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Can we expect clarity?

Thursday, February 7, 2008

SO THE FIELD IS NARROWED – quite a bit now. We’ll have less crowded platforms for TV debates -- and maybe fewer candidates could mean fuller questioning. I fervently hope so, since the media’s representatives have hardly distinguished themselves so far as penetrating inquisitors.

One crucial area for inquiry that has gone pretty near AWOL in recent months is the matter of just how, after the Bush Administration’s so-called War on Terror has both traduced basic human rights and made nonsense of effective military and intelligence practices, America's greatness can ever be restored.

 

I’m talking of three vital fronts … re-establishment of the constitutional rule of law … recovery for America’s weakened reputation as a leader in the world … and the creation of genuine strength to defeat our terrorist enemies.

 

Will we see (or is it too much to expect ?) as debates are being planned in the delegates-rich states of Texas and Ohio before their March 4th primaries, moderators like Brian Williams or Wolf Blitzer seriously pressing the presidential contenders to be clear about what solutions they propose?

 

I’m prompted to ask this by the slow progress being registered through that other branch of government, the law courts (and slim media coverage, too) for efforts by the Center for Constitutional Rights and others to challenge the Administration’s Military Commissions Act . This meritricious piece of Bush legislation denies abused and often innocent detainees the right of access to a federal court for full habeas corpus rights, civil damages, or - perhaps most important of all – the chance to press criminal charges against their jailers.

 

The urgency of the issue has been sharpened for me by producer Alex Gibney‘s powerful documentary Taxi to the Dark Side, now showing in movie theaters – though very few of them, of course - which graphically explores the moral depths we have been brought to by the grim constellation of Guantanamo - Abu Ghraib – Baghram (plus all the un-named “Black Sites” operated by the CIA).

 

The film builds its indictment outward from a horrible microcosm, the despicable case of a completely innocent Afghani taxi-driver named Dilawar who was arrested by US troops,  tortured for five days and then died in Baghram US Air Force base, while his passengers were sent on for incarceration in Gitmo (spending 15 months there before being released as “no threat”). It is shameful and shaming.

 

 

 

**A RADIO DISCUSSION  OF THIS COLUMN CAN BE HEARD ON WHDD (ROBIN HOOD RADIO)**

To hear the PODCAST click HERE

 

 

 

SO WHERE DO THE CANDIDATES STAND ON - FOR INSTANCE - THE MOST BASIC of human rights abuses exposed here? 

 

John McCain (pictured left) -  and it’s hardly surprising in his case, since he's the solitary presidential hopeful to have actually been tortured - has notably condemned the notorious “waterboarding” interrogation technique. And he's been joined by the Christian rightist Mike Huckabee, making a total of only two Republicans in the field to have taken this clear position. (It may be moot now, but Rudy Giuliani was almost gleeful in his embrace of the treatment .)

 

On first viewing Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton (seen above center) seem united in their views on torture – condemning “waterboarding” and, further, wanting to clearly outlaw torture in general. But Clinton has zigged and zagged a bit over time. Responding to the classic “ticking bomb” scenario - even though she tried to dismiss it with “these hypotheticals are dangerous”, as indeed they are - she declined to contemplate torture even if Americans were at imminent danger, getting applause at the time for differing on the question from her husband, the former Chief Executive.

 

Then, away from the cameras, she was reminded that she herself had, in talking with New York’s Daily News, already professed some openness to making an exception, saying:

 

"In the event we were ever confronted with having to interrogate a detainee with knowledge of an imminent threat to millions of Americans, then the decision to depart from standard international practices must be made by the President”.

 

So, seeking to clarify matters, she had her campaign issue a statement:

 

“Upon reflection and after meeting with former Generals and others, Senator Clinton does not believe that we should be making narrow exceptions to this policy based on hypothetical scenarios.”

 

Obama, for his part, has been unvaried in his anti-torture position, and he has earned the endorsement of 80 volunteer lawyers representing Guantanamo detainees.

 

And you’d think all candidates want to shut down Guantanamo, yes? Especially since even George W Bush has said that’s what he wants.  But Mitt Romney, the candidate who insisted yesterday he was staying the course all the way to the GOP convention "and to the White House", remains committed to this simple assertion of his:

 

“Some people have said we ought to close Guantanamo. My view is we ought to double Guantanamo.”

 

 

THERE’S LITTLE THAT JOURNALISTS LIKE BETTER than a reversal of the expected and conventional. It makes a much better story – obviously. Why else would we so highly prize the perfect headline: “MAN BITES DOG”?

 

So seeing New York “society”, in the shape of the charitable Citizens’ Committee for New York City, give its award of appreciation for public service this week to Bill Cunningham (above right) the legendary recordist of Gotham’s social and fashion scene, was a distinctly pleasurable delight. For photoflashes were popping all over the cavernous Grand Ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel ... and the focus for all this attention was a humble photographer.

 

And I really mean humble. It’s taken a long time for Cunningham to be pressed into the limelight himself, preferring to be the fly-on-the-wall that the best in his profession tend to remain. In his personal values, too, he epitomizes humility, living in modest quarters and traveling everywhere on his trusty bicycle, or by train.

 

He’s never been known to accept so much as a limo ride, despite all the glitzy events he covers. And he’s much happier, anyway, in his other workplace - the city sidewalks, where he captures the candid, zeitgeist-revealing images of stylish passers-by that grace the pages of the Sunday New York Times. (Wear your glad-rags to the corner of 57th Street and Fifth Avenue, and you might make the cut.)

 

Very touchingly, when Cunningham accepted the Committee’s Daniel Patrick Moynihan Award (named of course for the great legislator who preceded Hillary Clinton in the US Senate) he was the only one among all the honorees -- including a ground-breaking community activist, big-money philanthropists, the city’s planning chairperson and the Metropolitan Opera’s new-ish chief -- to be given a standing ovation by the hundreds of New Yorkers present.

 

With typical impishness Cunningham flashed back. Scores of digital cameras, cell-phones, and the freebee, once-time-only cameras scattered throughout the banqueting tables may have all been pointed at him, but he still recorded the entire scene himself with his aged Leica, one of the five that take turns at hanging round his neck.

 

And he kept on working. The evening ended after the soprano Renee Fleming presented the top honor to her boss at the Met, Peter Gelb (emphasizing his creditable media achievement of giving over a million viewers access to Met performances through High Definition transmissions to select movie-theatre venues – “Now that’s outreach!” she cried) and two fellow Met singers, Patricia Racette and Marcello Giordani, enthralled the audience with “O Soave Fanciulla” from Giacomo Puccini’s La Boheme.

 

The final strains of this duet famously continue even after the singing lovers have left the stage – in this rendition, oddly but still beautifully, they echoed down a Waldorf corridor. And - from my seat right by the podium - I could see something few others in the ballroom could.

 

Bill Cunningham was walking ahead of the couple, backwards of course, photographing them until their very last high note. Unrelentingly on assignment, as ever.