Greetings!
Two major civil rights stories unfolded recently, seemingly unconnected; yet both testify mightily to why civil and human rights are not only just, but good for us. Dick Cheney accused President Obama of putting Americans at greater risk of a new catastrophic terrorist attack by ordering the closure of the detention camp at Guantanamo and an end to the torture of suspected terrorists. Was Cheney speaking the truth? Or torturing it? But first to another civil rights issue, and then to the questions of terrorism, the Constitution and national security.
This week New York Senator Charles Schumer announced his support for marriage equality legislation in New York state and for the repeal of the "Defense of Marriage Act" (DOMA), which forbids federal government recognition of same-sex marriages. In declaring his support for legalizing same-sex marriage, Schumer joins New York's other Democratic US Senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, New York City's (Republican) Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and other leading area Democrats like New York Governor David Paterson and New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine.
Schumer put it like this: "It's time. Equality is something that has always been a hallmark of America and no group should be deprived of it. New York, which has always been at the forefront on issues of equality, is poised appropriately to take a lead on this issue."
This week a prominent Republican, Steve Schmidt, chief strategist for U.S. Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign, also came out in favor of marriage equality for same-sex couples, "while urging the Republican Party to be more inclusive of gays and lesbians." The call for inclusiveness towards gays and lesbians is increasingly resonating in the American Jewish community too. JTA reported recently about the growing efforts of synagogues to be more welcoming to gays.
Schumer's support will add to the momentum building this year to make New York one of the next states to enact marriage equality: the New York State Assembly has already passed a marriage equality bill, and now it's up to the New York State Senate.
Learning from the mistakes that were made with Proposition 8 in California (which reversed the state Supreme Court's ruling affirming the right to marry for same sex couples there), LGBT groups are joining with straight allies - from organized labor, religious groups, including New York City's Congregation B'nai Jeshurun, and businesses - to bring over 1,400 New Yorkers to Albany on April 28 for LGBT Equality and Justice Day to make their voices heard with their state senators. If you'd like to participate, or just watch a moving video about this campaign, click here.
 But it's not just about marriage equality, which will finally guarantee equal rights to health insurance, hospital visitation and other benefits to same-sex couples, and help to remove the stigma of "separate and unequal." It's about insuring that NY schools are safe places for LGBT youth; it's about guaranteeing full civil rights for the many LGBT people in our community. It's about tzedek, justice, a core value in the Jewish tradition. And it's why the Jewish Alliance for Change has joined with LGBT rights groups to support marriage equality. It's why we're sponsoring the star-studded concert in New York City, BROADWAY FOR A NEW AMERICA on Monday, April 13.
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Cheney, Obama, Jack Bauer & Torture
A few years ago essayist Sarah Vowell tried to reconcile the Whitmanesque contradictions within her in a New York Times op-ed: "Down With Torture! Gimme Torture!" cried her title. How is it that we (some of us, anyway) can cheer, or find solace, when TV character Jack Bauer threatens to torture bad guys who hold information which, once disclosed, could save thousands, even tens of thousands or millions of innocent lives, while at the same time we rightly condemn the trampling of our Constitution and the Geneva Conventions in which the Bush Administration engaged by torturing certain prisoners (many innocents, some merely suspected terrorists and a few who undoubtedly played key roles in 9/11)?
"There is a jarring disconnect between what I want my real-life intelligence officers to be doing versus what I want my fake TV intelligence officers to be doing," explained Vowell. "Unconstitutional fantasies are normal (I hope), and on TV dramas they can be entertaining and cathartic. Let's just keep them off the TV news."
Well, recently they were in the news. Former (baruch hashem) Vice Present Dick Cheney claimed on CNN that Obama's "plans to close the detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, within the year, suspend military trials for terrorism suspects and prohibit the interrogation practice known as waterboarding," in his words, "will, in fact, raise the risk to the American people of another attack." (See, we told you during the election that Obama palled around with terrorists, and was their best friend. It wasn't just campaign rhetoric. We meant it!) Cheney further insisted that these measures yielded valuable intelligence which protected the United States from another terrorist attack. We, the public, can't of course know about all that, because the intell is, well, classified. We just have to take Cheney's word.
Is President Obama in fact degrading our national security and increasing our risk of suffering another mass casualty terrorist attack? Is he sacrificing American lives on the altar of a renewed commitment to the rule of law and human rights?
Highly doubtful. President Obama is privy to the same intelligence to which Cheney was - and more. Obama noted in his response that Cheney's notion "that we can't reconcile our core values, our Constitution, [with] our belief that we don't torture, with our national security interests" is mistaken. "The facts don't bear him out. I think that attitude, that philosophy, has done incredible damage to our image and position in the world.... It hasn't made us safer. What it has been is a great advertisement for anti-American sentiment. Which means that there is constant effective recruitment of Arab fighters and Muslim fighters against U.S. interests all around the world."
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was the head of Al Qaeda in Iraq, responsible for numerous suicide bombings, beheadings and attacks against American forces and Shiites during the Iraq War. "Major Matthew Alexander," who played a key role in taking out al-Zarqawi, told Harpers's: "I listened time and time again to foreign fighters, and Sunni Iraqis, state that the number one reason they had decided to pick up arms and join Al Qaeda was the abuses at Abu Ghraib and the authorized torture and abuse at Guantanamo Bay. My team of interrogators knew that we would become Al Qaeda's best recruiters if we resorted to torture."
Second, there is considerable evidence that torture, far from producing reliable intelligence, is more likely to cause detainees to fabricate stories just to make the pain stop. This appears to be exactly what happened when Khalid Sheikh Muhammed, the mastermind of 9/11, was tortured under Bush Administration directives, generating a series of false red alerts in the U.S.
In reality, the kind of ticking bomb scenarios so often depicted on 24 and so often used to justify torture by the Cheneys of the world - where saving lives, perhaps even countless lives, might depend on extracting critical information from someone complicit in an unfolding terrorist plot - are extremely rare. And in those cases when they do occur, the harms wrought by torture are highly likely to far outweigh the possible gains. Listen again to Major Alexander, the American Air Force major who, "through a series of skillful interrogations" - without the use of torture - "secured the information that allowed the military to pinpoint al-Zarqawi's whereabouts and kill him:"
"It is clear that at least hundreds but more likely thousands of American lives (not to count Iraqi civilian deaths) are linked directly to the policy decision to introduce the torture and abuse of prisoners as accepted tactics. Americans have died from terrorist attacks since 9/11; those Americans just happen to be American soldiers."
"This is not simply my view," continued Major Alexander. "It is widely held among senior officers in the U.S. military today. Alberto Mora, who served as General Counsel of the Navy under Donald Rumsfeld, testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee in June 2008 that 'U.S. flag-rank officers maintain that the first and second identifiable causes of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq - as judged by their effectiveness in recruiting insurgent fighters into combat - are, respectively the symbols of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.' We owe it to our troops to protect them from terrorist attacks by not conducting torture and we owe it to our forefathers to uphold the American principles that they passed down to us."
In short, civil and human rights are not only just; they're also good for us. | |
Kol tuv,
Doni
Doni Remba
Executive Director
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This week Senator Charles Schumer joined a growing roster of prominent Democrats
and Republicans endorsing marriage equality and the repeal of the "Defense of Marriage Act." |
Broadway for a New America:
Standing Up for Marriage Equality & A Progressive Agenda for Change
on our new date
April 13, 2009
Symphony Space
95th and Broadway New York City
featuring a dazzling array of over 30 top named performers from the worlds of Broadway, television, film, music, and comedy, including many Tony, Emmy, Oscar and Grammy Award winners and nominees.
Plus, surprise guests and prominent New York political leaders and activists.
Click for tix
Synagogue members are eligible for special discount tickets.
Tickets purchased for March 2nd will be honored on 4/13 |
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The work of enacting a progressive agenda for change has only just begun. | |
