thoughts on torture
Jan. 28th, 2005 07:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eiriasSomething occurred to me yesterday about the administration's soft line on torture. Why would an administration acquiesce to the use of torture in a war they could win without that particular PR stain, and without that particularly unreliable information-gathering method? I think the fact that torture is so widespread is a pretty clear indication not only that we're losing this war now, but that we probably aren't going to win it at all.
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-28 02:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-28 07:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-28 02:49 pm (UTC)To completely switch metaphors, you have to treat the causes and not the symptoms.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-28 11:29 pm (UTC)Yeah, there's no way you'll ever win a war on an abstract concept; we are in violent agreement there. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-28 04:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-28 11:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-29 12:12 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-30 11:36 pm (UTC)(and yes, i think the torture was emerging as a behavior among the memo-writers, as well as among the people with their paws on other people.)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-28 04:43 pm (UTC)I find it terrifying how non-stop reporting of negative issues results in widespread belief that we are "losing the war". The policy is containment, and from that perspective, point me to how we're losing?? Pre-9/11, we had bombings on US targets in Africa, in Europe, on our own soil -- almost monthly at one point. Now, we know _exactly_ where the threat points are, have much of the significant activity contained to a few geographic areas -- and yes, people continue to be killed, but NOBODY expects flashpoints in Iraq to be "safe". Still, while insurgents get the press time, my cousin spends a big portion of his time having his hand shaken by thankful citizens. Quote: "I've been thanked about a thousand times more often than I've been shot at."
That region of the world is going to stew for decades. Look at Israel/Palestine. But, we know where it is. We know generally who we're dealing with, and for the most part, it's contained. If you go to a temple in the West Bank, you're in trouble, but if you go to a temple in Poughkipsie Iowa, it's going to be the last thing in your mind.
.. and where are the calls that we're "losing the war" in Afghanistan?? After hearing that drum beat for 6 months, the latest check of Google News shows the opening and turnover of a new hospital (http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/fromthefield/220224/110690389283.htm) and successful diplomatic missions are the most recent news from there. This, after elections in THAT country that "weren't going to succeed."
This blind assumption that we're "losing" because some people disagree with the underlying policy is foolish and dangerous. What I see on TV and the newspaper paints a radically different picture than what I'm hearing first-hand from a family member. Everyone, even our troops, would rather that the fighting and bombing be happening in some godforsaken stretch of sand over THERE, than back here on Main Street USA.
we've already lost
Date: 2005-01-28 06:47 pm (UTC)This is not a "blind assumption that we're losing", it's based on research and testimony from people who know. To begin with, I recommend you try to hear Dick Clark speak sometime soon.
As for what you hear first-hand from a family member: hey, I read several blogs of people in Iraq, both residents and soldiers, and I know some people who have relatives serving there too. Each person is in a different place and has a different experience. There is definitely a lot of good happening in Iraq, though not nearly as much as should be happening if our top policymakers hadn't been so blatantly and ridiculously incompetent. But that's neither here nor there. Even the best case reasonably possible scenario in Iraq, at this point, isn't going to balance out the severe damage our policies have done. It will take decades, at minimum, to undo the damage.
Re: we've already lost
Date: 2005-01-28 08:35 pm (UTC)As for Clarke, if anybody wants to take shots for dishonesty at Rice and Bush, they'd better start with him. He's suddenly such an informative font of knowledge after a book deal and a spot on the known-to-be-accurate 60-minutes, despite that fact that most of his most "shocking revelations" have ZERO supporting evidence, or are even completely opposite to the contents of since-declassified memos that he himself wrote. He successfully managed to piss off everyone in 2 separate, and bipartisan, administrations, but now he's supposed to be some sort of clear-talking enlightening hero, because he positioned himself as a self-created whistleblower?? No thanks.
... and to answer your below post as well, "they" are a fairly static set of well-organized, well-funded ringleaders. We're not out there hunting down confused morons in the Michigan Militia with $20 rifles. We're hunting down the rich, cowardly warlords with their hands in large pools of government money -- and there is a very limited supply of those. You kill the heads, and the bodies will follow. When's the last time you heard the word "Baathists" or "Taliban" crop up? When we blow holes in Zarqawi, his particular organization will wither on the vine as well. There will be others, but they need money to effectively operate, and we are VERY successfuly strangling off the flow of that -- except from certain quarters like Syria and Iran, which one way or the other, will be dealt with sooner or later.
WHEN the Election bit settles down, there will either be civil war, or a stable-enough internal government to start ferreting out their own rats. Frankly, from an "American Interests" perspective, both result in a largely self-correcting issue. They either police their own backyard, or else they'll be too busy killing _each other_ to effectively kill _us_. They want power. They will do whatever it takes to get it, or die trying.
This whole "global cooperation" BS is a red herring. There's never been "global cooperation" on ANYTHING, and for the forseeable future, there never will be. If you honestly believe that we should have just "tried more diplomacy" with France and Russia prior to the war, then you obviously are purposefully blocking out any and all reality as relates to the multi-BILLION dollar bribes stemming from where?? Oh, yeah... the _UN's PROGRAMS_ on Iraq. Global Cooperation my ass... self-interest always rules the day, and if we didn't go out on our own, there _would_ be more deaths on American soil today.
What you're making the mistake of believing is that these terrorists who were "forced" into opposition against the US, would lay down arms and live peacefully in their own corner of the world if we would just be nice, and leave them alone. There is no diplomacy. There is no reasoning with these people. There is nothing anyone can give them that will make them go home and start cooperating with the rest of the planet. The only thing they want is death and destruction. The only way to neutralize them is to kill them. Dead.
... and if that means spending the next 15 years decapitating the head of every major nation, and every major local militia, in that region, over and over and over again, then that's just what we're going to have to do. And if we don't, sooner or later, CHINA is going to do it for us. Until we have a cost-effective, stable source of energy other than mideast oil, every industrialized nation is going to be lining up to shoot the insurgents into submission -- right now, the other potential participants are simply finding it more convenient to sit back and let America do their dirty work, while they show the rest of the UN how clean their own hands are.
Re: we've already lost
Date: 2005-01-28 08:43 pm (UTC)You lost me already. I was always in support of intervening in Afghanistan, and once the Taliban had been toppled, I even called members of Congress urging them to commit more miltary and money ASAP. I don't know what this "your viewpoint" deal is in your head, but you're clearly not worth any more of my time. You've just convinced me that you won't read what I write, are arguing from knee-jerk emotionalism, and reason by association rather than logic.
There is no reasoning with these people
... and that your knee-jerk assertions don't even have any connection to reality. Goodbye.
Re: we've already lost
Date: 2005-01-28 08:48 pm (UTC)I don't see any bad form of quarterbacking there at all.
"better to fight them there than here"
Date: 2005-01-28 06:56 pm (UTC)To begin with, who are "they"? It's not like there's a static set of terrorists in the world, and we just drew most of them into Iraq where we can fight them. Most of the people we've been fighting in Iraq were not people we would ever have had to fight in the first place, if we hadn't invaded Iraq. There have been enough reports from Arab journalists, released prisoners, local residents, and un-embedded westerners, to conclude that a majority of Iraqi insurgents are locals, many of whom did not support Saddam Hussein's government, and who are motivated primarily by nationalism. They see us as a foreign occupation and don't want us there. It is better to kill these people, and sometime be killed by them, than to have left them alone?
There are, of course, foreign terrorists and alQaeda in Iraq too. Many of them came from elsewhere specifically to fight the Americans in Iraq. A few of these were, indeed, already active in Islamist terrorism elsewhere, and we've temporarily drawn them to Iraq. But more of them are people who were recruited specifically because of Iraq. And this recruitment doesn't just draw people to Iraq - Iraq is being used and advertised in places like Pakistan, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, and so on, to recruit more people into terrorist groups. Some of them go to Iraq to fight and to be trained, others don't.
And what happens later, when Iraq is stabilized after a few years and gets a strong enough government to stop its terroritory from being used for terrorist training? All of these newly recruited and combat-hardened Islamist militants will just fade away? hah.
This is the second great Jihad of modern times. Just like with Afghanistan, it doesn't really matter who the sides were in the original Jihad or what they were trying to accomplish. When it's all over, the result is a large number of Islamists ready to wreak havoc on the world. That's where 9/11 came from. At least this time we're not giving them our money and weapons. But we will suffer the blowback eventually.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-28 11:54 pm (UTC)Actually, it's not an assumption on my part, it's an impression I've gotten from reading two pro-war columnists: one a Middle East expert (http://www.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/thomaslfriedman/index.html) who championed the war initially as a step toward revitalization and democratization of the region in order to make it less hospitable toward terrorist recruitment; another a very frightened civil libertarian hawk (http://www.andrewsullivan.com/) who viewed the war less as an opportunity to spread democracy and more as an opportunity to stamp out totalitarianism, if that makes sense. I don't think either of them is convinced that we've already lost (though Sullivan is nearing the breaking point, I think), but both are dismayed with how the war has been handled. Me, I waffled on the war at first - I find Friedman's logic quite compelling, and I'm big on addressing root causes - but eventually came down on the anti-war side because of cynicism about our ability to handle the postwar scenario well. Cross-cultural communication and compromise are not strengths of this administration, and they are necessary skills for nation-building (particularly in a place like Iraq, which, if I understand correctly, would make a better federation than a unified nation). If we do fail at the nation-building game, I predict that the outcome for us (measured in terms of anti-American terrorists) will be worse than it would have had we not started this war. The logistical problems that Sullivan complains about (most likely what you mean by Monday morning quarterbacking) aren't things I know much about and so I didn't give much thought to them before the war; but in any case I can't see what two hawks have to gain by painting the war as a failure, if in fact it's not.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-03-08 06:49 pm (UTC)Coming back to this post after a few weeks and rereading, I find this one to be the most disturbing statement in the whole discussion. This was was contrived out of thin air, for specious reasons, and it's very very scary to me to see how extremely effective that tactic was. Even if the war itself hadn't happened, the fact that it got so many people seriously considering it on the pros and cons people on various sides of the issue came up with, rather than seeing it for the nonsensical trumped up contrivance that it was, suggests that with a really bad president, the US could decide to invade just about any country on earth, at the president's whim. Because whim is exactly what this was.