Kennan misconstrued (again)

Brad DeLong dredges up a 2002 post in which he disabuses Max Sawicky of his impression that George Kennan in a 1948 policy assessment for the State Department was advocating a policy of imperialism in Asia:

The well-meaning and honorable but naive and somewhat gullible Max Sawicky has been duped. He trots out http://maxspeak.org/gm/archives/00000406.html a paragraph from George F. Kennan's 1948 Policy Planning Study 23:

Furthermore, we have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population. This disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction...

and calls it:

...a confession of original sin in U.S. foreign policy, from 1948 to the present. (It is from a memo that was originally classified.) In this light, both 'our' (i.e., the State's) motives and our deeds become problematic, don't they?

But those who have led the Rt. Hon. Mr. Sawicky to this quotation have carefully kept him from seeing it in its context.

If you look at all of Policy Planning Study 23--or even at section VII: Far East--and think what was going on in Asia in February 1948, when the document was written, it rapidly becomes clear that "sentimentality and day-dreaming" means "placing a high value on the alliance the U.S. had with Chiang Kaishek," and "altruism and world-benefaction" means "sending U.S. troops to China to die and U.S. atom bombs to China to go BOOM! in an attempt to stop the forward march of Mao Zedong's People's Liberation Army."

Those who have led the Rt. Hon. Mr. Sawicky to this quote intend for him--intend for you--to believe that Kennan's call for the rejection of "sentimentality and day-dreaming... altruism and world-benefaction" was a call for U.S. imperial domination over Asia.

It wasn't.

It was a call for the U.S. to withdraw, militarily and diplomatically, from Asia; to base its security on the Philippines and Japan; and to leave Asia to the Asians. For, as Kennan had written much earlier in Policy Planning Study 23, " ...The use of U S. regular armed force to oppose the efforts of indigenous communist elements within foreign countries must generally be considered as a risky and profitless undertaking, apt to do more harm than good."

You can argue that Kennan was wrong in seeking a withdrawal of U.S. influence from continental Asia in 1948. You can't--honestly--argue that Kennan was advocating a policy of forceful imperialist world domination.

Notice the qualifier “forceful” and the use of the term “world domination,” which I don’t think anyone in the 20^th Century besides Hitler really had in mind.

DeLong then quotes Kennan more fully from Policy Planning Study 23, but I think the passage supports Sawicky’s point better than DeLong’s:

We should make a careful study to see what parts of the Pacific and Far Eastern world are absolutely vital to our security, and we should concentrate our policy on seeing to it that those areas remain in hands which we can control or rely on. It is my own guess, on the basis of such study as we have given the problem so far, that Japan and the Philippines will be found to be the corner-stones of such a Pacific security system and if we can contrive to retain effective control over these areas there can be no serious threat to our security from the East within our time.

Only when we have assured this first objective, can we allow ourselves the luxury of going farther afield in our thinking and our planning.

If these basic concepts are accepted, then our objectives for the immediate coming period should be:

(a) to liquidate as rapidly as possible our unsound commitments in China and to recover, vis-à-vis that country, a position of detachment and freedom of action;

(b) to devise policies with respect to Japan which assure the security of those islands from communist penetration and domination as well as from Soviet military attack, and which will permit the economic potential of that country to become again an important force in the Far East, responsive to the interests of peace and stability in the Pacific area; and

(c) to shape our relationship to the Philippines in such a way as to permit the Philippine Government a continued independence in all internal affairs but to preserve the archipelago as a bulwark of U.S. security in that area.

Even though at that precise moment American power relative to the rest of the world was probably at its peak, security was much more a legitimate concern for the U.S. then than now. The U.S. had just come through a devastating war against people with bona fide aspirations of world domination and would soon find itself under the very real threat of being wiped out completely. Kennan had a difficult needle to thread, and he saw further than most. At the time, his policy memo was likely a sober, relatively sane proposal to butt out of Chinese affairs. (Too bad Truman hadn’t been listening very closely and shortly thereafter embroiled the country in the Korean meatgrinder.)

But I can’t read phrases like “if we can contrive to retain effective control over these areas there can be no serious threat to our security from the East within our time” or “we should concentrate our policy on seeing to it that those areas remain in hands which we can control or rely on” and see anything other than a calculated policy of imperialism. And of course “continued independence in all internal affairs” as far as the Philippines (and Taiwan and Korea) was concerned meant “giving corrupt dictators a free hand so long as they mouth anti-Communist platitudes.” I shudder to think what Kennan or others in his day had in mind about the "luxury of going farther afield," but it was a proposal that George W. Bush gladly took up. DeLong argues persuasively that Kennan's position was the lesser of two evils. But the optimist in me says our future holds better than simply “less evil.”

doomed

Figured I’d jump on the bandwagon and share the insights of Matt Yglesias on what is looking like a weak Republican field for 2008:

But this gets at what's truly insane about the three unorthodox Republican contenders. Given that they're all viewed skeptically by cultural conservatives, the only possible way for any of them to campaign for the nomination is with an escalating race to the right on national security, even though Iraq just led the GOP to disaster last November. Which vulnerable state that Bush won in 2004 is rendered more secure by making the Republican Party less committed to social conservatism but more committed to the Iraq project? Ohio? Virginia? Missouri? Nevada? Iowa? I don't see it. But only a real conservative Christian can afford to put even a ray of sunlight between himself and the president on the subject of Bush's massively unpopular war, and the cult of celebrity has left the GOP's top-tier field without one. It's too early to say anything with confidence, but from where things sit right now, the Republicans look, well, doomed by their tunnel vision about potential nominees.

The “real conservative” Yglesias is looking for here, I think, is Brownback. Or Hagel, but the base seems to hate him with a passion normally reserved for McCain. Brilliant!

My plan going forward is to milk this for all it’s worth, until it turns out to be totally unfounded, at which point I will quietly pretend it never existed.

progressive national security policy

Matt Yglesias wonders why Democrats fight for union-friendly policies domestically but drop the ball again and again on crucial foreign policy issues.

Sadly, there are virtually no institutions of any consequence organized around providing a progressive take on the substance -- as opposed to labor procedures -- of national security issues. And until that changes, you'll keep having what we have today; a Democratic Party with very clear ideas about whether or not airport screeners should be represented by unions, but very hazy ideas about how to deal with Iran.

Union members are voting U.S. citizens. If they are unhappy, then Democratic politicians feel motivated to do something about it to improve their own job security. In my view, a progressive foreign policy would take into account the preferences of non-U.S. citizens. Or at least respect those preferences—I’ll settle for acknowledging that they exist for starters. Right now there’s not much in the way of international institutions that impartially and systematically determine which competing preferences among nations win out. In order to have a truly progressive foreign policy, you need truly democratic international institutions. What you have instead currently is an anarchic international political system in which nation is pitted against nation as each tries to improve its “national security” position vis-à-vis the others, and the stronger nations attain security at the expense of the weaker ones. The narrative that this situation generates is that when a nation is sufficiently threatened, it’s time to circle the wagons and do whatever it takes to defend the homeland. This narrative is not progressive. In this sense, “progressive national security policy” is an oxymoron, since there’s really no such thing until there’s a democratic international framework on which to hang it.

fallibility

The State Department has just released its annual human rights reports detailing human rights abuses in countries around the world.

From the NY Times:

“Our democratic system of governance is accountable, but it is not infallible,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in releasing the Congressionally mandated report. It weighs the human rights situation in 193 countries — but not the United States, and Ms. Rice did not specifically cite any American violations.

But Barry Lowenkron, an assistant secretary of state, said the State Department was “issuing this report at a time when our own record, and actions we have taken to respond to terrorist attacks against us, have been questioned.” He referred to American laws “governing the detention, treatment and trial of terrorist suspects.”

Officials from countries that are often cited in the report have complained that the United States is quick to criticize others for violations that sometimes occur in America, and the remarks on Tuesday, one White House official said, were an attempt to answer those charges. In particular, the administration has come under fire from human rights groups for its treatment of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

That’s pretty weak beer. If the administration’s way of addressing criticisms of U.S. human rights practices is to acknowledge that they exist, I suppose it’s a big improvement over the past five years, but still far from adequate.

The State Department Human Rights Reports have historically been a valuable resource for human rights groups and other NGOs around the world. While Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch and other NGOs do good work, they simply don’t have the resources to undertake a project of this magnitude. I worked for a short time some years ago at an organization in London that provides legal services to refugees, and the human rights country report was a central piece of evidence in building any asylum claim. While never sterling, the U.S. government used to have some credibility as a source of detailed information on the multitudinous ways governments abuse their people.

Now I don’t know as an empirical matter which reports from which countries have historically had rough edges smoothed, or which claims have been inflated from year to year. And the U.S. has had its own human rights problems both at home and abroad. But I do know that many of the people who gathered the information and put those reports together cared deeply about what they were doing, and they were part of an ongoing project that endeavored to publicize injustice and universalize Enlightenment ideals. The term “human rights” is really shorthand for the U.S. Bill of Rights and the amendments to the Constitution. This annual attempt to apply ideals of individual rights to every society in the world, a grand cultural leveling, was both arrogant and naïve—typically American—but also simply the right thing to do.

Now it seems to me that every report is up for question since the U.S. government has backed off its explicit commitment to human rights in so many arenas. While it may be argued that the government is only making public now what it has long done in secret or by proxy, this still matters. In the last five years, the government has embraced torture as a tool of electoral politics. This was, to my knowledge, a bridge it had not crossed before. While pre-9/11 U.S. advocacy of human rights often triggered accusations of hypocrisy, now the government cannot credibly promote a comprehensive program of human rights simply because it has publicly defended its own transgressions. It must set its own house in order before it can serve anything resembling an exemplary role again.

And in the long run, this function would be better performed by the UN Human Rights Council, other supranational bodies, and NGOs. One nation alone cannot effectively police itself, much less the rest of the world.

hoist your diaper and march forth!

The only man (creature?) who could lure me away from Obama has just entered the race.

Prepare yourself.

the vast, soul-crushing conspiracy

Belle Waring upbraids some who need it while demolishing the long-suspected link between feminism and the rampant exhibitionism of the nation’s fair daughters. Not much to add here. A sampling:

Secondly, and I think this point is often underrated, just consider the vast, soul-crushing apparatus that has been constructed over the years for the purposes of restraining or subjugating female sexuality. Like, all of human society, right? Think of the arguments made in traditional societies about why women have to be kept separate from men, have to cover their bodies, have to be kept relatively ignorant. Sure, part of it is premised on the first point: men are vile brutes who are incapable of putting even modest restraint on their appetites. But I often think this is something of a dodge, because men don’t really, at some level, think as badly of themselves as this line implies. And so…

Who builds a wall a mile high, topped with razor-wire and extravagantly electrified? Who but a man very afraid of something terrifying and powerful on the other side?

who's in your corner?

At some point AIPAC may realize that it’s not in its interest or that of its constituents to strive to be so closely associated with hawkish conservative millenarians.

Aside from the issue that many of them are praying quite publicly for the literal destruction of Israel, conservative-led U.S. policy in the Middle East is not getting any less toxic. As a matter of simple self-preservation, AIPAC may wish to revisit this strategy.

While my status as double Gentile may lead some to question my standing to give AIPAC unsolicited advice, I do have, along with everyone else in the country, a vested interest in seeing a sane U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Meaning something, anything other than what we’re doing now.

Sullivan on the slur

I am reluctant to bring up Ann Coulter since so many words have been wasted on her already, but this post from Andrew Sullivan on the dynamics of the slur she used last week at the CPAC conference is worth reading.

A snippet:

Coulter's defense of the slur is that it was directed at an obviously straight man and so could not be a real slur. The premise of this argument is that the word faggot is only used to describe gay men and is only effective and derogatory when used against a gay man. But it isn't. In fact, in the schoolyard she cites, the primary targets of the f-word are straight boys or teens or men. The word "faggot" is used for two reasons: to identify and demonize a gay man; and to threaten a straight man with being reduced to the social pariah status of a gay man. Coulter chose the latter use of the slur, its most potent and common form. She knew why Edwards qualified. He's pretty, he has flowing locks, he's young-looking. He is exactly the kind of straight guy who is targeted as a "faggot" by his straight peers. This, Ms Coulter, is real social policing by speech. And that's what she was doing: trying to delegitimize and feminize a man by calling him a faggot. It happens every day. It's how insecure or bigoted straight men police their world to keep the homos out.

producers, dealers, and users

Perhaps I should read the actual article first, but this idea from center-left foreign policy guru Anne-Marie Slaughter just isn’t doing it for me:

The Slaughter-Wright Thesis is that we should make "nuclear transfer a crime against humanity" in order to "[capture] the enormity of the crime" and to "dramatically increase the cost of getting caught." How precisely the latter will occur appears to escape our authors' attention, although they do go on to explain that:

Nuclear transfer threatens the lives of millions of people. It merits a place in infamy alongside genocide and other evils. Creating a nuclear transfer taboo would strip away feigned protestations of innocence and illusions of a victimless crime. It would stigmatize black-market financiers and other facilitators of nuclear transfers as the ultimate merchants of death.

The white elephant loudly shitting in the corner of this room is that it is not "nuclear transfer" per se that threatens the lives of millions of people, but nuclear weapons, which, as the authors point out, must be produced by states, which are the only entities currently able (to our knowledge) to marshall the substantial industrial resources necessary for the production of such weapons. Why, I wonder, does that not "merit a place in infamy along genocide and other evils?"

Also there is the small matter of this which led to this (warning: the second link is gross).

As I understand it, there’s a very short list of actors who’ve used an atomic weapon against other human beings. But IOZ must not understand the appropriate use of the word “infamy” or he wouldn’t keep asking these silly questions.

Update: A couple of points after reading the Slaughter-Wright op-ed:

What they are calling for is for nuclear transfer to be considered a new "crime against humanity" by the International Criminal Court, a crime of universal jurisdiction that could be prosecuted by any nation anywhere in the world, subject to the constraints of the ICC (i.e. domestic state must be unable or unwilling to pursue enforcement, jurisdiction of the court is limited to cases where the accused is a national of a state party, the alleged crime took place on the territory of a state party, or a situation is referred to the court by the UN Security Council).

The current administration is not going to sign onto anything that strengthens the ICC or the system of international law more broadly, as this proposal certainly would. The White House has already shown its lack of interest in pursuing multilateral solutions by eviscerating the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty by cooperating on nuclear issues with India, which is not a signatory to the NPT. This proposal likely is aimed at reframing the debate on a possible nuclear Iran away from unilateral military action by the US and towards multilateral institutional-based solutions. Any possibility of implementing this proposal must wait until a Democrat is in the White House in 2009.

So far so good. But the authors seem to feel constrained by domestic political considerations to focus solely on dealers, which the US is not, rather than on producers and users, which the US is or has been (and might be again). But the domestic political debate is framed in part by the parameters set by foreign policy experts like Slaughter and Wright. Slaughter at least (I don't know much about Wright) represents mainstream liberal foreign policy thought today. She could be doing much more to reframe the debate in a way that pushes the ball forward, such as acknowledging that the US itself needs international institutions to avoid its worst foreign policy excesses produced by its savior/martyr/victim mentality, rather than simply trying desperately to stave off a new war with Iran before Bush leaves office in two years' time.

Chertoff on tour

Michael Chertoff is fighting the good fight for comprehensive immigration reform, trying to show skeptics that the White House is really super tough on illegal immigration.

WASHINGTON — For weeks, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has waged a clandestine charm offensive on behalf of an immigration overhaul. He consulted with supportive lawmakers, listened to adversarial congressmen and slipped into the private offices of wary senators, the only sign of his presence the beefy security men waiting outside.

Last week, Chertoff took skeptical members of Congress on a helicopter tour of the southern U.S. border to promote the administration's stepped-up enforcement measures.

They gave chase to illegal immigrants, and at one stop the lawmakers picked up a welder and — with a spray of sparks — helped build the solid-steel barrier rising along parts of the border with Mexico.

I just love giving chase to illegal immigrants. Fun for the whole family! And I see Chertoff has learned from the best when it comes to staging “hands on” photo ops—this seems like when a cop or a firefighter might let a first grader try on his hat on a field trip.

Today, Chertoff launches a higher-profile effort to win enough votes to pass a comprehensive overhaul when he testifies at the first Capitol Hill hearing on immigration legislation since Democrats took over.

Chertoff's campaign has impressed some lawmakers who may be crucial to the fate of his effort, but it's not clear whether they have been swayed enough to support it.

. . .

"Chertoff is a pretty good listener, but he works for the White House, and they have a different goal," King said. "We have a working relationship and we'll be able to talk about this policy, but my position is that until we stop bleeding at the border we can't have a discussion about the 12 million who are here."

By “bleeding” he means the metaphorical bleeding of immigrants into the country. He fails to explain how an entity can bleed a foreign substance into itself. “Bleeding” would more accurately describe the continuous outflow of skilled workers from places like Zimbabwe or India.

But the term “bleeding” is carefully employed. It connotes a crisis, one that poses a clear and present danger to the health of the nation.

In reality, we know that the immigrant population pushes up wages and pushes down crime. Economists tell us that, as the native population ages and birthrates edge downwards, ingesting immigrants into the body politic is necessary for the long-term health of the economy. (Apologies for the gruesome imagery, but it is fitting given the way we extract low-wage labor from people in desperate circumstances.) The border is not bleeding, then, unless you count the blood spilled by the immigrants gunned down by border patrol or the thousands who have died in the desert trying to cross the border. Rather, immigration is a form of nourishment that should in theory benefit both the receiving nation and immigrants themselves. Right now the exchange is rather one-sided. Even so, politicians and pundits trading on the insecurities of the public are eager to distort and misrepresent the actual effects of immigration. Their goal is not to find a reasonable solution to widely acknowledged problems with our immigration system, but to obscure and demonize for political gain.

feeling old

This recounting of an exchange between my little brother and my brother-in-law made me laugh:

the other day christopher told me he was listening to a lot of nirvana lately. then he asked me if i had ever heard of kurt cobain. he's 13, i'm 29.

i cried the day he died.

These young kids … next they’ll be discovering Prince or NIN.

comprehensive immigration reform

The Economist has an update on the chances of a comprehensive immigration reform passing this year:

An odd coalition of business groups, trade unions and civil-rights organisations is pushing hard for reform under the umbrella of the Alliance for Immigration Reform 2007. An equally odd coalition of White House operatives, Democratic leaders and reform-minded Republicans is also working in the same direction. A new version of the McCain-Kennedy bill could be launched as early as mid-March. And Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell, the two parties' leaders in the Senate, have said that immigration will be one of the first ten bills they will consider. This time the chances of success are higher than last.

The main reason is the new Democratic majority in the House. The most virulent opposition to reform came from Republican House members who were obsessed with cracking down on illegals and building a 700-mile (1,125km) fence along the border with Mexico.

That didn’t work out so well for some of them, as the article points out: “Several high-profile immigrant-bashers, such as Arizona's J.D. Hayworth and Indiana's John Hostetler, lost their elections.”

Now that the Democrats are in the majority, Zoe Lofgren, the head of the sub-committee on immigration, thinks a deal is at least a possibility.

The reformers are also adopting a tougher tone. The new McCain-Kennedy bill will put more emphasis on beefing up the border, punishing errant employers, enforcing the law and assimilating new immigrants. It will also try to rebut Republican charges that it rewards lawbreaking and offers amnesty. Two current ideas are to impose a hefty fine (up to $5,000) on illegal immigrants who want to become legal, and to make illegals return to their countries of origin (“touching base”, in the jargon) in order to apply for legal entry.

Hmm, that sounds pretty crappy. Would this be a hefty fine on top of the proposed fee increases?

The reformers will have to overcome some big political and practical problems.

I’ll pass over the magazine’s take on the political problems, since its political analyses are often as infuriating as they are wrong.

The practical problem is that the proposed bill will become so tough that it is self-defeating. Why should illegal immigrants come out of the shadows if they have to “touch base” and put themselves in the hands of America's notoriously slow and inept bureaucracy? And why, for that matter, should liberal interest groups support a bill that might seem punitive?

. . .

Karl Rove, Mr Bush's chief strategist, has long pointed out that it is stupid to alienate America's fastest-growing minority—particularly one as culturally conservative as the Latinos. In a swathe of states that Republicans need to retain the presidency, their numbers are crucial: New Mexico is 43% Latino, Texas 35%, Nevada 24%, Florida and Colorado 20%.

Here’s a political point with which I agree. But the party doesn’t seem to be listening much to Rove these days, and the White House position on immigration is one reason why.

immigration and crime

ImmigrationProfBlog brings us a report by Ruben Rumbaut and Walter Ewing on immigrants and crime.

Here’s the abstract:

Because many immigrants to the United States, especially Mexicans and Central Americans, are young men who arrive with very low levels of formal education, popular stereotypes tend to associate them with higher rates of crime and incarceration. The fact that many of these immigrants enter the country through unauthorized channels or overstay their visas often is framed as an assault against the rule of law, thereby reinforcing the impression that immigration and criminality are linked. This association has flourished in a post-9/11 climate of fear and ignorance where terrorism and undocumented immigration often are mentioned in the same breath. However, data from the census and other sources show that for every ethnic group without exception, incarceration rates among young men are lowest for immigrants, even those who are the least educated. This holds true especially for the Mexicans, Salvadorans, and Guatemalans who make up the bulk of the undocumented population. The problem of crime in the United States is not caused or even aggravated by immigrants, regardless of their legal status. But the misperception that the opposite is true persists among policymakers, the media, and the general public, thereby undermining the development of reasoned public responses to both crime and immigration.

This makes sense if you think about it for a minute. If out-of-status immigrants sneeze wrong in front of a cop, they will be deported. So they have the greatest incentive to stay out of trouble with the law. Permanent residents can also be deported for relatively minor offenses—almost any kind of drug possession charge, for instance. Those with the least incentive to strictly obey the law are U.S. citizens, who often, depending on their race and socioeconomic status, face the least serious consequences.

Some statistics from the report:

[A]bout three-fourths (73 percent) of Americans believed that immigration is causally related to more crime. That was a much higher proportion than the 60 percent who believed that “more immigrants were [somewhat or very] likely to cause Americans to lose jobs,” or the 56 percent who thought that “more immigrants were [somewhat or very] likely to make it harder to keep the country united.”

Here is the reality:

In 2000, 3 percent of the 45.2 million males age 18 to 39 in the United States were in federal or state prisons or local jails at the time of the census. Surprisingly, at least from the vantage point of conventional wisdom, the incarceration rate of nativeborn men in this age group (3.5 percent) was 5 times higher than the incarceration rate of foreign-born men (0.7 percent).

The foreign-born rate was nearly two-and-a-half times less than the 1.7 percent rate for native-born non-Hispanic white men and almost 17 times less than the 11.6 percent rate for native-born non-Hispanic black men. The lower incarceration rate among immigrants was found in every pan-ethnic category without exception. For instance, native-born Hispanic men were nearly 7 times more likely to be in prison than foreignborn Hispanic men, while the incarceration rate of native-born non-Hispanic white men was almost 3 times higher than that of foreign-born white men . . .

The incarceration rates of foreign-born Mexicans, Salvadorans, and Guatemalans were the lowest of any Latin American immigrant group even though they were the least educated. These three nationalities are precisely the groups that make up the majority of illegal immigrants in the United States.

But, true to the propensity of each succeeding generation to define the nation as constituted by immigrants while denigrating those most recently arrived, an earlier study reached identical results—in 1901.

In a sense, these findings should not come as news, for they are not new—merely forgotten and overruled by popular myth. In the first three decades of the 20th century, during the previous era of mass immigration, three major government commissions came to similar conclusions. The Industrial Commission of 1901, the [Dillingham] Immigration Commission of 1911, and the [Wickersham] National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement of 1931 each sought to measure how immigration resulted in increases in crime. Instead, each found lower levels of criminal involvement among the foreign-born and higher levels among their native-born counterparts. As the report of the Dillingham Commission concluded a century ago: “No satisfactory evidence has yet been produced to show that immigration has resulted in an increase in crime disproportionate to the increase in adult population. Such comparable statistics of crime and population as it has been possible to obtain indicate that immigrants are less prone to commit crime than are native Americans.”

This also is somewhat disturbing:

[I]mmigrants, especially those from Latin America, have lower rates of adult and infant mortality and give birth to fewer underweight babies than natives despite higher poverty rates and greater barriers to health care. But their health status—and that of their children—worsens the longer they live in the United States and with increasing acculturation.

The authors attribute this to "an ‘American’ diet high in fats, sugars, and processed foods," leading to "sharp increases in obesity and in the incidence of diseases such as diabetes and high blood pressure."

In addition, assimilation often entails incorporation into “minority” status in the United States, particularly among poor immigrants from non-European countries. As a result, the children and grandchildren of many immigrants—as well as many immigrants themselves the longer they live in the United States—become subject to economic and social forces that increase the likelihood of criminal behavior among other natives. This is especially true in impoverished communities where the native-born in particular are much more likely than immigrants (especially recent immigrants) to experience higher rates of divorce and drug and alcohol addiction.

This is too bad, since for many immigrants, it seems that as their absolute standard of living increases, their relative quality of life decreases. And this is achieved by many through extraordinary sacrifice in pursuit of the American dream.

I guess there’s nothing more American than fighting for the right to destroy yourself.

pull the thread, dammit!

The NY Times brings us the latest round of the shell game in Iraq:

BAGHDAD, Feb. 25 — A raid on a Shiite weapons cache in the southern city of Hilla one week ago is providing what American officials call the best evidence yet that the deadliest roadside bombs in Iraq are manufactured in Iran, but critics contend that the forensic case remains circumstantial and inferential.

The new evidence includes infrared sensors, electronic triggering devices and information about plastic explosives used in bombs that the Americans say lead back to Iran. The explosive material, triggering devices, other components and the method of assembly all produce weapons with an Iranian signature that has never been found outside Iraq or southern Lebanon, where Hezbollah is believed to have used weapons supplied by Iran, the Americans say.

But critics assert that nearly all the bomb components could have been produced in Iraq or somewhere else in the region. Even if the evidence were to establish that Iran is the source, they add, that does not necessarily mean that the Iranian leadership is responsible.

I don't care whether the Ayatollah drove the weapons across the border in his bulletproof mullah-mobile and personally delivered them to al-Sadr, this still would not make it ok to bomb Iran.

Take the option off the frickin' table already.

Skeptics say the new details do not support a conclusion that only Iran could be providing the components. “Iran may well be involved in the supply of these weapons, but so far they haven’t proved it,” said Joseph Cirincione, senior vice president for National Security at the Center for American Progress, a liberal research and advocacy organization.

“Before we act on the assumption that these are Iranian we’ve got to rule out all these other possibilities,” he said. “The military hasn’t done that.”

He noted that a related weapon, the shape charge, “has been around for decades.

“This is not new stuff,” he continued. “There is a vast international arms market selling shape charges from many countries.”

. . .

Major Weber said many of those techniques were clearly Iranian in origin. Critics said that all of them could be replicated by skilled Iraqis or others in the Middle East with a solid knowledge of electronics and basic manufacturing techniques.

I have some unsolicited advice (as if there were any other kind on this blog) for these so-called "critics" and "skeptics". The correct response to the narrative of Iranian aggression being constructed by the White House is not “those EFPs could be made anywhere.” The correct response is “it doesn’t matter where those effing things were made, the idea of attacking Iran is the product of the fevered, sociopathic brain of Dick Cheney and needs to be neutered right now.”

The correct response to breathless reports of Iranian nuclear fiddling is not “Iran is at least 10 years away from a bomb.” The correct response is “The Bush administration is busy undermining the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty at every turn, so why doesn't it refocus its efforts on actually preventing proliferation.” If the debate centers around the first response, the obvious question then is what happens in 10 years? That’s not very far away, and most of us will probably still be around. What happens in 5 years, when Iran is 5 years away from a bomb? Or what if Iran is not 10 years away from a bomb? What if it’s more like 3 or 4 years? What if it has one now? What then?

The question that should be asked is not “How close is Iran to getting the bomb?” because the answer the White House is looking for to that question is “We can’t afford to wait to find out, mushroom cloud, etc.” Instead, the better questions are “Why have the Cold War nuclear powers failed to stop nuclear proliferation?” and “How can nuclear proliferation be reversed?” I have a decent idea, based on my careful, systematic observation of North Korea and Iraq from the period 2003-2006, that the solution does not include “threats of attack by the U.S.”

The administration has framed the question in this way (and the Times has lapped it up): “Is Iran providing weapons to insurgents in Iraq that are being used to kill U.S. troops?” If the answer is shown to be “yes” to the satisfaction of the New York Times, then the administration will say it is duty-bound to take appropriate measures against Iran in response—I’m guessing that would involve air attacks against suspected nuclear facilities.

What air strikes on suspected nuclear sites have to do with EFPs, I do not know.

But for actual sentient critics of the Cheney foreign policy, arguing about the answer to the weapons question is a foolish thing to do. The administration’s question is irrelevant to the thread that unravels this particular bamboozle, which is: “Why would any sane person want to start a war with Iran?” This has little to do with which EFPs came from where and why, or how smoothly they are contoured or from which Radioshack in Tehran they were sourced, and more to do with whether we want to unleash a world of hurt on ourselves and the region and accelerate our national descent into madness.

warming up

Ezra Klein says he is warming up to Obama. I am glad to see this, since I consider him a bellwether for Edwards supporters who could be persuaded to change their minds.

And we see that Giuliani is outpolling the next three Republican candidates combined.

Once more, just so I’m clear about this, Giuliani will never never never win the Republican nomination for president in 2008. Never never never never. It’s simply not going to happen.

Here’s why:

Giuliani told the crowd he didn't like abortions but that that wasn't his choice to impose on others.

. . .

But all of the joshing aside, in front of this fairly conservative crowd, Rudy made no apologies for his support of men and men and women and women deserving the full protection of all laws for their domestic partnerships.

I don’t understand the confusion on this point. Rudy is pro-choice. And Rudy is pro-gay. Either one would be enough to sink his chances with the people who will be selecting the nominee. But with both, he might as well run as a Democrat. For good measure, he’s been married three times and favors gun control.

If he does manage to win the nomination, I will do a little celebratory dance in honor of Rudy, because it will mean that the Republican base has seen the error of its ways and agreed to relinquish the cultural direction of the country to Godless liberals like myself.

As far as this AP article which has for us the shocking revelation that Mitt Romney’s ancestors were polygamists (see here, here, and here for more), I have a scoop for the AP: virtually everyone whose ancestors lived in Utah in the 19^th century (except for the Native Americans who managed not to get wiped out) is descended from polygamists.

That means me, and while I don’t know for sure, it probably means our esteemed Senators Reid, Hatch, Bennett, and Smith.

But I see that no one, in their discussions of this vile slander—vile!—has bothered to touch the merits of modern-day polygamy. If you allow gay marriage, then why not polygamy? It is a simple question, one that deserves an answer. As I understand it, the creators of Big Love decided to make the series in part to stir up questions about what constitutes “family” in the U.S.

But polygamists might as well be atheists for all the traction they’re getting with the mainstream left. I guess it’s one more question we’ll have to put off for our more enlightened grandchildren to deal with.

scapegoat

The NY Times has another story on the problems facing the nation's immigration courts:

In a move that immigration lawyers say is highly unusual, a federal appeals court has recommended that a Justice Department appeals board review all immigration cases still on appeal involving a judge who has been criticized as being hostile to people seeking asylum.

The request came in a ruling on Wednesday by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Manhattan that struck down a decision by Judge Jeffrey S. Chase in the case of a Mauritania native who said he would be persecuted if he was returned to his home country.

The court said Judge Chase’s decision to deny asylum contained a “plethora of errors and omissions.” The three-judge panel capped off its ruling by saying that “given the court’s history with Chase, it may improve judicial efficiency” if the Board of Immigration Appeals “closely re-examined all of his cases” that are still on appeal.

The board is the first level of appeal in immigration cases before they can advance to the federal appellate courts. A phone call to the board’s offices in Falls Church, Va., last night was not returned.

Immigration experts say the court’s rebuke of Judge Chase highlights the escalating demands on the nation’s 218 or so immigration judges, who handle some 350,000 cases a year without the help of law clerks, bailiffs or stenographers. A scarcity of competent immigration lawyers and language barriers only complicate matters.

. . .

Mr. Chase is one of several immigration judges who have been criticized by the appeals courts in recent years. The nation’s immigration judges are employees of the Justice Department, not the court system.

In fact, Judge Chase has a record of approving asylum requests more often than the average judge. He denied 58 percent of asylum claims, compared with about 62 percent by immigration judges nationally, from 2000 to early 2005, according to the latest data available from Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.

Lauris Wren, who runs an asylum clinic at Hofstra University’s School of Law, said the court was “scapegoating Judge Chase instead of addressing” systemwide problems.

Mr. Ba’s lawyer, Thomas V. Massucci, told The Associated Press that he had never heard of a court making such a recommendation. “There are probably hundreds of these cases in the pipeline,” he said.

As I noted here, the difference between the highest and lowest asylum denial rates among New York judges from 2000-2005 was 86 percentage points. Some asylum claims, no matter how strong on the merits, have virtually no chance of approval simply because of the judge who happens to be assigned to the case. And advocates of a stricter asylum system can’t be happy with the immigration judges who approve 80 or 90 percent of their cases. Pinning the blame on Judge Chase for acting uncivilly in his courtroom only distracts from the greater obscenity of a system with these outcomes.

As further evidence of the pressure [on the immigration system due to a large caseload], the appeals court issued a temporary notice on Friday that asylum cases would no longer be scheduled for oral arguments unless requested by the parties involved and approved by the court. The court’s immigration caseload has expanded in recent years as the Justice Department has curtailed its own appeals process. The court will take public comments before deciding whether to make the change permanent.

The overload of immigration cases in federal courts was the predictable outcome of Attorney General Ashcroft's decision to cut the number of judges on the Board of Immigration Appeals by half, purging it of its liberal members and gutting it of its ability to serve as a useful filter between immigration judges and the federal courts. This might have been an early example of the Bush administration's efforts to destroy the immigration system from within to stimulate legislative change to the system. Or it could just be incompetence--it's often hard to tell with this administration.

“Can you imagine if they said there were no longer going to be oral arguments in criminal cases, civil libertarians would go crazy,” said Bryan Lonegan, a lawyer with the Legal Aid Society’s immigration unit. “But they’re doing this in these asylum cases because the workload is huge.”

And because noncitizens can’t count on being treated as human beings in U.S. courts.

If they can manage to even get there. Andrew Sullivan links to this article detailing a new facility at Guantanamo to keep men imprisoned the government admits are innocent:

Camp 6 includes detainees who have been cleared for transfer because the military has determined that they are no longer considered to be a danger to the United States or its allies, that they no longer have any intelligence value and that there is no other reason to keep them locked up. They remain only until they can be repatriated to their country of origin, or another country willing to accept them. Can there be any justification for a civilized country to hold any of this group of approximately 100 men, in conditions worse than maximum security? The answer is surely no. Yet we do.

. . .

There are about 400 men imprisoned at Guantánamo. Only 10 of them were charged under the president's first military commission system that was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court, and none has been charged under the new military commission system passed by Congress last year. The government claims it intends to charge and try 60 to 80 men; with approximately 100 men languishing, but cleared for transfer, this leaves more than 200 men already imprisoned or at risk of being imprisoned under conditions that are worse than the harshest prisons in our federal system-without due process and with no end in sight. The situation at Guantánamo is worsening, desperate and critical. Many minds have already been lost and their bodies will soon follow.

The most important indicators of guilt for a noncitizen who ends up in a U.S. prison appear to be (1) lack of U.S. citizenship and (2) the act of being in prison. Once those two conditions are met, the noncitizen is guilty as charged. Or can be—it’s in the judge’s discretion, so long as he uses polite language and shows the proper deference to the detainee as he tramples on notions of due process built over centuries.

On a side note, Legal Aid does good work for a range of clients. These permanent resident brothers served years in prison for a crime they never committed, and were convicted without any physical evidence linking them to the crime. Due to their own persistence and some resourceful Legal Aid attorneys, they managed to get the charge overturned.

Although one of the brothers may be deported anyway. This is the way the well-oiled machine that is our immigration system works.

ten-step program

Human Rights Watch has some suggestions for Congress (via Andrew Sullivan). The road to national sobriety starts here.

***

Ten Steps to Restore the United States' Moral Authority

A Common Sense Agenda for the 110th Congress

(1) Restore Habeas Corpus

Perhaps the most important protection against the arbitrary exercise of executive power, the writ of habeas corpus ensures that all persons can challenge the legality of their detention before an independent court. The Military Commissions Act of 2006, as interpreted by the current administration, would deprive any non-citizen labeled “enemy combatant” of this centuries-old right. A vote to protect the habeas rights of detainees in US military custody lost in the Senate by just three votes in September. Restoring habeas corpus to ensure judicial review of detentions and provide an important independent check on executive power should be a first order of business for the new Congress.

(2) Stop Renditions to Torture

The United States made great strides when, in 2005, it enacted the McCain Amendment prohibiting the use of torture or cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment by any US official acting anywhere in the world. Now the United States needs to get out of the business of outsourcing torture and ill- treatment to other countries. Congress should pass legislation to protect detainees in US custody from being transferred to abuse.

(3) Abolish Secret Prisons

Although the US has long criticized other nations for engaging in forced disappearances – imprisoning people in secret – the Bush administration continues to assert the right to do so. While the administration claims to have emptied its secret CIA prisons for the time being, it has not ruled out their future use nor accounted for all the prisoners who are believed to have been secretly detained. Congress should pass legislation to ensure that the secret detention centers are shut down permanently and that no one in US custody is forcibly disappeared or otherwise held incommunicado. Congress should also demand an accounting of the whereabouts of all those formerly held in secret locations.

(4) Hold Abusers Accountable

Although more than six hundred US military and civilian personnel have been implicated in hundreds of known instances of detainee abuse, including 25 cases where the detainee ultimately died, very few have been prosecuted. Only eleven service members have been sentenced for more than a year – all low-ranking; no one has been convicted on the basis of command responsibility; and only one civilian – a contractor to the CIA – has been prosecuted. Congress should demand that the Pentagon and Department of Justice vigorously prosecute those responsible for engaging in, authorizing or condoning detainee mistreatment, including those up the chain of command. This would deter future abuse and demonstrate to the world the US’s condemnation of such ill-treatment.

(5) Hold Fair Trials

In October, the Congress authorized the use of military commissions to try non-citizen detainees in US military custody. The rules for these commissions raise serious concerns about the integrity and fairness of such trials. Of particular concern, the rules allow the use of coerced evidence and evidence obtained through cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment if obtained before January 2006 and found “reliable” by a military judge, and also allow the government to withhold from defense lawyers information about how the evidence was obtained. As a result of these provisions, defendants could be convicted based on the wide array of so-called “enhanced” interrogation techniques allegedly employed by the CIA – techniques including extended exposure to extreme cold, prolonged sleep deprivation, and “waterboarding” (mock drowning). Congress should amend these rules to ensure that detainees are not convicted – and possibly executed – based on evidence obtained through torture or other abusive treatment, are provided a fair opportunity to confront their accusers and are given a meaningful chance to gather and present evidence and witnesses.

(6) Prohibit Abusive Interrogations

In the Military Commissions Act, Congress amended the War Crimes Act of 1996, specifying a list of eight “grave breaches” of the humane treatment requirements of the Geneva Conventions that constitute war crimes. Two of the primary authors of the Military Commissions Act, Senators John Warner and John McCain, have publicly stated that they intended to criminalize the abusive interrogation techniques allegedly used by the CIA in the past. But the administration continues to imply that it could continue the CIA secret detention program – and presumably the abusive interrogations that go with it. Congress should clarify that the full range of abusive interrogation techniques that have been prohibited for use by the military’s new field manual on interrogations are similar prohibited – and criminalized – if used by the CIA.

(7) Close Guantánamo Bay

The US continues to hold close to 400 detainees in Guantanámo Bay, many of whom have been held for five years without charge and without access to court to challenge the legality of their detention. Those detainees who have engaged in terrorism-related crimes should be charged and held accountable; those who are not charged with criminal acts should be released. The administration should work with its allies to develop appropriate procedures in accordance with U.S. and international human rights and humanitarian obligations to ensure that detainees are not returned to countries where they face torture or abuse. Congress should hold oversight hearings about the future of Guantanamo, and push the administration to put forth a plan for its closure.

(8) Respect the Laws of War

The US’s unilateral reinterpretation of the Geneva Conventions to support its questionable detention policies undermines respect for the rule of law around the world and puts US service members and civilians at risk if US’s policies and practices are adopted by others. Of particular concern, the US Congress in October enacted (in the Military Commissions Act) an overbroad definition of “unlawful enemy combatant” that turns a civilian munitions worker, a mother who provides food to her combatant son, and a US resident accused of giving money to a banned group into “combatants” who can be detained without charge in military custody or tried by a military court. The new Congress should strike this definition of “unlawful enemy combatant” and reaffirm the US’s longstanding commitment to the civilian – rather than military – courts to prosecute civilians who violate the law.

(9) Protect Victims of Persecution From Being Defined As Terrorists

The United States will never be able to effectively fight terrorism if it cannot distinguish between terrorists and victims. Yet, overbroad terrorism-related bars in US immigration law are now being used to define innocent victims as terrorists – and denying them entry to the United States. Hmong and Montagnards are being labeled as terrorists solely because they took up arms alongside the United States during the Vietnam War. Rape victims who were forced into sexual slavery by West African rebel groups are being labeled “material supporters” of terrorism because they performed household chores while enslaved. Congress should adopt a reasonable definition of terrorism that does not equate victims with terrorists and define any armed group as terrorist, even if it does not target civilians.

(10) End Indefinite Detention Without Charge

Ever since 9/11, the Bush administration has relied on a variety of means to detain individuals indefinitely and without charge. The material witness warrant law – a law that allows the government to temporarily detain key witnesses who pose credible flight risks – has been misused to detain dozens of terrorism-related suspects, some of whom were held for months without charge. Now, the administration is improperly invoking the “enemy combatant” label to justify the indefinite detention without charge of Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, a lawful US resident who since the eve of his trial for credit card fraud in 2003 has been held in a military brig in South Carolina. Congress should use its oversight authority and pass legislation that will prevent the administration from evading basic due process protections, and, in so doing, undermine respect for fundamental human rights and the rule of law.

sorry de snorry, betsy

Inspired by the hardhitting journalism of CNN, I’ve striven to bring you something equally newsworthy.

catch the immigrant

In the NY Times today:

A game called “Catch the Illegal Immigrant” staged on New York University’s campus by a student Republican group drew several hundred students yesterday. But most came to protest the game, not to play it.

Under the game’s rules, according to one student Republican, players were to search on campus for the student chosen to wear a name tag saying “illegal immigrant.” The winner received a small reward.

But many students and other critics said they were repelled that anyone would want to play such a game.

Chanting demonstrators, marching on a side street near Washington Square Park across from a table set up by the Republicans, carried signs saying, “Racism Isn’t a Game” and “We Are All Immigrants.”

. . .

The College Republicans said their aim was not to offend, but rather to draw awareness to the issues.

Because illegal immigration is an issue that hasn’t received nearly enough attention lately.

“I’d rather have people motivated against us than sanguine,” added Mr. Laska, who described himself as “the grandchild of four legal immigrants.”

Yes, but were they legal from the moment they entered the country, or did they become legal later? Where were they from, and how difficult was it for them to immigrate? “Laska” sounds northern European, although I could be totally wrong. Immigrating from the Netherlands in the 1950s, for instance, was a much different proposition than trying to legally immigrate from Oaxaca today. For unskilled laborers from oversubscribed countries like Mexico, legal immigration is next to impossible.

But heaven help Mexico if anyone should infringe upon Mr. Laska’s god-given right to visit the Mayan pyramids for Spring Break. That would truly be an outrage.

I wonder if Mr. Laska’s family ever went through something like this. I know mine didn’t, and I’m the great-great . . . grandson of umpteen legal (illegal? those distinctions were meaningless then) immigrants.

As the protest wound down about 2 p.m., the protesters declared themselves satisfied with the outcome.

“For us, this is a victory,” said Dalia Yedida, speaking through a bullhorn.

Referring to the College Republicans, she said: “They’re scared right now. This is great. We showed N.Y.U. But this is not over.”

No, they are not scared. And no, you didn’t show NYU, you “showed” the NYU College Republicans, all 12 of them. What exactly you showed them is unclear. You are correct, it is far from over. But I find myself wondering what exactly happened here, aside from some college students making asses of themselves.

acid tests

Julian Sanchez:

Almost 30 years ago, Robert Nozick wrote that Israel's kibbutzes provided "the acid test for voluntary socialism," and concluded that the results to date had not provided a ringing endorsement. Well, hate to say I told you so, but according to The Guardian, the oldest and best-known kibbutz in Israel has just decided to go private . . .

And this communal experiment failed much earlier.