One need have only the slightest awareness of the worldwide web’s developmentally hyper-accelerated nature to appreciate how remarkable it is for any web site to have remained in place for a decade. Still more remarkable is for that site to be a blog, one which speaks in the same voice on the same subjects as it did ten years ago. Yet while Sullivan’s voice maintains its distinctive tone and timbre, the spirit it expresses is in no way immoderate.

Andrew Sullivan
Photo: Flickr/Geoff Livingston

Although he self-identifies as a conservative, the generally positive regard that people like me have for Andrew Sullivan is one reason the capital-“c” Conservative Movement in the U.S. consider him a capital-“l” Liberal. Other reasons include his wholehearted endorsement of Barack Obama, his equally wholehearted opposition to Sarah Palin, his despair at the United States’ embrace of torture as an interrogation tactic¹, and, most fundamentally, his status as an out, proud gay man and tireless fighter for marriage equality and the repeal of DADT. The classical conservative bona fides he cites (which, naturally, oblige me to disagree with him a respectable portion of the time) are things like his opposition to progressive taxation, his support for free market health care and pharmaceuticals (grrr…) and his opposition to hate crimes laws.

Points of agreement or disagreement aside, there is no doubt that Sullivan’s words issue from a formidable well of expertise and experience. This alone could be reason enough to read his blog, but in fact it ain’t the half of it. What separates him from the pack of beige half-measurers, strident blowhards and other lesser voices is his exercising the wisdom of reconsideration. As long as I’ve read the Dish, he has never failed to give ample time to opposing viewpoints — be they posts by other bloggers or emailed “Dissent of the Day” notes (of which there are often more than one per day). Moreover, it is the sturdy honor with which Sullivan has owned up to past errors that vaults his judgment beyond most others in my esteem. Contrast this with the foolish consistency of small-minded punditiots who jackhammer away at the same patch of ideological ground year after year. Or, even more distressingly, superimpose Sullivan’s capacity for self-critique upon today’s politicians, who live in fear of doing anything that could possibly cause them to be called a flip-flopper.²

All of this is on display in Sullivan’s post “The View from My Window 2000 – 2010,” which I highly recommend. In quoting from it, I’ll try to indicate its worth without transplanting it wholesale.

My greatest failure by far in these ten years… was giving in to my legitimate but far-too-powerful emotions after 9/11 and cheerleading for a war in Iraq that remains one of the most disgraceful, disastrous and murderous episodes in the history of American foreign policy. I was wrong – but more than wrong, I was dismissive of those who turned out to be right… All I can say is that the great virtue of this blog is that it gave me nowhere to hide.

I remain very proud of a few things: …the part this blog has played in pioneering the equality of gay people in marriage and military service; of being among the first to recognize the potential of Barack Obama and being an integral and early part of his viral rise to the presidency, and to elaborating the core conservative and reformist rationales for his pragmatic presidency. I am also proud to have been among the first to see the deeply dangerous phoniness and authoritarianism behind the Palin cult, and to insist that her constant lies be exposed and that the core symbol of appeal to the base – the disgusting political abuse of a child with Down Syndrome – be subject to the same media skepticism that should be applied to every other aspect of her fraudulent and farcical candidacy for vice-president and now president. I remain proud that I did not flinch in exposing and writing about the hideous crimes of the Vatican hierarchy and my own church in the rape and abuse of countless children, and the refusal again of anyone truly to take responsibility and be accountable.

This all sounds very serious. We have lived in serious times. But I’d be remiss if I did not also say how much fun we have had as well. From ’80s music video contests to our now constant Mental Health Breaks… the wonder of that simple idea – The View From Your Window – that then became a weekly puzzle; the Poseur Alerts; the randomness of bear culture, beard disasters, straight anal sex, South Park out-takes, Hathos Red Alerts, baby panda sneezes … we’ve created an institution here that remains alive because we really don’t know what the fuck we are going to do next. And yes, I used the word “fuck”. Because I fucking well can, if I want to.

Fuckin’-A right, Andrew. Happy ten years, and keep on doing what you’re doing.

Too well I recall the morning last November when I read your stated intention to vote in favor of confirming Michael Mukasey as U.S. Attorney General. It made what would have been a pleasant breakfast at a local café go down quite a bit less easily. I narrowly averted embarrassment, because your characterizations of Judge Mukasey as independent-minded and repulsed by the idea of torture were such stuff as spit-takes are made on. I couldn’t believe that you, my home state’s senior senator, had watched the same confirmation hearings as I had and not come away similarly disgusted at Mukasey’s craven dodging of the torture issue.

Your op-ed included a desire to see Judge Mukasey come before the senate panel again to have another chat about the whole Dick Cheney/Jack Bauer-iziation of American justice thing. Well, who’s back on the Hill today but your guy Mike the AG, front and center, talking waterboarding and destroyed CIA interrogation tapes. You must’ve been geeked, armed with a bucket of popcorn and ready to see The Muke torque up and bring the outrage, huh?

There are times when a mere “I told you so” doesn’t seem to cover it.

How bad was it? Let’s pick up the play-by-play with Mukasey’s questioning by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), who was trying to find out whether the Justice Department’s current investigation into the destruction of the CIA interrogation videotapes would apply to the content of the tapes, or only to their having been shredded.

The AG had been saying that there was no evidence to suggest that the recordings showed suspects being waterboarded or treated in any other maybe-kinda-sorta illegal manner, or at least none that wasn’t – you got it – classified, and therefore off-limits for discussion in a public hearing. Whitehouse called bullshit, pointing out that all you had to have done was read the newspaper or watched a little CNN to have heard credible sources statements that the tapes had showed exactly that kind of thing. The Rhode Islander continued:

WHITEHOUSE:…So, then the question is, you know, where do we stand? Because I think anybody who even has a public view of what’s going on would suggest that there’s something that might at least merit the beginning of inquiry as to whether an investigation might be opened.

MUKASEY: All of that depends on whether certification was given, whether permission was given and whether it was permissibly relied on. And it would not — it should not turn on one person’s current view of what the statute requires or doesn’t require, because if it does, the message is, it all changes.

WHITEHOUSE: But aren’t there two questions here? There is no exemption under [U.S. Code, Title 18, Section] 2340(a) depending on whether the conduct was authorized by a supervisory official or not. There is no Nuremberg defense built into this criminal statute.

…And I’m just trying to get, which is this? Is it that there aren’t facts well-developed? That doesn’t seem credible. Is it because there’s authorization, we’re not going to look at this no matter what? If that’s your position, fine, but let’s just say so and then I’ll understand.

MUKASEY: That’s not my position.

WHITEHOUSE: What is your position?

MUKASEY: My position is that there is an ongoing investigation and that I’m not going to speculate on what might or might not have happened, particularly with regard to authorizations.

WHITEHOUSE: But the ongoing investigation, as far as we know, is only into the destruction of tapes. It has nothing to do with the underlying interrogation, unless you’re telling me that that’s the forum. Is that the forum in which this will get decided?

MUKASEY: That is in part dependent on what [the] investigation shows.

WHITEHOUSE: Well, let’s hypothesize that a little further. If it shows that waterboarding took place…

MUKASEY: Let’s not hypothesize anything.

WHITEHOUSE: Well, there’s only two choices. It’s not going to take us a long time to discuss the alternatives, either it did or it didn’t.

MUKASEY: It’s not a question of it taking a long time. It’s a question of telling agents out there that we are investigating the CIA based on speculation about what happened and whether they got proper authorizations. And I don’t think that ought to be the message.

(transcript via TPM Muckraker)

I’ll say one thing for the Attorney General: the guy can cover some ground. I mean, from the Nuremberg defense to the McGwire defense in one round of questioning? That is range, people.

Dianne? Chuckie Schumer? Barbara Boxer, my other California homegirl? Harry Reid, our sheep in sheep’s clothing? Congressional Democrats, please please hear this: we still have almost a year of Bush left. NONE of you have even NEARLY handed that blithering numbnuts the mop and pail you said you had ready for him, and the shit he’s strewn everywhere is just sitting there. Hell, he’s adding to it!

It doesn’t work. You know, inviting them up to the Hill and hoping they’ll just casually admit, “Oh yeah, we eviscerated the Constitution and lied the country into a disastrous war and horribly tarnished America’s standing in the world. That was us, we’re here to turn ourselves in.” That’s a little much for your average slip of the tongue. What do you think this Administration is going to say about any of this stuff? Here’s a hint: you’ve heard it a million times over the last seven years.

And speaking of hearing something a million times, I don’t know how many more futile I-told-you-so’s I have left in me. Let me save a few to use on the Bush cabal when (please, oh please) they one day have to pay for all the damage they’ve done.

I had lunch today with a prominent German Constitutional scholar who was flabbergasted about something that I could not adequately explain.

He asked me how the candidate to become the top legal official of the U.S. government could say that he does not know whether water-boarding constitutes “torture” (as Judge Mukasey stated yesterday in his confirmation hearings). My colleague insisted that in Germany any person who uttered such a statement would be finished. He found it shocking that a person could say this in America and still become our Attorney General.

At first I was surprised at his genuine disbelief; and then I felt a bit ashamed that I did not also react with disbelief.

And yesterday at Slate, a piece co-written Dahlia Lithwick (whose reporting over the last year or two on the Bush Administration’s detention and interrogation practices has been consistently stellar) and Philip Carter brings another aspect of Mukasey’s craven dissembling into focus. The rub:

…Mukasey’s worst sleight-of-hand regarding waterboarding [is] his assertion Thursday that to comment about specific techniques would be irresponsible “when there are people who are using coercive techniques and who are being authorized to use coercive techniques. … And for me to say something that is going to put their careers or freedom at risk simply because I want to be congenial—I don’t think it would be responsible of me to do that.” Please. This administration has put careers at risk by muddying legal rules. If Mukasey really wanted to save careers, he would reinstate the bright-line rules that define and prohibit torture, as opposed to confusing and confounding them. By muddying these rules, we have now put generations of our own soldiers at risk should they ever be captured. It is they, and not Mukasey, who may face enemies using these very practices, shored up with our own tortured logic.

It is the oldest trick in the Bush administration’s psychological playbook to claim that we must be one serious badass nation if we are willing to do sick, unspeakable things to our enemies—even in the face of international condemnation and in violation of our own laws and ethical rules. But when those sick, unspeakable practices endanger our own soldiers, horrify our allies, and embolden our enemies, we don’t look like badasses anymore. We just look like sadists. And when those practices don’t even work, we look like stupid sadists to boot. There’s an easy fix here. Renounce torture. It was once an unremarkable proposition that the Unites States doesn’t stand for senseless sadism. What a tragedy that defending it has suddenly become a point of principle.

I think there’s still hope of cleansing our country’s reputation once we can get rid of the Bush cabal. If I didn’t think so, I’d be acting on a thought that I confess occurred to me a few times recently – something I never dreamed I’d even consider for a brief moment: emigrating.

Gitmo to Stay Open as Human Rights Sanctuary

Turns out it’s more than just a catchy headline. The story is that the good ol’ Bush administration wants to slim down the prisoner headcount at Gitmo from the current 360 to 150. So good news for 210 wrongfully-imprisoned and even-more-wrongfully tortured detainees? Actually, no. We’ve still got one more level of wrongful to go: there’s nowhere to drop them off. Their home countries and all of the possible foster-home states that have been asked either won’t take them, or won’t take them without promising not to torture or kill them. So they get to stay in Guantánamo, where their human rights will be, uh, protected.

I wonder if they’d take any consolation in not being among the other 150 prisoners – the ones the Bush DoD doesn’t want to get rid of. Of those 150, Bush & Co. have selected 80 finalists whom they want to [beverages down again...] charge with war crimes. I shit you not. The Bush administration, having exempted itself from international accords and the U.S. Constitution in order to avoid being charged with war crimes, is gearing up to charge some of the victims of its war crimes with war crimes. Yes, some of them are surely guilty of war crimes, but we’ll never really know with the kangaroo-court military tribunals that will try them.

What about the 50 semi-finalists? The Bush junta says that they’re too dangerous to release from Gitmo, but not bad enough to put on trial. Um… I have nothing to add to this point. I guess my disgust has reached critical mass, at least for the moment.

The thing that’s saddening me the most right now is that after 6+ years of Bush, this level of absurdity doesn’t even seem unusual anymore. It’s like a ghastly, global-scale version of one of the “Cowboys and Indians” games I participated in during my single-digit years: the ones where the biggest kids make up the rules as they go along, and their manipulations become more and more illogical until chaos and disillusionment set in and the game collapses.

Would that I could just say “I’m not playing anymore,” quit the so-called war on terror and walk home.

September 14, 2006 press conference, transcript posted on Whitehouse.gov:

REPORTER: What do you say to the argument that your [Military Commissions Act] proposal is basically seeking support for torture, coerced evidence and secret hearings?

PRESIDENT BUSH: This debate is occurring because of the Supreme Court’s ruling that said that we must conduct ourselves under the Common Article III of the Geneva Convention. And that Common Article III says that there will be no outrages upon human dignity. It’s very vague. What does that mean, “outrages upon human dignity?” That’s a statement that is wide open to interpretation.

Is it? The rest of the world hasn’t seemed to have had all kinds of trouble interpreting what Common Article 3 means in the 50+ years since it was written, so your problem is…?

One wonders how an argument this lame was given a pass. I can only surmise that the idea of Bush not getting what a line in a treaty means didn’t seem like much of a stretch. Of course, the truth is that he and his cohorts know damn well what it means.

Today, the crap came back. The whole “that could mean a lot of things” gambit slid through so easily for Bush that now it’s cropping up in other areas of the federal government:

November 16, 2006 article on TPMmuckraker.com:

In a new report on publicly-funded abstinence programs, a government watchdog charged that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)… last year spent $153 million on abstinence education programs… some of the [which] are telling kids stuff that just isn’t true. The Government Accountability Office cites one program which told kids that HIV can pass through latex condoms, because latex is porous. (That’s false.)

The GAO gave the reasonable-sounding recommendation to HHS that it ensure that all information given to kids through these programs should be scientifically accurate.

…In response, HHS — which has on staff more than a few scientists and other educated types — said, “[the] GAO never defines the term ‘scientific accuracy’ in its report… As such, it is difficult to precisely determine the criteria employed by GAO in making the recommendations as to scientific accuracy.”

May I respectfully request that we stop this shit right now? Please? Because, look: the neocons are the folks who created and gloried in the endless “Monica-gate” drama and who never get tired of mocking Bill Clinton with the sound clip of his “that depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is” evasion. I assure you that if I have to listen to one more of these guys wax hypocritical by claiming not to know what some perfectly obvious idea means, I may never stop throwing up.