May 20, 2009
Obama, Passion and Guantanamo
I've seen it happen so many times. When someone powerful moves in a certain direction, sometimes one can see the outcome long before anybody else does, just by looking for what is happening behind the scenes. This is especially true in politics, where passion counts more than either reality or justice.
The passionatly foolish concept will often beat better ideas, simply because those holding the better ideas acquiesce. Both Justice and Injustice require passion to achieve, largely because injustice flows from passionate feelings. In a truly just system justice is boring. There are people who are up-front with their goals and motives, and people who are sneaky, but most people are somewhat in between. There is nothing wrong with passion, nor with folks working behind the scenes to accomplish things. But because passion is often decoupled from accuracy, and even where people hold accuracy as a personal principle that accuracy is so hard to get, the result is that passionate injustice often wins out over legal principle, written laws, or even common sense. Fiction, such as the tv series 24! wins the day, even if it is based on false premises and complete spin.
This is true in the case of right wing ideology, where influential libertarians and right wing politicians have been able to push their ideas on an often skeptical majority for more than 30 years.
But it takes passion to fight back. And I applaud Obama for publicly debating (Darth) Dick Cheney.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/21/AR2009052101748.html
Some of these people go over a moral and ethical line to the point of being passionate monsters (See Dirty War posts). There would be little interesting about our efforts to bring, say, Bin Laden, to justice if it weren't for the injustices perpetrated by our own passionate monsters in their determined efforts to achieve their will, on our own side. For 40-50 years they've been pushing a shadow war, sometimes with the connivance of "liberals" and sometimes behind their back. They've done so with the cooperation of other politically powerful intelligence services, private individuals with intelligence connections, and groups such as the John Birch society, and others, and with the cooperation of the intelligence services of other countries who share a similar outlook.
Because these people are so passionate, and their opposition has been so ambivilant, there is no guarantee there will ever be justice for either Moslem extremists or Crusading Christian/Authoritarian extremists in our own country. On the contrary, nobody in the major media has been willing to confront them except the few people who feel as passionately as they do. The flegmatic middle is thus left pretending that both sides have arguments of equal weight. I reached the point last night where I was wondering if the fix was in. But then Obama gave his speach.
I am encouraged another day. I started this blog entry as a very depressing discussion of whether or not "the fix is in" on national security and the Bill of Rights. It is depressing that when ordinary folks win a rare victory such as a right to a two week vacation from their employers, that gets labeled by fibbertarians as "nanny state" and a violation of the constitution, but when the constitution is actually violated these thugs are quiet or even piling on folks complaining about its use as Police State toilet paper. Working people need more victories. These hierarchs and little barons need to be told that they don't own us. And these fibbertarians need to be refuted.
Further Reading:
Ruth Marcus offers this:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/27/AR2009052702961.html
Chris
Posted by cholte at May 20, 2009 07:02 PM
Obama is still somewhat holding back. But these things will ferment. People ask me why a Buddhist would bother to involve himself. I go to the Rissho Ankoku Ron for my answer:
"If the nation is destroyed and people's homes are wiped out, then where can one
flee for safety? If you care anything about your personal security, you should
first of all pray for order and tranquility throughout the four quarters of the
land, should you not?"
(WND, 24)
On Establishing the correct Teaching for the Peace of the Land
Submitted to Hojo Tokiyori on July 16, 1260
Prayer is not enough. I suspect this will turn into a post.
Maybe I'm missing something. It seems to me nothing is being changed but the name and location. When I saw Obama speak I felt it was the last nail in the coffin for hope that this guy would be anything other than a cheerleader for the military industrial complex, renditions, torture, and open ended detentions without charge or trial. I'm sure a lot of people will say, "Well what really are his options?"
But if he can't really change anything then what is the point of the political process which always results in more of the same?
Well, his speech was encouraging considering just how badly he seemed to be caving. I'm limited in how much direct action I can take right now (I have to eat), but I'm convinced that at least his is a step in the right direction conceptually.
Clown:
"Maybe I'm missing something. It seems to me nothing is being changed but the name and location."
Well he showed signs that he can be pushed into putting on trial the "Torture Heavy" crowd of 2001-2004; Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bush, the entire NSA of the administration, and their lawyers. That is a start in the right direction.
The problem is that "Torture lite" is probably still being practiced under cover of National Security, Psychological expediency, and inertia. Torture lite is more legally "correct" -- at least in terms of documentation, but involves total control of the prisoner, extended and secret detention, and is aimed at breaking people so the interrogators can get maximum value from them.
The civil liberties nightmare involved is more subtle because it doesn't always require physical torture to be successful. The psychic torture of being held incommunicado for an extended period is bad enough.
The civil liberties element flows from the purpose, methods, and attitude involved in both torture lite and torture heavy. Both involve a state that takes a "father figure" attitude of omniscience, when the reality is fog. Thus we tortured a cab-driver and killed him because he knew nothing but the interrogators thought he knew something. Thus we hold the guilty and innocent until they are broken and utterly dysfunctional.
Thus folks are denied due process, habeas corpus, all on the grounds of "war" when the problem ought to be a matter for the police; and the police are licensed to behave like they are at war with the citizenry. Like I said this subject deserves research and its own post.
Clown:
"When I saw Obama speak I felt it was the last nail in the coffin for hope that this guy would be anything other than a cheerleader for the military industrial complex, renditions, torture, and open ended detentions without charge or trial."
There is always hope except when dealing with folks as perverse as Cheney or Bush and their defenders (I've given up on Robin too). With folks like them the only remedy is to use the courts and prosecute them; or use the power of public opinion to remind them for the rest of their life what kind of people they are.
Clown: I'm sure a lot of people will say, "Well what really are his options?"
The problem with Obama is also what I like about him; he listens to people. In these cases he's listening to the wrong people.
"But if he can't really change anything then what is the point of the political process which always results in more of the same?"
History offers a lot of parallels, warnings and examples. We won't be able to "move on" until we've dealt with those two years of "Torture Heavy" and also until we deal with the sneaky, devious, and arrogant CIA and its tradition of partisanship for torture-lite, secrecy, lying to people, and lawlessness. All these are bad tactics, disastrous policy, and terrible strategy. The CIA needs a house cleaning, and hopefully they've overstepped themselves enough that Panetta will deliver it to them. Right now he's trying to placate them. That never works with thugs.
I had thought that most CIA persons I'd met were basically lawful people who wanted to protect their country, but it appears there is a renegade faction that has no trouble with dirty war, torture, murder, and law-breaking. I had heard how the Mafia penetrated the CIA. More worrisome is that Mafia style thinking seems to have penetrated their ranks.
I am encouraged that the FBI repudiated both kinds of torture. Torture heavy explicitly and torture lite implicitly, with Safwan's testimony.
I am encouraged that a lot of people are not going to let this lie.
I am encouraged strategically by the notion that faulty notions are always dysfunctional. We won't see lasting improvement in our foreign policy until torture lite, "realpolitik," impunity, and deceptive concepts are set aside and concepts that have a chance to actually work strategically are applied. Obama is a conceptual thinker I have hope he'll catch on before these faulty concepts destroy him the way they degraded Clinton.
Chris
Well at least there is finally a public debate on these polices. I re-read the speech, and realized he's still upholding indefinite detentions and the culture of secrecy and impunity. Until those are dismantled we will continue in danger. And if the Republicans and fibbertarians don't realize they are headed down a fascist course we'll be in even more danger in 4-7+1/2 years when the next administration starts using those powers against us.
I guess "fibbertarians" are neo-cons who claim to be libertarians. Did you make that up yourself? It's very fitting.
Don't think so. I think it comes from a while ago. First heard it from Richard Torgerson while we were debating Andy. No, the economics of Libertarians is bogus, that is the reason I adopted the term.
Ruth Marcus notes just how deceptive and hollow Cheney's arguments are in her Washington Post article:
The dangerous overstatement, topped off with partisan jab: "The administration seems to pride itself on searching for some kind of middle ground in policies addressing terrorism... But in the fight against terrorism, there is no middle ground. And half measures keep you half exposed... Triangulation is a political strategy, not a national security strategy."
If there is no middle ground, why place any limits on how enhanced interrogations can get? Why not wiretap all conversations? Why give detainees any legal process at all? Calibrating the proper balance between liberty and security is difficult, and reasonable people can differ about where lines should be drawn. But Cheney's whatever-it-takes worldview seems to contemplate no tradeoffs whatsoever. Obama isn't seizing on terrorism for political advantage, like Bill Clinton with welfare reform. He's addressing a real threat -- and cleaning up Cheney's mess.
The outright misstatement: "The interrogations were used on hardened terrorists after other efforts had failed. They were legal, essential, justified, successful and the right thing to do."
But former FBI agent Ali Soufan offered a completely conflicting account of his interrogation of Abu Zubaida, telling the Senate Judiciary Committee that the injured terrorist was cooperating and yielding important information -- the previously unknown role of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in the Sept. 11 attacks -- until other interrogators insisted on stepping up the pressure, at which point Zubaydah clammed up.
A twist on the above, misstatement wrapped in demagoguery: "Attorney General Holder and others have admitted that the United States will be compelled to accept terrorists here in the homeland, and it has even been suggested U.S. taxpayer dollars will be used to support them.... Keep in mind that these are hardened terrorists picked up overseas since 9/11. The ones that were considered low risk were released a long time ago."
Hard to know where to start parsing the misinformation here. "Compelled to accept terrorists here in the homeland" makes it sound like they'll be roaming the local malls. I don't recall Cheney deploying the "terrorists in the homeland" bogeyman when Zacarias Moussaoui, the 20th hijacker, was being tried, sentenced and imprisoned here. As Obama said: "We are not going to release anyone if it would endanger our national security, nor will we release detainees within the United States who endanger the American people. Where demanded by justice and national security, we will seek to transfer some detainees to the same type of facilities in which we hold all manner of dangerous and violent criminals within our borders -- highly secure prisons that ensure the public safety."
U.S. taxpayer dollars supporting terrorists sounds like the 2009 version of welfare queens driving Cadillacs, with about as much truth. As if tax dollars aren't being spent on Guantanamo? As to the notion that only the "worst of the worst" remain, in fact, courts have ruled -- and in some cases Cheney's administration acknowledged -- that there was no legitimate reason to hold 21 of the 241 prisoners currently at Guantanamo; another 50 have been approved for transfer to another country. So the notion that the "low risk" ones are long gone is simply wrong. Ask the Chinese Uighurs who never intended harm to America but have been held without basis for seven years.
The best defense is a good offense: "[T]here has been a strange and sometimes willful attempt to conflate what happened to Abu Ghraib with a top-secret program of enhanced interrogations. At Abu Ghraib, a few sadistic prison guards abused inmates in violation of American law, military regulation and simple decency.... And it takes a deeply unfair cast of mind to equate the disgraces of Abu Ghraib with the lawful, skillful and entirely honorable work of CIA personnel trained to deal with a few malevolent men."
What radicals have engaged in this slur? Well, a panel appointed by then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and headed by former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger, for one. Enhanced interrogation techniques "migrated to Afghanistan and Iraq where they were neither limited nor safeguarded," Schlesinger's report found.
Finally, ultimate chutzpah: Cheney assailing the Obama administration for failing to disclose documents. "[A]ll that remains an official secret is the information that we gained as a result [of interrogations]. Some of his defenders say the unseen memos are inconclusive, which only raises the question why they won't let the American people decide that for themselves."
Cheney, ardent tribune of open government. Now, that's rich.