Turkey: An Endangered Bridge Between East and West

Note to Readers: The following post was written by David Brunet, a good friend and a former Fulbright Scholar in Turkey.

I lived in Turkey in 1992-93 as a Fulbright scholar, teaching at Ege University in Izmir. I’m pretty good at learning languages, so I made it a goal to learn as much Turkish as possible before and during my stay there. I was glad I tried to learn the language and although I never got to be as fluent as I had hoped, I was able to have simple conversations with grocery store clerks, shopkeepers, policemen, and others, and they were so pleased that an American wanted to have a conversation in their language.

I found the Turks to be warm and friendly, and even though they mirrored the U.S. in having a strong military, they were intensely interested in sustaining peace and strengthening cultures across the world. They valued diversity, the arts, and dialogue with other cultures.

My experience in Turkey was very positive. Despite our religious differences, I found that we shared basic values, and that in fact we worshipped the same God.

Overlooking the similarities between Islam and Christianity, President Bush labels the terrorists Islamic extremists. He forgets our Christian culture has also spawned terror: the gangs in our cities qualify as terrorists, and our use of force abroad to solve every dispute is viewed in other countries as terrorism.

James Carroll’s essay on Turkey in yesterday’s Boston Globe is right on target. The Turks have always seen us as their best allies. Long a part of European culture, they have also seen themselves as a bridge between the West and the Middle East. But as Carroll said, Bush is now creating chaos in Turkey’s immediate neighborhood.

Are the Turks our enemies? No! In my experience, Turkey responds with enthusiasm and gratitude when the U.S. and Europe show that we value their culture and their people. But Bush’s wars demonstrate to the world that we don’t value other people’s cultures. His response to a terrorist strike in the U.S. has destroyed the culture of Afghanistan and Iraq, and now he threatens to do the same in Iran.

Keep in mind that Iran has an ancient role as the cultural center of the Middle East. If we destroy that culture, we’ll alienate even more of the world’s population.

Lincoln’s Impersonators: Musharraf, Bush, Nixon, et al

In light of Pervez Musharraf’s reference to Abe Lincoln to justify imposing emergency law on Pakistan Saturday, Daily Kos’s Devilstower traces a similar distortion of Lincoln’s acts as president by Bush ’43 and other conservative leaders going back to Richard Nixon.

History books will tell you that Abraham Lincoln was a champion wrestler in his youth. But for the last forty years, it's been Lincoln who has taken the fall. Again and again, Republicans have seized the first man to become president under their banner and dragged him to the ground, determined that he should be thoroughly coated in their own muddy morals.

Examples of the above include:

They've pressed the idea of a Lincoln who shredded the Constitution at will. Did Bush ignore habeas corpus? No matter, look at Lincoln. He suspended those rights entirely. Did Bush institute military tribunals? Why... so did Abe!
Did Bush, Cheney, Nixon, and Reagan adopt extraordinary levels of executive privilege and secrecy? Toss 'em a stovepipe hat, they're only following the model set by our greatest president. Bush wiretapped phone lines without judicial oversight. Well Lincoln did to, and he did it before phones had even been invented. You can even hear the words of this Lincoln absolution expressed in the testimony of Michael Mukasey, when he says that the president's role as commander in chief can exempt him from the bonds of petty law.

Devilstower concludes that Lincoln “-- unlike Musharraf, unlike Bush, unlike Nixon -- never mistook expansion of his own power for preservation of the union.”

Now That We've Armed Pakistan

Dan Froomkin’s White House Watch zeroes in today on the tendency of the Bush anti-terror policies to backfire. Froomkin writes:

The ultimate anti-terror backfire, of course, is the war in Iraq, which U.S. intelligence shows has helped al Qaeda much more than it's hurt it.But now, with Musharraf declaring emergency rule over the weekend, the country that Bush considers a bulwark against terror may gain infamy as a crucible for terror
instead.

Froomkin cites Karen DeYoung’s piece in today’s Washington Post:

"The Bush administration seemed to still be reeling from Musharraf's announcement Saturday and waiting for the rapidly shifting events to settle before making any move beyond expressing strong disapproval.

"U.S. aid to Pakistan over the past six years has totaled nearly $11 billion, most of it in military hardware and budget support. Immediately after the September 2001 terrorist attacks, President Bush lifted aid sanctions imposed on Pakistan and India after both countries tested nuclear weapons in 1998.
Additional sanctions set against Pakistan after Musharraf seized power in a bloodless coup in 1999 were also waived."

In light of all the above, this item in Froomkin’s post seems an appropriate way to conclude:

CBS News reports that "a statewide poll conducted by CBS affiliate WCAX in Burlington, Vt. posed the question to 400 likely voters. Sixty-one percent said they would be in favor of Congress beginning impeachment proceedings against
President Bush. Thirty-three percent opposed it, and 6% were not sure.

"The numbers for Vice President Cheney differed only slightly: Sixty-four percent favored impeachment, while 31% opposed it."

A Public Wiser than the Punditry

A week after the Philadelphia debate (watch debate on YouTube from this site) and the media’s hysterical attempts to justify the unrelenting assault endured by Hillary Clinton have somewhat abated.

In the meantime, I’ve cringed at such uninformed remarks by supposedly respected commentators as “Feminist means anti-male.” Since when? Just to set the record straight, the feminist movement has always been about fair and equitable treatment for women, including such mundane issues as equal pay for equal work.

Next on my list have been the pseudo-psychologists throwing around the phrase, “playing victim.” That’s long been a favorite response of conservatives to anyone who dares to complain about blatant discrimination, obvious abusive treatment, or even hate crimes. I fear that Clinton’s critics on both the extreme left and right are now finding the phrase useful.

Incidentally, a friend of mine noted yesterday that of the candidates pressing Clinton about her position on the immigration issue during the debate, not one had the courage to reveal where he stood.

All is not lost, however. Recent polls show the public is a lot wiser than the overeager pundits who predicted that Clinton’s responses during and after the debate jeopardized her frontrunner status.

Data from the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll shows that on the two nights following the debate (Wednesday and Thursday) Clinton held a 45% to 18% lead over Barack Obama. For Clinton, that’s an improvement from Monday and Tuesday nights when her lead over Obama had been 40% to 24%.

And according to staff writers John Cohen and Dan Balz, the latest Washington Post-ABC poll shows Clinton leads the race for the Democratic nomination with 49 percent, followed by Obama at 26 percent. Edwards has 12 percent.”

Cohen and Balz indicate that Clinton's national front-runner status is built on her advantages on several key attributes, all of which may yield dividends in the state-by-state contests. They explain:

Three-quarters of Democrats view Clinton favorably, which is somewhat higher than the results for Obama (67 percent) or Edwards (62 percent). More than twice as many have a "strongly" positive impression of Clinton as have that view of
Edwards. And most of those who would back Clinton in their state's primary or caucus, "strongly" support her.

A majority of Democrats see Clinton as the strongest leader of the three top candidates, and she has the edge over Obama and Edwards as being best on the issues and the closest representative of the party's core values. Notably, given
the increasingly sharp debate among the candidates over foreign policy, Clinton is seen as the best able to handle the situations in Iraq and involving Iran, by margins of better than 2 to 1.

Despite their personal attacks in Philadelphia on Clinton’s character, the poll shows she leads Obama by five points and Edwards by 16 points as the Democratic party’s most honest and trustworthy candidate.

Finally, Cohen and Balz report:

A large and growing lead on "electability" also propels Clinton's candidacy. More than six in 10 Democrats now see her as the candidate who has the best shot at winning next November -- up 19 points from June.

Scrabble, Anyone?

Most of us spend a lot of time messing around with our electronic gadgetry these days and since I started blogging, I’ve spent far too many hours at my computer. You might even say I've become a little geeky.

And that reminds me: a favorite form of recreation is getting together with my son Steve and his wife Nancy for a game of Scrabble, a board game that’s been around for decades.

Their dog Kaia is usually somewhat indifferent to the outcome.

Have a great weekend!

Virginia

Our Sick Society

Speaking of the political party of shriveled hearts, Susan Thistlethwaite, president of Chicago Theological Seminary, has some strong words in today’s Washington Post for President Bush and his followers who continue to deny healthcare coverage to our nation’s children.

A blogger for On Faith, Thistlethwaite’s post is titled Only a Sick Society Plays Politics with Children's Health, and she concludes:

We have the money to pay for health care insurance for every child in America and instead we are choosing to spend it on making war and still more war. That is truly sick, morally sick, perhaps even fatally sick because when you can see the suffering of so many children without access to adequate medical care and do nothing, you are lost.

It appears the moral sickness will continue indefinitely as the Senate just set up another likely veto from President Bush by again passing health insurance legislation to cover an additional four million lower-income children. Sad to say, the vote fell three short of the two-thirds majority needed to override Bush’s veto.

Memo from Rumsfeld: “Link Iraq to Iran”

My friend David dropped by Katalusis yesterday and left a comment in response to my Oct. 23 post, “Wrapping the Earth in an Explosive Vest.”

The suicide bomber’s explosive vest was the ominous metaphor developed by James Carroll in his reflections on the recent Bush-Cheney mutterings about Iran and the possibility of World War III. Carroll concluded:

Iraqi civil war, conflict with Iran, Turkish-Kurdish violence, chaos throughout the Middle East - and now President Bush tells us that, if we don't defuse the regional body vest carefully, World War III will start. There it is. Bush himself acknowledging at last what, under his leadership, the United States has done. We have put an explosive vest on Earth itself.

David responded:

Because I have lived abroad in several countries, and because I speak several languages (French, German, Turkish), I have been able to have conversations with people around the world not in English but in their own languages. And they have told me in their own ways that they view the US as a "terrorist nation." We get our way by creating fear, by using force, and by sacrificing our young people. And they have noticed that the nations we don't bully are the ones that have nuclear weapons. Is it any surprise that Iran wants to have nuclear weapons? If Bush is willing to attack Iran with nuclear weapons, then he is the incarnation of Satan himself, and the whole world will suffer or
even come to an end through him. I love this world, and I love my country. Already he has caused havoc that may change our world forever. A hex on you, Bush.--David Brunet.

However, the fact that many people around the world view the US as a terrorist nation isn’t due to Bush-Cheney alone; those two had considerable help from Donald Rumsfeld. Check out Robin Wright’s article in today’s Washington Post that jarringly reminds us of the former secretary of defense’s legacy, effectively captured in Wright’s opening paragraph:

In a series of internal musings and memos to his staff, then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld argued that Muslims avoid "physical labor" and wrote of the need to "keep elevating the threat," "link Iraq to Iran" and develop "bumper sticker statements" to rally public support for an increasingly unpopular war.

What I can’t figure out is why more people aren't as concerned as my friend David about our country’s reputation in the world and the latest saber rattling in Washington.