Some of us were still digesting the heart- and conscience-rending story of the Navy Judge Advocate General (JAG) who resigned rather than continue to work in an organization that unethically endorsed torture, when we also became aware of the Bush administration’s plan to politicize the justice operations of the U.S. military. (See Geneva Conventions, here.)
Jurist, a news organ from the University of Pittsburgh Law School, with the short version here (with a recounting of other political troubles in JAG); the Boston Globe has the longer version here.
It’s the sort of move one expects from Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharaf; it’s the sort of move one would expect President Hugo Chavez to try in Venezuela, before the college students and military shout him down. It’s a banana republic-style action. It’s a move beneath a U.S. politician. Or, it should be.
If Orrin Hatch and Arlen Specter were alive today, you can bet this proposal would be dead.
For high school history and government teachers, these are exciting times. Abuses of the Constitution and potential crises cross the headlines every day. Each of these stories tells students the importance of knowing government and where the levers of power are.
Jan Carlzon at SAS Airline used to say people armed with knowledge cannot help but act. We must be missing the boat — where is the action?
Tip of the old scrub brush to Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
Chavez is vexing to pigeonhole, no? I was with him when he stood down the coup. But since then, I can’t think of any occasion when he’s acted to encourage me to think he either understands economics much (though he’s got the parable of the unfaithful servant down really well), or that he really cares to build the economies and necessary institutions in the nations around him — instead he appears to love tweaking George Bush. That’s a charming quality in a stand-up comedian, not so much in the President of Venezuela.
Your analysis of the student protestors makes me reassess.
I agree with you that it appears Bush is trying to make us a banana republic. Not yet convinced Chavez is about pulling Venezuela out.
I’m happy that Henry Kissinger and Milton Friedman aren’t active there. It probably helps Chavez a lot that Castro is so ill; even the CIA probably figures that no one thinks military action is the right path since Castro’s gray and dying.
On such small platforms are long peaces and economic turnarounds built on.
LikeLike
I don’t understand the Hugo Chavez bashing that I see on some progressive sites. Chavez is in no way comparable to Bush or Musharraf. I wouldn’t either use Time as a reliable source about Chavez.
Chavez is one or the few Latin American leaders who is trying to change things for the better for the majority in his country. The student protesters come from the minority ruling elite that has created the great inequality in the country where for decades only this privileged oligarchy benefited from the country’s mineral wealth. They are more like Bush and Musharraf than Chavez is.
Of course after so many years of this elitist class structure, it is a long hard slog. Chavez can’t change everything overnight, or even in a few short years. But he is trying to rise out of the banana(or oil) republic, while Bush is making the U.S. into such a republic.
LikeLike