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I've been reading The Economist for decades and have always admired the magazine for its coverage, insights, and eclectic politics (who else in the media has called for Bill Clinton's resignation, gay marriage, war in Iraq, and drug decriminalization?). I've respected the magazine's opinions even when I disagreed with its conclusions. But lately, I find myself wondering about its common sense. Two pieces from the October 17 issue, Obama's War and To Surge or Not to Surge, both calling for escalation in Afghanistan, are useful to study not just to expose the flaws in escalation theory specifically, but to illuminate various species of weak critical thinking in general. Let's take the magazine's arguments for escalation one by one.
1. "A less intensive, more surgical 'counter-terrorism,' relying on unmanned air raids and assassination... is more likely to kill civilians and create new enemies than to decapitate and disable al-Qaeda."
Certainly killing civilians and creating new enemies would be counterproductive for any policy. It's reasonable, therefore, to ask whether sending tens of thousands of additional foreign troops into the country eight years into the war might have a similar effect, or even a worse one. Yet The Economist doesn't consider the costs of its favored policy. It's as though those costs don't exist.
The general flaw here is the assessment of costs only of one course of action, not of its proposed alternative. If your house and belongings were being ruined by a leaky roof and someone told you repairs would cost a thousand dollars, would you reflexively say, "Forget it, too costly?" Or would you also consider the costs of ongoing water damage caused by an unrepaired roof, and measure one against the other?
2. "Anarchy in Afghanistan, or a Taliban restoration, would leave it prey to permanent cross-border instability."
The specific problem here is that the argument ignores not just theoretical alternatives, but also actual history. If cross-border stability is a goal, it's important to ask whether there was more of it before or after the current war began. If the answer is "before," we can reasonably infer that the presence of foreign troops in the country is part of the cause of the current instability, and that more troops would make things worse.
The more general problem here is unexamined assumptions. Afghanistan has a whole history of instability. Why ignore that history when asserting withdrawal would worsen things? Why leave a critical assumption untested when you have so much data to test it with?
Note too the related assumption: stability in Afghanistan is so vital a western interest that no one even has to explain what the interest is. Stability is one of those words that just gets intoned, thought-free, by serious-sounding people who rarely bother to explain why the stability is important enough to warrant a war to maintain it -- and who even more rarely pause to consider how war might foster stability's opposite.
3. "Defeat for the West in Afghanistan would embolden its opponents not just in Pakistan, but all around the world, leaving it open to more attacks."
The argument is that we shouldn't do something to embolden our opponents, yes? Then why does The Economist not also discuss the way war -- particularly escalation -- emboldens our opponents? Or can only withdrawal embolden opponents, while escalation can't?
Again, it seems the only costs are those associated with the course of action The Economist seeks to dismiss. The magazine's preferred alternative is free of such costs, and apparently of other costs, as well. Wouldn't it be nice if life were really like this?
4. "Withdrawal would amount to a terrible betrayal of the Afghan people, some of whose troubles are the result of Western intervention."
I don't know how you measure something like this, especially after the kind of rigged election Karzai just pulled off. Regardless, will this always be true? Afghanistan seems historically a hard place to pacify. How long does The Economist propose staying to avoid betraying the Afghan people? How many lives is it willing to spend for this avoidance? How much money? It doesn't say.
Starting to see a pattern here? If a salesman were trying to sell you a car this one-sidedly -- "no costs, unless you don't buy the car!" -- would you get out your checkbook?
5. "The Afghan conflict, it is often said, has been not an eight-year war, but eight one-year wars. NATO comes off worse each time. And so the most important reason for persisting in Afghanistan: the coalition can do much better."
If you knew someone who had been married and divorced eight times, would you recommend he give it another go because he can do better? If, as you lay down on the operating table, you learned that your surgeon had killed her previous eight patients, would you take this as a sign your operation will be a success?
They say past performance isn't an indication of future results. Maybe not. But the notion that eight years of failure means ipso facto next year will be better is contradicted by history, everyday experience, and common sense. As an argument, it is, simply, delusional.
6. "The coalition’s leaders, at least, seem to have grasped that it must behave not as an occupying army but as a partner, whose aim is to build up the local forces that will ultimately ensure Afghanistan’s security. And soldiers and civilians are beginning to understand that development aid can benefit local people rather than foreign consultants and contractors."
If it took eight years for our leaders to figure these things out, is that cause for encouragement? Or despair? If you knew someone who'd been driving for eight years and only just figured out the importance of using the turn signal and rear view mirror and putting on the headlights at night, would you then confidently hand him the keys to your vehicle? Or would you instead sense that someone who learns this slowly will never manage to safely drive a car?
7. "The coalition, however, lacks three essential components of a successful strategy. It needs a credible, legitimate government to work with, the resources to do the job and the belief that America’s president is behind this war."
I think Rory Stewart said it best: "This is not a plan: it is a description of what we have not got."
8. "As for resources, it is worth remembering that in 2006, before the American surge, prospects in Iraq looked far bleaker than they do now in Afghanistan."
It's odd to tout Iraq as the kind of success we might emulate in Afghanistan. Andrew Bacevich:
9. "Mr Obama... might well reflect on a line from a British counter-insurgency specialist, quoted in Lewis Sorley’s book 'A Better War,' which White House staff are said to be busily reading. South Vietnam, he says, could have been saved if America had not cut off military aid to its government. 'Perhaps the major lesson of the Vietnam war,' said Sir Robert Thompson, 'is: do not rely on the United States as an ally.'
Perhaps so. Perhaps the point would be more relevant if Sir Thompson and The Economist could point to the country whom South Vietnam could have relied on instead. Otherwise, you could as well argue that Bill is useless to have your back in a fight because he lacks mutant invisibility powers and titanium-coated skin.
10. "Most of all, Mr Obama needs to fight this war with conviction. His wobbles over the last month have done more to comfort his enemies and worry his allies than any recent losses on the ground. Only if he persuades his troops, his countrymen and the Taliban that America is there for the long haul does he have a chance of turning this war around."
This sounded familiar to me. So I looked up William Westmoreland on Wikipedia and found this in his 1967 address to a joint session of Congress:
Indeed, the oddest thing about reading The Economist's articles this week was my sense that, had the word Vietnam been substituted for the word Afghanistan, they could have been written anytime during that earlier war (and I'm sure they were). Well, those who don't learn the lessons of history and all that.
Measure the costs of all proposed courses of action, not just one. Identify and test your assumptions. Recognize that multiple failures and extraordinarily slow learning are not cause for optimism for success. Don't confuse a description of what you lack with a strategy for achieving it. Spot and learn from historical parallels. Common sense, you would think. But not, apparently, when such common sense is most urgent.
P.S. On the subject of weak critical thinking, conservative NYT columnist Ross Douthat claims the secular arguments against gay marriage can be summed up as "institutional support for reproduction."
Reproduction needs institutional support? I actually can't think of something that needs less institutional support. Breathing, maybe. And the guy calling for this institutional support for reproduction also calls himself a conservative, presumably in favor of small government and all that? Bonus points, Ross, for irony.
1. "A less intensive, more surgical 'counter-terrorism,' relying on unmanned air raids and assassination... is more likely to kill civilians and create new enemies than to decapitate and disable al-Qaeda."
Certainly killing civilians and creating new enemies would be counterproductive for any policy. It's reasonable, therefore, to ask whether sending tens of thousands of additional foreign troops into the country eight years into the war might have a similar effect, or even a worse one. Yet The Economist doesn't consider the costs of its favored policy. It's as though those costs don't exist.
The general flaw here is the assessment of costs only of one course of action, not of its proposed alternative. If your house and belongings were being ruined by a leaky roof and someone told you repairs would cost a thousand dollars, would you reflexively say, "Forget it, too costly?" Or would you also consider the costs of ongoing water damage caused by an unrepaired roof, and measure one against the other?
2. "Anarchy in Afghanistan, or a Taliban restoration, would leave it prey to permanent cross-border instability."
The specific problem here is that the argument ignores not just theoretical alternatives, but also actual history. If cross-border stability is a goal, it's important to ask whether there was more of it before or after the current war began. If the answer is "before," we can reasonably infer that the presence of foreign troops in the country is part of the cause of the current instability, and that more troops would make things worse.
The more general problem here is unexamined assumptions. Afghanistan has a whole history of instability. Why ignore that history when asserting withdrawal would worsen things? Why leave a critical assumption untested when you have so much data to test it with?
Note too the related assumption: stability in Afghanistan is so vital a western interest that no one even has to explain what the interest is. Stability is one of those words that just gets intoned, thought-free, by serious-sounding people who rarely bother to explain why the stability is important enough to warrant a war to maintain it -- and who even more rarely pause to consider how war might foster stability's opposite.
3. "Defeat for the West in Afghanistan would embolden its opponents not just in Pakistan, but all around the world, leaving it open to more attacks."
The argument is that we shouldn't do something to embolden our opponents, yes? Then why does The Economist not also discuss the way war -- particularly escalation -- emboldens our opponents? Or can only withdrawal embolden opponents, while escalation can't?
Again, it seems the only costs are those associated with the course of action The Economist seeks to dismiss. The magazine's preferred alternative is free of such costs, and apparently of other costs, as well. Wouldn't it be nice if life were really like this?
4. "Withdrawal would amount to a terrible betrayal of the Afghan people, some of whose troubles are the result of Western intervention."
I don't know how you measure something like this, especially after the kind of rigged election Karzai just pulled off. Regardless, will this always be true? Afghanistan seems historically a hard place to pacify. How long does The Economist propose staying to avoid betraying the Afghan people? How many lives is it willing to spend for this avoidance? How much money? It doesn't say.
Starting to see a pattern here? If a salesman were trying to sell you a car this one-sidedly -- "no costs, unless you don't buy the car!" -- would you get out your checkbook?
5. "The Afghan conflict, it is often said, has been not an eight-year war, but eight one-year wars. NATO comes off worse each time. And so the most important reason for persisting in Afghanistan: the coalition can do much better."
If you knew someone who had been married and divorced eight times, would you recommend he give it another go because he can do better? If, as you lay down on the operating table, you learned that your surgeon had killed her previous eight patients, would you take this as a sign your operation will be a success?
They say past performance isn't an indication of future results. Maybe not. But the notion that eight years of failure means ipso facto next year will be better is contradicted by history, everyday experience, and common sense. As an argument, it is, simply, delusional.
6. "The coalition’s leaders, at least, seem to have grasped that it must behave not as an occupying army but as a partner, whose aim is to build up the local forces that will ultimately ensure Afghanistan’s security. And soldiers and civilians are beginning to understand that development aid can benefit local people rather than foreign consultants and contractors."
If it took eight years for our leaders to figure these things out, is that cause for encouragement? Or despair? If you knew someone who'd been driving for eight years and only just figured out the importance of using the turn signal and rear view mirror and putting on the headlights at night, would you then confidently hand him the keys to your vehicle? Or would you instead sense that someone who learns this slowly will never manage to safely drive a car?
7. "The coalition, however, lacks three essential components of a successful strategy. It needs a credible, legitimate government to work with, the resources to do the job and the belief that America’s president is behind this war."
I think Rory Stewart said it best: "This is not a plan: it is a description of what we have not got."
8. "As for resources, it is worth remembering that in 2006, before the American surge, prospects in Iraq looked far bleaker than they do now in Afghanistan."
It's odd to tout Iraq as the kind of success we might emulate in Afghanistan. Andrew Bacevich:
Six-plus years after it began, Operation Iraqi Freedom has consumed something like a trillion dollars—with the meter still running—and has taken the lives of more than forty-three hundred American soldiers. Meanwhile, in Baghdad and other major Iraqi cities, car bombs continue to detonate at regular intervals, killing and maiming dozens. Anyone inclined to put Iraq in the nation’s rearview mirror is simply deluded. Not long ago General Raymond Odierno, Petraeus’s successor and the fifth U.S. commander in Baghdad, expressed the view that the insurgency in Iraq is likely to drag on for an-other five, ten, or fifteen years. Events may well show that Odierno is an optimist.
Given the embarrassing yet indisputable fact that this was an utterly needless war—no Iraqi weapons of mass destruction found, no ties between Saddam Hussein and the jihadists established, no democratic transformation of the Islamic world set in motion, no road to peace in Jerusalem discovered in downtown Baghdad—to describe Iraq as a success, and as a model for application elsewhere, is nothing short of obscene. The great unacknowledged lesson of Iraq is the one that the writer Norman Mailer identified decades ago: “Fighting a war to fix something works about as good as going to a whorehouse to get rid of a clap.”
For those who, despite all this, still hanker to have a go at nation building, why start with Afghanistan? Why not first fix, say, Mexico? In terms of its importance to the United States, our southern neighbor—a major supplier of oil and drugs among other commodities deemed vital to the American way of life—outranks Afghanistan by several orders of magnitude.
9. "Mr Obama... might well reflect on a line from a British counter-insurgency specialist, quoted in Lewis Sorley’s book 'A Better War,' which White House staff are said to be busily reading. South Vietnam, he says, could have been saved if America had not cut off military aid to its government. 'Perhaps the major lesson of the Vietnam war,' said Sir Robert Thompson, 'is: do not rely on the United States as an ally.'
Perhaps so. Perhaps the point would be more relevant if Sir Thompson and The Economist could point to the country whom South Vietnam could have relied on instead. Otherwise, you could as well argue that Bill is useless to have your back in a fight because he lacks mutant invisibility powers and titanium-coated skin.
10. "Most of all, Mr Obama needs to fight this war with conviction. His wobbles over the last month have done more to comfort his enemies and worry his allies than any recent losses on the ground. Only if he persuades his troops, his countrymen and the Taliban that America is there for the long haul does he have a chance of turning this war around."
This sounded familiar to me. So I looked up William Westmoreland on Wikipedia and found this in his 1967 address to a joint session of Congress:
In evaluating the enemy strategy, it is evident to me that he believes our Achilles heel is our resolve ... Your continued strong support is vital to the success of our mission ... Backed at home by resolve, confidence, patience, determination and continued support, we will prevail in Vietnam over the Communist aggressor!
Indeed, the oddest thing about reading The Economist's articles this week was my sense that, had the word Vietnam been substituted for the word Afghanistan, they could have been written anytime during that earlier war (and I'm sure they were). Well, those who don't learn the lessons of history and all that.
Measure the costs of all proposed courses of action, not just one. Identify and test your assumptions. Recognize that multiple failures and extraordinarily slow learning are not cause for optimism for success. Don't confuse a description of what you lack with a strategy for achieving it. Spot and learn from historical parallels. Common sense, you would think. But not, apparently, when such common sense is most urgent.
P.S. On the subject of weak critical thinking, conservative NYT columnist Ross Douthat claims the secular arguments against gay marriage can be summed up as "institutional support for reproduction."
Reproduction needs institutional support? I actually can't think of something that needs less institutional support. Breathing, maybe. And the guy calling for this institutional support for reproduction also calls himself a conservative, presumably in favor of small government and all that? Bonus points, Ross, for irony.
Date Published: Oct 23, 2009 - 2:33 pm
Hi everyone, forgive my long hiatus. If anyone here is considering moving back from Tokyo, living in a house while it's being renovated, and finishing a manuscript all at the same time, I would advise... don't. But the worst of the storm is past, thank God, and it's good to be back at blogging. Lots to catch up on; here are three recent items that strike me as all being evidence (along with, say, the bizarre and unconstitutional reverence for "our" Commander-in-Chief) of the creeping militarization of American society.
1. On Fox News Sunday, Liz Cheney offered these thoughts on Obama's Nobel:
Here are the main premises in the paragraph above:
A. America should dominate the world.
B. The president "rules" America.
C. Americans elect a president exclusively, or at least primarily, to "defend" our national interests.
D. The defense of America's national interests should not, and indeed cannot, make sense to the majority of the people of the world.
Let's examine the premises Cheney regards as axiomatic.
A. Is it necessary, desirable, or even possible for America to dominate the world? What are America's national interests, and is world dominance necessary for their defense? Do all countries require world dominance to defend their national interests, or is America unique in this regard?
B. Does the president "rule" America? (Hint: the president's job description is helpfully laid out right in the Constitution. Very handy document.)
C. Is it true that Americans exclusively or primarily elect a president to "defend" our national interests? What else do we want a president to do? What does it suggest when someone mentions "defense" as the only, or even the primary, role Americans expect in a president (as opposed to, say, advancing interests, or continuing to form a more perfect union... that kind of thing)? Especially when the same person suggests the president "rules" America?
D. Is it true that when the president defends America's national interests, his actions cannot and should not make sense to the majority of the world? Is a decent respect for the opinions of mankind incommensurate with the defense of our national interests, or a part of that defense?
2. Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) supports a repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, which is good. But the senator also says, "It has to be done in the right way, which is to get a buy-in from the (U.S.) military (that) I think is now possible."
Huge majorities of Americans, including majorities of Americans with family members in the military, favor a repeal of DADT (it seems the military itself seems about evenly divided). Regardless: what, specifically, would the required military "buy-in" consist of? Was the military's "buy-in" also required when President Truman ordered desegregation? Are there other issues for which the civilian government and civilian population require the military's "buy-in?" Are there other institutions from which the President and Congress require buy-in, or is it just the military? What does Levin's notion suggest about current notions regarding military subordination to civilian leadership?
3. In a September 11 Wall Street Journal op-ed, Fouad Adjami, who writes like Peggy Noonan (this is not a compliment), claimed, "Wars are great clarifiers." Adjami was so certain of the truth of his statement that he didn't even bother to support it, and instead offered it up as an axiom.
Is it true wars really are great at clarifying things? Or do they tend instead to enflame and obscure? What does it say about a person's worldview when he believes it virtually goes without saying that wars greatly clarify things?
Against the creeping authoritarianism that today thoroughly infests the GOP but that shows increasing virulence outside it, as well, awareness, outspokenness, and familiarity with the Constitution are the best defense.
P.S. Glenn Greenwald has a terrific related interview with Jonathan Weiler, co-author of "Authoritarianism & Polarization in American Politics."
1. On Fox News Sunday, Liz Cheney offered these thoughts on Obama's Nobel:
Well, I think what the committee believes is they'd like to live in a world in which America is not dominant. And I think if you look at the language of the citation, you can see that they talk about, you know, President Obama ruling in a way that makes sense to the majority of the people of the world. You know, Americans don't elect a president to do that. We elect a president to defend our national interests. And so I think that, you know, they may believe that President Obama also doesn't agree with American dominance, and they may have been trying to affirm that belief with the prize. I think, unfortunately, they may be right, and I think it's a concern.
Here are the main premises in the paragraph above:
A. America should dominate the world.
B. The president "rules" America.
C. Americans elect a president exclusively, or at least primarily, to "defend" our national interests.
D. The defense of America's national interests should not, and indeed cannot, make sense to the majority of the people of the world.
Let's examine the premises Cheney regards as axiomatic.
A. Is it necessary, desirable, or even possible for America to dominate the world? What are America's national interests, and is world dominance necessary for their defense? Do all countries require world dominance to defend their national interests, or is America unique in this regard?
B. Does the president "rule" America? (Hint: the president's job description is helpfully laid out right in the Constitution. Very handy document.)
C. Is it true that Americans exclusively or primarily elect a president to "defend" our national interests? What else do we want a president to do? What does it suggest when someone mentions "defense" as the only, or even the primary, role Americans expect in a president (as opposed to, say, advancing interests, or continuing to form a more perfect union... that kind of thing)? Especially when the same person suggests the president "rules" America?
D. Is it true that when the president defends America's national interests, his actions cannot and should not make sense to the majority of the world? Is a decent respect for the opinions of mankind incommensurate with the defense of our national interests, or a part of that defense?
2. Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) supports a repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, which is good. But the senator also says, "It has to be done in the right way, which is to get a buy-in from the (U.S.) military (that) I think is now possible."
Huge majorities of Americans, including majorities of Americans with family members in the military, favor a repeal of DADT (it seems the military itself seems about evenly divided). Regardless: what, specifically, would the required military "buy-in" consist of? Was the military's "buy-in" also required when President Truman ordered desegregation? Are there other issues for which the civilian government and civilian population require the military's "buy-in?" Are there other institutions from which the President and Congress require buy-in, or is it just the military? What does Levin's notion suggest about current notions regarding military subordination to civilian leadership?
3. In a September 11 Wall Street Journal op-ed, Fouad Adjami, who writes like Peggy Noonan (this is not a compliment), claimed, "Wars are great clarifiers." Adjami was so certain of the truth of his statement that he didn't even bother to support it, and instead offered it up as an axiom.
Is it true wars really are great at clarifying things? Or do they tend instead to enflame and obscure? What does it say about a person's worldview when he believes it virtually goes without saying that wars greatly clarify things?
Against the creeping authoritarianism that today thoroughly infests the GOP but that shows increasing virulence outside it, as well, awareness, outspokenness, and familiarity with the Constitution are the best defense.
P.S. Glenn Greenwald has a terrific related interview with Jonathan Weiler, co-author of "Authoritarianism & Polarization in American Politics."
Date Published: Oct 12, 2009 - 3:40 pm
I just read this article in today's New York Times: "Sotomayer Says Identify Won't Distort Her Positions."
Two questions and an observation:
1. Has a white man ever been asked if he would allow his background to determine the outcome of a case?
2. Is it even conceivable that a white man would be asked if he would allow his background to determine the outcome of a case?
3. Worse: a white man has claimed that his background affected and would continue to affect his decisions. That man was Justice Sam Alito, who said during his confirmation hearings:
(Hat Tip Glenn Greenwald)
Imagine those words coming out of Sonia Sotomayer's mouth. Imagine the Republican furor.
So when a white man says his background will affect his decision making as a Justic, that's an asset for Republicans. A Latina, on the other hand, is forced to disclaim such a possibility.
Wow.
"Judge Sonia Sotomayor insisted on Tuesday, in the face of sometimes skeptical questioning from Republicans, that she would never allow her background or life experiences to determine the outcome of a case if she were elevated to the Supreme Court."
Two questions and an observation:
1. Has a white man ever been asked if he would allow his background to determine the outcome of a case?
2. Is it even conceivable that a white man would be asked if he would allow his background to determine the outcome of a case?
3. Worse: a white man has claimed that his background affected and would continue to affect his decisions. That man was Justice Sam Alito, who said during his confirmation hearings:
"But when I look at those cases, I have to say to myself, and I do say to myself, 'You know, this could be your grandfather, this could be your grandmother. They were not citizens at one time, and they were people who came to this country...'
"When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background or because of religion or because of gender. And I do take that into account."
(Hat Tip Glenn Greenwald)
Imagine those words coming out of Sonia Sotomayer's mouth. Imagine the Republican furor.
So when a white man says his background will affect his decision making as a Justic, that's an asset for Republicans. A Latina, on the other hand, is forced to disclaim such a possibility.
Wow.
Date Published: Jul 14, 2009 - 2:02 pm
This post began as a response to a series of comments on my FaceBook page, where I posted a video of Rachel Maddow interviewing Rep. Patrick Murphy, an 82nd Airborne Iraq war veteran, winner of the Bronze Star, and Congress's point man for the repeal of the military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell (DADT) policy. You can find the full text of those comments here, and a similar exchange with a woman who conflated gays and child molesters, here.
After writing my response to the anti-gay commenters, I realized what I'd written would serve well as its own post. Here it is.
You know why these discussions can be so sterile? Because the people who talk the most and listen the least are the ones with the most nonsensical, ill-considered opinions. I guess this makes sense, in a way. After all, if you know deep down that your opinion will be exposed as nothing but ignorant, empty prejudice in the face of evidence, logic, argument, and even common sense, your best strategy will be to ignore such things any time you encounter them in favor of throwing up an unending stream of thoughtless bullshit.
So, Brentt and Colin, you ignored my request to substitute the word "blacks" for the word "gays." Here, let me do it for you in your own comments:
"It all comes down to following orders. If you can't abide by having to serve in an all-black unit and not being able to serve with whites, then you deserve whatever comes your way, and it makes me happy to see it... Just because you're black doesn't mean you get special treatment so grow up, man up and follow the rules... All I am saying is that in order to maintain professionalism in an all volunteer military, you volunteer once, and then do what you're told to do after that. It doesn't mean you have to like it, you just have to do it... Just because they are black they are exempt from the rules? I think not."
"I think all the blacks should be put into their own regiment. That would give them a way to show their true merit and defend or avenge their black buddies in battle."
How does that read to you? It's exactly what you're arguing.
Brentt, your thoughts on the discriminatory nature of DADT also ignore previous comments -- again, presumably because you're not reading them. As others here have said, and as even the most elementary common sense ought to suggest to you, DADT is indeed discriminatory because it only applies to gays. The only way you could miss a point so obvious is if you're motivated by something other than reason.
Here, let me clarify by substituting the word "straight" for the word "gay" in your comment:
"If any of you try to make this a debate about discrimination, you'd be wrong. The military is not saying that you can't be straight and serve in the military. They are only saying that you can't ask anyone if they are, or tell anyone that you are. It's perfectly fine for you to be straight and serve in the military and has been for 15 years or so when President Clinton enacted this policy."
Do you see it now? A law that allows one class of people to acknowledge their sexuality and punishes another class of people for acknowledging their sexuality is inherently, obviously, discriminatory. If you want DADT to apply across the board -- such that anyone who acknowledges his or sexuality, straight or gay, will be discharged -- then it won't be discriminatory. Otherwise, by definition, it is.
Really, to miss a double standard so blindingly obvious, you'd have to start with the premise, conscious or unconscious, that gays are in some way illegitimate. Which I guess is where you're coming from and is unlikely something you can be reasoned away from if you're sufficiently motivated to adhere to your view.
"So, the question here is this: Is the Military ready for homosexuals to openly serve?"
But I already specifically addressed this exact question in one of my comments above, in which I referenced Truman's desegregation order, the Civil Rights Act, and the attitudes of the military and society at large. I argued, in fact, that this is not "the question," nor should it be, nor was it or should it have been then. Now you're raising the question again as though for the first time, suggesting that for you, it *is* the first time, because the most charitable explanation I can devise for why you would ask the same question that has been responded to previously without even noting the existence of that previous response is that you're not reading the comments to which you purport to be responding. And because you haven't responded to a single one of the arguments Rep. Murphy lays out in the video interview I linked to, and because many of his points contradict your own, I imagine you haven't watched the interview, either.
Discussing -- if that's the right word -- an interview you haven't even bothered to listen to is odd behavior. I wonder what would motivate it.
Your conflation of sexual assault with homosexuality is borderline insane and regardless, has already been addressed in other comments here. Sexual assault and other forms of assault are and should be illegal, in the military and elsewhere. Assault has nothing to do with homosexuality or heterosexuality, and the fact that you would argue otherwise again suggests that your views are motivated by something other than reason.
As for your conflation of sexual orientation with marital affairs, this is as worthy an argument as your conflation of sexual orientation and sexual assault. Once again, if you can't understand the difference between orientation and behavior -- about the same as the difference between being left-handed, on the one hand, and a left hook, on the other -- something is going on inside you, and it isn't reason.
Your suggestion that most gays are just malingerers who are using their gayness as an excuse to get out of the military is similarly revealing. The only evidence you cite is that you have "seen many people" do so -- as though someone as prejudiced as you could be counted on to adequately account for someone's motivations -- and you ignore the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Rep. Murphy points out that over 13,000 military personnel -- over three combat brigades worth -- have been discharged for being gay. And you assume that a significant percentage of that number were malingerers? Based on a few people you claim to know? Without offering any other evidence for your opinion? Tendentious would be a charitable way of describing your views.
If you really believed your "they're all malingerers" theory, and you really wanted to stop the malingering you assume is so widespread, you would support ending DADT. But you don't -- leading me, once again, to wonder what's really motivating you.
Your fear that straights might freak out if they knew there was a gay in a communal shower is also strange. First, there already are gays in the showers, and good order and discipline seems to go on. Is your point that good order and discipline can be maintained if straights know there are gays in the shower, but not if straights know who some of these gays are? I guess you're arguing then, as Col. Jessup might say, that straights "can't handle the truth."
Well, what was your previous advice for gays? "Man up and follow the rules." I could be wrong, but I have a feeling most soldiers devoted enough to serve and brave enough for combat can handle knowing some of their comrades, equally devoted and brave, are gay. But don't take my word for it: watch the Rep. Murphy video you're pretending to discuss and see what he has to say on the matter.
**********
I promised in a previous post to do an article on how to argue. I haven't forgotten and in fact have outlined some of the points I want to make. But the new book, a sequel to Fault Line called Inside Out, is due at the end of the month, and I've still got a ways to go, so I'm trying to keep my blogging semi-under control.
Pending the article on how to argue, I'll just say this: if you want your argument to be persuasive, and if you hope to be taken at all seriously, at a minimum you have to: (i) familiarize yourself with what's being discussed, whether it's an interview, an article, or the comments of other posters; (ii) respond to points that other people are making, ideally by quoting their exact words; and (iii) understand the difference between opinion and evidence and use the latter to bolster the former.
Final point: for anyone who wants to hear from me a little more frequently, I've been posting updates on Twitter. I confess when I first heard of a 140-character-per-post social networking medium, I thought it sounded silly. It's actually interesting, useful, and productive, though it can be a hell of a distraction, too. Anyway, if you're on Twitter, follow me, and I'll look forward to seeing you there.
After writing my response to the anti-gay commenters, I realized what I'd written would serve well as its own post. Here it is.
You know why these discussions can be so sterile? Because the people who talk the most and listen the least are the ones with the most nonsensical, ill-considered opinions. I guess this makes sense, in a way. After all, if you know deep down that your opinion will be exposed as nothing but ignorant, empty prejudice in the face of evidence, logic, argument, and even common sense, your best strategy will be to ignore such things any time you encounter them in favor of throwing up an unending stream of thoughtless bullshit.
So, Brentt and Colin, you ignored my request to substitute the word "blacks" for the word "gays." Here, let me do it for you in your own comments:
"It all comes down to following orders. If you can't abide by having to serve in an all-black unit and not being able to serve with whites, then you deserve whatever comes your way, and it makes me happy to see it... Just because you're black doesn't mean you get special treatment so grow up, man up and follow the rules... All I am saying is that in order to maintain professionalism in an all volunteer military, you volunteer once, and then do what you're told to do after that. It doesn't mean you have to like it, you just have to do it... Just because they are black they are exempt from the rules? I think not."
"I think all the blacks should be put into their own regiment. That would give them a way to show their true merit and defend or avenge their black buddies in battle."
How does that read to you? It's exactly what you're arguing.
Brentt, your thoughts on the discriminatory nature of DADT also ignore previous comments -- again, presumably because you're not reading them. As others here have said, and as even the most elementary common sense ought to suggest to you, DADT is indeed discriminatory because it only applies to gays. The only way you could miss a point so obvious is if you're motivated by something other than reason.
Here, let me clarify by substituting the word "straight" for the word "gay" in your comment:
"If any of you try to make this a debate about discrimination, you'd be wrong. The military is not saying that you can't be straight and serve in the military. They are only saying that you can't ask anyone if they are, or tell anyone that you are. It's perfectly fine for you to be straight and serve in the military and has been for 15 years or so when President Clinton enacted this policy."
Do you see it now? A law that allows one class of people to acknowledge their sexuality and punishes another class of people for acknowledging their sexuality is inherently, obviously, discriminatory. If you want DADT to apply across the board -- such that anyone who acknowledges his or sexuality, straight or gay, will be discharged -- then it won't be discriminatory. Otherwise, by definition, it is.
Really, to miss a double standard so blindingly obvious, you'd have to start with the premise, conscious or unconscious, that gays are in some way illegitimate. Which I guess is where you're coming from and is unlikely something you can be reasoned away from if you're sufficiently motivated to adhere to your view.
"So, the question here is this: Is the Military ready for homosexuals to openly serve?"
But I already specifically addressed this exact question in one of my comments above, in which I referenced Truman's desegregation order, the Civil Rights Act, and the attitudes of the military and society at large. I argued, in fact, that this is not "the question," nor should it be, nor was it or should it have been then. Now you're raising the question again as though for the first time, suggesting that for you, it *is* the first time, because the most charitable explanation I can devise for why you would ask the same question that has been responded to previously without even noting the existence of that previous response is that you're not reading the comments to which you purport to be responding. And because you haven't responded to a single one of the arguments Rep. Murphy lays out in the video interview I linked to, and because many of his points contradict your own, I imagine you haven't watched the interview, either.
Discussing -- if that's the right word -- an interview you haven't even bothered to listen to is odd behavior. I wonder what would motivate it.
Your conflation of sexual assault with homosexuality is borderline insane and regardless, has already been addressed in other comments here. Sexual assault and other forms of assault are and should be illegal, in the military and elsewhere. Assault has nothing to do with homosexuality or heterosexuality, and the fact that you would argue otherwise again suggests that your views are motivated by something other than reason.
As for your conflation of sexual orientation with marital affairs, this is as worthy an argument as your conflation of sexual orientation and sexual assault. Once again, if you can't understand the difference between orientation and behavior -- about the same as the difference between being left-handed, on the one hand, and a left hook, on the other -- something is going on inside you, and it isn't reason.
Your suggestion that most gays are just malingerers who are using their gayness as an excuse to get out of the military is similarly revealing. The only evidence you cite is that you have "seen many people" do so -- as though someone as prejudiced as you could be counted on to adequately account for someone's motivations -- and you ignore the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Rep. Murphy points out that over 13,000 military personnel -- over three combat brigades worth -- have been discharged for being gay. And you assume that a significant percentage of that number were malingerers? Based on a few people you claim to know? Without offering any other evidence for your opinion? Tendentious would be a charitable way of describing your views.
If you really believed your "they're all malingerers" theory, and you really wanted to stop the malingering you assume is so widespread, you would support ending DADT. But you don't -- leading me, once again, to wonder what's really motivating you.
Your fear that straights might freak out if they knew there was a gay in a communal shower is also strange. First, there already are gays in the showers, and good order and discipline seems to go on. Is your point that good order and discipline can be maintained if straights know there are gays in the shower, but not if straights know who some of these gays are? I guess you're arguing then, as Col. Jessup might say, that straights "can't handle the truth."
Well, what was your previous advice for gays? "Man up and follow the rules." I could be wrong, but I have a feeling most soldiers devoted enough to serve and brave enough for combat can handle knowing some of their comrades, equally devoted and brave, are gay. But don't take my word for it: watch the Rep. Murphy video you're pretending to discuss and see what he has to say on the matter.
**********
I promised in a previous post to do an article on how to argue. I haven't forgotten and in fact have outlined some of the points I want to make. But the new book, a sequel to Fault Line called Inside Out, is due at the end of the month, and I've still got a ways to go, so I'm trying to keep my blogging semi-under control.
Pending the article on how to argue, I'll just say this: if you want your argument to be persuasive, and if you hope to be taken at all seriously, at a minimum you have to: (i) familiarize yourself with what's being discussed, whether it's an interview, an article, or the comments of other posters; (ii) respond to points that other people are making, ideally by quoting their exact words; and (iii) understand the difference between opinion and evidence and use the latter to bolster the former.
Final point: for anyone who wants to hear from me a little more frequently, I've been posting updates on Twitter. I confess when I first heard of a 140-character-per-post social networking medium, I thought it sounded silly. It's actually interesting, useful, and productive, though it can be a hell of a distraction, too. Anyway, if you're on Twitter, follow me, and I'll look forward to seeing you there.
Date Published: Jul 11, 2009 - 5:03 pm
What I find most remarkable about America's debate regarding torture -- beyond the fact that such a debate could even be necessary in America -- is the continual recourse of both proponents and opponents to the question of whether torture works. I can't think of any other illegal behavior -- not murder, not rape, not kidnapping, not assault -- that receives this kind of rhetorical makeover. When a murder has been committed, you don't hear people agonizing over whether killing can never, ever be justified. When someone has been raped, people don't ignore the crime in favor of a discussion of whether a rapist's satisfaction could possibly be proven to outweigh a victim's trauma and horror. If a child is kidnapped, the airwaves aren't polluted with discussion of whether kidnapping might actually be an effective way of acquiring ransom money. And so on.
Torture, apparently, is different. Let's talk about why.
Unlike other crimes, torture has a constituency, in the form of the architects who created America's torture regime. These are the people who feed the public discourse with a steady supply of, "Can you really say that torture never, ever works?" And, "What would you do if your child were kidnapped and the kidnapper refused to reveal the child's location?" And, "How can you compare enhanced interrogation techniquing one terrorist to the 3000 people killed on 9/11?" Etc. The architects, and their media allies, know that as long as the talking heads of television and gatherers by office water coolers, literal and electronic, are discussing the morality and practicality of torture, they won't be talking about the illegality of torture.
But this supply-side explanation is only part of what makes torture different. The supply would have nowhere to go in the absence of demand. And the demand is what we most need to guard against. Purveyors of torture excuses will come and go, but our psyches will never change.
I believe some deep place in the human psyche is attracted to torture. A fundamental aspect of human nature is an abhorrence of powerlessness and a concomitant will to power. And what greater confirmation of power, and banishment of powerlessness, is there than utter control over another human being -- body, mind, and soul?
We also abhor helplessness. It's horrifying to consider that over time we will never be able to entirely prevent terrorist attacks. We prefer to believe 9/11 happened because we failed to do something we could have done, that there's some extreme we can still resort to that will make us safe again, that if we do that thing from now on, we can gain greater mastery over the possibilities that frighten us. Because, for the reasons set forth in the paragraph above, torture is already seductive, we seize on it like a talisman custom-made for our fearful psyches.
So it bears reminding that the reason torture is universally illegal in the civilized world is a consensus that torture is not only evil, but also insidious, and that therefore we must guard against the temptation to torture by enacting and enforcing strict laws against it. These laws provide not just a bulwark against a recrudescence of torture, but act also as a signpost, wisely erected by generations before us, warning us to stand fast against the dark sirens of our worst impulses.
Leave aside the irony that it's self-styled "conservatives" who are so eager to ignore the accreted wisdom of generations past. That the consensus against torture is the work of generations -- the product of generations of mistakes and of continual, improbable appeals not just to morality, but to wisdom, too, to the better angels of our nature -- makes the more debilitating the right's progress in once again coloring torture as something respectable, even desirable.
It is nothing of the sort. Torture is an abomination. It is without exception illegal. Those who have authorized it and those who have carried it out have committed crimes. In the face of clear laws and clear evidence of violation of those laws, a rhetorical resort to theory or morality or practicality isn't just an attempt to obscure the commission of crimes. It's also an implicit debasement of the value of the law itself. Most of all, it's a profoundly unconservative attempt to reingest an evil seed civilization has over time and in the face of dark, conflicting impulses, managed largely to expel.
Cross-posted at Humanity Against Crimes. More here:
The Torture Mentality, Part 1
The Torture Mentality, Part 2
The Torture Mentality, Part 3
The Torture Mentality, Part 4
Torture, apparently, is different. Let's talk about why.
Unlike other crimes, torture has a constituency, in the form of the architects who created America's torture regime. These are the people who feed the public discourse with a steady supply of, "Can you really say that torture never, ever works?" And, "What would you do if your child were kidnapped and the kidnapper refused to reveal the child's location?" And, "How can you compare enhanced interrogation techniquing one terrorist to the 3000 people killed on 9/11?" Etc. The architects, and their media allies, know that as long as the talking heads of television and gatherers by office water coolers, literal and electronic, are discussing the morality and practicality of torture, they won't be talking about the illegality of torture.
But this supply-side explanation is only part of what makes torture different. The supply would have nowhere to go in the absence of demand. And the demand is what we most need to guard against. Purveyors of torture excuses will come and go, but our psyches will never change.
I believe some deep place in the human psyche is attracted to torture. A fundamental aspect of human nature is an abhorrence of powerlessness and a concomitant will to power. And what greater confirmation of power, and banishment of powerlessness, is there than utter control over another human being -- body, mind, and soul?
We also abhor helplessness. It's horrifying to consider that over time we will never be able to entirely prevent terrorist attacks. We prefer to believe 9/11 happened because we failed to do something we could have done, that there's some extreme we can still resort to that will make us safe again, that if we do that thing from now on, we can gain greater mastery over the possibilities that frighten us. Because, for the reasons set forth in the paragraph above, torture is already seductive, we seize on it like a talisman custom-made for our fearful psyches.
So it bears reminding that the reason torture is universally illegal in the civilized world is a consensus that torture is not only evil, but also insidious, and that therefore we must guard against the temptation to torture by enacting and enforcing strict laws against it. These laws provide not just a bulwark against a recrudescence of torture, but act also as a signpost, wisely erected by generations before us, warning us to stand fast against the dark sirens of our worst impulses.
Leave aside the irony that it's self-styled "conservatives" who are so eager to ignore the accreted wisdom of generations past. That the consensus against torture is the work of generations -- the product of generations of mistakes and of continual, improbable appeals not just to morality, but to wisdom, too, to the better angels of our nature -- makes the more debilitating the right's progress in once again coloring torture as something respectable, even desirable.
It is nothing of the sort. Torture is an abomination. It is without exception illegal. Those who have authorized it and those who have carried it out have committed crimes. In the face of clear laws and clear evidence of violation of those laws, a rhetorical resort to theory or morality or practicality isn't just an attempt to obscure the commission of crimes. It's also an implicit debasement of the value of the law itself. Most of all, it's a profoundly unconservative attempt to reingest an evil seed civilization has over time and in the face of dark, conflicting impulses, managed largely to expel.
Cross-posted at Humanity Against Crimes. More here:
The Torture Mentality, Part 1
The Torture Mentality, Part 2
The Torture Mentality, Part 3
The Torture Mentality, Part 4
Date Published: Jun 09, 2009 - 4:38 pm
This one's a little off topic, but enough people have asked so that I thought I'd post it here, too. If you want to know how to give a great talk, here are my thoughts following TEDx Tokyo. Enjoy.
Cheers,
Barry
Cheers,
Barry
Date Published: Jun 02, 2009 - 8:25 am
It's impossible to keep up with the ever-creative arguments of torture apologists, but I'm trying. For the moment, let me step back from the cornucopia of metastasizing specific torture apologies and focus for a moment more on the larger picture.
Have you ever wondered how Dick Cheney can be a credible voice on torture? Can you imagine Cheney (or the architect of any program of at best dubious legality) saying, "Well, our intentions were certainly good, but nothing worthwhile came out of it. Definitely was worth a try though." Is there any way on earth Dick Cheney would ever say that? Of course not, and therefore, how can anyone take him seriously as the chief advocate for the illegal program he himself designed? We might equally expect George Bush to say, "Boy, the war in Iraq has really been a completely unnecessary catastrophe. Oops."
When a car salesman working on commission tells us we're going to love driving this car, we know to be skeptical because his opinion is not disinterested. Why does this sort of common sense evaporate when the salesman is a politician, and with far more on the line than the car salesman?
Why is it that the people who argue for torture have no experience with interrogations, while the most experienced are against it? Read this new article from Time magazine. Between them, Matthew Alexander and Ali Soufan have interrogated or supervised the interrogations of hundreds of war on terror prisoners. Both say torture doesn't work and that in fact it has cost thousands of American lives. Why are apologists so quick to dismiss as irrelevant the the experience of men like these in favor of their own evidence-free opinions?
You might have seen recently that rightwing talkshow host Eric "Mancow" Muller volunteered to be waterboarded so he could demonstrate graphically that waterboarding isn't torture. Here's his conclusion, unsurprising to anyone but himself. And bear in mind, this result was achieved in six seconds in the safest, most controlled, most friendly circumstances possible.
So: why not a torture Turing Test? If Liz Cheney can continue to maintain that Waterboarding Isn't Torture even while being waterboarded, she would be infinitely more persuasive. I wonder why Cheney the elder and Cheney the younger, and so many other apologists with so much on the line, refuse to make this extremely persuasive point? After all, they say waterboarding causes no permanent harm. It's just a dunk in the water, a no brainer, no big deal at all. So why not submit to an easy dunk and demonstrate powerfully and persuasively and once and for all for everyone to see that waterboarding isn't torture? Like Mancow did.
Given how strongly motivated some people are to believe in spite of glaring evidence to the contrary that We Do Not Torture, it might not help to repeat this. But still: waterboarding is hardly the only torture technique that was permitted or engaged in under the Bush/Cheney program. The UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading Treatment, signed by Ronald Reagan and ratified by the Senate, binds the US not just to not torture, but also not to engage in cruel, inhuman, or other degrading treatment. It specifically prohibits all exceptions.
But you never hear about the law from torture apogists. Instead, they want to make it all about theory: "What would you do if you had to torture someone to save a city? To save a loved one? Can you absolutely say that under all circumstances torture never, ever justified?"
Imagine you're a cop. You come across a dead body with a bullet hole in the forehead, and there's a guy standing over the corpse holding a smoking gun. You want to arrest the guy with the gun, and your partner says, "Hang on a minute there, pard. Can you honestly say that killing is never, ever justified?" This is exactly what torture apologists are doing in the face of actual laws and actual facts demonstrating that those laws were violated.
Really, I get so tired of the ridiculous and irrelevant question, "But wouldn't you torture someone if you thought it could save a loved one?" This is simply an argument for setting policy according to what we would do if we were out of minds with fear, rage, and desperation. How can any rational person believe that policy so devised would be in our interests? What are our rational minds for, if we're so eager to surrender them in advance?
The real question here is: if someone chained your stripped and hooded wife or daughter to the ceiling so she couldn't sleep for a week and the skin on her legs were nearly split with edema, and repeatedly smashed her into the wall, and left her lying in her own urine and excrement, and then waterboarded her again and again and again and again, would you dismiss it all as no worse than a bunch of fraternity pranks, just some "enhanced interrogation procedures?" Or would you recognize it as torture?
It amazes me, the awesome powers we've come to attribute to terrorist losers and misfits. Not only can they dissolve the concrete walls of America's most fortress-like supermax prisons, they're also impervious to the most sophisticated interrogation techniques. You'd think that people who had signed up for a cause as looney as worldwide jihad, who were such true believers that they were willing to blow themselves up along with thousands of innocents in the service of the cause to which someone recruited them, must by definition be reasonably amenable to psychological manipulation. They can be talked into blowing themselves up, but not into giving up information? When did we come to have so little confidence in ourselves that we started to view these cretins as more clever than we are?
I get a lot of mail from people arguing that we should torture terrorists (never terror suspects; after all, if the government says someone is a terrorist, he's a terrorist, because the government has never been wrong about such a thing ever). They're evil, they deserve it, blah blah blah. Even if "they deserved it" could magically render torture legal or otherwise desirable, shouldn't we take a step back and carefully examine our real motivations here? If we really, really want to torture these evildoers because they deserve it, is it possible we'll also want to retroactively invent other, more rational-seeming, respectable reasons to justify the underlying bestial desire? When you really, really want to do something, you start to look for reasons. If you can't find real ones, you might start to invent them. Rational people are aware of this dynamic and take steps to guard against it. Really motivated people don't want to be aware of the dynamic and don't want to guard against it -- they just want to do what they want to do.
It's fascinating to watch the people who argue that torture doesn't matter because people who want to kill us are going to want to kill us anyway. After all, The Terrorists tried to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993, before we started torturing, that kind of thing. And yet these same people also say Obama must never, ever release the new photos of prisoner abuse, lest they inflame anger against us.
Although maybe these photos would cause some inflammation. Some of them are said to depict prisoners being raped.
Okay, here are a few more specific pro-torture arguments. I'm numbering them to make it easier to reference them when I get repetitive pro-torture email.
1. "I'd take your criticism of the US more seriously if you'd also criticize al Qaeda. All we do is rough tactics; they cut people's heads off. Doesn't that bother you?"
This is a really weird argument in so many ways -- call it the Fairness Doctrine for Terrorist Criticism -- but it's out there so let's address it.
First, I wonder, does it only apply to terrorists and torture? Or does the equal time theory apply to other governments and other issues, too? "Before criticizing the US government for its approach to health care, you must provide equal time for criticism of the UK approach."
Look, I'm a US citizen, so naturally I tend to focus on the actions of my government. What my government does affects me, and because we're a democracy, there's at least a theoretical chance my criticism will have some effect. By contrast, somehow I don't think US citizens criticizing al Qaeda behavior is likely to reach the appropriate al Qaeda ombudsman. It might also be that Americans are more critical of their own government than we are of al Qaeda because we hold our government to a slightly higher standard. Are we mistaken in doing so?
Another reason Americans might not spend a lot of time criticizing al Qaeda is because there's no vocal contingent of Americans applauding al Qaeda's barbarism. By contrast, there's a large and vocal segment of the US population applauding torture, and their applause requires a response. So tell you what: when Fox news starts apologizing for and excusing al Qaeda's mass murder, you can count on me to publicly manifest my outrage.
2. "The Democratic party’s civil libertarians seem to believe that several medium-sized US cities would be a reasonable price to pay for insisting on ordinary criminal trials for terrorist suspects." via Clive Crook.
There's so much wrong with this statement it's embarrassing just to read it. An ordinary criminal trial for terrorists will cause the destruction of several medium-sized US cities? What is the connection between one and the other? Which terrorists? Which cities? Seriously, if we try terrorists in civilian courts, we will lose cities?
If Crook rephrases, I'll have another crack. As it is, it's very hard to know what he's talking about.
3. "We're faced with a ruthless foe, so we have to be at least equally ruthless."
I think I saw this one as a deep thought on Talking Points Memo: If torture so great, why have all the countries that used it -- Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union -- been defeated by the US?
And then there was Jesse Ventua on The View: If waterboarding etc isn't torture, why do we not use it more broadly -- on domestic criminal suspects, for example?
4. Here's one you hear a lot. "How can it be torture when we do it to our own people in military training?"
I don't know. How can it be rape when married couples do the same thing all the time at home? How can it be slavery when people do the same thing for wages?
And by the way, it's *not* just what we did to our own people. Dozens of prisoners were tortured to death (that is, murdered). As far as I know, the military doesn't torture soldiers to death as part of their training. Nor, for that matter, does it chain them to the ceiling for a week etc. before waterboarding them 183 times.
5. "You can't call it torture because some people say it's not."
I hereby apologize to anyone I might have misled by referring to the "Holocaust." Or for using without qualification the phrase, "Man walks on the moon." Or for suggesting that "Shakespeare" wrote all those plays and sonnets.
6. Here's a good one from Lindsey Graham: torture has been around for five hundred years because it works.
Hmmm... works at what? For extracting the false confessions torturers want to hear, it's been brilliant, no doubt.
Personally, I think torture has been around for a long time because people like doing it. What's Senator Graham's explanation for, say, oral sex? That's been around for a long time, too.
7. "Bush and Cheney kept the country safe. At least you can say that."
Nope. Not even close. Anyway, even if this outrageous whopper were true, the same is true of Bill Clinton, who kept the country safe from the February 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.
Personally, I think my books are what's kept the country safe. I sold the first one in late September, 2001, and have been writing about one a year ever since. Surely this can't be a coincidence.
Kept the country safe? The real bill for what they've done has yet to be presented.
I guarantee I'm going to get comments to this post from apologists who will simply repeat the usual torture hypotheticals while continuing their embarrassing, damning silence on the law and the facts of its violation. If you're one of the people who's going to take that route, could you just acknowledge this paragraph as evidence suggesting you at least glanced at the post before responding to it? Thanks.
Have you ever wondered how Dick Cheney can be a credible voice on torture? Can you imagine Cheney (or the architect of any program of at best dubious legality) saying, "Well, our intentions were certainly good, but nothing worthwhile came out of it. Definitely was worth a try though." Is there any way on earth Dick Cheney would ever say that? Of course not, and therefore, how can anyone take him seriously as the chief advocate for the illegal program he himself designed? We might equally expect George Bush to say, "Boy, the war in Iraq has really been a completely unnecessary catastrophe. Oops."
When a car salesman working on commission tells us we're going to love driving this car, we know to be skeptical because his opinion is not disinterested. Why does this sort of common sense evaporate when the salesman is a politician, and with far more on the line than the car salesman?
Why is it that the people who argue for torture have no experience with interrogations, while the most experienced are against it? Read this new article from Time magazine. Between them, Matthew Alexander and Ali Soufan have interrogated or supervised the interrogations of hundreds of war on terror prisoners. Both say torture doesn't work and that in fact it has cost thousands of American lives. Why are apologists so quick to dismiss as irrelevant the the experience of men like these in favor of their own evidence-free opinions?
You might have seen recently that rightwing talkshow host Eric "Mancow" Muller volunteered to be waterboarded so he could demonstrate graphically that waterboarding isn't torture. Here's his conclusion, unsurprising to anyone but himself. And bear in mind, this result was achieved in six seconds in the safest, most controlled, most friendly circumstances possible.
So: why not a torture Turing Test? If Liz Cheney can continue to maintain that Waterboarding Isn't Torture even while being waterboarded, she would be infinitely more persuasive. I wonder why Cheney the elder and Cheney the younger, and so many other apologists with so much on the line, refuse to make this extremely persuasive point? After all, they say waterboarding causes no permanent harm. It's just a dunk in the water, a no brainer, no big deal at all. So why not submit to an easy dunk and demonstrate powerfully and persuasively and once and for all for everyone to see that waterboarding isn't torture? Like Mancow did.
Given how strongly motivated some people are to believe in spite of glaring evidence to the contrary that We Do Not Torture, it might not help to repeat this. But still: waterboarding is hardly the only torture technique that was permitted or engaged in under the Bush/Cheney program. The UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading Treatment, signed by Ronald Reagan and ratified by the Senate, binds the US not just to not torture, but also not to engage in cruel, inhuman, or other degrading treatment. It specifically prohibits all exceptions.
But you never hear about the law from torture apogists. Instead, they want to make it all about theory: "What would you do if you had to torture someone to save a city? To save a loved one? Can you absolutely say that under all circumstances torture never, ever justified?"
Imagine you're a cop. You come across a dead body with a bullet hole in the forehead, and there's a guy standing over the corpse holding a smoking gun. You want to arrest the guy with the gun, and your partner says, "Hang on a minute there, pard. Can you honestly say that killing is never, ever justified?" This is exactly what torture apologists are doing in the face of actual laws and actual facts demonstrating that those laws were violated.
Really, I get so tired of the ridiculous and irrelevant question, "But wouldn't you torture someone if you thought it could save a loved one?" This is simply an argument for setting policy according to what we would do if we were out of minds with fear, rage, and desperation. How can any rational person believe that policy so devised would be in our interests? What are our rational minds for, if we're so eager to surrender them in advance?
The real question here is: if someone chained your stripped and hooded wife or daughter to the ceiling so she couldn't sleep for a week and the skin on her legs were nearly split with edema, and repeatedly smashed her into the wall, and left her lying in her own urine and excrement, and then waterboarded her again and again and again and again, would you dismiss it all as no worse than a bunch of fraternity pranks, just some "enhanced interrogation procedures?" Or would you recognize it as torture?
It amazes me, the awesome powers we've come to attribute to terrorist losers and misfits. Not only can they dissolve the concrete walls of America's most fortress-like supermax prisons, they're also impervious to the most sophisticated interrogation techniques. You'd think that people who had signed up for a cause as looney as worldwide jihad, who were such true believers that they were willing to blow themselves up along with thousands of innocents in the service of the cause to which someone recruited them, must by definition be reasonably amenable to psychological manipulation. They can be talked into blowing themselves up, but not into giving up information? When did we come to have so little confidence in ourselves that we started to view these cretins as more clever than we are?
I get a lot of mail from people arguing that we should torture terrorists (never terror suspects; after all, if the government says someone is a terrorist, he's a terrorist, because the government has never been wrong about such a thing ever). They're evil, they deserve it, blah blah blah. Even if "they deserved it" could magically render torture legal or otherwise desirable, shouldn't we take a step back and carefully examine our real motivations here? If we really, really want to torture these evildoers because they deserve it, is it possible we'll also want to retroactively invent other, more rational-seeming, respectable reasons to justify the underlying bestial desire? When you really, really want to do something, you start to look for reasons. If you can't find real ones, you might start to invent them. Rational people are aware of this dynamic and take steps to guard against it. Really motivated people don't want to be aware of the dynamic and don't want to guard against it -- they just want to do what they want to do.
It's fascinating to watch the people who argue that torture doesn't matter because people who want to kill us are going to want to kill us anyway. After all, The Terrorists tried to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993, before we started torturing, that kind of thing. And yet these same people also say Obama must never, ever release the new photos of prisoner abuse, lest they inflame anger against us.
Although maybe these photos would cause some inflammation. Some of them are said to depict prisoners being raped.
Okay, here are a few more specific pro-torture arguments. I'm numbering them to make it easier to reference them when I get repetitive pro-torture email.
1. "I'd take your criticism of the US more seriously if you'd also criticize al Qaeda. All we do is rough tactics; they cut people's heads off. Doesn't that bother you?"
This is a really weird argument in so many ways -- call it the Fairness Doctrine for Terrorist Criticism -- but it's out there so let's address it.
First, I wonder, does it only apply to terrorists and torture? Or does the equal time theory apply to other governments and other issues, too? "Before criticizing the US government for its approach to health care, you must provide equal time for criticism of the UK approach."
Look, I'm a US citizen, so naturally I tend to focus on the actions of my government. What my government does affects me, and because we're a democracy, there's at least a theoretical chance my criticism will have some effect. By contrast, somehow I don't think US citizens criticizing al Qaeda behavior is likely to reach the appropriate al Qaeda ombudsman. It might also be that Americans are more critical of their own government than we are of al Qaeda because we hold our government to a slightly higher standard. Are we mistaken in doing so?
Another reason Americans might not spend a lot of time criticizing al Qaeda is because there's no vocal contingent of Americans applauding al Qaeda's barbarism. By contrast, there's a large and vocal segment of the US population applauding torture, and their applause requires a response. So tell you what: when Fox news starts apologizing for and excusing al Qaeda's mass murder, you can count on me to publicly manifest my outrage.
2. "The Democratic party’s civil libertarians seem to believe that several medium-sized US cities would be a reasonable price to pay for insisting on ordinary criminal trials for terrorist suspects." via Clive Crook.
There's so much wrong with this statement it's embarrassing just to read it. An ordinary criminal trial for terrorists will cause the destruction of several medium-sized US cities? What is the connection between one and the other? Which terrorists? Which cities? Seriously, if we try terrorists in civilian courts, we will lose cities?
If Crook rephrases, I'll have another crack. As it is, it's very hard to know what he's talking about.
3. "We're faced with a ruthless foe, so we have to be at least equally ruthless."
I think I saw this one as a deep thought on Talking Points Memo: If torture so great, why have all the countries that used it -- Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union -- been defeated by the US?
And then there was Jesse Ventua on The View: If waterboarding etc isn't torture, why do we not use it more broadly -- on domestic criminal suspects, for example?
4. Here's one you hear a lot. "How can it be torture when we do it to our own people in military training?"
I don't know. How can it be rape when married couples do the same thing all the time at home? How can it be slavery when people do the same thing for wages?
And by the way, it's *not* just what we did to our own people. Dozens of prisoners were tortured to death (that is, murdered). As far as I know, the military doesn't torture soldiers to death as part of their training. Nor, for that matter, does it chain them to the ceiling for a week etc. before waterboarding them 183 times.
5. "You can't call it torture because some people say it's not."
I hereby apologize to anyone I might have misled by referring to the "Holocaust." Or for using without qualification the phrase, "Man walks on the moon." Or for suggesting that "Shakespeare" wrote all those plays and sonnets.
6. Here's a good one from Lindsey Graham: torture has been around for five hundred years because it works.
Hmmm... works at what? For extracting the false confessions torturers want to hear, it's been brilliant, no doubt.
Personally, I think torture has been around for a long time because people like doing it. What's Senator Graham's explanation for, say, oral sex? That's been around for a long time, too.
7. "Bush and Cheney kept the country safe. At least you can say that."
Nope. Not even close. Anyway, even if this outrageous whopper were true, the same is true of Bill Clinton, who kept the country safe from the February 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.
Personally, I think my books are what's kept the country safe. I sold the first one in late September, 2001, and have been writing about one a year ever since. Surely this can't be a coincidence.
Kept the country safe? The real bill for what they've done has yet to be presented.
I guarantee I'm going to get comments to this post from apologists who will simply repeat the usual torture hypotheticals while continuing their embarrassing, damning silence on the law and the facts of its violation. If you're one of the people who's going to take that route, could you just acknowledge this paragraph as evidence suggesting you at least glanced at the post before responding to it? Thanks.
Date Published: May 29, 2009 - 7:50 am
Transcript of an intercepted conversation between two terrorists in a cave somewhere along the Afghanistan/Pakistan border:
Did you hear Dick Cheney's speech to the American Enterprise Institute last week?
I did. It was funny how Cheney said we think it shows weakness when the Americans argue.
I know. The truth is, I'm a little jealous of the way they get to argue.
I would never say this to my wife, but I think the way they argue is a sign of strength. It takes a lot of confidence to argue like that. I once tried to argue a little with Osama, and he told me if I did it again, he would cut my head off.
I know, I know, Osama doesn't like disagreement. But we have to remember, he's our leader and he knows what's best for us.
That's true. Not everyone has a leader as wise as ours. We're lucky to be able to follow him without question.
What was funny was, who cares about the arguing? And even if we did care, Cheney was arguing, too! It was funny to hear him say, "We must stop doing what I'm doing!"
Yes, that was good. It was like, "We must not be as weak as I'm being!"
In fact, it's the way they're surrendering the freedoms they claim to cherish that's so weak. One big attack and immediately they're torturing, kidnapping, wiretapping without warrants, imprisoning people without charging them... it was so easy! I thought it would be harder, but Osama was right -- America is a paper tiger.
Allahu Akhbar.
I have to admit, I was a little worried when they elected Obama. He seemed to understand that among the country's key strengths were its values.
Empty values, though.
Of course empty values. Equality, freedom, individuality, the rule of law... who wants all that when you can have submission to God, instead?
Allahu akhbar.
But still, a lot of people in the world find those values -- call them the American brand -- attractive. That's what I mean when I say American values were making America strong. Throughout history, the values attracted a lot of people to America's cause. Think of the American brand compared to the communist brand. The Soviet Union never had a chance.
Yes, I suppose that's true.
And it's a problem for us, too. Many people are so deluded that they would prefer equality, freedom, individuality, and the rule of law to submission to God. As though there could be any law but God's law!
Infidels.
Yes. But now that America is torturing, spying on it citizens without warrants, imprisoning without charge, and all the rest, the people who were attracted to America's values are recoiling. They are saying, America, the great hypocrite! And the ease with which the soft Americans have surrendered their "cherished" values shows America's enemies how weak she really is.
Then thanks be to Allah that Obama has reversed all those campaign promises.
Yes. For a while, we were afraid America was going to restore its brand and attract new followers again. But Obama is making sure not to do that. If he has his way, Americans will soon surrender more of their "values," including even this thing called "the right to a trial by jury."
You mean the US government will be able to imprison people without trial?
Yes.
US citizens?
Yes.
Forever?
Yes.
Wow. That is a huge victory for us.
Yes. And it came much more easily than we were expecting. Imagine how weak and frightened they must appear to anyone who might once have been attracted to their cause of "freedom!"
Allahu akbar.
I have to say, I don't understand their political system. The Democrats are afraid of the Republicans, and the Republicans are afraid of everything -- except the Democrats.
That is strange.
Yes. But it works for us. You know, when Bush and Cheney left office, Osama was very sad. But all the talk shows and speeches Cheney has been doing since then have given Osama a good idea.
Yes?
I really shouldn't tell you, it's a secret...
I won't say anything.
All right. What Cheney and his allies are doing is trying to convince Americans that if there's another terrorist attack, it happened because Americans didn't give up enough of their values. Because they stopped torturing, for example.
You mean...
That's right. If we can attack them again, there's a better chance than ever, thanks to the work of Cheney, that Americans will quickly surrender even more of their values. That will make them even weaker, and us stronger.
They might torture more?
If we are lucky. Their torture of the brothers is the best recruitment tool we've ever had. It has won us many committed new followers.
They're so easy to manipulate, aren't they? We must take advantage of this opportunity Cheney is giving us.
Exactly. Who would have thought Dick Cheney would go on shaping the battlefield for us, that he would find new ways even after leaving office to encourage us to attack by increasing the benefits of an attack?
Allah works in mysterious ways.
He certainly does.
Did you hear Dick Cheney's speech to the American Enterprise Institute last week?
I did. It was funny how Cheney said we think it shows weakness when the Americans argue.
I know. The truth is, I'm a little jealous of the way they get to argue.
I would never say this to my wife, but I think the way they argue is a sign of strength. It takes a lot of confidence to argue like that. I once tried to argue a little with Osama, and he told me if I did it again, he would cut my head off.
I know, I know, Osama doesn't like disagreement. But we have to remember, he's our leader and he knows what's best for us.
That's true. Not everyone has a leader as wise as ours. We're lucky to be able to follow him without question.
What was funny was, who cares about the arguing? And even if we did care, Cheney was arguing, too! It was funny to hear him say, "We must stop doing what I'm doing!"
Yes, that was good. It was like, "We must not be as weak as I'm being!"
In fact, it's the way they're surrendering the freedoms they claim to cherish that's so weak. One big attack and immediately they're torturing, kidnapping, wiretapping without warrants, imprisoning people without charging them... it was so easy! I thought it would be harder, but Osama was right -- America is a paper tiger.
Allahu Akhbar.
I have to admit, I was a little worried when they elected Obama. He seemed to understand that among the country's key strengths were its values.
Empty values, though.
Of course empty values. Equality, freedom, individuality, the rule of law... who wants all that when you can have submission to God, instead?
Allahu akhbar.
But still, a lot of people in the world find those values -- call them the American brand -- attractive. That's what I mean when I say American values were making America strong. Throughout history, the values attracted a lot of people to America's cause. Think of the American brand compared to the communist brand. The Soviet Union never had a chance.
Yes, I suppose that's true.
And it's a problem for us, too. Many people are so deluded that they would prefer equality, freedom, individuality, and the rule of law to submission to God. As though there could be any law but God's law!
Infidels.
Yes. But now that America is torturing, spying on it citizens without warrants, imprisoning without charge, and all the rest, the people who were attracted to America's values are recoiling. They are saying, America, the great hypocrite! And the ease with which the soft Americans have surrendered their "cherished" values shows America's enemies how weak she really is.
Then thanks be to Allah that Obama has reversed all those campaign promises.
Yes. For a while, we were afraid America was going to restore its brand and attract new followers again. But Obama is making sure not to do that. If he has his way, Americans will soon surrender more of their "values," including even this thing called "the right to a trial by jury."
You mean the US government will be able to imprison people without trial?
Yes.
US citizens?
Yes.
Forever?
Yes.
Wow. That is a huge victory for us.
Yes. And it came much more easily than we were expecting. Imagine how weak and frightened they must appear to anyone who might once have been attracted to their cause of "freedom!"
Allahu akbar.
I have to say, I don't understand their political system. The Democrats are afraid of the Republicans, and the Republicans are afraid of everything -- except the Democrats.
That is strange.
Yes. But it works for us. You know, when Bush and Cheney left office, Osama was very sad. But all the talk shows and speeches Cheney has been doing since then have given Osama a good idea.
Yes?
I really shouldn't tell you, it's a secret...
I won't say anything.
All right. What Cheney and his allies are doing is trying to convince Americans that if there's another terrorist attack, it happened because Americans didn't give up enough of their values. Because they stopped torturing, for example.
You mean...
That's right. If we can attack them again, there's a better chance than ever, thanks to the work of Cheney, that Americans will quickly surrender even more of their values. That will make them even weaker, and us stronger.
They might torture more?
If we are lucky. Their torture of the brothers is the best recruitment tool we've ever had. It has won us many committed new followers.
They're so easy to manipulate, aren't they? We must take advantage of this opportunity Cheney is giving us.
Exactly. Who would have thought Dick Cheney would go on shaping the battlefield for us, that he would find new ways even after leaving office to encourage us to attack by increasing the benefits of an attack?
Allah works in mysterious ways.
He certainly does.
Date Published: May 26, 2009 - 4:28 am
Mostly I agree with Glenn Greenwald that only a politician's actions matter, and speculation about his or her motives is pointless. But when a politician reverses himself repeatedly on core campaign promises and rhetoric immediately after taking office, as Obama has done, it's hard not to wonder what's driving him. It's not just that my day job is writing novels, meaning character motivation is a particular obsession of mine. It's also that in understanding what could cause Obama to make such a liar of himself regarding transparency, the rule of law, and civil liberties, we might learn something not just about the man, but about the system in which he operates.
The list of Obama's reversals is long, but in brief: amnesty for telecom companies that violated eavesdropping laws; abuse of the state secrets privilege; not releasing photos of torture at US-run prisons; continuing the Bush administration's plans to establish "military commissions" with lower levels of due process. Most outrageously of all, Obama now proposes that the government should be able to imprison people indefinitely without trial.
Pause for a moment and consider: the US government. In America. Imprisoning Americans. Who might or might not have committed a crime. Forever. Without trial.
Obama wants to call this "preventive detention." Pretty-sounding, isn't it? Detention is such a friendly word. It's what I used to get in high school when I didn't turn in my homework (here's more on the political abuses of "detainee" and "detention"). Rachel Maddow was being far more accurate when she used the language of Steven Spielberg's adaptation of Philip K. Dick's story, Minority Report: "Pre-Crime."
Now, some people see "Trial by Jury as the only anchor yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution." But what kind of of extreme-left, tree-hugging, blame-America-first, granola-eating, America-hating, socialist, ACLU card-carrying librul retard would believe something like that?
Well, Thomas Jefferson, actually. Obama's a pretty smart guy. But does he know better than Jefferson?
So now we come to why. Why would a guy who campaigned on promises of open government, the rule of law, and the importance of civil liberties and all that, a guy who actually taught Constitutional Law, suddenly position himself to become Warden-in-Chief?
I think it comes down to fear.
Americans have become so fearful of being Attacked by the Terrorists that the fear is increasingly distorting our politics. President Bush claimed his most important responsibility was to keep the American people safe -- despite the lack of any such provision in the Constitution. Dick Cheney distorts his oath of office to invent a responsibility to protect America rather than to defend the Constitution. Obama apes Bush in claiming to wake in the morning and fall asleep at night worrying about how to keep us all safe. Wouldn't it be great if these guys would read their job descriptions, as provided for in the Constitution, and try to govern accordingly?
So Americans are afraid. The fear is fed by demagogues, mostly on the right, who either share the fear or cynically exploit it. As the fear worsens, the level of safety the populace expects and demands from the government increases to unreasonable levels. But because perfect safety is impossible in life, politicians know that, like other forms of crime, terrorist incidents are inevitable. Faced with the impossible demands of the citizenry, what's a politician to do?
Well, basically you do every batshit crazy, extremist thing you can think of: torture (sold for consumer comfort as "enhanced interrogation techniques"); secret prisons ("detention facilities"); preventive wars ("self-defense against mushroom-cloud smoking guns"); warrantless eavesdropping (the "Protect America Act of 2007"); secret laws ("Our Playbook"); show trials and kangaroo courts ("military commissions"); pre-crime prisons ("preventive detention"). Then, when the inevitable happens, the politician can say to the angry, frightened public, "Look what I did to protect you. No one could possibly have done more."
If Americans have become insane with fear, even otherwise responsible politicians might conceive of their job as just managing the insanity.
And that's my take on Obama. I could be wrong, of course; he could be a power-mad tyrant wannabe who -- muwahuwahuwa -- fooled everyone with all that talk of not sacrificing our values for safety, and certainly the powers he's claiming for himself would support that theory. But my essentially unsupportable sense, for what it's worth, is that he's someone with the education, experience, and temperament to know better, who's doing what he's doing merely to protect his political flanks.
What's the difference between a demogogue and a cynic, then? Or between a cynic and a coward?
In the end, perhaps not much.
But what's an honest politician to do? The people are so fearful, the Dick and Liz Cheney Be Very Afraid Show is playing 24/7, when the next attack happens the right will scream it was Obama's fault, he did this, he could have protected you but he didn't...
Yes, what to do. A difficult question.
Oh, wait a minute. A politician could, you know, lead.
Nah, that's crazy. What was I thinking. You're right, cash in the Constitution to protect yourself politically. What the hell, everyone's doing it, why shouldn't you.
But if Obama did actually want to lead, he could try something like this:
Obama could actually say all this, you know. But it wouldn't be convincing. After all, it would be awkward for the president to try to inspire us to steadfastness against terrorists while he's simultaneously caving in to fear-mongering from Liz Cheney.
The list of Obama's reversals is long, but in brief: amnesty for telecom companies that violated eavesdropping laws; abuse of the state secrets privilege; not releasing photos of torture at US-run prisons; continuing the Bush administration's plans to establish "military commissions" with lower levels of due process. Most outrageously of all, Obama now proposes that the government should be able to imprison people indefinitely without trial.
Pause for a moment and consider: the US government. In America. Imprisoning Americans. Who might or might not have committed a crime. Forever. Without trial.
Obama wants to call this "preventive detention." Pretty-sounding, isn't it? Detention is such a friendly word. It's what I used to get in high school when I didn't turn in my homework (here's more on the political abuses of "detainee" and "detention"). Rachel Maddow was being far more accurate when she used the language of Steven Spielberg's adaptation of Philip K. Dick's story, Minority Report: "Pre-Crime."
Now, some people see "Trial by Jury as the only anchor yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution." But what kind of of extreme-left, tree-hugging, blame-America-first, granola-eating, America-hating, socialist, ACLU card-carrying librul retard would believe something like that?
Well, Thomas Jefferson, actually. Obama's a pretty smart guy. But does he know better than Jefferson?
So now we come to why. Why would a guy who campaigned on promises of open government, the rule of law, and the importance of civil liberties and all that, a guy who actually taught Constitutional Law, suddenly position himself to become Warden-in-Chief?
I think it comes down to fear.
Americans have become so fearful of being Attacked by the Terrorists that the fear is increasingly distorting our politics. President Bush claimed his most important responsibility was to keep the American people safe -- despite the lack of any such provision in the Constitution. Dick Cheney distorts his oath of office to invent a responsibility to protect America rather than to defend the Constitution. Obama apes Bush in claiming to wake in the morning and fall asleep at night worrying about how to keep us all safe. Wouldn't it be great if these guys would read their job descriptions, as provided for in the Constitution, and try to govern accordingly?
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So Americans are afraid. The fear is fed by demagogues, mostly on the right, who either share the fear or cynically exploit it. As the fear worsens, the level of safety the populace expects and demands from the government increases to unreasonable levels. But because perfect safety is impossible in life, politicians know that, like other forms of crime, terrorist incidents are inevitable. Faced with the impossible demands of the citizenry, what's a politician to do?
Well, basically you do every batshit crazy, extremist thing you can think of: torture (sold for consumer comfort as "enhanced interrogation techniques"); secret prisons ("detention facilities"); preventive wars ("self-defense against mushroom-cloud smoking guns"); warrantless eavesdropping (the "Protect America Act of 2007"); secret laws ("Our Playbook"); show trials and kangaroo courts ("military commissions"); pre-crime prisons ("preventive detention"). Then, when the inevitable happens, the politician can say to the angry, frightened public, "Look what I did to protect you. No one could possibly have done more."
If Americans have become insane with fear, even otherwise responsible politicians might conceive of their job as just managing the insanity.
And that's my take on Obama. I could be wrong, of course; he could be a power-mad tyrant wannabe who -- muwahuwahuwa -- fooled everyone with all that talk of not sacrificing our values for safety, and certainly the powers he's claiming for himself would support that theory. But my essentially unsupportable sense, for what it's worth, is that he's someone with the education, experience, and temperament to know better, who's doing what he's doing merely to protect his political flanks.
What's the difference between a demogogue and a cynic, then? Or between a cynic and a coward?
In the end, perhaps not much.
But what's an honest politician to do? The people are so fearful, the Dick and Liz Cheney Be Very Afraid Show is playing 24/7, when the next attack happens the right will scream it was Obama's fault, he did this, he could have protected you but he didn't...
Yes, what to do. A difficult question.
Oh, wait a minute. A politician could, you know, lead.
Nah, that's crazy. What was I thinking. You're right, cash in the Constitution to protect yourself politically. What the hell, everyone's doing it, why shouldn't you.
But if Obama did actually want to lead, he could try something like this:
"My fellow Americans, there's no such thing as complete safety in this world. And that's always been okay for Americans. We're risk takers and we love liberty -- a combination perfectly summed up in Patrick Henry's 'Give me liberty or give me death.' There was a man who knew there were things in life more precious than safety.
"Actually, there is such a thing as perfect safety in the world. I've heard they have it in North Korea. Of course, the population there isn't safe from the government, but they are safe from pretty much everything else except malnutrition, and that might not be so bad. At least they're not being attacked by Terrorists.
"But is that what we want for ourselves, to cash in the freedom we cherish to make ourselves as safe as North Korea? Generations of Americans have fought and died to protect the freedoms enshrined in our Constitution. Are we really prepared to barter away the freedom they bequeathed us with their blood?
"No, we won't break faith with those previous generations of brave Americans. We won't allow the government to spy on us without warrants, or to govern under secret laws, or to imprison people without trial, or to torture. And if any of that puts us at some additional risk, that's fine. We're Americans. We embrace risk and we love freedom, and we'll be damned if we'll allow a bunch of medieval cave-dwellers to call our tune."
Obama could actually say all this, you know. But it wouldn't be convincing. After all, it would be awkward for the president to try to inspire us to steadfastness against terrorists while he's simultaneously caving in to fear-mongering from Liz Cheney.
Date Published: May 25, 2009 - 7:23 am
As op-eds go, this one in the NYT praising President Obama for reversing himself and deciding to block the publication of additional torture photos is particularly vapid and incoherent.
You have to read the whole thing to appreciate just how nonsensical and self-contradictory it really is, but here's the author's argument, boiled down:
1. The release of the Abu Ghraib photos in 2004 was good because the photos showed the Bush administration was lying when it said it didn't order torture.
2. But the Bush administration was able to wriggle free by portraying the soldiers who took the photos as rogues and prosecuting them.
Therefore:
3. Obama was right not to release additional AG-style photos taken at other prisons because new photos would enflame anti-American feeling while not telling us anything we don't already know.
Huh?
By proving the AG techniques were employed at other US prisons throughout the world, the new photos would tell us *exactly* what we need to know, exactly what the Bush administration managed to obscure by painting the AG guards as a few bad apples: that these techniques didn't spring up at random in isolation, but rather were the result of centralized orders. The author, Philip Gourevitch, himself decries the Bush administration's ability to obscure this central truth of Abu Ghraib -- that what happened there wasn't an aberration -- and yet he salutes Obama for covering up the very evidence that would prove the "bad apples" narrative was a lie.
As for enflaming things, how would the new photos be inflammatory if they don't show anything new? Maybe there would be a little enflaming, but surely not nearly so much enflaming as with the AG photos in 2004? Gourevitch himself argues that the AG photos enflamed in vain. Now we have a chance to finish the job of demonstrating where the AG abuses really came from, at far lower cost of inflammation. But Gourevitch shies from the opportunity.
Gourevitch goes on to argue that:
If photos are so distracting and deterring, why was it good to release the AG photos? And really, "photographs cannot tell stories?" Is he serious? How does someone come to write something so self-evidently silly?
Regardless, why does Gourevitch set up his argument as though words and images are an either/or proposition, when obviously ideally we would have both? This is all especially confusing because we already do have words, born of "investigation and interpretation," proving that AG was not an aberration. Here, let me quote a few of them, from the bipartisan Senate Armed Services Committee Inquiry Into the Treatment of Detainees in US Custody:
So we already have the words, and they've accomplished little about fixing appropriate responsibility for torture, as Gourveitch himself laments. It's the photos we need, but Gourevitch claims that (this time, as opposed to last time) the photos would be distracting, deterring, mute, unable to tell a story. Bizarre.
Gourevitch says "Mr. Obama is not suppressing information when he opposes the release of more photographs." It's difficult to imagine that he would say the same thing were Mr. Obama Mr. Bush.
You have to read the whole thing to appreciate just how nonsensical and self-contradictory it really is, but here's the author's argument, boiled down:
1. The release of the Abu Ghraib photos in 2004 was good because the photos showed the Bush administration was lying when it said it didn't order torture.
2. But the Bush administration was able to wriggle free by portraying the soldiers who took the photos as rogues and prosecuting them.
Therefore:
3. Obama was right not to release additional AG-style photos taken at other prisons because new photos would enflame anti-American feeling while not telling us anything we don't already know.
Huh?
By proving the AG techniques were employed at other US prisons throughout the world, the new photos would tell us *exactly* what we need to know, exactly what the Bush administration managed to obscure by painting the AG guards as a few bad apples: that these techniques didn't spring up at random in isolation, but rather were the result of centralized orders. The author, Philip Gourevitch, himself decries the Bush administration's ability to obscure this central truth of Abu Ghraib -- that what happened there wasn't an aberration -- and yet he salutes Obama for covering up the very evidence that would prove the "bad apples" narrative was a lie.
As for enflaming things, how would the new photos be inflammatory if they don't show anything new? Maybe there would be a little enflaming, but surely not nearly so much enflaming as with the AG photos in 2004? Gourevitch himself argues that the AG photos enflamed in vain. Now we have a chance to finish the job of demonstrating where the AG abuses really came from, at far lower cost of inflammation. But Gourevitch shies from the opportunity.
Gourevitch goes on to argue that:
"Crime-scene photographs, for all their power to reveal, can also serve as a distraction, even a deterrent, from precise understanding of the events they depict. Photographs cannot show us a chain of command, or Washington decision making. Photographs cannot tell stories. They can only provide evidence of stories, and evidence is mute; it demands investigation and interpretation."
If photos are so distracting and deterring, why was it good to release the AG photos? And really, "photographs cannot tell stories?" Is he serious? How does someone come to write something so self-evidently silly?
Regardless, why does Gourevitch set up his argument as though words and images are an either/or proposition, when obviously ideally we would have both? This is all especially confusing because we already do have words, born of "investigation and interpretation," proving that AG was not an aberration. Here, let me quote a few of them, from the bipartisan Senate Armed Services Committee Inquiry Into the Treatment of Detainees in US Custody:
"The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of “a few bad apples” acting on their own. The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees. Those efforts damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority. This report is a product of the Committee’s inquiry into how those unfortunate results came about."
So we already have the words, and they've accomplished little about fixing appropriate responsibility for torture, as Gourveitch himself laments. It's the photos we need, but Gourevitch claims that (this time, as opposed to last time) the photos would be distracting, deterring, mute, unable to tell a story. Bizarre.
Gourevitch says "Mr. Obama is not suppressing information when he opposes the release of more photographs." It's difficult to imagine that he would say the same thing were Mr. Obama Mr. Bush.
Date Published: May 24, 2009 - 9:43 pm
Still trying to keep up with the messages I receive from torture apologists. Recently I received one from a gentleman named James R. Hostert on my Amazon blog. Mr. Hostert's opinions in favor of torture are depressingly common and therefore worth addressing in spite of his equally common refusal or inability to support any of these opinions with facts. In addition to the absence of evidence for any of these pro-torture assertions, note as ever the refusal to address the glaringly obvious point that *torture is illegal.*
Mr. Hostert's points in quotes below; my thoughts interpolated.
"Well, Barry, I don't think we'll ever see eye to eye on this."
James, that's the first accurate thing you've said in this thread.
"I don't understand how you can oppose torture to save lives."
Perhaps you don't understand my point because you're misconstruing it.
First, torture doesn't save lives. Torture costs lives, and indeed has cost thousands of American lives. I'm not asking you to accept my opinion on this point as a substitute for facts (note that your own opinions might be more persuasive to others if you would bolster them with evidence). Matthew Alexander, an Air Force interrogator in Iraq, himself claims that:
And Alexander isn't the only one:
And here's a Washington Post article from March this year. Headline: "Detainee's Harsh Treatment Foiled No Plots."
Are you starting to understand now? Why don't you do me and anyone else who's reading this a favor: read the articles linked above, and rebut Alexander's, Mora's, and the Washington Post authors' points based on your own experience with torture and interrogation. I'm not asking you to repeat your opinions. I'm asking you for a refutation based on facts (this is Question #1).
While you're at it, please answer this question: is saving lives the only, or even the highest value?" (Question #2) Was Patrick Henry wrong when he said, "Give me liberty or give me death?" (Question #3)
"Obviously, we don't begin by torturing someone."
Not that it matters whether we torture someone in the morning or later in the day, but in fact, like all the other unsupported opinions you've been offering up here, this one is wrong as a matter of fact. Torture was ordered and was used not just during interrogations, but to "soften up" prisoners before interrogations. Such softening up is the whole point of sleep deprivation, stress positions, manacling prisoners to the ceiling for days at a time, etc.
"We attempt to get the required information by other means."
Again, not that it matters, but so what if we also use other means? Are you saying torture is legal as long as we ask nicely first? (Question #4)
"However, I believe that if it comes down to it, torture is a viable tool to get information that can save lives."
Why do you keep repeating what you believe without offering any evidence at all for that belief? Do you expect to persuade people by repeating your opinions and without any evidence to bolster those opinions? (Question #5)
Here's a quote from General David Petraeus from May 2007:
"What sets us apart from our enemies in this fight… is how we behave. In everything we do, we must observe the standards and values that dictate that we treat noncombatants and detainees with dignity and respect. While we are warriors, we are also all human beings."
Please explain why Petraeus is wrong. (Question #6)
"So, you're telling me that you wouldn't allow a "bad guy" to be tortured to save your wife/child? Really? You'd actually allow them to die. I find THAT depressing."
Not as depressing as I find our failure to teach basic civics in high school, I'm sure.
Anyway, probably in extremis I'd resort to extremes. But James, wouldn't it be more productive -- and polite -- to answer the questions I've already asked you, before repeating ones I've already answered? (Question #7)
I have to say, it is continually fascinating to encounter people who are confident in their opinions despite a complete absence of any supporting evidence and in the presence of so much contradictory evidence. May I ask: since you are formulating and repeating these opinions without any regard at all to facts, what do you think is actually motivating you? (Question #8)
If you want me to respond to you again, please first do me the courtesy of answering each of the questions above. For your convenience, I've numbered them for you -- #1 - #8.
Respectfully,
Barry
Mr. Hostert's points in quotes below; my thoughts interpolated.
"Well, Barry, I don't think we'll ever see eye to eye on this."
James, that's the first accurate thing you've said in this thread.
"I don't understand how you can oppose torture to save lives."
Perhaps you don't understand my point because you're misconstruing it.
First, torture doesn't save lives. Torture costs lives, and indeed has cost thousands of American lives. I'm not asking you to accept my opinion on this point as a substitute for facts (note that your own opinions might be more persuasive to others if you would bolster them with evidence). Matthew Alexander, an Air Force interrogator in Iraq, himself claims that:
"What I saw in Iraq still rattles me -- both because it betrays our traditions and because it just doesn't work... I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. It's no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse. The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me -- unless you don't count American soldiers as Americans."
And Alexander isn't the only one:
"Al Qaeda and Taliban terrorists are taught to expect Americans to abuse them. They are recruited based on false propaganda that says the United States is out to destroy Islam. Treating detainees harshly only reinforces that distorted view, increases resistance to cooperation, and creates new enemies. In fact, the April 2006 National Intelligence Estimate "Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States" cited "pervasive anti U.S. sentiment among most Muslims" as an underlying factor fueling the spread of the global jihadist movement. Former Navy General Counsel Alberto Mora testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee in June 2008 that "there are serving U.S. flag-rank officers who maintain that the first and second identifiable causes of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq – as judged by their effectiveness in recruiting insurgent fighters into combat – are, respectively the symbols of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.""
And here's a Washington Post article from March this year. Headline: "Detainee's Harsh Treatment Foiled No Plots."
Are you starting to understand now? Why don't you do me and anyone else who's reading this a favor: read the articles linked above, and rebut Alexander's, Mora's, and the Washington Post authors' points based on your own experience with torture and interrogation. I'm not asking you to repeat your opinions. I'm asking you for a refutation based on facts (this is Question #1).
While you're at it, please answer this question: is saving lives the only, or even the highest value?" (Question #2) Was Patrick Henry wrong when he said, "Give me liberty or give me death?" (Question #3)
"Obviously, we don't begin by torturing someone."
Not that it matters whether we torture someone in the morning or later in the day, but in fact, like all the other unsupported opinions you've been offering up here, this one is wrong as a matter of fact. Torture was ordered and was used not just during interrogations, but to "soften up" prisoners before interrogations. Such softening up is the whole point of sleep deprivation, stress positions, manacling prisoners to the ceiling for days at a time, etc.
"We attempt to get the required information by other means."
Again, not that it matters, but so what if we also use other means? Are you saying torture is legal as long as we ask nicely first? (Question #4)
"However, I believe that if it comes down to it, torture is a viable tool to get information that can save lives."
Why do you keep repeating what you believe without offering any evidence at all for that belief? Do you expect to persuade people by repeating your opinions and without any evidence to bolster those opinions? (Question #5)
Here's a quote from General David Petraeus from May 2007:
"What sets us apart from our enemies in this fight… is how we behave. In everything we do, we must observe the standards and values that dictate that we treat noncombatants and detainees with dignity and respect. While we are warriors, we are also all human beings."
Please explain why Petraeus is wrong. (Question #6)
"So, you're telling me that you wouldn't allow a "bad guy" to be tortured to save your wife/child? Really? You'd actually allow them to die. I find THAT depressing."
Not as depressing as I find our failure to teach basic civics in high school, I'm sure.
Anyway, probably in extremis I'd resort to extremes. But James, wouldn't it be more productive -- and polite -- to answer the questions I've already asked you, before repeating ones I've already answered? (Question #7)
I have to say, it is continually fascinating to encounter people who are confident in their opinions despite a complete absence of any supporting evidence and in the presence of so much contradictory evidence. May I ask: since you are formulating and repeating these opinions without any regard at all to facts, what do you think is actually motivating you? (Question #8)
If you want me to respond to you again, please first do me the courtesy of answering each of the questions above. For your convenience, I've numbered them for you -- #1 - #8.
Respectfully,
Barry
Date Published: May 24, 2009 - 7:01 am
Last week, I posted a set of pro-torture talking points sent to me by a persistent torture apologist, along with my responses. The talking points were extensive, by not comprehensive. There are plenty more to enumerate, but today I'd like to talk about the one favorite technique and the most frequent recourse of all torture apologists: the resort to theory over reality. The details of the apologies will vary (it wasn't torture, it saved lives, you would have done it too, it was only in the panicky aftermath of 9/11, it's kept us safe ever since, etc., etc.), but the one point apologists will always return to is The Ticking Bomb Theory of torture.
Why all this theory? Because the reality is so damning. Apologists hope that if they can get you to focus on a fantasy ("if you had to torture someone to save a city, would you do it?"), you'll overlook that the Bush administration tortured terror suspects not just in the panicky aftermath of 9/11, but for years afterward, and did so in significant part not to defuse ticking bombs, but rather to establish a nonexistent link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.
Don't believe the three reports linked above that Bush and Cheney ordered torture not just to save others' lives, but to cover their own political asses? There's more. Yesterday, anonymous "senior intelligence officials" got Walter Pincus of the Washington Post to publish their self-serving claim that although the CIA had indeed questioned Abu Zubaidah and Kalid Sheik Mohammed about an Iraq/AQ connection, such questions were never asked while Zubaidah and KSM were actually being waterboarded. Liz Cheney, currently on tour to defend her father, cited these anonymous claims as proof that the then Vice President didn't use torture to create a nonexistent cause for war.
(BTW, ask yourself this. What is the Washington Post's value-add when it types up anonymous government assertions like these? Why doesn't the CIA just post them on its own website? Answer: if you were to read the same claim on the CIA's website, you'd immediately discount its value because you would recognize it as self-serving. When instead you read the claim as dutifully transmitted by a stenographer with the Washington Post, it seems more substantive because it's being presented, in theory, by the disinterested Fourth Estate. The government uses a complicit mainstream media to sanitize its propaganda much as drug dealers use corrupt banks to launder drug money.)
The CIA waterboarded Zubaydah and KSM 83 times and 183 times each. How likely do you think it is that over the course of 266 waterboarding sessions, the CIA never brought up its questions about an Iraq/al Qaeda connection? Who are you going to believe, anonymous intelligence officials and Liz Cheney, or your own lyin' common sense? And even if you believe the superficially self-serving story of these anonymous intelligence officials, which way does their story cut? Torture is effective at producing false confessions not just because of pain, but because of the *fear* of pain. So someone who's being waterboarded six times a day for a solid month, as KSM was, will spew out anything he can imagine to get the torture to stop not just while he's actually being waterboarded, but also in between sessions, when he's trying to forestall the next trip to the drowning rack.
So don't go for the head fake: what matters here isn't the anonymous officials' claim that Zubaydah and KSM weren't asked about an Iraq/AQ connection while they were actually being waterboarded. What matters is that the anonymous officials have admitted that Zubaydah and KSM were being asked about an Iraq/AQ connection at all. Anything we got from these two is tainted, whether it was produced during torture sessions or in between them.
(And by the way, there's another head fake in there: the implication that if Zubaydah and KSM weren't waterboarded while being asked about Iraq and AQ, they weren't tortured while being asked. Waterboarding is far from the only torture technique permitted in secret Justice Department memos. So the anonymous officials irrelevant claim that Zubaydah and KSM weren't simultaneously waterboarded while being asked about Iraq and AQ doesn't even mean the two weren't tortured in other ways while being asked).
So get ready for the next talking point in the apologists' arsenal: "Okay, sure, they were also asked about Iraq and al Qaeda, but since we were torturing them anyway, why not throw in a few other questions, too?"
Torture. It really does take on a life of its own.
Why all this theory? Because the reality is so damning. Apologists hope that if they can get you to focus on a fantasy ("if you had to torture someone to save a city, would you do it?"), you'll overlook that the Bush administration tortured terror suspects not just in the panicky aftermath of 9/11, but for years afterward, and did so in significant part not to defuse ticking bombs, but rather to establish a nonexistent link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.
Don't believe the three reports linked above that Bush and Cheney ordered torture not just to save others' lives, but to cover their own political asses? There's more. Yesterday, anonymous "senior intelligence officials" got Walter Pincus of the Washington Post to publish their self-serving claim that although the CIA had indeed questioned Abu Zubaidah and Kalid Sheik Mohammed about an Iraq/AQ connection, such questions were never asked while Zubaidah and KSM were actually being waterboarded. Liz Cheney, currently on tour to defend her father, cited these anonymous claims as proof that the then Vice President didn't use torture to create a nonexistent cause for war.
(BTW, ask yourself this. What is the Washington Post's value-add when it types up anonymous government assertions like these? Why doesn't the CIA just post them on its own website? Answer: if you were to read the same claim on the CIA's website, you'd immediately discount its value because you would recognize it as self-serving. When instead you read the claim as dutifully transmitted by a stenographer with the Washington Post, it seems more substantive because it's being presented, in theory, by the disinterested Fourth Estate. The government uses a complicit mainstream media to sanitize its propaganda much as drug dealers use corrupt banks to launder drug money.)
The CIA waterboarded Zubaydah and KSM 83 times and 183 times each. How likely do you think it is that over the course of 266 waterboarding sessions, the CIA never brought up its questions about an Iraq/al Qaeda connection? Who are you going to believe, anonymous intelligence officials and Liz Cheney, or your own lyin' common sense? And even if you believe the superficially self-serving story of these anonymous intelligence officials, which way does their story cut? Torture is effective at producing false confessions not just because of pain, but because of the *fear* of pain. So someone who's being waterboarded six times a day for a solid month, as KSM was, will spew out anything he can imagine to get the torture to stop not just while he's actually being waterboarded, but also in between sessions, when he's trying to forestall the next trip to the drowning rack.
So don't go for the head fake: what matters here isn't the anonymous officials' claim that Zubaydah and KSM weren't asked about an Iraq/AQ connection while they were actually being waterboarded. What matters is that the anonymous officials have admitted that Zubaydah and KSM were being asked about an Iraq/AQ connection at all. Anything we got from these two is tainted, whether it was produced during torture sessions or in between them.
(And by the way, there's another head fake in there: the implication that if Zubaydah and KSM weren't waterboarded while being asked about Iraq and AQ, they weren't tortured while being asked. Waterboarding is far from the only torture technique permitted in secret Justice Department memos. So the anonymous officials irrelevant claim that Zubaydah and KSM weren't simultaneously waterboarded while being asked about Iraq and AQ doesn't even mean the two weren't tortured in other ways while being asked).
So get ready for the next talking point in the apologists' arsenal: "Okay, sure, they were also asked about Iraq and al Qaeda, but since we were torturing them anyway, why not throw in a few other questions, too?"
Torture. It really does take on a life of its own.
Date Published: May 18, 2009 - 6:50 am
As I pointed out recently, it's difficult to keep up with the denial, obfuscation, and sheer, tendentious illogic of torture apologists. Even now, despite Bush-era DOJ memos acknowledging that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in a single month, Liz Cheney is still clinging to the Jack Bauer fantasy that KSM had to be tortured (actually, she denies it was torture) because the administration "knew there was a threat of imminent attack." And Dick Cheney claims he had to torture because his oath of office required him "to protect and defend the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic." Actually, Article 2, Section 1 of Constitution requires the following oath: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." See if you can spot the difference to which Dick Cheney is willfully blind.
I was planning on creating a list of the justifications torture apologists trot out most reliably, but as it turns out, I don't have to. Recently I received several messages from a persistent apologist that serve as a nice summary of the sort of bullshit the right and the MSM peddle as a matter of course. Each numbered point below is a verbatim quote from my apologist correspondent; my thoughts interpolated. For a few equally absurd but dangerous arguments my correspondent overlooked, here's Dan Froomkin on the emerging "You can't prosecute politicians because the whole country is guilty" argument.
Now, obviously the gentleman who's advancing these arguments is not going to change his mind. It's fair to ask, therefore, what's the point of responding. The answer, I think, is this. On any given subject, there will be a core group so wedded to a belief that the belief will be impervious to all contrary evidence. But not everyone has his head buried this deeply in the sand, and there will always be some people (many people, I optimistically maintain) who can be persuaded by facts and reason. As I said in the comment section to a previous post on gay equality:
And now, the torture apologists' apologies.
1. "We have 'tortured' only a few."
Both the scare quotes and the assertion of "only a few" are demonstrably untrue. Unless, perhaps, you're arguing that nothing we've done except waterboarding is torture, a position that would also be at odds with clear settled law. Moreover, we are bound by law not just to not torture, but also to not inflict cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.
In any event, the argument is irrelevant. Try, "we only raped a few. We only murdered a few." If I'm missing something in the relevant law -- a "we only tortured a few" safe harbor exception -- please let me know.
2. "Waterboarding is administered under highly controlled circumstances."
I imagine the Gestapo made the same claim. And waterboarding is certainly not the only, and arguably not the worst of what the Bush administration authorized. And after 183 times in a month, how much does it matter whether it was highly controlled or not?
In any event, irrelevant. If I'm missing something in the relevant law -- a "torture is okay as long as it's done under highly controlled circumstances" safe harbor exception -- please let me know.
3. "And only to those who richly deserve it."
You're basing this on what, exactly? It's belied by the Red Cross and numerous other independent investigations. Also, irrelevant. If I'm missing something in the relevant law -- a "torture is okay as long as it's done to people I retroactively think deserved it" safe harbor exception -- please let me know.
4. "I believe we have obtained some valuable intel from them."
You never include any evidence for your beliefs, so it's hard to give them much credit. Here's some evidence to the contrary. In any event, irrelevant. If I'm missing something in the relevant law -- a "torture is okay as long as it obtains some valuable intel" safe harbor exception -- please let me know.
5. "By the way, the furor over 'torture' is a farce in my opinion. All of a sudden everyone is a Constitutional lawyer because they hated Bush. They won't apply the same scrutiny to Obama I assure you."
Who's they? There' evidence that Pelosi will burn over this, too, and that's fine by me. Likewise if Obama ever authorizes what Bush did. My sense is that people who can't see this as a legal matter -- which it obviously is -- and insist it must be partisan are projecting their own hyper-partisan worldview.
And even though I'm sure some people are motivated by partisanship, so what? If I'm missing something in the relevant law -- a "torture will be excused if some people who seek to prosecute it are motivated by partisanship" safe harbor exception -- please let me know.
6. "The average American would waterboard and then some if it would save someone they love from someone who wants to kill them."
Possibly, and possibly the average American would be glad to eviscerate and crucify someone they believe murdered or raped a loved one. Despite the understandable urge, we don't allow this. Think about why not, and apply the principles you extract to your analogous argument in favor of torture.
In any event, irrelevant. If I'm missing something in the relevant law -- a "torture will be excused if in extremis some people might resort to it" safe harbor exception -- please let me know.
7. "Politicizing criminality could also be called protecting America. One could argue the efficacy of what Bush and Cheney did to protect us but I find it difficult to entertain the notion that the result was not in our best interests."
Let me try to make it a little less difficult for you:
Also:
What couldn't be justified, especially retrospectively, as having been done to protect America? In any event, irrelevant. If I'm missing something in the relevant law -- a "torture will be excused some of the people who engaged in it say they did so to protect America" safe harbor exception -- please let me know.
8. "The word "torture" elicits a lot of emotion. I draw a distinction between what we have done and many examples throughout history. We did not line up captives and feed them to dogs or rape them."
Anything short of rape and feeding captives to dogs isn't torture? Wow. Do I even need to repeat my safe harbor question here?
9. "Moral equivalency is the domain of the left. Rape is a crime and I feel safe saying that we would never rape a captive as a means to an end so to compare it to what we have done is hardly relevant."
There's a certain truth to the first statement. Because no matter what our side does, no matter how exactly a match it is to precisely the policy and behavior of sadists and totalitarians throughout history, it's not equivalent because... well, because that was them, and this is us.
Anyway, why shouldn't all the non-existent get-out-of-jail free excuses you're eager to provide torturers generally apply specifically to rapists, as well? We did it to protect America. It resulted in valuable info. We only raped a few. Etc. What's the difference?
10. "We held a man [KSM] who boasted about being the mastermind behind 9/11."
Fascinating use of the word "boast." We waterboarded KSM 183 times in a month. Why do you reflexively believe he was "boasting?" Is it not possible he was spewing out anything he could possibly imagine to get the torture to stop? Where's that flinty conservative skepticism?
11. "We poured water on his face while he was hooked up to a heart monitor. We made records of our actions and applied rules to ensure he was not permanently harmed."
It's fascinating to watch a torture apologist's verbal contortions as he tries to pretty the picture of what Americans have done. And the mention of the heart monitor is nice, too, intended to show how caring we are while we gently pour the water (room temperature water, no doubt, and ph-balanced, too) on the man's face. It couldn't be that the torturer's determination to keep the torture victim alive is about maintaining the victim's life so that he can continue to be tortured?
We applied rules to ensure he was not permanently harmed. Bravo! Then rape really must be okay, too, no? If done carefully, with doctors supervising, under carefully prescribed rules, the victim -- wait, that's the wrong word, after all, these people "richly deserved it," call them subjects, that's nice and dry, or detainees, or why not guests -- the subject will not be permanently harmed by the rape.
Indeed. We raped to protect America. Rape resulted in valuable info. We only raped a few. Doctors supervised the rape. There was no permanent harm to the people we raped. According to your own principles, the government would be derelict if it *failed* to rape.
12. Eventually a plot to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge was was exposed and more. War is not pretty and waterboarding is certainly unkind but I would gladly see that happen before I would see that bridge in the Hudson."
The Brooklyn Bridge is over the East River, and the plot (which in any event seemed more an aspiration than a plot) was uncovered through police work and without torture. This is unfortunate from your standpoint, as it suggests we can prevent terrorism without torturing. You'll have to find another example. Given the utter lack of research you brought to bear on this one, I suspect you'll be able to come up with something easily enough.
13. "War involves shooting other people. Isn't that also a violation of their rights?"
In fact, it's not. See particularly the Hague Conventions. Even if it were, are you saying that because we shoot people on the battlefield, we can do anything we want to them if we first take them prisoner? But you've already acknowledged (incoherently, given your other arguments) that rape is wrong. But isn't it better to rape them than to shoot them, a kind of lesser evil? Especially if we rape them to protect America, under a doctor's supervision, etc.
14. "Let's see how people feel the day after the next attack. I believe the polls will shift rather dramatically."
We could call this the "if some people support it when they're out of their minds with fear and rage, it's not illegal" defense. And to be even barely coherent, this "argument" has to assume that torture makes us safe. Again, all available evidence suggests the contrary. And given the danger of another irrational and dangerous departure from the Constitution, shouldn't we do all we can now to inculcate respect for the rule of law, rather than proactively providing excuses for abandoning it?
There are so many aspects of the apologists' arguments that fascinate me. Most of all is the ongoing refusal to engage on the question of what the law clearly prohibits. Also the utter absence of any facts to support assertions.
If America doesn't stand for the rule of law, what are we? I used to think of myself as a conservative (before the term ceased to mean anything coherent). Part of the reason I identified myself thusly was because I'm a law and order guy and not very sympathetic to attempts to get me to see things from the poor criminal's perspective, how he was temporarily insane when he committed his crimes, or only meant well, or whatever. Well, I still feel that way. It's just that I'm able to apply that world view impartially. Others, it seems, refuse to. For them, America doesn't live under the rule of law. In fact, for them, the law isn't a rule at all; at best it's just an optional, annoying suggestion.
I was planning on creating a list of the justifications torture apologists trot out most reliably, but as it turns out, I don't have to. Recently I received several messages from a persistent apologist that serve as a nice summary of the sort of bullshit the right and the MSM peddle as a matter of course. Each numbered point below is a verbatim quote from my apologist correspondent; my thoughts interpolated. For a few equally absurd but dangerous arguments my correspondent overlooked, here's Dan Froomkin on the emerging "You can't prosecute politicians because the whole country is guilty" argument.
Now, obviously the gentleman who's advancing these arguments is not going to change his mind. It's fair to ask, therefore, what's the point of responding. The answer, I think, is this. On any given subject, there will be a core group so wedded to a belief that the belief will be impervious to all contrary evidence. But not everyone has his head buried this deeply in the sand, and there will always be some people (many people, I optimistically maintain) who can be persuaded by facts and reason. As I said in the comment section to a previous post on gay equality:
"Persuading any given individual is only part of the purpose of a discussion like this one. In fact, there's a much more important function: by subjecting dogmatic, fearful, irrational opinions to the light of reason, we expose them for what they are. And over time, views that were once respectable become untenable, and then increasingly disreputable, until finally even the few people who still cling to them are too embarrassed to utter them in polite society. This is the very history of the fight against racism, bigotry, and intolerance. We can all feel proud to have contributed to this chapter of that history -- after all, even those of us whose contribution has been unintentional are playing an important part."
And now, the torture apologists' apologies.
1. "We have 'tortured' only a few."
Both the scare quotes and the assertion of "only a few" are demonstrably untrue. Unless, perhaps, you're arguing that nothing we've done except waterboarding is torture, a position that would also be at odds with clear settled law. Moreover, we are bound by law not just to not torture, but also to not inflict cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.
In any event, the argument is irrelevant. Try, "we only raped a few. We only murdered a few." If I'm missing something in the relevant law -- a "we only tortured a few" safe harbor exception -- please let me know.
2. "Waterboarding is administered under highly controlled circumstances."
I imagine the Gestapo made the same claim. And waterboarding is certainly not the only, and arguably not the worst of what the Bush administration authorized. And after 183 times in a month, how much does it matter whether it was highly controlled or not?
In any event, irrelevant. If I'm missing something in the relevant law -- a "torture is okay as long as it's done under highly controlled circumstances" safe harbor exception -- please let me know.
3. "And only to those who richly deserve it."
You're basing this on what, exactly? It's belied by the Red Cross and numerous other independent investigations. Also, irrelevant. If I'm missing something in the relevant law -- a "torture is okay as long as it's done to people I retroactively think deserved it" safe harbor exception -- please let me know.
4. "I believe we have obtained some valuable intel from them."
You never include any evidence for your beliefs, so it's hard to give them much credit. Here's some evidence to the contrary. In any event, irrelevant. If I'm missing something in the relevant law -- a "torture is okay as long as it obtains some valuable intel" safe harbor exception -- please let me know.
5. "By the way, the furor over 'torture' is a farce in my opinion. All of a sudden everyone is a Constitutional lawyer because they hated Bush. They won't apply the same scrutiny to Obama I assure you."
Who's they? There' evidence that Pelosi will burn over this, too, and that's fine by me. Likewise if Obama ever authorizes what Bush did. My sense is that people who can't see this as a legal matter -- which it obviously is -- and insist it must be partisan are projecting their own hyper-partisan worldview.
And even though I'm sure some people are motivated by partisanship, so what? If I'm missing something in the relevant law -- a "torture will be excused if some people who seek to prosecute it are motivated by partisanship" safe harbor exception -- please let me know.
6. "The average American would waterboard and then some if it would save someone they love from someone who wants to kill them."
Possibly, and possibly the average American would be glad to eviscerate and crucify someone they believe murdered or raped a loved one. Despite the understandable urge, we don't allow this. Think about why not, and apply the principles you extract to your analogous argument in favor of torture.
In any event, irrelevant. If I'm missing something in the relevant law -- a "torture will be excused if in extremis some people might resort to it" safe harbor exception -- please let me know.
7. "Politicizing criminality could also be called protecting America. One could argue the efficacy of what Bush and Cheney did to protect us but I find it difficult to entertain the notion that the result was not in our best interests."
Let me try to make it a little less difficult for you:
"Torture has undermined the United States' reputation for respecting and following the law and thus has crippled its political influence. By torturing, the United States has wounded itself and helped its enemies in what is in the end an inherently political war—a war, that is, in which the critical target to be conquered is the allegiances and attitudes of young Muslims. And by torturing prisoners, many of whom were implicated in committing great crimes against Americans, the United States has made it impossible to render justice on those criminals, instead sentencing them—and the country itself—to an endless limbo of injustice. That limbo stands as a kind of worldwide advertisement for the costs of the US reversion to torture."
Also:
"Al Qaeda and Taliban terrorists are taught to expect Americans to abuse them. They are recruited based on false propaganda that says the United States is out to destroy Islam. Treating detainees harshly only reinforces that distorted view, increases resistance to cooperation, and creates new enemies. In fact, the April 2006 National Intelligence Estimate "Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States" cited "pervasive anti U.S. sentiment among most Muslims" as an underlying factor fueling the spread of the global jihadist movement. Former Navy General Counsel Alberto Mora testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee in June 2008 that "there are serving U.S. flag-rank officers who maintain that the first and second identifiable causes of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq – as judged by their effectiveness in recruiting insurgent fighters into combat – are, respectively the symbols of Abu Ghraib and
Guantanamo.""
What couldn't be justified, especially retrospectively, as having been done to protect America? In any event, irrelevant. If I'm missing something in the relevant law -- a "torture will be excused some of the people who engaged in it say they did so to protect America" safe harbor exception -- please let me know.
8. "The word "torture" elicits a lot of emotion. I draw a distinction between what we have done and many examples throughout history. We did not line up captives and feed them to dogs or rape them."
Anything short of rape and feeding captives to dogs isn't torture? Wow. Do I even need to repeat my safe harbor question here?
9. "Moral equivalency is the domain of the left. Rape is a crime and I feel safe saying that we would never rape a captive as a means to an end so to compare it to what we have done is hardly relevant."
There's a certain truth to the first statement. Because no matter what our side does, no matter how exactly a match it is to precisely the policy and behavior of sadists and totalitarians throughout history, it's not equivalent because... well, because that was them, and this is us.
Anyway, why shouldn't all the non-existent get-out-of-jail free excuses you're eager to provide torturers generally apply specifically to rapists, as well? We did it to protect America. It resulted in valuable info. We only raped a few. Etc. What's the difference?
10. "We held a man [KSM] who boasted about being the mastermind behind 9/11."
Fascinating use of the word "boast." We waterboarded KSM 183 times in a month. Why do you reflexively believe he was "boasting?" Is it not possible he was spewing out anything he could possibly imagine to get the torture to stop? Where's that flinty conservative skepticism?
11. "We poured water on his face while he was hooked up to a heart monitor. We made records of our actions and applied rules to ensure he was not permanently harmed."
It's fascinating to watch a torture apologist's verbal contortions as he tries to pretty the picture of what Americans have done. And the mention of the heart monitor is nice, too, intended to show how caring we are while we gently pour the water (room temperature water, no doubt, and ph-balanced, too) on the man's face. It couldn't be that the torturer's determination to keep the torture victim alive is about maintaining the victim's life so that he can continue to be tortured?
We applied rules to ensure he was not permanently harmed. Bravo! Then rape really must be okay, too, no? If done carefully, with doctors supervising, under carefully prescribed rules, the victim -- wait, that's the wrong word, after all, these people "richly deserved it," call them subjects, that's nice and dry, or detainees, or why not guests -- the subject will not be permanently harmed by the rape.
Indeed. We raped to protect America. Rape resulted in valuable info. We only raped a few. Doctors supervised the rape. There was no permanent harm to the people we raped. According to your own principles, the government would be derelict if it *failed* to rape.
12. Eventually a plot to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge was was exposed and more. War is not pretty and waterboarding is certainly unkind but I would gladly see that happen before I would see that bridge in the Hudson."
The Brooklyn Bridge is over the East River, and the plot (which in any event seemed more an aspiration than a plot) was uncovered through police work and without torture. This is unfortunate from your standpoint, as it suggests we can prevent terrorism without torturing. You'll have to find another example. Given the utter lack of research you brought to bear on this one, I suspect you'll be able to come up with something easily enough.
13. "War involves shooting other people. Isn't that also a violation of their rights?"
In fact, it's not. See particularly the Hague Conventions. Even if it were, are you saying that because we shoot people on the battlefield, we can do anything we want to them if we first take them prisoner? But you've already acknowledged (incoherently, given your other arguments) that rape is wrong. But isn't it better to rape them than to shoot them, a kind of lesser evil? Especially if we rape them to protect America, under a doctor's supervision, etc.
14. "Let's see how people feel the day after the next attack. I believe the polls will shift rather dramatically."
We could call this the "if some people support it when they're out of their minds with fear and rage, it's not illegal" defense. And to be even barely coherent, this "argument" has to assume that torture makes us safe. Again, all available evidence suggests the contrary. And given the danger of another irrational and dangerous departure from the Constitution, shouldn't we do all we can now to inculcate respect for the rule of law, rather than proactively providing excuses for abandoning it?
There are so many aspects of the apologists' arguments that fascinate me. Most of all is the ongoing refusal to engage on the question of what the law clearly prohibits. Also the utter absence of any facts to support assertions.
If America doesn't stand for the rule of law, what are we? I used to think of myself as a conservative (before the term ceased to mean anything coherent). Part of the reason I identified myself thusly was because I'm a law and order guy and not very sympathetic to attempts to get me to see things from the poor criminal's perspective, how he was temporarily insane when he committed his crimes, or only meant well, or whatever. Well, I still feel that way. It's just that I'm able to apply that world view impartially. Others, it seems, refuse to. For them, America doesn't live under the rule of law. In fact, for them, the law isn't a rule at all; at best it's just an optional, annoying suggestion.
Date Published: May 12, 2009 - 8:25 pm
Many Americans are willing -- even proud -- to break the law, to abandon our fundamental moral underpinnings, and to engage in practices pioneered by the Spanish Inquisition and refined by Stalin's secret police and the Gestapo, all in the name of keeping the nation Safe From The Terrorists. But we haven't lost all perspective. Some prices just aren't worth paying, not even for Safety. The price, of, say, allowing openly gay linguists fluent in Arabic to serve in the military. Better a city incinerated by a suitcase nuke than that.
I wish I were making this up, but:
Two possible conclusions:
1. Some people hate gays more than they love life itself. More, even, than they value the lives of their own children.
2. Torture isn't really about safety. It's about something else. Because surely if we're willing to torture to be safe, we could manage to rub shoulders with a gay or two, as well?
One thing that's interesting in all this is the supernatural powers rightists ascribe to the things they're afraid of. We can't imprison bearded terrorists in US prisons because they might break out and wreak havoc upon the land! We have to discriminate against gays -- apparently literally at all costs -- because gayness is so potently communicable!
Gay cooties: even stronger than Terrorist Mojo. On the fear scale that obsesses the right, that's really saying something.
I wish I were making this up, but:
"Dan Choi, a West Point graduate and officer in the Army National Guard who is fluent in Arabic and who returned recently from Iraq, received notice today that the military is about to fire him. Why? Because he came out of the closet as a gay man on national television."
Two possible conclusions:
1. Some people hate gays more than they love life itself. More, even, than they value the lives of their own children.
2. Torture isn't really about safety. It's about something else. Because surely if we're willing to torture to be safe, we could manage to rub shoulders with a gay or two, as well?
One thing that's interesting in all this is the supernatural powers rightists ascribe to the things they're afraid of. We can't imprison bearded terrorists in US prisons because they might break out and wreak havoc upon the land! We have to discriminate against gays -- apparently literally at all costs -- because gayness is so potently communicable!
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Gay cooties: even stronger than Terrorist Mojo. On the fear scale that obsesses the right, that's really saying something.
Date Published: May 07, 2009 - 7:00 pm
Just got back to Tokyo after another week on the road for Fault Line promotion. No time to write while I was traveling, but I did have a chance to read a number of establishment opinion pieces about torture. They were so alike in various respects that they could have have been churned out by the same government press office. The most glaring similarity was an omission of any discussion or even acknowledgment of the role of the law. Reading these opinions and knowing nothing else, you could be forgiven for believing that no law on torture or other cruel, inhumane, or other degrading treatment even exists, let alone that such laws might matter.
A sampling:
David Broder in The Washington Post: "But now Obama is being lobbied by politicians and voters who want something more -- the humiliation and/or punishment of those responsible for the policies of the past." That's one way of looking at it. Another way would be that this is simply about prosecuting criminals. But if you refuse to recognize that the law should even a part of the discussion -- that applicable law even exists -- I can see where you might look at things in the stunted, distorted way Broder does.
Ross Douthat in the New York Times: "We need to hear more: What was done and who approved it, and what intelligence we really gleaned from it. Not so that we can prosecute – unless the Democratic Party has taken leave of its senses – but so that we can learn, and pass judgment, and struggle toward consensus." Yes, if you think people who break the law should be prosecuted and punished, you have taken leave of your senses. You'd have to be crazy to argue something like that.
Tom Friedman in the New York Times: Friedman acknowledges that up to 27 prisoners were tortured to death in US custody (i.e., murdered), but then goes on to argue against any prosecutions because "bringing George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and other senior officials to trial... would rip our country apart." I'd be more comfortable with this argument if Friedman also favored a constitutional amendment making de jure his de facto grant of immunity to high government officials. Why are establishment pundits always afraid to make explicit arguments for what they're calling for?
Garrison Keillor in Salon: Keillor actually entitles his piece, "Let War Crimes Be Bygones." Substitute "Rape," "Murder," or the other crime of your choice in his chosen title and see how the concept works for you that way.
Lexington in The Economist: "The most important comment on Mr Obama’s approach to counter-terrorism so far came on April 20th, from the CIA agents who cheered him to the rafters." Is cheering at the CIA really the most important comment on Obama and counter-terror? More important, then, say, an analysis of, even a reference to, the law? The spooks must have done a wave or something. Damn lawyers, it's their fault -- obviously they're not cheering sufficiently loudly for the application of the law. Maybe we who believe, as Thomas Paine did, that in America the law is king, should cheer more loudly for the law's application so the law can get favorable mention in Lexington, too.
Jon Meacham in Newsweek: Meacham argues, "And to pursue criminal charges against officials at the highest levels—including the former president and the former vice president—would set a terrible precedent." As opposed to the precedent of de facto immunity from criminal prosecution for our political class? Pretty nice perk Meacham, Friedman et al are suggesting there. I wish novelists could get get out of jail free cards, too, but alas, it seems the hoi polloi are ineligible.
But surely Meacham isn't arguing that politicians are actually above the law? Yes, he is, explicitly, and the only kind thing you can say about it as that at least he's more honest about what he's calling for than Friedman et al: "That is not to say presidents and vice presidents are always above the law; there could be instances in which such a prosecution is appropriate, but based on what we know, this is not such a case." Holy when the president does it, that means its not illegal, Batman! Although again, it would be nice if Meacham could propose some guidelines for which politicians are in fact above the law (is it just the President and VP? What about the Secretary of State and Defense? Treasury? Leaders in Congress? Only federal officials, or state, too? Any lobbyists out there who would be willing to go to bat for novelists? Seriously, we want proactive immunity for lawbreaking, too) and under what circumstances (do sexual peccadilloes count, or is the immunity only for war crimes?). Then we could codify it (maybe as the "Get Out of Jail Free Act") and wouldn't have to rely on pseudo-journalists like Meacham to make up the law as we go along.
Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal: Noonan argues, "A problem with the release of the [torture memos] is that it opens the way—it probably forces the way—to congressional hearings, or a commission, or an independent prosecutor. It is hard at this point to imagine that what will follow will not prove destructive to—old-fashioned phrase coming—the good of the country." Like Friedman, Noonan shies away from saying aloud what she is really arguing: that America is better off when ruled under secret laws, with immunity for government officials who violate the non-secret ones.
Think about that concept for a moment. Secret laws. In America. And we have "journalists" telling us the secret laws are good for the country. War is peace, baby. Dig it.
Even Jon Stewart seems to have momentarily forgotten that there's such a thing as the law, suggesting instead immunity for anyone willing to admit, "My bad." Apply that thinking to criminality generally and see where it takes you.
If you want to stay in denial, avoid clicking on this link (h/t Andrew Sullivan). Especially avoid The UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhumane, and Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which President Reagan signed in 1988 and the Senate ratified in 1994, and which Article VI of the Constitution makes the supreme law of the land. Definitely don't read the following excerpts from the UNCAT, which provides that:
And:
How is it that none of the opinion pieces linked above sees fit even to mention these laws?
For the record: I also failed to include a discussion of applicable law in November 2007, when responding to an interview Vince Flynn did with the Washington Post in which Vince argued for torture. But I've taken the trouble to educate myself in the interim. Vince, you didn't mention it before except by omission, so I'll ask now: do you think the law is irrelevant to a discussion of torture? And what do you make of the news that Kalid Sheik Mohamed was waterboarded not once, but 183 times in a month? Not exactly the "rarest of circumstances," or the "clinical precision" you claimed at the time. And if you have to do it 183 times -- over the course of a month -- can you really claim it's effective, or even appropriate for the Ticking Bomb Scenario? (well, maybe the bomb was ticking really slowly). Especially because all the facts that have come to light since the former administration and its cheerleaders began their "torture works and is necessary" campaign belie both claims.
For a nice summary debunking the myths various establishment figures are still peddling about torture, here's Scott Horton.
Opponents of prosecuting the architects of Amerca's torture regime argue that prosecutions would be about "criminalizing policy differences." No. Failing to prosecute would be to politicize criminality, and proponents of de facto immunity for our political class are doing exactly that.
By the time we prosecute them, crimes are by definition past. That the crime has already been committed is never an argument for failing to prosecute it ("Your honor, it's true my client raped the victim, but that's part of the past and we need to look forward. This is a time for reflection, not retribution"). But the Bush administration's torture policies are not even part of the past. The fact that President Obama has banned the practices in question implicitly ratifies his or the next president's right to re-invoke them. Only investigation and prosecution can restore the proper place of the law in our country and ensure, insofar as possible, that the law is not treated as a sad joke in the future.
But don't take my word on all this. Take President Bush's:
You'd think Republicans, who purport to be the party of law and order, might be concerned about law-breaking. Well, I thought the GOP was about small government, balanced budgets, and a modest foreign policy, too. To the extent Republicans still bother making such claims, they've become the world's emptiest brand. Republicans have no principles, Democrats have no balls, and our pseudo journalistic class enables the worst and weakest elements of both. Imagine where we'd be without the blogosphere.
A sampling:
David Broder in The Washington Post: "But now Obama is being lobbied by politicians and voters who want something more -- the humiliation and/or punishment of those responsible for the policies of the past." That's one way of looking at it. Another way would be that this is simply about prosecuting criminals. But if you refuse to recognize that the law should even a part of the discussion -- that applicable law even exists -- I can see where you might look at things in the stunted, distorted way Broder does.
Ross Douthat in the New York Times: "We need to hear more: What was done and who approved it, and what intelligence we really gleaned from it. Not so that we can prosecute – unless the Democratic Party has taken leave of its senses – but so that we can learn, and pass judgment, and struggle toward consensus." Yes, if you think people who break the law should be prosecuted and punished, you have taken leave of your senses. You'd have to be crazy to argue something like that.
Tom Friedman in the New York Times: Friedman acknowledges that up to 27 prisoners were tortured to death in US custody (i.e., murdered), but then goes on to argue against any prosecutions because "bringing George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and other senior officials to trial... would rip our country apart." I'd be more comfortable with this argument if Friedman also favored a constitutional amendment making de jure his de facto grant of immunity to high government officials. Why are establishment pundits always afraid to make explicit arguments for what they're calling for?
Garrison Keillor in Salon: Keillor actually entitles his piece, "Let War Crimes Be Bygones." Substitute "Rape," "Murder," or the other crime of your choice in his chosen title and see how the concept works for you that way.
Lexington in The Economist: "The most important comment on Mr Obama’s approach to counter-terrorism so far came on April 20th, from the CIA agents who cheered him to the rafters." Is cheering at the CIA really the most important comment on Obama and counter-terror? More important, then, say, an analysis of, even a reference to, the law? The spooks must have done a wave or something. Damn lawyers, it's their fault -- obviously they're not cheering sufficiently loudly for the application of the law. Maybe we who believe, as Thomas Paine did, that in America the law is king, should cheer more loudly for the law's application so the law can get favorable mention in Lexington, too.
Jon Meacham in Newsweek: Meacham argues, "And to pursue criminal charges against officials at the highest levels—including the former president and the former vice president—would set a terrible precedent." As opposed to the precedent of de facto immunity from criminal prosecution for our political class? Pretty nice perk Meacham, Friedman et al are suggesting there. I wish novelists could get get out of jail free cards, too, but alas, it seems the hoi polloi are ineligible.
But surely Meacham isn't arguing that politicians are actually above the law? Yes, he is, explicitly, and the only kind thing you can say about it as that at least he's more honest about what he's calling for than Friedman et al: "That is not to say presidents and vice presidents are always above the law; there could be instances in which such a prosecution is appropriate, but based on what we know, this is not such a case." Holy when the president does it, that means its not illegal, Batman! Although again, it would be nice if Meacham could propose some guidelines for which politicians are in fact above the law (is it just the President and VP? What about the Secretary of State and Defense? Treasury? Leaders in Congress? Only federal officials, or state, too? Any lobbyists out there who would be willing to go to bat for novelists? Seriously, we want proactive immunity for lawbreaking, too) and under what circumstances (do sexual peccadilloes count, or is the immunity only for war crimes?). Then we could codify it (maybe as the "Get Out of Jail Free Act") and wouldn't have to rely on pseudo-journalists like Meacham to make up the law as we go along.
Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal: Noonan argues, "A problem with the release of the [torture memos] is that it opens the way—it probably forces the way—to congressional hearings, or a commission, or an independent prosecutor. It is hard at this point to imagine that what will follow will not prove destructive to—old-fashioned phrase coming—the good of the country." Like Friedman, Noonan shies away from saying aloud what she is really arguing: that America is better off when ruled under secret laws, with immunity for government officials who violate the non-secret ones.
Think about that concept for a moment. Secret laws. In America. And we have "journalists" telling us the secret laws are good for the country. War is peace, baby. Dig it.
Even Jon Stewart seems to have momentarily forgotten that there's such a thing as the law, suggesting instead immunity for anyone willing to admit, "My bad." Apply that thinking to criminality generally and see where it takes you.
If you want to stay in denial, avoid clicking on this link (h/t Andrew Sullivan). Especially avoid The UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhumane, and Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which President Reagan signed in 1988 and the Senate ratified in 1994, and which Article VI of the Constitution makes the supreme law of the land. Definitely don't read the following excerpts from the UNCAT, which provides that:
Article 1. For the purposes of this Convention, the term "torture" means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.
And:
Article 16. Each State Party shall undertake to prevent in any territory under its jurisdiction other acts of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment which do not amount to torture as defined in article I, when such acts are committed by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. In particular, the obligations contained in articles 10, 11, 12 and 13 shall apply with the substitution for references to torture of references to other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
How is it that none of the opinion pieces linked above sees fit even to mention these laws?
For the record: I also failed to include a discussion of applicable law in November 2007, when responding to an interview Vince Flynn did with the Washington Post in which Vince argued for torture. But I've taken the trouble to educate myself in the interim. Vince, you didn't mention it before except by omission, so I'll ask now: do you think the law is irrelevant to a discussion of torture? And what do you make of the news that Kalid Sheik Mohamed was waterboarded not once, but 183 times in a month? Not exactly the "rarest of circumstances," or the "clinical precision" you claimed at the time. And if you have to do it 183 times -- over the course of a month -- can you really claim it's effective, or even appropriate for the Ticking Bomb Scenario? (well, maybe the bomb was ticking really slowly). Especially because all the facts that have come to light since the former administration and its cheerleaders began their "torture works and is necessary" campaign belie both claims.
For a nice summary debunking the myths various establishment figures are still peddling about torture, here's Scott Horton.
Opponents of prosecuting the architects of Amerca's torture regime argue that prosecutions would be about "criminalizing policy differences." No. Failing to prosecute would be to politicize criminality, and proponents of de facto immunity for our political class are doing exactly that.
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By the time we prosecute them, crimes are by definition past. That the crime has already been committed is never an argument for failing to prosecute it ("Your honor, it's true my client raped the victim, but that's part of the past and we need to look forward. This is a time for reflection, not retribution"). But the Bush administration's torture policies are not even part of the past. The fact that President Obama has banned the practices in question implicitly ratifies his or the next president's right to re-invoke them. Only investigation and prosecution can restore the proper place of the law in our country and ensure, insofar as possible, that the law is not treated as a sad joke in the future.
But don't take my word on all this. Take President Bush's:
You'd think Republicans, who purport to be the party of law and order, might be concerned about law-breaking. Well, I thought the GOP was about small government, balanced budgets, and a modest foreign policy, too. To the extent Republicans still bother making such claims, they've become the world's emptiest brand. Republicans have no principles, Democrats have no balls, and our pseudo journalistic class enables the worst and weakest elements of both. Imagine where we'd be without the blogosphere.
Date Published: Apr 30, 2009 - 12:55 am
