Tag Archives: morality

A Museum Kerfuffle

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A bunch of self-important clergy are all in a tizzy because of a 7-minute film, “The Rise of al Qaeda,” planned for the opening of the National September 11 Memorial Museum. Sheik Mostafa Elazabawy, the Imam of Masjid Manhattan wrote to the NS11MM director,

The screening of this film in its present state would greatly offend our local Muslim believers as well as any foreign Muslim visitor to the museum.

Unsophisticated visitors who do not understand the difference between Al Qaeda and Muslims may come away with a prejudiced view of Islam, leading to antagonism and even confrontation toward Muslim believers near the site.

Unsophisticated. Because Americans are just too stupid to form the “correct” conclusions without the instruction of our betters.

And that difference between al Qaeda and Muslims about which the imam worries so? There surely are differences, but we wouldn’t know that from the words of any mullahs or imams identifying them, or from their decrying al Qaeda or other jihadists conducting terrorism in the name of Islam.  Their silence has been as loud as the roar of the fires in the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.  No, we had to figure out those differences all by ourselves.  And we did.  Go figure.

Professor Akbar Ahmed, Chairman of Islamic Studies at American University, added this bit of contempt for Americans:

[W]hen you associate their [al Qaeda’s] religion with what they did, then you are automatically including, by association, one and a half billion people who had nothing to do with these actions….

You might, because you don’t think about what you’re doing; you only project your own failings onto others, as this example illustrates. I don’t at all make such associations, and neither do the folks I know. We think more clearly than that.

The museum plans to proceed with the showing, and that’s all to the good.

But What Are You Actually Going To Do, Mr Obama?

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President Barack Obama sent his most important sheriff, Vice President Joe Biden, to Ukraine Tuesday to offer American support to its new government. Biden had some fine words:

The opportunity to generate a united Ukraine and getting it right is within your grasp. And we want to be your partner and friend in the project. We’re ready to assist.

And

You face some very daunting problems and some might say humiliating threats are taking place[.]

Well, NSS. What are you going to do about that?

And

I want you to know I do not underestimate the incredible pressure you all are under. I do not underestimate the challenges you all face. And I do not underestimate the frustration you all must feel when someone like me comes along to say what a great opportunity this is for you all.

Awfully astute of you, old boy.

Again, I ask: what are you actually going to do, Messrs Obama and Biden? Besides spout pretty words, I mean, or make laughable moves against empty bank accounts.

A Thought on Foreign Policy

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President Barack Obama gave a moment of his time for a word about Russia in a recent CBS News interview.

We don’t need a war.  What we do need is that countries like Ukraine can have relationships with their neighbors.  [And not have those neighbors]…violate their sovereignty.

Carol E Lee and Colleen McCain Nelson wrote in The Wall Street Journal wrote shortly after that interview,

A protracted US standoff with Russia, which senior US officials said they now anticipate, would raise questions about Moscow’s cooperation on the unrest in Syria and curbing Iran’s nuclear program.
…
In Asia, US relations with China would become vital to offsetting declining ties with Russia…

And

US officials said they now plan for Mr Obama to spend much more time on Europe than he had intended….

I have some thoughts about Obama’s…musings.

We’ll have a war, whether we need it or not, if we don’t stop acquiescing to Russia, which is all that our barely noticeable “economic” “sanctions” amount to.  Russia’s next move is to run over Moldavia, and then on to the Baltics, then Poland.  Those last four are NATO members whom we’re treaty- and honor-bound to defend (just as we are Ukraine—that Belgrade Memorandum thing.  We’re doing well on that one, aren’t we?).  Or we abjectly surrender Europe to a resurgent Russia.  This is the same situation that faced France and Great Britain as NAZI Germany successively overran its neighbors.

Regarding “unrest” in Syria (?? Jeffrey Dahmer was just having the occasional snack?) and Iran’s drive for nuclear weapons, we’ve never had cooperation from Russia.  Indeed, the Russians actively are arming and replenishing al Assad’s forces, and they’re selling Iran nuclear reactors when they’re not helping the Iranians build their own.  We don’t have any cooperation from Russia vis-à-vis northern Korea’s nuclear weapons program or their attempts to sell their weapons and nuclear technology to others, either, a matter those senior officials of Obama’s carefully omitted to mention.  What is there to lose, then, from a protracted standoff with Russia in this arena?

On playing off the People’s Republic of China against Russia: how, exactly, does such a playing off become vital, and what is there to offset?  It would be nice to play one against the other, certainly, but it’s not necessary, and (eliding the enmity between the two) given PRC aggressive acquisitiveness, encouraging its military adventurism anywhere is not optimal.

Nor is there anything to play off economically.  Russia has nothing we need or want in trade goods, and while the PRC could be an effective trading partner, they won’t be until they stop being intellectual property thieves, and stop trying to use economics for extortion, as they attempted to do with rare earth shipments (sort of like Russia already has pulled, repeatedly, with its oil and gas).

The assumption that we can’t deal with both, separately and as they, are is a false premise.

Finally, there’s this:

US officials said they now plan for Mr Obama to spend much more time on Europe than he had intended….  …  That, in turn, complicates Mr Obama’s promised focus on Asia….

Again, why?  Is this another example of Obama’s arrogance–he thinks he’s better at foreign relations than his foreign relations experts in State?  Never mind that State has the manpower to walk and chew gum simultaneously, even to deal with Russia and the PRC simultaneously?

If Obama doesn’t think his extended “staff” throughout the Executive Branch, particularly in State and Defense, are up the task, why are we spending taxpayer money on their salaries?

Which is More Important?

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A Federal judge’s oath of office, or adherence to superior court precedent?  To be sure, both hierarchy in our judiciary and the precedence of rulings are critical to rule of law and to the US remaining a nation of laws and not of men.  But so is a judge’s adherence to his oath of office, and so is the Constitution.

Here’s the oath:

I, _________, do solemnly swear or affirm that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me as _________, according to the best of my abilities and understanding, agreeably to the constitution and laws of the United States.  So help me God.

This oath is tightly bound to the Constitution of the United States in Article VI:

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution….

Moreover, the Constitution is the supreme Law of the Land.

Hence my question: in a conflict between a judge’s (subordinate, in particular, but all judges in general) oath and rulings of a superior court, how must a judge resolve this?

The principles statement of our social compact shows one way:

[W]henever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it…when a long train of abuses and usurpations…evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off….

While keeping in mind that such a thing is not to be done lightly or for triflings:

Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes….

Had subordinate judges been willing to rule contrary to the Taney Court on a matter of runaway slaves, a war might have been averted.  Had subordinate judges been willing to rule contrary to a superior court’s ruling, the 80 years of injustice flowing from Plessy might have been cut short.  Had subordinate judges been willing to contradict superior courts, property rights might still be intact.  The list goes on and on.  Notice that plural, though.  A single judge acting contrary is likely to act wrongly, and a court of law is not the proper venue for a lone act of civil disobedience.

Still, the question demands a care: is the precedent contrary to the Constitution, or is the judge’s opinion on the matter the thing that is wrong?  This answer can be sought out only after we recognize that neither a law nor the supreme Law is what a judge thinks it is; the law, the Constitution, is what the law, the Constitution, says it is.

Given this, is it possible for a judge to adhere to precedent and, as a result, violate his oath of office?  You bet.  Must he rule against precedent, then?  That’s harder in a practical sense.

The judge certainly can discuss matters with his fellows and develop a unified position to rule, all of them, against superior courts when they believe the superior ruling at hand is wrong—a morally necessary act of throwing off.  Notice though that this is a throwing off of the superior ruling, not of the superior court itself.

But when a single judge embarks on such a course, is it legitimate revolution, or is it insubordination?  A revolution requires more than just a single actor acting in disobedience; it requires a significant fraction of the men and women available to join the action.  Hence, that collection of like-minded judges, if such a collection can be assembled.  If a collection cannot, this does not, of necessity, demonstrate that he’s the one who’s wrong; however, the failure must give the single judge pause.  If that man still believes he cannot rule in accordance with his superiors, his proper course becomes to resign his office.

To return to the question, it’s clear that adhering to the oath is far more important than adhering to precedent.  The former never is wrong; the latter often is, because the precedent itself often is.  However, the response to such a conflict must be influenced by how widespread the error can be demonstrated to be.

What To Do About Ukraine

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KT McFarland has some thoughts.  After taking notice of President Barack Obama’s foolishness in worrying that supporting the victim of Russian invasion in any material way might antagonize the victim’s attacker, she suggests [emphasis hers]

First, if the Ukrainian people want to fight for their freedom, we should help them.  …with intelligence, communications, and logistics.
If it comes to a civil war, the fighting will be short and bloody, and Russia will win.

Second, we should shore up our NATO allies.  We should reverse course and build the missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Finally, the US should take aim at Russia’s economy.  Russia does not have a modern economy, it’s a petro-power.  The only thing it sells that the world wants to buy is oil and natural gas.

To which I add, since I’m as unwilling as the Ukrainians to surrender their Crimea Oblast to the Russians, the following.

Arm the Ukrainian army: anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons are easily transported, and these should be rushed in—by military convoy and by military cargo aircraft.  Russia still will win a short, sharp fight, as McFarland suggests, but they should pay a hard price in soldiers and military equipment, not only in rubles.  And if the supplies are sufficient to drag out the fight, well….

Send a squadron of the US Navy into the Black Sea.  Directly challenge the Russians in occupied Crimea—but make the Russians fire first, or not at all.  Make clear to the Russians that they need to consider challenging the US as well as Ukraine.

Third, in addition to reviving the missile shield, forward deploy—in Poland and the Czech Republic, certainly, but also in the Baltics.  And run some of those forces, along with a naval flotilla, up to the Polish and Lithuanian borders and Baltic Sea boundary surrounding Russia’s Kaliningrad Oblast.

Add some serious economic sanctions.

Drill, baby, drill.  And frack, baby, frack.  And sell the output to Europe and Ukraine.  This will immediately drop the price of oil and gas on the world market, severely reducing the major source of Russian income, making it difficult for Russia to maintain its armies in the field—and to continue developing, in contravention of existing arms control agreement, its medium range nuclear missiles.

We also need to deny Russia’s access to the US’ banking system, which is a major part of the international banking system, and pressure Europe to deny Russia access to the European banking system, which is most of the rest of the international banking system.  Without access to credit, dollars, or petrodollars/rubles, the Russian economy—which Senator John McCain (R, AZ) has accurately called a gas station masquerading as an economy—will be severely constrained, if it doesn’t collapse altogether.

Other than the prompt price drop, drilling/fracking won’t have an immediate effect on the Russian economy as a whole until the oil and gas actually start arriving in Europe and Ukraine, and freezing Russia out of the international banking system won’t produce an immediate effect until the Russians run out of dollar reserves.  But we need to keep both pressures on, not just until Russia pulls back from eastern and southern Ukraine, but also until Russia withdraws from Crimea.  And agrees to cancel its lease on the naval base in Sevastopol.  Russia has demonstrated these last several months that it can’t be trusted with military bases on other nations’ territory.

Finally, we have an agreement with Ukraine—as do Great Britain and Russia (which has already welched on that agreement) under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum—to guarantee Ukraine’s territorial integrity if they give up what was at the time the third largest nuclear weapon inventory in the world.  They did their part; we need to do ours.  Alone, if needs be.

Whatever we decide to do, though, we can’t wait on the EU or the rest of NATO.  They’re even more timid (if you can believe it) than Obama when it comes to Russia (or to the PRC, or Iran, or Syria, or northern Korea, or… but let’s stick with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine for now).

We need to move; Ukraine is out of time.  The window for idle chit-chat has closed.  Unless we’re going abjectly to surrender.

Update: According to General Wesley Clark (USA, Ret) and Phillip Karber, this administration even has refused Ukraine’s request for requests for such passive defensive equipment as body armor, night-vision goggles, and communications equipment. Such things are…provocative.

Appalling timidity from the Obama administration.