Iraq in civil war?

A couple weeks ago, an official from Iraq — Prime Minister or Ambassador, one of those — gained headlines by insisting, ‘We have 60 civilians dying every day in Baghdad. If that is not civil war, I don’t know what is.’

Well, I wouldn’t define a civil war by the number of people being killed daily. The UN, now, is saying that 100 people per day died in May and June in Baghdad. A little bit of quick math shows that during the American Civil War about 400 people were dying per day. Regardless of all of that, a civil war is not defined by the number dying every day, but by the sides and their political motivations.

Generally, I think of a civil war as the product of a power vacuum or an emasculated central power. Meriam Webster says, simply, a war between citizens of the same country. (Interestingly, by that definition the American Civil War is questionable in nomenclature. By the Northern view, the South was in ‘rebellion’, but was still part of the Union. But by the Southern view, they had formed their own government, and therefore the battles between its citizens and the citizens of the north did not constitute a Civil War, according to Meriam Webster. Just something to think about.)

But both by my intuitive standard and Meriam Webster’s, Iraq is in civil war: while its factions battle in the midst of an incapable central power after the toppling of a capable regime. There’s your answer, but it has nothing to do with the number of people that are dying daily.

HR 2389

The House of Representatives voted recently to pass HR-2389, the “Pledge Protection Act of 2005.” The bill precludes the federal courts from ruling on the wording or recitation of the Pledge in public schools. This is, of course, a Conservative response to the 9th circuit court’s ruling that the phrase “Under God,” violates the Establishment Clause of the Constitution.

That is, the response is to take the issue out of the hands of those covetous unelected tyrants, the Courts. The falsely perceived injustices of those damned East Coast latte-sipping activist judges are nothing when compared to violating the Constitution to restrict them from doing their jobs.

What really gets me is the misinformation, the ignorance, and the outright lies spread by one brand of the Conservative proponents of the bill. For the record: the government of the United States of America is in no way founded on the Christian religion.

Don’t believe me? Let’s hear what George Washington had to say about it:

“The Government of the United States of America is in no way founded on the Christian Religion.” –George Washington

One of the purposes of this country was to establish a land free from any coercive governmental endorsement of religion, like, say, telling impressionable children to acknowledge that the nation is established “under God” every morning of public schooling. Children should encounter religion on their own time, not in the same environment they are otherwise generally being taught facts.

The problem is twofold. First, the legislature should have no right to pass a bill saying what the judiciary can and cannot do. It’s a violation of the Federalist system and the separation of powers. The Constitution spells out the powers of the legislature and the judiciary. If you want to change their powers, change the Constitution. At least, then, the methods would be kosher.

The point of the judiciary is to judge the laws against the Constitution. If this bill passes the Senate, which I sincerely hope it does not, I cannot wait until it is challenged in court. How ironic that would be.

I acknowledge that the pledge was not around at the time of the Constitution. Interesting that the Founders didn’t see it necessary to daily indoctrinate our youth. If the Founders had believed in a pledge, they would have written one themselves, not waited around for a Socialist, Edward Bellamy’s cousin, to write it at the turn of the century. And if these Judeo-Christian notions permeate our history and the beliefs of our Founders so much, then why did Jefferson call the New Testament a “manifest forgery?” Even if a pledge had been back then, I doubt the Founders would have seen it so Holy as to protect at the expense of some ad hoc unConstitutional farce of a bill.

Neither the means nor the motive of the Conservative-controlled legislature stand up to these common sense criticisms. I can’t wait until the mid-term elections.

In the mean time, I urge parents to lecture their children on the meaning of the Pledge, in concert with their own religious beliefs, which are not the government’s business. As a footnote, fully fourteen percent of the United States population is atheist or agnostic.

Deaths over history: religious vs. nonreligous

I heard a while back that more people had died in the name of Jesus than in the name of Hitler. I’d always wondered if it was true, it seemed perfectly plausible given the persistence and viciousness of the Vatican during the Crusades. Unfortunately, I had found it difficult to find a number of deaths from the Crusades. But, I found in Google Answers, this webpage that chronicles numerous human conflicts and includes a category for religious conflicts. The numbers are hazy, of course, when we’re speaking about conflicts hundreds or thousands of years ago when death tallies were not a priority or of mild interest like they are today.

In short, 809 million people have died in religious wars. That’s nearly a billion people.

Oftentimes, a retort is that secular ideals and Godless Communism have killed many more. It is true that Stalin, among others, slaughtered his own people by the millions during the industrialization of Soviet Russia. By comparison, 209 million have died in the name of Communism. Some 62 million died during World War II, civilian and military, on all sides. Conclusively, more people have died in the name of religion than in the name of Communism or Hitler, or the two combined times two.

Stem cell veto

If Bush believed stem cell research was murder, if using embryos for research was murder, I don’t understand why he only vetoed funding for the practice. One under that impression would, I think, act to outlaw the practice outright.

Instead, in 2001, when Bush signed the bill that outlawed creating new ‘lines’ for research, it was a strange gesture from a man who otherwise claims to never compromise his ideals, and who unabashedly thinks in black and white. Why are we not seeing a push from Bush to make stem cell research illegal, and to prosecute the doctors who participate in such research? Bush has drawn criticism from scientists for being a hypocrite because of this. He is, in effect, saying that he will allow federal funding for some murder, but no more past an arbitrary point. And he’ll allow private and state funding for more murder. That does not make sense to me.

Other than that, I do not understand why Bush has vetoed the bill at all. The moral implications he and other Republicans are so fond of pointing to are poorly founded.

These embryos are extras that are used in in-vitro fertilization. They are otherwise slated for destruction. Why is it okay to destroy these unfeeling, unconscious piles of cells, but not to use them to conduct research that could save countless lives? It purely does not make sense.

Additionally, it is impossible to point to a clump of cells and say, “This will be a human.” Those cells could become the placenta, or the umbilical cord, which are both commonly destroyed. And what if the embryo splits and creates two humans? Which one is the original then? Even until 18 weeks, the fetus cannot feel pleasure or pain, it is not awake nor self conscious. To protect it simply because it is a human is entirely arbitrary. Medical procedures that are funded by the government and take place daily inflict much more pain and suffering on thinking, feeling creatures.

Sending them a bill

Why would the United States send a bill to the people they are evacuating from Lebanon? Since when has the current administration thought it important to spend real money, instead of borrowing? It’s ironic our government would borrow money to buy bombs to kill citizens of other countries, but that when it comes to saving the lives of our own twenty-five thousand citizens, we send them a bill.

Pet Food

The United States spends seventeen billion dollars annually on pet food, four billion more dollars than it would take to end world hunger.

The question is of the existence of a moral obligation to end suffering around the world; whether the preferences of starving humans to be fed outweighs the preferences of dogs and cats; or whether the pleasure and satisfaction brought to a starving person fed will outweigh the satisfaction gained by a dog fed. That is, if you accept the utilitarian standpoint to maximize pleasure and minimize suffering around the world.

It may even be moot for the animals that are not self-conscious, for example: pet fish. For they cannot conceive of themselves as beings continuing in existence, they can have no rational desire to continue living, only to satiate the pleasures of the moment. If they sleep and awake, they do not remember being awake prior. They have no knowledge of themselves.

Or, do the pleasures brought to the owner of a pet, such as companionship, outweigh the pleasure of a person’s life being sustained?

These questions I pose: I have long believed that the acknowledgment that one’s considerations and actions should take into account more than themselves is a high virtue. Rather than purchasing a dog or a fish, I will be donating to Oxfam, for example. I will be more content with that donation than with the purchase of a fish.

Eighty cents can feed, clothe, and house one person for one day.

Democracies don’t not breed terrorism

Bush has said before that his democratic world-tour crusade is inspired by the belief that ‘democracies don’t breed terrorism.’ But that’s just not true.

If Timothy McVeigh is a terrorist, if the Unibomber is a terrorist, if the Anthrax Mailer is a terrorist, then terrorism has been bred here in the United States.

We have seen political parties whose platform condones or endorses terrorism come to power recently in the Middle East, as well. In Lebanon’s parliament, Hezbollah occupies fourteen of one hundred and twenty eight seats. Hamas won seventy-eight of Palestine’s one hundred and thirty two legislative seats in January, an effective majority.

Democracy promotes the will of the people. If the will of the people be terrorism against others, then that’s exactly what gets instated. There’s nothing mutually exclusive about terrorism and democracy, nothing at all, and a number of particular examples smashes that universal claim to bits.

Google, Information, Capitalism, and Tango

It takes two to tango. Such is the case with Google’s operations in China. The search giant agreed to censor its search results so that they would be allowed onto the mainland of Red China.

Shame on the Chinese government for censoring the Internet. And shame on Google for complying willingly.

But can you blame Google? After all, China’s the largest — soon to be second-largest — market in the entire world. Think of all that money. Profit motivated Google’s willingness to censor itself, to restrict access to the sum of human knowledge. Google, the pride and joy of American entrepreneurship, the little guy that’s whipping Microsoft in the Internet search arena. For a second there, they were laudable for their achievements. But everyone has a price.

The giant could have just as easily refused to do business with the despotic Communists who maintain a stranglehold on the dissemination of information to the populace. But Google saw dollar signs.

Geneva Conventions Redux

I read a few replies to the BBC article about the US reversing its stance on the Geneva Conventions and Gitmo.

(Because reversing their stance is exactly what they did. Before, they said they didn’t apply, and they did everything they could to convince the world of that. Now they are complying with the Conventions.)

People — even British people, I was surprised at their interest — were crying foul, saying that we must now fight terror with one hand tied behind our back.

Even though the Geneva Conventions apply to ‘people in uniform,’ I believe they should be applied to all people engaged in battle. If we can acknowledge that this is a “war” on terror, how can we escape the fact that we are engaged in war between two sides? We have acknowledged that many insurgents are financially backed by foreign countries, like Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Syria, etc.

If I was to concede that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to insurgents, I would then move on to insist that they outline the general rules for any army to follow. One may maintain that, unless a rule (as such) is specifically codified, one has no obligation to abide by it in international conflict. This would mean that, even though the Conventions are a suggestion, our army cannot be held responsible for disobeying them.

Point well taken. But, even after all that, one must acknowledge that the Conventions do spell out an attitude, a respect for human life, a respect for dignity and the rights of mankind — the same respect embodied in the Constitution and Declaration — that our Founders saw as applying to all humans. The Constitution, I believe, applies to all humans — at least to all humans under our jurisdiction. That is, it is illogical to simultaneously claim that we have the right to try these people, but they don’t have the right to counsel. Mutatis mutandis, we have the right to hold these people without trying them, without the guarantees of the Constitution.

It is sickening that the administration would decide ad hoc which humans they could apply these rules to and which not, while they are being held under the flag of the United States. Four hundred and sixty people being held without trial.

The point of America, the dream of the Founders, was to establish a land within the rule of law — outside of arbitrary despotism, where none are above or below the law’s protections, all have the right to trial, and all are innocent until proven guilty. But these insurgents aren’t given a trial, aren’t given the chance to prove themselves innocent. If we are so certain that they are guilty, certain enough to hold them for years at a time, why is the government so afraid of trying them in a fair court of their peers? It does not make sense.

The argument that the terrorists’ ignorance of the Geneva Conventions gives us the right to do the same deserves little time for critique. First of all, if we acknowledge that we are adopting their tactics — their lack of respect for international law — we are literally lowering ourselves to their level. Secondly, the overall argument is an example of the logical fallacy of ad hominem — the fact that they ignore the Conventions should not affect our motivations. I do not believe that the insurgents’ ignorance of the Geneva Conventions gives them the upper hand. The Convention in question, the Third Geneva Convention, applies to the treatment of prisoners, not to their apprehension or combat. Therefore, the only way their adoption would alter the effectiveness of the military is after the fact.

The most that the application of the Conventions would do is free innocent prisoners and rebuild lost credibility. They would cause no harm.

Gitmo Reversal

Some good news is coming out of the Bush administration today. It reminds me of when Bush admitted he made a mistake by telling the insurgents to “bring it on.”

The White House has decided it will apply the Geneva Conventions to detainees at Gitmo, etc. That’s grand. Of course, this is the way it should have always been, but it’s good that they’re changing their minds now.

But all is not well. From CNN: “‘It’s not really a reversal of policy,’ [White House Press Secretary Tony] Snow asserted, calling the Supreme Court decision ‘complex.’”

Oh shut up. I don’t know why it’s so hard for the administration to admit that they’re wrong. For the rest of mankind it’s a sign of strength and virtue to state that you’ve made a mistake, you’ve learned from your mistake, and you’re righting some wrongs. But Bush and his cronies remain, for the most part, headstrong, stubborn, and as cowboyish as ever.