Taking a Stand

James Carville’s 1992 words of political wisdom, “It’s the economy, stupid,” are an even more appropriate  analysis of today’s American electoral politics than they were in 1992.  Americans are scared, as Robert Reich recently wrote, “Voters are petrified of losing their jobs, their homes and what’s left of their savings.”

There is really nothing that a President can say in a State of The Union Address to dispel these fears. It’s an important speech, but it’s still just a speech, words.  According to Nancy Wyman, our State Comptroller, Connecticut has lost 94,000 jobs since the recession started in 2008 and 21,000 jobs in just the last six months! So long as unemployment continues to grow, as long as banks remain reluctant to loan money to businesses and to consumers, the fears of Americans are justified, and they will continue to “fire” the politicians who in power; the election in Massachusetts shows that they are still in the process of firing President Obama and my Democratic Party.  This termination may very well mean a three year work in progress unless things change.

President Obama’s recipe for economic recovery is stimulus spending. In this economy this means deficit spending.  The public, however, is wary of out-of-whack budgeting, and it is doubtful there will be Congressional support for this type of deficit spending.

What is shocking to me is that in all of the punditry and analysis of the State of The Union Address there has been so little outcry over our massive defense spending and our continued military spending to fight wars in the Middle East; defense spending has been exempted from any budget cuts.

At this time, with so many Americans unemployed or “underemployed”, can we really afford to undertake to rebuild two Middle Eastern countries? The U.S. spends almost as much on military spending as the rest of the world combined, and spends about six-times more than the second largest spender, China, a nation of a billion people. 44 percent of all 2009 tax dollars went to fund military spending, compared to a tiny fraction, just 7 seven percent, which was spent on jobs and education.

Make Us Healthy

And while it is true that Connecticut benefits from military spending and from military jobs, while military spending creates about 12 jobs per $1 million in spending, clean energy investments generate around 17 jobs, health care creates 20, and education produces 29 jobs for every $1 million of spending.

What are we accomplishing in Iraq and Afghanistan for our investment? In Afghanistan we have to counter a history of groups battling for political control. As my friend Scott Bates of the Center for National Policy recently wrote, “We are asking them (the Afghans) to put the past aside and work together, especially in the threat posed by the reconstituted Taliban. That is a tall order in one of the poorest nations on earth, where a generation has grown up knowing only war.”

Taliban Fighters

Are we making America safer from the threat posed by al-Quiada by our presence in Afghanistan? U.S. Intelligence officials admit that there are more al-Quiada members in places like Somalia and Yemen than Afghanistan. And Iraq? Has our commitment and spending in Iraq made America safer from terrorists? Civil war between the Sunnis and Shia still rages, six hard years after “Mission Accomplished” was declared.  Only 44 percent of Americans still believe that the war in Afghanistan is still worth fighting, according to a November ABC News/Washington Post poll, 52 percent say the war is “not worth it.”

President Bush aboard The USS Lincoln, "Mission Accomplished"

Given the pain felt in Connecticut and across the country it is time to reconsider our priorities, reconsider the exempt status of the military budget from the budget cutter’s scalpel and reconsider our financial commitment to rebuilding Afghanistan and Iraq.   Back to Carville:  It’s the economy, stupid.  And it’s our economy first. And  I mean OUR.

United States Attorney General Eric Holder and The Obama Administration were presented with a choice. They could have chosen to submit Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and the four other alleged 9/11 terrorists to face prosecution either in federal court by federal prosecutors before a federal judge conducted under federal law and procedure, or in the alternative, could have had them face a trial before a military tribunal.

Either decision would have been legally justifiable.

It would have been justifiable to try them in a military tribunal because, as the grieving family members of the 9/11 victims rightly point out, Mohammed, Al Quaida and radical Islam have declared war against the United States. The 9/11 attacks were an intentional expression of a wartime agenda, and Mohammed was a key general in that war. The Americans murdered on 9/11 were innocent victims of an assault on the United States and the American way of life.

The murders, however, were also a violation of federal law, the crimes were committed here on our soil in New York City and not abroad. Mohammed, not an American citizen, is classified in international law as an “unlawful combatant,” not a prisoner of war (POW). Under the Geneva Convention of 1949, a person is a POW if they: (a) are commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates; (b) have a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance; (c) carry arms openly; and (d) conduct their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.

Since Mohammed is clearly not a POW but a foreigner alleged to have plotted a horrific and barbaric mass murder on our soil, kidnapping Americans and murdering them with American civilian airline jets, either system of prosecution is justifiable. Neither system will provide true justice for this rogue act of barbarism. As with all horrific crimes that shock our sense of a civilized human existence, any procedures with rules and decorum will feel out of place and elevate Mohammed to a level he seemingly does not deserve.

So why do it?

A civilian trial in a United States District Court will be held to an even higher level of decorum than a military tribunal. The rules of evidence in federal court are stricter than in a military tribunal. The following evidence is allowed in military tribunals but will not be allowed in a federal civilian trial: coerced testimony, hearsay testimony, and written statements not subject to cross-examination. Federal judges and prosecutors have, since 1993, accumulated an impressive record of trying and prosecuting hundreds of suspected terrorists. They prosecuted in a federal court in New York Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the first World Trade Center bombing, Omar Adbel Rahman,  the “blind sheik,” and a federal court in Virginia put on trial Zacarias Moussaoui, the “20th hijacker.”

At this time in history the United States needs to further repair an image tarnished during eight years of the Bush Administration. That administration and the manner it treated military prisoners gave minimal rights to the accused, allowed torture and had to be reined in a number of times by the Supreme Court, a court known to be otherwise conservative when it comes to the rights of the accused. In one such strong rebuke, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority in Boumediene v. Bush, “the laws and constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force in extraordinary times. Liberty and security can be reconciled; and in our system they are reconciled within the framework of the law.”

Mohammed would like nothing more than for us to summarily execute him; he craves for us to imitate his barbarism. He wants us to do that so that he and his fellow radicals can hold us up as international oppressors. The appropriate way for us to defy him is to make no apologies, to hold our heads up high and conduct the most fair, dignified proceeding possible. Not because we are weak, but because we are strong. And in acting with elevated rules of procedure and decorum, and conducting an open and public trial in a federal courtroom in New York we will demonstrate to the world, and history shall record, that we are a nation where the overriding principles are the rule of law, of fairness and a dedication to human dignity.

The memory of the victims of 9/11 deserve nothing less.

Can We Blame Oprah for Putting Charla Nash on TV?

Charla Nash appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show on November 11. Nash is the victim of the horrific attack by a 200-pound adult chimpanzee owned by her friend and employer Sandra Herold in my hometown of Stamford, Connecticut. Nash deserves a world of credit for the appearance, as it took a tremendous amount of courage for her to appear. The disfiguration to her face is shocking.

Paramedics responding to the February 16, 2009 911 call said they found pieces of Nash’s fingers strewn on the floor and her hands looked as though they had been through a meat grinder. “The monkey had ripped off her entire upper jaw, had ripped off her nose, which as hanging by a thread,” said Dr. Kevin Miller, who treated Nash when she taken to the emergency room. “We found extensive dirt, chimp fur, and chimp teeth implanted in her bone.” Nash is missing both hands, but had a thumb surgically replaced on her left hand. Doctors removed her eyes and grafted a piece of her leg to where her nose used to be.

Nash could have attempted to continue to avoid the spotlight and nobody would blame her. Her every move is followed by cameras as the community gathers for a digital glimpse. Many people, certainly those of us who live in Stamford, were curious to view her injuries. I have to admit feeling embarrassed and shamed, however, for being drawn to watch the interview and I wish I never did. It is quite a spectacle to display this tragedy on national television, regardless of the fact that it has been done with Nash’s permission. It’s like a massive international rubber necking delay on the electronic interstate.

What does it say about a society which insists on marveling at pain and suffering? And that the tragedy happened in the prosperous suburban City of Stamford? That same City that had to rescue a bankrupt center for the arts with trash talking daytime television?

What have we become? Today is not a proud day for broadcasting, for journalism or for Stamford. It’s not a proud day for any of us, me included, who did not have the self discipline to stay away.