and changing your beliefs when you find out you were drastically wrong.
Jamie posted this at 4:14 PM EDT on Friday, May 22nd, 2009 as Global War on Terror
May 22nd, 2009
Putting Your Money Where Your Mouth Is…
May 6th, 2009
Inappropriate
As a general rule, I’ve got no beef with the Patriot Act, but perhaps the fact that they put this guy in juvenile lockup should be a sign that he’s not really the sort of terrorist the law was designed to be used against.
Though he is being held several hundred miles away from his home. Perhaps it’s the juvi equivalent of Gitmo?
Apollo posted this at 5:11 PM EDT on Wednesday, May 6th, 2009 as Global War on Terror, The Law Is An Ass--An Idiot
May 4th, 2009
Construing Narrowly
Charles Krauthammer’s column last week arguing in favor of torture under limited circumstances is far better than most on the subject. Not only is it well-reasoned, it’s actually willing to state clearly what it wishes to argue: that torture, without the quotation marks, can be justified under two circumstances:
The first is the ticking time bomb. An innocent’s life is at stake. The bad guy you have captured possesses information that could save this life. He refuses to divulge. In such a case, the choice is easy. Even John McCain, the most admirable and estimable torture opponent, says openly that in such circumstances, “You do what you have to do.” And then take the responsibility.
Some people, however, believe you never torture. Ever. They are akin to conscientious objectors who will never fight in any war under any circumstances, and for whom we correctly show respect by exempting them from war duty. But we would never make one of them Centcom commander. Private principles are fine, but you don’t entrust such a person with the military decisions upon which hinges the safety of the nation. It is similarly imprudent to have a person who would abjure torture in all circumstances making national security decisions upon which depends the protection of 300 million countrymen.
The second exception to the no-torture rule is the extraction of information from a high-value enemy in possession of high-value information likely to save lives. This case lacks the black-and-white clarity of the ticking time bomb scenario. We know less about the length of the fuse or the nature of the next attack. But we do know the danger is great. (One of the “torture memos” noted that the CIA had warned that terrorist “chatter” had reached pre-9/11 levels.) We know we must act but have no idea where or how — and we can’t know that until we have information. Catch-22.
I whole-heartedly agree with his first argument and — for the same Krauthammer offers — would question the fitness of anyone who refused to waterboard or do worse under when confronted with a genuine ticking time bomb. As I have stated elsewhere, I am not aware of this situation ever taking place during the War on Terror.
I do not agree with his second conclusion that torture is (legally? morally? Krauthammer never quite says) permissible to torture or waterboard “a high-value enemy” simply by his virtue of being one. Why, for instance, should we not waterboard a medium-value prisoner, when his information could likely lead to the capture of his superiors? It’s too slippery, and it’s only going to got down hill. When it comes to torture, I think we should insist on the kind of black-and-white certainty Krauthammer mentioned earlier.
Tom posted this at 8:48 PM EDT on Monday, May 4th, 2009 as Global War on Terror, Kraut-hammered, Liberty and/or Security
April 29th, 2009
The Poisoned Debate
The most distressing aspect of the torture issue — worse, to my mind, than either the harm done to detainees or the intelligence that may have been compromised — has been our inability to debate the subject seriously and rationally. This is not a back-door way of criticizing those who disagree with me: 99% of the arguments put forward by both sides rely on the kind of circular logic that admits no honest disagreement. In short the debated has been poisoned.
That we’ve been unable to discuss a subject this important — though for entirely different reasons, depending on whom you ask — for more than five years speaks very, very poorly for us; after 200 years of practice with republicanism, one would think our citizens could have an intelligent public debate about a controversial subject.
Jim Manzi’s post on the Corner is a genuine exception and something of an antidote: it frames the debate rationally, weighs arguments for and against, and then makes a reasoned judgment. It’s by no means a definitive statement, but it’s the kind of argument we need.
My thoughts are below the fold, but they’re less important than what Manzi wrote. Go read the whole thing.
Tom posted this at 10:37 PM EDT on Wednesday, April 29th, 2009 as George Bush Sucks!, Global War on Terror, That's Not Change!, We're all DOOMED
April 27th, 2009
False Dichotomy Watch
Having satisfied its readers’ appetite for insightful commentary about the entertainment industry and popular culture, the fine folks at Big Hollywood treat us to this original and thoughtful essay on the torture controversy by one Jeffrey Jena:
So what is torture? There is no definition of torture anywhere that I can find. Is playing loud music torture? Then the kid next door to me needs to get a visit from the Attorney General so I can get some sleep. Bugs where you sleep? I always knew camping was torture! Cold and naked, that was my four years in college. Someone puts underpants on your head? Ever been to a kegger? Annoying voices saying things you find offensive, then Obama and Pelosi torture me every day.
How would the left extract information from terrorists? Sit them down in a well lit room with some nice Lazy-e-Boys and a cold soda, lean in close and say, “Do you have something to tell me?” Then lean back and wait until they are ready to open up? Maybe we could put them in therapy and in six or seven years they would have a breakthrough!
One wonders how Mr. Jena imagines policemen do their work. Do they torture murder suspects into a confession, or do they ask them nice questions while massaging thier feet and ordering Pad Thai? I can’t think of any other possibilities.
Tom posted this at 10:11 AM EDT on Monday, April 27th, 2009 as Buffoon Watch, Global War on Terror
April 23rd, 2009
We Are America!
Sheppard Smith, that staunch pinkocommieliberal, lays it out in plain simple language. (Warning NSFW)
And there we have it. The efficacy of the techniques is inconsequential if the morality runs counter to everything America stands for.
Thank god someone at Fox News has their head on straight.
More
Jamie posted this at 12:33 AM EDT on Thursday, April 23rd, 2009 as George Bush Sucks!, Global War on Terror
April 8th, 2009
A Microcosm of the Torture Debate
Caller: You’re a chickenhawk Nazi.
Rush: You’re not a “real” conservative.
Tom posted this at 9:45 AM EDT on Wednesday, April 8th, 2009 as Global War on Terror, Liberty and/or Security, Possession by the Coultergeist
January 2nd, 2009
I Am Deeply, Deeply Tempted…
To write a highly sarcastic post arguing that the Bush administration has gotten soft in its old age, as evidenced by this article on CNN. “How do we know this family isn’t tied to al Qeada?” I’d write. “Shouldn’t we be willing to ‘take the gloves off’ on these people” I’d ask. “Why don’t we book them a one-way ticket to Cuba where they can enjoy an all-expenses-paid stay at Club Gitmo until this situation is, uh, resolved?” I’d suggest.
Unfortunately, such a post would be in extremely poor taste. What’s more, at least one commentator wouldn’t get the joke and would make some snidely approving post. I have no interest in reading that post and am, hence, refraining.
Tom posted this at 9:37 AM EST on Friday, January 2nd, 2009 as Global War on Terror, Liberty and/or Security
January 1st, 2009
Terrorist Squeegee
The Prophet applies broken window policing to geopolitics:
The solution, it largely turned out, wasn’t to become more tolerant of criminality by recasting it as a cultural or lifestyle choice or by invoking root causes (as The New York Times often did), but to become less tolerant of crime. In New York, turnstile jumpers, graffiti artists, even the infamous “squeegee men” were treated as the lawbreakers they were. One heartening moral of the story is that sometimes deviancy can be defined back up.
We learned a similar moral after 9/11. For years — starting around the time of Klinghoffer’s murder, as it happens — policymakers in both parties debated how to define terrorism. Is it a law-and-order issue or a military threat? If it’s a military threat, how do we define a “proportionate response” — this legalistic phrase entered the national-security lexicon back then, too. By the end of the 1990s, the best and the brightest of the Clinton administration found the answer in a lawerly kind of proportionality, blowing up empty office buildings as a way to “send a message” in response to attacks on America and her interests.
After 9/11, the gloves were off. The far left beseeched the government to retaliate with, at most, a proportionate response, but no one cared. We toppled the Taliban as a warm-up act. Terrorists weren’t criminals anymore, they were enemy combatants, ineligible for the Geneva Conventions. But the war in Iraq and reports of American zeal in the war on terror have left a sour taste in our mouths. That there have been no terrorist attacks on our soil only bolsters the sense that terrorism is manageable, even banal. Barack Obama leads a counteroffensive from a legal establishment that wants to treat terrorists like any other criminals. Terrorists in Mumbai or Jeddah are little more than the squeegee men of the New World Order.
It’s a great article, even if Goldberg is on the following edge of a few things.
Hubbard posted this at 12:53 PM EST on Thursday, January 1st, 2009 as Global War on Terror, The Past Is Never Dead--It Isn't Even Past, There Is Only One God And Jonah Goldberg Is His Prophet
December 19th, 2008
Must read o’ the day
Mark Helprin:
Today’s progressives apologize to the world for America’s treatment of terrorists (not a single one of whom has been executed). Franklin Roosevelt, when faced with German saboteurs (who had caused not a single casualty), had them electrocuted and buried in numbered graves next to a sewage plant.
The counterpart to Republican incompetence has been a Democratic opposition warped by sentiment. The deaths of thousands of Americans in attacks upon our embassies, warships, military barracks, civil aviation, capital, and largest city were not a criminal matter but an act of war made possible by governments and legions of enablers in the Arab world. Nothing short of war — although not the war we have waged — could have been sufficient in response. The opposition is embarrassed by patriotism and American self-interest, but above all it is blind to the gravity of the matter. Though scattered terrorists allied with militarily insignificant states are not, as some conservatives assert, closely analogous to Nazi Germany, the accessibility of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons makes the destructive capacity of these antagonists unfortunately similar — a fact, especially in regard to Iran, that is persistently whistled away by the Left.
An existential threat of such magnitude cannot be averted by imagining that it is the work of one man and will disappear with his death; by mousefully pleasing the rest of the world; by hopefully excluding the tools of war; or by diplomacy without the potential of force, which is like a policeman without a gun, something that doesn’t work anymore even in Britain. The Right should have labored to exhaustion to forge a coalition, and the Left should have been willing to proceed without one. The Right should have been more respectful of constitutional protections, and the Left should have joined in making temporary and clearly defined exceptions. In short, the Right should have had the wit to fight, and the Left should have had the will to fight.
Both failed.
Hubbard posted this at 10:26 AM EST on Friday, December 19th, 2008 as George Bush Sucks!, Global War on Terror
November 19th, 2008
Paging Gnaeus Pompeius
Seriously, it’s 2008 and we can’t stop pirates. Not “quit stealing my intellectual property” pirates – though we can’t stop them either – but “quit stealing my oil tanker, ya scurvy ridden sea mutts” pirates.
It’s bad enough that it’s 2008 and I do not have a flying car, but also the high seas are flooded with pirates. More Jetsons, less Mad Max, please.
Apollo posted this at 12:30 AM EST on Wednesday, November 19th, 2008 as Global War on Terror, The Past Is Never Dead--It Isn't Even Past
May 7th, 2008
War In The Age of Telecommunications
OTIS, Ore. — An Oregon couple received a frightening phone call from their son in Afghanistan when he inadvertently called home during battle.
Stephen Phillips and other soldiers in his Army MP company were battling insurgents when his phone was pressed against his Humvee. It redialed and called his parents in the small Oregon town of Otis.
Sandie Petee, Phillips’ mother, and her husband, Jeff Petee, weren’t home at the time of the call. They returned home to find a three-minute voice mail on their answering machine.
“His friend died a year ago in Iraq and I’m thinking, ‘Oh my God, this may be the last time I hear my son’s voice on the phone,’” Petee said.
They heard shooting, swearing and shouted pleas for more ammunition on the phone call from their son.
“They were pinned down and apparently his barrel was overheating,” said Jeff Petee. “It’s something a parent really doesn’t want to hear. It’s a heck of a message to get from your son in Afghanistan.”
The three-minute call ended abruptly.
“You could hear him saying stuff like, he needs more ammo, or he needs another barrel,” said John Petee, Phillips’ brother. “At the end, you could hear a guy saying ‘Incoming! RPG!’ And then it cut off.”
As soon as the voice mail stopped playing, the Petees began trying to reach their son in Afghanistan. The family figured out Petee had tried to call home earlier that day, but he didn’t leave a message and the phone later redialed during battle.
They eventually reached their son.
“I finally got a hold of him,” Sandie Petee said. “He was embarrassed, he said, ‘Don’t let Grandma hear it.’”
Stephen Phillips is scheduled to return home next month, when his tour is complete, his mother said.
H/T: Right-Thinking
Tom posted this at 12:38 PM EDT on Wednesday, May 7th, 2008 as Global War on Terror
April 5th, 2008
If you don’t want your weekend ruined. . .
. . . Then don’t click on this link. It explains the Middle East in tribal rather than theological terms, and it ain’t pretty. The most cheerful thing you’ll read Stanley Kurtz’s article is this:
[I]n the absence of fundamental cultural change, the feud between the Muslim world and the West is unlikely ever to end. Tribal feuds simmer on and off for generations, with negotiated settlements effecting only temporary respites. Among the tribes of Waziristan, the saying goes: “I took my revenge early. I waited only 100 years.”
Kurtz wrote a review of Salzman’s Culture and Conflict in the Middle East worth pondering. It appears that Salzman gives an intellectual explanation for hair-trigger wars and feuds that makes Jack D. Ripper look like a care bear. I’d be interested to see Theodore Dalrymple’s comments on the matter, given how closely he’s observed the tribal and Islamic immigrants to France and Britain.
Long story short: there’s no good way around the Middle East’s chaos.
Hubbard posted this at 11:13 AM EDT on Saturday, April 5th, 2008 as Global War on Terror
April 3rd, 2008
Since He’s in the News Again…
Once again, constitutional scholar John Yoo is making headlines, thanks to his recently declassified memo. I think this is a good opportunity to take time to revisit a classic example of Yoo’s legal argumentation.
This is what it takes to get onto the faculty of the #6 law school in the country.
Geoff posted this at 6:02 PM EDT on Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 as Amer-I-Can!, Conservatism, George Bush Sucks!, Global War on Terror, We don't need no stinkin' Constitution
April 2nd, 2008
On horrifying a co-blogger
Since Conor has graciously accused me of Orwellian tendencies, I feel obliged to respond.
My point in my reply was that I thought the 60 Minutes report was sloppy, and that as such, it would do little to persuade partisans of either side. For example, here’s a quote from one of the supporting documents in the matter:
THREAT ASSESSMENT
There is no information that KARNAZ received any military training or is associated with the Taliban or al-Qa’ida. Although he has denied being a memmber of the Jama’at al-Tabligh, his associates, travel, and religious studies contradict this denial. For these reasons, KARNAZ is believed to pose a [REDACTED] to the national security of the United States and its allies if released.
Despite a rather important redaction in this document, it is made quite clear that Karnaz has been caught lying to investigators. These are not the usual actions of an innocent man.
Consider the other memo CBS cites as its support. Go on, take a look, I’ll still be here. Huge chunks of it are redacted, which may well contain significant information regarding what level of threat he is and whether or not he should be released.
Again, I think it’s questionable reporting on CBS’s part to portray Karnaz as a complete innocent. Now, onto some of Conor’s statements:
And how chillingly Orwellian a statement — the guilty proclaim there innocence, therefore everyone arrested must be assumed guilty.
Not that everyone that’s arrested must be assumed guilty, but rather that we must be skeptical—particularly when pushing something as a news item. CBS presented the case heavily in Karnaz’s favor, which lined up rather neatly with the biases CBS has regrettably shown in its past. 60 Minutes has been less skeptical than it should have been in other matters, and I wonder if they were as skeptical as they should have been in this one. Unless they’re sitting on more documentation, I’m skeptical about them.
CBS appears to have found several people willing to leak documents to them from the pro-Karnaz members of the intelligence community, but none from the Karnaz skeptics. Since a few hundred people have been released some time before Karnaz, it’s not as though nobody ever leaves Gitmo. It looks as though CBS doesn’t know all the facts in the case, and it has presented what facts we do know to throw as much blame on America as possible.
When you’re saying that America would’ve be justified killing an unarmed civilian who has been declared innocent by our own FBI and intelligence agencies you’d damn well better revise your standard of what a justified killing is. Your statement is all the more horrifying given the way we got this man — that is, he was pulled off a bus by a Pakistani soldier apparently paid by the head to round up suspicious looking people.
Beyond that, I’ve seen no evidence that this man converted to “radical Islam” and I fail to see why his behavior is any more peculiar than any of the other religious pilgrims who travel to the Middle East every year.
And what is this nonsense about American mercy? In what way is it merciful to arrest an innocent man, to torture him and to hold him years beyond the point where even a very conservative arbiter could see that he presented no threat to American security?
Let’s walk back through several stolen bases.
1) As far as I can tell, he hasn’t been declared innocent; he has been declared “not a threat.” That’s a significant difference. In law, sometimes we come across matters where we are reasonably certain that someone is guilty but will have trouble proving so, nolle prosequi, the matter is dropped.
2) He joined a radical mosque—one with terrorist ties—and goes to the middle of a war zone for “theological studies.” He could easily have studied Sunni theology in Saudi Arabia or Shiite theology in Iran. Yet he chose Pakistan. Strong circumstantial evidence for being a convert to radical Islam.
3) “[N]onsense about American mercy?” He’s alive, released, and has a book contract. Would Russia or China have been so forgiving? For that matter, would France’s investigative magistrates? What about the British during the troubles? The only country that would have been so merciful to him is America.
4) When Karnaz was sent to American troops, he could easily have been classified as a soldier out of uniform, which would make him a spy and eligible for the firing squad. Execution would have been within the letter (if not the spirit) of the Geneva Convention. Yet we imprisoned him—quite probably for too long—then released him and allowed him to write a book. I don’t think there’s any “nonsense about American mercy,” as Conor so colorfully put it. But there’s plenty of overheated rhetoric about America’s flaws.
Hubbard posted this at 12:42 PM EDT on Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008 as Global War on Terror