Noughty and nice

Mein Gott but the zeitgeist is sour. Paul Krugman has (already famously) dubbed the decade past "the big zero" -- "the decade in which we achieved nothing and learned nothing." Simon Schama looks back cheerfully on "the book-ending of the decade by two immense calamities--mayhem and meltdown, mass murder...and mass unemployment."  Transported by the irrational exuberance of his own eloquence, Schama paints an almost gleeful picture of Dystopia Now:

Give me a sceptic and I will take him to Shanghai or São Paulo on a day of ripe smog and see how sceptical he remains while coughing his guts into a mask and peering at brown sunlight as if through a dome of begrimed glass. Lake Baikal is a saline puddle and the Sahara is heading for Timbuktu. If the earth is not yet in its terminal death rattle, it sure ain’t looking good. Population pressure on shrinking and degraded resources in the poorest parts of the world is unrelenting and no mega-city – Lagos, Caracas, Rio, Mumbai – is without its mountain range of trash on which humans can be seen like skeletal goats picking over the black plastic for something to eat. Along with drought and famine, pandemics have returned: in which, like some as yet unwritten scripture, the animal kingdom – avian, porcine, bovine – is a bellwether of human perishability.

All of which seems to put the nail in the coffin of a collective optimism born 200 years ago, when the Enlightenment envisioned a world illuminated by reason, banishing the afflictions of ignorance, poverty, war and disease. hat the arch-prophet of this smiley-faced secularism, the Marquis de Condorcet, perished while imprisoned by French revolutionary authorities should have told us something.

Whew. Well, key up the guillotine for Condorcet Jr. -- that is, me, a.k.a. Pollyanna the Fukuyaman, giving way to a fit of knee-jerk contrarian optimism. I'm used to this.  My poor mother (born in 1933 and still commuting to Manhattan 3x a week) witnessed the crumbling of WTC Tower #2 with her own eyes on 9/11. I've been trying to convince her ever since that humanity remains on an upward trajectory, that the Soviet Union was a more dangerous adversary than al Qaeda, etc. etc.  So for what it's worth, a reality check on the last decade:

Interrogation "light"

“I’ve seen man at his worst, and man at his best.  I can tell you that in the darkest of moments, there are those who provide a light.  Never forget that a small beam of light is enough to overpower a whole room of darkness.  Never underestimate the impact that you alone, sticking to your principles, can have.”

      - Ali Soufan, former FBI rapport-based interrogator extraordinaire, nemesis of the Cheney torture regime
       Commencement Address, Mansfield University, Dec. 19 [?], 2009

Depends what your definition of "works" is

Strategic as well as moral clarity on the efficacy of torture from The Anonymous Liberal (h/t Andrew Sullivan):

First, and most obviously,it's completely irrelevant [ [whether the Bush interrogation techniques were 'effective']. Torture is categorically prohibited by numerous laws and treaties. It's illegal. Indeed, it's a war crime. Ethnic cleansing may also be an "effective" way of accomplishing certain strategic goals, but that doesn't make it any less reprehensible or illegal. There are all kinds of "effective" strategies and techniques that are foreclosed by the law and by international treaty...

to make a policy case for the use of such techniques, you would have to do much more than establish that they occasionally have produced actionable intelligence. Among other things, you would have to prove that 1) such information could not have been extracted using other means, 2) that the misinformation produced by such methods doesn't overwhelm the accurate information to the point of rending the whole exercise pointless, 3) that the strategic costs of using such techniques (international outrage, increased radicalization of the Muslim world, increased danger to U.S. troops, etc.) don't outweigh the benefits, and 4) the value of the information produced is worth the tradeoff of never being able to use that information (or the fruits thereof) in court and severely jeopardizing any hope of ever convicting that individual in any constitutionally compliant legal proceeding.

So even if we all check our moral faculties at the door (and choose to ignore the law), the defenders of these techniques have come nowhere close to making a compelling policy case for their continued us.

Couldn't have said it better. In fact I think I said it somewhat worse.

Hilllary's '07 blueprint for interrogation policy review

Remember when Hillary got in trouble back in October '07 for for this exchange about interrogation and detention policy?

Wash Post: Can I ask you a follow up? You mentioned Blackwater, you’ve said that at the beginning of your administration you’d ask the Pentagon to report. When it comes to special interrogation methods, obviously you’ve said you’re against torture, but the types of methods that are now used that aren’t technically torture but are still permitted, would you do something in your first couple days to address that, suspend some of the special interrogation methods immediately or ask for some kind of review?

HRC: Well I think I’ve been very clear about that too, we should not conduct or condone torture and it is not clear yet exactly what this administration is or isn’t doing, we’re getting all kinds of mixed messages. I don’t think we’ll know the truth until we have a new President. I think once you can get in there and actually bore into what’s been going on, you’re not going to know. I was very touched by the story you guys had on the front page the other day about the WWII interrogators. I mean it's not the same situation but it was a very clear rejection of what we think we know about what is going on right now but I want to know everything, and so I think we have to draw a bright line and say ‘No torture – abide by the Geneva conventions, abide by the laws we have passed,' and then try to make sure we implement that.

Compare Greg Craig in yesterday's Times, speaking about rendition specifically Bush antiterror policy generally:

Mr. Craig noted that while Mr. Obama decided “not to change the status quo immediately,” he created a task force to study “rendition policy and what makes sense consistent with our obligation to protect the country.”

He urged patience as the administration reviewed the programs it inherited from Mr. Bush. That process began after the election, Mr. Craig said, when military and C.I.A. leaders flew to Chicago for a lengthy briefing of Mr. Obama and his national security advisers. Mr. Obama then sent his advisers to C.I.A. headquarters to “find out the best case for continuing the practices that had been employed during the Bush administration.

From the Administration's point of view, a comprehensive review of Bush era practices is simple prudence. Charged with protecting the nation against terrorist attack, they cannot simply tear up every element of the prior Administration's interrogation, detention and disclosure policies in one fell swoop. Which is not to say that civil liberties groups should let down their guard or ease up on their pressure. Countervailing pressures keep presidents on course -- and no one alive, placed in the President's chair, would not be tempted to err on the side of security over liberty when the two seem to conflict.

Make it thirteen...accomplishments of George W. Bush

As media and electorate kick W. unceremoniously out the door, thoughts turn to a perhaps misguided thought experiment I posted in July, "11 accomplishments of George W. Bush," reposted below. At this late date I'd make it a baker's dozen, adding the auto industry stopgap and close collaboration with the incoming Obama Administration on the transition. Without further ado:

Eleven accomplishments of George W. Bush

July 10, 2008

Like most Americans, I think of George W. Bush as a failed President. Worse than that, I think him not simply as a President who chose unwise policies but as one who assaulted the foundations of American democracy and federalism -- by institutionalizing torture, suspending habeas, violating FISA, corrupting intelligence, and politicizing the Justice Department, the CIA, the EPA and probably every other federal agency.

Nonetheless: our institutions are strong, though weaker when he took office; good people have served during his tenure; and not all of his own impulses and goals were warped. After seven and a half years, the Bush Administration has some accomplishments under its belt. Arrayed together, they look like the pillars of an impressive presidency -- if you discount the incoming missiles of multiple disaster. Here's an equivocal list:

1. Disarmament deal with North Korea - five years and maybe 10 bombs late, but there would seem to be at least a reasonable chance that this rogue will be effectively disarmed. After poking the polecat Kim Jong II and stimulating North Korea's successful weaponization, the Bush Administration has patiently tread a multilateral path that's yielded at least the potential of a good outcome.

2. Bringing Gaddafi in from the cold: a long process with an array of carrots and sticks, but the invasion of Iraq may have concentrated this dictator's mind.

3. Massive increase in AIDS aid: perhaps thanks to Christianist prodding, Bush has showed admirable focus and follow-through on one of the greatest threats to global prosperity.

4. Prescription drug benefit: too expensive, the donut hole is inefficient, private insurers have too great a role, and the drug companies got a giveaway. But seniors do have substantial help in paying their drug bills.

5. No Child Left Behind: the mandate's unfunded and the loopholes in assessment are ridiculous. But we have the halting beginnings of assessing where we're at, state-by-state and district-by-district, in educational achievement.

6. No terror attack on U.S. soil since 9/11: no one will ever know all the reasons why, and many of Bush's "antiterror" measures have come at a dreadful price. But preventing another attack was probably Bush's top priority -- quite a heartfelt one. And there has not been another attack -- here -- on his watch.

7. The FISA bill he wanted: Bush has to know that he's gone all out on this front probably to hand expanded capabilities to a Democratic President. He's probably been motivated partly by the need to obtain cover for his own crimes in breaking FISA. But again, he's doubtless convinced that the intelligence agencies need the powers he's obtained for them. And they probably do need most of them.

8. Decent stewardship of the China relationship: China-bashing on the economic front is mostly demagoguery; it's in everyone's interest that China continue on a peaceful path to first-world economic stature and attendant global influence. The Bush crew has maintained trust and cooperation; it's doubtful whether more pressure could have shaped Chinese economic or geopolitical decisions more to our liking.

9. Deposing the Taliban: yes, the caveats outweigh the accomplishment: we let bin Ladin escape, we took our eye off the ball, we allowed al Qaeda to regroup and left a foundling government in a shattered country to its own devices. But who's to say the initial campaign couldn't have been botched? The Taliban went down swiftly, with a minimum of blood.

10. Deposing Saddam: again, the price paid and the terms chosen were catastrophic. This was not a job to be undertaken on false pretenses, without winning our chief allies' assent or the world's acceptance; it was the wrong war at the wrong time, and it gave new life to our worst enemies. But Saddam was a threat to stability in the middle east and therefore in the world. Iraqis would have had to cope with his end at some point, and who's to say the transition would have been better without the heavy hand of the hegemon? There is now at least a reasonable hope that a non-monstrous national government will assert control over Iraq. Which suggests another accomplishment:

11. The Surge: if a hedge fund manager loses $700 million out of a $1 billion, do we credit him with decisions that bring the balance back up to a half billion? A poor analogy. Money is easily accounted; lives can't be, and actual historical outcomes can't be compared with might-have-beens. Nonetheless, whatever you think of the decision to go to war or of the first four years of its execution, the surge was an extraordinarily difficult decision that's worked better than basically anyone expected. It was also something of a reversal for Bush, who had lived and died by the Rumsfeld doctrine to that point. I don't think anyone can deny that the opportunity for a decent outcome in Iraq is far greater now than in fall 2006; to deny the surge's centrality in the turnaround is deep denial. Yes, those who designed and executed it got lucky - but they made their own luck. The surge enabled the Sunni Awakening, the Sadr rope-a-dope, and the long-delayed beginnings of legislative progress.

So there you have it. I have not convinced myself that Bush was a good President, or even not a monstrous President -- I consider the institutionalization of torture as established U.S. policy a truly monstrous legacy. So what exactly is the point of this exercise? Perhaps its this: in a long-established democracy, there's almost an institutional inertia toward some constructive action. After a Rumsfeld, institutional pressures and norms will push up a Gates. While stalwart nonpolitical appointees like Richard Clarke may get pushed out, others, like Christopher Hill will remain. Even a bad crew remains accountable to a large degree to voters. As long as people don't vote away their civil liberties or other Constitutional protections, the system self-regulates and self-corrects.

We are all enemy combatants now

The road from Guantanamo to Americans' front doors continues to be built out in stages. The Washington Post reports on a section laid in 2005 and 2006:

The Maryland State Police classified 53 nonviolent activists as terrorists and entered their names and personal information into state and federal databases that track terrorism suspects, the state police chief acknowledged yesterday.

Police Superintendent Terrence B. Sheridan revealed at a legislative hearing that the surveillance operation, which targeted opponents of the death penalty and the Iraq war, was far more extensive than was known when its existence was disclosed in July....

Sheridan said that he did not think the names were circulated to other agencies in the federal system and that they are not on the federal government's terrorist watch list. Hutchins said some names might have been shared with the National Security Agency.

An aggressive or sloppy police force classifies peaceful demonstrators as "terrorists." Terrorists in the U.S. can be deemed, at the Administration's pleasure, enemy combatants. Enemy combatants can be held indefinitely without trial and tortured at will. U.S. citizens are not exempt:

WASHINGTON (AP) _ A U.S. military officer warned Pentagon officials that an American detainee was being driven nearly insane by months of punishing isolation and sensory deprivation in a U.S. military brig, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

While the treatment of prisoners at detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in Afghanistan and Iraq have long been the subject of human rights complaints and court scrutiny, the documents shed new light on how two American citizens and a legal U.S. resident were treated in military jails inside the United States.

The Bush administration ordered the men to be held in military jails as "enemy combatants" for years of interrogations without criminal charges, which would not have been allowed in civilian jails.

The men were interrogated by the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency, repeatedly denied access to attorneys and mail from home and contact with anyone other than guards and their interrogators. They were deprived of natural light for months and for years were forbidden even minor distractions such as a soccer ball or a dictionary.

Even scarier than changes in law is the desensitizing of the American citizenry. A recent global survey of global attitudes toward torture found, as Andrew Sullivan put it,

Americans are now among the people on earth most supportive of government's torturing prisoners. The United States is in the same public opinion ballpark as some of the most disgusting regimes on the planet....America's peers in the fight against torture, in terms of public opinion are Azerbaijan, Egypt, Russia, and Iran.

Just 53% of Americans supported a global ban on torture - fewer than in China, Indonesia, or the Palestinian territories. Many Americans have been schooled by the Bush Administrations and the producers of 24 to believe that torturing (suspected) terrorists is essential to our security -- and that it's what "the worst of the worst" deserve in any case.

If the U.S. doesn't change course in this election, those who thought that torture was just for Middle Eastern terrorists may find their sons and daughters Guantanamoed one not-so-distant day -- some time after the next major terror attack. If they dare to protest any government action, that is. President Palin would not blink.

Palin learns quick: torture is American

On genteel PBS, the talk after Sarah Palin's convention speech was all about her skilled punchline delivery, and her poise, and her hockey mom persona. How low we've sunk.

Palin's run through her own resume was fine. Her tributes to McCain were pro forma. Her showcasing of her own family was a bit over the top, but they're a political asset you can't blame her for exploiting.

Her self-branding joke - what's the difference between a hockey Mom and a pit bull? A hockey Mom wears lipstick -- was appropriate, as the latter part of the speech demonstrated.

Her attack on Obama was despicable -- a shameless catalogue of lies and distortions.

The worst first:

Al Qaida terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America, and he's worried that someone won't read them their rights.

Won't read them their rights. That's Republican-speak -- now at last adopted with full throat by the McCain campaign -- for "will stop inflicting on suspected terrorists every torture that was inflicted on John McCain by the North Vietnamese" and/or "will not seek to hold suspects indefinitely without trial or without the right to challenge their imprisonment. " This in a convention in which every major speaker has rehashed those tortures that McCain suffered -- while none until Mike Huckabee last night dared use the word "torture" to describe the litany of stress positions, caging, temperature extremes, beatings and mental torments they catalogued (Palin used the oddly tortuous phrase "torturous interrogations").

As late as last February, McCain was still better than his opponents on this issue of issues. While Romney boasted that he would "double Guantanamo" and Giuliani dismissed sleep deprivation and long standing as minor discomforts, McCain -- who had suffered those tortures -- still said that Americans must not torture. True, by that point he had brokered compromises that left the CIA free to continue tortures prohibited to military personnel, and voted against a bill that would end their exemption. Then, this June, he excoriated the Supreme Court for upholding terrorist suspects' habeas rights in Boumediene. But he had not yet sunk so low as to taunt those who want to restore America's honor by rolling back the Bush torture regime. Now, his henchmen are handing that fascist red meat to his top surrogate. And she, Christian paragon, is happy to mouth the slurs.

Equally defamatory was this:

This is a man who can give an entire speech about the wars America is fighting and never use the word "victory," except when he's talking about his own campaign.

Obama has laid out a very clear set of military priorities -- drawing down troops in Iraq, diverting some to Afghanistan, and concentrating our energies there and in Pakistan to "finish the fight against al Qaeda" -- that is, to achieve "victory" against that terrorist network. Obama has contrasted his policy clearly with McCain's, claiming, with evidence, that McCain went to sleep over Afghanistan while al Qaeda and the Taliban regrouped.

But Obama has never suggested that McCain did not want "victory" against any adversary, or that he put his personal political fortunes ahead of national security. That disgusting charge is of course embedded in the smear above.

Indeed, the theme that Obama "would rather lose a war than lose a campaign" -- as McCain has asserted repeatedly -- is literally the theme of the Republican Convention. "Country First" is meant to signal that Obama puts himself first. The vapid celebrity charge meshes with portrayal of Obama as a vain, self-serving cad who does not love his country. McCain's response to Obama's challenge to ban attacks on patriotism from the contest has been to double down.

Nor is this mode of attack a departure for McCain. He spent the Clinton years impugning Clinton's patriotism, charging repeatedly that Clinton put personal political gain ahead of the national interest. Assuming such motives in other politicians outside a core of chosen friends seems to be a McCain reflex.

Back to Palin. Those who have seen her in action affirm that she's a quick study. Charlie Black envisions her training for foreign policy leadership by "sitting at the feet of the master." Unfortunately, the masters she'll be studying from this fall are expert chiefly in Rovian campaigning, military adventurism, tax cutting to the point of national ruin, and destruction of civil liberties.

Related Posts:
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Sarah Palin: No Dan Quayle
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A Democrat "for" McCain

Financiers, who know how to hedge, often contribute to candidates in both parties. Why not the rest of us? This letter accompanied my contribution today to the McCain campaign:

Dear Senator McCain:

While I will almost certainly vote for the Democratic nominee in 2008, I am contributing to your campaign because I fear for the future of American democracy should a proponent of torture and the destruction of American civil liberties such as Rudy Depends-who-does-it Giuliani or Mitt Double Guantanamo Romney win a major party nomination.

This contribution is to honor your sustained and essential opposition to torture, suspension of habeas, assertions of unlimited executive power, and wholesale flouting of the Bill of Rights. Should you win the Republican nomination, I will rest assured that Americans are not prepared to sell their ancient liberties for a little bit of perceived security.

I should add that I believe that your support of President Bush’s misadventure in Iraq contributed to that disaster; that your campaigning for Bush in the 2004 election helped bring on four more years of assault on our core liberties; and that the ‘compromise’ you green-lighted in the 2006 Military Commissions Act ratified the Administration’s abuses. I am also disappointed by your repudiation of your own principled opposition to the Bush Administration’s irresponsible tax cuts, and by your cozying up to corrupt theocrats.

Nonetheless, on the all-important issue of torture and civil liberties, history will recognize that you stood as the conscience of a party run amok with fear-mongering and power-grabbing.

American democracy cannot function without (at least) two viable major parties. Should you win the nomination, the Republican Party will have taken a giant step toward a return to responsible governance.

The New York Times reports that in a community meeting in Iowa, Rudolph Giuliani, asked whether waterboarding is torture, responded: “It depends on how it’s done. It depends on the circumstances. It depends on who does it.”

Thank you, Rudy, for clarifying how President Bush can keep repeating "we do not torture" in the face of massive documentation that for the past six years the U.S. has explicitly authorized and systematically implemented "enhanced interrogation techniques" -- including the simulated drowning universally understood to be denoted by the term "waterboarding" and long prosecuted by the U.S. as a war crime. Now the logic is clear: if we do it, it's not torture.

Torture: What Hillary was Asked

Re the blogosphere's perfectly appropriate interrogation of Hillary Clinton's seeming refusal in a Washington Post interview published today (10/10/07) to state categorically that upon taking office she would end end "special interrogation methods," i.e. torture, authorized by Bush: discussion of the full transcript of the conversation released by the Clinton campaign has neglected the fact that the Post article not only omitted a key part of Clinton's response, but also distorted the context.

The Post reported the conversation as follows:

Clinton was similarly vague about how she would handle special interrogation methods used by the CIA. She said that while she does not condone torture, so much has been kept secret that she would not know unless elected what other extreme measures interrogators are using, and therefore could not say whether she would change or continue existing policies.

"It is not clear yet exactly what this administration is or isn't doing. We're getting all kinds of mixed messages," Clinton said. "I don't think we'll know the truth until we have a new president. I think [until] you can get in there and actually bore into what's been going on, you're not going to know."

The Clinton campaign released this transcript:

Q: Can I ask you a follow up? You mentioned Blackwater, you’ve said that at the beginning of your administration you’d ask the Pentagon to report. When it comes to special interrogation methods, obviously you’ve said you’re against torture, but the types of methods that are now used that aren’t technically torture but are still permitted, would you do something in your first couple days to address that, suspend some of the special interrogation methods immediately or ask for some kind of review?

HRC: Well I think I’ve been very clear about that too, we should not conduct or condone torture and it is not clear yet exactly what this administration is or isn’t doing, we’re getting all kinds of mixed messages. I don’t think we’ll know the truth until we have a new President. I think once you can get in there and actually bore into what’s been going on, you’re not going to know. I was very touched by the story you guys had on the front page the other day about the WWII interrogators. I mean it's not the same situation but it was a very clear rejection of what we think we know about what is going on right now but I want to know everything, and so I think we have to draw a bright line and say ‘No torture – abide by the Geneva conventions, abide by the laws we have passed,' and then try to make sure we implement that.

Clinton was asked whether she would suspend special interrogation methods "that are now used" in her first couple of days. She said in effect, I don't know because I don't know what they're doing (or will have been doing when I take office). She then said we have to draw a bright line against torture. That is, we have to define what we won't do but we can't know right now whether there (will be) any then-current behavior to suspend immediately. The WaPo made it sound like she was saying, I don't know whether we'll repudiate what has been done (since late 2001) or what has been authorized. The Post elided a difference between "existing policies" (what's authorized, still on the books, so to speak) and practices taking place at the moment the next President takes office.

Mark Kleiman complains, "The CIA just announced that it would no longer do waterboarding. That clearly implies that the CIA was doing waterboarding." Ergo, Hillary is avoiding repudiation of waterboarding. But that complaint reproduces the Post's transformation of Hillary's reaction to a question about practices she would have to suspend to a statement about policies she would change. On the other hand, Kleiman is perfectly right to say that Clinton could end the ambiguity by stating unequivocally, no waterboarding, no long time standing, no cold room, no sensory deprivation, no rendition.

Andrew Sullivan, in his discussion of what the Post left out, doesn't even include the question that set the context for Clinton's remarks. Primal loathing distorts everything Andrew says about Clinton in any case. Still, he's acute to point out that Clinton's injunction to "abide by the laws we have passed" [may] include, of course, the Military Commissions Act."