Month: June 2005

Pressure of work meant that I missed Bush’s televised speech on Iraq, so I was forced to rely on the transcript and the pronouncements of the pundits to determine what he said. And that’s a pity, because I’m sure I missed something – a subtitle, or an ad-lib that wasn’t captured in the transcript. How else can one explain the following juxtaposition?

First, Bush promised that “If our commanders on the ground say we need more troops, I will send them. But our commanders tell me they have the number of troops they need to do their job.” So the troop levels are a matter of military judgment, right? And since quite a few officers have been saying that they don’t have enough troops….

But wait. The President then said “Sending more Americans would undermine our strategy of encouraging Iraqis to take the lead in this fight. And sending more Americans would suggest that we intend to stay forever – when we are in fact working for the day when Iraq can defend itself and we can leave.” Huh? So now we can’t send more troops because that would undermine the strategy and send the wrong message? So it’s a political decision then.

Well, no. Maybe Bush realized that he was speaking in front of a military audience, because he later said, “As we determine the right force level, our troops can know that I will continue to be guided by the advice that matters – the sober judgment of our military leaders.”

So which is it? Did they explain in the subtitles that I wasn’t there to see? Or did the President manage to flip and then flop in the course of a single speech? Inquiring minds, etcetera…

According to today’s Guardian:

Channel 4 has teamed up with the award-winning film director Michael Winterbottom to make a docu-drama about three British Muslims who were incarcerated at Guantánamo Bay as “enemy combatants”. The Road to Guantánamo will tell the story of the so-called “Tipton Three”, who were released without charge from the US government’s Camp X-Ray prison last spring after two years in captivity.

(I wonder if it will be shown on US TV? PBS seems increasingly unlikely; maybe HBO.)

Over at Balkinization, Jack Balkin discusses Scalia’s uncompromising dissent in McCreary County v. ACLU, the courtroom 10 commandments case:

Scalia forthrightly explains that the Establishment Clause is not about preserving neutrality between religion and non-religion. It is not even about neutrality among religions. Rather, it requires neutrality among monotheistic religions that believe in a personal God who cares about and who intervenes in the affairs of humankind, and in particular, among Christianity (and its various sects), Judaism, and Islam.

Quite apart from its viciously divisive tone, Scalia’s argument displays remarkable ignorance. For example, he asserts that “With respect to public acknowledgment of religious belief, it is entirely clear from our Nation’s historical practices that the Establishment Clause permits this disregard of polytheists and believers in unconcerned deities just as it permits the disregard of devout atheists”. Yet the phrase “believers in unconcerned deities” clearly describes deists, a category that included many of the framers of the Constitution.

Balkin’s analysis is much more detailed than my brief note. Among other things, he dissects the curious pretzel logic that Scalia employs in including Jews and Moslems. The (scathing) bottom line: “Justice Scalia’s tradition of establishment of monotheism is, like so many other traditions, an invented tradition which he has made up to produce an outcome that he politically prefers.”

Highly recommended.

In his attempt to beat out Karl Rove for the title of Most Shameless Fabricator of Guilt by Association, Senator Rick Santorum explains the origins of child molestation by Roman Catholic priests in Catholic Online: “It is startling that those in the media and academia appear most disturbed by this aberrant behavior, since they have zealously promoted moral relativism by sanctioning ‘private’ moral matters such as alternative lifestyles. Priests, like all of us, are affected by culture. When the culture is sick, every element in it becomes infected. While it is no excuse for this scandal, it is no surprise that Boston, a seat of academic, political and cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the storm.”

(Via Sully. But Josh thinks Santorum first said this back in 2002.)

UPDATE: Sullivan received a great email from a reader in the Republic of Ireland which emphasizes the sheer stupidity of Santorum’s attempt to link priestly pedophilia with liberalism:

99% of schools were Catholic, 90% of the population were weekly mass goers and monthly confession was the norm for the majority. Divorce was banned by the constitution. There was no “plague of cultural liberalism”; there was no liberalism at all! It was almost a perfect Catholic State. Yet the physical and sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy was rampant. Indeed it has been the exposure of these crimes that has revolutionized Irish society in the course of 10 years.