Diary Of A Mad Libyan Dictator

Mohamed Eljahmi at The Corner:

Later today, Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi will address the United Nations General Assembly, shortly after Pres. Barack Obama has spoken. Qaddafi’s U.N. appearance will cap a long line of official accolades. In recent years, Libya has chaired the U.N. Security Council and the U.N. General Assembly. Qaddafi has been rewarded handsomely ever since he surrendered his WMD program in December 2003. Libya has been touted by U.S. and British diplomats as a model for rogue states such as Iran, North Korea, and Syria. Qaddafi’s rapprochement with the West has enabled him to achieve international legitimacy and solidify his rule at home.

Sadly, however, there is little to show for nearly six years of engagement with Libya. The so-called Libyan example has failed to convince any other rogue state to end its WMD programs; Iran has actually accelerated its nuclear program in recent years. Worse still, human-rights abuses continue unabated in Libya. Qaddafi’s security and revolutionary committees operate with impunity. His regime is guilty of arresting, kidnapping, and even murdering its political opponents.

The legitimacy accorded to Qaddafi is particularly heartbreaking for the victims and their families. My late brother Fathi Eljahmi was recently murdered by Qaddafi’s regime. Fathi was killed through slow, long torment because he publicly called for political reform in Libya. My brother also said that Qaddafi should accept responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing and the wars that Libya fueled in Chad and West Africa — wars that claimed thousands of victims.

Peter Catapano in NYT:

You had to laugh.

A day after Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi did everything but wave a rubber chicken in the face of the U.N. General Assembly, it’s hard to see him as anything but rich fodder for the absurdist late-night dictator skits that are sure to follow — what with the tent, the actual requests to pitch it, the ill-fated deal with the Donald and the theatrical speech that stretched the Libyan leader’s allotted 15 minutes of fame into 90 minutes of shock and — I guess we can say it — awe, as jaws did surely drop throughout the West. You half expect to see him on the next episode of “Celebrity Apprentice.”

Richard Just at TNR:

That was what happened today with Qaddafi. Conservatives will probably offer his 90-minute-long rant as more evidence for the pointlessness of the U.N. But I would argue that it proves the opposite. It’s been all too easy to forget in recent years that Qaddafi is an unadulterated lunatic. He agreed to disband his nuclear program back in 2003. He got published on the op-ed page of The New York Times. (Then his son did.) He became head of the African Union, and other African leaders seemed perfectly willing to ratify the veneer of respectability he was acquiring.

An anecdote that illustrates this: In June, as part of a group of journalists traveling with the International Reporting Project, I met Kenya’s prime minister, Raila Odinga, at his home in Nairobi. I asked Odinga whether he thought the African Union–given that it was now headed by Qaddafi, a notorious human rights abuser, and given how many other dictators were part of the organization–could possibly play a constructive role in promoting human rights. In response, he offered a persuasive critique of the A.U., pointing out that some African leaders were hesitant to criticize each other on human rights because of their own records. For instance, he said, “people like Robert Mugabe will be treated with kid gloves” at the A.U. “Why? Because a number of the heads of state going there are carrying the same baggage, like Mr. Mugabe. You’ll find one of them, President Bongo of Gabon, will say that, ‘Oh, Mr. Mugabe, he conducted elections–one election–therefore he’s the president.’ You see? Because that is what he does in his own country.” A good answer, I thought. But while Odinga had called out Mugabe and Bongo, he had not mentioned Qaddafi, the one leader about whom I had specifically asked. So I followed up: “Are you frustrated that the organization is led by Qaddafi?” At which point, Odinga smiled, and said simply, “I don’t want to comment on the head of a state which has got a diplomatic relationship with Kenya.”

So there you have it: For the number-two official in Kenya–a country that is one of the key players in African politics and a democracy–Mugabe and Bongo (who, it so happens, died the next day) were far enough outside the realm of respectability that they could be safely criticized. Qaddafi, apparently, was not–even though he is every bit the brutal dictator that Mugabe is and Bongo was (Libya is actually less free than Zimbabwe or Gabon, according to Freedom House), and even though he himself has not extended much courtesy to his fellow African leaders over the years (for instance, during his decades-long bid to conquer Chad).

Which brings me back to the United Nations. Qaddafi’s rant today was so embarrassing (introduced as the “King of Kings of Africa,” he held forth on topics like the JFK assassination and the origins of swine flu) that it should help to remind the world just how crazy he is, and just how little he deserves the aura of quasi-respectability he has somehow acquired. And if that happens, then hasn’t the United Nations arguably done a valuable service–simply by giving a nutty dictator the stage and letting him tell us what is on his mind?

Jeffrey Goldberg:

The troubling part: “…the Libyan diplomat who now holds the rotating presidency of the General Assembly.” It’s hard to believe, actually.

Allah Pundit:

I didn’t watch but Twitter was aflame with rolling updates about his intro as the “king of kings,” his musings about jetlag and why the UN should be moved to Beijing, and, oh yes, his hope that The One shall remain president forevermore. And that’s just for starters: I’m giving you two clips, one of CNN covering the kookier lowlights and another of a lowlight they forgot to mention — his pensees about the JFK and MLK assassinations. I can’t tell if the interpreter is (mostly) unintelligible because he simply doesn’t speak English well or because Qaddafi is that incoherent, but the garbled syntax only adds to the whole vibe.

And now I’m going to make a painful confession. As loathsome as he is, I couldn’t help feeling a tiny — tiny — bit of sympathy at watching someone who quite clearly lacks the mental capacity to realize he’s making a spectacle of himself. Ever seen a homeless guy ranting at no one in particular, and quite convinced that he’s winning the “argument”? Dude. Exit question: First Joe Wilson, now Qaddafi. How many “important” Obama speeches are going to be overshadowed by a bizarre outburst?

Steve Clemons:

Qaddafi really did make me chuckle when he said that the UN should be moved out of New York because of his jet lag — and that he thanked President Obama for hosting him for his first ever UN General Assembly visit, commenting that President Obama should be President for life.

As much as Colonel Qaddafi can frustrate folks as the UN’s court jester this week, we need to remember that in the realm of serious nuclear non-proliferation matters, Libya is a success story. Iran is not. I would be happy to tolerate all sorts of lesser problems with Libya in part exchange for getting off the rogue nation track. People need to keep that in mind as they ridicule Libya’s leader. I found that he made this week here much more dynamic and interesting – and he added some creative drama.

Joshua Keating at Foreign Policy:

Well that was something. Largely holding off on contemporary issues until the end, the colonel launched an epic, rambling, tirade against the U.N. institution itself, paricularly the Security Council, which he likened to Al Qaeda. He also rattled off a series of historical grievances dating back to the Suez crisis and the Patrice Lumumba assassination and indulged in some conspiracy mongering over the origins of swine flu and the Kennedy assassination.

As Blake noted, this makes it very hard to argue that Qaddafi is trying to reintegrate his country into the international community. I wouldn’t expect any more visits from John McCain to Tripoli in the near future. I would imagine this also largely undermines Ali Treki’s credibility as General Assembly president, after a fairly tame opening statement. Gordon Bown, who speaks later today, must have been squirming in his seat as well.

It should be interesting to see how Obama handles him at the “terror council” meeting tomorrow.

Day 3: Perhaps The Courtroom Scene From “Bananas?” Or The Nose Scene From “Sleeper?”

Liberal bloggers and Keith Olbermann all pointed out the parallels with the above scene and what happened at the hearings yesterday. Kieran Healy, Daily Kos, and Josh Marshall.

The liveblogs for today:

Doug Kendall at HuffPo

Bench Memos at NRO

SCOTUSBlog

Ed Morrissey

Andrew Pincus at TPM

A small sample of commentary so far on the hearings. Dahlia Lithwick in Slate:

Consider, for example, the questioning about Judge Sotomayor’s judicial record. There isn’t much of it. That’s partly because the Republicans think her record tells us nothing about her, since her speeches (or, rather, a single line in one speech) reveal her true judicial temperament. But even when Sotomayor is being questioned about her judicial record, the focus isn’t on her legal approach or process but on the outcomes. So when she talks about her Ricci decision, Jeff Sessions asks her why she didn’t apply affirmative action precedents that had no bearing in a case that was not an affirmative action case. When she speaks about Didden, her eminent domain case, Republican Chuck Grassley asks why she didn’t analyze the Kelo precedent in a case about timely filing. Nobody wants to hear how she got to a result. They want to know why she didn’t get to their result. Time and again she is hectored for deciding the narrow issues before her. It’s like a judicial-activism pep rally in here.

Senate Democrats are almost as confused. About half of them insist that she is a narrow, mechanical, pro-prosecution judge—the perfectly neutral umpire, John Roberts in sensible pumps. The other half utterly reject the balls-and-strikes talk, saying she’s empathetic, dammit, and that’s a good thing. Consider Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, who said in his opening statement yesterday: “If your wide experience brings life to a sense of the difficult circumstances faced by the less powerful among us—the woman shunted around the bank from voicemail to voicemail as she tries to avoid foreclosure for her family; the family struggling to get by in the neighborhood where the police only come with raid jackets on; the couple up late at the kitchen table after the kids are in bed sweating out how to make ends meet that month; the man who believes a little differently, or looks a little different, or thinks things should be different—if you have empathy for those people in this job, you are doing nothing wrong.” As Doug Kendall observed this morning, Democrats need to pick a horse and ride it. The alternative is Judge Sotomayor offering up a vision of herself as the world’s most empathetic umpire, someone who feels deeply for everyone before coldly finding the objectively correct legal answer.

Paul Mirengoff at Powerline:

In any event, her record in those capacities isn’t all that revealing either way. When she ruled against, and attempted to bury, the claims of the Ricci plaintiffs, Sotomayor did not say she was doing this based on her life experiences as a Latina. But that doesn’t mean that these experiences weren’t in play. Indeed, Sotomayor continues to acknowledge that bias can enter the decisionmaking process subconsciously.

To be sure, as Sotomayor pointed out, two other judges agreed with the way she elected to treat the Ricci plaintiffs, and neither was a Latina. But this doesn’t mean that, in Sotomayor’s case, her inner Latina was not at work. All we can say for sure is that (1) Sotomayor got the decision wrong (not one Supreme Court Justice agreed with her disposition of the case), (2) Sotomayor’s treatment of the plaintiffs and the issue they raised was shabby (her mentor, Judge Cabranes, basically said as much), and (3) if her handling of the case was influenced by her gender and ethnicity, to Sotomayor that is fine, according to her speeches.

A similar analysis applies to Sotomayor’s overall voting record. A Washington Post study showed that she is more liberal than the average judge appointed by a Democratic president. But other judges, by definition, also fit this description and, given the demographics of the bench ,few of them can be Latina. But again, we can’t know whether Sotomayor’s ethicity and gender helped push her into this particularly liberal cohort.

My sense, for what it’s worth, is that liberalism has internalized identity politics to the point that most liberals consistently see the world as Latinas do, at least for purposes of deciding cases. For example, most white liberals believe as ardently Latina liberals that women of color continue to get a raw deal from white males. Accordingly, as judges they filter the facts before them through that lens to just about the same degree as their Latina counterparts on the bench.

Richard Just:

The empathy war has its roots in a statement Barack Obama made back in 2007, when he described the kinds of jurists he planned to appoint: “We need somebody who’s got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom,” he said. “The empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor or African American or gay or disabled or old.” Obama’s statement contained one big mistake: using the word “heart” in conjunction with empathy. This made empathy sound mainly emotional and therefore suspect. Of course empathy can be emotional, but, in a constitutional democracy, it is much more than that. One of the primary roles of the constitution is to hedge against the possibility of majoritarian tyranny by protecting the rights of unpopular groups. This is not a matter of sentiment or good will; it is a fundamental matter of morality and the underpinning of a free, liberal order. We insist on these rights for others largely because of the human capacity to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes–to imagine what it would be like if the natural lottery had placed us in circumstances different from our own. Without empathy, neither our constitution nor the body of legal interpretation that has sprung up around it over the past two centuries could possibly exist in anything like its present form.

But this afternoon the Senate Judiciary Committee managed to reduce empathy to a caricature of its true meaning. Here was one of Republican Senator Jon Kyl’s questions to Sotomayor: “Have you always been able to have a legal basis for the decisions that you have rendered–and not have to rely upon some extra-legal concept, such as empathy or some other concept other than a legal interpretation or precedent?” Sotomayor must have known that Kyl had set up a ridiculous dichotomy–just minutes before, in response to a question from Russ Feingold, she had actually issued a rather passionate defense of empathy in judging–but still she played along, responding, “We apply law to facts. We don’t apply feelings to facts.” Both the question and the answer were absurd. Empathy is not the opposite of law, nor is it a simple matter of feeling or emotion; it’s a cornerstone of both human reasoning and the constitutional principles we call on Supreme Court justices to interpret. But during this exchange, Kyl and Sotomayor effectively collaborated to render the concept a sort of legal slur.

Byron York in the Washington Examiner:

After a night of studying Sotomayor’s testimony, Republicans will have more questions about what they view as her misrepresentation of her record. GOP senators know that Democrats are committed to confirming Sotomayor, and, with a 12-to-7 advantage in the committee and 60 votes in the full Senate, they don’t need any Republican support to get it done.  But they are troubled by her answers, by her attempts to deny the clear meaning of her words from the past.  And that could result in growing, rather than diminishing, Republican opposition.  “We heard a lot of things that were not factually buttoned down,” the senior GOP aide said.  “If that’s because she and the White House think she has the votes and doesn’t have to answer, then some Republicans are going to be troubled by that.”

Okay, $200 on Kathleen Sullivan?

Politico on the possibility of Kathleen Sullivan being appointed to the bench. This would be the first openly gay appointment to the Supreme Court. Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick and Hanna Rosin have an article up about the possible nomination and the broader phenom of “rumoured to be gay” amongst unmarried female political figures (and sometimes married ones. See: Clinton, Hillary, the 90s). The piece also takes a jab at the Rosen piece and mentions Sotomayor.

Ann Althouse on the Slate piece, focusing more on Sotomayor.

Marc Ambinder:

“In the end, the nomination of a gay Supreme Court Justice might be the perfect way to engage the public, and I think the upside potential is greater than the downside risk.  What better way to advance the cause of the public normalization of homosexuality than to appoint a gay justice to the court without referencing her sexuality?

If, on the other hand, the White House nominates a gay justice and makes a big deal about it and then becomes defensive when social conservatives object, they’ve undermined their underlying social engineering.”

Steve Benen on Ambinder’s piece.

On the right, Jennifer Rubin isn’t focused on the sexuality so much as:

“I thought I had inadvertently clicked on the Onion this morning when I saw the headline: “Lesbian Lawyers Eyed for Supreme Court.” But no, it was Politico. Shortly thereafter it was changed to the tamer: “Groups push for first gay justice.” Putting aside whether Politico is living up (down?) to its reputation of lacking in journalistic gravitas, one has to question whether we have now reached the ludicrous outer limits of judicial-nomination-by-bean-counting. What is next — “AARP Pushes For Geezer On The Bench”?”

Andy McCarthy at The Corner.

As to the earlier post on Sessions, he is, according to the Hill, not going to automatically disqualify a lesbian for the court. Most other GOP senators were quoted with a shrug, haven’t thought about it, doesn’t make a difference, except for John Thune. Steve Benen, again:

“I don’t expect much from Thune, but I have to wonder if he realizes how incredibly ridiculous this is.

As he put it, the nominee has to be straight, otherwise the would-be justice “would be a bridge too far right now.” Honestly, what the hell does that mean? Thune, as a practical matter, is establishing a litmus test — qualifications and merit are important, but homosexuality, regardless of any other factor, is more important. Why? Because Thune says so.”

EARLIER: Fight Over The Nomination Sparks Fight Over The Nomination

EARLIER: $100 on Sonia Sotomayor?

UPDATE: Matt Y.

UPDATE #2: Dday

UPDATE #3: Richard Just in The New Republic

UPDATE #4: Matt Y. responds to Just.

UPDATE #5: Henry Clay over at New Majority.

UPDATE #6: Jonathan Chait at TNR on Session’s comments today:

“And, of course, Sessions is only willing to allow “gay tendencies.” This of course is not the same thing as being willing to vote for a justice who’s actually gay. Just gay-ish. So, for instance, some bigots might refuse to seat somebody like Jennifer Granholm, who is heterosexual but has suspiciously short hair. Sessions would not disqualify her on that basis. Per se. But perhaps a prospective justice who evinced extremely strong gay tendencies, such as outright non-heterosexuality, might be a different story.”

Legal Insurrection goes after Matt Y:

“In that very same post, however, Yglesias referred to a possible heterosexual nominee as a “breeder,” which is a derogatory term for heterosexuals. Using that term is the equivalent of calling a homosexual a “fag.” Sounds like new-fashioned, un-subtle bigotry. I can’t wait to see the Media Matters’ press release.”

UPDATE #7: And Matt Y responds to Legal Insurrection.

UPDATE #8: Greg Sargent, among others, reporting that Focus On The Family won’t oppose a gay SCOTUS pick.

Think Progress has it that now Sessions would be concerned over a gay pick.