Ever since al Qaeda attacked the United States on September 11, 2001, the Bush Administration has been less than cooperative with the various investigations trying to find out what happened and how future attacks can be prevented. To cite just one example, the White House took a hatchet to the Congressional 9/11 report, blacking out twenty-eight full pages. (While the contents of the blacked-out pages are officially unknown, it was quickly leaked that they contained information on al Qaeda links with the Saudi royal family. Given the Bush family's long history of business connections with Riyadh, as well as the constant White House efforts to downplay the fact that most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi citizens, there was prompt speculation that this was done more to protect the royals than anything else.)
But as the Congressional investigation could only go so far, public opinion began calling for a truly independent and bipartisan inquiry into why the signs that al Qaeda was planning a major attack were so prevalent and yet so missed. The White House fought the establishment of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (popularly known as the 9/11 commission) tooth and nail until President Bush grudgingly created it, but afterwards treated it with foot-dragging, stonewalling and general non-cooperation.
Even given that the Bush Administration has a secrecy mania unseen since the Nixon years (for Exhibit A, one need look no further than Vice President Cheney's now-infamous Energy Task Force and his insistence that the public has no right to know who makes public policy), its refusal to work with the 9/11 commission has raised eyebrows. Bush and Cheney originally said they would meet with only with the two lead commissioners, do so privately and not under oath, and only for one hour apiece. They retreated – somewhat – after loud public grumbling, but the general air of contempt continues.
This week's public commission hearings are a case in point. Bush, Cheney and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice all flatly declined to testify publicly before the commission, and sent in their stead Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, CIA director George Tenet, and former counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke.
In his testimony, Clarke criticized both the Clinton and Bush Administrations for not doing more about al Qaeda, disappointing the blame-Clinton-for-everything crowd. But he also became something of a hero to many 9/11 families when he did something the Bush Administration never did – he publicly apologized for the security and intelligence failures that led to the attack. "To them who are here in the room," he said, "to those who are watching on television, your government failed you, those entrusted with protecting you failed you and I failed you... And for that failure, I would ask – once all the facts are out – for your understanding and for your forgiveness." His candor was a refreshing change from the Administration's usual we-did-nothing-wrong attitude.
Clarke's testimony came in the aftermath of the bombshell 60 Minutes interview in which he claimed that the Bush Administration all but ignored al Qaeda pre-9/11, then actively tried to pin the attacks on Iraq afterwards. In what has become an expected ritual, the White House responded with a take-no-prisoners defense, furiously smearing him as a partisan political hack despite his serving administrations both Republican and Democratic. Cheney went on Rush Limbaugh's radio show to assail Clarke, as did Rice on numerous morning TV news shows – all while claiming that she did not have the time to testify publicly before the commission.
Even compared to other White House assaults on disapproving former insiders, the immediacy and viciousness of the attack says that Clarke struck a nerve – and it's a dead giveaway that there is at least some truth to his allegations.
All of this begs an important question: what is the White House hiding? Is it just the Administration's way of saying, "bug off, we stole the 2000 election fair and square; we can do anything we want and we don't have to answer to the likes of you?" Is this simply standard operating procedure for a White House that believes everything should be done secretly and out of the public eye?
Or is it something else?
With the Bush Administration's steadfast refusal to answer any questions about 9/11 that even slightly deviate from the official version, one has to wonder why. Much speculation centers on a classified CIA briefing given at Bush's Texas ranch on August 6, only a month before the attacks, which reportedly warned Bush in explicit and specific terms that al Qaeda was planning a terrorist attack involving hijacked airliners. (The exact contents of the briefing are unknown, as the White House refuses to say anything about it.) The briefing was apparently ignored, as nothing was done.
Some of the wilder accusations claim that Bush et al knew 9/11 was coming but deliberately let it happen, claiming that he "needed" the attack to boost his poll numbers or some such reason. This is, to put it mildly, hard to swallow. The Bush Administration may be politically tone-deaf or even energetically dumb at times, but saying that it is actively malicious with American civilian lives is just too much.
Rather, the explanation for the Bush Administration's intransigence appears to be a mixture of two factors:
1. The complete refusal to pay any attention to anything the Clinton Administration handed down, concerning al Qaeda or anything else.
2. The equally complete refusal ever to admit that they just might have been wrong, regardless of the consequences.
In other words, political pigheadedness combined with rank incompetence. It's a bad combination for any government, but especially so for a government led by a man who calls himself a "wartime President."
The truth behind the Administration's pre-9/11 actions does not appear to be the sinister web woven by some of Bush's more far-out opponents. Far more sadly, it seems to be simple ineptitude, but the White House's see-no-evil attitude, combined with the scorched-earth approach to anyone who contradicts them, threatens to turn it into something far worse.
3/26/2004
3/24/2004
Rough Week
The Bush Administration has had a difficult week. In the space of just seven days, there have been no less than three embarrassing and/or potentially damaging revelations which call into serious question the Administration's veracity, judgment and just plain common sense:
1. The Department of Health and Human Services was caught distributing several phony news clips to local TV stations across the country, featuring fake journalists touting the benefits of the new Medicare prescription-drug law. Several dozen stations ran the clips before learning that it was a propaganda piece and not actual news. When the scam was discovered, HHS tried to get out of it by calling it a "video news release."
2. Richard Foster, Medicare's head cost analyst, revealed that before the Medicare bill was passed, he was ordered to hide the bill's true cost and ignore all Congressional requests for cost information. His supervisor also threatened to fire him should he ever disclose that the books were cooked. It was only after the bill became law that the real ten-year estimates, totaling $140 billion more than what Congress was told, were released. (Unlike other Administration figures who blew the whistle and were smeared for it, Foster was initially protected only because Republicans as well as Democrats are outraged by the White House's bait-and-switch move. That may be changing, however, as the White House attack machine shifts into gear.)
3. Richard Clarke, the Administration's former counter-terrorism chief, said in a 60 Minutes interview that the White House ignored the al Qaeda threat before 9/11 despite his increasingly frantic efforts to make them listen. After the terrorist attacks they sought to blame Iraq instead and thus make possible the pre-9/11 goal of overthrowing Saddam Hussein. (According to Clarke, Donald Rumsfeld even tried to justify it by claiming that "there aren't any good targets in Afghanistan, and there are lots of good targets in Iraq.") After the interview, the White House hit squad went into high gear, attacking Clarke as a disgruntled former employee and pro-Democrat political hack, despite the fact that he had served administrations both Democratic and Republican since the 1980s.
One has to wonder what on Earth is going on in there. Does the Administration really not understand that this is the real world? In the real world, most people tend to look down on fake news, phony bookkeeping and using a terrorist attack to implement a separate agenda. If the White House keeps on blundering about like this, John Kerry won't have to do a thing to win the November election. He'll just have to sit back and let the Bush campaign do the job for him.
1. The Department of Health and Human Services was caught distributing several phony news clips to local TV stations across the country, featuring fake journalists touting the benefits of the new Medicare prescription-drug law. Several dozen stations ran the clips before learning that it was a propaganda piece and not actual news. When the scam was discovered, HHS tried to get out of it by calling it a "video news release."
2. Richard Foster, Medicare's head cost analyst, revealed that before the Medicare bill was passed, he was ordered to hide the bill's true cost and ignore all Congressional requests for cost information. His supervisor also threatened to fire him should he ever disclose that the books were cooked. It was only after the bill became law that the real ten-year estimates, totaling $140 billion more than what Congress was told, were released. (Unlike other Administration figures who blew the whistle and were smeared for it, Foster was initially protected only because Republicans as well as Democrats are outraged by the White House's bait-and-switch move. That may be changing, however, as the White House attack machine shifts into gear.)
3. Richard Clarke, the Administration's former counter-terrorism chief, said in a 60 Minutes interview that the White House ignored the al Qaeda threat before 9/11 despite his increasingly frantic efforts to make them listen. After the terrorist attacks they sought to blame Iraq instead and thus make possible the pre-9/11 goal of overthrowing Saddam Hussein. (According to Clarke, Donald Rumsfeld even tried to justify it by claiming that "there aren't any good targets in Afghanistan, and there are lots of good targets in Iraq.") After the interview, the White House hit squad went into high gear, attacking Clarke as a disgruntled former employee and pro-Democrat political hack, despite the fact that he had served administrations both Democratic and Republican since the 1980s.
One has to wonder what on Earth is going on in there. Does the Administration really not understand that this is the real world? In the real world, most people tend to look down on fake news, phony bookkeeping and using a terrorist attack to implement a separate agenda. If the White House keeps on blundering about like this, John Kerry won't have to do a thing to win the November election. He'll just have to sit back and let the Bush campaign do the job for him.
3/22/2004
Good Riddance
Once again, Israel has committed a horrible crime, this time by eliminating master Hamas terrorist Ahmed Yassin. Evidently, Israel still does not understand that it is not like other countries; its job is to behave like the good ghetto Jew of old, to study Talmud and never protest, let alone strike back, when it is attacked. At least, this is what the rest of the world is saying.
Hogwash. Israel is a sovereign nation, and as such has the right, indeed the duty, to defend its citizens from attack. And Yassin, as the head of the terrorist group Hamas, had the blood of hundreds of Israelis on his hands; this was long overdue.
(Before anyone complains of a double standard for applauding Israel’s raid against Palestinian terrorists while condemning the American invasion of Iraq, I should point out that the two situations are not comparable. Israel is striking back against the terrorists who have not only been proved to have slaughtered Israeli civilians, they brag about it. The US, on the other hand, invaded a country which has never been shown to have any connection with anti-US terrorism that is not more than a decade old.)
Hamas has never hidden its ultimate goal of the annihilation of Israel and the expulsion of its Jewish citizens. Yassin was often described in news reports as “a senior Hamas activist.” He was many things, but he was not an activist. An activist hands out pamphlets, or writes letters, or carries a sign as part of a peaceful protest.
Yassin was a terrorist. From his mouth came the directives ordering Palestinians to strap explosives to their bodies and walk into restaurants, buses and other public places. These human bombs, brainwashed by their own leaders to believe that killing Jews was the path to heaven, were instructed to seek out the heaviest concentration of civilians before detonating. Men, women, children, entire families – as long as they were Jewish, they were fair game for Yassin’s death squads.
Israel repeatedly attempted to get the Palestinian Authority to hold up its end of the Oslo and Wye River agreements by arresting Yassin and other terrorists, a move the PA always refused to do. So Israel had to take matters into their own hands; if the PA will not do the job, Israel will do it for them. The PA is, naturally, protesting Israel’s latest move as an “extrajudicial execution,” not bothering to mention that Yassin presided over hundreds of “extrajudicial executions” conducted as Hamas terrorist attacks. But his victims were only Jews, so who cares?
The media is predictably filled with laments and condemnations, how Israel has “buried the peace process,” how “the attack could herald a dangerous new phase in the dragging conflict,” and other apocalyptic warnings. But after every terrorist outrage inflicted on a café in Tel Aviv or a market in Jerusalem, we never hear complaints that the Palestinians have “buried the peace process.” Instead, we hear calls for Israeli “restraint.” God forbid the Jews should fight back.
Media reports constantly hold up Hamas as a sort of social-welfare organization, as if providing food to Palestinians can possibly provide an ethical balance to killing Jews. And as always we hear that old chestnut, “the cycle of violence,” as if Palestinian terrorism and Israeli self-defense are somehow morally equivalent.
Why is Israel, alone among the nations, consistently forbidden to defend itself? Any other country in the world would be cheered for taking action against the killers of its citizens, just as when the United States rightly struck back against al Qaeda and the Taliban after 9/11. But Israel, again alone among the nations, is Jewish. And as the world’s only Jewish state, Israel must struggle daily to survive, not just against those who seek its physical destruction but against those who seek its moral de-legitimization. Those who claim that Israel does not have the right to fight back against those who actively kill and maim its citizens claim that Israel is not a legitimate country.
This is not, of course, to say that no criticism of Israel is ever allowed; censure of Israel’s actions is sometimes (but not always) entirely valid. But there is a considerable difference between condemning Israel’s actions and condemning Israel’s existence. And when one denounces Israel for taking the same actions that any other country does without complaint, one is in fact attacking Israel’s very existence as a sovereign nation.
Ahmed Yassin ordered the murders of hundreds of people and not only showed no remorse but was proud of it. Israel should not apologize for its act of self-defense.
Hogwash. Israel is a sovereign nation, and as such has the right, indeed the duty, to defend its citizens from attack. And Yassin, as the head of the terrorist group Hamas, had the blood of hundreds of Israelis on his hands; this was long overdue.
(Before anyone complains of a double standard for applauding Israel’s raid against Palestinian terrorists while condemning the American invasion of Iraq, I should point out that the two situations are not comparable. Israel is striking back against the terrorists who have not only been proved to have slaughtered Israeli civilians, they brag about it. The US, on the other hand, invaded a country which has never been shown to have any connection with anti-US terrorism that is not more than a decade old.)
Hamas has never hidden its ultimate goal of the annihilation of Israel and the expulsion of its Jewish citizens. Yassin was often described in news reports as “a senior Hamas activist.” He was many things, but he was not an activist. An activist hands out pamphlets, or writes letters, or carries a sign as part of a peaceful protest.
Yassin was a terrorist. From his mouth came the directives ordering Palestinians to strap explosives to their bodies and walk into restaurants, buses and other public places. These human bombs, brainwashed by their own leaders to believe that killing Jews was the path to heaven, were instructed to seek out the heaviest concentration of civilians before detonating. Men, women, children, entire families – as long as they were Jewish, they were fair game for Yassin’s death squads.
Israel repeatedly attempted to get the Palestinian Authority to hold up its end of the Oslo and Wye River agreements by arresting Yassin and other terrorists, a move the PA always refused to do. So Israel had to take matters into their own hands; if the PA will not do the job, Israel will do it for them. The PA is, naturally, protesting Israel’s latest move as an “extrajudicial execution,” not bothering to mention that Yassin presided over hundreds of “extrajudicial executions” conducted as Hamas terrorist attacks. But his victims were only Jews, so who cares?
The media is predictably filled with laments and condemnations, how Israel has “buried the peace process,” how “the attack could herald a dangerous new phase in the dragging conflict,” and other apocalyptic warnings. But after every terrorist outrage inflicted on a café in Tel Aviv or a market in Jerusalem, we never hear complaints that the Palestinians have “buried the peace process.” Instead, we hear calls for Israeli “restraint.” God forbid the Jews should fight back.
Media reports constantly hold up Hamas as a sort of social-welfare organization, as if providing food to Palestinians can possibly provide an ethical balance to killing Jews. And as always we hear that old chestnut, “the cycle of violence,” as if Palestinian terrorism and Israeli self-defense are somehow morally equivalent.
Why is Israel, alone among the nations, consistently forbidden to defend itself? Any other country in the world would be cheered for taking action against the killers of its citizens, just as when the United States rightly struck back against al Qaeda and the Taliban after 9/11. But Israel, again alone among the nations, is Jewish. And as the world’s only Jewish state, Israel must struggle daily to survive, not just against those who seek its physical destruction but against those who seek its moral de-legitimization. Those who claim that Israel does not have the right to fight back against those who actively kill and maim its citizens claim that Israel is not a legitimate country.
This is not, of course, to say that no criticism of Israel is ever allowed; censure of Israel’s actions is sometimes (but not always) entirely valid. But there is a considerable difference between condemning Israel’s actions and condemning Israel’s existence. And when one denounces Israel for taking the same actions that any other country does without complaint, one is in fact attacking Israel’s very existence as a sovereign nation.
Ahmed Yassin ordered the murders of hundreds of people and not only showed no remorse but was proud of it. Israel should not apologize for its act of self-defense.
3/19/2004
Iraq: One Year Later
One year ago today, after months of saber-rattling and drum-beating, the United States invaded Iraq in what was called a "preventive war." (While other countries were involved, the vast majority of troops, not to mention the driving forces behind the invasion, were American. For all intents and purposes, this was and is an American war.)
We were told that Iraq posed an imminent threat to American security. We were told that Saddam Hussein possessed vast arsenals of chemical and biological weapons, and was working on building nuclear weapons. We were told that Iraq could pass such weapons to terrorists. We were told that Saddam was in league with al Qaeda. We were told that we could not wait for another 9/11, and indeed it was implied through endless repetition that Iraq was involved in 9/11.
And none of it was true.
No weapons of mass destruction have been found anywhere in the country. Supposed WMD finds have all been deflated as false alarms. No Baghdad-al Qaeda connection has been discovered. Iraq was in no way connected with 9/11.
(Speaking of 9/11, it now seems that invading Iraq was never a reaction to the terrorist attacks, as the Administration has always publicly claimed. In Ron Suskind's recent book, The Price of Loyalty, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill revealed that at his first National Security Council meeting less than two weeks after taking office in January 2001, Bush ordered his staff to "go find me a way" to attack Iraq.)
Revelations as to how the White House manipulated and distorted pre-war intelligence reports pour out almost daily. CIA analysts say the Administration pressured them to deliver the "right" intelligence, that is, intelligence supporting an invasion. When they could not do so, the Office of Special Plans, a Pentagon analysis group reporting solely to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, went over the raw intelligence data, picked out only the most damaging tidbits regardless of their actual relevance or even reality, and discarded the rest. (The New Yorker last year published a penetrating article about the OSP.)
The National Intelligence Estimate, which was released in October 2002 and played such a major role in convincing Congress to give President Bush blank-check authorization for war, actually had two versions. The unclassified version, the one released to Congress and the public, clearly and frighteningly said Iraq had WMD, and lots of it. But a classified version was far more equivocal in its assessments, saying Iraq might have WMD but it could not be proved. This version was solely for senior Administration figures, although parts of it were declassified and released only after the invasion.
The White House has shown no enthusiasm for any real inquiry as to how, in the words of former chief U.S. weapons-hunter David Kay, "we were almost all wrong." (Kay, who quit in January after reporting that no WMD were found and concluding that there were none to find, has since gone on record urging Bush to "come clean" about the pre-war rationales and that his refusal to do so is "going to hurt American credibility.") It was only after severe pressure that the Administration agreed to create a commission to examine the pre-war intelligence, but deliberately excluded from its mandate any examination of how that intelligence was used by the White House. This is not terribly surprising, given where the intelligence came from.
The primary (and in many cases, only) source of recent pre-war intelligence from inside Iraq, Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, has been shown to be less than reliable. Even before the war, CIA and State Department analysts were deeply suspicious of the INC, warning the White House that they were a bunch of craven opportunists who cared only about seizing power for themselves, and that nothing they said could be trusted. But the INC had what CIA and State lacked: a willing audience in the White House and the Pentagon, and they told the Administration exactly what they wanted to hear.
Long after virtually every piece of intelligence passed by the INC to the Administration has proven to be wildly exaggerated or outright false, you and I, through our tax dollars, are giving the INC $3-4 million a year in under-the-table payments. And surprise, surprise: Newsday reported on February 15 that "U.S. authorities in Iraq have awarded more than $400 million in contracts to a start-up company that has extensive family and, according to court documents, business ties with Ahmed Chalabi, the Pentagon favorite on the Iraqi Governing Council."
Chalabi makes no attempt to dispel the perception that his INC deliberately lied to get what they wanted. In fact, he bragged in a recent interview with the London Daily Telegraph, "As far as we're concerned, we've been entirely successful. That tyrant Saddam is gone and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before is not important."
Um...yes, it is. Hundreds of Americans and thousands of Iraqis were killed in the war and its aftermath. Such a loss of life demands an honest public accounting of how we got here, no matter where it may lead.
We were told that Iraq posed an imminent threat to American security. We were told that Saddam Hussein possessed vast arsenals of chemical and biological weapons, and was working on building nuclear weapons. We were told that Iraq could pass such weapons to terrorists. We were told that Saddam was in league with al Qaeda. We were told that we could not wait for another 9/11, and indeed it was implied through endless repetition that Iraq was involved in 9/11.
And none of it was true.
No weapons of mass destruction have been found anywhere in the country. Supposed WMD finds have all been deflated as false alarms. No Baghdad-al Qaeda connection has been discovered. Iraq was in no way connected with 9/11.
(Speaking of 9/11, it now seems that invading Iraq was never a reaction to the terrorist attacks, as the Administration has always publicly claimed. In Ron Suskind's recent book, The Price of Loyalty, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill revealed that at his first National Security Council meeting less than two weeks after taking office in January 2001, Bush ordered his staff to "go find me a way" to attack Iraq.)
Revelations as to how the White House manipulated and distorted pre-war intelligence reports pour out almost daily. CIA analysts say the Administration pressured them to deliver the "right" intelligence, that is, intelligence supporting an invasion. When they could not do so, the Office of Special Plans, a Pentagon analysis group reporting solely to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, went over the raw intelligence data, picked out only the most damaging tidbits regardless of their actual relevance or even reality, and discarded the rest. (The New Yorker last year published a penetrating article about the OSP.)
The National Intelligence Estimate, which was released in October 2002 and played such a major role in convincing Congress to give President Bush blank-check authorization for war, actually had two versions. The unclassified version, the one released to Congress and the public, clearly and frighteningly said Iraq had WMD, and lots of it. But a classified version was far more equivocal in its assessments, saying Iraq might have WMD but it could not be proved. This version was solely for senior Administration figures, although parts of it were declassified and released only after the invasion.
The White House has shown no enthusiasm for any real inquiry as to how, in the words of former chief U.S. weapons-hunter David Kay, "we were almost all wrong." (Kay, who quit in January after reporting that no WMD were found and concluding that there were none to find, has since gone on record urging Bush to "come clean" about the pre-war rationales and that his refusal to do so is "going to hurt American credibility.") It was only after severe pressure that the Administration agreed to create a commission to examine the pre-war intelligence, but deliberately excluded from its mandate any examination of how that intelligence was used by the White House. This is not terribly surprising, given where the intelligence came from.
The primary (and in many cases, only) source of recent pre-war intelligence from inside Iraq, Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, has been shown to be less than reliable. Even before the war, CIA and State Department analysts were deeply suspicious of the INC, warning the White House that they were a bunch of craven opportunists who cared only about seizing power for themselves, and that nothing they said could be trusted. But the INC had what CIA and State lacked: a willing audience in the White House and the Pentagon, and they told the Administration exactly what they wanted to hear.
Long after virtually every piece of intelligence passed by the INC to the Administration has proven to be wildly exaggerated or outright false, you and I, through our tax dollars, are giving the INC $3-4 million a year in under-the-table payments. And surprise, surprise: Newsday reported on February 15 that "U.S. authorities in Iraq have awarded more than $400 million in contracts to a start-up company that has extensive family and, according to court documents, business ties with Ahmed Chalabi, the Pentagon favorite on the Iraqi Governing Council."
Chalabi makes no attempt to dispel the perception that his INC deliberately lied to get what they wanted. In fact, he bragged in a recent interview with the London Daily Telegraph, "As far as we're concerned, we've been entirely successful. That tyrant Saddam is gone and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before is not important."
Um...yes, it is. Hundreds of Americans and thousands of Iraqis were killed in the war and its aftermath. Such a loss of life demands an honest public accounting of how we got here, no matter where it may lead.
3/18/2004
Having a Gay Old Time
Molly Ivins, the outspokenly opinionated Texas columnist, once said, "You pick up the paper in the morning and it's kind of like finding Fidel Castro in the refrigerator. Hard to know what to think."
Such was my reaction when Rhea County, Tennessee decided to accuse gays of "crimes against nature" and bar them from living in the county. It was in pursuit of this lofty goal that the county commissioners unanimously passed a motion asking the state legislature to amend Tennessee law as such.
"We need to keep them out of here," Commissioner J.C. Fugate is quoted as saying.
It is not terribly surprising that such a thing is coming out of Rhea County; after all, it was the location of the infamous Scopes "Monkey Trial" of 1925. In that memorable proceeding, John Scopes was accused and convicted of teaching Darwinian evolutionary theory to his high-school science class, violating a state law barring such teaching in favor of Biblical creationism. (The trial served as the inspiration for the stage show Inherit the Wind, which later became a classic film starring Spencer Tracy, Frederic March and Gene Kelly.)
On the one hand, it's events like these that make punditry so much easier, not to mention a lot more fun; it's a gold mine of material. On the other hand – well, what more is there to say? In one fell swoop, Fugate and his fellow commissioners have made Rhea County a national laughingstock, just as it was seventy-nine years ago. After the story hit the wires, the county commission hastily scheduled a vote to reconsider the motion.
I think it's a safe bet that this one will pass as well.
(Followup: It did. In fact, the motion passed unanimously after a full three minutes of debate.)
Such was my reaction when Rhea County, Tennessee decided to accuse gays of "crimes against nature" and bar them from living in the county. It was in pursuit of this lofty goal that the county commissioners unanimously passed a motion asking the state legislature to amend Tennessee law as such.
"We need to keep them out of here," Commissioner J.C. Fugate is quoted as saying.
It is not terribly surprising that such a thing is coming out of Rhea County; after all, it was the location of the infamous Scopes "Monkey Trial" of 1925. In that memorable proceeding, John Scopes was accused and convicted of teaching Darwinian evolutionary theory to his high-school science class, violating a state law barring such teaching in favor of Biblical creationism. (The trial served as the inspiration for the stage show Inherit the Wind, which later became a classic film starring Spencer Tracy, Frederic March and Gene Kelly.)
On the one hand, it's events like these that make punditry so much easier, not to mention a lot more fun; it's a gold mine of material. On the other hand – well, what more is there to say? In one fell swoop, Fugate and his fellow commissioners have made Rhea County a national laughingstock, just as it was seventy-nine years ago. After the story hit the wires, the county commission hastily scheduled a vote to reconsider the motion.
I think it's a safe bet that this one will pass as well.
(Followup: It did. In fact, the motion passed unanimously after a full three minutes of debate.)
3/17/2004
The Credibility Chasm
With the differences between pre-war claims on Iraq and what has been discovered since the invasion growing ever starker, the White House is trying to get out of what is politely called a "credibility gap," wavering between plowing ahead with the same apocalyptic rhetoric and simply denying that they ever said it. When he was asked by ABC's Diane Sawyer in December 2003 about the chasm between the pre-war claims of massive arsenals of weapons of mass destruction and the post-war discoveries of no WMD at all, President Bush dismissively replied, "So what's the difference?"
Vice President Cheney is a particular advocate of this damn-the-facts-full-speed-ahead doctrine, blithely claiming that nothing has changed. For example, in a January 22 interview on National Public Radio, Cheney claimed that, "We know, for example, that prior to our going in that he had spent time and effort acquiring mobile biological weapons labs, and we're quite confident he did, in fact, have such a program. We've found a couple of semi trailers at this point which we believe were, in fact, part of that program." However, this had been universally debunked months earlier; no such labs have actually been found. (This is hardly unusual for Cheney, who kept insisting that Iraq was behind the 9/11 attacks long after the supposed evidence was discredited. Even Bush had to say publicly that this was not the case.)
Before the invasion, the Administration kept up a constant drumbeat of propaganda claiming that Iraq was an imminent threat to American security. For example:
• "The Iraqi regime is a threat of unique urgency." (President Bush, October 2, 2002)
• "No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq." (Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, September 19, 2002)
• "This man poses a much graver threat than anybody could have possibly imagined." (President Bush, September 26, 2002)
• "Iraq is busy enhancing its capabilities in the field of chemical and biological agents, and they continue to pursue an aggressive nuclear weapons program. These are offensive weapons for the purpose of inflicting death on a massive scale, developed so that Saddam Hussein can hold the threat over the head of any one he chooses." (Vice President Cheney, August 29, 2002)
But after the war, when it became clear just how decrepit the Iraqi military really was and how the much-ballyhooed weapons arsenal did not exist, the White House began a truly Orwellian campaign to convince the public that they never said any such thing. Usually, such efforts revolved around the claim that the actual phrase "imminent threat" was supposedly never used.
Oh, yes it was:
• "Absolutely." (White House spokesman Ari Fleischer answering whether Iraq was an "imminent threat," May 7, 2003)
• "This is about imminent threat." (White House spokesman Scott McClellan, February 10, 2003)
• "Well, of course he is." (White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett responding to the question "is Saddam an imminent threat to U.S. interests, either in that part of the world or to Americans right here at home," January 26, 2003)
• "Some have argued that the nuclear threat from Iraq is not imminent -- that Saddam is at least 5-7 years away from having nuclear weapons. I would not be so certain. And we should be just as concerned about the immediate threat from biological weapons. Iraq has these weapons." (Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, September 18, 2002)
In his State of the Union speech in January, Bush coined the utterly Clintonian phrase "weapons of mass destruction-related program activities" while trying to duck the fact that no actual weapons had been found. In his disastrous Meet the Press interview on February 8, he floundered about looking for an explanation:
"David Kay has found the capacity to produce weapons. Now, when David Kay goes in and says we haven't found stockpiles yet, and there's [sic] theories as to where the weapons went. They could have been destroyed during the war. Saddam and his henchmen could have destroyed them as we entered into Iraq. They could be hidden. They could have been transported to another country, and we'll find out... But David Kay did report to the American people that Saddam had the capacity to make weapons. Saddam Hussein was dangerous with weapons. Saddam Hussein was dangerous with the ability to make weapons. He was a dangerous man in the dangerous part of the world."
Bush did not mention that Kay, the chief U.S. weapons hunter until he quit in January, actually reported that Iraq's "capacity to produce weapons" was in complete chaos, and nothing has been found to contradict it. He seems completely unaware that his credibility has been shredded. He is viewed with deep suspicion by a large segment of the American public, and by the world at large.
Far from a get-tough "war on terror," the true legacy of the Iraq invasion, even more than the hundreds of American and thousands of Iraqi dead, is that the next time Bush proclaims an imminent threat from another country he will not be believed. And if the threat is real next time, we will all pay the price.
Vice President Cheney is a particular advocate of this damn-the-facts-full-speed-ahead doctrine, blithely claiming that nothing has changed. For example, in a January 22 interview on National Public Radio, Cheney claimed that, "We know, for example, that prior to our going in that he had spent time and effort acquiring mobile biological weapons labs, and we're quite confident he did, in fact, have such a program. We've found a couple of semi trailers at this point which we believe were, in fact, part of that program." However, this had been universally debunked months earlier; no such labs have actually been found. (This is hardly unusual for Cheney, who kept insisting that Iraq was behind the 9/11 attacks long after the supposed evidence was discredited. Even Bush had to say publicly that this was not the case.)
Before the invasion, the Administration kept up a constant drumbeat of propaganda claiming that Iraq was an imminent threat to American security. For example:
• "The Iraqi regime is a threat of unique urgency." (President Bush, October 2, 2002)
• "No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq." (Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, September 19, 2002)
• "This man poses a much graver threat than anybody could have possibly imagined." (President Bush, September 26, 2002)
• "Iraq is busy enhancing its capabilities in the field of chemical and biological agents, and they continue to pursue an aggressive nuclear weapons program. These are offensive weapons for the purpose of inflicting death on a massive scale, developed so that Saddam Hussein can hold the threat over the head of any one he chooses." (Vice President Cheney, August 29, 2002)
But after the war, when it became clear just how decrepit the Iraqi military really was and how the much-ballyhooed weapons arsenal did not exist, the White House began a truly Orwellian campaign to convince the public that they never said any such thing. Usually, such efforts revolved around the claim that the actual phrase "imminent threat" was supposedly never used.
Oh, yes it was:
• "Absolutely." (White House spokesman Ari Fleischer answering whether Iraq was an "imminent threat," May 7, 2003)
• "This is about imminent threat." (White House spokesman Scott McClellan, February 10, 2003)
• "Well, of course he is." (White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett responding to the question "is Saddam an imminent threat to U.S. interests, either in that part of the world or to Americans right here at home," January 26, 2003)
• "Some have argued that the nuclear threat from Iraq is not imminent -- that Saddam is at least 5-7 years away from having nuclear weapons. I would not be so certain. And we should be just as concerned about the immediate threat from biological weapons. Iraq has these weapons." (Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, September 18, 2002)
In his State of the Union speech in January, Bush coined the utterly Clintonian phrase "weapons of mass destruction-related program activities" while trying to duck the fact that no actual weapons had been found. In his disastrous Meet the Press interview on February 8, he floundered about looking for an explanation:
"David Kay has found the capacity to produce weapons. Now, when David Kay goes in and says we haven't found stockpiles yet, and there's [sic] theories as to where the weapons went. They could have been destroyed during the war. Saddam and his henchmen could have destroyed them as we entered into Iraq. They could be hidden. They could have been transported to another country, and we'll find out... But David Kay did report to the American people that Saddam had the capacity to make weapons. Saddam Hussein was dangerous with weapons. Saddam Hussein was dangerous with the ability to make weapons. He was a dangerous man in the dangerous part of the world."
Bush did not mention that Kay, the chief U.S. weapons hunter until he quit in January, actually reported that Iraq's "capacity to produce weapons" was in complete chaos, and nothing has been found to contradict it. He seems completely unaware that his credibility has been shredded. He is viewed with deep suspicion by a large segment of the American public, and by the world at large.
Far from a get-tough "war on terror," the true legacy of the Iraq invasion, even more than the hundreds of American and thousands of Iraqi dead, is that the next time Bush proclaims an imminent threat from another country he will not be believed. And if the threat is real next time, we will all pay the price.
3/16/2004
They Don't Get It
One of the reasons why the first President Bush lost the 1992 election was the widespread public perception that his Administration was simply out of touch with the needs and challenges faced by American families. From Patrick Buchanan's prime-time "culture war" oratory at the GOP convention to Bush's much-publicized close encounter with a grocery scanner, the Republicans basically went around wearing a sign saying "I have no idea what you're going through, nor do I really care." The voters did care, however, and went to the polls accordingly.
Fast-forward twelve years; as in 1992, a Bush is running for re-election in the face of a sluggish economy. And also as in 1992, we see more and more evidence that the White House is hopelessly disconnected from the everyday lives of American families who don't have piles of money. With jobs vanishing overseas at an alarming rate, Gregory Mankiw, chair of the President's Council of Economic Advisors, went on record in February as saying that outsourcing is actually good for the economy, calling it "generally a positive contribution to economic prosperity." The theory is that outsourced jobs are replaced by new, better-paying jobs, but when the promised replacement jobs don't appear, it becomes little more than a cruel joke. (Mankiw retreated after the ensuing uproar, saying, "My lack of clarity left the wrong impression that I praised the loss of U.S. jobs...it is regrettable whenever anyone loses a job.")
In February, the U.S. economy created only 21,000 new jobs, less than one-tenth the number required to maintain the workforce as a whole. And all but 1,000 of those new jobs were due to increased hiring by state and local governments. Let us rewind to 2001, when the second President Bush was selling his tax-cut plan. We were promised that business owners and industry executives would take the money from those cuts and use it to hire more employees and spend more on capital equipment. Everyone benefits, right?
Wrong. What actually happened is that they pocketed the gains instead of investing them. A few statistics should put this in perspective. Since the recession "officially" ended in November 2001, corporate profits are up 30%, and since 2002, dividends paid by S&P 500 companies have increased 19%. But for those of us who live paycheck to paycheck (meaning a large majority of American workers), 2.3 million jobs have disappeared since the recession officially ended, and average weekly earnings rose just one half of one percent, far behind the rate of inflation. Even when tax-cut savings were spent on new equipment, much of the purchased apparatus was designed to allow fewer people to do the same work.
We are told not to worry, that job growth is just around the corner. But the White House has used the same "just be patient" line for more than a year now, and it's just not happening. While the economy is officially in recovery mode, very few benefits of that recovery are trickling down to the vast majority of us who work hard, live honestly, and just try to get by.
The White House's response to this state of affairs is to attempt a distraction. Traditionally, the way to redirect attention away from bad news has been to launch a splendid little war, but we've already got that in Iraq, and it's turned out to be anything but splendid or little. President Bush tried using the unquestioned achievement of the Mars rovers to propose a lunar base and a manned Mars flight, but that didn't fly - too many people saw it for the diversion it was. The flurry over Janet Jackson's revealing "wardrobe malfunction" was good for a few weeks of headlines, but that too ran out of gas.
Bush and his handlers then turned back to the same culture-war rhetoric used in 1992: demonize gays and lesbians, this time with a proposed constitutional amendment barring same-sex marriages. But it didn't work back then, and given the fury of openly gay Republicans combined with the notable lack of enthusiasm among the GOP rank and file, it's not working now. The campaign then made what they thought was a sure-fire move: air TV ads showing Bush as the 9/11 candidate and using footage from Ground Zero - but that imploded when the families of various 9/11 victims took exception to using the tragedy as political fodder.
It seems clear that the second Bush Administration just doesn't get it, precisely as the first one didn't. It remains to be seen whether they will straighten up and fly right, or whether the party is headed for electoral defeat in November.
Fast-forward twelve years; as in 1992, a Bush is running for re-election in the face of a sluggish economy. And also as in 1992, we see more and more evidence that the White House is hopelessly disconnected from the everyday lives of American families who don't have piles of money. With jobs vanishing overseas at an alarming rate, Gregory Mankiw, chair of the President's Council of Economic Advisors, went on record in February as saying that outsourcing is actually good for the economy, calling it "generally a positive contribution to economic prosperity." The theory is that outsourced jobs are replaced by new, better-paying jobs, but when the promised replacement jobs don't appear, it becomes little more than a cruel joke. (Mankiw retreated after the ensuing uproar, saying, "My lack of clarity left the wrong impression that I praised the loss of U.S. jobs...it is regrettable whenever anyone loses a job.")
In February, the U.S. economy created only 21,000 new jobs, less than one-tenth the number required to maintain the workforce as a whole. And all but 1,000 of those new jobs were due to increased hiring by state and local governments. Let us rewind to 2001, when the second President Bush was selling his tax-cut plan. We were promised that business owners and industry executives would take the money from those cuts and use it to hire more employees and spend more on capital equipment. Everyone benefits, right?
Wrong. What actually happened is that they pocketed the gains instead of investing them. A few statistics should put this in perspective. Since the recession "officially" ended in November 2001, corporate profits are up 30%, and since 2002, dividends paid by S&P 500 companies have increased 19%. But for those of us who live paycheck to paycheck (meaning a large majority of American workers), 2.3 million jobs have disappeared since the recession officially ended, and average weekly earnings rose just one half of one percent, far behind the rate of inflation. Even when tax-cut savings were spent on new equipment, much of the purchased apparatus was designed to allow fewer people to do the same work.
We are told not to worry, that job growth is just around the corner. But the White House has used the same "just be patient" line for more than a year now, and it's just not happening. While the economy is officially in recovery mode, very few benefits of that recovery are trickling down to the vast majority of us who work hard, live honestly, and just try to get by.
The White House's response to this state of affairs is to attempt a distraction. Traditionally, the way to redirect attention away from bad news has been to launch a splendid little war, but we've already got that in Iraq, and it's turned out to be anything but splendid or little. President Bush tried using the unquestioned achievement of the Mars rovers to propose a lunar base and a manned Mars flight, but that didn't fly - too many people saw it for the diversion it was. The flurry over Janet Jackson's revealing "wardrobe malfunction" was good for a few weeks of headlines, but that too ran out of gas.
Bush and his handlers then turned back to the same culture-war rhetoric used in 1992: demonize gays and lesbians, this time with a proposed constitutional amendment barring same-sex marriages. But it didn't work back then, and given the fury of openly gay Republicans combined with the notable lack of enthusiasm among the GOP rank and file, it's not working now. The campaign then made what they thought was a sure-fire move: air TV ads showing Bush as the 9/11 candidate and using footage from Ground Zero - but that imploded when the families of various 9/11 victims took exception to using the tragedy as political fodder.
It seems clear that the second Bush Administration just doesn't get it, precisely as the first one didn't. It remains to be seen whether they will straighten up and fly right, or whether the party is headed for electoral defeat in November.
3/12/2004
The Passion of Mel Gibson
With all the verbiage flying over Mel Gibson's movie Lethal Weapon 5: The Cross - oops, I mean The Passion of the Christ - I thought I'd add my opinion, having put myself through the ordeal of actually seeing the film.
A few years ago, Gibson appeared in an episode of The Simpsons in which he films a remake of the Frank Capra classic Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Of course, Homer gets involved and talks Gibson into not only scrapping the original filibustering finale but replacing it with a bloodbath in which Gibson's character wipes out most of Congress. I had much the same feeling while seeing The Passion.
Now, we all know how the story goes, so I'm not giving away any plot points. A good Jewish boy hangs out with his friends, runs afoul of the wrong people, and ends up getting nailed to a tree for his troubles. The question on everyone's mind is, "How does it treat the Jews?" The short answer is: not well. To fully realize how and why, we have to step back for a minute and take a look at history.
Jews have been blamed for the execution of Jesus for two millennia because of a line in Matthew in which a Jewish mob, clamoring for Jesus' death, shouts out, "let his blood be on us and our children." Christians throughout the Common Era have used that as a license to blame all Jews during all times for the death of Jesus, with hideous results. Around Easter time, priests shouted from their pulpits that Jesus' killers were still alive and living in the Jewish section of town. During the Middle Ages, Church-sponsored Passion Plays dramatized the trial and execution of Jesus, always saying that the Jews did it. Such plays, sermons and other pronouncements were all too often followed by pogrom and slaughter.
After centuries of enthusiastically stoking the fires of Jew-hatred, the Catholic Church finally turned away from that in 1965 when the Second Vatican Council (popularly known as Vatican II) changed official Church doctrine to discard the ancient charge of deicide: "What happened in his passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today...the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures."
This is where Gibson comes in. Most Catholics embraced the Vatican II reforms, but some rejected them and broke away from Rome to start the Traditionalist Catholic movement, which considers all Church teachings and pontiffs since then to be illegitimate. One can reasonably conclude that since they claim to throw out all of the Vatican II reforms, they also reject the Church's refutation of the deicide charge. This is the movement to which Gibson and his family belong. (His father, Hutton Gibson, exposed himself as a genuine cartoon character by saying the Holocaust was a hoax and that the Pope is a Jewish puppet, among other nonsense. While I don't believe in blaming the son for the sins of the father, I should point out that Mel Gibson has repeatedly refused to disclaim his father's remarks.)
Even post-Vatican II, the Catholic Church allows the production of Passion Plays, but has a series of rules for the depiction of Jews. Gibson's Passion violates every single one of them, especially: "Jews should not be portrayed as avaricious (e.g., in Temple money-changer scenes); blood thirsty (e.g., in certain depiction's of Jesus' appearances before the Temple priesthood or before Pilate); or implacable enemies of Christ (e.g., by changing the small "crowd" at the governor's palace into a teeming mob)."
Which brings us back to the film. Gibson's Passion is really just a big-screen Passion Play, with everything that implies. And yes, it is undeniably filled with the sort of classically anti-Semitic elements that turned the medieval Passion Plays into festivals of Jew-hating. While Gibson does not actually say in so many words that "the Jews did it," that and a buck will get you a cup of coffee.
Specific anti-Jewish elements in the film include:
Gibson claims to have made the film as a faithful depiction of the Gospels, but it is filled with elements which are mentioned in the Gospels only briefly (especially scenes which are drawn out) or not at all. This begs a further side question: how faithful are the Gospels to history? Biblical scholars mostly agree that the Gospels were not eyewitness accounts written as the events happened, but were in fact written decades later - after the Romans crushed the Jewish revolt and destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem in the year 70 CE. Scholars point out that the Gospels were thus written in such as way as to shift as much of the blame as possible from the Romans, whose favor the early Christians were trying to curry, to the Jews, who had already proved their disloyalty to Rome. None of this is reflected in the film.
The other big topic of conversation about the film is, of course, the violence. So as not to invite nausea, I will be considerably more concise here.
The Jesus story has appeared on the big screen before, from The Greatest Story Ever Told and The Last Temptation of Christ to Jesus Christ Superstar and Godspell. But none of them wallows in sadomasochistic violence and pain as does this Jesus. Blood spurts, flesh flies, whips thwack, nails squish and the really gory parts are always shown in slow motion to draw them out. The result is an almost pornographic orgy of brutality, from the scene where the Romans whip Jesus until he is literally a bloody mess (it lasts eleven minutes) to the stumbling and grisly route to Golgotha (nineteen minutes) to the final nailing, crucifixion and death (another nineteen minutes) and everything in between.
The word "passion" comes from the Latin word "passus," meaning "suffered," and Gibson wants his viewers to experience the suffering right along with the principals. The movie does not in any way depict the life of Jesus, and shows moments from it only in brief flashbacks amid the violence and gore of his execution.
Rather than celebrate life, Gibson glories in death, revels in blood, and makes it all too clear who he thinks is to blame for the execution of his Savior. His Christianity is not the one where Jesus tells his followers to turn the other cheek and to love their enemies. Rather, it is filled with pain, suffering, and invective, making a cruel mockery of the notion that religion is a balm for the soul.
It has been said that any work of art is a window into the artist's soul. If The Passion of the Christ is such a window, Mel Gibson's soul is filled with an obsessive need to cast blame and a blood-spattered desire to suffer for what he sees as his religious duty. Unfortunately, he makes the rest of us suffer along with him.
A few years ago, Gibson appeared in an episode of The Simpsons in which he films a remake of the Frank Capra classic Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Of course, Homer gets involved and talks Gibson into not only scrapping the original filibustering finale but replacing it with a bloodbath in which Gibson's character wipes out most of Congress. I had much the same feeling while seeing The Passion.
Now, we all know how the story goes, so I'm not giving away any plot points. A good Jewish boy hangs out with his friends, runs afoul of the wrong people, and ends up getting nailed to a tree for his troubles. The question on everyone's mind is, "How does it treat the Jews?" The short answer is: not well. To fully realize how and why, we have to step back for a minute and take a look at history.
Jews have been blamed for the execution of Jesus for two millennia because of a line in Matthew in which a Jewish mob, clamoring for Jesus' death, shouts out, "let his blood be on us and our children." Christians throughout the Common Era have used that as a license to blame all Jews during all times for the death of Jesus, with hideous results. Around Easter time, priests shouted from their pulpits that Jesus' killers were still alive and living in the Jewish section of town. During the Middle Ages, Church-sponsored Passion Plays dramatized the trial and execution of Jesus, always saying that the Jews did it. Such plays, sermons and other pronouncements were all too often followed by pogrom and slaughter.
After centuries of enthusiastically stoking the fires of Jew-hatred, the Catholic Church finally turned away from that in 1965 when the Second Vatican Council (popularly known as Vatican II) changed official Church doctrine to discard the ancient charge of deicide: "What happened in his passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today...the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures."
This is where Gibson comes in. Most Catholics embraced the Vatican II reforms, but some rejected them and broke away from Rome to start the Traditionalist Catholic movement, which considers all Church teachings and pontiffs since then to be illegitimate. One can reasonably conclude that since they claim to throw out all of the Vatican II reforms, they also reject the Church's refutation of the deicide charge. This is the movement to which Gibson and his family belong. (His father, Hutton Gibson, exposed himself as a genuine cartoon character by saying the Holocaust was a hoax and that the Pope is a Jewish puppet, among other nonsense. While I don't believe in blaming the son for the sins of the father, I should point out that Mel Gibson has repeatedly refused to disclaim his father's remarks.)
Even post-Vatican II, the Catholic Church allows the production of Passion Plays, but has a series of rules for the depiction of Jews. Gibson's Passion violates every single one of them, especially: "Jews should not be portrayed as avaricious (e.g., in Temple money-changer scenes); blood thirsty (e.g., in certain depiction's of Jesus' appearances before the Temple priesthood or before Pilate); or implacable enemies of Christ (e.g., by changing the small "crowd" at the governor's palace into a teeming mob)."
Which brings us back to the film. Gibson's Passion is really just a big-screen Passion Play, with everything that implies. And yes, it is undeniably filled with the sort of classically anti-Semitic elements that turned the medieval Passion Plays into festivals of Jew-hating. While Gibson does not actually say in so many words that "the Jews did it," that and a buck will get you a cup of coffee.
Specific anti-Jewish elements in the film include:
- All the Jews have stereotypically "Jewish" appearances (dark and ugly complexions, big noses, etc) and wear prayer shawls or the functional equivalent worn over their heads at all times. The handsome Jesus and his equally attractive disciples, on the other hand, do not, setting them apart from their fellow Jews.
- Numerous and seemingly endless scenes show crowds of Jews screaming abuse at Jesus, demanding his execution and attacking him on the route to Golgotha.
- The Jewish priests clearly smirk and watch with satisfaction as Jesus is whipped and then crucified by Roman soldiers.
- The Romans are depicted as cruel oafs, but the Jews (especially the priests) are shown as crafty and manipulative.
- The Roman governor Pontius Pilate is depicted as a sensitive and thoughtful soul who is unwilling to order Jesus' death, but gives in and allows the execution to proceed after being shouted down by a Jewish mob. (The historical Pilate was notoriously cruel and more than once was recalled to Rome after particularly bloody episodes.)
- The scene in which Pilate literally washes his hands of the matter has the audio of Jews shouting out the "his blood be on us and our children" line in Aramaic, but the subtitle was deleted. It remains to be seen whether foreign distributions will do the same.
Gibson claims to have made the film as a faithful depiction of the Gospels, but it is filled with elements which are mentioned in the Gospels only briefly (especially scenes which are drawn out) or not at all. This begs a further side question: how faithful are the Gospels to history? Biblical scholars mostly agree that the Gospels were not eyewitness accounts written as the events happened, but were in fact written decades later - after the Romans crushed the Jewish revolt and destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem in the year 70 CE. Scholars point out that the Gospels were thus written in such as way as to shift as much of the blame as possible from the Romans, whose favor the early Christians were trying to curry, to the Jews, who had already proved their disloyalty to Rome. None of this is reflected in the film.
The other big topic of conversation about the film is, of course, the violence. So as not to invite nausea, I will be considerably more concise here.
The Jesus story has appeared on the big screen before, from The Greatest Story Ever Told and The Last Temptation of Christ to Jesus Christ Superstar and Godspell. But none of them wallows in sadomasochistic violence and pain as does this Jesus. Blood spurts, flesh flies, whips thwack, nails squish and the really gory parts are always shown in slow motion to draw them out. The result is an almost pornographic orgy of brutality, from the scene where the Romans whip Jesus until he is literally a bloody mess (it lasts eleven minutes) to the stumbling and grisly route to Golgotha (nineteen minutes) to the final nailing, crucifixion and death (another nineteen minutes) and everything in between.
The word "passion" comes from the Latin word "passus," meaning "suffered," and Gibson wants his viewers to experience the suffering right along with the principals. The movie does not in any way depict the life of Jesus, and shows moments from it only in brief flashbacks amid the violence and gore of his execution.
Rather than celebrate life, Gibson glories in death, revels in blood, and makes it all too clear who he thinks is to blame for the execution of his Savior. His Christianity is not the one where Jesus tells his followers to turn the other cheek and to love their enemies. Rather, it is filled with pain, suffering, and invective, making a cruel mockery of the notion that religion is a balm for the soul.
It has been said that any work of art is a window into the artist's soul. If The Passion of the Christ is such a window, Mel Gibson's soul is filled with an obsessive need to cast blame and a blood-spattered desire to suffer for what he sees as his religious duty. Unfortunately, he makes the rest of us suffer along with him.
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