Category: National

Let’s see if we have this right.

From Gaza to Indonesia, Muslim robes are in a menacing knot over a caricature of Mohammad. A Danish newspaper — and then a French one — ran some Prophet cartoons, one of which showed Mohammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban with a burning fuse.

Perhaps the point was what some wild and crazy Islamists won’t do in the name of religion.

But any image of Mohammad, let alone a satiric one, is forbidden. Such “partnering” is, according to the Koran, the one truly unforgivable sin. Freedom of expression, we are reminded, is some na

One can only wonder what the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. would make of all that is said in commemorating his life. Perhaps the dream gets lost in translation. More likely, it too often morphs into rhetorical self service.

Sounding not unlike Kanye West, Sen. Hillary Clinton told a mostly black audience in a Harlem church that she was apologizing to Hurricane Katrina survivors for a government that “turned its back on you.” Clinton, who had been tacking to the political center, then ratcheted up the pander-speak by descending into an analogy of the (Republican-controlled) House of Representatives to a plantation.

“The House has been run like a plantation, and you know what I’m talking about,” declared Clinton to thunderous approbation.

King’s most remembered and revered lines were calls for inclusiveness – not slavish exercises in partisan divisiveness.

Then there was New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin. Sounding not unlike a Crescent City Pat Robertson, he told a crowd at City Hall that not only will the city be rebuilt as a “Chocolate New Orleans,” but in so doing it would be “the way God wants it to be.”

Nagin has a hard enough time speaking for himself, let alone presuming to channel the Almighty with a demographic invocation. And this from a black politician who has arguably been part of the pre- and- post Katrina problem.

In an ironic way, however, maybe King’s words were revelatory. Wherever there is scapegoating, political pandering and race-baiting there is character content on display – irrespective of skin color.

Latest decree from Tehran is that, “until further notice,” CNN is banned. At a recent news conference on Iran’s nuclear research, CNN botched a translation of comments by Iran’s hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The network mistranslated “nuclear technology” into “nuclear weapons.”

However, Iran is not claiming mistranslations for the apocalyptic Ahmadinejad’s comments calling for Israel to be “wiped off the map” or terming the Holocaust a “myth.” Those were all too accurate.

Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., the architect of “borking,” is as iconic an inquisitor as the Senate Judiciary Committee has. His presence is also the most ironic. He’s the only member to be thrown out of law school (for cheating.) How many nominees would have loved to have thrown that one back at him as he postured for his nightly news sound bite during Supreme Court nominee hearings?

Finally, after all the smug preening and all the “Ferris Buelleresque” attaboys from the media, something sensible has come out of that Baghdad misadventure experienced by 16-year-old Farris Hassan of Fort Lauderdale. He finally apologized to those owed one the most: the U.S. military. He had to be transported out of Iraq over land, which was more than an inconvenient expense. Since everything that moves militarily in Iraq is a target, soldiers risked their lives to secure his.

They ought to garnish his allowance too.

It’s come to my attention that I seemingly never miss an opportunity to go out of my way to work in some commentary about Cuban-American relations that is hardly in harmony with Bush Administration policy. Guilty as charged.

Here’s additional context.

It’s true that I rarely reference Cuba’s well-earned reputation for human rights violations. But the Castro government’s track record is not, alas, a worldwide anomaly. Would that it were – and would that Cuba were as bad as it gets.

Let’s just say it doesn’t deter us from doing business and having normalized relations with China or Russia or Egypt or Saudi Arabia or Nigeria or Uzbekistan or Belarus or Turkey or myriad others.

Cuba is different, but not because we are so morally repulsed by that government’s contempt for human rights. Cuba is different because it’s personal.

And, frankly, if I were Cuban and had been forced to flee or been tortured or had friends and family members imprisoned or executed, I would not be in a forgiving mood. Not then; not now. Moreover, if I had lost anyone at Pearl Harbor or in the Tet Offensive, I wouldn’t necessarily be neutral on normalizing matters with Japan and Vietnam.

And that’s why those so viscerally close to tragic, life-altering events should not be in a position to influence foreign policy. What’s in the overall enlightened self-interest of the United States is more a matter for dispassionate diplomats and pragmatic leaders than emotionally-involved victims.

What I do find fault with, however, is every American Administration since Kennedy that has played the Cuban dictatorship card for domestic political spoils. President George W. Bush only upped the ante by appointing the overtly antagonistic James Cason as top U.S. diplomat in Havana and further tightening restrictions on travel and remittances.

It’s pandering at its worst – to the detriment of Cuban citizens who are saddled with the Castro regime, American business interests who forfeit markets and America’s geo-political standing in the world, which can ill afford any more erosion.

Nothing good comes of this Cold War relic of a policy that hurts all the wrong people – and treats Cuba as a less than sovereign entity.

But, to reiterate an earlier point. Until you’ve walked in someone’s shoes who has been personally impacted by what Fidel Castro has wrought, you can’t blindly and insensitively criticize. But you can – and should – hold accountable a blatantly dumb, inhumane and counterproductive policy, while showing respect for those who have been where you never were.

Here’s hoping your whole holiday season has been a happy one so far. From blessings that resonated at Thanksgiving to whatever the New Year already portends.

But of no less importance, here’s also hoping yours was a very Merry Christmas. Whether you gathered around a Nativity scene, played Santa to the special people in your life, sang carols off-key, remembered the less fortunate or just enjoyed the company and camaraderie of friends and family. Or any combination.

To repeat: Merry Christmas.

To all – including cultural warriors, secular elites and First Amendment syllogists. It is, after all, the season; it is, in fact, the CHRISTMAS spirit.

Truculent, xenophobic Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad continues his game plan for repealing the last millennium. He has now banned all Western music, including classical, from Iran’s state radio and TV stations.

All this does, however, is underscore the Islamic Republic’s commitment to hypocrisy. This is no Talibanned-in-Tehran. Behind the closed doors of the well-off and influential, the liquor still flows, the fashions still reflect Western taste and satellite dish owners still receive entertainment from outside the Muslim cloister.

Typically I wouldn’t be revisiting a column subject less than a month after publication. But my comments on the topic of government torture brought enough of a response – of disagreement and disparagement – that I feel compelled to further clarification.

As I mentioned in that column of Nov. 30, I could never have conceived of a “debate” on the subject of torture. As if there were two legitimate sides. As if I would be aligned with the “pro-torture” position.

Was 9/11 a synonym for “anything goes”?

Some readers wondered if my morality were so facile that it could easily accommodate some ends justifying any means. That due process was no more than a speed bump on the road of expedience. That I had a Torquemada fantasy.

To reiterate. I think a government is derelict if it doesn’t use every tact, ploy and non-nuclear option in its arsenal to protect itself, i.e., to prevent a civilian-casualty atrocity that would dwarf 9/11 in mass-murder magnitude. Even if the Vatican disagrees.

If this sounds like selective morality or due-process hypocrisy, I’ll live with it. As will millions more. Literally.

And a corollary would be that contextual circumstances and common sense justify – and, indeed, demand – profiling. Might as well re-open that can of national security worms as well.

As to due process, per se, I don’t apologize for making self preservation a priority. However, it should go without saying that in regards to the treatment of prisoners and the “T” word, we must carve out very specific parameters and proscriptions.

That means legitimate, high-value, non-Geneva Convention-qualified targets. They’re not that hard to define. They’re the combatants sans uniforms and consciences who target non-combatants. They behead the innocent. And videotape it. On a moral scale, they couldn’t carry Tookie Williams’ dumb bells.

But their interrogators must be disinformation-deciphering professionals – not neo-Nazi losers or al-Qaeda counterparts. The approach must be sophisticated, not sadistic.

The rule of humane treatment for legitimate POWs doesn’t change. But neither does the rule of thumb that the Khalid Sheikh Mohammeds and his terrorist ilk might have to take one for our team. Might. Arguably, Mohammed’s “waterboarding” means has already served the end of saved lives.

In short, and after all is said, we don’t live life in the abstract.

And, yes, it would have helped immeasurably if we had had an Administration that didn’t divert troops from Afghanistan and the pursuit of Osama bin-Laden to the ill-advised, ill-managed invasion and occupation of Iraq. Now we’re saddled with the mother of all jihadist pep rallies – and many more problematic prisoners.

But that’s a different debate.

Much is being made – for obvious reasons – of the FAIR v. Rumsfeld case now being considered by a seemingly skeptical U.S. Supreme Court. In short, it’s about the government’s right to condition its funding to universities on the basis of military recruiters having equal access to students.

This goes for undergrads as well as law students. It’s also about a school’s prerogative to deny military recruiters the same access that all other recruiters get – and still expect the same federal largess they’ve long become accustomed to. The Feds’ financial support to higher education now exceeds $35 billion annually.

And, in the verbalized view of new Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, it’s also about “the right in the Constitution to raise a military.”

The genesis of the case is the 1994 Solomon Amendment, which gives the government the right to withhold funds when schools deny such access. The real target of the case is the higher ed-hated “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” military policy, which has been – like it or not — the law of the land since 1993.

However this shakes out – couched in language referencing discrimination against gays and bizarre spins on free speech and academic freedom – there are interesting extralegal issues at play.

For openers, shouldn’t an all-volunteer military have direct access to as wide a recruiting base as possible? It’s hardly an egalitarian fantasy, but shouldn’t it be able to make its pitch in front of a demographic that is not mostly minorities and na