Sane perspective from the Wall St. Journal on the “torture” issue versus an insane perspective on torture from the NYT.

The latter compares the CIA’s proposition to use a caterpillar against one individual known to be terrified of insects to terrorists bringing a disease that’s worse than West Nile Virus to the US.  Um… what?  There’s a slight difference in degree there.  The CIA didn’t threaten the Arab world with the spread of Malaria, it used a harmless bug to try to scare a guy, something every five year old boy in the world has done to his female classmates and/or siblings.  I agree that bugs can be used as weapons of physical and psychological war, but in this case the CIA was depending on the man’s illogical fear of bugs, rather than the inherent viciousness of the caterpillar.  Get real people.

The Left decries that the Right supports torture.  This is not true.  The Right is against torture as well.  The question is what constitutes torture?  I think depriving someone of sleep is not torture.  For casual John Q. Citizen, a night where you are woken up (by a baby or dog) might be described as “torturous” as hyperbole, but in the legal and moral sense of the word, it is not torturous; it’s simply a bad night.  Putting someone on the rack is torture.  Pulling off fingernails is torture.  Anything that causes lasting physical or, within reason, psychological harm should be considered torture.  In my opinion, making someone think they are drowning (when they are not actually drowning) for 20-40 seconds when precautions are taken to ensure that water never enters the lungs and should that occur, medical professionals are present, is not torture. Uncomfortable?  Yes.  Eternally painful and/or life threatening?  No.  Keep in mind that many of the same people that consider such methods torture also consider spanking to be child abuse.  (Then they wonder why their kids are hellions and have supposed ADD problems.)

I’m just getting around to making some posts, so the articles are a little dated.

Wall St. Journal op-ed on the purpose of “enhanced” interrogations by a former director of NSA and CIA.  The key points:

The release of these opinions was unnecessary as a legal matter, and is unsound as a matter of policy. Its effect will be to invite the kind of institutional timidity and fear of recrimination that weakened intelligence gathering in the past, and that we came sorely to regret on Sept. 11, 2001…

Which brings us to the next of the justifications for disclosing and thus abandoning these measures: that they don’t work anyway, and that those who are subjected to them will simply make up information in order to end their ordeal…  But confessions aren’t the point. Intelligence is. Interrogation is conducted by using such obvious approaches as asking questions whose correct answers are already known and only when truthful information is provided proceeding to what may not be known. Moreover, intelligence can be verified, correlated and used to get information from other detainees, and has been; none of this information is used in isolation…

Of the thousands of unlawful combatants captured by the U.S., fewer than 100 were detained and questioned in the CIA program. Of those, fewer than one-third were subjected to any of the techniques discussed in these opinions. As already disclosed by Director Hayden, as late as 2006, even with the growing success of other intelligence tools, fully half of the government’s knowledge about the structure and activities of al Qaeda came from those interrogations…

Politicians pressure the intelligence community to push to the legal limit, and then cast accusations when aggressiveness goes out of style, thereby encouraging risk aversion, and then, as occurred in the wake of 9/11, criticizing the intelligence community for feckless timidity.

The key finding in the aftermath of 9/11 was that the law enforcement side and the intelligence side of the national security community did not “share information.”  They, of course, did not share information because such practices had essentially been institutionalized, albeit informally, in the wake of the Church and Pike Commissions.  [During the Carter Administration, the country began learning of some of the tactics undertaken by the FBI during the tenure of J. Edgar Hoover (COINTELPRO, etc.).  A Democratic Congress was concerned that the intelligence people would "spy" on Americans that it deemed dangerous (white supremacist groups, anarchists, far Left-wing groups) and share it with the law-enforcement people, who would then round up "innocent" Americans for simply expressing their constitutional rights.  Thus, the "wall" between intelligence and law-enforcement was erected in order to protect groups like the KKK, the Black Panthers and Weather Underground.]

The point is that the airing of the entire “torture” discussion outside the administration has the same effect as the Church and Pike Commissions in the 1970s.   By publicly chastising and threatening legal action against it, the Intelligence Community learns timidity.  It learns to keep its head down and honor the house-line of the bureaucracy, the primary issue that led to the Intelligence Community’s failure to anticipate 9/11 despite, as George Tenet said, the “light was blinking red.”

These things matter.  Ideas have consequences.  I don’t think the Carter and Obama Administrations were/are intentionally trying to hurt the country, but I do think they were/are clueless enough where their actions do just that.  As stated, in paraphrase, at the end of the book “Broken”:  If you kick a guard dog every time it barks, it learns to not bark.  The worst type of intelligence community is one that doesn’t bark.

The Weekly Standard has a good article regarding the effectiveness of Comedy Central in deriding the GOP brand.  The key graphs:

I asked a well-respected academic political scientist what accounted for the sharp move in recent years. His answer: Comedy Central. “Jon Stewart has done more to destroy the Republican brand among young voters than any person in America.” And after reviewing some new research, it’s clear he may have been on to something…

[Jon] Stewart has said repeatedly he is “. . . just having fun pointing out the absurdities that emanate from the people and processes involved in today’s political world” and not intending to persuade anyone. “Regardless,” Morris writes, “. . . even though Stewart may not intend to persuade anyone, the evidence suggest that may have happened . . . “

First, it’s ridiculous of Stewart to claim that he’s not attempting to persuade anyone.  He’s a diehard liberal satirizing a political newscast.  As a liberal, he’s predisposed to finding conservatism/Republicanism more humorous.  Thus, he’s going to mock his enemies more and thereby persuade his audience to mock/reject his primary targets.  And as a diehard liberal, why wouldn’t he want to do this?  If I had a show on TV, I’d certainly want to influence people to adopt my worldview and its values.  It’s simply human nature to do so.  Quit wrapping yourself in the warm blanket of satire!

Second, of course Stewart is persuading people.  He’s a funny guy.  Who would want to support the losers he mocks?  No one, of course.  But especially not youth voters who are already overly sensitive to being ostracized from the larger group and have a limited foundation - at best - of history, economics or philosophy upon which to weigh a statement’s merits.  Most are just looking to be entertained.  And there’s the problem: they’re being entertained by a humorous, one-sided impersonation of a news show.  Whatever their motive for watching the show, the message comes through loud and clear.  The Daily Show is television’s equivalent to the bumper sticker: witty and generally well-crafted, but incredibly one-sided without any feedback channel.  By shaping the arguments, Stewart is 90% of the way to winning the arguments.

Now, Comedy Central is a private enterprise, so it can do whatever it wants.  But where’s the personal responsibility?  There’s certainly a place for humor, but [from either perspective on the political spectrum] laughing while Rome burns is irresponsible, particularly when you know you are likely the only source of “news” your audience consumes.

We’ve become a generation of mockers.  From television to journalism to academia, people who have never accomplished anything mock those in the public square who have accomplished much.  Academia and journalism are the more serious problems overall (eg. PhD professors and editorial columnists who have never run a business in their lives lecturing the world about running businesses), but television is hugely influential, particularly over youth voters.  And nearly all television aimed at the youth demographic - from Comedy Central to MTV and its subsidiary VH1 - is filled with C-List actors/comedians mocking everyone else.  Much of it is in good fun and pokes fun at our society for latching on to fads, exalting celebrities and listening to bad music that gets overplayed on the radio; however, the people doing the ridicule are generally at the forefront of any and all fads whose life goal is to be famous enough to end up on the cover of US Weekly.  In reality, they’re a bunch of never-will-bes tearing down the lives - and in our present context the ideas - of others.

Don’t kid yourself, this stuff matters.  Derision and ridicule is an effective form of political warfare.  In WWII, Hitler was mocked incessantly by Hollywood (via Looney Tunes and Charlie Chaplin) as a fascist, goose-stepping loon with deep psychological issues.  More recently, in Team America: World Police Kim Jong Il was made to look like a petty gangster - “Hans Brix, oh no!” - and the United Nations was portrayed as the feckless organization that it is - “we will write you a letter telling you how angry we are.”  Put simply, ridicule works because it makes the enemy into a pathetic farce, rather than a twelve foot giant worthy of respect.

Jon Stewart has led the charge in tearing down the GOP among youth voters.

Here’s the best commentary that I’ve read on the current economic situation:

The story so far: some capitalists behaved very badly. While this was going on, the socialists didn’t ask questions because they were too busy spending the receipts that flowed from that behaviour. Now, the socialists - who were happy to look the other way during the good times or even to delude themselves into thinking that they were responsible for them - want to use the ignominy of the capitalists to seize the kind of power they thought they had lost forever. …

In Gordon Brown’s fantasy, this is an “opportunity” to exercise control over the whole world. Not just stricter regulation by national governments of their own economic institutions, but a wondrous new level of international regulation by supranational functionaries - to be appointed by whom? A World Government agency accountable to no electorate and with no democratic mandate from the populations over whom it will wield such power? …

Meanwhile, Mr Obama - who gives the impression of being considerably out of his depth in the economic maelstrom - talks of an “opportunity” to “reorganise our priorities”. He gave a major speech last week in which he actually seemed to suggest that the present crisis had been caused by America’s failure to develop a universal health care system and to attend to the impending environmental disaster of global warming (”we made the wrong choices”), and that by focusing on these matters a way can be found out of the country’s economic problems.

Is he quite mad? Does he really believe that the banking crisis and the recession were some kind of divine retribution for the absence of universal health care, and excessive carbon emissions? …

What neither the Prime Minister nor the President can admit is what is becoming more obvious every day (and which has been admitted by the Prime Minister of New Zealand, John Key): there is precious little that any politician can do to resolve the present economic problems. The values of assets and property are simply going to have to fall from the grossly inflated points they reached under the debt bubble to what are generally accepted to be realistic levels. Then people will start to do business again - as eventually they must - and confidence will gradually return.

… I grew up with the Left and what this looks like to me is a power grab: a seizing of the moment by the forces which always believed in state domination. The Left sees an opening here, first for telling a critical lie about the historical origins of this crisis, which was propelled as much by the Left-liberal determination to spread prosperity through easy credit to the poor, as by the greed of bankers. And then, out of the wreckage, to restructure the economy along the lines that it always wanted, complete with central controls over the pay levels in private financial institutions.

As Charles Krauthammer said:  Obama’s efforts to use the economic crisis to transform education, healthcare and energy “is perhaps the greatest non sequitur ever foisted upon the American people.”

From Powerline.

The Weekly Standard brings us a “timeless critique from Tocqueville:”

It seems that if despotism came to be established in the democratic nations of our day, it would have other characteristics: it would be more extensive and milder, and it would degrade men without tormenting them. .  .  .

Thus, after taking each individual by turns in its powerful hands and kneading him as it likes, the sovereign extends its arms over society as a whole; it covers its surface with a network of small, complicated, painstaking, uniform rules through which the most original minds and the most vigorous souls cannot clear a way to surpass the crowd; it does not break wills but it softens them, bends them, and directs them; it rarely forces one to act, but it constantly opposes itself to one’s acting; it does not destroy, it prevents things from being born; it does not tyrannize, it hinders, compromises, enervates, extinguishes, dazes, and finally reduces each nation to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals of which government is the shepherd. .  .  .

If only he could soften, bend and direct the wills of our enemies as easily as he does his flock of sheep at home.  Unfortunately, in places like Iran, actions are more important than words.

Thomas Sowell has an excellent article about the roots of the housing crisis that sparked our present economic downturn:

From television specials to newspaper editorials, the media are pushing the idea that current economic problems were caused by the market and that only the government can rescue us.  What was lacking in the housing market, they say, was government regulation of the market’s “greed.” That makes great moral melodrama, but it turns the facts upside down. It was precisely government intervention which turned a thriving industry into a basket case.

It’s a great article, but it reveals a larger problem as well:  The media has the authority to shape an issue so that its interpretation becomes fact, regardless of the actual history.  In this instance, the cause of the housing crisis is blamed entirely on “greed” rather than misguided politicians who wanted everyone to own homes, including those who couldn’t afford it.  However, as the “first historians” (a title I despise as an actual student of history) journalist’s can shape an issue however they please.  As the ones with the megaphone, they are able to control the dialogue of the debate.  As they have a vested interest in promoting Leftist ideals - as they are overwhelmingly liberal - this is a problem for conservativism.  In this case, as the Left wants socialism, the market must be blamed in order to convince the American people to seek deliverance from the government.  Thus far, the media appears to be playing their part to perfection.

Excellent article by George Will about doomsday predictions:

An unstated premise of eco-pessimism is that environmental conditions are, or recently were, optimal.  The proclaimed faith of eco-pessimists is weirdly optimistic: These optimal conditions must and can be preserved or restored if government will make us minimize our carbon footprints, and if government will “remake” the economy.

It’s cunningly smart: Create a global scare in a field that confuses most people where government action to curtail the freedoms of its citizenry is the only solution.  Then, wait for the citizenry to demand that the government take away its freedoms in order to eliminate the global scare.  King George III couldn’t have done it any better.  Sadly, more people have died as a result of the “good intentions” of command economies than have ever perished as the result of what Adam Smith deemed “the invisible hand.”

The growing list of cons that “experts” were absolutely positive would lead to the destruction of the earth:

1. Overpopulation in the 1960s
2. Resource Scarcity in the 1970s
3. Global Cooling (!) in the 1970s
4. Global Warming in the 2000s

Ironically (and sadly) the only scare that had any real basis in fact - total nuclear annihilation (1950-1990) - was approached with absolute weakness by the Left, whose solutions amounted to unilateral disarmament and appeasement.  We can only wish they’d take such an approach to global warming.

But Obama was only getting warmed up. His major howler was this:

So then you get the argument, well, this is not a stimulus bill, this is a spending bill. What do you think a stimulus is? (Laughter and applause.) That’s the whole point. No, seriously. (Laughter.) That’s the point.

Under this “logic,” any bill that contains spending should be enacted because, by definition, it provides “stimulus.” It doesn’t matter how much stimulus is provided or when the stimulus will occur. This is quite possibly the most irresponsible position ever taken by a president on an economic issue…  The problem is that given enough time, every spending program in that plan will have to be paid for by taking money out of the economy. The result of taking money out of the economy is the opposite of stimulus.

Judea Pearl, the father of Daniel Pearl who was kidnapped and beheaded by terrorists in the name of the “religion of peace,” writes about the mainstream legitimization of terrorism by Western media and academia.

The key graph:

But somehow, barbarism, often cloaked in the language of “resistance,” has gained acceptance in the most elite circles of our society. The words “war on terror” cannot be uttered today without fear of offense. Civilized society, so it seems, is so numbed by violence that it has lost its gift to be disgusted by evil.

I believe it all started with well-meaning analysts, who in their zeal to find creative solutions to terror decided that terror is not a real enemy, but a tactic. Thus the basic engine that propels acts of terrorism — the ideological license to elevate one’s grievances above the norms of civilized society — was wished away in favor of seemingly more manageable “tactical” considerations.

Frank Gaffney writes that this mentality is adhered to and promoted by President Obama:

Several observers have noted in recent days that Mr. Obama’s outreach to the Muslim world is not only defensive and apologetic. It explicitly embraces a narrative that is factually erroneous and deprecating to his own country.

For example, in his Inaugural address, the president spoke of seeking “a new way forward [with the Muslim world], based on mutual interest and mutual respect.” He amplified this idea during his first post-Inaugural interview, which was granted to a Saudi-owned network, Al Arabiya: He is determined to “restore” the “same respect and partnership America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago.”

The problem with this formulation is that it misrepresents the more distant as well as the recent past, even as it panders to those (abroad and at home) who would blame the United States for the ills of the Muslim world.

He continues:

Mr. Obama has also seriously mischaracterized our enemy as “a far-reaching network of violence and hatred,” averring “We cannot paint with a broad brush a faith as a consequence of the violence done in that faith’s name.” Such statements deliberately ignore the animating and unifying role in jihad of authoritative Islam’s violent and hateful theo-political-legal program: Shariah.

What is really worrying is that Mr. Obama’s actions and rhetoric are almost certainly being perceived by his target audience as evidence not of respect but of subservience - precisely what Islam (literally, “submission” in Arabic) requires of all of us, Muslims and non-Muslims, alike.

Many supporters of Obama appreciate his supposed ability to improve the American image in the eyes of the rest of the world.  However, if the world is blind to evil, if it refuses to denounce terrorism as a barbaric attack on civilization, if it would rather protect itself than stand up to the most obvious tyrannies in human history (the former Soviet Union, North Korea, Saddam’s Iraq, Sudan, Iran and any other state that endorses Shariah law),  should we really be concerned with seeking the world’s approval?  Weren’t we supposed to learn in high school that seeking popularity for its own sake is worthless?

So I’m at the grocery store today in suburban Washington, DC.  There is a woman in her 40’s in front of me in the checkout line with whom I presume to be her late teens/early twenties daughter.  The daughter is dressed incredibly well: the latest fashions, the latest hairdo and all the latest gadgets, bells and whistles.  The cashier rings up their items: a 12 pack of bottled Miller Light, a case of Bottled Water, a 12 pack of Lipton Brisk Iced Tea, a 12 pack of Ginger Ale, a DVD (Are we Done Yet? starring Ice Cube) and various other food items.  (Despite what it sounds like, I wasn’t actually taking notes.)  Her bill comes to $171.  She turns to the cashier and tells him that she has $51 dollars left in food stamps for the week, swipes her card and her bill magically becomes $120.  She pays the rest with a credit/debit card.

Now, I don’t have anything against helping the poor, but what is wrong with this picture?  Is this the picture of “social justice” that Liberals talk about ad nauseum?  Does the government really intend for people to buy DVDs with food stamps?  Do the taxpayers really need to support someone who’s spending $50 on items that are clearly luxury items.  I don’t have any problem with luxury items when you pay for them yourself.  But when you’re on the government’s (read: the American people’s) dime, you probably shouldn’t be buying anything starring Ice Cube and you certainly shouldn’t be buying bottled water for crying out loud.  (Note: I live in urban DC.  While the tap water here was once unsafe for consumption - and the city actually mailed water filters to each residence - those problems have been fixed.  Unless there’s some health scare of which I’m not aware, it’s perfectly healthy for her to drink out of the tap).

This experience underlines the problem with socialism and government programs in general.  There are unintended consequences for every action.  When legislators on Capitol Hill supported a bill to help the poor with food stamps, they certainly weren’t thinking of supporting this woman’s desire to dress her daughter in flashy clothes, entertain her family with DVDs and pop open a cool bottle of Miller Light at the end of the day.  But naturally, when this woman has $50 of her grocery bill covered by the government, it enables her to afford luxury items that she otherwise would not have been able to.  (Another anecdote:  A friend of my mother’s teaches in inner-city schools and she says that its easy to spot the families who are on food stamps because their children have the nicest/most expensive shoes.)

Capital L Liberalism presupposes that human beings have a perfect understanding of human nature and can predict with certitude that Action X with have Effect Y (and only Effect Y).  This is patently false and impossible.  But under the tenets of Liberalism, the government is omniscient and can perfectly shape human action through legislation.  It has a moral duty to fix the problems in this world!  Sadly, however, it creates more problems (and injustice) in the process.

Its not that conservatives don’t care about helping the poor.  We just don’t think that the government is the “man for the job.”  We despise government assistance/intervention because we care about helping the poor (instead of fake-helping them over the short term).  How did the woman’s experience help her in the long run?  Did it teach her to save?  Did it teach her that hard work pays off?  Did it teach her daughter that sometimes you have to forego the DVD and the bottled water in order to keep up with the latest fashions?  Of course not!  It taught her that the government will take care of you with money that magically appears; you can work less and still buy more than you are able to afford.  Thus, the poor will always be poor.

On the bright side, I got to meet the woman who ended up with the 12 pack of Lipton Brisk that I could’ve afforded had the government not taken my money and given it to the woman in front of me in the checkout line.