War Handwavium

Glenn Greenwald reports that Italy convicted 22 CIA officers and 2 Italian intelligence officers of kidnapping. They had rendered an Italian man to Egypt where he was tortured.

Apparently, this is the only way Americans who committed torture and broke various international laws will be held accountable: by other countries. Because America itself is not interested in accountability of its own actions.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2009/11/05/renditions/index.html

So, the US House of Representatives, morons of history that they are, voted 344 to 36 to oppose the Goldstone report.

“The report was not written to talk about 12,000 rockets intentionally sent by Hamas to slaughter Israeli men, women and children, versus the Israelis trying in many respects to minimise the damage to Palestinian civilians,” Steven Rothman, a Democratic congressman from New Jersey, told Al Jazeera.

Dude, there have been twelve thousand rockets only if you count all the rockets that have been launched since 2001.

And there was a cease-fire back in June of 2008, and all the rockets stopped. For several months, July 2008 to October 2008, rocket fire had come to an end.

ANd then Israel went and violated the cease fire. In November of 2008, Israel sent commandos into Palestinian territory and killed six Palestinians.

Israel had agreed to a ceasefire in June and then Israel invaded Palestinian land and killed Palestinians in November. That’s not how you follow a ceasefire.

Hamas rockets resumed after the cease fire violation in November.

Israel then launched Operation Cast Lead in December of 2008.

What moron quotes “12,000 rockets” without looking at the actual history? What moron counts 12,000 rockets launched prior to a cease fire agreement, ignores the months that Palestinians honored the cease fire, and ignores Israel violating the cease fire agreement?

Only a moron in public office in America, apparently.

And more importantly, the Goldstone report is a report on Operation Cast Lead. Israel’s bombardment and invasion of Gaza. That military operation must follow international law. Just because someone launched a rocket from Gaza back in 2001, doesn’t mean Israel is justified in killing an unarmed woman and her child in 2009. It is still a war crime to kill civilians like that.

And that’s what the Goldstone report says, that Israel’s operations during Operation Cast Lead violated the rules of war, that Israel used the war to inflict collective punishment on the Palestinians, rather than launching the war to stop rockets.

If Israel wanted to stop the rockets, it shouldn’t have violated the cease fire that had been successful for the previous months. If Israel wanted the rockets to stop, it shouldn’t have launched a war and killed hundreds, possibly a thousand, civilians.

DUring Operation Cast Lead, some Palestinian militants fired rockets back into Israel. A total of 17 Israelis were killed during that same time period. During that same time period, Israel killed 1400 people, about 800 or so were civilians.

So, if the Honorable Moron Steven Rothman from New Jersey wants to quote 12,000 rockets spanning all the way back to 2001, then by all means, lets do a side-by-side comparison of all the Palestinians that Israel has killed since 2001.

I can assure you that every step of the way, more Palestinian civilians have been killed by Israelis, than Israeli civilians have been killed by Palestinians.

Only a moron would compare apples to oranges, only a moron would take a three week invasion Operation Cast Lead and compare it to the last ten years of Palestinian militants.

A moron, or someone who doesn’t like the truth.

more details about the Israeli cease fire violation here:

http://www.warhw.com/2009/01/06/israeli-ceasefire-violation-november-2008/

article about the House vote here:

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2009/11/200911320434191455.html

In 2002, a Canadian named Maher Arar was detained by US officials while traveling through JFK airport, accused of being a terrorist, held for two weeks without access to a lawyer or anyone on the outside, then shipped off to Syria where he was tortured for 10 months.

Arar was completely innocent and had no connections to terrorism.

The Canadian government did a full investigation, realized Arar was innocent, publicly disclosd a report of what happened and what went wrong, publicly apologized to Arar, and paid Arer a $9 million dollar settlement.

In contrast, the US government has never admitted doing anything wrong, has never publicly acknowledged what it did, and has repeatedly taken steps to muzzle any attempts to get the US Courts to look at what happened to Arar.

Yesterday the US Courts dismissed Arar’s case entirely, saying that even if the government did violate Arar’s constitutional rights, Arar had no right to sue.

It’s all handwavium, pure and simple. Bury the truth so long as any of the wrongdoers are still alive.

This year, 2009, Obama publicly acknowledged and apologized for the US involvement in Operation Ajax, the 1953 CIA operation to overthrow the democratic government of Iran and install a puppet dictator in the form of the Shah. From 1953 until 2008, the US government had never publicly acknowledged its role in the overthrow of a democratic Iran. For 56 years, the US went about its business in denial.

Obama’s apology to the world was a victory for truth, but it didn’t cost Obama or the administration very much. None of them had been involved in the 1953 operation. None of them were guilty. None of them were culpable. Obama was admitting the guilt of people who were dead, not of something he had done himself.

Apologizing for someone else is only slightly less cowardly than not apologizing at all. True courage, true integrity, would come from a person apologizing for something they themselves had done wrong.

But it seems that 56 years isn’t all that unusual for Americans to come to terms with its actions.

In the 1940’s, America put Americans of Japanese decent into internment camps, a massive failing of justice and liberty. It wasn’t until the mid 1980’s when the US government acknoweldged the wrongness and injustice of its actions, long after the wrongdoers themselves were dead, long after many of the people who had suffered the injustice were dead too. It took 40 years for the US government to apologize and recompense the remaining survivors and the heirs of those who had been imprisoned for the misdeeds of the previous administrations.

Reparations for slavery have never been made, a century after slavery was abolished in America.

So, it seems that 50 years isn’t too unusual of a waiting period for the US government to acknowledge the truth of its actions, apologize to its victims (or the heirs of its victims) for its misdeeds, and compensate its victims (or the heirs of its victims) in some way.

In Maher Arar’s case, Arar was tortured in 2002. That would mean that whatever form of the US government is around in 2052 might finally apologize for what it did to Arar. Arar was born in 1970, so he would be 82 years old if he’s still alive at that point. But the people who tortured him, who ordered his torture, who approved the programs that allowed his torture, they’ll most likely all have died of old age by then. The US Court that ruled that Arar cannot sue, they will all by dead by 2052.

Arar will likely be dead by then too, and whoever is president in 2052 may not even be born yet.

But what sort of “justice” is it if the heirs of the guilty are the only ones who can apologize to the heirs of the victims?

Can there be no justice now? Can Obama not fight for justice today? Or must we wait until all the wrong-doers are dead before the truth can be spoken about what they did?

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2009/11/03/arar/index.html

Gideon Levy, an Israeli journalist with the Israeli paper Haaretz, wrote an article today titled:

“America, stop sucking up to Israel”

Juicy tidbits:

“As long as Israel feels the United States is in its pocket,… (Israel) will continue in its ways.”

“If America and the world had issued condemnations after Operation Summer Rains in 2006 … then Operation Cast Lead never would have been launched.”

“For something to change, Israel must understand that perpetuating the status quo will exact a painful price.”

“Israel of 2009 is a spoiled country, arrogant and condescending, convinced that it deserves everything”

It’s good to see that not all Israelis agree with the militant actions of their government.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1124928.html?

via Glenn Greenwald

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2009/11/02/levy/index.html

Responsibility can be defined as “Owning up to the effects of your actions”.

One of the biggest War Handwavium tactics is to be irresponsible, to downplay the effects of your actions. Rather than acknowledge that bombing and invading a country, irresponsible psychopaths try to spin their actions with “They’ll welcome us as liberators”.

It’s been interesting to see this same level of irresponsibility play out with Tasers.

Tasers are a weapon that are issued to police that are supposed to be used only when deadly force is justified but the police officer doesn’t want to have to shoot the person with a gun.

Instead, tasers are being used by police when a person refuses to comply with police orders. And repeatedly, news articles are reporting people dying from being tasered.

Intended use: non-deadly force in a situation that justifies deadly force.

Actual use: Sometimes deadly force in a situation that doesn’t justify deadly force, but rather the officer wants compliance.

That’s the basic level of irresponsibility right there. Tasers were issued to police as a resplacement for deadly force, so they wouldn’t have to shoot someone. But the reality is that a lot of cops are using tasers in situations that would never justify using a gun, in non-life-threatening situations, and the use of the taser itself is sometimes deadly.

If the police as a whole were fully responsible for the actions of their individiual officer’s actions, they would acknowledge the effects of their actions. But what usually happens is one cop uses a taser where lethal force was not justified, someone dies from the taser, and then the police union closes ranks to protect the officer, and the city closes ranks to protect themselves from being sued.

But there’s a second level of irresponsibility from police use of tasers. It’s the refusal to own up to the fact that using a taser in a non-lethal situation must neccessarily escalate the situation.

It’s not surprising that a lot of news stories about police using tasers and people dying are stories about people who are mentally handicapped or drunk getting tasered. Imagine a cop who expects complete and absolute compliance with his every order. And he’s talking to someone who is mentally handicapped and doesn’t understand, or someone who is drunk and isn’t goign to comply out of drunkeness.

Neither mentally handicapped nor drunk are violent threats. They just don’t comply with every order given. But in the stories that make the news, the cop facing a menally handicapped person or a drunk person is completely incapable of distinguishing the difference between non-compliance to orders versus a violent threat justifying the use of deadly force.

And in the latest story, witnesses say the cop brought his own beligerent attitude to the scene, and the cops needless use of the taser escalated a non-violent situation into something where a drunk man was shot to death.

The irresponsible twist here is the cop refusing to grasp that his actions, the use of a taser where a taser was NOT needed, that his actions took a non-violent situation and escalated to a situation where someone died.

And there is even a third level of irresponsibility here. Something called the “Garrity Rule”. Based on a 1967 Supreme Court Ruling in “Garrity v. New Jersey”, anything a cop says can NOT be used against him in criminal prosecution, it can only be used for departmental investigation. So, if a cop kills someone they shouldn’t have killed, but the Garrity Rule is in effect, the most that can happen to him is he’ll lose his job. He can’t go to prison for murder, even if it was murder by every other definition.

So, what happened was this: A drunk guy refused to follow a cop’s instructions. The cop tasered the guy. That escalated the situation and the drunk guy tried to get away. The cop responded by shooting the guy eight times, killing him.

Any use of a taser not justifying deadly force needs to be automatically deemed a crime. Tasers kill people every year. The use of a taser in a non-violent situation will likely escalate the situation. Cops need to be trained to used tasers as a substitution for their firearm, not as a way to extract compliance to their orders. Tasers have become the new “rubber hose”, a way to inflict pain on someone without getting into trouble. (Rubber hoses didn’t leave marks. Tasers leave marks but the courts have thus far refused to condemn their use in non-violent situations)

And the Garrity Rule needs new legislation to deal with police investigations and criminal activity by cops so that cops don’t use it as a “get out of jail free” card whenever they know they screwed up and broke the law.

Article about the actual incident:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/041750.html

via digby:

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/time-to-end-this-by-digby-drunk-man.html

Garrity Rule:

http://www.njlawman.com/Garrity.htm

Dick Cheney can’t remember a damn thing about Valerie Plame.

Now that we’ve gotten the “amnesia episode” out of the way, we’re still waiting for the “Evil Twin” episode, and the “Dream Sequence” episode. Dick Cheney, after all, is a soap opera.

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2009/10/22-things-dick-cheney-cant-remember-about-plame-case

This is how Fox “News” works. One of the Fox “opinionators” expresses outrage at something the Democrats did. Then Fox “News” people report that “Some have expressed outrage at this thing that Democrats did”, without mentioning that the Vinn Diagram of that “some” is the set of people who are opinionators at Fox networks.