Decline and Fall

This recent exchange between Obama and McCain illustrates something that I still don't quite know how to put into words, but will try to anyway after the quote:

"I'm going to start with John McCain, because,...you know, he and I had some good debates about these issues," President Obama said in the final session of the Fiscal Responsibility Summit. "But -- and I mean what I say here -- I think John has also been extraordinarily consistent and sincere about these issues. And I want to see if you've -- John, you've got some thoughts about where we need to go and some priority areas. I know you were in procurement, for example, which is an area I know we would like to work on together with you."

Said the president's former Republican rival, "Well, thank you, Mr. President. And thank you for doing this...Just one area that I wanted to mention that I think consumed a lot of our conversation on procurement, it was the issue of cost overruns in the Defense Department. We all know how large the defense budget is."

And, McCain noted, "your helicopter is now going to cost as much as Air Force One. I don't think that there's any more graphic demonstration of how good ideas have -- have cost taxpayers an enormous amount of money."

Said Obama, "I've already talked to (Defense Secretary Robert) Gates about a thorough review of the helicopter situation."

Added the president, to laughter, "the helicopter I have now seems perfectly adequate to me. Of course, I've never had a helicopter before. So, you know, maybe -- maybe I've been deprived and I didn't know it.But I think it is a -- it is an -- an example of the procurement process gone amuck, and -- and we're going to have to fix it."

What strikes me about this, rather than Jonathan Chait's response, that "[Obama] is just a very, very skilled politician," is that Obama is really just a decent guy. He admits that everything isn't perfect, and owns up to things that actually are kind of his responsibility. And McCain is an asshole. McCain makes a craven attempt to stick it to the man who bested him, rather than mention something significant about a defense budget that is much bigger than most countries' GDPs and doesn't even include a hell of a lot of the Iraq spending, and Obama responds with graciousness and humility.

It's like we've finally got a President who no one thinks is really a jerk in private. We haven't had that since either Reagan or Carter, depending on your view of the Gipper. I mean, Obama actually listened to McCain's response, rather than prepare his next talking point in his mind while pretending to look thoughtfully at the senator.

OK, so Reagan's out. Did Carter pretend to listen? I don't know. I'm not that old.

Yes Jon, it is a skilled response. But many in the pundit class would have crowed over a sharp, witty rejoinder. It's fundamentally a decent response. Obama really does seem to be a nice guy.

I'd much rather have a beer with him than a jock wannabe redneck like Bush, who would probably spend the whole time interrupting the conversation to tell funny drunk stories from college.

Via, via.

Labels: Framing, McCain, Obama, politics

One of Andrew Sullivan's readers has pointed to what I have long believed was the central folly of Bush's strategy to rebuild Iraq:

I think the folly of introducing "democracy" with the hasty election scheme was disastrous and foreseeable. Any serious student of geopolitics knows that the rule of law is the fundamental precursor to a functioning democracy - institutions, culture, accepted norms... need to be shaped and accepted thoroughly over generations. Our own democracy did not drop out of the sky in 1776, it was a product of centuries of British history. As the already sixty year rise of South Korea, Japan, Singapore, etc. reveal, the transition from rule of law to democracy occurs in different ways in different cultures, and typically takes several decades, not months.

From the beginning, the Bush Administration has pushed the idea that democratic elections are a panacea for all of Iraq's troubles. But the rule of law must always come first. Elections without trust in government, the trust that only comes after years of living under law and impossible under the regime of a dictator like Saddam Hussein or a vindictively partisan parliament like the one we've seen over the last 4+ years, are worth nothing if their result is inevitably to grant authority to leaders who are above the law.

I could have told you that even when I was a conservative Republican, but today's GOP is obviously not the place to look for people who believe themselves accountable to their oaths of office.

Placing democracy before the rule of law in Iraq is yet another example of Bush, whose very presidency hinged on a legal ruling that trumped the majority vote Gore received, showing clearly that he lacks the capacity for self-reflection. If there ever were a President who lived an unexamined life, it was Dubya.

Of course, how could we expect a President, who spent his entire tenure insisting that it was his right to violate whatever law he chose, to understand the central importance of law--thus trust--in a free society?

Cross-Posted at OOIBC.

Labels: Bush, conservatism, Iraq, liberty, OOIBC

Andrew Sullivan had this to say, in an otherwise promising post, regarding fiscal conservatism:

On the one hand, I'm delighted that the GOP has rediscovered fiscal conservatism after a long period of Bush insanity. On the other hand, they may have chosen the one moment in recent history when fiscal conservatism could be disastrous.

Sullivan seems to believe Bush's spending was the problem, as if spending qua spending were responsible for the current economic crisis. But the problem isn't how much money the government spends, it's what they spend it on.

The Bush prescription drug law, for instance, benefits the companies making and distributing the pharmaceuticals at the expense of the vastly poorer multitudes who now pay more for their medicine (my Father, as fiscally conservative as they come, hates Bush for this).

An even bigger slice has gone to the defense contracting industry (my former employers) in the Bush years with full support from the GOP and blue dog Democrats, and those dollars go disproportionately to the already well-off.

The money Bush and conservatives have been spending over the last eight years has only served to widen already vast income disparities, leaving low- to middle-income Americans feeling the crunch like never before. This leads to decreased consumer spending, increased bankruptcy and foreclosure rates, and class envy, which tears at the fabric of a nation whose promise is built on equal opportunity and fairness.

Income disparities don't just keep the poor down, they belie the very promise of America. Deregulation, a shallow safety net, tax cuts that predominately benefit the rich, corporate bailouts, and bills benefiting industry executives and shareholders written by lobbyists for the same industry only confirm what most of us quietly believe: America is not a classless society, it's an aristocracy. While it may still be true that you can work your way up to riches here, it's not as easy as it was and it depends on an unsustainable reliance on credit, leaving the entrepreneur further exposed to disaster.

Also, the goalposts keep moving. Try living in a major American city on less than $80,000 per year and tell me if you feel rich. Remember when that was an upper-class income? Never mind that one in five American households earned less than $19,178 in 2007, before the economy really began to sink.

The rich are simply richer, and the poor are further behind. These are the fruits of fiscal conservatism. This is not the "one moment" fiscal conservatism could be disastrous; fiscal conservatism creates the disaster in the first place.

It's also a framing issue on the Right. The predominant "conservative" ideology declares that "government is the problem" and holds the extremely wealthy up as societal role models. When "maximizing returns" becomes a positive social good, indeed a moral imperative, it leads to simplistic thinking along the lines of "taxes: bad, government: bad, regulation: bad, free-market: good."

If the Right cared as much about responsible governance as they do about ideological conformity, they wouldn't be so quick to praise deregulation and tax cuts for their own sake. But they live in a black and white world, where the enemy is always evil and the good are never wrong.

(This, incidentally, partially explains the Right's defense of torture and enduring love for anticommunist dictators like Pinochet and Franco.)

Labels: conservatism, economics, ideology, politics

Valtin at Invictus has written a provocative article arguing that Appendix M of Army Field Manual 2-22.3 “took the standard operating procedure of Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay and threatened to expand it all over the world.” It’s an argument that is worth reading, but it suffers from a basic misunderstanding of how a prison camp in a war zone actually operates, and what interrogation operations actually entail.

The most important feature of Appendix M to interrogators is the approval procedure (handy flowchart on page 349 of the FM). Essentially, a General has to sign off on it, and throughout the employment of the technique (i.e., the vast majority of the time when the detainee is just sitting by himself in a cell) special safeguards must be employed and the detainee must be monitored. No General wants to be the next Karpinski or Miller, so the consensus view is that given the political climate, separations will be very hard to obtain. I've been out of that business for almost two years now, so I have no way of knowing whether that prediction came true. The dozens of interrogators I knew when the FM was published believed it though.
Valtin then goes into some very loose interpretation of what "Separation" actually entails:

What kind of procedures, which the manual avers cannot be used on regular prisoners of war (who are covered by the Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War), make up this special interrogation "technique," separation? In fact, it includes the following: solitary confinement, perceptual or sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation, the induction of fear and hopelessness, and the likely use of sensory overload, temperature or environmental manipulation, and any number of other techniques permitted elsewhere in the AFM, such as "Emotional Pride Down." As at Guantanamo and at prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan, a "multidisciplinary" team implements the program, including a behavioral science consultant (likely a psychologist.

I'll address these individually:

Solitary Confinement: that's what "Separation" essentially means. No argument there. But it's not the same "solitary confinement" that you've seen in the movies. (A comment heard often in U.S.-run Iraqi prisons is how much "easier" they are than American prisons.) Rather, it's a one-man cell with plenty of light and outside noise. It's just too far away from the other prisoners to allow relationships between them to develop. Is it unpleasant? Of course. So is being in the other parts of a prison. Is it cruel or inhumane? Only if it's done without proper care and supervision, which are mandated explicitly in the FM. There may be quibbles yet regarding acceptable durations of separation, but those arguments exist around the edges. The fact is, prisons need to be set up in such a way that the prisoners are controlled to the extent that uprisings, vital information sharing and terrorist, insurgent, or criminal recruitment are made extremely difficult. This then must be balanced against the requirement that prisoners be treated humanely. I assume there are experts on this, so I leave this question to them.

Perceptual or Sensory Deprivation: it's prohibited. Right there in the Appendix, and throughout the rest of the FM. It is illegal to use goggles, earmuffs, or anything else designed to limit the sensory perception of a detainee who has been separated, except as a field expedient (a condition that by definition cannot exist at a long-term detention facility) and then for a maximum of 12 hours. I do not see how an honest reading of could support such a conclusion.

Sleep Deprivation: is made explicitly illegal in Appendix M. Detainees must receive at least 4 hours of uninterrupted sleep per 24-hour period. That doesn't sound like much, but that's the minimum standard for our own fighting forces (cf. FM 22-5, "Combat Stress," Chapter 4). Try telling an MP who just rotated back on shift after four hours of sleep that the prisoners he guards can't be woken up until they get a solid eight and see how he reacts.

The Induction of Fear and Hopelessness: this is a condition of prison life in general, and it is a tool in the interrogator's arsenal, because someone who is afraid and hopeless might (everyone is different) lower his guard and talk. The fear, however, is never to his physical person. Even the old FM was clear on this: if an interrogator is trying to induce fear, it is fear of an unkmnown future, fear for the safety of his family without the breadwinner around to take care of them, fear of a guy like Zarqawi actually taking Iraq over, etc. An interrogator cannot put a detainee in any physical danger, and an interrogator cannot imply that the detainee is in physical danger, for instance by cleaning a pistol on the table between them (weapons are confiscated prior to interrogations anyway). But a broader fear? Yes, it's allowed and yes, it sometimes works. No, the detainee is never made to feel threatened. This is a discussion that could go on for quite a while, so I'll stop here.

The likely use of sensory overload: sensory overload is prohibited explicitly by the phrase, "Care should be taken to protect the detainee from exposure... to Excessive noise." (page M-10) Interrogators have no access to the detainee's cell as per several FMs (part of the strict delineations between MP duties and Interrogator duties), so Valtin's statement that "rather than appear convincing, these caveats seem to direct the interrogation team to just those kinds of procedures that should be used, as long as it is not judged 'excessive'" does not bear scrutiny.

Temperature or environmental manipulation: The same page also explicitly prohibits "temperature or environmental manipulation," although in my experience the only "environmental manipulation" available to interrogator's is what's called the "comfort booth," where the detainee may sit on a cushioned chair, drink tea, watch television, and other heinous practices. Any "environmental manipulation" that violates the "humane treatment" sections littering the pages of this FM is unauthorized by those sections.

Any number of other techniques permitted elsewhere in the AFM, such as "Emotional Pride Down": This gets to a standard misunderstanding about what approaches actually are. Chapter 8 spends a lot of time discussing the ins and outs of approaches, but the key thing to know about them is this: they are always mixed with other approaches. Say an interrogator appeals to a detainee's love for his family. If that detainee is looking at a life in prison, thinking about his family automatically brings up huge anxieties, especially in a culture where being the main breadwinner is an unlikely accomplishment for a now-single mother (the FM might call that a "Love of Family" with "Fear Up Mild." ). It's the combination of the detainee's love for his wife and kids and his understandable fear for their wellbeing that are being used to weaken his resolve. (Notice also that the happiest-sounding and most vicious-sounding approaches are inexorably linked--no one talks because they think their family is swell; they talk because they don't want their family to suffer, and there's no way to show them that link without inducing fear. Take away the fear, and "love of family" is just a trip down memory lane.

The other thing to know is that everyone runs approaches. I used to use this example at the Army Intelligence School when teaching approaches: think about the way you behave when hitting on someone attractive: you smile more, make more eye contact, compliment a bit more, tease a little more, etc., than you would if you weren't hitting on that person. You are trying to get something from that person, and you are controlling your tone to achieve that. If you've ever held a sales job a bell should be going off, because running an approach is a sales pitch. Notice the difference in the way you behave toward bill collectors, salespeople, bartenders, your boss, your children, and anyone else who has the ability to improve or reduce your quality of life. We all run approaches, we just don't call them that. And we run them concurrently with other approaches. So do interrogators, unless they really suck at their jobs.

Why Separation is Necessary

In order to understand what "Separation" means, you should also know a bit about detention facilities in war. I don't know whose law this is, but it has been U.S. policy since the beginning of the war to not build any new structures (presumably to fend off the "colonizer" accusation). Abu Ghraib (the prison where I spent the most time) is unusual in this, since it's a facility that the U.S. appropriated, but even there our detainees lived in hundreds of twelve-man tents separated by chain-link fences. There's no way to keep them from passing information in that environment, especially since the MPs aren't generally Arabic linguists.

Some of that information is resistance training, some of it is the establishment of alibi stories, some of it is recruiting for known terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda in Iraq and Iraqi Hezbollah, and some of it is direct, credible threats to the safety of the family of a detainee who knows too much. That information-sharing has contributed to the deaths of many people, on both sides of the conflict. The worst of it is probably classified, so I won't go into it. There were very few individual cells relative to the population, and most of those were used by the MPs to keep riot instigators away from potential riot instigatees. Yes, Abu Ghraib had all the problems that other prisons have.

Separation is the only method by which detainees with significant information can be prevented from gathering support for their continued silence. Just so we're clear on this, that means that if detainee x knows where, say, car bombs are being built, those car bombs will continue to be produced as long as he successfully resists. From the interrogator's perspective, separation is a way to weaken the will of a true believer without inflicting any real harm.

The task with Separation is to ensure that it is used rarely, safely, and only when truly warranted, which is why a General must personally approve of it and why there are so many references to "humane treatment" in Appendix M. The red tape involved in getting a Separation approved also serves to limit its use. I take a backseat to nobody in condemning torture, cruelty, and demeaning treatment, especially by interrogators and I see nothing in Appendix M itself to warrant such a frenzied reaction.

EPW Status

I do see a problem outside America's laws, however. The Separation approach technique applies only to those accorded EPW status, as defined by the Geneva Convention on Torture:
However, separation may not be employed on detainees covered by Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War (GPW), primarily enemy prisoners of war (EPWs) (emphasis in the original).The question of whether an insurgent merits EPW status is the loophole through which the Bush Administration was able to justify its abuse of prisoners—even the term “detainee” is used specifically to avoid referring to people who might not merit inclusion in the ranks of EPWs.

My point is that the Geneva Conventions (GC) are due for an update. The GC were written at a time when war meant one uniformed military, representing a state, fighting against another. Here are the requirements that must be met for a captured person to be declared an EPW:

Article 4
A. Prisoners of war, in the sense of the present Convention, are persons belonging to one of the following categories, who have fallen into the power of the enemy:
1. Members of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict as well as members of militias or volunteer corps forming part of such armed forces.
2. Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, belonging to a Party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory, even if this territory is occupied, provided that such militias or volunteer corps, including such organized resistance movements, fulfil the following conditions:
(a) That of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;
(b) That of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance;
(c) That of carrying arms openly;
(d) That of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.
3. Members of regular armed forces who profess allegiance to a government or an authority not recognized by the Detaining Power.
4. Persons who accompany the armed forces without actually being members thereof, such as civilian members of military aircraft crews, war correspondents, supply contractors, members of labour units or of services responsible for the welfare of the armed forces, provided that they have received authorization from the armed forces which they accompany, who shall provide them for that purpose with an identity card similar to the annexed model.
5. Members of crews, including masters, pilots and apprentices, of the merchant marine and the crews of civil aircraft of the Parties to the conflict, who do not benefit by more favourable treatment under any other provisions of international law.
6. Inhabitants of a non-occupied territory, who on the approach of the enemy spontaneously take up arms to resist the invading forces, without having had time to form themselves into regular armed units, provided they carry arms openly and respect the laws and customs of war.
B. The following shall likewise be treated as prisoners of war under the present Convention:
1. Persons belonging, or having belonged, to the armed forces of the occupied country, if the occupying Power considers it necessary by reason of such allegiance to intern them, even though it has originally liberated them while hostilities were going on outside the territory it occupies, in particular where such persons have made an unsuccessful attempt to rejoin the armed forces to which they belong and which are engaged in combat, or where they fail to comply with a summons made to them with a view to internment.
2. The persons belonging to one of the categories enumerated in the present Article, who have been received by neutral or non-belligerent Powers on their territory and whom these Powers are required to intern under international law, without prejudice to any more favourable treatment which these Powers may choose to give and with the exception of Articles 8, 10, 15, 30, fifth paragraph, 58-67, 92, 126 and, where diplomatic relations exist between the Parties to the conflict and the neutral or non-belligerent Power concerned, those Articles concerning the Protecting Power. Where such diplomatic relations exist, the Parties to a conflict on whom these persons depend shall be allowed to perform towards them the functions of a Protecting Power as provided in the present Convention, without prejudice to the functions which these Parties normally exercise in conformity with diplomatic and consular usage and treaties.
C. This Article shall in no way affect the status of medical personnel and chaplains as provided for in Article 33 of the present Convention. Clearly, an insurgency meets none of those requirements (they fail number 6 because not carrying arms openly is a defining feature of the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan). Logic may dictate that if you’re going to declare war on “terror,” then a “terrorist” imprisoned in the War on Terror is the enemy combatant and ought to be treated as such, but there is a ton of wiggle room here. It pains me to write it, but the Bush Administration's interpretation has the narrow legal merit, which I suspect will be their primary defense if prosecutions are pursued.

This argument carries a lot of water in the military. The first thing I heard from fellow interrogators during discussions of abuses at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere was this legal argument. If the detainees don’t meet the definition, they don’t qualify. Hazy concepts like “values” were brushed aside with the ever-popular “Americans are free because people in dark places do dark deeds to keep us free” argument, followed with a derogatory harrumph about my own naivete for bringing up such a wishy-washy objection.

Alas, this legal argument has some merit, which is what prompted the Pentagon to re-write the Army Field Manual in an attempt to clarify the limits on interrogation techniques no matter who the U.S. is fighting.

If you’re concerned about Appendix M, I suggest working toward an update of the Geneva Convention on Torture to reflect the changed face of combat in the 21st Century. The Army Field Manual is not the problem, the outdated definitions (and only the outdated definitions, in my opinion) of the GC are.

Which isn’t to say that the GC wasn’t violated at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere. Obviously it was. The use of prison guards to “soften” detainees was a clear violation, which the Army moved swiftly to correct once its nose had been bloodied by the Abu Ghraib pictures. Now, Military Intelligence has no formal authority over Camp Operations. One of the first things new units in interrogation centers do is make friends with the MPs, because those requests for extra blankets, eyeglasses, large-print Qurans, and yes, separation must be implemented by the MP command at their discretion.

There is much to criticize about the Bush Administration's interrogation policies, and much that was obviously illegal. None of the arguments I have put forth here should be taken to endorse waterboarding, hypothermia, sensory deprivation, stress positions or any other overtly cruel and inhumane treatment. FM 2.22-3 should be scrutinized thoroughly, and if my legal arguments are wrong, I'd like to know about it. I have no formal legal training, but I have been through at least 50 training sessions on the Geneva Conventions and Laws of War by JAG Officers, one of whom (himself a former interrogator) declared publicly that he and most of his colleagues would resign their commissions if waterboarding were ever authorized by DoD. This wasn't some random JAG Officer, this was the chief JAG Officer of the Army Intelligence School at the time. There really are good people in the interrogation business.

The worst of the abuses occurred when no one was looking. The authorization of those techniques occurred in what appeared to be a legal black hole (thanks to the inadequacy of the GC). The interrogators who engaged in those abuses were well-trained in the relevant laws and should have known better. They should be prosecuted for obeying unlawful orders at the very least. FM 2-22.3 was written to ensure some oversight of detainee operations and to close some of the loopholes that existed in the previous FM. But the FM is not the problem, nor is Appendix M. The main problem now lies with the Geneva Conventions and with oversight of detention operations in war. The ICRC should have a stronger presence than it has currently.

Valtin's sin was one of over-reaction, which is no great offense. I've always considered the statement, "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice" to be quintissentially American, despite the source. With Obama in office and still so much attention on the horrors done in our name over the last eight years, this is probably a good time for an independent commission to review FM 2-22.3. As Valtin notes, it was vetted by Alberto Gonzalez's justice department.

Labels: GWOT, interrogation, Iraq, prison, terrorism, torture

Of all the inane defenses of the Bush Administration, "he kept us safe" is one of the dumbest, yet the cave-dwellers on the Right are committing to it with gusto. Take Thomas Sowell, who managed to pack more faulty logic into one column than some can squeeze into whole books.

Thankfully, CAFAP has generated a handy chart showing the number of mass-casualty terrorist attacks under every President going back to McKinley:

It's snarky but it can't be denied: by this logic, Bush is not only the President who did not keep us safe, he's the only President in U.S. history who has not kept us safe. Sowell's argument actually makes Bush out to be a worse President than even I think he was!

On a more serious note, it's been generally acknowledged that Bush has, in fact, made us less safe since the 9/11 attacks. If there have been some super secret, yet scrupulously legal, heroics that have protected our country in the last seven years, I applaud them. Just remember that the FBI and CIA secretly protected us under previous Presidents as well, it's just that previous Presidents didn't spend all their time bragging about stuff they "can't talk about." But that's just on the tactical level.

On the strategic level, Bush made us less safe. He did this by making enemies all over the Muslim world, thereby increasing their recruitment. He did this by making enemies all over the rest of the world, by making them less eager to work with us. He did this by taking away our civil liberties, making Americans lose their trust in their government and undermining the separation of powers that sheltered America from the excesses of one branch of government for more than 200 years. He did this by failing to prepare for, or respond adequately to, Hurricane Katrina, thus costing the lives of hundreds of American citizens who might have made it to safety. And so on.

By the way, I wouldn't have linked to such garbage if I hadn't been forwarded this incoherent ramble by someone close to me who actually thought it was a convincing argument. This is another casualty of the Bush years: the conservative movement used to have some intellectual force behind it. There were real arguments, made by rational people. Agree or disagree with their premises, at least these were conversations worth having. Now, the level of discourse has sunk so low that people on the right can't even see how insubstantial their arguments are. There is literally not a single honest argument in Sowell's defense of Bush.

Even his criticisms don't rise to the level of basic coherence. If you were doubting how absurd Sowell's column is, note how he defends warrantless wiretapping, then criticizes Bush for signing McCain-Feingold, "restricting free speech," which Sowell calls "the Bush administration's biggest dereliction of duty."

You can't make this stuff up. The sad thing is, we're going to be getting these preposterous arguments for years, until ex-President Dubya is like ex-President Nixon became: a respected elder statesman.

Labels: Bush, conservatism, politics, reason, terrorism

The Pentagon has determined that PTSD sufferers are inelible for Purple Hearts, because

the condition had not been intentionally caused by enemy action, like a bomb or bullet, and because it remained difficult to diagnose and quantify

Excuse me? One of the main reasons insurgencies are so effective is because of the psychological effect that the possibility of any type of attack occurring anywhere from any direction, with zero regard for collateral damage. Insurgencies live by their ability to psyche-out their enemy. At least some of the conditions that cause PTSD in war are a direct result of the planning and implementation of carefully-designed psychological operations designed by the enemy to do psychological harm.

So yes, PTSD is caused by enemy action. The Pentagon's position tells us either a lot about how far behind they are on the subject of PTSD (known as "shell shock" as far back as World War I) or how little regard they have for their injured soldiers and veterans.

Michael Cowen adds:

Simply because their wounds are not evident to the naked eye does not mean they are not real and debilitating. In many respects, those who suffer from PTSD never truly recover and suffer through all sorts of deep psychological trauma. And as for the notion that it's difficult to diagnose; perhaps the people who made this decision should crack open the latest copy of the DSM.

One would hope that in the 21st century, with all we've learned about the debilitating nature of mental illnesses, that these sort of simple-minded and uninformed characterizations of "war injuries" would be restricted to the peanut gallery. But instead they are seemingly driving Pentagon decision-making.

This failure to recognize PTSD has real consequences. Not only will those who are suffering not receive the added -- and much-needed -- medical benefits that come to Purple Heart recipients, but the stigma around mental illness in the military is only perpetuated by this action. One can only imagine the chilling effect that this decision will have on soldiers already uncomfortable about facing mental illness.

I suspect the Pentagon has no interest in acknowledging the severe effects of war on those who are lucky enough to return unscathed, nor do they want to honestly face the costs of long-term treatment for the many thousands of Iraq and Afghanistan vets who suffer through this horrible ordeal. I blogged about my PTSD here. For the record, I wouldn't be eligible for a Purple Heart anyway--I was a contractor in Iraq. I get no support from the VA or my previous employers.

Labels: military, PTSD

A comment on an earlier post alerted me to a new blog by Matthew Semel, Associate Professor of Criminal Justice at Sacred Heart University, who is trying to apply scientific rigor to the question of which interrogation methods work best in a military setting:

I am conducting a study to determine what MIs (Military Interrogators~ed.) believe are the best interrogation methods for gaining cooperation from a subject. My study is designed to address some of the gaps in knowledge about interrogations conducted by military interrogators and their counterparts in federal counterterrorism agencies in the United States and provide information about methods from their perspectives and based on their experiences.

I plan to post a survey on a secure web server and solicit MIs to complete the 15 minute survey anonymously. I will collect no personal information other than branch of service and gender. If you are a MI and are interested in participating in this study in any way please contact me.

Of course I said yes, and I'll be contacting some old friends to help him out as well.

But for now, go over to his blog, where you can see interrogation discussed intelligently and dispassionately by a non-practitioner, something most Intelligence Officers I’ve known can’t do.

Labels: interrogation, science

Jeffrey Goldberg, who is a supporter of Israel in the most humane way one can be:

Palestinians interested in a two-state solution would have viewed the withdrawal in 2005 as a first, important step toward independence. They would have used the billions in aid money that flowed to Gaza to build schools and hospitals and roads and farms on the abandoned land of the Jewish settlements. But they turned those ruined settlements into rocket launching pads.

Maybe those settlements turned into rocket launching pads turned that way because they were ruined? Even the Bush Administration at least "expressed concern" over the way Israel pulled out of Gaza, demolishing homes and leaving hundreds of Rafah residents homeless. Is it possible that Palestinians knew what a "first, important step"

The State Department said it was "deeply troubled" by the "tragic loss of life" in Gaza Wednesday, and it is waiting for the investigation into the circumstances....

"We oppose the demolition of homes of innocent Palestinians," Ereli said. "We have registered our deep concern. We have made it clear that restraint is critical. And we've made it clear that innocent life has to be respected on both sides."

Contra Goldberg, An Israel interested in a two-state solution would have given heed to the manner of its withdrawal. To claim good faith on the part of Olmert in this incident is to be willingly blind to the causes of resentment among Palestinians.

I'm not saying there would have been no rocket attacks from intact houses with tunnels under them, but if Israel had been honest enough about the process to withdraw as quietly as possible, the international community would have put a lot more pressure on Palestinian leaders to police their territory better.

This would in turn have led to the international community taking a much dimmer view of Iran's delivery of weapons to Gaza, which would have served the long-term good of Israel, the US, Palestine, and humanity in general.

All Israel had to do was be decent and abide by the spirit of the withdrawal agreements.

Via Andrew Sullivan.

UPDATE: Or, what Stephen M. Walt said.

Labels: Middle East

David Niewert at Crooks and Liars links to a typical display of ignorance, misinformation and moral turpitude on the O'Reilly Factor last night, but what caught my eye was the craven declaration by his guest, Fox "Military Analyst" Col. David Hunt, that torture must be available for use by interrogators:

O'Reilly: But Colonel -- and you and I have disagreed on this one before -- if you're going to say that you have to do the Army Field Manual, which you know very well, which says, quote, you are not to make any captured person uncomfortable in any way, if that's going to be the standard that Leon Panetta embraces, and he told the Monterey newspaper that's exactly his vision, then I don't think we're going to get intel from any captured terror suspects at all, am I wrong?*

Hunt: No, and the Army Intel Manual is meant for Private Johnson, in the field, and it's not been adopted by the intelligence community.

O'Reilly: But -- but -- it was clear by the interview that Panetta did with the Monterey newspaper that this was the standard that he believes the CIA has to adhere to!

Hunt: He's wrong, and so is the incoming president, on this issue. Guys who know this business understand that it has to be in their toolkit, the ability to do this very tough thing called torture.

As Niewert notes, Matthew Alexander, like myself an actual interrogator, has refuted Col. Hunt's thesis, as has every Interrogation Instructor I've ever known at the Army Intelligence School (suporting torture will get you fired from the Intel School, actually). O'Reilly and Hunt act as if the ban on torture is a new thing, but it was in the old version of the FM as well as the one published two years ago.

The Army has never been in the business of teaching its interrogators to torture. That lesson was only learned in the nearly lawless environs of Bagram and Guantanamo Bay, when vague and contradictory guidelines were given to interrogators by an Administration with no regard for international law bent on fighting the GWOT with as few rules as possible.

Col. Hunt clearly doesn't "know this business." If he did, he wouldn't so breathlessly parrot O'Reilly's obtuseness or so casually endorse the open flaunting of every relevant law and regulation from the Golden Rule to the Code of Conduct to the Geneva Conventions.

Also, a couple points of order: nowhere in the Army Field Manual 2-22.3 does it say "you are not to make any captured person uncomfortable in any way" or anything to that effect. I should know--as an Instructor at the Army Intelligence School at the time the manual was published, I was one of the first to read it.

Also, the "Intel Manual" is meant for Private Johnson only if Private Johnson happens to be an Interrogator, i.e., an intelligence professional. Not only has FM 2-22.3 "been adopted by the intelligence community," it was written by the intelligence community. If Col. Hunt doesn't know this, he has no business pretending to be an authority.

Of course, if Col. hunt did know this, he wouldn't be a Fox News Military Analyst.

Labels: conservatism, GWOT, interrogation, media, military, terrorism, torture

Digby has raised some valid concerns with Obama's proposed middle class tax cut, but there may be more going on here. A TPM reader offered this analysis:

In regards to Obama's strategy re: tax cuts, the proper move is to offer a concession so as to split the GOP. If he is able to do that at the get-go, he'll log-roll them for months. It is going to be really hard for them to oppose any measure designed to make America's economy get back on track.

This seems like a good strategy to me (whatever its drawbacks) if you believe Obama takes his unity message seriously. Co-opt vulnerable Republicans now while they're desperate for any association they can have with the Obama mojo and get your stimulus package through with a minimum of the usual GOP dirty legislative tricks. Then claim victory in getting the economy going, giving the middle class some relief, and bringing the country together.

It's a win-win-win if Obama plays this correctly, and it paves the way for more victories down the road on energy, health care and the environment.

Labels: economics, Obama, politics

I was glad to hear that Leon Panetta, a man I have respected ever since I worked tirelessly for his opponents in his congressional campaigns, had been selected to head the CIA. I'm not sure he's the most qualified person to lead that agency, but there's something to the founders' wisdom in mandating civilian leadership of the military, so I was ready to give the outsider the benefit of the doubt.

That turned to full-on support when I read this:

According to the latest polls, two-thirds of the American public believes that torturing suspected terrorists to gain important information is justified in some circumstances. How did we transform from champions of human dignity and individual rights into a nation of armchair torturers? One word: fear.

Fear is blinding, hateful, and vengeful. It makes the end justify the means. And why not? If torture can stop the next terrorist attack, the next suicide bomber, then what's wrong with a little waterboarding or electric shock?

The simple answer is the rule of law. Our Constitution defines the rules that guide our nation. It was drafted by those who looked around the world of the eighteenth century and saw persecution, torture, and other crimes against humanity and believed that America could be better than that. This new nation would recognize that every individual has an inherent right to personal dignity, to justice, to freedom from cruel and unusual punishment.

We have preached these values to the world. We have made clear that there are certain lines Americans will not cross because we respect the dignity of every human being. That pledge was written into the oath of office given to every president, "to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution." It's what is supposed to make our leaders different from every tyrant, dictator, or despot. We are sworn to govern by the rule of law, not by brute force.

We cannot simply suspend these beliefs in the name of national security. Those who support torture may believe that we can abuse captives in certain select circumstances and still be true to our values. But that is a false compromise. We either believe in the dignity of the individual, the rule of law, and the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, or we don't. There is no middle ground.

We cannot and we must not use torture under any circumstances. We are better than that.

It has been far, far too long since we've heard words like these from anyone in our Executive Branch. Moral clarity may actually be on the way in. Here's hoping it becomes a trend.

Via.

Labels: Bush, GWOT, torture

Via TPM, this post at the Wall Street Journal's blog reveals the extent to which lockstep thinking among economists helped lead to the current financial crisis:

The episode suggests one reason that the crisis went unchecked: A dangerous all-or-nothing orthodoxy had come to dominate the policy debate, where one was either for free markets or against them.

I've written about the perils of free market fundamentalism before, but it's worth noting that sloppy, lockstep thinking on economics isn't merely a tic of Bush Administration appointees, Cato Fellows and Ron Paul supporters, it's the dominant point of view among those whose actions have a direct effect on America's economic health. These are the fruits of decades of propaganda from the right on the inviolable sanctity of the invisible hand: the national economy guided by sloppy thinking investment bankers in Adam Smith neckties.

I've long believed that ideological rigidity is the result of an insufficiently broad and deep education, so imagine my surprise at the very next section of the post:

Another reason that many policymakers may have missed the risks is that macroeconomists didn’t have a good understanding of the changes that were occurring within financial markets and the banking system.

There has long been a marked distinction between economists who study finance and economists who study the broader economy, with limited communication between the groups. As a young Harvard University economist, Mr. Summers argued this was a dangerous shortcoming in a now famous screed, where he unfavorably compared finance specialists to “ketchup economists” who are too narrowly focused on their field of study, while also complaining about general economists tendency to continually rediscover conclusions that the finance specialists had come to long ago.

Again, these are the guys at the top of the field. When you're young and starting out, it's OK to be hazy on the details of specialties that only intersect with yours, but by the time you get to the "policymaker" stage, I'd like to think that years of study and experience might have filled in some of those gaps, or at least alerted you to their existence.

If the first casualty of ideology is critical thinking, the second must be integrity, because you can't dedicate yourself to the defense of a flawed ideology without bending the truth a little. Or in this case:

Finally, many academic economists privately worried that a housing bubble was building, and that it’s bursting would cause severe problems, but didn’t publicize their concerns.... “Most academics are really reluctant to take part in the public dialog, because the public dialog requires you to have an opinion about things you can’t really be sure about,” says Mr. Rajan. “They fear talking about things where everything is not neatly nailed in a model. They stay away and let the charlatans occupy the high ground.”

So, to recap: our economy is in tatters because the people entrusted with its care are a bunch of lazy-thinking, poorly-educated frauds and the genuine experts who might have stood in their way were too scared to speak up.

Sounds about right.

Labels: economics, ideology

I don't link to Glenn Greenwald enough (hell, I don't link to anyone enough) but his snarky take on Michael Calderone's piece on the year's biggest political scoops, which included Sarah Palin's shopping spree and McCain's houses but made no mention of the White House's endorsement of torture, is worth reading in full. A snippet:

In fairness to Calderone and his comrades in the political press, our media currently covers a country that has very few substantial problems and an administration that is renowned around the world for being competent, honest, conventional and quite uncontroversial. In general, countries which enjoy great tranquility, prosperity, and stability -- such as the U.S. today -- can afford the luxury of fixating on the types of fun and trivial stories which comprise the list of top "scoops" heralded by Politico.

Indeed, the only real news story in Calderone's bunch is the one where the White House used supposedly independent Military Analysts as propagandists for the DoD in the news media, which Greenwald notes was also, coincidentally I'm sure, the one that sank without a trace. I wrote about it here, and here is a list of Greenwald's more thorough takes, helpfully organized by Margalis at Common Nonsense.

As an antidote, here are 25 stories that didn't make Politico's cut, from Project Censored.

Labels: Framing, media, politics

Regarding the "little blue pill" story in the Washington Post, Yglesias comments:

One especially neat thing about this is that unlike guns or money, our Taliban rivals have essentially no prospect of producing large quantities of advanced pharmaceuticals. So if Afghan elders decide they like their ED meds, they’ll really have no choice but to try to stay on our good sides.

While there may or may not be any companies capable of producing "advanced pharmaceuticals" in Afghanistan, the rest of the region doesn't have that problem. Here's a company in Aleppo, Syria that produces knock-off versions of Viagra and Cialis. Here's a faux Viagra from Iran. I'm sure there are others, but you see where I'm going with this: "daddy's little helpers" are widely available throughout the world, including places where some of us imagine the religious authorities would never allow it.

Beyond that, in my experience folks in the Middle East are downright open about their affection for the blue diamonds. I can't tell you how many times I looked through a detainee's pocket litter and found a solitary blue pill, stashed like a nug at the bottom of his pocket or deep within the folds of his wallet. In Cairo, the drug stores often advertise Viagra and its upstanding bretheren right in front, the display occasionally being larger than the sign for the store itself, and more prominently placed.

Even the kids get into it. Don't ask me how or why this happened, but I was once asked by an Egyptian boy of no more than 14 years if I used Viagra, because he sure as hell did. (Incidentally, this kid actually began the conversation this way... creepy.) When I said, "no," he looked at me like I was a total dork. This says a lot about what it means to be "cool" in some places.

But I have no problem, in principle, with us providing a little extra humanitarian aid in an effort to a people brought low by poverty, despotism and war. Note that the pills are but one part of a broader strategy:

In their efforts to win over notoriously fickle warlords and chieftains, the officials say, the agency’s operatives have used a variety of personal services. These include pocketknives and tools, medicine or surgeries for ailing family members, toys and school equipment, tooth extractions, travel visas, and, occasionally, pharmaceutical enhancements for aging patriarchs with slumping libidos, the officials said.

Hearts and minds, indeed.

Labels: GWOT, Iran, Islam, Middle East, military, terrorism

If you haven't read it already, "Matthew Alexander's" Washington Post article about his experience as an Interrogator in Iraq is a crucial document in the story of America's decline. Alexander and I had similar experiences (I'm pretty sure I know him, actually). As a fellow former Interrogator, I found myself nodding in agreement through much of the piece.

I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. It's no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse. The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me -- unless you don't count American soldiers as Americans.

I'm hesitant to shift too much of the blame for the attacks themselves away from the ordinary Iraqis who supported those foreign fighters ("Zarqawi's Willing Executioners"?), but the connection to our detention policies is spot-on. I heard versions of this many, many times from detainees--America came waving the banner of freedom, then unjustly imprisoned and horrifically abused the people they were supposed to be saving, thus inviting a bloody backlash.

Not only was I told this directly, but like Alexander I was also told the correlate: the good treatment, adequate food and healthcare that they received in our prisons convinced at least five of the men I personally interrogated to give solid intelligence. Once they found out that we (all) weren't that bad, they opened right up. I wish this story were told more often--Alexander and I can't be the only ones who heard this:

"I thought you would torture me, and when you didn't, I decided that everything I was told about Americans was wrong. That's why I decided to cooperate."

Imagine how different this war would have gone if that was a commonly-heard refrain. How tragic that it isn't.

(Cross-posted at OOIBC.)

Labels: GWOT, interrogation, Iraq, OOIBC, torture

Much of the article is self-serving claptrap, but Lord Black's inside view of America's prison system seems to have opened his eyes:

The US is now a carceral state that imprisons eight to 12 times more people (2.5m) per capita than the UK, Canada, Australia, France, Germany or Japan. US justice has become a command economy based on the avarice of private prison companies, a gigantic prison service industry and politically influential correctional officers’ unions that agitate for an unlimited increase in the number of prosecutions and the length of sentences. The entire “war on drugs”, by contrast, is a classic illustration of supply-side economics: a trillion taxpayers’ dollars squandered and 1m small fry imprisoned at a cost of $50 billion a year; as supply of and demand for illegal drugs have increased, prices have fallen and product quality has improved.

Well, duh. One shouldn't have to experience something so horrible as the fundamental injustices of the Prison-Industrial Complex and the drug war to be against them, but I'm glad this one rich S.O.B. finally does. If it takes sending them to prison for high-profile, muscle-flexing "tough on crime" conservatives to see the need for reform, I've got a few ideas....

Via.

Labels: conservatism, drug war, liberty, prison

I knew America was militarily involved in the horn of Africa (we've got troops stationed in Djibouti) but I didn't know how badly we had screwed things up there. Martin Fletcher reports:

I am referring to the Bush Administration's intervention in Somalia in the name of the War on Terror. It has helped to destroy that wretched country's best chance of peace in a generation, left more than a million Somalis dead, homeless or starving, and achieved the precise opposite of its original goal. Far from stamping out an Islamic militancy that scarcely existed, the intervention has turned Somalia into a breeding ground for Islamic extremists and given al-Qaeda a valuable foothold in the Horn of Africa.

Remember as you read the article that Afghanistan embraced the Taliban when they first took control for the same reasons Somalis embraced the Islamic Courts: after decades of civil war, the strongmen imposed order. I'm not as ready as Fletcher to laud the tyrannical rule of the Islamic Courts, whose thugs once opened fire on a crowd of World Cup fans.

But I do understand why the Somalis were quick to embrace trading in their right to drink and listen to music for the ability to walk to the store with a reasonable expectation of survival. That's where I see Iraqis heading now; I've been told as much by a lot of them. With all the talk of the statist "Road to Serfdom," it turns out that the quickest route to Serfdom is civil war, collapse of the state, several years of chaos, and the emergence of a strongman who imposes order. This is what we've given Somalia and Iraq: the desire to live under an iron hand.

This quote from the piece felt all too familiar:

“The Americans see an extremist under every Muslim stone,” one European official complained bitterly....

Doesn't that just give you the warm fuzzies?

Link via Obsidian Wings.

Labels: Bush, GWOT, Islam, terrorism

Via Art of the Possible: Jewish voters are stupid and insufficiently tribal because they voted for Obama, according to conservative columnist Don Feder. This article is all kinds of wrong, and someone needs to fisk the whole thing, but here are a few highlights:

That McCain had an unblemished, 20-year record of support for Israel, Obama is surrounded by advisors who are hostile to Israel, and Iranian Television described the latter as “highly educated” and “eloquent,” mattered not in the least.

Yeah, that Rahm Emanuel is an anti-zionist of the first order. And anything Iranian Television says must be false. If they say the sky is blue, they're wrong and deserve to be militarily occupied.

Even though Iran is led by a raving anti-Semite and Holocaust-denier – who’s said Israel “should be wiped off the face of the Earth” – even though Iran was voted most likely to commit nuclear suicide if it could take Israel with it, a plurality of Jews still said they’d oppose U.S. military action to forestall a second Holocaust.

Poor Iran. They so wanted to win "Most Likely to Create a Death Star," but that award went to Japan. There, there, it's just a popularity contest. Oh, and Ahmedinejad didn't say that.

As Jewish author Dennis Prager notes, if there was a connection between Judaism and liberalism, those Jews grounded in Torah and most committed to living a Jewish life, would be the most liberal.

Right. Because the more Orthodox you are, the more Jewish you are. And Dennis Prager is definitely the go-to guy for impartial analysis.

[Obama] attended Farrakhan’s 1995 Million Man March, and later lauded the neo-Nuremberg rally as an event that brought African-American men together and showed they were ready “to make a commitment to bring about change in our communities and our lives”

"Neo-Nuremberg rally"? WTF? Nothing hyperbolic there, Godwin.

[Obama] said the “legitimate claims” of Hezbollah are “weakened” by its violence

You mean to tell me there's absolutely nothing legitimate about Hezbollah's claims, which in turn aren't weakened by their use of violence? How on earth is that even a controversial statement?

[Obama] said the terrorist attacks of 9/11 grew out of “a climate of poverty and ignorance, helplessness and despair” – to which we must not overreact

I don't know of any actual scholar in the field who denies that "poverty and ignorance, helplessness and despair" are at least part of the root causes of terrorism. It's clearly an extremist position, taken only by those who truly hate the Judeo-Christian faith, and Israel is as good as incinerated now that Barack Hussein is in charge.

Those Jews also reject the Judeo-Christian ethic and the historic mission of the Jewish people – to repair the world under the rule of God.

Because there's only one way of interpreting the injunction to "repair the world," and that's to "vote Republican." After all, the world is in much better shape now than it was eight years ago. But Jews are too stupid to that..

How this bigoted, jingoistic moron has been allowed to write a sydicated column for a quarter century is beyond me. But he's certainly at home in today's conservative movement.

Labels: conservatism, politics, religion

Via Andrew Sullivan:

More than 100 retired generals and admirals called Monday for repeal of the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays so they can serve openly.

I knew a good number of gay servicemembers and veterans both when I served and afterward when I worked with the military in Iraq and at Ft. Huachuca; and counted many as friends. I saw no difference in their abilities, and saw very little threat to "unit cohesion" by their presence.

Among those I have known was one of the 12 female victims of a "witch hunt" at the Defense Language Institute (DLI) in 1999--she was a friend of my then-wife, who was also at DLI at the time. She came over to the house several times, once so that we could show her The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which I used to lamely joke was what pushed her over the edge (she had not come out yet, bet we had our suspicions). She was, of course, no different than any of the other servicemembers we knew in terms of ability, professionalism, dedication and esprit des corps, but she was gay, so her services were not needed, not even after September 11.

The fundamental injustice of her discharge, of a policy that demands servicemembers remain in the closet, was only too obvious to me then as it is now. There is no good reason gays cannot be allowed to serve openly in the military. Any "unit cohesion" problems can easily be addressed by the military's current sexual harrassment regulations. Most of the people I knew in Iraq, especially the grunts, had no problem serving with homosexuals and almost everyone it seemed knew one personally who was relatively open about his or her sexual orientation.

Sure, the faggot and cocksucker comments flew unfettered through many a conversation, but never in my presence were they directed at gays. This does raise the sticky issue of widespread homophobia, at least in talk, in our military, but fortunately the military has an almost ideal system for rooting out prejudice.

In Basic Training at Ft. Leonard Wood, MO in 1995, I was forced to meet and work alongside people whose subcultures I had never known. In my 8-person (we were among the first gender-integrated Basic Training cycles at Leonard Wood) squad were a stereotypical white redneck from the Georgia hills, an black soldier from Detroit and a Puerto Rican female from, well, Puerto Rico, alongside myself, a white boy from an agricultural town in California. Would we have ever come into contact with all of those people in one place had the military not forced us to work together? Likely not. But I remember having a private conversation toward the end of the 8-week cycle with that stereotypical redneck about race. He brought it up, because he just had to tell someone how strange it was to him that he could have so much in common with a black man. I told him I was astonished to discover how much he and I shared.

This epiphany can happen, and has happened, for those who believe they could never work with a homosexual. All it requires is for the military to tell its recruits, "shut up, put your differences aside, and learn to work together." They might also add, "keep your hands off each other," as they already do in gender-integrated units.

If you're at all concerned about the results of Prop 8 in California or the grossly unequal treatment of homosexuals in our society, you should be hopeful about this development. Just as racial integration of the military 60 years ago was a watershed event in the struggle for equality, lifting the ban on gays in the military will serve a similar purpose.

Twenty years from now, we may look upon this as the canary in the coalmine of legal anti-gay discrimination in America. The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network has made it easy foryou to write your representatives about this issue. Please do so.

(Cross-posted at OOIBC.)

Labels: homosexuality, liberty, military, OOIBC

After opposing "timelines for withdrawal" from Iraq on principle for years now, the Bush Administration has agreed to one. One of the things that struck me about the article was the way time constraints led to the Administration giving in on one of its key lines in the sand. My guess is that Iraqi officials stalled, and Bush blinked:

The U.S. government has lobbied hard for the status-of-forces agreement, which would replace a United Nations mandate authorizing the U.S. presence that expires on Dec. 31. Without some legal umbrella, the 150,000 U.S. forces would have to end their operations in Iraq in a few weeks' time, military officials said.

...

One issue is timing: The notoriously slow-moving Iraqi parliament is scheduled to adjourn on Nov. 25 for a three-week break to allow lawmakers to make the hajj pilgrimage.

"We have a limited window of time," warned Hoshyar Zebari, the foreign minister.

America has been generally belligerent toward the nascent Iraqi state, treating their clear wishes, such as timelines, as the suggestions of politicians clearly out of their depth.

This paternalism is the sort of thing that hawks believe projects strength, but by refusing to budge on Iraq's (and the rest of the world's) demands for more autonomy, reductions in U.S. forces, legal accountability for the actions of U.S. military and civilian personnel and a timeline for withdrawal, America has backed itself into a corner where the only options were "leave soon" or "leave now." America could have spent the last five and a half years working in good faith with Iraqi officials to transfer authority as soon as possible, but instead Bush insisted on calling the shots, thus weakening his position when the inevitable day came when America had to negotiate.

Maliki was aware of this, but the Administration seemed to be oblivious. Another example of the grotesque hubris and myopia that have characterized the Bush years. Basically, Maliki schooled Bush.

(Cross-posted at OOIBC.)

Labels: Iraq, military, OOIBC, politics

I've been asked by many of my former conservative and libertarian friends what a self-described "liberal" believes on economic matters. From now on, I'll begin my explanation with, "what Hilzoy said":

I'm sure that there are some devotees of central planning out there somewhere. But for the most part, those of us who reject free market fundamentalism do so not because we fail to recognize that market economies are generally best, but because we think that this, like most general principles, has exceptions.

...

I find myself arguing in favor of more regulation more often than not. This is not because I favor it in general, though; it's because, as I said, the playing field has shifted since the '70s and '80s. Back then, there were arguments between people who were generally for regulation and people who were generally opposed to it, and I normally found myself in the middle, asking for details of particular cases. Now, however, the pro-regulation camp has more or less vanished, leaving mostly people (like me) who think these questions should be decided on a case-by-case basis, and that there is no general reason for favoring regulation over its absence, arguing against free market fundamentalists who often write as though all regulation were presumptively bad.

The basic problem with free market fundamentalism is that a large number of those steeped in the doctrines of Hayek and Friedman can't help but see any economic decision through the false dichotomy of collectivism and capitalism, or coercion and freedom.

You don't have to be a Nobel Prize-winning Economist to see that the world doesn't actually operate by those rules (N.b.: Hayek and Friedman were both Nobel laureates); each new emissions or workplace safety regulation hasn't plunged us further into despotism. That America and Europe have somehow managed to not slide into Serfdom despite the ever-growing size of the welfare state in the half century or so since Hayek's flawed argument (in its famous booklet form here) was published never phazes the free market ideologues.

The fact is, some things really are worse than government intervention, the supposed "coercion" of taxation (it's more complex than that), and the resultant loss of freedoms that occur when more of your money is spent by somebody else. Market interventions really can be decided on a case-by-case basis, and often the benefits outweigh the costs.

Labels: conservatism, liberalism, liberty

Just in case you were wondering why McCain lost, it's that his campaign, conducted almost entirely on personal slander and fear-mongering, was too nice:

Honestly, if I should hear the word “gracious” applied to John McCain’s concession speech even one more time, I may throw the biggest hissy fit ever seen this side of the Mississippi.

In reality, however, it isn’t the concession speech that has me riled. It’s the unavoidable reality that Senator McCain attempted to be