2013-05-20T12:43:25-04:00 James Heffernan http://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=james-heffernan Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for James Heffernan Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3275883 2013-05-16T12:16:45-04:00 2013-05-16T15:11:20-04:00

James Heffernan http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-heffernan/
In spite of all that has been written and spoken so far about the rescue of Amanda Berry and two other young women in Cleveland last week, most reporters have overlooked the most fascinating part of what was said by her second rescuer, Charles Ramsey, who lives next door to the house where the kidnapped Amanda had been held for ten years in brutal captivity.

I call Ramsey her second rescuer because he came along only after the locked front door to the house was kicked in by Angel Cordero, who lives across the street. Though Cordero surely deserves more credit than he has so far received, he speaks only Spanish, so the spotlight of attention has shone largely on Ramsey, and no wonder: his firsthand account of the liberation of Amanda Berry is nothing less than riveting.

Ramsey himself is an unlikely rescuer, especially of women. A repeatedly convicted felon, he served two years behind bars in the 1990s for drug abuse, criminal trespassing, and receiving stolen property, and in 2003, he was sentenced to eight more months for repeatedly abusing his now-estranged wife Rochelle. Ironically, this may help to explain why he first thought Amanda Berry might have been the victim of domestic abuse. But aside from his criminal past, his age (43), and his present job (dishwasher), the most important thing about Charles Ramsey may be the simple fact that he is black. Since Amanda Berry is white, Ramsey believed that nothing but desperation could explain why she threw herself into his arms:

"I knew something was wrong," he told an AP interviewer, "when a little pretty white girl ran into a black man's arms. Something is wrong here. Dead giveaway. Dead giveaway. Either she's homeless or she's got problems. That's the only reason."

To feel the full force of Ramsey's statement, you have to know something about the history of race relations in this nation and in particular about the role that white woman have played -- or been made to play -- in the incrimination and lynching of black men. And let us remember that lynching typically involved not just hanging but also burning and mutilation: death by public torture.

Of the 3,446 black people who were lynched between 1882 and 1968, the Tuskeegee Institute reports that just over 25 percent -- more than 850 -- were lynched for rape or attempted rape. In Cleveland itself, a black man suspected of rape was forcibly taken from jail in June of 1897 and lynched before a crowd of 9,000 people.

The crime avenged by most of these lynchings was probably no more than a mild affront to the dignity of a white woman. In William Faulkner's "Dry September," a short story set in rural Mississippi and published in 1930, the mere rumor that a black man named Will has done or said "something" to a middle-aged white spinster spells his doom. When the town barber ventures to imply that the spinster may be given to sexual fantasies, another man asks, "Won't you take a white woman's word before a nigger's?" The white woman's word is all he needs to justify Will's death.

Twenty-five years later, the fate of Faulkner's fictional Will was re-enacted in fact by Emmet Till, a 14-year-old boy from Detroit who was visiting relatives in Mississippi in August of 1955. For reportedly flirting with a young white woman in a grocery store, he was mutilated and murdered.

If it is painful to ponder what happened to Emmet Till, it may be simply baffling to recall what happened eighteen years ago to O.J. Simpson, the black professional football star whose glory days have long since turned to dust. (He's back in the news right now only because he's trying to overturn the kidnapping and armed robbery conviction that sent him to prison in 2008.) In 1995, Simpson was tried for the murder of his white ex-wife Nicole Brown, whom he had more than once previously abused. In the face of evidence that included what Nicole once told police about him in a recorded call -- "He's going to kill me, he's going to kill me" -- Simpson was acquitted by a jury largely composed of black women. Their verdict, which astounded and enraged so many people, can be at least partly explained by the history of lynching. When the chief prosecutor -- a white woman named Marcia Clarke -- repeatedly asked a group of black women to take the word of a white woman against a black man, she unwittingly reminded them how generations of white women had delivered black men to lynch mobs. That was all the jurors needed to acquit this one.

How much of this history does Charles Ramsey know? I have no idea. But he knew enough to realize instinctively that when a young white woman runs into the arms of a black man, "something is wrong here. Dead giveaway." Yet something here went amazingly right. After all the years in which black men have been killed for merely talking the wrong way to white women, let alone embracing them, this black man is universally and justly acclaimed for rescuing the "pretty white girl" who flung herself into his arms. For her he was not a rapist, nor even a convicted wife-abuser, but a sudden refuge from ten years of misery and fear.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3225592 2013-05-09T12:38:36-04:00 2013-05-09T13:03:20-04:00

James Heffernan http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-heffernan/
Last October, a pregnant Indian woman died in an Irish hospital after being denied an abortion that might well have saved her life. To prevent any more such deaths, the Irish parliament is now considering a bill that would legalize abortion under very strict conditions. Aside from being allowed to terminate the pregnancy of a woman who would otherwise commit suicide, doctors could abort a fetus if -- and only if -- two doctors (one of them an obstetrician or gynecologist) certified that continued pregnancy posed a "real and substantial risk" to the life of the woman.

But this scrupulously humane bill has been roundly condemned by the Roman Catholic church.

In a joint statement, the Irish Catholic Bishops have called it "a dramatically and morally unacceptable change to Irish law." In other words, regardless of her conscience, her religious beliefs, her personal values and her elemental will to live, the bishops are determined to sacrifice on the altar of fetal sanctity any Irish woman whose pregnancy threatens her life.

At the Vatican, the screw of ecclesiastical intimidation has been further turned by Cardinal Raymond L. Burke, former archbishop of St. Louis and now head of the Vatican Court. In February, Cardinal Burke urged Irish priests to deny communion to any legislator who votes for the bill: to excommunicate any lawmaker who votes to de-criminalize a life-saving operation.

In making this statement, Cardinal Burke echoes the words of Cardinal Charles Chaput of Denver, Colorado, who in 2004 threatened to excommunicate any Catholic in his diocese who voted for John Kerry. (Though Kerry was then the first Roman Catholic candidate for president in 44 years, he did not think that abortion should be re-criminalized, which made him intolerable for the archbishop.) Just as Archbishop Chaput did before him, Cardinal Burke wholly ignores the crucial distinction between sin and crime, and thereby forgets -- if he ever knew it -- something clearly stated by two of the greatest saints in the history of Christendom: Augustine and Aquinas.

As I have explained before on this site, both of these saints argued against criminalizing all moral evils -- even grave ones. While Aquinas considered prostitution a "mortal sin" binding the soul to spiritual death, he also insisted that civil authorities should tolerate it because -- in the words of Augustine, which Aquinas quotes --"if you do away with harlots, the world will be convulsed with lust." Since human law aims not to promote eternal salvation but to ensure temporal order, Aquinas wrote, it cannot "forbid all vicious acts."

What then would Augustine or Aquinas say about a law that aims to save the life of a pregnant woman by tolerating what the Catholic church of our time considers a vicious act? Would the two great saints insist on excommunicating any legislator who voted for such a law? Or would they assign the Irish bishops and Cardinal Burke to a crash course in moral theology?

You be the judge.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3194202 2013-05-01T15:49:09-04:00 2013-05-02T11:29:23-04:00

James Heffernan http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-heffernan/
On Friday, April 19, with all of Boston under lockdown while police closed in on the one surviving marathon bomber, Dartmouth welcomed prospective members of next fall's entering class --"prospies"-- with a program called Dimensions: an official welcome to the Class of 2017, a rousing salute to the class itself and all the "diverse experiences" that Dartmouth will offer them. But around 10:30 that night, just as Boston was celebrating the capture of the bomber, the opening of a show staged for the prospies was hijacked by a small band of student activists shouting that "Dartmouth has a problem": a problem with homophobia, racism, sexism, the grossly inadequate reporting of sexual assault, and -- for good measure -- the evils of capitalism.

The vocal bomb thus detonated by the activists -- aka #REALTALK -- soon provoked a volley of online firecrackers. Starting in the early hours of the day after the protest, a Dartmouth message site called bored@baker featured anonymous comments like "wish I had a shotgun, would have blown those hippies away" and "it's women like these who deserve to get raped." In response to such comments, the Dean of the College, Charlotte Johnson, publicly deplored the harassment of the protesters, insisting that "threats and intimidation -- even if made anonymously or online" -- are "never justified."

More dramatically, the Dartmouth administration staged its own version of the Boston lockdown by cancelling all classes on Wednesday, April 24 so that all members of the Dartmouth community could gather to discuss its "commitment to debate that promotes . . . the value of diverse opinions." But two days later, the Chairman of the Dartmouth Board of Trustees, Steve Mandel, issued a campus-wide email that seemed to find the shouts of the protestors just as objectionable as the words of their detractors. "Neither the disregard for the Dimensions Welcome Show nor the online threats that followed," he wrote "represent what we stand for as a community." Both cases, then, may be subject to "disciplinary action."

But let's view this episode in the light of two large murals. At least part of what Dartmouth stands for as a community has long been represented by one of them: a sequence of frescoes that drew howls of dismay from Dartmouth alumni when they were first unveiled in 1934. Though it has just been designated a national historic landmark, José Clemente Orozco's EPIC OF AMERICAN CIVILIZATION -- painted in what is now called the Orozco Room of Dartmouth's Baker Library -- gores the ox of traditional American pieties with a trenchancy that makes the shouts of the Dimensions protestors sound like the cooing of doves.

Besides showing how Christianity helped to destroy the indigenous populations of the Americas rather than "saving" them, as the founder of Dartmouth (Eleazer Wheelock) set out to do in 1768, Orozco's mural savages American capitalism. In one of its panels, a Zapata-like revolutionary proudly defies the rapacity of Yankee capitalists bent over like rooting pigs -- greedily clutching vast bags of coins with cannons and beribboned generals stacked up around them. It is hard to imagine a fiercer attack on the unholy alliance of money and guns that has shaped so much of the history of U.S. involvement in Latin America. And it is almost as hard to imagine why Orozco himself was not promptly disciplined for assaulting the values of the Dartmouth community -- or at least of the many alumni who wanted the murals whitewashed away.

To his great credit, Dartmouth's President Ernest Martin Hopkins refused to hide them, and to this day they remain to exemplify one face of the college: fearless of debate and dissent, it not only tolerates but FEATURES a searing critique of the very values on which the college was founded and on which America traditionally stands.

But three years after Orozco completed his project, the college commissioned a Saturday Evening Post illustrator named Walter Beach Humphrey (Dartmouth Class of 1914) to produce a very different set of murals in a dining room known as the Hovey Grill. Painted to illustrate a drinking song written by Richard Hovey (Class of 1885), they salute Dartmouth's founder for allegedly trading "five hundred gallons" of rum for a tract of Native American land and thus introducing its occupants to the joys of college life. From a large silver bowl, the painted Wheelock freely pours a golden stream of rum for a partying crowd of would-be native Americans. They include several bare-breasted young women (one of whom is trying to read a book upside down), a feather-crowned "brave" whose bare pale muscular chest sports a fresh green Dartmouth D, and -- shaking Wheelock's hand -- "the Sachem of the Wah-hoo-wahs," a fake tribe conjured from a Dartmouth football cheer.

This is the other face of Dartmouth: lusty, hard-drinking, strenuously heterosexual, and all too eager to turn native American peoples into a sign of what used to be called the Dartmouth Indian but now, perhaps, might simply be called the Dartmouth party animal. In other words, the Hovey murals represent Eleazer Wheelock showing native Americans -- the aboriginal prospies -- how to get bombed.

In the late seventies, Dartmouth belatedly realized that given its original mission to educate native Americans, it ought to treat them with respect and also, not incidentally, treat women -- all women -- as something more than sexual playmates for Dartmouth men. As a result, the Hovey murals were eventually hidden behind solid doors, though they can still be found online. What can never be fully suppressed, however, is the carefree racism and macho sexism they displayed -- both of which resurfaced, in variant strains, right after the protests made at the Dimensions show.

Dartmouth, in other words, is a place of two murals, one open and one hidden. But to understand its own history, the Dartmouth community must reckon with them both.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3132931 2013-04-22T14:30:20-04:00 2013-04-22T14:30:27-04:00

James Heffernan http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-heffernan/
Henry Fielding (1707-1754), English novelist

Eleazer Wheelock (1711-1779), founder of Dartmouth College (in 1769)

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), German philosopher

Madame de Staël (1766-1817), Swiss-born saloniste, novelist, and literary critic

Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924), leader of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia

Bettie Page (1923-2008) , American pinup queen, playmate of the month in the January 1955 issue of PLAYBOY.

Answer: like yours truly, they were all born on this day. So here's a little toast to the birthday boys and girls of April 22:

To Henry Fielding, author of TOM JONES,
Whose novels titillate our funny bones.
To Eleazer Wheelock, next in line
Who founded Dartmouth on a hill of pine.
To Kant, who taught us all just how to live
By categorical imperative;
To Madame Staël, who piqued Napoleon
By dashing off a novel called DELPHINE,
And then enraged the great French emperor
By speaking up for German literature.
To Lenin next, who led the Bolsheviks
To set the stage for Stalin's dirty tricks;
To Bettie Page, the busty pinup queen,
Like all the others, no more to be seen.
And last, to her and all the other five,
I beg to add one more--who's still alive.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2922800 2013-03-21T10:32:10-04:00 2013-03-21T10:32:16-04:00

James Heffernan http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-heffernan/ New York Times, a new generation of conservatives has now taken up arms for marriage, which means -- of course -- raising arms against the right to marry a member of one's sex.

With the Supreme Court poised to hear arguments against the voter-approved California ban on same-sex marriage, more than one hundred notable Republicans have urged the court to affirm that same-sex marriage is a constitutional right. Besides these mostly older Republicans, who have lately seen what I believe to be the light, 45 percent of young Republicans (between 18 and 44) agree with them.

But a small band of young conservatives -- rising stars in the firmament of "traditional marriage" -- do not. In the face of all the pressures to redefine marriage so as to make gay people "happy," as one of them puts it, they believe that they must turn a negative message into a positive one, that they must stop bashing gays and gay rights and start trumpeting the virtues of traditional marriage.

Unfortunately, they have not yet found a way of going positive without going negative. They do not yet see a way of endorsing heterosexual marriage without opposing gay marriage. They do not yet see that gay marriage threatens "traditional marriage" far less than what they seldom mention at all, which is divorce.

Wikipedia tells us that in 2002 (the latest year surveyed), 29 percent of first marriages among women under 45 ended in separation, divorce, or annulment within ten years. More recently PolitiFact.com estimated last year that the probability of marriage ending in divorce at some point is 40 percent to 50 percent. (Not long ago, one couple I know split up just two years short of their golden wedding anniversary.) So statistics tend to support the widely shared assumption that about half of all marriages eventually break up.

What then are the proponents of traditional marriage doing to make it last longer? They're attacking same-sex marriage. Just consider what has been said by Ryan T. Anderson, the 31-year-old author of areport on marriage just issued by the Heritage Foundation: "In redefining marriage to include same-sex couples," says Anderson ". . . you're excluding the norm of sexual complementarity. Once you exclude that norm, the three other norms -- which are monogamy, sexual exclusivity and permanency -- become optional as well."

Presumably, then, Anderson thinks that heterosexuality safeguards those other three norms. Does he also think that heterosexual men and women marry only once, never stray sexually, and always stay married for life? But of course they don't, which means that with one small exception, the other three norms are ALREADY optional in the eyes of the law. You can't legally marry more than one person at a time, but you can take any number of spouses in sequence (the late mother of a friend of mine had four husbands), you can legally commit adultery, and you can legally bail out of a marriage well before you die. None of these options would change if same sex marriage became legal throughout the land.

Ironically enough, the champions of traditional marriage must believe that it has grown dangerously weak. For decades longer than these young traditionalists have been around, the institution of heterosexual marriage in this country has withstood divorce rates near 50%. Would traditional marriage really not survive the legalization of same sex marriage in a country where the self-identified gay population is just above 3 percent? Even if gay marriages came to make up 10 percent of all marriages, what HARM would they do to heterosexual marriages? (When John and Jane Doe wake up one morning to see a gay married couple moving in next door, do they file for divorce?) This is the question that traditionalists have never been able to answer, which is why efforts to ban same-sex marriage have repeatedly failed in court. The only thing same sex marriage harms is the purity of an idée fixe: the assumption that marriage must be heterosexual.

And also, of course, that it must breed. Listen to Caitlin Seery, the 25-year-old director of programs for the Love and Fidelity Network. "When you de-link marriage from childbearing," she says, "you then have to increase the complexity of that relationship." Really? I don't know if Ms. Seery is married, but I strongly suspect that she has no children of her own. When and if she does, she will soon discover that few things complicate a relationship more dramatically than children do, which is why some heterosexual couples choose to remain childless. Should we then deny them the right to marry, and deny it also to any couple that is physically unable to bear a child? Should we likewise deny gay couples the right to bear children with the help of others, or adopt children? And just how well would these restrictions safeguard the institution of heterosexual marriage?

Don't get me wrong here. I firmly believe in heterosexual marriage. As the ninth child of a man and a woman who were married for 67 years (until my father died), I've been "traditionally" married for almost fifty years, and next year my wife and I will celebrate our golden anniversary along with our two children, their opposite sex partners, and our four grandchildren.

In other words, heterosexual marriage has immeasurably enriched my life. But why should the value of my marriage -- or any heterosexual marriage -- depend on impoverishing the lives of those who want to marry within their own sex? Why should I deny a right that enriches their lives and cannot possibly diminish mine? Why can't I be pro - marriage and pro- gay marriage?

That's what I am.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2811387 2013-03-05T14:57:39-05:00 2013-05-05T05:12:01-04:00

James Heffernan http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-heffernan/
So wrote Oleg Kalugin in his diary sixty years ago today. As a young KGB officer-in-training, Kalugin and his classmates had not only been specially favored by Stalin's regime but also led to believe that this titanically murderous dictator was the savior of Russia. Shattered by his death, they all wept openly over it, as Oleg recalls in a BBC radio interview that you can hear right now.

On the same program you can also hear the recollections of a woman named Valentina, whose extended family had suffered cruelly under Stalin's reign of terror. But even though his regime had killed at least two of her relatives, her mother insisted that she display a public face of mourning, that she stand outside in silence for several minutes wearing a mask of grief -- whatever she may have felt.

Evidently, a similar command went out all across the nations of the Warsaw Pact, because it certainly reached a young Hungarian named Stefan Scher, who later became a professor of literature at Dartmouth College (where I knew him well) but who was then a teenage schoolboy in Budapest.

When Stalin's death was announced at Stefan's school, every student (all boys) was ordered to stand at his desk, face forward, and observe five minutes of silence.

Silence then reigned for a minute or two. But suddenly, from somewhere behind him, Stefan heard a giggle that could not be stopped.

Like the ripples made a pebble thrown into the midst of a pond, it spread out uncontrollably from one student to another (including Stefan, of course) until the whole classroom was convulsed. And since classroom doors were always kept open to allow maximum surveillance, the tide of giggles soon rushed out to the corridor and into all the other classrooms until, it seems, the entire building was caught up in something like a minor earthquake.

Scandalized and outraged, the school authorities did everything they could to identify the prime mover of this earthquake. But even though the principal was fired, they never caught the kid who giggled first. What other kid would ever finger him?

Stefan died a few years ago, but one of the things I best remember about him was the readiness of his laughter. So on this day, as on every anniversary of Stalin's death, I imagine him standing up there somewhere next to a cloud--and giggling till the tears roll down his cheeks.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2662177 2013-02-11T11:32:53-05:00 2013-04-13T05:12:01-04:00

James Heffernan http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-heffernan/
You think I'm joking? Just consider a few things.

First of all, Stephen Colbert is named for the very first martyr to the Christian faith: Saint Stephen, a man "full of faith and power" who "did great wonders among the people" (Acts of the Apostles 6:8) but who -- shortly after the crucifixion of Christ -- was stoned to death for preaching on His behalf (Acts 7:59). No man of our time resembles Saint Stephen more than Stephen Colbert, a staunch Roman Catholic with a devoted following of young people deeply inspired by his eloquent advocacy of strictly conservative values and Christian faith. A few years ago, I distinctly recall his proudly reciting from memory every word of the Apostles' Creed -- right in the middle of his show. Furthermore, since I taught at Dartmouth for nearly 40 years, I knew Stephen well as an undergraduate, and I can assure you that at least once a week in his Dartmouth years he was totally stoned.

Secondly, at a time when the great ship of Roman Catholicism has been rocked by scandal and captained by a frail octogenarian, we desperately need a fresh and firm young hand at the helm. I say this with all due respect to Pope Benedict XVI, who -- to shift metaphors slightly -- has mightily striven to fortify the church's seawall of dogma and doctrine against all the raging modernistic tides of contraception, abortion, homosexuality, gender bending, married priests (except of course for ex-Episcopal ministers creeping in through the back door) and the ordination of women, who stubbornly fail to see that God never meant them to be priests, for otherwise He would have made them bearded Jewish fishermen. For all these reasons, Benedict XVI resoundingly deserves the everlasting gratitude and admiration of his worldwide flock.

Nevertheless, since this 85-year-old pontiff is now resigning, the Roman Catholic church must now choose his successor. And I can think of no one worthier than Stephen Colbert.

You may say, of course, that Stephen is not even a priest, let alone a cardinal, a prince of the church, and it is only from the college of cardinals that a pope may be chosen. But as a staunch defender of Roman Catholic conservative values, Stephen IS a prince of the church. Furthermore, he is a man of cardinal importance to Catholicism in America, as well as a champion of red state values. Anyone who watches him closely on television can see that his handsome head is invisibly but unmistakeably crowned by a cardinal's red hat. (In Greek, by the way, the word stephanos means crown.) He is unquestionably the eminence rouge of our time.

But, you will say, Stephen Colbert cannot possibly be pope because he is a married man. To which I reply that so was St. Peter, the Pope of Popes, the petrus -- the very rock -- on which Christ founded His church (Matthew 16:18). Scripture makes it absolutely clear that Peter was a married man. At Capernum, we are told, Christ healed Peter's ailing mother-in-law (Mark 1:29-31), which incidentally may help to explain why Peter later denied Him three times (Luke 22:57-59).

And so my dear conservative brethren, let us dream together. Almost 1,000 years after the death of the last Pope Stephen (Stephen IX) in the year 1058, let us dream that we will have another pope of that name, and that one fine day soon to come, a plume of white smoke rising from the chimney of the Sistine chapel will signify the election of the first American pontiff in the history of the Roman Catholic church. Then from the balcony of Saint Peter's will come the resounding words, ever ancient and ever new: "Habemus Papam! Habemus Papam! Stephanus X!" He will not even have to change his Christian name.

Though he may have a long commute to his Manhattan studio.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1979443 2012-10-20T17:16:02-04:00 2012-12-20T05:12:01-05:00

James Heffernan http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-heffernan/
Like many other critics of Romney's tax plan, President Obama charges that it fails to specify whether or not it would kill such sacred cows as the deduction for home mortgage interest. It also fails to add up. If cutting taxes by 20% cuts five trillion dollars in revenue over a period of ten years, closing loopholes and capping deductions simply cannot make up that loss. The Tax Policy Center estimates that even if deductions and credits were capped at $17,000, which would affect not just the wealthy but also many people earning less than $100,000 a year, we could raise no more than 1.7 trillion -- only a third of the five trillion needed.

What critics fail to realize, however, is that a simple solution to this problem has been staring us in the face all along. If and when the American body politic starts bleeding to death from Romney's tax cuts, all we have to do is to take it to the nearest emergency room, which is legally bound to treat all comers without regard for their ability to pay.

That's why I'm for Mitt.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1963817 2012-10-16T16:13:52-04:00 2012-12-16T05:12:02-05:00

James Heffernan http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-heffernan/
In last Thursday's debate with Vice President Joe Biden, Congressman Paul Ryan charged the Obama administration with misrepresenting the attack as a spontaneous protest against an anti-Islamic video and leaving the consulate vulnerable by rejecting its requests for increased security. All this, Ryan claimed, shows that the president's foreign policy is "chaotic," making the U.S. "less safe."

In response to Ryan's charge, Biden led off by claiming that the Congressman once voted to cut 300 million dollars from the budget for embassy security. Unfortunately, that charge stretches a rather complicated set of facts, as Peter Grier has recently shown. The real hypocrisy lies elsewhere, and it's far more flagrant than even Biden sought to imply -- as I will explain further on.

But first let's examine the charges, starting with the one about lax security. On Wednesday, October 10, the day before the debate, Eric Nordstrom -- the former regional security officer in Libya -- told a Congressional hearing that the State Department had blocked his request for reinforcements. But according to ABC, Nordstrom "said that he had sought mainly to prevent any reduction on staff, rather than have a big increase." Furthermore, Charlene Lamb, deputy secretary of state for diplomatic security, told the hearing that "we had the correct number of assets in Benghazi at the time of 9/11."

If that statement (which the White House itself has repudiated) looks laughably blinkered in hindsight, we must face a basic fact about diplomatic life in Libya right now. Contrary to what Paul Ryan implied at the debate, Benghazi is not another Paris any more than Libya is another France or a consulate is another embassy, which is what we have in Paris. Even if the State Department could have sent a marine detachment to Benghazi, as Ryan seems to think, it could not have guaranteed the safety of the consulate in a city dominated by militias barely under the control of a government now struggling to be born. As we must surely know from what happened in Tehran 33 years ago, no embassy can be fully secure without the protection of the host government.

How much protection can we count on from Libya? Let's get into into its political weeds. At the time of the September 11 attack, even as our two major parties were duking it out for the White House, Libya's new lawmakers in Tripoli were caught up in voting for its first democratically elected prime minister, with the choices narrowed to Mustafa Abushgar and Mahmoud Jibril, formerly the interim prime minister. On September 12, Abushgar won by a hair, but he has since been knocked out by a vote of no confidence, which means that Libya still needs a prime minister.

Now here's a dirty little secret just disclosed by Michael Birnbaum. At a meeting held with our diplomats in Benghazi just a few days before the September 11 attack, at least two leaders of the Benghazi militias accused the U.S. of backing Mahmoud Jibril in the election. Because they consider Jibril a secularist, the leaders told our diplomats that they could not guarantee security in Benghazi if he were elected. That's what we're up against in Libya. Is this the kind of problem that is best solved by weapons and more American boots on the ground, or by the kind of patient, courageous negotiation that distinguished the career of Ambassador Stevens?

Whatever the effectiveness of diplomacy, the only alternative is deeper military involvement in Libya: yet another war, which is what we have so far avoided waging there. Obama's management of our part in the overthrow of Gaddafi was anything but "chaotic"; it was a triumph of foreign policy. Unlike President Bush with Iraq, Obama helped Libya change its regime without putting a single pair of American boots on the ground. If we have learned nothing else from our adventures in war during the past decade, we should surely know by now that it is far, far better to risk diplomacy -- no matter how uncertain -- than to launch another war.

One more thing about the management of consulate security. Can anyone recall what steps were taken to increase security at American airports in August of 2001, when the Bush administration was unequivocally told that Bin Laden was "determined to strike within the United States"? That's just one thing that makes the Republican line on Benghazi so hypocritical.

Now consider what the White House said about about the Benghazi attack. By initially presenting the attack as a spontaneous protest against an anti-Islamic video, Biden claims that the administration was reporting "exactly what [they] were told" by intelligence officials at the time, that further intelligence has led them to a different conclusion, and that they "will get to the bottom of it, and... wherever the facts lead us, we will make clear to the American public, because whatever mistakes were made will not be made again."

Is Biden wholly credible here? Remembering how intelligence was spun in the years of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, we might question Biden's claim that the White House reported "exactly" what intelligence officials told it. But what's the bone of contention here? It took the White House about one week to get the Benghazi story straight, or about as straight as anyone could in a week. (See Birnbaum's story again on how hard it is to find the truth in Benghazi.) How long, then, did it take the Bush administration to straighten out its story on Iraq, to admit that there were never any weapons of mass destruction there when we invaded that country and thus launched a war that killed 4,486 American soldiers, plus over 162,00 Iraqis (including well over 100,000 civilians), and will end up costing us well over a trillion dollars? You know the answer all too well.

And in light of that answer, the Republican spin on the Benghazi attack has just set a new record for hypocrisy.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1241762 2012-01-31T12:10:34-05:00 2012-04-01T05:12:01-04:00

James Heffernan http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-heffernan/
Echoing the words of many Catholic authorities and their socially conservative allies, that's what Andrea Saul, a spokeswoman for Mitt Romney, has said about a new rule announced by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

By Aug. 1 of this year, says the rule, all private health insurance plans must cover all FDA approved methods of birth control at no cost to the woman treated. Since Catholic organizations believe and teach that contraception is immoral, they insist that this new rule would force them to violate their religious beliefs. For this reason, they say, it attacks religious freedom.

On the contrary, the new rule simply aims to protect the health of American women. Not to serve their convenience, but to safeguard their health.

The rule is firmly based on a report issued by the Institute of Medicine, an independent group of doctors and researchers.

In the year 2008, this group found, about half of all pregnancies in the U.S. were unplanned, and about 42 percent of those ended in abortion. But birth control cuts the rate of unplanned pregnancies and thereby cuts the rate of abortion. In other words, birth control cuts abortion rates. Nothing else works so well against them.

Second, the report says, women with unplanned pregnancies are more likely to smoke, drink, and skip or skimp on pre-natal care, all of which endangers the fetus and increases the risk of premature birth and low birth weight.

Third, says the report, birth control pills can do many things besides preventing conception. These pills are used to treat menstrual problems, migraine headaches and pelvic pain, and they can also reduce the risk of endometrial cancer and several other diseases.

That crucial point has failed to dent the brain of Michael Galligan-Stierle, President of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities, who recently declared that birth control cannot be considered a "preventive service" because "we do not happen to think pregnancy is disease."

Even if pregnancy were not something that every woman should be allowed to prevent for the sake of her health, Galligan-Stierle fails to realize that birth control pills may be urgently needed to treat what anyone would call disease. In a recent New York Times article on the HHS ruling, Denise Grady tells what happened to a law student at Georgetown University who was denied coverage for the birth control pills prescribed by her doctor. Even though the prescription plainly stated that the pills were meant for the treatment of polycystic ovarian syndrome, she was repeatedly denied coverage for the pills, which she then had to buy herself for $100 a month. When she could no longer afford them, she developed a large ovarian cyst that had to be surgically removed -- along with her ovary. As a result, her capacity to bear children has been impaired for the rest of her life. Is this what we mean by religious liberty?

Let's get something straight: religious liberty is not absolute. Under our system of justice, there is no such thing as an absolute right to anything. You cannot legally shout "fire" in a crowded room if there is no fire. You cannot legally shoot a gun if I happen to be standing in front of it. You cannot legally advocate the violent overthrow of the U.S. government (no matter how badly you may want to bring it down). And regardless of your religious beliefs, you cannot legally deny care that is needed to preserve the health of someone whose health you are insuring, or for which you are in any way responsible.

This point has already become a matter of law. In refusing -- on religious grounds -- to cover a type of care that is plainly needed to safeguard the health of American women, Catholic institutions are acting like Christian Scientists. Because Christian Scientists do not believe in medical science, they generally do not accept medical care for themselves, and many do not allow it for their children. But their religious beliefs have recently run head on into the law. The California Penal Code holds that "any person who ... willfully causes or permits any child to suffer ... or permits that child to be placed in such a situation that its person or health is endangered, shall be punished by imprisonment." According to Caroline Fraser, the state of California has obtained criminal convictions against two sets of Christian Science parents who allowed their children to die without medical treatment.

I have no evidence that any woman has ever died as a direct result of being denied access to birth control. But we now know for certain that denying or impeding such access -- by making women pay for it -- endangers their health, raises the rate of unplanned pregnancies, and thereby raises the rate of abortion. Religious liberty means the freedom to worship and proclaim one's beliefs. It does not mean the freedom to deny medical care to anyone who needs it and who depends on her insurance plan to provide it.

To deny such care will soon be illegal under the new ruling. But quite apart from the new ruling, denying such care -- whatever one's religious beliefs -- is simply immoral. ]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1208130 2012-01-17T16:02:04-05:00 2012-03-18T05:12:01-04:00

James Heffernan http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-heffernan/
Could he become the next pope?

Matt Moore, Executive Director of the South Carolina Republican Party, obviously thinks not. "Stephen Colbert," he says, "has about as much a chance at being elected president in South Carolina as he does of being elected Pope."

But what if he has a BETTER chance of becoming Pope than of gaining the White House?

Just consider a few things.

First of all, Stephen Colbert is named for the very first martyr to the Christian faith: Saint Stephen, a man "full of faith and power" who "did great wonders among the people" (Acts of the Apostles 6:8) but who -- shortly after the crucifixion of Christ -- was stoned to death for preaching on His behalf (Acts 7:59). No man of our time resembles Saint Stephen more than Stephen Colbert, a staunch Roman Catholic with a devoted following of young people deeply inspired by his eloquent advocacy of strictly conservative values and Christian faith. A few years ago, I distinctly recall his proudly reciting from memory every word of the Apostles' Creed -- right in the middle of his show. Furthermore, since I taught at Dartmouth for nearly 40 years, I knew Stephen well as an undergraduate, and I can assure you that at least once a week in his Dartmouth years he was totally stoned.

Secondly, at a time when the great ship of Roman Catholicism is rocked by scandal and captained by a frail octogenarian, we desperately need a fresh and firm young hand at the helm. I say this with all due respect to Pope Benedict XVI, who -- to shift metaphors slightly -- has newly fortified the church's seawall of dogma and doctrine against all the raging tides of godless modernism: against contraception, abortion, homosexuality, married priests (except of course for ex-Episcopal ministers creeping in through the back door) and the ordination of women, who blindly and stubbornly fail to see that God never meant them to be priests, for otherwise He would have made them bearded Jewish fishermen. For all these reasons, Benedict XVI resoundingly deserves the everlasting gratitude and admiration of his worldwide flock.

Nevertheless, since this 85-year-old pontiff cannot live forever, it behooves us to begin thinking now about his successor. And I can think of no one more worthy than Stephen Colbert.

You may say, of course, that Stephen is not even a priest, let alone a cardinal, a prince of the church, and it is only from the college of cardinals that a pope may be chosen. But as a staunch defender of Roman Catholic conservative values, Stephen IS a prince of the church. Furthermore, he is a man of cardinal importance to Catholicism in America, as well as a champion of red state values. Anyone who watches him closely on television can see that his handsome head is invisibly but unmistakeably crowned by a cardinal's red hat. (In Greek, by the way, the word stephanos means crown.) He is unquestionably the eminence rouge of our time.

But, you will say, Stephen Colbert cannot possibly be pope because he is a married man. To which I reply that so was St. Peter, the Pope of Popes, the petrus -- the very rock -- on which Christ founded His church (Matthew 16:18). Scripture makes it absolutely clear that Peter was a married man. At Capernuum, we are told, Christ healed Peter's ailing mother- in-law (Mark 1:29-31), which incidentally may help to explain why Peter later denied Him three times (Luke 22:57-59).

And so my dear conservative brethren, let us dream together. Almost a thousand years after the death of the last Pope Stephen (Stephen IX) in the year 1058, let us dream that we will have another pope of that name, and that one fine day soon, after Benedict XVI goes to his eternal reward, a plume of white smoke rising from the chimney of the Sistine chapel will signify the election of the first American pontiff in the history of the Roman Catholic church. Then from the balcony of Saint Peter's will come the ringing words, ever ancient and ever new: "Habemus Papam! Habemus Papam! Stephanus X!" He will not even have to change his Christian name.

Though he may have a long commute to his Manhattan studio. ]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1195067 2012-01-11T14:17:00-05:00 2012-03-12T05:12:01-04:00

James Heffernan http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-heffernan/
Oh yes indeed. Our great conciliator, our champion of consensus and bipartisan cooperation has finally realized what it takes to make significant change: a clenched fist.

In naming Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, he has openly defied a bipartisan pact: the "gentleman's agreement" that lets Congress thwart recess appointments by simply holding pro forma sessions in which no business gets done. Predictably, Obama's move has drawn howls of outrage from leading Republicans charging that he has just shredded the Constitution. But as Lawrence Tribe has cogently demonstrated, the president has done no more than his duty under the Constitution, which is to "fill without delay" appointments "necessary for the public service." For many months, Republicans have blocked the appointment of a chief of the CFPB because they don't want to it regulate financial companies at all. But since Cordray is eminently qualified and since we consumers desperately need someone to protect OUR interests, it was high time for Obama to fill this post.

And now it's also time for Democrats to start fighting -- with words.

Monday morning this week on the Diane Rehm show, I heard once again what all of us have been hearing for months, if not years: the left can't beat the right because it doesn't have the kind of language that wins political fights. Not the meticulously shaped arguments and expert testimony that good old-fashioned academic liberals like me love to dispense but rather two-fisted slogans that will take the wind out of the right.

So what am I asking? That we all set out to ape Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly? That we leave the high ground of progressive principles to wallow in the mud of invective? That we stop making reasonable cases for our candidates and policies and start flinging mudpies at the candidates and policies of the right?

Not exactly. Let's try a different metaphor. Let's forge simple slogans that can each become the sharp point of a long spear made of the best metal we can find: solid arguments and evidence that will drive that point home.

Consider one of the right's favorite slogans: "pro-life." Over three years ago on this site, I argued that the phrase is grossly hypocritical as well as grossly misleading, for it implies that anyone who supports a woman's right to choose is "pro-death." But even when backed by the reasoning of saints like Augustine and Aquinas, arguments like mine will probably win no converts -- not unless they can be brought to a sharp point.

So how about two simple words: NO CHOICE?

When any candidate for president says that he wants to overturn Roe v. Wade and thus recriminalize abortion, he's a no-choice conservative. He wants to abolish the Constitutional right to choose abortion. Candidates like Rick Santorum go even further: by banning contraception, they seek to abolish the right to choose between pregnancy and its opposite. Even without changing the law, when conservatives reduce or block federal funding for organizations like Planned Parenthood (recently de-funded in my own state of New Hampshire) they are waging war against one of the most important choices that anyone can make. They are NO CHOICE conservatives.

NO CHOICE also applies to the conservative stand on gay marriage. Heterosexual couples are now free to marry in any state of the land, and absolutely no one thinks we should abolish that right. In New Hampshire, for instance, where gay marriage is legal, everyone is free to choose a marriage partner of the opposite sex, and so far as I know, no heterosexual marriage in any state has ever been harmed in any way by the legality of gay marriage. (The only real threat to the stability of marriage as an institution comes from divorce, which not even conservatives would dare to ban.) But if conservatives had their way, no one in any state could legally choose to marry anyone of the same sex.

So when it comes to anything involving sexual relations -- whether marriage, conception or childbirth --conservatives are NO CHOICE all the way. And the spear behind that point has a very long shaft.

Now consider another favorite talking point of the Republican right: Obamacare. Along with "government takeover" and "death panels," it's their nickname for the Affordable Health Care Act, which they've all pledged to repeal. But none of them has even tried to explain how THEY would make health care affordable for the 52 million people who lacked health insurance in 2010, the additional 73 million adults who had trouble paying for health care, and the 75 million who put off treatment because they couldn't afford it.

Republican candidates don't care about any of these people. They want us all to return to a system in which insurance companies could refuse coverage for preexisting conditions, decline renewal of coverage after an expensive illness, or even deny coverage for a life-threatening illness and let one of their own customers die. (If you really want to know what a death panel looks like, rent The Corporation, a 2004 documentary film in which a former executive for a health insurance company tells a Congressional committee that under orders from her superiors, she denied coverage for treatment of a life-threatening condition that did indeed take a life.)

All things considered, the Republican line on health care can be summed up in just two words: NO CARE. No care for anyone who can't afford strictly private health insurance such as we had in 2009, when it cost well over $16,000 a year for the average American family of four. No care for the twenty thousand Americans who die each year for lack of health insurance. (Five years ago, a study by the Institute of Medicine, a branch of the National Academy of Sciences, put the figure at 18,000 a year.) No care for any young pregnant woman who can't afford adequate pre-natal treatment -- even if she makes the only choice that conservatives allow. And no care for the millions of children whose parents cannot afford regular checkups for them, and who as a result may be permanently handicapped by learning disabilities.

Let's start saying it now: Republicans are indeed the party of NO. No choice, no care, no solutions for the critical problems we face at home and abroad.

And if you're wondering whether we Democrats can hold the White House, retake Congress, and regain a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, I've got just three words for you: YES, WE CAN.

]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.966421 2011-09-16T13:36:44-04:00 2011-11-16T05:12:01-05:00

James Heffernan http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-heffernan/
So said House Speaker John Boehner in a speech on Thursday to the Economic Club of Washington, denouncing President Obama's jobs bill because it would raise taxes on the "job-creating" rich.

Mr. Boehner did not tell us how many jobs have been created in the past year by this grossly undertaxed sliver of our population. Nor did he say anything about what happened the last time Congress raised our taxes.

In the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993, a Democratic-majority Congress raised taxes on top wage earners, corporations, Social Security benefits, and transportation fuels, and lifted the cap on Medicare taxes. Not a single Republican in the House or Senate voted for the Act, which President Clinton signed on August 10.

And guess what happened?

Between the date of the signing and the end of Clinton's second term, more than 21 million jobs were CREATED. Whether or not these jobs grew out of the tax increases or rose up in spite of them is a question debated by those on the right and the left. But no one can deny this simple fact: the largest tax increase in American history was followed by one of the most extraordinary periods of job growth we've ever seen. So when the Speaker of the House claims that tax increases destroy jobs, he's talking through his hat.

This is just one reason why I continue to support President Obama. Though it is safe to predict that House Republicans will never pass his Jobs Bill, I believe he can run on it next year. When 14 million people are out of work and more than 46 million are mired in poverty, how many voters really believe that the wealthiest among us simply cannot be asked to pay their fair share of taxes? Not even to pay for things we desperately need -- such as extending unemployment benefits, cutting payroll taxes for businesses and typical American workers, giving tax credits to employers who hire veterans and the long-term unemployed, keeping police, teachers, and firefighters on the job, repairing and modernizing some 35,000 public schools, and putting hundreds of thousands of workers back on the job rebuilding the roads, rails, bridges, and airports that businesses cannot run without?

Next fall, how many voters will believe that we must sacrifice all these benefits on the altar of NO: no tax increases on the so-called "job-creating" rich? Mr. Speaker, the rich won't create jobs until consumers start demanding more goods and services. And that demand won't come without the kind of action exemplified by the American Jobs Bill.

Opposition to this bill springs, of course, from the same mindset that has lately defined the Federal government as the number one Enemy of the People. Texas Governor Rick Perry, for instance, is running for president on a pledge to "make Washington, D.C. as inconsequential as possible in our lives." But since February 2009, businesses and government agencies in Texas have received more than 17 billion FEDERAL dollars from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and when fierce wildfires swept the state last spring, guess who begged the president for an emergency declaration that would bring more federal resources and dollars to the state? ( In response to Governor Perry's urgent request, the president made the declaration.)

It's fascinating to see what emergencies do to state governors, regardless of which party they belong to or what they think about government spending. When Hurricane Irene brought floods to New Jersey, Governor Chris Christie, a darling of the Republican right (which would dearly love to see him run for president), could hardly wait for FEMA funds and would not tolerate any delays in the name of budget-balancing, such as the offsetting cuts in federal spending demanded by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. At a news conference on September 1, here's what Christie said of Cantor's demand: "You're going to turn it into a fiasco like that debt-limit thing where you're fighting with each other for eight or nine weeks and you expect the citizens of my state to wait? They're not gonna wait, and I'm going to fight to make sure that they don't. I don't want to hear about the fact that offsetting budget cuts have to come first before New Jersey citizens are taken care of."

Listen, folks: that's a REPUBLICAN governor asking the federal government to take care of his people. Without wrangling over spending cuts.

How many more fires, hurricanes, and economic disasters do we need before we can all recognize that the federal government is absolutely vital to the survival of this country? And can we afford to vote for anyone who simply wants the government to get out of our way, or who doesn't believe that every one of us should pay our fair share to support it?

These will be central questions in the coming elections.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.858389 2011-05-06T11:39:37-04:00 2011-07-06T05:12:01-04:00

James Heffernan http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-heffernan/
Nevertheless, did you notice how this former professor of constitutional law used the word "justice"?

Twice he told us that we killed Osama bin Laden for the sake of justice. In his own words, the president "authorized an operation to get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice." What did this mean? It could have meant what happened to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who has officially been called "the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks" and who allegedly helped to plan many other terrorist attacks, but who was captured alive in Pakistan seven years ago so that -- presumably -- he could be brought to justice in the judicial sense of the term.

How much justice he got is an open question. During his years at Guantanamo Prison, he has been subjected to five sessions of waterboarding, which we treated as a crime during World War II, when we hanged Japanese soldiers for doing it to American prisoners of war. For a time at least, what was once a crime punishable by death became a legitimate way of interrogating suspected terrorists. Nevertheless, though KSM has been not just brutally interrogated but also denied his day in a New York Federal court (because Congress will not allow any Guantanamo detainee to be tried in the U.S.), he will at least be tried by a military tribunal, where -- if he's lucky -- he may have some of the rights constitutionally granted to anyone accused of a crime in America, no matter how heinous.

But what does justice mean in the case of Osama bin Laden? Its meaning can be summed up in a single word that President Obama carefully avoided in his nine minute speech: assassination. Essentially, the President ordered the death of Osama bin Laden. That is what he meant by bringing him to justice.

We now know that bin Laden was unarmed at the time he was killed. But because he was said to have been resisting capture in some unspecified way, we are asked to believe that a team of superbly trained commandoes who suffered not a single scratch in the whole operation had no other way of subduing him than to kill him. And this is called justice.

I don't question the widespread belief that Osama bin Laden deserved to die. But for all its eloquence, the president's speech offered one more example of the way in which the war against terror has eroded and undermined some of our most basic principles. The war, we seem to think, compels us to suspend them. In the recent airstrike on the home of a son of Moammar Gaddafi in Tripoli, NATO forces killed not only the son but also his three young children. In the name of "protecting" the civilians of Libya, NATO -- with our full support -- is clearly seeking to assassinate Gaddafi himself, and in pursuit of this end it will not hesitate to kill civilians or recklessly endanger them, which is hardly more defensible.

Yes indeed, the world is plagued by evil dictators and ruthless terrorists, and the man we have just killed was no doubt largely responsible for the deaths of nearly 3000 people on 9/11. But when we invaded Iraq eight years ago, we had no credible evidence of its responsibility for any of those deaths. And according to a detailed study just published by King's College, London, coalition forces -- our side -- killed over 18,000 Iraqi civilians between 2003 and 2008, more than three times the number of people killed in this country on 9/11. In light of these facts, the president's equation of assassination with justice makes me wonder again just how deeply the "war against terror" has riven the moral bedrock of this nation and darkened the light of freedom, "justice," and the rule of law that we claim to shine upon the world.

One more thing about the president's speech gave me equal pause. When he said that the killing of Osama bin Laden reminds us "that America can do whatever we set our mind to," what was he thinking? That we never really did "set our mind" (a single mind?) to win the war in Vietnam, or that we can actually "win" all three of the wars we are now waging, whatever "winning" means in each case? With all due respect, Mr. President, nothing is more illusory and dangerous than the assumption that if only we "set our mind" to it, we Americans can do whatever we want. No one who does not fully understand the limits, as well as the scope of American power, can effectively lead this nation, let alone the world. ]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.856031 2011-05-01T15:37:55-04:00 2011-07-01T05:12:01-04:00

James Heffernan http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-heffernan/ condemned the Libyan government's repeated attacks on civilians and civilian facilities in Misrata and warned that these attacks could be treated as criminal.

"Under international law," said Commissioner Navi Pillay, "the deliberate targeting of medical facilities is a war crime, and the deliberate targeting or reckless endangerment of civilians may also amount to serious violations of international human rights law or international humanitarian law."

Commissioner Navi is absolutely right. Under Section II, Article 85, item 3a of the 1977 Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949: "grave breaches of this Protocol" include "making the civilian population or individual civilians the object of attack."

This protocol, we might say, is precisely what justifies our own actions in the Libyan conflict. Officially, the only reason for which we launched our attacks on Libya, and for which we now support the NATO airstrikes against it, is to protect its civilian population.

But it is now clear that NATO is seeking to assassinate Muammar Gaddafi and will not hesitate to kill civilians in pursuing this end. Last night, a NATO airstrike on the Tripoli home of his youngest son, Seif al-Arab Moammar Gaddafi, failed to hit Gaddafi himself but killed Seif along with three of Gaddafi's grandchildren.

Can anyone explain to me why this NATO airstrike on the house of Seif Gaddafi did not recklessly endanger the lives of his children, or why the children of Seif Gaddafi are not protected by the 1977 Protocol to the Geneva Conventions, let alone by our official "mission" to protect the civilian population of Libya?

I also have another question. How many more Libyan children are we willing to kill?

One clue to an answer appears in a study just published by King's College London and said to be "the most detailed assessment so far of civilian deaths in the course of the [Iraqi] conflict." According to this study, coalition forces caused 12% of the 92,614 civilian deaths that occurred as a result of armed violence in Iraq between March 20, 2003 and March 19, 2008. In other words, our side killed 18,522 Iraqi civilians, more than six times the number killed in the attacks of 9/11. So it's safe to bet that the number of Iraqi children killed by our side numbers in the thousands.

And what about Afghanistan? Though (to my knowledge) we don't yet have anything like the figures compiled for Iraq, the most conservative estimate would put the total number of Afghan children killed by coalition forces in the hundreds. And while our commanders in Afghanistan have repeatedly pledged to avoid civilian casualties, we go on inflicting them. Just two months ago, General David Petraeus had to apologize for a helicopter strike that killed nine children collecting firewood in a remote part of Kunar province.

According to ancient Greek legend, the Mycenean king Agamemnon sacrificed his own daughter to stir up winds for the ships that took his forces into the war against Troy. President Obama, of course, would never do such a thing. Even to gain decisive victory in all three of the wars we are now waging, he would never dream of sacrificing either Malia or Sasha. And as a civilized nation, we can scarcely imagine sacrificing children for any purpose.

But as a fighting nation, we have already sacrificed thousands of them, and for the foreseeable future we have absolutely no plans to stop doing so.

So how many more children are we willing to kill in order to "protect" the civilians of Libya? The answer is brutally, searingly, inescapably clear: as many as it takes to do the job. ]]>