The Obama administration is going to continue rendition:
The European Parliament condemned renditions as “an illegal instrument used by the United States.” Prisoners swept up in the program have sued the CIA as well as a Boeing Co. subsidiary accused of working with the agency on dozens of rendition flights.
But the Obama administration appears to have determined that the rendition program was one component of the Bush administration’s war on terrorism that it could not afford to discard.
See, it’s only evil when Chimpy McHitler does it.
[Tuesday morning update]
The case for the hypocrisy of the leftists’ defense of Obama is made:
Here’s a summary: the liberal defense is strained, dishonest, surprisingly nuanced, and contrary to true progressive politics because it elevates “party” over principle.
You don’t say.
As a commenter there notes, these people don’t give a goddamn about human rights (as evidenced by their blind eyes toward people like Fidel Castro). It’s all about partisan politics.
[Bumped]
Heh. There were four baisc permutations of Obama continuing or halting rendition and the critics of Bush speaking up again or not. You could have gotten some good digs in no matter what happened — all four permutations would have been similar fodder for your blog. If the many worlds explanation of quantum physics is correct, you still wouldn’t have to diverge all that much. 🙂
Make a joke if you want, Bob. He got elected partly by saying I’m not Bush. The fact he’s lied more than Fibber McGee shouldn’t enter into it.
As a loyal reader, I’m just appreciating the way Rand can remain Rand no matter what happens.
Who else would I be expected to be? What is this supposed to mean?
Bob, do I need to drop a little acid to really dig your post? Or would it be sufficient to hit myself on the head with a big hammer?
I’m just saying run through the permutations, and Rand would have somebody to criticize for each of them.(*) It isn’t surprising that the Obama presidency would leave Rand in a critical mood, but I’m appreciating his adaptability.
(*) I’m presuming that Rand approves of renditions as a tool in the war on terrorists, at least to the extent that Obama apparently does.
(Rand, I hope any travel-related aggravation is soon ameliorated.)
What I think about rendition is completely irrelevant. I’m simply pointing out that a) as always, the Messiah’s pledges all come with expiration dates and b) the double standard of the media.
Undisclosed expiration dates at that — until that date.
For Bob: Rand criticizes hypocrisy! = Man bites Dog!
It’s like, with all the permutations with X Y chromosomes, Bob notes that Rand is a man.
Congratulations Bob! We knew someday you’d be able to observe the obvious. I’d ask what gave it away to you, but I don’t want to take away from your moment of glory.
I saw the order and have read some analyses of it. It could be read as ending rendition to countries that allow torture, but I’m skeptical of that interpretation. After all, even the Bush administration repudiated the use of torture and the rendition of people to countries that practiced torture. Then–and likely now–the issue turned on how “torture” was defined.
I define torture as watching TV ads for commemorative Obama merchandise.
That’s heresy, you know.
–and likely now–the issue turned on how “torture” was defined.
I’ve read articles saying any form of humiliation or discomfort constitutes torture. If that’s the case, then I could charge my Army drill instructors with torture. They raised discomfort to an art form. Given the importance of their job, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
My uncle Paul was a POW for 2 1/2 years during the Korean War. I strongly suspect his definition of torture is a bit more rigorous than humiliation or discomfort.
Oh My! I read the hypocrisy link. He even quotes the Gleens. That had to leave a mark.
Where is the media hypocrisy or double-standard? The article was published in the LA Times. Usually I think of news reporting when I hear complaints of “media bias’ but do you mean a double-standard by editorial writers as opposed to news reporting?
As for hypocrisy or a double-standard by “the left”, I liked the comment by DR in the link:
http://dissentingjustice.blogspot.com/2009/02/still-flip-flop-my-fellow-liberals-push.html?showComment=1233682800000#c7886624966416842948
It’ll be interesting to see if anyone answers DR.
Did Obama ever promise to end (non-extraordinary) rendition?
Bob, the hypocrisy is among leftists, and it consists of blanket condemnation of rendition when Bush does it, followed by nuanced subtlety “it depends what the meaning of ‘torture’ is” when Obama does it. The conclusion that criticism depends more on the party in the White House than any imagined objective ethical standards is hard to avoid.
The “double standard” in the media lies in the fact that the LA Times reports this as straight news, with pains to explain the subtlety of the issue and how challenging it is for the President — at least a Democratic President — to steer a careful course between inhumanity and failing to defend the United States. Whereas, of course, there was no such subtlety in reporting when Bush did it. Rather, they implied that the problem was obvious and easily soluble, and only an evil or stupid Bush could fail to understand and take appropriate action immediately.
Finally, the fact that the movement labeled “liberalism” is internally inconsistent does not save the movement from the charge of hypocrisy. Does the fact that only some US soldiers behaved abominably at Abu Ghraib save the US Army as an institution from disgrace? Nope. A movement is, to the extent it has any groupwise credibility at all, responsible for the behaviour of its members.
Hence, liberalism as a movement has either two choices here: admit that, as a movement, it is incoherent and inconsistent, and contains diametrically opposed points of view, or, as a movement, admit that it has been hypocritical on the issue of rendition.
Or, of course, it could simply deny reality in favor of some clever fantasy narrative.
I am against torture. Period. I could care less who is doing it. W, Obama, Stalin, Pol Pot. As an instrument for searching the truth in a judicial system, it has proved time and again it serves no useful purpose. It is even less useful than a lie detector test. Many people will lie under duress to stop the pain, while others will not say anything even if under duress. It serves no purpose. Unless you are thinking of using torture as a form of punishment. Neither reason appeals to me the slightest.
As for extradition, I believe crimes should be tried in the nation they were committed. Otherwise national sovereignty is at risk. Some countries even had laws to this effect. One of those was Serbia, and that particular law was one of the reasons for WWI. But I digress. If there is a need for a world police or court system (e.g. to trial genocide), it should be a supra-national authority not run by any particular state. If a state reserves itself the right to trial cases which happened in another state, it opens precedent to a whole heap of problems. If it amount to hypocrisy to admit things are not always processed like this even if they should, who cares.
As an instrument for searching the truth in a judicial system, it has proved time and again it serves no useful purpose. It is even less useful than a lie detector test.
No one in the Bush administration ever stressed a prisoner for either of these reasons. It was only done to obtain actionable intelligence. It did in fact serve that useful purpose, numerous times, as the DCI has attested.
Rand:
I think you’re naive to believe the DCI’s assertion that “enhanced interrogation” produced actionable intelligence, when he has every political and legal reason to say so, and there’s no way to disprove his claim.
> I think you’re naive to believe the DCI’s assertion that “enhanced interrogation” produced actionable intelligence, when he has every political and legal reason to say so, and there’s no way to disprove his claim.
And we’d be naive to believe your claim that it hasn’t for similar reasons.
Which leaves us with a problem. Both claims can’t be wrong and both claims can’t be correct.
It’s really kind of nutty, and in fact completely out of touch with reality to believe that stressing a perp never provides useful information.
So now Rand has dropped back from the “fact” that stressing produced actionable intelligence “numerous times”, to a supposition that if you stress enough perps it must produce useful information at least once. Maybe this new line is a corollary to the one about enough monkeys and typewriters producing Hamlet.
You can truthfully say that the Bush administration claims they saved lives with information they got from enhanced interrogation, but none of us have the evidence it would take to prove or disprove that claim, and given their motives to exaggerate the utility of such interrogations I’m very skeptical.
So now Rand has dropped back from the “fact” that stressing produced actionable intelligence “numerous times”, to a supposition that if you stress enough perps it must produce useful information at least once. Maybe this new line is a corollary to the one about enough monkeys and typewriters producing Hamlet.
No, not really. This analogy is equally nutty.
There is no sane reason to be skeptical that when you stress terrorists that you are likely, probably more often than not, to get actionable information from them. Again, to think otherwise is to have no experience with the real world. One can only do so out of extreme wishful thinking in the service of either a hyperconcern for the human rights of terrorists, or deranged hatred of George Bush.
My money’s on the latter, given the ongoing hypocrisy that is the subject of this post.
I’ve heard–and I have nothing more substantial than that–that torture/enhanced interrogation doesn’t work well in our current anti-terror operations because it takes too long to get information that way. The mobility of our opposition is such that information a week old isn’t all that helpful (and can be garnered via other means, anyway).
I’m opposed to any interrogation that I view as “torture”, but that’s the $24,000 question–what is torture? In any case, I don’t think that sort of interrogation is going to get us very far–electronic and manned surveillance and the many other options we have are keys to the long-term solution.
Please do tell us about your real world experience with getting actionable intelligence by stressing prisoners.
Or else we could listen to someone like “Matthew Alexander” (pseudonym), the Army Major whose group found Zarqawi, specifically by foregoing coercive interrogation techniques. Alexander concludes that use of those techniques was the #1 recruiting pull for foreign fighters coming to Iraq, and was therefore responsible for hundreds or thousands of U.S. casualties.
See “How to Break a Terrorist” by Matthew Alexander. And as for the motives for my skepticism, please note that the DOD had Alexander redact 93 sections of his book on national security grounds; all redactions were overturned on appeal, because the material did not endanger U.S. security, it just pointed out the ineffectiveness of coercive techniques. There’s ample reason to not take Bush officials at their words on this subject.
Yes. Of course. People who routinely chop off innocent heads with dull knives, or bake children of uncooperative civilians, came rushing into Iraq because they were unhappy about our interrogation techniques.
Is it your intention to make my web site into a comedy club? Because that’s certainly the effect.
Yes, Rand, I’m sure it’s all very funny to you. Here’s some more comedy (from http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/12/hbc-90004036):
The number-one reason foreign fighters gave for coming to Iraq to fight is the torture and abuse that occurred at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo. The majority of suicide bombings are carried out by foreign fighters who volunteered and came to Iraq with this motivation. Consequently it is clear that at least hundreds but more likely thousands of American lives (not to count Iraqi civilian deaths) are linked directly to the policy decision to introduce the torture and abuse of prisoners as accepted tactics. Americans have died from terrorist attacks since 9/11; those Americans just happen to be American soldiers. This is not simply my view–it is widely held among senior officers in the U.S. military today. Alberto Mora, who served as General Counsel of the Navy under Donald Rumsfeld, testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee in June 2008 that “U.S. flag-rank officers maintain that the first and second identifiable causes of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq–as judged by their effectiveness in recruiting insurgent fighters into combat–are, respectively the symbols of Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo.”
Yes, right. It had nothing to do with the call to Jihad and the declaration of Iraq as the central front in the war by Al Qaeda.
And it didn’t matter what we actually did at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. We were going to be slandered and lied about in the Middle Eastern press (not to mention the BBC) regardless. As we were (e.g., the flushing the Koran down the toilet story).
I think I’ll take the opinion of Alexander, Mora and U.S. generals before yours, thanks. But you propose an interesting standard — that our enemies will lie about us, so it doesn’t actually matter whether we do horrible things or not. We’re going to take the blame either way, so we might as well do them. That’s quite the moral philosophy.
Morality aside, I don’t think it’s so simple. Effective propaganda — good enough to get tens of thousands of men to leave their lives, go to a foreign country, and kill and/or be killed — is difficult to construct out of thin air. Our interrogation policies gave Al Qaeda a treasure trove of inflammatory material to work with.
But maybe Alexander, Mora, etc. don’t know the “real world” like you do.
Jim, don’t be daft. You’re taking the word of terrorists about why they do what they do? You think someone who would blow up kids in the marketplace wouldn’t lie to you about his motives? That’s really naive, you know.
Why don’t you try the hypothesis that the terrorists don’t stop being terrorists once they’re in captivity. If you ask them “Say, why did you come to Iraq to blow people up?” you can assume that they’ll give the answer that is most likely to advance their cause and damage ours. Since they’ve learned quite well that their biggest ally is the fifth columnists amongst us — for example, you — they give the answer that strengthens the hand of those people.
The rest of us know this. You just look like a fool falling for a pretty transparent trick by a shithead.
In addition, the Bush Administration gave detailed information about the various plots foiled and high-value targets captured or killed as a result of “torture.” Sure, it’s possible they made it all up, just like it’s possible the Moon landings were faked. But…er…how about we err on the side of sanity, this once? You can just pretend the report was released by the Obama Administration, how about that?
Finally, I confess to being utterly mystified by the cerebral oddballs who get squeamish about waterboarding or other such minor crap. Do you not eat meat or anything? Never punish your toddler, make him cry? Unfamiliar with the pain of surgery, filling a cavity?
Life is full of the occasional tough choice that for the greater, or ultimate good, require some present harsh action in which one or more people will squawk, be unhappy, whatever. This is why God gave us brains in addition to hearts, so that we could do what needs to be done, not merely what pleases our vanity, our sense of how “nice” we are.
Me, I’m of the old school. If it would prevent a monster from smashing half a dozen little kids to pulp, as on the flights into the WTC in 2001, I would cheerfully see an associate of the monster have his leg sawn off to convince him to say where the monster is hiding. Indeed, I’d hold him down myself, or wield the saw.
Carl:
I’m not the one taking their word, U.S. Army interrogators (and flag-rank officers) are. Don’t they look like fools, falling for such a transparent trick! Too bad Alexander isn’t a real man like you.
I don’t think the Bush administration made up everything they claim to have learned through torture. I think they just gave it the best possible spin, and that an impartial observer with access to the same information might well conclude that the use of torture did not save a single life. We had many other sources of information, and most plots are stillborn for a variety of reasons. It isn’t as if we were completely unable to stop terrorist plots before we started using torture.
In the 60s the FBI was adamant that its surveillance efforts were critical to stopping domestic terrorist threats. When Congress finally investigated what Hoover had been up to, it turned out that they’d been infiltrating harmless peace and civil rights groups, bugging Martin Luther King, keeping files on Paul Newman, etc. But if all you had to go on was their word, you’d think their efforts were 100% above board. Is it so hard to believe that the Bush people would overstate the effectiveness of a very controversial secret program? These are the people who knew where the WMD were (but couldn’t tell us, or the UN inspectors, because it was a secret).
As for being “old school”, I think you have it backwards. Every U.S. war leader from Washington to Clinton forswore the use of the techniques that Bush approved. The old school prosecuted Japanese soldiers for water boarding. The old school did not approve the use of stress positions against Nazis or the Viet Cong. But I guess those old guys — Washington, Lincoln, Ike, Truman — they must have all been cerebral oddballs.
Jim, the fact that you’ve got fellow travelers in your madness doesn’t impress me. The considered opinion of the Bush Administration was that these things were (1) necessary and (2) valuable. The plain fact that they have the best track record bar none of demolishing and preventing terrorism against Americans gives them enormous credibility in my opinion. Fact is, if you got 100 “flag-rank officers” and 5,000 NPR talking heads to say the Sun rises in the East and George Bush said the opposite, I’d have to reserve judgment, give GWB the benefit of the doubt. He’s got flaws, but on how to prevent terrorism, there is no better expert living, as proved by his track record.
You’re free to argue any amount of logic and plausible-sounding theory that says the Bushies were wrong, but you’ve got zero facts that even suggest that taking the soft approach would have worked as well. (It didn’t for the Carter or Clinton Administrations, for example.)
When I’m forced to choose between a plausible-sounding theory and a few hard facts, I vote for the facts, every time.
Plus of course there’s plain common sense. If I want to get you to tell me where your car keys are located, plain common sense says that if I twist your arm until it’s ready to break, you’ll tell me. Doesn’t matter if you make something up, because I can do a quick check and come back to apply greater pressure if you lie. So you’re expecting me to believe terrorists are another species entirely? Won’t save themselves great pain because of their robot-like Devotion to the Cause? Give me a break.
As for your historical appeals to authority (“Washington! Lincoln!”) I really don’t give a damn, not even enough to probe whether you’re right (and I doubt you are — the modern squeamishness about “torture” is very 21st century). I’m unimpressed by historical authority, just as I am by your appeal to “flag-rank officers.” I don’t recognize any of them as the Son of God. I don’t consider my own good sense inferior to theirs. You’re asking me to accept something that flies in the face of common sense, that it’s never the case that putting the thumbscrews on someone is both useful and ethically justified. I’d have to be a starry-eyed Democrat doofus, fonder of fine-sounding theory than the hard lessons of life experience, to believe that.
So you aren’t impressed with majors, admirals or generals, it’s the desk jockeys in the White House, Pentagon and Langley who really know what’s up. Got it.
And I hate to break it to you, but we lost more lives to terrorism under Bush than the rest of our presidents combined. And this gives him the “best track record bar none”?
If you don’t trust my account of Washington and Lincoln’s attitude towards torture, take a look yourself.
Washington’s Charge to the Northern Expeditionary Force, 9/14/1775:
“Should any American soldier be so base and infamous as to injure any [prisoner]. . . I do most earnestly enjoin you to bring him to such severe and exemplary punishment as the enormity of the crime may require. Should it extend to death itself, it will not be disproportional to its guilt at such a time and in such a cause… for by such conduct they bring shame, disgrace and ruin to themselves and their country.”
Lincoln issued a code of conduct (the Lieber Code) for the humane treatment of prisoners in 1863, forbidding any cruelty or torture. Douglas McArthur ordered adherence to the Geneva Convention in Korea, even though the U.S. was not a signatory until 1955. We applied the Geneva Convention to Viet Cong prisoners even though the convention did not technically require that we do so.
But we should toss that history because your common sense and “hard lessons of life experience” — so far beyond the experience of Washington, Lincoln, et al — says so. Right.
Well, Jim, no, if the “desk jockeys” get the job done right, and the particular generals you cherry pick don’t, then, yeah, the former get more respect.
What is it with you on the left and your worship of titles? Like, a guy has Professor, Senator, or even General in front of his name and you just put your brain in neutral, prepare to be instructed in how to think? What’s wrong with your own noggin, eh? Why do you need a “flag rank officer” or what have you to tell you whether you’ve been more, or less, safe from terrorists blowing up your airplane while you’re on it between 2001 and 2009, versus 1991 and 2001? Geez, Louise, think for yourselves. I do, and I don’t need anybody to tell me in what period things were safer.
And I hate to break it to you, but we lost more lives to terrorism under Bush than the rest of our presidents combined.
Meaning 9/11/01 itself? While “under Bush,” that was no more Bush’s fault then the present disastrous economy is Obama’s fault., even though it’s “under Obama.” 9/11 was Bush’s predecessor’s fault, fair and square., and the fact that they were never called to account for it is shameful. If you mean since 9/11/01, you’re just plain wrong.
Washington’s Charge to the Northern Expeditionary Force, 9/14/1775: [don’t torture prisoners]…
No doubt, Jim. Problem is, you’ve got to consider how you folks on the left have changed the definition of the word “torture” between 1775 and 2009. Do I think Geo Washington would consider waterboarding “torture”? Not in the slightest. Do I think he would hesitate to use it for the good of the country? Nope. The man had Andre hanged instead of shot, purely because it would be humiliating, and help deter other spies. Washington had spine. You don’t know him. Same with Lincoln.
But we should toss that history because your common sense and “hard lessons of life experience” — so far beyond the experience of Washington, Lincoln, et al — says so.
Well, yeah, Jim. If “history” — as you relate it, let us note — contradicts my plain experience, then I’m going with the experience. Is this really so hard to understand? I’m one of those odd people who, in the 16th century, would refuse to believe something merely because the Pope and all the bishops said it was true, if it contradicted my own eyes. I’m one of those folks who would’ve told the Emperor he had no clothes, if I didn’t see ’em myself.
You know, the kind who founded a country of, by, and for the people, who are utterly unimpressed with kings, popes, bishops, generals, professors, lords, and all the rest of the largely soi-disant aristocracy.
So 9/11 was Clinton’s fault, how very convenient. If it had happened in 2002 would that have been Bush’s fault? How about 2003? Were the anthrax attacks on Bush’s watch, or is that on Clinton as well? How about car bombings in Afghanistan? IEDs and car bombs in Iraq? Do any of the Americans killed by terrorists between January 2001 and January 2009 actually count against Bush?
The definition of torture is not as historically fluid as you seem to believe. Waterboarding was torture when the Spanish Inquisition used it in the 1500s, when the Japanese used it in the 1940s, and when the Khmer Rouge used it in the 1980s. It only became not-torture in 2002, in Bush’s Washington, D.C. And it only became not-torture because it was legally inconvenient to admit that we were torturing prisoners.
It’s not just convenient, Jim, it’s true. Why would you feel that because a fact is convenient to my argument, it must be false? That’s an odd assumption.
Had 9/11 happened in 2002 or 2003 then, yeah, I’d be blaming Bush, depending to some extent on what Congress had been like over that interval. (He doesn’t run the country himself, you know.)
The anthrax attacks were a domestic crime by a lone disturbed American, as I assume you know. They had nothing to do with an ideological attack on the nation. They had much more in common with the poisoned Tylenol murders some time ago. So, while to the extent the President has some liability for domestic crime — certainly far less than he does for foreign attack, inasmuch as he’s specifically charged with defending the nation, and he has much greater powers to do so — it could be partly the President’s fault. But this has zip to do with defending the nation against terrorist attack, because that’s not what it was.
Car bombings in Afghanistan and Iraq that kill soldiers are casualties of war, you silly person. Of course Bush is responsible for the deaths of soldiers he orders into action. But, um, the standard of successful warfare is not zero combat deaths but rather whether the job gets done at a reasonable cost. Bush won the war in Iraq with a historically unprecedented low number of American combat deaths, so he gets an A+ for that. It’s certainly sad that American soldiers had to die fighting, but it beats the heck out of American civilian childern dying ignominiously like sheep having their throat cut. We all die, Jim. It matters how. If I have to choose, I’ll take a President who makes sure that the only Americans who die are volunteer soldiers on the frontier, fighting and winning.
The definition of torture is not as historically fluid as you seem to believe.
Ha ha, Jim. That’s so ludicrous it doesn’t even deserve response. Go review the judicial history of the death penalty and the changing definition of “cruel and unusual punishment,” and then come back and tie yourself into a pretzel explaining how that’s different.
You’d have been much wiser to admit my point, which is obvious, and instead argue that the changing definition of “torture” is a sign of the improved ethics and humanity of the present, versus the past. You’d still have been wrong, but it would be a better argument.
Carl, I think you’re dodging Jim’s point about the history of waterboarding.
Also, I thought your comments above about “the liberal movement” seem at odds with your admonition to think for yourself. If you can think for yourself, so can various liberals, and it is insulting to hold them to a lower standard than the one you hold yourself to. Labels like “conservative” and “liberal” are adjectives, not shackles, and not even mass movements.
Just be clear: I think there is no such thing as “the liberal movement”, just as there is clearly no “conservative movement”. People want to pretend that there is a neo-conservative movement, but the neo-conservatives disagree with each other, as I would expect from a group of intellectuals.
Plus of course there’s plain common sense. If I want to get you to tell me where your car keys are located, plain common sense says that if I twist your arm until it’s ready to break, you’ll tell me. Doesn’t matter if you make something up, because I can do a quick check and come back to apply greater pressure if you lie. So you’re expecting me to believe terrorists are another species entirely? Won’t save themselves great pain because of their robot-like Devotion to the Cause? Give me a break.
It is not just about devotion to the cause. In WW2 Japanese civilians often fought to the death against US troops because they were brainwashed into thinking they would be tortured and killed by US troops if captured. As Sun Tzu would say: even the most cowardly man can have the ferocity of a beast when trapped.
As for your car key analogy, it is flawed in many counts. Only a stupid car thief, who doesn’t know how to break a lock, would need to resort to such methods. The person being robbed knows his chances of getting away after the perp gets what he wants are high. You seem to think life is a zero-sum game when it is not – if you are incarcerating a person, branding him as a terrorist, condemning him to death, the chances of extracting useful and pertinent information go way down. Assuming you can capture him alive in the first place. Why the heck do you think those techniques are shunned upon in law enforcement anyway? You seem to think life is like a Dirt Harry movie.