Thoughts on Drumpf

"For one thing, what’s wrong with a lot of what he says isn’t about truth or falsity but moral repugnance. If you are an adult and you don’t know why it’s insane for Trump to mock prisoners of war or call for intentionally killing innocent family members of terrorists there’s nothing the media can tell you to change that. The government already spent twelve years paying to educate these people for eight hours a day five days a week and for many that apparently didn’t work. I’m not sure how an hour of Anderson Cooper every night is going to accomplish much." I've been looking at this narrative for a while, several months really; that the problem is that the media covered him too much. Except that at the outset, the media more or less chose to ignore him. Various entities have tried to boycott or block him. The whole thing is a mess. There's also been a lot of work involved in this idea that dismisses the behavior and ideas of his followers. I don't think that's necessary at all. This sort of thing was an ugly possibility anywhere. The US has never quite embraced it. Not for decades at least. Some of the uglier Progressive era policies (which accounts for most of the stuff Wilson and Hoover did), maybe? The campaign involved in Prohibition often resembles this. Jim Crow does also. Huey Long got shot before anything came up there. Father Coughlin went off the air (because of the war). Andrew Jackson might be the last populist to succeed in American politics at this level and he won a major battle in a war that was already technically over to allow him to pretend to be a war hero (incidentally, he was also a POW). Trump doesn't have even this kind of faux credibility. (To be clear, Jackson was probably one of the worst Presidents in US history, and this is largely why). So even this modest possibility of capturing a nomination of a major political party suggests an institutional problem has occurred in the country to create this. I would put forward the proposition that the media did not do this. They didn't create several million people willing to vote for this idiot. Though they certainly haven't helped (bending over backward to talk to him, and thus giving him free airtime instead of making him pay for his primary campaign in order to get publicity and attention, not the best idea in the world). That means WE are the problem. The public. The populace has to be in a position to embrace a populist. We created this. Expecting the media to mediate it, to reduce it, or to push us away from what (some of) the public tends to be, when it tends to endorse as darker and more craven impulses, that's not going to work. We have had a series of curious moral failures. Large numbers of the public believe torture is morally acceptable. Huge numbers of Republicans do, but that there are not acceptably large numbers of liberals and Democrats who reject such a policy, and indeed who do not insist on the treaty agreements that were put into place by Ronald Reagan (of all people), that we should prosecute violations of torture and human rights ordered by or carried out by our government officials, is suggestive this is a deeper problem than merely red state politics running off the deep end. We shouldn't have to waste time explaining why these are not things Americans should do; torturing captives. Bombing civilians deliberately. Murdering families. Excluding thousands of suffering people from emigrating away from their homes because of their religious prayers referencing Allah instead of Jesus. Vast numbers of people apparently believe these are acceptable behaviors now. How did that happen? Who is to blame? Fear? Maybe. Rage? More likely. Ours has historically been an optimistic culture. Even as it recognizes that it fails miserable to live up to that promise of opportunity, freedom, fairness, justice. A certain amount of idealised nonsense pervades what constitutes patriotic fervor at any time, a certain amount of blindness is necessary to pretend this is a great thing. "A noble experiment." It seems clear that there is among us a certain subset of people who perhaps felt that experiment was fine so long as they believed that experiment was rigged to favor people like themselves. This belief has collapsed for some number of people. Trump does better (if not his best) in counties that voted heavily for George Wallace. That was nearly 50 years ago. Entire generations of families have been raised and grown old since. These counties apparently have had nothing better to do than to harbor and protect resentments. Few of them have changed substantially, apparently. I can't in good conscience defend such people and their views, to shield them by giving them the excuse that it "was not their fault". These views, given form in a public figure, are morally repulsive. As are the people who hold them. We were supposed to conclude in 2008, I felt erroneously, that racism had been destroyed. That our resentments were no more. I think it is clear from events since that this is not the case. We were to conclude that the death of Osama bin Laden meant that the "war on terror" was over. Cynically, I was aware this would not be the case. And that fear remains a powerful weapon to exploit. But that fear existed before most of these people had ever heard of OBL. If it is fear that these people are engaged with, and wrestling with, I am not the best messenger for overcoming it. I do not recognize most of these as valid fears ("race wars", fear of other religious beliefs, fear of terrorism, fear of immigrants). Indeed, I find there is no evidence in support of any of these to be generalized as policies, or carried out in our names. Such fears are unreasonable and best suffered and indulged alone and in private than as a public recrimination. But if it is rage that drives us, and in turn hatred and not merely fear. That is something else entirely.

Paris

This happened several days ago. Any delay in composing my thoughts has a number of personal reasons (I had a lot going on), but it also has a lot to do with the general reactions I was observing. Indeed, it is those I wish to comment upon rather than upon the attacks and attackers and their victims themselves. I have a number of loosely connected thoughts, so bear with me if you wish.

Lots of people changed their social status via an app to show concern with a French flag overlaid on their profile. Or associated changes to lighting in various venues around the world. I respect this outpouring of sympathy as an avenue to feel like one has done something. It is well that some people are concerned about the well-being of complete strangers in other places they may never have been. I myself messaged a few of my friends when I first heard of these terrible incidents. I count about 10% of my social circle that has done this change. Most likely they have done other things as well, and some equal number have commented eloquently themselves with calls for help or for local attentiveness if help abroad seems too complicated and impossible.

But as usual with changes in colours on my status, I find the sort of signaling behavior involved unpleasant for my own behavior. It feels hollow and inadequate, and in this particular case, I was further annoyed that we received the ability to do this for attacks in France, but nothing happened for a large attack the day before in Beirut. Suggesting our concern was believed to be very specific. It undoubtedly was. This bothered me in some way. The scope of destruction and carnage may be a factor, but the loss of life via senseless violence anywhere in the world should be a cause for mourning, grief, and sympathy by other human beings, and demand our attention and response if we can. We attach more importance to the lives of those we may feel a degree of connection to, as is natural, and this leads many people who have traveled to Paris (or who wish to) to find sympathy an easy response. More work is required to get to the same level of attention for Lebanese who suffer, or Syrian refugees seeking to escape a much more intense version of violence still than that afflicted upon Paris.

I do not feel people who did much to react to Paris (and to some degree, only Paris) are to blame, or are terrible people if they did not react to news from Lebanon with equal concern. Far from it, as the violence in Syria or Iraq is now regarded as so routine it barely registers news coverage, even as it kills many thousands of people per month, and terrorist attacks in Lebanon used to be routine as well (they are not now and have not been for about 25 years). It is natural that our collective attention should be divided and incomplete to not hear of every event of suffering and horror elsewhere and respond instantly and correctly in all cases. It's just not the path I would choose in how sympathy and assistance should be rendered is to signal a specific cause. My concern is humans more broadly and how we should treat each other.

This is far afield however from some of the more typical reactions I saw as it at least begins with a place of sympathy and concern for the grief and needs of victims and those directly trying to help them. In many cases, people were, as happened after 9-11 here in America, out for blood. Calls for any captured assailants to be tortured, in some cases scarcely veiled. Demands for renewed vigor in attacking ISIS, despite this being unclear as a foreign policy goal that would achieve anything of use in providing security for the French people, or anyone else either. Demands for preventing many thousands of suffering people from reaching safety as refugees, even before any connection to refugees were made, and in spite of the fact that this was unlikely to be refugees fleeing that would be the source of the problem versus people who were familiar with French culture and society and could identify suitable targets for committing violent atrocities that would garner attention and then successfully plan and carry them out. People who had lived in France or at least Western Europe for example. All of this resembled more lashing out and a baser demand for vengeance rather than an appreciation for human suffering and the limits of our abilities to either prevent such suffering or accommodate those who are so afflicted. This too was natural, but I do not forgive it anywhere near as lightly or easily. Perhaps because I have little attachment to fear such incidents as likely to threaten my own existence, or those of friends, I do not see anger as an appropriate response.

One of the most annoying elements of writing at all about international relations and in particular about terrorism as an event within foreign policy is the nature of response tends to be perceived as diametric by the public and by many pundits within the field. We must either go all out to try to kill people using military forces or we are "doing nothing" or perhaps we "look weak" and obviously then "the terrorists win". This is nonsense masqueraded as grand strategy. To the extent that there are at times in history some very terrible people who perhaps may need to be sought out and fought and defeated on battlefields in foreign lands, I agree. That sometimes remains true in international relations that our own security as a nation and that of allies (such as France) depends upon this.

But even accepting this limited position leaves open a number of questions that are not answered by stating that there are threats abroad.

Whether it is ourselves that must do this, or whether someone else could do so? Someone with more local knowledge of the particular group, or more direct interest in the defeat of groups involved, such as in this case, Iran. Whether the use of air power and bombs is an effective measure of applying what amounts to counter-insurgency? I regard this as dubious at best. Are there no soft power measures which may be more helpful? For example, offering aid or refugee to Syrians/Iraqis in a war zone area? Do we even need to engage such forces with military force to defeat them at all, or at the very least, can we protect ourselves from perceived threats abroad with much less effort and achieve the same or even better return on our efforts? And finally, how big is the threat to ourselves really? Just how much should we really be worried about terrorists abroad as a danger to American society? Many seem to regard this as an existential conflict where the doom of America as a country and Western civilization as an ideal is at stake. I do not. Nor do I believe we have much to fear from terrorists that we must defeat them anywhere and everywhere on the globe versus other methods of interdiction to prevent them from making attacks like those carried out in Paris and Beirut last week.

In general, I find myself farther from most people on international relations. The vast majority of human beings have relatively peaceful and serene lives, much more so than at any point in human history, and our goal in such dealings should be the preservation and extension of that peaceful co-existence as much as possible, while preserving our own security and prosperity as best we can. There are specific hotspots on the globe that afflict tremendous violence to life and through destruction of infrastructure the quality and prosperity of those lives that remain (Syria, Eastern Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, as examples). These attract considerable attention and debate within American foreign policy discussions. It is well that they should as they represent some of the largest sources of human suffering on the globe and they are man-made in origin via violent armed conflict, suggesting man-made resolutions may be possible. Our thinking however is generally too narrow in response (use of force or do nothing) and this often limits our ability to make productive impacts.

What is less clear to me is how or even whether our military can help resolve these conflicts. This is not what they are trained and equipped to do in most cases, and such kinds of warfare can be of the most difficult to conduct properly and intractable to extricate ourselves from that they may not be wise conflicts to intercede directly into anyway as they would result mainly in the overextension of our forces and the diminished ability to prepare for and attend to larger geopolitical threats for which our considerable military forces (and those of our allies) are much better prepared and equipped to defend against.

There are ways to use a military force in what amounts to a soft power demonstration to help bring about local peace within divided factions warring abroad in a foreign land, but none of the fighting in these now unpleasant and terrible places abroad directly threaten our own security, and most even do little to damage neighbouring territory and peoples. They are self-contained bloodshed and can be contained further with military forces, both local and international. The best most military actions and interventions may do is perhaps minimize the abilities of (some) warring factions to directly attack one another by injecting another force of violence into the equation. This is unclear if it provides some benefits in many cases in compelling these factions to seek peace. Indeed, some of these factions seem intent on embittered warfare with their neighbours and rivals despite any limitations in their conventional abilities (ISIS for example has no navy or air power).

We can be gravely concerned with the humanitarian problems such conflicts create, and we can and should do much to ameliorate those. We can be concerned about the diplomatic status of allies nearby and their security near a conflict zone, or whether they may be drawn into such conflicts or feel it necessary to intercede, and we can offer them support and advice on how best to do so. None of that suggests that it is necessary to deploy American forces into these armed conflicts in order to preserve relative peace of billions of human beings, much less the incredibly secure lives of Americans from foreign threats. Nor does it imply that such deployments will in some way secure additional security for Americans, or improve the quality of lives for people on the ground in far flung places about which we often know very little. We can purchase our own security very cheaply, with intelligence gathering about major plots, and common sense measures of security (reinforced cockpit doors on airplanes for instance), without regarding millions of citizens with excessive suspicion, and without invading or bombing other countries and their people or leaders in these crises. That does not mean we have done nothing in response and does not mean we could not do more than we have, or do things differently.

To me it simply means our responses thus far have been unimpressive in their results, and often more damaging to our security or prosperity than they have been helpful for a variety of reasons. For example, discouraging air travel through heightened and excessive security at airports encourages people to drive more. Driving is more dangerous and less productive than flying. Excessively broad (and potentially illegal) surveillance potentially enmeshes hundreds of thousands of Americans in bureaucratic nightmares trying to travel and otherwise attracts unnecessary attention and resources of intelligence organisations trying to identify actual threats, the number of which is much smaller, or diverts resources to combat other dubious national interests that are dubiously related to threats of international terrorism (for instance, the drug war). Material support for police forces using military hardware is granted via concerns over "terrorism" that are extremely unlikely to ever materialize in the vast majority of American cities and towns, and predictably are diverted for other purposes. Invading or toppling unpleasant and horrible regimes in other countries (Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya) provides an unstable power arrangement over which we exercise precious little influence and control and may as a result be as hazardous and destructive as the previous regimes to the lives of citizens of those nations, and from which we may feel a measure of responsibility and remain entrenched militarily and economically for decades at a time. Each of these measures may have limited points of usefulness. Surveillance and intelligence gathering of potential threats can be done with a warrant, or done without one over foreign nationals and people traveling into these war zones for dubious purposes for example, and at times, the destruction of vile regimes may serve some legitimate humanitarian goal. But these are difficult boundaries to tread over successfully and without considerable pitfalls. The breezy way that they are described as our only and best way forward is troublesome.

Finally. I wish to address the questions over Islam and Muslims that such actions and atrocities, when committed by Muslims (and not by some other agent, as often happens in the US at least and as used to happen with great frequency in France as well), naturally surface and engender. I am troubled here too by the breezy assurance that it is Islam itself that is a significant cause of these concerns, if not "the" cause of our concerns as regards terrorism. There are many, many problems with this line of analysis. To be sure, many organisations and many terrorists who commit acts of horrible violence identify with various statements which are religiously ordered and drawn from religious texts and decrees. I do not believe this is denied. Many billions more people do not commit acts of horrible violence, or even identify with those who carry those out supposedly in their name. This seems like it ought to factor heavily into our analysis.

One reason I suspect it is easy to think and believe otherwise, that any Muslim or at least specific persons of a Muslim country of origin may be a threat, is that we do not have many Muslims around, and they are often of a fairly invisible nature to Americans (many are fairly well acculturated and Westernized that live in the US). The considerable inconveniences we thus demand to impose upon them actually only impact some small number of people, a few million at most, while then "allowing" the rest of us to proceed unmolested in our daily lives. Such inconveniences are not trivial to individuals but on a societal level they may appear so. We are then left with the uncomfortable work of having to convince a mostly Christian country that these strange people of a "foreign" religion in their midst are not by default a threat and do not deserve to be treated as such with so grand a suspicious attitude. This work is then increased by the notion that many prominent secularists take a specific interest in the violence and extremism of some Muslims and accordingly share in some of these demands. I regard this quest as not rational as a response, and a serious error in logic and thinking, things which secularists ordinarily pride themselves upon. There are a series of problems with it.

It assumes a threat is posed by the doctrines of a particular faith without evaluating the behavior or even the practiced beliefs of those who describe themselves as adherents to it. As a comparison, my evaluation of most Christians is that they have only very limited association with the texts and theology of their beliefs (for better or worse). Muslims are likely little different in my experience as the availability of diverse scholarship in belief, practices of beliefs, and textual emphasis that results carries a similarly varied and otherwise iffy nature. This logic suggests some amount of wariness is appropriate given that we may be unfamiliar and perhaps underestimating the probability of having wacky and dangerous beliefs as opposed to holding fairly benign or even beneficial beliefs. But translating that wariness and unfamiliarity into severe limitations on civil liberties more broadly is not a sensible response. Even where if were a case that many American Muslims were conducting and advocating violent actions, it would be difficult to carry out, and relatively easy and more successful to identify such threats with far more minimal inconveniences made upon those many who did not wade into these waters than are often advocated and supported.

It assumes a threat posed by extremists requires treatment of anyone vaguely similar as a potential extremist. This is a poor use of intelligence and deterrence strategies, profiling of this kind is extremely unlikely to be an effective deterrent to thoughtful terror cells who can easily avoid such efforts, resulting in precisely the same kind of "prevent the last attack" mentality that appears to govern many of our security efforts right now but with the added "benefit" of taking poorly trained and selected bureaucrats and giving them powers to apply ethnic and racial animus with legal force, while generally ignoring anyone who might also pose a threat to security instead. All of this theory behind profiling relies upon assumptions of percentages of people who are like X being much higher than is likely the case. Even the NSA's broad casting of surveillance suggests that there are potentially very few people who are radicalized threats to other Americans living among us, of any kind.

This is also not a source of treatment which is applied to other groups who have violent extremists in their midst. Christians tend not to have to disassociate themselves publicly from the behavior of radical persons and can still call themselves Christians with fairly minimal assessments of hypocrisy and inconvenience of mental gymnastics being imposed upon them. There are not generally calls that people should stop being Christian, or at least that they should acknowledge that their own dogmatic beliefs must include violent actions toward others. As they can and sometimes do too. Similar issues apply with, say, right-wing ideological views that these are not seen as automatically disqualifying to the general public. Perhaps to some left-wing ideological travelers. This seems like a double standard at the very least, if not a sign that this is an incorrect way to response to the actions of radicals is to associate such radicals with everything else related to whatever they radicalized and have weaponized into violent behaviors. All of this should be a factor in our thinking.

Finally it assumes that a threat posed primarily in the form of violence done in unstable Muslim-majority countries is likely to translate to a fairly stable Western democracy with the same level of regularity and for the same reasons as a basis for our efforts as a source of risk (if we do "nothing"). This is extremely unlikely. The expenditure of vast amounts of capital and resources in interdiction of threats and the accompanying potential reductions in the liberty of citizens of all faiths and customs may be regarded as "worthwhile" if it were appreciably reducing the level of violence from one where major terrorist incidents like those of Paris, or Boston, or New York are not only infrequent to one every few years but instead might occur daily. They do not. Such actions are fairly difficult to organise recruit, fund, train, plan, and successfully carry out in a stable Western liberal society. This is one good reason they do not occur with the level of frequency and resulting destruction and mayhem that one finds in Palestine or Iraq or Afghanistan or Syria. Finding disaffected people willing to risk death to inflict death is fairly easy if life is unpleasant, suffering is significant, and it is believed that such actions will help others. In a modern state with a civil government and functioning society, this is not the case. Other options are available to redress grievances. Funding and assembling people to be trained to carry out complicated operations is also something that can be easily detected and tracked. While there are many counter-surveillance tactics and strategies that can make this more difficult, all it requires is one foolish error to attract attention. Meanwhile known sources of radicalism can be monitored and tracked.

Accordingly, this is also all happening in societies with relatively few Muslims living there. Even France is only about 10% Muslim by population. The US is barely over 1%. India may have the only Muslim minority population of note (around 20%) of a relatively modern state. We are thus dealing with societies that may find such people strange and suspicious by nature and thus attract more scrutiny from neighbours, co-workers, local police, and so on. The idea that this extra scrutiny requires official sanction and bureaucratic license strikes me as more dangerous than necessary. The idea that such a tiny percentage of the population can seriously jeopardize our system of jurisprudence, our general values for humanity, and the relative prosperity and well-being of significant numbers of citizens is highly dubious. They can manage to make attacks and even kill some number of people per year. Such actions however are extremely small in number relative to the numbers of Americans who kill themselves or each other in more prosaic ways. This suggests that we have other problems more worth worrying about and attending to as a concern of suffering of our own country than that of terrorism, radicalism, and Islam more broadly.

Continuing to talk about unspeakable things

Torture edition

I think this view actually confuses the utilitarian argument. Or at least the consequentialist argument against torture and for a general prohibition on its use by the state (and in a related matter, the NSA dragnet). That argument goes like this:

1) Obtaining accurate information is a valuable intelligence goal in preventing heinous acts of violence.

This isn't a dispute in either the torture or the NSA dragnet debates. The problem is that it is unclear that torture or the NSA dragnet have provided this information, and that valuable intelligence was often obtained in other ways.

2) We should use those methods that quickly and verifiably provide that intelligence.

It is not disputed that torture or the NSA dragnet could provide verifiable and useful intelligence (there's some dispute on whether it has, particularly in the latter case). The big question mark is if it is the most efficient means of investigation and interrogation of sources out of the litany of options available to detect and parry aside possible threats of terrorism. Which it doesn't appear to be.

The argument is often made that KSM lied to provide information the interrogators wanted to hear rather than actual useful intelligence because of torture. This is somehow defensible in the minds of torture proponents because he or others lied under normal interrogation methods too. That is undoubtedly the case that they did but this has little persuasive use in pointing it out. If other methods allow for easier verification, or prevent interrogators from entering with an agenda of scaring out a particular story of guilt (and thus obtaining false and unverifiable "information"), those methods are superior even if they also obtain false information as they may be less prone to these systematic errors (over time). The key is whether we are  obtaining truthful and accurate intelligence, and it is far from demonstrated that torture was a reliable method on this merit. The NSA dragnet seems even less clear and a more demonstratable failure (even by their own admission, it appears its main use was to expensively and invasively demonstrate that there weren't that many people worth following as potential threats to acts of terrorism; that the threat for which it existed in the first place doesn't actually exist).

3) We should also use those methods that do so with minimal cost upon the interrogators, detainees themselves, and where these are international norms being involved upon a state of moral standing obtained by being a "good country" which conforms to, or even helped set (as in this case of torture prohibitions), those norms.

A utilitarian logic would conform to a cost-benefit analysis at some point. If there are substantial costs to doing something, then it would be reasonable to look for something that provides a similar benefit without the higher costs. In the case of torture, to our general security by agitating many people by violating norms of international human rights, or to the moral qualms of the people engaged in the acts of malicious cruelty themselves.



One plausible argument and serious problem with the terrorism mantras is that we are often confusing single (or a handful of) villainous individuals and their ideological causes and potential defeats with a defeat of the threat of danger. This is too linear and perhaps not even expansive enough (eg, "terrorism" is only terrorism if it happens because X did it, and if we can stop people like X, we win). Terrorism however is a process and tactical strategy of using asymmetric warfare and it has a multivariate set of causes. Rather than being a single cartoon villain defeated in the space of a Hollywood plot, it is inherently a long-lasting system with a variety of agents attempting to use it throughout human history (many more than just "islamo-fascists", whatever that's supposed to mean). Attempting to suppress it likewise has a number of effects. Including the possibility of creating lasting animus that inspires further attacks, such as by abusing captive prisoners with violence or physical and mental trauma in violation of our normal standards of human rights (which we ourselves as a nation have been long-time promoters and advocates). Americans haven't typically demonstrated great skill in asymmetric warfare. At least not for generations (maybe against some native tribal peoples in the 19th century and prior to that, and then of course, we have our history of violence against racial minorities). So it's not something I'd advise we undertake casually, without attempting a fuller appreciation of consequences to our preferences in actions and strategies to suppress violence and terrorism undertaken against Americans.

We are a long, long, long way away from the "ticking time bomb"/24 style scenarios that our government attempted to assure us were to be the norm for regimes of torture, even for those subjects about whom there is less sympathy for their plight (KSM for example). We are instead looking at a systematic method of abusing captives with a secondary purpose of possibly obtaining information being a norm, with an episode like Abu Ghraib being not an outlier but a standard of operation. When we have reasonable alternatives to imposing violence and cruelty upon captive human beings, about whom we may have uncertain at best standards of their guilt or complicity in any plots of violence against Americans or really anybody at all, it is reasonable to continue to use them instead.

On this topic in particular I go back principally to the high value our society places upon punishment and its confusion with severity of punishment as a method of deterrence rather than as a means of satisfaction. That appears to be the ideological preference of those favoring torture regimes or systems of un-adjudicated detention for our purported enemies and threats to national security. In so far as some methods of penalty, detention, and general safety or security are favored and needed for a prosperous society to continue to flourish in the face of dangers of crime and mayhem, I don't think this is a disputed point. In so far as the extremes being demanded and insisting that these are necessary and helpful steps (in the utilitarian sense of "it works"), this is far less clear. The "ends justify the means" logic really only works if the ends were the only way to obtain the means and then it helps if they actually obtained the means. Which is in this case, less clear.

We are seeing a similar debate (finally) cropping up surrounding the death penalty and mass incarceration policies for our more commonplace domestic criminal activities. One should expect that would be far more controversial as it pertains to millions of lives, both of criminals and victims of crime and yet there are broadly shaped ideological coalitions pushing against the systems of policing and incarceration or punishment strategies being used for their cost being excessive, both in human and fiscal terms. The cost in the form of torture is rarely discussed when placed against the purported benefits (both sides ignore the existence of the other). Which suggests that people wishing to use some variety of consequentialist logic to justify their preferred actions aren't bothering to actually try to do so.

More important things I've written about before, torture version

So there was a report that came out. Not much new was actually learned. I think I could summarize my information from skimming through it and various stories thusly in the following three points.

1) Hummus is for eating, not for anal insertion. I may have to cut back on hummus consumption for a time as I'm actually mildly grossed out by that particular detail. That does not happen easily. The story in Training Day where a suspected thief gets off with a lighter sentence by licking peanut butter off his fingers from a stash of it inside his buttocks was funny (also because there's no way that would happen). This however was depraved. I cannot bring myself to marvel at our capacity of creativity when applied to destructive arts.

2) CIA lied to itself and high public officials. I'm not sure I find this a plausible truth really to accept at face value.

What seems more likely is one of two things happened:
a) the high public officials of both parties and up to and including the President/Vice President and Department of Justice all authorized it and then said "I don't want you to tell me exactly what's going on, so if asked, I don't have to lie". They were then only informed of what was going on around the time the Abu Ghraib story broke, probably because they were mildly alarmed and disgusted about what was going on there and were concerned about what else might come out later when the press got onto the the actual torture story.

b) Another possibility is that high public officials of both parties were informed and are now covering up when they knew what was going on in a sort of "we'll get you for this" treatment, trying to burn the idiots at the CIA who ran the thing without getting caught on fire themselves. Since the Bush team was in office administering the programme, they would get more blame as an added bonus for Democrats to release the story. They can also claim some variety of "bi-partisanship" because John McCain has been an avid anti-torture figure from the right and because several of now President Obama's current officials, including the CIA director, are implicated in the scandal. It's a win-win for them.

3) The main revelation was how the programme was administered and started in practical terms (legal terms we already knew years ago because of the release of the DoJ's and White House memos from Yoo and Bybee). What appears to have happened is the crack team selected to run it was paid a large sum of money and had no previous interrogation experience. Then didn't run any kind of background checks on their guards and interrogators, leading to a number of problems of depraved and sometimes sexual behavior well outside the grounds that were supposedly approved by the legal team. This was in conjunction with a sweep for "terrorists" that not only incarcerated hundreds of totally innocent people but apparently allowed dozens of them to be tortured, one of which to death.

That fact is hardly surprising, but given that again, we were told the use was restricted to high value targets with actionable intelligence (a dubious and questionable choice already), it should be very alarming that there doesn't appear to have been much work done to confirm the identities of the persons held in custody, and their status as potential terrorists with hazardous information. What that suggests, foremost, is that no attempt was even made to conduct regular interrogations on many of these individuals. They went straight to the torture chamber. And this happened without any clear and confirmed association that these might have been persons in possession of immediate information, of the classic 24-style "ticking time bomb" scenario so often depicted in Hollywood films. It is hardly surprising that it should not resemble in the slightest the actual practice. Script writers take pains to define our evil foes, their prospective acts of wanton destruction and to provide moral certainty of our actions by having them succeed in saving the day (there are exceptions). Actual intelligence is messy and uncertain and typically involves a lot of errors and educated guesses.

What most of these facts in #3 align with is not that torture as an approved and sanctioned program was a necessary and proper process with strict controls. But rather that torture was a systematic concept that easily ran amok once allowed into the system of intelligence and national defence at all (as one would predict, and as a reason why it is banned by international treaties to which we are signatories as Americans). It was haphazardly run and overseen. There were complaints from within the infrastructure about the value of information produced and toward the effect of these types of interrogations upon morale and sanity of interrogators themselves. The conduct of such practices quickly and extensively warped beyond the supposedly strict confines of manoeuvres designed to give the veneer of legality, as would be expected once the door was opened to allow it.

It is not relevant in legal terms that we either sought to justify these actions or even that should they have produced anything of value at all. They are strictly banned under any circumstances and for any reason, whether a country was directly assaulted, at war, or not. Which is why for many years public officials involved or defending the practice have taken pains to describe them with the Orwellian (and originally German) descriptor of "enhanced interrogation" rather than applying the title of torture to them as we have done in the past when conducted by others. Presumably less noble others than anointed Americans charged with the defence of freedom and decency (eg, our enemies the Chinese or Vietnamese or Soviets or Nazis, etc). The charge that they produced effective results should be weighted against the costs; which we are seeing now in the charges of international condemnation and public opinion upon the disclosure of these secrets. They can also be weighted against the alternatives of regular and approved forms of interrogation and manipulation of prisoners and suspects. Many of which appear to have been all but ignored in the haste to "break" these captive men.

Torture's primary historical utility is in getting people to tell you what you wanted to hear (ie, propaganda), such that the torture may cease, and not things that you do not already know and wished to learn (ie, intelligence gathering). Thus in any strategic sense, torture has historically offered little or no value to provide information and presents considerable risks and harms to torturers should it be discovered that captives were tortured and abused for intelligence purposes. Particularly when undertaken in a systematic way, under orders or instructions from commanders and leaders, rather than as some kind of one-off scenario that could be "excused" and dealt with (as was done with Abu Ghraib officers and personnel). It is also providing risk and harm when it is not condemned, when people are accepting of the offering of retributive violence against unarmed captives, including innocents who posed us no threat of harm in the first place and all on the pretext of acquiring information. And a risk where the officials involved face no repercussions and indeed are welcomed to offer their opinion freely. Not only to dissemble on this issue of what they had done and for which we might expect them to wish to try to defend themselves but on all manner of other topics as to our foreign relations they are granted respectability and gravitas rather than greeted with deafening silence and indifference where they wish to express themselves; to be shunned and stripped of social rank and titles rather than welcomed. These harms should have been much more carefully considered, in spite of any imagined or perceived threats to the security and serenity of the citizens of the nation, and the whatever propriety hard-earned over the history of the nation as it conducted itself abroad should not have been tossed aside in the need for vengeful assaults on human decency. That our enemies are brutal and presumed to be savage in the destruction of innocent lives is not an excuse for depravity, nor a call to conduct ourselves as savages. Standing back up taller in a moment of weakness should be seen as discouraging attack, by making us appear stronger and more formidable to our allies and enemies alike. Slinking lower to a moral standard makes us appear weaker and desperate, capable of abandoning our standards at the slightest push. Such an approach may win battles, but will lose many wars.

The reason it offers risk and harm for our public and political class to react so to these stories is that it presents the firm possibility that we would do it again, and continue our depraved status as a nation of torturers at risk to any moral standing we have as an ally and friend of those nations in search of establishing justice and peace. If but there were no restraints cast on us by our current leaders, we would do it again is the implicit promise of our reaction. Or that we would cooperate with allies who might do so at our behest rather than condemn such practices universally and unequivocally. It is not enough to place words upon paper and sign them. We have to practice the ideals behind those words. Those ideals carry meaning and value only so long as we wish to uphold them, and they lose value and credibility when we stray grievously from our established acceptable practices. They are not reinforced by pointing to lesser exemplars for their own brutality and abdication of human rights or decency. They are only reinforced by making ourselves strive to be ever stronger examples of such things.

Torture and the 8th amendment

Most of my qualms with the death penalty have to do with the expense of using it as an extravagance rather than a necessary penalty for even for the most heinous crimes, as this appears to be. Others would be the high probability that we erred in determining guilt and that I'm not persuaded it is a deterrent.

But taking 10-20 minutes to kill someone sounds like an agonizing experience of suffering not just for the convicted criminal, something perhaps some people would be unpersuaded is a problem, but for the people associated with the execution itself who must afflict it as penalty and witness the results. Torture is not merely an affliction upon the tortured, but also the torturer.

This is little different. There are good reasons why torture and cruelty to prisoners is morally wrong and legally wrong, on top of questions of its efficacy. And a very powerful reason is because of what it does to the people who use it, or what it allows of the people who want to use it in the first place. Watching someone die in a horrible way, no matter what that person did before we encountered them, is an unpleasant experience to have to afflict and bear witness to.

I would expect a strong challenge to the 8th amendment that would hold up that this was in fact cruel and unusual and that the state (of Ohio) will at least have to use some other method of injection or some other means of imposing sentences of death.

Again with the torture. Still getting worse.

Key points:

Perhaps the most important or notable finding of this panel is that it is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture.

The second notable conclusion of the Task Force is that the nation’s highest officials bear some responsibility for allowing and contributing to the spread of torture.

"The SERE program was developed to help U.S. troops resist interrogation techniques that had been used to extract false confessions from downed U.S. airmen during the Korean War. Its promoters had no experience in interrogation, the ability to extract truthful and usable information from captives."

"To deal with the regime of laws and treaties designed to prohibit and prevent torture, the lawyers provided novel, if not acrobatic interpretations to allow the mistreatment of prisoners....

Those early memoranda that defined torture narrowly would engender widespread and withering criticism once they became public. The successors of those government lawyers would eventually move to overturn those legal memoranda. "

"Following the September 11 attacks, the immediate responsibility for action fell appropriately on the executive branch, which has direct control of the vast machinery of the government. It encompasses not only the nation’s military might but the president himself as the embodiment of the nation’s leadership and thus the individual best positioned to articulate the nation’s anger, grief and considered response.... 

....Decisions ultimately handed down by the Supreme Court overturned some of the basic premises of the administration in establishing its detention regime. Officials had counted on courts accepting that the U.S. Naval base at Guantánamo, Cuba, was outside the legal jurisdiction of the United States. As such, the officials also reasoned that detainees there would have no access to the right of habeas corpus, that is, the ability to petition courts to investigate and judge the sufficiency of reasons for detention."  (the report goes to some lengths to make note of the pressures involved, but does not suggest this abdicates the duty of elected officials to follow existing laws and norms under some new special circumstance at their convenience, without that they should then amend those laws and norms in an official and accountable capacity, and goes to some length to catalogue the variety of ways they were shown to be incorrect, illegal, or unaccountable). 

"Task Force investigators and members believe it is difficult to overstate the effect of the Abu Ghraib disclosures on the direction of U.S. policies on detainee treatment." - Basically the sunlight here on one particular place of abuse was unpleasant enough to require a change in policy finally, but not enough to start asking how that abuse came to be. 

"If presumed enemy leaders—high-value targets—are killed outright by drones, the troublesome issues of how to conduct detention and interrogation operations are minimized and may even become moot." - This suggests why we now use the drones instead of the expansive indefinite detention regime of the Bush years. Which is to say, we're still avoiding and evading the question of whether the indefinite detention regime itself is justifiable and legal. 

"The following techniques and treatments have both been used by the U.S. against detainees within its control and been deemed torture, abuse or cruel treatment in DOS’s annual Human Rights Reports... 

Stress Positions...temperature manipulation... waterboarding... sleep deprivation... threats of harm to person, family, friends,... sensory overload (light/noise)..., sexual humiliation...., prolonged solitary confinement..., forced nudity..., confinement in small space....forced prolonged standing"

"the ICRC highlights a series of “serious violations of International Humanitarian Law,” some of which are “tantamount to torture.” The primary violations occurred largely in the beginning stages of the internment process, except for those labeled “high value,” who experienced mistreatment throughout their detention. Some of the violations... include 

Brutality against protected persons upon capture and initial custody, sometimes causing death or serious injury" (a number of prisoners died worldwide from our actions, not from age, infirmity, or sickness). 

"Absence of notification of arrest of the persons deprived of their liberty to their families causing distress" (an understandable notion for high value targets early on to gain tactical or strategic advantage, but not for their prolonged captivity). 

"Physical or psychological coercion during interrogation to obtain information" (eg, torture). 

"Prolonged solitary confinement in cells devoid of daylight"

"Excessive or disproportionate use of force against persons deprived of their liberty resulting in death or injury during their period of internment"

Other events and notable quotes: 

"At Camp Bucca in Iraq, six sailors were accused of abusing detainees by means that included throwing them into a cell they had filled with pepper spray"

"The techniques included banging pots and pans to scare the detainees, blaring loud music, and severe beatings.“The sounds were meant to disorient, but also to mask the screams.” If the detainees sustained injuries during beatings, the military intelligence officers who had medical training “could stitch up or bandage injuries, avoiding a call to the medics and an entry in the logbooks that the Red Cross could read."

"In the summer of 2003, the interrogators threw a detainee against a concrete wall, punched him in the neck and gut, kicked him in the knees, threw him outside, and dragged him back in by his hair. For the entire two-hour ordeal, the prisoner wouldn't talk; Ben later found out he spoke Farsi and couldn't understand the interrogators’ English and Arabic"

"Engaging in torture damages the torturer. The starting point for torture is the dehumanization of a detainee. Those who dehumanize others corrupt themselves in the process; dehumanization of other is a paradigm shift in how two people relate to each other, and as such it has an impact on both sides of the relationship. Once the detainee’s human status no longer matters in the mind of the torturer, he or she can unleash personal, even national, aggression. The detainee is subjected to suffering and the torturer lets go of reason, one of the marks of humanity, and descends into rage"

"“The country doesn’t really understand the cost. … [O]ne JAG officer came in and said that British military captured a terrorist — not a terrorist suspect, a terrorist — in Basra and released him. They gave him 48 hours head start and only then notified American authorities. They did not have detention facilities [at that time], and they did not trust either the United States or the Iraqi forces not to abuse this individual. So rather than engage in potentially aiding and abetting criminal activity, [the British forces] thought that the least worst option was to release a terrorist back into the field.”"

"I was chained to the floor and the guards were holding my head. … [T]here were many of them, seven or six or more, they were holding me down to the floor so there was no fear of [me] fighting [back] or anything like that. Both eyes were completely open so [one of the guards] put his fingers and … started to push inside my eyes. … I could feel the coldness of his fingers [as] he was pushing hard digging into my eyes and I didn't want to scream because I didn't want to frighten the people in the other cells and then the other thing is I didn't want to give them that satisfaction of me screaming on the floor. I didn't scream, so he was pushing even harder digging inside my eyes. The officer standing was saying “More, more” and this guard was saying “I am, I am,” shouting to the officer. And then, what I know is lots of liquid coming out from both of my eyes, I couldn't see anything for three days, I think. I was thrown back into the cell and food was thrown, because [I was in] an isolation cell, the food was thrown from the bean hole and I was eating food and just sleeping. I couldn't see anything, there was lots of pain in my eyes. And then slowly one of them recovered sight. … [T]here was [no medical care] till after couple of months, a medical doctor came in and all his advice was that he would be willing to take the eye out from my head because he thought it looks really bad"

"He was held in Kandahar for 11 days and subjected to forced nudity, extreme temperatures, and beatings where guards “kicked my injured leg and I was screaming in agony, but they just laughed and danced like it was a joke.

Al-Gazzar elaborated: I was … concerned about my leg, because I had severe pain and the environment was dirty so I was worried that it might get infected. The American doctors were telling me it had to be amputated. I resisted, arguing with them about what the Pakistani surgeons had said, that they could save my leg. I even showed them the X-rays that I had kept. The Americans just laughed and said the Pakistanis didn't know anything about medicine and treatments. In the end one of them admitted that they could save my leg but the operation would cost thousands of dollars and that America was a “poor country.” 

"After transfer to Guantánamo, Al-Gazzar again tried to explain to the doctors at Camp X-Ray that his leg could be saved. I got the same as answer as I’d had in Kandahar: Pakistanis didn't know anything, the leg had to go. As the days passed the pain increased and the colour of my leg started to turn grey — almost black. I asked them to clean the wound, and to change the dressing every day and night but they wouldn't do it. When I asked them in the morning for a new dressing they said they will do it in the afternoon, and in the afternoon they said they will do it in the morning, like that. … The wound was open and big — without any kind of treatment besides basic dressings. They forced us to take showers so the wound got wet many times — the pain became almost unbearable. … [M]ost of the other prisoners advised me correctly that I had no option but to accept the amputation as it had passed the stage of being saved and had become gangrenous and could spread higher up the leg the longer it was left. I finally gave in."

The report also wrestles with the question, left unanswered for all the classification still involved, of just how useful this stuff was for information.  (For the most part, this question is entirely addressed at the CIA's use on a very select grouping, and not the broader abuses conducted by the CIA, what willing allies we had in this, or the military. Only a very small sliver of which has been held accountable in the US). 

They do however issue this finding: 

"There is no firm or persuasive evidence that the widespread use of harsh interrogation techniques by U.S. forces produced significant information of value. There is substantial evidence that much of the information adduced from the use of such techniques was not useful or reliable.

There are, nonetheless, strong assertions by some former senior government officials that the use of those techniques did, in fact, yield valuable intelligence that resulted in operational and strategic successes. But those officials say that the evidence of such success may not be disclosed for reasons of national security. 

The Task Force appreciates this concern and understands it must be taken into account in attempting to resolve this question. Nonetheless, the Task Force believes those who make this argument still bear the burden of demonstrating its factual basis. History shows that the American people have a right to be skeptical of such claims, and to decline to accept any resolution of this issue based largely on the exhortations of former officials who say, in essence, “Trust us” or “If you knew what we know but cannot tell you.” 

In addition, those who make the argument in favor of the efficacy of coercive interrogations face some inherent credibility issues. One of the most significant is that they generally include those people who authorized and implemented the very practices that they now assert to have been valuable tools in fighting terrorism. As the techniques were and remain highly controversial, it is reasonable to note that those former officials have a substantial reputational stake in their claim being accepted. Were it to be shown that the United States gained little or no benefit from practices that arguably violated domestic and international law, history would render a harsh verdict on those who set us on that course."

On the question as to whether coercive interrogation techniques were valuable in locating Osama bin Laden, the Task Force is inclined to accept the assertions of leading members of the Senate Intelligence Committee that their examination of the largest body of classified documents relating to this shows that there was no noteworthy connection between information gained from such interrogations and the finding of Osama bin Laden.

The Task Force does not take any unequivocal position on the efficacy of torture because of the limits of its knowledge about classified information. But the Task Force believes it is important to recognize that to say torture is ineffective does not require a belief that it never works; a person subjected to torture might well divulge useful information.

The argument that torture is ineffective as an interrogation technique also rests on other factors. One is the idea that it also produces false information and it is difficult and time-consuming for interrogators and analysts to distinguish what may be true and usable from that which is false and misleading.

The other element in the argument as to torture’s ineffectiveness is that there may be superior methods of extracting reliable information from subjects, specifically the rapport-building techniques that were favored by some. It cannot be said that torture always produces truthful information, just as it cannot be said that it will never produce untruthful information. The centuries-old history of torture provides example of each, as well as many instances where torture victims submit to death rather than confess to anything, and there are such instances in the American experience since 2001.

The Task Force has found no clear evidence in the public record that torture produced more useful intelligence than conventional methods of interrogation, or that it saved lives. Conventional, lawful interrogation methods have been used successfully by the United States throughout its history and the Task Force has seen no evidence that continued reliance on them would have jeopardized national security thereafter."

There was not unequivocal support for modifying the indefinite detention regime centered on Guantanamo, a separate matter studied in this report, though a majority of the study's (bipartisan) commission were in favor of severe steps to change it. Several findings were also issued regarding the conduct and lack of transparency of the OLC, as well as the conduct (non-ethical) of the medical professionals who participated in the monitoring, if not carrying out, of torturous methods. 

This is probably the most disheartening statement: "No CIA personnel have been convicted or even charged for numerous instances of torture in CIA custody — including cases where interrogators exceeded what was authorized by the Office of Legal Counsel, and cases where detainees were tortured to death. Many acts of unauthorized torture by military forces have also been inadequately investigated or prosecuted."

As a side note, this even has implications, unsettlingly, for Libya: 

"This is what occurred when the perception of Libya’s ruler, Muammar el-Gaddafi, shifted in the West; he went from being regarded as a dangerous and unstable despot to someone who was to be courted as a valuable ally in the war against terrorism and an example of a leader renouncing dangerous weapons. Then, when he tried to crush a rebellion, the view of him shifted again as he was regarded once more as a dangerous tyrant whose overthrow we were proud to have aided. 

During the course of these changes, several leaders of the principal nationalist Libyan movement were abused in U.S. custody — and in some cases, their wives were as well. One of the detainees was even subjected to waterboarding by U.S. forces. Then, in an effort to reward el-Gaddafi during the time he was in favor with the West, they were secretly handed over to his regime, where they faced further abuse. One of the detainees, Sada Hadium Abdulsalam al-Drake, estimated that about a dozen members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), were handed over to Libya by the Americans and British authorities during the period the West was trying to improve relations with el-Gaddafi. .....

Within a few years, those same Libyan nationalists who suffered under allied detention and rendition to el-Gaddafi became figures of some importance to the United States. They were even regarded as heroic democratic examples in the West as they toppled el-Gaddafi. There is a deep and unsettling irony in this as the United States would soon become instrumental in the NATO effort to help Libyans overthrow el-Gaddafi, and that meant depending on those same individuals who had been rendered and abused (some by U.S. forces)... "

....the leaders of the revolt that overthrew el-Gaddafi expressed surprisingly little bitterness or even anger toward America. (Their attitude toward Britain is a different story.)" ... 

"...Al-Shoroeiya was not one of the three people the CIA has acknowledged waterboarding." "

“It wasn’t the idea of killing me,” he said through a translator. “You know the person doesn’t want to kill you. But the torture is harder than death.”

"Belhadj told the Task Force interviewer that he bore no continuing anger toward the United States, but noted that it has been especially difficult for him to reach that view because of how his wife was treated. “What happened to my wife is beyond belief,” he said through a translator. She was not part of his political life, he said, and “what my wife went through doubled my pain.”

"she was 4½ months pregnant. She said they were taken to a secret prison near the Bangkok airport where they were separated. “They took me to a cell and they chained my left wrist to the wall and both my ankles to the floor,” she told the Guardian. She was given water but no food over the next five days. 

At the end of that period, she was forced to lie on a stretcher and was wrapped tightly from head to toe with tape. When they got to her head, she said, she made the mistake of keeping one eye open and it was taped in that position. It remained that way for the duration of a long flight to Libya, later determined to have lasted about 17 hours. “It was agony,” she said"

Bits and pieces of the weeks past, and future.

1) Watching the Final Four, I was rather disappointed with the talent level. Michigan had maybe 3 first rounders (Burke, Robinson, McGeary), Louisville had maybe 2 (Dieng, although he's old, and Smith, as a second rounder), and that's it. That was at least a quality final until about the last 3 minutes (and Burke's 3rd foul was bullshit, that was a clean block). I would say the officiating was really weird.

2) Mike D'Antoni is still a terrible coach. Took him months to figure out his roster had two excellent post players and use them together, and still didn't trust that option to give Kobe any rest, so he was run aground with enormous minutes use for his age and experience (several games down the stretch at 47-48). Or alternatively, he had no power to make Kobe rest. Which is absurd, because clearly every other coach in the league rests even their best players extensively (Rivers and Popovich and Carlisle are among the best at this).

3) 42 was a decent sports movie, which is to say it's not a great film. I think it relies too much on the "we who are enlightened now find this behavior repugnant" problem of how Americans think about (our) history, rather than as placing the context. That said, at least they included the repugnant behavior as something being overcome and confronted. I was also pleased to see Robinson's actual dynamic play being pushed to the front as part of the "legend".

4) I don't have anything new to offer as commentary or consolation for the Boston marathon bombing. I will say that I have been (very) impressed by the reaction of Boston in the face of a horrific event, and marginally impressed (tentatively) with the rest of the country not panicking and overreacting, as it is wont to do. With a few exceptions. 

5) We tortured. Semi-officially this time. (That calls for its own post).

A note on this: I write about torture occasionally for a variety of reasons. But foremost is that while I am a "realist" in foreign policy, much of that basis is pragmatic approaches to the reality of chaotic international relationships. One way realists may approach this chaotic environment is to establish and practice and try to enforce reliable norms upon the international stage, like "not torturing prisoners" (among others like "don't spread weapons of mass destruction to other states"). Not torturing prisoners has a number of practical benefits in international relationships, among which that other states which adhere to it will more readily cooperate in any necessary warfare operations with the other states which do not, and that states which rely more easily upon diplomatic methods rather than open warfare where their subjects are not subjected to abuse and detention without appropriate legal protections. Since the variety of non-torturing states is largely American allies in our hegemonic operations, it's immensely practical not to violate the norms which we agreed to and have often attempted to impose. It's also immensely practical not to start fighting wars with everyone out there who might have harboured or hosted enemies of the international order or even mere American interests (such as terrorists or accused terrorists), as wars are rather costly of blood and treasure for all sides and should be reserved for essential purposes and interests (such as self-defence or perhaps punishing very poor international actors, such as those who invade or terrorize their neighbours).

This is true even before considering the moral basis of permissive regimes of aggressive or cruelty in interrogation (including torture), or in evaluating the efficacy of those regimes vis a vis standard interrogation techniques, the ability of American courts to prosecute or adjudicate claims of guilt or association with terrorist organisations and plans upon verifiable evidence and proper legal treatment, and so on.

A movie or two

I've taken a long hiatus from recording my thoughts here. They've mostly ended up in extended debates on social network forums where I've had them. And of course the vacuousness of the election cycle was very wearisome to any attempt to find thoughtful debates over actual issues.

Nevertheless, things are still happening, and I am still thinking about some of them.

1) I don't think we should be getting into Mali. The only justification for a national interest I can think of is that we have fucked up that country by previously fucking up another one (Libya). Which is a rather dumb way of saying "why don't we light something else on fire and see if that helps put out the flames".

2) I have followed the Newtown tragedy with my usual indifferent attitude. I'm extremely skeptical that most of the proposed ideas have much merit. I would endorse the following statements:
- We should study the epidemiology of our violence. What causes it. What steps could be taken to prevent it once we understand it. We have a lot of violence and murder even after it has decreased, far more than most developed countries. We also have a lot of misinformation, fear-mongering, and easily lifted off the shelf causes (ban violent video games! ban rap music! ban assault weapons! throw lots of people in jail or mental hospitals!) that I doubt would accomplish much but which suck up a huge portion of the oxygen in the wake of these events while excluding any pertinent discussion. Arming a few people with some facts would allow actual reasoned debates to occur somewhere and might allow prominent media outlets to book sane people rather than Alex Jones types
- Encourage mental health to reform and share information where necessary, but also to be less stigmatize socially. A handful of lunatics heavily armed have effectively made the lot of us scared of anyone who has the slightest case of depression or shows anxiety at work or school. And for the most part, the reality is that it is precisely the people who are "off" in that sense who are most vulnerable and most often violated in their person or property, assaulted, raped, etc, among us.
- Stop pretending there's a functional difference between semi-automatic rifles and other legal weapons. They just look scarier to people who don't like guns but in both cases they're designed and capable of spitting out little metal pullets at high speed into living tissue and causing damage and death, at close or long range. Actual machine guns or bazookas or tanks or land mines or surface to air missiles are generally illegal and heavily restricted (eg banned). There are people who disagree with some of those bans as well on moral or legal grounds, but by and large, these weapons at least have functional differences from a common hunting rifle, handgun, or shotgun that allow for legal distinctions to occur and which could apply to their function as weapons. "Assault rifles" do not.
- Gun rights advocates should not presume to the defence of liberty against tyranny as the first most accessible argument for the protected right of gun ownership in this country. Tyranny has many forms, and I'd much rather that a free society defend ALL of its rights and liberties against it, not just its right to be armed. Nevertheless, in defending that right, there are a number of sane sounding justifications for why someone would want a particular gun. Sport, discipline, hunting, and self-defence all spring to mind and would apply just as well to virtually any weapon which is presently legal. I find the macho-gun culture aspects of how some of these are marketed, presented, and used to be more than a little repellent personally, in that I find men should have quite enough confidence in their penis without needing a gun to represent something. But my personal sentiments are hardly a good basis for public policy. Neither are yours.

3) Movies. I've now seen 5 of the 9 nominees for best pictures. 4 of them were mediocre to decent in my mind (Lincoln and Django were okay to low end good, Zero was decent but not great, Les Miserables had a lot of people who couldn't sing in it but were determined to pretend otherwise). Argo was a good movie, but I wouldn't say it was "best picture" material (Affleck can direct though). I've heard good things about Beasts and will probably see it and Silver Linings at some point. I'm not sure that there were "Oscar" worthy films this year in that sense so much as a few good blockbusters (Avengers, Skyfall, and Dark Knight Rises. The first Hobbit movie wasn't that great, but had a few flashes of promise too).

Daniel Day Lewis was very good in Lincoln even though I thought the rest of the film was way too messy. I thought Denzel did well in Flight too as a functional alcoholic. I don't have critical opinions on the rest of the field.

The main reason to bring this up: Zero Dark Thirty. I think it was a touch too long. I think Chastain did rather well in it acting wise but I suspect her story or character was trumped up and condensed to make the CIA seem more sympathetic. I think it is deliberately ambiguous about the torture sequences in some ways. I think it's very direct that what we were doing was in fact TORTURE. In capital letters, even if no one refers to it as such, stress positions, blaring music, putting people in tiny boxes, water boarding, stripping men naked and cold (in front of women, a cultural affront on top of the physical) and so on. It's unpleasant even watching the violence afflicted by men wearing black masks upon their helpless captives even though in most cases these are men who plotted or participated in the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians. It messes with the people doing it, it's directly referred as hurting and pain, and so on. The ambiguous part is that people keep complaining that they cannot do it as though it must have offered them some perceived advantage but it never really demonstrates any such advantages in gathering intelligence about the war on terror efforts or learning any vital clues on the trail to Osama. The vital clues come from normal acts of intelligence gathering (tips, bribes in the "right" places, etc). Also the film seems to be blaming Obama for that change even though Bush was the one who ordered the halt, which I think is a mistake.

The important non-ambiguous part I got from watching it though was this: We went in there specifically to kill Osama. Period. There wasn't effective resistance. There was a calm and deliberate intention. The only reason we spent special forces on it instead of a drone or air strike was to a) be sure he was there and b) be sure he was killed. It had the secondary effect of limiting collateral damage by not killing a bunch of random civilians (and of course, wives and children of the people living in the compound). That's it. We can think of some justification for why he would be killed, perhaps he would shoot back or blow himself up, something. But none of those hold in the depiction of events, the planning involved, the questions surrounding the operation, the attitudes of people involved. We could say this is from fictionalized accounts. But we also get the strong impression that the film was crafted with the participation of the White House, the CIA, and the special forces community (including the team involved in the strike). If they had input, and they disagree with the notion that we went in there specifically to kill rather than collect him, I'd say someone should say so. Nobody seems all that intent on disagreeing with that notion even though they went to some effort to establish it as true before. Personally, I find that more than a little troubling. I don't particularly care that we sometimes use military force and drones strikes to kill people in foreign countries in theory. I'm not a pacifist, even though I'm far less belligerent than most Americans it seems. Still. I find it at least a little strange that we would send in a special forces team to assassinate someone who we could by sending that team have had hauled back, put on trial, and eventually have killed in a more ordinary and banal American way (the death penalty).

I think the idea that terrorism is more like a crime, perhaps a war crime at times but a crime nonetheless, is one of the more effective premises available in suppressing it. Giving it elevation as a proper military tactic, worthy of (always) the full military response is a) a waste of nation-state resources and treasure and military forces and b) an undeserved credit to a bunch of murderous thugs. People argue that putting these people on trial allows them access to media, undeserved legal protections, that we would have to disclose a good deal of intelligence gathering methods and sources. I'd argue that those legal protections are important because they help assure fairness in the legal system, and it thus ensures that our burdens of proof must be high to imprison and especially to kill other human beings. Accusations are not enough to have a man stripped of his freedom and thrown into prison, there is to be a due process of law executed to assert these accusations have merit and evidence backing them. We have already protections to allow for intelligence and secrecy in trials. And allowing people access allows them to display their full measure of disconnectedness or to articulate arguments that are disjointed from the usual notions of terrorism while all the time being afforded a proper legal and ethical treatment that is often believed unavailable or inaccessible to people persuaded by these foolish notions and the thugs who promote them. If we appear less the hypocrites, so much the better.

The second of a set of two

Now that I've seen the entire Nolan arc, I would state that he's used Batman very effectively as a means to investigate, and in effect parody, the power that the nation-state uses in things like fighting terrorism.

A city in crisis essentially appoints one man to save them, to fight for them. That can work only because Bruce Wayne is an immortal icon, with incorruptible values, and exists with a power that isn't granted by his actual personal power directly but by assuming the guise of a theatrical legend. In real life, we have no such icons.

We have only men and women of normal values. Even Wayne struggles with these values.

He tortures Joker by beating him savagely in a moment of desperation. It doesn't work out as he expects. And he promptly goes off and invades the wrong country...err, rather he goes to the wrong building. He devises a system of super surveillance to catch this master criminal but even he doesn't trust himself with this power and leaves it to a subordinate in his mission, a man of wisdom and conscience greater than even himself. He allows a city to lie to itself and to apportion ridiculous and extraordinary powers of detention and thus subvert due process so that its people have a chance at hope, a path that can only backfire on itself spectacularly when the lie is exposed. (I always found the Platonic concept of a noble lie disturbing, even if I have rather less faith in human beings capacity for decency and a determined course of progressive advancement than many. I preferred Machievelli's satirical approach to governance and manipulation to Plato's cynical abuse of same.)

The message here: if even Batman can't walk the line between what is right and wrong without sometimes straying, without sometimes going too far in the pursuit of what is just and decent and good, even if he won't ever compromise on those values (for example he personally only "kills" Raz, and it can be argued a few faceless henchmen plus one important character, in the course of the trilogy and saves even the Joker), then what chance do the rest of us have with what we have to work with, petty, divided, and ambitious human beings of opportunity.

On Game of Thrones

This has been on long enough and I've been watching it fairly religiously enough that it deserves some comment. It's pretty much just the sex and violence that require commentary. The levels of intrigue and politicking involved I think go without saying are interesting to me, in the same way that the "game" in the Wire was, watching agents move in pursuit and position with an idea of power over each other. Some spoilers are in order for people who haven't read or followed the series closely.

First off, sex.

I find occasionally the use of "sexposition" a little jarring. I don't mind watching humans have sex with each other, and there is a lot of "useful" sex involved and depicted (going back to Dany in season 1 with the Khal and the development of their relationship, or Loris and Renly, etc). That's not what I'm talking about. Rather, these are points where characters are having sex or parading around naked while talking to some other character, sometimes their sexual partner, sometimes not, about some particular thing or another. I do not mind the use of boring but essential narrative elements being explained to us. And it's a trick that goes back to Shakespeare or Aristophanes in theater uses. So it's not new. I still find it strange at times. And it's been fairly ongoing (right down to the first episode where Tyrion is found in a whorehouse to various conversations involving Little Finger/Baelish at one of his establishments).

Occasionally this figures into character developments in a useful way. For example Theon's sexual "conquest" on a ship while on his way home is deliberately causal and dismissive in a way that suggests his overriding character. And we see almost immediately how this matters because of how his sister, who has taken up his birthright as the important family member to command power and influence as an heir, passively observes and reacts to him and in effect uses his weaknesses against him to command even more power or influence within their family dynamic. I think it also plays into how he handles his forces that he is given later on. He looks immediately to a sexy flash to attain his power rather than something he can actually pay the "iron price" for in the same way that his manner around women glazes over that he's generally in the company of prostitutes is buying their affections and attentions rather than earning them.

I don't think the show is misogynistic or sexist as a result. Women have, in environments of inequality, long used sex as a means to power. This is sort of where Cersei, Dany, and the Tyrells come in. They've also been historically at the short end of those unequal arrangements in a way that portraying such is sometimes necessary, which is generally where Cersei (she's sitting on both sides of this coin, and to some extent so is/was Dany. Though she benefits from being in power of a less official variety.) and various prostitutes or commoners matter, as well as where Arya's disguise as a boy and her "dancing lessons" are important. But ultimately, it is also a productive way for people to express affection and desire to depict sex and sexuality as a part of normal relationships, such as there are any in the show. The staid fantasy genre for both book and film tends to use or overuse elements of purity and chivalry to exclude sex from the topic all together, to say nothing of sexual politics.

I have some appreciation for these effects. Since the show and the books are ultimately about the use and abuse of power, its impact on sexuality matters and seems to be depicted in a reasonable manner. It might be preferable that women should have greater equality in that world (Lady Stark being one of the few examples to the contrary), but their actions in a world of inequality are what you would expect.

Second, I tend not to be overly squeamish about violence. However, last week's episode had two of the more disturbing uses of violence involved of any show or film I've encountered. One was the highlight of an escalating series of sadistic jollies taken on by the young king, in this case amounting to an S&M match with himself and two prostitutes. In which he has one beat and eventually abuse the other. There is no sex involved and the closest he gets to participating directly is to offer up his belt as a weapon. Followed by a rather grotesque use of a piece of wood railing (I think), that we were mercifully spared from witnessing directly. It is, in other words, not enough that he have something sadistic of his own action, but that he should use this desire to command others to do the same. He's essentially spent all of his reign abusing his authority to do as he pleases to anyone; conducting farcical battles to the death, ordering the deaths of small children, even infants, to be bled in public, and so on. This is, fortunately, not likely to last for long nor does it seem possible to do so as few of the more demented reigns of kings and emperors in our own history could show had great length and power. But it does has all sorts of fallout (some in the public for instance believes it is Tyrion the dwarf who commands these atrocities from the king) that does last a lot longer. and which we can plausibly accept as a genuine reaction from the powerless to the explanation of the actions of their powerful lords and masters (that is to blame some other figure).

I see a similar reaction at play to that of Democrats or liberals to blame Republican leaders or conservative movement figures for actions that Obama has, apparently, willingly taken on his own recourse in preference to their perceived interests. On issues like health care, he got essentially the bill he wanted. There was not, for the most part, a good deal of conservative political influence on the final product. On gay marriage or gay rights generally, he's pushed only as far as he seems willing to have done so and hasn't gone further not because he wants to but is prevented, but because he doesn't seem to want to do so. On marijuana or immigration laws, there's a perception that he is and has been better than conservatives, even though arrests and deportations are actually pretty far up under his administration. On secrecy and treatment of civil liberties. And so on down the line down to some of the acts of violence themselves (assassination programmes of accused terrorists), which go unremarked because at that point it seems, nobody can believe it or is willing to believe that this is a power that would or could go irresponsibly used by this man. A similar affliction was accorded conservatives where President Bush was concerned, or Reagan, etc. Tax increases? Har. Why you must be joking. They wouldn't do that. Torture? No, no, we'd never do that. Except to people who we think deserve it and then we might wink at it. And so on. It's surprising how the powerless justify their heroes and imbue them with a quality of innocence and purity of motive that is entirely undeserved. Because, after all, they are still human beings. And human beings, as we shall see, are capable of being enormously fucked up creatures to one another for no good reason at all.

Speaking of torture. By far the most fucked up thing I've seen happen on this show was the torture sequence. First, it is plainly obvious that they're doing it for sport and to use their cruelty to pass the time rather than to develop good information or for some other supposed utilitarian premise. This is, as best I can tell, more or less how torture is actually deployed when it is in the wild, as it were. There is no actual interest in what a prisoner says or tells us. The point is to abuse them. It only gets covered up in that guise later when people find out about it. Here there was no veil of ignorance and innocence. It was just pure malice and brutality. And of a very... interesting method. They strapped a bucket onto a man's naked chest. After placing a rat inside of it. And then held a torch underneath the bucket to agitate the rat to escape. By burrowing through the chest in front of it. Romans historically we are told were to have applied something similar for some of their sterner capital punishments; throwing a man live into a river with some set of animals, monkeys or dogs or chickens, all tied up into a sack with them and allowing his body to be torn apart as they all drowned but while the animal(s) tried to desperately escape. That too served no purpose in all its malice, to supposedly deter others from the same gruesome fate (something for which I doubt the severity of justice but the swiftness of it did). Here the penalty was being carried out before the eyes of their next victims; victims who had no ability to escape or defend themselves and were simply left out in the open to die one by one to the amusement of their captors in a sadistic game. And what stops this cruelty? Not a demonstration or a letter demanding their oppression cease, nor the release of their captive state. It stops because the lord (Tywin Lannister, richest man in that world) commanding the castle they are at arrives and protests the waste of a body of available forced labourers in such a useless way. It's almost purely self-interest utilitarian command. He doesn't actually care that it is malicious and cruel. He cares that they're killing slaves and prisoners that he could use in a war or to be pressed into his personal service. There are, of course, many utilitarian self-interested motives to the pursuit of human rights of this sort, namely that they help promote a lot of other values we might find productive and useful to a society that practices them. But this was a pretty bold demonstration of such things. And it was all juxtaposed with the application of our malice for no purpose whatsoever. Which is precisely what purpose it usually serves.

As for the rest, several conversations that occur are brilliant. I really liked Tyrion's banishment talk with a King's Guard commander ("I'm not questioning your honor, I am denying its very existence"), and really he gets almost all of the wit to apply to others throughout the series. Arya and Tywin's talk in his war room meeting is awesome. He asks about the legends in the north surrounding her brother (which he does not know it is in fact her brother), and whether he can be killed. To which she responds "Anyone can be killed" with a none too subtle use of sustained eye contact and unspoken silence between the two to follow.  Given where her character is going (she's about to meet up with and eventually train with a band of assassins), it's a revealing picture. Dany got a lot of use of power lines in season 1, particularly as compared to her brother and within the context of her evolving marriage to the Khal as she became as true Khalessi in her own right. But she's getting into bluster mode in her far weakened position.

I suppose I am a sucker for a well-written show or production, and I usually penalise heavily for poor or sloppy writing (hence why I despised the Spider Man movies and the prequel Star Wars films).