Made You Think

Advice for soldiers going to Iraq
In 1942. My favorite part: "If you can win the trust and friendship of all the Iraqis you meet, you will do more than you may think possible to help bring them together in our common cause."

The Morning News (which linked me to this Harper's piece on our government's 1942 advice to our soldiers in Iraq) is really much more useful than this blog, I have to say. I should be reading the Morning News rather than posting here.

Balkin on Luttig's "Superprecedents"
Balkin offers a thoughtful discussion of what it means to call Roe v. Wade a "superprecedent."

Our women detainees
The American Prospect recently reminded readers that there were women at Abu Ghraib, too.

After she arrived, she says, soldiers and guards forced her and other prisoners to crouch on the ground with their arms above their heads in 100-degree weather: “They told us, ‘You are cowards. You are Saddam’s children. You are ?ghting against the Americans.’ If we complained, they said, ‘Shut up. Put your face against the wall.’”

The next day, a stocky American of?cer in boots and a T-shirt told Selwa she was responsible for the disposal of waste. As a former detainee told Human Rights First senior associate Ken Hurwitz during an interview last August, this is a ritual that serves purposes both utilitarian and penal: Human waste is dumped in metal containers, mixed with lighter ?uid, and set on ?re. Detainees are forced to stir the mixture to speed its dissipation. It’s a wretched job, done in shifts by young men and boys, and the stench is overwhelming.

That afternoon, the American of?cer lit a mixture of human feces and urine in a metal container and gave Selwa a heavy club to stir it. She recalls, “The ?re from the pot felt very strong on my face.” She leans forward and sweeps her hands through the air to show how she stirred the excrement. “I became very tired,” she says. “I told the sergeant I couldn’t do it.”

“There was another man close to us. The sergeant came up to me and whispered in my ear, ‘If you don’t, I will tell one of the soldiers to fuck you.’”

She looks down at the ?oor.

“It is a shame on them,” says Riva Khoshaba, a 28-year-old Assyrian American lawyer who was born in Iraq. She is sitting across the table in the Amman hotel and looking sympathetically at Selwa. “Not on you.”

Selwa closes her eyes and nods her head, trying to show that she is listening. But it’s almost as though she is sitting at a table far away and can hear Khoshaba’s words but can’t make out their meaning. Selwa nods again and sinks back into her chair.

“I said, ‘I will go on.’ I stirred for two hours,” Selwa says. “Then I fainted.”

As Balkin says, "We need 'maximum flexibility' to waterboard"
Speaks for itself.

Government database with "driving records, favorite college subjects, GPAs, ethnicity and Social Security numbers of every American age 16-25"
I saw this the other day and then I think I blocked it out because it was so freaky.

Imagine a massive database packed with the driving records, favorite
college subjects, GPAs, ethnicity and Social Security numbers of every American age 16-25. What could anyone possibly want with all that data?

The government has actually collected such a database. Ostensibly, for military recruitment.

Protein Music
Some scientists are finding it easier to teach about the structure of DNA proteins by using Protein Music -- music based on the patterns of amino acids that make up DNA. Here's my favorite part:

Clark said one of the more interesting things demonstrated by the music is the differences and similarities between the same protein of different species.

While some proteins change very little between species, others, such as beta globin, are quite variable.

Therefore, Clark said, by playing the beta globin song for a human and tuatara, an ancient three-eyed lizard, people can hear the process of evolution—a variation on a theme that was present before mammals split from reptiles some 200 million years ago.

"You can hear the parts that remain constant and the parts that change," she said.

Death

We have now lost 2000 soldiers in Iraq. And by at least one count, Iraqi civilian casualties are in the tens of thousands. The New York Times reports that "more than 60 Iraqis were killed daily this year, up from 40 last year." (Thanks to the Morning News for the link to this headline.)

Can they do that? CNN reports the White House has asked the Onion to quit using the presidential seal in parodies.

Torture

The Morning News also links to this New York Review of Books article that reports the testimony of an officer and two NCOs who served at "Forward Operating Base Mercury" in Iraq, with the 82d Airborne division of the United States Army. The article is an excerpt of a longer Human Rights Watch Report that came out in September.

Torture horrifies me. Not so much because I picture myself in the place of someone being tortured, but more because I try to imagine the reasoning that allows a human being to commit such acts against another. It frightens me that some human brains can rationalize these acts.

In the report, the anonymous soldiers describe in their own words what went on every day at the camp where they detained Iraqi "persons under control," or "PUCs" (the acronym that replaced "POW," to avoid calling the detainees prisoners of war) :

The "Murderous Maniacs" was what they called us at our camp because they knew if they got caught by us and got detained by us before they went to Abu Ghraib then it would be hell to pay. They would be just, you know, you couldn't even imagine. It was sort of like I told you when they came in it was like a game. You know, how far could you make this guy go before he passes out or just collapses on you. From stress positions to keeping them up fucking two days straight, whatever. Deprive them of food, water, whatever.

To "fuck a PUC" means to beat him up. We would give them blows to the head, chest, legs, and stomach, pull them down, kick dirt on them. This happened every day.

To "smoke" someone is to put them in stress positions until they get muscle fatigue and pass out. That happened every day. Some days we would just get bored so we would have everyone sit in a corner and then make them get in a pyramid. This was before Abu Ghraib but just like it. We did that for amusement.

I have nothing to say after that.

Thank-you notes.

I am terrible at writing thank-you notes. Often, I just don't do so. When I do, I struggle to write them. I like to write, and have always been puzzled by this problem.

The Morning News offers this helpful assistance for the thank-you-note challenged. And links to this piece discussing Harriet Miers' terrible thank-you note to George Bush, and why such notes are so hard to write. I feel as if a weight has lifted, I am not alone in my thank-you note struggle . . . .

We are having a fantastic working moms discussion on motherswithoutborders. My last postings made me think of this website I've visited now and then, for the organization Putting Family First.
The front page of the site says that "[c]urrent research tells us that what our children and youth want most and need most from us as parents… is our TIME! In our fast paced world, many of us find ourselves overscheduled, hyperactive and underconnected." The site is a bit vague and incomplete, but I love its emphasis on the virture of just hanging out as a family. I think that most working people, parents or not, could benefit from more unstructured down time.

Sadly, it seems that selective logging does not help the rain forest. And that the overall damage caused by timber harvests has been greatly underestimated.

Sickening waste of Katrina debit card money. Not surprising I guess.

DailyKos today includes a blurb and a link about Robert Bork's perspective on the Harriet Miers nomination.

Which reminded me of a fleeting thought I had this morning when I heard someone mention Robert Bork. Is it possible that in some small part, Bork's confirmation process was affected by the confluence of his personality, the raucus debate over his nomination, and the sound of his name? And does the fact that "to Miers" lacks the onomatopoetic qualities of "to bork" bode well for Miers?

I truly hope not. But there's no getting around the fact that the word "bork" is more than just funny-sounding: it's surly- and defiant-sounding. "Miers," on the other hand, sounds like "compliant." Hmm. (And, yes, onomatopoeia can be non-auditory.)

I discovered that Nobel prize winner Gerard 't Hooft has created this web page that lists the subjects, and even some particular materials, that he believes one must understand to try to grasp the current problems of theoretical physics. His approach seems the most reasonable to me; to really understand these things, I have to understand the fundamentals first. So, no more on string theory from me until I've caught up on the underlying subjects. Which should take me a decade or so....

More on the string theory situation. This month's Scientific American includes an article about mathematical work by Juan Maldacena that shows that for a particular type of spacetime (a type that can be imagine but seems unlikely to exist, to me anyway), the holographic theory of quantum gravity seems to work. That is, in this imagined spacetime, things on the inside of the time can be understood consistently as projections of the same things from the boundary of that spacetime.

Fascinating. I hadn't heard about this holographic theory. It has an intuitive appeal. But of course, it might only seem to work because of the constraints at the start - the limitations placed on the nature of this imagined spacetime, which in this particular article was a version of anti-deSitter space (sorry, not a very good wikipedia article on that one).

But the concept that the apparent inconsistency between quantum and classical physics could be explained by some version of this holographic principle (see also Maldacena's proposed Ads/CFT correspondence, to which this article lends support).

Lynda Barry's sage advice to young readers.

My student emailed me a copy of David Brooks' op-ed piece, "In Her Own Words." (Note: it's "premium content.")

If the writing he excerpts in that piece is a fair indication of Miers' writing, I think I am going over to the other side on the issue of her qualifications. I don't think such a fuzzy thinker, with vague, platitudes-ridden writing, should be a Supreme Court justice.

I still don't think what I was saying before was wrong, because I was just saying that her resume, alone, didn't convince me she was not bright or thoughtful enough to be a justice. I hadn't read her writing; it does convince me.

David Luban has written a thought-provoking post on Balkinization regarding the significance of the Hamdan case, a case involving the legitimacy of the military trials ("commissions") at Guantanamo Bay. He explains that in part, the DC Circuit's reversed the lower court in Hamdan based on the reasoning that the lower court jumped the gun in considering the fairness of the procedures before the trials were completed.

But he makes a good case that the more interesting and important aspect of Hamdan is its decision that the people detained in the War on Terror are entitled to no Geneva Convention protections because the conflict that their detention results from is neither a traditional war between nations nor a civil war. Luban writes as follows:

The Geneva Conventions establish two levels of wartime protection, depending on the nature of the war. If the war is an "old paradigm" conflict between states, Geneva provides an elaborate system of protections - for prisoners of war in the Third Convention, and for civilians in the Fourth Convention. (The remaining two conventions concern wounded and sick combatants on land and sea.) But what about conflicts that don't pit state against state? Here, in "common Article Three" (common, that is, to all four Conventions), the Geneva framers insisted on at least minimum human rights for anyone who is detained. These include rights not to be sentenced or punished without minimum due process - the Geneva right on which Hamdan based his argument against the military commissions.

But common Article Three also provides for other basic human rights, including rights against violence, cruel treatment, torture, and "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment." When the D.C. Circuit held that Article Three does not apply to the War on Terror, it stripped away all these basic protections from detainees. In place of the split-level protections of Geneva - full protections in state-against-state wars, and at least minimum human rights the rest of the time - Hamdan creates a third tier of "protections," namely no protections at all, in the War on Terror. Where Geneva creates a main floor and a basement, Hamdan digs beneath the basement and adds a dungeon.

[paragraphs omitted]

The Hamdan majority adopted the Bush Administration's argument that Geneva does not apply in the War on Terror. According to this argument, Article 3 applies only to "internal" armed conflicts - civil wars within a single country. The War on Terror is not a civil war, nor is it an old-paradigm war between nation-states; neither fish nor fowl, it falls outside all categories that Geneva protects.

The Hamdan majority has treaty text to back up its interpretation. Article Three states that it applies only "in case of armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties [i.e., parties to Geneva]." The War on Terror undoubtedly is "of an international character," and it occurs in the territories of many states, not one; thus, Article Three does not apply. So goes the argument, and it has some plausibility.

As Judge Williams notes in his dissent, however, the awkward phrase "not of an international character" simply means "not between nation-states." International law has traditionally been defined as the law governing relations among states - the literal meaning of "inter-national." And so, "not international" doesn't mean "internal" - it merely means "not between nation-states." On that reading, the standard one among international lawyers, Article Three does apply to the War on Terror, which clearly is an armed conflict not between nation-states. Initially, the framers of the Geneva Convention considered limiting Article Three to internal armed conflicts; but they rejected that narrow phrasing in favor of the broader phrase "not of an international character." Nor does the phrase "…occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties" limit Article Three to conflicts within a single state. That phrase is in the Convention simply to ensure that Geneva applies only to states that are parties to it, not states that aren't. Treaties cannot bind non-parties, and Geneva would have been invalid if it purported to apply outside the territory of at least one of its "High Contracting Parties."

After this, much of the post relates to international human rights law and the troubling situation created by Hamdan's interpretation of the Geneva Convention.

I have to admit I haven't even looked at Hamdan. But what troubles me about such a decision, even more fundamentally, is the conception that the United States government could deprive anyone, any human being, of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. What about the Fifth Amendment's provision that "no person . . . shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law"? I realize that Mezei and some other cases undermined a plain-language interpretation of this due process provision. But I think those cases are wrong. The Fifth Amendment means what it says: our federal government is prohibited from taking away any person's liberty without due process. Any person. Anywhere.

Well, okay, with some limits; our government kills people in war without due process. Martial law is sometimes appropriate. But it seems quite a stretch to suggest that the same sort of exigency applies when one is locking people away for months or years.

I aspire to understand string theory. This is an ambitious goal, I think, probably somewhere on the 15- or 20-year plan. (Actually, I just found a website that gives me hope for making some progress sooner.)

Anyway, currently I do not pretend to really understand string theory, only to sort of nibble at the edges of understanding it. But I am a fan, sort of a groupie. Something undeniably appealing about a unified theory, and fundamentally unsettling about about the inconsistency between quantum mechanics and general relativity. I guess I am rooting for string theory, that it not turn out to be a blind alley.

So, an article in this week's Economist caught my attention, because it shows that string theory, at the very least, helps explain another scientific puzzle, called the anthropic principle. Actually, as that wikipedia article points out, you might think of the anthropic principle as more of a philosophical problem than a scientific one: the question is, why are the physical laws of the universe consistent with human life? If the physics of the universe were different, human life could not exist. Is it luck, or chance, that the universe is three-dimensional and life-supporting, or is this the universe the only way it could be?

The article, which is entitled "A braney theory," (published in the October 6, 2005 print edition of the Economist, and available online as premium content) discusses a paper by Andreas Karch and Lisa Randall, that will be published in Physical Review Letters later this month. The paper "suggest that the laws of physics may, indeed, be biased towards three-dimensions." In the paper, these physicists "assume that, initially, the universe was filled with equal numbers of" what physicists call "branes," for membranes, and anti-branes - in essense dimensions and anti-dimensions, "up to ten different dimensions." The paper shows "mathematically, that a universe filled with equal numbers of branes and anti-branes will naturally come to be dominated by 3-branes and 7-branes [i.e., three-dimensional or seven-dimensional space] because these are the least likely to run into their anti-brane counterparts and thus be annihilated."

This development seems encouraging (though probably mostly because of my anthropic bias). I do wish I better understood why those assumptions they began with are fair, because I think the whole thing would fall apart with out those. But the fact that string theory helps explain why the universe appears to be three-dimensional seems like a positive development in the "is string theory just a goose chase" debate (for one rooting for string theory).

Actually, as I write about this, I'm not sure I'm really really rooting for string theory, as much as for some progress toward a unifying / reconciling theory. But since string theory seems like the best current candidate, I'm at least half-heartedly hoping for it.

Well anyway - made me think!

Oh how fondly I remember those days long ago, playing Smurfs with my friend Jenny. Smurf houses, Smurf adventures, . . . Smurf victims of war? We did not play that game.

Did you know the Smurfs were a Belgian creation? And apparently remembered fondly by much of the Belgian population. UNICEF is running an ad on Belgium TV, designed to catch adults' attention about the horrors of war for children in Africa. "A UNICEF spokesman says 'it's working.'"

I bet it is. According to CNN, "Smurfette is killed and the others go running. Baby Smurf sits crying at the edge of a bomb crater."

This news item from EurekAlert! made me think...that at least maybe I'm doing one thing right as a parent. A recent study "that families who regularly share meals together have children who know more about their family history and tend to have higher self-esteem, interact better with their peers and show higher resilience in the face of adversity. In addition, families who openly discuss emotions associated with negative events, such as the death of a relative or a pet, have children with higher self-esteem and sense of control."

That's an addition to a significant amount of other evidence supporting the notion that eating together as a family is good for people in the family, especially the kids. Things may be crazy around here, but at least we somehow manage to be together at the table for dinner most nights.

I've been feeling a little sheepish about my knee-jerk anti-elitist reaction to the Miers criticisms. Speaking about this with students in class today, I realized that I was understating the lack-of-related-experience point in one way: it not only makes it more difficult to know her "judicial philosophy," it also makes it difficult to know her intellect.

I stand by my point, though, that we have little basis on which to call her "incompetent" or "unqualified" at this point. The problem isn't that we know her and she's not good enough; it's that we just don't know. But hearings should help, right?

It's sort of strange how often I'm agreeing with Ann Althouse today. First I basically agree wiht her discussion about Mellowing on Miers, and then I noticed she's a big fan of The Nights of Cabiria, one of the best movies ever.

Wow, did Al Gore get a really phenomenal speech-writer, or was he just off his game that year he ran for president?

The Miers nomination is bringing out such an interesting mix of arguments. Is the problem that she's not a reliable conservative? That she's too conservative? That she's an unknown quantity?

Or maybe the problem is everybody hates cronyism in general? Cronyism of a particular sort?

Is it that people believe her genuinely incompetent, lacking the intellect and experience to serve in this capacity? Or that no man with her qualifications would have been chosen?

And Jack Balkin posted this interesting data about when nominations fail.

In Dr. Chappell's English 290 (the rhetoric course I'm sitting in on now and then) we've been discussing the concept of stasis. "Stasis" is a process of "invention," or way of finding arguments. Speicially, stasis offers a series of questions designed to help people arguing about some topic or other to arrive at a real point of disagreement.

I think of it this way: when people are "arguing past each other," they're out of stasis. And argument out of stasis is really just hot air. It doesn't accomplish much.

So anyway, back to the Miers nomination. The debate seems to be a little out of stasis, in a way that's deflecting attention from the real point of disagreement - how will Miers interpret the Constitution and federal law.

Take the "cronyism" issue. I am the first one to agree that cronyism (and on the definition of cronyism, Volokh's post really is interesting) is distasteful. But all else being equal, is cronyism the real problem with the Miers nomination? I guess the nomination provides a perfect moment (kairos - thanks Dr. Chappell!) for debate about the problem of cronyism in our political system. And that's an important debate, one that I wish were more often such a prominent topic for discussion. But when that debate's over, what does it tell us about whether Miers should be confirmed? Should senators vote against Miers as some sort of statement against cronyism? That seems unlikely and even a little silly.

What about her qualifications? To be sure, Miers is no Roberts. But am I the only one who finds much of the complaining about her qualifications elitist? Should senators vote against Miers because being "a distinguished career as a an attorney who is active in the state bar and the community" should not be enough to make one eligible to be nominated to the United States Supreme Court?

Like the cronyism issue, this one is very interesting and deserves more discussion. If you think Miers should be rejected because of her resume, is it because you believe that a person's aptitude for constitutional analysis and the other sophisticated legal analysis at the Supreme Court can be measured by looking at the resume? I'm not so confident we live in a meritocracy. Or maybe the "no-qualifications" folks think that, regardless of whether Roberts-quality resumes are achieved mainly by merit, such resumes should be prerequisites to service on the Supreme Court.

In any event, at bottom, the arguments in the "qualifications" debate seem helpful to determining whether the United States is mostly a meritocracy, or whether there is an identifiable intellectual skill, or set of experiences, beyond being a distinguished attorney, that one needs to serve well on the Supreme Court.

The "qualifications" arguments, though, seem only tangentially related to helping us decide the issue at hand: should senators vote to confirm Harriet Miers to the United States Supreme Court? To my mind, one's stance on that issue should be determined by whether you think Miers (1) has sufficient smarts to understand and apply the law, (2) is ethical, and (3) will interpret the United States Constitution and federal law in a way that comports with one's beliefs about how those laws should be interpreted.

Is there any real doubt that she's basically smart, and likely ethical? So it's all about #3 for me. Can we start arguing about that now?