This is an old article by Glenn Greenwald, but it has in one place lots of links and information documenting how the US government (that's us) has killed over 100 people in custody when torture tactics went too far.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/06/30/accountability/
Now I guess it may make us feel better to respond that "they're all terrorists anyway so who cares", but if we're open-minded enough to give this a careful reading we have to conclude that not all these people were terrorists; these are detainees, many picked up on random sweeps through Iraq and Afghanistan. Our government has been doing the same thing that we condemn authoritarian regimes for doing. When the Viet Cong did this to John McCain it was torture. When the Soviet Union did it to dissidents it was torture. And yet in our current political environment we have one party (Republicans) who enthusiastically embrace torture, and a second party (Democrats) who seem at best ambivalent about it and certainly unwilling to take it on.
Our political discourse starts with an assumption that "we're the good guys". But this isn't self-evident to people in other places. We have to prove it every day.
I am now a wacked-out, fringe Leftist nut for taking the position that torture is wrong, which was a majority position in this country on September 10, 2001.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Friday, February 26, 2010
Health Care Clarity (posted by DT)
Well, this week's "Health Care Summit" again helped clarify where we're at politically with respect to health care reform, and I can only dream that it will move us away from dreary platitudes about how we need bipartisan reform. We shouldn't have bipartisan reform because liberals and conservatives have different goals. President Obama ran for president arguing for Universal Health Care, in which all Americans would be able to get health insurance no matter what. That's what Democratic leaders are trying to deliver.
Republicans clearly don't share this goal. They might support some form of cost controls, plans to cut the growth of health care costs, and certainly want to increase free market influence on health care. They want malpractice reform. All of that is fine; it just doesn't accomplish the goal of universal health care.
Now some conservatives feel this way because they don't think that poor people deserve to get health coverage if they can't afford it- I guess the argument is that we're a capitalist country and it's every man for himself- only the strong can survive. Other conservatives would like to make health care universal, as they see the injustice for those with pre-existing conditions out of their control who can't get coverage, but they just don't want to raise any tax revenue to pay for it. Low taxes are just seen as more important.
So the answer is for Democrats to finish health care and pass a bill. I wish I had more confidence in their ability to do it. As I've said before, I'm struck by the gutlessness of congressional Democrats, and wish they had half the courage displayed by Republicans when they were in power.
I'm trying to be fair to people on the Right, here. Did I miss something?
Republicans clearly don't share this goal. They might support some form of cost controls, plans to cut the growth of health care costs, and certainly want to increase free market influence on health care. They want malpractice reform. All of that is fine; it just doesn't accomplish the goal of universal health care.
Now some conservatives feel this way because they don't think that poor people deserve to get health coverage if they can't afford it- I guess the argument is that we're a capitalist country and it's every man for himself- only the strong can survive. Other conservatives would like to make health care universal, as they see the injustice for those with pre-existing conditions out of their control who can't get coverage, but they just don't want to raise any tax revenue to pay for it. Low taxes are just seen as more important.
So the answer is for Democrats to finish health care and pass a bill. I wish I had more confidence in their ability to do it. As I've said before, I'm struck by the gutlessness of congressional Democrats, and wish they had half the courage displayed by Republicans when they were in power.
I'm trying to be fair to people on the Right, here. Did I miss something?
Monday, February 22, 2010
Reader Response (posted by DT)
I love and crave reader responses! This came from one of my loyal readers:
I think this is a fair point, and I certainly agree that the media's focus on "horse race" politics is a huge part of the problem in our political discourse.
But we need to understand that liberals and conservatives have fundamentally different views about what our country should look like and stand for. The conservatives I know mostly seem to believe that taxes must be lowered no matter what, and spending slashed accordingly, so that the Free Market can bring prosperity to all. If you believe that tax relief is the #1 priority, then you can legitimately be against any national health care because, frankly, it will cost money. One of my problems with conservatives right now is it's not realistic to be against any tax increases whatsoever while being simultaneously against a large government deficit, unless you have lots of enormous cuts in spending, including on Medicare. I guess a conservative arguing this point would say that tax cuts will spur so much growth that government revenue will increase to compensate and pull us out of the hole.
As a liberal, on the other hand, I see justice as a primary goal, more important than tax cuts. I believe that government, while not particularly efficient, is still capable of solving problems and improving the lives of its citizens. That's why I'm in favor of government action to improve health care and make sure it's provided for all citizens.
These two views are in conflict, as they should be. Arguing the philosophies above isn't very productive, because it comes down to our sense of right and wrong. But we can certainly argue about which policy inspired by each side would be more effective in solving each problem. It's pretty clear that the free market is the best way to manufacture consumer goods like washing machines and cars, and provide entertainment like movies and TV shows, along with tons of other stuff. It's clear that the government is best at providing police and fire department protection and staffing agencies to protect abused children. For everything in between, we should be arguing what works better.
That's not "us vs. them"; it's a serious discussion about which policies we should all be supporting. I make no apologies for my view that liberal policies are better for more people; that's why I'm arguing so hard for them.
You propagate a fundamental problem in political discourse. It’s not ‘us’ vs. ‘them,’ democrats vs. republicans, or liberals vs. conservatives. Serious discussion about the issues we face should not be reduced to, or portrayed in terms of, which team is gaining or losing points. It drives me crazy how all the major media outlets focus on the two teams – three if you count Tea Party and four if you throw in Blue Dogs – and which is winning or losing ground as we march toward the next round of elections.
If party leaders were more tolerant of independent thinkers within their party, if lawmakers were more willing to follow their beliefs on individual issues, and if the media focused on the issues themselves without always resorting to the implications on political gamesmanship, we might actually be able to get things done. As it stands, status quo will endure indefinitely.
I think this is a fair point, and I certainly agree that the media's focus on "horse race" politics is a huge part of the problem in our political discourse.
But we need to understand that liberals and conservatives have fundamentally different views about what our country should look like and stand for. The conservatives I know mostly seem to believe that taxes must be lowered no matter what, and spending slashed accordingly, so that the Free Market can bring prosperity to all. If you believe that tax relief is the #1 priority, then you can legitimately be against any national health care because, frankly, it will cost money. One of my problems with conservatives right now is it's not realistic to be against any tax increases whatsoever while being simultaneously against a large government deficit, unless you have lots of enormous cuts in spending, including on Medicare. I guess a conservative arguing this point would say that tax cuts will spur so much growth that government revenue will increase to compensate and pull us out of the hole.
As a liberal, on the other hand, I see justice as a primary goal, more important than tax cuts. I believe that government, while not particularly efficient, is still capable of solving problems and improving the lives of its citizens. That's why I'm in favor of government action to improve health care and make sure it's provided for all citizens.
These two views are in conflict, as they should be. Arguing the philosophies above isn't very productive, because it comes down to our sense of right and wrong. But we can certainly argue about which policy inspired by each side would be more effective in solving each problem. It's pretty clear that the free market is the best way to manufacture consumer goods like washing machines and cars, and provide entertainment like movies and TV shows, along with tons of other stuff. It's clear that the government is best at providing police and fire department protection and staffing agencies to protect abused children. For everything in between, we should be arguing what works better.
That's not "us vs. them"; it's a serious discussion about which policies we should all be supporting. I make no apologies for my view that liberal policies are better for more people; that's why I'm arguing so hard for them.
Friday, February 19, 2010
Is the Federal Stimulus Working? (posted by DT)
YES.
Pretty much every serious economist says (or for those on the Right, "admits") that the federal stimulus package has created jobs and saved us from a much more severe economic downturn, even if they may disagree about how much it's done, how many jobs it's created, etc.
And of course government action to pump up the economy started under the Bush administration, which generally did an effective job bailing out Wall Street when conditions were dire. The Obama administration just continued those strategies, even with many of the same people involved (Bernanke, Paulson).
So it's great, right? Bipartisan action working toward a common and rather obvious goal of staving off a second Great Depression. Just one problem: the wing nuts who run the Republican party are now saying that the stimulus hasn't created "a single job" (I believe Scott Brown said that). National Review doesn't think it has done anything. Tea Partiers certainly don't think it's been effective, since it was implemented by the Obama administration. But when you ask people who study this stuff for a living, everyone agrees that it's done something. The positive response of the stock market shows that private investors are OK with stimulus spending. But the Tea Party Right isn't going along- what would have happened if they had been in power? We'd be in a free-fall Depression.
I think this is the tough part of being a reasonable conservative these days. The Republican party has been hijacked by really deranged people. If you want lower taxes and lower spending, I don't know where you would go these days; Republicans are going to lower taxes but have proved pretty conclusively that they'll keep spending, making our deficit much worse. Democrats are much more fiscally responsible at this point, but they want to lower the deficit at least in part by increasing taxes. So where does a true fiscal conservative go?
So let me extend an invitation: come on over here to the Liberal side of the street. Yes you'll have to swallow increased spending on health care for the poor, but at least we'll raise revenues at the same time instead of passing the costs on to your grandchildren. And you have to admit it: Brie tastes good and Birkenstocks are comfortable!
Pretty much every serious economist says (or for those on the Right, "admits") that the federal stimulus package has created jobs and saved us from a much more severe economic downturn, even if they may disagree about how much it's done, how many jobs it's created, etc.
And of course government action to pump up the economy started under the Bush administration, which generally did an effective job bailing out Wall Street when conditions were dire. The Obama administration just continued those strategies, even with many of the same people involved (Bernanke, Paulson).
So it's great, right? Bipartisan action working toward a common and rather obvious goal of staving off a second Great Depression. Just one problem: the wing nuts who run the Republican party are now saying that the stimulus hasn't created "a single job" (I believe Scott Brown said that). National Review doesn't think it has done anything. Tea Partiers certainly don't think it's been effective, since it was implemented by the Obama administration. But when you ask people who study this stuff for a living, everyone agrees that it's done something. The positive response of the stock market shows that private investors are OK with stimulus spending. But the Tea Party Right isn't going along- what would have happened if they had been in power? We'd be in a free-fall Depression.
I think this is the tough part of being a reasonable conservative these days. The Republican party has been hijacked by really deranged people. If you want lower taxes and lower spending, I don't know where you would go these days; Republicans are going to lower taxes but have proved pretty conclusively that they'll keep spending, making our deficit much worse. Democrats are much more fiscally responsible at this point, but they want to lower the deficit at least in part by increasing taxes. So where does a true fiscal conservative go?
So let me extend an invitation: come on over here to the Liberal side of the street. Yes you'll have to swallow increased spending on health care for the poor, but at least we'll raise revenues at the same time instead of passing the costs on to your grandchildren. And you have to admit it: Brie tastes good and Birkenstocks are comfortable!
More on Torture (posted by DT)
I guess I'm now considered out of the mainstream when it comes to interrogation and torture. I find this fact depressing, given that it wasn't too long ago that there was a pretty clear consensus in the US that we were the "good guys" who would win the Cold War because we were seen by common people everywhere as the bastion of Freedom and Democracy, bringers of prosperity. The USSR, on the other hand, were the authoritarians who arrested people for no reason or with little evidence, and sent severed limbs back to whoever pissed them off to make sure that they knew who they were messing with.
Now, in the Age of "24", we're so post-modern that we don't believe in that claptrap any more I guess. But there are lots of problems with torture outside of the moral element:
Now, in the Age of "24", we're so post-modern that we don't believe in that claptrap any more I guess. But there are lots of problems with torture outside of the moral element:
- How are we supposed to know if the guys we're torturing are really terrorists? As I noted in my earlier post, we've been picking up lots of "alleged terrorists" in sweeps all over Afghanistan and Iraq, and lots of them have turned out to be innocent. (Remember even the Bush administration released lots of people from Gitmo because they weren't terrorists). Without any legal system or rules of evidence, we could be torturing the wrong people. Before you sneer that I'm protecting Bad Guys, note that we ALREADY HAVE tortured innocent people: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/25/world/americas/25arar.html or http://www.truthout.org/1210093
- Torture doesn't work as a method of gaining information. Professional interrogators from the FBI and the military have been appalled by these tactics. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/28/AR2008112802242_pf.html Torture is really good for extracting false confessions- that's what authoritarian regimes use it for, not to get good intelligence. When you're getting tortured, you'll say anything to get the torture to stop, and that certainly includes lying.
- The "Ticking Time Bomb" scenario popularized in the TV series 24 just never happens. It's great drama, but it's not real life. How many people do we torture looking for the one guy in 100 who might know something?
- Torture is a runaway train- it can't be used in a limited way only in extreme cases- it always migrates to everything. Look at Abu Ghraib- people on the ground take it and run with it. Besides, the logic extends to increased use: if torture is OK to find terrorists, then shouldn't we use it to find common murderers? What about rapists? Why only foreign citizens?
Finally, it's important to note that the Orwellian use of terms like "enhanced interrogation" are a smokescreen. We should call it what it is. The difference between waterboarding or sleep deprivation or hanging in stress positions on one hand (all used by the US in recent years), and cutting off fingers on the other is a difference only in severity. There have been dozens of DEATHS of detainees in US custody that occurred because the "enhanced interrogation" went a little too far- how can that not be torture?
Terrorism By Any Other Name (Posted by AS)
Some truly chilling developments yesterday:
Name a man who intentionally flew an airplane into an office building because he is angry at the actions of the people inside and who they represent.
Mohammed Atta? Marwan Al-Shehhi? Ahmed Al-Haznawi?
Add the name Joseph Stack to the list. There is no difference, other than the size of the plane and the number of people who were killed.
It’s only by luck that nobody in the IRS building in Texas was killed. Stack clearly didn’t care who else he took with him. He didn’t care what would happen to the people inside. There could have been a day-care center there too, like in Oklahoma City. But Stack was so motivated by fear, hate and ideological fervor, that nothing was going to stop him from carrying out his evil plan.
We can expect more death and destruction at the hands of the radical right wing. The Tea Partiers are riling up all sorts of anti-government fringe elements. At CPAC yesterday, Tea Party leaders encouraged their followers to wage a grass roots war on liberalism.
To quote Dana Loesch with the St. Louis Tea Party: “We have several bars that are infested with liberals in St. Louis. Go there, take them over. Say how much you love the Constitution! Say it loud! Make them feel uncomfortable. Have no mercy, take no prisoners, suffer no fools. Don’t let them have a sanctuary.”
That kind of stuff really sends chills down my spine. It reminds me of the type of language heard in beer halls in Munich in the late 1920’s. If nothing else, it is borderline incitement to violence. It’s not a stretch at all to envision another Joseph Stack taking such language and actually going to such a bar and firebombing it. Mark my words.
Of course, all of this is going on with the encouragement of Republican Party leaders like John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, who are scared to death that the Tea Partiers will find them insufficiently ideologically pure and roust them from office. John McCain and Charlie Crist are facing vigorous primary challenges from the far right.
Even Mitt Romney has been forced to drink the Kool-Aid. Of course, he only got thunderous applause at CPAC when he made snide attacks against Obama. However, when Romney actually talked about his plans for helping the economy from a business perspective, or defended GW Bush for his fiscal and education policy, the response was much more subdued. The state of the Republican Party is such that Romney now has zero chance of being elected President in 2012. He might as well give up and save his millions now. It’s clear what direction the Republican Party is headed. It may be old, but it sure ain’t Grand.
Name a man who intentionally flew an airplane into an office building because he is angry at the actions of the people inside and who they represent.
Mohammed Atta? Marwan Al-Shehhi? Ahmed Al-Haznawi?
Add the name Joseph Stack to the list. There is no difference, other than the size of the plane and the number of people who were killed.
It’s only by luck that nobody in the IRS building in Texas was killed. Stack clearly didn’t care who else he took with him. He didn’t care what would happen to the people inside. There could have been a day-care center there too, like in Oklahoma City. But Stack was so motivated by fear, hate and ideological fervor, that nothing was going to stop him from carrying out his evil plan.
We can expect more death and destruction at the hands of the radical right wing. The Tea Partiers are riling up all sorts of anti-government fringe elements. At CPAC yesterday, Tea Party leaders encouraged their followers to wage a grass roots war on liberalism.
To quote Dana Loesch with the St. Louis Tea Party: “We have several bars that are infested with liberals in St. Louis. Go there, take them over. Say how much you love the Constitution! Say it loud! Make them feel uncomfortable. Have no mercy, take no prisoners, suffer no fools. Don’t let them have a sanctuary.”
That kind of stuff really sends chills down my spine. It reminds me of the type of language heard in beer halls in Munich in the late 1920’s. If nothing else, it is borderline incitement to violence. It’s not a stretch at all to envision another Joseph Stack taking such language and actually going to such a bar and firebombing it. Mark my words.
Of course, all of this is going on with the encouragement of Republican Party leaders like John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, who are scared to death that the Tea Partiers will find them insufficiently ideologically pure and roust them from office. John McCain and Charlie Crist are facing vigorous primary challenges from the far right.
Even Mitt Romney has been forced to drink the Kool-Aid. Of course, he only got thunderous applause at CPAC when he made snide attacks against Obama. However, when Romney actually talked about his plans for helping the economy from a business perspective, or defended GW Bush for his fiscal and education policy, the response was much more subdued. The state of the Republican Party is such that Romney now has zero chance of being elected President in 2012. He might as well give up and save his millions now. It’s clear what direction the Republican Party is headed. It may be old, but it sure ain’t Grand.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Editorial Disagreement (Posted by AS)
First of all, I guess it's pretty sad that only the bloggers are commenting on their own blog - If a blog tree falls in the forest and nobody reads it...
Anyway, I feel it incumbent as the more centrist member of this blog to comment on Dan's most recent post on torture. I take a somewhat different view.
Yes, the U.S. is obligated to conduct itself according to international law and universally accepted norms on "torture", etc., etc., etc. But to compare the treatment of the Christian missionaries in Haiti to that of the Guantanamo detainees seems to strain credulity. Clearly, the potential for important information being extracted from terror suspects is far, far greater than anything in the investigation of "Orphangate."
Maybe I'm missing Dan's point, but I have no problem with "hard interrogation" of people who are actively involved in sowing terror against our country. Maybe some of those at Guantanamo aren't guilty of what they are accused, but Islamic Fundamentalists are still at war with the U.S., an asymmetrical war where the rules are a whole lot different than in a criminal prosecution.
Anyway, I feel it incumbent as the more centrist member of this blog to comment on Dan's most recent post on torture. I take a somewhat different view.
Yes, the U.S. is obligated to conduct itself according to international law and universally accepted norms on "torture", etc., etc., etc. But to compare the treatment of the Christian missionaries in Haiti to that of the Guantanamo detainees seems to strain credulity. Clearly, the potential for important information being extracted from terror suspects is far, far greater than anything in the investigation of "Orphangate."
Maybe I'm missing Dan's point, but I have no problem with "hard interrogation" of people who are actively involved in sowing terror against our country. Maybe some of those at Guantanamo aren't guilty of what they are accused, but Islamic Fundamentalists are still at war with the U.S., an asymmetrical war where the rules are a whole lot different than in a criminal prosecution.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)