Friday, May 27, 2005

Brother Tom Gets It Right Again; Atrios Apoplectic

I think Tom Friedman is on the mark today--as he often is--when he argues that we must shut down Guantanamo Bay. Our actions there are likely to go down as one of the blackest black marks on our history--a history with entirely too many black marks on it as it is.

The administration's policies with regard to the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay seem to indicate that their commitment to human rights is shallow at best, a mere smokescreen at worst. What's going on at Guantanamo Bay is consistent with the general orientation of American conservatives in my lifetime: they have been all too willing to engage in egregious violations of the rights of non-Americans in order to purchase even miniscule--and sometimes purely fictional--improvements for security for Americans. This is what happened, for example, when conservatives backed the Nicaraguan Contras.

But our government is underwritten by a theory according to which all human beings have certain inalienable rights. Our constitution guarantees that our government must recognize these antecedently-existing rights, but the constitution itself is not taken to create these rights, and, so, these rights are not limited to American citizens. Here's a good place to use the "what if the tables were turned?" test: how many of us would tolerate the abuses of Guantanamo Bay if the prisoners held without trial there were Unites States citizens? How many of us would tolerate it if another country were holding our citizens under such conditions?

As the most minor of footnotes to all of this, I notice in passing that Atrios now exists in a state of near-constant apoplexy. I hate to be too harsh toward the guy who gave me my first big link, but I have to say that I consider Atrios to be little more than the Instapundit of the left anymore. And although the comments are sometimes amusing, they are almost uniformly shrill and irrational, an exercise in the worst kind of groupthink Atrios, like many others on the left, has nothing but contempt for Tom Friedman--and, apparently, anyone else who dares to be a centrist and refuses to toe the party line. I frequently disagree with what Friedman has to say, but he certainly doesn't warrant the kind of sneering disdain that Atrios heaps on him.

But, sadly, such seems to be the polarizing and snarkifying effect of the blogosphere. Whereas we more-or-less leftish types spend a good deal of time complaining about Fox "news," Atrios and his ilk make Fox look like Frontline.

Atrios is, however, right to say that it would have been better to see this column two years ago. Still, better late than never. Let's hope that Darth Dubya is listening.

23 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

With respect to Friedman, you know, the old thing about a stopped clock ... I don't much care for Friedman's writing style (oy veh, the apocryphal-sounding anecdotes!) either, and I find a lot of his analysis shallow (maybe that's because he's a popularizer, and to the extent that he is, it's forgivable).

Given the things Atrios has said about Friedman in the past, that snippet appears to me to be snarky, grudging praise. So it's an odd hook on which to hang the charge of shrillness.

I'm betting that at least part of your reaction is to what he said about Matt Yglesias, which is I'm guessing (yes, I am actually guessing) a little closer to home. That one seems to me to be the one least likely to win friends and influence people.

Atrios' tone, I'm guessing, comes from frustration over having been on the topic for years, and having most of it be shouting into the void, while -- I won't use 'centrist' to describe Friedman and his ilk -- virtually ignore the great huge freaking beam in the eye of the US. It doesn't 'hurt' that he has a nice feedback mechanism in the comments going on, either.

That doesn't make it right, but it makes it more explicable. And what you can explain, maybe you can correct; when Atrios jumps into threads, he often offers something incisive or illuminating. So appeal to that part of him.

Maybe the mechanisms described above are the same behind the loony 'Christian' right's shrillness on ... well, most of the stuff they seem to care about. Two birds?

9:46 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I would also point out that you, Winston, are pretty much doing the same thing you blame him for doing. You have a grudge against the left. You pretty much work snark about the left into any criticism you have of the right. You seem to be unable to stop poking them in the eye when your trying to give them a back handed compliment.

You don't seem to have a problem with the actual content, meaning and focus of the left. Rather, you have some meta problem with the balkanization and what you perceive as civility - a balkanization you seem to also be contributing to. I mean, after all, you're sitting around getting your own snarks and licks in which pisses people off and drives further wedges in the cracks.

People react to being beaten up by getting tough themselves. And if you don't like that feedback loop, you don't help it by blaming the victim. It's like you're complaining about a kid who has been consistently beaten up by a pack of bullies, who when he finally gets sick and tired of it and starts playing by the same rules, gets sent to the principal's office (you) for fighting back.

I've seen it happen in real life a zillion times. You have one standard for the bully. You have another standard for the victim. It's a big part of the problem in the first place, imho.

You don't like mutants, stop growing them in toxic waste.

10:17 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

All Tom Friedman EVER talks about is how he travels around the world talking to shoe-shine boys in Istanbul and cab drivers in Cairo, and investors in Mumbai and London. And I'm supposed to believe that NOW he's realizing how outraged the rest of the world is with Gitmo? If he were some shut-in working off wire dispatches from Cincinnati, I'd roll my eyes, but given that he sells himself as Mr. Clued-in-about-stuff, I want to call him the twunt that he is.

10:18 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I know that I sound Atrios shrill, but to add-- part of MY frustration with Friedman is that he did not always come off as such a clueless, self-important fool. But somewhere after From Beirut to Jerusalem his inferences about what people told him became far more important to him than what thos folks actually told him. And I think that power to infer deluded Friedman, and steered him away from getting the kind of more subtly enlightening anecdotes he used to find. His tone is one of believing that he is bigger than the story. And though Tom thinks his stories ARE HUGELY IMPORTANT, ONLY HE, TOM FRIEDMAN, WORLDLY MAN, SEES THE IMPLICATIONS.

10:42 AM  
Blogger Tom Van Dyke said...

---I'd agree Gitmo has outlived its usefulness---there might have been a "ticking clock" defense made after the initial rush of 9-11 and the capture of those who might know something about the plans for the next 9-11, but one would think that time is past.

But if it's nearly certain they'll go back to terrorism if released, what would be the proper thing to do with them? They are spies and saboteurs, and I think the rules of war permit summary execution.

---If the tables were turned and Americans were conducting terror out of uniform and therefore not protected under Geneva, I wouldn't give a damn about them. You play, you pay.

---Friedman's either a visionary or a mook; either way, let him talk. He's one of the very few opinionators who actually travels.

---As an outsider, I certainly find this right-as-bully/left-as-victim meme amusing, as well as the double standards riff. WS asks us to reverse roles before we rant, and how could that possibly be anything but wise?

Before you judge a man, walk a mile in his shoes. You'll be a mile away and still have his shoes.

4:05 PM  
Blogger Tom Van Dyke said...

Oh, let me add, in the Philosoraptor spirit of things, that Hannity's getting more and more shrill. Even the wife, who's a conservative, too, remarked on it the other night. Meanwhile, she had nothing but good to say about Colmes' comportment and intellectual honesty.

Of such things, swing voters are made.

So I reckon a corollary to WS' point is that we risk the whole farm by letting the most vociferous of us be at the forefront of our cause. Our silence would indicate acceptance.

(PS---You heard it here first: I predict Hannity's lack of intellectual depth and learning is gonna get him in a very big pickle.

He dodged a bullet here with his infatuation with reactionary/revisionist Thomas Woods. Next time, he won't be so lucky. Face in the Crowd, anyone?)

4:22 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Well, I fail to see what effect Dr. Black's commentary will have on curtailing T. Freidman's speech. I'm always amused at an argument of "let him speak" when the criticizing person (Dr. Black, in this case) has a blog and the person criticized has an op ed column in the NY times. The image is priceless.

Might I ask what you think our black ops do? How about our special ops we send in? Spies and saboteurs? Guerillas? Out of uniform? Undoubtedly. But still, different rules for me and thee I suppose. And after all, a lot of those in Gitmo actually were in uniform and fighting for the Taliban. I need only point out our own American Taliban who was one such soldier. I guess 9/11 changed all that, though.

I also note with some amusement the "outsider" meme. Whenever I hear this, I immediately think of the "Observer" character in Mystery Science Theater 3000. It's always fun until someone gets their eye poked out.

And speaking of walking in someone else's shoes.... Maybe it was all the attempts at breaking down racial barriers that equates to Republican victim hood by Democrats. (hey, what about those cross burnings in Durham, North Carolina? This time with extra theological gay hating goodness). Or maybe it was Social Security - lord almighty do they seem to really, really hate that.

Anyways, I'm sure there's a lot more I can learn from walking another couple of miles in the right's shoes. Lord knows I haven't really gotten to the whole cross burning, blowing up government buildings, gun toting militia thing which the democrats have really screwed over for them with Waco, Ruby Ridge and their evil gun control ways. I could spend some more time thinking about all the liberal activist judges that made their lives a living hell with affimative action, and I can justify their calls for mass impeachments of the judiciary. Maybe after that mile or so in those shoes I'll understand better how they really are equally the victims here and that I really should get over being called treasonous traitors who should be carted off or killed to put the fear of God in us.

Hey, it's all relative.

Still, liked the bit about Hanity.

1:03 AM  
Blogger Tom Van Dyke said...

That's cool, but the rest didn't really make a swing voter out of me.

2:23 AM  
Blogger Winston Smith said...

TB,
No, I didn't see that bit about Yglesias. I've seen other idiotic screeds about centrists over at Eschaton, though, so this one doesn't come as a surprise...

First Anonymous,
Nope, I don't have different standards for bullies and bullied, but the same one. All stupidity is bad. The right is currently stupider, so they get more criticism. But the left richly deserves its share too. Of course, I could be wrong about how much they respectively deserve

Re: snarkiness:
Guilty as charged. I keep telling myself to be better about this...but blogs just make it so damn easy...

Re: Cross burnings down the road...
Egad. I have recurring fantasies of catching those fools.

Re: Friedman: Sure he can be annoying. But he's frequently sensible.

5:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

TVD: I don't really have much use for swing voters on the whole torture issue - it's not something that I should have to convince anyone about. If I have to, then they're not someone I really want on my side anyway. I have standards about such things.

WS: I'm pretty sure that all of humanity, including well educated philosophy types, pretty much richly deserve everything they get. That's why we have this thing called grace - we're all guiltier than hell and need a lot of slack to survive.

The question is, what serves your cause better? Further pointing out the flaws in Dems, and bashing them over the head so that everyone remembers well what losers they are? Or focusing on the truly dangerous, mind bindingly surreal situation we live in where torture is not just justified, but embraced.

It's a matter of choosing your battles and keeping friends that are desperately needed. I guess this is maybe your point, in that Dr. Black is pissing you off and acting "just like" the other side. But it's a dirty job and someone has to do it. Both sides kill in a war. Both sides create collateral damage. It's the nature of war. Breaking eggs for omelets n' all that.

I really wish we could all just have civilized conversations and I really wish we still had the fairness doctrine still around so we wouldn't have even seen the rise of rabid right wing talk radio and the advent of Fox. But we're living in this situation now, and it doesn't seem like having tea and talking it over like gentleman is going to have any effect at all.

We can go back to politically knee capping one another after we take care of the rather nasty fascists and theological totalitarians that happen to be the first 100 jobs on the agenda we have in taking back this country.

10:04 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"They are spies and saboteurs, and I think the rules of war permit summary execution."

That's funny, I thought they were a bunch of guys picked up in Afghanistan who have, for the most part, never had any evidence presented against them, and no judgements rendered regarding their guilt or innocence. Their ranks also include, as has be demonstrated by this point, a number of hapless people who were picked up rather indiscriminately by Afghan warlords who cashed in on the U.S. bounty on "terrorists." But, what the hell, one towelhead is as good as another, right?

How in god's name is their guilt proven simply by the fact that they are in custody? THAT is the standard at play here. Ask yourself if you would accept the same treatment of Americans.

12:44 PM  
Blogger Tom Van Dyke said...

Mr. Anonymous, I was referring to the rest of your screed with the gay cross-burnings and Ruby Ridge and affirmative antion and the rest of the kitchen sink you threw in, which did not form a cohesive and therefore persuasive thesis.

---"Spies and saboteurs" is a Geneva term that acknowledges the historical prohibition against men fighting out of uniform. There is an assumption made here that those in Gitmo are guys who were just hanging around, and not "illegal combatants." I do not know this to be true, but if they are, certainly detaining them is unjust.

If US "black ops" types are caught out of uniform, they are entitled to no legal protection whatsoever. Had Mr. Phelps been caught or killed, the secretary would have disavowed any knowledge.

There must be grave consequences for fighting out of uniform; the idea is actually to protect innocent non-combatants behind whom the spy or saboteur takes cover. Without consequences, everybody would do it.

1:42 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Interesting theory. I find it quite horrifying that you seem to endorse torture as a means of punishment for fighting out of uniform. It's an odd world you inhabit, TVD.

Oh, btw, found a rather interesting bit by Phillip Carter: What Is Torture? A primer on American interrogation.

5:13 PM  
Blogger Tom Van Dyke said...

Sorry I wasn't clear. I was referring to indefinite detention and possible execution of illegal combatants, not torture. Torture is definitely not cool.

I couldn't quite penetrate the meaning of the website, although it had a nice chart that says Bush is the president. Seemed ominous, but vague.

Was there anything specific you found relevant?

6:54 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

But without some kind of due process, how can you determine if the detention is justified? Assume that, because some warlord handed you a prisoner that he's bin Laden's homeboy? Is that enough?

10:06 PM  
Blogger Tom Van Dyke said...

If this is seen as a law enforcement problem, our classic freeing of 99 guilty for the sake of one innocent man makes this a slam dunk.

I do see this as a war, and not a stretch to compare it to holding 600 SS men, the overwhelming majority of whom will go back to killing Jews and other innocents as soon as they're released.

It's morally far stickier, with the commitment to due process in conflict with common sense. There is no unambigious moral answer.

2:53 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"overwhelming majority" will go on to kill.

Where is there justification for this conviction that the vast majority of these people are guilty and that only a handful, if any, are not? What, given all that we now know about the manner in which so many of the "detainees" from Afghanistan were rounded up, gives one the confidence to assume that the military has gotten the right men in anywhere near large enough a percent to justify this continued internment.

Also, you compare it to rounding up 600 "SS men." Well, right there, you've pre-framed the debate in order to justify your side. Since, in this analogy "SS men" means, presumably, "al-queda or taliban affiliated terrorists", you're once again assuming that ALL, or nearly all, of the guantanamo inmates are, indeed, queda-affiliated, while it has already been demonstrated that at least a significant minority has been shown to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time during a sweep. If the question is: do we keep 600 al-queda terrorists locked up without access to the legal system, then we have a real issue to consider. But that's not the question. Rather, do we keep 600 people, an unknown but presumably significant percentage of whom may be completely innocent of any terrorist affiliation locked up without access to the legal system?

11:27 PM  
Blogger Winston Smith said...

I'm with Matt_C on this one. If I knew that all of these guys were guilty, I wouldn't be too upset by GB. But they haven't had trials, so the decision to imprison them does not meet the "reasonable doubt" standard--not by a long shot.

Given what we know about GB, I don't see how we can avoid the conclusion that there are likely to be many innocent people wasting away in there.

5:55 AM  
Blogger Tom Van Dyke said...

Could be. Or they are not entirely certain they all aren't killers like this guy, who successfully hid his true identity until they set him free, after which he promptly went back to terrorism. The government claims there have been at least a dozen such cases.

National Review isn't as credible as the testimony of released al-Qaeders, but I pass this on anyway:

Detainees “provide useful information on locations of training compounds and safe houses, terrain features, travel patterns and routes used for smuggling people and equipment, as well as for identifying potential supporters and opponents.” U.S. questioning has “expanded our understanding of the extent of their presence in Europe [and] the United States…”

“Detainees provide information that helps sort out legitimate financial activity from illegitimate terrorist financing operations,” the report says.

One detainee “identified a complex detonation system…that had been used in the Chechen conflict, and now is being used on IEDs [Improvised Explosive Devices] in Iraq, helping U.S. forces to combat this lethal weapon.”

Despite this apparent cooperation, enemy combatants remain viciously anti-American and dedicated to mayhem, even after release.

“I will arrange for the kidnapping and execution of US citizens living in Saudi Arabia,” one detainee threatened, if freed. “They will have their heads cut off.”

“There is no need to ask for forgiveness for killing a Jew,” another said. “Israel should not exist and be removed from Palestine.”

One detainee reportedly warned that “upon his release from GTMO, he would use the Internet to search for the names and faces of MPs so that he could kill them.”

Among 167 detainees freed from Guantanamo, the Pentagon has identified “about 12” who have resumed terrorist operations. Last October, two Chinese engineers were kidnapped in Pakistan. “Former detainee Abdullah Mahsud, their reputed leader, ordered the kidnapping,” the report states.

“Another released detainee assassinated an Afghan judge,” the document continues. “Several former GTMO detainees have been killed in combat with U.S. soldiers and Coalition forces.”


Whatever the proportion of innocent to guilty-as-hell, I repeat my opinion that common sense and caution about life-and-death must have primacy over legal issues. Since they've already released 167 detainees (and were wrong about some of them), it stands to reason that anyone known to be innocent is already out.

Are they demanding proof "beyond reasonable doubt" to hold the rest? Definitely not. But it appears that to apply that standard at this time will most likely result in some bad apples getting away and causing more deaths.

This is certainly an illegal due-process standard for criminal cases, but not for war.

7:20 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I wouldn't necessarily argue that the gitmo prisoners need to be given a full-on, bells-and-whistles "beyond reasonable doubt" jury trial, complete with Mark Geragos for the defense. However, there needs to be SOME public vetting of whatever justification the military is using the keep these men detained. The administration arguement is that, because Guantanamo Bay is not technically under American or Cuban jurisdiction, there is therefore no compelling reason to give these men ANY hearing of ANY kind at ANY time. This is surely too much of an affront to the concept of justice to be allowed, even during 'wartime.'

3:31 PM  
Blogger Tom Van Dyke said...

Well, Matt, I certainly respect the other side of the argument, too---it's principle vs. practicality, a classic moral dilemma.

6:27 PM  
Blogger Winston Smith said...

I've not argued that they live in bad conditions, nor that they aren't dangerous. What I'm saying is that they have to be given fair trials.

And National Review is not a news source...but I think you already acknowledged that...

Anwyay, an interesting new issue occurs arises: what if they haven't done anything wrong (they aren't "enemy combatants" in that sense), but they make it very clear they INTEND to harm us (so they could still be called "enemy combatants" in some sense)?

Would it be o.k. to lock 'em up then? Can we lock up people who express intentions to harm other individuals? I'm ignorant on this point of law.

If somebody in Canada said "I intend to kill Americans," (and Canada failed to do anything about it), would it be o.k. for us to sieze the guy and lock him up? I'm not sure...

6:51 AM  
Blogger Tom Van Dyke said...

NR was obviously putting out the government propaganda, but since I have seen it absolutely nowhere in the regular press, I thought it deserved a listen. Some Americans will take the word of al-Qaeda first, but that's the way it goes...


I thought we had wrapped this up in a nice warm & fuzzy knot, but my read-between-the-lines crystal ball tells me this:

---By American 99+% criminal law burden-of-proof standards, there isn't enough to hold some or most of these guys.

---By common sense standards, some or most of these guys would go kill innocent people if released, probably immediately.

The moral dilemma is the probability of depriving an innocent of his freedom vs. the probability of the rest of these maniacs taking innocent human life. I think both propositions are probable, and I think both options suck. You make your best 51-49 call and live with being a moral leper with the 49.

So me, I make my call based on detentions being temporary and death being permanent.


To the second part, I don't think we have the time or inclination to react to mere verbal threats.

(May I add, this issue reminds me of the problem of what to do with pathological sex offenders after their prison sentence is up. The law says they've paid their debt, but we know the odds of them living peaceful, harmless lives is not good. Our love of the law vs. our common sense.)

10:18 PM  

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