I think that this is a legitimate criticism of George Bush and his management style, though it's unclear how much the problem is of Bush's vacillation, and how much is guerrilla warfare within the bureaucracy. But even for the latter, I fault Bush for doing too little about it, starting with leaving George Tenet in place. While I never had high hopes for his administration, I was disappointed nonetheless (particularly by Cheney, for whom I did have higher hopes). About the best that can be said is that he was still far better than either of his opponents would have been.
About the best that can be said is that he was still far better than either of his opponents would have been.
Nonsense. You at least would argue he is also far better than his immediate predecessor, no? Many other people -- including notably over half the electorate -- also think he is better than his father and penultimate predecessor. That brings us back to Reagan, whose personal effect is difficult to analyze inasmuch as he presided over large currents of change, both domestically and internationally. Then we have Carter -- wouldn't you agree GWB is better than Carter? Ford? C'mon, Ford lost to Carter. Nixon? Mr. Wage 'n' Price Controls and Peace With Honor himself? LBJ, the architect of the Vietnam and Great Society debacles? (We'll give him extra credit for the Civil Rights Act, however.)
So going back 50 years I'm guessing there is maybe one President you might think GWB's superior (Reagan) and one you might think his equal (Kennedy, assuming as a youth you believed in Camelot and didn't end up holding the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis against him).
It's worth remembering how faulty and pointless the office of the President seemed for much of the late 60s through early 80s, all the one-termers and the silly pointless pronunciementos, not to mention the out-of-control Cabinet-level officers and scandals. You remember Iran-Contra, Watergate, etc. Compared to chaos and disloyalty at the Cabinet level, failing to rein in the entrenched career bureaucracy at State and the CIA is small potatoes.
Carl, I was just referring to the actual choices on offer at the time, not ranking him with other presidents.
I think that this is a legitimate criticism of George Bush and his management style, though it's unclear how much the problem is of Bush's vacillation, and how much is guerrilla warfare within the bureaucracy.
It's easy enough to show resolve and run the car into the ditch. But once it's stuck there, it's almost impossible not to waffle.
I fault Bush for doing too little about it, starting with leaving George Tenant in place.
You probably mean George Tenet. Although not only has Tenet been replaced by now, his replacement has also been replaced. But the car is still in the ditch.
Jim, I don't know if the car even began on the road. At what point in its history do you feel the CIA was a really a badass, can-do, highly reliable and competent spy agency? Their performance in the Cold War was pretty bad, no? I mean, two or so years before the Soviet Union came unglued, they're confidently predicting it will go on another century, right?
Arguably the only real American intelligence triumphs belong to the NSA, the Pentagon, FBI counter-intelligence, and the OSS.
Carl, I was just referring to the actual choices on offer at the time, not ranking him with other presidents.
Okey doke. But I think the fact that GWB is a better President than Gore or Kerry ever would have been is hardly "the best that can be said." You could make much stronger statements. He's by no means perfect, he may even be a disappointment, but compared to historical reality among Presidents, he's pretty damn good. We forget too easily how exceedingly rare what everyone calls a "good" President is. You can count them on one hand over the past 230 years, pretty much. Standards are awfully high. God help any one of us if he had to meet the same standards in our jobs.
...the car is still in the ditch.
No, Jim, it just looks like it is, through your view from below the sewer grate.
Some quotes from Gore during the 90's seem pretty on the ball. Maybe if he didn't lose the election and go crazy it would have worked out.
Word up on the 2004 election though.
At what point in its history do you feel the CIA was a really a badass, can-do, highly reliable and competent spy agency?
That is four different questions. I can't speak to the last three, but certainly the last thing that America or any other free nation needs is bad-ass government agencies. Which unfortunately is what we have right now. The CIA is a bad-ass government agency that kidnaps and tortures people, including Westerners, with no serious explanation. Some of them were tortured to death, while others were released, and in both cases the CIA often acted as if nothing had happened.
This may be hard to understand for September 11th Americans, but for July 4th Americans it's an essential point. It's a shame that Rand didn't have more to say this year about July 4th itself --- I guess he was distracted by the death of an old segregationist. The Declaration of Independence, whose signing was commemorated three days ago, is one of the most important documents in the history of Western thought, especially the second and third paragraphs:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed.
These fundamental truths leave no room, on the plane of just government, for bad-ass government agencies that kidnap and torture people. Not even if the victims happen to be foreigners. As it says, all men have unalienable rights, not just American citizens.
Now, September 11th Americans may reason that the Declaration is a great rosy scenario, but we can no longer afford to follow its principles. They would do well to heed this advice from Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
About the best that can be said is that he was still far better than either of his opponents would have been.
I'll take it.
Wow... Jim just turned the whole planet into naturalized American citizens.
Jim, you're delusional. The CIA is a war-fighting agency. They exist to do harm unto our enemies, mkay? Just like the armed forced, the guys with guns designed to make holes in other people and let all their life blood out. Nasty stuff. The CIA doesn't precisely shoot people, at least all the time, at least openly, but they serve the same essential function. You can think of them as the equivalent of pilots in bomber aircraft. They don't exactly pull the switch that drops the high explosive on people, but they're responsible for piloting the bomber over the target.
Arguing for a kinder, gentler, human-right's respectin' kind of CIA is like arguing for an army that obeys the Ten Commandments: i.e. totally detached from reality.
You can argue we shouldn't have a spy agency at all if you want ("gentlemen do not read each other's mail"), but if we do have one, it is either a badass obnoxious cruel institution, or it is a joke.
I'm thinking you really haven't thought through this idea of war very far.
Also, the key aspect of the Declaration of Independence is that government derives it powers from the consent of the governed. That means the protections of government do not apply if you have not consented to the framework. That's why you don't get your liberty defended if, say, you commit murder. Or fly airplanes into skyscrapers, that kind of thing. Sheesh.
Yeah, I'll be that bridge from Mr. Simon, right off. This is coming from a supporter of a president who talked about sending 'ninjas' to drop in on Bin Laden, yet when there were line of sight opportunities with the Northern Alliance, blanched at the last minute. Liberals have got to make up his mind; was he indecisive or was he a dictator; there really is no middleground. As for the rendition effort we followed the Canadian govt's tip proferred by the Syrians; who were told were on the up and up. The Syrians who a year and a half later were sheltering the people who funding and directing the blowing up of our troops in Iraq. We sent an iman, who was running a network into Iraq; which the Italian police were
doing nothing about; back to his home country. We
did rather sloppily. I guess you could chalk that up to incompetence. Than again a subsequent court
acquitted a similar figure of terrorism charges, basing it on an affirmative defense of jihad as an obligation of Islam.
The CIA is a war-fighting agency. They exist to do harm unto our enemies
That explanation may work in the fake-but-accurate world of certain September 11th Americans, but it is certainly does not fit the facts of the real world. First, not everyone who the CIA tortured lately actually is our enemy. Second, neither the CIA nor any other government bureau has any authority to torture anyone as a method of attacking enemies. It's not supposed to be torture, and it's supposed to be to obtain information, and not directly to punish or attack anybody. Third, America's founders understood as well as anyone that an sweeping, permanent, informal declaration of war against a vaguely defined enemy is the easiest way to destroy freedom. The Constitution says that only Congress has the power to declare war, but Congress did not declare a war, much less an indefinite world war.
If the CIA's torture victims were our enemy, the government would have been able to explain that point when they were let go or when their corpses showed up. But it didn't. If you care about the facts, you can look in particular at the case of Maher Arar. He is a Canadian citizen who was kidnapped at Kennedy Airport, then tortured in Syria, then released back to British Columbia. If our government can't explain this --- it hasn't given a serious explanation and it doesn't look like it can --- then this was a bad-ass act of tyranny, not a legitimate defense of our soil.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maher_Arar
I'm thinking you really haven't thought through this idea of war very far.
Again, if they need a war, the Constitution very clearly states that they need to declare it. Don't expect them to declare war against Canada.
The key aspect of the Declaration of Independence is that government derives it powers from the consent of the governed. That means the protections of government do not apply if you have not consented to the framework.
No, it means that a just government keeps its hands off of free men who have not given consent. If foreigners, such as Al Qaeda, attack a free nation, then they have granted implicit consent to face arrest or a counterattack (although not torture). That's fine. However, men such as Maher Arar are not in Al Qaeda and they did not forfeit any of their rights.
I will grant that governments may over-reach but I make a distinction between physical and psychological torture.
I have chronic bronchitis which is like six months of water boarding each year. I have absolutely no problem with 3 minutes of water boarding known bad guys. There is no physical harm and they become cooperative in a very short time. Seems like a win to me.
No I don't want our government randomly torturing people and I don't see that happening. But I wouldn't tie the hands of the CIA regarding a proven effective tool.
Jim, you are missing the point and your response is logically scattered, wandering all over the place.
The point is the purpose of the CIA. You think it should be "nice." I think the CIA doesn't make sense as a "nice" agency. Spying is not nice behaviour. It's mean. It's nasty. The CIA is like a handgun. You may need one in your house, but you should not fool yourself that using it is in any sense nice.
You have other criticisms, about whether they did wrong here or there. I think what you need to do is make up your mind. If you think these things show that the CIA isn't nice, and they should be, then, as I said, you don't understand the purpose of a spy agency.
If, on the other hand, you think the CIA shouldn't be nice, but they picked the wrong guy in this case or that, then you actually agree with me that the difficulty with the CIA isn't their purpose or general behaviour, but the fact that they're screw-ups and haven't been able to do their job right.
It's like this. Let's assume the CIA was responsible for sending Maher to Syria (which we don't know, but let's say we did). Now, you haven't quite decided, so far as I can tell, whether (1) the CIA should never be sending people to Syria to have useful stuff shaken out of them, or (2) the CIA should, but should damn well make sure they send the right guy to Syria, and not some doofus who doesn't know anything anyway.
If it's (1), I think you need to argue that the CIA shouldn't exist at all, and probably neither should the DoD in general (because they all do nasty stuff in what we like to think are good causes), and we should rely on, I dunno, Ghandian passive resistance to defend our interests and liberty. Never nasty aggressive tactics. It's a legitimate pacifist Quaker point of view.
On the other hand, if it's (2), you should want the CIA shaken up and replaced with competents who will nail the right people and screw information we need out of them.
But you really can't float vaguely between (1) and (2), accepting the existence of government agencies for doing violence but pursing your lips in disapproval when they actually do so. You can't approve of guns but disapprove of their actually being fired.
I will grant that governments may over-reach but I make a distinction between physical and psychological torture.
When I said that the CIA has tortured people lately, I did not mean that they had a shrink sneak up from behind and say "boo". As the Wikipedia page explains, while Maher Ahar was in prison in Syria, he was beaten with shredded cables. That is torture by anyone's definition.
For that matter, waterboarding is not just "psychological" torture. It is not like some chronic wheezing from bronchitis. Waterboarding is a method of torture by choking. It is the same as if interrogators tied you down, plugged your nose, and crammed a racquetball into your mouth until you grunted for mercy. It isn't just violent; it's also a way to convince you that you're going to die. It doesn't take three minutes to for you to expect to meet your Maker in those circumstances, it takes fifteen seconds. That is all it took Christopher Hitchens, whose first-hand account is very much worth your time:
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/08/hitchens200808
If it only takes fifteen seconds for waterboarding to become mock execution, then three minutes of it is a serious crime. It a stain on the reputation of any just government. It is torture by anyone's definition, or at least it was and should be. No American disputed that waterboarding is torture until the Bush Administration said it wasn't. In particular, in 1983 a Texas sheriff, James Parker, was convicted of waterboarding arrested suspects. American courts said then that it was torture, and it still is.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterboarding
I have absolutely no problem with 3 minutes of water boarding known bad guys.
Many of the torture victims certainly aren't known bad guys. And even if you personally don't have a problem with waterboarding, it is still torture and still illegal.
But I wouldn't tie the hands of the CIA regarding a proven effective tool.
The methods that they chose to use at Guantanamo and elsewhere was proven to be effective by Communist China at exctracting both true and false confessions. Not at obtaining reliable information. They also proved to be effective at destroying their moral standing, and now also ours. Again, when I say that these methods came from Communist China, I do not mean that as some kind of semblance or metaphor. At Guantanamo, they relabeled an American study of Communist torture methods from 1957 as our own how-to manual. These methods were never certified as effective; they were certified as what our enemies do.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/02/us/02detain.html
If, on the other hand, you think the CIA shouldn't be nice
The Declaration of Independence is not about being nice and I don't care whether the CIA is nice. No, the Declaration is about just governments and tyrannies. That is what really matters.
It is not the same question as whether the CIA is competent, but it is related. Communists may extract confessions with nails and screws, but they don't choose those methods by professional competence. The Communists chose those methods by malice. Competent interrogators know not to mix fact-finding with punishment. They know that the best method to obtain reliable information from a detainee is to establish rapport. They know that if he is guilty, punishment will come later.
Jim, I'm just not following your arguments about the DofI and just governments and tyrannies and inalienable rights and so forth.
I mean, we can read it two ways. Either you think (1) an "inalienable right" to life and liberty means no one man (or government) can morally deprive another of his life or freedom, period, or (2) you think it means it can't be done without good reason.
If you believe in (1), then that's fine, it's a consistent moral position, one of absolute nonviolence, where you may not raise your hand to another even to save your own life or the lives of others, et cetera. Very Ghandian, as I said. Possibly Buddhist. Not very popular in the West, of course.
But if you believe in (2), you believe these "rights" are in some sense contingent. You can be deprived of your life by (for example) being ordered into a shooting war via a draft for the purpose of national defense, or you can be shot and killed by a police officer to prevent you dropping a child off a bridge, or you can be confined in a prison cell if you are guilty of various crimes, and so forth.
And if that is the case, then certain the DofI does not contain any absolute prohibition against the CIA waterboarding terrorism suspects. It can only, at best, contain a relative prohibition, in the sense that it says you can't do so without good and sufficient reason. (After all, if you can kill a man for good enough reason, you can certainly waterboard him.)
So then you can't just appeal to the DofI and say it's tantamount to a blanket prohibition on what you call "torture." You have to make the case in detail that the reasons for the "torture" are insufficient to justify it.
Now, you have made some of that argument also. Not where you say these are just the tools Chinese Communists use. That's just tarring by association, and silly anyway. The Volkswagen Beetle was Hitler's idea, as was the Interstate Highway system. Do we reject them merely because evil Nazi bastards thought them up? Hardly.
I think the serious core of your argument is where you say "torture" is pointless because people will say anything to get it to stop, and they might say complete bullshit that will do you no good.
You are no doubt correct. But I think you overlook something very important, which is that the purpose of these interrogations is not to get information for the mere purpose of knowing, for satisfaction (Ha! So it was you who did it!), or to convict someone in a Court.
No, the purpose is usually to target some kind of preventative action, and in this case the evidence will be corroborated, or not, by reality. For example, if you waterboard Khalid Sheik you bastard, we think your colleagues have a bomb planted, now where is it? and he gasps out Penn Station! stop already! you don't just write it down in a notebook. You go and look. If there is a bomb in Penn Station, you remove it, and you've just saved umpty lives. If there isn't, and Khalid just said so to get it to stop for a moment, well, you're back to square one.
It's not evidence, in other words, so much as operational intelligence. You're trying to screw information about who, where, when and what out of them. If they give you nonsense, that's not helpful, but it doesn't necessarily derange your operations. And, on the other hand, if they lack the presence of mind to make up convincing nonsense in the middle of thinking they're about to die, and instead blurt out chunks of truth, well, that is very helpful indeed.
So I think you're a priori wrong about "torture" being of zero use. You may well have to check stuff, and sift through lots of garbage, but it's got to be a net plus. Whether it's worth the cost to your self respect is the nub of the argument, but I don't think you can short-circuit the entire argument by saying the information is always worthless.
you think it means it can't be done without good reason.
That's right: People can only forfeit their rights for very strong reasons. Even then, they do not forfeit all of their rights, but only the bare minimum. It may be tempting for a policeman to tell a criminal, "I could have shot you when you were robbing that bank, so therefore I can rape you now. It could be a way to get you talk." But that would set a dangerous precedent.
Besides that issue of bad precedents, your argument has a very serious bait-and-switch mistake. You put forward the most notorious detainees you can think of, and then you imagine reasons that the US might want to torture them. But they aren't the only detainees who were tortured. Maher Arar was tortured on behalf of the US by Syrians, but the US has no real argument that he did anything wrong. Manadel al-Jamadi was tortured to death in Abu Ghraib, and again there is no clear argument that he did anything wrong. Instead, the CIA interrogator who killed him has some murky legal immunity. And there are other cases.
You haven't said so, but you may be thinking, oh, what's the big deal if they torture the wrong guy now and then? Yes, we will lose self-respect as a just nation. We will also lose everyone else's respect and make a lot of new enemies. No, it isn't a net plus.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manadel_al-Jamadi