Guest Commentaries: So Much To Repent For

There is so much to repent for. Let's start with this.

No U.S. Senators were willing to engage in a filibuster against the new authorization of torture. As the article below makes clear, some of us reading this may some day face torture that this bill authorizes, because the president or a committee in the defense dept. can arbitrarily decide that our dissent from their policies constitutes material aid to terrorism. This is a major step toward eliminating everything people in the West have been fighting for in way of civil liberties and human rights since the Magna Charta and certainly since American patriots fought for freedom in 1776. Yet our elected representatives capitulated in order to be “realistic” given their fear of being labeled “soft” on terror.

Please read the article below on what is at stake. The author hopes the Supreme Court will do something to overturn it, apparently unaware of the degree to which that Court itself reflects the same subordination to right-wing visions of presidential power as the Congress.

All 100 Senators voted for a budget that gives $448 Billion to the Pentagon to continue the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet many of us will end up voting for these same Senators, thus ratifying their vote to continue war.

Or take the vote of many Democrats as well as Republicans to spend over $1 billion to build a 700 mile fence along the US-Mexico border, a fence that will push immigrant workers trying to cross the border to get jobs that were eliminated from Mexico and Central America by the Clinton and Democratic-backed “free trade” measures of the 90s. So now, to keep them out, the fence will push many of them deeper into the desert, and more of them will die because of it.

And then there is the continuing rejection of steps that could bring peace to Israel—by the Israeli government itself. Please read the article below from today’s Ha’aretz newspaper in Israel.

Here is what you can do:

• Participate in a non-violent way in the October 5th mobilization against the war. Go to http://www.worldcantwait.org/ to find a demonstration near you.

• Demand that every Congressional or Senatorial candidate seeking your support explain why they didn’t filibuster against torture, war funding, and the fence in the Senate, or use other techniques in the House (sit-ins, blocking the normal order non-violently, or at least a massive walk out and refusal to participate in the vote).

• Join and become active with the Network of Spiritual Progressives to help us build an alternative way of thinking to that which allows Democrats and Republicans both to act in these humanly destructive ways. www.spiritualprogressives.org,

• Create an evening gathering at your home and invite friends, coworkers, members of your community, your church/synagogue/mosque/ashram, your professional colleagues or members of your union, and show them the Spiritual Progressives dvd or video tape—and have a discussion with them about the kinds of changes that are needed in American politics. Don’t wait till after the election to boo-hoo:

Act now. Contact Allyson@tikkun.org or 510 644 1200 (we’re closed on Yom Kippur, Monday the 2nd, but open on Tuesday and thereafter).

If you haven’t gotten your Members’ Manual in the mail, you probably haven’t yet joined or haven’t renewed your membership in The Tikkun Community or The Network of Spiritual Progressives. Please help us save paper and money that we will otherwise have to spend sending you letter appeals—join or renew now at www.tikkun.org or www.spiritualprogressives.org. Membership comes with a one year subscription to Tikkun magazine.

• Send this email to everyone you know, and post it on your websites

And then, after reading all this, go to the bottom and re-read the prayer for forgiveness--a necessary component of what we need to do to stay centered as spiritual progressives.

AND PLEASE FORGIVE US FOR SENDING LONG EMAILS!!!! WE KNOW MANY PEOPLE WILL

NOT TOLERATE READING SOMETHING THIS LONG, AND YET....TRYING TO SUMMARIZE

PLAYS INTO THE HANDS OF THE DUMBING=DOWN THAT IS CENTRAL TO HOW THE

POWERFUL KEEP THEIR CONTROL OVER ALL OF US.

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Sayonara to Checks and Balances?

By Aziz Huq, HuffingtonPost.com. Posted September 30, 2006.

You -- citizen or non-citizen, resident of Topeka or Timbuktu -- can become an "unlawful enemy combatant."

"Checks and balances" has a nice ring. But it's a currency that doesn't go a long way in Washington today.

The Military Commissions Act of 2006, of MCA, passed by the House and Senate is a wholesale assault on the idea of a limited government under law.

It will be taken by the Bush Administration as a blank check to torture, to detain indefinitely without just cause, and to trample the values that win America respect in the world. From tomorrow, counter-terrorism is the "land of do as you please" for the President and the wise men of the Defense Department -- those savants who brought you Iraq, the gift that keeps on giving (at least if you're a jihadist).

The MCA comprehensively assaults two ideas: The idea of checking executive power by laws. And the idea of a separate branch of government ensuring those limits are respected. These are the basic tools of accountability. The MCA frontally attacks both of these -- although only time will tell whether it succeeds.

How does the Military Commissions Act assail checks and balances? Consider the key issues of detention and torture.

The MCA says nothing explicit about the detention power. Indeed, I would argue that nothing in the legislation ought to be read to imply

Here's how the Addington play for detention power will work. The opening definition of the Act describes elaborately what an "unlawful enemy combatant" is. Why? The term is a neologism. The laws of war do not use or define this term. Indeed, it is a mutation of a phrase used in a subordinate clause of a 1942 Supreme Court opinion. Nothing else in the Act directly turns on this definition--although only an "alien unlawful enemy combatant" can be subject to trial by military commission. So why bother with the elaborate definition? And why extend the definition to U.S. citizens as well as non-citizens?

Back in 2004, the Supreme Court, in the now well-known Hamdi v. Rumsfeld decision, stated that an "enemy combatant" captured in hostilities could be held for the duration of those hostilities. The Court made very clear it was talking about only the limited context of the ground war in Afghanistan, not some amorphous and unending "war on terror." But Addington et al. will, however, take Hamdi's sanction of detention--and extend it far, far beyond Hamdi. It will be a detention power that applies anywhere and anytime.

There are two ways in which you -- citizen or non-citizen, resident of Topeka or Timbuktu -- can become an "unlawful enemy combatant."

The first way is if you engage "n hostilities" or "purposefully and materially support" hostilities. This sounds reasonable enough until you realize that no-one has the slightest clue what it means to "purposefully and materially support" hostilities. Do you need to intend to aid the hostilities? Or is it enough to intend to give the support? Would purposely giving to a charity that then gave money to Hamas count, even if you knew nothing about the Hamas? What about writing an editorial that gave "aid and comfort" to the enemy -- say, by criticizing the Administration's Iraq policy?

The second way is -- if it's even possible -- more dangerous: You are designated an enemy combatant by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal -- the Potemkin proceedings jerry-rigged at Guantánamo -- or you are designated by "another competent tribunal" created by the Defense Secretary.

It's the latter that catches in the throat, because the MCA does not define what Rumsfeld's "competent tribunal" must look like. Rummy himself with the always-fair-and-impartial Addington? Five Syrian torturers (like the ones to whom the U.S. sent the hapless Canadian Maher Arar)? A bunch of guys who flip coins for your liberty? Sure, why not? The MCA doesn't stop the executive from using any of these, provided Rumsfeld gave them power and hence made them "competent."

At least for non-citizens, moreover, that would be that: For the first time in U.S. history, an Act of Congress singles out a group of persons--non-citizens--and deprives them of any right to challenge their detention wherever they are picked up. No non-citizen would, the MCA seems to say, be able to challenge this detention. And while citizens are certainly entitled to a hearing, the Government will fight tooth and nail to make sure this hearing doesn't allow any effective inquiry into the facts on which a detention is based. So no judicial review -- and no accountability.

The same dynamic is at play in the anti-torture rules. The MCA alters a criminal statute called the War Crimes Act, which imposed criminal sanctions for certain violations of the laws of war.

Until recently, the United States could proudly point to a long history of supporting a universal ban on torture, and to a strong record in ensuring that those who in fact tortured did not escape accountability. No longer. Now a gamut of horrendous kinds of treatment will be non-criminal -- and, the Bush Administration will argue, within the discretion of the President.

Start with the substantive anti-torture rules themselves (which cover both torture and the lesser "cruel and inhuman" treatment). The MCA contains an incredibly complex and convoluted set of definitions. Despite all the cant about clarity, the rules no longer in plain English -- as they were in Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions -- and they are so full of holes they might have been tortured themselves.

Here are three examples of the duplicitous ambiguity of the MCA when it comes to torture and abuse.

First, "cruel and inhuman" treatment is defined as acts that cause "severe or serious" pain. We know "severe" is worse than "serious" because "severe" is used to define torture (yes, we'll get there in a moment). But then "serious pain" is defined as "bodily injury" that causes "extreme physical pain." So "serious" pain is only "extreme" pain? Isn't extreme worse than serious? It would seem so--but the MCA is deliberately confusing and circular.

And why the reference to bodily injury? Does that mean that hypothermia and long-time standing and those other wretched "enhanced" techniques more fitting for Stalin's gulags than American facilities are not criminal? Well, yes, I reckon it does.

Second, in another convoluted section, "serious mental pain" is defined in terms of "non-transitory" harms. Thus, if a CIA agent threatens to kill a detainee, or to rape his spouse and his children -- all long-recognized as forms of torture -- that's not torture; it's not even the lesser "cruel and inhuman" treatment.

Finally, the torture statute itself. Almost unnoticed, the Bush Administration has gutted the no-torture rule. It has added the requirement that a person "specifically" intend to cause the pain that amounts to torture. This technical change--foreshadowed in the August 2002 OLC memo -- has tremendous implications. It means that any government agent who says his goal was to get information, and not to cause pain, hasn't tortured no matter how bad the things he does. If the person water-boards or knee-caps a person, or buries them alive, if it's to get information -- well, that's just dandy.

Once again, it's not just the substantive rules that have been assailed: It's also the mechanisms to ensure the rules are followed. Under the MCA, there is no accountability for torture. The MCA cuts off courts' power to hear claims of torture by aliens held as "unlawful enemy combatants." And it vests the President with power to interpret the relevant laws of war. So if he says that "cold cell" and sexual abuse are not "cruel and inhumane," that's the end of the matter.

There are two reasons for hope. First, any reading of the Act that reaches an untrammeled detention power may be unconstitutional. The Supreme Court in the 2004 case of Rasul v. Bush -- in what one day will be called "famous footnote 15" -- strongly hinted that even non-citizens captured overseas have Due Process rights. Combined with another clause of the Constitution called the Suspension Clause, this means the unchecked detention power and the jurisdiction-strip are likely unconstitutional.

Second, even if the War Crimes Act has been amended, the Due Process Clause also ought still to protect detainees held overseas: Torture is un-American. It's also unconstitutional--and that doesn't change depending on where it's done. Moreover, the law of war, embodied in the Geneva Conventions, is clear: There is no "specific intent" requirement for torture. Countries -- whether it's the United States or North Korea -- cannot unilaterally define down the rules against torture.

"Unchecked and unbalanced" government -- I argue at length in a forthcoming book-- is antithetical to American government. The MCA is also anathema to our best traditions. We must hope it is our traditions that win, and not the selfish partisan posturing that animated this week's votes.

Aziz Huq is co-writing a book on national security and the separation of powers called Unchecked and Unbalanced, to be published by the New Press.

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Operation Peace for the Winery
By Gideon Levy

What do you call a rejection of peace that is liable to lead to war? What is the term for a state that is not even willing to sit at the negotiating table with the head of a state who publicly issues an explicit peace proposal? If there is a positive angle to the Israeli refusal to consider the Syrian president's proposals, it is the exposure of the bitter truth: Israel does not want peace with Syria - period. No linguistic trick or diplomatic contortion can change this unequivocal fact. We will no longer be able to declare that we are seeking peace with our neighbors; we are not turning toward them for peace. In the Middle East, a new rejectionist axis has formed: Israel and the United States, which is saying "no" to Syria. Not only is Iran endangering peace in the region, Israel is too. It would be best for us to admit this.

Common sense makes it difficult to understand and the heart refuses to accept how it happened that an important Arab state offered to forge a peace accord with us and we arrogantly rebuffed it. "It's not the right time," the statesmen in Jerusalem say. With Syria, it is not the right time. With the Palestinians, it is not the right partner. And when is the right time? Only after the next war. This type of refusal, which is liable to lead to another cycle of bloodshed, is a crime.

Behind the latest Israeli refusal is cowardice and behind this cowardice is the prime minister. Ehud Olmert knows very well that Israel will ultimately withdraw from the Golan Heights, but he lacks the courage to lead this move. Just like his predecessor, Ehud Barak, who was on the verge of an agreement with Syria, Olmert also lacks the most important quality required of an Israeli leader - courage.

Especially after the fiasco of the war in Lebanon, with his public standing at a nearly unsalvageable low, one might have expected that Olmert would try to lead a bold move - a relatively easy one when compared to peace with the Palestinians. But Olmert is A-F-R-A-I-D. Perhaps he is afraid of Israeli protestors outside his home, or maybe of America turning up its nose. These are not sufficient reasons to refrain from putting Assad's intentions to the test.

Because what do we have to lose? Let's assume that Assad is not ready to live up to his words. Let's assume that he is not capable of signing an agreement with Israel. Why not challenge him? What hair would fall from Israel's head if Olmert would take up the Syrian gauntlet and tell Assad: Let's meet. Instead, Zhdanov-Olmert forbids his ministers from speaking in favor of negotiations and even threatens to expel them from the government. Olmert is more cowardly than Barak: He is not even ready to come to the negotiating table. History will remember him, therefore, as someone who torpedoed a possible peace accord that could have changed the face of the Middle East. This is a more severe failure than embarking on the futile war in Lebanon. When the next war with Syria breaks out - a war that will be immeasurably more difficult than the one with Lebanon - we will remember well who is responsible for it. There will be no need for a commission of inquiry on this.

The Golan Heights are desolate. Perhaps "The people are with the Golan," but the people stopped coming to the Golan Heights a long time ago. During Rosh Hashanah, hikers kept away from this gorgeous piece of land. Anyone who visited there saw roads without any human presence, eternally rocky fields and some settlements whose fate was decreed long ago. So why should we keep the Golan Heights at the price of war? Is it conceivable that because of territorial lustfulness we will bring about another war, the "Peace for the Winery" war? Are a successful winery and prosperous factory for mineral water enough to affix us to an occupied land, which has no value except for its grapes and clear waters? After all, in the era of missiles, no one can speak seriously any more about the Golan Heights as a "strategic asset."

The Golan Heights is occupied land, despite the annexation law we enacted, which no country in the world has recognized, and its Israeli settlers are like any other settlers. Who decided that a resident of Itamar was an "extremist" settler, while a resident of Merom Golan was a different kind of settler - one of us? A hidden hand determined that in Israeli consciousness the Golan Heights was not occupied and its residents were not, like other settlers, in violation of international law. But this is a ridiculous word game we play with ourselves. Just as peace seekers in Israel should boycott products originating in the West Bank settlements, the same should apply to the products of the Golan Heights. They originate in a land that is not ours. Questions of morality that still surface here and there in regard to the act of occupying the West Bank and Gaza Strip are not on the agenda at all when it comes to the Golan Heights. Who remembers that about 100,000 people who lived in the Golan Heights were forced to flee their homes in 1967? The ruins of their homes are still on the Golan Heights and they live in refugee camps near Damascus. They, too, long for their land, while the residents who remained live under Israeli occupation, albeit a relatively comfortable occupation.

In a situation in which the prime minister is too cowardly to respond to the Syrian proposal, a cry of protest should have arisen from those who wish to prevent the next war, especially after the last one. If the IDF reservists and the rest of the protest movements want to also do something to prevent the next war and not just rummage through the previous one, they should issue a determined cry to say "yes" to peace with Syria. Syria's conditions are clear and simple, and even just - peace for land - and the impression is that there is a partner in Damascus. A meeting with the foreign minister of Oman is good for making headlines and a secret meeting with a Saudi prince sparks the imagination, but peace must be made with Syria and the Palestinians. Syria said yes, Israel said no. For reasons we know and remember well, there is no better time than Yom Kippur to think about this.

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A central message of the Tikkun Community is that inner healing and transformation is an important element in, though not the totality of, the social, economic and political transformation of the world.

I thought I'd share with you a prayer that I use each evening before I go to sleep. Perhaps you might want to use this prayer, or modify it in any way that fits for you (for example, eliminate the prayer element and turn it into a before-sleep meditatin). If you decide to use it, then after using it for a few months, tell me if it has had any positive impact in your life! It has been a powerful tool for me in getting through the past years when the events in the larger world might have made it hard for me to get to sleep at night, by helping me transform the righteous indignation I'd been feeling during the day into a sense of compassion for others as I contemplated the ways that I, too, might have gone astray. Of course, prayer is not a form that works for everyone--and I admit to being very uncomfortable with any notion that suggests that there is a God who is a cosmic bellhop waiting to take our orders if only we say them with the right words (to paraphrase my teacher Abraham Joshua Heschel). But prayer can also work when one thinks of God as I do--as the Force of Healing and Transformation in the Universe, the Force that makes possible the transformation from That Which Is to That Which Ought to Be, the Force that makes possible the transcendence of the repetition compulsion (these ideas are developed in my book Jewish Renewal: A Path to Healing and Transformation, and they are not just for Jews, but for anyone thinking about God or the meaning of life or about the spiritual reality of the universe, but that's not what I'm writing about, so lets get back to this particular prayer, which you can use in any way that seems fitting to you--it is based on a rendition from Hebrew by my teacher Rabbi Zalman Schachter Shalomi).

Bedtime Prayer of Forgiveness

YOU, my ETERNAL FRIEND, WITNESS now that I forgive anyone who hurt or upset me or who offended me-- damaging my body, my property, my reputation or people that I love; whether by accident or purposely; with words, deeds, thoughts or attitudes.

I forgive every person who has hurt or upset me. May no one be punished because of me. May no one suffer from karmic consequences for hurting or upsetting me.

Help me, Eternal Friend, to keep from offending You and others. Help me to be thoughtful and not commit outrage by doing what is evil in Your eyes.

Whatever sins I have committed, blot out, please, in Your abundant kindness, and spare me suffering or harmfulillnesses. Help me become aware of the ways I may have unintentionally or intentionally hurt others, and please giveme guidance and strength to rectify those hurts and to develop the sensitivity to not continue acting in a hurtful way. Let me forgive others, let me forgive myself, but also let me change in ways that make it easy for me to avoid paths of hurtfulness to others.

I seek peace, let me BE peace. I seek justice, let me be just. I seek a world of kindness, let me be kind. I seek a world of generosity, let me be generous with all that I have. I seek a world of sharing, let me share all that I have. I seek a world of giving, let me be giving to all around me. I seek a world of love, let me be loving beyond all reason, beyond all normal expectation, beyond all societal frameworks that tell me how much love is "normal," beyond all fear that giving too much love will leave me with too little. And let me be open and sensitive to all the love that is already coming to me, the love of people I know, the love that is part of the human condition, the accumulated love of past generations that flows through and is embodied in the language, music, recipes, technology, literature, religions, agriculture, and family heritages that have been passed on to me and to us. Let me pass that love on to the next generations in an even fuller and more explicit way.

Source of goodness and love in the universe, let me be alive to all the goodness that surrounds me. And let that awareness of the goodness and love of the universe be my shield and protector. Hear the words of my mouth and may the meditations of my heart find acceptance before You, Eternal Friend, who protects and frees me. Amen.

Many blessings to you and all who seek a world of love, kindness, peace, social justice, ecological sanity and generosity. May peace prevail on earth and let it begin with you and me.

Rabbi Michael Lerner
Tikkun