Every time I hear one of the network “talents” use the phrase the “War on Terror” it grates like fingers on a blackboard. I think Gore Vidal first made the point that you cannot wage war against a tactic then Maureen Dowd and several others reiterated the point.

An exploration of our government’s use of the word “terrorism” yields only the confusion we have come to expect from the Bush Administration. Back in WWII the government produced a series of propaganda films titled “Know Your Enemy.” I’m not sure they could–or more pointedly would–do that today. To ask “Why not?” is to uncover an old Republican tactic in new clothes.

As we all know, there are many groups around the world whose tactics could be described as terrorist. The State Department’s October 11, 2005 Fact Sheet on Foreign Terrorist Organizations listed 42 groups including United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, Real IRA, Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, Shining Path as well as many groups I am ashamed to say I have never heard of. Yet it is clear that when the administration or the media speak of the “War on Terror,” they are not referring to the Tamil Tigers or Shining Path.

Reading the State Department’s definition of terrorism only further muddles the matter. It states terrorism is any of the following:

(I) The highjacking or sabotage of any conveyance (including an aircraft, vessel, or vehicle).
(II) The seizing or detaining, and threatening to kill, injure, or continue to detain, another individual in order to compel a third person (including a governmental organization) to do or abstain from doing any act as an explicit or implicit condition for the release of the individual seized or detained.
(III) A violent attack upon an internationally protected person (as defined in section 1116(b)(4) of title 18, United States Code) or upon the liberty of such a person.
(IV) An assassination.
(V) The use of any–
(a) biological agent, chemical agent, or nuclear weapon or device, or
(b) explosive, firearm, or other weapon or dangerous device (other than for mere personal monetary gain), with intent to endanger, directly or indirectly, the safety of one or more individuals or to cause substantial damage to property.
(VI) A threat, attempt, or conspiracy to do any of the foregoing.

By this definition a fair number of people occupying prison cells in this country plus what used to euphemistically be called “organized crime” (I always wondered who committed disorganized crime) might come under this definition as well as their counterparts throughout the world.

Originally I thought the “War on Terror” was synonymous with al Qaeda, since they carried out the 9/11 murders. But over the last few years people have applied the term to a variety of groups. What these groups seem to have in common is that they are Muslim. In other words, for all its obfuscation, based on their list of terrorist organizations, the prime definition of a terrorist is ideological not tactical. Even more baffling we apply it to Sunni and Shiite alike as if these two religious factions somehow joined together in a vast conspiracy that defies logic.

Something more ominous has also been developing in the way we use the word domestically. Terrorism has become the new communism. Once Americans of a certain political persuasion used “commie” like a schoolyard taunt to describe anyone who happened to disagree with the established order of things. Call for nuclear disarmament, you were a “commie.” Support the United Nations, you were a “commie.” Raise the income tax, you were a “commie.”

Today the phrase is “soft on terrorism.” Judging by some of the arrests that have been made a terrorist can be anyone who happens to make an ill-timed remark. Anyone who speaks ill of George W. Bush is “soft on terrorism.”

George Orwell and others, including Vidal, have observed that imprecise language leads to all sorts of imprecise problems (read the War in Iraq) or to an unhealthy “us” versus “them” mentality that Dr. Seuss brilliantly satirized in his book on Sneetches. It also is a handy way of covering up either faulty thinking or something people don’t want to say out loud.

The media, above all, should know better. The McCarthy years took place while some of the reporters and anchors who are regarded as media “elder statesmen” were first beginning their careers. They remember when Lucille Ball was branded a “red,” to which Desi replied, “The only thing red about Lucy is her hair.”

So the time has come to give the “War on Terror” a well-deserved burial. From now on no one in the media or blogdom should use the phrase. More pointedly, it is long past the time that some reporter does not press George Bush about the phrase at his next news conference. WHO are we at war against? The American people and the world deserve an honest answer.

Crossposts: My Left Wing, All Things Democrat,

Tagged with: 9/11 • abstain • Al-Qaeda • dangerous_device • definition_of_terrorism • desi • dr_seuss • George_W_Bush • Gore_Vidal • implicit_condition • liberation_tigers_of_tamil_eelam • lucille_ball • mainstream_media • Maureen_Dowd • personal_monetary_gain • real_ira • reiterated • revolutionary_armed_forces_of_colombia • shining_path • sneetches • State_Department • substantial_damage • tamil_tigers • terrorist • violent_attack • war_on_terror

As I listened to John McCain and the other Republican hopefuls supplicate themselves before the Religious Right, it occurred to me that each of them was trying extremely hard to show they had been “born again.” But of course none of them had the chutzpah to pull what the man the want to replace did when he courted Jerry Falwell and company–to actually claim he had been born again and that none other than Billy Graham himself had convinced him of the error of his ways.

How George W. Bush became president is certainly THE greatest make over story of our times and you must understand, as I think most Americans do, that the make over is the key. Make overs have been the stock-in-trade of television reality shows, women’s and men’s magazines and innumerable local newspaper contests.

Its antecedents lie in yellowing old comic strip ads of 98 pound weaklings having sand kicked in their face and faded black-and-white video tapes of you-can-look-like-a-movie-star hair permanent commercials. The contemporary make over artist is a modern necromancer who mutters some psychobabble mixed with just enough common sense and pseudo science that a wave of the magic product exacts a miraculous transformation worthy of the most venerated medieval saint.

What makes the script sizzle is the object of the make over. This cannot just be some ordinary citizen any more than a saint bother himself or herself with healing some victim of the common cold. The object must be truly abject, someone deformed by humpbacked irregularities and sporting the equivalent of odiferous, leprosy-like sores that turn away everyone’s gaze.

The object must undergo an ordeal, a trial by fire to portray the make over as truly miraculous. You don’t lose 50 pounds just by being a couch potato and taking a little yellow pill. A pitch that shallow ends up on the back of matchbook covers or cheap magazines buried at the bottom of the rack by the supermarket checkout counter. The audience knows you can’t get something for nothing, although enough of them figure that for a few bucks, what the heck, it’s like a lottery ticket and just maybe it will work.

This is what the Religious Right is truly looking for. They know that every candidate begging for their votes will say all the right things about abortion and gay marriage and the other social causes they have thrust on Americans who would just as soon the government stay out of their bedrooms, thank you. But what will matter in the end is the conversion.

Were John McCain to reveal he had been born again in that North Vietnamese prison cell he might just as well walk on water. Were Sam Brownback to admit he had personally talked with God somewhere on the Kansas prairies, the way the Lord talks regularly with Pat Robertson the faithful would anoint him as George W. Bush’s heir apparent.

Yet so far, the candidates have stuck with policy when the Religious Right craves the personal. McCain can deliver speech after speech saying that even though he called Falwell one of America’s “agents of intolerance” in 2000, he had changed. A true Falwell voter has to hear that somehow God played a role in that change. Otherwise, McCain is just another politician.

Right now the GOP likes to believe that what it sees as the relatively similar ideologies of its candidates will give it a leg up on the Democrats who are already undergoing their annual rite of who is a “real” Democrat and who is “electable.” Yet the Republican contest could promise to become just as nasty.

You can bet things will get as dirty as they did when McCain ran in 2000 and conservative groups circulated literature in South Carolina accusing him of having an African American child. Brownback or someone else will trot out the Falwell quote. McCain will respond in kind.

For the Democrats this contest to see who can kiss the ring of Jerry Falwell the hardest holds out the hope that the GOP will move even further to the right. Contrary to some pundits who have given them a premature burial, the Religious Right, which felt slighted this past fall and still thinks Dubya neglected them for Iraq, itches to show its strength again. People who believe Armageddon lies just around the corner do not fade away quietly.

Crossposts: My Left Wing, All Things Democrat,

Tagged with: billy_graham • born_again • cheap_magazines • chutzpah • couch_potato • Dubya • George_W_Bush • Jerry_Falwell • John_McCain • matchbook_covers • miraculous_transformation • Pat_Robertson • presidential_campaign • pseudo_science • psychobabble • reality_shows • religious_right • Republican_hopefuls • Sam_Brownback • supermarket_checkout • television_reality

Last week the U.S. Election Assistance Commission finally got around to officially issuing a report they commissioned that was completed in June 2006, but not formally discussed until the bipartisan panel met in Washington last week. Even more curious is that the report has been online at Rutgers University’s Eagleton Institute of Politics since last Summer. Rutgers professors Timothy Vercellotti and David Anderson presented a paper on the report at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association in Philadelphia in early September of 2006, so the data and findings have been widely available for almost a year.

Yet the mainstream media and most of blogdom were silent about the study until the EAC finally got around to officially issuing the report. I must confess, I usually try to keep up on such things but missed it. Even after the delay of almost a year, the Commission’s chairwoman, Donetta Davidson, called the study “premature,” making the obvious point that since 2004 a number of states had adopted voter ID regulations. “You can’t make determinations based on one year,” she said. “We have new states that have ID requirements now that weren’t in that review.” What she didn’t say was that most of these new requirements are even stricter than the ones in the 2004 study.

So what did this report contain that made it a political hot potato and left the two prestigious academic centers who had conducted the study–the Eagleton Institute and Ohio State’s Moritz College of Law–in an extremely awkward position? In a nutshell, the report told the Commission exactly what it didn’t want to hear. It’s main findings confirmed what many had suspected in 2004: requiring voter IDs restrict voter turnout, especially among people of color.

“It validates some of the things that have been said all along about the problems of voter ID,” said Kimball Brace of Election Data Services told USA Today, which broke the story. Taken together with the earlier research by Tova Wang and Job Serebrov that found little evidence of voter fraud at polling places, it shows voter ID laws can have more of a negative than a positive impact, Brace said.

The opening of the paper by professors Vercellotti and Anderson alludes to the critical balancing act between being too lenient about voter registration which, according to some, increases fraud, or to be stricter and decrease turnout. In the first paragraph they write:

Democratic norms regarding ballot access and the legitimacy of elections collide at the polling place on Election Day. A representative democracy ought to make voting accessible to as many qualified citizens as possible. But, at the same time, it is important to prevent vote fraud that could lead to an inaccurate outcome and illegitimate results. Conducting elections, therefore, becomes a balancing act between allowing maximum access to the ballot and preventing fraud in the casting of those ballots.

What the two concluded was that the balancing act had fallen on its face and what I refer to as the level playing field had tilted. The two found that voter turnout in 2004 was about 4% lower in states that required voters to sign their name or produce documentation. But the most dramatic finding was that requiring ID’s had a decidedly negative impact on people of color. Hispanic turnout was 10% lower. For African Americans and Asian-Americans the figure was 6%.

In their conclusion the authors admit that their data did not allow them to examine the crucial why of the results. Why did people turn out in lesser numbers as the requirements stiffened? The paper asks:

If these requirements dampen turnout, is it because individuals are aware of the requirements and stay away from the polls because they cannot or do not want to meet the requirements? Or, do the requirements result in some voters being turned away when they cannot meet the requirements on Election Day?

The final paragraph of the report ends with what on the surface seems an one-the-one-hand and on-the-other-hand conclusion that tries to tip toe through the minefield of voting rights and the immediate issue of satisfying the group that had paid for the study. Yet curiously even this rhetoric did not satisfy the Commission:

It appears that stringent requirements can reduce turnout. But it remains to be seen whether the reduction in turnout is the price to pay for greater ballot security. That may, indeed, be the case. But it is also possible that strict voter identification requirements, designed to promote legitimate election results, could actually undermine that legitimacy instead .

Perhaps the reason this language failed to satisfy the Commission lies in the clever rhetorical construction of the paragraph. Reverse the first two and last two sentences and you will see what I mean. By framing the issue as they did these two very clever professors seem to say that in a democracy there can really only be one answer, we must accept some degree of imperfection if that allows more people to participate in the process. Otherwise we are no better than some tin horn dictatorship.

It is too bad the study did not allow the authors to survey people of color or that the Commission could find the courage to conduct a study focusing on why stricter requirements have kept them from voting. Maybe it is because they don’t want to hear the answer. I suspect such a study would show what many people of color already know: some don’t have IDs like driver’s licenses, some don’t have permanent addresses because that’s what life can be like in certain parts of the country, some don’t bother because their usual experiences with government officials have just been too much of a hassle, and frankly, some are intimidated. The higher percentages for Hispanics may also be due to the intimidation over immigration.

The attempt of the Republican Counterrevolution to make it difficult for people of color to vote has been going on for quite some time. Their argument is that making registration easier causes more voting fraud. This is where Wang and Serebrov enter the picture. The EAC hired this bipartisan team to survey studies and reports of voter fraud and intimidation and to make recommendations for further study.

Their report to the EAC makes interesting reading. Their literature review concluded, “there is no consensus on the pervasiveness of voting fraud and voter intimidation.” But they went on to note “one point of agreement is that absentee voting and voter registration by nongovernmental groups create opportunities for fraud.” Interviews with experts largely confirmed this finding that the greatest problem lay with absentee ballots. Their exhaustive review of 40,000 cases related to fraud turned up approximately 180 relevant cases. What they don’t say is that this is less than one percent. According to Wang and Sebrov, “Of those that were applicable, no apparent thematic pattern emerged.”

While the report makes recommendations to the EAC for further study, it also shoots a rather large hole in the Republican contention that voter fraud at the polls is a major problem. At best it is a huge exaggeration, at worst a deliberate attempt to create a problem where none exists. USA Today, in an article on the Wang and Sebrov report stated unequivocably, “At a time when many states are instituting new requirements for voter registration and identification, a preliminary report to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission has found little evidence of the type of polling-place fraud those measures seek to stop.”

So why is the Republican Party working so hard to perpetuate the myth of voter fraud? Because this debate has little to do with potential fraud and everything to do with the fact that the poor, the elderly, and people of color tend to vote overwhelmingly Democratic. They also happen to be people who do not have IDs, do not even have ways to get to the polls, and are either suspicious or cynical about government.

It is time to name this for what it is: pure, flat-out racism. The implication that people of color are more likely to “cheat” at the polls evokes some insulting and obnoxious stereotypes that go back more than a century. In the GOP�s attempts to disenfranchise voters of color one can hear echoes of the “shifty negro,”"the lawless bandito,” “the untrustworthy Asian.�”

Neither the paper nor the EAC dared to touch the real bomb hidden behind all those numbers: what impact did they have on the presidential election? Did John Kerry, like Al Gore before him, lose the election because of systematic attempts to keep voters from the polls? Simple math yields a probable answer. The additional 4% cited in the Vercellotti and Anderson paper probably would have put John Kerry in the White House. We cannot say for sure because the data are not broken down by state, so the impact on the electoral vote is speculative.

There are those who feel that compared to the War in Iraq that issues such as election reform have little traction. As I post this, Technorati reports almost 5,000 bloggers babbling on about Iraq. This is the only post on voting rights out of over 300,000 blogs. You may draw your own conclusion about the relative importance of each, but this imbalance leaves me uneasy about the future of our country.

If what I call one of the four cornerstones of Liberal America is crumbling right before our eyes, its implications stretch far beyond the validity of regression analysis or the precise and often indecipherable legal language of election law. In short, had we had fair elections in 2000 and 2004 we might not be in Iraq or debating over troop increases. The thousands who have been killed and wounded might be living normal lives. So when you read about the next helicopter that goes down think about the ballot box and the tilted playing field.

Crossposts: All Things Democrat

Tagged with: 2004_presidential_election • Abramoff • accountability • Al_Gore • American_democracy • American_Political_Science_Association • ballot_box • bloggers • Bush • cornerstones • Dean • decline_in_voter_turnout • Democratic_Party • Democratic_voters • donetta_davidson • eac • Eagleton_Institute • election_assistance_commission • George_W_Bush • GOP_Counterrevolution • Iraq • Iraq_War • John_Kerry • Latino_voters • level_playing_field • liberal_america • mainstream_media • media • Rahm_Emanuel • Republicans • Republican_Counterrevolution • right_to_vote • Saddam_Hussein • United_States_Supreme_Court • vercelotti • voter_id • voter_participation • voting_rights

The blade shines in the candlelight, the reflection from its metallic edge forces you to shut your eyes or to allow it to cut deep into your soul. To those for whom the blade signifies the center of a personal ritual, its edge holds meanings and contradictions as fathomless as the deepest synapses of the human mind, meanings and contradictions any Penitente would recognize. Scourging and purging. Each time soul and blade wrestle, the uncertainty of the outcome heightens the moment, charging it with the high voltage of survival and threatening to color it with the distinctive carmine of flowing blood.

The first time I heard about �cutting,� I was facilitating a mental health leadership project for my state. A woman who served on the planning committee attended our sessions with both her forearms wrapped in Ace bandages. The others knew her story, but I did not. So one day she told me before I could ask, as if she knew sooner or later she would be asked. �I cut,� she said.

According to the University of Michigan, “adolescent self injury, frequently known as cutting, has become alarmingly common. Physicians estimate that almost 3 million people, most of them adolescents, exhibit this dangerous behavior.” Cutting is also more common among young women. The psychologists and psychiatrists I talked with agreed the causes for cutting were complex. “If we had figured it all out by now, people wouldn’t cut, would they”,one said.

Social pathologies can create as deadly a minefield as those in individuals. Even the simple act of moving from individual to group makes some policy analysts extremely uncomfortable. Psychologists and psychiatrists also find the idea of transferring an illness to a group not only wrong-headed but also dangerous because it may reinforce stereotypes.

Our planning group spent much time on stigmatizing, a memory which caused me to rewrite this post several times. Yet even as I did so, I thought of groups that also exhibit self-destructive behaviors that resemble cutting. Perhaps the best way to think of the parallel is metaphorically.

Certainly the Democratic Party and Blogdom currently exhibit all the signs of cutting. The Party’s presidential candidates all appear as if they were swathed in bandages. Meanwhile the blogs themselves spill their own blood, mirroring the Party.

Democrats and blogs cut because they are angry with Hillary Clinton’s views on Iraq. They cut because of frustration about an inability to pigeonhole Barack Obama. They cut because John Edwards issued a health care plan when they wanted a road map out of Iraq. They cut because they are depressed by other candidates clogging up the race.

Meanwhile blogdom is experiencing a bloodletting that directly links to the Democrats’ own wounded candidates. Bloggers are angry about the political views of other blogs, views they feel will lead to losing the best chance the party has had for the White House in years. Other blogs cut to express their frustration with the constant carping. Some posts openly admit being hurt and depressed.

A web site for parents of cutters explains cutting in language that could describe the current Blog Wars and the Democratic Party:

The urge to cut might be triggered by strong feelings the person can’t express - such as anger, hurt, shame, frustration, or depression. People who cut sometimes say they feel they don’t fit in or that no one understands them. A person might cut because of losing someone close or to escape a sense of emptiness. Cutting might seem like the only way to find relief, or the only way to express personal pain over relationships or rejection.

When you think about it, it seems as though Democrats and bloggers alike have been cutting for quite some time. John Kerry left so much blood on the floor in 2004 there was not much left of him. Howard Dean’s jugular was literally cut in Iowa. In 2000, Al Gore’s campaign seemed to veer from one cutting to another. And through it all, like teenagers at some gruesome spectacle, bloggers urged them on.

So how do you deal with cutting? The medical experts advise that first you have to acknowledge it. Then you need to get to the root of the problem. “Cutting is a way of reacting to emotional tension or pain. Try to figure out what feelings or situations are causing you to cut,” advises the parent’s web site.

The pain of the Democratic Party over the past decade has been so visible that sometimes it almost hurt to watch their candidates and representatives. The anger stirred up by the Era of Bad Feelings had a great deal to do with that as Democrats endured humiliation after humiliation inflicted by the likes of Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, Tom DeLay and Bill O’Reilly.

Many felt the Democrats wimped out, not fighting back against the bullying. Others argued that the only way to restore the Party’s credibility was to adopt the ideas of their tormentors. So Democrats voted for welfare “reform,” No Child Left Behind, tax cuts for the wealthy, and, of course, the biggest one of all, the Iraq War. You almost expected to see Democrats walk onto the floor of the House or Senate with Ace bandages on their arms.

The victories in November seemed to promise an end to the cutting, but as the early days of the presidential race and the wobbling paths taken by Congress so far testify, November failed to stop the blood flow. In fact the cutting in Blogdom hints at the anger and frustration still in the Party.

It seems to me that what has caused Democrats and blogs alike to cut is that they have lost their moral compass. Like someone caught in a psychological crisis they seem caught in an ideological crisis in which they no longer know who they are or what they stand for. That is one reason I decided to periodically post on past Democratic presidents and candidates, because only by understanding the past can we move confidently into the future.

Although that journey has just begun, several themes have emerged. First, single issue zealots threaten to tear apart the Party. Some groups will to do anything to push their agenda. No other cause matters�because other causes directly compete for funds and candidate loyalty. Meanwhile, in the now familiar endorsement rituals, candidates show off their scars to symbolize their dedication. Scourging and purging characterize the process.

At the other extreme stand triangulators who calculate positions as sharp as a knife�s edge using pollsters and their focus groups. Had Franklin Roosevelt used focus groups to solve the Depression he might have taken a fatal approach. Harry Truman would never have been known as “Give-em Hell, Harry” and the famous newspaper photograph would have been right.

Triangulators agree with the mainstream media that the country has drifted to the right even though polls show strong support for a woman’s right to choose, more spending for education, breaking up the big media, a reassertion of voting rights and tax equity. For triangulators cutting is central to the political process because candidates must visibly shed blood to show they truly believe the positions outlined for them by the consultants. Few emerge without deep wounds.

Blogdom reflects this same split which is why the “Blog Wars” have become so intense. Site “enforcers” insure that a certain party line is followed by all posters while other sites are being pressured into adopting a similar policy. Posters must show their scars just like the candidates so they too can pass muster with the ideologues. “Snarky” language and four letter words sometimes take on the symbolism of spilled blood.

As the cutting web site noted, cutting is a coping mechanism for a highly charged situation that demands some kind of relief. The woman I talked with those many years ago likened the feeling before she started cutting to a pressure cooker building up to the point where she had to do something. It feels like that right now.

Already there is talk none of the candidates are satisfactory. Meanwhile the blogs covering them engage in purging one another. Instead of cutting, we should be asking what vision do the candidates and the blogs have for the American people? This election should not be about programs, because inevitably they will be modified in the crucible of government, but about the raw ingredients for those programs�the principles that drive them. We no longer need 150 plus page lists of programs as John Kerry gave us in the last campaign. Nobody wants to read a book to know how to cast their ballot.

What they do want to know is what values do the candidates see guiding their decisions both at home and abroad? What does the American dream mean to them? Most of all do they believe that government must keep the playing field level so all Americans have a chance to achieve that dream?

Tell us that you will recover the Party’s lost moral compass. Tell us that you will take back the banner that the enemy so rudely captured, the battle flag on which hang ribbons signifying the Fourteen Points and the Four Freedoms, The New Deal and the Marshall Plan.

Values also lie behind the Blog Wars. Blogs that enforce various posting rules, stifle one of the most our most precious rights: free speech. As some of you readers know my family earned a death sentence under the Nazis for daring to speak out and my uncle�s family died at Dachau just for having a different faith. Yet those in my family who lived through the Weimar Republic and experienced Nazi hate first hand, NEVER spoke out against restrictions on speech. My father even gave money to the ACLU after they defended the American Nazi Party.

Why, because for them the issue had nothing to do with what was being said but with the defending the rule of law. The brownshirts enforced their anti-Semitism with violence. That is why they were dangerous. The Wiemer Republic refused to put a stop to it; that’s why it fell. Now is not the time for rigid proscriptions but for thoughtful new ideas and emotional testimony about what truly matters.

So the time has come to stop the cutting. We must seek a compelling vision that reasserts our principles in a manner that gives everyone a voice no matter how much they might offend.

Crossposts: My Left Wing, All Things Democrat

Tagged with: 2004_presidential_election • adolescent_mental_health • Barack_Obama • blog_wars • Bush_tax_cuts • cutting • Democrats • Democrats_lost_moral_compass • Democrat_party • education_funding • era_of_bad_feelings • Franklin_Delano_Roosevelt • future_of_the_Democratic_Party • Harry_Truman • Hillary_Clinton • Hillary_Rodham_Clinton • Howard_Dean • Iowa_caucuses • John_Edwards • John_Kerry • Nazis • Newt_Gingrich • No_Child_Left_Behind_Act • rush_limbaugh • tax_cuts • teenagers • Tom_DeLay • university_of_michigan • voting_rights • Weimar_Republic • Wilson_administration

If you happen to have this President’s Day off and are cruising the blogosphere and happen to land on this site, I’m going to do something I rarely do. I’m going to send you away. I want to send you to a a post titled, “No President’s Day For Dante.”

Part of the post is a story by Mark Bowden for The Philadelphia Inquirer, but it is the follow-up by the author of the blog The Field Negro, that truly nails this story. In the past week, this blog has become required reading for me. It should be for all true Liberal Americans, especially white Liberal Americans that I term “limousine liberals.”

In this Era of Bad Feelings, when the wrong stories end up in the papers and this country’s most import value–the level playing field–seems to have been forgotten it is blogs like The Field Negro that truly demonstrate the value of blogdom. That value is quite simply to give voice to those whose ideas are not being heard by the mainline press or most Americans.

Blogdom can be an insular place, with people reading only opinions that reinforce their own prejudices. That is dangerous, but no more so than in this present era. For readers of this site let me know about interesting places–by that I mean blogs like this one that are “on the fringe” and I will try to include them as future shout-outs.

So get out of your own neighborhood, open your mind to new ideas, even if they are uncomfortable. Most of all, enjoy the wonderful cacophony of democracy in action, but as you do it remember American democracy is still an ideal to be realized not a destination we have already reached. For Americans like Dante, life is still an Inferno.

Tagged with: blogosphere • blogs • dante • liberal_americans • mark_bowden • on_the_fringe • philadelphia_inquirer • presidents_day • the_field_negro

The Bush Administration’s rhetoric about Iranian meddling in the Iraq War may be the most absurd charge they have made in a long line of absurd charges dating back to the reasons for this increasingly bizarre war. In case you have forgotten, back in December, American troops arrested two Iranians they accused of running weapons to Iraq.

According to the troops involved, they had caught the Iranians red-handed, smoking guns and all. A Baghdad raid detailed in the New York Times, found evidence that connected some of those detained to “weapons shipments to armed groups in Iraq.” Maj. Gen. William Caldwell IV, the chief spokesman for the American command, said the military, in the raid, had “gathered specific intelligence from highly credible sources that linked individuals and locations with criminal activities against Iraqi civilians, security forces and coalition force personnel.”

American troops on the scene wanted to detain the Iranians for further questioning. They were particularly interested in finding out more about the entire operation: what types of weapons were they running? How many? How often? And, most important, who were they linked to? Suspicions pointed to Moktafa al_Sadr, the Shiite head of the Mahdi Army militia, but the evidence was certainly far from conclusive.

Not long after the arrests, Iran learned what had happened and demanded we release their two citizens because they had “diplomatic immunity.” To many this seemed rather slim, but none other than the Iraqi government entered the fray on the side of the Iranians. A spokesman for Iraq’s president, Jalal Talabani, said he had invited the two Iranians to visit the country.

At this point the entire affair became a diplomatic rather than a military issue. Evidence suggests that the State Department and Condoleeza Rice, the same people who would order the military to release Saddam Hussein for execution on the eve of a major Shiite religious holiday, ordered the release of the Iranians. According to the Times “after days of back room negotiations among the Americans, the Iranians and the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki” the Iranians were released.

So, you ask, why is Iran suddenly accused of exactly what it apparently doing in December? And if we had the evidence then, why did we release the Iranians? Why didn’t we hold onto them long enough to nail the case? It would have been easy enough to find excuses to keep the Iranians for a few more days, even weeks. With more intense investigating we even could have had a contemporary equivalent of the infamous X, Y, Z affair.

If you remember your history, the X, Y, Z affair took place in 1797 when French privateers seized several American vessels. When President Washington sent diplomats to France to negotiate the release of the Americans three French ministers code-named X, Y. and Z refused to allow the Americans to see Prime Minister Talleyrand without a huge bribe. The letters from the French were published in the American press, causing an uproar and one famous quote. Minister Charles Pinckney is reported to have told the French, “Millions for defense, sir, but not one cent for tribute.”

Whatever was going on between the Iraqis, the Iranians and our State Department, we muffed our chance to nail the Iranians and perhaps even to link them to prominent Iraqi officials. Now suddenly, after releasing the two Iranians, Iran has become the Bush Administration’s major issue. Some swear they can even hear the war drums beating in the background. Why the sudden shift? Why is something we were willing to overlook in December suddenly on the front pages?

It is enough to make you agree with critics who say George W. Bush is off the deep end. But for purposes of argument let us assume some rationality. Certainly those who see the current criticisms of Iran as a prelude for an invasion may be on to something. However, you also wonder about other possible explanations.

The first and simplest is that the “Iran Scare,” as we’ll call it, is simply another card to play in making the case for a troop increase in Iraq. We need more troops so the Iranians don’t get the wrong idea. But if that is the case, why were so many GOP House members invoking the bogeyman of al Qaeda, which is Sunni, while Iran is Shiite?

Another more far out theory has the Bush Administration playing the Iran card to light a fire under neighboring Sunni nations–mainly Saudi Arabia. Saudi clerics have openly preached about supporting their Sunni brothers in Iraq. By fingering Iran, the Administration plays into this war mongering.

If this is the case, it represents a dangerous game. It would destabilize even further an already volatile region, touching a match to the flammable mixture of prejudice and religious conflict that has been building for over a century. When Iran and Iraq fought each other from 1980-1988 it resulted in an estimated one million Iraqi casualties. A regional war would make those figures look puny.

There may be a third possible scenario, but it is the least likely. By fingering Iran, the United States could once again make a case for bringing the international community into play. No one in the world wants to see a major war in the Middle East. Evoking the possibility of Iran actively participating in the Iraq conflict could provide the United States with an opportunity to return to the United Nations to work out an international plan for Iraq.

Of course, this should have been done before we ever went to war unilaterally. That the rest of the world would suddenly offer to help bail us out of the mess we have made seems unlikely. The rest of the world also remains suspicious of this administration’s twisting of facts. Why should they believe us now?

Let us hope this is not a prelude to an invasion of Iran. That would not only destabilize a region but also this nation. One hope George W. Bush would not be that stupid. It would lower his already abysmal historical ranking. It would be like Truman listening to MacArthur about expanding the Korean War or Lyndon Johnson listening to Curtis LeMay’s plans to bomb Southeast Asia back into the “Stone Age.”

Crossposts: My Left Wing, All Things Democrat,

Tagged with: Abramoff • Al-Qaeda • al_Maliki • al_sadr • Bush • Bush_administration • captured_iranians • Condoleeza_Rice • Curtis_LeMay • Dean • execution_of_Saddam • general_caldwell • George_W_Bush • GOP • Harry_Truman • Iran • Iraq • Iraqis • Iraq_troop_increase • Iraq_War • Latino_voters • Lyndon_Johnson • MacArthur • moktada_al_sadr • New_York_Times • pinckney • Saddam_Hussein • Shiite • State_Department • Sunni • talabani • talleyrand • United_States_Supreme_Court • war_in_Iraq

The celebration of Black History Month always leaves me feeling a bit uncomfortable, for white folks the main emphasis seems to be on honoring the achievements of individual African-Americans. There usually is a magazine piece or public television documentary that uncovers a lost figure whose achievements had been so walled off by the bricks of racism that the discovery has all the atmosphere of opening an ancient Egyptian tomb. Too often in all of this there is a subtle or not so subtle message that these are the leaders, these are the unusual, the exotic.

Even as history as a discipline has moved to studying what used to be euphemistically called “the common people,” Black History Month remains strangely immune to this. Yet while we should not EVER forget the achievements of great scientists or writers who were African Americans, we seem to ignore the achievements of the African American people, especially of groups of African Americans who worked together to change American history.

In recent American history, one of these groups whose name is rapidly fading from the history books but should never be forgotten is the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Besides many admirable recent histories about what was called The Movement, one of the best and most unlikely places to understand the African American grassroots politics of the early 1960s are the records of the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, which functioned like the STASI of the former East Germany.

As we argue about bringing democracy to Iraq and other nations, we sometimes imply the difficulty lies with the “undemocratic nature” of the people of those countries. Yet in our hubris we tend to forget that within the living memory of most Americans, Southern segregationists had the equivalent of a secret police force and those who dared cross over the lines drawn by the apartheid of Mississippi and other states sometimes paid with their lives.

Commission records lay under a tombstone of secrecy and protection until a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union opened them for the public in 1998. Although the records appeared sanitized, what emerged was shocking enough�ghosts whose wails tell a sordid story. The handwritten records from one county show payments to informers ranging from $25 up to almost $100, with $40 not being uncommon.

Check marks march down the page, marking African American informers, sometimes several for the same family. Like Nazi and gulag administrators, the Commission believed nothing was too inconsequential to report. An eerie 1964 memo notes: “Rita Schwerner [the wife of slain Civil Rights worker Michael Schwerner] recently purchased a Singer sewing machine in Meridian and had it delivered to 2505 1/2 5th Street in Meridian.”

To picture Mississippi in the early 1960s you have to be prepared to walk into a fevered nightmare which periodically reasserts itself into our consciousness. Fantastical images and shapes flit in the darkness, and curses and screams come from beyond the edge of safety and sanity. We awake with that uncomfortable feeling of sorting out what is real. One memo captures the atmosphere: “It was pointed out to Shiboh by the writer,” it notes, “that he was going a bit beyond the tutoring in Leland and he was advised to be very careful he did not go beyond the provisions of the law and create a problem which could bring about serious trouble.”

Billie Holiday sang about those times in the song, “Strange Fruit:”

Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

The Sovereignty Commission records, as sanitized as they are, tell about a part of America that is within the living memories of many still alive, which makes their reports all the more chilling. In another entry, an agent recommended pressuring a black college to purge itself of Civil Rights “agitators” by threatening to revoke the teaching licenses of all the faculty and of those who graduated with teaching licenses.

A third memo tells of a plant visit by representatives of a racist group that threatened the plant owner if he did not stop hiring African Americans. Reporting on a closed meeting an investigator noted, “The writer could not gain access to the meeting but is very close to some of those who will attend so I should be able to find what was discussed.” A letter documents the Commission’s role in providing a hidden tape recorder that agent Woodley Carr “could use in interviewing the sister of Fannie Lou Hamer.”

I have had the unnerving experience of paging through memos like these only once before and that was reading the Nuremburg trial volumes that documented the atrocities of Nazi concentration camp doctors like Joseph Mengele. Looking at a documents with names underlined with a dark pen stroke inspires thoughts of enemies lists and death decrees. At some point, after reading pages and pages of the Sovereignty Commission files, the records become routine, making you wonder if you, like those who compiled them, have become numb to it all.

The people who are documented in these records were anything but numb. Commission records tell a powerful story; their pages documenting the names of hundreds of African Americans who stood up in the face of intimidation with energy and commitment. It is important to recognize that African Americans led efforts like the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Even the Sovereignty Commission, which would have loved to find Northern white hands pulling the strings, gives local leaders full credit.

Because the agents were so thorough in their spying we now have in black and white the names of hundreds of courageous people who laid there lives on the line for freedom. And there are hundreds, column after column neatly typed by spies who infiltrated local meetings of an army committed to a cause. These were people who did everything from provide housing and food to writing, printing and distributing leaflets to talking with their neighbors about the cause. They came to meetings held at night in churches, knowing they might be bombed or randomly shot or beaten on their way home. They marched and testified and voted.

One of their monuments was the Freedom Ballot. Amidst the papers preserved by the Sovereignty Commission lies a copy of the 1964 Freedom Ballot, names listed in neat rows, their order belying an explosive weapon that was designed to bring down the structure that had stood for so long in the Cotton Belt.

The Freedom Ballot�s intent was to demonstrate that a significant number of Mississippi�s African Americans were not invisible or slaves to the power structure. To minimize the violent segregationists that would be attracted like moths to a flame, organizers mailed the Freedom Ballot over a four-day period. The courage behind the effort remains difficult to imagine, for everyone involved in printing, distributing, filling out and counting the ballots literally put their lives on the line, testifying to a communal strength and resolve determined to rid the state of oppression. When the counting ended, over 50,000 African Americans had sent in ballots, a collective shout for freedom that reverberated across Mississippi to the very halls of Congress.

Today it is easy to dismiss the significance of the Freedom Ballot, but my research tells me it is the only effort I know of by an oppressed people in any country to hold a democratic election in what amounted to a dictatorial state. That singular achievement testifies to the power, resolve and courage of the African Americans who made it happen. It is as important a collective contribution to American democracy as the Boston Tea Party or the winter at Valley Forge and as such deserves a suitable monument.

But there also is in it a lesson for today’s Democratic Party. The Freedom Ballot and other political organizing by groups like the MFDP represented a moral crossroads for the Party. They could continue to side with the segregationists or work toward a new America, one where the playing field was level for all. The results of those years are well-known: of the attempted compromise over the seating of delegates at the 1964 Democratic Convention and the Congressional vote over the results of the Freedom Ballot in the fall of 1965. Those years represented signs that the Democratic Party was losing sight of the ideals of Liberal America.

The question is now, after almost half a century does it have the will to recover what it squandered? Those whose names belong on that monument are still waiting for an answer.

Crossposts: My Left Wing, All Things Democrat, Progressive Historians

Tagged with: American_Civil_Liberties_Union • billie_holiday • black_history_month • Fannie_Lou_Hamer • freedom_ballot • gulag • informers • Michael_Schwerner • Mississippi_Freedom_Democratic_Party • Mississippi_Soverignty_Commission • nazi • stasi • strange_fruit