Chris:
"How is he demanding Israel compromise its security [ie, by demanding dismantling the settlements and abandoning the West Bank]? It seems to me he’s calling for a Palestinian state and an end to the settlements, or, at the very least, their expansion."
It's because such a thing would give Hamas a foothold at least and possibly more power on the West Bank. This would put Tel Aviv and 75% of the Israeli population within easy Qassam-rocket distance, among other things.
I don't know if this is "true" but I think that most Israelis believe it to be true, which is why I say it's unrealistic.
I'm getting tired of repeating myself to you. You're 54, a journalist, and an ex military officer. You should know better. But, for the last time, I never said, or even implied, that "it wasn’t about the WMDs." I said that saying that they were the ENTIRE reason for the war was false (your screaming all caps). There were a whole package of justifications besides the WMDs s. If you were so intently focused on the debate at the time, you'll remember Bush's September, 2002 speech to the UNGA. He listed all of these reasons there for the whole world to see.
I thought at the time that the WMD issue was the only one of the above "package" that had any chance in the world of getting UNSC approval, which was why I thought Bush emphasized it, among other reasons. So much for the unilateralist, though.
You say that the government failed to get enough evidence of Saddam's WMD capabilities before the invasion, but went ahead anyway. How much more evidence would you require if the UN, EU nations, and the former Clinton administration agreed that he had the WMDs. I just can't remember anyone seriously questioning this at the time so refresh my memory for me.
You say, "the government manufactured evidence including using torture to elicit false links." I guess that the "links" refers to evidence of Saddam's possession of WMD capabilities. What evidence are you referring to, specifically? This is the kind of thing that would convince me, like I said before, if that means anything to you. I do change my mind when faced with new evidence. I just haven't seen any yet and neither has Sullivan and neither have you. I don't remember anything like manufacturing evidence, least of all through torture. So, again, what are you talking about?
Sullivan changed his mind back in 2004, when just about everyone else was. That was the in-crowd. He was far from the first, though.
Until you prove me wrong, I maintain that Bush did the due diligence you require before asking Congress for authorization to invade Iraq. In that case, yes, you're whining. Commanders are responsible for sending their men to their deaths if necessary. Even I know that. You were an officer so you must know it better than I do. How would you describe a soldier or marine under your command who started complaining about people getting killed in an operation you were responsible for?
You say, "It’s ONLY because of the skill, professionalism and dedication of our military people that, against all the odds, we have salvaged something from this debacle." Again with the all-caps hyperbole! Why don't you try and calm down? I can think of another reason, off the top of my head: Bush himself refused to quit and upped the ante instead. Then he threw all the support he could to the military to accomplish what he was demanding. And, if you look at Iraq today, it's far from the debacle you say it is. In fact, we salvaged a victory, which isn't just "something." We handed al Qaeda a defeat—a major reason why they're still living in caves instead of in some palace.
I'm still waiting for you to cough up some details about the lies Bush told that got him his war resolution and irresponsibly put your life at risk. So far, no good.
And I'm not interested in debating conservative principles in general with you or the prospects of the Republican party. Please stick to the subject, Mister Journalist.
I'm going to call you an anti Semite, just to make you feel at home. But not now! I'm going to wait until you're not expecting it, just to show you.
Furthermore, I'm not going to quibble over your one-sided version of history. That's just too much effort for me right now.
What I am going to do is to remind you (if you ever knew about it) of a great analysis by Paul Berman: he said that there are four wars in Israel/Palestine, of which two are legitimate and two are not. The wars for security and a national state are legitimate; the wars of expansion and extermination are not.
You seem to be trying for something like this, without really ever hitting it on the head and in the process you're confusing the issue.
It's easy to see how your post fits into Berman's analysis—expansion=settlements; extermination=Hamas. I pretty much agree with you, you may be surprised to know.
Where we part ways is when you say, "Since Hamas is unlikely to take that step, it may be that in the end, Israel must continue toward peace unilaterally." It's unacceptable and unrealistic to give Hamas a pass while demanding concessions out of Israel, although you do seem to have moderated this sentiment since the last time I read it. It's unacceptable because you're demanding that Israel compromise its security (the legitimate fight, according to Berman) while it allows Hamas to maintain the illegitimate one it promotes against Israel—extermination. It's unrealistic because there is no rational argument in favor of this position anywhere. It rests on just shrugging your shoulders at Hamas—fanatic Islamists will be fanatic Islamists, after all. They'll never change, so just ignore them. It's unrealistic to demand this for a policy that any nation under attack by them can follow.
It doesn't seem impossible in theory to get Hamas to give up its genocidal goals. All it would take is for the UN, the EU, Egypt, Jordan, and so forth to take up this position unequivocally, to match their positions on the illegitimacy of the settlements. That would be more or your "honest broker" stuff. Berman's argument seems unbeatable to me as a justification. Then, Hamas would know that its game is over. It's only when this happens that the war will be over.
Practically, of course, this is not really possible. The above entities are hostage to Arab interests in many ways and here I have no qualms at all about accusing them of anti Semitism.
The above is how I think Obama should proceed. He should announce that he's open to talks with Hamas, but on this topic alone until further progress. Then, he could continue to pressure Israel on the settlements, but this pressure would be balanced with an equal pressure on an equal point (again, the illegitimate war) on Hamas. With Obama's talent and popularity, he may have a shot at it. But he won't even try it, for reasons unknown to me.
In Mexico, politics itself is a political crime. Political crimes are prosecuted by lynching—unless it's a really high-profile politician. In that case, he's prosecuted by lynching.
Be careful with that wad of pesos down here! Police will be happy to accompany you to the nearest ATM for the "police tax." By the way, everyday police extortion is becoming less common here than it was years ago. In Mexico City, though, police are like sharks—but there there's an ATM on every corner, so don't worry about it! It's funny, but the colloquial name for "police agent" is mordelón. Morder means "bite" but it's used to refer to the petty bribes you referred to—the cops just take a little bite out of your patrimony. Therefore, cops are called "biters."
An op-ed by Tom Friedman today makes some points that I wasn't expecting out of him. I don't read him all that much, but I thought he was some kind of anti-Bush Democrat and a war opponent. His conclusion:
So, yes, people among us who went over the line may go unpunished, because we still have enemies who respect no lines at all. In such an ugly war, you do your best. That’s what President Obama did.
He's talking about releasing the torture memos and then backing down from prosecution of those responsible. But, of course, it applies to Bush much better than to Obama.
I suppose he's still an anti-Bush Democrat, though, because he wastes a lot of space saying that "our people killed detainees." Anyone paying attention would know that this is a red herring (I am not defending anyone who kills detainees). These are abuses and not government programs or policies. They should be (and have been) dealt with through the ordinary legal process—although probably not as much as one would think necessary upon reading Friedman.
But then, curiously in my mind, he says,
Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda aspired to deliver a devastating blow to America. They “were involved in an extraordinarily sophisticated and professional effort to acquire weapons of mass destruction. In this case, nuclear material,” Michael Scheuer, the former C.I.A. bin Laden expert, told “60 Minutes” in 2004. “By the end of 1996, it was clear that this was an organization unlike any other one we had ever seen.”
And thus supports Bush's WMD justification for the invasion of Iraq. He goes on:
We have the luxury of having this torture debate now because there was no second 9/11, and it was not for want of trying. Had there been, a vast majority of Americans would have told the government (and still will): “Do whatever it takes.”
He gives the invasion of Iraq as the most important explanation for our relative safety during the Bush years:
I believe that the most important reason there has not been another 9/11, besides the improved security and intelligence, is that Al Qaeda is primarily focused on defeating America in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world — particularly in Iraq. Al Qaeda knows that if it can destroy the U.S. effort (still a long shot) to build a decent, modernizing society in Iraq, it will undermine every U.S. ally in the region.
This is exactly what Bush was saying years ago: We have to fight them there so we don't have to fight them here.
And there goes the canard that there was no link between al Qaeda and Iraq—practically the only Bush lied! meme left out there.
At first I thought you were a kid in high school or something. I thought that you were too young to really remember the 2002-03 debates that led to the invasion of Iraq and were getting your information from Sullivan. Is it really true that you're 54 and a journalist?
You should learn to read more carefully so as not to put words in my mouth. Then, you make me clarify, which is an extra effort for me. I don't like that. An example is, "Saying the war was not about WMD is being revisionist." I didn't say that the war wasn't about the WMDs—how could anyone ever do that? Are you calling me stupid or what? I said that the WMDs weren't the entire rationale for the war, as you tried to show. Plus, do you know what the word "revisionist" means? You're not really using it correctly here—another reason I thought you were a high-school student.
You say, "If [the WMDs] was a mistake then the administration should have admitted it." Of course they have admitted it over and over again. What follows next is an anachronism (another reason why I had thought you were too young to have actually remembered the debate): "Instead the Bush administration assured us it was a “slam dunk” that Iraq had WMD and implied that they had evidence that they couldn’t share with us." All this happened before the invasion. How could they possibly admit their mistake before the invasion? The invasion is the only reason that we now know Saddam didn't have the WMDs. You say, "It appears now they didn’t have real evidence, merely false evidence derived from torture, forgeries and Chalabi." I don't know what you mean by "real evidence." I guess you mean, "evidence that supported the truth." This is just fallacious, as I've explained to you here. Of course whatever evidence they had turned out to be "false" because we never found the WMDs. That's why it's called a "mistake" and not a "lie." You should review the whole UN inspection regime under Blix so that you understand that Bush didn't get all his evidence from "torture, forgeries and Chalabi." Blix also believed Saddam had WMDs, even if he didn't believe that this justified an invasion. This goes for the French, the British, and other allies, as well as the Clinton administration before that.
You say, "I don’t think the theory of “Preventative War” has fared very well." Well,so what? I brought that up to show you that saying that Bush had claimed Saddam posed an "immediate threat" was either a lie or a mistake, depending. If you're a high school student, it's a mistake and you didn't do your research properly. If you're an adult who was following the debate at the time, then at the very least it's negligent ignorance, if not a lie.
Of course the nation's leaders are responsible for using "due care" before sending you to fight in a war. But that doesn't mean that you get to whine about it if you disagree with them once they do. I say they did use "due care" and I suppose that a lot of soldiers and marines agree.
I really don't care what Sullivan's message is. It doesn't mean anything to me that he feels guilty. Too bad for him! He can eat shit for all I care. I just wish he'd quit parading it in front of everyone because, even if I don't read his bullshit anymore, I'm still subject to it through people like you. I stopped reading him years ago, even to disparage him. He's a disgrace. I canceled my subscription to the Atlantic because his presence there degrades that venerable magazine. My point about him—here we go again repeating stuff you didn't read correctly the first time—was that he's an intellectual coward. He backed down from supporting the war, not because any new information came out that falsified Bush's rationale, but because of the reasons you listed (the economic and human costs). These are good reasons to argue that Bush was incompetent, but not to retract his original support. Back in 2004, I was convinced of Bush's incompetence myself, and I wished that the Democrats had argued that point and reaffirmed their original support for the war back in 2004. If they had done so, and had come up with a better plan to win, they might have won the elections—even with a nebish like Kerry. The only Democrat who came out of that with her head high was Hillary. She never backed down, although she did come close. She had my vote for sure, just for that reason alone. Instead, they started saying they had been misled and lied to by Bush. Strange that such a stupid individual could cheat such a light in the intellectual firmament as Kerry. Or not? All of Sullivan's reasons for backing down amount to "if I had known then what I know now..." That's just childish. It's an historical fallacy. It's a complete waste of time to even entertain this line of thought—even in one's personal life. People have to do the best they can with what they have. You can analyze their mistakes if you want to, but you're limited to analyzing the information they had available at the time, not future events. If you can't accept that, then I'm just sorry for you. Sullivan just jumped on the bandwagon, that's all. I think the explanation was peer pressure. It takes a strong personality to stick to one's guns to face ridicule and worse from one's friends and comrades. Just ask Christopher Hitchens. Sullivan just doesn't have these qualities and substitutes moral preening for them.
You ask, "who would have supported the war if they had suspected what it would have really cost?" I can't answer that. Probably a lot of people, though. But this is what ED Kain calls a "bullshit hypothetical." Let me ask you the same question the other way around: "Who would have opposed the war if they had suspected what Saddam would have done if we hadn't invaded?" Do you imagine that the situation in Iraq would have stayed the same somehow forever? Think back to before the invasion. He was a true ticking bomb. Just one element of this bomb to illustrate my point: the Oil for Food scandal. This was the biggest scam in human history (until the Obama stimulus/budget/bailouts, that is). The situation was building up so that the sanctions were doomed. At that point, the money scammed off the UN would have kicked in. All the post-invasion investigations agree that Saddam had WMD programs that could have been reactivated at the right time. That time was coming along fast. Even I was aware that Oil for Food was a massive scam at the time, just from reading the press. I'm sure that Bush knew a lot more than I did. This is a situation where an opponent of the war could say, "If I had known then what I know now, I would have supported the war." This would have been a case where new information came out that changed the original calculus. I can't see anything equivalent in Sullivan's position. You for sure haven't even hinted at anything.
This is fantastic! I'm kicking myself for not thinking of it myself.
When Nietzsche wrote about torturing convicts, he saw it as a symptom of the torturers’ resentment, but he also saw the same instinct of resentment at work in religious moralism, the sadistic desire of a clergyman to torture the conscience of peoples with the idea that they are reprehensible creatures, unless they follow his creed. Andrew has that unhealthy instinct.
You turn the tables on the "losing our souls" crowd and make it look easy! You must be a pro.
the ENTIRE rationale for the War turned out to be a lie, that Saddam Hussein had WMDs and posed an immediate threat.
False: The entire rationale for the war was not based on the WMD threat. There were many others. For example, the twelve or so UNSC resolutions that came after the Gulf War, which Saddam violated; the rampant human rights abuses perpetrated by Saddam in his Republic of Fear; the fact that a megalomaniac was sitting on top of so much oil with WMD capability. There are more. Any one of these would be a legitimate causus belli.
The WMD threat was not a lie. It was a mistake. The difference is apparent for a five-year old, so one would think that Mister Nuance could understand that if he weren't blinded by so much admiration of his own appreciation of nuance. The whole world believed Saddam had the WMDs, not just Bush/Cheney. If this wasn't true, then where was the debate about it at the time? The only reason we know today that he didn't have the WMDs is because we invaded. To this day, no one can really explain what happened, since Saddam isn't talking. I haven't seen any evidence at all to refute this, so point me in the right direction. If true, then I'm switching sides right away. But until then, I maintain the position I took back in 2002-03, which was to support the invasion for a whole "package" of reasons. I have seen nothing in in the interim that contradicts it. This is the main reason why I lost all respect for Sullivan: he waffled on his support because of secondary issues (whatever they were). The reasons he gave to support the war back in 2002-03 are just as legitimate now as they were then.
Even so, the WMD rationale was not based on Saddam's "immediate threat," like you say it was. It was based on the Bush preventative war doctrine, which means that war is legitimate to prevent a threat from becoming immediate. Saying that Bush lied because he was touting an immediate threat that wasn't there is a lie in itself.
How was it that the government sent you to Iraq? I thought that we had an all-volunteer army. If you joined up, then the government owned you no matter what. If you didn't want the government to own you, then why did you join up?
You imply that war should only be the last resort. This is a truism. But in practice, its a judgment call as to where to draw the line simply because we can never exhaust more peaceful methods of resolving a conflict. That's just using logic. These decisions are not made on the basis of some kind of scorecard, where you use up all your diplomatic chips and then must resort to violence. Bush made his call. It was his job to do so. So did the Congress and Andrew Sullivan. They all rejected further diplomacy for one reason or another, even though it was readily at hand: this is exactly what the UN debate was about, not about the existence of WMDs.
I object to you putting yourself and Sullivan in the category of "principled conservatives" and others in the category of incompetent and dishonorable criminals. That's the key element of Sullivan's style. It's self-serving and dishonest to dehumanize one's opponent. It shows a lack of principles and honor.
Just as the "war of last resort" is based on someone's drawing the line where others wouldn't, so the use of waterboarding, slapping, stress positions, etc etc are as well. Nobody is defending abuse or torture. Bush administration defenders are simply drawing the line where you and Sullivan would not. Your black-and-white approach to this whole problem may help you feel like you're on God's side in this fight, but it's useless for analytical purposes. All it does is raise the level of the shouting when the situation demands a political solution. We are under attack by jihadists. We need to adapt to the problem of asymmetric warfare. The interrogation techniques we use are part of this adaptation. We can't adapt if everyone's shouting at everyone to show that he or she is on the side of truth and justice.
Nobody is "redefining" anything. Get off your high horse once an for all.
How would you define it then? It seems reasonable to define "waterboarding" as "sessions of waterboarding" and not as the individual pours of water, no matter what your opinion is on the legality/efficacy of the practice. Why is this so Orwellian, as ED Kain suggests? By the way, this "Orwellian gambit" is yet another example "outrage" because it implies that anyone who thinks that the practice should be defined as "sessions" and not "pours" belongs in a totalitarian police state and only ED Kain and his friends belong in a free society, etc etc. Defining waterboarding as "sessions" is not an attempt to hide or cover up the practice but only one to make it more precise. Not doing so has the obvious purpose of exaggerating the practice to the unimaginable—i.e., it's politically motivated.
What if we used your criteria for other things in daily life? How many Cokes did you drink today? Well… let's define "drinking a Coke" as individual sips. Then you'd become some kind of Coke pervert if you only drank one Coke.
How about masturbation? Let's define it as meaning individual strokes on the genitals. Then I masturbated about ten thousand times last week, or whatever. Why is this so stupid? Because we just don't talk that way. Why, then, should we talk that way about waterboarding?
the point of it would be the idea that learning what happened, how, when, and how and whether to prevent it from happening again is more important than punishing those responsible.
So, what's the point nowthat waterboarding, slapping, sleep deprivation and so forth have already been discontinued and in fact were discontinued years ago under the evil Bush/Cheney empire?
Am I the only one who sees a contradiction here? Am I alone here in thinking that the contradiction can be resolved by the fact the the bullshit truth commission advocates are really after the scalps of Bush/Cheney? Is my Aspberger's syndrome so far advanced then that I'm crazy to see an extremely dangerous precedent being set with the bullshit truth commission?
Blair, however, maintains that the information was not worth the damage to America's image. I guess it is a sign of the modern age that U.S. forces can deploy unmanned drones to attack the enemy in Afghanistan -- risking the lives of innocent people, among whom the guilty are hiding -- but the left gets its hackles up if KSM loses his beauty sleep.
Fair enough, Mark. But you're going to have to convince my buddy (in the photos). He gets pretty wrought up about these things. I wouldn't want to be in your shoes if he goes ballistic over this minor incident.
Mark:
Too bad for you. I now have "celebrated" written down and no fair going back and changing the record. What's the problem? Does it give you the willies to celebrate me, as an Asperger's sufferer?
Here are twophotos of one of my friends and me. We're already celebrating, so there's nothing you can do about it. I do have a hard time relating to people, so most of my friends are hummingbirds. Here we are at the beginning of the celebrations.
Mark: Maybe you'll then answer the question, since ED Kain declines: "Why in the world would we ever need an ad hoc bullshit truth commission when we already have adequate laws and mechanisms in place to both investigate and prosecute federal crimes?"
I'm aware that Robespierre-style revolutionary tribunals are not being proposed. Who would ever be so stupid as to do that anyway? I said that they will end up that way, not that anyone had been so stupid as to propose them. Keep in mind that even Robespierre himself never proposed them before they "just happened."
Asperger’s, and various other disorders, including ADHD, are in fact things that society should learn to celebrate.
I'm proud to say that I was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome over at the Culture 11 blog sometime last fall. In fact, there was a consensus on that particular comment thread confirming the diagnosis. I'd never heard of it before.
So, needless to say, I've very happy to read that me and my ilk are to be celebrated by society. When do the festivities begin? I'll accept any legal tender and most illegal tender as well. Let me know and ... let's party!
I wasn't suggesting that Clinton should be immune somehow. I was just explaining why there will be no truth commission or federal prosecutions: Democrats don't want to end up being prosecuted, even as they pontificate about "losing our soul", etc etc.
Where did you get the idea that a bullshit truth commission should precede federal prosecutions? What happened to grand juries? Why in the world would we ever need an ad hoc bullshit truth commission when we already have adequate laws and mechanisms in place to both investigate and prosecute federal crimes? Ad hoc tribunals could only end with some Robespierre/Sullivan presiding over revolutionary tribunals/truth commission and the rest of us in the shitcan. What's wrong with you?
So now it looks like you agree with Jaybird. Can't you then see that this truth commission atmosphere would be unstoppable? And that's assuming good faith. But good faith is the last thing I'd ever assume in politics or national security. We do have enemies, right? And we'd just be handing them our heads on a platter if we go ahead with this.
I can't stand reading Sullivan (because he's an outrage) whore) so could you explain why a truth commission is so necessary? If laws were broken, why isn't it enough for you for that federal prosecutors just do their jobs?
Douthat may have been referring to the fact that Democrats would end up prosecuting themselves if they go ahead with prosecutions—let alone this bullshit truth commission. Why would prosecutions, or the bullshit truth commission, be limited to the Bush administration? According to Scheurer, the Clinton administration was worse. Don't you imagine that he and Hillary are pulling a lot of strings backstage right about now?
Your quote from Andre Tocme (who he?) is an example of what I can't stand. He defines "peace and justice" so as to fit his own philosophy (which is respectable, of course) and leaves anyone else hanging out there to defend injustice and war.
That's not the way things work. People can oppose his pacifism and still be civilized and support peace and justice.
I think Jaybird has a good point, which you dismiss out of hand. His hypothetical may be bullshit to you today, but in the future things change. That's why it's called "the future." How do you know that "Geneva Conventtion" fanatics will not make "collateral damage" their next jihad and then try and put Obama's head on the block?
No one has even accused the Bush administration of wholesale violations of enemy combatants' rights (whatever they may be), of genocide, of running concentration camps, or using slave labor. He is accused on the basis of decisions he made as CIC and as president to fulfill his duty. People can judge him as they want to but to mount a political show trial, like Sullivan wants, would set a very dangerous precedent. That's what Jaybird is talking about and it's an important consideration for anyone who wants the nation to survive.
Maybe, maybe not. I was referring to "topping it" with a more illuminating analysis, which you clearly haven't done. In fact, you added more examples that support it by showing that an impossible situation will lead people to violate the code of civilization, or whatever, like the Japanese did back then.
Grendel72: would those intelligence agencies who “failed us” be the ones who gave the Bush administration memos with titles like “Bin Laden Determined to Attack US”? The ones that detailed plans to use commercial airlines? Those intelligence agencies?
Yes, they would be.
Your point isn't all that clear, though. So, they gave Bush a memo? What about it?
This, again, is a common "hindsight" error in thinking about history. There was a prescient memo; Bush ignored it (if he did, which I don't know); therefore Bush failed. It's an error because there was so much data to analyze and no one could say with certainty before 9/11 what data was significant, although some people were prescient about al Qaeda. Maybe the truth is always just staring us in the face but we can't see it until it hits us over the head.
But my point stands: after 9/11 the government didn't know enough about al Qaeda to act so to prevent the follow-on attack that everyone thought was coming. That's the intelligence failure that Friedman refers to. This created a "ticking bomb" climate in the government that allowed people to think it was legitimate to authorize torture—if that's what it was. Friedman is very clear when he says that we eventually did understand al Qaeda and that therefore the torture program should have ended, both from the moral and from the practical points of view.
More to the point, are we such despicable cowards that we betray everything we stand for as a country in fear of a few morons with boxcutters and exploding shoes? We beat countries that had freaking NUKES, and we’re cowering because of some cave dwelling religious nuts?
This is the kind of thing that I find repulsive. For sure, you've put me in the category of "torture defender," therefore in the category of a "despicable coward who betrayed everything his country stands for." That's exactly what these public expressions of outrage do to people: they make it impossible to hold a reasonable discussion.
As for the "religious nuts" living in caves and attacking us with boxcutters, I suggest you read up about asymmetric warfare. Also, remember that these cave-dwelling religious nuts with boxcutters operated the only attack on the US since the war of 1812—and that was by the British Empire!
I certainly don't question that "humane" methods plus a trained and creative interrogator (like Ali Soufan) can produce quality intelligence and possibly even in less time. I don't question it because I can't. I just don't know anything about it. But it's easy to see that among honest and serious public figures today there's an honest and serious debate that goes beyond the moral posturing evident on these blog comments. So I really don't know enough to take a position on these questions and I don't want to take anyone's opinion at face value either.
My whole point is that these moral questions are easy to decide and pontificate about after the fact (Mexicans say, "Al toro pasado todos somos toreros" [Once the bull has passed, everybody's a bullfighter]) But they're a lot different in the heat of battle and Bush was in the heat of battle, not you or I.
Maybe I can use this Christopher Hitchens article to illustrate my point, which I put up here as a quote from George Friedman: our intelligence services had failed us at 9/11 and we were in a panic to get information. The "ticking bomb" scenario was really ticking in some people's minds and those people were responsible for the country's safety.
Bill: Thanks for writing. I appreciate the effort.
First off, we agree on Bush's approach to gay marriage, stem-cell research, and probably a lot more. He was certainly imposing morality on politics and even science in an unacceptable way. I wasn't thinking about these topics when I wrote my other comments because I'm not really interested in them at all. Insofar as I have thought about them, I tend to think that they are simply divide-and-conquer political strategies. In other words they're not real problems. But that's just me.
Global warming, though, is another kettle of fish. How can you possibly think that the global warming enthusiasts are not imposing morality on science? I'm not really aware of anything Bush himself said on the topic, but it's obvious to me that anyone who opposes today's global warming hysteria is opposing the imposition of morality on science, not the opposite. How can one possibly believe, for example, that they know what the Earth's ideal temperature is and that they have the power to achieve this mythical temperature, if they are not speaking from a moral position cloaked in science? How can one possibly have the moral arrogance to project present tendencies into the future, and bleat about "the children" without the commonsensical caveat that we just don't know what will happen in the future because it hasn't happened yet?
I can't argue economic theory with you but I can't see why "spreading the wealth" is not based on morality. Anyhow, the present crisis seems to have everyone by the balls, not just the Republicans. That's the way crisis are—unexpected and demanding a new approach that discards old dogmas.
The Democrats' culpability or lack of it is not illustrated by your analogy. I agree that the Republicans made the decisions and that they deserve the blame, if that's how it turns out. But the Democrats were far from passive bystanders. How would you know that they had no way of stopping it short of blowing the whistle? That really short-changes congressional power. Of course they could have and if they had tried and failed, then they would not be implicated. But they didn't try. That's the point.
Like I said, your analogy is a false one. A civilian witness to police brutality is not implicated in the least, no matter what he chooses to do about it. The Democrats (according to press accounts) approved the administration's torture program. That's entirely different from being a passive bystander. To extend you analogy, if a civilian witness to police brutality joins in, then he must share the blame. In Mexico, people say, "Peca tanto el que mata la vaca el que la agarra la pata. It means, "The one who kills the cow sins just as much as the one that holds down its leg." It rhymes in Spanish, though. The Democrats were definitely holding down the cow's leg here.
I looked at the link you posted and found it quite compelling, although I don't see any reason to believe that we got everything we needed out of Zubaydah before he was tortured—if that's what it was. Ali Soufan left the scene, after all, and we don't know what information we got out of him later. In fact, the article you link to shows the urgency of the post-9/11 atmosphere graphically and really adds veracity to Friedman's thesis rather than subtract from it.
In any case, the Ali Soufan story is compelling for another reason: our government lost an important resource when he quit. It's really a shameful waste considering the situation we're in.
Hey, ED Kain, Thanks for the shout-out! I appreciate it a lot. (Yes, I do live in Mexico. Come down here anytime and you've got the nation's number one guide at your service for free. I can guide tours on any topic you desire, from the literary/arts scene, to history and culture, to the immigration and drug war "problems" from the other side of the fence, to tequila drinking, etc. I've even done tours on irrigation systems.)
Today, I'm healthy. Tomorrow, who knows?
I know what you mean about how your kids put the fear into you. In your case, it's just the beginning. Sorry to have to break it to you like this. For example, one of my daughters is pregnant with her first child. Now I have to worry about her, plus the glob of cells in her belly that she calls her child, plus my son-in-law. Having kids is exponential worry. It's no joke, either. I'm writing this in the hope that someone will read it and decide that they're not up to it and decline to reproduce.
For what it's worth, I remember the first swine flu scare so this just seems kinda silly to me by now. Would Marx's tragedy/farce dictum fit here?
The Republicans are defending their "enhanced interrogation" program, which of course reflects well on them because they're not whining about the situation they "inherited" after 9/11. If anyone wants to prosecute them, they're right there.
But the fact is that the torture program had bipartisan support. That's what I meant by my comment. Democrats had a chance to dissent and they didn't—until now, when it seems like a good political move to do so.
Stephen: Neither I nor Friedman are justifying torture. My point is to understand why the administration authorized it in the aftermath of 9/11. I think Friedman's analysis is compelling and—while it doesn't justify anything—it made me see the pressure on Bush and to understand that most people in his shoes would have done the same—even if it was just wrong.
As for the "bit player" you mention, the fact that he was a "bit player" is not a counter example to refute Friedman. To the contrary, he's saying that we needed to fill in the gaps of our knowledge of al Qaeda so a "bit player" would help here, even if a "top dog" like KSM would help more. We had to get the information where we could find it. We didn't have the luxury of waiting to get a higher-level al Qaeda militant.
Your comment that there was no need to use torture—if that's what it was—on Zubaydah is just idle speculation in my mind. The people at the scene at the time thought that there was. Hindsight is no good here, especially since we don't know what information he gave us under torture—if that's what it was.
As for KSM, I think the 189 waterboardings is not accurate, but, as for your point that KSM was "clearly" a victim of vengeance, it's also hindsight-fueled speculation. Again, we don't know what information we got out of him to be able to say such a thing as you do with such confidence. Plus, if vengeance really was a motive in his treatment, do you really want to claim victim status for him?
Bob: I don't know who was responsible for our intelligence failure. There is enough blame to spread around, for sure. But the fact of the intelligence failure is what I want to emphasize, no matter who's to blame.
And with this, I want to emphasize that I do not "justify" the torture program—if that's what it was. I just want to explain it in a way that allows me to understand how good people with good motives could do it. In doing this I can't possibly put myself above the authorities who did authorize the program—if that's what it was—much less demand their prosecution.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “The Right to Exist”
Chris:
"How is he demanding Israel compromise its security [ie, by demanding dismantling the settlements and abandoning the West Bank]? It seems to me he’s calling for a Palestinian state and an end to the settlements, or, at the very least, their expansion."
It's because such a thing would give Hamas a foothold at least and possibly more power on the West Bank. This would put Tel Aviv and 75% of the Israeli population within easy Qassam-rocket distance, among other things.
I don't know if this is "true" but I think that most Israelis believe it to be true, which is why I say it's unrealistic.
On “a quote for saturday”
Seth Owen,
I'm getting tired of repeating myself to you. You're 54, a journalist, and an ex military officer. You should know better. But, for the last time, I never said, or even implied, that "it wasn’t about the WMDs." I said that saying that they were the ENTIRE reason for the war was false (your screaming all caps). There were a whole package of justifications besides the WMDs s. If you were so intently focused on the debate at the time, you'll remember Bush's September, 2002 speech to the UNGA. He listed all of these reasons there for the whole world to see.
I thought at the time that the WMD issue was the only one of the above "package" that had any chance in the world of getting UNSC approval, which was why I thought Bush emphasized it, among other reasons. So much for the unilateralist, though.
You say that the government failed to get enough evidence of Saddam's WMD capabilities before the invasion, but went ahead anyway. How much more evidence would you require if the UN, EU nations, and the former Clinton administration agreed that he had the WMDs. I just can't remember anyone seriously questioning this at the time so refresh my memory for me.
You say, "the government manufactured evidence including using torture to elicit false links." I guess that the "links" refers to evidence of Saddam's possession of WMD capabilities. What evidence are you referring to, specifically? This is the kind of thing that would convince me, like I said before, if that means anything to you. I do change my mind when faced with new evidence. I just haven't seen any yet and neither has Sullivan and neither have you. I don't remember anything like manufacturing evidence, least of all through torture. So, again, what are you talking about?
Sullivan changed his mind back in 2004, when just about everyone else was. That was the in-crowd. He was far from the first, though.
Until you prove me wrong, I maintain that Bush did the due diligence you require before asking Congress for authorization to invade Iraq. In that case, yes, you're whining. Commanders are responsible for sending their men to their deaths if necessary. Even I know that. You were an officer so you must know it better than I do. How would you describe a soldier or marine under your command who started complaining about people getting killed in an operation you were responsible for?
You say, "It’s ONLY because of the skill, professionalism and dedication of our military people that, against all the odds, we have salvaged something from this debacle." Again with the all-caps hyperbole! Why don't you try and calm down? I can think of another reason, off the top of my head: Bush himself refused to quit and upped the ante instead. Then he threw all the support he could to the military to accomplish what he was demanding. And, if you look at Iraq today, it's far from the debacle you say it is. In fact, we salvaged a victory, which isn't just "something." We handed al Qaeda a defeat—a major reason why they're still living in caves instead of in some palace.
I'm still waiting for you to cough up some details about the lies Bush told that got him his war resolution and irresponsibly put your life at risk. So far, no good.
And I'm not interested in debating conservative principles in general with you or the prospects of the Republican party. Please stick to the subject, Mister Journalist.
On “The Right to Exist”
I'm going to call you an anti Semite, just to make you feel at home. But not now! I'm going to wait until you're not expecting it, just to show you.
Furthermore, I'm not going to quibble over your one-sided version of history. That's just too much effort for me right now.
What I am going to do is to remind you (if you ever knew about it) of a great analysis by Paul Berman: he said that there are four wars in Israel/Palestine, of which two are legitimate and two are not. The wars for security and a national state are legitimate; the wars of expansion and extermination are not.
You seem to be trying for something like this, without really ever hitting it on the head and in the process you're confusing the issue.
It's easy to see how your post fits into Berman's analysis—expansion=settlements; extermination=Hamas. I pretty much agree with you, you may be surprised to know.
Where we part ways is when you say, "Since Hamas is unlikely to take that step, it may be that in the end, Israel must continue toward peace unilaterally." It's unacceptable and unrealistic to give Hamas a pass while demanding concessions out of Israel, although you do seem to have moderated this sentiment since the last time I read it. It's unacceptable because you're demanding that Israel compromise its security (the legitimate fight, according to Berman) while it allows Hamas to maintain the illegitimate one it promotes against Israel—extermination. It's unrealistic because there is no rational argument in favor of this position anywhere. It rests on just shrugging your shoulders at Hamas—fanatic Islamists will be fanatic Islamists, after all. They'll never change, so just ignore them. It's unrealistic to demand this for a policy that any nation under attack by them can follow.
It doesn't seem impossible in theory to get Hamas to give up its genocidal goals. All it would take is for the UN, the EU, Egypt, Jordan, and so forth to take up this position unequivocally, to match their positions on the illegitimacy of the settlements. That would be more or your "honest broker" stuff. Berman's argument seems unbeatable to me as a justification. Then, Hamas would know that its game is over. It's only when this happens that the war will be over.
Practically, of course, this is not really possible. The above entities are hostage to Arab interests in many ways and here I have no qualms at all about accusing them of anti Semitism.
The above is how I think Obama should proceed. He should announce that he's open to talks with Hamas, but on this topic alone until further progress. Then, he could continue to pressure Israel on the settlements, but this pressure would be balanced with an equal pressure on an equal point (again, the illegitimate war) on Hamas. With Obama's talent and popularity, he may have a shot at it. But he won't even try it, for reasons unknown to me.
On “Taking Leave of Our Senses”
Cascadian:
In Mexico, politics itself is a political crime. Political crimes are prosecuted by lynching—unless it's a really high-profile politician. In that case, he's prosecuted by lynching.
Be careful with that wad of pesos down here! Police will be happy to accompany you to the nearest ATM for the "police tax." By the way, everyday police extortion is becoming less common here than it was years ago. In Mexico City, though, police are like sharks—but there there's an ATM on every corner, so don't worry about it! It's funny, but the colloquial name for "police agent" is mordelón. Morder means "bite" but it's used to refer to the petty bribes you referred to—the cops just take a little bite out of your patrimony. Therefore, cops are called "biters."
"
Jaybird:
You belong down here in Mexico with me. Lynching is practically legal here—you'd have a ball!
"
An op-ed by Tom Friedman today makes some points that I wasn't expecting out of him. I don't read him all that much, but I thought he was some kind of anti-Bush Democrat and a war opponent. His conclusion:
He's talking about releasing the torture memos and then backing down from prosecution of those responsible. But, of course, it applies to Bush much better than to Obama.
I suppose he's still an anti-Bush Democrat, though, because he wastes a lot of space saying that "our people killed detainees." Anyone paying attention would know that this is a red herring (I am not defending anyone who kills detainees). These are abuses and not government programs or policies. They should be (and have been) dealt with through the ordinary legal process—although probably not as much as one would think necessary upon reading Friedman.
But then, curiously in my mind, he says,
And thus supports Bush's WMD justification for the invasion of Iraq. He goes on:
He gives the invasion of Iraq as the most important explanation for our relative safety during the Bush years:
This is exactly what Bush was saying years ago: We have to fight them there so we don't have to fight them here.
And there goes the canard that there was no link between al Qaeda and Iraq—practically the only Bush lied! meme left out there.
On “a quote for saturday”
Seth Owen,
At first I thought you were a kid in high school or something. I thought that you were too young to really remember the 2002-03 debates that led to the invasion of Iraq and were getting your information from Sullivan. Is it really true that you're 54 and a journalist?
You should learn to read more carefully so as not to put words in my mouth. Then, you make me clarify, which is an extra effort for me. I don't like that. An example is, "Saying the war was not about WMD is being revisionist." I didn't say that the war wasn't about the WMDs—how could anyone ever do that? Are you calling me stupid or what? I said that the WMDs weren't the entire rationale for the war, as you tried to show. Plus, do you know what the word "revisionist" means? You're not really using it correctly here—another reason I thought you were a high-school student.
You say, "If [the WMDs] was a mistake then the administration should have admitted it." Of course they have admitted it over and over again. What follows next is an anachronism (another reason why I had thought you were too young to have actually remembered the debate): "Instead the Bush administration assured us it was a “slam dunk” that Iraq had WMD and implied that they had evidence that they couldn’t share with us." All this happened before the invasion. How could they possibly admit their mistake before the invasion? The invasion is the only reason that we now know Saddam didn't have the WMDs. You say, "It appears now they didn’t have real evidence, merely false evidence derived from torture, forgeries and Chalabi." I don't know what you mean by "real evidence." I guess you mean, "evidence that supported the truth." This is just fallacious, as I've explained to you here. Of course whatever evidence they had turned out to be "false" because we never found the WMDs. That's why it's called a "mistake" and not a "lie." You should review the whole UN inspection regime under Blix so that you understand that Bush didn't get all his evidence from "torture, forgeries and Chalabi." Blix also believed Saddam had WMDs, even if he didn't believe that this justified an invasion. This goes for the French, the British, and other allies, as well as the Clinton administration before that.
You say, "I don’t think the theory of “Preventative War” has fared very well." Well,so what? I brought that up to show you that saying that Bush had claimed Saddam posed an "immediate threat" was either a lie or a mistake, depending. If you're a high school student, it's a mistake and you didn't do your research properly. If you're an adult who was following the debate at the time, then at the very least it's negligent ignorance, if not a lie.
Of course the nation's leaders are responsible for using "due care" before sending you to fight in a war. But that doesn't mean that you get to whine about it if you disagree with them once they do. I say they did use "due care" and I suppose that a lot of soldiers and marines agree.
I really don't care what Sullivan's message is. It doesn't mean anything to me that he feels guilty. Too bad for him! He can eat shit for all I care. I just wish he'd quit parading it in front of everyone because, even if I don't read his bullshit anymore, I'm still subject to it through people like you. I stopped reading him years ago, even to disparage him. He's a disgrace. I canceled my subscription to the Atlantic because his presence there degrades that venerable magazine. My point about him—here we go again repeating stuff you didn't read correctly the first time—was that he's an intellectual coward. He backed down from supporting the war, not because any new information came out that falsified Bush's rationale, but because of the reasons you listed (the economic and human costs). These are good reasons to argue that Bush was incompetent, but not to retract his original support. Back in 2004, I was convinced of Bush's incompetence myself, and I wished that the Democrats had argued that point and reaffirmed their original support for the war back in 2004. If they had done so, and had come up with a better plan to win, they might have won the elections—even with a nebish like Kerry. The only Democrat who came out of that with her head high was Hillary. She never backed down, although she did come close. She had my vote for sure, just for that reason alone. Instead, they started saying they had been misled and lied to by Bush. Strange that such a stupid individual could cheat such a light in the intellectual firmament as Kerry. Or not? All of Sullivan's reasons for backing down amount to "if I had known then what I know now..." That's just childish. It's an historical fallacy. It's a complete waste of time to even entertain this line of thought—even in one's personal life. People have to do the best they can with what they have. You can analyze their mistakes if you want to, but you're limited to analyzing the information they had available at the time, not future events. If you can't accept that, then I'm just sorry for you. Sullivan just jumped on the bandwagon, that's all. I think the explanation was peer pressure. It takes a strong personality to stick to one's guns to face ridicule and worse from one's friends and comrades. Just ask Christopher Hitchens. Sullivan just doesn't have these qualities and substitutes moral preening for them.
You ask, "who would have supported the war if they had suspected what it would have really cost?" I can't answer that. Probably a lot of people, though. But this is what ED Kain calls a "bullshit hypothetical." Let me ask you the same question the other way around: "Who would have opposed the war if they had suspected what Saddam would have done if we hadn't invaded?" Do you imagine that the situation in Iraq would have stayed the same somehow forever? Think back to before the invasion. He was a true ticking bomb. Just one element of this bomb to illustrate my point: the Oil for Food scandal. This was the biggest scam in human history (until the Obama stimulus/budget/bailouts, that is). The situation was building up so that the sanctions were doomed. At that point, the money scammed off the UN would have kicked in. All the post-invasion investigations agree that Saddam had WMD programs that could have been reactivated at the right time. That time was coming along fast. Even I was aware that Oil for Food was a massive scam at the time, just from reading the press. I'm sure that Bush knew a lot more than I did. This is a situation where an opponent of the war could say, "If I had known then what I know now, I would have supported the war." This would have been a case where new information came out that changed the original calculus. I can't see anything equivalent in Sullivan's position. You for sure haven't even hinted at anything.
"
Brian:
This is fantastic! I'm kicking myself for not thinking of it myself.
You turn the tables on the "losing our souls" crowd and make it look easy! You must be a pro.
"
Seth Owen:
False: The entire rationale for the war was not based on the WMD threat. There were many others. For example, the twelve or so UNSC resolutions that came after the Gulf War, which Saddam violated; the rampant human rights abuses perpetrated by Saddam in his Republic of Fear; the fact that a megalomaniac was sitting on top of so much oil with WMD capability. There are more. Any one of these would be a legitimate causus belli.
The WMD threat was not a lie. It was a mistake. The difference is apparent for a five-year old, so one would think that Mister Nuance could understand that if he weren't blinded by so much admiration of his own appreciation of nuance. The whole world believed Saddam had the WMDs, not just Bush/Cheney. If this wasn't true, then where was the debate about it at the time? The only reason we know today that he didn't have the WMDs is because we invaded. To this day, no one can really explain what happened, since Saddam isn't talking. I haven't seen any evidence at all to refute this, so point me in the right direction. If true, then I'm switching sides right away. But until then, I maintain the position I took back in 2002-03, which was to support the invasion for a whole "package" of reasons. I have seen nothing in in the interim that contradicts it. This is the main reason why I lost all respect for Sullivan: he waffled on his support because of secondary issues (whatever they were). The reasons he gave to support the war back in 2002-03 are just as legitimate now as they were then.
Even so, the WMD rationale was not based on Saddam's "immediate threat," like you say it was. It was based on the Bush preventative war doctrine, which means that war is legitimate to prevent a threat from becoming immediate. Saying that Bush lied because he was touting an immediate threat that wasn't there is a lie in itself.
How was it that the government sent you to Iraq? I thought that we had an all-volunteer army. If you joined up, then the government owned you no matter what. If you didn't want the government to own you, then why did you join up?
You imply that war should only be the last resort. This is a truism. But in practice, its a judgment call as to where to draw the line simply because we can never exhaust more peaceful methods of resolving a conflict. That's just using logic. These decisions are not made on the basis of some kind of scorecard, where you use up all your diplomatic chips and then must resort to violence. Bush made his call. It was his job to do so. So did the Congress and Andrew Sullivan. They all rejected further diplomacy for one reason or another, even though it was readily at hand: this is exactly what the UN debate was about, not about the existence of WMDs.
I object to you putting yourself and Sullivan in the category of "principled conservatives" and others in the category of incompetent and dishonorable criminals. That's the key element of Sullivan's style. It's self-serving and dishonest to dehumanize one's opponent. It shows a lack of principles and honor.
Just as the "war of last resort" is based on someone's drawing the line where others wouldn't, so the use of waterboarding, slapping, stress positions, etc etc are as well. Nobody is defending abuse or torture. Bush administration defenders are simply drawing the line where you and Sullivan would not. Your black-and-white approach to this whole problem may help you feel like you're on God's side in this fight, but it's useless for analytical purposes. All it does is raise the level of the shouting when the situation demands a political solution. We are under attack by jihadists. We need to adapt to the problem of asymmetric warfare. The interrogation techniques we use are part of this adaptation. We can't adapt if everyone's shouting at everyone to show that he or she is on the side of truth and justice.
On “How to Redefine a Word”
Nobody is "redefining" anything. Get off your high horse once an for all.
How would you define it then? It seems reasonable to define "waterboarding" as "sessions of waterboarding" and not as the individual pours of water, no matter what your opinion is on the legality/efficacy of the practice. Why is this so Orwellian, as ED Kain suggests? By the way, this "Orwellian gambit" is yet another example "outrage" because it implies that anyone who thinks that the practice should be defined as "sessions" and not "pours" belongs in a totalitarian police state and only ED Kain and his friends belong in a free society, etc etc. Defining waterboarding as "sessions" is not an attempt to hide or cover up the practice but only one to make it more precise. Not doing so has the obvious purpose of exaggerating the practice to the unimaginable—i.e., it's politically motivated.
What if we used your criteria for other things in daily life? How many Cokes did you drink today? Well… let's define "drinking a Coke" as individual sips. Then you'd become some kind of Coke pervert if you only drank one Coke.
How about masturbation? Let's define it as meaning individual strokes on the genitals. Then I masturbated about ten thousand times last week, or whatever. Why is this so stupid? Because we just don't talk that way. Why, then, should we talk that way about waterboarding?
On “Taking Leave of Our Senses”
the point of it would be the idea that learning what happened, how, when, and how and whether to prevent it from happening again is more important than punishing those responsible.
So, what's the point nowthat waterboarding, slapping, sleep deprivation and so forth have already been discontinued and in fact were discontinued years ago under the evil Bush/Cheney empire?
Am I the only one who sees a contradiction here? Am I alone here in thinking that the contradiction can be resolved by the fact the the bullshit truth commission advocates are really after the scalps of Bush/Cheney? Is my Aspberger's syndrome so far advanced then that I'm crazy to see an extremely dangerous precedent being set with the bullshit truth commission?
On “From Intolerance to Tolerance to Acceptance”
Fair enough, Mark. But you're going to have to convince my buddy (in the photos). He gets pretty wrought up about these things. I wouldn't want to be in your shoes if he goes ballistic over this minor incident.
"
Mark:
Too bad for you. I now have "celebrated" written down and no fair going back and changing the record. What's the problem? Does it give you the willies to celebrate me, as an Asperger's sufferer?
Here are two photos of one of my friends and me. We're already celebrating, so there's nothing you can do about it. I do have a hard time relating to people, so most of my friends are hummingbirds. Here we are at the beginning of the celebrations.
On “Taking Leave of Our Senses”
Mark: Maybe you'll then answer the question, since ED Kain declines: "Why in the world would we ever need an ad hoc bullshit truth commission when we already have adequate laws and mechanisms in place to both investigate and prosecute federal crimes?"
I'm aware that Robespierre-style revolutionary tribunals are not being proposed. Who would ever be so stupid as to do that anyway? I said that they will end up that way, not that anyone had been so stupid as to propose them. Keep in mind that even Robespierre himself never proposed them before they "just happened."
On “From Intolerance to Tolerance to Acceptance”
Asperger’s, and various other disorders, including ADHD, are in fact things that society should learn to celebrate.
I'm proud to say that I was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome over at the Culture 11 blog sometime last fall. In fact, there was a consensus on that particular comment thread confirming the diagnosis. I'd never heard of it before.
So, needless to say, I've very happy to read that me and my ilk are to be celebrated by society. When do the festivities begin? I'll accept any legal tender and most illegal tender as well. Let me know and ... let's party!
On “Taking Leave of Our Senses”
I wasn't suggesting that Clinton should be immune somehow. I was just explaining why there will be no truth commission or federal prosecutions: Democrats don't want to end up being prosecuted, even as they pontificate about "losing our soul", etc etc.
Where did you get the idea that a bullshit truth commission should precede federal prosecutions? What happened to grand juries? Why in the world would we ever need an ad hoc bullshit truth commission when we already have adequate laws and mechanisms in place to both investigate and prosecute federal crimes? Ad hoc tribunals could only end with some Robespierre/Sullivan presiding over revolutionary tribunals/truth commission and the rest of us in the shitcan. What's wrong with you?
So now it looks like you agree with Jaybird. Can't you then see that this truth commission atmosphere would be unstoppable? And that's assuming good faith. But good faith is the last thing I'd ever assume in politics or national security. We do have enemies, right? And we'd just be handing them our heads on a platter if we go ahead with this.
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I can't stand reading Sullivan (because he's an outrage) whore) so could you explain why a truth commission is so necessary? If laws were broken, why isn't it enough for you for that federal prosecutors just do their jobs?
Douthat may have been referring to the fact that Democrats would end up prosecuting themselves if they go ahead with prosecutions—let alone this bullshit truth commission. Why would prosecutions, or the bullshit truth commission, be limited to the Bush administration? According to Scheurer, the Clinton administration was worse. Don't you imagine that he and Hillary are pulling a lot of strings backstage right about now?
Your quote from Andre Tocme (who he?) is an example of what I can't stand. He defines "peace and justice" so as to fit his own philosophy (which is respectable, of course) and leaves anyone else hanging out there to defend injustice and war.
That's not the way things work. People can oppose his pacifism and still be civilized and support peace and justice.
I think Jaybird has a good point, which you dismiss out of hand. His hypothetical may be bullshit to you today, but in the future things change. That's why it's called "the future." How do you know that "Geneva Conventtion" fanatics will not make "collateral damage" their next jihad and then try and put Obama's head on the block?
No one has even accused the Bush administration of wholesale violations of enemy combatants' rights (whatever they may be), of genocide, of running concentration camps, or using slave labor. He is accused on the basis of decisions he made as CIC and as president to fulfill his duty. People can judge him as they want to but to mount a political show trial, like Sullivan wants, would set a very dangerous precedent. That's what Jaybird is talking about and it's an important consideration for anyone who wants the nation to survive.
On “stating the obvious”
Freeman:
Maybe, maybe not. I was referring to "topping it" with a more illuminating analysis, which you clearly haven't done. In fact, you added more examples that support it by showing that an impossible situation will lead people to violate the code of civilization, or whatever, like the Japanese did back then.
Thanks for trying, though.
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Grendel72:
would those intelligence agencies who “failed us” be the ones who gave the Bush administration memos with titles like “Bin Laden Determined to Attack US”? The ones that detailed plans to use commercial airlines? Those intelligence agencies?
Yes, they would be.
Your point isn't all that clear, though. So, they gave Bush a memo? What about it?
This, again, is a common "hindsight" error in thinking about history. There was a prescient memo; Bush ignored it (if he did, which I don't know); therefore Bush failed. It's an error because there was so much data to analyze and no one could say with certainty before 9/11 what data was significant, although some people were prescient about al Qaeda. Maybe the truth is always just staring us in the face but we can't see it until it hits us over the head.
But my point stands: after 9/11 the government didn't know enough about al Qaeda to act so to prevent the follow-on attack that everyone thought was coming. That's the intelligence failure that Friedman refers to. This created a "ticking bomb" climate in the government that allowed people to think it was legitimate to authorize torture—if that's what it was. Friedman is very clear when he says that we eventually did understand al Qaeda and that therefore the torture program should have ended, both from the moral and from the practical points of view.
More to the point, are we such despicable cowards that we betray everything we stand for as a country in fear of a few morons with boxcutters and exploding shoes? We beat countries that had freaking NUKES, and we’re cowering because of some cave dwelling religious nuts?
This is the kind of thing that I find repulsive. For sure, you've put me in the category of "torture defender," therefore in the category of a "despicable coward who betrayed everything his country stands for." That's exactly what these public expressions of outrage do to people: they make it impossible to hold a reasonable discussion.
As for the "religious nuts" living in caves and attacking us with boxcutters, I suggest you read up about asymmetric warfare. Also, remember that these cave-dwelling religious nuts with boxcutters operated the only attack on the US since the war of 1812—and that was by the British Empire!
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Bill:
I certainly don't question that "humane" methods plus a trained and creative interrogator (like Ali Soufan) can produce quality intelligence and possibly even in less time. I don't question it because I can't. I just don't know anything about it. But it's easy to see that among honest and serious public figures today there's an honest and serious debate that goes beyond the moral posturing evident on these blog comments. So I really don't know enough to take a position on these questions and I don't want to take anyone's opinion at face value either.
My whole point is that these moral questions are easy to decide and pontificate about after the fact (Mexicans say, "Al toro pasado todos somos toreros" [Once the bull has passed, everybody's a bullfighter]) But they're a lot different in the heat of battle and Bush was in the heat of battle, not you or I.
Maybe I can use this Christopher Hitchens article to illustrate my point, which I put up here as a quote from George Friedman: our intelligence services had failed us at 9/11 and we were in a panic to get information. The "ticking bomb" scenario was really ticking in some people's minds and those people were responsible for the country's safety.
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Bill: Thanks for writing. I appreciate the effort.
First off, we agree on Bush's approach to gay marriage, stem-cell research, and probably a lot more. He was certainly imposing morality on politics and even science in an unacceptable way. I wasn't thinking about these topics when I wrote my other comments because I'm not really interested in them at all. Insofar as I have thought about them, I tend to think that they are simply divide-and-conquer political strategies. In other words they're not real problems. But that's just me.
Global warming, though, is another kettle of fish. How can you possibly think that the global warming enthusiasts are not imposing morality on science? I'm not really aware of anything Bush himself said on the topic, but it's obvious to me that anyone who opposes today's global warming hysteria is opposing the imposition of morality on science, not the opposite. How can one possibly believe, for example, that they know what the Earth's ideal temperature is and that they have the power to achieve this mythical temperature, if they are not speaking from a moral position cloaked in science? How can one possibly have the moral arrogance to project present tendencies into the future, and bleat about "the children" without the commonsensical caveat that we just don't know what will happen in the future because it hasn't happened yet?
I can't argue economic theory with you but I can't see why "spreading the wealth" is not based on morality. Anyhow, the present crisis seems to have everyone by the balls, not just the Republicans. That's the way crisis are—unexpected and demanding a new approach that discards old dogmas.
The Democrats' culpability or lack of it is not illustrated by your analogy. I agree that the Republicans made the decisions and that they deserve the blame, if that's how it turns out. But the Democrats were far from passive bystanders. How would you know that they had no way of stopping it short of blowing the whistle? That really short-changes congressional power. Of course they could have and if they had tried and failed, then they would not be implicated. But they didn't try. That's the point.
Like I said, your analogy is a false one. A civilian witness to police brutality is not implicated in the least, no matter what he chooses to do about it. The Democrats (according to press accounts) approved the administration's torture program. That's entirely different from being a passive bystander. To extend you analogy, if a civilian witness to police brutality joins in, then he must share the blame. In Mexico, people say, "Peca tanto el que mata la vaca el que la agarra la pata. It means, "The one who kills the cow sins just as much as the one that holds down its leg." It rhymes in Spanish, though. The Democrats were definitely holding down the cow's leg here.
I looked at the link you posted and found it quite compelling, although I don't see any reason to believe that we got everything we needed out of Zubaydah before he was tortured—if that's what it was. Ali Soufan left the scene, after all, and we don't know what information we got out of him later. In fact, the article you link to shows the urgency of the post-9/11 atmosphere graphically and really adds veracity to Friedman's thesis rather than subtract from it.
In any case, the Ali Soufan story is compelling for another reason: our government lost an important resource when he quit. It's really a shameful waste considering the situation we're in.
On “now that i have a kid…”
Hey, ED Kain, Thanks for the shout-out! I appreciate it a lot. (Yes, I do live in Mexico. Come down here anytime and you've got the nation's number one guide at your service for free. I can guide tours on any topic you desire, from the literary/arts scene, to history and culture, to the immigration and drug war "problems" from the other side of the fence, to tequila drinking, etc. I've even done tours on irrigation systems.)
Today, I'm healthy. Tomorrow, who knows?
I know what you mean about how your kids put the fear into you. In your case, it's just the beginning. Sorry to have to break it to you like this. For example, one of my daughters is pregnant with her first child. Now I have to worry about her, plus the glob of cells in her belly that she calls her child, plus my son-in-law. Having kids is exponential worry. It's no joke, either. I'm writing this in the hope that someone will read it and decide that they're not up to it and decline to reproduce.
For what it's worth, I remember the first swine flu scare so this just seems kinda silly to me by now. Would Marx's tragedy/farce dictum fit here?
On “stating the obvious”
Bill: I think I could rebut those contentions
I think you can't.
The Republicans are defending their "enhanced interrogation" program, which of course reflects well on them because they're not whining about the situation they "inherited" after 9/11. If anyone wants to prosecute them, they're right there.
But the fact is that the torture program had bipartisan support. That's what I meant by my comment. Democrats had a chance to dissent and they didn't—until now, when it seems like a good political move to do so.
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Stephen: Neither I nor Friedman are justifying torture. My point is to understand why the administration authorized it in the aftermath of 9/11. I think Friedman's analysis is compelling and—while it doesn't justify anything—it made me see the pressure on Bush and to understand that most people in his shoes would have done the same—even if it was just wrong.
As for the "bit player" you mention, the fact that he was a "bit player" is not a counter example to refute Friedman. To the contrary, he's saying that we needed to fill in the gaps of our knowledge of al Qaeda so a "bit player" would help here, even if a "top dog" like KSM would help more. We had to get the information where we could find it. We didn't have the luxury of waiting to get a higher-level al Qaeda militant.
Your comment that there was no need to use torture—if that's what it was—on Zubaydah is just idle speculation in my mind. The people at the scene at the time thought that there was. Hindsight is no good here, especially since we don't know what information he gave us under torture—if that's what it was.
As for KSM, I think the 189 waterboardings is not accurate, but, as for your point that KSM was "clearly" a victim of vengeance, it's also hindsight-fueled speculation. Again, we don't know what information we got out of him to be able to say such a thing as you do with such confidence. Plus, if vengeance really was a motive in his treatment, do you really want to claim victim status for him?
On “all the president’s spies”
Bob: I don't know who was responsible for our intelligence failure. There is enough blame to spread around, for sure. But the fact of the intelligence failure is what I want to emphasize, no matter who's to blame.
And with this, I want to emphasize that I do not "justify" the torture program—if that's what it was. I just want to explain it in a way that allows me to understand how good people with good motives could do it. In doing this I can't possibly put myself above the authorities who did authorize the program—if that's what it was—much less demand their prosecution.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.