Agnoiologist

Only a few more essays left. I’m writing one right now. In my four years here, nothing else has caused more pain, anxiety, and sleepless nights. I suppose one could say that having children would beat essays in all three departments, but at least the former experience would be balanced out by moments of euphoria and pride. I have occasionally felt euphoria while writing essays, but I am sure that this was caused by the alcohol. I feel zero pride for my essays, which I suppose has been part of the reason why my college experience was so miserable.

It takes a particular talent to write something so jam-packed with spectacular falsehoods, but Tom Friedman manages to do it. He recognizes that Americans tortured, but comes to the bizarre conclusion that we should not prosecute. He gets it right when he says, “Look, our people killed detainees, and only a handful of those deaths have resulted in any punishment of U.S. officials.” Yet he quells his moral outrage using sophistry.

His first argument is unsubstantiated and reveals a tyrannical mindset. He says:

The first [reason we should not prosecute is] because justice taken to its logical end here would likely require bringing George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and other senior officials to trial, which would rip our country apart.

He never substantiates the claim that bringing George Bush to trial would “rip our country apart.” How, pray tell, would that happen? Would the gigantic number of Bush supporters go crazy? Would the Republicans threaten to filibuster every important bill in Congress? This claim is conjured out of thin air.

The worst part of it is that the idea of carrying justice to its logical end shocks Mr. Friedman. Yes, we could begin to prosecute low-level torturers. That would not tear our nation apart. But God forbid that we punish those at the top! Our elected officials cannot be prosecuted! That would be barbaric! That would tear apart the very fabric of the nation! It takes a very tyrannical mindset to shirk from the duties of justice when it pertains to those in power.

His second argument is worse, and it is wrong in so many ways, I’m not sure where to begin. Let us read the introduction of the argument:

Al Qaeda truly was a unique enemy, and the post-9/11 era a deeply confounding war in a variety of ways.

This is a complete non sequitur. Al Qaeda is evil; therefore we should not prosecute for war crimes. I fail to see the connection.

It gets worse.

Here’s Mr. Friedman’s cartoonish, Manichaean account of Al Qaeda:

First, Al Qaeda was undeterred by normal means. Al Qaeda’s weapon of choice was suicide. Al Qaeda operatives were ready to kill themselves — as they did on 9/11, and before that against U.S. targets in Saudi Arabia, Kenya, Tanzania and Yemen — long before we could ever threaten to kill them. We could deter the Russians because they loved their children more than they hated us; they did not want to die. The Al Qaeda operatives hated us more than they loved their own children. They glorified martyrdom and left families behind.

First, Al Qaeda is not composed of evil supermen who will stop at nothing to kill us. Khalid Sheik Mohammed was merely a thug who loved to kill people and blow shit up. He was not a religious fanatic: “He was obviously pathologically antisemitic but not very religious himself. He wasn’t one to quote Saudi clerics.” Tell me, when did KSM plan on blowing himself up? He was having too good a time posing as a rich businessman and getting blowjobs.

Even if they were religious fanatics, this does not exonerate torture. If they’ll stop at nothing, then how is torture supposed to deter them? The fact is that the torture at Abu Ghraib was perhaps the number one propaganda tool of Al Qaeda recruiters. Thanks for encouraging the killing of our soldiers, Mr. Friedman.

Then, Mr. Friedman pulls out the old WMD playbook:

Second, Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda aspired to deliver a devastating blow to America. They “were involved in an extraordinarily sophisticated and professional effort to acquire weapons of mass destruction. In this case, nuclear material,” Michael Scheuer, the former C.I.A. bin Laden expert, told “60 Minutes” in 2004. “By the end of 1996, it was clear that this was an organization unlike any other one we had ever seen.”

Oh please. Mr. Friedman’s argument for torture can be summed up in one word: FEAR.

It is interesting that Mr. Friedman chooses the word “compromise” to describe not prosecuting war criminals. He would gladly compromise our principles because he fears terrorist supermen. Nothing exonerates torture. I don’t care how evil Al Qaeda is; it does not excuse his sadism.

[There's so much bullshit in here that I can't write a coherent entry. Mr. Friedman pulls out the "flypaper theory" after talking about bombs. If Al Qaeda had a bomb, don't you think they'd try to blow it up in the US before Iraq? How exactly will this deter them?]

The commenters are much more eloquent than I am.

EDIT: This post would’ve been much better if I had just focused on KSM.

Ross Douthat’s column in the New York Times is morally idiocy disguised by a veneer of reasonableness. Read this incredibly stupid passage:

He wasn’t alone. A large swath of the political class wants to avoid the torture debate. The Obama administration backed into it last week, and obviously wants to back right out again.

But the argument isn’t going away. It will be with us as long as the threat of terrorism endures. And where the Bush administration’s interrogation programs are concerned, we’ve heard too much to just “look forward,” as the president would have us do. We need to hear more: What was done and who approved it, and what intelligence we really gleaned from it. Not so that we can prosecute – unless the Democratic Party has taken leave of its senses – but so that we can learn, and pass judgment, and struggle toward consensus.

Learn, pass judgment, and struggle toward consensus? Has hundreds of years of history simply disappeared? I thought Mr. Douthat was supposed to be conservative, so it is strange that he would ignore the fact that our ancestors and recent predecessors have already figured out that torture is wrong and should be punished.

What is left to learn? Torture is cruel and ineffective. In the West, in Russia, and in the East, we see time and time again that the most effective interrogators eschew physical force and that systematic policies of torture result in false confessions. Here’s Liao-Fan in the 16th century: “Also, extreme beating can force an innocent suspect to plead guilty.” We have a long and dark history of the consequences of torture: the Spanish Inquisition, Stalin’s show trials, the Khmer Rouge.

What consensus is there to reach? That torture is wrong? That torture is brutal and immoral? One must have a malfunctioning moral compass in order to have not yet reached that conclusion.

Imagine that the President had kept slaves in the White House. Ah, but reasonable people agree that we must investigate in order to “learn, and pass judgment, and struggle toward consensus.” Never mind that the issue of slavery has already been decided.

We have already learned, already passed judgment, and already struggled towards consensus. History has already passed its verdict. We have the Geneva Conventions, and Ronald Reagan signing treaties against torture. What more consensus do we need?

We need none of what Mr. Douthat urges, unless you cleave the present from the entire history of Western Civilization. We already know everything we need to know about torture. What’s needed now is punishment for war crimes.

James Wilson:

The enemies of liberty are artful and insidious. A counterfeit steals her dress, imitates her manner, forges her signature, assumes her name. But the real name of the deceiver is licentiousness. Such is her effrontery, that she will charge liberty to her face with imposture: and she will, with shameless front, insist that herself alone is the genuine character, and that herself alone is entitled to the respect, which the genuine character deserves. With the giddy and undiscerning, on whom a deeper impression is made by dauntless impudence than by modest merit, her pretensions are often successful. She receives the honours of liberty, and liberty herself is treated as a traitor and a usurper. Generally, however, this bold impostor acts only a secondary part. Though she alone appear upon the stage, her motions are regulated by dark ambition, who sits concealed behind the curtain, and who knows that despotism, his other favourite, can always follow the success of licentiousness.

Jon Meacham:

The answer depends, at least in part, on how we turn back the page. Is a Watergate- or Iran-contra-style congressional probe the way to go? No, for public hearings encourage—demand, really—dramatic plays for attention from lawmakers. Such a stage would lead to the expression of extreme views.

So we do not want that. Nor, I think, do we want to open criminal investigations into those who participated in brutal interrogation methods. And to pursue criminal charges against officials at the highest levels—including the former president and the former vice president—would set a terrible precedent. (The presidential historian Michael Beschloss suggests that the closest parallel to a president authorizing a probe of his predecessor can be found in the 1920s, when Calvin Coolidge appointed special prosecutors to investigate Warren Harding’s role in the Teapot Dome scandal.) That is not to say presidents and vice presidents are always above the law; there could be instances in which such a prosecution is appropriate, but based on what we know, this is not such a case. [emphasis mine]

David Broder:

But having vowed to end the practices, Obama should use all the influence of his office to stop the retroactive search for scapegoats.

This is not another Sept. 11 situation, when nearly 3,000 Americans were killed. We had to investigate the flawed performances and gaps in the system and make the necessary repairs to reduce the chances of a deadly repetition.

The memos on torture represented a deliberate, and internally well-debated, policy decision, made in the proper places — the White House, the intelligence agencies and the Justice Department — by the proper officials.

One administration later, a different group of individuals occupying the same offices has — thankfully — made the opposite decision. Do they now go back and investigate or indict their predecessors?

That way, inevitably, lies endless political warfare. It would set the precedent for turning all future policy disagreements into political or criminal vendettas. That way lies untold bitterness — and injustice. [emphasis mine]

What a topsy-turvy world we live in! It is not torture that is the extremist view, but the prosecution of an inhumane and brutal crime that would be extremist. It is not letting people go free for war crimes that sets a dangerous precedent, but pursuing proper justice for criminals that sets a dangerous precedent. Nor is it the very act of torture that sets a dangerous precedent, but putting torturers in prison that would set a dangerous precedent. God forbid that our elected officials be subject to the laws! That would be bad precedent!

And in the most topsy-turvy statement of all, the pursuit of justice is turned into injustice. Indisputable war crimes should be ignored — that is justice. Prosecution for torture, following the Law of Nations, our treaties, our Constitution, and our laws — that is injustice. “Such is her effrontery, that she will charge liberty to her face with imposture.”

I may be “bitter,” but you, sirs, have no shame. The enemies of liberty are artful and insidious, indeed.

It’s been a productive day. I did a bunch of chores, and still managed to watch the draft. I’m really excited that Crabtree fell to the 49ers. Thank you so much Al Davis for picking Heyward-Bey, haha.

It’s Spring Fair. That means I have to eat Chicken on a Stick. Mmm. I guess that’s one thing I’ll miss when I get the heck out of here.

In other news, I bought maracas and a recorder. I am going to drive my roommates crazy.

It’s been a week since I’ve been trying to check and process my e-mail once a day. So far, I’ve been able to process all my e-mails during that one session, which I’m pretty proud of. That was a secondary goal, which I wasn’t going to focus on, but I still am doing it.

The primary goal is only checking my e-mail once. It was initially rough, but it’s getting easier. During the day, I didn’t feel any aggressive urges to check my e-mail. I didn’t feel anything while I was surfing online during lunch, nor did I feel anything after I was reading blogs after my last class. Usually the urge to check e-mail is worst in the morning, but I woke up kind of late today and didn’t have time to go on the computer.

During the week, there were times when I was forced to use e-mail before 10PM because I had to e-mail myself something. I refrained from reading my e-mails, though, and processed them all at the end of the day. I wish there was some way to send e-mails without checking your e-mail.

I’m very encouraged by this. If I can break this addiction, then I can break my other internet addictions.

I was remarking to my friend about how we were so close to the end.

She replied, “You know what that means? We get to be real people.”

Ah, the extended adolescence experience that is college.

My cousin just sent me this text: “Dynasty complete, I got semper fi”

I went to the same school as three of my cousins (all siblings). My older cousin played trombone, I played trombone, my younger cousin played trombone. We were all first chair in jazz and Wind Ensemble. We were all drum major. And we all got the semper fi award. Plus, my friend Daryl, who played second trombone under me for several years, succeeded me as drum major and first chair.

Trombone dynasty. I’m proud of my cousin for continuing the legacy.

I liked the suggestions in the op-ed: Up, Up and Out.

The prose in this article is not particularly eloquent. However, it expresses its ideas clearly and that is the most important element for writing, is it not? I recently said to a classmate that the purpose of language is to communicate and if your writing obscures meaning, then you’ve committed a sin. This has no such sin.

Here are the suggestions:

• Scrap the Air Force and integrate it into the other services
• Eliminate the “up or out” promotion policy
• Institute a mandatory national service program

I’ve already seen the scrap the Air Force argument before and was convinced of it back then. The “up or out” thing is new to me, and Kane has persuaded me.

The mandatory national service program is definitely more complicated an issue. I do think it can do a lot of good, and the idea about having a bunch of young people dedicated to disaster relief is very appealing. I think I’ve also seen the argument before. Emergency response is one of the best things we can spend our money on, so I’m all for it. I haven’t thought much about the other ways we could use this service. He lists “intelligence assessment, conservation, antipoverty projects, educational tutoring, firefighting, policing, border security, disaster relief or care for the elderly,” and at first glance I have no objection aside from policing.

Is this kind of thing feasible? There are so many young people in the US. Maybe a national service would best be run by states? I really have no idea about the administration of this thing, but I do think a certain amount of localism would be beneficial. It could create some community in our hyperfragmented society.