Last week, I posted a set of pro-torture talking points sent to me by a persistent torture apologist, along with my responses. The talking points were extensive, by not comprehensive. There are plenty more to enumerate, but today I'd like to talk about the one favorite technique and the most frequent recourse of all torture apologists: the resort to theory over reality. The details of the apologies will vary (it wasn't torture, it saved lives, you would have done it too, it was only in the panicky aftermath of 9/11, it's kept us safe ever since, etc., etc.), but the one point apologists will always return to is The Ticking Bomb Theory of torture.
Why all this theory? Because the reality is so damning. Apologists hope that if they can get you to focus on a fantasy ("if you had to torture someone to save a city, would you do it?"), you'll overlook that the Bush administration tortured terror suspects not just in the panicky aftermath of 9/11, but for years afterward, and did so in significant part not to defuse ticking bombs, but rather to establish a nonexistent link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.
Don't believe the three reports linked above that Bush and Cheney ordered torture not just to save others' lives, but to cover their own political asses? There's more. Yesterday, anonymous "senior intelligence officials" got Walter Pincus of the Washington Post to publish their self-serving claim that although the CIA had indeed questioned Abu Zubaidah and Kalid Sheik Mohammed about an Iraq/AQ connection, such questions were never asked while Zubaidah and KSM were actually being waterboarded. Liz Cheney, currently on tour to defend her father, cited these anonymous claims as proof that the then Vice President didn't use torture to create a nonexistent cause for war.
(BTW, ask yourself this. What is the Washington Post's value-add when it types up anonymous government assertions like these? Why doesn't the CIA just post them on its own website? Answer: if you were to read the same claim on the CIA's website, you'd immediately discount its value because you would recognize it as self-serving. When instead you read the claim as dutifully transmitted by a stenographer with the Washington Post, it seems more substantive because it's being presented, in theory, by the disinterested Fourth Estate. The government uses a complicit mainstream media to sanitize its propaganda much as drug dealers use corrupt banks to launder drug money.)
The CIA waterboarded Zubaydah and KSM 83 times and 183 times each. How likely do you think it is that over the course of 266 waterboarding sessions, the CIA never brought up its questions about an Iraq/al Qaeda connection? Who are you going to believe, anonymous intelligence officials and Liz Cheney, or your own lyin' common sense? And even if you believe the superficially self-serving story of these anonymous intelligence officials, which way does their story cut? Torture is effective at producing false confessions not just because of pain, but because of the *fear* of pain. So someone who's being waterboarded six times a day for a solid month, as KSM was, will spew out anything he can imagine to get the torture to stop not just while he's actually being waterboarded, but also in between sessions, when he's trying to forestall the next trip to the drowning rack.
So don't go for the head fake: what matters here isn't the anonymous officials' claim that Zubaydah and KSM weren't asked about an Iraq/AQ connection while they were actually being waterboarded. What matters is that the anonymous officials have admitted that Zubaydah and KSM were being asked about an Iraq/AQ connection at all. Anything we got from these two is tainted, whether it was produced during torture sessions or in between them.
(And by the way, there's another head fake in there: the implication that if Zubaydah and KSM weren't waterboarded while being asked about Iraq and AQ, they weren't tortured while being asked. Waterboarding is far from the only torture technique permitted in secret Justice Department memos. So the anonymous officials irrelevant claim that Zubaydah and KSM weren't simultaneously waterboarded while being asked about Iraq and AQ doesn't even mean the two weren't tortured in other ways while being asked).
So get ready for the next talking point in the apologists' arsenal: "Okay, sure, they were also asked about Iraq and al Qaeda, but since we were torturing them anyway, why not throw in a few other questions, too?"
Torture. It really does take on a life of its own.
Monday, May 18, 2009
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
The Torture Mentality
As I pointed out recently, it's difficult to keep up with the denial, obfuscation, and sheer, tendentious illogic of torture apologists. Even now, despite Bush-era DOJ memos acknowledging that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in a single month, Liz Cheney is still clinging to the Jack Bauer fantasy that KSM had to be tortured (actually, she denies it was torture) because the administration "knew there was a threat of imminent attack." And Dick Cheney claims he had to torture because his oath of office required him "to protect and defend the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic." Actually, Article 2, Section 1 of Constitution requires the following oath: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." See if you can spot the difference to which Dick Cheney is willfully blind.
I was planning on creating a list of the justifications torture apologists trot out most reliably, but as it turns out, I don't have to. Recently I received several messages from a persistent apologist that serve as a nice summary of the sort of bullshit the right and the MSM peddle as a matter of course. Each numbered point below is a verbatim quote from my apologist correspondent; my thoughts interpolated. For a few equally absurd but dangerous arguments my correspondent overlooked, here's Dan Froomkin on the emerging "You can't prosecute politicians because the whole country is guilty" argument.
Now, obviously the gentleman who's advancing these arguments is not going to change his mind. It's fair to ask, therefore, what's the point of responding. The answer, I think, is this. On any given subject, there will be a core group so wedded to a belief that the belief will be impervious to all contrary evidence. But not everyone has his head buried this deeply in the sand, and there will always be some people (many people, I optimistically maintain) who can be persuaded by facts and reason. As I said in the comment section to a previous post on gay equality:
And now, the torture apologists' apologies.
1. "We have 'tortured' only a few."
Both the scare quotes and the assertion of "only a few" are demonstrably untrue. Unless, perhaps, you're arguing that nothing we've done except waterboarding is torture, a position that would also be at odds with clear settled law. Moreover, we are bound by law not just to not torture, but also to not inflict cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.
In any event, the argument is irrelevant. Try, "we only raped a few. We only murdered a few." If I'm missing something in the relevant law -- a "we only tortured a few" safe harbor exception -- please let me know.
2. "Waterboarding is administered under highly controlled circumstances."
I imagine the Gestapo made the same claim. And waterboarding is certainly not the only, and arguably not the worst of what the Bush administration authorized. And after 183 times in a month, how much does it matter whether it was highly controlled or not?
In any event, irrelevant. If I'm missing something in the relevant law -- a "torture is okay as long as it's done under highly controlled circumstances" safe harbor exception -- please let me know.
3. "And only to those who richly deserve it."
You're basing this on what, exactly? It's belied by the Red Cross and numerous other independent investigations. Also, irrelevant. If I'm missing something in the relevant law -- a "torture is okay as long as it's done to people I retroactively think deserved it" safe harbor exception -- please let me know.
4. "I believe we have obtained some valuable intel from them."
You never include any evidence for your beliefs, so it's hard to give them much credit. Here's some evidence to the contrary. In any event, irrelevant. If I'm missing something in the relevant law -- a "torture is okay as long as it obtains some valuable intel" safe harbor exception -- please let me know.
5. "By the way, the furor over 'torture' is a farce in my opinion. All of a sudden everyone is a Constitutional lawyer because they hated Bush. They won't apply the same scrutiny to Obama I assure you."
Who's they? There' evidence that Pelosi will burn over this, too, and that's fine by me. Likewise if Obama ever authorizes what Bush did. My sense is that people who can't see this as a legal matter -- which it obviously is -- and insist it must be partisan are projecting their own hyper-partisan worldview.
And even though I'm sure some people are motivated by partisanship, so what? If I'm missing something in the relevant law -- a "torture will be excused if some people who seek to prosecute it are motivated by partisanship" safe harbor exception -- please let me know.
6. "The average American would waterboard and then some if it would save someone they love from someone who wants to kill them."
Possibly, and possibly the average American would be glad to eviscerate and crucify someone they believe murdered or raped a loved one. Despite the understandable urge, we don't allow this. Think about why not, and apply the principles you extract to your analogous argument in favor of torture.
In any event, irrelevant. If I'm missing something in the relevant law -- a "torture will be excused if in extremis some people might resort to it" safe harbor exception -- please let me know.
7. "Politicizing criminality could also be called protecting America. One could argue the efficacy of what Bush and Cheney did to protect us but I find it difficult to entertain the notion that the result was not in our best interests."
Let me try to make it a little less difficult for you:
Also:
What couldn't be justified, especially retrospectively, as having been done to protect America? In any event, irrelevant. If I'm missing something in the relevant law -- a "torture will be excused some of the people who engaged in it say they did so to protect America" safe harbor exception -- please let me know.
8. "The word "torture" elicits a lot of emotion. I draw a distinction between what we have done and many examples throughout history. We did not line up captives and feed them to dogs or rape them."
Anything short of rape and feeding captives to dogs isn't torture? Wow. Do I even need to repeat my safe harbor question here?
9. "Moral equivalency is the domain of the left. Rape is a crime and I feel safe saying that we would never rape a captive as a means to an end so to compare it to what we have done is hardly relevant."
There's a certain truth to the first statement. Because no matter what our side does, no matter how exactly a match it is to precisely the policy and behavior of sadists and totalitarians throughout history, it's not equivalent because... well, because that was them, and this is us.
Anyway, why shouldn't all the non-existent get-out-of-jail free excuses you're eager to provide torturers generally apply specifically to rapists, as well? We did it to protect America. It resulted in valuable info. We only raped a few. Etc. What's the difference?
10. "We held a man [KSM] who boasted about being the mastermind behind 9/11."
Fascinating use of the word "boast." We waterboarded KSM 183 times in a month. Why do you reflexively believe he was "boasting?" Is it not possible he was spewing out anything he could possibly imagine to get the torture to stop? Where's that flinty conservative skepticism?
11. "We poured water on his face while he was hooked up to a heart monitor. We made records of our actions and applied rules to ensure he was not permanently harmed."
It's fascinating to watch a torture apologist's verbal contortions as he tries to pretty the picture of what Americans have done. And the mention of the heart monitor is nice, too, intended to show how caring we are while we gently pour the water (room temperature water, no doubt, and ph-balanced, too) on the man's face. It couldn't be that the torturer's determination to keep the torture victim alive is about maintaining the victim's life so that he can continue to be tortured?
We applied rules to ensure he was not permanently harmed. Bravo! Then rape really must be okay, too, no? If done carefully, with doctors supervising, under carefully prescribed rules, the victim -- wait, that's the wrong word, after all, these people "richly deserved it," call them subjects, that's nice and dry, or detainees, or why not guests -- the subject will not be permanently harmed by the rape.
Indeed. We raped to protect America. Rape resulted in valuable info. We only raped a few. Doctors supervised the rape. There was no permanent harm to the people we raped. According to your own principles, the government would be derelict if it *failed* to rape.
12. Eventually a plot to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge was was exposed and more. War is not pretty and waterboarding is certainly unkind but I would gladly see that happen before I would see that bridge in the Hudson."
The Brooklyn Bridge is over the East River, and the plot (which in any event seemed more an aspiration than a plot) was uncovered through police work and without torture. This is unfortunate from your standpoint, as it suggests we can prevent terrorism without torturing. You'll have to find another example. Given the utter lack of research you brought to bear on this one, I suspect you'll be able to come up with something easily enough.
13. "War involves shooting other people. Isn't that also a violation of their rights?"
In fact, it's not. See particularly the Hague Conventions. Even if it were, are you saying that because we shoot people on the battlefield, we can do anything we want to them if we first take them prisoner? But you've already acknowledged (incoherently, given your other arguments) that rape is wrong. But isn't it better to rape them than to shoot them, a kind of lesser evil? Especially if we rape them to protect America, under a doctor's supervision, etc.
14. "Let's see how people feel the day after the next attack. I believe the polls will shift rather dramatically."
We could call this the "if some people support it when they're out of their minds with fear and rage, it's not illegal" defense. And to be even barely coherent, this "argument" has to assume that torture makes us safe. Again, all available evidence suggests the contrary. And given the danger of another irrational and dangerous departure from the Constitution, shouldn't we do all we can now to inculcate respect for the rule of law, rather than proactively providing excuses for abandoning it?
There are so many aspects of the apologists' arguments that fascinate me. Most of all is the ongoing refusal to engage on the question of what the law clearly prohibits. Also the utter absence of any facts to support assertions.
If America doesn't stand for the rule of law, what are we? I used to think of myself as a conservative (before the term ceased to mean anything coherent). Part of the reason I identified myself thusly was because I'm a law and order guy and not very sympathetic to attempts to get me to see things from the poor criminal's perspective, how he was temporarily insane when he committed his crimes, or only meant well, or whatever. Well, I still feel that way. It's just that I'm able to apply that world view impartially. Others, it seems, refuse to. For them, America doesn't live under the rule of law. In fact, for them, the law isn't a rule at all; at best it's just an optional, annoying suggestion.
I was planning on creating a list of the justifications torture apologists trot out most reliably, but as it turns out, I don't have to. Recently I received several messages from a persistent apologist that serve as a nice summary of the sort of bullshit the right and the MSM peddle as a matter of course. Each numbered point below is a verbatim quote from my apologist correspondent; my thoughts interpolated. For a few equally absurd but dangerous arguments my correspondent overlooked, here's Dan Froomkin on the emerging "You can't prosecute politicians because the whole country is guilty" argument.
Now, obviously the gentleman who's advancing these arguments is not going to change his mind. It's fair to ask, therefore, what's the point of responding. The answer, I think, is this. On any given subject, there will be a core group so wedded to a belief that the belief will be impervious to all contrary evidence. But not everyone has his head buried this deeply in the sand, and there will always be some people (many people, I optimistically maintain) who can be persuaded by facts and reason. As I said in the comment section to a previous post on gay equality:
"Persuading any given individual is only part of the purpose of a discussion like this one. In fact, there's a much more important function: by subjecting dogmatic, fearful, irrational opinions to the light of reason, we expose them for what they are. And over time, views that were once respectable become untenable, and then increasingly disreputable, until finally even the few people who still cling to them are too embarrassed to utter them in polite society. This is the very history of the fight against racism, bigotry, and intolerance. We can all feel proud to have contributed to this chapter of that history -- after all, even those of us whose contribution has been unintentional are playing an important part."
And now, the torture apologists' apologies.
1. "We have 'tortured' only a few."
Both the scare quotes and the assertion of "only a few" are demonstrably untrue. Unless, perhaps, you're arguing that nothing we've done except waterboarding is torture, a position that would also be at odds with clear settled law. Moreover, we are bound by law not just to not torture, but also to not inflict cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.
In any event, the argument is irrelevant. Try, "we only raped a few. We only murdered a few." If I'm missing something in the relevant law -- a "we only tortured a few" safe harbor exception -- please let me know.
2. "Waterboarding is administered under highly controlled circumstances."
I imagine the Gestapo made the same claim. And waterboarding is certainly not the only, and arguably not the worst of what the Bush administration authorized. And after 183 times in a month, how much does it matter whether it was highly controlled or not?
In any event, irrelevant. If I'm missing something in the relevant law -- a "torture is okay as long as it's done under highly controlled circumstances" safe harbor exception -- please let me know.
3. "And only to those who richly deserve it."
You're basing this on what, exactly? It's belied by the Red Cross and numerous other independent investigations. Also, irrelevant. If I'm missing something in the relevant law -- a "torture is okay as long as it's done to people I retroactively think deserved it" safe harbor exception -- please let me know.
4. "I believe we have obtained some valuable intel from them."
You never include any evidence for your beliefs, so it's hard to give them much credit. Here's some evidence to the contrary. In any event, irrelevant. If I'm missing something in the relevant law -- a "torture is okay as long as it obtains some valuable intel" safe harbor exception -- please let me know.
5. "By the way, the furor over 'torture' is a farce in my opinion. All of a sudden everyone is a Constitutional lawyer because they hated Bush. They won't apply the same scrutiny to Obama I assure you."
Who's they? There' evidence that Pelosi will burn over this, too, and that's fine by me. Likewise if Obama ever authorizes what Bush did. My sense is that people who can't see this as a legal matter -- which it obviously is -- and insist it must be partisan are projecting their own hyper-partisan worldview.
And even though I'm sure some people are motivated by partisanship, so what? If I'm missing something in the relevant law -- a "torture will be excused if some people who seek to prosecute it are motivated by partisanship" safe harbor exception -- please let me know.
6. "The average American would waterboard and then some if it would save someone they love from someone who wants to kill them."
Possibly, and possibly the average American would be glad to eviscerate and crucify someone they believe murdered or raped a loved one. Despite the understandable urge, we don't allow this. Think about why not, and apply the principles you extract to your analogous argument in favor of torture.
In any event, irrelevant. If I'm missing something in the relevant law -- a "torture will be excused if in extremis some people might resort to it" safe harbor exception -- please let me know.
7. "Politicizing criminality could also be called protecting America. One could argue the efficacy of what Bush and Cheney did to protect us but I find it difficult to entertain the notion that the result was not in our best interests."
Let me try to make it a little less difficult for you:
"Torture has undermined the United States' reputation for respecting and following the law and thus has crippled its political influence. By torturing, the United States has wounded itself and helped its enemies in what is in the end an inherently political war—a war, that is, in which the critical target to be conquered is the allegiances and attitudes of young Muslims. And by torturing prisoners, many of whom were implicated in committing great crimes against Americans, the United States has made it impossible to render justice on those criminals, instead sentencing them—and the country itself—to an endless limbo of injustice. That limbo stands as a kind of worldwide advertisement for the costs of the US reversion to torture."
Also:
"Al Qaeda and Taliban terrorists are taught to expect Americans to abuse them. They are recruited based on false propaganda that says the United States is out to destroy Islam. Treating detainees harshly only reinforces that distorted view, increases resistance to cooperation, and creates new enemies. In fact, the April 2006 National Intelligence Estimate "Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States" cited "pervasive anti U.S. sentiment among most Muslims" as an underlying factor fueling the spread of the global jihadist movement. Former Navy General Counsel Alberto Mora testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee in June 2008 that "there are serving U.S. flag-rank officers who maintain that the first and second identifiable causes of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq – as judged by their effectiveness in recruiting insurgent fighters into combat – are, respectively the symbols of Abu Ghraib and
Guantanamo.""
What couldn't be justified, especially retrospectively, as having been done to protect America? In any event, irrelevant. If I'm missing something in the relevant law -- a "torture will be excused some of the people who engaged in it say they did so to protect America" safe harbor exception -- please let me know.
8. "The word "torture" elicits a lot of emotion. I draw a distinction between what we have done and many examples throughout history. We did not line up captives and feed them to dogs or rape them."
Anything short of rape and feeding captives to dogs isn't torture? Wow. Do I even need to repeat my safe harbor question here?
9. "Moral equivalency is the domain of the left. Rape is a crime and I feel safe saying that we would never rape a captive as a means to an end so to compare it to what we have done is hardly relevant."
There's a certain truth to the first statement. Because no matter what our side does, no matter how exactly a match it is to precisely the policy and behavior of sadists and totalitarians throughout history, it's not equivalent because... well, because that was them, and this is us.
Anyway, why shouldn't all the non-existent get-out-of-jail free excuses you're eager to provide torturers generally apply specifically to rapists, as well? We did it to protect America. It resulted in valuable info. We only raped a few. Etc. What's the difference?
10. "We held a man [KSM] who boasted about being the mastermind behind 9/11."
Fascinating use of the word "boast." We waterboarded KSM 183 times in a month. Why do you reflexively believe he was "boasting?" Is it not possible he was spewing out anything he could possibly imagine to get the torture to stop? Where's that flinty conservative skepticism?
11. "We poured water on his face while he was hooked up to a heart monitor. We made records of our actions and applied rules to ensure he was not permanently harmed."
It's fascinating to watch a torture apologist's verbal contortions as he tries to pretty the picture of what Americans have done. And the mention of the heart monitor is nice, too, intended to show how caring we are while we gently pour the water (room temperature water, no doubt, and ph-balanced, too) on the man's face. It couldn't be that the torturer's determination to keep the torture victim alive is about maintaining the victim's life so that he can continue to be tortured?
We applied rules to ensure he was not permanently harmed. Bravo! Then rape really must be okay, too, no? If done carefully, with doctors supervising, under carefully prescribed rules, the victim -- wait, that's the wrong word, after all, these people "richly deserved it," call them subjects, that's nice and dry, or detainees, or why not guests -- the subject will not be permanently harmed by the rape.
Indeed. We raped to protect America. Rape resulted in valuable info. We only raped a few. Doctors supervised the rape. There was no permanent harm to the people we raped. According to your own principles, the government would be derelict if it *failed* to rape.
12. Eventually a plot to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge was was exposed and more. War is not pretty and waterboarding is certainly unkind but I would gladly see that happen before I would see that bridge in the Hudson."
The Brooklyn Bridge is over the East River, and the plot (which in any event seemed more an aspiration than a plot) was uncovered through police work and without torture. This is unfortunate from your standpoint, as it suggests we can prevent terrorism without torturing. You'll have to find another example. Given the utter lack of research you brought to bear on this one, I suspect you'll be able to come up with something easily enough.
13. "War involves shooting other people. Isn't that also a violation of their rights?"
In fact, it's not. See particularly the Hague Conventions. Even if it were, are you saying that because we shoot people on the battlefield, we can do anything we want to them if we first take them prisoner? But you've already acknowledged (incoherently, given your other arguments) that rape is wrong. But isn't it better to rape them than to shoot them, a kind of lesser evil? Especially if we rape them to protect America, under a doctor's supervision, etc.
14. "Let's see how people feel the day after the next attack. I believe the polls will shift rather dramatically."
We could call this the "if some people support it when they're out of their minds with fear and rage, it's not illegal" defense. And to be even barely coherent, this "argument" has to assume that torture makes us safe. Again, all available evidence suggests the contrary. And given the danger of another irrational and dangerous departure from the Constitution, shouldn't we do all we can now to inculcate respect for the rule of law, rather than proactively providing excuses for abandoning it?
There are so many aspects of the apologists' arguments that fascinate me. Most of all is the ongoing refusal to engage on the question of what the law clearly prohibits. Also the utter absence of any facts to support assertions.
If America doesn't stand for the rule of law, what are we? I used to think of myself as a conservative (before the term ceased to mean anything coherent). Part of the reason I identified myself thusly was because I'm a law and order guy and not very sympathetic to attempts to get me to see things from the poor criminal's perspective, how he was temporarily insane when he committed his crimes, or only meant well, or whatever. Well, I still feel that way. It's just that I'm able to apply that world view impartially. Others, it seems, refuse to. For them, America doesn't live under the rule of law. In fact, for them, the law isn't a rule at all; at best it's just an optional, annoying suggestion.
Thursday, May 07, 2009
Gay Cooties vs Terrorist Mojo
Many Americans are willing -- even proud -- to break the law, to abandon our fundamental moral underpinnings, and to engage in practices pioneered by the Spanish Inquisition and refined by Stalin's secret police and the Gestapo, all in the name of keeping the nation Safe From The Terrorists. But we haven't lost all perspective. Some prices just aren't worth paying, not even for Safety. The price, of, say, allowing openly gay linguists fluent in Arabic to serve in the military. Better a city incinerated by a suitcase nuke than that.
I wish I were making this up, but:
Two possible conclusions:
1. Some people hate gays more than they love life itself. More, even, than they value the lives of their own children.
2. Torture isn't really about safety. It's about something else. Because surely if we're willing to torture to be safe, we could manage to rub shoulders with a gay or two, as well?
One thing that's interesting in all this is the supernatural powers rightists ascribe to the things they're afraid of. We can't imprison bearded terrorists in US prisons because they might break out and wreak havoc upon the land! We have to discriminate against gays -- apparently literally at all costs -- because gayness is so potently communicable!
Gay cooties: even stronger than Terrorist Mojo. On the fear scale that obsesses the right, that's really saying something.
I wish I were making this up, but:
"Dan Choi, a West Point graduate and officer in the Army National Guard who is fluent in Arabic and who returned recently from Iraq, received notice today that the military is about to fire him. Why? Because he came out of the closet as a gay man on national television."
Two possible conclusions:
1. Some people hate gays more than they love life itself. More, even, than they value the lives of their own children.
2. Torture isn't really about safety. It's about something else. Because surely if we're willing to torture to be safe, we could manage to rub shoulders with a gay or two, as well?
One thing that's interesting in all this is the supernatural powers rightists ascribe to the things they're afraid of. We can't imprison bearded terrorists in US prisons because they might break out and wreak havoc upon the land! We have to discriminate against gays -- apparently literally at all costs -- because gayness is so potently communicable!
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| The Colbert Coalition's Anti-Gay Marriage Ad | ||||
| ||||
Gay cooties: even stronger than Terrorist Mojo. On the fear scale that obsesses the right, that's really saying something.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Politicizing Criminality
Just got back to Tokyo after another week on the road for Fault Line promotion. No time to write while I was traveling, but I did have a chance to read a number of establishment opinion pieces about torture. They were so alike in various respects that they could have have been churned out by the same government press office. The most glaring similarity was an omission of any discussion or even acknowledgment of the role of the law. Reading these opinions and knowing nothing else, you could be forgiven for believing that no law on torture or other cruel, inhumane, or other degrading treatment even exists, let alone that such laws might matter.
A sampling:
David Broder in The Washington Post: "But now Obama is being lobbied by politicians and voters who want something more -- the humiliation and/or punishment of those responsible for the policies of the past." That's one way of looking at it. Another way would be that this is simply about prosecuting criminals. But if you refuse to recognize that the law should even a part of the discussion -- that applicable law even exists -- I can see where you might look at things in the stunted, distorted way Broder does.
Ross Douthat in the New York Times: "We need to hear more: What was done and who approved it, and what intelligence we really gleaned from it. Not so that we can prosecute – unless the Democratic Party has taken leave of its senses – but so that we can learn, and pass judgment, and struggle toward consensus." Yes, if you think people who break the law should be prosecuted and punished, you have taken leave of your senses. You'd have to be crazy to argue something like that.
Tom Friedman in the New York Times: Friedman acknowledges that up to 27 prisoners were tortured to death in US custody (i.e., murdered), but then goes on to argue against any prosecutions because "bringing George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and other senior officials to trial... would rip our country apart." I'd be more comfortable with this argument if Friedman also favored a constitutional amendment making de jure his de facto grant of immunity to high government officials. Why are establishment pundits always afraid to make explicit arguments for what they're calling for?
Garrison Keillor in Salon: Keillor actually entitles his piece, "Let War Crimes Be Bygones." Substitute "Rape," "Murder," or the other crime of your choice in his chosen title and see how the concept works for you that way.
Lexington in The Economist: "The most important comment on Mr Obama’s approach to counter-terrorism so far came on April 20th, from the CIA agents who cheered him to the rafters." Is cheering at the CIA really the most important comment on Obama and counter-terror? More important, then, say, an analysis of, even a reference to, the law? The spooks must have done a wave or something. Damn lawyers, it's their fault -- obviously they're not cheering sufficiently loudly for the application of the law. Maybe we who believe, as Thomas Paine did, that in America the law is king, should cheer more loudly for the law's application so the law can get favorable mention in Lexington, too.
Jon Meacham in Newsweek: Meacham argues, "And to pursue criminal charges against officials at the highest levels—including the former president and the former vice president—would set a terrible precedent." As opposed to the precedent of de facto immunity from criminal prosecution for our political class? Pretty nice perk Meacham, Friedman et al are suggesting there. I wish novelists could get get out of jail free cards, too, but alas, it seems the hoi polloi are ineligible.
But surely Meacham isn't arguing that politicians are actually above the law? Yes, he is, explicitly, and the only kind thing you can say about it as that at least he's more honest about what he's calling for than Friedman et al: "That is not to say presidents and vice presidents are always above the law; there could be instances in which such a prosecution is appropriate, but based on what we know, this is not such a case." Holy when the president does it, that means its not illegal, Batman! Although again, it would be nice if Meacham could propose some guidelines for which politicians are in fact above the law (is it just the President and VP? What about the Secretary of State and Defense? Treasury? Leaders in Congress? Only federal officials, or state, too? Any lobbyists out there who would be willing to go to bat for novelists? Seriously, we want proactive immunity for lawbreaking, too) and under what circumstances (do sexual peccadilloes count, or is the immunity only for war crimes?). Then we could codify it (maybe as the "Get Out of Jail Free Act") and wouldn't have to rely on pseudo-journalists like Meacham to make up the law as we go along.
Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal: Noonan argues, "A problem with the release of the [torture memos] is that it opens the way—it probably forces the way—to congressional hearings, or a commission, or an independent prosecutor. It is hard at this point to imagine that what will follow will not prove destructive to—old-fashioned phrase coming—the good of the country." Like Friedman, Noonan shies away from saying aloud what she is really arguing: that America is better off when ruled under secret laws, with immunity for government officials who violate the non-secret ones.
Think about that concept for a moment. Secret laws. In America. And we have "journalists" telling us the secret laws are good for the country. War is peace, baby. Dig it.
Even Jon Stewart seems to have momentarily forgotten that there's such a thing as the law, suggesting instead immunity for anyone willing to admit, "My bad." Apply that thinking to criminality generally and see where it takes you.
If you want to stay in denial, avoid clicking on this link (h/t Andrew Sullivan). Especially avoid The UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhumane, and Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which President Reagan signed in 1988 and the Senate ratified in 1994, and which Article VI of the Constitution makes the supreme law of the land. Definitely don't read the following excerpts from the UNCAT, which provides that:
And:
How is it that none of the opinion pieces linked above sees fit even to mention these laws?
For the record: I also failed to include a discussion of applicable law in November 2007, when responding to an interview Vince Flynn did with the Washington Post in which Vince argued for torture. But I've taken the trouble to educate myself in the interim. Vince, you didn't mention it before except by omission, so I'll ask now: do you think the law is irrelevant to a discussion of torture? And what do you make of the news that Kalid Sheik Mohamed was waterboarded not once, but 183 times in a month? Not exactly the "rarest of circumstances," or the "clinical precision" you claimed at the time. And if you have to do it 183 times -- over the course of a month -- can you really claim it's effective, or even appropriate for the Ticking Bomb Scenario? (well, maybe the bomb was ticking really slowly). Especially because all the facts that have come to light since the former administration and its cheerleaders began their "torture works and is necessary" campaign belie both claims.
For a nice summary debunking the myths various establishment figures are still peddling about torture, here's Scott Horton.
Opponents of prosecuting the architects of Amerca's torture regime argue that prosecutions would be about "criminalizing policy differences." No. Failing to prosecute would be to politicize criminality, and proponents of de facto immunity for our political class are doing exactly that.
By the time we prosecute them, crimes are by definition past. That the crime has already been committed is never an argument for failing to prosecute it ("Your honor, it's true my client raped the victim, but that's part of the past and we need to look forward. This is a time for reflection, not retribution"). But the Bush administration's torture policies are not even part of the past. The fact that President Obama has banned the practices in question implicitly ratifies his or the next president's right to re-invoke them. Only investigation and prosecution can restore the proper place of the law in our country and ensure, insofar as possible, that the law is not treated as a sad joke in the future.
But don't take my word on all this. Take President Bush's:
You'd think Republicans, who purport to be the party of law and order, might be concerned about law-breaking. Well, I thought the GOP was about small government, balanced budgets, and a modest foreign policy, too. To the extent Republicans still bother making such claims, they've become the world's emptiest brand. Republicans have no principles, Democrats have no balls, and our pseudo journalistic class enables the worst and weakest elements of both. Imagine where we'd be without the blogosphere.
A sampling:
David Broder in The Washington Post: "But now Obama is being lobbied by politicians and voters who want something more -- the humiliation and/or punishment of those responsible for the policies of the past." That's one way of looking at it. Another way would be that this is simply about prosecuting criminals. But if you refuse to recognize that the law should even a part of the discussion -- that applicable law even exists -- I can see where you might look at things in the stunted, distorted way Broder does.
Ross Douthat in the New York Times: "We need to hear more: What was done and who approved it, and what intelligence we really gleaned from it. Not so that we can prosecute – unless the Democratic Party has taken leave of its senses – but so that we can learn, and pass judgment, and struggle toward consensus." Yes, if you think people who break the law should be prosecuted and punished, you have taken leave of your senses. You'd have to be crazy to argue something like that.
Tom Friedman in the New York Times: Friedman acknowledges that up to 27 prisoners were tortured to death in US custody (i.e., murdered), but then goes on to argue against any prosecutions because "bringing George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and other senior officials to trial... would rip our country apart." I'd be more comfortable with this argument if Friedman also favored a constitutional amendment making de jure his de facto grant of immunity to high government officials. Why are establishment pundits always afraid to make explicit arguments for what they're calling for?
Garrison Keillor in Salon: Keillor actually entitles his piece, "Let War Crimes Be Bygones." Substitute "Rape," "Murder," or the other crime of your choice in his chosen title and see how the concept works for you that way.
Lexington in The Economist: "The most important comment on Mr Obama’s approach to counter-terrorism so far came on April 20th, from the CIA agents who cheered him to the rafters." Is cheering at the CIA really the most important comment on Obama and counter-terror? More important, then, say, an analysis of, even a reference to, the law? The spooks must have done a wave or something. Damn lawyers, it's their fault -- obviously they're not cheering sufficiently loudly for the application of the law. Maybe we who believe, as Thomas Paine did, that in America the law is king, should cheer more loudly for the law's application so the law can get favorable mention in Lexington, too.
Jon Meacham in Newsweek: Meacham argues, "And to pursue criminal charges against officials at the highest levels—including the former president and the former vice president—would set a terrible precedent." As opposed to the precedent of de facto immunity from criminal prosecution for our political class? Pretty nice perk Meacham, Friedman et al are suggesting there. I wish novelists could get get out of jail free cards, too, but alas, it seems the hoi polloi are ineligible.
But surely Meacham isn't arguing that politicians are actually above the law? Yes, he is, explicitly, and the only kind thing you can say about it as that at least he's more honest about what he's calling for than Friedman et al: "That is not to say presidents and vice presidents are always above the law; there could be instances in which such a prosecution is appropriate, but based on what we know, this is not such a case." Holy when the president does it, that means its not illegal, Batman! Although again, it would be nice if Meacham could propose some guidelines for which politicians are in fact above the law (is it just the President and VP? What about the Secretary of State and Defense? Treasury? Leaders in Congress? Only federal officials, or state, too? Any lobbyists out there who would be willing to go to bat for novelists? Seriously, we want proactive immunity for lawbreaking, too) and under what circumstances (do sexual peccadilloes count, or is the immunity only for war crimes?). Then we could codify it (maybe as the "Get Out of Jail Free Act") and wouldn't have to rely on pseudo-journalists like Meacham to make up the law as we go along.
Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal: Noonan argues, "A problem with the release of the [torture memos] is that it opens the way—it probably forces the way—to congressional hearings, or a commission, or an independent prosecutor. It is hard at this point to imagine that what will follow will not prove destructive to—old-fashioned phrase coming—the good of the country." Like Friedman, Noonan shies away from saying aloud what she is really arguing: that America is better off when ruled under secret laws, with immunity for government officials who violate the non-secret ones.
Think about that concept for a moment. Secret laws. In America. And we have "journalists" telling us the secret laws are good for the country. War is peace, baby. Dig it.
Even Jon Stewart seems to have momentarily forgotten that there's such a thing as the law, suggesting instead immunity for anyone willing to admit, "My bad." Apply that thinking to criminality generally and see where it takes you.
If you want to stay in denial, avoid clicking on this link (h/t Andrew Sullivan). Especially avoid The UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhumane, and Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which President Reagan signed in 1988 and the Senate ratified in 1994, and which Article VI of the Constitution makes the supreme law of the land. Definitely don't read the following excerpts from the UNCAT, which provides that:
Article 1. For the purposes of this Convention, the term "torture" means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.
And:
Article 16. Each State Party shall undertake to prevent in any territory under its jurisdiction other acts of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment which do not amount to torture as defined in article I, when such acts are committed by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. In particular, the obligations contained in articles 10, 11, 12 and 13 shall apply with the substitution for references to torture of references to other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
How is it that none of the opinion pieces linked above sees fit even to mention these laws?
For the record: I also failed to include a discussion of applicable law in November 2007, when responding to an interview Vince Flynn did with the Washington Post in which Vince argued for torture. But I've taken the trouble to educate myself in the interim. Vince, you didn't mention it before except by omission, so I'll ask now: do you think the law is irrelevant to a discussion of torture? And what do you make of the news that Kalid Sheik Mohamed was waterboarded not once, but 183 times in a month? Not exactly the "rarest of circumstances," or the "clinical precision" you claimed at the time. And if you have to do it 183 times -- over the course of a month -- can you really claim it's effective, or even appropriate for the Ticking Bomb Scenario? (well, maybe the bomb was ticking really slowly). Especially because all the facts that have come to light since the former administration and its cheerleaders began their "torture works and is necessary" campaign belie both claims.
For a nice summary debunking the myths various establishment figures are still peddling about torture, here's Scott Horton.
Opponents of prosecuting the architects of Amerca's torture regime argue that prosecutions would be about "criminalizing policy differences." No. Failing to prosecute would be to politicize criminality, and proponents of de facto immunity for our political class are doing exactly that.
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By the time we prosecute them, crimes are by definition past. That the crime has already been committed is never an argument for failing to prosecute it ("Your honor, it's true my client raped the victim, but that's part of the past and we need to look forward. This is a time for reflection, not retribution"). But the Bush administration's torture policies are not even part of the past. The fact that President Obama has banned the practices in question implicitly ratifies his or the next president's right to re-invoke them. Only investigation and prosecution can restore the proper place of the law in our country and ensure, insofar as possible, that the law is not treated as a sad joke in the future.
But don't take my word on all this. Take President Bush's:
You'd think Republicans, who purport to be the party of law and order, might be concerned about law-breaking. Well, I thought the GOP was about small government, balanced budgets, and a modest foreign policy, too. To the extent Republicans still bother making such claims, they've become the world's emptiest brand. Republicans have no principles, Democrats have no balls, and our pseudo journalistic class enables the worst and weakest elements of both. Imagine where we'd be without the blogosphere.
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
Privileging the Posterior
As Ian Fleming's Auric Goldfinger said, "Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action." So when I heard Rush Limbaugh's recent comments about British Prime Minister Gordon Brown getting "anal poisoning" from slobbering over President Obama, I couldn't help wondering whether something was going on.
And indeed, here's Rush again, claiming "we're being told... we have to bend over and grab the ankles" (mind you, Rush would never assume such a position voluntarily).
And here's Tucker Carlson, opining that Jim Cramer's wife must have been ashamed of "the butt sniffing he gave Jon Stewart."
And Carlson again, asking why Jon Stewart wanted to be John Kerry's "butt boy."
I don't want to make too much of this. Maybe there are examples of prominent left-wingers who share Limbaugh's and Carlson's apparent fixation. But after a while, given the richness of English and the variety of colorful references available to suggest subservience, one does start to feel that happenstance and coincidence might not be sufficient to explain things here.
Regardless, I'm sure that conservatives, who care deeply about maintaining standards of decency on the airwaves, will rise up to protect society by insisting that Limbaugh and Carlson find a way to exclude from public discourse their taste for anal idiom.
And indeed, here's Rush again, claiming "we're being told... we have to bend over and grab the ankles" (mind you, Rush would never assume such a position voluntarily).
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | M - Th 11p / 10c | |||
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And here's Tucker Carlson, opining that Jim Cramer's wife must have been ashamed of "the butt sniffing he gave Jon Stewart."
And Carlson again, asking why Jon Stewart wanted to be John Kerry's "butt boy."
I don't want to make too much of this. Maybe there are examples of prominent left-wingers who share Limbaugh's and Carlson's apparent fixation. But after a while, given the richness of English and the variety of colorful references available to suggest subservience, one does start to feel that happenstance and coincidence might not be sufficient to explain things here.
Regardless, I'm sure that conservatives, who care deeply about maintaining standards of decency on the airwaves, will rise up to protect society by insisting that Limbaugh and Carlson find a way to exclude from public discourse their taste for anal idiom.
Criticize Govt = Hate America?
Back in Tokyo after three weeks on the road promoting Fault Line, drained as usual after these things but happy. Not much of a break this time, either, with the Japanese version and the Rain Fall movie coming out this month, but these are quality problems and no complaints.
Got a whole lot to write about and not much time, so today, just one thought. I've been surprised by the amount of mail and reviews of Fault Line dismissing the book (and me) as anti-American, far left, etc. I don't want to give away anything essential to the plot here, but I think it's okay to say that in the book the US government is involved in a number of illegal activities, including assassinations. At which point, two questions present themselves.
First, is it not true that the USG is involved in illegal activities, including assassinations?
Second, why would pointing out that the government behaves illegally make one anti-American? At a minimum, such an argument would have to equate the government with America. Is this true? America = the government, no more, no less?
This is a worldview I find difficult to understand. When did the government come not just to represent America, but actually to *be* America, in the minds of people who think criticism of the government and hatred of America are the same thing? Adding to my befuddlement is my sense that the people advancing this line of argument typically call themselves conservative. Among their rank, of course, is Grover Norquist, a fellow who famously declared his desire to shrink the government to a size where he could "drown it in the bathtub." I don't understand -- how could someone hate America so? Where's the outrage?
Tell you what: I love my country, but frequently can't stand the government. Trivial example: one night just last week, heading to a bookstore in Tyson's Corner, VA, from one in Reston, I pulled into the toll booth to the Dulles toll road. There were two booths: one labeled Exact Change, the other, Full Service. Lacking change, I chose the latter. But -- surprise! There was no attendant. I couldn't back up, so I had to drive through, past the camera and the alarm bells. Five minutes later, I repeated the process at the exit ramp. I'm sure I'll be getting a stiff set of tickets in the mail later this month. I'm equally sure the people who designed this system did so with full knowledge of how it would work, just to collect revenue. I think they're all a bunch of government squeegee men. Does criticizing them mean I hate the entire polity, society, and culture of Northern Virginia?
It's easy for me to criticize and sometimes even loathe the government while at the same time loving the country because it's so obvious to me that the two are distinct. For others, apparently... not so much.
Other news: Fault Line is big in the blogosphere! The novel's been covered in The Huffington Post, in Glenn Greenwald's Unclaimed Territory on Salon, in Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish, in Scott Horton's No Comment on Harper's, and in Obsidian Wings. It's an honor to be mentioned in these blogs, all of which feature prominently in the novel, all of which I regularly read. Give 'em a try -- they're well worth reading.
Got a whole lot to write about and not much time, so today, just one thought. I've been surprised by the amount of mail and reviews of Fault Line dismissing the book (and me) as anti-American, far left, etc. I don't want to give away anything essential to the plot here, but I think it's okay to say that in the book the US government is involved in a number of illegal activities, including assassinations. At which point, two questions present themselves.
First, is it not true that the USG is involved in illegal activities, including assassinations?
Second, why would pointing out that the government behaves illegally make one anti-American? At a minimum, such an argument would have to equate the government with America. Is this true? America = the government, no more, no less?
This is a worldview I find difficult to understand. When did the government come not just to represent America, but actually to *be* America, in the minds of people who think criticism of the government and hatred of America are the same thing? Adding to my befuddlement is my sense that the people advancing this line of argument typically call themselves conservative. Among their rank, of course, is Grover Norquist, a fellow who famously declared his desire to shrink the government to a size where he could "drown it in the bathtub." I don't understand -- how could someone hate America so? Where's the outrage?
Tell you what: I love my country, but frequently can't stand the government. Trivial example: one night just last week, heading to a bookstore in Tyson's Corner, VA, from one in Reston, I pulled into the toll booth to the Dulles toll road. There were two booths: one labeled Exact Change, the other, Full Service. Lacking change, I chose the latter. But -- surprise! There was no attendant. I couldn't back up, so I had to drive through, past the camera and the alarm bells. Five minutes later, I repeated the process at the exit ramp. I'm sure I'll be getting a stiff set of tickets in the mail later this month. I'm equally sure the people who designed this system did so with full knowledge of how it would work, just to collect revenue. I think they're all a bunch of government squeegee men. Does criticizing them mean I hate the entire polity, society, and culture of Northern Virginia?
It's easy for me to criticize and sometimes even loathe the government while at the same time loving the country because it's so obvious to me that the two are distinct. For others, apparently... not so much.
Other news: Fault Line is big in the blogosphere! The novel's been covered in The Huffington Post, in Glenn Greenwald's Unclaimed Territory on Salon, in Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish, in Scott Horton's No Comment on Harper's, and in Obsidian Wings. It's an honor to be mentioned in these blogs, all of which feature prominently in the novel, all of which I regularly read. Give 'em a try -- they're well worth reading.
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Detainees and Prisoners
Yesterday the Obama administration announced a new policy to govern the holding of terror suspects. Here's what Attorney General Eric Holder announced:
"As we work towards developing a new policy to govern detainees, it is essential that we operate in a manner that strengthens our national security, is consistent with our values, and is governed by law."
Followers of HOTM know I put a lot of stock in words. So two things struck me about Holder's statement.
First, what does it mean to "work towards developing" something? It seems that not only does the Obama administration lack a policy, not only is it not developing a policy, it is merely working toward developing a policy. Is this like being engaged to be engaged? Maybe. Maybe there will eventually be a marriage. But if you really plan to get hitched, why not just get engaged? If you really want a new policy, why not actually develop one? I mean, if a house painter told you he was working towards developing a way to paint your house, how confident would you be that the job would ever get done?
Second, why is the administration (and just about everyone else, including the liberal blogosphere, including even the excellent Scott Horton, who expresses his own doubts here) continuing to call people held at Guantanamo and other prisons "detainees"? For me, "detention" is something that happens to you at a place you first arrived at of your own volition. For example, if I mail a letter at the post office and government agents show up and hold me there for an hour, I think it's fair to say I've been detained. If the same agents hood me, drug me, manacle me, fly me to Guantanamo and hold me there for five years, I think it's fair to say I've been imprisoned.
So why the squeamishness about calling people in the second hypothetical (actually, it's not at all hypothetical) prisoners? Simple: the people in question have received neither a trial nor traditional notions of due process. It would be uncomfortable to acknowledge that America imprisons people without trial or other due process. Suggesting that we're merely detaining them is a way of sanitizing the whole business.
The use of language for political sanitization makes me uncomfortable. It's like calling torture "aggressive interrogation." If we really need to torture prisoners, for example, let's make a case for it. But if proponents instead feel the need to try to sell me on the notion by reassuring me that all that's going on is the "aggressive interrogation of "detainees," I sense these proponents lack the courage of their own supposed convictions. And if they themselves are insufficiently confident in the necessity of imprisoning people without due process to make a clear case for the policy, how can they expect anyone else to be persuaded?
As long as the government calls prisoners detainees, I'll wager any policy changes will be mostly cosmetic.
P.S. For an example of life imitating art -- in this case, the covert operations group at the heart of the plot of Fault Line -- last week Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh reported on an "executive assassination ring" that reported directly to the Vice President. Amazingly close match to the setup in Fault Line.
"As we work towards developing a new policy to govern detainees, it is essential that we operate in a manner that strengthens our national security, is consistent with our values, and is governed by law."
Followers of HOTM know I put a lot of stock in words. So two things struck me about Holder's statement.
First, what does it mean to "work towards developing" something? It seems that not only does the Obama administration lack a policy, not only is it not developing a policy, it is merely working toward developing a policy. Is this like being engaged to be engaged? Maybe. Maybe there will eventually be a marriage. But if you really plan to get hitched, why not just get engaged? If you really want a new policy, why not actually develop one? I mean, if a house painter told you he was working towards developing a way to paint your house, how confident would you be that the job would ever get done?
Second, why is the administration (and just about everyone else, including the liberal blogosphere, including even the excellent Scott Horton, who expresses his own doubts here) continuing to call people held at Guantanamo and other prisons "detainees"? For me, "detention" is something that happens to you at a place you first arrived at of your own volition. For example, if I mail a letter at the post office and government agents show up and hold me there for an hour, I think it's fair to say I've been detained. If the same agents hood me, drug me, manacle me, fly me to Guantanamo and hold me there for five years, I think it's fair to say I've been imprisoned.
So why the squeamishness about calling people in the second hypothetical (actually, it's not at all hypothetical) prisoners? Simple: the people in question have received neither a trial nor traditional notions of due process. It would be uncomfortable to acknowledge that America imprisons people without trial or other due process. Suggesting that we're merely detaining them is a way of sanitizing the whole business.
The use of language for political sanitization makes me uncomfortable. It's like calling torture "aggressive interrogation." If we really need to torture prisoners, for example, let's make a case for it. But if proponents instead feel the need to try to sell me on the notion by reassuring me that all that's going on is the "aggressive interrogation of "detainees," I sense these proponents lack the courage of their own supposed convictions. And if they themselves are insufficiently confident in the necessity of imprisoning people without due process to make a clear case for the policy, how can they expect anyone else to be persuaded?
As long as the government calls prisoners detainees, I'll wager any policy changes will be mostly cosmetic.
P.S. For an example of life imitating art -- in this case, the covert operations group at the heart of the plot of Fault Line -- last week Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh reported on an "executive assassination ring" that reported directly to the Vice President. Amazingly close match to the setup in Fault Line.
Monday, March 09, 2009
Fault Line is Here!
Fault Line, my first standalone thriller, launches today, so I thought it would be appropriate to include some thoughts from a recent interview on the book’s origins and its political milieu. The tour is taking me to Phoenix/Scottsdale, Los Angeles (Pasadena, Thousand Oaks, LA), San Diego, Sacramento, the San Francisco Bay Area (Menlo Park and San Mateo), Houston, Indianapolis (Carmel), Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Washington DC (Bethesda and Baileys Crossroads), and New York City. Details and the full schedule here. Enjoy the book—subject of a nice recent write-up in the Wall Street Journal—and hope to see you on the road!
Ben Treven, one of the three main characters in Fault Line, is also an assassin. Based on your own CIA experience, is there a certain personality type that makes an effective assassin? What draws you to these characters as a writer?
I’d say there are a number of necessary elements: intelligence, adaptability, patience, the ability to role-play, game things out, think like the opposition. But probably the most important element is an ability to dissociate. Snipers will tell you they don’t see a man; they see a target. That there’s no difference between hunting a man and hunting a deer. So you have to be able to separate yourself from what you’re doing, separate the target from his own humanity. Either you have to deny the humanity in the target, or deny it in yourself—anything else produces empathy, and as Dox, the former Marine sniper of the Rain books, points out, “If it inhabits your mind, it’ll inhibit your trigger finger.”
What draws me to these characters? I’m not sure, exactly. I think it’s that, on the one hand, they’re like you and me. They’re not sociopaths; they’re normal. And yet they’re not normal, because they can do—and live with—acts that would crush a normal psyche. I guess I’m drawn to the idea that a person can transcend—commit the ultimate transgression, in fact—without being punished for it. An ability like that would be an almost godlike kind of power, wouldn’t it? Raskolnikov without the guilt. Ahab without the catastrophe.
And yet these men aren’t free of consequences—there is a “cost of it,” as a Vietnam vet friend who’s taught me a lot puts it. That cost, and the way these men shoulder it, is something else that fascinates me.
Like many of the Rain books, Fault Line includes some surprisingly graphic sex. Why do you write so much sex?
I’m tempted to paraphrase Blazing Saddles here and just answer, “I like sex.” But let me see if I do better than that…
There are three general ways to get to know someone’s character: time, stress, and sex. In a novel, you don’t have time, meaning you need an accelerant, and that leaves you with sex or stress. Violence is one of the most stressful experiences we humans can face, which is why violence can be such a powerful tool in stories. But sex is also enormously revealing, which is why the biblical euphemism that Abraham “knew” Sarah is so apt. Also, sex can be an incredibly powerful pivot. Sex changes everything. Remember when John Cusack and Ione Skye finally make love in Say Anything? Cusack then tries to pretend that it doesn’t matter that much, and Lili Taylor says to him something like, “Yes it does! It changes everything. Decades could go by without you seeing each other... and then, when you’re in your sixties, you might bump into each other, and you’ll say, ‘Hi, how are you?’ and she’ll say, ‘Fine, how are you?’, but what you’ll really be thinking is, ‘We had sex!’”
Which is why I had so much of a blast with the buildup to what happens in Fault Line and with its culmination. These are characters caught for a variety of reasons between powerfully conflicting feelings of antagonism and attraction. They know they shouldn’t, they even tell themselves they don’t want to… and yet of course they do. What would happen to two people with feelings like that, pressurized by shared danger, enhanced by distrust, catalyzed by violence? Not going to tell you here… you’ll have to read the book to find out.
I’ve heard about how the idea for your first novel came to you as a series of images that led you to ask questions about what you were seeing and why. Did Fault Line have a similar origin, or did you set out to write this novel as a conscious change of pace from your novels featuring the assassin John Rain?
It’s funny, unlike the case with Rain Fall, I can’t identify the actual moment Fault Line came to me. But the story certainly has its origins in an interesting pair of jobs I held: first, a covert position with the CIA’s Directorate of Operations; second, as an attorney with a high-powered Silicon Valley law firm (and as an executive with a high-tech startup thereafter). Somewhere along the line I started thinking about a pair of brothers, radically different in personality, temperament, and worldview. One would be an undercover soldier, the other a hotshot lawyer… yeah, I could draw on my own experiences in those two worlds. It felt right, so I kept thinking about it. They’d have to be alienated from each other for some reason. They’re not even on speaking terms… but then one of them, the lawyer, gets into a kind of trouble his otherwise considerable experience and expertise can’t get him out of. The only guy who could help him would be his brother, but they hate each other… but okay, blood is thicker than water, and the older brother reluctantly agrees to help. And what if there were something cranking up the tension between them, bringing their painful, buried history closer to the surface? Maybe a love triangle? Yeah, with a beautiful Iranian-American lawyer, Sarah Hosseini, who the older brother would instantly distrust even as he was drawn to her…
And on and on like that, questions leading to answers that lead to more questions, and eventually you have a story like Fault Line.
I’m curious about how long the typical assassin—if there even is such a thing—can be effective in the field, either before his or her identity is blown or the psychological effects of the work begin to degrade performance.
This will vary with the individual, but dissociation is hard psychological work, and over time the framework a killer uses to stay functional will start to deteriorate. For more on this fascinating topic, I recommend two books: first, David Grossman’s On Killing: The Psychological Costs of Learning to Kill in War and Society; second, Jonathan Shay’s Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character.
How did the covert world of spies and assassins change after 9/11? I recall former Vice President Cheney talking about the need to “work the dark side,” and it does seem that in many cases “the gloves came off,” to use another phrase that frequently crops up in these kinds of discussions.
Ah, the dark side, the same place Darth Vadar went. And what did Yoda tell Luke about that? The dark side of the force is seductive because it promises a shortcut… but in the end, delivers nothing. I guess former Vice President Cheney didn’t see the movie, or if he did, he drew the wrong lesson from it.
Yes, post 9/11, we took the gloves off and went to the dark side or whatever other metaphor we might use to describe the abandonment of intelligent tactics and the embrace of primitive emotion instead. Because what else could “the dark side” be if not a more primitive, id-focused, emotionally-based way of reacting to the world? Diplomacy isn’t the dark side. Dale Carnegie isn’t the dark side. Clausewitz, Machiavelli, and Sun Tsu aren’t the dark side. Rationality, empiricism, logic… these are all concepts we associate with the light. You don’t go to the dark side because it makes sense to go there. You go because going feels good. You go because you don’t know any better.
Torture, kidnapping, warrantless surveillance… it’s well documented that these policies originated in the White House. And now the purveyors of the policies find themselves trapped by a kind of double vision. We have to take the gloves off… but we don’t torture. Telecoms didn’t break the law in turning over confidential customer data to the government… but they need retroactive immunity anyway.
It would be refreshing if dark side proponents would speak a little more clearly. Yes, we torture—forget all that “aggressive questioning” nonsense—and here’s why. Yes, the telecoms broke the law, that’s why we’re trying to get them off the hook. But I guess the nature of the dark side is that spending time there impedes clarity of vision. It certainly impedes clarity of speech.
In your opinion, how have these changes impacted the security of the United States?
They’ve made us less safe. The U.S. brand, often called our “soft power,” has been badly damaged. When foreigners think of America today, do they think of the Statue of Liberty, or of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo? Soft power matters because it creates political conditions that foster cooperation. If popular hostility causes a European politician to distance herself from America, that distance trickles down to the levels of intelligence, security, and law enforcement cooperation, all of which are critical in combating international terrorism.
Leave aside questions of morality for the moment, and analyze the issue in cold-blooded cost/benefit terms. Torture isn’t worth it. Sure, it might lead to actual intelligence, but it also leads to false confessions. How do you separate the wheat from the chaff? And torture inhibits the local population from cooperating. People who believe suspects will be tortured are less likely to inform on them. So an authority that becomes known for torture cuts itself off from the source of intelligence it most needs: the local population.
Worst of all, the French experience in Algeria suggests that nothing creates new insurgents faster than torture. Death in open battle is more forgivable than the complete powerlessness, pain, and humiliation of being tortured. People don’t forget it, and the need for revenge after is extreme.
The dark side has also made us lazy. Training interrogators and linguists is expensive and labor intensive. Why bother with all that if you believe you can just do what cavemen did ten thousand years ago? Or perhaps the problem is denial, because what else besides denial could explain how the Defense Department fired some of its few Arabic linguists for being gay? It’s enough to make you wonder what our priorities really are…
So for the sake of some occasional theoretical benefit, we’ve adopted a course highly likely to produce false information, that cuts us off from intelligence produced by local populations, and that is maximally efficient at creating new enemies. I guess Cheney called it the dark side because its more accurate name—the dumb side—would have been a tougher sell.
Ben, the Fault Line assassin, believes, at least initially, that the gloves haven’t come off enough, and the threat to America justifies going beyond the law or even the Constitution. Is this mindset prevalent in the CIA? How does a democracy like America balance its historic respect for individual liberties and its suspicion of government power with its obligation to defend itself and its citizens against those who wish us harm? Don’t we need men and women like Ben—even if we publicly disavow their actions and even their existence?
One of the things I like about Ben is that although his views can be pretty primitive, they’re also refreshingly honest. He doesn’t dress up his behavior in high-minded notions of honor and principle; he thinks America is in a fight, and he knows there’s an advantage to fighting dirty. So hell yeah, he’s going to fight dirty… don’t you want to win?
I don’t know how prevalent this mindset is in the CIA, but it’s clear from the Yoo torture memos, records of meetings among White House and Justice Department officials, and other evidence, that the philosophy was embraced by the Bush White House. I’m concerned it’s now being embraced by Obama, as well.
How do we balance security and civil liberties? I think the Constitution does a pretty good job of it: the government can exercise certain extraordinarily intrusive powers, including not only the power to search and seize but to imprison and even execute citizens, as well, but only with appropriate oversight and only upon a proper showing of evidence. What’s chiefly disturbing about the powers claimed by the Bush administration isn’t that they’re new; it’s that the Bush administration has exercised these powers in secret and in violation of the Fourth Amendment and statutory law. It’s as though the White House has unilaterally determined that oversight is just too burdensome and decided to eschew it. But democracy itself is burdensome—after all, freedom isn’t free.
Do we need men and women like Ben? Ben certainly thinks so. I’m not so sure. When you look at the history of CIA clandestine activities—regime change in Iran, assassination plots against Castro, skullduggery in Latin America—and of their intelligence calls—the condition of the pre-collapse Soviet Union, Pakistani nuclear efforts, Iraqi WMDs—it’s fair to ask how different things might be if the CIA hadn’t existed to begin with. A public corporation would look at all the money we spend on intelligence and ask what we’re getting for it—and whether we can get the same for less. But because in place of an animating profit motive, the government is propelled instead by bureaucratic self-interest, these cost-benefit questions aren’t seriously asked. Or if they are, the answers are ignored.
Alex Treven, Ben’s younger brother, is in many ways Ben’s opposite. As a high-tech patent lawyer, Alex is wary of the government and respectful of the legal, constitutional framework. Yet when his client is murdered and his possession of the cutting-edge Obsidian encryption program puts him at risk from unknown assailants, Alex turns to Ben despite their longstanding differences—just as the United States, post-9/11, turned to “the dark side.” I almost felt as if Ben and Alex stood for a country dangerously split in two: perhaps the “fault line” of your title.
Yes, Alex does work as a bit of a metaphor there, doesn’t he? He would never think of getting mixed up in Ben’s world—until he really needs to. And even then, he tells himself (to Ben’s disgust) that he doesn’t really want to get involved. He wants the benefits without the costs, which, as Ben puts it, is like trying to pick up a turd from the clean end. It can’t be done.
Sarah Hosseini is a young associate at the law firm where Alex works. Why did you make her Iranian?
I wanted her to be something that would create instant conflict with Ben. Here’s a guy who kills Iranians for a living, so what could be more stressful than suddenly having to work with a woman who looks, sounds like, and comes from a culture Ben thinks of as the enemy? And Sarah, who is both political and idealistic, has her own issues with Ben: she recognizes him as the embodiment of the dark forces she abhors. And yet—of course—there’s an overwhelming physical chemistry between them. Placing characters in conflict like that and seeing what they do is always a blast.
I’ve never worked for the CIA, but I have worked in law firms, and I have to say, you really nail the atmosphere of surface bonhomie masking cut-throat competition. I guess every world has its own assassins.
Yeah, the politics of big firm life can get pretty tough. You’re talking about a collection of people with out-sized analytical skills and ambition, with a lot of money and prestige at stake and a pyramid structure where only a small percentage can hope to make partner. Which is part of the reason I enjoyed making Alex a player in such an environment. True, he’s a civilian, and out of his element in Ben’s world, but on the other hand, he’s survived in the shark tank of big firm life. It was interesting for me (and for Ben) to see the way some of Alex’s skills wound up translating from one arena to another.
I’ve read a lot of thrillers in which the characters are simply mouthpieces for the author, but you step back and allow your characters to possess their own opinions. Nonetheless, I couldn’t help wondering whether you identified more with Ben or Alex… or even Sarah.
Writing political characters can be dangerous because many readers feel so strongly politically that if they disagree with a character’s views, they’ll immediately impute those views to the author, get angry, and get pulled out of the story. But politics and political stories interest me, so I’m willing to take the chance.
As for whom I identify with, the answer is all three. I don’t know how it is for other writers, but when I’m creating a character, I try to identify some element of my own personality or worldview, distill it out, and then culture it in a new person, where it expresses itself differently than it does in myself because it’s growing in a different medium. There are idealistic aspects of my worldview, so I sympathize with Sarah. I have my ruthless, amoral elements, also, so I can understand a guy like Ben. And there are parts of me that don’t want to bother with any of it, that just want to be left alone… so then there’s Alex. But I’m not interested in creating mouthpieces—mouthpiecing is what my blog is for. My characters are people. Their purpose isn’t to express viewpoints or change opinions; it’s to evoke an emotional reaction in readers, to illuminate some aspect of being human, to make my readers care. They’re real to me: sympathetic, complex and three-dimensional. Their opinions are secondary to all that.
What makes Obsidian so dangerous . . . and valuable? Is there real-world technology similar to Obsidian?
I don’t want to give away too much here, so I’ll just say this: the United States is the most networked country in the world. Our computer-intensive economy and society are strengths, but also represent a potential vulnerability for anyone seeking to do America harm. And yes, there are definitely technologies out there like Obsidian. For more, here’s an excellent book: Adam Young and Moti Yung’s Malicious Cryptography: Exposing Cryptovirology.
I couldn’t help noticing that certain peripheral characters in Fault Line bear the names of well-known bloggers. Were you tipping your hat to their work?
You caught me. I’m a huge admirer of various bloggers: Glenn Greenwald, Scott Horton, Hilzoy, Andrew Sullivan, and quite a few others. Even if you don’t agree with them (and I should say I do tend to agree with them), the quality of their argument is peerless.
Remember the end of Three Days of the Condor, when Robert Redford has spilled his story to the New York Times? Or the end of Stephen King’s book Firestarter, when the little girl sneaks past the big newspapers because they’re being watched by government agents and goes to Rolling Stone instead? In Fault Line, the protagonists don’t even pause to consider a newspaper—they recognize that if they go to anyone, it’s going to be a blog. Times have changed.
With your website and blog, The Heart of the Matter, you have a substantial online presence yourself. How has the Internet affected your work as a writer? How do you think it’s changing the nature of the publishing business—and will those changes help aspiring writers?
The most obvious effect of the Internet for a writer like me is in enabling nonstop promotion. It used to be that an author’s promotion efforts were clustered mostly around the launch of a new book, but blogs and social networking sites like FaceBook and MySpace make it possible to reach new readers anywhere, anytime… which in fact typically means everywhere, all the time. I have a background in business and law and enjoy interacting with fans, real and potential, so you might say that the rise of the Internet favors my style of play. But it’s also a challenge, because for me creating a story requires a degree of cushioning from the world that promotion doesn’t permit.
So the big change is of a “because you can, you should” variety: you can promote all the time, so you should. Certainly authors are doing an unprecedented amount of promotion themselves. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Either way, it’s a necessary thing, given various aspects of the state of the publishing world, so I don’t think that much about it, I just do what needs to be done. I think aspiring writers should treat the changes the same way published writers should: with realism. Because once you’re selling your art, you’re in business, and to succeed in business you have to be realistic.
What about the political potential of blogs and the Internet? Can they serve as checks on government power and advocates of policy in the way that the Fourth Estate was meant to do, and sometimes did . . . before succumbing to corporate ownership?
I hope so. The mainstream media has become so lazy and complicit there’s often no difference between the function of television news coverage in America and the role of Pravda in the Soviet Union. Most mainstream journalists depend on politicians for access, and access depends on favorable coverage. This dynamic means our most celebrated “journalists”—the real Washington insiders, the media establishment—function primarily as spokesmen issuing press releases, not as any kind of Fourth Estate “comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable.” So if you get your news primarily from television, for the most part you’re being spoon-fed the official government line.
Can blogs remedy this imbalance? I’m not sure, although I must be optimistic, or I wouldn’t be blogging myself. I will say that I don’t know anyone writing for the mainstream media—and I read widely—who is producing the kind of quality opinion pieces turned out every day by Glenn Greenwald and the other bloggers I mention in Fault Line. So hopefully, over time, more people will stumble across Glenn and the others and realize that today’s preeminent journalism exists primarily in the blogosphere.
The name of your blog is also the title of a novel by Graham Greene. I take it that you’re an admirer of his work. If he were alive today, how do you think he’d respond to the post-9/11 world?
I am indeed an admirer, and although I don’t want to presume to speak for the man, I can’t imagine him being anything other than disgusted about the way Republicans cynically exploited 9/11 and the way Democrats cravenly capitulated to their opponents. But maybe I’m just projecting.
The movie version of your first novel, Rain Fall, is coming out in 2009. Were you involved in writing the screenplay?
I adapted the book and Sony Pictures bought my screenplay, which was nice, but the director they brought on board, Max Mannix, had his own vision for the movie and decided to write his own. Max’s version is certainly different from mine, but that’s to be expected when two people are repurposing a story for the screen.
Will you be writing more about Sarah Hosseini and the Treven brothers? What about John Rain?
The next book is a sequel centering on Ben. I’m not sure how much Sarah and Alex will be in it, though I find Sarah fascinating and love spend timing her, so I could see her in another book, as well. As for Rain, I see several possibilities there. One is an origin-of-Rain story, because the story of how Rain became who and what he is has so far only been told in fragments. Another is a Dox- or Delilah-centric story, with Rain as a supporting character. I’ll get there… but one book at a time!
Ben Treven, one of the three main characters in Fault Line, is also an assassin. Based on your own CIA experience, is there a certain personality type that makes an effective assassin? What draws you to these characters as a writer?
I’d say there are a number of necessary elements: intelligence, adaptability, patience, the ability to role-play, game things out, think like the opposition. But probably the most important element is an ability to dissociate. Snipers will tell you they don’t see a man; they see a target. That there’s no difference between hunting a man and hunting a deer. So you have to be able to separate yourself from what you’re doing, separate the target from his own humanity. Either you have to deny the humanity in the target, or deny it in yourself—anything else produces empathy, and as Dox, the former Marine sniper of the Rain books, points out, “If it inhabits your mind, it’ll inhibit your trigger finger.”
What draws me to these characters? I’m not sure, exactly. I think it’s that, on the one hand, they’re like you and me. They’re not sociopaths; they’re normal. And yet they’re not normal, because they can do—and live with—acts that would crush a normal psyche. I guess I’m drawn to the idea that a person can transcend—commit the ultimate transgression, in fact—without being punished for it. An ability like that would be an almost godlike kind of power, wouldn’t it? Raskolnikov without the guilt. Ahab without the catastrophe.
And yet these men aren’t free of consequences—there is a “cost of it,” as a Vietnam vet friend who’s taught me a lot puts it. That cost, and the way these men shoulder it, is something else that fascinates me.
Like many of the Rain books, Fault Line includes some surprisingly graphic sex. Why do you write so much sex?
I’m tempted to paraphrase Blazing Saddles here and just answer, “I like sex.” But let me see if I do better than that…
There are three general ways to get to know someone’s character: time, stress, and sex. In a novel, you don’t have time, meaning you need an accelerant, and that leaves you with sex or stress. Violence is one of the most stressful experiences we humans can face, which is why violence can be such a powerful tool in stories. But sex is also enormously revealing, which is why the biblical euphemism that Abraham “knew” Sarah is so apt. Also, sex can be an incredibly powerful pivot. Sex changes everything. Remember when John Cusack and Ione Skye finally make love in Say Anything? Cusack then tries to pretend that it doesn’t matter that much, and Lili Taylor says to him something like, “Yes it does! It changes everything. Decades could go by without you seeing each other... and then, when you’re in your sixties, you might bump into each other, and you’ll say, ‘Hi, how are you?’ and she’ll say, ‘Fine, how are you?’, but what you’ll really be thinking is, ‘We had sex!’”
Which is why I had so much of a blast with the buildup to what happens in Fault Line and with its culmination. These are characters caught for a variety of reasons between powerfully conflicting feelings of antagonism and attraction. They know they shouldn’t, they even tell themselves they don’t want to… and yet of course they do. What would happen to two people with feelings like that, pressurized by shared danger, enhanced by distrust, catalyzed by violence? Not going to tell you here… you’ll have to read the book to find out.
I’ve heard about how the idea for your first novel came to you as a series of images that led you to ask questions about what you were seeing and why. Did Fault Line have a similar origin, or did you set out to write this novel as a conscious change of pace from your novels featuring the assassin John Rain?
It’s funny, unlike the case with Rain Fall, I can’t identify the actual moment Fault Line came to me. But the story certainly has its origins in an interesting pair of jobs I held: first, a covert position with the CIA’s Directorate of Operations; second, as an attorney with a high-powered Silicon Valley law firm (and as an executive with a high-tech startup thereafter). Somewhere along the line I started thinking about a pair of brothers, radically different in personality, temperament, and worldview. One would be an undercover soldier, the other a hotshot lawyer… yeah, I could draw on my own experiences in those two worlds. It felt right, so I kept thinking about it. They’d have to be alienated from each other for some reason. They’re not even on speaking terms… but then one of them, the lawyer, gets into a kind of trouble his otherwise considerable experience and expertise can’t get him out of. The only guy who could help him would be his brother, but they hate each other… but okay, blood is thicker than water, and the older brother reluctantly agrees to help. And what if there were something cranking up the tension between them, bringing their painful, buried history closer to the surface? Maybe a love triangle? Yeah, with a beautiful Iranian-American lawyer, Sarah Hosseini, who the older brother would instantly distrust even as he was drawn to her…
And on and on like that, questions leading to answers that lead to more questions, and eventually you have a story like Fault Line.
I’m curious about how long the typical assassin—if there even is such a thing—can be effective in the field, either before his or her identity is blown or the psychological effects of the work begin to degrade performance.
This will vary with the individual, but dissociation is hard psychological work, and over time the framework a killer uses to stay functional will start to deteriorate. For more on this fascinating topic, I recommend two books: first, David Grossman’s On Killing: The Psychological Costs of Learning to Kill in War and Society; second, Jonathan Shay’s Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character.
How did the covert world of spies and assassins change after 9/11? I recall former Vice President Cheney talking about the need to “work the dark side,” and it does seem that in many cases “the gloves came off,” to use another phrase that frequently crops up in these kinds of discussions.
Ah, the dark side, the same place Darth Vadar went. And what did Yoda tell Luke about that? The dark side of the force is seductive because it promises a shortcut… but in the end, delivers nothing. I guess former Vice President Cheney didn’t see the movie, or if he did, he drew the wrong lesson from it.
Yes, post 9/11, we took the gloves off and went to the dark side or whatever other metaphor we might use to describe the abandonment of intelligent tactics and the embrace of primitive emotion instead. Because what else could “the dark side” be if not a more primitive, id-focused, emotionally-based way of reacting to the world? Diplomacy isn’t the dark side. Dale Carnegie isn’t the dark side. Clausewitz, Machiavelli, and Sun Tsu aren’t the dark side. Rationality, empiricism, logic… these are all concepts we associate with the light. You don’t go to the dark side because it makes sense to go there. You go because going feels good. You go because you don’t know any better.
Torture, kidnapping, warrantless surveillance… it’s well documented that these policies originated in the White House. And now the purveyors of the policies find themselves trapped by a kind of double vision. We have to take the gloves off… but we don’t torture. Telecoms didn’t break the law in turning over confidential customer data to the government… but they need retroactive immunity anyway.
It would be refreshing if dark side proponents would speak a little more clearly. Yes, we torture—forget all that “aggressive questioning” nonsense—and here’s why. Yes, the telecoms broke the law, that’s why we’re trying to get them off the hook. But I guess the nature of the dark side is that spending time there impedes clarity of vision. It certainly impedes clarity of speech.
In your opinion, how have these changes impacted the security of the United States?
They’ve made us less safe. The U.S. brand, often called our “soft power,” has been badly damaged. When foreigners think of America today, do they think of the Statue of Liberty, or of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo? Soft power matters because it creates political conditions that foster cooperation. If popular hostility causes a European politician to distance herself from America, that distance trickles down to the levels of intelligence, security, and law enforcement cooperation, all of which are critical in combating international terrorism.
Leave aside questions of morality for the moment, and analyze the issue in cold-blooded cost/benefit terms. Torture isn’t worth it. Sure, it might lead to actual intelligence, but it also leads to false confessions. How do you separate the wheat from the chaff? And torture inhibits the local population from cooperating. People who believe suspects will be tortured are less likely to inform on them. So an authority that becomes known for torture cuts itself off from the source of intelligence it most needs: the local population.
Worst of all, the French experience in Algeria suggests that nothing creates new insurgents faster than torture. Death in open battle is more forgivable than the complete powerlessness, pain, and humiliation of being tortured. People don’t forget it, and the need for revenge after is extreme.
The dark side has also made us lazy. Training interrogators and linguists is expensive and labor intensive. Why bother with all that if you believe you can just do what cavemen did ten thousand years ago? Or perhaps the problem is denial, because what else besides denial could explain how the Defense Department fired some of its few Arabic linguists for being gay? It’s enough to make you wonder what our priorities really are…
So for the sake of some occasional theoretical benefit, we’ve adopted a course highly likely to produce false information, that cuts us off from intelligence produced by local populations, and that is maximally efficient at creating new enemies. I guess Cheney called it the dark side because its more accurate name—the dumb side—would have been a tougher sell.
Ben, the Fault Line assassin, believes, at least initially, that the gloves haven’t come off enough, and the threat to America justifies going beyond the law or even the Constitution. Is this mindset prevalent in the CIA? How does a democracy like America balance its historic respect for individual liberties and its suspicion of government power with its obligation to defend itself and its citizens against those who wish us harm? Don’t we need men and women like Ben—even if we publicly disavow their actions and even their existence?
One of the things I like about Ben is that although his views can be pretty primitive, they’re also refreshingly honest. He doesn’t dress up his behavior in high-minded notions of honor and principle; he thinks America is in a fight, and he knows there’s an advantage to fighting dirty. So hell yeah, he’s going to fight dirty… don’t you want to win?
I don’t know how prevalent this mindset is in the CIA, but it’s clear from the Yoo torture memos, records of meetings among White House and Justice Department officials, and other evidence, that the philosophy was embraced by the Bush White House. I’m concerned it’s now being embraced by Obama, as well.
How do we balance security and civil liberties? I think the Constitution does a pretty good job of it: the government can exercise certain extraordinarily intrusive powers, including not only the power to search and seize but to imprison and even execute citizens, as well, but only with appropriate oversight and only upon a proper showing of evidence. What’s chiefly disturbing about the powers claimed by the Bush administration isn’t that they’re new; it’s that the Bush administration has exercised these powers in secret and in violation of the Fourth Amendment and statutory law. It’s as though the White House has unilaterally determined that oversight is just too burdensome and decided to eschew it. But democracy itself is burdensome—after all, freedom isn’t free.
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Do we need men and women like Ben? Ben certainly thinks so. I’m not so sure. When you look at the history of CIA clandestine activities—regime change in Iran, assassination plots against Castro, skullduggery in Latin America—and of their intelligence calls—the condition of the pre-collapse Soviet Union, Pakistani nuclear efforts, Iraqi WMDs—it’s fair to ask how different things might be if the CIA hadn’t existed to begin with. A public corporation would look at all the money we spend on intelligence and ask what we’re getting for it—and whether we can get the same for less. But because in place of an animating profit motive, the government is propelled instead by bureaucratic self-interest, these cost-benefit questions aren’t seriously asked. Or if they are, the answers are ignored.
Alex Treven, Ben’s younger brother, is in many ways Ben’s opposite. As a high-tech patent lawyer, Alex is wary of the government and respectful of the legal, constitutional framework. Yet when his client is murdered and his possession of the cutting-edge Obsidian encryption program puts him at risk from unknown assailants, Alex turns to Ben despite their longstanding differences—just as the United States, post-9/11, turned to “the dark side.” I almost felt as if Ben and Alex stood for a country dangerously split in two: perhaps the “fault line” of your title.
Yes, Alex does work as a bit of a metaphor there, doesn’t he? He would never think of getting mixed up in Ben’s world—until he really needs to. And even then, he tells himself (to Ben’s disgust) that he doesn’t really want to get involved. He wants the benefits without the costs, which, as Ben puts it, is like trying to pick up a turd from the clean end. It can’t be done.
Sarah Hosseini is a young associate at the law firm where Alex works. Why did you make her Iranian?
I wanted her to be something that would create instant conflict with Ben. Here’s a guy who kills Iranians for a living, so what could be more stressful than suddenly having to work with a woman who looks, sounds like, and comes from a culture Ben thinks of as the enemy? And Sarah, who is both political and idealistic, has her own issues with Ben: she recognizes him as the embodiment of the dark forces she abhors. And yet—of course—there’s an overwhelming physical chemistry between them. Placing characters in conflict like that and seeing what they do is always a blast.
I’ve never worked for the CIA, but I have worked in law firms, and I have to say, you really nail the atmosphere of surface bonhomie masking cut-throat competition. I guess every world has its own assassins.
Yeah, the politics of big firm life can get pretty tough. You’re talking about a collection of people with out-sized analytical skills and ambition, with a lot of money and prestige at stake and a pyramid structure where only a small percentage can hope to make partner. Which is part of the reason I enjoyed making Alex a player in such an environment. True, he’s a civilian, and out of his element in Ben’s world, but on the other hand, he’s survived in the shark tank of big firm life. It was interesting for me (and for Ben) to see the way some of Alex’s skills wound up translating from one arena to another.
I’ve read a lot of thrillers in which the characters are simply mouthpieces for the author, but you step back and allow your characters to possess their own opinions. Nonetheless, I couldn’t help wondering whether you identified more with Ben or Alex… or even Sarah.
Writing political characters can be dangerous because many readers feel so strongly politically that if they disagree with a character’s views, they’ll immediately impute those views to the author, get angry, and get pulled out of the story. But politics and political stories interest me, so I’m willing to take the chance.
As for whom I identify with, the answer is all three. I don’t know how it is for other writers, but when I’m creating a character, I try to identify some element of my own personality or worldview, distill it out, and then culture it in a new person, where it expresses itself differently than it does in myself because it’s growing in a different medium. There are idealistic aspects of my worldview, so I sympathize with Sarah. I have my ruthless, amoral elements, also, so I can understand a guy like Ben. And there are parts of me that don’t want to bother with any of it, that just want to be left alone… so then there’s Alex. But I’m not interested in creating mouthpieces—mouthpiecing is what my blog is for. My characters are people. Their purpose isn’t to express viewpoints or change opinions; it’s to evoke an emotional reaction in readers, to illuminate some aspect of being human, to make my readers care. They’re real to me: sympathetic, complex and three-dimensional. Their opinions are secondary to all that.
What makes Obsidian so dangerous . . . and valuable? Is there real-world technology similar to Obsidian?
I don’t want to give away too much here, so I’ll just say this: the United States is the most networked country in the world. Our computer-intensive economy and society are strengths, but also represent a potential vulnerability for anyone seeking to do America harm. And yes, there are definitely technologies out there like Obsidian. For more, here’s an excellent book: Adam Young and Moti Yung’s Malicious Cryptography: Exposing Cryptovirology.
I couldn’t help noticing that certain peripheral characters in Fault Line bear the names of well-known bloggers. Were you tipping your hat to their work?
You caught me. I’m a huge admirer of various bloggers: Glenn Greenwald, Scott Horton, Hilzoy, Andrew Sullivan, and quite a few others. Even if you don’t agree with them (and I should say I do tend to agree with them), the quality of their argument is peerless.
Remember the end of Three Days of the Condor, when Robert Redford has spilled his story to the New York Times? Or the end of Stephen King’s book Firestarter, when the little girl sneaks past the big newspapers because they’re being watched by government agents and goes to Rolling Stone instead? In Fault Line, the protagonists don’t even pause to consider a newspaper—they recognize that if they go to anyone, it’s going to be a blog. Times have changed.
With your website and blog, The Heart of the Matter, you have a substantial online presence yourself. How has the Internet affected your work as a writer? How do you think it’s changing the nature of the publishing business—and will those changes help aspiring writers?
The most obvious effect of the Internet for a writer like me is in enabling nonstop promotion. It used to be that an author’s promotion efforts were clustered mostly around the launch of a new book, but blogs and social networking sites like FaceBook and MySpace make it possible to reach new readers anywhere, anytime… which in fact typically means everywhere, all the time. I have a background in business and law and enjoy interacting with fans, real and potential, so you might say that the rise of the Internet favors my style of play. But it’s also a challenge, because for me creating a story requires a degree of cushioning from the world that promotion doesn’t permit.
So the big change is of a “because you can, you should” variety: you can promote all the time, so you should. Certainly authors are doing an unprecedented amount of promotion themselves. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Either way, it’s a necessary thing, given various aspects of the state of the publishing world, so I don’t think that much about it, I just do what needs to be done. I think aspiring writers should treat the changes the same way published writers should: with realism. Because once you’re selling your art, you’re in business, and to succeed in business you have to be realistic.
What about the political potential of blogs and the Internet? Can they serve as checks on government power and advocates of policy in the way that the Fourth Estate was meant to do, and sometimes did . . . before succumbing to corporate ownership?
I hope so. The mainstream media has become so lazy and complicit there’s often no difference between the function of television news coverage in America and the role of Pravda in the Soviet Union. Most mainstream journalists depend on politicians for access, and access depends on favorable coverage. This dynamic means our most celebrated “journalists”—the real Washington insiders, the media establishment—function primarily as spokesmen issuing press releases, not as any kind of Fourth Estate “comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable.” So if you get your news primarily from television, for the most part you’re being spoon-fed the official government line.
Can blogs remedy this imbalance? I’m not sure, although I must be optimistic, or I wouldn’t be blogging myself. I will say that I don’t know anyone writing for the mainstream media—and I read widely—who is producing the kind of quality opinion pieces turned out every day by Glenn Greenwald and the other bloggers I mention in Fault Line. So hopefully, over time, more people will stumble across Glenn and the others and realize that today’s preeminent journalism exists primarily in the blogosphere.
The name of your blog is also the title of a novel by Graham Greene. I take it that you’re an admirer of his work. If he were alive today, how do you think he’d respond to the post-9/11 world?
I am indeed an admirer, and although I don’t want to presume to speak for the man, I can’t imagine him being anything other than disgusted about the way Republicans cynically exploited 9/11 and the way Democrats cravenly capitulated to their opponents. But maybe I’m just projecting.
The movie version of your first novel, Rain Fall, is coming out in 2009. Were you involved in writing the screenplay?
I adapted the book and Sony Pictures bought my screenplay, which was nice, but the director they brought on board, Max Mannix, had his own vision for the movie and decided to write his own. Max’s version is certainly different from mine, but that’s to be expected when two people are repurposing a story for the screen.
Will you be writing more about Sarah Hosseini and the Treven brothers? What about John Rain?
The next book is a sequel centering on Ben. I’m not sure how much Sarah and Alex will be in it, though I find Sarah fascinating and love spend timing her, so I could see her in another book, as well. As for Rain, I see several possibilities there. One is an origin-of-Rain story, because the story of how Rain became who and what he is has so far only been told in fragments. Another is a Dox- or Delilah-centric story, with Rain as a supporting character. I’ll get there… but one book at a time!
Saturday, March 07, 2009
Still Winnable, Give or Take Five Years
Today I read the always-insightful Andrew Bacevich's review of David Kilcullen's "The Accidental Guerilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One" (h/t Andrew Sullivan). Kilcullen is certainly an expert on the subject and the book sounds well worth reading. But one thing disturbed me. Actually, two.
First, Kilcullen maintains that Afghanistan "remains winnable," and when I read the phrase, I couldn't help but wonder what percentage of conflicts described in their eighth year as still winnable or the like go on to actually be won. I would guess there aren't many such instances, but I'm no expert and I could certainly be wrong. If anyone can offer examples one way or the other, I'd be grateful.
The other verbalism I noticed was Kilcullen's insistence that winning in Afghanistan would require an effort lasting another "five or ten years at least." I found myself thinking about that predicted timeline. Will the effort take at least five years, or will it take at least ten? It can't take both. Why not just say the effort will take at least five years?
I can think of a few possibilities. First, because if the war goes on for much longer than five years, people might in retrospect regard the original estimate as clearly mistaken or even as misleading. But then why not just say the effort will take at least ten years? Because ten years -- especially "at least" ten years -- sounds too long. People might not buy it. But if you say something as vague and logically incoherent as "at least five to ten years," optimistic buyers can focus on the five, and cynical sellers can point to the ten when the five fails to materialize.
Another possibility is that the person making the prediction in fact has no clear idea how long something is going to take and is trying to hide his uncertainty behind a facade of precision. Or it might be that his true timeline is so far out -- say, fifty years or more -- that from the distance of his actual perspective, a difference of five years one way or the other looks inconsequential.
I don't know what accounts for Kilcullen's odd construction. I do know that we're so used to precise-sounding imprecision that often it glides right past us. I remember working at a Silicon Valley startup where executives talked comfortably about product launches in the "Q2 or Q3 timeframe." Q2 and Q3 together already represent six months, but even six months was apparently too narrow for the team to be willing to commit, and they insisted on creating even more wiggle room by reference to that precise-sounding but substantively meaningless word, "timeframe." I suppose the board might have shown its displeasure had management instead said, "We're hoping to get the product out sometime this year, but we're not really sure." On the other hand, the board should have had the sense to know the "timeframe" estimate amounted to the same thing.
Probably not a coincidence that the company in question has long since died.
Of less likely significance, but still odd, is the message from Hawaiian governor Linda Lingle in the program booklet at Left Coast Crime, where I'm spending a few days before the Fault Line launch on Tuesday. Governor Lingle sends her "personal greetings" to the conference goers. But what could this mean? First, Ms. Lingle is identified as the governor, and the seal of the State of Hawaii appears next to her picture, so if anything, this was an official greeting. But even without the official references, how do you personally offer greetings from a pamphlet? Why can't people just send their greetings, unsullied by silly sleight of hand? I wouldn't put Governor Lingle's puffery in quite the same category as something like "sincere condolences," which at least is a logical construction despite its unfortunate implication that condolences unadorned by the adjective might be less than heartfelt. But still.
Obviously, some of the sort of bullshit noted above is innocuous and some of it is dangerous. It's important to distinguish, but I think it's also important to not let it slide. Fixing a problem, even an inconsequential one, without focus and realism takes an awful lot of luck. If we need to be in Afghanistan for half a century, or if experts are so unsure how long we'll need to be there that they offer estimates as incoherent as Kilcullen's, let's get those facts on the table and decide accordingly.
First, Kilcullen maintains that Afghanistan "remains winnable," and when I read the phrase, I couldn't help but wonder what percentage of conflicts described in their eighth year as still winnable or the like go on to actually be won. I would guess there aren't many such instances, but I'm no expert and I could certainly be wrong. If anyone can offer examples one way or the other, I'd be grateful.
The other verbalism I noticed was Kilcullen's insistence that winning in Afghanistan would require an effort lasting another "five or ten years at least." I found myself thinking about that predicted timeline. Will the effort take at least five years, or will it take at least ten? It can't take both. Why not just say the effort will take at least five years?
I can think of a few possibilities. First, because if the war goes on for much longer than five years, people might in retrospect regard the original estimate as clearly mistaken or even as misleading. But then why not just say the effort will take at least ten years? Because ten years -- especially "at least" ten years -- sounds too long. People might not buy it. But if you say something as vague and logically incoherent as "at least five to ten years," optimistic buyers can focus on the five, and cynical sellers can point to the ten when the five fails to materialize.
Another possibility is that the person making the prediction in fact has no clear idea how long something is going to take and is trying to hide his uncertainty behind a facade of precision. Or it might be that his true timeline is so far out -- say, fifty years or more -- that from the distance of his actual perspective, a difference of five years one way or the other looks inconsequential.
I don't know what accounts for Kilcullen's odd construction. I do know that we're so used to precise-sounding imprecision that often it glides right past us. I remember working at a Silicon Valley startup where executives talked comfortably about product launches in the "Q2 or Q3 timeframe." Q2 and Q3 together already represent six months, but even six months was apparently too narrow for the team to be willing to commit, and they insisted on creating even more wiggle room by reference to that precise-sounding but substantively meaningless word, "timeframe." I suppose the board might have shown its displeasure had management instead said, "We're hoping to get the product out sometime this year, but we're not really sure." On the other hand, the board should have had the sense to know the "timeframe" estimate amounted to the same thing.
Probably not a coincidence that the company in question has long since died.
Of less likely significance, but still odd, is the message from Hawaiian governor Linda Lingle in the program booklet at Left Coast Crime, where I'm spending a few days before the Fault Line launch on Tuesday. Governor Lingle sends her "personal greetings" to the conference goers. But what could this mean? First, Ms. Lingle is identified as the governor, and the seal of the State of Hawaii appears next to her picture, so if anything, this was an official greeting. But even without the official references, how do you personally offer greetings from a pamphlet? Why can't people just send their greetings, unsullied by silly sleight of hand? I wouldn't put Governor Lingle's puffery in quite the same category as something like "sincere condolences," which at least is a logical construction despite its unfortunate implication that condolences unadorned by the adjective might be less than heartfelt. But still.
Obviously, some of the sort of bullshit noted above is innocuous and some of it is dangerous. It's important to distinguish, but I think it's also important to not let it slide. Fixing a problem, even an inconsequential one, without focus and realism takes an awful lot of luck. If we need to be in Afghanistan for half a century, or if experts are so unsure how long we'll need to be there that they offer estimates as incoherent as Kilcullen's, let's get those facts on the table and decide accordingly.
Friday, February 06, 2009
Secrecy and Lies
Since Wednesday, I've been following the story of how the United States has apparently threatened to stop sharing intelligence with Britain should a British court release details of the torture of British resident Binyam Mohamed by American guards at Guantanamo Bay prison.
I tend to hold a relatively cynical view of human nature (which is why I'm big on the US system of checks and balances -- I don't trust those in power to check themselves). So when I immediately sensed that the USG made its threat not in the interests of national security, but rather to cover up evidence of war crimes, I had to acknowledge that perhaps my take was at least in part the result of my own biases.
And then I read an article by Garry Wills in the February 12 New York Review of Books called "Why the Government Can Legally Lie." You'll need a subscription to read the online version, but in summary, when a B-29 crashed in 1948, the widows of the crash victims sued the Air Force for compensation. The Air Force cited the imperative of national security in refusing to share information about the plane's maintenance and related matters relevant to the causes of the crash. Eventually, the Supreme Court, reversing two lower court opinions, sided with the government, and the crash information stayed secret in accordance with the government's claim that its release would harm national security.
Then, in 1996, the Air Force records were declassified, and the 220-page Air Force report, including fifteen photos of the wreckage, was finally available to the public. As Wills writes, "[Relatives of the crash victims] read the report carefully, looking for details of any secret project the plane was involved in. There were none. Instead, the report told a horror story of incompetence, bungling, and tragic error," which Wills goes on to enumerate in horrifying detail. But the Supreme Court case that found for the Air Force and against the widows, US v. Reynolds, is still valid, and has been used by the government repeatedly to withhold evidence.
Does the government's previous cover-up prove that its national security claims in the current imbroglio with Britain are without merit? No. But certainly the previous case is powerful evidence of a reflex among those in power to confuse their national security prerogatives with the imperatives of their individual reputations, to claim non-existent interests of the nation in pursuit of personal desires.
Moreover, it's hard to imagine what legitimate national security interests could be at stake in the Binyam Mohamed case. The British court seeks to publicize its own summary of Mohamed's treatment while in captivity. So many books and articles have been written on the way the United States captured, held, and treated war on terror prisoners, so many television programs and documentary films have been made, it strains credulity to suggest the British court has some previously uncovered nugget of information the revelation of which might harm US national security. It seems much more likely that the real concern is that the British court's summary was based on documents provided by US officials, and that unlike reports by third parties, those underlying documents might function as confessions in a potential war crimes trial.
We all have our biases. But the ability to ignore the history of the government's abuse of its secrecy power in the Reynolds case, and the willingness to overlook the absence of a compelling rationale for government secrecy claims in the Mohamed case, suggests a mindset possessed of a powerful internal need to believe in authority, a mindset that exists not just independent of, but also in contradiction to, the available facts.
Miscellaneous:
From a Lexus ad on Salon's home page:
"Realistically, what is your ultimate vision for this country as it relates to sustainable mobility? Tell us what you think for a chance at a cash prize."
I think the prize should go to person who responds, "I think you should find a way to ask your question -- whatever it is -- in plain English."
What's with the recorded greetings in drug stores and gas stations? The muzak is bad enough, but now when a motion sensor detects your presence, a television screen starts blaring advertisements (loudly enough to be audible to even the most significantly hearing-impaired, naturally). The Shell screens are the worst: the recorded video actually shouts, "Good to see you today!"
Deep thought: how many millions did Shell fork over to the consulting geniuses who persuaded the company that customers could be won over by a motion-activated video of a guy claiming it's "good to see" people who when he was talking to the camera weren't even there and who he'll never actually meet?
Michael Phelps' bong hits: You might have seen that Michael Phelps, who won eight gold medals in as many swimming events at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, was photographed recently doing bong hits. Phelps apologized, but at least one of his corporate sponsors, Kellogg, dropped him anyway. I feel a little bad for the guy. Not because he got caught using marijuana, not because he's losing millions of dollars of corporate sponsorship as a result, but because it seems his focus on trying to keep the money blinded him to something more important.
Instead of apologizing, Phelps could have said, "Yes, I used marijuana. I like to get high from time to time and obviously my choice of drug hasn't inhibited my discipline or prevented my success. I'm 23, more than old enough to drink, to drive, to kill and die in war. For some reason, the country's establishment has decided to permit alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, and oxytocin, while prohibiting cannabis. Well, I don't share the establishment's hypocrisy. Rather than hypocritically condemning my choice of drug while enjoying their own, the establishment might consider the costs of its smug insistence on continued prohibition: the diversion of precious judicial, security, intelligence, military, and border control assets from the war on terror, and the undermining of democratically-elected governments throughout Latin American and elsewhere. If publicity surrounding my occasional recreational use of this relatively harmless drug does anything to bring America to its senses about drug prohibition, I will be very glad."
Instead, Phelps kow-towed, no doubt hoping to keep his lucrative sponsorships. If others beside Kellogg now desert him, the swimmer will have lost not just his sponsors, but his integrity, as well.
I tend to hold a relatively cynical view of human nature (which is why I'm big on the US system of checks and balances -- I don't trust those in power to check themselves). So when I immediately sensed that the USG made its threat not in the interests of national security, but rather to cover up evidence of war crimes, I had to acknowledge that perhaps my take was at least in part the result of my own biases.
And then I read an article by Garry Wills in the February 12 New York Review of Books called "Why the Government Can Legally Lie." You'll need a subscription to read the online version, but in summary, when a B-29 crashed in 1948, the widows of the crash victims sued the Air Force for compensation. The Air Force cited the imperative of national security in refusing to share information about the plane's maintenance and related matters relevant to the causes of the crash. Eventually, the Supreme Court, reversing two lower court opinions, sided with the government, and the crash information stayed secret in accordance with the government's claim that its release would harm national security.
Then, in 1996, the Air Force records were declassified, and the 220-page Air Force report, including fifteen photos of the wreckage, was finally available to the public. As Wills writes, "[Relatives of the crash victims] read the report carefully, looking for details of any secret project the plane was involved in. There were none. Instead, the report told a horror story of incompetence, bungling, and tragic error," which Wills goes on to enumerate in horrifying detail. But the Supreme Court case that found for the Air Force and against the widows, US v. Reynolds, is still valid, and has been used by the government repeatedly to withhold evidence.
Does the government's previous cover-up prove that its national security claims in the current imbroglio with Britain are without merit? No. But certainly the previous case is powerful evidence of a reflex among those in power to confuse their national security prerogatives with the imperatives of their individual reputations, to claim non-existent interests of the nation in pursuit of personal desires.
Moreover, it's hard to imagine what legitimate national security interests could be at stake in the Binyam Mohamed case. The British court seeks to publicize its own summary of Mohamed's treatment while in captivity. So many books and articles have been written on the way the United States captured, held, and treated war on terror prisoners, so many television programs and documentary films have been made, it strains credulity to suggest the British court has some previously uncovered nugget of information the revelation of which might harm US national security. It seems much more likely that the real concern is that the British court's summary was based on documents provided by US officials, and that unlike reports by third parties, those underlying documents might function as confessions in a potential war crimes trial.
We all have our biases. But the ability to ignore the history of the government's abuse of its secrecy power in the Reynolds case, and the willingness to overlook the absence of a compelling rationale for government secrecy claims in the Mohamed case, suggests a mindset possessed of a powerful internal need to believe in authority, a mindset that exists not just independent of, but also in contradiction to, the available facts.
Miscellaneous:
From a Lexus ad on Salon's home page:
"Realistically, what is your ultimate vision for this country as it relates to sustainable mobility? Tell us what you think for a chance at a cash prize."
I think the prize should go to person who responds, "I think you should find a way to ask your question -- whatever it is -- in plain English."
What's with the recorded greetings in drug stores and gas stations? The muzak is bad enough, but now when a motion sensor detects your presence, a television screen starts blaring advertisements (loudly enough to be audible to even the most significantly hearing-impaired, naturally). The Shell screens are the worst: the recorded video actually shouts, "Good to see you today!"
Deep thought: how many millions did Shell fork over to the consulting geniuses who persuaded the company that customers could be won over by a motion-activated video of a guy claiming it's "good to see" people who when he was talking to the camera weren't even there and who he'll never actually meet?
Michael Phelps' bong hits: You might have seen that Michael Phelps, who won eight gold medals in as many swimming events at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, was photographed recently doing bong hits. Phelps apologized, but at least one of his corporate sponsors, Kellogg, dropped him anyway. I feel a little bad for the guy. Not because he got caught using marijuana, not because he's losing millions of dollars of corporate sponsorship as a result, but because it seems his focus on trying to keep the money blinded him to something more important.
Instead of apologizing, Phelps could have said, "Yes, I used marijuana. I like to get high from time to time and obviously my choice of drug hasn't inhibited my discipline or prevented my success. I'm 23, more than old enough to drink, to drive, to kill and die in war. For some reason, the country's establishment has decided to permit alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, and oxytocin, while prohibiting cannabis. Well, I don't share the establishment's hypocrisy. Rather than hypocritically condemning my choice of drug while enjoying their own, the establishment might consider the costs of its smug insistence on continued prohibition: the diversion of precious judicial, security, intelligence, military, and border control assets from the war on terror, and the undermining of democratically-elected governments throughout Latin American and elsewhere. If publicity surrounding my occasional recreational use of this relatively harmless drug does anything to bring America to its senses about drug prohibition, I will be very glad."
Instead, Phelps kow-towed, no doubt hoping to keep his lucrative sponsorships. If others beside Kellogg now desert him, the swimmer will have lost not just his sponsors, but his integrity, as well.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Gaza, the Inauguration, Etc.
Thanks for all the mail, everyone, and I miss you too. As I mentioned in my first post-election post, I've been trying to blog less so I can focus more on the next novel. The election was hugely distracting and now I'm trying to make up for lost time.
Some of you have written to me to ask why I had nothing to say on Gaza. Part of the answer can be found in this paragraph from a leader in the January 17th Economist:
That paragraph could have been written (and probably was written) about any Israeli/Arab clash of the last quarter century. I'm sure it'll be written again in the next one. I wrote about some of this in September 2006, and though my view has evolved on a few items I think those earlier posts have held up well. If you're curious, you can read more here, here, and here. Two years from now, I'll probably be linking to them again.
The inauguration: yes, I got up at 1:30 am Tokyo time to watch it. Despite how galactically stage-managed these things are, I found it moving. Former president Bush managed to include a last, characteristic parting shot, saying, "Good speech, Mr. President," following President Obama's speech. I'm sure in Bush's conscious mind, he was being gracious by calling the Obama Mr. President. In fact, he was indulging himself by implying that he was qualified to opine on the merits of the speech he'd just listened to. In Japan, it's considered rudely presumptuous for a student to complement a professor on the quality of a lecture. Instead, one merely says, "Thank you, I learned a lot." "Godspeed, Mr. President" would have been the equivalent for a man given to mangling English as ruthlessly as the former president. Regardless, Bush's last self-indulgence was redeemed by the sight of his helicopter, mercifully extracting him from the capital of the nation he's done so much to damage.
Off politics for a moment: on Friday, I got to see a screening of the Rain Fall movie, out on April 25 in Japan. It was a lot of fun; more thoughts and information here. And if you'd like to say hello in person while I'm on the road promoting Fault Line, out on March 10, here's the tour schedule, which includes Phoenix, Los Angeles (Pasadena, Thousand Oaks, LA), San Diego, Sacramento, San Francisco Bay Area (Menlo Park and San Mateo), Houston, Indianapolis (Carmel), Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Washington DC (Bethesda and Baileys Crossroads), New York City. Hope to see you at one of the events.
Finally, in case you missed it, here's your Jon Stewart fix. Without Fox news, comedy would be much the poorer.
Some of you have written to me to ask why I had nothing to say on Gaza. Part of the answer can be found in this paragraph from a leader in the January 17th Economist:
"Israel’s ruthless offensive has already cost it dear in world opinion. The remorseless demolition of wretched homes and lives by a mighty high-tech war machine cannot but cause grief and outrage in any decent onlooker. Israel asks how else it was supposed to respond to the rocket fire directed for years into its farms and cities, but such questions do absolutely nothing to blunt the emotional impact of this sort of war, whose heart-wrenching images are going to widen an already fearful chasm between the Jewish state and the peoples of the region in which it has yet to win acceptance. For its own sake as well as for the sake of the people of Gaza, it must stop."
That paragraph could have been written (and probably was written) about any Israeli/Arab clash of the last quarter century. I'm sure it'll be written again in the next one. I wrote about some of this in September 2006, and though my view has evolved on a few items I think those earlier posts have held up well. If you're curious, you can read more here, here, and here. Two years from now, I'll probably be linking to them again.
The inauguration: yes, I got up at 1:30 am Tokyo time to watch it. Despite how galactically stage-managed these things are, I found it moving. Former president Bush managed to include a last, characteristic parting shot, saying, "Good speech, Mr. President," following President Obama's speech. I'm sure in Bush's conscious mind, he was being gracious by calling the Obama Mr. President. In fact, he was indulging himself by implying that he was qualified to opine on the merits of the speech he'd just listened to. In Japan, it's considered rudely presumptuous for a student to complement a professor on the quality of a lecture. Instead, one merely says, "Thank you, I learned a lot." "Godspeed, Mr. President" would have been the equivalent for a man given to mangling English as ruthlessly as the former president. Regardless, Bush's last self-indulgence was redeemed by the sight of his helicopter, mercifully extracting him from the capital of the nation he's done so much to damage.
Off politics for a moment: on Friday, I got to see a screening of the Rain Fall movie, out on April 25 in Japan. It was a lot of fun; more thoughts and information here. And if you'd like to say hello in person while I'm on the road promoting Fault Line, out on March 10, here's the tour schedule, which includes Phoenix, Los Angeles (Pasadena, Thousand Oaks, LA), San Diego, Sacramento, San Francisco Bay Area (Menlo Park and San Mateo), Houston, Indianapolis (Carmel), Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Washington DC (Bethesda and Baileys Crossroads), New York City. Hope to see you at one of the events.
Finally, in case you missed it, here's your Jon Stewart fix. Without Fox news, comedy would be much the poorer.
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