Browse: Home » Crosscut.com

Crosscut.com

Tuesday’s Scan: Costco? Who says we’re from Costco?

originally published on Crosscut.com on May 22, 2012

In Alan J. Pakula’s brilliant film adaptation of Woodward and Bernstein’s All the President’s Men, Bob Woodward, played by Robert Redford, confronts an attorney named Markham during the arraignment of the Watergate burglars. “Markham,” Woodward says. “Mr. Markham, are you here in connection with the Watergate burglary?”  

“I’m not here,” Markham says.  

The scene, emblematic of absurd denials, was replayed in Olympia last week (minus E. Howard Hunt) as a team of Costco attorneys attended a state Supreme Court hearing challenging Initiative 1183, the Costco-underwritten measure that privatizes state liquor sales. Is there a compelling reason for attorneys to act so taciturn and Markham-like?  

“In my experience it’s tradition that after newsworthy oral arguments before the Supreme Court, the lawyers talk with reporters. Sometimes this happens in the chambers. Sometimes out in the foyer. Other times on the steps of the Temple of Justice,” Austin Jenkins writes in the Washington Ledge. “But on Thursday, neither [attorney David] Burman nor anyone from the Costco delegation would speak on the record. In fact, Costco Senior Vice President and Chief Legal Officer Joel Benoliel wouldn’t even identify himself to me. Instead, Benoliel — whom I later identified based on his picture — referred KOMO’s Bryan Johnson and me to the state’s attorney.”   

Wasn’t the whole purpose of I-1183 to de-bureaucratize and facilitate the purchase of hooch by impulsive miscreants like this Scan’s author? In practice,  liquor privatization could evolve into a monopoly, sidelining smaller businesses that hope to cash in. Are there adequate safeguards for little-guy booze peddlers or will they simply need to become more entrepreneurial?   

“After the state’s voters gave big retailers the right to sell liquor starting June 1, at least one chain is invoking a right that elbows out some slim small-store competition,” the Seattle Times‘ Melissa Allison writes. “QFC is enforcing contracts at some of its locations that prohibit private liquor stores from operating in the same shopping centers, according to real-estate brokers involved in two local deals, one in Issaquah and the other in Kirkland. The restrictions, which are legal, are causing some people to scramble for new locations after they won rights in an auction to operate one of the state’s 167 existing liquor stores.”   

Snohomish County Councilmember Brian Sullivan’s mother did not raise a quitter. As the The Herald‘s Jerry Cornfield writes, “Democratic Snohomish County Councilman Brian Sullivan said Monday he’s not giving up on his dream to serve in Congress. He said he will remain a candidate in the special election to serve the final month of U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee’s term even though the field ballooned to 11 people last Friday, including five who want the job well into the future.”

Politics notwithstanding, it would be pretty sweet to witness Sullivan power past the crowded field and emerge triumphant. He or some other non-ambitious (write in PETER H. JACKSON) candidate who wouldn’t attempt to game the system, but rather promote the interests and greater good of the district (PETER H. JACKSON needs health insurance) in a farsighted, nonpartisan manner.  

The Green Moutain Lookout in Washington’s Glacier Peak Wilderness Area may live to see another summer. Sens. Maria Cantwell, Patty Murray, and Rep. Rick Larsen have elbowed U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to do everthing legally kosher to put the kibosh on the lookout’s destruction. As the Seattlepi.com‘s Joel Connelly writes, “U.S. District Judge John Coughenour, ruling on a suit by Montana-based Wilderness Watch, recently ordered the U.S. Forest Service to remove the lookout.  The Seattle U.S. Attorney’s office has filed a motion to have the ruling remanded to allow the Forest Service to assess whether the historic lookout can remain.” The question revolves around helicopters used to reconstruct the lookout, a clear violation of the U.S. Wilderness Act of 1964. Arguably, someone should get a letter of reprimand from the U.S. Forest Service, but tear down an historic lookout? The remedy doesn’t exactly square with the violation.  

Lastly, if a tsunami comes this way, early warning may be a wee tougher to gauge. As KPLU’s Tom Banse reports, “One quarter (12 of 39) of U.S.-operated tsunami warning buoys in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans are out of service. That includes the two tsunami detection buoys directly off the Pacific Northwest coast. But the warning system has some redundancy built in.” Let’s hope that “redundancy” saves us.  

May 22, 2012 phjackson Leave a response , ,

Crosscut: a Northwest incubator

originally published on Crosscut.com on April 10, 2012

When I was a teen, I was passionate about The New Republic and Mad Magazine (and other things that, to spare my family, will go unmentioned.) I integrated the two and became convinced that humor was one of the more effective ways to animate public ideas (a sentiment magnified during the dolorous Reagan era.) The New Republic, a flimsy magazine that occasionally featured a Vint Lawrence cartoon or two, was an incubator of some of the nation’s more vital policy brainstorms. People in and out of public life read it and debated it, and at times lawmakers enacted legislation in response. It was and is a vivid expression of journalism in the public interest. 

Today Crosscut is a Northwest incubator, a regional lens and a forum to provoke, to question, and to float ideas designed to elevate the public interest. It’s a project that merits your membership and support.

Knitting together the threads of the serious and profane, I quickly gravitated to Crosscut’s elderly cutups (I’m kidding. I truly love their tales of Al Smith and bathtub gin.) In fact, now I’m the oldster (yes, Berit and Zachariah, there really was a President Bush before W.) 

My first Crosscut submission (fasten your seat belts!) highlighted the Northwest roots of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Before long I was invited to expound on the question at Boise State’s Frank Church Institute. Since then I’ve scribbled about the need for a no-net-loss of public gathering places in Everett, chided Boeing for its complicity in extraordinary rendition (not too popular, that),  elbowed for the reinstatement of a history column at a Northwest paper (it actually happened) and lamented the plight of a Northwest cartoonist who was targeted by an Islamic extremist. That extremist, Anwar-Al-Awlaki, was subsequently killed in a U.S. drone attack. Q.E.D. (Ed note: Crosscut does not condone assassinating evildoers. Technically.) 

Since August of 2011, I’ve written a weekday news compendium consisting of five Northwest stories that we believe are worth a gander. Midday Scan, conceived by Joe Copeland and David Brewster, is a news capsule with links that go beyond the most popular stories to underline some overlooked public issues that merit particular attention. It’s part of Crosscut’s mission to provide a forum that digs deeper to extend upon and illuminate critical ideas.  

Even when you disagree with some of its (non-Midday Scan) content, I hope Crosscut provides a key public benefit. It’s one of the reasons why I’m a member, and why I encourage you to become an annual Member as well. In the Pacific Northwest, there’s nothing quite like it.  

April 10, 2012 phjackson Leave a response ,

Tale of 2 Seattles: Obama mixes in very different settings

originally published on Crosscut.com on September 25, 2011

On Sunday a young American president intrepidly withstood the elements of the Pacific Northwest. He traversed a floating bridge like Gen. Patton crossing the Rhine and de-camped to a remote lakeside village, name of Medina. There he sat and listened to the real-world concerns of everyday Northwesterners, most of whom salted away money for a decade to pony up the price of admission ($35,800 a couple.)

Jealous not to be there? Indeed, this writer would have bartered his mother and wife to the Visigoths to attend.  

Thankfully, penurious writers benefit from well-heeled friends (who do you think pays for their meals)? Here’s what I learned from one of the many grateful attendees:  

The Medina shindig was hosted by philanthropist and former Microsoft president Jon Shirley and his spouse, Mary. Despite living in a tiny hamlet, they have quite a spread, including one of the most impressive art collections around (the Shirleys were generous benefactors of the Olympic Sculpture Park). Approximately 80 folks attended, including a handful of children. The tech industry was heavily represented.  

The president ran several minutes late, although no refunds or discounts were in the offing. (The good news: tickets included brunch). Once the president arrived, the photo-ops began. Everyone got their pic with “a very charming, very witty” president. Post-photos, Obama spoke for 20 minutes, underlining the country’s economic challenges in a mostly apolitical “statesmanlike” spiel. Then came a half-hour of Q&A.  

 The questions were relevant, the source said, and somewhat confrontational when it came to the environment. The president has been criticized by the conservation community, for example, for retreating on EPA clean-air regulations.  

The president acknowledged the importance of galvanizing the progressive community, a constituency that has felt marginalized of late. Democrats need to rally and be vigilant, he said. Obama also alluded to the Republican presidential candidates and some of the “frightening” and unreal aspects of their agenda. The source said, “He didn’t say it, but there was an unspoken sense that ‘these folks are nuts.”  

The brunch ended with a teenage girl asking about the role of youth. A spot-on question: President Obama will not get reelected if complacent younger voters sit on their hands in 2012.  

Obama bid adieu, braved Lake Washington again, and headed west to the Paramount Theatre for a less-ritzy fundraiser ($100 for the cheap seats). Facebook lit up. “Kissing babies and telling the truth in Seattle,” one attendee wrote. There, sports legends Lenny Wilkins and Bill Russell made a pitch.

“I need you guys to shake off any doldrums,” the president said near the end of his Paramount address. Unfortunately, President Obama was behind schedule. At this event, alas, there was no time for questions.   

September 25, 2011 phjackson Leave a response , ,

Llew Pritchard and the call for human rights: An assistant Secretary of State speaks at event honoring the Seattle attorney with a long record of fighting for rights and justice while serving on local boards.

originally published on Crosscut.com on September 21, 2011

An assistant Secretary of State speaks at event honoring the Seattle attorney with a long record of fighting for rights and justice while serving on local boards.

There are instances, however rare, when a namesake award and the award recipient so neatly align that one seems a natural extension of the other.

At the Four Seasons on Wednesday (Sept. 21), the Seattle chapter of the American Jewish Committee presented its 2011 Judge Learned Hand Award to Llewelyn “Llew” Pritchard, the distinguished local attorney and civic whirilwind. The late Judge Hand, who served for decades on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, was a noted civil libertarian, legal philosopher, and Joe-McCarthy-despising progressive. The Hand-Pritchard parallel is resonant, although Pritchard has always been an independent, get-it-done operator and never served as a judge. The philosophical congruence between the two, coupled with Pritchard’s lifelong commitment to public service, made the award especially sweet.

The advancement and protection of human rights was the defining theme of Wednesday’s event. Michael Posner, the U.S. Assisrant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor and a human-rights boosting compatriot of Pritchard’s, outlined the Obama Administration’s agenda.

“I read the intelligence reports every day, and I can’t exactly tell you to relax,” Posner said. (Yes, the comment generated nervous laughter). 

Some of the administration’s initiatives are unadorned and obviously consistent with core American values: A policy of “principled engagement” that enshrines religious freedom and human rights, for example. The administration is also focusing on an open Internet and tamping down political interference in cyber space. (Posner acknowledged Microsoft’s Brad Smith, who was in the audience, as a human rights-tech ally). The administration has dedicated $70 million to “Internet freedom,” Posner said, including the training of 5,000 activists on the latest technology. One example: A “panic button” for cell phones that automatically erases an individual’s directory, safeguarding the identities of fellow activisits. 

“Changes occur from within,” Posner said, an implicit nod to elevating civil society while avoiding changes from without. Approximately 50 countries worldwide continue to crack down on nongovernmental organizations, he said. There’s still much work to do.  

When it came his turn to speak, Pritchard was characteristically modest, although quoting from Judge Hand has an immodest effect: It hits like an anchor truth. “The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right,” Pritchard said, quoting Hand. Another Hand nugget was cited by Thomas Ehrlich, the former Stanford Law Dean and Hand’s last law clerk: “If we are to keep democracy, there must be a commandment: Thou shalt not ration justice.”  

Llew Pritchard, an indefatigable advocate for the legal rights of immigrants, the poor, and those in the shadows of life, headwinds the sin of rationed justice. Judge Learned Hand would be delighted.    

September 21, 2011 phjackson Leave a response , ,

Water fights: A proud son of Everett swings back at the latest insult, this one about how well Everett’s bottled water lies on the exquisite stomachs of upmarket urban booksellers.

originally published on Crosscut.com on July 28, 2011

On Wednesday one of Crosscut’s elderly editors asked me the distance between Everett and Spada Lake, the source of most of Snohomish County’s water. “It’s about 50 miles,” I said.

The editor paused, fixed in either deep thought or a nano nap. “So, pretty far from all of those pulp mills,” he said.

Please forgive Crosscut’s well-meaning, albeit senescent, nonagenarian editors. They’re still stuck back in college, when they donned raccoon coats and straw boaters and played “Yes, We Have no Bananas” on the ukulele. They recall hopping the Interurban up to Everett for speakeasy gin. Now Everett is simply that blue-collar speck “up there,” drive-through country on the way to the Vancouver Four Seasons. Sigh.

Among Seattle plutocrats, Everett remains a “hey, my contractor lives there!” place. The inference is clear: Some of my best roofers are Everettites, I just don’t want my daughter to marry one.

My Spada Lake exchange was in response to Peter Miller’s entertaining Crosscut blog. Miller, a renowned Seattle bookseller, links his stomach discomfort with drinking purified Everett tap water from Spada Lake.

Alas, the otherwise brilliant Miller lost me with his pusillanimous first sentence: “There is a bravery to eating and drinking what is put in front of you, a thankfulness and can-do spirit.” Hmmm. A bravery and can-do spirit to eating and drinking what’s put in front of you? Pray tell who is providing said food and drink, and where do I sign up? Not since Marie Antoinette’s “let them eat cake” have such un-Everett sentiments been expressed.

Make no mistake: No one in Everett has ever had a problem eating what’s put in front of them and, just as relevant, no one has ever experienced a stomach ache. I repeat: Never. Whether drinking Spada Lake water or, more commonly, Jack Daniels, discomfort is not an option.

Miller’s dyspeptic message is best captured in the hypothetical headline: “Seattle Bookseller Gets a Tummy Ache from Drinking God-purified Water.” Instead an unnamed editor (let’s assign him/her a random pseudonym, “David Brewster”) titled it “Think Before you Drink.” Oh the humanity.

Can a clash of perspectives be reduced to a brand catchphrase? No, but let’s do it anyway: Per Olympia beer, “It’s the Water.”

July 28, 2011 phjackson Leave a response , , ,

‘Today, we are all Norwegian’: Reflections on political terror and the Scandinavian experience in the Northwest.

originally published on Crosscut.com on July 25, 2011

A Facebook post has become an anthem of the chin-scratching class from Beijing to Ballard: I dag er vi alle Norske. “Today, we are all Norwegian.”

The scale of Anders Behring Breivik’s political terror is extraordinary. Even among Lutheran existentialists, violence is not suppose to be visited upon the innocent, and God is never so jarringly absent.

For Norwegian Americans, expressions of solidarity kindle feelings of both grief and ethnic hubris. Really, we are all Norwegian? We all rank first on the Human Development Index and produce above-average children? Oh, you wish you were Norwegian.

Scandinavian immigrants changed the cultural landscape of the Northwest, transplanting a tradition of political progressivism, fair play, and trade unionism. There might even be a link, however tenuous, between Norse immigrants and the Northwest’s appetite for clean, ponderous, process-heavy government. For a time, along with Swedes and Germans, Norwegians were the vanguard of Washington’s post-colonial settlers. The Norse were weaned and influenced by the Jante Law, a sense not that everyone is equal per se, just that no one is better than anyone else. Suck it up. Don’t be a braggart and accept life on life’s terms.

My paternal grandparents were part of the great Norwegian diaspora which, unlike other ethnic dispersals, never quite made sense. There was no political or economic disaster to flee. My grandparents received the promotional brochures brandishing the American West, and they bit. They discovered a near-identical climate and a land that blended nature with labor. After a time, they happened upon Our Savior’s Lutheran Church in Everett and the stolid Rev. Karl Norgaard, who conducted his sermons in Norwegian. For them, the Pacific Northwest was Norway, only more so.

Like the Irish, the Chinese, the Italians, and other immigrant communities, Norwegian-Americans have an emotive link to their ancestral home. That’s why the ripples from Anders Behring Breivik’s terror radiate with such force.

As a child I devoured Claire Sterling’s book, The Terror Network. Sterling was able to document the vast organizational web that knit together the IRA, the PLO, Germany’s Baader-Meinhof gang, Italy’s Red Brigades, and other disparate 1970s-era radical groups. Commandos trained together and learned the fundamentals of asymmetrical warfare. Here’s how to manufacture a car bomb. Here’s how to hijack a commercial airliner.

In the aftermath of 9/11, Sterling’s book reminded me of the difference between mass political violence — of violence with an ideological agenda, which 9/11 was — and the violence of a lone, apolitical actor. It’s one of the reasons why the expression “The War on Terror” makes as little sense as “The War on Fertilizer Bombs.”

In brief, Anders Behring Breivik’s mass shooting and bombing represent xenophobic political violence. Breivik had a strategic and instrumental purpose: To foster panic and to murder future leaders of Norway’s Labor party. Period. The “madman” explanation is a cop out.

Books such as Ian Buruma’s Murder in Amsterdam regarding Theo van Gogh’s killing illustrate how Scandinavia and Northern Europe are riven by ethnic and sectarian tensions. Breivik stands on the unsteady shoulders of Pim Fortuyn, Vidkun Quisling, and other master-race reactionaries. If there’s an American analog to Breivik it’s Nidal Malik Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter. So forget the riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma version. Political violence is what it is: it has the power to inflame, diminish, or unite a people.

Here’s the takeaway: Breivik does not appear to be a mentally ill rebel without a cause. He is a political actor with a political agenda committed to mass political violence. It’s a horror narrative that would have repelled Sweden’s Igmar Bergman, who in his films explored God’s silence and the mystery of death. No, this is Costa-Gavras territory, an admixture of violence and politics and society.

Americans understand both narratives. Today, we are all Norwegian. We always were.

July 25, 2011 phjackson Leave a response , ,

Cantwell’s cheaper shoes are pinching

originally published on Crosscut.com on July 7, 2011

Sens. Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray have a proposal to lift tariffs from imported shoe wear, saving consumers (or shoe companies) close to $1 billion annually. But what’s in it for shoemakers in sweatshops?

On the sensibility spectrum, it’s hard to top a title like Sen. Maria Cantwell’s “The Affordable Footwear Act.” The words tumble out bourbon-smooth: affordable footwear.

The bill’s name even bigfoots the evocative Barefoot Schoolboy Act of 1895, the Washington law that established school-levy equalization. Americans sympathize with suffering barefoot schoolboys, but bargain shoes? That one transcends gender, race, and all manner of hoof-related wants.

Cantwell has teamed with Senate colleague Patty Murray and Republicans Pat Roberts and Roy Blunt to craft the legislation that knocks down onerous duties on imported footwear, a legacy of 1930s-era protectionism. The Tri-City Herald reports that the bill would have saved Americans $800 million last year, presupposing shoe distributors and retailers passed the attendant savings along to consumers.

Cantwell’s bill also throws light on the collapse of the nation’s shoe-manufacturing sector. Duties on imported shoes affect all Americans, because almost all shoes are imported nowadays. In a global economy, spookily cheap labor and often-Dickensian working conditions in China, Vietnam, and India are a windfall for American shoppers.

And so the Cantwell bill snaps into place: Erase an outmoded, regressive tariff, and save consumers millions on the price of shoes. Could there be enemies of affordable footwear, organized opposition to something so grossly obvious?

Cantwelll’s bill will pass Congress with the kind of ease that should immediately arouse suspicion in the hearts of Northwest Hobbesians. Life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and, well, you know. This good bill could be a great, substantive bill, one that also addresses some of the less-savory aspects of human nature.

Here’s a modest proposal: Somewhere in the Affordable Footwear Act embed a human rights carrot. Duty waivers would only apply to overseas factories that meet a specific human rights or anti-sweatshop benchmark. Receive the waiver and spur additional business.

Paul Wolfe, a legislative aide for Cantwell, said that such a provision is technically possible. However, various labor and environmental standards are already codified in NAFTA and other free trade agreements. Linking tariff reform to labor and human rights could be redundant or worse, toothless and ineffective.

The potential hitches are significant. Trade acts are dense and arcane, with industry lobbyists whispering to bill scribes and bill scribes scribing away. The central question of government, qui bono? (who benefits?), would reach from Nike’s Phil Knight to poor families hunting for affordable kids’ shoes. The benefits would not, however, extend to drained Vietnamese sweatshop workers (nor should they, many economists would argue).

We live in the post-GATT World Trade Organization era where fiddling with tariffs is a big no-no. This bill, however, offers a rare exception. It’s about eliminating, not creating a trade barrier. Lawmakers can be as innovative and nettlesome or as inspired and meretricious as they want.

There is at least one non-amending option: Sen. Cantwell and company could ape LBJ and convene a come-to-Jesus meeting with America’s shoe barons. We’ll do this, but you’ll be expected to demand X from foreign producers. The philosophy behind a closed-door shakedown is as transactional and crude as it is simple: When you’ve got ’em by the, er, aglets, their hearts and minds will follow.

In the coming years, Vietnam, China, and other developing countries will reach a tipping point. Something will give, worker discontent will manifest itself politically, or universal standards will ultimately shame the shameless.

Kwame Anthony Appiah, last spring’s Solomon Katz lecturer at the University of Washington and the author of The Honor Code, How Moral Revolutions Happen, posits that appealing to a nation’s honor is one of the most effective catalysts for advancing human rights. Tinkering with international trade could, however, produce a Niebuhr-esque outcome, underlining American hubris and the limits of prescriptive power. Would a human rights benchmark appeal to a country’s sense of national or cultural honor or would it have just the opposite effect?

In the end, a re-jiggered Affordable Footwear Act would attempt to harmonize men-are-no-angels American realism with the Judaic notion of Tikkun olam, to repair the world. Okay, yes, it’s a pretentious-sounding argument.  Advocates should nix any reference to Federalist No. 51 or Jewish mysticism. How about this: Cheaper shoes for fewer sweatshops?

July 7, 2011 phjackson Leave a response , , ,

Burning holes in the state’s indoor-smoking ban

originally published on Crosscut.com

Wing chairs, tobacco smoke, rose-colored prints of…fox hunts. Throw in a whiskey sour (or two, or three) and you have the “Mad Men” meme, fully expressed in a bill wending its way through the Washington legislature.

Senate bill 5542 would crack open Washington’s smoking ban and permit special licenses for cigar lounges and retail tobacconist shops. It appears, at least on the surface, to be a trivial tweak of Initiative 901, the 2005 clean-indoor-air law that passed in every county in Washington. Northwesterners are free agents, mind you. If we walk into a cigar bar we should (gasp) presuppose that we’ll get blasted by cigar smoke.

On May 17, the cigar bill passed the Senate, albeit barely, with bipartisan support. It’s strange bedfellows at work: Democrats who want to bolster their small-business cred in common cause with conservatives who savor challenging a tribal monopoly on all things tobacco. In the midst of a recession, what could be more symbolically rich than politicians laboring to bring back the smoke-filled room?

Continue reading →

May 23, 2011 phjackson Leave a response , ,

Go West, Young U.W. President Young

originally published on Crosscut.com

The University of Washington, which is today announcing its new president, Michael K. Young of the University of Utah, is at an inflection point that will define higher education for decades. The next UW president needs to be a transformational figure, a savior who can finesse politicians, business barons, professors, and churlish alums. No job in the Northwest is freighted with higher expectations or longer odds.

In addition to enduring Olympia’s budget cuts, the UW is getting starved by the feds, including a potential 40-percent reduction in Title VI funding. At the confluence of these misery streams stands the University’s newly named president, Michael Young.

Continue reading →

April 25, 2011 phjackson Leave a response , ,

Why a Seattle church takes up the cause of a Guantanamo detainee

originally published on Crosscut.com on April 25, 2011

Adnan Latif, who suffers from mental health issues, was once cleared for release from Guantanamo. But he remains trapped by bizarre circumstances and political pressures.

Guantanamo Bay muddles the American narrative on wartime conduct. Torture and unjust detention are nothing new, but arbitrary, indefinite detention is.

On a Sunday in March, the University of Washington’s Jamie Mayerfeld spoke to congregants from the University Temple United Methodist Church about the case of Adnan Latif, a Guantanamo Bay inmate since 2002. Latif’s detention is one of the more bracing instances of knucklehead injustice, a Guantanamo prison saga that would have roused Kafka or Dario Fo.

The latest WikiLeaks revelations from The New York Times and other papers underline the problems and confusion that have marked the overall Guantanamo operations, including the particular problems for Yemenis like Latif with weak or no ties to terrorism. The newly published documents seem to confirm much of what critics have been saying about the lack of remedies where individuals appear to be wrongly or unnecessarily held.

Latif’s existential detour began in 2001 when the Yemeni national was snatched by Pakistani security and handed over to American forces for a $5,000 bounty. Mayerfeld, an associate professor of political science who writes extensively on human rights, observed that only 5 percent of Guantanamo prisoners were captured by the U.S. The rest were nabbed by others in a spirit of post-9/11 bonhomie. Bonhomie and, well, the hook of liberal bounties, sweeteners to lasso America’s real or perceived enemies.

Latif became a victim of wrong-place, wrong-time circumstance. He had suffered severe brain damage in a 1994 car accident, a condition that magnified his despair and greased subsequent suicide attempts. And his prison timeline hasn’t helped on the despair front. With no documented link to terrorism or a terrorist network, Latif was recommended for release in 2004. It didn’t happen. His release was cleared in 2007. No action was taken.

In 2009, the Obama administration initially consented to a transfer back to his native Yemen. Finally in 2010, federal District Judge Henry Kennedy, Jr. heard Latif’s habeas corpus petition and ordered his immediate release. The Obama administration needed to take “all necessary and appropriate diplomatic steps to facilitate Latif’s release,” Judge Kennedy wrote. This time, however, the Obama administration decided to appeal.

Latif’s nationality presaged the administration’s reversal. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the so-called underwear bomber and a citizen of Nigeria, was trained and equipped in Yemen. After Abdulmutallab’s unsuccessful attempt to blow up a Northwest Airlines Airbus A330 over Detroit in December of 2009, the administration adopted a blanket ban on releasing Yemeni detainees. Largely as a result, Yemenis form the the largest group of current Guantanamo prisoners. It’s Camus meets the accident of birth.

Mayerfeld offered a primer: Guantanamo Bay held 779 prisoners in January of 2002. Today that number is just 172 (seven have died while incarcerated). All the while and as early as 2002, one CIA report declared that one-third to one-half of detainees had no ties to terrorism. Nevertheless, a utilitarian calculus infected executive-branch decision making. There are evil actors at Guantanamo. Better to delay justice for a few, the conventional wisdom goes, than imperil American security over the long term.

Most of Guantanamo’s overarching questions transcend partisanship. Separating the innocent from the merely suspect has been delegated to a body called the “Guantanamo Review Task Force.” Mayerfeld terms it “trial by bureaucracy.”

Improvements have taken place, Mayerfeld said, and the consensus is that by the summer of 2009 detainee treatment drew closer to international norms. There are still flagrant violations of normative justice, however, such as arbitrary detention, deprivation of due process, and the denial of a fair trial. The question of solitary confinement also looms large. “Imagine living and sleeping in your own bathroom for 23 hours a day,” Mayerfeld said.

Mayerfeld, whose scholarship revolves around issues of torture and human rights, teaches a UW class on Guantanamo. In addition to extensive research, students are required to keep journals documenting the quotidian and often soul-deadening anomie of specific detainees. Individual profiles range from an Adnan Latif to unabashed killers such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

In a recent Crosscut interview, Dr. Esther Brimmer, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs, said, “The president has said that he plans to close Guantanamo, and cases are under active, regular review. We’ve moved out 68 prisoners to third countries.” Brimmer, who said that she was not familiar with details of Latif’s case, insisted that Guantanamo’s future also depends on the consent of Congress.

For Mayerfeld the essential question centers on Guantanamo’s afterlife. The conundrum of arbitrary, indefinite detention will not disappear if the United States shutters Guantanamo tomorrow and simply scatters prisoners to mainland purgatory.

Here the proverbial lessons of history don’t apply. “The fallacy of prediction by analogy occurs when analogy is used to anticipate future events — as it often is, in the absence of anything better,” David Hackett Fischer wrote more than 40 years ago. It’s an axiom that resonates still.

Guantanamo Bay is not about American servicemen in 1898 learning a novel technique for torturing Filipino POWs called the “water cure;” it is not Camp Harmony, the Puyallup way station for Japanese-Americans in the 1940s; and it is not President Lincoln’s Civil War suspension of habeaus corpus.

If Guantanamo is without clear antecedents, then the model for combatting it seems equally elusive. The civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s isn’t instructive because so much revolved around a judicial strategy in addition to political mobilization. Thurgood Marshall was the linchpin and Martin Luther King, Jr., was the closer. Justice would be revealed in the courts.

Capital punishment may be the closest analogue: a manifestly moral issue that loses juice because the lead characters are often heinous or unsympathetic. Latif — an ill and troubled man, but not a terrorist — has become an accidental metaphor, a force greater than himself.

So on a cold spring morning, two dozen Methodists ask questions and grab letter paper to write their members of Congress about a 34-year-old prisoner.

“What has been done will be done again,” reads Ecclesiastes. “There is nothing new under the sun.” Well, mostly.

No one aims to amend scripture in the basement of a Methodist church. It’s tempting though.

April 25, 2011 phjackson Leave a response , , ,