Must-Reads Everywhere – Obama on the Precipice
posted at 1:25 pm on April 22, 2009 by CK MacLeod
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One thing you can say for the Obama Administration: It inspires “must-read” columns and articles at unheard-of rates, must-reads in chain reaction.
Just today, we already have David Ignatius’s How Obama’s scaring the CIA into timidity at the Washington Post, declared a “must-read” at HotAir. We have Dorothy Rabinowitz’s Obama Blames America, accuratedly described as a “brilliant must-read” by Jennifer Rubin at Contentions, whose own analysis would on any normal day in any normal time itself be a candidate for the day’s must-read – except for the competition provided by her own post on Ignatius, or John Podhoretz’s must-read post on David Frum’s must-read post on the dire (read: late Roman Republic) implications of one administration throwing a previous one to the legal wolves. When Rush Limbaugh’s morning summation of Obama’s 100 Days becomes available in transcript, it, too will be a must-read.
We have a must-read here today at the Green Room, too, a post by cold warrior, on what it means to have a president undermining his own intelligence professionals, that would be difficult enough to bear if everything else was going very well indeed.
And, in a possible preview of tomorrow’s or the next day’s must-read, we have Rasmussen’s daily poll of likely voters showing Mr. Obama at his all-time lows in approval since taking office – suggesting that Obama has given up the entirety of his election “bonus,” the difference between where he stood on election night and where he stood as the object of the country’s united good will: We don’t know whether this is a floor or a ledge yet, whether the must-read chain reaction is about to go nuclear, but the Honeymoon, anyway, is over – and a lot of us brides find ourselves envying Megan McAllister and wishing, not for the first time, that the political cops had been there for us.
What happens when the impressions seep in further? Ask yourself how well Obama would have done last Fall if, asked about his first 100 days if elected, he had said he’d be bowing to King Abdullah, making bro-love with Hugo Chavez, attacking the US from foreign capitals, sending his AG after Bush officials, castrating the CIA, and, oh yeah, planning trillion dollar deficits through 2020 and beyond. (Everyone has his or her own list… better start early if you’re trying to be comprehensive and want to finish before the next commercial break.)
Contemplating this all, as with so much else about this presidency and where it’s leading us, produces “thoughts too deep for tears,” as the poet said. It’s easier on the nerves and the soul to step back, and just think politically for a moment. I’m therefore wondering whether, approaching Day 100 of the Age Episode of Obama, we might not be seeing an inflection point, or at least its shape.
Is it too late for the Chavez soul-shaker to pull back from an unnecessary war on the institutions, assumptions, and morale that underpin not just American national security, but American political life? Just on the “torture prosecutions” question, even before the dangers of Obama’s approach have been made real in unforgettable headlines, this sop to the utopian left of his coalition, and against what I believe is still the vast majority in American opinion, reminds me of “Gays in the Military” under Bill Clinton, when a new President whose national security bona fides were already tenuous, went a bridge too far against institutional and cultural consensus. In short, we may be seeing “Gays in the Military” to the power of 10 – to the power of 10 again. And that’s just “torture.”
A pessimistic German once said, “There is no present. There is only the past projected into the black hole of the future.” Maybe not as catchy as “Change We Can Believe In,” but increasingly looking like just about the same thing, a multi-sided assault on the American future – on American assumptions about/assumptions about America as a future always busy being born, worth rushing to, ever more real, not to be passively watched like an interminable, tragic movie, or vaguely hoped for like the “green jobs” fantasy the President is blathering about (…false choice… I always said…) as I write. What we now see taking shape ever more clearly is the opposite of Reaganism: Sunset in America.
It’s never sold before, not for very long anyway, not here. Polls aren’t my be-all and end-all, far from it, but I’ll still be clicking Rasmussen tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, looking for that next must-read.
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Malaise +1000
thebrokenrattle on April 22, 2009 at 2:03 PM
Well….quite a rant, my delightful Celtic homeslice.
Let’s start with Ignatius, shall we?
Given that so much of human so called reasoning (castrating!!) is actually emotional, fueled by a neurohormonal cascade of endorphins and oxytocins, perhaps we should look at torture as a purely game-theoretic thought experiment.
This would be MY must read of the day.
Take it away, Dr. Manzi.
I did actually learn some Game Theory in my execrable brainwashing leftist university.
I learned that in a non-time-limited iterated game, strategy always beats tactics.
lol.
strangelet on April 22, 2009 at 2:39 PM
Also….I think you should read this.
Obama Skates While the Right Fumes.
And how can you BELIEVE Obama is The One?
He raised the Dead.
hahaha
strangelet on April 22, 2009 at 2:50 PM
Manzi’s article is based on a straw man – excuse me, straw person – straw grrl. NO ONE (outside of a few stray internet-commenters) is proposing “systematic torture as a matter of policy.” Many refuse to concede that the “torture” part of “torture memos” is accurate. Even if you accept a broad definition of torture – one that in my opinion would require us to declare numerous normal practices in, for instance, the penal system to be “torture” – the issue is still whether such torture should, and secondarily even can, be banned in ALL instances. Different game.
You’re right, by the way, that the use of “castrate” was probably too emotive. I’d edit the rant, but will preserve it in its current state of imperfection instead.
CK MacLeod on April 22, 2009 at 2:50 PM
ooops, NOT believe I meant.
poor typing skillz from my deplorable leftist brainwashing public school education.
strangelet on April 22, 2009 at 2:52 PM
Well no…..it is the same game.
The gamespace is the world and the gamegoal is keeping America safe.
Torture is a tactic. Not-torturing is a strategy.
strangelet on April 22, 2009 at 2:55 PM
Well, my lunch is over….I shall look forward to your response.
a tout a l’heure!
strangelet on April 22, 2009 at 2:57 PM
The game would be “pretending not to torture.” That’s the game the Obama Administration is currently playing.
“No torture” is a fantasy – partly because every time you try to set the limit, it would be possible for someone so inclined to point to the behavior just to the left or right of the line and raise impossible questions. This isn’t just a sophistry: It’s inherent in the nature of human beings, including the problem that what’s torture to you may be delight to me, and what’s torture to me today may be delight to me tomorrow.
One alternative strategy would be some version of legalized torture under the Dershowitz “torture warrant” proposal.
It could be modified in various respects from the version I just linked to, to cover “physical compulsion” – under a minimum realistic application to achieve life-and-death result, precision-guided terror vs. mass terror. It would be part of the strategy under the “Don’t effin mess with Uncle Sam” game, aka the Chicago Way game, aka the Jack Bauer game, aka the let’s get real game, aka honesty is the best policy.
I include the last, because, no matter what law you pass, when push comes to shove, some hero or set of heroes will be willing to accept the legal, ethical, moral, and physical risk to do things to the captive to make him talk in time, and deal with the consequences after.
CK MacLeod on April 22, 2009 at 3:07 PM
From Frum:
Another asshat suggestion. The 9/11 commission accomplished what exactly? Congress likes to distance themselves for these things and call for bipartisanship but then these commission are stuffed with partisans from both sides assuring that the applecart isn’t disturbed. Jamie Gorelick should have been a witness before the 9/11 commission instead of sitting on it. No, if Congress wants to stir up the mud let them do it themselves so we have somebody to hold accountable.
I’d love to see an ambitious Republican rattle Tony Rezco’s cage in late January of 2013 after this poseur serves his one term.
Where are all these asshat commentaries coming from today? There is a high level of stupidity today.
thegreatbeast on April 22, 2009 at 3:24 PM
Well…..no, Highlander.
Because we are playing in the global gamespace the definition of torture has been fixed, defined in the gamespace…..and we Americans are some of the people that defined it.
We defined it as something those “bad” countries do.
Not us.
strangelet on April 22, 2009 at 3:49 PM
Don’t know who you mean by “we,” white grrl. I’ve just argued that neither the definition nor any law or regime based on any definition can truly be “fixed,” and that any claim of having done so would be dishonest – implying (I’ll add here, picking up a theme from earlier posts) uncontrollable/unintended consequences and overcompensations.
Neither the Constitution nor whatever games we’ve played or pretended we were playing are or have to be suicide pacts – and everyone knows it – and that’s part of the game.
Did you miss Derrida on Saussure at your leftwing etc. school? The definition of a word is another word.
CK MacLeod on April 22, 2009 at 4:12 PM
LOL
Teh Pomocons are my meat.
Lieutenant Poulos often has tasted defeat on the point of my IQ-sword.
My paradigm defines theirs…….the paradigm of science.
strangelet on April 22, 2009 at 5:34 PM
Sorry for the OT….any mention of Derrida fills me with reflexive scorn.
Highlander….we are discussing a game theoretic approach to understanding torture if torture benefits American policy. The gamespace definition of torture is an intitial condition.
Jay Bybee tried to change the definition of torture with legal contortion, and he did it in secret.
Why do that unless Bush wanted to cheat, to torture without acknowledging the use of torture?
The definition stands.
strangelet on April 22, 2009 at 5:41 PM
And the definition is fixed by international consensus.
strangelet on April 22, 2009 at 5:44 PM
Believe whatever you like, scorn whomever you like, enjoy your fantasy victory, strangelet. It doesn’t matter.
You are putting up replies that do not include responses. If you are incapable of understanding why all the nations of the world together, all the people of all the nations together, by whatever fiat or prayer, do not have it within their power to “fix” a definition, then you are incapable of arguing this aspect of the topic interestingly. One alternative would be for you to get over your disdain for Jacques Derrida, and read his key works, particularly the critiques of Kant and de Saussure. They happen to apply. Of course, you wouldn’t need to read Derrida if your intuition was functioning properly – if you were even one quantum as quantum mechanical as you like to pretend, you could apply a logic patch borrowed from Heisenberg, Nietzsche, or I don’t know, Don E Stevens and Carlos Castaneda.
Game theory is a tool. You seem incapable of understanding its limitations or the game that circumscribes your game. I don’t accept your assumptions, your logic is flawed, and your game is small and boring. Please up it.
CK MacLeod on April 22, 2009 at 6:05 PM
Exactly my point. I am trying to use MY language of choice, mathematics, to avoid both theory of forms issues (like meaning and intentionalism) and emotional neuro-hormonebased psuedo-analysis (castrated!!! god and country!!).
In order to formulate the problem, we must assume 1) torture exists and 2) we practiced it systemically. There are reams of classified paper documenting what we did, and if it wasn’t torture why the need to redefine it? Why destroy tapes that could have have been used as learning tools?
It is a simple thought experiment….do tactical victories in torture (high value intell) have a higher payoff in a non-time-limited iterated game than the strategic move of non-torture?
strangelet on April 22, 2009 at 7:51 PM
strangelet on April 22, 2009 at 7:51 PM
Unfortunately, language (and real life) does not map onto your game, at least not in the way you desire. You’re trying to cram an n-dimensional indeterminate trapezoid, several of whose dimensions cannot even be approximated except by multi-variable equations, several others of which fold and unfold into each other unpredictably, into a 3-dimensional hole. Furthermore, not only is language more complex than your game – and the definition of torture is always a linguistic question as well as a political one – the world is more complex than any attempt to describe it in language.
That said, and setting aside the higher and lower level games that will always render your game irrelevant, the answer to your question – which, I note, is crucially different from Manzi’s question – is “yes,” for two reasons that occur to me off the top of my head: 1) In a non-time-limited variation of the game there will come an instance in which the game itself cannot continue except through torture or the appearance of torture; 2) because the strategic move of non-torture continually converts over time into its opposite (see prior posts) either as a result of definitional diffusion and transformation, or as a result of deferred compensation reaction (overcompensation). In other words, you will always be faced, at this level of abstraction, with having to start the game over again, at least one casualty down, after each eruption of “torture” nullifies “non-torture.”
CK MacLeod on April 22, 2009 at 8:16 PM
So your answer is YES!
In the Highlander metaverse tactics beat strategy in the domain of torture…because it is cyclic?
Okfine.
I axed the question because I don’t know the answer.
And Manzi didn’t either.
As an emotional HUMAN though….I think have to agree with John Schwenkler…altho I hardly ever do…..
strangelet on April 22, 2009 at 8:48 PM
And thats fine, Highlander, because your argument is THERE IS NO TORTURE.
Its all a fuzzy subset theory definition, infintely plastic and continuously changing….MAYBE this or that protocol is torture, but its all Derrida and hermeneutics and semiotics and intentionalism.
Right.
I get it.
strangelet on April 22, 2009 at 8:54 PM
I’m fascinated that no one else from the Hotair commentariat is brave enough to step into our sword-dance of scintillating intellect…..are they afraid they’ll get cut?
strangelet on April 22, 2009 at 9:24 PM
LOL
Too bad you cant collapse the threads, Highlander, I see sesqui is duelling you on the Agree thread………and you’re not doing too badly!
good thing you specced dual weild.
strangelet on April 22, 2009 at 9:57 PM
Meme-warriors!
strangelet on April 22, 2009 at 10:27 PM
Do better.
Jim Treacher on April 22, 2009 at 11:17 PM
Sorry, strangelet, your I find the Schwenkler piece just more salami from the same Generation Snark slicer. If you already presume you’re right, then, yeah, every glib riff you strum is probably gonna sound just fine to you.
I also think you’re over-interpreting – in a kind of Lucy with the football way – my Charlie Brown willingness to play your game theory game.
It’s the anti-torturists who are convinced, like your friend Schwenkler, that they know what torture is exactly, and what implications incontrovertibly follow – by sufficient necessity to condemn a set of public servants who were coping with what they, and as or more important the public, considered an emergency situation. We know the public considered it an emergency situation, because the public overwhelmingly supported war and all that war entails, and the public wouldn’t support war just for the fun of it, would it? We know that the public was still feeling urgent enough about it to support a second war by levels measured in the 70% range at its commencement and throughout the first major episode. The vast majority of the citizens of this nation, including several ardent anti-torturists, were worried enough to tell Generation Kill to go for it, and to marvel in advance at shock and awe and then to make up justifications for that little dismembered bomb victim’s agonies – and to take an chance on things going badly, worse even than they did, even during the whole ruckus that followed and that eventually led more than half conveniently to flee responsibility when the movie’s sequels ceased to please.
I believe definitions of torture will always be contingent, as will attitudes toward torture and every other gradation of violence between a caress and… use your own imagination, and I support a policy flexible enough to deal with that fact, without pretense to moral certainty, especially retrospective moral certainties. I support a policy that looks at the full range of known reactions to threats and violence by human polities, and so is in a position to conduct itself with reason and perspective the next time the torture of a nation breaks that nation’s will to suffer quietly and helplessly – as it will.
CK MacLeod on April 22, 2009 at 11:39 PM
Geez, Treacher – we’re trying. Been a long day, my diction’s wearing down, I hit submit too quickly, and Fox just reached out and slapped my day job, even after I said such nice things about their shows last week!
Hugh MacDiarmid
CK MacLeod on April 22, 2009 at 11:45 PM
I hear you…..THERE IS NO TORTURE.
Then why change the definition in secret?
Why bother to classify the memos redefining torture as not-torture?
You say there is no line that we cannot and willnot cross to protect ourselves.
I say that is an old question, and one you secretly know the answer to, Highlander.
Like Ivan’s question to Alyosha–
So you would torture to protect our country?
Just admit it, and quit trying to weasel word it.
KSM wasn’t an innocent child, but where do you draw the line? Would you torture an innocent child to get his suspected terrorist father to talk?
More Dostoyevsky….
strangelet on April 23, 2009 at 9:16 AM
As I said to our comrade sesqui, strangelet, this isn’t a sequel to SAW. I support a minimum sufficient and timely application of physical force based on well-grounded contingency, subject to consultation and review, not sophomoric would-you-pimp-your-wife-to-Robert-Redford for $1 MM, or cut-off-your-finger-to-save-your-dog’s life games.
CK MacLeod on April 23, 2009 at 10:05 AM
I don’t. And neither does Shep.
strangelet on April 23, 2009 at 10:17 AM
My game-theoretic toy argument was about whether tactical torture payoffs beat not-torturing strategy in the global gamespace.
But you made an endrun around the problem statement by declaring that “torture” doesn’t actually exist.
Fine.
You win.
strangelet on April 23, 2009 at 10:23 AM
What Would Shep Do is not a standard I apply to my life.
See how easy that was. In fact, you and Shep and sesquipedalian and Andrew Sullivan and Green Glennwald not only support torture, but are avid fans of torture, happy torturers, every one of you.
CK MacLeod on April 23, 2009 at 10:25 AM
Liar.
strangelet on April 23, 2009 at 10:32 AM
I’m Alyosha.
strangelet on April 23, 2009 at 10:34 AM
You are responsible, Alyoshalet, whether you dirty your hands or not. It makes you feel better to pretend that it’s not in your name – either your real one or your screen-name. It’s a very convenient and comfortable position. And, of course, you don’t really know whether you could “do it.” You think you couldn’t. But after a little work, there’s probably a lot you could do that you think you couldn’t. The people who know fear make the best sadists! Keep that in mind on the next career day.
And that’s one of the problems with the “shocks the conscience” (aka, “closest available high horse”) standard: What shocks the conscience on 9/10 or on 4/22/09 is a lot different from what shocks the conscience on 9/12, or what may or may not shock the conscience on 4/22/10. At the beginning of World War II, “area bombing” shocked the conscience. By the end of World War II, we were burning up whole cities.
It would shock my conscience to accept the risk to thousands upon thousands of innocent civilians – both in the unstaunched terror campaign and the war that would have inevitably followed it (and made Afghanistan and Iraq look like Tea Party protests) – because of squeamishness over plunging KSM’s face in water several times an hour on a series of afternoons. Call it torture or call it getting rough: No one cares what you think of my relationship to the words, and they’d care even less about anyone’s feelings about their feelings in the rubble of whatever un-averted aftermath.
CK MacLeod on April 23, 2009 at 11:25 AM
Liar.
That was compartment codeword classified.
When the first stories of torture leaked, I couldn’t believe it.
I said, not my country, never.
My country doesn’t torture.
strangelet on April 23, 2009 at 11:36 AM
Your country tortures. Your country has always tortured. You country always will torture. All countries torture. Every person tortures, and is tortured. Haven’t you heard? Life is torture, and then you die.
CK MacLeod on April 23, 2009 at 11:43 AM
Why the compartment codeword classification?
Wasn’t the threat of what we’d do to them supposed to be some sort of deterrent? A tool in the WoT? But how could they know we were torturing if it was secret?
It was classified so WE wouldn’t know what they were doing.
So the American People wouldn’t know America was torturing.
strangelet on April 23, 2009 at 11:43 AM
I already conceded Highlander.
There is no torture/ everybody tortures.
Make up your mind.
strangelet on April 23, 2009 at 11:49 AM
w/e
strangelet on April 23, 2009 at 11:52 AM
More Dr. Manzi.
strangelet on April 23, 2009 at 12:03 PM
It was classified because how many sheets of paper your secretary’s secretary is using is classified during wartime.
The American people were, overall, fine with the knowledge that bad things were being done to bad people in their name. If on 9/12 GW Bush had sadly informed the country that protecting our cities required nuking Tora Bora, he would have gotten nods and more than a few cheers from Manhattan to Hollywood.
Not my burden. I’m not the one trying to sell Jay Bybee down the river, wash my hands and plead “not my fault” if worse comes to worst, and call everyone who disagrees Torquemada, Jr.
CK MacLeod on April 23, 2009 at 12:04 PM
More Manzi.
Bybee will judged by a jury of his peers…the Bar Association.
That is the American Way.
strangelet on April 23, 2009 at 12:09 PM
i’m glad to see the vacuity of your arguments challenged by others as well. torturers shouldn’t be safe from scorn anywhere.
sesquipedalian on April 23, 2009 at 12:12 PM
And I’m sorry to see you draw back from the respectful form or our exchange on the other thread, and isntead reverting to your reflexively derisive and pre-judging modus operandi. If you find my arguments vacuous, you may leave, and never return. If your objective reduces to heaping scorn on me or anyone, merely for the thought-crime of disagreeing with you on this subject, then you and your posts are not welcome.
CK MacLeod on April 23, 2009 at 12:17 PM
/draws epee
sesqui, the Highlander’s arguments are NOT vacuous.
They may be wrong, but they are substantive.
Retract that or draw your sword.
strangelet on April 23, 2009 at 12:23 PM
CK MacLeod on April 23, 2009 at 12:17 PM
your arguments are vacuous because they essentially represent a “let’s look the other way” stance. you exhibit a level of tolerance for human suffering that makes it difficult not to be scornful.
sesquipedalian on April 23, 2009 at 12:25 PM
strangelet on April 23, 2009 at 12:23 PM
en garde!
sesquipedalian on April 23, 2009 at 12:26 PM
From my perspective, you are the one determined to look the other way, sesqui, both from the direct and indirect results of the policy you have enunciated, from the compromises it presumes and enables, and from the even larger, indeed immense contradictions between your narrowly focused humanist posture and all of the human suffering that has made and makes adopting and advertising it possible.
CK MacLeod on April 23, 2009 at 12:31 PM
Egagee! Parry huit!
My sempai, Dr. Manzi, articulates the Highlander’s SUBSTANTIVE point quite well.
strangelet on April 23, 2009 at 12:31 PM
engagee, pardon.
/touches bell of epee to lips
I think I scored a touch.
Touche!
strangelet on April 23, 2009 at 12:36 PM
stay tuned, sesqui, strangelet, and symparanekromenoi, I’ve got some errands to run and some captives to torment this afternoon, but I expect to have plenty of evil and spleen still in the tank later on.
CK MacLeod on April 23, 2009 at 12:55 PM
CK MacLeod on April 23, 2009 at 12:31 PM
i can’t see how rejecting systematic torture wrapped in fake legality and acknowledging the necessity of collateral casualties in a conflict is contradictory.
sesquipedalian on April 23, 2009 at 12:59 PM
Highlander, I see one place where you are wrong.
Don’t you think that Sesqui and I (and other likeminded Americans) would have protested if we had known?
I dismissed Cole and Sully because I simply could not believe my country would torture.
I did look away, I was in denial, but not in the way you assume.
strangelet on April 23, 2009 at 1:00 PM
Lol
You continue to delight.
Since you are The Mathematikos of this blog, Sesqui and I must needs be aukosmatikoi.
We await revelation.
strangelet on April 23, 2009 at 1:04 PM
strangelet on April 23, 2009 at 12:36 PM
i still find the argument that historical precedent justifies torturing people vacuous. i despise reflexive hitler analogies, but he also had plenty of historical precedent for expanding the german lebensraum and exterminating other peoples in the process. that obviously doesn’t make it acceptable.
sesquipedalian on April 23, 2009 at 1:11 PM
No, it is a strong argument…….but not directly the argument of history, but the argument of biology.
Homo sapiens sapiens is both warlike and tribal.
History is the field lab of evo bio.
strangelet on April 23, 2009 at 1:24 PM
the fact, for example, that non-violence is a basic tenet in all major religions suggests that we’re also genetically coded to be compassionate.
sesquipedalian on April 23, 2009 at 2:02 PM
lol….the nonviolence is only extended to ones’ memetic or genetic tribe.
There is cooperation in nature….the jury is still out on altruism.
strangelet on April 23, 2009 at 2:12 PM