Debate: On

You campaign with poetry, but you govern with prose.

– Hillary Rodham Clinton

.

Watching the debate for a second time – the first time on the elliiptical, this evening. Thought – like every other blogger out there, I’m sure – that I’d post some thoughts. My (caustic) thoughts in green. Comments that grabbed my attention in blue.

Full transcript here.

In my opinion, McCain won this one – but not by much. Also, I liked how many details were covered; names and places came up that I’m sure 90% of all voters have never even heard of … I’m watching NPR, and they just made the point – this sounds a lot more like a Kennedy School debate than the usual battle of the dueling soundbytes …

.

In any case: Here goes:

.

.

LEHRER: What I’m trying to get at this is this. One of you is going to be the president of the United States come January … in the middle of a huge financial crisis … How [will this] … affect the approach to take as to the presidency?

MCCAIN: How about a spending freeze on everything but defense, veteran affairs and entitlement programs.

LEHRER: Spending freeze?

Yeah, I’m with Lehrer. What? Warning, warning, Maverick at work. … I want a sign that says “Caution: Maverick thinking!”

MCCAIN: I think we ought to seriously consider with the exceptions the caring of veterans national defense and several other vital issues.

OBAMA: The problem with a spending freeze is you’re using a hatchet where you need a scalpel. There are some programs that are very important that are under funded. I went to increase early childhood education and the notion that we should freeze that when there may be, for example, this Medicare subsidy doesn’t make sense.

Let me tell you another place to look for some savings. We are currently spending $10 billion a month in Iraq when they have a $79 billion surplus. It seems to me that if we’re going to be strong at home as well as strong abroad, that we have to look at bringing that war to a close.

And Obama responds “No, we can’t stop spending - what about the children?! Let’s stop spending on the war…”

.

LEHRER: (…but seriouly, folks…) How will the financial crisis affect your choices as the President?

.

OBAMA: There’s no doubt it will affect our budgets. … The only point I want to make is this … if we are spending $300 billion on tax cuts for people who don’t need them and weren’t even asking for them, and we are leaving out health care which is crushing on people all across the country, then I think we have made a bad decision …

So Obama replies, we’ll raise taxes on the wealthy. Oh, yeah, and stop fighting in the Middle East!

MCCAIN: …I want to make sure we’re not handing the health care system over to the federal government … I want the families to make decisions between themselves and their doctors. Not the federal government. Look. We have to obviously cut spending. …

… I also want to say again a healthy economy with low taxes would not raising anyone’s taxes is probably the best recipe for eventually having our economy recover.

And spending restraint has got to be a vital part of that.

And McCain says, no, we’ll have to cut government funding – and one place we’ll have to cut spending is in Healthcare.

Seems to me, Obama’s playing to his supporters – most of whom (I bet) are idealistic, and too young or too green to be making enough to be in that tax bracket. McCain’s talking to the Baby Boomers, who’re much more worried about debt on every front . . .

…

LEHRER: … What do you see as the lessons of Iraq?

McCAIN: I think the lessons of Iraq are very clear that you cannot have a failed strategy that will then cause you to nearly lose a conflict. … basically, he says you have to have a good strategy, and be willing to commit to it.

OBAMA: …The first question is whether we should have gone into the war in the first place.

Now six years ago, I stood up and opposed this war at…We hadn’t caught bin Laden. We hadn’t put al Qaeda to rest, and as a consequence, I thought that it was going to be a distraction. … And I wish I had been wrong for the sake of the country and they had been right, but that’s not the case. We’ve spent over $600 billion so far, soon to be $1 trillion. We have lost over 4,000 lives. We have seen 30,000 wounded, and most importantly, from a strategic national security perspective, al Qaeda is resurgent, stronger now than at any time since 2001.

We took our eye off the ball. So I think the lesson to be drawn is that we should never hesitate to use military force, and I will not, as president, in order to keep the American people safe. But we have to use our military wisely. And we did not use our military wisely in Iraq.

So, what, the lesson is “don’t make bad decisions? … Oh, and, I was right about Iraq…” ?? Great.

And, McCain with the response:

MCCAIN: The next president of the United States is not going to have to address the issue as to whether we went into Iraq or not. The next president of the United States is going to have to decide how we leave, when we leave, and what we leave behind. That’s the decision of the next president of the United States.

At this point, I started laughing. (Good point!) Yes, laughing while on the elliptical machine…

And I’ll tell you, I had a town hall meeting in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, and a woman stood up and she said, “Senator McCain, I want you to do me the honor of wearing a bracelet with my son’s name on it.”

He was 22 years old and he was killed in combat outside of Baghdad, Matthew Stanley, before Christmas last year. This was last August, a year ago. And I said, “I will — I will wear his bracelet with honor.”

(McCain plays the sympathy card)

And this was August, a year ago. And then she said, “But, Senator McCain, I want you to do everything — promise me one thing, that you’ll do everything in your power to make sure that my son’s death was not in vain.” … And [these mothers] all say to me that we don’t want defeat. … we won’t come home in defeat and dishonor and probably have to go back if we fail.

And now, the “Don’t Tread On Me!!” card — Stack ‘em up!!!

OBAMA: Jim, let me just make a point. I’ve got a bracelet, too, from Sergeant [his pause here was way too long...] - from the mother of Sergeant Ryan David Jopeck, given to me in Green Bay. And she said to me, make sure another mother is not going through what I’m going through.

This one got me. Obama’s response to “we can’t give up”: Hey, I’ve got a souvenir, too! More elliptical giggling. The trick is to come up with a different story with the same emotional impact.

Negative ONE to Obama for lack of creativity.

And it is not true you have consistently been concerned about what happened in Afghanistan. At one point, while you were focused on Iraq, you said well, we can “muddle through” Afghanistan. You don’t muddle through the central front on terror and you don’t muddle through going after bin Laden. You don’t muddle through stamping out the Taliban.

I think that is something we have to take seriously. And when I’m president, I will.

Obama: Seriously, folks, it’s all about Afghanistan…

He does have a point.

.

.

LEHRER: Senator McCain, what is your reading on the threat to Iran right now to the security of the United States?

MCCAIN: My reading of the threat from Iran is that if Iran acquires nuclear weapons, it is an existential threat to the State of Israel and to other countries in the region because the other countries in the region will feel compelling requirement to acquire nuclear weapons as well.

… existential threat?? what does that even mean…

But the point about a regional arms race is valid. He goes on to point out that Iran is encouraging chaos in Iraq, passing out weapons, etc.

So obviously, our policy over the last eight years has not worked. Senator McCain is absolutely right, we cannot tolerate a nuclear Iran. It would be a game changer. Not only would it threaten Israel, a country that is our stalwart ally, but it would also create an environment in which you could set off an arms race in this Middle East.

Now here’s what we need to do. We do need tougher sanctions. I do not agree with Senator McCain that we’re going to be able to execute the kind of sanctions we need without some cooperation with some countries like Russia and China that are, I think Senator McCain would agree, not democracies, but have extensive trade with Iran but potentially have an interest in making sure Iran doesn’t have a nuclear weapon.

But we are also going to have to, I believe, engage in tough direct diplomacy with Iran and this is a major difference I have with Senator McCain, this notion by not talking to people we are punishing them has not worked. It has not worked in Iran, it has not worked in North Korea. In each instance, our efforts of isolation have actually accelerated their efforts to get nuclear weapons. That will change when I’m president of the United States.

Without Precondition?!?!

Then they go tête-a-tête over talking with Ahmadinejad (McCain mispronounces his name – which i’d be harder on, if he hadn’t said the name first, and gotten it right first, some four sentences earlier…).

They seem to agree we have to start talking to people. That dialog is good. That the president can talk to people. That having secretary-level dialoge is good. They throw a lot of names around – Kissinger, especially – to no avail. I think McCain’s trying to say that anytime the President of the US meets face-to-face with someone, it’s a world-scale political legitimization movement. That you have to do what you can to minimize that, or to drive it. And Obama’s trying to say that we may have to recognize dictators we don’t like, to get what we want – that we have to prepare, but we can’t just ignore dictators we don’t like . . .

And I think this is all obvious. Can’t we just go back to the whole fix-the-economy thing???

When we talk about preconditions — and Henry Kissinger did say we should have contacts without preconditions — the idea is that we do not expect to solve every problem before we initiate talks.

And, you know, the Bush administration has come to recognize that it hasn’t worked, this notion that we are simply silent when it comes to our enemies. And the notion that we would sit with Ahmadinejad and not say anything while he’s spewing his nonsense and his vile comments is ridiculous. Nobody is even talking about that.

No, no, go back to that – the Bush administration did something right???!?!?!

MCCAIN: So let me get this right. We sit down with Ahmadinejad, and he says, “We’re going to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth,” and we say, “No, you’re not”? Oh, please.

Right. So no diplomacy where we don’t have leverage? Since that makes sense… Someday, we’re going to have to realize we don’t get to drive all the time, any more . . .

Then things get really fun. Check this out:

MCCAIN: And Senator Obama is parsing words when he says precondition means preparation.

OBAMA: I am not parsing words.

MCCAIN: He’s parsing words, my friends.

OBAMA: I’m using the same words that your advisers use.

(to Lehrer) Please, go ahead.

LEHRER: New lead question.

Gotta give him this. Lehrer knows when it’s time to move on…

.

.

LEHRER: Senator Obama. How do you see the relationship with Russia? Do you see them as a competitor? Do you see them as an enemy? Do you see them as a potential partner?

OBAMA: Well, I think that, given what’s happened over the last several weeks and months, our entire Russian approach has to be evaluated, because a resurgent and very aggressive Russia is a threat to the peace and stability of the region.

Their actions in Georgia were unacceptable. They were unwarranted. And at this point, it is absolutely critical for the next president to make clear that we have to follow through on our six-party — or the six-point cease-fire. They have to remove themselves from South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

It is absolutely important that we have a unified alliance and that we explain to the Russians that you cannot be a 21st-century superpower, or power, and act like a 20th-century dictatorship.

And we also have to affirm all the fledgling democracies in hat region … And to countries like Georgia and the Ukraine, I think we have to insist that they are free to join NATO if they meet the requirements, and they should have a membership action plan immediately to start bringing them in.

Now, we also can’t return to a Cold War posture with respect to Russia. It’s important that we recognize there are going to be some areas of common interest. One is nuclear proliferation.

They have not only 15,000 nuclear warheads, but they’ve got enough to make another 40,000, and some of those loose nukes could fall into the hands of al Qaeda.

So, we can’t get mad at them, ’cause we can’t actually insist they back down . ..

… You deal with Russia based on, what are your — what are the national security interests of the United States of America?

Interesting. So we have to return to a selfish strategy. Anything to do with national debt, an overstretched military, and a failed international reputation…?

And we have to recognize that the way they’ve been behaving lately demands a sharp response from the international community and our allies.

This is nice to say. I think it’s kinda weak, in the face of the international whine-and-shrug performed post-Georgian invasion…

LEHRER: Two minutes on Russia, Senator McCain.

MCCAIN: … I looked into Mr. Putin’s eyes, and I saw three letters, a “K,” a “G,” and a “B.” And their aggression in Georgia is not acceptable behavior.

This line would’ve been more effective, if McCain hadn’t then spent some time chuckling at his own joke . . .

I don’t believe we’re going to go back to the Cold War. I am sure that that will not happen. But I do believe that we need to bolster our friends and allies. And that wasn’t just about a problem between Georgia and Russia. It had everything to do with energy.

… It’s not accidental that the presidents of Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, and Ukraine flew to Georgia, flew to Tbilisi, where I have spent significant amount of time with a great young president, Misha Saakashvili.

<insert massive name-and-place knowledge-dropping here. > Even I was impressed. He does \ know the playing field. He’s been there, and as an adult.Check on experience, check on commanderishness.

…. and I’m tired, so jumping to the very end:

OBAMA: Well, let me just make a closing point. You know, my father came from Kenya. That’s where I get my name.

(yes, we know)… McCain made some age jokes, too. They know their bad-publicity spots . . .

And in the ’60s, he wrote letter after letter to come to college here in the United States because the notion was that there was no other country on Earth where you could make it if you tried. The ideals and the values of the United States inspired the entire world.

I don’t think any of us can say that our standing in the world now, the way children around the world look at the United States, is the same.

And part of what we need to do, what the next president has to do — and this is part of our judgment, this is part of how we’re going to keep America safe — is to — to send a message to the world that we are going to invest in issues like education, we are going to invest in issues that — that relate to how ordinary people are able to live out their dreams.

And that is something that I’m going to be committed to as president of the United States.

MCCAIN: Jim, when I came home from prison, I saw our veterans being very badly treated, and it made me sad. And I embarked on an effort to resolve the POW-MIA issue, which we did in a bipartisan fashion, and then I worked on normalization of relations between our two countries so that our veterans could come all the way home.

I guarantee you, as president of the United States, I know how to heal the wounds of war, I know how to deal with our adversaries, and I know how to deal with our friends.

… No, we really *are* all the same …

From Overheard in New York:

Hobo #1: Stop playing your f***ing drum, I hear it all the way over here.
Hobo #2: I was here first, motherf***er!
Hobo #3: You guys, why can’t you just play together?
Hobo #2: Nah, f**k you man! Stay out of it!
Hobo #3: You should die. You gonna die. Tonight!
Hobo #2: Are you threatening me, man?
Hobo #3 (laughing): Nah, man, I’m just a shoe shiner, but you’re seriously gonna die.

From Great moments in US Foreign Policy:

China: Stop the Capitalism now, I really mean it.
Taiwan: I was into Capitalism before you were a second world country, motherf***er!
US of A: You guys, why can’t you just play together?
China: Nah, f**k you man! Stay out of it!
Taiwan: You should die. You gonna die. Tonight! (China’s gonna kill you, but we appreciate the thought…)
China: Are you threatening me, old man?
US of A: (laughing): Nah, man, I’m just a liberty lover. But seriously. You’re gonna die.

or perhaps…

Russia: Stop playing your f***ing drum, I hear it all the way over here.
Georgia: I’m not playing a drum!
US of A: You guys, why can’t you just play together? …

The Hidden Mind – Reasoning about Iranian/U.S. conflict

“The key of strategy… is not to choose a path to victory,
but to choose so that all paths lead to a victory.”
(Lois McMaster Bujold, The Vor Game)

Re:

U.S. says Iranian boats harassed warships http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22537199/

Was writing about the Iran-US conflict (my last post on this), but realized later that, while I spent time trying to talk about what is going on, I didn’t take much time to talk about why things are happening.

With an event like this, we don’t want to ask who’s telling the truth, or isn’t. We want to ask who would benefit from an encounter like this, and why.

So:

• Does US benefit from the report of this conflict? I say “not enough.” Sure, it does make Iran look that much less stable, but who’s to convince? The West, and the ’stable’ Middle East are already deeply concerned by political and religious trends in Iran. (Saudi Arabia’s reactions are good to watch, here). On the same front, the report makes the US look even more paranoid/jumpy (i.e. insecure). So we didn’t either fake this or instigate it, just because we don’t benefit enough from the report to justify the risk of our machinations being discovered.
• What if it’d gone to actual conflict? Then we stand far too much chance of things working out badly; worst-case scenario, we murder a bunch of drunk teenagers, with lots of photo ops of floating limbs. Second worse, a bunch of speedboats damage one of our warships; we look weak, have to do something about it… no matter what, this kind of conflict works out badly for the US, especially since we can’t sustain another war right now (even if another war was a good idea on any level…)

So my gut feeling here is that this didn’t originate with the U.S. and that it’s not a fake (esp. given the YouTube vid floating around).

So what about the Iranians? Do they benefit? How?

• Say they do succeed in blowing up a warship - the U.S. has a strong history of responding badly to these kinds of events. Whether or not we have the economical ‘bounce,’ we’ll go after the guy who hit us, no matter what. Iran doesn’t want a conflict with the U.S. at the moment; it has Iraq and Afghanistan as good examples of its own fate. Iran will become more confrontational when and if it gains nuclear weapons (shutting off oil sales to the U.S., perhaps?), but it’s not looking for an open fight now.
  • Also, it’s benefiting from the U.S.’s position at the moment; chaos in the region gives Iran more ’space,’ as it were. The U.S. distracted gives it time to build nuclear weapons, to build a nuclear relationship with Russia – yes, this is really, truly, happening. Iran has been funding insurgents and terrorist organizations in Iraq in order to keep us spread thin. (we’ve proven this, but can’t do anything about it).
• In other words, provoking the U.S. to an openly hostile response is not in any way in Iran’s favor right now.
• So what if the goal was to create martyrs? Aside from “then why didn’t they stick around and die?” I don’t know that one could be sure of leaving identifiable remains. Also, again, a directly hostile encounter with the U.S. could go wrong in far too many ways.
• What about making the U.S. be and look (more) paranoid? This one I would buy, except for the fact that this is already very efficiently done via insurgent funding, and at least, in that case, you can’t prove it’s the Iranians. I really do think Iran wants to lay low until it has nuclear capability; it doesn’t make sense to start a conflict. Note President Bush’s response language: he suggests the Iranians “refrain from such provocative actions that could lead to a dangerous incident in the future.” They got one freebie. They might not have.

What about “the terrorists”? Wouldn’t they benefit?

Terrorist groups are being funded through Tehran. They have a haven, of sorts, in the border of a country the world community (read: the West) can’t directly influence. I don’t think any group would jeopardize that stronghold unless they were sure of doing some serious damage.

– it could have been a test run for something else, of course; a real, serious attack. One wonders…

So unless this was just a simple harassment move, (or unless they really were drunk idiots or something similar), I postulate there’s another player in the game, one who’d benefit from a U.S. confrontation with Iran.

Unfortunately, we’ve made too many enemies recently and we have too much competition (military, economic, and strategic) to allow for easy guessing/analysis this way. My parents both said – right off the bat – that Russia’s involved, but I have a hard time buying it. The Russians do produce a huge amount of oil, so they might not be as devastated by Iran’s collapse as the U.S. … but still, Russia, with Putin at the helm, has made a number of strides toward becoming an economic rather than a military giant. There also seems to be a certain amount of wary respect between the USSR and the USA; two duelists wary of returning to the field. The USSR also wants to prevent a nuclear holocaust, just as we do.

I wonder if they’d provoke us into overtaking Iran now, to prevent an eventual nuclear war…? They have been pulling the bait-and-switch on Iran on actually handing over the power plant supplies …

Russia’s been funding Tehran’s nuclear power interests; helping with power plants, etc. I don’t believe they have much to gain from a devastated Iranian economy, either. Nor do they want to go for round II with the United States. (Not yet?)

So now I’m looking for a player that’s not heavily invested in Iran, that doesn’t want to see Tehran gain nuclear capability and/or that would greatly benefit by watching the U.S. utterly bankrupt itself via one more invasion (i.e., not an Iranian ally);

The Chinese come to mind (although I don’t know much about their investment in Iran). Saudi Arabia? This doesn’t seem India’s style, and they’ve got major famine issues coming up, even as the middle class rises like a meteor. I’d say they’re too busy, and too dependent on a stable U.S., to be playing this kind of game. It’s not Brazil’s arena, either, and the E.U. (we’d all like to think) is largely past these kinds of games.

So here’s a random thought: the U.S. crushing Iran would be bad for Iran - but it’d be good for anyone wanting to unite the Middle East in some kind of Islamic Jihad. Iran’s an Islamic spiritual center, I believe. It’s basically a theocracy masquerading as a democracy (remember this slide?: Iranian Power Structure). The kind of leader or group that’d benefit from an Islamic Jihad also benefits from the U.S. looking bad, from Iran looking bad, from tensions rising, from martyrs created.

For that invisible player, there was no outcome for that little standoff that wouldn’t be beneficial. This is the invisible player for whom all paths lead to victory.

Now all we need is a name.

The Iran-U.S. War, incoming

U.S. says Iranian boats harassed warships
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22537199/

WASHINGTON – Iranian boats harassed and provoked three American Navy ships in the strategic Strait of Hormuz, threatening to blow up the vessels, U.S. officials said Monday.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry said Monday the confrontation was “something normal” and was resolved, suggesting the Iranian boats had not recognized the U.S. vessels. National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said the Bush administration urges Iranians “to refrain from such provocative actions that could lead to a dangerous incident in the future.”

When considering a news source w/two sides like this, I try to put it through a thought-grid of sorts:

• Both sides are telling the truth
• Neither is
• Only one side is
• There’s something bigger going on

So: Iran is telling the truth, and they just can’t recognize U.S. warships. … which always carry flags, as i remember …? So they’re idiots (unlikely), or they’re trying to provoke something (implied by the U.S. statement), or they never existed.

I think that’s slightly unlikely, if only because faking something of this magnitude would have someone up in flames.

So perhaps the Iranians were just harassing the U.S. to make a point, that it’s their space.. and the U.S. took the moment to make a point; we’ve got muscles, and we’re not afraid to use ‘em.

We have to read intentionality, too; what does ‘threatening’ mean in this context? (that’s what US soldiers said of villagers during the Vietnam War, too, and sometimes the villagers had guns, and sometimes they had fishing poles …)

This is the bit that really worries me: “The Bush administration urges Iranians “to refrain from such provocative actions that could lead to a dangerous incident in the future…”

That’s a pretty damn clear signal, if you ask me. — “don’t make me come back there…”

So i suspect there was an incident; the Iraqis trying to make a point (bad idea, badly carried out), the U.S. using the incident to make their own on the international stage (“don’t mess with Texas,” heh).

But what’s the bigger picture here? The U.S. sees Iran as dangerous, by virtue of its Muslim government (Achmadinijad is only nominally head of state; he was elected and is effectively controlled by a set of mullahs… well, here, check this out:

Note that the president (Achmadinijad, who made all the noise at Columbia University during the UN meetings in NYC) is not the supreme ruler. The supreme ruler and armed forces hold a great deal of power and they’re nominally elected from .. well, aside from some citizen input to the “Assembly of Experts” (not ‘balanced’ elections in US terms), the overriding power-granting force in Iran rides with spiritual and military leaders.

Achmadinijad is basically a puppet wielded by the magician that is the larger government of Iran. He exists to distract the viewer while the magician performs the impossible.

This all makes the U.S. nervous. Meanwhile Iran, looking at a growing power vacuum in the Middle East, seeing schisms between even the U.S. and old allies (Saudi Arabia, etc) – feels it can move quickly in the gap to gain nuclear weapons – and, therefore, bargaining power.

Also it feels untouchable, perhaps? This might explain the nonsense.

We could also postulate it’s got an ace up its sleeve, and is hoping to provoke the U.S. into war.

We could argue this all serves a greater purpose; the U.S. cannot extend into another war/occupation. Cold hard numbers and the collective American will says no; a refusal to respond to a blatant act of terrorism would give the signal to the rest of the world that the U.S. was in retreat – we’d lose face – while another major military commitment, along with the inevitable concomitant loss of prestige and goodwill in the world community – that’d be disastrous for us as well.

So what I want to know is, what’s going on here, why, and how? I don’t for one minute believe, as Iran says, that it was all just a case of mistaken identity.

Torture and objectivity

This is from the FBI’s website, witness accounts of detainees being tortured.

Guantanamo Bay Inquiry

A survey of 493 FBI personnel who were asked whether they observed aggressive mistreatment, interrogations or interview techniques of GTMO yielded 26 positive responses and several additional responses that were “not purely negative.”

Here’s one of the ‘positive’ ones:

W(itness) observed women crying near the river, their homes had been destroyed by planes. Trucks full of people trying to surrender were blown up by planes. On 2d day after capture, d(etainee) was put in a ditch by Northern Alliance people. Next day, he was allowed to jump into a truck and taken to Mazar-e-Sharif where he was forced into a metal “shipping”-type container w/about 100 men. The container was then closed and d blacked out due to lack of air. When he awoke, there were new holes in the container., The man next to him was dead. He thinks he was in the container 24 hours – only 20 men survived. When it opened he was at Sabergaan jail. The dead were put into a hole and buried, he heard that those too weak to get out of the container were as well. US soldiers arrived about a month later

I repeat: this is from the FBI’s website. It’s been released under the Freedom of Information Act. Here’s another:

on several occasions, witness (“W”) saw detainees (“ds”) in interrogation rooms chained hand and foot in fetal position to floor w/no chair/ food/water; most urinated or defecated on selves, and were left there 18, 24 hrs or more. Once, the air conditioning was so low that the barefoot d was shaking with cold. Another time, it was off so the unventilated room was over 100 degrees, d was almost unconscious on floor with a pile of hair next to him (he had apparently been pulling it out throughout the night). Another time, it was sweltering hot and loud rap music played – d’s hand and foot was chanined and he was in a fetal position on the floor. Upon inquiry, W was told that interrogators [military contractors] ordered this treatment. Took place in Delta Camp.

So those accounts have been told to the FBI and are under investigation; I can imagine one or two people giving a false account to the FBI for the shock value of it, but not 30+ military personnel, many/most of whom would certainly lose their careers – and possibly freedom – if it turns out they’re lying.

If you want to be (more) shocked, and along the same lines, read this article, posted on Salon, a San Francisc-based news source about which I know nothing whatsoever, except that they carry interesting articles. This one is (purportedly) by a Yemeni man who was held and tortured by the US for two years.

All of this, naturally, brings me to political philosophy.

The hardest thing to attain in life is objectivity; to see yourself, others, the world itself, without bias. This is as true for nations (and states) as it is for people. Perhaps objectivity is an impossible goal – but I’ve spent enough time outside of the U.S. now to say that the view from the outside frightens me

• Allegations of institutionalized, government-sanctioned torture all over the world.
• Unnumbered and hugely destructive nuclear weapons – more than most of the rest of the worlds’ combined – in the hands of an incredibly flexible, lethal army/navy/air force, with trigger-happy generals and Presidents at the helm.
• An intelligence community so advanced it can spy on its own citizens without disturbing either their consciences or daily lives.
• Surly airline security that repels and humiliates instead of inviting.
  (see this Salon article – an entertaining read, at least! – or my own thoughts on airline security/hysteria here).
• A ‘closed’ border so porous we’re enacting punitive immigration laws.
• Most US citizens – by far – don’t even have a passport. Those who do, likely have never been anywhere other then Canada or Mexico.
• Most don’t speak a second language, but if they do, it’s most likely to be Spanish, and they speak it at home.
• The highest murder rate – by far – among other industrial and first world nations, and one of the worst school age reading and math skill sets among that same group.
• Capable of holding an international grudge – and the world’s longest-running embargo (against Cuba) – for over 40 years.
• An upper class whose top 1%’s increase in income from 2003-5 was more than the total income of the poorest 20% – most of whom are black or Hispanic.

The increase in incomes of the top 1 percent of Americans from 2003 to 2005 exceeded the total income of the poorest 20 percent of Americans, data in a new report by the Congressional Budget Office shows.
The poorest fifth of households had total income of $383.4 billion in 2005, while just the increase in income for the top 1 percent came to $524.8 billion, a figure 37 percent higher.

“Report Says That the Rich Are Getting Richer Faster, Much Faster,”
NYT 12/17/2007

… shall I go on?

I’m not denigrating the United States here, merely pointing out that the view from the outside is quite different from that on the in. Every story has another side. The United States, like India, is a nation state where any statement you make about it will be both true and false.

Can we fix this? I don’t know. We’ve been running on massive deficits since WWII, and on a wartime economy since WWI. We are a nation of spenders – up to and far beyond our means. We eat, we drink, we enjoy life at home – and, hemmed in by oceans on either side, and by neighbors who have no reason for aggression – we feel (mostly) safe.

Most Estadonidenses (am I spelling that right, M?) are like people anywhere; they (we?, heh) simply want to have a home and community, to find a partner, raise our children safely, eat good food, enjoy life.

Somewhere along the way, I think we’ve gotten lost; we’ve forgotten that no one can have it all, no country, no person, no government.

• We cannot be the masters of war, the world’s arms dealer, the military innovators and be loved and respected as a peaceful, peace-making, mature nation.
• We cannot act like “ugly Americans” while in Paris, and expect to be welcomed with open arms at the European summit.
• We cannot refuse to deal with China – or, for that matter, with the rational Middle East – on realistic and equal terms and expect to be able to control the outcome of all action in the region.
• We cannot refuse to buy oil in Africa – on whatever grounds, be they morally correct or not – and then expect to have African oil when our Middle East wells run dry.
• We cannot torture criminals – of any stripe – and be regarded as purveyors of justice.
• We cannot ignore history if we wish to survive the present.

That is the bottom line, I suppose. When we say one thing and do another, we must eventually explain ourselves.
So how do we fix it?

I expect that eventually, we’ll have to face a choice – as the USSR did, just before the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1989. To let the outside states go, and sacrifice the heart, or to keep the heart of the nation, but let the empire crumble to pieces? In 1989, Gorbachev let the satellite states go, and, unable to fund both guns and plowshares, turned to inward economic development. Today, under Putin, Russia is emerging, a lean, confident Phoenix, triumphant from the ashes of her past.

Could we do the same? Could we let the empire go, withdraw from our bases, allow the rest of the world to muddle about as it did before we came on the scene? Could we take 50 years to revitalize our economy? Could we reinvent, reformat, reenergize, re-Constitutionalize (sorry) ourselves?

Do We, The People, have it in us any more?

Have we become too .. soft, too sedentary to take on the task of first, seeing ourselves, and second, affecting change in our own lives and backyards?

I’m no political analyst, and I don’t know shit about economics, but I do know we’re overextended in every way imaginable. If we don’t pull back soon, well .. something’s got to give.

Thinking: Action and reaction

When we distort our language, we may distort our thinking, and we hamper our efforts to find solutions to the grave problems we face…

George Shultz
Terrorism and the Modern World
October 25,1984

United States Department of State
Bureau of Public Affairs
Washington, D.C.

This is a fascinating speech on terrorism (and the modern world), given by Secretary of State George Schultz in 1984. If you have the time and you’re (honestly) interested in terrorism, I recommend reading it. It’s only six pages, and you’ll be amazed; aside from a few extra USSR references, it might as well have been written last week. Check out these quotes:

We are attacked not because of some mistake we are making but because of who we are and what we believe in. We must not abandon our principles, or our role in the world, or our responsibilities as the champion of freedom and peace.

But part of our problem here in the United States has been our seeming inability to understand terrorism clearly. Each successive terrorist incident has brought too much self-condemnation and dismay, accompanied by calls for a change in our policies or our principles or calls for withdrawal and retreat. We should be alarmed. We should be outraged. We should investigate and strive to improve. But widespread public anguish and self-condemnation only convince the terrorists that they are on the right track. It only encourages them to commit more acts of barbarism in the hope that American resolve will weaken.

Clearly the democracies have a moral right, indeed a duty, to defend themselves.

The grievances that terrorists supposedly seek to redress through acts of violence may or may not be legitimate. The terrorist acts themselves, however, can never be legitimate. And legitimate causes can never justify or excuse terrorism. Terrorist means discredit their ends.

We now recognize that terrorism is being used by our adversaries as a modern tool of warfare. It is no aberration. We can expect more terrorism directed at our strategic interests around the world in the years ahead. To combat it, we must be willing to use military force.

This is a particular danger in the period before our election. If our reaction to terrorist acts is to turn on ourselves instead of against the perpetrators, we give them redoubled incentive to do it again and to try to influence our political processes.

What the public must know first (very end of the article)

• The public must understand before the fact that there is potential for loss of life of some of our fighting men and the loss of life of some innocent people.
• The public must understand before the fact that some will seek to cast any preemptive or retaliatory action by us in the worst light and will attempt to make our military and our policymakers – rather than the terrorists – appear to be the culprits.
• The public must understand before the fact that occasions will come when their government must act before each and every fact is known – and the decisions cannot be tied to the opinion polls.

Public support for U.S. military actions to stop terrorists before the commit some hideous act or in retaliation for an attack on our people is crucial if we are to deal with this challenge…

So I don’t know about you, but it looks to me as though whatever plan of action we have and/or are using isn’t working; we’re dealing with the same issues, in the same way, 20 years later.

So then I go to the historic New York Times (via Proquest on a university site) and pull this quote:

“Terrorism is adopted as the arm of the weak against the strong, deliberately chosen to goad and madden the bull so that he acts to weaken himself. The most effective retaliation is not sheer force but a resourceful strike at the terrorists’ own points of vulnerability, their need for secrecy and anonymity… terrorism isn’t a clear, identifiable enemy that can be overwhelmed by military means. It’s a technique, and it takes astute technique to counter it.”

From “The Technique of Terror,”
Flora Lewis, New York Times, December 28, 1984

I don’t know if secrecy and anonymity are the concerns of terrorists in 2007, but the point still stands; we’re pitting our weaknesses (our open societies, our need for complete information, action via the will of the people) against their strengths. We should be doing the reverse …

General Abizaid

I was talking with Madiha and Ben after dinner yesterday evening, and have some thoughts on communications/conflict/sustainable development/technology for you, but first, about the dinner and today’s talk:

We ate with General Abizaid (no, really, I’m serious) and then spent some time talking about the Middle East, U.S. actions in the region, etc. Abizaid was quieter than I expected – someone I wouldn’t at first have taken for 4-star general. He was quietly impressive; the more time we spent talking, the more obvious the depth of his thought process. He wasn’t trying to prove himself, as so many academics do when you speak to them (part of the reason I’m thinking of stepping outside the academic system for a while), and he wasn’t interested in fluff. He was genuine, obviously used to leading people, handled all of us really well. Remembered our names. Looked each person in the eye. Made a few jokes to set us at ease.

And then, after introductions – and after all of us finished our Thai food, with chopsticks – he gave us a bit of a talk. Said there are four specific movements in the middle east that bear watching right now:

1. Sunni fundamentalism
   • This is what we’ve seen so far with Al-Qaeda etc.
2. The rise of Shi’a Extremism
   • We’re especially concerned that extremism not take hold in any government – right now, it’s contained to the fringes of society, but if it were to take hold (especially in a country like Pakistan, which has nukes), the balance of power/ideology could shift dramatically, and very much not in our direction
3. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict
   • Is providing a rallying point for terrorists, and is a long-term conflict sitting in the backyard of the Arab states. Helping with the peace process here will demonstrate our own good intentions and might significantly decrease tension in the region.
4. Instability and a possible move toward extremism in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia

In the talk today (today is Wednesday), he put #4 in with #2, and his #4 was the U.S. need to wean ourselves from our dependence on Middle Eastern oil.

He had quite a bit to say, but mostly he talked about these four points. A few other notes I found interesting:

• He said our involvement in the Middle East right now is 80% military and 20% other (say, anthropology, cultural understanding, education, etc etc) – we need to reverse that percentage
• He said that no one can ‘control’ the Middle East (“5000 years of history…”) but that we can help the people there achieve stability.
• Said that Al-Qaeda didn’t (necessarily) want to take over Iraq – the idea is to keep it in chaos so that insurgent and terrorist groups will have a “haven”
  • (to me this sounds very much like Iran’s interests in the region…)
• And so on and so forth.

In any case, it was really interesting to meet someone of his stature and experience. I wanted more time to talk with him, to figure out where he was coming from, but it wasn’t to be.

A few other interesting things: the dean was only choosing older people to ask questions — i think to keep the questions balanced and not too loaded, although there weren’t that many students raising their hands. Also, I noticed that sometimes he would reframe the questions in a way that meant they were similar to the original question asked, but not identical…

Alright, enough of this post (i’ve been typing a sentence here and there for a couple days, and now it’s Thursday… on to the next thing)

Guns

…. what would happen if the US stopped selling arms, except, say, to countries that are first-world long-time allies? I mean, aside from the gun lobbies going nuts, and a “rearrangement of resources” …

I suppose at this point China would pick up the slack, but it seems that – at least at some point – we might have made a lot of difference by simply refusing to arm anyone but ourselves.

It is ironic that we spend so much time fighting people armed with weapons we sold or gave them.

… also, i predict that in ten years or so, we’ll be fighting whatever the current Iraqi peace forces (the U.S.-created police etc) become …

These musings courtesy of the International Herald Tribune:

U.S. leads arms sales to developing countries
WASHINGTON: The United States maintained its role as the leading supplier of weapons to the developing world in 2006, followed by Russia and Britain, according to a Congressional study. Pakistan, India and Saudi Arabia were the top buyers.

The global weapons market is highly competitive, with manufacturing countries seeking both to increase profits and to expand political influence through weapons sales to developing nations that reached nearly $28.8 billion in 2006.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/09/30/america/arms.php

shadowplay

Doing research on modern terrorism (under Soviet war in Afghanistan), I came across this photo in Wikipedia:

Soviet soldier in Afghanistan, 1988. Photo by Mikhail Evstafiev

Found myself thinking about light and shadow, about all the contrasts inherent in war. Soldiers giving peace signs to small children. A baby-faced 19-year-old screaming for his mother and trying to hold one arm on with the other. Silence before a mine explodes or a bomb strikes. Smiles on politicians’ faces as they proclaim victories we may never achieve.

A thousand shades of gray:

The study of policy is confusing, enlightening, embittering. Sometimes I get so far above the fray, into the theory, that I have a hard time coming back down to earth. There are so many ways to look at everything, it’s easy to get lost in ideology, or in points of view – as much value as each has, the older I get, the more I feel you have to see all the angles before you have any idea what something looks like …

The Vietnam War, for example:

• A “proxy” war - a way for the great powers/ideologies (USSR/Communism vs. US/Democracy)
• A rebellion/freedom struggle – the Vietnamese had been struggling to repel foreign invaders since the late 1800’s – the French, the Japanese, then us Estadonidenses…
• A massive terrorist action -I’m not saying this in an incendiary way, just as a way to look at it. Here’s a definition of modern terrorism:
  • “Terrorism is the capricious and illegal application of politically-motivated force or violence by a clandestine individual, small groups or cells claiming to represent larger bodies or communities, independent of the accepted conventions of the rule of law and international conflict.” (It’s from an article on the birth of modern terrorism, but I left the essay at work; I’ll drop the title in here on MondaySo “Terrorism” comes from the French, from the governmental massacre of dissidents, called “terrorisme.” (Now that I think of it, you might liken that ‘terrorisme’ to the killings by the Argentine Junta in the 70’s and 80’s … In any case, before modern terrorism, there was state terrorism, which basically involved killing a lot of innocents to frighten or intimidate the guilty (or the dissenters) and/or to get the citizenry to rise up against the guilty (as denoted by the state) in order to make the killings stop. This, of course, generally works best when the government is considered so strong as to seem unstoppable …) So: politically-motivated violence against the citizenry; that might fit the definition, eh?
• A ‘just’ war - this one’s easy. All U.S. wars are ‘just’ wars, wars considered ‘justified’ by the general public when initiated. In Afghanistan, we were chasing terrorists. In Iraq, WMD’s.
  • Please to note that this is not a normative statement. Term usage, not judgement made.
• A war to maintain U.S. internal stability – I don’t know enough about the Vietnam war to say for sure, but one could easily argue that this war, the Iraq war, came to exist, initially, due to a combination of factors including one president’s wish to remain in office, a U.S. economy that is largely a war economy (we need an excuse to power through on economic stupidity as we do)… anyone know it was the same w/the Vietnam War?

… and now i’m into the present …

• To give the army practice/To flex our muscles for the rest of the world/to say, “don’t step on me”/to gain a foothold in the Middle East
• To boost our national self-esteem/see if anyone wants to knock the chip off our shoulder …
• To divide the world into ‘us’ and ‘them’…/to show how bad ‘they’ were/to defeat evil in our time
  
• A war for religious freedom
• A war over resources
• A war to maintain control
  
• A war against religious intolerance
• A clash of ideologies/cultures/languages/traditions
• YourPointOfViewHere

Annnnd the bad guys and the good guys switch sides, depending on your starting point, your angle of view.

Shadowboxing.

To be or Not To Be (human); Iraq War Taxation, Networking Detriments

(to skip to the “point” of this article, drop down to the paragraph beginning “I’m not so far afield as I appear…”)

If you read the end of my October 5th post titled “Networking, On-Demand Software, Disaster Scenarios,” you know I’m concerned about our increasing dependence on infrastructure/technology networking. I also have reservations about our dependence on technology in general (“Your Cyborg Future is Here“).

It may then come as a surprise to you that I really liked Thomas L. Friedman’s** op-ed in the NYT today (“Charge it to my Kids,” October 7, 2007).

A brief overview: The Republicans are ragging the Dems, who want to increase taxes to pay for the war (this will, of course, only bolster public condemnation of our Middle East “involvement,” which is bad for the Reps). Friedman, sarcastically, replies:

Of course, we can pay for the Iraq war without a tax increase. The question is, can we pay for it and be making the investments in infrastructure, science and education needed to propel our country into the 21st century? Visit Singapore, Japan, Korea, China or parts of Europe today and you’ll discover that the infrastructure in our country is not keeping pace with our peers’.

We can pay for anything today if we want to stop investing in tomorrow… (emphasis mine)

That last part is important; we can’t have it all any more. Either we can have an advanced infrastructure, or we can have more fighter jets. We can provide social security benefits or we can revamp our transportation network … I’m honestly not sure what the economies of scale are here – i.e. what types of either/or comparisons are valid – but I do know the great steam engine of the U.S. economy is slowing down, or perhaps we’re running out of track. The landscape is coming clear, that green blur outside the window turned to grass, weeds, the fallen blocks of bridges and hiss of 50 year old phone lines. We’re getting passed by passenger cars, ladies and gentlemen, and most of them have Asian license plates.

On one hand, I’m not a huge fan of complete technology dependence; I’m not comfortable with the idea of individual humans living like spiders at the nexuses of a technology web. (the OED says “nexus” is the more common plural, but I prefer archaisms…) At some point the question will be whether it is us running the technology, or us serving as foci in/of/for a vast dataweb.

Perhaps the next step in human evolution is brains in cans (Alastair Reynolds’ Redemption Ark etc), or maybe, as in William Gibson’s Neuromancer, the physical world will merely be one’s ticket into a better, higher plane of existence; the loss of one’s ability to function on that plane, a hell;

The damage was minute, subtle, and utterly effective. For Case, who’d lived for the bodiless exultation of cyber-pace, it was the Fall. In the bars he’d frequented as a cowboy hotshot, the elite stance involved a certain relaxed contempt for the flesh. The body was meat. Case fell into the prison of his own flesh. (Neuromancer, Ch. 1)

I feel that sensuality – touch, sensation, pleasure, even pain – are all very much a part of what it means to be human. Don’t want us to lose touch of that. What have we become when flesh itself is a prison?

We humans have a way of turning everything into an art form – like a Dan Simmons character says, satirically, in in Hyperion, “even elimination must become pure poetry” – but this may not always work to our benefit. Art is a way of dramatizing experience; of pushing experience into overdrive. Like most media, it’s to help us appreciate the everyday, not an end in and of itself. Technology, I think, should work the same way.

Technological networking – yes, I know, I’m aware, this is an online blog after all! – has so many benefits; it’s just important imo to remember there are negatives, as well, and that we often don’t have good predictive methodology for large-scale consequences…

I’m not so far afield as I may appear; here’s the question: Do we really want to revamp our infrastructure just yet? We have so many social problems, one could easily and effectively argue they need to be solved first before we move on to things like replacing telephone networks and data cables. Maybe we should work on the physical network (bridges, roads, subways) before the technological, the mental, the elite.

It might do us some good, after all, to be a little behind, to have to play catchup, to be forced to take the time to stop, smell the roses, whatever it is - because we don’t have the ability to do otherwise. We have the world’s biggest nuclear arsenal, after all, thousands of miles of ocean and a damn good army to protect us. We might gain immeasurably from holding ourselves back, just a little.

This is where the logic takes me: Perhaps we should therefore support the war in Iraq without promoting a tax increase, because we wish to leave ourseves even farther behind in the networking race. (Perhaps we’re doing this already, unintentionally…?)

Bottom line: what’s more important – winning a war, or creating a peace, being technologically advanced, or being more fully ourselves - whatever that means?

**Thomas L. Friedman (author “The World is Flat” and “The Lexus and the Olive Tree”) writes an interesting column for the NYT. I don’t always agree with him, but do visit it here: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/07/opinion/07friedman.html