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Great piece in last week's issue of The Nation on the status of Lt. Ehren Watada, who is the first commissioned officer to refuse to serve in Iraq. In case you missed what's happened lately, Watada's military court trial for his failure to deploy ended in a mistrial; however, the military courts have threatened to re-try him--contravening, Watada argues, his constitutional right to be spared double-jeopardy.
Now Watada's taking his case to the US courts, asking them to deny the military court the right to subject him to yet another trial on the same charge. And thus far the US court has complied, offering a stay to block the 2nd military court trial.
Watada will go before that judge on October 19th to plead his case, and it should be interesting to see what comes of it. If he loses, Watada goes back to the military court to be tried again--and it will be a miracle if there's yet another mistrial this time around. Moreover, the likelihood of a military court finding in his favor strikes me as slim to none, not least because in order to find him innocent
the court would essentially have to declare the war in Iraq both "immoral and illegal"--the charges that form the crux of Watada's claim about his innocence (i.e., that he was, as an officer, dutybound not to take part in conduct he knew to be immoral or illegal--and by the measure of American law, he says, this war is both). If the court says he is right, then not only has it delivered a slap in the face to the Executive Branch, but it also has on its hands about 200,000+ criminal-soldiers who have deployed as directed to carry out an illegal war. And who the hell wants to deal with that?
I couldn't be a bigger fan of Watada's and I have every finger and toe crossed that the US courts will find that he deserves access to his constitutional rights as much as any other citizen. Because-- and call me a pessimist--I'm pretty confident that this guy stands no shot if the military tries to take another swing at him. See what standing up for your morals gets you in this country these days?
Turns out that the NY Times does have a conscience--or at least it turns out to have one under mounting scrutiny of its potential wrongdoing. The paper of record has now admitted that the discount it gave MoveOn.org to run the infamous General Betray Us ad was "a mistake"; apparently someone inside decided it was time to come clean about the fact that journalists just like liberals better.
Well, besides me, a whole group of former CIA officers, who have taken it upon themselves to call Mr. Tenet out and ask him return that good old "Medal of Freedom" he accepted from President Bush. Those CIA officers sure aren't ones to mince words; as they remind Mr. Tenet in their letter,
"You were not a victim. You were a willing participant in a poorly considered policy to start an unnecessary war and you share culpability with Dick Cheney and George Bush for the debacle in Iraq."
Uh... good point. Think he's listening?
Funny, isn't it, how life and art (or journalism) intersect? This morning as I was walking down Wall Street with a copy of this weekend's NYTimes Magazine griped firmly in my left hand, I noticed an absolute phalanx of combat ready NYPD officers clogging the street, the sidewalks, and the entrance to the number 1 train. Being that this is New York, and downtown NY at that, only blocks from where the World Trade Center once stood, seeing all this police activity made my heart race a little bit--and not in a good way. And then I heard the shouting in the distance, rhythmic and punctuated by an intermittent drum beat, and when I looked again and saw once officer with a camera to his face, snapping madly at the scene, I realized what was going on: a protest. An anti-war protest. It's the first one I've seen in person here in Manhattan and it made me wonder if we've finally reached a place where people are actually going to begin standing up and demanding real change... Which brings me back to the life/art connection, because what I was holding in my left hand, in that NY Times magazine, was this week's cover story on women and war--or, specifically, the female US soldiers who are returning from their tours with cases of PTSD caused not just by the trauma they are seeing in the war zone, but also by the sexual trauma inflicted upon them by their male counterparts in the military. To have been so fully immersed in the story on my subway ride downtown this morning, and to have had the sense, in reading it, that the shit is really about to hit the proverbial fan in regards to this war; and then to emerge from there straight into the middle of an anti-war protest... Well, it gives you the feeling that the war really is everywhere--that the chickens have come home to roost. And the most terrible part about it all is that, in so many ways, the damage has already been done. There's no going back for the thousands of soldiers dead or damaged. The only question left is: how many more lives are we willing to ruin in the name of oil and power?
On that happy note, a few items of note from this past weekend:
Let the Mudslinging Begin (Again): Barack's team may be disavowing it, but this video spot that parodies Apple's landmark "1984" commercial is the best piece of pirate political advocacy I've seen yet.
Is Ignorance Bliss?: From the NYTimes, a paralyzing article about one young woman's choice to find out whether she possesses the genetic marker for Huntington's disease (she does). Likely to provoke the "What Would You Do?" sentiment in most of us. For the record, I don't think I have the capacity to hold such knowledge about the limitations of my life expectancy and still live any full kind of life. When it comes to pain and suffering, I'm a wimp, quite frankly. So let me float off in a daze, all who are listening...
Pre-abortion Ultrasounds Could Be Required Under SC Law: In another move to limit a woman's right to abortion without being lectured to or coerced, a bill is now winding its way through the South Carolina legislature that would require women seeking abortions to view ultrasounds of their fetuses before actually going through with the procedure. Un-freakin'-real.
Thanks to Andrew Sullivan for highlighting this article about a bookseller in Baghdad whose life was brought to an end by a car-bomb that recently detonated in the city. It struck me, in reading it, how few stories we hear that tell us much about the real lives, and families, and losses of the thousands of Iraqi citizens who are suffering as a result of this war. My personal theory is that most Americans don't feel that the lives of Iraqis (and thus, their deaths) are worth as much as the deaths of American soldiers or civilians, but with more stories like this one, we may actually learn to appreciate any death, anywhere, as diminishing to us all.
Kudos to Newsweek for not only tackling one of the many hidden results of this War of Terror--our tens of thousands of wounded Vets--but for also putting a wounded female soldier on their cover. If you read the whole article, you get a better sense of what this war is going to mean for us here at home for a generation or more; plus, it leaves you with the bitter taste of outrage at how poorly we're treating folks who put their lives on the line to defend the freedoms we're all so used to taking advantage of. Despicable. Really.
God bless Jane Smiley for this quote of the day, from her very astute contribution to HuffPo on the debacle that is this war in Iraq. Cheney, Wolfowitz, Bush, Bolton and Rummy-- I think they pretty much prove the point. It's long for a blog post, but well worth the read.
Great piece in last week's issue of The Nation on the status of Lt. Ehren Watada, who is the first commissioned officer to refuse to serve in Iraq. In case you missed what's happened lately, Watada's military court trial for his failure to deploy ended in a mistrial; however, the military courts have threatened to re-try him--contravening, Watada argues, his constitutional right to be spared double-jeopardy.
