Wednesday, January 20, 2010
A Tale of a Non-Diplomatic Diplomat
An ambassador is an honest man set to lie abroad for the commonwealth.
—Sir Henry Wotton, Reliquiae Wottoniamae [1651]
Diplomacy is not always as its name suggests. For this week’s lesson in its niceties (or lack thereof) we are indebted to Daniel Ayalon, Israel’s deputy foreign minister. He essentially taught us that there is more than one way to skin a cat or, put diplomatically, to let another country know of your displeasure with what the other country has done. This particular row pertained to affairs between Turkey and Israel and found its genesis in a Turkish television series known as “Valley of the Wolves”.
The program began in 2003 and is reportedly filled with nationalistic dialogue and scenarios displaying Turkish success in the various conflicts depicted on the series. The series contains graphic scenes of violence and, according to one description, glamorizes the life of the Mafiosi and, if taken at face value, could be seen as glamorizing lives of violence. In that respect it sounds a lot like what is seen every night on American TV. The Turks are more sensitive to such things than Americans and have often protested the show and demanded that it be removed from the airwaves. Murathan Mungan, a prominent Turkish author and poet is quoted saying of the series: “I believe the team behind the series is openly racist, defends acting outside the law, promotes the mafia and portrays violent role models . . . in a manner that would not have been seen in Hitler’s Germany or Mussolini’s Italy.” According to a description of the series in the New York Times, among other things the series shows Israeli agents and diplomats engaged in the business of trying to capture and convert Muslim children. It is considered particularly offensive because it is perceived as a way of feeding anti-Israel sentiment in Turkey.
The episode that gave rise to the lesson in diplomacy presented by Israel’s Deputy Foreign minister, Daniel Ayalon showed the series’ hero, Polat Alemdar, storming an Israeli diplomatic mission in order to rescue a Turkish boy who had been kidnapped by Israel’s Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations known as Mossad. Alemdar kills an Israeli agent and justifies his action saying it is no different from what Israel does vis a vis the Palestinians.
Upon learning of the depiction, Mr. Ayalon summoned Ahmet Oguz Celikkol, the Turkish Ambassador to Israel, in order to express Israel’s displeasure over the series. However, Mr. Ayalon was not content to issue a verbal rebuke. He also wanted to surprise Mr. Celikkol. He succeeded. Mr. Ayalon had, without telling Mr. Celikkol ahead of time, invited television reporters to attend the meeting. In the room in which the meeting took place were two chairs and a table. The table had the Israeli flag on it but no Turkish flag. The chairs were of different heights. Mr. Celikkol was seated on the lower chair so that he was forced to look up at Mr. Ayalon thus demonstrating, at least to Mr. Ayalon’s satisfaction, the superiority of Mr. Ayalon’s position. Mr. Ayalon wanted to make sure that no one missed the significance of the seating arrangement. According to the BBC, Mr. Ayalon “was caught on camera urging cameramen to note the ambassador’s low seating position. . . .” Speaking in Hebrew, which the Turkish Ambassador does not understand, Mr. Ayalon said: “The important thing is that people see that he’s low and we’re high and that there is no flag here.” He was also heard to point out in Hebrew, lest it be overlooked, “we are not smiling”. He refused to serve refreshments during the meeting or to shake the Ambassador’s hand. Pictures of the meeting showing Mr. Ayalon’s superior position were broadcast widely throughout Israel.
If anyone wondered how Mr. Ayalon attained the lofty position he holds, that episode provides the answer. Mr. Ayalon knows how to show the world who is who. Of course, his diplomatic triumph was not without its consequences. Such episodes rarely are. The good thing is one of its consequences was not the beginning of a war. Instead it was a continuation of the Ambassador summoning business.
The Israeli ambassador to Turkey, Gabby Levy, was summoned to a meeting in the Turkish foreign ministry’s under-secretary in Ankara. According to the BBC, the two men were seated in chairs of equal height and Turkey expressed its displeasure with demeaning treatment given its Ambassador. It is not reported whether refreshments were served. The Turks demanded an apology. At first Mr. Ayalon refused and simply said in the future he would be more diplomatic. In response to the refusal, Turkey’s president said that absent a formal apology, Turkey’s ambassador to Israel would be withdrawn. Responding to the uproar that was growing louder, Mr. Ayalon relented and issued a formal apology to Mr. Celikkol. It was not reported whether Mr. Ayalon had his fingers crossed when he penned the apology.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Who are the Recidivists?
Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more man’s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.
— Francis Bacon, de Augmentis Scientiarum bk. II Fortitudo
This week’s surprise is not one you might have expected. It pertains to recidivism. If you listened to Senators and Congresspersons talk about the perils of releasing prisoners from Guantanamo because they will only return to attack us once again, you’d assume that recidivism among those released from Guantanamo would be close to 100%. That would not be surprising since many of the released GITMO prisoners had, among other things, been tortured and held there for years without charges being filed. One of the understandable side effects of such treatment could be a wish to exact revenge on one’s former captors. Indeed, the dangers of recidivism among this group was neatly captured by Representative Pete Hoekstra of Michigan who, upon learning during the Christmas holidays that the administration was sending two GITMO detainees overseas, (an announcement that was made two days after 12 other detainees had been sent to Afghanistan, Yemen and Somaliland) said: “We continue to send people back to countries that have weak central governments and ungoverned areas. It baffles the brain. In light of recent events, both the attempted bombing [Christmas Day] and the link to a former detainee from Gitmo who then became an al-Qaeda leader in Yemen. . . there should be a whole lot of red flags about transferring any more detainees out right now. Are they going to a country that produced any of these recidivists?”
His concern was echoed by Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the ranking Republican member of the Judiciary Committee who said: “We are deeply concerned about pending transfers [of detainees] on the heels of the Christmas Day bombing and news reports suggesting that even more released GITMO detainees have returned to militant activities than previously thought. All transfers should be put on hold until there has been a chance to analyze emerging numbers about the threat of recidivism, and to begin patching the cracks in the system laid bare by the Christmas Day bomb plot.”
Here is the surprise. According to the most recent Pentagon report, the recidivism rate among released GITMO detainees has gone up from 14% in the spring of 2009 to 20%. Four out of 5 of the former detainees have returned to a pacific way of life not involving hostility towards their former captors. Here is another surprise. It’s the recidivism rate among people released from U.S. prisons.
Every person incarcerated in a United States prison knows why he or she is there and, subject to early release for good behavior (and with the exception of certain sex offenders) knows exactly how long he or she can expect to stay there. Not one prisoner anywhere in the United States was subjected to torture in order to assist the government in establishing why the prisoner should be in prison rather than out on the streets. Every prisoner in the United States has a right to have a court consider every aspect of the proceedings that ended up with the prisoner’s incarceration. Notwithstanding the treatment accorded domestic criminals, they show little gratitude for the treatement they receive in the American criminal justice system.
According to the 2006 report of the Commission on Safety and Abuse, within 3 years of being released, 67% of the former prisoners will once again be arrested and 52% will be re-incarcerated. The rate of recidivism for our homegrown criminals is more than three times as high as it is for the foreign nationals at GITMO, not all of whom have even committed any crimes. The Report does not suggest, as some elected officials have with respect to GITMO detainees, that because they might be dangerous if released they should be incarcerated forever. (The four policemen in Lakeland, Washington who were murdered by the apparent recidivist Maurice Clemmons, would probably not have favored indefinite detention for violent offenders but would have wished that a convicted felon from Arkansas charged with child rape and assault in Washington, would not have been out walking the streets while awaiting trial.)
Reflecting on the United States statistics one is tempted to apply Mr. Hoekstra’s question about release of folk from GITMO to the release of folk from the U.S. prison system: “Are they going to a country that produced any of these recidivists?” The answer being in the affirmative one is tempted to ask Mr. Hoekstra whether he and others who favor indefinite detention for certain GITMO detainees would favor indefinite detention for domestic criminals, and, if not, why not, and if so, which ones would qualify for indefinite detention. That might also provide guidelines for deciding which GITMO detainees qualify for indefinite detention. With the development of such guidelines we could take comfort in the fact that something good has come out of Guantanamo.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Filibusters Could Be Fun
You can’t really blame the senators. It’s much easier for them this way. On the other hand, it was more amusing for the citizens the old way. The senators should go back to the old way. I refer to the filibuster. They took the fun out of it several decades ago and it’s high time they put it back. The senators would have more time in the public eye and the public eye would have something at which to gaze.Although the Senate is much given to admiring in its members a superiority less obvious or quite invisible to outsiders, one senator seldom proclaims his own inferiority to another, and still more seldom likes to be told of it.
— Henry Brooks Adams, The Education of Henry Adams
According to the Congressional Quarterly (CQ), the filibuster’s first use by the U.S. Senate took place in 1841 when Democrats and Whigs were fighting over the appointment of official Senate printers and the establishment of a national bank. Later in the 19th Century the filibuster was involved in issues pertaining to slavery, the civil war and reconstruction. In 1917 it was used to block a bill authorizing the purchase of ships and another authorizing the arming of merchant ships, both sought by President Woodrow Wilson to prepare the nation for war. Following the 1917 filibuster, the Senate adopted a cloture rule to cut off endless filibustering that was invoked 25 times through 1962, but successfully ended a filibuster only four times.
In days gone by filibusters required talking. And more talking. So long as the filibusterers had the floor, the Senate could not engage in other business and the filibusterers were free to talk as long as they had the strength and observed the rules that permitted them to hold the floor. In the 1950s and ‘60s the threat of civil rights legislation being passed was sufficient to guarantee filibusters. Strom Thurmond filibustered a civil rights bill in 1957 speaking continuously for twenty-four hours and eighteen minutes. Three years later eighteen southern senators formed groups of two and kept the senate in session for 9 days until majority leader Lyndon Johnson abandoned the legislation in favor of a weaker version later passed. June 10, 1964, Senator Robert Byrd came to the end of a speech he had given that lasted 14 hours and 13 minutes opposing the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Shortly after he concluded, cloture was approved bringing to an end a debate that had taken 57 working days including six Saturdays. Then a sad thing happened. Majority Leader Mike Mansfield imposed a rule that might be called the Virtual Filibuster. Senators call it two tracking.
Under the two track rule more than one bill can be pending on the floor of the Senate as unfinished business. Thus, if a filibuster of a given bill is threatened, the senate pretends that the filibuster is taking place but continues working on other legislation. In effect (and it may be hard to believe that senators are capable of this) the senators are multi-tasking.
In 2004, former Congressman Jack Kemp wrote that in the 19th century there were only 23 filibusters whereas between 1970 and 2004 there were 191. The increase in number was attributable to the Virtual Filibuster whose abolition Mr. Kemp favored. Today every piece of legislation and many nominations are threatened by filibuster. It seems unfair to the minority that they are not given the opportunity to put their mouths where their hearts are.
The Senate should get rid of the Virtual Filibuster. It should insist that everything come to a grinding halt while those opposing legislation are permitted to demonstrate their oratorical skills. Some senators may oppose this new-old idea on the completely believable ground that they lack enough information about the legislation they oppose to discuss it intelligently for 10 minutes, much less several hours. Those fearing that should be comforted by the knowledge that under the rules of the Senate, their orations need not be germane to the legislation being opposed. They can, as Senator Huey Long once did while filibustering, discuss recipes for a variety of Southern foods. Requiring those filibustering to stand before cameras and orate gives them the opportunity for viewers of C-Span, Twitter and the like to let the whole world see how brilliant they are. And if, as would often be the case, the orator or the cause is not brilliant, the orator and his colleagues may, after sufficient public exposure, recognize that they are an embarrassment to the country and abandon the filibuster.
When President Wilson commented on the use of the filibuster to block the arming of the merchant ships in 1917 he said: “The Senate of the United States is the only legislative body in the world which cannot act when the majority is ready for action. A little group of willful men . . . have rendered the great government of the United States helpless and contemptible.” Mitch McConnell, minority leader of the senate, might want to contemplate those words. Some would say they describe him and his Republican cohorts.