Words cannot state the power of feelings when true justice has been administered. To shun Douglas Feith for behaving as though his brain is primitive rather than evolved is a clear and bold statement from Georgetown that high intelligence and the rule of law are indeed continuing to crown the Great American Dream. Regardless of what the obvious "neo-con" (what a politically correct name, btw) agenda may be, CLEARLY, there is YET, a greater majority of human beings who choose to continue evolving the "idea" of humanity in the art form of the gene of altruism, rather than the ongoing (for far, far too long now)CANNIBALIZATION of our own species.

Speaking of cannibalization ... what is the perfect time to demand accountability, requiring full disclosure of every stock portfolio being traded in the global market?

I would absolutely LOVE to see Mr. Douglas Feith's retirement portfolio and all who band together in this cult of cannibals.

Oops, I'm so sorry - I mean politically correct leadership.

Which portfolio trades the highest numbers in digital wealth: War, weapons, etc.?

Perhaps we can simply begin with a full investigative forensics audit, an old fashioned economic underwriting examination by an authentic and certified expert.

And let us begin with Mr. Douglas Feith since he appears to be such a willing neo-con to lead America into places where economics is indeed a serious issue.

Mr. Feith, my direct question to you is - can we expect full disclosure of your retirement portfolio? Is the trading of flesh a continued practice of those who actually believe (see Henry Kissinger's 200 page "study" for the LDCs, 1970s) that "preferred stock" is of greater value than "common stock?"

How do all those who support war fare in times of peace? Do you have to work (i.e. "labor") as well, Mr. Feith?

Life can seem difficult when we must create rather than destroy, but just as it is with war, peace requires practice, practice, practice.

Perhaps Mr. Feith it's time for you to at least make an attempt to understand the requirement to be a maestro.

Creation not cannibalization. Meditate on Socrates cause he can be your mentor during these next few years of your new "idea."

Karl Marx was/is my cousin once removed so do not pull the ADL tool of toxic shame out of the tragic 18th and 19th Century in-bred insane GWOT full spectrum dominance for the 21st Century.

Every intelligent human on this Earth thanks Georgetown for its decision to not renew Mr. Douglas Feith's two year contract, yet again.

To the extent that the previous post is inteligible it is wrong.

Georgetown is always a better place by the exchange of ideas from all corners of life. Fieth's experience was a valuable one, his tecahing style was by all accounts professional, and his knowledge of the ways of the world would no doubt benefit future generations of students.

Maybe the pervious poster should dedicate his obvious energy to thinking of ways to counter Feith's viewpoint rather than simply drafting incoherent angry ramblings.

Saxon Gillis

According to the article, there are at least 46 people at Georgetown who do not belong to the "Every intelligent human on this Earth" population. We also note that Georgetown's decision NOT to renew Feith's contract conforms with "The Hoya"'s policy to DELETE the promotion of hate or bias. Now, if we could just DELETE that pathetic "book" of his...

Gotta agree with "Mr. Saxon Gillis", what the hell is Biloxi talking about? Other then calling Jews Nazis and writing with so much passive voice as to render his writing near unintelligeable, from what I can gather, he completely misses the point here.

Douglas Feith is not a criminal. It is debateable as to whether or not his legal interpertations were correct or not, but he is able to intellegently defend the actions that he has taken. If you don't like him, fine, you are not obliged to vote for an administration that would use someone like him. But this debate is not and has never (at least correctly) been about his politics.

Rather the importance here is how successful he is in passing on the clear wealth of knowledge that he possesses. Georgetown sees itself as a world leader in the academic field of government. Not liberal government, or conservative government or libertarian or communist or whatever. Merely government, from all viewpoints. Feith in his career and especially his positions in government is uniquely qualified to teach at Georgetown, and those who have taken his courses have said that he is quite good as a teacher. Still, just because you take a course with a proffessor does not mean you have to agree with him, the point of courses in a liberal arts education is to gain the tools to think for yourself, not to be told the right way to think.

The message that Georgetown has sent here is unfortunately a dangerous one; that certain types of thought will not be permitted here. Other conservative thinkers and students will think twice about coming to the Hilltop, thus narrowing the range of discourse on campus. This is not the direction that GU should be headed.

"FREEDOM OF SPEECH. Yes I know it's that pesky Constitution you all continue to question, I mean hope to rewrite."

Ah yes, lecture me about my beliefs (which of course you have no clue about) while you argue to censor Douglas Feith. Well done.

Your diatribe about Zionism and Jew Nazis, while despicable for a number of reasons, is most importantly irrelevant, as is any discussion of Marx. I appreciate opinions on the issue from all angles, but for a discussion board like this to be successful, it seems better if we stick to the issue at hand, rather than spewing hateful and ignorant non-sequiturs as you do.

The great thing about free speech is that the radicals cannot complain that they did not have their say. Instead they are heard, and summarily dismissed. While it would be imprudent of me to predict how your postings will be treated by other rational thinkers, I nevertheless have a pretty good hunch as to how it will turn out.

Ok let us put our money where our mouths are.

I'm 100% about this, Sir.

And this invitation is to Georgetown - Please, it is beyond the scope and breadth of what we define as TIME -

Time to expose your portfolios and this especially means you HUH, Douglas Feith, Gillis, et al.

"... I appreciate opinions on the issue from all angles, but for a discussion board like this to be successful, it seems better if we stick to the issue at hand, rather than spewing hateful and ignorant non-sequiturs as you do."

I concur.

Expose your retirement portfolios this is the point and you know it so please, "... no more spewing hateful and ignorant non-sequirurs ..."

as you do?

What is the definition of a scholar? How about let us examine and explore every facet of the "problem/s"?

This includes every human who trades in the global market at the expense of those who appear to be lesser than those who are chosen by God?

Or is it the GOLDEN RULE?

Expose your retirement portfolios cause this is the basic tap root truth and therefore the beginning, middle and end point.

Respectfully, Biloxi

Biloxi

At the risk of indulging the insane. Here are my retirement portfolios:

Common Stock in:

Thompson Rueters (TRI)-- a company that compiles legal and financial news and research. The research is used in court by organizations like the ACLU.

VCA Anatec (WOOF) -- A company that helps organize and supply veterinarians. The veternarians take the consulting advice and supplies from VCA and use the products to help cure puppies and kittens who are sick. Sometimes the puppies and kittens have viruses. Sometimes they were hit by cars. Once VCA is done with them, the puppies and kittens feel better and lick the faces of their owners and wag their tails with gusto.

If you can demonstrate that either company contributes to violent oppresssion, I may consider selling.

Regards,

Saxon Gillis

When I attended university, my mind was open like a tin can. Roughly shaped it was by whoever got to me first to open it, -- jagged, perhaps affected by parents, a community and its mores and prejudices, my friends, limited TV (much less then than now), but no computers nor video games, few-to-no drugs around -- and certainly much less obvious manipulation -- to my young mind. There I was. An open can. Ready to inhale the world.
So a student often considers themself wise and worldly -- able to "take it on", whatever the "it" is. But the student is vulnerable. And not always wise. And seldom worldly.
As a student in a world religion class my freshman year (one of the classes in which I was miserably inadept), I recall the professor odd by most people's standards. He always wore a turtleneck and a huge chain with oversized links around his neck symbolizing the enslavement and control of society as we know it.
I never really even thought much about it then -- just thought it was odd like everybody else (I was not worldly, nor wise) -- like so many still, alas. But now I see the importance of what he "was about". His metaphor was powerful. It stays with me still.
So what symbol or metaphor can a student take from an instructor who has been supported by and profited from the war machine and its insidious tentacles that have crept and continue to creep into every cell of our daily lives. As a now wise, more worldly and still, but less vulnerable citizen of the world, I ask you to question why any university -- though I know they all do -- would hire a lobbyist (for isn't that what we have here, really?) of the military-industrial complex, of which Gen DWEisenhower so courageously warned, to teach our children the only jobs available at to work for the government, or be a soldier for the government, or work for a corporation for the government, or teach in a university that is supported by the government and employs government employees. Isn't this fascism??? Where is the individual in all this? What is a student to think?
I thought university (when I was an open tin can) was a place to question and evaluate everything. In a university setting, shouldn't the GOP line take a rest???
And just what part of his role in the war machine can be considered "distinguished"? For students, academicians, bloggers and other curious sorts, I refer to today's Truthout review of Nick Turse's new book, The Real Matrix: The Pentagon Invades Your Life. Nick Turse wrote a book that isn't exactly the GOParty-line. Now there would be a provocative and heady professor at a university such as yours.
Now methinks the chain my professor wore was a powerful token. I didn’t know then that the chain was even bigger than the one he wore, but big enough to enslave us all.

Biloxi-

I don't think the founding fathers were looking for amusement when conceptualizing the freedom of speech. Not sure The Hoya is either.

Now, unless TRI or WOOF do purposeful harm to various innocent small animals, Mr. Gillis has made 10% and 11%, respectivley, on his portfolio in the last week. Geeze - I'd even take the harm to small forrest critters for that kind of return.

Baisically, the Crux of my argument is this: Can somebody please call Nurse Ratched and get this thread back on track?

Michael McLimerick

Academic Freedom vs. Harboring War Criminals:

1) Having diverse viewpoints on campus, even very objectionable ones, is good. It provides students with material to consider and accept or reject, which is a good intellectual exercise.

2) Inviting people who may actually be evil, in that they actively took part in crafting a policy which has led to destruction of a country (and the concommitant loss of life, home or livelihood of millions)which posed no threat to us, is morally questionable. If Feith had any idea that so many innocent people would die, and pushed for the mass murder anyway (or because of that fact) then he is evil. For some reason government officers get a pass on morality, though even children on a playground are expected to follow some basic levels of morality. We call a serial killer evil, and how much better is Feith? Giving him GTown money, a platform to speak, and the respect and benefits being a professor entails, is significantly supporting him. supporting evil people is arguably wrong.

3) GTown can get all the agressive, militaristic, violent, racist views it wants via thinktank hires and neocon professors. No need for actual practitioners of morally disgusting politics; the good of presenting their ideas can be undertaken by sympathetic scholars.

4) get rid of Feith.

I'm glad people have gotten back on topic in discussing the topic at hand.

Arthur: I understand that your argument is that as 18-22 year olds, we are still at a stage where we are more easily influenced, and so we should choose wisely who we allow to handle them. But herein lies the problem: how do we determine who is best suited to do this? There are numerous opinions on Feith's and in fact the entire Bush administration's actions. Some, like you, view it as being criminal, even murderous. Yet others, many of who are as intellectual and educated as yourself, view the actions quite differently. Instead of worrying that a single professor can influence a student wrongly, let us instead worry that there are enough divergent opinions expressed by intellegent and well spoken professors that the student will have all the information neccessary to make these decisions for himself. In this light, I still believe that Feith is a valuable resource, as his viewpoint it clearly at odds with most of the other professors at GU.

Oscar: To you I would argue that practioners of government and other professions are the best people a university can get to teach their students. Think tanks and full time professors can give theories, but practioners, well, put it into practice an thus understand how things actually work in the real world. I see that you also operate under the assumtion that Feith is a criminal, but I would urge you as well to respect divergent opinions on this issue, and similarly respect your fellow students enough to recognize that they can figure out right from wrong and thus could not be hurt by attending Feith's lectures.

"Huh?":

For the most part, I agree with what you are saying. It is important that education reflect the diverse perspectives on politics in America.

However, bear in mind that Georgetown is a Jesuit University with a strong Catholic tradition. Catholicism has been a strong opponent of the War in Iraq, and I'm sure it deems torture to be against doctrine as well. I agree that it is important to provide a forum for practitioners of foreign policy with experience in the real world. Yet, why should Georgetown provide that stage for somebody that has so clearly violated the ideas of Catholicism? By not rehiring Feith, we do not intend to censor him in any way. He has every right to say whatever he wants, but should not receive a wage from a Catholic institution.

I'd be glad to give Feith a teaching position at a university. Just not at this one.

L. Ron: Ignoring the Church's own sordid history with wars and torture...

Your point is a good one, but the fallacy that you make is that you seem to apply it selectively. GU employs professors who are pro-abortion, pro-gay rights, pro-stem cell research, against religion in politics, against the forms of social welfare that the Church promotes, etc. The central tenet of Catholicism is that God came to earth as Jesus so that he could die in order to absolve humankind of sin; clearly many of our professors disagree with that. Should all of these professors be told, "We don't want to censor you, but you should find a job somewhere else"?

Additionally, Feith is not in favor of torture per se, rather some of the methods that he has approved of have been seen (rightly or wrongly) to be torture. The Geneva Convention is not entirely specific as to what is and what is not torture, and therefore it is reasonable that there can be some debate as to its precise definition. While it is vital that GU also have viewpoints to oppose Feith's, who is there out there better than him to speak about the legal implications of the Convention?

Can we please stop throwing around the line 'war criminal'. Feith is not a war criminal. I'm tired of the polarized bullshit that insane liberals think they can pass off as reasoned argumentation. Without resorting to copying a wingnut document from moveon.org, I'd love to see someone substantiate a claim that Feith is a war criminal. It won't be done. It can't be done. If you have a modicum of comprehension re: the operation of domestic law and/or international tribunal law, you'll know that Feith comes nowhere near the term.

(note the precedent adjective: insane ... I know plently of level-headed liberals at the school, though it would be nice to hear from them on this board. So far, no dice)

Let's put it all out on the table: Feith is associated with a position that has become politically unpopular amongst talking heads and mainstreamers. His association is both as an architect and an intelligent advocate. Due to political pressure internal to the University, combined with biased employment calls (again, internal to the University) Feith's contract will not be renewed. Don't pull a bs-gloss of 'academic legitimacy' on this situation: the protests, as well as the failure to renew contract on Feith, were functions of the political climate in the air.

We live in a politicized world, and it's filled to the brim with bias and prejudice and idiocy. We have a conservative political official being displaced from an academic position on false grounds. Consider if former President Carter was on staff at the University. (The Jimmy Carter lionizing Arafat and calling Hamas a national liberation movement this very week and, in the process, undermining attempts at a valid two-state solution by giving unofficial legitimacy to a terrorist organization). Do you think there would be any question that Carter would be praised, tenured, supported, etc. at Georgetown. I don't. I know it would happen.

Look kiddies: If you aren't willing to tolerate and engage with controversial positions on the various (not both - there are always more than two) sides of the issue, you ought to remove yourself - not your professor - from the University. You also ought to stop calling yourselves liberals, let alone democrats. Modern liberals are supposed to embrace an ethic of diversity. This is the exact opposite: intolerance writ large.

This is a sad day for Georgetown University.

"... As Juan Cole, history professor at the University of Michigan and author of the widely read blog Informed Comment (JuanCole.com) wrote in January 2005, when Feith announced his resignation:

Feith has been questioned by the FBI in relation to the passing by one of his employees of confidential Pentagon documents to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which in turn passed them to the Israeli Embassy. The Senate Intelligence Committee is also investigating Feith. There seems little doubt that he operated in the Pentagon in such a way as to produce false and misleading 'intelligence,' that he created an entirely false impression of Iraqi weapons capabilities and ties to al-Qaida, and that he is among the chief facilitators of the U.S. war in Iraq. Feith is clearly resigning ahead of the possible breaking of major scandals concerning his tenure at the Department of Defense, which is among the more disgraceful cases of the misleading of the American people in American history."

Nice indeed rhetoric that razzels and dazzels too.

University students today have the internet and are far more sophisticated than the law of unintended consequences imagined.

Humans in their teens, 20s, 30s and the 40s to 50s too have the internet and this has changed the playing field.

Anyone can discover who Douglas Feith and his co-hearts are simply by a stroke of curiosity.

Frankly I find it physically nauseating to do in-depth reading about him. It reminds me too much of when I read Truman Capote for the first time at age 19. The reality enema of how hideous human beings can be in the name of whatever idea they "imagine" up in a head filled with contempt towards humanity, or so it appears -- to know the action followed-up on his words.

I can't remember which wise person said that but it continues to apply in the historical and legal ("criminal?" remains to be judged?) case building against Mr. Douglas Feith, et al.

To Huh? and those of you who are like-minded:

I always appreciated the byline, "All the news that's fit to print" -- whether it was true or not is another matter. And now I also know words are just words, depending on their source, so "what's fit" is a matter of conjecture.
It is beyond me why our culture is still operating with the fairly old belief system or ideology (we are still a young nation) that we are a democracy with a functional government, a working voting system, an informative media, a balanced Supreme Court, a fair wage system for all workers -- be they of color, foreign origin or female, -- a functional monetary system (the Fed is not of this nation), that paying taxes to the debt of to the wealthy elite is our obligation, that our Constitution is still viable and that mom won't be snatched from her home at a moment's notice by Blackwater-trained goons before her apple pie is cool on the window sill.
First of all, we have a republic -- NOT a democracy. Secondly, I hold the media, the hate-mongering and the media propaganda (now owned by Rupert and his ilk) largely responsible for the skewed viewpoints of our politics here as well as our foreign policy. The few prestigious public servants and distinguished gentlemen -- and women -- are the courageous ones who are willing to truly question everything, inquire as to what is really true and dare risk stepping out beyond conventional media and limited thinking.
Without a free press in our country and the world (it's going, going, virtually gone) how can people sort out anything? Thanks to Pravda-esc corporate media, journalism is dead! The true investigative reporters are numbered, but many and have been forced underground by the Big Money Fish. True (investigative) journalism was sent off to war in the first Bush administration to risk along with the young men and women who believed they were protecting democracy. Now, another generation also falsely believes they are protecting democracy when in fact they are killing and being killed, maiming and being maimed, creating an unliveable nuclear nightmare of depleted uranium fields and spoiled skies for us and our great great grandchildren to breath should they live to be born.
These United States and our Constitution & Bill of Rights are soon to be a thing of the past like the 5-cent loaf of bread and the 50-cent/gallon of gas. The old way of thinking has given way to a newer old way of thinking. And the thinkers are in their heads which is equivalent to ego which is all about how much can I have, how much can I get, how much can I use, and what should I say so I can get it?
It is time to think differently. If there is anyone in university positions who still truly believe that schools are offering healthy, thought-provoking alternatives to students by paying dinosaurs of war and violence and torture, then bow to the king, lick the boots of his chief administrator, damn the Republic and its Constitution and "heil" to the North American Union and the collectivist Constitution of the United Nations so that The Rockefeller dream of an imperial world of elitists realize their scheme of a one world government, controlled by the wizard who has no doubt bought retirement property (with US taxpayer money) in Dubai.
I am glad to hear Georgetown University has let Feith go. He harbors dinosaur thinking in a "real world" that is NOT the world most of us choose to co-create, believe it or not. My wish is that he no longer be in a position to spread his toxic thinking that pollutes minds and skews positive direction -- particularly in a "learning institution."
History studies destruction:
competition, resources and commodities, borders, war and power -- the worst qualities of humankind (old-brain-stem thinking i.e. reptilian mentality)
The humanities studies construction:
cooperation, resourcefulness and the magic of alchemy, architecture, the arts, culture, hope & beauty (higher-minded, heartful and spirit-filled mentality)

So what do you think, HUH?
Will students choose what is moral if someone in an acceptable suit "teaches" that waterboarding isn't torture and that war and death and destruction are necessary for whatever reason the powers-that-be deem to lie about so they can have whatever they want before someone else gets it?

Though I am disturbed ones such as Feith have been holding his foot in the door of GU for two years, I am hopeful. All institutions -- especially educational institutions must change! We must learn to think with our hearts (we are all on this planet together as one pulsating universal spirit) and feel with our minds. If not, we are doomed. Doomed for a few individuals to have "peace" in the burning and smoldering remains and smoked-out skies of a once-great planet. If we are not challenged -- all of us -- to expand to the incredible beatitude of the human spirit and the human heart and the human mind, then forget it! There won't be a Kansas anymore.

When this blog is being edited for no reason according to the rules, regulations, guidelines and laws - is it the journalism department or scholars?

Hmmm, there seems to be some sanitization of the dialogue on this blog. Is this out of some fear for the great unknown??? And why is there such fear of opinion???

"Look kiddies: If you aren't willing to tolerate and engage with controversial positions on the various (not both - there are always more than two) sides of the issue, you ought to remove yourself - not your professor - from the University. You also ought to stop calling yourselves liberals, let alone democrats. Modern liberals are supposed to embrace an ethic of diversity. This is the exact opposite: intolerance writ large."

Why is Feith a paid instructor of such hateful ideologies while a provocative blog post is removed from view of these same students who are recipients of the propaganda? Where is "the ability to tolerate and engage in controversial positions"???

So who is doing the removing???

Arthur -

I didn't see the scrubbed messages, but your last long post is one of the clearest, most concise and most accurate short descriptions of where we are politically at present that I have ever read - with one caveat, of course. ;-)

While I agree abut the central role of the corporate media, the effects of its charades would have been negligible had it been playing to an empty house. But it had far too many eager consumers for its bilge.

Just as there are highly admirable traits in the American character - and I think there is an identifiable American character; there are qualities about our peoples that you can pretty much expect to find anywhere you go in this country - there is a strong dose of something dark, selfish, narrow-minded, bigoted, superstitious, ignorant, self-righteous, opprobrious and shameful there as well. For the past 7+ years the highest office in the land has been occupied by an amoral, cornball humbug who is gifted only at appealing to those qualities in people.

He brought with him much of his ilk, and Feith is one of those - an idealogue and a pathological liar, either of which should disqualify him for a position in academe. The "distinguished practitioner in national security policy" indeed - he manipulated data to suit a preordained agenda.

When he was first hired at Georgetown, the press said that it was to teach a course on the Bush administration's strategy in the war on terror. Is that an accredited course? What strategy? There was no "strategy," other than to grab the oil at all costs; what reliable information we have about prewar "planning" - and of course what we know from watching the drama unfold - makes that unassailable.

One is tempted to analogize to Germany - would "academic freedom" or "freedom of thought" justify giving a teaching position to, say, the third or fourth man down from Goebbels (had he survived) - but the analogy is not accurate.

Feith is an authoritarian follower and a technocrat of a kind not previously seen. He was third man in line at the Pentagon, Sanitize, when this blatantly illegal invasion and occupation - illegal under both domestic and international law - was planned and executed at the cost of a great bloodletting. What do you think a war crime is? How much substantiation is necessary?

And for what? Who is the enemy? Is it the Iraquis? That's who Feith and the other masters of war were telling us we were going to liberate! I wonder what he was telling his students.

You don't give a war criminal who is a pathological liar a teaching position at a major university for God's sake.

"when this blatantly illegal invasion and occupation - illegal under both domestic and international law - was planned and executed at the cost of a great bloodletting. What do you think a war crime is? How much substantiation is necessary?"

Those are some fancy words. Empty, hollow, meaningless, but fancy. Purtty.

What I think is that the vast majority of people in this country live their lives with canned phrases, soundbites, and force-fed talking positions. They don't investigate or challenge their assumptions. Pigs at a trough.

I also think that 95% of the people in this thread, yourself included, could not describe the a scintilla of the legal framework involving determinations of war crimes. Nor could they explain the actual policy, control, and pressure structures in government for planning and implementing military engagements. Ha. I doubt you could even give a DSM definition of a pathological liar.

I think that you throw around words like "bloodletting" and "war criminal" because they are your heuristics for understanding the Big Bad Scary World. I think it's shameful. You live an unexamined life. I also think that none of what I'm writing will matter. It will sound like a rant to you. You probably won't read it. Why bother. You know you are correct. You feel good. Someone you don't like, for reasons you aren't really sure, involving geopolitical happenings you don't really understand, has been fired. And that's a victory. Congratulations.

Orwell would be happy!

I wouldn't be surprised if the neo-conservative books in the library start disappearing next. It is extremely important that we stand up for our right to hear all sides of arguments here at Georgetown and not have our education filtered by certain groups on campus. I don't see why people don't trust vigorous academic discourse to filter out the best ideas and push aside the rest. There is no need for the administration to intervene in our education like this. I don't support much of what Prof. Feith says and I was vocally against the war from the start, but I think Georgetown students should be allowed to hear all sides of the issues. I have enough faith in my convictions that I'm certain they can stand up to anything Prof. Feith teaches in his class.

Don't worry Doug, just as your comment about racism was removed so shall any/all books be removed (GU?) except for the UN partnership with Marvel Comics and teaching children in the future "how to live in a war torn world?"

Orwell is already "happy" "Greatest of All Time?" I am so impressed with GU's "forward thinking?" Scrub, scrub, scrub and plant, plant, plant. Wow. This is indeed a scary world alright. Just wait and see, hear, swallow hook, line and sinker trouts - "neo-conservative" forward march into the future. What future exactly do you folks have in mind, those who appear to welcome scholarly debate, or flock to block what information stream -- tributaries that can indeed offer the kind of education necessary for critical thinking and wise or simply, common sense judgments. Deductive reasoning. Cognitive thinking.

What about choices for real G*O*A*T? Making a namesake real G*U?

Goat -

You are probably not old enough, or far along enough in school yet, to actually know anything about the history of the early 20th century, but there was this huge war in two parts in Europe, and at the end of the second part a number of Germans were prosecuted and hanged by the Americans for “waging aggressive war,” pretty generally defined as waging war that is not defensive. The chief American prosecutor called it “the supreme war crime.”

Similarly, the movers and shakers in the Japanese war machine were put on trial. The Judgment of the Tokyo International Military Tribunal recognizes five separate crimes as crimes against peace: These are planning, preparation, initiation and waging aggressive war or a war in violation of international law, treaties, agreements or assurances, or any conspiracy to commit those designated crimes. See, generally, United Nations War Crimes Commission, Wm. S. Hein Publishing, ISBN:1575884038, p. 140 et seq.

Then the United Nations was formed, and within it the Security Counsel. The United States is a signatory to the UN Charter, and it defines acts of aggression as “armed invasions or attacks, bombardments, blockades, armed violations of territory, permitting other states to use one's own territory to perpetrate acts of aggression and the employment of armed irregulars or mercenaries to carry out acts of aggression.” Oh, and then there is Resolution 95(I) of the UN General Assembly dated December 11, 1946 affirming the criminality of waging aggressive war. See, generally, R.L. Griffiths, “2 international Criminal Law Review,” 301-308 (2002).

The definition is subject to some technical and political jostling, but it still means pretty much the same thing today. Now tell me, was the invasion of Iraq “defensive” somehow? Do you think the good ol’ USA was in danger from Saddam Hussein? Had Iraq attacked us recently do you recall?

Now, you may not know it being busy as you are with self-aggrandizement, but during our occupation of Iraq, members of the US military, its civilian superiors and some of its mercenaries - uh, contractors - have actually tortured and killed prisoners. That’s a fact - it cannot be denied. And it has recently been admitted - that's a legal term, admitted - it means there is no more denying that, either - that orders to do that came right from the top.

Now - follow this if you can - torture, inhumane treatment and intentional murder are grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, which are treaties ratified by the United States. Treaties made under the authority of the United States are, inter alia (that’s some Latin the lawyers use - you can look it up), the “supreme law of the land,” according to Article VI Sec. 2 of the Constitution, and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions are considered war crimes under the War Crimes Act of 1996.

Did you follow all that? That is a little more than a scintilla of the legal framework involving determinations of war crimes, don’t you think?

You assert that few on the thread could comprehend "the actual policy, control, and pressure structures in government for planning and implementing military engagements." But how is that pertinent to the issues? We are talking about war crimes, not logistics.

Now, you accused me of using empty, hollow, meaningless words, but I charge you with intellectual dishonesty; the empty hollow meaningless words were yours, "full of sound and fury but signifying nothing." You said *nothing* except that you did not believe I could support my allegations, and you took paragraphs to say it.

I have now done so, and without much effort.

So unless you actually have something to say - some reason for your existence other than bawling out your petty nihilism and your ignorant jibes, I suggest you just follow along and learn as best you can.

It is specious to suggest that advocacy of torture is protected by academic freedoms or freedoms of speech.

Torture transgresses far beyond the normative line that anyone who truly loves and understands American ideals would defend. There is no meaningful rationale to justify it.

It does not enhance national security, even if short-term gains in intelligence were achieved in rare cases. It backfires -- viz. the torture-extracted confession of "Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi" about a link between Al Qaeda and Saddam, which Colin Powell cited as part of the justification for the US invasion of Iraq. (Al-Libi later recanted his confession, and US intelligence agreed he had been lying to make the torture stop.)

The advocacy of pedophilia, misogyny, torture, racism, hate-speech, anti-Semitism, violence, and homophobia are all rightfully excluded from academic freedoms of speech. Douglas Feith's legal contortions to authorize waterboarding, verschärfte vernehmung ("enhanced interrogation"), and other forms of torture are shameful. They do not warrant academic debate. They should not be given a voice anywhere in America, let alone in government or an institution of higher-learning, let alone at a Jesuit institution that pontificates ethical values, let alone at our beloved Georgetown University.

Prof. Keith Fort (Emeritus)

Artists are natural in the creation of non sequitur. So is advertising. One creates a work for the viewer to participate in, hopefully the gift of curiosity sparks the memory of creative genius.

And the other (i.e., "Freedom Sticks" in the 1920s for "women") may have a hidden agenda.

Read JustinCase very, very carefully since this is what the brain that thinks is supposed to look like - in choosing intelligently.

My youngest son in his 20s is an artist who also writes poetry:

Alpha fedora
señora slurrin’ lies
first in line
climb the ladder
Omega in his eyes
smokescreen brainwash
propaganda base
removing every face
projecting them
to the stars
floating in the ocean
are the rest without a voice
Alpha fedora
only wants to make your choice.

Think about it for a minute. His initials are RAW and this means

NOT

WAR! PERIOD.

Read F. William Engdahl before these same people who come to blog and feed our minds with the ? information??

Seeds for our future that have only a diminishing return and the honeybees as well as birds, salmon and other life forms do not ingest and most certainly not ... digesting the non sequitur of advertising.

The "neocon" agenda was a mass advertising scheme and it is continuing to play out in all kinds of non sequiturs so pay attention and look for the writing of a JustinCase, for example, to feed the brain real thinking food for humanity.

Alpha Fedora only wants to make your choice. Uh uh, not as long as the brain can think to choose.

THere are several points that are being ignored in this debate. The first is the most obvious: there are dozens of conservative professors at Georgetown, by any definition of "conservative". Just to pick a couple of the most prominent -- that is apparent to people who don't pay attention to academics and just notice public figures -- we currently have George Tenet and Viet Dinh, and in recent years Jeanne Kirkpatrick and Henry Kissinger. But beyond these public figures there are loads of professors with conservative world-views (Catholic and not) even by the idiosyncratic standards of the US. (That is, the country in which the "left" political party is to the right of the Tories on most issues.)

What distinguishes Kissinger and Kirkpatrick -- earlier uber-conservative ideologues involved in criminal government behavior -- from Feith is that they were hired under normal academic procedures. That is, they were considered against other candidates by a faculty committee composed of experts in their area. In a typical faculty search hundreds of people apply. All have degrees in the area they are applying for. All have letters of recommendation from academics. They submit academic written work (most having publications, even as very junior applicants.) They submit teaching evaluations. Then they are systematically screened for excellence in teaching and research by a faculty search committee in a process that takes up many hundreds of person-hours.

None of this happened with Mr. Feith. No degree in the relevant area, no academic publications, no teaching experience, and above all no faculty search. Just handed a university job by the dean. Well, you say, he's a practitioner, not an academic. True, sometimes those are hired on a short-term basis, as was Feith, though he now is trying to dance around that fact. But even here, the norm is faculty evaluation and some evidence of success in the practice. Mr. Feith has been, as judged by almost everyone including most of his Republican colleagues, a disaster in his appointed government job, and there was no meaningful consultation with faculty before his hiring.

So leaving completely to one side his involvement in war crimes -- and yes, they were crimes, perfectly straightforwardly -- his hiring was an utter affront to conventional academic standards and amounted to no more than a gift via the old-boys-network. The dean had a right under university rules to do what he did, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a terrible exercise in judgment.

Now, when the question of whether to offer him another job comes up, faculty have shown far better judgment and decided not to hire him. And in the face of not being handed even more gifts, Mr. Feith has the nerve to whine that it's just because he's conservative. Poor poor conservative victims. (I wonder how many times my contract would have been renewed if I published nothing in academic journals, committed a few misdemeanors, and had a degree in law rather than philosophy? Of course the question is pointless, because my original hiring under those conditions is inconceivable.)

If what this man and his pals have done to world weren't so serious, the whole debate would be laughable.

Mark Lance

Before anyone lands on Prof. Fort for supporting censorship, I don't read him that way. He is correct in saying that "advocacy" of torture, misogyny, pedophilia etc. deserves no formal platform in academia because of the implicit imprimatur of legitimacy that goes along with such a platform. People like Feith should always be given the opportunity to explain themselves, but the reaction should be universal scorn.

I disagree about academic debate, however. All these aberrations should be dispassionately and objectively examined, including the legal contortions of people like Douglas Feith and John Yoo. Because if we don't study them and identify them for what they are and expose them and continue to remind upcoming generations of the corruption they represent, they come back in disguise. They are nurtured by vermin like Douglas Feith.

During the 1960's, George Lincoln Rockwell was invited by the student body to speak at the University of Idaho. There was an uproar, and the Student Body President was disparaged as a "communist" on the front page of the daily paper. Why a communist would invite a nazi to speak was never explained.

Well, Rockwell was eventually permitted to speak, his ideas were greeted with the derision they deserved, and then he got in his armored car and went back home. That was a completely appropriate exercise in academic freedom, IMNSHO.

Rockwell was not offered a teaching post.

That's what I'm talking about.

Mark Lance, thank you.

Ignoring problems is a serious problem in the American thought process. It wasn’t that long ago, during the 1950s and 1960s, that writers in the U.S. (Napoleon Hill, Dale Carnegie) wrote books on how to solve problems. These authors are not a Shakespeare and certainly not a Mozart by any stretch of the imagination.

However they were problem solvers and believed that in order to stimulate the brain or to grow self esteem (“positive core image”), problems are a mandatory growth process in the human development of “higher thinking.”

Problem solving requires higher thinking.

We have a serious problem in the United States when a man, a Douglas Feith, can actually be well-paid, well-supported and also hold positions of power and therefore create a climate of countless numbers of serious problems for us to solve - globally.

This includes every man, woman and child in America - we have serious problems to solve and it is at critical mass, this toxic mass destruction of “Peace on Earth.”

Mr. Douglas Feith and his "pals" have created more problems than we know what to do with and to run from them or to play word army games is insanity.

Or should I state, further insanity?

Think tanks need to be set-up alright and we must carefully examine every brain that constructs a plan which includes the (see long list of words by Prof. Keith Fort ‘Emeritus’).

Beyond “shock and awe” - this particular reality for the neocons appears to be their chosen reality. I can’t even write all those “ideas” that Professor Fort has written since the truth is, I’ll throw-up.

A “real” problem to/for the “neo-cons,” but not such a great problem to solve and grow our self-esteem as a nation into the 21st Century, or so it appears to be now that America has discovered the non sequitur of advertising by Feith, et al.

It takes a lot of money to sell a war and it takes a lot more money to own the whole wide world.

America is paying a high price for the advertising non sequitur GWOT.

I wanted the Pope to scold the coup d’etat like the other Pope would have, the one who called it right on before the mass advertising scheme took hold like the devil and danced with America.

Did you notice that the devil has not changed but America has. That’s what happens when one dances with the devil so it is said.

‘Western Leaders Are War Criminals’

"... Mahathir Mohamad’s statement appears to be valid as the International Criminal Court defines the following as international crimes:

(a) Crimes against Peace:

Namely, planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances, or participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing:

(b) War Crimes:

Namely, violations of the laws or customs of war. Such violations include, but not be limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave labor or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity:

(c) Crimes against Humanity:

Namely, murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war, or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country where perpetrated.

Former PM of Malaysia Mahathir Mohamad calls for Western leaders to be charged with war crimes ~

Speaking at Imperial College in London Mahathir, who was in office from 1981 to 2003, singled out US President George Bush, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Australia’s former prime minister John Howard as he wants to see them tried “in absence for war crimes committed in Iraq”.

By Mick Meaney - RINF (dot com)

People seem to conveniently forget that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other top Democrats in Congress were briefed on the secret prisons and interrogation techniques now considered torture in Sept 2002. Not only did they sign off of them, but additionally they asked if they were in fact tough enough. It seems odd to blame the Bush administration, including Prof Feith, for the secret prisons and waterboarding when Congress stood with them and signed off on it, knowing full well what they were agreeing to.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/08/AR200712...

Are we going to bar Nancy Pelosi from teaching here after she retires from Congress?

How many of our representatives allow for full disclosure, a thorough examination to understand how the "wealth" they appear to have, such as Nancy Pelosi (the "third richest" member of Congress, btw, no less than some obscene amount - $53 Billion was the number) when she was anointed with her prestigious position to make certain Governor Bush (thanks to George Carlin) was and is not impeached during her watch.

I'm one who gets stuck in problem solving. This impeachment process makes me wonder about America's ability to understand what has actually happened, most especially when I think about all the minds in this great country that do not seem to hear the lantern that was kicked over by a cow?

No it was airplanes flying into buildings and the story is stranger than fiction.

Anyway Rome appears to be burning.

Not quite a trillionaire then, Ms. Pelosi, but we do not require an examination of what our government employees earn in their portfolios - somewhere offshore?

Why should representatives of Congress vote for war, when a conflict of interest is clearly against the law/s which govern - or certainly should govern - the "multinational stocks" of weapons, wars, etc. and so on. There should not be war time profiteering.

Intellectual genius is like a mystical quasi-scientific experiment and therefore when this has been corrupted by the faux collegial cult of greedy pin heads, humanity screeches to a halt and now we can see this agenda to turn history backwards. That's intelligent. Not.

Full disclosure should be a common sense law or common law that standardizes the rule of law, watcful of war-time profiteering.

Measuring the "blow-back?" Of exactly what do we label this unacceptable pathological behavior by those who take an oath to uphold the rule of law?

There is no exception should we choose to call ourselves "civilized" but to follow the rule of law.

The Congress acting in the representation of the American people must provide 100% full disclosure of the assets traded as "wealth."

Else how can we trust "them" to be our leaders when clearly our best interest is not their number one priority.

Am I missing something here? Or is it time we bring the filthy dirty secret out of the grab bag of scholarly, intellectual, collegial discourse and on and on it goes with words that do not ask the question - it may very well be about the money.

This is what nauseated Einstein into choosing his "next life" to be a gardener rather than a scientist.

There is a worse thought than the money, however America isn't ready to face this yet since the media controls the brands and we're not done with poisoning ourselves enough so it's not over till it's over.

Brand GWOT is still being sold to the American public as though it is good for us.

Doug -

Who signed off on the secret prisons and the torture? We don't know from the article. A little background check reveals that Pelosi was the only Dem to be briefed - that may explain her taking impeachment "off the table." I noted, however, that it was suggested that the briefings were "sanitized" so that the most revolting aspects of the pogrom - you know what that is? - were kept hidden.

Beyond that, however, the officials being briefed were foresworn to secrecy and secrecy was imposed on them by law. What do you think they should have done? Write a classified letter? That was the path taken by Jay Rockefeller, and you see how much good it did.

If your point is to suggest that none of these people is fit to teach, you may be quite correct, although the vetting process outlined by Mark Lance would likely reveal that independent of their official activities.

But the idea that it is "not fair" to blame "Prof." Feith for his blatant violations of national and international law and his consistent, intentional skewing of vital intelligence to support an obviously illegal invasion and occupation of a nation that had done us no harm is puerile.

I assume you are a student at Georgetown, Doug, but I don't think you really appreciate what that means - what the name and reputation of that institution and the few others like it represent to those of us trying to make intelligent sense of the events of our lives and of the world we helped to create. We must be able to rely on these respected places of higher learning to produce clear-thinking, objective leaders and, even more important, teachers committed to true intellectual endeavor and honesty, so that they may pass on the real wisdom we have gleaned, such as it is, to future generations.

You must try harder. You must learn American history from William Manchester and the history of your world and your civilization from Barbara Tuchman and Hannah Arendt.

But what is most important is that you must learn to think with clarity and the intent to discern whatever is true - then you will not be plagued with any concerns about being "fair" to the likes of Douglas Feith. Believe me, he and his ilk are most emphatically not concerned with being fair to you. They have an agenda, and they will readily fix the facts to conform to it.

He, Pelosi, Bush, Cheney - whoever greased the skids for this disaster in Iraq and its worldwide ripple effect - must be subjected to the same fate as the Prince of Verona imposed on both the Capulets and the Montagues: "All are punished!"

A few relatively unconnected points.

(1) Where was all this moral outrage when George Tenet joined the faculty. Wasn't he equally complicit in both the supposedly criminal war in Iraq and the supposedly criminal interogataion techniques used to combat global Islamic terror. Is it possible that he got a free pass from the liberal faculty members because he was a Clintonian democrat serving Bush and as such not a "neo-con."

(2) Lance's point that there are plenty of conservatives on faculty is well taken. But the problem isnt that Fieth's removal eliminated any chance of conservative viewpoint, but the suspicion that he has been removed because of his conservative viewpoint. I'm sure McCarty could have taken any one person under the Smith act and say, "Well there are plenty of other communists out there. The viewpoint can survive without this one." The relevent concern here is (1) of chilling a viewpoint by example and (2) of one individual's academic freedom being curtained because of his beliefs instead of merit.

(3) If, in fact, he was removed for lack of academic merit (as Lance suggests) than this is all moot, but this suspicion held by some (apparently including Feith) is serious enough in a University to merit a full airing -- beyond the Hoya's blog.

Regards,

Saxon Gillis

Saxon Gillis:

1. Clinton was/is Bush. Study BeyondTreason dot com. In other words: "There's not a dimes worth of difference."

2. Conservative. The first and last conservatives were the Native Americans. Since the Treaty of the Six Nations was not honored, there is no such thing as an "American Conservative." Ask Carrie Dann, Grandmother of the Western Shoshone. Now this is a lesson in history, the Native Americans who are truly "conservatives."

The human people who stay as close to nature as they can since this is how the word conservative is defined at its tap root. And precisely the opposite of what the American leadership had in mind when a certain family usurped and monopolized entrepreneurial, in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

3. Academic Merit. This one is interesting. Henry Kissinger in the 1970s, wrote a 200 page paper that was nothing more than pure deceit. A papal bull it was for him, a intellectual trap for America's future - we're living it now.

How to grow industry and yet at the same time wrap the growth in the "idea" that contraction would be, and is, mandatory. Expansion and contraction. BUBBLES, lots and lots of them rolling right into the GREEN Revolution.

How creative and intellectually brilliant.

However, there is a serious problem -- the Native Americans have been "green" since before Henry could write.

Conservative? Henry Kissinger? Douglas Feith, et al.?

I do not concur.

Those who believe in growing humans like we are disposable commodities to utilize as though we are "intellectual property," to now "cull."

This is not conservative and every human with a brain cell working knows it. It's conservative for those who wish to control the power in a more conservative fashion and therefore Kissinger, Feith, Clinton, Bush, et al. do indeed have a notion of conservative in their pea brains.

The conservatives you speak of have a conservative idea of about 200 billion humans on planet Earth. Do you think you get to be one of the downsized? Is it going to be without any suffering? Are you going to look away and think conservative when children are starving here in the U.S., rather than just Haiti?

Please discontinue being intellectually dishonest. It is time that the Henry Kissingers of planet Earth (fat zionest toadies) work for a living rather than lie, cheat, steal, mass murder and then become what Americans label intellectual merit.

He is not one to be proud to know. Know Carrie Dann, she's a conservative and has never behaved as a HK.

GU it is time you look to genuine leaders in America, true conservatives and liberals. Time for some tough love to those who purchase such as the Baptist Church in Boston or was it Chicago? ... and use it as their best weapon to teach the "idea" of "conservative" ... PLEASE WE ARE NOT DUMB ENOUGH TO CONTINUE BELIEVING IN THE "GOTROCKS" (see Warren Buffet's 2006 newsletter to his stockholders), and the agenda of full spectrum domination branded as conservative.

In other words it is time to study the true meaning of words.

JustinCase, I would like to add to the "history" lesson.

Art in America:

"... Abby Aldrich Rockefeller used her empathy, willingness to experiment, and defiant optimism to leaven her husband's conservative thinking. She expanded his vision of what the Rockefeller fortune could do, shaping the family into a progressive force in philanthropy, the arts, education, the social and physical sciences and politics.

snip snip

Such personalities as Nelson Aldrich, John D Rockefeller and J P Morgan, all born within a span four years between 1837 and 1841, were products of a capitalistic age they helped to create. They were radicals who altered the nature of US society, overthrowing the agrarian democracy that underpinned the political mandate of the new nation founded three-quarters of a century earlier. With a view of themselves as moral, disciplined visionaries of strong Protestant ethics, they were meticulously upright in their personal affairs while engaging in wholesale duplicity in large-scale business and financial manipulation. They were ruthless empire builders in that they did not merely play the game to win, but they bent the rules of the game to ensure their less-than-fair winnings. And they were not apologetic about it.

snip snip

In the summer of 1907, the US economy crashed, with a large number of big businesses and major Wall Street brokerages going bankrupt. By October, the venerated Knickerbocker Trust in New York City and the blue-chip Westinghouse Electric Co had both failed, touching off what came to be known as the Banking Panic of 1907, the latest and most severe of four nationwide banking panics that had occurred in three decades. The stock market plummeted and panic-stricken depositors made massive runs on the nation's banks.

Once more J P Morgan (1837-1913) acted to restore financial order. This was not his first exercise to save finance capitalism from free market forces, each time making his control of the financial markets more complete. He summoned leading bankers and financial titans to his palatial home on 36th Street and Madison Avenue in New York, where they set up a rescue operation in his ornate library. Over the course of the next three weeks, Morgan and his team bypassed legal constraints to channel money from the stronger institutions they owned to the weaker ones they had just acquired through predatory fire sales to keep the system afloat, halting the panic with the cooperation and gratitude of the government.

MONEY, POWER, and MODERN ART PART I: Ruthless empire builders By
Henry C K Liu

Now I ask you all who use the word "conservative" to look very carefully at this time and remember it's not the first time this "idea" of conservative has visited America - to save us ...

exactly, from which terrorists?

"...The men who profit from such mass murder use terms like "structural adjustment" and "economic fundamentals" to attach a veneer of rationality to a chaotic system they have created on the fly for the sole purpose of mega-theft. In the end, the Lords of Capital have mastered only one art: the production of overlapping calamities, each more lethal than the last. Soon, if not already, the Haitian poor will have no cooking oil to mix with clay for their diet of dirt pies. The Lords of Capital will have turned them into dirt for another Haitian's consumption and demise.

For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Glen Ford."

Does this writing merit intellectual authority?

I can't quite get Henry Kissinger giving a damn, frankly my dear.

What length of understanding is needed, to continue kicking around words like conservative, liberal, etc. and then do we FINALLY come to a reckoning and get to realize that action/s speak much louder than words (SWORD becomes the act)?

When is it appropriate to realize, BRANDING is a high powered psychological crafting tool in the American psyche, closing in fast, total control.

Edward Berney. Study him well.

But this was/is the real hidden marketing: "Why, of course, the people don't want war," Goering shrugged. "Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."

"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."

"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

snip snip

"As an intellectual Goebbels looked down on the crude philistines of the leading group in Munich, who for their part made fun of the conceited academic's literary ambitions. Goering considered neither the Munich philistines nor Goebbels sufficiently aristocratic for him and therefore avoided all social relations with them; whereas Himmler, filled with the elitist missionary zeal of the SS felt far superior to all the others. Hitler, too, had his retinue, which went everywhere with him. Its membership, consisting of chauffeurs, the photographer, his pilot, and secretaries, remained always the same."

spartacus (dot) schoolnet (dot) co (dot) uk

Seeds of Destruction by F. William Engdahl explains the "hidden?" agenda or simply just another "idea" of those who think with brains that do not have a connectedness to humanity - both liberal and conservative since Goebbels has given the order to stand up, sit down and do what we are told and regardless of our labels we obey.

Conservative is a clever word to brand thinking ideas into its host, such as Lemmings marching off to war, oops, greener pastures.

Liberal is cute, too. Just what the hell does it mean, liberal?

Are we free to use our imaginations in whatever form we choose or is the full spectrum agenda of the "Lords of Capital" to seize the BRAINS (doing a great job in this preparation since gmos have shrunk more than two generations of brains), and therefore we are nothing more than vegies for those who we brand as intellectual geniuses with merit.

"... Edward Bernays was raised in the United States. He spent a lot of the summers of his youth vacationing in Austria and getting to know firsthand some of his famous uncle's theories. He used what he learned to formulate the most useful corporate alien theory on the planet. This theory is called "Public Relations" by some, and "Spin" by others. You and I have been influenced by spin for decades if we've lived in any so called "civilized" nation of the world.

snip snip

In 1928 the American Tobacco Company hired Bernays to try and change this. He consulted with a psychoanalyst A.A. Brill, who suggested that what women really want was the freedom to do the same things men do. So during New York's 1929 Easter Parade, Bernays hired debutantes to march in the parade pretending to be suffragettes. On his signal, these women all lit up a cigarette. He had photographers standing by to mark the event and referred to cigarettes as being "torches of freedom." It appeared that anyone against women smoking was against women's liberation as well. Bernays saw to it that this event was publicized throughout the world. Smoking by women everywhere quickly skyrocketed when they began to associate cigarettes with freedom."

continued ezinearticles (dot) com/
?Sigmund-Freuds-Nephew-and-Corporate-Alien-Control&id=330300

Biloxi, you seem to be under the category of person who believes that he (oh, excuse me, "she") who speaks the loudest and the longest is the rightest. You have had your say, and while meandering, nonsensical, nosequitur, anti-semititic and otherwise bizzare, through all of that, you have made your point as to the central issue of this thread, ie. whether or not GU was correct in not offering to extend Feith's contract.

I would like to say that I appreciate the input of Prof. Lance, who while I have not met I have heard much about (good things mostly) from friends who have taken his classes in the philosophy department. I do not agree with his arguments, and so I would like to try to respond to his points.

You have determined that Feith's behavior was criminal, "perfectly straightforwardly" as you state. Unfortunately, this absolute statement reveals that your background is not in law, but rather in philosophy where determinations of right and wrong are based on which school of thought you belong to, rather than on written or court provided laws. Feith's "crime" was in his application of the Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War, more specifically it was in the decision to view Al Qaeda fighters captured in Afghanistan as "enemy combatants" rather than POWs. This determination is legally defensible by the Geneva Convention Article 4 definition of POW as having to fulfil each of these categories:

-that of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;
-that of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance;
-that of carrying arms openly;
-that of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war

It is possible that many of these were commanded by an officer or some kind, so I will grant that. Some, but certainly not all, carried weapons openly. Terrorist activity generally is about the concealing of bombs, guns, etc. Clearly, none of these combatants had recognizable insignia. And finally, these combatants in most cases did not operate according to the laws and customs of war.

So, what then is the importance this determination? By not defining these individuals as POWs, they are not subject to the protections set forth under the Convention. Because of this determination, the US could legally operate more freely in their detentions and with the so called "enhanced interrogation techniques".

This was Mr. Feith's crime. While he paved the way for the CIA and military to act with more flexibility, he was not involved in the process of determining what techniques would be viewed as lawful or not. I would argue that that is for another debate, as again, points can be made on either side. John Yoo is not the professor in question here.

Professor Lance, from the standpoint of ethics, of which I assume you to be much more well versed, what Feith did may well be "perfectly straightforwardly" criminal. From a standpoint of law, both domestic and international, it is not. The only other "crime" he committed was in his analysis of intellegence in the lead up to the Iraq War. While it is clear that some mistakes were made, as will sometimes happen in intellegence analysis at all levels and departments, it is up to debate and politics whether Feith's actions even crossed the ethical threshhold or whether he was operating in good faith in his determinations.

Your point is well taken that Feith does not have a degree in the field, but undoubtedly a life's experience in high levels of government is greater qualification than a PhD as it comes to teaching the practice of National Security and government. If he were here teaching about the theory and philosophy of government, that would be a different matter.

Feith was recognized by his students as being an excellent educator, and expressed openly his desire to stay at GU. While Gallucci was under no obligation to rehire Feith, it seems irrational to refuse to rehire a successful professor. Whether it was Gallucci's intent or not, the message sent is clear, if your politics do not line up with ours, then you are not welcome here.

Huh:
I'm afraid most of what you write here is based on a misreading of what I wrote. I said "his involvement in war crimes -- and yes, they were crimes, perfectly straightforwardly ..." I did not say that his behavior was straightforwardly criminal. What was straightforwardly criminal was the war, the launching of an aggressive war without justification or UN endorsement. His involvement in that was not merely on the issue of torture, but in producing ideological justifications for the war -- justifications that were surely false, and likely fabricated. Whenever you get to the involvement of subordinates in such things, and what degreeof involvement in crimes is necessary to count as criminal on their part, international law is far from straightforward. That's why I worded my comment carefully.

As for your claim that government experience is more important than a PhD, I actually responded to that in the original post. Not just any experience, successful or not, competent or not, is a qualification. Relevant faculty need to evaluate these things. Apparently they have now done so.

The principle that one should always rehire temporary teaching hires if they teach well is hardly one that can be defended. It would either radically curtail the ability of GU to provide a variety of practitioners to students, or quickly swamp the faculty with an ever-growing number of temporary hires.

The only message sent is that even people who work in government are subject to review before being handed GU jobs.

Mark Lance

Again, Professor Lance, you use the phrasing "perfectly straightforwardly" either too loosely or too politically. There is an ongoing debate as to the legality of the war, with noted legal scholars on either side of the fence. While I do not know the precise opinions of the various law professors at GU, if you speak with any of them (my personal experience is with Arend) you will find that the justifications for this war, while by no means on perfectly solid ground, were neither straightforwardly illegal. Furthermore, while you did not directly label Feith a criminal, you did imply his criminality by stating that you would not have been hired if you had any "misdemeanors".

Especially in academia, it is our duty, as professors and students alike, to keep an open mind. I have not expressed my own opinions on Feith, Bush and the War for the singlular reason that I believe that the issue here is not about what the US should or should not have done, but rather that the SFS, the leading undergraduate institution on internation government and law, should have well spoken and experienced advocates of all positions in order to best facilitate debate.

Huh:
I didn't base any arguments about Feith's hiring on the illegality. But I do think the war was straightforwardly illegal. Yes, people disagree. They do on everything. I don't think that they can do so reasonably on this issue.
Mark Lance