The Republic of Dissent

Politically correct approach to counter-terror

Foreseeable crap from Eugene Kontorovich:

Russia only succeeded in suprresing the Chechen Islamists with extremely brutal tactics that would never find support in the U.S – essentially leveling the Chechen capital. Yet dealing with such a threat would also be impossible with a politically correct approach to counter-terror that, for example, turns away from talking frankly about the terrorists profiles and motives.

Yeah let's transform America into Russia, it won't be too difficult for Obama has at least one thing in common with Putin.

Is it possible to wait to now more facts before advocating ideological measures in the name of security?

Extensive, perpetual, and cheap wars

I agree with David Cole's comment on the now infamous US Justice Department's Drone White paper :

Drone technology has made it possible to use lethal force in many situations where we could not or would not have even considered it in the past. Unlike conventional military operations, drone attacks require no “boots on the ground,” and therefore do not pose a risk to American lives. Unlike bombings, they have pinpoint accuracy; they therefore reduce the collateral costs of killing and may be easier to disavow. Because drones can effectively travel the world while being controlled remotely from home, they permit the “war” to move far beyond the battlefield. And drones have made it possible for the US government to do something that was unthinkable before, and should be unthinkable still—to kill its own citizens in secret. In short, drones radically reduce the disincentives to killing. And that may well make a nation prone to use military force before it is truly a last resort. That certainly seems to be what has happened here.

Kenneth Anderson has a interesting take on the subject.

 

Rien ne change

Obviously, I agree with Glenn Greenwald on this:

t is a perfect illustration of the Obama legacy that a person who was untouchable as CIA chief in 2008 because of his support for Bush's most radical policies is not only Obama's choice for the same position now, but will encounter very little resistance. Within this change one finds one of the most significant aspects of the Obama presidency: his conversion of what were once highly contentious right-wing policies into harmonious dogma of the DC bipartisan consensus.

Quelle surprise!

Moral distance

I agree with professor Bainbridge on this:

After all, the moral distance between Bush and Obama has gotten quite narrow.

Sweet justice

The sentence du jour from Glenn Greenwald on the Petraeus affair:

(...) there is some sweet justice in having the stars of America's national security state destroyed by the very surveillance system which they implemented and over which they preside.

I still believe that it is way too creepy how much the state can know private lives.

It's still Bush's world

Best comment on last night's debate from Gregor Peter Schmitz over at Spiegel:

Romney and Obama exchanged carefully prepared platitudes as though they were trapped in a world order created for them by White House predecessor George W. Bush.(...) Indeed, it appears as though Stevens' death in election year 2012 has been enough to overshadow the killing of Osama bin Laden and several other top terrorists from al-Qaida and other networks. It has been enough to keep America fixated on the war on terror and preoccupied with the Middle East.

The paradox of this fixation shown by both candidates is that neither Obama nor Romney have shown a real interest in the Muslim world. Despite overtures early in his term, the president did little thereafter to ensure that progress was made. The only regional issue that appears to be high on his priority list is Iran's nuclear program. Romney's plan for the region appears to consist almost entirely of unconditional support for Israel. Both candidates want to continue using drones unhindered.

There is so much cause for concern and the scariest thing is the paralysis of the American media.

Protracted wars

From Glenn Greenwald:

One of the primary reasons war - especially protracted war - is so destructive is not merely that it kills the populations at whom it is aimed, but it also radically degrades the character of the citizenry that wages it. That's what enables one of America's most celebrated pundits to go on the most mainstream of TV programs and coldly justify the killing of 4-year-olds, without so much as batting an eyelash or even paying lip service to the heinous tragedy of that, and have it be barely noticed. Joe Klein is the face not only of the Obama legacy, but also mainstream US political culture.

I'm not sure this is just an American 'thing' for it has to do with power and the  complacency that comes with a sense of entitlement.

Drones and the final debate

I agree totally with Tony Junod on this:

We have been told, many times, that each killing carried out by the administration is accompanied by vigorous and even agonized debate about its legality, advisability, efficacy, and morality. That debate, however has remained staunchly internal — has remained secret — and it has become clear that the only way to find out what our two presidential candidates think about the implications of the Lethal Presidency is to ask them, tonight, at the debate in Florida. President Obama has limited his comments to all but the most self-serving circumstance, and Governor Romney has spoken only through inference and through the often confounding comments of his foreign-policy surrogates. Bob Schieffer should know that if he does not ask a question about targeted killing tonight, he is — we are — unlikely to get another chance.

Unfortunately,the main concern of most journalists and of most Americans is to protect America by whichever means necessary. Thus, until Americans feel secure, they are going to be willing to let the president do whatever it takes to keep them safe even if they sense that the means used are wrong and will mean apologizing and regretting them in the future. 

A troubled marriage

From Jonathan Turley (hat tip: Matt Welch):

The very right that laid the foundation for Western civilization is increasingly viewed as a nuisance, if not a threat. Whether speech is deemed imflammatory or hateful or discriminatory or simply false, society is denying speech rights in the name of tolerance, enforcing mutual respect through categorical censorship.

As in a troubled marriage, the West seems to be falling out of love with free speech. Unable to divorce ourselves from this defining right, we take refuge instead in an awkward and forced silence.

One caveat,  free speech isn't a western right or value. That said, I think the problem is that free speech has just become expensive for citizens who value security and comfort over pretty much everything else. It is for that reason that a knowledge citizenry is key to a liberal democracy to realize that there are certain things that can never be too costly!

The American surveillance state

From Glenn Greenwald:

(...) the fact that the US government keeps files on people who have never been charged with any crimes, let alone convicted of them, and then deems some of them to have "derogatory national-security records" is creepy indeed. Governments should not be surveilling and storing massive amounts of information about law-abiding citizens, and in free countries, by definition, they do not. But that is exactly what a surveillance state entails.

I would love to see a debate between Glenn Greenwald and Paul Krugman because the more I read them, the more I wonder what is the point of Obama's presidency? The answer to that question can't just be the other side is evil especially when the 'good guys' are doing  abominable things!

American justice and national security

Question of the day from Glenn Greenwald:

Would you have any confidence in obtaining justice if you were accused of harming U.S. national security and came into the clutches of the American justice system?

The appearance of toughness

Former National Intelligence director Dennis Blair on the use of drones by the Obama administration:

It is the politically advantageous thing to do--low cost, no U.S. casualties, gives the appearance of toughness. It plays well domestically and it is unpopular only in other countries. Any damage it does to the national interest only shows up over the long term.

 Boy did Obama punk the Norwegian Committee which gave him the Novel Peace Prize believing that he would be a worldly American president because he asserted that he was a citizen of the world!

Le salaire de la peur

I agree with Frank Furedi on this although I would phrase the same point differently and for in my opinion there isn't such a thing as 'Western culture':

In fact, the way that society responds to acts of individual terror represents a far greater threat than the destruction caused by the lone wolf himself. The inflation of the threat empowers the lone wolf, who may conclude that relatively modest acts of terrorism are likely to achieve a disproportionate impact. The best example of this was the Washington sniper in the summer of 2002, who literally managed to terrorise the capital city of the most powerful nation on Earth for some considerable time. Constant live television coverage and political discussion of the shootings unconsciously fuelled a palpable sense of fear and anxiety, and served as an invitation to be terrorised - they empowered the shooter, making him into a mighty threat to the capital of the United States.

From time to time – fortunately very rarely – the lone wolf succeeds in causing great physical damage. But it is not the scale of this damage that endows the lone wolf with such significance. They are not simply a physical but also a cultural threat. They serve as symbols of a society that is not quite at ease with itself, one that feels culturally fragmented and atomised. In the end the lone wolf works as a metaphor, with the emphasis on the sensibility of being isolated and alone. The image of a socially disconnected young man sitting in front of a screen, lost in the world of online confusion, is one with which society is all too familiar. Disconnected from us but not immune to the virus of radicalisation, they become people whose behaviour can easily become unrestrained and uncontained by social norms. That is the threat they pose. It is the insecurity that surrounds Western culture that has encouraged officialdom’s dangerous dramatisation of the lone wolf.

Seriousness, facts and terror plots

Glenn Greenwald on the 'Iranian terrorist plot" to kill the Saudi Ambassador to the US:

[...] why would Iran possibly wake up one day and decide that it wanted to engage in a Terrorist attack on U.S. soil when it could much more easily kill Saudi officials elsewhere? and if Iran and its Quds forces are really behind this inept, hapless, laughable plot, then nothing negates the claim that Iran is some Grave Threat like this does [...]

I, for one, am waiting for something more conclusive and convincing than assertions by Holder and co. about what the facts show for I have learned in the Bush and the Obama years not to take claims about terrorism and national security threats at face value for they have become too influenced by ideology and politics.

Skepticism is required for it cools down things to make the issue facts rather than fears and beliefs.  In short, I'm waiting for the Obama to show me the money instead of trying to scare me by appealing to my conviction that Iran is a country with a dangerous government!

On American democracy

Sugary excerpt from David Cole on this Columbus Day

As American citizens we have a right to know when our own government believes it may execute us without a trial. In a democracy the state’s power to take the lives of its own citizens must be subject to democratic deliberation and debate. War of course necessarily involves killing, but it is essential that at a minimum, the lines defining the state’s power to kill its own are clearly stated, and public—particularly when the definition of the enemy and the lines demarcating war and peace are as murky as they are in the current conflict. Leaked accounts to The New York Times are no substitute for legal or democratic process. As long as the Obama administration insists on the power to kill the people it was elected to represent—and to do so in secret, on the basis of secret legal memos—can we really claim that we live in a democracy?

The issue is that the Obama administration is solely focused on protecting Americans by any means necessary for it knows that what would be said if another terrorist attack happens on American soil. It is sad to say but the fact that Obama is a democrat and has been made into an exotic creature by the media, his own supporters and himself condemns him to be dumbly Cheneyan when it comes to national security.

Obama is too good of a politician not to realize that the minute after America is hit on his watch, he will become the other and that notion would become threatening and frightening even to liberals who love to embrace the illusory exoticism of apparent difference.

The genius of America's political culture and the means

Glenn Greenwald on the death of the American Born Al Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlaki by American drones (Kenneth Anderson must feel that he is winning the argument on the necessity and effectiveness of drones):

Many will celebrate the strong, decisive, Tough President's ability to eradicate the life of Anwar al-Awlaki -- including many who just so righteously condemned those Republican audience members as so terribly barbaric and crass for cheering Governor Perry's execution of scores of serial murderers and rapists -- criminals who were at least given a trial and appeals and the other trappings of due process before being killed. 

From an authoritarian perspective, that's the genius of America's political culture.  It not only finds way to obliterate the most basic individual liberties designed to safeguard citizens from consummate abuses of power (such as extinguishing the lives of citizens without due process).  It actually gets its citizens to stand up and clap and even celebrate the destruction of those safeguards.

I'm going to munch on Greenwald's words, but it is pretty clear that in the so-called war on terror (I have to come to hate that term because it implies that war is the only way to fight terrorism), the end justifies the means and as a long time Camusian that fact bothers me.

The corruption of the American character

 

 

Interesting conversation as always between John McWhorter and  Glenn Loury. I just have one question or rather two. What is American character?  Does it exist?

I might be trying to suggest with these questions that there isn't such an American identity, that Americans are what they do and that America is an ideal, a noble idea that alas cannot remain good in itself because of Americans aren't always able to live up  to it.

Horror is horror

Sugary excerpt of the day from Glenn Greenwald:

Yes, the 9/11 attack was an atrocious act of slaughter; so were many of the violent, horrendous crimes which executed convicts unquestionably (sometimes by their own confession) committed.  In all cases, performing giddy dances over state-produced corpses is odious and wrong.

Justification

No need for commentary after reading this:

Though the targeted killing of Osama bin Laden by American special forces strikes those of us to the right of Noam Chomsky as an act of retributive justice, our collective certainty of his guilt and our longing to balance the moral scales cannot justifty the sovereignty-defying military raid and seeming execution ordered by Barack Obama. If the aim had been to try and punish Mr bin Laden for his enormities, it would have been imperative at least to attempt to take him alive. However, despite conflicting reports, the official position seems to be that capture was not on the agenda; death was the the order of the day. The justification for the killing must be that Mr bin Laden was not only an "enemy combatant", but a dangerous one.

Convenient lies

Only one word comes to mind after reading these words from Alexander Cockburn:

(...) Obama only had one bloodied feather in his cap when he gave one of the most morally repellent speeches I have ever heard delivered from the White House. Bush at least had the crude brio of a semi-literate jock when he vaunted America's prowess. Obama's "we nailed him" paragraphs of mendacity concluded with Dickensian Heepishness: "Tonight we are once again reminded that America can do whatever we set our mind to. That is the story of our history." Alas, the actual story of the "our history" is an unrelenting ability to lie about everything, while simultaneously claiming America's superior moral worth.

Cockburn isn't right, but it is difficult to say that he is  totally wrong (even though he can't help being over the top and needlessly mean about his truth) and that is the problem  for anybody who loves american as much as I do.

The death of the debate on terrorism

I almost totally agree with Greenwald when he makes the folloing assertion:

Obama has single-handedly eliminated virtually all mainstream debate over these War on Terror policies.  At least during the Bush years, we had one party which steadfastly supported them but one party which claimed (albeit not very persuasively) to vehemently oppose them.  At least there was a pretense of vigorous debate over their legality, morality, efficacy, and compatibility with our national values. Those debates are no more.

It isn't just Obama who eliminated all mainstream debate, the Democrats and the America public are at fault too for the focus has been on the rresults and thus the consensus is that America can be protected at nay cost even the one of its Americanness. That said Greenwald is right, Obama has completed on the terror side the Cheneyisation of America.

Wars are not effective ways to fight terrorism

I agree with Juan Cole on this with one essential caveat, there is a huge difference between gullibility and faith-based or narrow-minded based blindness:

The point of 9/11 for Bin Laden was to drag the US into Middle Eastern quagmires. Not everyone is as gullible as George W. Bush and fringe terrorist groups should be dealt with quietly and effectively, not with big multi-trillion dollar wars.

The irrational sacrifice of liberty in the name of security

The statement of the day is from Chris Dillow:

The uncertainty created by the threat of terrorism leads us to sacrifice liberty even though this doesn’t necessarily improve our security.

Obama, National security, and progressivism

The statement of the day is from Kevin John Heller on the rumors that Elena Kagan is Obama's pick to replace Justice Stevens in the US Supreme Court:

Can we finally stop pretending that there is anything even remotely progressive about Obama, at least insofar as national security is concerned?

Terrorism and wimpish politics

I agree with Sean Collins on this:

But this ‘Republicans strong, Democrats weak’ discussion obscures a more fundamental consensus between the two parties. Both establish anti-terror polices on the premise that the country is vulnerable and at risk. And both therefore overplay the threat posed by possible terror attacks.
The common assumption is that the American people are afraid, worried about the next explosion, and therefore in need of heavy state protection. And since, therefore, all it takes to traumatise the masses is an isolated bomb, it is taken as a given that any party in office at the time of an attack would be severely damaged in political terms. In this, both parties have agreed to allow the terrorists to define success, and have collaborated in reorganising US life around tiny groups.
When American politicians talk about getting ‘tough’ on terrorism, about pursuing a ‘war’ on it, they are actually using code-words for saying ‘we are scared shitless’. And in that respect, both parties are wimps; in fact, if anything, the noisier Republicans are the biggest wimps of all.

The frightening thing is that the question is never asked whether tough talk on terrorism followed by bad policies is effective because it is assumed that it is better to talk tough and to fail rather than to talk softly and to success. In short, tough talk sells because it is flashy and wimpish politics is prevalent because the worst fear of an American politician is our age is to perceived as girly and therefore unwilling and unable to protect Americans.

The global war on crime

I agree with this:

America must recognise that not all the terror its suffers from abroad is the work of terrorists. Since the destruction of the twin towers in 2001, the West has been so consumed by terrorism that it has focused insufficiently on criminality. Somalia, Afghanistan, Pakistan’s lawless tribal regions,North Korea, Albania, the Balkans — these and other failed or failing states demand at least as much of our attention. If oil-rich but tottering Nigeria, for instance, were to tumble, the impact on both Africa and the world would be catastrophic.
These are not necessarily terrorist havens, but their actions can have terrifying consequences for the West none the less. It is time the war on terror was matched more rigorously by a global war on crime.

I think that the single-minded focus on terrorism has been to the detriment of the fight against so many crimes, which have also dangerous consequences. The point is that single-mindedness is never an effective way to ensure security and political stability in a world that is too integrated, too complicated, too interdependent for its ills to be solved solely by the 'war on terror.'

Attacking the lawyers

Debra Burlingame and Thomas Joscelyn have a op-ed in the Wall Street Journal this morning, which I find despicable and demagogic. Sugary excerpt:

In the last several days, the debate has taken a detour about what some have called a "shameful attack" on the "noble attorneys" who have chosen to defend "unpopular people." A national security organization, Keep America Safe (of which Ms. Burlingame is a board member), used the phrase "Al Qaeda 7" in an Internet ad to describe seven unnamed Department of Justice political appointees who previously represented or advocated on behalf of terrorists.
The purpose of the ad was to prod Attorney General Eric Holder to disclose to the public which detainee attorneys he has hired to work on behalf of the American people, and whether they are involved in the policy-making decisions that will affect the nation's safety and security while we are at war. He was asked for this information by several members of the U.S. Senate, and he was stonewalling.
The attorney general has the right to select whomever he chooses to work in his department, and to set policy as he sees fit. He does not, however, have the right to do it in the dark. The policies he advances must face the scrutiny of the American people, his No. 1 client.
The public has a right to know, for instance, that one of Mr. Holder's early political hires in the department's national security division was Jennifer Daskal, a former attorney for Human Rights Watch. Her work there centered on efforts to close Guantanamo Bay, shut down military commissions—which she calls "kangaroo courts"—and set detainees who cannot be tried in civilian courts free. She has written that freeing dangerous terrorists is an "assumption of risk" that we must take in order to cleanse the nation of Guantanamo's moral stain. This suggests that Ms. Daskal, who serves on the Justice Department's Detainee Policy Task Force, is entirely in sync with Mr. Holder and a White House whose chief counterterrorism official (John Brennan) considers a 20% detainee recidivism rate "not that bad."

I find those arguments not only troubling, and ideological, but more importantly unconvincing. They are are made in a vacuum and with the implicit assumption that it is un-american to defend alleged or known terrorists and that there are times when the rule of law should become the rule of men especially if means shutting up or killing the lawyers who dare to question the actions of their government. The central issue of this whole debate isn't about a few lawyers who can easily be scapegoated as defenders of Al Qaeda, but rather whether, even in times of crisis and of great uncertainties, America still believes in its own laws and will view as normal Americans, its citizen, who hold the rule of law as sacred, and who choose to defend that principle above all else when their government isn't, . It's always easy to blame the lawyers when the politics of terrorism have become almost so one-sided and Manichean and, that thus, only radicalism can help score political points.

Missed opportunity for American-led multipolirty

I would like to agree with Nikolas Gvosdev on this:

The attacks of Sept. 11 created a second opportunity. In the wake of the collapse of the Twin Towers and the destruction at the Pentagon, governments around the world were stunned -- the fruits of globalization, which had so advanced the cause of prosperity, could also be utilized by those who would seek to bring down the state. What's more, all governments were vulnerable -- democracies and non-democracies, developed and developing states alike. The shock to supply chains around the world in the attacks' aftermath, when interruptions in air travel and new security procedures impeded the flow of goods and services, made many realize how vulnerable the international system really was. And because the rising and resurgent powers had harnessed their chariots to the horses of global economic growth, they were amenable to finding common ground.
As a result, the anti-terrorist coalition could have become the basis for a new concert of powers. But the give-and-take of the classic concert system, in which a series of quid pro quos set the basis for collective decisions, was a mindset largely alien to both the Bush administration and Congress. With a new concert not in the making, and with the U.S. making clear it would act unilaterally in order to secure its own interests, other states began to find ways not to openly challenge the United States (...)

Hum, I'm reluctant to buy Nikolas Gvosdev's arguments because I'm wondering if power can really be shared when it hasn't be earned based on feel-good principles and charity. I'm starting to believe that the biggest failure for a hegemon is to use power in circumstances when it cannot help it and will therefore weaken it. Moreover, recent developments in international affairs have led me to question the concept of multipolarity. I don't think that the world can't ever be multipolar for it is always the powerful who make the decision not really in unison, but through real political bargaining, which reflects the reality of the day. Thus, the biggest mistake of the Bush administration wasn't really unilateralism, but ideology, incompetence, and a blindness to reality. It was so inflexibly ideological that in too many cases, it never took the steps that were required to win and to achieve its objectives because it as decided that reality didn't matter and was almost never going to get in the way of its ideology.When you are a Hegemon, failed demonstrations of strength will weaken you every time.

Killing all lawyers

Quote of the morning from Sabin Willett, a lawyer who represented Gitmo detainees: 

(...) as the years went by, the right did learn one thing useful about Guantanamo detainees. The public can’t distinguish one from another. If imprisoned endlessly, the detainees will furnish an endless source of scaremongering — that rich mulch in which votes will grow.
And so Cheney and Grassley beaver away to Keep America Scared. Some Americans will see the rule of law as a threat, and lawyers as the enemy. Small men with loud voices will exploit their fears on cable television. Petty politicians will mine them for votes. It’s been this way since Shakespeare’s famous policymaker Dick the Butcher said, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.’’

Authorizing torture

I agree with David Cole on this:

Responsibility for the illegal brutality inflicted on CIA and Guantánamo detainees cannot be limited to Yoo and Bybee. It extends to all those who approved the tactics—even those so eager later to condemn Yoo’s reasoning. And unless we as citizens demand that these lawyers be held to answer for the wrongs done in our name, responsibility extends to all of us, too. We must continue to insist on accountability—whether in congressional hearings, citizens’ commissions, civil lawsuits, or the marketplace of ideas. The essential lesson must be that torture and cruel treatment are not policy options—even when a lawyer is willing to write an opinion blessing illegality.

It is too easy to put the blame on Lawyers and to ignore the ones who approve the opinions by framing the issue in such a way that they got the advice that they wanted to receive and that gave them so political covers. As much as I dislike John Yoo's lawyering, I recognize that he was the tool of an administration who needed ideological lawyers to justify a serious break with international law in order to avoid having another 9/11 on their watch. After all, the fact that the Obama administration is still unable to break completely with the Yoo-Cheney tactics to fight 'the war on terror', tells us all we need to know about where one should look to ask for some accountability.

The impossibility to return to America after a war

Quote of the day from Brian Turner's op-ed in the New York Times on the Hurt Locker, wars, soldiers, and the impossible return back to America:

The last image of “The Hurt Locker” expresses a theme I’ve often tried to articulate. In the film, the main character cannot completely return to America, to the norm of a life back home. In a sense, he’s in Iraq whether he’s physically in a supermarket in the States, or in a bomb suit walking into the hurt locker.
That image rings true to me, but I’d take it a step further: I’d say that we, as a nation, now contain this explosive ordnance within us. Within our national psyche. We have generations of combat veterans and military family members woven throughout the fabric of our entire culture. Some of us have to walk down those dusty streets. We have to approach that which might tear us apart. We have to try to defuse what is explosive within.

Exceptionalism and Solitude

I agree with Glenn Greenwald on this:

The U.S. -- first under the Bush administration and now, increasingly, under Obama -- is more and more alone in its cowardly insistence that special, new tribunals must be invented, or denied entirely, for those whom it wishes to imprison as Terrorists (...) . 

I guess Obama really does believe in American exceptionalism after all. I just have the feeling that clashes are inevitable for how long can a president grandstand about being far superior than his predecessor while imitating him? May be the answer is forever for it is starting to occur to me that Obama might actually be the son of God.

Bush is still here

Well, I know that it won't be a surprise but I agree with Alex Massi's conclusion, but not necessarily all of his sentiments when he writes this:

Increasingly I suspect that George HW Bush may be one of the most under-rated American presidents since the Second World War. Politically, sure, he wasn't the smartest, sharpest or smoothest and some of his greatest achievements - most notably the management of post-Soviet eastern europe - owed something to a policy of what was, in some senses and to some extent, benign neglect. But there's a certain old-fashioned, perhaps patrician, wisdom in that too. The first Bushies got some things wrong and they got some kinds of lucky too but their reserve also helped them avoid too many self-inflicted mistakes.
It wouldn't be quite right to say that the Obama administration is Pappy's heir but its approach to foreign and security policy certainly borrows from the GHWB playbook.

I'm wondering what people would be saying if Hillary Clinton were in the White House and following the same course? I believe that Andrew Sullivan (who once said that she was Dick Cheney in pantsuit) and others would already be Sarah Palining her and saying that she is pure evil and that she killed the poor "Black" guy to become president and yet, cannot even bring real change to America. Well, I guess that foolish and thoughtless toughness only works for dudes.

Europe and Nation-building

Christopher Chivvis argues that Europeans are bad at Nation-building when it ought to do its best to be good at it to make a necessary contribute to wars which America is fighting most alone in the name of the "West" since it is so unwilling to fight in them:

Civilian work is now widely recognized as an essential ingredient in addressing security challenges around the world. Weak states need people who know how to investigate a murder, run a prison system, collect customs and other taxes, and generally keep a state bureaucracy up and running. There is little point in pacifying a country militarily if its infrastructure, courts, fiscal controls, and health systems are so feeble that chaos returns the moment the troops leave.
Europe seems particularly well-suited for this kind of work. Not only is the European Union the gravitational center of Europe's foreign economic power, Europe is home to some of the most skilled legal, administrative, and law enforcement experts in the world.
Unfortunately, the European Union is failing to live up to its potential. Unless it expands its efforts by taking on more ambitious projects, with larger staff and bigger budgets, the age-old dream of transforming the EU into a civilian power will falter, just as its military prowess continues to decline. NATO -- and the mission in Afghanistan -- will suffer along with it. In its first five years of existence, the EU sent civilian experts to 13 war-torn countries. This sounds impressive, but the vast majority of these missions had fewer than 80 staff members, and most lasted less than a year. Some had little or no impact on the ground.

Is it just me or does Europe seem like the perfect scapegoat for the lack of a viable military strategy in Afghanistan and elsewhere that would lead to victory? What Chivvis does is too easy and in a way cheap because it blames Europeans for been bad at something that it is hard to be good at especially when their countries have an history of being colonizers. I guess one gets historical amnesia when one is looking for culprits.

Europeanizing Nato

Andrew Bacevich argues boldly that the United States should let Nato become a European organization:

If NATO has a future, it will find that future back where the alliance began: in Europe. NATO's founding mission of guaranteeing the security of European democracies has lost none of its relevance. Although the Soviet threat has vanished, Russia remains. And Russia, even if no longer a military superpower, does not exactly qualify as a status quo country. The Kremlin nurses grudges and complaints, not least of them stemming from NATO's own steady expansion eastward.
So let NATO attend to this new (or residual) Russian problem. Present-day Europeans -- even Europeans with a pronounced aversion to war -- are fully capable of mounting the defenses necessary to deflect a much reduced Eastern threat. So why not have the citizens of France and Germany guarantee the territorial integrity of Poland and Lithuania, instead of fruitlessly demanding that Europeans take on responsibilities on the other side of the world that they can't and won't?
Like Nixon setting out for Beijing, like Sadat flying to Jerusalem, like Reagan deciding that Gorbachev was cut from a different cloth, the United States should dare to do the unthinkable: allow NATO to devolve into a European organization, directed by Europeans to serve European needs, upholding the safety and well-being of a Europe that is whole and free -- and more than able to manage its own affairs.

The trouble with bold ideas is that they remain utopias if the odds of their realization are slim to none. No American president is even going to take the chance/risk to europeanize Nato for immediately the argument will be that s/he is a coward who lost Europe. What is probably going to end up happening is that as Europe finds a way to provide for its own security by having a common security, Nato will become irrelevant and will fade without much noise or protest in the background.

Diversity shouldn't be an absolute value

The Boston Globe has a worth-reading article on Major Nidal Malik Hasan,  the main suspect in the Fort Hood's massacre. It focuses on the reasons why in spite of all his faults, his expressed extreme views, his superiors never made decisions that would have made him less of a security risk to others. Sugary excerpt:

The Globe was permitted to review the Army’s more complete findings on the condition that it not name supervisory officers who did not act, some of whom are facing possible disciplinary action.
In searching for explanations for why superiors did not move to revoke Hasan’s security clearances or expel him from the Army, the report portrays colleagues and superiors as possibly reluctant to lose one of the Army’s few Muslim mental health specialists.
The report concludes that because the Army had attracted only one Muslim psychiatrist in addition to Hasan since 2001, “it is possible some were afraid’’ of losing such diversity “and thus were willing to overlook Hasan’s deficiencies as an officer.’’
“Several of his supervisors explicitly mentioned Hasan’s potential to inform our understanding of Islamic culture and how it relates to the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan,’’ the investigators found.
In one classroom incident not previously described by the Army - which parallels another episode around the same time that has received press attention - Hasan gave a presentation in August 2007 titled “Is the War on Terrorism a War on Islam: An Islamic Perspective.’’
But the presentation was “shut down’’ by the instructor because Hasan appeared to be defending terrorism. Witnesses told investigators that Hasan became visibly upset as a result.

This episode is an example of the fact that in America, especially in organizations that need to "diversify visibly" for political, societal or economical reasons,  there is an overemphasis on people's ethnicity, religion or any other trait that make them a member of a minority group. There is very little focus on their individuality and on the reality that those traits are not necessarily (and I would argue rarely) the defining factors in their identity. In any case, diversity is becoming too much an absolute value because it camouflages the fact that America doesn't know how else to deal with its race problem, its segregating consequences, and the fact that it still believes that people with certain traits, from different races and religion faiths are all alike and that thus, their mere presence in certain surroundings are absolute proofs of openness and progressiveness. In short, diversity has become a totem.

Official high priests of intelligence and American presidents

Sugary excerpt from Jurek Martin's review of Garry Wills's Bomb Power:The Modern Presidency and the National Security State in the Financial Times:

The cult of secrecy has afflicted every president since, not merely the paranoid, such as Richard Nixon. Even Jimmy Carter was not entirely immune – the abortive 1980 rescue mission to extricate the US hostages in Tehran was executed without advising even his secretary of state, Cyrus Vance, who resigned. Wills is particularly hard on the Kennedy brothers’ obsession with deposing Fidel Castro, a mindset so blinkered that it failed to acknowledge the reality that Cubans liked their president (ditto Salvador Allende in Chile, etc). That fits with Robert McNamara’s much later admission that the US knew nothing of Vietnamese culture even as it was losing nearly 60,000 troops in the war.

Presidents, Wills persuasively argues, have fallen into the trap of listening only to the official high priests of intelligence. Those without prized security clearance are somehow considered inferior, if not ignorant, even if proved right. That was the proposed sanction against Oppenheimer for opposing the development of the hydrogen bomb. To be in-the-know is to be omniscient. The Pentagon Papers, the in-house review of the Vietnam War published only after the Supreme Court so ordered, contained no state secrets. But they were highly classified and thus, for government, unfit for consumption by friend or foe.

But the organic growth of the national security state needed theoreticians and they comprise Wills’s large Hall of Infamy. It was the (ironically conservative) Reagan justice department, under attorney-general Edwin Meese, that developed the theory of the “unitary executive” – which basically says that the law is anything that the president says it is. This produced a welter of “signing statements” in which a president says he can disregard, for whatever reason, any section of a duly passed congressional bill he has just, er, signed.

Torture and other niceties

I agree fully with Adrian Hamilton on this: 

Torture isn't a matter of niceties. You can argue the circumstances in which you might feel it useful or even necessary. You can try and épater le bien-pensant by writing "A Modest Proposal for Preventing Poor People in Britain from Being Endangered by Torturing Their Children and Their Mothers", only without Jonathan Swift's wit or intention to satirise.
You can sincerely believe it right to cripple the grannies and dismember the family pets in what you conceive of the greater community good. What you cannot do, as the Government is trying to, is get around the fact that Britain, along with most of the developed world, has decided to ban the practice.
And for good reason. After centuries of abuse, torture has been found to be neither productive nor containable. It rarely provides accurate intelligence. It produces fantasy and misleading information born out of the desperation of the victim. For all the discussion of the "ticking time bomb" and the films of Dirty Harry and Spooks, there is no reported case where an explosion has been prevented because of the use of torture.
What its proponents never like to answer is the question of just who would decide who should be tortured. The answer, of course, is the "state". And once you add that to the equation you are on a straight line to General Pinochet, Saddam Hussein and all those other characters whom successive British governments were wont to support in their heyday.

Grand Frère France

This worries:

The lower house of the French parliament has approved a draft bill that will allow the state unprecedented control over the Internet. Although the government says it will improve security for ordinary citizens, civil rights activists are warning of a "new level" of censorship and surveillance.
For members of the French administration, it is a law against digital crime. For civil rights activists and politicians from opposition parties, it is a plan for censorship that excites fear and loathing -- and even conjures up the specter of Big Brother and the surveillance state.
The lower house of the French parliament, the National Assembly, passed the first draft of the bill, known as "Loppsi 2," on Tuesday. It will now go on for a second reading in the Senate, where it seems likely to pass, thanks to the government's majority. If the Senate approves the bill, the new law could come into force as early as this summer. The legislation could have far-reaching consequences: Loppsi 2 contains rules that would make France the European country where the Internet is subject to the most censorship, regulation, control and surveillance.

What gets to me is how easy Loppsi 2 was to pass. This frightening fact underscores two critical reality about France. First, Internet has become the fundamental political,cultural and economical tool, which political, cultural, and economical elites want to control before it undermines totally their influence and their ability to remain "the ones". Second, there is no organized and vital opposition to Sarkozy despite his increasing unpopularity. Whatever one can say about Sarkozy, he has total control of his side while the opposition whether it is in civil society or elsewhere is too busy focusing about what they don't like about each other as if it matters since they don't have any power without offering a credible alternative that would at least tear down the new myth that there is no alternative to Sarkozysm.

Dangerous slippery slope

At the end of Margaret Wente in her op-ed in  the Globe and Mail makes the following point, which she seems to believe in her strongest an attempt to make an unshakable case on torture:

Maybe there would be a case for torture if it worked. But all the evidence points the other way. And even though many people (including Barack Obama) are understandably desperate to move on, I'm afraid the ghosts of Abu Ghraib won't be stilled until there is a thorough reckoning.

That is the mistake that the people against torture make by opening the door for torture by asserting implicitly or explicitly, as Wente in this case, that torture might be permissible if it worked. By doing this they make the focus of the debate the effectiveness of torture when the focus should be on the fact that torture is never acceptable especially when it is effective for the simple reason that a society cannot make exceptions for its use even on terrorists without corrupting its ideals and its soul.

Sense and sensibility

I agree with Paul Krugman on this:

The Bush administration was obviously — yes, obviously — telling tall tales in order to promote the war it wanted: the constant insinuations of an Iraq-9/11 link, the hyping of discredited claims about a nuclear program, etc.. And the question was, should you stand up against that? Not many did — and those who did were treated as if they were crazy.
I’ll never trust “sensible” opinion again. But for those who stayed “sensible” through the test, it’s a moment they’d like to see forgotten. That, I believe, is the real reason so many want to let torture and everything else go down the memory hole.

Effective torture

Marc Thiesse, a former Bush official, affirms in an op-ed in the Washington Post that torture worked:

Critics claim that enhanced techniques do not produce good intelligence because people will say anything to get the techniques to stop. But the memos note that, "as Abu Zubaydah himself explained with respect to enhanced techniques, 'brothers who are captured and interrogated are permitted by Allah to provide information when they believe they have reached the limit of their ability to withhold it in the face of psychological and physical hardship." In other words, the terrorists are called by their faith to resist as far as they can -- and once they have done so, they are free to tell everything they know. This is because of their belief that "Islam will ultimately dominate the world and that this victory is inevitable." The job of the interrogator is to safely help the terrorist do his duty to Allah, so he then feels liberated to speak freely.
This is the secret to the program's success. And the Obama administration's decision to share this secret with the terrorists threatens our national security. Al-Qaeda will use this information and other details in the memos to train its operatives to resist questioning and withhold information on planned attacks.

In my opinion, the fact that the effectiveness of torture is even discussed shows that the US has lost the moral high ground. For the next few decades,  this issue will remain relevant not only in the United States, but  also in the world because the Bush administration opened the door and the Democrats let them do it by allowing the argument to be about whether torture can protect America from ruthless terrorists as if that was the main consideration, as if the central question was whether the end justify the means. The problem here is that the way the Obama administration released the torture memos, the arguments that it made to justify the release and its refusal to do more makes it possible for torture to become again an acceptable way to insure the security of Americans when it comes under attacked and feels that it has no other means to defend itself.

Losing the moral high ground

Via the International Herald Tribune, a good point about America, Torture, and losing the moral high ground:

We Americans reviled torture, as individuals and as a nation. When it was exposed, we reacted. Torture was one reason we invoked for overturning Saddam Hussein.

Today, we Americans have come up with "waterboarding," which sounds like a fraternity prank. It is el submarino: cruel and, for a people that respects itself, unusual.

Obviously, we are a far cry from an Argentine military which put thousands to death in a long nightmare of official terror. But what are we prepared to accept?

Our justification is the same that was used in Argentina: What Dick Cheney calls harsh interrogation is needed to protect innocent people from terrorism. Our government contracts some of this harsh interrogation to private mercenaries who pledge no allegiances. Not even the Argentines did that.

George W. Bush denies that we torture, which adds hypocrisy to our sins. His attorney general refuses to call waterboarding torture and won't rule out its use.

Whatever Americans may think, judgment elsewhere is plain. When our highest authorities excuse torture - even applaud it - it is no surprise that terrorist ranks swell, and so many people loathe us.

Even if torture did provide useful information, what is the longer term cost? By employing such terror ourselves, we lose claim to a higher moral plane.

Prosecuting and convicting terrorists

My second favorite law professor, Kenneth Anderson has an important article on the trial of the Madrid Bombings verdicts. Professor Anderson argues that terrorism isn’t a different and therefore terrorist suspects shouldn’t be tried the same way as suspects of crimes with less victims:

We accept that freely, if not happily, in the case of ordinary criminality. Part of the reason we do so, however, is that we understand that the stakes are not as high in ordinary criminality as they are in the case of jihadist terrorists bent on suicide and mass murder. We accept—and should accept—a high standard of proof in order to protect the innocent in ordinary criminality, although a few minutes' conversation with any public defender will suffice to show that in reality, there are relatively few genuinely innocent criminal defendants out there. They exist and deserve all the protections Western systems of justice offer—and, as the Duke lacrosse case demonstrates—in our ordinary justice system, the prosecutor has too much power and too much discretion.

When the stakes get up to those of mass murder by people who cannot be deterred by threat of punishment, because they are in pursuit of heaven, then a different moral and prudential calculation ought to hold. If our Western legal systems are unable to find ways to draw differences, and apply different standards of evidence and procedure than those of ordinary criminality, then the result is likely to be what happened in Spain. Granted, the actual bombers barricaded themselves in an apartment and blew themselves up rather than face capture; but those in the dock included their handlers, controllers, planners, and suppliers. On any just calculus—and the extensive, but ultimately excluded, evidence—they should have been found just as guilty of murder. Yet the Spanish prosecutors were unable to secure more than three guilty verdicts of murder.

Spanish criminal justice is vastly more prosecutor friendly than the American system. It allows much more hearsay evidence, and really anything the judge deems of sufficiently probative value. The fact that numbers of defendants, even ones evidently culpable to an outside observer, were released for lack of admissible evidence, and that, if not for the fact that Spanish law permits something considered quite unacceptable in the American system under the First Amendment's freedom of association—conviction for membership alone, without evidence of action or activity—Spanish criminal justice would have obtained very few convictions—well, if one takes the obligation to keep terrorists from blowing up people, trains, and train stations seriously, then something is wrong.

I disagree strongly with Professor Anderson. Differentiating terrorists from other criminals is a red herring because it pushes the debate away from the central question, which is whether terrorists can be judged as common criminals, receive a fair trial, and still get convicted or whether in the case of terrorism, special rules are needed because the cost of a miscarriage of justice is greater. If the argument is that terrorism is different than other crimes, then why not just admit that all crimes are different and adapt the legal system according to what society feels is the gruesomeness of the crime and the threat that the accused to society? Why not have different courts and different systems for pedophiles, rapists, and serial killers? Why should the number of victims be the only exception for a different type of trial? Of course making exceptions would mean that we have a tailored made legal system that no longer recognizes the presumption of innocence. After all giving all accused the same treatment reinforces the principle that they may be innocent and that therefore they must be given the same opportunity to defend themselves no matter how great the accusations against them are. What the Madrid Bombings verdicts shows isn’t that Western legal systems are ill equipped to prosecute suspected terrorists, but rather Western anti-terrorist agencies don’t know how to build a convincing case against terrorism because their only priority is prevention and because they rarely think about prosecution.

The point is that most if not all of the emphasis, understandably so, is on stopping terrorism and not on prosecuting terrorists, which is in my opinion that is going to take time to learn how to find the right balance between the two. It is both premature and too pessimistic to argue that the Madrid Bombings verdicts is part of a worrisome trend that shows that changes to the judicial system are necessary when more than likely they simply show that prosecutors need to adapt and to learn the fine art of prosecuting terrorists in this new age by for example educated anti-terrorist agents about the rule of law. In conclusion, it is difficult not to admit that the nature of terrorism itself already changes the nature of the crime by increasing the burden on the jurors or the judges who have to decide the fate of the suspects. This fact is the one of the strongest arguments against Professor Anderson’s point.

Torture and ordinary people

Martha Nussbaum reviews Philip Zimbardo’s book about torture and Abu Ghraib, The Lucifer Effect in the Times Literary Supplement. She makes following about torture and Zimbardo’s thesis, which I believe is essential in the current debate about the use of torture to protect society from Terrorism:

Research has amply confirmed that people of many different kinds will behave badly under certain types of situational pressure. Through the influence of authority and peer pressure, they do things that they are later amazed at having done, things that most people think in advance they would never themselves do.

Zimbardo’s first plea, appropriately, is for humility: we have no reason to say that atrocities are the work of a few “bad apples”, nor have we reason to think that they are done only by people remote from us in time and place. We should understand that we are all vulnerable, and we should judge individuals, accordingly, in a merciful way, knowing that we don’t really know what we would have done, had we faced similar pressures. His second appropriate plea is that we learn to “blame the system”: namely, to look at how situations are designed, and to criticize people who design them in ways that confront vulnerable individuals with pressures that human beings cope with badly. Zimbardo served as an expert witness on behalf of one of the officers accused of presiding over torture at Abu Ghraib, and his point was that we must not think that this is the work of a few unusual “defectives”. We must understand that good people can do bad things under pressure, and we must learn how to structure situations so that they do not put such pressures on individuals. In short, he calls for collective responsibility – not as a total replacement for personal responsibility, but as its necessary concomitant, if people are not to be faced, again and again, with demands to which they are very unlikely to respond well.

Zimbardo sometimes speaks as if situations are all that is important, and the insides of people explain nothing at all. That is clearly a wild over-extrapolation from his data, which support a much more qualified view. Even if people in these experiments had all behaved in precisely the same way, we could not conclude that their inner psychology supplies nothing at all: for they might be motivated by common human emotions and tendencies, one or many, and it would then be extremely important to know what these forces are.

Nato, Sarkozy, and suspicion

The independent has a different take on France’s rapprochement with Nato and what it believes to be its probable reentry into that organization:

The overtures could even be something of a Trojan horse strategy as far as Nato is concerned. If France, with its large military, rejoins the Nato command it will inevitably strengthen European influence in the organisation. This could then boost the case for a European Defence Force, which could one day become more important than Nato in Europe.

Is any of this desirable? The purpose of Nato certainly needs to be re-examined, and the renewed French participation should spark that debate. The end of the Cold War has thrown Nato into confusion. The rise of international Islamic extremism has merely exposed its lack of unity. Nato has been under huge strain in Afghanistan. It has 40,000 troops stationed in the country but commanders complain that they lack helicopters, mobile units and instructors to train the Afghan army. There is also a disagreement over purpose. While Britain, Canada and Denmark are attempting to suppress the Taliban militarily in the south, Germany and Italy are refusing to allow their troops to engage in anything but reconstruction work. This is creating bad blood. Some commanders are suggesting that Afghanistan could be the operation that breaks Nato.

As for greater European co-operation on defence matters, it is certainly desirable in theory, but whether European nations would work together better under the umbrella of the European Defence Force than they do under a Nato command remains to be seen.

With President Sarkozy's American overtures everything could change. But, for now at least, everything remains the same.

As I wrote before, I believe that France will not rejoin Nato anytime soon for Sarkozy is already the political benefits he would have gain by making that decision quickly. Sarkozy is going to wait and see to find a time when France rejoining Nato would gain him more accolades and political benefits. However, the theory of a Trojan horse is ridiculous and guided in my opinion by the bias suspicion that the French can never be trusted when it comes to following America’s leadership. The history of France with Nato has led to do with France’s obsession with America than with France’s obsession with itself and its grandeur. Sarkozy has decided that for now, grandeur means the end of Gaullism and of French exceptionalism so whatever troubles arise from his decision to rejoin to Nato will not be about French sabotage, but simply about a change in his political situation. Furthermore, if Nato cannot remain relevant or function efficiently with France’s reentry then it was no raison d’être.

The meaning of the debate on torture

Bret Stephens makes the disturbing and alas increasingly popular point that it is dangerous to define torture down because it makes it difficult to fight efficiently terrorism:

But by maintaining the "distinction between 'torture' and 'inhuman or degrading treatment,' " the court sought to preserve the "special stigma [attached] to deliberate inhuman treatment causing very serious and cruel suffering."

These distinctions are not "legal sophistries," as the Times would have it. They are a juridical necessity to ensure that our definition of torture does not become so diluted as to render its prohibition unenforceable. But the abuse of the word does have its rhetorical uses: As with the militant anti-abortion movement, which believes that every abortion is murder and thus that every abortionist is a "murderer," the Times editorialists and their fellow travelers would characterize anyone who favors so much as touching a hair on 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's head as "pro-torture." This isn't argument. It's moral bullying.

For the record, count me as one who does not object to the interrogation to which KSM was reportedly subjected, including waterboarding. This is not because I take the use of waterboarding lightly (although I have a hard time concluding that a technique, however terrifying, to which CIA officers are willing to subject themselves experimentally can properly be counted as torture). It's because I take the threat posed by KSM seriously.

That makes it difficult for me to subscribe to the "So be it" line of reasoning. Taken seriously, it says that the civilized world would be better off sustaining a nuclear 9/11 than tarnishing its good name, that righteous victimhood is a finer thing than an innocent life saved through morally compromised methods, and that self-preservation is not the most fundamental requirement of democratic life.

H.D.S. Greenway answers Stephen’s points by focusing on the effectiveness of torture and the image of the United States:

The trouble with torture is that a prisoner will say anything he thinks you may want to hear. Take Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a planner of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. After being severely tortured he has confessed to such a wide-ranging number of crimes as to be unbelievable.

The long-range problem with the Bush administration's efforts to subvert national and international bans on torture is that it hurts us deeply in the struggle against Islamic extremism. It revolts the conscience of the world, which makes it harder for the West to convince Muslims that we are not the enemy of Islam. It encourages converts to Al Qaeda. It stays the hand of moderate Muslims who may otherwise want to cooperate with us. It undermines our international standing and our national security.

The fact that there is a debate on the United States about the use of torture worries me for two reasons. The first reason is that if in a country as great and as influential as the United States it is possible to argue for the use of torture then it becomes justifiable in the rest of the world. No matter what the anti-Americans, the Isolationists, or the patriots with a superiority complex toward the world say, the United States does leads by example and the standards that it sets has repercussions around the globe because it frames the debate. I am afraid this debate has pushed the world backwards because the fact that torture may be morally acceptable has entered not only the American, but the world consciousness since the  emphasis is not on the means and values, but on survival and security. The second reason why the debate on torture worries me is that it is a strike against the enduring American principle that the United States is a country of laws and not of men human being. The “24” mindset that wants to make torture or torturous tactics just means of survival and of fighting terrorism ignores the fact that Jack Bauer’s world is limited and even sterilized for it simplifies the debate by making it about us versus them, life or them, good versus evil. The point is that Jack Bauer, no matter how compelling and how efficient of terrorist fighter he is, is an island that is a man without history, without past, and without traditions. The United States cannot escape its history, its past, and its traditions to focus on its survival because it was founded precisely on principles contrary to survival. After all, if the founders had been so worry about survival, they would have remained loyal to England for they would have believed that there was no way that simple men could defeat the British army. The point is that America, the American life isn’t about surviving, it is about thriving and about perpetually refusing to obey base human  instincts to reach for greatness even when that means living dangerously.

France, England, and terrorism

In this video, Jonathan Paris makes some interesting observations about the French and the British counter-terrorism efforts. I don't agree with some of his remarks, but they are thought-provoking.

Faces of terrorism

This is an interesting video about terrorism, which looks at the issue from a different perspective by considering its global aspects . The speakers are Reza Aslan, Dalia Mogahed,  and Husain Haqqani.

The use of private armies

James Meek has a review of Jeremy Scahill’s The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. The book is about the increasing use of private armies by some governments including in messy conflicts about its implications by focusing on a firm, Blackwater, which provided the US with some private soldiers in Iraq. Meek argues that Scahill’s book is incomplete because it fails to address important questions:

Even within the confines of Scahill’s theme, there are frustrating omissions. He writes about how much higher the daily pay of Blackwater guards in Iraq is than the pay of regular US troops, and the staggering sums Blackwater as a company is paid by the US government. But he fails to analyse the more difficult and more important issue about the money: is the government getting extra soldiers on the cheap, or not? The cost of a long-service professional soldier is reckoned not only in his daily pay but in how much it costs to train him, the cost of lifetime medical care (whether he is injured or not), and the cost of his pension if, as many do, he retires in his forties. Blackwater and other mercenary firms don’t pay to train their recruits: they hire ex-military men, and if there’s extra training, the recruits pay for it themselves; nor do they offer the same health and pension benefits as the military.

The most unfortunate thing about Scahill’s book is the way that, in serving its narrow subject, it manages to make the careless, callous US-British invasion and occupation of Iraq sound like a vicious plan that partly succeeded, rather than a monument to political incompetence such as the world has rarely seen.