Twist and Shout

More on the we hate illegal immigrants so much we laugh when they are victims of crime front (scroll to the update at the bottom). In California, a Mexican women went to court to get a restraining order against her husband, who was abusing her. Instead, the presiding judge asked if she was an illegal immigrant. When she said yes, the judge replied:

"I hate the immigration laws that we have, but I think the bailiff could take you to the immigration services and send you to Mexico.” Then the Judge had a creative idea: he would count to 20 and Gonzalez would disappear by the time he was finished. No trouble for her; no trouble for him. "One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. When I get to 20, she gets arrested and goes to Mexico," said the judge according to the court transcript. This week, in an interview with the LA Times, Judge Fink explains his intent to get Gonzalez from trouble with the INS. He also said he saw nothing more than screaming between the husband and wife, although reportedly Gonzalez had moved last month into a domestic violence shelter. The Superior Court is now reviewing the hearing.

I'm waiting for an explanation of why this isn't one of the more twisted things I've ever seen in America. This is how we deal with an abused women (illegal or not)?

Prospective Disenfranchisement

I was thinking today about my future as a citizen of America. As many of you know, I'm a Maryland native, born and bred in Bethesda, just a few short minutes (and one metro station) away from the District of Columbia. I am a large fan of my hometown as well as the surrounding area: I can definitely see the D.C. metro area as a place I would like to return to settle down and have a family (even my long-standing prejudice against Virginia might fall by the wayside--if that was the only option). But what if I moved to D.C. proper? I'd--and there's no gentle way of putting this--lose my right to vote.

This is a very weird prospect. I suppose some people who grew up inside the D.C. borders are just used to not having a Senator and a Representative and actually voting members of Congress. But I've had elected, voting representatives since the day I was born. I voted in my first primary in Maryland, and now am registered to vote in the state of Minnesota. How odd would it be if I could no longer vote; not because I committed a felony, not because I renounced my citizenship, not because I left the country, but because I moved literally five minutes south-east of my boyhood home and crossed Western Avenue?

The continuing disenfranchisement of D.C. is appalling and completely non-sensical (if the prospect of not allowing born, naturalized U.S. citizens living inside the continental U.S. to vote doesn't cause prima facia disturbance, frequent Debate Link visitor Stentor gives the full takedown of the anti-D.C. voting argument). I hope by the time I'm ready to possibly move back here, it will have become a forgotten footnote of electoral history.

Click Click Boom

Ethiopia has sent troops into Somalia, in support of the transitional government and in opposition to the ruling Islamic militias.

So. Ethiopia and Somalia are effectively at war. Sudan and Chad are effectively at war. Lebanon and Israel are at war. Iraq is in the midst of a civil war, in which Turkey may intervene. Iran and Syria appear to want nothing better than to join in one or both of the previous two wars.

Shaping up to be a great year, ain't it?

President Bush Doesn't Care About Black People

When Kanye West said that, he provoked a firestorm of criticism. Yet taking the comments in a milder form, I think there might be something to it. I sincerely doubt that President Bush sits in his oval office, cackling at the prospect of directing pain and misery toward his African-American constituency. If a staunch Bush critic like Paul Begala can affirm, in the midst of an otherwise furious attack on everything Bush, that the President has not "a racist bone in his body," then that's good enough for me. But I do think the President has not even a vague grasp of what issues and policies are important to the Black community, and displays very little curiosity in finding them out (to put it another way, he doesn't push the button).

At his first NAACP speech in 6 years as President, for example, what theme did the President hit up? The Estate Tax. It is difficult to find an issue further removed from the interests of the Black rank-and-file than the Estate Tax. There are millions of Black people in America. A grand total of 59 of them will be paying the Estate Tax next year. Meanwhile, Bush's much touted push to fight poverty has completely petered out now that Katrina is off the radar screen. In his whole speech before the NAACP, he didn't mention it once.

It's not active animosity, anymore, that explains why people no longer respond to Black concerns. It's a lack of curiosity. Bush doesn't care about Black people, and he demonstrates it by not caring enough to find out what Black people care about.

Push the Button

This summer, I'm conducting research for one of my Carleton Professors, Anna Moltchanova (Hi Professor!) on the topic of Whites in the pre-Brown v. Board American South. What we want to find out is how aware the average White person was of the moral critiques of racism and Jim Crow. Were they reported in newspapers? How did they respond to them? Were they critically engaged, or ignored? What type of justifications were constructed for their oppressive regime?

Today I've been working my way through a very interesting article that touches on a lot of these subjects: Jon and Kathleen Hanson's "The Blame Frame: Justifying (Racial) Injustice in America" [41 Harv. C.R.-C.L. L. Rev. 413 (2006)]. One of the themes they hit is what's known as the "just world" mindset. People want to believe that the world is just. As a result, "people crave justice and, consistent with that craving, actively work to eliminate injustice" (419). That's the good news. The bad news is that instead of actually eliminating the injustice itself, we simply redefine the questionable event so that it seems "just." Hanson and Hanson continue "[W]e often satisfy the craving [for justice] through troubling means: when alleviating innocent suffering is at all difficult or complex, people reconceive the victim as deserving the suffering by assigning negative characteristics to her" (id.).

A study by Melvin J. Lerner & Carolyn H. Simmons elucidates how this happens. Test subjects were asked to observe a "learner" who appeared to be subjected to painful shocks when he got an answer wrong. One group of subjects was given the option to move the learner to a different study where she'd receive positive reinforcement for right answer instead of being shocked for wrong ones. Most took the offer. The second group of subjects was given no such option, and could only watch as the learner was shocked again and again [Melvin J. Lerner & Carolyn H. Simmons, The Observer's Reaction to the "Innocent Victim": Compassion or Rejection?, 4 J. Personality & Soc. Psychol. 203 (1966)].

The subjects were then queried as to their views of the learner. The first group, which was presented with an easy option to rectify the injustice, tended to describe the learners as "likeable, innocent victims of shocks who deserved to be reassigned to a positive reinforcement environment" (Hanson & Hanson, at 419). Those who had no easy option to end the suffering, by contrast, tended to describe the victim in negative terms, as blameworthy and deserving of what happened to them.

The conclusion of the study was that people don't like injustice, but will only proactively act to end it when they feel like they can have some control of the outcome. When they do not have that route, instead of admitting that injustice is occurring, they will simply rationalize "unjust" into "just", maintaining the psychological stability of the "just world" viewpoint. In other words, "it is not justice that we crave so much as the perception of justice. And that craving can often be satisfied far more easily by changing our perception of the victims than by acknowledging and addressing the underlying unfairness" (id. at 420).

Of course, even the second group of subjects in the Lerner experiment did have some options to try and stop the suffering of the learners. They could have "object[ed] to the experiment, refus[ed] to participate, complain[ed] to the social scientist or the university, call[ed] the police, or even interven[ed] physically to end the shocking" (id. at 420-21). But such actions would be considered extreme and abhorrent, not a socially sanctioned route like that given to the first group.

So the first lesson we draw from this is that hard-to-solve injustice is likely to be seen as just, or at least not unjust. That's bad in of itself. It makes it less likely that we will press big, institutional actors (e.g., businesses or governments) to intervene where we cannot. But it's not fatal. We can still resolve to not commit injustices individually, even where we are unwilling to stand up them when committed by more powerful social actors. For example, someone watching the Lerner experiment could say to themselves "if I become a teacher, I'm never going to shock my students with a cattle prod" (bold ambition!).

The problem here, though, is that many injustices are not as facially obvious as sending painful jolts of electricity through a student. Often times, it requires some effort to seek out and learn the effects of a given action to discover that it is unjust. But Hanson & Hanson cite to another study which shows that we are unwilling to do this, even when the costs of doing so are negligible.

The study here had a case where a test subject could pick one of two outcomes of a game, one which distributed a reward equally between them and their partner, and another which gave the subject a slightly higher reward while significantly reducing the partner's share. When these choices were presented in full, most participants chose to act fairly, that is, they picked the option which gave equal shares to both persons. But in another group, the effect on the partner was hidden so that the participant could only see how much they would get. Finding out the impact of each choice on the partner was not difficult; in fact, all one had to do was press a button which would reveal the impact on both parties. But half of the study participants chose not to press the button at all. They maintained their ignorance so as to more easily justify taking the larger cut (id. at 423).

This would be a great example of what Fernando Teson might call Rational Ignorance. Finding out information is either harder than staying ignorant, or makes life more difficult than staying ignorant, so people deliberately avoid becoming more informed and thus perpetuate unjust social outcomes.

I titled this post "Push the Button" as an exhortation to all my readers to resist this trend. It is unnerving, to be sure, to find out that we don't live in a fair world, or a just world, or a righteous world. But one cannot let that fear be paralyzing. It is critically important that one take every opportunity available to see where injustice is happening, and to determine what ways one can combat it; whether it be by personal change or by governmental reform. The easy way out is the tyrant's way in.

What Is The World Coming To?

In other sky is falling news, the somewhat infamous Juan Cole earns a Yglesias Award for some unusually harsh words towards Hezbollah:

I watched in horror as this maniacal speech unfolded in which Nasrallah actually threatened the Israelis with releasing chemical gas from local factories on civilians in Haifa. Despite fighting them for all those years, he clearly does not understand the Israelis' psyche or the trauma of the Holocaust. A threat like that. The Israelis don't like being caught in a quagmire any more than the next person, which is why Nasrallah could get them to leave southern Lebanon. But his victory appears to have given him megalomania, and he has now gone too far.

Hizbullah's attacks on Israeli civilians are war crimes. The killing of the civilians in Haifa at the train station was a war crime. And threatening to release chemicals from factories on civilian populations is probably a war crime in itself, much less the doing of it.

Obviously, I do not accept that Hizbullah's actions justify the wholesale indiscriminate destruction and slaughter in which the Israelis have been engaged against the Lebanese in general. But they do have every right to defend themselves against Nasrallah and his mad bombers.

Presumably by this time tommorow Professor Cole and I will both resume being hacks. But everyone needs to step out of the norm, now and then.

Condemn This

Now here's a good example of where it would and is perfectly justified to condemn Israel for not just acting unwisely, but immorally:

The roughly 1.2 million Arab citizens of Israel -- one-fifth of the population -- do not serve in the army, now engaged on the northern and southern borders. They have slim representation in parliament, and receive scant government support for the kind of bunkers and warning systems that have been well used in other northern Israeli cities since the fighting began.
[...]
On the next hilltop, the largely Jewish town of Nazaret Ilit has a number of shelters.

"I have discussed the issue with the Ministry of Interior and the home front and they have said there is no money for them," said Ramez Jaraysi, the mayor [of the largely Arab town of Nazareth]. (emphasis added)

I'm not sure if they are given an exemption from army service or are banned from it, so I'll let that slide for now. But refusing to fund shelters and needed security defenses is wrong, and deplorable. Pro-Israel partisans love to say how Israeli-Arabs are full citizens of Israel, and for the most part they're right, but "for the most part" doesn't cut it.

Especially now that Nazareth appears to be a target of Hezbollah rockets, the Israeli government needs to take adequate measures to protect its citizens there--all of them.

Read It Again

So ever since Jim Chen started his Jurisdynamics blog, I've been meandering my way through some of the articles the good professor recommended to me. They raise a lot of points which are insightful and erudite. But there was one thing that jumped out at me that had very little to do with Professor Chen at all, but rather just a product of reading a piece through my own tinted glasses.

The two articles I've finished so far are Poetic Justice, and Mayteenth, which I read in that order. Both include the following quote by William Van Alstyne:

One gets beyond racism by getting beyond it now: by a complete, resolute, and credible commitment never to tolerate in one's own life--or in the life or practices of one's government--the differential treatment of other human beings by race. [Rites of Passage: Race, the Supreme Court, and the Constitution, 46 U. Chi. L. Rev. 775, 809]

It's a nice, snappy quote. I liked it. I also completely misinterpreted it the first time around. In "Poetic Justice," the quote came in the midst of a discussion of Brown v. Board's (in)famous maxim that desegregation proceed with "all deliberate speed." "All deliberate speed," of course, rapidly became no speed at all, as Southern states used it as an excuse to delay, and delay, and delay. So I read Professor Van Alstyne's quote through my happy Crit worldview: as a critique of incrementalism and a call for radical change. Arguing against those Whites who pushed a "don't rock the boat" mentality, who insisted that race relations will improve on its own, I had Van Alstyne in the role of Martin Luther King, demanding that racism never be tolerated: not now, not tomorrow, not ever.

This is, to be sure, very close to what Professor Van Alstyne is saying: in fact, if you replaced "differential treatment of other human beings by race" with something like "the unforgivable evil of racism and racist ideologies," it might say exactly that (I'd imagine that Van Alstyne would equate the two, but I think they are distinct). But upon re-read in "Mayteenth," I realized (somewhat embarrassingly, as it was quite clear) that what Professor Van Alstyne was actually advocating was not a radical view of race and anti-racism, but classic color-blindness. "Mayteenth" transposed the quote next to Bakke instead of Brown, where the full meaning of the phrase "one gets beyond racism" is found in its implicit rebuke to Justice Blackmun's famous argument in that case: "In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race. There is no other way." I'm in the camp of Mr. Justice Blackmun--I am not even convinced that race is something we should get beyond, much less confident that we are prepared to make the jump now.

One of the nice (or not so nice, depending on your perspective) things about great quotes is that they can be used to inspire so many things. I've always took to heart Barry Goldwater's exhortation that "extremism in the pursuit of liberty is no vice, and moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue," although I would have agreed with precious little else Goldwater believed in 1964. Similarly, with Van Alstyne in mind, I can say that One gets beyond racism by getting beyond it now, by resolving to pursue and eradicate racial hierarchy wherever it exists, by refusing to tolerate the structures and institutions which denigrate color and exalt White, and by keeping an ever-vigilant eye and a constant guard against racism in all its many forms and disguises. Most importantly, one gets beyond racism by never allowing oneself to think one has already gotten beyond it.

Perhaps not as poetic--but certainly more in line with my conception of justice.

Sadly, It Is a Question

Whenever I get annoyed that folks aren't concentrating enough on Palestinian or Hezbollah terrorism vis-a-vis the Israeli response, I get chided that the former is never a question: "Everybody knows terrorism is bad. That isn't up for debate. What is a tough question is how to ethically respond to terror." And for the most part, I agree. How to ethically respond to terror is a difficult question, worthy of being debated. And few (though by no means no) persons seriously are willing to defend terror as something legitimate or just.

Sadly, what is a question is whether Israel's responses, even if bad or unwise or unjust, are equally unjust to those of Hezbollah's. This is one of the reasons I think that the debate gets fuzzy. A few days ago, for example, Publius admonished his commenters that merely saying that Israel is justified to respond doesn't mean that this response is justified. Certainly a reasonable point. Publius wrote his post from the perspective of critiquing Israel's particular response, so the pro-Israeli folks came out of the woodwork to debate him in comments. For my part, I've been writing my post trying to argue that Israel's response is "just" (if not "ideal"), so the comments I've been receiving have been more anti-Israel and more prone to try and argue from the "Israel is being evil" front. Take enough from that wing, and you're going to get snippish towards people who even seem like they're arguing that Israel can do nothing without becoming as bad as their enemies.

But that's not the point I want to make. The reason why folks like me are so vigilant in trying to get people to denounce Hezbollah and their allies isn't because we think anyone who opposes an Israeli policy is pro-terror. The reason why we do it is because we want to know that these people recognize that even if they think Israel is bad, what Hezbollah or Hamas is doing is far worse from an ethical standpoint. And that, unfortunately, is a question.

David Bernstein, for example, points to a piece by the former Mid-East Bureau Chief of the New York Times arguing that "We cannot ascribe equal amounts of moral blame to all sides" because Israel is worse than Hezbollah or Hamas. My college friend Ben complained about an Amnesty press release on the conflict because it was equally condemnatory of Israel and Hezbollah, rather than being harsher towards Israel for its "escalation."

It's true that saying "terror is bad" is not something you have to drag out of the liberal critics of Israel. Okay good, that's lesson one. Lesson two is that, as abominable as you may find civilian casualties from airstrikes against military targets, it's not the moral equal of deliberately targeting individuals for no purpose other than to sow terror. That lesson we're still working on.

Two Notes on College

Two quickies on college:

First, the thing I might like best of all about college is the throw-back mentality. That is, you're growing up with the same kids through middle and high school, and so you kind of feel compelled to disown all the "childish" things you enjoyed when you were younger to prove that you're "mature" and all that. But in college, all those old things--comics, toys, cartoon shows--become instant bonding material. There's no need to put on a facade--you're already in college after all--so there is a free reign to be goofy and enjoy all the things that made childhood such a blast.

Maybe that's just Carleton and its uber-mellow persona, and at more preppy schools people are talking about their favorite yacht and their upcoming vacation in the Swiss Alps ("Good one, Chet!"). But at least at Carleton, the freedom to do all the bizarre things that you've always wanted to do (Campus-wide dart gun fight! Cookies available 24/7!) are what makes these four years great.

Second, a more personal note. Driving home from work today in Bethesda, I saw a Black Jeep in front of me with a "Carleton College" sticker on it. Needless to say, this is a rare occurance in my lovely hometown, most of whose residents guess that Carleton is a community college somewhere. So that sent my mind racing: who among the few Carls in the area could have been in front of me? Or perhaps it was a graduate? Anyway, if you're Carleton affiliated and you drive a Black Jeep (and were in Bethesda today), give me a ring. I want to know who you are.

Message from the Old Homestead

Michael Totten, who calls Lebanon his "second home," has sensible comments on the conflict over there (via The Daily Dish):

Obviously Hezbollah started this and Hezbollah is the main problem. Not only did they drag my second home into a war, the bastards also threatened me personally. So I hardly see the point in telling you what I think about them right about now. I'll get to them later.

I sympathize one hundred percent with what Israel is trying to do here. But they aren't going about it the right way, and they're punishing far too many of the wrong people. Lord knows I could be wrong, and the situation is rapidly changing, but at this particular moment it looks bad for Israel, bad for Lebanon, bad for the United States, good for Syria, and good for Iran.

There is no alternate universe where the Lebanese government could have disarmed an Iranian-trained terrorist/guerilla militia that even the Israelis could not defeat in years of grinding war. There is no alternate universe where it was in Lebanon's interest to restart the civil war on Israel's behalf, to burn down their country all over again right at the moment where they finally had hope after 30 years of convulsive conflict and Baath Party overlordship.

The Lebanese government should have asked for more help from the international community. The Lebanese government should have been far less reactionary in its attitude toward the Israelis. They made more mistakes than just two, but I'd say these are the principal ones.

What should the Israelis have done instead? They should have treated Hezbollahland as a country, which it basically is, and attacked it. They should have treated Lebanon as a separate country, which it basically is, and left it alone. Mainstream Lebanese have no problem when Israel hammers Hezbollah in its little enclave. Somebody has to do it, and it cannot be them. If you want to embolden Lebanese to work with Israelis against Hezbollah, or at least move in to Hezbollah's bombed out positions, don't attack all of Lebanon.

The problem, from the Israeli perspective, is that you can't just divide Hezbollahland from the rest of Lebanon, if for no other reason than that the rest of Lebanon has resupply routes for Hezbollah (additionally, Hezbollah has offices and militants all throughout Lebanon, including Beirut). Ideally, you work with the Lebanese government to isolate and eliminate Hezbollah together. The problem with that is that Israel and Lebanon don't have diplomatic ties, and Israel doesn't trust Lebanon to uphold its end of the bargain anyway, as it already has been breaching its obligation under UN Resolution 1559 to conduct the disarming process. What Israel is banking on is that its bombing runs will a) convince Lebanon that harboring Hezbollah is more trouble than it's worth and b) weaken Hezbollah so that Lebanon can actually act on the new-found revelation triggered by "a". It's possible that will happen. It's also possible that the Israeli bombings will radicalize the Lebanese population and generate new sympathy for Hezbollah. I've seen reports that lend credence to either conclusion.

Meanwhile, the UN is both urging that the Lebanese government take a more active role in disarming the terrorist militias attacking Israel, and that an international peacekeeping coalition be deployed to police the Israeli/Lebanese border. Israel has rejected the latter thus far. Once again, I'm torn. On the one hand, an international peacekeeping mission could do wonders in this region, if it does it's job and actually roots out Hezbollah. Israel's greatest fear, though, is that Hezbollah will take its cue from uncountable other terror organizations that have managed to operate with impunity from behind the shield of UN Blue Helmets, launching attacks and hiding behind the UN to protect from counter-strikes. This trick, unfortunately, tends to work exceedingly well, so from Israel's perspective allowing the UN in does nothing to make them safer, but does prevent them from actually defending themselves. So they're understandably less than enthusiastic at the prospect.

"Those People"

Via Misty of Shakespeare's Sister, some lovely sentiments about homosexuals coming out of Kentucky:

This week, [State Sen. Dick] Roeding [R-Lakeside] mixed himself up in the University of Louisville's decision to offer health benefits to domestic partners, and in so doing the senator came across as a bigot unfit for further public service.

"I find this very repulsive," Roeding said of U of L's plans, according to the Louisville Courier-Journal. And he continued: "I don't want to entice any of those people into our state. Those are the wrong kind of people."

Let's hear it again: The wrong kind of people.

In case you're thinking Roeding was misquoted, or that those statements don't reflect his genuine sentiments, consider what he said when a Kentucky Post reporter called to get his reaction to criticism of his remarks from the Republican Log Cabin organization. "Who are they?" Reading asked our reporter. Told they were a gay rights organization within the GOP, Roeding said, "Oh, a bunch of queers."

It's nice to know that even as the world spirals into turmoil, homophobia remains a depressing, ever-present constant.

In Other News

After four straight Israel posts here, and several more (not including pointers) at The Moderate Voice, I feel its time to mix things up. I'd like to say it's because I feel an obligation to inform you about other happenings, but honestly, it's primarily because I need the break. So, without further ado, here are the major (blog and otherwise) events that have occurred over the last few days.

The Voting Rights Act was renewed. Though a majority of Republicans voted for "poison-pill" amendments that would have killed the bill before it reached the floor (a coalition of moderate Republicans and Democrats defeated those amendments), once the bill itself was up for renewal, only 33 GOP Representatives had the courage to, in the words of Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC), defy "political correctness" and vote to repeal the right to vote. It's so rare to see folks stand up for Jim Crow these days.

Minnesota Law Professor Jim Chen has started his own blog. I know of Professor Chen only due to his (in)famous "Unloving" article. This is very unfair to Professor Chen, both because I came at his article from the side he was critiquing, and because Chen specifically wrote in the article that this piece was outside his area of focus and scholarly expertise. So it's not really fair to judge him from that. The blog itself looks pretty neat--though I'm wondering how long it takes Chen to stop writing as if his posts were 1000 word law review articles.

House Majority Leader John Boehner is raising K street contributions at a record pace. Whose stunned to hear that the GOP commitment to cleaning up lobbying was just a flash in the pan?

Political analyst Charlie Cook has 14 Republican House seats listed as "toss-ups", with zero Democratic seats so labeled. Democrats need 15 seats to take back the House.

The UN unanimously votes to condemn North Korea for its missile launch. That makes 50% of the country's they tried to condemn this weekend one's that are actually, you know, doing something wrong.

Feministe riffs off the new, err, "modest" swimwear lines that were previously profiled in the Washington Post. The best way I can describe them is that they'd be very revealing for a burqa.

Kevin Drum tries to explain why so many liberal blogs don't like to blog on Israel.

A sex workers convention shares its meeting space with a quilting convention. Apparently they won some converts to the cause.

In For a Penny...

Oddly enough, the folks at The Volokh Conspiracy have had some of the most indispensable commentary on the Israel/Lebanon situation. It's not odd because the VC normally is poor (they're consistently top-notch), only that a blog focusing primarily on American law wouldn't be the first source I'd guess for information on a foreign conflict.

Anyway, Ilya Somin argues that at this stage, Israel has to go balls-out against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

According to most experts, the democratically elected Lebanese government lacks the firepower to take on the much better armed Hezbollah forces. However, if the Israelis can do enough damage to Hezobollah, the terrorist group might be sufficiently weakened to enable the government to disarm it and take control of the Lebanese-Israeli border in the aftermath of an Israeli attack. Although the anti-Hezbollah Lebanese probably have little love for the Israelis, the Christians and moderate Muslims who control the government are unlikely to use the border as a staging ground for rocket attacks into Israel, as Hezbollah has been doing. Indeed, many Lebanese factions, particularly various Christian and Druze groups, have cooperated with the Israelis in the past when it was in their interest to do so.

Hopefully, this scenario, or something like it is the Israeli objective. The worst outcome would be for the Israelis to stop after inflicting only minor damage on Hezbollah. This would subject Israel to international condemnation and increase Hezbollah's prestige for "standing up" to Israel, while producing few benefits for either Israelis or Lebanese. Obviously, a full-fledged campaign to crush Hezbollah would lead to greater casualties in the short run than a more "proportionate" retaliation. But it is likely to save numerous lives in the long run on both sides of the border. It could also help the Lebanese to consolidate their still-fragile democracy by eliminating the most serious domestic threat to it.

Saying Hezbollah is not a dominant force in Lebanese politics is somewhat redundant, as Lebanon is so fractured that the only thing all the groups share is that they are hated by all the others. Still, it does seem possible that the weakening of Hezbollah by Israeli forces could give the Lebanese government the edge it needs to put down the terrorists once and for all. And certainly, after the events of the last few days they need no more incentive to do it!

Meanwhile, David Bernstein provides a much needed clarification of what Israel is and is not hitting in Lebanese territory. Quoting from the Israeli paper Ha'aretz (a highly respected center-left publication):

The Israel Air Force focused its attacks in Lebanon on Thursday against long-range Iranian Fajr 3 and 4 missiles, and succeeded in hitting some that were hidden in camouflaged bunkers. The missiles have a range that can reach Haifa and possibly Hadera.... The most significant strategic target attacked thus far has been the Beirut airport. While the strikes against runways have shut down operations, none of the radar or control towers were hit. This allows the airport to continue to control international flights over its airspace. Similarly, the main ports have not been hit, and with the exception of Hezbollah's broadcasting station, no other targets in Beirut were attacked. The air force has concentrated its attacks against Hezbollah's military installations. The main Shi'ite neighborhoods in the capital, the power plant, and transformers also have not been targeted."

Good to know. Saying "airport" was always too vague, but it's good to know the facts. Also, it's the fact that Israel has these high-tech, top-of-the-line equipment that allows it to conduct strikes with such precision. Nobody's perfect, and I'm sure they've missed some targets and made some mistakes. But in general, it is nothing short of amazing that they could avoid hitting the main airport infrastructure while still putting the runways out of commission.

A Modest Proposal

"If Israel proves to be 10 percent better ethically than the rest of the world, it will be 'a light unto the nations.' If it proves to be 25% better, it will bring the Messiah. If it is 50% better, it will be dead." --Irving Greenberg

One of the truly aggravating things about those criticizing Israel for it's recent actions is that there is been virtually no effort to articulate what would be a reasonable response for Israel in this case. Matthew tried to argue that Israel should enter into negotiations with Lebanon, a country with which it has been in a technical state of war with since Israel's inception, has no diplomatic relations with, and, oh yeah, has two ministers and over 20 parliamentarians who are members of Hezbollah. Aside from that--shall I call it fanciful?--suggestion, there has been no counter proposal whatsoever.

So, based on the critiques I've heard so far, I offer the following proposal of my own for an Israeli response. I admit it won't be ideal (nor is the current one), but I am curious if the critics of Israel would find it preferable (not "just" but perhaps "less unjust") to the current set of tactics.

Basically, it runs like this. Israel cease all of its current military operations in Lebanon, and will instead just lob unguided, untargeted missiles randomly into Lebanese territory. This is clearly superior to what they're doing now, where they are running precisely targeted strikes at significant pieces of infrastructure. Hitting important targets, obviously, raises the civilian casualties, because Hezbollah has made a policy of mixing its military equipment and facilities into civilian areas (the goal being to maximize civilian casualties and then turn that into a PR victory. But that could never work...). Presumably, randomly firing off rockets can also cause civilian casualties, but since they could land anywhere (from a busy city street to an unpopulated meadow), the odds are strong that the total death toll and damage will be smaller. And of course, these types of rockets (Qassams and Katayushas, presumably) have far smaller destructive capabilities than conventional Israeli arms, so that also cuts in favor of the "reduced damage" hypothesis. Furthermore, many of Israel's stated goals ("sending a message", for example, or having a deterrent effect) would be served equally as well by random shelling compared to the status quo. And even if not "as well", the fact that Israel can pursue this tact with reduced civilian casualties mandates that they take it, even if it means significantly reduced military efficacy.

The disadvantages to this have already been shown to be irrelevant. Israel would no longer be targeting specific sites of military value (such as airports or military bases or Hezbollah outposts). The corollary, of course, is that Israel could no longer leaflet the targeted areas warning civilians to leave, minimizing the casualties, because they have no idea where the rockets are going to land anymore. But since Israel has gained no points for trying to actually target locations of military significance (indeed, has been criticized since these locales have had a large civilian presence), this is really a small loss compared to the large civilian gain. It would also bear very little connection to getting back the missing soldiers, compared to targeting transportation hubs so that they can't be smuggled out. But as the comments in the previous posts have made clear, the lives of these two men (and their dignity, since they're likely to face torture) is of small utilitarian consequence compared to the civilian damage Israel would be doing (indeed, it's "ethnocentric" to think otherwise!). All told, under the commentary I've received from my previous posts, it would be qualitatively better for Israel to randomly sow terror throughout Lebanon haphazardly, than it is for Israel to actually try and wage its attacks within the laws of war. And since we've had very stringent standards of anything less than perfect being immoral, we can conclude that Israel is not just unwise, but inarguably evil for not pursuing this course.

***

Stepping back into reality for the moment. I have become more and more convinced that there is literally no feasible response by Israel to the current crisis that would be acceptable to a large chunk of the world community. This is not a determination you want me or they to make. It's not that I don't see a moral difference between a targeted military strike and carpet-bombing the entirety of Southern Lebanon. It's just that I'm not convinced the critics do, and if they're going to denounce Israel with equal shrillness regardless of what it does, frustration builds to the breaking point, and it becomes that much easier to disregard even the sane voices advising caution.

In the through-the-looking-glass world we live in, otherwise smart, intelligent people advocate standards of morality which prefer indiscriminate shelling to targeted strikes on targets of military importance (no, they don't say it directly, but it is clearly implicit in the standards they give. And I have yet to see my friend Matt's blog have a decidated "Hezbollah: WTF?" post, or Iran, or Syria). I refuse to abide by those standards.

For the record, should we keep up on this kick of proportionate response meaning body equals body: 12 million people died in the Holocaust. In the conflict that brewed, in part, to save them, an additional 50 million people died, including 25 million civilians. Is that in proportion? Are we to say that World War II was unjust? Or perhaps when confronted with radical evil, with bona fide war, we might have to adjust our standards--not to act inhumanely, but to recognize that civilian casualties are an inevitability of war, and that forcing Israel to constantly be its own Sudetenland is not a strategy, not an option, and not permissible.

Tragic But Necessary

In the midst of pursuing an interesting angle on Iran, David Bernstein reveals a critical fact: Israel's justification for hitting Lebanese transportation hubs (the airport, highway systems, and the port blockade). The first is a simple war strategy issue: keep Hezbollah from being resupplied by its Iranian and Syrian backers. The second, though, I think is the kicker--to stop Hezbollah from moving the captive Israeli soldiers out of Lebanon, to Syria or Iran. Even if you don't believe that the first is time-critical, and Israel should have negotiated first (which I still think is a rather sick moral obligation--they have to let their enemies stock up arms for as long as it takes to pursue likely futile negotiations), the second one is obviously something that has to be acted on immediately. For one, Hezbollah's negotiating position improves tremendously if they get their prisoners out of Lebanon. For two, this is a tried-and-true tactic of Hezbollah--the Israeli prisoners they take have a disturbing tendency to get moved to Iran and "disappear" there. Waiting even a few days would likely insure the death of these men, probably in Iranian torture chambers. Israel was perfectly justified in hitting these targets immediately under any rational standard.

Even still, it's worth noting that Israel held off on hitting Beirut (aside from the airport) until after Hezbollah rockets hit the major Israeli city of Haifa. It's a mistake to act as if the only act of violence committed by Hezbollah was the kidnapping. They've launched hundreds of rockets over the border, targeting major Israeli cities (and, since Israel does not combine its military and civilian infrastructure, these are not legitimate military targets). All too often, these attacks are simply ignored, as if a constant hail of rocket attacks is something Israel should just be forced to bear and can never legitimately respond to. For too many, the "neutral baseline" of this conflict is a constant barrage of low-level Arab and/or Palestinian terror.

It's unfortunate that, in military conflicts, there are going to be civilian casualties. It is also considered unavoidable. It's particularly problematic when the civilians in question had little to no role in precipitating or otherwise endorsing the instigating event that caused the conflict in the first-place. Such was the case in, for example, the Pacific Campaign of World War II (what did the islanders do wrong?), or the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan (al-Qaeda was not the same as the Taliban, and the Taliban didn't have the support of the majority of the population, anyway), or really any situation where the actor in control of a region is one that is foreign or otherwise not democratically elected. Nevertheless, this can not be a bar to waging legal acts of war in response to naked provocation. So long as Israel takes all reasonable precautions to limit civilian casualties in its campaign, the fact that there are some cannot be disqualifying, anymore than civilian casualties in Okinawa or Saipan or Kabul would be.

As usual, the Washington Post coverage of this calamity (including Lebanon's response has been stellar. Their editorial this morning is also must reading.

UPDATE: It's also worth noting that, unless I'm mistaken, Lebanon does not recognize Israel and the two countries have no formal diplomatic relations. Another fact that would put a crimp in negotiating. The fact that the two countries are still in a formal state of war makes it difficult to demand that Israel trust the Lebanese military to give effective assistance in any hostage retrival operation.

Israel Snaps

What is starting to look a full-fledged war between (at least) Israel and Lebanon has been provoking some of my friends to ask me, in no uncertain terms: "WTF"?

I admit that the escalating Israeli response in Gaza in the wake of the Shalit kidnapping was beginning to give me pause. It seemed a bit too furious, too extreme, compared to how Israel normally responds to such provocations. And the civilian casualty rate was beginning to rise at an alarming rate. This was when I first began to articulate my "snapped" hypothesis. Israel finally lost its temper with being forced to make constant concessions for no apparent change in its security or in Palestinian willingness to compromise. Basically, they unilaterally withdrew from Gaza, and the Hamas response was "hurray--more space to launch rockets from." The Lebanon war is an extension of this--Israel has withdrawn from Lebanese territory for years, yet there has been no noticable reduction in Hezbollah rocket strikes in northern Israel. The kidnapping of Israeli soldiers up there was the last straw.

Yossi Klein Halevi is calling this "the next Israeli war." Part of me is inclined to cheer. Not because I like war, but because the ambigiousness of this half-guerilla war between a state and a quasi-state is maddening. Wars have rules, which can be applied to the combatants. Kidnapping a soldier is, actually, a legitimate war act, but only if you treat him consistent with international law (rather than having them simply "disappear"). But of course, it is a war act, fully warranting a total military reprisal. This is one of the reasons I supported unilateral withdrawal. The hope, of course, is that with a state Palestinians would finally prevail upon themselves to make peace. But, barring that, Israel could say: "Okay, you're a state now, with all the responsibilties that entails. That means if you attack us, it's an act of war, and we're going to act accordingly. Consider yourself warned." As Halevi puts it:

For the Israeli right, this is the moment of "We told you so." The fact that the kidnappings and missile attacks have come from southern Lebanon and Gaza--precisely the areas from which Israel has unilaterally withdrawn--is proof, for right-wingers, of the bankruptcy of unilateralism. Yet the right has always misunderstood the meaning of unilateral withdrawal. Those of us who have supported unilateralism didn't expect a quiet border in return for our withdrawal but simply the creation of a border from which we could more vigorously defend ourselves, with greater domestic consensus and international understanding. The anticipated outcome, then, wasn't an illusory peace but a more effective way to fight the war. The question wasn't whether Hamas or Hezbollah would forswear aggression but whether Israel would act with appropriate vigor to their continued aggression.

So I do believe that this response is justified. I am torn as to whether it is wise or advisable. I do think it might be an over-reaction, perhaps not in the long-term interests of the state, possibly disproportionate to the crime that occured. But what am I to say? As David Bernstein points out, imagine how France would respond if a neighboring country started kidnapping its soldiers and lobbing missiles across the border. American relations with Mexico would take a definitive turn for the worse if our neighbors began shelling El Paso.

This is the essential paradox of being an Israel supporter. It is so difficult to hold the line between what is just and what is wise. Because of the torrent of critiques asserted that Israel is fundamentally unjust, a "colonial" state, where Olmert = Hitler, we feel compelled to be vigorous in our defense, and we'd rather die than make common cause with those who think the existence of a Jewish state is a grave affront to the international order. We close ranks because the type of people who are saying "what Israel is doing is wrong" tend to phrase it as a proof of Israel's immorality, not of it's human fallability. I want to be able to say that Israel's actions are a poor but still justified decision, but there is no way to say that without giving fodder to those who would rather see the state not exist at all.

Hairstyle

PrawfsBlawg contributor Paul Horwitz blogs on a very interesting LA Times column about hair. Specifically, Black (African-American) hair. The gist of it is that the traits of Black hair (nappy, kinky) mean that certain hairstyles (braids, dreadlocks) are far easier than traditionally "White" hairstyles. Almost definitely not coincidentally, these hairstyles often are prohibited under corporate dress and grooming policies.

In general, a corporate policy targeting such "voluntary" aspects of racial identity is not subject to a Title VII challenge. This isn't due to anything actually written in the statute, but rather is a "judicially constructed definition" of Title VII's limits [Camille Gear Rich, Performing Racial and Ethnic Identity: Discrimination By Proxy and the Future of Title VII, 79 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 1134, 1138 (2004)]. There are excellent arguments to be made that this is a bad (descriptively and normatively) interpretation of Title VII, and that it should be interpreted to include sociological traits that are linked to certain races (the one's Horwitz cites to, and with which I strongly concur, are found in Kenji Yoshino's Covering, about which I blogged here).

Anyway, the kink (no pun intended) that is brought up in the article and Horwitz's commentary is that some of the institutions which are hostile to these Black hairstyles are in fact Black institutions (such as Hampton University and Black Enterprise magazine). Horwitz wonders:

But does the fact that the regulations she cites (aside from the egregious example of the Louisiana sheriff) come from black institutions complicate the picture? Does it suggest that "corporate" appearance norms are just that -- collective norms emerging from workplace culture, norms that may be objectionable but can't simply be reductively described as stemming from the callousness of a white majority? Or, as one of our commenters, John Kang, has suggested, does it suggest that even black communities can internalize a form of "white" aesthetics? Or is the answer still more complicated than either of those descriptions?

Unfortunately, Professor Kang's article is not yet available online, but my own opinion I suspect would be a modified version of his.

Imagine, say, an elite law firm that has a young African-American associate who wears his hair in dreadlocks. The partner in charge tells him that this hairstyle has to change. In doing so, he explains that it's not he who has the problem with it, that if it were up to him he would allow the styling, and even that he recognizes that this is an unfair burden that falls disproportionately on the firm's young Black associates. But, he says, it's likely that this sort of hair will be off-putting or give a bad impression to the type of clients they have and are trying to attract--older, white, corporate executives.

It is easy to extrapolate this to a Black institution, whose hypothetical words might argue either that (in the case of the magazine) that we need to be taken seriously by white advertisers, or financiers, or banks, or other magazines, and having a bunch of employees in dreads makes that task more difficult; or (in the case of the college) that the student's are going to be graduating into a world where many people unfairly make assumptions based on certain appearances, and we want to break you out of the habit now before you get hurt in the real world.

This understanding tags the cause of anti-African-American-hairstyles neither in "the callousness of a white majority," nor in "black communities...internaliz[ing] a form of 'white' aesthetics." It is, to be sure, a manifestation of White privilege, but in a more depersonalized form that does not depend on any individual actor simply demonstrating callousness or racism.

Indeed, I think this is an important observation to make. Much of what today preserves racial hierarchy (in the sense of providing privileges to Whites and disadvantaging Blacks) does not stem from simple racism and malice. Noting that a given policy entrenches racial hierarchy is not the same thing as saying that the persons who follow a certain policy are racists or virtual Klan members. Rather, racism perpetuates itself by institutions, cultural norms, and feedback loops which allow it to remain pervasive even as most individuals consciously condemn it. When we split off the tasks of "fighting racism" from "fighting racists", recognizing that the former won't always include the latter, then we can perhaps make some progress against the reflexive defensiveness many White people have towards the allegations that there still is racism in American society today.

More Immigration Insanity

Following up on the last post, the state of Colorado brings out more Republican's for whom immigration brings out their psychotic side. The Rocky Mountain state just passed one of the toughest anti-immigrant laws in the nation (in fact, Lou Dobbs noted it with approval in the same article dedicated to degrading the testimony of Peter Pace in the name of defending him). Among other things, the bill deprives illegal immigrants of most non-critical governmental services. But the bill is a compromise, and one of the compromises is that children under the age of 18 are exempt. Some Republicans are aghast:

But Rep. Debbie Stafford, R-Aurora, said at the caucus that she was upset that the bill exempted children under 18.

"We're helping create the next generation of terrorists," she said.

Umm...what? I thought the tactic of appending "terrorism" to every conservative policy proposal had long since jumped the shark, but apparently some GOP lawmakers haven't gotten the memo.

So. Making sure children don't die because they can't get healthcare = training terrorists.

Welcome to the twilight zone.

H/T: Kevin Drum

Poor Peter Pace

Poor Peter Pace. Yesterday, the top military officer in America gave stirring and moving testimony on the subject of immigration. Pace, whose parents were Italian immigrants, stressed the opportunities America gave them that are not available anywhere else. And he noted that the first marine he lost in combat--in the Vietnam war--was an immigrant. Pace was so overcome with emotion that he broke down in tears, unable to talk for about a minute during the hearing.

The natural conclusion is that this is an issue that General Pace feels very passionate about, and clearly one in which he is willing to defend vigorously the dignity of immigrants--many of whom are serving America in combat today. The unnatural conclusion, forwarded by CNN's Lou Dobbs, is that Pace's own testimony is an "insult" to Pace for which he deserves "an apology."

Dobbs, frankly, is going insane. He calls for the GOP and President Bush to rise "above politics", as if they are courting the famously powerful and fickle illegal immigrant voting bloc. Or perhaps they're courting the (non-sarcastically) powerful Latino voting bloc--but if they feel comradery with their undocumented brethren, maybe Mr. Dobbs shouldn't be so quick to dismiss "blur[ring] the line between legal and illegal immigration" as "unforgivable."

But regardless of that, I am gratified to hear General Pace present his views and his story. Even if it can't persuade those, like Dobbs, past the point of reason, perhaps it will have an impact on those who believe that one of America's greatest warriors might have a legitimate opinion on the subject. And there's nothing to apologize about that.