

Anyway, Derbs postualtes that Hispanics are attracted to all this zero-sum, victimological spoilage because it most closely resembles Latin American political traditions. Latin American political traditions recall in my mind decades of Joan Didion plotlines and the overabundant image of Ollie North, but that's another story. This is as silly as saying that most British American Conservative Publications Stooges retain their monarchicalisms because of the British Political Tradition. Which, perhaps, is to say that it isn't so silly after all.

In any case, the idea that the Bush family's connections to Latin oil industry would have some bearing on hispanic voting in this country is as silly as thinking that their connection with the House of Saud would send the Mslim population of Detroit flocking to change their party registrations.

Leave

Leave now.

Earlier this year, I spent a week in Miami, which is in the middle of a downtown building boom of astonishing material profligacy, not to mention prodigious idiocy. Glass-curtain-wall skyscrapers sprout like weeds through the sidewalk. A vast new performing arts complex is going up, equally glassy. In Hurricane country.

I have great sympathy for Florida homeowners--more so, certainly, than a guy like Jim Kunstler, who, though basically correct in the broad outlines of his ideas, has gotten a wee bit trop Cassandra for my tastes. (Caveat lector: Cassandra was right!) Vote-with-your-feet bromides aside, we're not nearly so mobile a nation as we think, and ballyhooed job-creation numbers don't mean much to a guy or a gal trying to replicate his comfortable middle-middle class salary in a new city. And in any event, it's never easy to uproot job, family, and patriot-consumer credit debt in order to hit the highway for parts unknown.

But still.

I'm sorry that the people living in an ill-designed megalopolis in one of the most disaster-prone regions of any advanced (first-world; industrialized) nation on earth are finding themselves priced out of home ownership by the cost of insurance, but honestly, what do they expect? They've bought into an infrastructure totally ill-suited for its environment; aggressively ill-suited. They live in homes, in communities, that thumb their noses at every principle of reasonable design and environmental accommodation, but they ask not to bear an economic burden for that choice. It is possible to design for hurricane or monsoon-prone regions, just as it's possible to design for earthquake-prone regions. But that would mean fewer million-dollar condos on the 30th floor, fewer Mission-Carribean-Bermudan-Whatever canal-front mansions. It would mean building smaller and smarter.

Positively un-American.

The Devil Wears Prada

A good and very fashionable friend, the proprieter of an excellent women's boutique, got a bunch of comps to The Devil Wears Prada. I enjoyed it more than any new movie in a long time. It was a trifle, but I mostly agree with Emanuel Levy, particularly when he writes:

The script takes liberties, particularly in the ending, with the best-selling novel by Lauren Weisberger, which was for six months on the New York Times bestseller list and was translated into 27 languages. Even so, “The Devil Wears Prada” is not only the most satisfying comedy around, but also the first comedy this summer made for adults. Indeed, here is a comedy with no children, animals, or special effects that totally relies on witty humor, sophisticated characters, and glamorous look, resulting in a film that feels like the old MGM pictures of yesteryear.

Emphasis mine. It occured to me that this was what I liked about it. Although most of the characters are drawn from the same thin stock, with the possible exception of the Anna Wintour-manquée "Miranda Priestly," whose depth is far more a testament to Meryl Streep's craft than to any skill on the part of the filmmakers or the source novel's author, they are, at last, characters, placed en scène, motivated by reasonable facsimiles of human emotions and desires, speaking a language only slightly abstracted from the language real people speak.

After the movie we all went out for a drink. I found myself talking about the characters as if they were real. "I liked the part where Miranda . . ." Thanks for the tix, Beebee.

RAGE!

Apoplexy is the new black, apparently, although, given the source, not too Black.

The Strunk and White still tumbling around in the reptilian quarters of my brain instructs me that, anaphora aside, it's poor form to begin sentences repeatedly with the same word or phrase. Yet the current alignment of the stars--or something!--impels me again to that old standby: There's a certain irony . . .

As in:

There's a certain irony floating in the mental shallows (shoals?) of The National Review, which in above-linked editorial manages the impressive feat of condemning The New York Times for exposing precisely how such-and-such "top-secret program to monitor terror funding . . . ingeniously focuses on the hub of interlocking systems that facilitate global money transfers," while simultaneously exposing/explaining precisely how such-and-such "top-secret program to monitor terror funding . . . ingeniously focuses on the hub of interlocking systems that facilitate global money transfers."

How fondly I recall long car trips with my family. My brother and I would share the back seat of the station wagon. I would poke him over and over, all the while chanting as a mantra: "I'm not touching you I'm not touching you I'm not touching you."

But even in the most dismal swamp, orchids yet bloom. Even while fulminating impotently about the Times "recidivism"--dear Lord, save us from "conservatives" with access to the langauge of rehabilitation--"The Editors" (sic) happen upon a very good idea.

The president should match this morning’s tough talk with concrete action. Publications such as The Times, which act irresponsibly when given access to secrets on which national security depends, should have their access to government reduced. Their press credentials should be withdrawn. Reporting is surely a right, but press credentials are a privilege. This kind of conduct ought not be rewarded with privileged access.

You could call it wrong intent, right action. The idea that The Times' organizational conduct in this matter merits "concrete action," by which our editors mean strip to your tighty whities and cry thank you sir may I have another, is laughable. But reducing the Times "access to government"? Were that we should be so lucky.

Back in the halcyon days of the Iraq War, in which the fraud was being (but hadn't yet been) laid bare for even Joe Q. McAmerican to see, Judy Miller infamously noted that it wasn't her job to ferret out "the truth" or suchlike, but rather to tell Americans what Important People were saying to each other. Or, as a woman with a mind might put it: What Important People want Americans to think that Important People are saying to each other.

Imagine, though, a press denied access to these various Beggin' Strips. God help us, we'd have to read stories in which In Some Place, At Some Time, Something Happened.

No one would call it a victory, a defeat, a tipping point, a turned corner. In life, there are no such things.