What's a Counter-revolution?

Egypt's Mohamed Morsi threatened the other day to crack down even more seriously on violent protests in Port Said. Calling the protesters "counter-revolutionaries," he insisted that he would maintain public order at the cost of civil liberties if necessary.

The word "counter-revolutionary" sounds dangerous to me. It implies that the revolution, whatever that is, comes first. Not the rule of law, not liberty, not democracy, not equality, not prosperity, not even order come before the revolution.

Check out his exact words:

The revolution was a turning point in Egypt's history. Egyptians have achieved unlimited freedoms and a constitution that reduced the president's powers.A structural reform is taking place in the state's institutions to fulfill the revolution's demands. I'm also working with the government to solve the problems of slum areas in Egypt.

Note the reification of the revolution here: it has demands, desires. Not only that, but it provided "unlimited freedoms." Such language does not bode well.

Stable democracy requires moderation. It requires compromise. I understand the pressure on President Morsi here, because no government can function, and few liberties can survive, in an atmosphere of chaos. People need to feel -- and to be -- secure in their personal safety before they ca engage is reasoned debate about touchy subjects. To this end, Morsi may need to make strongly-worded statements and to authorize coercion. The problem should be familiar to any 11th-grade US history student who as studied Abraham Lincoln. But language matters, too, and Morsi and the Muslim brotherhood need to learn to talk the talk.

Fame and Consequences

I don't generally take halls of fame seriously -- they're just museums. All the hubbub and dispute about who belongs in what hall of fame is the most base mental masturbation.

This week, however, the baseball writers made a statement. They refused to vote anyone into the Baseball Hall of Fame, even though some of the best players in history were candidates. Statistically, Barry Bonds is the best hitter of all time, Roger Clemens is among the best pitchers, and Mike Piazza is the best hitting catcher. None came even close to the 75% of voters they needed to be inducted.

As a museum, the Hall should include all three of these players, and probably also Craig Biggio and Jeff Bagwell (against whom I played in high school). And I have a hard time taking the morality of this kind of thing seriously. After all, Ty Cobb was a racist jerk, and Gaylord Perry only cheated through his whole career.

But I read one comment that rings most true to me: these guys made themselves rich by cheating and got to play the game at the highest level by cheating, but they did not earn honor. They'll have to live with that consequence, if none other.

"An approach that is so bureaucratically, legally and morally sound "

The Brookings Institution recently published some brief comments and illustrations on a Washington Post series on the Obama Administration's drone policy. Whether US law is ready for it or not, the Obama team has established a formal review process for the decision to kill a foreign national.

Brookings published a flow chart for the process, found here:
http://www.brookings.edu/research/interactives/2012/wittes-byman-terrorist-threat-flowchart

On the surface, the thing seems eminently reasonable and legal. The government only kills "operational" targets who can not easily be captured and prosecuted in the United States. The rationale goes like this: if there is a really bad guy out there, we would like to capture him and try him for crimes, but if we can't we just have to kill him, right?

Maybe. But I just don't think it's as easy as all that.

As the Post article put it, "Obama administration officials at times have sought to trigger debate over how long the nation might employ the kill lists, but officials said the discussions became dead ends." In other words, they are no longer doing the deep thinking here about the moral, legal and diplomatic consequences of what they are doing. Officials admit that the targets they hit these days just are not as important or as dangerous as the targets from five years ago, but the bureaucratic momentum driving the existence of a "top 20" list makes it difficult to complete it once and for all. There will always be a "most dangerous" person, even if he's not nearly so dangerous as people we killed or imprisoned already.

Here's a thought-provoking exchange from the Post: "In one instance, Mullen, the former Joint Chiefs chairman, returned from Pakistan and recounted a heated confrontation with his counterpart, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani. Mullen told White House and counterterrorism officials that the Pakistani military chief had demanded an answer to a seemingly reasonable question: After hundreds of drone strikes, how could the United States possibly still be working its way through a “top 20” list?"

We still have not conducted a clear and open debate about the legality and utility of these assassinations. Too many people don't know about them or can't be bothered to think about them carefully enough. It's not so much that I worry about a slippery slope -- what will we do if we are willing to blow people up -- though that's not as silly as most slippery slope problems are. Rather, I am concerned that we as a people are changing who we are. We are now the ones who target and kill people because we can do it. I don't think that's a good idea.