Greg Sanders

Cork Gaol July 11, 2009

In real time, we arrived home safely today.  But for the purposes of this log, we’re back exploring Cork and western Ireland and grateful for the company and transportation provided by Kate’s friends.

Our first night in Cork was interrupted by someone, presumably a drunkard, pulling a fire alarm.  We got back to sleep easily enough, but the 3:30 am wake up was not fun.  Thankfully the day itself was much better.  First stop was the Cork Gaol, an impressive stone facility that imprisoned people for largely poverty related crimes.  It was also overstuffed during the Irish civil war.  The design of the main chambers actually represented an improvement over the dank corridors of older facilities.  However, the philosophy of the time emphasized silence and solitude which may help prevent recidivist training but on the other hand probably breaks many of the people punished under such a system.  We close out the pictures with some overhead views of Cork.

If we ever manage to pull off prison reform in the States I suspect future generations may visit a new crop of jail museums spread throughout much of the U.S.  The exhibits will probably point out the absurdities in our current system and we’ll be earnestly or snarkily knocked by the visitors.  Sen. Webb has been doing some good work on these issues, here’s hoping we get these museums sooner rather than later.

Question for any commenters: Am I the only one that tends to actively try to plan escapes when visiting museum jails and the like?  Does everyone do it?

20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre

Terril Jones had been present at Tiananmen Square during the crackdown and has a picture of the famous confrontation between one man and a tank from a different angle.  Since it isn’t available under a creative commons license, I won’t reproduce it here, but please look at it, I’ll wait.  What’s notable in the picture is that ‘tank man’ choose this fight at some distance away and was already standing resolute even as others fled.  There’s a terrific Frontline documentary on “tank man” available free online his actual name is unknown as is his fate.  The confrontation ended when he was spirited away by unknown persons.  His whereabouts are still unknown.  At present, the iconic image is largely unknown to Chinese students, James Fallows passes along a few stories that show both how the events have been successfully censored and how the younger generations responds to learning about them.

The anniversary was proceeded by interesting news about Zhao Ziyang, here’s Dan Drezner with a summary:

It turns out that Zhao Ziyang, China's Communist Party chief during the Tianamenn massacre (and who was outsted for opposing a violent crackdown),secretly recorded a memoir of his time in power.

This is very exciting -- as the New York Times' Erik Eckholm observes, "In a sharp break with Chinese Communist tradition, even for dismissed officials, Mr. Zhao provides personal details of tense party sessions."  In other words, there's some good dirt here for China scholars.

Drezner also notes that Zhao is taking credit for a central role on early economics reforms widely associated with Deng Xiaoping.  Zhao Ziyang was a reformer, so this isn’t implausible, but it’s also obviously self-serving so should be taken with a grain of salt.  That said, in opposition to the reference joke in the post title, Al Gore did provide key funding for the internet and that was all that he ever claimed to have done.  Regardless, I’m definitely going to have to read that book.

My picture, available under a CC license.

Assassination of Dr. Tiller and Counter-insurgency

Dr. George Tiller was one of a handful of doctors that were essentially abortion providers of last resort for those late in a pregnancy.  Thus, as Matt Yglesias notes, they make a fairly effective target for political violence.  Here’s my attempt to look at how we should respond if I were considering a more generic counter-insurgency operation.

1) Differentiate between groups with similar agendas and investigate those that cross the line into threats or violence.  I tend to think the thresholds for investigation were too low in practice post-9/11 as they had often been throughout U.S. history, so I strongly doubt any increased powers are needed.  However, coordination of these efforts at a federal level is probably a good idea.  In any event, deciding that political violence is appropriate and acting on that decision is hardly unprecedented but it makes one a legitimate target for state violence within the usual legal confines.  Live by the sword, die by the sword.

2) Co-opt groups willing to eschew violence.  This does necessitate talking to them but does not require giving them what they want.  I think we might do better if we actually debated abortion rights rather than ‘judicial activism’ as the former is what people care about.  At the same time, I think it is key to have those whose rights are most impacted to be directly involved in negotiation.  That’s why I’m trying to eschew making compromise proposals, it isn’t my rights on the line.

3) A civil protection strategy is necessary.  Ann Friedman over at The American Prospect gives a good breakdown of the history of violence and intimidation as well as Congressional efforts to stop it.  That link is via Ezra Klein who I think makes a mistake in this passage: “That campaign [to deny access] stretched over decades of protests, lawsuits, violence, and, finally, murder.”  Successfully implementing a co-option strategy requires clearly differentiating between acts that are legitimately within the political sphere and those outside of it.  This doesn’t mean the strictly political are appropriate, fair, or the like, just that they use legal tools and can be countered by other legal political tools such as the National Network of Abortion funds.

4) Keep things in perspective.  I haven’t been able to find the chart by Googling, but the Washington Post had a great chart that did show that incidences of clinic violence were going down on the whole.  However, as noted above, the 1% of abortions that happen in the third trimester and have a notable bottleneck when it comes to providers.  This vulnerability means that even a comparatively small violent campaign can be effective.  The U.S. can mitigate but not eliminate the threat of violence and as a result so long as the bottleneck is so small there will always be a worry.  Decreasing the intimidation short of violence levels will help, but I think a game changer might be needed.  I have some thoughts on that issue, but I think that gets back into areas where I have no extra knowledge.

Does the U.S. support democracy in Arab nations?

The Obama administration has wisely rejected regime change, but is it committed to supporting democracy non-violently?  It’s difficult to say.  On the one hand, they’ve respected democratic outcomes in Iraq, made statements in support of Pakistan’s civilian government, and worked to rebuild rule of law in that country.  Those are critical test cases as they are areas where U.S. interests are most at stake.  However, as Marc Lynch notes, Gates as said to Egyptian President and dictator Hosni Mubarak that military aid to Egypt, billions per year, is not contingent on democracy or human rights.

We will discover how Obama feels about Democracy promotion on June 4th when he will be making a speech from Cairo.  Choosing Egypt to give his promised speech in the Muslim world dramatically escalates the stakes for the speech because Egypt, along with Saudi Arabia, symbolize U.S. thwarting of democracy in Arabic nations.  Turkey or Indonesia, both democratic Muslim countries, would allowed some sidestepping of the issue as both governments could be legitimately praised.  Neither country is Arabic, but at least it would showcase good relations with predominantly Muslim nations.

I really do not know how Obama is going to come down on this.  His instincts are often realpolitik, albeit not constrained by the classical realist exclusive focus on the nation state.  If he does not make a meaningful push for human rights in Egypt or reach out to the non-violent Muslim Brotherhood it would be a profound mistake but not a betrayal of campaign promises.  Nonetheless, I actually rate this issue more important than the President’s positions on the torture pictures or even some sort of military commissions compromise.  Hamas and Hezbollah are hard cases, but the Muslim Brotherhood is not.  Our harbinger of change choose his venue, intentionally raised the stake, and anything short of a strong and Egypt specific message of democracy support will rightfully be seen as U.S. opposition to popular rule among our Gulf allies or more accurately put our frenemies.

As Spencer Ackerman notes in a post on Somalia today, there are forces in this world far worse than moderate Islamists, even moderate armed Islamists.  Please, Mr. President, stand with government by the people, of the people, and for the people.  Democracy may be about more than elections, but popular sovereignty is at its heart.

The Speaker and Torture

The Republicans are trying some sort of odd defense that breaking the law doesn’t count if you tell opposite party politicians about it.  The way rule of law works, you actually have to change the law, if you check the constitution, there’s not some sort of briefing exception.  Regardless, here’s Dan Balz of the Post on the current controversy:

For the first time, Pelosi (D-Calif.) acknowledged that in 2003 she was informed by an aide that the CIA had told others in Congress that officials had used waterboarding during interrogations. But she insisted, contrary to CIA accounts, that she was not told about waterboarding during a September 2002 briefing by agency officials. Asked whether she was accusing the CIA of lying, she replied, "Yes, misleading the Congress of the United States…"

Instead of registering her protest to the administration, she said, she set out to help Democrats win control of Congress and elect a Democrat as president.

Basically the difference between 2002 and 2003 is the difference between asking for permission and presenting a fait accompli.  Pelosi’s actions were no profile in courage and I certainly think it’s fair that she should say all she knew in front of a truth commission.  However, once she did get power she has worked towards ending both torture and cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment as well as launching investigations of the lawbreaking.  On this issue, she’s certainly been out in front of President Obama and for that I salute her.  I actually got to see both her and Rahm Emmanuel at a fundraiser this Wednesday and even with these revelations I am still a fan.  Why, because while I do think Pelosi is spinning, I think the CIA is engaging in a bald-faced lie.  James Fallows helpfully explains:  

It's easy! If the CIA says one thing and former Sen. [Bob] Graham says another, then the CIA is lying. Or, "in error," if you prefer.

(Background here and here, in which Graham says that some of the briefings in which he was allegedly filled in about waterboarding and related techniques never occurred. This matters, because the CIA's claims are part of the same argument that Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats in Congress had known about and acquiesced to waterboarding all the way along.

Part of the payoff of reaching age 72 and having spent 38 years in public office, as Graham has, is that people have had a chance to judge your reputation. Graham has a general reputation for honesty. In my eyes he has a specific reputation for very good judgment: he was one of a handful of Senators actually to read the full classified intelligence report about the "threats" posed by Saddam Hussein. On the basis of reading it, despite a career as a conservative/centrist Democrat, he voted against the war and fervently urged his colleagues to do the same. "Blood is going to be on your hands," he warned those who voted yes.

More relevant in this case, Graham also has a specific reputation for keeping detailed daily records of people he met and things they said. He's sometimes been mocked for this compulsive practice, but he's never been doubted about the completeness or accuracy of what he compiles…

This doesn't prove that the accounts of briefing Pelosi are also inaccurate. But it shifts the burden of proof.

As for the reputation of the CIA?  Spencer Ackerman notes that they aren’t denying Graham’s statement.  There are certainly trustworthy people there.  On the other hand, there are also people that destroyed 92 videotapes of interrogation despite a judge’s order to preserve evidence.  We’re also talking about an administration that started torturing in part for the classic reason, to get confessions that affirm the party line.  In this case, to gin up ‘evidence’ of the connection between Iraq and Afghanistan.  Did they genuinely believe such a connection existed?  Doesn’t matter, the fact that they’d torture people until they ‘admitted’ such a connection existed shows why torture is so corrupting and why other methods are both more moral and superior.

I do fear that Ta-Nehisi Coates and Digby are right and the torture taboo is shattered.  The Balz article above, like most in the media, is unwilling to call a spade a spade.  But there is a chance here if the Speaker plays her cards right.  I’d like to believe we have strong public support, but I don’t think that’s true.  However, depending on what else is being lied about, the public might start to feel strongly about this.  We should certainly not put all of our eggs in this basket, we have to look to the long game and in the short term work on a truth commission.  In the likely event no one goes to trial now, we could still try them later.  If we fail to get the information out now, then it will be all too easy for the torture clique to destroy more evidence.

Celebrating same-sex marriage victories

I’ve long thought that the spread of same-sex marriage in America was being furthered by demographics.  Aside from the more liberal attitudes among the young, each victory would bring same sex couples more into the spotlight and show how they were not a threat to society at all and would instead will help make up the bedrock.

Despite my optimism, I’ve been shocked by the speed of the recent string of victories.  A judicial decision in Iowa followed by legislative implementation in Vermont and Maine.  New Hampshire has passed a bill, although it is unclear whether the governor will sign it.  Meanwhile, despite all the hand-wringing over African-American voting in California, the DC council decisively voted to recognize marriages from other states.

Kevin Drum makes an interesting observation about all this:

But I wonder if this is an example of how gay marriage opponents are going to end up losing this battle entirely when they could have won at least a partial victory if they'd been less strident in their opposition.  If they had actively supported civil unions, that could have become the de facto standard across the country, accepted by courts and legislatures alike.  But the ferocity of their opposition to any form of marriage equality might have been instrumental in convincing a lot of people like Baldacci that half measures are impossible.  And if half measures are impossible, then full marriage rights are the only alternative.

Yglesias also rightly notes that this should be seen as a vindication for the judicial press for rights.  Lawsuits can’t be the only way of advancing the cause, but they can be a great way to get the ball rolling.

So what’s next?  The current pace is obviously unsustainable.   Even so, things are going well enough that we’ll be listing Equality Maryland as a charitable alternative to our  wedding registry.  I had been afraid that Maryland was far enough off that it would be better to target resources elsewhere given the snowball effect.  With this good news, I feel more confident in the local fight.  To end on a happy local note, a few weeks ago that crazy Topeka hate group staged a protest outside of Walt Whitman High School.  Apparently bigots aren’t Whitman fans.  Regardless, they didn’t know who they were messing with:

If everyone’s responsible, no one is

This odd rationale has been floating around lately when it comes to torture prosecution discussions.  Here’s Jacob Weisburg:

What we need now is a public airing through congressional hearings and perhaps a high-level commission—Jack Goldsmith and Philip Zelikow, brave opponents of torture and legal casuistry inside the Bush administration, would be excellent choices for it. But pursuing criminal charges would be too hard legally and politically and too easy morally. Prosecuting Bush and his men won't absolve the rest of us for what we let them do.

First off, as I’ve often thought when hearing this sort of argument, what do you mean “we”, white man?  More to the point there was certainly damage done to America’s reputation, but more to the point there are victims here, admittedly many of them nasty people.  Beyond that, a violation of a treaty is a betrayal of all the abiding signatories.  Weisburg and the like seem to be treating torture as the equivalent of neglecting our national gravesites or something else just about us.

If we are collective responsible, than what is the collective price we pay?  I’m not a believer in collective punishment, but there are certainly people radicalized by torture that are.  The answer American collective punishment advocates seem to argue for is basically that we should uncover the truth and feel guilty.  In war time we’ve tended to take a far harsher line but in power politic conflict we’ve tend to give defeated adversaries a pass.  I think not gloating or going for blood is often a wise move, but that’s in the context of a country that’s already paying a tough price.

Instead, advocates for the collective responsibility approach act as both sinner and forgiver.  They dilute the guilt until it vanishes entirely and then order us to go and sin no more.  The investigation will provide a hand basin for a collective washing our hands of this unpleasantness.

Of course, the torture advocates are still arguing torture, so that sort of throws a crimp in the plan.  But what are the odds that in a two party system, the other party will win again?

Good news from the courts

The charges against AIPAC lobbyists for spying have been dropped.  I’m no fan of AIPAC, but I think this was the right call.  Jerry Markon reports:

Rosen and Weissman were charged in 2005 with conspiring to obtain classified information and pass it to journalists and the Israeli government. They were the first non-government civilians charged under the 1917 espionage statute with verbally receiving and transmitting national defense information.

Some lawyers and First Amendment advocates have said the case would criminalize the type of information exchange that is common among journalists, lobbyists and think-tank analysts.

As a note of disclosure, I am a think-tank analyst, but I’ve never dealt with classified information.  Closest I’ve come is For Official Use Only (FOUO) material and business sensitive stuff.  I think on the whole I’m happier that way.  Regardless, these guys didn’t have clearances and if you’re doing normal espionage you don’t pass it on to journalists.  Moreover, I think journalists should at times receive go digging for classified information because some things are declared secret because their embarrassing.

In other good news, the Obama administration lost a ruling where they were attempting to invoke the states secret doctrine.  In essence, they were continuing a Bush era policy of rejecting suits because they would involve disclosure of classified information.  I do think that certain information shouldn’t come out to the public in lawsuits, but there’s ways to protect secrets without deny the judicial branch a chance to review the case.

Link round up 4-29-09

Culture

• N’Gai Croal finds a Maureen Dowd column amusing I do as well in this case, though she’s normally not my thing.
• Brainy Gamer discusses Mother 3 (earlier games in English went by Earthbound) The story sounds great and much of it involves one changing community rather than hopping around the world.  Sadly it isn’t officially available in English, but given the raves I might get a bootleg.

Political Economy

• The Monkey Cage notes that Democratic Senators are easy to herd after all and provides the data to back it up.  I think this phenomenon hasn’t been more noticed because as both parties get more unity each defection becomes more important.
• Emmanuel Saez won the Clark Medal for young economists and has done interesting work on equality.  The top 1% had hugely gained of late.  It’s well established that the top percentages tend to gain under Republicans, but I wonder whether that relationship goes both ways and they tend to win more thanks to a larger bankroll.  Such a phenomenon would still be contained by the inevitable crashes brought about by the excesses of inequality.

Rights

• Kevin Drum defends civilization against the torturers.  This might be my favorite tack combined with encouragement to have a stiff upper lip regarding terrorism which isn’t that big of a threat to the U.S. to begin with (See Cold War, WWII).  Manzi notes that countries that torture tend to be losers in their conflicts.
• Andrew Gelman explains that contradictory torture polling might be caused by the fact that people tend to make a lot of exceptions when you offer them specific scenarios.  Thus we probably do better in a big picture debate.
• Justine Fleichner discusses the risks to women from concessions to the Taliban.  I fear some concessions may prove necessary, but we should ensure that Afghan women are at the bargaining table to defend their interests.
• States with more men than women extended the franchise first in case you were wondering, why Wyoming took the lead.  I don’t think political violence was as much of an issue when it came to suffragettes, but we should still probably study our history to learn methods for dealing with Afghanistan.

Power-brokers oppose enforcing laws against the powerful

Michael Gerson admits that coercive interrogation is a mistake, but thinks waterboarding presented a difficult dilemma despite the fact that we’ve prosecuted people for it in the past.  David Broder is similarly happy the torture is done, but thinks that enforcing the law is scapegoating.  Moving away from the relative moderates, Outlook had an embarrassing article that put forth a scenario where we captured Bin Laden and he had vital information about multiple nuclear weapons that were to be used to blow up American cities.  Tom Clancy and the writers of 24 wouldn’t run with such a ridiculous scenario, why is it on the front page of the Outlook section?  Happily Eugene Robinson, who received a well deserved Pulitzer, does make the obvious point that torture is a crime that deserves punishment. 

The basic logic here is straightforward.  American elected leaders and their appointees have the right to be wrong, to break the law when we’re frightened.  Richard Cohen made this argument explicitly, albeit in a manner completely lacking in self-awareness.  Those who favor unaccountability often also praise the pardoning of Nixon who clearly stated his claim that if the President does it, it’s not illegal.  The fact that these measures violate international law is probably not even a secondary consideration here, after all, who is going to make us face accountability?  Spain isn’t really powerful enough to do more than keep people out of Europe .  None of this is especially surprising and I suspect that despite the extraordinary nature of 9/11 the principle of the executive accountable only to the electorate isn’t going to go away.

This is not to say that prosecutions are the best way to sway public opinion.  Mark Danner argued in the Post that investigations, not prosecutions, are what’s needed to keep torture from returning.  He may well be right, enforcing the law is just, but that doesn’t mean it will always be the best tactic. This will not be an easy battle, as John Sides shows public opposition to torture has been dropping in recent month.  Even so, a thin majority to support investigation (Hat tip: Ackerman).  The support levels for torture scare me, but it does provide an opening to release all the information we can find that the CIA hasn’t yet illegally destroyed.

All in all, I pray we can win the fight on torture, but I do not believe that the self-correcting measures on American hegemony can prevent future disastrous mistakes.  A few months ago I attended a great talk by Spencer Ackerman that essentially argued that the tools of military dominance inevitably corrupt and that unless we’re willing to put some of those tools down the cycle will keep repeating itself.  I have no problem with American military superiority, but I think liberals will better spend their energy directing resources away from supremacy than in trying to direct the tools of military supremacy to the greater good of the world.  If torture is giving our elites this much trouble, how are we going to manage the tougher calls?

Would the operations side of the CIA be better handled by the military?

John Judis suggests this as a possibility to consider, as well as eliminating the CIA as a whole (Hat tip, Yglesias).

The question that Congress might ponder, but won't, is whether the structure of our foreign policy apparatus - the power and responsibility vested in a secret branch of government --  invites abuse. That was the position of the late Sen. Daniel P. Moynihan who argued for abolishing the CIA.  He didn't want to eliminate intelligence, but he wanted to return it to the purview of the State Department, while giving the armed forces the responsibility for overseas intervention. 

I'm not saying I favor this, but it's certainly worth discussing. One need only consider George Tenet's reign as CIA chief.  Tenet came in with a reform portfolio; and he initially did well as a manager; but by the time he had been forced out of office, the CIA itself had committed more war crimes, and bollixed more critical intelligence inquiries than ever before.  Was that because Tenet was deeply incompetent?  Or was there something about the agency's structure in government that invited presidents to twist it for their own sordid political ends?  Could the armed services have as easily complied with these torture memos?  I think not. 

I’m not really sure of the best arrangement of the analysis side of intelligence gathering.  I do suspect that constantly rearranging the organization charts is probably undermining the potential benefits of improvements.  However, I do feel that when you go from spying to strike forces and holding prisoners, it’s better to use the military?  Is that because the military is somehow immune to abuse?  No, certainly not. 

Instead I think the switchover could be worth while because the military has more protections built in as well as the Uniform Code of [Military] Justice.   I’ve heard of more official objections coming out of the military than the CIA.  High ranking military officers tend to escape judgment, but I think that on the CIA side there tends to be no accountability whatsoever.  I’m not sure I can say what the exact dividing line should be, but if it’s the kind of thing happening in the final third of a James Bond film, it would probably be better handled by the military.

This isn’t to say that there aren’t good people working at the CIA, there were those that resigned during the Bush years and in past accounts of debacles there are a fair number of agents that wanted to do right.  However, organizations with more institutional protections make it easier to do the right thing.  This isn’t to say it isn’t possible to design a civilian operations agency with such protections, but we haven’t pulled it off yet.  This is probably an area where comparisons with other nations intelligence services may help.  But on the whole, my instinct is that if the current and previous four directors of a government institution want to cover up torture, than it’s time to reassign powers and then salt the ground on which the old corruption was built.

Guessing at the torturer's rationale: is efficiency key?

This Yglesias post inspired a thought:

It’s shocking how easy it is to be shocked all over again by browsing through Jay Bybee’s memo. For example: “These procedures, as discussed above, involve the use of muscle fatigue to encourage cooperation and do not themselves constitute the infliction of severe physical pain or suffering.”

It’s not pain, it’s just muscle fatigue. And it’s not severe. It’s just bad enough to compel you to cooperate.

For those torture apologist that don't think that the President can order anything, the guiding idea seems to be that the problem with traditional torture is that it is inefficient in terms of pain suffered and damage done.  Thus it becomes a twisted version of a medical problem.  How can you break someone while not causing irreversible physical harm or pain above a certain magnitude.  They don't seem to get that breaking someone's spirit is inherently problematic.  As I understand it, more effective techniques involve time, gaining trust, and of course some level of psychological manipulation.  Coercive techniques basically rely on the victim being willing to tell you anything to get you to stop.  And since they'll tell you anything, you'll get a lot of bad intel that you want to believe since they're saying what you want to hear.

Also as a quick clarification on my prior post.  Torture is illegal under domestic U.S. law whereas the Supreme Court, and not just an executive branch lawyer has upheld the legality of abortion and the death penalty.  At the same time, torture is illegal under international law.  That would provide an alternate basis for prosecution.  However, there's no relevant treaties that we've signed on to (there might be something out there on the juvenile death penalty).  So the situation that Saletan describes wouldn't come up under either domestic or international law.  [Update: One possible exception, there was a big fight over the executions of Mexican nationals that didn't get to contact their embassy.  That wasn't specifically about the death penalty, but was relevant to international law.  However, that's about due process and not outcomes.]

When lawyer authorize war crimes

Names to remember:

"[Former Attorney General Alberto] Gonzales, Federal Appeals Court Judge and former Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee, University of California law professor and former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo, former Defense Department general counsel and current Chevron lawyer William J. Haynes II, Vice President Cheney’s former chief of staff David Addington, and former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith"

That quote from the Daily Beast describing the proceeding indictments in Spain (Via Yglesias). Judge Garzon, who had indicted Pinochet, will be asked by prosecutors to recuse himself due to past involvement with the case.  That seems appropriate, it makes all the more clear that this isn't about a single figure in Spain but has the backing of the Spanish justice system at large.  The six above are being indicted for their involvment with the toture of Spanish citizens. Torture violates customary international law in addition to treaties the U.S. has ratified, so Spain is an odd place for the indictments but they have jurisdiction.  As a key side note, the Geneva conventions ban not just torture but cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment.  The later catches many of the the more borderline methods.

The Obama administration today released the rest of the torture memos authored by Bybee, his replacement Bradbury, and the CIA legal counsel Rizzo (rundown via Ackerman).  Yoo had also written memos, but his aren't the four that people are mainly talking about. Ackerman has letters written by the administration to the intelligence community.  The President has said that we will not prosecute those that followed the twisted legal guidence.  My instinct would be to condition that amnesty on accurate testimony, but I can accept that.  Director of National Intelligence Blair asks that we treat the interogators with respect.  That I will not do.  Those that directly abused prisoners should have known better and their lives and families were not in danger if they rejected those orders.  Many a villain throughout history has believed they acted in the best interest of their nation.  I don't doubt that the Japanese soldiers convicted for waterboarding Americans, or Americans convicted of that crime in the past believed that as well.  I do believe in forgiveness, but it should be preceded by atonement.

Ackerman notes that the back and forth between the Office of Legal Counsel and the CIA's Counselor  leaves ambigious which side was the driving force.  I have no special insight there, we'll likely have to wait for further investigations and backstabbing to learn more.

You can read the torture memos themselves via the ACLU.  I haven't read them in detail yet myself, but on a quick scan it seems like less than 5% of the content was redacted.  Mostly it seems to be names and whatever codeword is in the header/footer.  The 46 page Bradbury memo has the largest chunks missing.  If you want key quotes, I'd recommend seeing Glenn Greenwald.

After the cut, the section that Kevin Drum reasonably argues is most definitive.

One way to avoid the inevitable robot uprising

I took an AI class back in undergrad, more than seven years ago now.  We never really discussed ethics, but that's in large part because the field wasn't far enough along.  The trouble is, there may not be that bright a line for when we are.  When an AI can impersonate a human conversationally, passing the Turing test, it will still probably be via the use of a range of heuristics and trickery.  However, the human brain also uses such short cuts.  It seems to me distinctly possible that we still will have highly limited understanding of human consciousness by the time we start to get to real AI.  Without that understanding it will be difficult to say what qualifies as consciousness via software.

So how long do we have.  The Ian Gross of the Global Strategy Institute at CSIS covered one estimate:

But, this article argues human-like computation in robots will be realized within 30 years or less.

Hans Moravec, a robotics specialist at Carnegie Mellon, speculates that a computer would have to be able to compute 100 trillion instructions per second to emulate the human brain. That means that to perform like a human brain a “futuristic” PC would have to be 1,000 times more powerful than the average PC produced in 2008. This bridge between current computer power and that needed in the future may seem large. But, keep in mind that computational power doubled each year in the 1990s. Experts believe the doubling of processing speed every year will continue to grow exponentially well into the next decade.

Living in a world where computers are as smart as and can learn as quickly as humans will change the way people live. According to Moravec, the rise of robots will lead to a “fundamental restructuring of our society” (sounds like our friend Ray Kurzweil, no?). Business practices, scientific advances, and even athletic competitions could all be held without people. Based on the articles, it appears as though human-like robots are truly right around the corner. Whether people in society will be willing to accommodate their integration is another issue.

How to prepare?  It seems to that one logical starting point would be to set a few easy to judge threshholds.  One would be any algorithm that has passed the Turing test or any modification on such an algorithm.  Another could be any learning software on a hardware platform sufficiently powerful to perform 100 trillion instructuions per second and thus emulate the human brain. I don't think such research should be banned, but once those threshhols are hit the designers and programmers should start talking to human subject review boards and bring in all the processes and protections relevant to human experimentation.  I'm not knowlegable or wise enough to suggest what boundaries these boards should lay down, but I feel that such protections should come in at the front end of true AI and not as an afterthought.

Won't someone think of the chickens?

Ezra Klein looks at a recent Nic Kristof column on chickens.  

Subsequently, I came across the Humane Farm Animal Care certification on some eggs in my local Harris-Teeter. The Humane Farm certification is given to products from farms that ensure a "nutritious diet without antibiotics, or hormones, animals raised with shelter, resting areas, sufficient space and the ability to engage in natural behaviors." More information here. They're careful to say that "humane" is not the same thing as "cage free" or "organic," terms that I think have gotten mixed up with humane practices in the consumers mind. Moreover, the more of a market there is for these products, the cheaper they'll become, which will in turn grow the market, which will again make the products cheaper, and so forth. You've seen this with organics (though there've also been considerable efforts to cut corners).

Cage-free doesn't mean relatively humane?  Sigh.  They were mixed up in this consumer's mind.  I put rather little weight on organic, but guess I'll have to update what certifications I look for.  Some of them also claim to be cruelty-free.  I wonder if that's a meaningful standard.

Spainish court may indict Bush administration war criminals

I’ve never been to Spain, but I kinda like the justice system.  Yglesias summarizes the latest news:

For a long stretch of the late Bush years I wondered if Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzón, famous for his prosecution of Pinochet and other efforts to assert universal jurisdiction over international human rights law, would put the Bush administration in his sights. And now it seems he has: “The officials include former attorney general Alberto Gonzales, former undersecretary of defense for policy Douglas Feith, former Cheney chief of staff David Addington, Justice Department officials John Yoo and Jay S. Bybee, and Pentagon lawyer William Haynes.”

I don’t actually know Bybee or Haynes that well.  I wasn’t aware that Feith was that involved with detainee treatment rather than ginning up a war, but I can’t say that it would surprise me.  Garzón’s issuing a warrant wouldn’t actually get them sent to his court, but would get the gears of justice slowly turning.

Peter Finn and Jody Warrick a great article in the Post whose headline speaks for itself: detainee’s harsh treatment foiled no plots.  The whole thing on Abu Zubaida, who we alleged was a chief of operations for Al Qaeda, is worth reading, but I’d highlight this passage:

Abu Zubaida quickly told U.S. interrogators of Mohammed and of others he knew to be in al-Qaeda, and he revealed the plans of the low-level operatives who fled Afghanistan with him. Some were intent on returning to target American forces with bombs; others wanted to strike on American soil again, according to military documents and law enforcement sources.

Such intelligence was significant but not blockbuster material. Frustrated, the Bush administration ratcheted up the pressure -- for the first time approving the use of increasingly harsh interrogations, including waterboarding.

In short, we got all we could get via conventional methods.  The return on investment for selling our soul was nothing.

Ideology and ideological intolerance

Are more religiously traditional people less tolerant of atheists in public life?  Lee Seigalman over at Monkey Cage summarizes the results of a study that indicates yes.

There are some signs that religious Americans have become more tolerant of those who hold different religious views. But by no means has religious intolerance faded away.

That’s the conclusion of a new report by James Gibson, based on a national survey he conducted in 2007. (For an extended overview of the results, click here.) In brief, based on survey respondents’ answers to a series of questions, Gibson created an index of “religious traditionalism,” some defining characteristics of which are frequent attendance at religious services and belief in God and the devil. The respondents were also asked about their willingness to deny one or more political rights (e.g., to give speeches, hold demonstrations, and run for public office) to atheists...

Gibson speculates that the link between religious traditionalism and political intolerance may “become more serious for American politics in the future,” not less so... "Future research should therefore focus on methods by which all citizens — religionists included — can be persuaded to value tolerance more highly.”

Absent changing the mind of religious traditionalists, I think Gibson's speculation was confirmed by a recent survey.  15% (up from 8% in 1990) of the population now says they have no religion meanwhile the rising numbers calling themselves born again or evangelical might indicate a rise in those hewing towards religious conservatism.   I don't think most of those holding no religion will mirror the desire to restrict the organization rights of the religious, although that would be an interesting study to see.  Even if it isn't mirrored, I think Douthat is right to suggest that the survey indicates that the culture war is likely to get hotter in the near future.

However, what I really would like to see is this study done for ideology the restrictions that fanatics are willing to put on athiests, "to give speeches, hold demonstrations, and run for public office," have been deployed against political groups before.  In America that sort of thing has been done to socialists, let alone communists.  Of course in Germany, such rules are presently employed against neo-Nazis.  Their reasons are understandable but doing exluding anyone from participation, rather than vehemently out-competing them, runs against liberal pluralistic ideals.  Not saying Germany is necessarily wrong here, just that I think the burden of proof for that sort of policy should be very high.

I wonder whether ideologues feel this as strongly as religious traditionalists.  I wonder which systems of belief are most prone to it.  Is it consisitently mirrored or does it sometimes hold on only one side?  This issue is truly vital in young democracies but I don't think it's fully understood even in the developed world.

Electoral Democracy

Elections are a necessary but not sufficient component of democracy.  It's widely, and correctly, said that U.S. policy sometimes forgets this.  I'll be attending an event tomorrow on Democracy Support and will write up the results, but I had a thought after attending a preview.

That said, I'm more of a booster for electoral, or thin, democracy than the average international relation type.  My reason is that the most controversial part of democratization from the U.S. perspective is that some times the 'wrong' people win.  Most common recent example is Hamas.  Time and again there's a corrupt government in power and a popular radical group out of power and we think the solution is to reform the corrupt government or, to paraphrase a Quiet American, to create a third force.  This approach fails time and time again when the opponents are not marginal? 

The virtue of thin democracy is that it forces the issue.  The power structure of a government will be reworked in to roughly mirror the preferences of the population.  This is no panacea, I'm not a fan of Hamas, but addressing the concerns that drive them is a necessary step.

I think what I may have been missing in my support for thin democracy is that there are other ways to work on incorporating the outside group.  Mitchell used a whole range of tools as part of the Good Friday process that included regularly booting Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA, out of the process.  These tools may be substantial better than elections for resolving the conflict.  However, ultimately longstanding popular movements must be co-opted.  Discrediting the movement can be part of that process, but it's much harder when they're out of power.

Photograph of Palestinian Election posters by pharaoh.berger used under a creative commons license.

Following orders

There’s an article in Time about various CIA officials worried that they’ll be held accountable for any war crimes they committed.  (Via Democracy Arsenal).

Apparently Sen. Feinstein is stepping up to the plate on investigations.  That means the intelligence committee head is joining with Sen. Leahy, who chairs judiciary, to call for probes.

Here’s a quote from one of the complainers:

By second-guessing the staffers now, warn the Agency veterans, Feinstein's investigation will have a "chilling effect on people who are asked to do risky things for this administration," says a former senior CIA official.

Really, you mean that enforcing the law means people will be less likely to break the law in the future?  That sounds like it might set some sort of dangerous precedent leading to a nightmare ‘rule of law’ scenario.  Similarly, I’m not finding the “they were briefed” excuse all that compelling.  Last time I checked, the Geneva Conventions didn’t contain an exceptions for Congressional briefings.  Funny how the CIA destroyed 92 interrogations videotapes.  It’s almost as if they felt they had something to hide.

That said, I will certainly give them this point:

Staffers at the CIA will wonder why they are being singled out for investigation for executing the Bush Administration's policies, "while whose who made those policies are busy writing their memoirs," says Paul Pillar, who was the agency's national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000-05, and now teaches at Georgetown University.

Generally speaking, I’ve got no problem giving these people amnesty if they testify under oath about what they did and who gave what orders.  Accountability should rest with the decision makers.  I similarly have no complaints if they want to reveal who in Congress was told what.  Only fair really.

Not change I can believe in: Torture cover-ups edition

The U.S. is presently continuing to blackmail the U.K. by threatening to withhold intelligence information if they reveal details on how we tortured one of their citizens, Binyam Mohammed.

Details of how the “terrorist” detainee was allegedly tortured — and what UK intelligence services knew about it — must remain secret because of the American threats, the High Court ruled yesterday.

Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones said lawyers for the Foreign Secretary had told them that the threat by the US still applied under President Obama. Oppostion MPs accused the Government of giving in to blackmail.

The disclosure that the US has threatened to re-evaluate sharing intelligence with Britain came only 24 hours after Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, lavished praise on the special relationship between the two countries.

But that’s not the only problem, the government is still claiming the State Secret doctrine to protect us against Binyam Mohammed’s lawsuit against Boeing for participating in his CIA rendering.  David Luban over at Balkinazation makes the solid point that if you cover it up, you own it and rightly dismisses the idea that anything that embarrasses the government should be a state secret. 

Yglesias bears the good news that Rep. Delahunt is calling for the release of the information.  Similarly Paisley Dodds of the AP reports that the Brits are going to Gitmo with the likely result of freeing Mohammed in the near future.   Even so, I plan on raising these issues every time I hear it for reasons that Ta-Nehisi Coates elaborates:

But implicitly supporting people who would take a razor to man's genitals, is, by the lights of Obama's own campaign rhetoric, disgraceful. Andrew thinks we should slow down, given that we don't know how it all will shake out. I think there may be something to that. But I also think there's something to raising the volume, to making it sure this doesn't slip through the cracks while the country is focused on the [economy].

Dealing with foreign and domestic adversaries

Jonathan Chait recently argued that liberals often seem to favor negotiation with foreign adversaries but oppose concessions to domestic ones.  This resulted in some quick pushback.  Key points from the pushback: negotiating isn’t a concession and that playing hard ball in politics means very different things than playing hardball in an actual war.  Here’s the key points of  his retort:

Certainly, it's a way of thinking about your adversary that's at least somewhat in tension with the kind of thinking liberals prefer on foreign policy. On foreign policy, liberals like to understand that our adversaries' thinking can't simply be defined as the negation of our own values. (I agree, which is why I'm a liberal, albeit a moderate one on foreign policy.) It's fatuous to think that if we believe in freedom, then Islamic radicals must simply hate us for our freedom, or that if we believe in equal rights, then social conservatives must be motivated by a hatred for equal rights. Moreover, our adversaries are not always monolithic, and there are times when concessions can divide or isolate them from the center, not just encourage them to increase their demands.

I think Chait’s summary of how domestic and foreign policy strategy are similar in this regard is accurate.  That said, the pieces he was responding to were more strategic than the excerpt he cited.    So, is there strategic analysis correct?  Well, coming from the other side, here’s Ross Douthat’s read:

If you're an unconflicted supporter of abortion rights, obviously, then you shouldn't support overturning [Roe vs. Wade], period: If second-trimester abortion is really a fundamental human right, then there's no reason to risk it's availability for some nebulous hope of a less polarized America

So, is a lot of the rhetoric about social conservatives hyperbolic?  Sure.   But that’s true of most any set of rhetoric when you’re dealing with an issue you actually care about.  I think Chait may well be right in that liberals should do a better job of practicing what we preach when it comes to domestic strategy.  That said, Obama’s outreach attempts to the House Republicans on stimulus netted him zero votes, so I don’t think this is a problem our leadership suffers from.

To have a meaningful debate, I think Chait needs to throw out an example where liberal strategic logic is flawed rather than one where the rhetoric is overheated.  On this issue, positions don’t flow from your assumptions on human nature, they flow from how strongly you care about abortion rights and how broadly you define them.

The attempt to end military tribunals hits a roadblock

In defiance of President Obama’s executive order, Abd el Rahim al Nashiri is still being tried under a military tribunal.  Key quote from Carol Rosenberg’s article:

In his ruling, the judge, Army Col. James Pohl, said a delay in Nashiri's arraignment would deny the public's interest in a speedy trial. He also said nothing that took place at the arraignment would prevent the Obama administration from deciding to deal with Nashiri in a forum other than the military commission now set to hear his case.

I suspect the judge’s decision is wrong on the law.  That said, I’m sure the President can find a way to legally contest this decision so I’m not especially bothered by the judge’s action.  More obnoxious are comments by the former commander of the Cole.  Matt Yglesias retorts retired Cmdr. Kurt Lippold’s idea that we should ignore human rights and legal advocacy groups:

I am one who believes that international relations should be largely understood through the lens of interests. But there’s still such a thing as right and wrong. And we should, in fact, make adequate respect for the law and for human rights an important priority when making our policy decisions. Over the long run, Americans will much prefer to live in a world governed by law and human rights than one of chaos and brutality. And other countries will be better-disposed to our national power and leading global role insofar as they see us upholding humane values and basic decency.

It’s also worth noting that the USS Cole was a military ship, and thus a legitimate target.  It was a suicide bombing, via boat, but the problem with such bombings isn’t the suicide.  The problem with most suicide bombings is that they hit civilian targets.  Yes, Kamikaze tactics are disturbing.  But to throw out a cultural example I don’t recall too many people complaining about the end of Independence Day for that reason.

That said killing 17 sailors is still an act of war and can be fairly treated as such.  Replying with military means is certainly legit.  Alternately, since it was done by a non-state actor, you could treat it as a criminal act.  Either way it’s just bizarre that the one guy still facing military tribunals designed (badly) for terrorists isn’t even accused of targeting civilians.

Will the Attorney General nominee foreswear justice?

The Obama administration hasn’t shown much interest in prosecuting those members of the Bush administration that committed war crimes.  Even so, Republicans in the Senate are delaying Eric Holder’s nomination for Attorney General until they get absolute assurance of that.  Spencer Ackerman found that Sen. Kit Bond (R-Missouri) is claiming that Holder privately assured him that there will be no prosecutions.  Happily, Holder’s aide is denying that claim.  I’m not really too concerned with which one is lying, a private verbal promise publicly denied can easily be broken.

Elena Schor over at TPM notes Holder’s written response to Sen Kyl (R-Arizona)

Prosecutorial and investigative judgments must depend on the facts, and no one is above the law. But where it is clear that a government agent has acted in "reasonable and good-faith reliance on Justice Department legal opinions" authoritatively permitting his conduct, I would find it difficult to justify commencing a full-blown criminal investigation, let alone a prosecution.

I think investigations, not necessarily criminal ones, are key for the agents.  That said, prosecutions should focus on the higher ranking officials absent behavior so egregious it violates the legal standard Holder mentions.  Practically speaking, I think we should probably be willing to trade amnesty for accurate testimony.  I don’t think many of the key perpetrators would take that deal, which would leave them open to later prosecutions when political will was there.  I expect most of the heavy lifting will be done at the behest of Speaker Pelosi.  She’s our best hope at this point for American-based justice.

Leon Panetta to head the CIA

A fairly surprising choice as he lacks intelligence experience, but perhaps a good one. As a former chief of staff for President Clinton, he does have ample administrative experience. Critically, Ezra Klein notes that Panetta strongly opposes torture and did so explicitly in Washington Monthly last August.

The simple answer is the rule of law...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.

Kevin Drum cites David Corn who adds that Panetta has called for “greater congressional control of covert ops.  Senators Feinstein and Rockefeller have concerns about the pick, sounds like they were left out of the decision process.

In other encouraging news Ackerman notes Dawn Johnsen is going to head the Office of Legal Council and the civil libertarians are happy with her.

The Attorney General nominee is also a strong opponent of torture, so all and all it looks like Obama is consistently putting his appointees where his rhetoric was.  Thank goodness.