Peace Price

Analysis…

Thursday President Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo.  Winning the Prize has earned Obama much criticism from every angle.  Voices  from both the left and the right  have said that Obama has not yet earned the prize.  Others point to prizes given in anticipation of great work, such as the one awarded to Archbishop Desmond Tutu before apartheid had fallen in South Africa.  In all the murky nuance of criticism and support, one thing is clear, for Obama the prize has a price. 

Washington Post | The traditional Nobel Peace Prize lecture, given every year at Oslo’s modernist City Hall, does not usually include such words as: “I’m responsible for the deployment of thousands of young Americans to battle in a distant land. Some will kill, and some will be killed.”

President Obama accepted the Nobel for peacemaking by delivering an eloquent, often grim treatise on the nature and necessity of warfare. Anyone who doubts his commitment to the war in Afghanistan, which he has escalated with an “extended surge” of 30,000 new U.S. troops, should read a transcript of the Oslo speech. Hawks who suspected — and doves who hoped — that Obama was a secret pacifist will see that although he did not set out to be a “war president,” he has accepted his fate.

The Hill | President Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize speech on Thursday “sounded really familiar,” said former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R).

Palin said approved of Obama’s speech in Oslo, where he described the concept of a “just war” in his troop surge strategy for Afghanistan, saying he mirrored her own thoughts on the use of force.

“I liked what he said, in fact, I thumbed through my book quickly this morning and said, ‘Wow, that sounded really familiar!’ because I talked in my book too about the fallen nature of man and how war is necessary at times,” Palin told USA Today in an interview.

Slate | Yes, Obama’s speech is filled with ambiguities, dilemmas, and contradictions. More to the point, it explicitly grapples with them. If there is a single theme to the speech, it’s that a philosopher-statesman of our time (which is what Obama is trying to be) must recognize and grapple with both universal principles and contingent realities, with our ambitions and our limits, with—as Martin Luther King Jr. put it in his Nobel lecture (and which Obama quoted today)—the “is-ness of man’s present nature” and the “ought-ness that forever confronts him.” 

Change.org | My reservations about the speech, and about Rice’s remarks at the Holocaust Museum tonight, are due to the fact that this Obama Doctrine is, indeed, still in development. Progress on clarity of purpose is not yet matched by action, leaving the principles established by the president feeling out of sync with reality. In his speech, Obama exalted human rights as a corner stone of peace, yet earlier this week the State Department issued a belated and rather tepid response to a brutal crackdown on protestors in Khartoum, following nearly a year with very little reaction to the repeated human rights violations by the authoritarian regime.

News…

The God Particle May Be Somewhere Else | Entangled States

There are so new indications that the Higgs particle (the “God particle“) may not be found where we are looking with the Large Hadron Collider. A team of researchers have been looking over a collection of data that indirectly puts bounds on the mass of the top quark has been able to use that data to make some predictions about the mass of the Higgs.

A Recent History of Things That Have Been Thrown at Political Figures | Daily Intel

Last week, Sarah Palin was signing copies of her highly successful and accurate book when she suddenly became the intended target of two airborne tomatoes — the latest addition to a proud and noble tradition of throwing things at political figures we don’t like. It’s an act of defiance that presidents, pundits, mayors, governors, and Ralph Nader alike have been unable to escape. We’ve put together a guide to the most notable incidents involving American politicos over the past decade or so, some of which — thankfully, because they’re usually hilarious — were captured on video for posterity.

Pastor Rick Warren Denounces Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill | Change.org

Faced with a bill in Uganda that would execute certain members of the country’s LGBT population, sentence many others to lifetime jail terms, and imprison straight advocates for LGBT rights, Pastor Rick Warren has finally spoken up with a loud and clear message: Uganda, don’t pass the Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009.

When Did 9/11 Become More Powerful Than 11/11?

“The 11^th hour of the 11^th day of the 11^th month…”

Ninety-one years ago today the echoes of the guns of August finally faded into silence.  The parties of what at the time was known as “the war to end all wars” laid down their arms and began negotiating the peace.  World War I had come to a close. (Of course, this didn’t mark an end to fighting – the Ottoman Empire disintegrated into civil war and wouldn’t reemerge as the Republic of Turkey for almost five years.)

Today we observe this date as Veteran’s Day, a national holiday to honor all of those who have lived and died in the service of the U.S. military.  Given our current crisis, this observance is perhaps more important than ever.  I think we may have exceeded Winston’s Churchill’s imagination of military sacrifice when he famously said, “Never has so much been owed by so many to so few.”  The burden of our military engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan teeters dangerously on the less-than-Atlas-sized shoulders of our all-volunteer military.  While this disproportionately small segment of U.S. society* fights our wars, the majority of us continue to rally around the cause of conflict with virtually no ownership.  How many of us have family members in the military?  In combat zones?  What is our personal investment in these conflicts?

I fear that our disregard for the face of this holiday has allowed the deeper meaning of Veterans Day to remain obscured.  Prior to becoming Veterans Day in 1954, this date was celebrated as Armistice Day, marking the cease fire that ended World War I.  Buried within the deep of the Veterans Day tradition, there is not only an honoring of those who have served, but a remembrance of the terrible cost of war.  A concurrent resolution passed by Congress in on June 4, 1926 reminds us of this price and encourages us to observe this date in the totality of its meaning (with thanks to the Veterans Administration, emphasis is mine):

Whereas the 11th of November 1918, marked the cessation of the most destructive, sanguinary, and far reaching war in human annals and the resumption by the people of the United States of peaceful relations with other nations, which we hope may never again be severed, and

Whereas it is fitting that the recurring anniversary of this date should be commemorated with thanksgiving and prayer and exercises designed to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations; and

Whereas the legislatures of twenty-seven of our States have already declared November 11 to be a legal holiday: Therefore be it Resolved by the Senate (the House of Representatives concurring), that the President of the United States is requested to issue a proclamation calling upon the officials to display the flag of the United States on all Government buildings on November 11 and inviting the people of the United States to observe the day in schools and churches, or other suitable places, with appropriate ceremonies of friendly relations with all other peoples.

To put it simply, Armistice Day was originally conceived as a day to celebrate the end of the fighting and to honor the cause of peace.

I fear we live in an age where much of the power of the original Armistice Day holiday has been lost; a power of which we are in dire need.  We are politically dominated by the symbol of 9/11, a rallying cry to war uninhibited by any understanding of the deeper causes of resentment and hatred for our neo-imperial foreign policy.  For those of us seeking to make a difference in our national life, it’s time to claim the symbol of 11/11: a call for peace grounded in the hope for a more cooperative community of nations, yet tempered in the sober reality of the destructive war whose end it commemorates.

Until we recognize that the cost of our callousness is truly greater than we can afford to bear, we will continue to live in fear instead of hope.  Defining our orientation in terms of the devastating attack of September 11^th only reinforces our national paranoia.  Redefining our direction in terms of an admittedly uneasy armistice and peace could allow us to begin the process of international reconciliation that will truly be required to ensure not only our national security but international security as well.  The time has come for those of who support the cause of peace to reject the fear of 9/11 and claim anew the hope of 11/11.

*Which also happens to be disproportionately overrepresented by African Americans and is rapidly rising in Latino/a representation – See Government Accounting Office Report GAO-05-952)

Related links:

• Section 60 | Xenia Institute

A Boost for Peace?

The news that U.S. President Barack Obama on Oct. 9 was awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize surprised many in the U.S. and around the world. After all, the president has only been in office for nine months; his name was proposed as a candidate for the prestigious award just weeks after his inauguration. Was he really “ready” for a peace prize?

Many people said no, citing the dearth of peace-related accomplishments on the Obama’s presidential resume. For example, one blogger wrote:

Anyone who shows up on the world stage willing to recite pre-approved bromides about “cooperation between peoples,” clumsily participate the kabuki dance of “international diplomacy,” and toss a few cliches on the alter of global climate change will duly receive his tchotchke.

However, contrary to popular belief, the Nobel Peace Prize isn’t necessarily awarded for work already done or peace work that are in the process of being done. Shortly after the announcement of the award, when many people were trying to figure out how the decision could possibly have been made, the Associated Press clarified the committee’s criteria. While Nobel Peace Prizes often go to those who have successfully negotiated or brought about peace in certain areas or certain times (such as past winners Martin Luther King, Jr., and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat for their efforts to bring about peace in the Middle East), the committee also may choose individuals who are at the beginning of their work, in order to “encourage those who receive it to see the effort through, sometimes at critical moments.”

Still, it was exactly because of Obama’s emphasis on dialogue and diplomacy that brought him the attention of the peace prize-awarding committee. In the speech announcing the president’s award, the committee said that thanks to Obama’s vision, the U.S. is meeting the world’s challenges constructively and paying attention to other voices and opinions from around the world rather than tackling problems unilaterally. According to the committee:

For 108 years, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has sought to stimulate precisely that international policy and those attitudes for which Obama is now the world’s leading spokesman. The Committee endorses Obama’s appeal that “Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges.”

The online news portal Global Post questioned whether Obama’s committment to listening and work in dialogue was enough to deserve a prize of that magnitude, especially considering that Obama is commander-in-chief of a military that’s currently involved in two wars. Will the prize, Global Post’s editors asked, spur Obama to move past good intentions into actual work to bring about peace?

It seems the judges in Oslo have awarded him for having a good ear for listening to the world. And that’s not a bad thing, even if he does still have a lot to prove. The big question now is whether being recognized by the Nobel committee this early will help or hinder the administration in carrying out the president’s great hopes for success in foreign challenges that include: reaching a settlement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, executing the U.S. draw down of troops in Iraq; continuing to build the institutions of democracy in Afghanistan; and containing the nuclear threat posed by Iran.

It’s a long list and there is a lot of work to do.

The Xenia Institute is providing a forum for this debate on our Web site. We asked Xenia fellows, bloggers, friends and community members to weigh in on the public discussion. Is dialogue enough of a criteria for the Nobel Peace Prize? Should the prize go to someone else? What does this prize now mean for Obama — and the world? Read their thoughts on the subject and post your comments here.

Prizing Peace

In a decision that surprised most of the world, the Norwegian Nobel Committee recently awarded U.S. President Barack Obama the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, citing his efforts to reduce nuclear arms, open dialogue with the Muslim world, and to emphasize diplomacy. Commentators and pundits have criticized the committee’s decision, saying that the president, who has been in office less than nine months, should not accept a prize dedicated to peace while his country is involved in two wars overseas. The Nobel committee responded to the critique, saying that the award is meant to encourage the work toward peace and dialogue that the president has accomplished so far, in hopes that it will continue. What do you think about President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize? What message would you send to him about the award? Writers at The Xenia Institute talk about their reactions to the news. Read more about the prize in A Closer Look.

An Open Letter to President Obama  |  Clint Collins

By the time this is published, I may be one of the last people remaining on the planet who has yet to commend or eviscerate you for your selection to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.  In spite of that, I hope you will accept my heartfelt congratulations on your receipt of this great honor. … Yet in spite of my admiration for your globally oriented approach to diplomacy and governance, I feel compelled to speak on behalf of those who today cannot share in Alfred Nobel’s vision of “fraternity between nations.”  The absence of any specific reference to the peoples of Iraq and Afghanistan in your acceptance announcement casts a conspicuous and disappointing shadow across an otherwise inspiring response.

What Does Peace Look Like?  |  Barbara Schwartz

I’ve spent the morning cracking jokes about Obama’s win, but more than anything I’ve been looking at my framework for what accomplishment is, and how important it is that I actually “see” progress or action in order to verify success. That there must be something tangible and measurable before I can classify something as “real.” And then it makes me wonder how we measure peace, human rights, justice and democracy. I know we can create criteria by which to measure these ideas, but how static are they, and how malleable are they to our contexts? At what point does the idea or the ideals of peace cross into action?

Hoping for Peace  |  Chris Moore

Maybe this award is the best thing … maybe it has just raised expectations so high on President Obama that it will be a detriment. At least it seems like an endorsement of the ideals he represents – the ideals of dialogue, humility and justice … the ideals that focus on the far shoreline of hope … though I don’t count him (or any human being) as having a prefect score on those accounts. Perhaps it could encourage him to seek a different path in Afghanistan, or to pursue peace between Israel and Palestine with more vigor, I don’t know. In fact, I really have no idea how anything is going to work out. I just know that from my vantage point in the boat, the stars are very bright.

What Does Peace Look Like?

By Barbara Schwartz
Editorial Director
The Xenia Institute

For the second time in a little over a year, news about Barack Obama woke me up and made me say, “Seriously? What the …?”

Last year I signed up to receive a text message from the Obama campaign so that I would know THE VERY SECOND that Obama announced his choice for running mate. When my cell beeped at 2 a.m., I picked it up, read “Joe Biden,” and went, “What, really? Seriously?” Not that I don’t like Joe Biden, (“Can I call you Joe?”) but that wasn’t the news I was expecting.

About 5 a.m. this morning, my iPod Touch, which is installed with the Associated Press news app, made the urgent “breaking news!” sound from its spot beside the bed. I rolled over, hit the button and read, “U.S. President Barack Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize.”

Seriously? What the …?

I mean, I support the guy, I voted for him, but … really? Did The Onion hack into the AP mainframe and hijack its breaking news bulletin?

You’ve probably heard the usual suspect list of protests: He’s only been in office nine months, what’s he done? Has he even had time to do anything? And what about the other candidates on the short list (as far as we can guess, anyway), who are out there in the trenches of the world who are working for peace? Maybe Obama really got the award because he’s not GWB.

And that’s exactly what was going through my mind when I read the news. I’ve spent the morning cracking jokes about Obama’s win, but more than anything I’ve been looking at my framework for what accomplishment is, and how important it is that I actually “see” progress or action in order to verify success. That there must be something tangible and measurable before I can classify something as “real.” And then it makes me wonder how we measure peace, human rights, justice and democracy. I know we can create criteria by which to measure these ideas, but how static are they, and how malleable are they to our contexts? At what point does the idea or the ideals of peace cross into action?

I’m still thinking about this as I wade through all the various news reports and analysis about the prize — the critics who say it’s worth nothing, the critics who say it’s worth so much that Obama should decline. If anything, I’ve gotten a chance to think about how I look at the world and the benchmarks I’ve established to help me measure it, and try to deconstruct how they got installed. How do I measure peace? How do I measure the worth of work for peace and justice?

I begin to wonder if I have defined peace work so narrowly in order to make it impossible for me to participate at all. What if it’s as easy as speaking the words, broadening my mind and being open to the possibilities of peace in new ways? It could be that I’ve been missing out on the opportunities simply by defining it out of my sight.

That’s where I am so far. I’ll leave the political critiques of whether Obama is an accomplished enough peacemaker for those who are better equipped. Right now, I’m thinking about the possibility that simply redefining for myself how peace starts may be a first step into it.

Hoping for Peace

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
– Oscar Wilde

By Chris Moore
Xenia Institute Fellow

President Obama is announced as the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and audible gasps are heard in the room. Then, just like clockwork, the disparaging comments start rolling in. I have to say that I’m not sure how I feel about him winning. There is a part of me that thinks it is a great statement, and another that says awards like this should be given for accomplishment, not intent.

It is amazing to me how often this happens, but there is a great synchronicity between the gospel lectionary passage for this week and this topic. Jesus encounters a rich young man who claims to be blameless before the law and seeks the final step to inheritance of “eternal life”. Jesus calls him with love to let go of one more thing – his money. We can make this just about money, and that might be a good message in our greed driven society, but the real kicker is this – you can’t halfway hope. You have to give in completely or it will never work. You have to be willing to go as far as changing what you believe in … even when what you believe in seems a long way off.

I agree with a friend of mine who said that it wasn’t so much that President Obama won the award as it was the ideals that he represents. President Obama may not have accomplished much in the scheme of things yet, but he has brought a cool drink to a very thirsty people. The reason that he was voted in and that people all around the world are responding to him, despite his lack of measurable outcomes, is that people are hungry for hope.

We’re hungry for hope instead of power, for cooperation instead of competition, for “we’re all in this together” instead of “every man for himself” and the vast yet largely quiet majority wants to see peace … real meaningful peace as something beyond just the absence of war. None of these ideals are currently measureable. In fact, if one watches nothing but Glenn Beck and listens only to Rush Limbaugh you would think quite the opposite. You would think that the world is going to hell and that President Obama is the ringleader marching us straight into the fiery pit.

This is the funny thing about hope. Look at the gospel stories. People weren’t exactly beating down the doors to get into Jesus’ group. They liked the healing and welcomed his stance against the occupying forces of Rome, but when the rubber met the road everyone but the women (in most accounts) fled his side like a fire alarm had gone off. The hope that lots of us see in President Obama is met quite often with skepticism, doubt and even derision. A lot of that is just partisan politics, but there is something else at work … something deeper and more sinister. It is a questioning of what hope really is.

I believe that a sense of hope is crucial to survival and that, ironically, the more comfortable you become materially the easier it is to convince yourself that you have no space for hope. Hope is a more necessary and hungered for commodity the lower on the ladder you get. But I want to cut my angry brothers and sisters a break, because I understand that hope can be a scary thing … especially when it asks you to give up the things you have already done … to change the way that you live … to believe something entirely new and even invisible. It asks people with power to give some of it up for at least a couple of reasons. First, it isn’t real anyway. The possessions age and crumble or break, the money goes away and power or fame is a wicked slave master. Second, this is the way that hope works … at least the way that I have learned from an itinerant carpenter from Nazareth who tells us that the first shall be last and the last first and that in the Reign of God, power doesn’t look like we’re used to. In order for power to be real, just like love, we have to give it away.

So, Jesus meets this young man with a serious answer for a serious question. He loves him because he deserves nothing less. He just doesn’t sugar-coat anything or deny him the truth. There is a struggle for our souls going on – one side tells us that might makes right and that we cannot let go of “the way things are” or abandon the “America we grew up in”. Another side says that we have to change things … seriously and completely change things in order to see a world that we want to see. We have hope set before us. We‘re all in the same boat, but some of us are looking beyond at what might be shoreline in the distance. Others are afraid to abandon ship … even as it cracks and splinters and takes on water.

Maybe this award is the best thing … maybe it has just raised expectations so high on President Obama that it will be a detriment. At least it seems like an endorsement of the ideals he represents – the ideals of dialogue, humility and justice … the ideals that focus on the far shoreline of hope … though I don’t count him (or any human being) as having a prefect score on those accounts. Perhaps it could encourage him to seek a different path in Afghanistan, or to pursue peace between Israel and Palestine with more vigor, I don’t know. In fact, I really have no idea how anything is going to work out. I just know that from my vantage point in the boat, the stars are very bright.

Cross-posted at Pelagian Heresy.

‘Jesus Taught Love’ is an Ambiguous Statement

This week I heard a sermon at my urban Los Angeles church that was partially about road rage.  The priest said that road rage is a result of radical individualism, because we assume that where I need to be is more important than where you need to be.  That is where the impatience and honking originate.  We’re so wrapped up in ourselves that we don’t even think that maybe the person in front of us is lost, or driving on a spare, or feeling ill.  All that matters is that I reach my destination in as little time as possible.

The sermon reminded me of an incident that I had experienced involving road rage at this particular church.  You see, St. John’s Cathedral Los Angeles is located on a major cross street and a ramp to the 110 Freeway, a major thoroughfare to Downtown LA.  To take advantage of this ideal position, an activist group of the church has a weekly peace protest out in front of the church during rush hour traffic.  One Wednesday when I wasn’t busy, I decided to give it a try.  After all, I hadn’t been to a protest before.  So, I showed up early to choose a sign.  Some weren’t appropriate for me, like the one that said “Soldier’s Mother for Peace.”  Others didn’t quite for me like the one that said, “Bring the troops home now.”  I didn’t want to advocate a particular position if I didn’t know the ins and outs of what it would entail to withdraw all forces at once.  So, I settled on a sign that was appropriately religious and vague.  All it said was, “Jesus Taught Love.”  I grabbed my sign and headed out for the street corner.  We were a small crew but what we lacked in size, we made up in gumption. 

As I became more comfortable, I ventured further up the street a little away from the group and the other signs.  Eventually, I was on the edge of the property, near a permanent billboard sign that read “St. John’s Cathedral.  No On 8.  Stop the Marriage Ban.”  As cars pulled by, some people waved at me and my “Jesus Taught Love” sign.  Others honked but most people ignored us.  One car caught my eye, and as it rolled by, the man in it flipped me off.  But right then, he was forced to halt by a red light.  What an awkward situation to be standing next to a car, the driver of which just made a rude gesture at you.  Not deterred, I wanted to examine the driver more closely.  As I looked at his car, I noticed several bumper stickers for Obama/Biden, Kerry/Edwards. and No on the Death Penalty.  I couldn’t understand why, if this guy was a die hard Progressive like his car made it seem, he was flipping me off for protesting the war, a Progressive cause.  As I looked on with perplexity, he motioned to me again, this time to move towards the car.  Waiting to be cussed out, I moved up to the car as the gentleman rolled down his window.  He shouted across the passenger chair, “I’m so sorry!  I thought you were protesting the No on 8 sign but now that I see the other protesters.  You’re doing good work!  Keep it up!  I apologize.”  I forgave him just before the light turned green and he moved on. 

I think the best way to sum up this experience is what my friend Erin said when I told her about it, “Apparently ‘Jesus Taught Love’ is an ambiguous statement.”  As an act of faith, I was trying to make one statement, but my sign was misinterpreted as another.  What does it say about us that the phrase “Jesus Taught Love” can be used to justify so many things? 

Jesus Taught Love

Support Universal Healthcare

Jesus Taught Love

Don’t get road rage

Jesus Taught Love

Ostricize Sexual Minorities

Jesus Taught Love

Christianity is the only true religion

Jesus Taught Love

Help the Homeless

Jesus Taught Love

Accept those different from you

Jesus Taught Love

You don’t have to obey the laws of the land

I could go on and on.  Our bumper sticker culture has done us a disservice.  Things have become so simple that they don’t make sense anymore.  Maybe next time I’ll hold up a sign that says, “I believe the USA should be more peaceful but I also recognize that foreign policy is a complex issue that may require some military intervention.”

News for May 21

Why the Uighurs are America’s Problem

Former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich recently penned an op-ed for the Washington Examiner questioning why the Obama administration is releasing a group of Uighurs –– Chinese Muslims who have been held at the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba for the past several years –– into the U.S. According to the Huffington Post:

“Why is that our problem?” Gingrich wondered in a recent TV interview. “Why are we protecting these guys? Why does it become an American problem?”

The Uighurs, who fear detainment and torture in China if they are returned there, this week protested Gingrich’s claims that they are terrorists who will threaten U.S. security in a TV interview. The Huffington Post further reports:

“Why does he hate us so much and say those kinds of things? He doesn’t know us. He should talk to our attorneys if he’s curious about our background,” (their translator Rushan) Abbas relates. “How could he speak in such major media with nothing based in fact? They were very disappointed how Newt Gingrich was linking them to ETIM which they never even heard of the name ETIM until they came to Guantanamo Bay.”

Several bloggers added their voices to the Uighurs’ to speak against Gingrich. Links include:

Angry Asian Man |  “Hey Newt, they’re “an American problem” because we’ve had them in United States’ custody for six years for no real freaking reason. Declassified documents show that government officials concluded as early as 2003 that the Uighurs weren’t enemy combatants and had recommended releasing them. And yet they’ve been stuck in prison limbo with nowhere to go.”

Obsidian Wings |  “The Uighurs are the most obviously innocent of all the detainees. Uighur communities have offered to take them in and help them resettle. There are a lot of things in their favor. If Republicans block their release in this country, they can block the release of any detainee in this country. And if they do that, then the task of closing Guantanamo down will become much, much more difficult, perhaps impossible.

“We should not let that happen without a fight.”

Hilzoy @Obsidian Wings tracks down the claims in Gingrich’s op-ed here, here, here, here, here and here. It’s fine journalistic work that deserves a standing ovation.

This discussion about the Uighurs ties into debate over what the U.S. should do with detainees after Guantánamo is closed, though it looks like closing the prison won’t happen until the president can settle the decision on where the detainees will go. Links include:

ThinkProgress |  “On CNN, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), author of the amendment, declared that moving detainees to maximum-security prisons or military bases would make those facilities “magnets to terrorism.” He claimed that the U.S. is “not set up to handle terrorist detainees” … In truth, the United States is more than equipped to handle a few dozen terrorist suspects. Indeed, dozens of dangerous terrorists are already held in American prisons. Inhofe tries to distinguish between those “criminals” and today’s terror detainees, but everyone knows that Timothy McVeigh, the Blind Sheikh, and Zacarias Moussaoui are terrorists. They know that because these men were convicted in U.S. courts and either executed or sentenced to life in prison at the Colorado Supermax.”

Glenn Greenwald @Salon |  “We never tire of the specter of the Big, Bad, Villainous, Omnipotent Muslim Terrorist.  They’re back, and now they’re going to wreak havoc on the Homeland — devastate our communities — even as they’re imprisoned in super-max prison facilities.  How utterly irrational is that fear?  For one thing, it’s empirically disproven.  Anyone with the most minimal amount of rationality would look at the fact that we have already convicted numerous alleged high-level Al Qaeda Terrorists in our civilian court system (something we’re now being told can’t be done) — including the cast of villains known as the Blind Shiekh a.k.a. Mastermind of the First World Trade Center Attack, the Shoe Bomber, the Dirty Bomber, the American Taliban, the 20th Hijacker, and many more — and are imprisoning them right now in American prisons located in various communities.
We’ve been doing that for two decades.  What are all the bad and scary things that have happened as a result?  The answer is:  “nothing.”

Political Animal |  “If the situations were reversed, and Dems resisted a Bush plan to bring Gitmo detainees onto U.S. soil, I suggested this would be the talking point: “If Democrats have proof that the nation’s prisons are incapable of housing 241 suspected bad guys, or have evidence that these guards who protect us from the bad guys are untrustworthy, they should offer it. Otherwise, they should apologize to the wardens, guards, and security teams, who do important work day in and day out, and who’ve just been insulted.”

Support Your Local Library  | Andrew Sullivan @The Atlantic

I’m shining the spotlight not on anything that Sullivan has written (he’s on vacation this week anyway, and the six or so guys who are filling his shoes aren’t doing half the blogging he normally does!) but some interesting reader comments the substitutes have lifted up. It seems that they asked, “Why do we need libraries?” And these readers gave great answers. The first:

What can the library do to stay relevant in the lives of the community? The methods of information delivery are increasing as well as the sheer volume of information resources. The quick and convenient Google search is replacing the more thoughtful human depth of a reference librarian’s answer. Librarians have transitioned from gatekeepers to guides, yet requests for our expertise in navigating the spectrum of information mediums and systems are in overall decline. There is an urge to offer more types of materials and services within the library, but there is also an enormous pull to provide greater forms of outreach through our website and other mobile technologies. What can we do to reverse this trend?

And the second:

In short, the library is still the most precious gift we give ourselves as a nation. Librarians are now more than the old-fashioned point-that-dewey-out individual-they are now information miners, resume makers, recreational reading advisors, gamers, events-planners for all ages. The library is the still the best place in town.

‘The World Ignored Our Warnings’  |  Salon

In an interview with Der Spiegel, reprinted by Salon, U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei talks about what it was like being wire-tapped by the Bush administration, sloughing off criticism in the face of larger goals for world peace, and how the arrogance of the Bush administration completely messed up roads to peace in the Middle East. Elbaradei says:

Would you have thought the Bush administration was capable of that sort of a wiretapping campaign?

It didn’t really surprise me. What can you expect from an administration that — in a mixture of ignorance and arrogance — passed over countless diplomatic opportunities to conduct a dialogue with Tehran? The entire Middle East was turned into a complete mess.

The new American administration has announced a change of course.

Indeed. [President] Barack Obama has turned U.S. policy around by 180 degrees. For instance, he announced plans to double the IAEA budget in the next four years. The Europeans, including Germany, want to freeze the budget, which I find alarming.

But you also gained a great deal of recognition in 2005, when you and the IAEA were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Yes, that’s true. It was a vote of confidence in the organization, and it strengthened my immune system against attacks, especially because this recognition was triggered by the policies of the powerful. We managed to draw attention to the organization; the letters of our name were always being mixed up by politicians. I am also pleased to see that, after two more or less wasted decades since the end of the Cold War, nuclear disarmament is now a central issue once again. This reflects the realization that the risk of the use of nuclear weapons has actually increased considerably and that the bomb could fall into the wrong hands.

Such as the hands of fanatics in Tehran.

We still have no ultimate proof of a military nuclear program in Iran. However, we do have some unanswered questions.

Living Abroad Gives You a Creative Edge  |  The Economist

Note: It’s not just vacationing abroad, although I can’t imagine that that would hurt. You’ve actually got to pack up and move. They don’t say, however, whether a semester abroad is enough to turn you into the next Neruda, or if you need to set down some roots:

As they report in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, William Maddux of INSEAD, a business school in Fontainebleau, France, and Adam Galinsky, of the Kellogg School of Management in Chicago, presented 155 American business students and 55 foreign ones studying in America with a test used by psychologists as a measure of creativity. Given a candle, some matches and a box of drawing pins, the students were asked to attach the candle to a cardboard wall so that no wax would drip on the floor when the candle was lit. (The solution is to use the box as a candleholder and fix it to the wall with the pins.) They found 60% of students who were either living abroad or had spent some time doing so, solved the problem, whereas only 42% of those who had not lived abroad did so.

…

To check that they had not merely discovered that creative people are more likely to choose to live abroad, Dr Maddux and Dr Galinsky identified and measured personality traits, such as openness to new experiences, that are known to predict creativity. They then used statistical controls to filter out such factors. Even after that had been done, the statistical relationship between living abroad and creativity remained, indicating that it is something from the experience of living in foreign parts that helps foster creativity.

Poor? Pay Up  |  The Washington Post

I had a conversation last night with a member of the Norman Justice Alliance about the organization’s  Poverty Simulation, in which community leaders learn first-hand the high costs of poverty. This story in the Washington Post sums up much of the results of that Poverty Simulation: It’s expensive to be poor, and you pay in time, in extra fees, in health and in dignity. For example:

Money and time. “I ride the bus to get to work,” Nicholas says. It takes an hour. “If I could drive, it would take me 10 minutes. I have to catch two buses.” She gets to the bus stop at 6:30 a.m. The bus is supposed to come every 10 or 15 minutes. Sometimes, she says, it comes every 30 minutes.

What could you accomplish with the lost 20 minutes standing there in the rain? Waiting. That’s another cost of poverty. You wait in lines. You wait at bus stops. You wait on the bus as it makes it way up Georgia Avenue, hitting every stop. No sense in trying to hurry when you are poor.

When you are poor, you wait.

News for May 19

Middle East Moment

U.S. President Obama said Monday that he’s planning to pursue diplomatic outreach to Iran in order to see whether it has any effect on reducing Tehran’s nuclear plans. Obama made the comments after meeting with Israeli Premier Benjamin Natanyahu, who came to the U.S. to discuss action with Iran with Obama. The public is expecting other issues to come up during the two world leaders’ discussion, including  settlements in the West Bank and a two-state solution to peace in the Middle East. Bloggers cautioned Obama not to let the Israeli prime minister, famed for bring a bully, to pressure him. Links include:

Informed Comment |  “It is the most fateful encounter of two world leaders since Kennedy met Khrushchev. And Obama absolutely must not allow himself to be cowed or misunderstood as timid by Netanyahu, who is a notorious bully and warmonger. (Bill Clinton complained that Netanyahu when last prime minister thought that he was the superpower). If Obama can cow Netanyahu, his Middle East policy may have a chance. If Netanyahu comes away thinking he can thumb his nose at Washington, the whole Middle East could be in flames by the end of Obama’s first term.”

CSMonitor.com |  “Gershon Baskin, the codirector of the Israel Palestine Center for Research and Information, says that while Netanyahu has not yet endorsed a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it’s not out of the question. ‘Statehood is not a matter of principle with him. It’s an issue of security,’ he says. ‘So if it’s not a matter of principle, he can be manipulated and pressured. He has legitimate concern about a Palestinian state endangering Israel’s security, and if the Americans want to advance the solution of the Palestinian state they will address those problems’.”

BBC News |  “It is in Mr Obama’s interest to signal soon and publicly the new realities of the US/Israeli relationship. How else will he convince the Arab world? Equally it may be in Mr Netanyahu’s interest to show his coalition partners that he is being pressured into attending a Middle East peace conference, where Israel can expect the condemnation of serried ranks of its neighbours.”

The Daily Beast |  “If Barack Obama really means to remake U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, he will condition his cooperation on Iran with a public demand for the dismantlement of all illegal settlements built since Israel put its signature on the U.S.-sponsored 2003 ‘roadmap’.”

GetReligion |  “When Pope Benedict visited the Holy Land last week, every religious move he made was analyzed for its political significance. On Monday when Prime Minister Netanyahu will meet President Obama in Washington, just the opposite will be true: the political moves will be analyzed for their religious significance.”

What Another Woman Would Bring to the Supreme Court  |  CSMonitor.com

President Obama has the task of selecting a U.S. Supreme Court nominee to replace retiring Justice David Souter, and rumor has it that women dominate his list of prospects. Linda Feldmann at the CSMonitor spotlights a study that indicates that including diversity on the court isn’t just diversity for diversity’s sake. The study shows that women justices ruled the same as male justices –– except in matters of sex and gender discrimination. In those cases, the study says, the justices’ gender brought different world views and experiences into their decisions. For example:

The recently argued Supreme Court case over the strip-search of a 13-year-old girl, though not a sex-discrimination case, illustrates how often-like-minded judges of opposite sexes can see things differently.

During the argument, Ginsburg expressed indignation at the idea of an adolescent girl being asked to shake out her bra and panties in front of school administrators.

Justice Stephen Breyer seemed to shrug. “In my experience, when I was eight or 10 or 12 years old, you know, we did take our clothes off once a day, we changed for gym, OK?” he said.

In an interview later with USA Today, Ginsburg elaborated on her perspective in the case – and that of some of the male justices. “They have never been a 13-year-old girl,” the justice said. “It’s a very sensitive age for a girl. I didn’t think that my colleagues, some of them, quite understood.”

• Related link: Why Court Diversity Can Matter  |  TAPPED

Blogosphere Reality Has Liberal Bias  |  FiveThirtyEight

Nate Silver blames the demographics:

The reason that liberal blogs are cited more often in the mainstream media is because they are more plentiful and more widely-read than conservative blogs. Traffic on the Internet in general tilts toward the young and the more highly educated, demographics which — at least for the time being — are associated with more liberal politics.

But then he would.

Food Snobs in the Soup Kitchen  |  Matthew Yglesias @ThinkProgress

Yglesias takes on Julie Gunlock at the National Review, who complains that the menu at soup kitchens are a little too hoity-toity for the soup-kitchen crowd:

It’s actually rare that conservatives get to combined their hatred of poor people with their hatred of “cultural elites” in a single argument, so Gunlock gets so busy dishing out the sarcasm that she can’t quite seem to deliver the “so what?” point where we see who is being harmed by this alleged trend.

Yglesias goes on to point out that the issue with food kitchens isn’t so much filling people up, but making sure that they’re getting filled up with nutritional food. The last time I checked, healthy nutrition shouldn’t be just for those who can afford it, although this is the way it generally shakes out. It’s also a problem in a lot of neighborhoods that don’t have easy access to grocery stores that vend fresh vegetables, fruits and lean meats at an affordable price. Shouldn’t access to nutritional meals be a human right?

Your World in Maps: Climate Change Edition  |  Ezra Klein @The Washington Post

Ezra Klein, late of The American Prospect, is now blogging at the Washington Post, and one of his first posts at his new digs includes a graphic map showing the global health impact of climate change. Klein bounced off President Obama’s speech at Notre Dame on Sunday, where he described climate change as a world threat, not just a domestic economic issue. The maps Klein presents from the British medical journal Lancet shows both the areas of the world that produce the most carbon emissions, and the areas of the world that will have increased mortality because of those increased emissions. The U.S. is grossly large in the first map, and grossly skinny in the second. Klein says:

The countries with the maximum incentive to prevent climate change have no power to do it. At Notre Dame, Obama exhorted the graduates to recognize that “that our fates are tied up, as Dr. King said, in a ’single garment of destiny.’” But we are not bound equally. No wonder Obama is looking to create a new coalition.

News for March 26

Cruel and Usual Punishment?

Bloggers highlighted an article in The New Yorker by Atul Gawande that examines the short- and long-term psychological effects of solitary confinement, a common practice in the U.S. prison system. Their comments also sparked some debate over incarceration rates and what reforms, if any, are needed in the prison system. Links include:

Hellhole by Atul Gawande in The New Yorker |  “Most hostages survived their ordeal, Fletcher said, although relationships, marriages, and careers were often lost. Some found, as John McCain did, that the experience even strengthened them. Yet none saw solitary confinement as anything less than torture. This presents us with an awkward question: If prolonged isolation is—as research and experience have confirmed for decades—so objectively horrifying, so intrinsically cruel, how did we end up with a prison system that may subject more of our own citizens to it than any other country in history has?”

Andrew Sullivan @The Atlantic |  “Prison reform is a serious sleeper issue in this country and it’s a cause I’m glad to join Glenn Reynolds in supporting. We have become unbalanced between necessary punishment and casual cruelty. And no fight against torture of terror suspects can ignore the culture which allowed it to seem almost unexceptional.”

Ross Douthat @The Atlantic |  “The turn toward mass incarceration and tough sentencing was championed, largely by conservatives, in response to what amounted to a long period of emergency in American life: A murder rate that had doubled over twenty years, a robbery rate that had quintupled, an urban landscape that seemed increasingly ungovernable, and so on. And the turn worked: The estimates of its impact vary, but most scholars agree that increased incarceration played a substantial role in the plunging crime rates of the 1990s. But as you might expect, a policy turn undertaken during a period of emergency will eventually produce diminishing returns.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates @The Atlantic |  “I’m less certain that the “tough on crime” approach has been “largely vindicated” by events–mostly because I think a large part of the events include the moral costs, and the real costs to communities where alarming numbers of men are under the watch of the state. One should consider the numbers here–blacks make up a third of all drug arrests, and black men are 12 times as likely to be imprisoned on a drug conviction. Four in Five of these arrests were for possession, not sale. Perhaps this is because the drug epidemic has run rampant through black communities, but probably not. The difference in illicit drug usage is slight (9.5 percent of blacks have used illicit substances, 8.2% of whites).  Those are the sort of numbers that feed an intense distrust of the justice system in many black communities.”

Isaac Chotiner @The New Republic |  “Gawande never considers the idea of punishment as an end in itself, and it is here, I think, where liberal  writers tend to miss a major motiviating factor in our crime policy. There are numerous historical and religious reasons for this belief, and without getting bogged down in too many details, it is worth pointing out that many people believe wrongdoers “deserve” punishment for bad deeds. Others like, I would assume, Gawande, see no value in punishing people unless it serves distinct ends (keeping criminals off the street, deterring crime, etc.). Now, I happen to agree with Gawande, and I see no value in punishment for punishment’s sake, but it is probably safe to say this is not a majority opinion in America. It also might help explain the sad state of our criminal justice system and prisons.”

Kevin Drum @Mother Jones |  “If you go down the whole list of accepted norms in treating people — child labor, civil rights, treatment of the mentally ill, minimum housing standards, workplace safety, etc. — virtually everything that was even a close call in 1890 is universally reviled today.  Nobody’s in favor of kids working in mills, Jim Crow laws, packed lunatic asylums, rat-infested slums, or miners dying of black lung.  Our penal system is apparently the exception.  But if we knew, even in 1890, that long-term solitary confinement is essentially barbaric, can there really be any question about it in 2009?”

Ugly Diplomacy from Geneva to Johannesburg  |  RaceWire

In an embarrassing intersection between Beijing and Cape Town, the Dalai Lama has been barred from attending an international peace forum, drawing the ire of Nobel laureates and pro-Tibet activists. The event, a prelude to the World Cup tournament, was designed to explore cross-cultural understanding through sport. By denying the world’s most influential monk a visa, South African officials were presumably following the interests of China, a major trading partner for South Africa and documented violator of Tibetan human rights.

• Related link: No Visa for Dalai Lama. Gold Medal for Castro  |  FP Passport

How the Crash Will Reshape America  |  The Atlantic

The crash of 2008 continues to reverberate loudly nationwide—destroying jobs, bankrupting businesses, and displacing homeowners. But already, it has damaged some places much more severely than others. On the other side of the crisis, America’s economic landscape will look very different than it does today. What fate will the coming years hold for New York, Charlotte, Detroit, Las Vegas? Will the suburbs be ineffably changed? Which cities and regions can come back strong? And which will never come back at all?

• Related link: How Some Places Fare Better in Hard Times  |  Economix blog @The New York Times

Social Security and Living with Grandma  |  Notes on Social Security Reform

The New York Times summarizes some interesting research on the living arrangements of older Americans. Traditionally, as individuals grew older – and particularly when one spouse died – the surviving spouse would move in with one of their children. Economists Robert F. Schoeni of the University of Michigan and Kathleen McGarry of Dartmouth analyzed the living arrangements of older Americans using Census data. They showed that the decline in older parents living with their children began in 1940, the year that Social Security first began paying out benefits. This indicates that older parents did not desire to live with their children – or the children did not desire to live with their parents — but were forced to by need. As Social Security alleviated that need, older parents continued to live independently.

Culture & Barbarism: Metaphysics in a Time of Terrorism  |  Commonweal

We find ourselves, then, in a most curious situation. In a world in which theology is increasingly part of the problem, it is also fostering the kind of critical reflection which might contribute to some of the answers. There are lessons that the secular Left can learn from religion, for all its atrocities and absurdities; and the Left is not so flush with ideas that it can afford to look such a gift horse in the mouth. But will either side listen to the other at present? Will Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins read this and experience an epiphany that puts the road to Damascus in the shade? To use two theological terms by way of response: not a hope in hell. Positions are too entrenched to permit such a dialogue. Mutual understanding cannot happen just anywhere, as some liberals tend to suppose. It requires its material conditions. And it seems unlikely these will emerge as long as the so-called war on terror continues to run its course.