Morris Davis, former chief prosecutor for the military commissions at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, op-eds for the New York Times:
My policy as the chief prosecutor for the military commissions at Guantánamo was that evidence derived through waterboarding was off limits. That should still be our policy. To do otherwise is not only an affront to American justice, it will potentially put prosecutors at risk for using illegally obtained evidence.
Unfortunately, I was overruled on the question, and I resigned my position to call attention to the issue — efforts that were hampered by my being placed under a gag rule and ordered not to testify at a Senate hearing. While some high-level military and civilian officials have rightly expressed indignation on the issue, the current state can be described generally as indifference and inaction.
The general indifference and inaction on the question of whether torture is acceptable is starkly contrasted with the frenzied flapping of those who are spreading FUD about how the extension of the Protect America Act has expired:
“Because Congress failed to act, it will be harder for our government to keep you safe from terrorist attack,” Bush said.
Bush had offered to delay his Africa trip if House Democratic leaders would stay to enact “a good bill.”
Instead, he said, “House leaders chose politics over protecting the country — and our country is at greater risk as a result.”
The fearful people at the Heritage Foundation are so convinced by Bush’s arguments for warrantless wiretapping and retroactive immunity for telcos and ISPs against legal action for invasion of privacy, that they have added this clock to their front page:
Chet points out that clocks like this will be counterproductive: the longer it runs without anything happening, the more obvious it is that such retrogressive laws are in fact unnecessary for ensuring the safety of the citizenry, no matter how useful they may be to the government otherwise. (Chet also pointed out that they misspelled “extension” in their graphic above. This has now been corrected, but they seem to have reset the clock when they did so, as the countdown was only 2 hours without warrantless wiretapping when I just stopped by)
The dimming of the light of the bastion of liberty flickers on apace.
And this is the same Moe Davis that badmouthed David Hicks every chance he had, prior to a court hearing?
Tigtog:
It was nice of you to put up this topic but I’m puzzled that seem to expect debate on it.
Fascism is still Fascism. Dictatorship is still dictatorship. The abuse of power by a king is still abuse of power. Torture is still torture. Show trials are still show trials. The unintended recruiting of previously good people to the terrorists’ cause remains so. Trampling all over the U.S. Constitution, the Geneva and Hague Conventions, the U.N. declaration of Human Rights and the Holy Bible continues. The American people are still humiliated by Mr Air-Guard-AWOL and his evil gang of gangplank-dodgers. Good American soldiers are still dying every day because of blunders by The Usurper.
Nothing has changed – other that an announcement of yet more evil – so what is there to discuss?
I must admit to a certain curiosity, Graham. Once upon a time we had regular commentors who would have at least defended the warrantless wiretapping, and I was wondering whether any would make the effort this time around.
I was also wondering whether anyone would make the pickup that Chade did.
Re Chade on Morris Davis’ comments and the new found spine of the Democrats, I feel ‘regime change’ in the air. The regime change is not just the end of the Bush Presidency, but a populist upsurge in the Democrat nominations that must by now be sending a message to elite opinion in the US.
I don’t mean to suggest that either BO or La Clinton will be setting up tumbrils-far from it. But the trick of successful rule, is to know when to give way on issues in a manner which doesn’t disturb or discombobulate the people who really matter, and which leaves the ‘fundamentals’ intact.
In my view, a sufficient number of ‘grownups’ in the US have twigged that US influence abroad, and their capacity to wield reliable influence ‘at home’ with the people who who actually elect governments, is now on the table, in a way not seen for over a generation. Minions like Mr Davis, being ‘career’ politicians as opposed to the independent contractors that chance their arm formally every two years or so, are expert at sniffing the wind.
There will be inestimable benefits to millions of people all over the wolrd, once the self proclaimed leading state in the liberal order, formally renounces torture as a judicial policy instrument at home, even if it continues as an ‘off the books’ police method in unruly and ungovernable parts of the world, where the means and methods of establishing pax Americana, is not usually written up in the New York Times.
Torture and warrantless eavesdropping, though both unquestionably bad things, remain qualitatively different things. TT, you’re conflating the act of strapping someone on a board and gagging them with water, with someone secretly reading email without a warrant. Though I’d prefer neither to happen to me—the empathetic litmus test—I have quite strong views about which would be worse. In the event I’m subjected to either, the question of whether my torturer/eavesdropper has a legal warrant is unlikely to be any consolation to me, but here’s the difference: I would be prepared to agree now or any time that eavesdropping, granted a warrant, is a valid part of criminal investigation in a way torture will never be.
In fact, it’s indicative of just how bad torture-as-policy has been, that it’s now trotted out in any argument to signpost any loss-of-liberty, no matter how insignificant or routine.
There *does* exist an absolute right not to be tortured, but an absolute right to not having plaintext email read as part of investigations? No.
As to amused’s amoral argument; that it’ll be good when the US renounces legal torture even if they do it on the hush: tell it to any victim of the School of the Americas, Ft. Benning, GA.
My intent was to distinctly not conflate them by referring separately to rights and liberties in the post title.
Yes, and you “starkly contrast” the indifference of the Heritage Foundation on torture to their squealing about wiretaps (which is funny, I admit). You don’t provide any argument against warrantless wiretapping itself, though. Is it bad just because the Heritage lot want it?
I don’t think there does exist an a-priori argument against warrantless eavesdropping—or to absolute communications privacy in the abstract—and certainly there isn’t any counter-argument nearly as strong as that against torture.
“the more obvious it is that such retrogressive laws are in fact unnecessary for ensuring the safety of the citizenry…”
You use the words ‘obvious’ and ‘in fact’. So I’m curious how you know these things with such certainty.
The issues of the post are indeed troubling and problematic, and ought to be discussed and argued with full seriousness. I’m not going to sit here and defend or condone the use of torture, so don’t get your hopes up for an easy time. On the other hand, I find that attitudes like the one here make the same mistake as the economist on the desert island who said, “Step one, assume a can opener.”
You assume the ongoing untroubled operation of an enormous, if imperfect, global system of stability and security which you (I’m sorry to put it this way) have done comparatively little to establish or maintain, and which you therefore, I would venture, understand somewhat imperfectly. You seem to think that you can remove the parts of the world that you don’t like, and that the parts you do like will remain exactly the same way you like them despite the change. That’s a fairly common human tendency, so I’m not taking a superior attitude, because I do it too in all sorts of ways, I’m just pointing it out. (And please, in the replies to this, let’s skip the jokes about that overdone monologue in A Few Good Men.)
So let’s look at a plausible hypothetical world where your legitimate concerns are addressed. Cruel and illegal interrogation methods, rightly condemned as unethical and illegitimate, are ended; Guantanamo is emptied, its inmates dispersed throughout the world; questionable surveillance techniques are stopped. Puppies and kittens frolic, and daisies sprout in the land of Mordor, otherwise known as Crawford, Texas.
Six months later, a dozen jumbo passenger jets from Europe explode in mid-air over the Atlantic. A dozen more explode over the Pacific. International air travel is essentially halted. A week later, low-grade radioactive devices detonate inside shipping containers in Long Beach and Seattle, irradiating and disabling the two largest commercial ports on the Pacific coast. An oil refinery outside of Houston is massively bombed, disabling energy distribution throughout the southeast and covering much of the Gulf region with massively toxic smoke.
The United States, in response, withdraws much of its armed forces from Europe and Asia, as troops are needed for the conscripted clean-up the radiation on the west coast. Thousands of young men and women die of radiation sickness in the process, many more than have died in Iraq. The global economy reels in wildly unexpected ways. In Australia, the distracted US Navy can no longer guarantee the safety of your shipping lanes. Since China is now your only reliable trading partner, the Chinese decide to, um, re-negotiate the price of Australian commodities, to considerable advantage.
It’s all rather unlikely but it’s certainly possible. (Or do you know that it ‘in fact’ isn’t?) I’m not trying to defend the present (admittedly bad) situation, and I certainly don’t have good answers; I’m merely pointing out the seriousness of the stakes and some of the hidden costs. If you want to debate these things, and I believe people should, then you should at least own up to the totality of the situation, and not cherry-pick your ethical position. I’ll take this sort of moralizing a lot more seriously when you get your hands a little dirty; Lord knows, there’s more than enough dirt to go around.
Step one – assume armageddon.
Moralizing about the unacceptability of torture. Lordy, where does it end?
Liam,
You misunderstand my point.
My bad.
I was not condoning the outsourcing of torture or its use as a method for control anywhere at all, ever. My point was that while liberal organs like the NY Times are finally indignant about its use ‘at home’ and worried about the effect that the publicity about it all is having for US foreign policy, for people far away, in places about which the NY Times neither knows nor cares to find out about, it will be ‘torture’ as usual.
j_p_z’s argument is an almost perfect illustration of the way the bully and the torurer always tries to make those who are critical, complicit in the obscentity, and when the critical indignantly reject the methods and the assumptions, then the j_p_zs of this world, accuse them of hypocrisy at best, and moral frivolity at worst, until the act of refusing to countence such methods in one’s name becomes the greatest obscenity of all.
This is an argument that tries to make the victim, and by extension, all potential victims, the authors of their own misfortune, because the latter deny the right of the powerful to ‘act in their name’ in this way, while apparently accepting the ‘protection’ that such methods produce and the former, well, if they didn’t do anything to offend us, they wouldn’t be victims, right?.
This is the argument of the street tough, the protection racketeer and the standover merchant.
You all know the drill-’All you liberal luvies/lefties/bleeding hearts/traitors/latte sipping etc etc just refuse to accept the sacrifices others make, in order for you to be rich, comfortable and safe. Why do you hate your fellow citizens so much? Why do you hate your country so much? Why do you reject western civilisation so much, that you refuse to torture in order to preserve its glories?’
We all know the drill. We’ve heard it all before. The point now, is to stop it, both here (in western civilisation land as it were)-and abroad, even in those places where the benighted and unenlightened refuse to accept our plans for their future.
Amused, no.
JPZ’s point is to try to get rid of the libertarian’s fantasy from the discussion of abstract rights: that the State acts only self-interestedly, where its interests always conflict with the interests of individuals.
It’s not like that, and you’re doing his argument a disservice.
“Once upon a time we had regular commentors who would have at least defended the warrantless wiretapping, and I was wondering whether any would make the effort this time around.”
OK, I’ll step up to the plate.
As I understand it, FISA does not permit warrantless wiretapping of communications between a “foreign power” (which includes terrorist groups) and a person on US soil.
So, for example, Ayman al-Zawahiri contacts someone in the US and the NSA goes … oh, gee, we can’t listen to/read this right now, we have to go to a federal judge, with all the necessary paperwork, and show that we have “probable cause” that the recipient of the communications is a terrorist.
I’m glad you are all so fastidious about privacy rights, but this situation is, frankly, insane. I’ll bet no socialist or social democratic government in any other part of the world has imposed such ridiculous constraints on their intelligence services.
The ‘Protect America Act’ rectified this problem, but it has now expired, and Congress needs to get off its backside and plug this legislative hole.
Oh, just in case you’re wondering, I don’t support or condone torture.
“So, for example, Ayman al-Zawahiri contacts someone in the US”
Which “someone” though, and why were they under surveillance? Surely anyone in contact with Al-Zawahiri would be pretty easy to get a surveillance warrant for.
Liam — that’s a brave stab you’re making there, but personally I wouldn’t even go so far myself as to claim I have either an argument or a point yet, strictly speaking. I just think the whole situation (as described in the post at least) suffers from an insufficiently developed and blurry vocabulary (as you yourself helped illuminate), which makes it hard to discuss or understand beyond the language of outrage. Outrage does indeed have its useful place here, but it hasn’t quite solved the problem on its own, I don’t think, yet. All the angry marches in the world against the Iraq war didn’t stop it from happening. A properly-built opposition, with feasible policy instruments at its disposal, might have done so.
wbb, amused — can’t say I’m surprised by your responses, but I’m not annoyed either. Look, I share your outright rejection of torture, and like I say, absolute moral outrage is a not inconsiderable weapon in these cases. It played a much stronger part in the struggle against apartheid than I would have predicted, for instance. But if you really think the present situation can’t be better unpacked and anatomized, that all we can honorably do is splutter ‘BAD! BAD!’, then it won’t be any better understood, and I don’t think that will advance the cause of right. Polio wasn’t ended by marching and yelling ‘BAD!’ at the virus, it was ended through careful study. If you don’t want to consider the full how and why of what is happening, that’s your prerogative, and as I say, it’s an honorable one in this case. But I believe that thinking out loud, and trying to game out motives and possibilities, is important to a credible and functioning opposition.
In my hypothetical, its a mobile phone number or email address based in Pakistan, belonging to al-Zawahiri, and he dials up someone in the States. Assume that “someone” is not previously known to the US authorities.
Should the NSA be able to listen to that conversation, immediately?
Well, apparently, they can’t, at the moment. As I understand it, they have to go off to the Justice Department, get lawyers involved, do up the paperwork, and troop off to see a FISA judge, hoping that what they’ve got meets the standard of “probable cause” that will convince the judge to issue a warrant.
Or they can just act illegally, as the NSA did in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.
Either way, its not an ideal situation.
Paulus you are either lying or too stupid/insane to try and bullshit us here. The NSA can tap from the moment they get a hit and then apply to the FISA approved courts up to 72 hours later. Mike McConnell – who comes from a long line of Bush Elmer Fudds with shotguns – has already said what this is all about now – its the immunity for ISPs to institute STASI style spying in defiance of the US constitution stupid. Specifically the forth amendment. So what are you – a liar? Or a criminally insane imbecile?
Bushco lied people into a war – the supreme crime – he then authorized torture and now this. ( Which started BEFORE 9-11!) Three strikes and yr out. He deserves to spend the rest of his life in jail. If he’s lucky.
BTW – Just obeying orders is no excuse.
One simple question: what is the law for wiretapping in Australia? When do police and others need a warrant from a judge to tap someone’s phone / read someone’s email / etc., and when does one not?
I’d assume the cops have greater power over here than there.
Everyone:
I wasn’t going to comment here again – but here goes.
Torture never delivers reliable, useful, timely intelligence – no matter what the supposed experts say. It consistently, reliably delivers thrills to perverts and bullies. In marked contrast: successful, experienced, professional intelligence wallahs have a swag of techniques and tricks that do deliver useful information that can be processed into intelligence – intelligence upon which a commander can depend.
Eavesdropping is a different matter. Why should the U.S. government place itself in a worse position than that of any major private corporation? There are plenty of quite legitimate covert ways in which useful information can be gathered, sorted and sifted without it looking like a bunch of bumbling loonies playing burglars and peeping-toms, all hell-bent on destroying liberty, the Bill of Rights and Mum’s apple-pie. No surprise that of the two, the Bush crowd chose the sillier, grossly offensive path.
The 8 years of Bush and his fellow culprits is a monsterous aberration in American history; one that has wrecked the U.S. economy, enfeebled its military strength and brought world-wide scorn and condemnation …. one way or another, it will pass.
OK, ratty, yes there are “emergency provisions” under the original FISA legislation. I was remiss for not mentioning them. If the NSA wanted to use them in my little hypothetical, they would (a) go to the US Attorney-General to obtain a determination that “emergency employment of electronic surveillance” is necessary, (b) immediately advise a FISA judge that this determination has been made, then (c) turn up before that judge within 72 hours to argue their “probable cause” case for the surveillance.
Some might wonder how all this bureaucratic procedure, set up in 1979, is suited to the modern world of instant emailing and mobile phones.
But why am I bothering to debate this with you, ratty? Surely amendment of the FISA is the least of your concerns. Like Naomi Wolf, you are no doubt expecting the Bushitlercheney warmongerocracy to stage another false terrorist incident in the next few months (just like they staged 9/11), then impose martial law, permanent dictatorship, and eliminate everyone who disagrees with them.
You know, if that’s what it takes to get rid of people like you, it would almost be worth it.
They’re already listening to your conversations, Professor Rat. And they’re putting you on speakerphone, smoking confiscated weed in the corner meeting room and giggling themselves nuts.
AFAIK, before the Australian “they” do it, they have to get a warrant from a magistrate (the usual case for State plod and AFP), an Attorney-General, or failing that, a temporary warrant from the Director-General of ASIO.
Quite, Graham Bell. Any given employer, or school, or university, who provides their workers/students with a telephone and the Internet already has unaccountable surveillance powers our secret agents would bust their collective left nut for. The privacy fetish on display here—OMG, they tortured, we mustn’t let them do anything under any circumstances whatever—is a libertarian one that privileges even the slightest display of State power, giving every other kind of tyranny a free (ahem) pass.
Sigh, I need so much work on my blog-jitsu fighting moves. Can I steal Liam’s first para, and cut-n-paste it over the last two paras of my #19? Oh, and sign me up THIS INSTANT for Remedial StouchGym (TM).
Yes, no matter how many acres of processing power and semi-sentient programs sniffing for key words that they stuff underneath Fort Meade, Cheltenham and wherever else Echelon roosts these days, they’ll never have enough people to filter out the signal to noise ratio of a billion calls and emails an hour.
I trust the authorities to only go after identified targets, not because I think they’ll do right thing but simply because they don’t have enough people. And if they do, why then they’ll have to be surveilled too. And then who surveils the surveillors of the surveillors.
After all, we’re talking about public servants who need to report tangible results for their annual performance reviews. They really only have the time and energy to go after targets identified at inter-agency cover-your-arse meetings.
Meanwhile the really smart lateral dudes that the NSA and co should be hiring are joining asymmetrical cybergangs like the Russian Business Network that have some real incentive-based schemes in place. I bet you no one in Echelon could mount a straight-faced business case for closely studying perabytes of porn to look for stegnographically encoded messages.
As for torture, yes there’s very little historical proof that it delivers any real practical benefits in an intelligence/security/war situation. And during a drought, should we really be merrily waterboarding away anyway?
Also, the whole point of Western civilisation is that we were supposed to grow out of this shit.
The question to ask anyone advocating torture as a state policy is not whether they’d undergo the torture themselves but rather whether they’d carry out the torture personally. If they answer yes, then they’re unintelligent at the very least and an authoritarian sadist at most. If they answer no, then they lack the courage of their convictions and so should not be trusted with our security.
Fork that one, Morton.
Like Dr Haneef?
“Like Dr Haneef?”
‘zactly. An easy and obvious target that surfaced during emails round the USAUKCANZUS security bureaucracy when they frantically needed a trophy for their ever demanding political masters.
Then of course smoothing over the fuckup became a career-advancing or limiting move in its own right, depending on what emails you sent, didn’t send or kept and what you said that got minuted at hastily convened extraordinary and paranoid committee meetings. “All mobile phones switched off and in this tray please. You can collect them outside afterwards”
Meanwhile, while hundreds of law enforcement, security and intelligence folks were dealing with that crap, what the fuck did they miss elsewhere?
Liam [20]
I respect your point of view, however, kindly read Nabokov [post 22] there is wisdom in what he says.
A very big problem in such 21st Century systems is the enlisting, training and retaining of dependable, reasonably intelligent operators and analysts. We’ve all seen what happens when organizations hire weirdos, dumbos, raving loonies, religious fanatics, sadists, drunks-&-druggies and the relatives of George Bush enthusiasts.
As for private companies having an extraordinary amount of personal information about you, information that, IF NECESSARY, could be collated to build up a virtual clone of you – have you never applied for a loan, used plastic to buy groceries, been employed or taken a holiday?
I’m not sure what you’re trying to get at GB. That private-sector hyper-surveillance is out of control? That the public-sector trenchcoat folks aren’t winning any Mensa invitations? Let’s all be trite and outraged together—OMG THEY’RE TORTURING! Now what was that about the information-availability dilemma and balancing convenience and freedom? I don’t think I’ll find the answer in my copy of 1984.
Rights to information privacy and rights against victimisation are orthagonal to each other, at the best of times. Doing it as a thought experiment, it’s perfectly possible to imagine ruthlessly repressive societies where personal/individual privacy is inviolable, and perfectly civilised, peaceful, free societies where everyone knows everybody else’s business.
I’m arguing, as is Paulus I suspect, that opposition to the activity of intelligence agencies has become nothing more than habit, on the traditional Left and libertarian Rights. I know in the bad old days of 2002-2003 I used to argue that the best response to terrorism was strengthened intelligence gathering and more policework, not a stupid-arse war in Iraq; I hope I’m not stealing Jack Strocchi’s schtick by pointing out my consistency.
…
It’s struck me, by the way, that the second half of the post is about the US Congress’s *refusal* to continue wiretap powers. They’re sticking up for personal privacy rights in the face of threats to them So the assertion, TT, that:
Is not just wrong, but perfectly wrong.
A worthwhile profile of Mike McConnell, Director of National Intelligence, which highlights, for me, a number of extraordinary lies, particularly those in relation to FISA.
As Marx said, “It’s all very well to understand the world. the point is to change it.”
Intelligence gathering, pure and simple, is simply an attempt to understand the world. (However, my reading of many intelligence files from several countries has indicated to me that there is an inverse relationship between the volume of information and the level of understanding.)
But what do these suthorities attempt to do with this info? Why, of course, they attempt to change the world. Do we like the way they intend to do this? Well, yes and no. Eavesdropping on violent jihadists seems to be a good use of surveillance.
But is this as far as it goes? I fear not.
This leviathan persona of the Bush administration finds its apogee in the ability of Bush unilaterally to declare martial law across the entire United States. Thus he is able to take personal command of all armed forces, including state National Guards, on his own authority. Since October 2006 Bush has been the first and only US president to have that legal right.
And of course eavesdropping plays an important part in this bigger and more dangerous story, because such information, protected of course by the catch-all “national security” immunity, can serve as the trigger for the end of constitutional government in the US.
It may be argued that Bush would never dare to try such a stunt. Well, maybe. But why take the power if there is no intention to use it?
And how will state National Guards respond if Bush calls them into action against domestic enemies real or imagined in their midst? I hope we never find out.
Let’s play spot the fallacy! Katz, your coup need not have anything to do with intelligence—it could be just as easily triggered by (say, as military coups in other countries are) an election.
This is exactly the kind of hyperbole I’m saying has become routine. Wiretapping rules that take into account the workings of the Internet are *not* going to lead to summary military dictatorship. Not by any reasonable stretch of even the most paranoid imagination.
That’s a good game, Liam.
I’ve got another game.
Let’s play spot the weasel term.
[Hint: It's "need not".]
And of course you are half right when you say that this material need not exist. But I reply that it helps.
Thus, when the loyalty of your forces is questionable, the more credible the information upon which they have been ordered to act, the more dependable is the loyalty. Intelligence serves that function of counterfeiting credibility. It’s all a metter of degree, not black or white.
That is precisely the function of the dodgy “intelligence” that served as the pretext for invasion of Iraq in both the US and in the UK.
I’m surprised you have forgotten.
*Is* the loyalty of US forces questionable? I’d have picked them as one of the most thoroughly professional and non-partisan militaries on the planet. But if you see a coup coming, do let the rest of us know. I’ll put some money on the MS13 to come out on top of the resistance.
Now let’s play the game “I don’t think that means what you think it means”. The White House used wrong intelligence to justify a war they had already decided to wage. Is that an argument against further intelligence collection?
No.
And I think that you may perceive from a rereading of my first post on this thread that I believe intelligence gathering, properly done, to be a good thing. (The keyword is “jihadist”.)
Your description of “intelligence” as a pretext for a predetermined action supports my argument that the Administration felt it needed to lie (that is to “sex up” some genuine intelligence) to justify the action it took against Iraq.
Why should that be different from any “sexing up” deemed necessary to justify declaration of domestic martial law?
That is less true for the State Guards than it is for the professional, full-time military.
The loyalty of the State Guards to the person of the President would be more dubious than that of the professional military.
Katz I’m still struggling to see any justification for your argument that increased wiretap powers make a Presidential/military coup any more likely.
And on the subject of the State militia’s loyalty to the Federal Government against internal “enemies”: historically they’ve been pretty loyal.
If these domestic wiretaps provide raw material for being “sexed up” to justify a course of action already determined up then such domestic information can encourage belief in the prospects of success of any declaration of martial law.
These prospects of success form an important part of the calculus when the administration attempts to answer the question: “If we declare matial law, who will come out in arms in our favour and who will come out in arms against us?”
And as to the loyalty of state national guards to the person of the president, here is a counter example slightly more recent than 1914:
http://www.centralhigh57.org/
Eisenhower used the 101st Airborne Division to stare down this act of defiance to the Federal Government.
And the Colorado State Militia carried out the Ludlow Massacre under the orders of the Governor of Colorado (as was his constitutional right to do) not under the orders of Woodrow Wilson, who had no right in 1914 to order the Colorado State Militia to do anything, unlike George W. Bush since October 2006.
OK, but to “sex up” fraudulent material, it isn’t necessary to have any original intelligence at all. So where’s the argument against FISA wiretapping overseas phonecalls that are routed through US nodes?
And again, I’m not sure Little Rock shows what you think it does. The Federal Government used its domestic intelligence (ie. the FBI) and domestic military (ie. Federalised militia) to preserve peace and civil freedoms. Good planning and correct intelligence led to the upholding of the law and the breaking-down of illegal segregation. This *isn’t* evidence towards the potential for a Bush coup.
…
Mate, let’s get StoushGym™ up and running. I can’t think of many things more motivating than chasing your moving goalposts all day.
[whistles Eye of the Tiger]
A pleasure stoushing with you Señor Beret.
Cracking stoush, lads. Now do the rape one.
Statler, you take the Evil Pundit position; Katz, you get to be Teh Feminazi Hivemind.
GO!!!
Oooh, argument-swapping, like car keys in a fruit bowl. It’s saucy sophist square-dancing. Well, why not walk on the wild side?
What’s this one? It’s marked “glib anti-intellectualism”…
After all this time, why can’t we have evolved to be a more progressive species? And why do all these young men with their fancy degrees have to be down on those of us educated in the School of Life? Isn’t it always the way of religion to oppress? Why oh why oh why
Yairs, rape is hilarious. I’m splitting my sides.
You assume the ongoing untroubled operation of an enormous, if imperfect, global system of stability and security which you (I’m sorry to put it this way) have done comparatively little to establish or maintain
True, we haven’t done as much to f**k it up as the US has.
Recommend: Adrian Guelike (working from memory, can’t remember spelling)
Counter terrorism can be dealt with along three main approaches – suppression (like wiretaps, torture etc), criminalisation (deal with through the existing criminal system), or accommodation. Of the 3, only this last addresses the underlying political dimension of terrorism. The suppression method is certainly effective in eliminating those already actively engaging in terrorist related activities, but also alienates others who aren’t (think stereotyping or victimisation effects), driving them towards an alienation threshold and potentially becoming terrorists themselves.
Criminalisation likewise ignores the political dimension – 50 dead? that would be 50 charges of murder then your honour. Never-mind why they did it, just lock them up.
Accommodation, by acknowledging that most terrorism is rooted in social factors that require political effort to resolve and then moving to address these issues contains the only effective method to undermine an individual or groups will to commit an attack. It is long-game strategy, and jpz’s hypothetical may occur yes but that is the price – there will always be nutters and eventually some will get hold of nukes. By minimising the social factors that produce nutters we can minimise the risk. Of course there are those that would claim that accommodation smacks of appeasement, so it is always politically unachievable.
While an exact definition of ‘terrorism’ does not exist, all definitions in use throughout the world recognise that there is a political element to the act which would seem to necessitate accommodation style approaches (to an extent). Reality is that a combination of all three methods are needed and unfortunately our American friends are focusing on suppression and ignoring the rest to their and our detriment.
Paulus #19
Like Naomi Wolf, you are no doubt expecting the Bushitlercheney warmongerocracy to stage another false terrorist incident in the next few months (just like they staged 9/11), then impose martial law, permanent dictatorship, and eliminate everyone who disagrees with them.
That’s a lie, and you know it. NW does not say that 9/11 was staged. She claims the government made up extra bonus sleeper cells which turned out to be bogus. I don’t know the truth of that, but your assertion widely oversteps the mark.
You know, if that’s what it takes to get rid of people like you, it would almost be worth it.
And that’s simply despicable.
an enormous, if imperfect, global system of stability and security – for whom? The only people who matter of course.
JPZ throws off the cloak to reveal the Jack Bauer/Alan Dershovitz lurking in most septics.
If the US troops withdrew from the ungrateful world how do you imagine the “non-negotiable US lifstyle”(Shrub Snr’s only memorable quote) would continue?
That’s my pessimism at the possibility that the Congressional Democrats actually have a spine on this or nearly any other issue. Yes, they’ve managed to not extend it this session. I have very little faith that they’ll manage to hold to that in the next session.
In principle I agree with your position that eavesdropping of various descriptions is an essential intelligence-gathering tool. The way that the Bushites have done and plan to continue going about it though lacks any accountability, and that’s the major problem with the warrantless aspect. By all means begin surveillance as soon as a communication is flagged, but get a warrant within a specified period or discontinue the surveillance. There has to be an auditable trail.
Helen,
You will save yourself a lot of grief on teh intertubes if you refrain from casually accusing people of lying. In blog commenting, an incorrect assertion usually turns out to be an error rather than deliberate mendacity.
This is just a bit of helpful advice for you.
Now, concerning Naomi Wolf, would it surprise you to know that I have little regard for her and have read few of her scribblings? One of those I have perused (who could go past the supremely melodramatical title?) is “Fascist America, in 10 easy steps”, in which she says, in the context of discussing 9/11, “Creating a terrifying threat – hydra-like, secretive, evil – is an old trick.”
I just assumed this was a wink to the 9/11 truthers. But, apparently, as I’ve just been checking out over the last few minutes, she isn’t one of their merry little band — although they do think the world of her (just google NW and “9/11 truth” to see what I mean). Still, Wolf doesn’t appear to have explicitly accepted the truthers’ imaginative stories.
So, sorry Naomi, it was an error on my part. Not a lie, an error.
As for my “despicable” comment concerning ratty, it was in response to his little tirade at #16, culminating in the charming question, “So what are you – a liar? Or a criminally insane imbecile?” Now, I have no objection to being called criminally insane, and indeed I regard it as a compliment, but being accused (again) of being a liar (you people really love the word, don’t you?) or being an imbecile, necessitated a sharp reponse.
For the record, I don’t actually hope Professor Rat is abducted and killed by an NSA death squad. It would be a waste, anyway. Once the dictatorship is in place, we’ll need people to work in the uranium mines.
Helen,
Helen, amphibious — I hope you both received your framed autographed photo of George W. Bush, which he sends out as a thank-you present to members of the barking Left, in gratitude for helping him and J. Howard stay in power for as long as they have. Without alert folks like you always on patrol, a credible opposition might have formed. Keep ‘em flying! (Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and Charles Rangel probably receive Halliburton stock options in gratitude, but then again, theirs is truly yeoman service.) Be sure to draw in the little Hitler moustache on the photo in the space indicated, with the crayon included.
btw, do you mean Jack Bauer, like the fictional character on the, y’know, TV show? Really? And, I mean, Alan… Dershowitz? Huh? Honestly, if you wanted to compare me to a widely-loathed hard case, Patrick Buchanan would have at least gotten you onto the edge of the putting green…
Liam, Katz — regarding your side stoush about Bush and the National Guard, I have a different theory, though I can’t back it up. Bush has been steadily drawing on Nat. Guard reserves to staff these wars because actual direct conscription is politically impossible at present against anything short of the fully-mobilized Chinese Army burning their way through the suburbs of St. Louis (and even then the lefty college students would instinctively wave their placards shrieking “No Blood for… Whatever It Is That the Chinese Army Wants!”). So he’s drawing the Guard reserves down to the bone, and I bet the governors and the states are complaining louder about it, esp. since Guards are most needed for natural disasters, like the recent tornadoes and so forth. So this sneaky political move you’ve identified may be a Byzantine legalistic way of empowering Bush to suck up even more Guard troops to fill out the ranks without a draft in case of an emergency, like for instance if something crazy and/or stupid happened with Iran.
But I don’t have any data on it, I’m just looking at it like it’s a chess position.
You take Pat Buchanan, JPZ, and I’ll take NSW’s own Michael Costa. I’ve got the glasses, the sullen aggro, and the hammer-and-sickle badge betrayed, I’ve just gotta lose the hair.
Helen, rape itself is not the object of Fyodor’s sentence; the endless threads d’antan within which the subject was repeatedly argued at Evil Pundit, painfully, is. So I do find it funny, having been a participant.
I don’t think EP was ever accused of being a criminally insane imbecile though. Or Alan Dershowitz.
Liam [26]:
Aaah, so you noticed after all.
Torture gets a result. Absolutely no doubt about it. The NKVD knew that, the GeStaPo knew that, the civil authorities to whom the Inquisition abandoned irredeemably lost souls knew that, George Orwell, in his book “1984″, knew that [after all, he was a veteran of the Spanish Civil War]. The results were pretty consistent: usually, anyone who survived the process was fervently well-behaved, intensely co-operative and very very obedient …. but did they consistently give forth with reliable information that could be built up into dependable intelligence? Very very rarely – and where they did, there were usually other factors unrelated to torture. In other words, the same information could have been without torture. Torture is for the fakes and flakes – real interrogators use their skills instead..
Katz [28]:
You were spot on about the inverse relationship of volume to quality of understanding. And [34]; oh, for the good old days of the Zimmerman Telegram and the like – no waterbording, no rendition, just good old-fashioned deceit and excuses to do what you were going to do in the first place and forget all the fine speeches.
Tony D [41]:
Excellent summary …. but you left out Number Four: Undermining. The one that should have been used in Iraq and elsewhere first up. [Thank you Mr Bremmer, don't call us; we'll call you]. Cut the props from under the guerrillas/CTs/revolutionaries/insurgents by hopping in first with YOUR land reform program, your rehabilitation and employment program, your schools and clinics, your program for having markets and shops chock-a-block full of affordable goods;, your stablized currency, your manifestly just legal system, your government of locals who loudly assert their independence of your puppet-stings.
j-p-z [47]:
Wish it were otherwise but I do fear you are right about the National Guard – and that would probably include some non-Federal organizations too.
That’d be the red Datto out front, right? Or am I confusing it with the “banal sarcasm”?
Helen, what Liam said. Ou sont les nuances d’antan? etc. However, FTR, you’re absolutely right that rape isn’t in the slightest bit funny. Not one little bit. Except, perhaps, when Chevy Chase and prison are involved. Or maybe Rodney Adler.
Graham Bell:
Yah know what you mean, this quote sums it up pretty well:
– John Boyd
IIRC that quote relates to the Vietnam war but could easily be applied to Iraq or Afghanistan today.
I would have thought that undermining as a strategy falls under Accommodation as there is little point acknowledging political causes if no attempt to address them will be undertaken.
The Datsun’s a wonderful vehicle, Cryptosporidium. It’s handy, cheap to run, and you can do it up to be as anti-social as you please. You never know who’s got one tucked away in their shed.
I assume we’re talking 120Y?
I’ll see your 120Y and raise it a 180B.
My Mum used to drive a 200B. I cried when she traded it in for a Volvo.
True story.
Boring too!
I’ll raise all of you.
Tony D [51]:
Understand your viewpoint but Accommodation and Undermining are different in intent.
Accommodation is not hell-bent on the annihilation of the rebels/insurgents/bandits and would not oppose their integration into mainstream political life IF they abandoned violence. [Cannon-fodder, wardroom warriors and other assorted boofheads usually think Accommodation is the same as Appeasement - but that's consistent with all their other ignorance and silliness]. Undermining, in contrast, seeks the complete destruction of the insurgents/terrorists/revolutionaries by means other than risking the lives of one’s own troops on field operations which have a low probability of success. It is a strategy that has much more chance of success that just shooting people and blowing things up – in other words, more real bang-for-the-buck …. but try telling that to all the far-away frustrated wannabe “action heroes” in politics.
You mentioned the Viet-Nam War: there was a song from that long-ago era “Where Have All The Flowers Gone?” which ended with “When will they ever learn, when will they ever learn?”. Several million dead later, nothing has changed.
Thanks Graham! I’ve unfortunately had to drift into the environmentalism debates recently (with a focus on eco-terrorism), so my studies in CT approaches has had to be put to the side for a bit.
It sounds like Undermining is an extension of psy-op(?), if so then should fall under the hard-power umbrella of strategies. Personally I’m a bit of a J. Nye Jnr fan and go for the soft-power options (but backed up with a big stick).
When will they ever learn?
Tony D [58]:
PsyOps with BIG teeth. Now there’s a thought. I think of it in the terms of the ancient Spartans …. Generals who won great battles got to sacrifice a chook on the altar …. Generals who won wars without even drawing a sword got to sacrifice a whopping big bull [at least, that's the story].
Winning victory with a minimum of effort and money, without suffering casualties yourself and without destroying lots of useful material and infrastructure formerly owned by the enemy is definitely the way to go.
Besides, surrendered enemy troops can be formed into excellent and trouble-free work-parties with the right management – just ask anyone involved with the repatriation of Imperial Japanese troops after the Second World War; better than having them as potential insurgents.
Are you familiar with DNI at all Graham? Seems like there could be some cross-over of ideas worth exploring.
Agreed though I’d add killing as few of ‘them’ as possible in the interests of post-conflict reconciliation. Because sooner or later we have to go home (another of histories lessons). Unless we can somehow ensure local political support is engaged with the strategic political solution we’re seeking, we’ll fail and no military gains will last once we leave.
I love my Lind, I do, Tony D. Commenter Leinad picked him perfectly a while back: entirely sane and reasonable, until you get him on the topic of multiculturalism, at which point it’s both feet down the rabbit hole, and say ¡hola! to the Mexican Cheshire Cat.
FDB, my parents had a 200B. Orange with a white vinyl top and brown seats, and they only got rid of it when bits of the clutch fell out onto the road. Best car ever.
Never quite worked up to this though. (Note. There’s a frightening number of “Datto Jump” videos on youtube. Is this some kind of fetish?)
Yeah Lind on ‘cultural marxism’ is hilarious Liam! It’s when his weirdo, freako side comes out… there’s a great quote by Lind about how the decline of Teh West began with the French Revolution and was sealed by Germany’s defeat in WW1. Funny shite indeed! Hahaha and don’t forget the ‘curse of Wilsonianism’! And then he does that weird Prussian thing too.
His biggest value is an attempt to develop a set of RoEs for the troops on the ground, and some analysis frameworks for determining if a military action is going to help in the long run or not.
It’s like when on a particular issue realpolitik, WST and neo-lib theory all agree, then you know somethings up.
Sorry if I come across as a Lind fanboi – I’m not really, I just find the frameworks useful.
On the car issue, as a child my mum used to delight in picking me up from my pretentious private school… in a Torana – the SUV(equiv) set hated it, which was precisely why she did it.
Tony D [60, 62]:
Not familiar with Lind; thanks for the link anyway; ever hear of Oswald Spengler?
. Now that does sound interesting.
By the way, the outright killing of enemy soldiers in battle seems to have less impact on post-conflict reconcilliation than does humiliating them, brutalizing them, abusing their fellow citizens and leaving their families starving, homeless and utterly destitute. That’s probably why the ill-treatment of prisoners at Abu-Ghraib Prison and in “rendition” had such a devastating effect – an effect that neither the Bush regime nor the U.S.military, as a whole, seem capable of comprehending [although there are isolated voices within who are not blind to the reality of what is going so badly wrong and why it is happening].
All you car buffs:
Nah. Nothing matches the Standard Vanguard of the early ’50s. Robust, with a Ferguson tractor motor and an off-road two-wheel-drive capability that would leave a lot of Toorak tractors for dead.