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Fear, With Good Reason

Last week, Dahlia Lithwick had a terrific piece in Slate in which she ponders America's "Terrorism Derangement Syndrome." America does seem to be in the grip of morbid fear, doesn't it? KSM could irradiate Manhattan if he's given a trial there... terrorists can melt the walls of supermax prisons... the Underwear Bomber is so diabolically clever he would laugh off traditional interrogation methods. With all this terror, you might even think... I don't know, that terrorism is working pretty well.

Lithwick attributes some of the cause of TDS to Republican fear-mongering and to Democratic acquiescence in GOP scare tactics. I agree -- but I think there's something more fundamental going on, something that explains both the fear and the fear-mongering.

Something like... our own policies.

I believe some deep-seated part of our national consciousness is aware there will be consequences for what we've done, and continue to do. The wars, and kidnappings, and illegal imprisonment, and off-the-mark Predator strikes, and, most of all, torture -- we sense a reckoning for all this, a conflagration waiting to engulf the combustible materials we insist on piling recklessly, relentlessly higher. Our tactics worsen the danger. The worse the danger, the more scared we get. The more scared we get, the less capable we are of rational policies. As our rationality deserts us, we embrace more tightly primitive tactics. And the more primitive we become, the worse we make the danger. And so on.

So yes, we're afraid. After all, we understand revenge, don't we? Revenge is a human need so powerful that, if necessary, we'll attempt to satisfy it by proxy, the way we satisfied our need for 9/11 vengeance against al Qaeda by attacking Iraq, instead. We know payback is coming because by God, if there were a country kidnapping Americans and imprisoning them and torturing them in secret prisons, and if that country constantly threatened to bomb us and sometimes actually did so, and if the bombs often missed and massacred women and children and funerals and wedding parties, we would not -- we could not -- rest until that country came to rue the day it even considered fucking with the United States of America.



That's how it would be if the shoe were on the other foot -- in fact, that's how it was. And you don't have to be psychic, or even exceptionally empathetic, to know that's how it is with other cultures, too. A little imagination and intuition are more than enough.

Imagination and intuition, as it happens, is the same combination that makes us sure Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons. Our own National Intelligence Estimate claims otherwise, but we don't believe the NIE because what would we do if we were subject to the kind of bellicose rhetoric our politicians and press level at Iran? What would we do if we were Iran, and America had invaded our neighbors east and west? We wouldn't rest until we had nukes, so we know Iran is after them, just as we would be. Anyone who suggests otherwise must be wrong.

As I wrote over a year ago:

It's common for rightists to justify America's embrace of the "dark side" by claiming President Bush has kept the country safe. The claim strikes me as remarkably simplistic. If the temporal frame of reference begins on 9/11, and we ignore the unsolved anthrax attacks that came shortly after, and the geographical frame of reference is the territorial United States alone, then one might accurately claim America has been safe up until now. Whether the correlation between "the dark side" and our safety up until this point has a causal connection is far more debatable. Regardless, to me, "has kept us safe up until this point" has far too much the ring of Neville Chamberlain's "peace in our time." It also makes me think of a parent who seems to be an excellent provider because he's financing all those provisions on a dozen maxed-out credit cards. The temporary comfort he's afforded his family will inevitably be wiped out by the unpayable bill they're all soon to receive. Watching these documentaries, you can't help but feel that bill is out there, and that soon enough, it will be horrifically presented to us. Even if you believe "the dark side" offers benefits, and you're willing to ignore what the dark side has cost us in terms of our own ideals and our image in the world, that bill, when it comes, will represent the dark side's true price.

What every American needs to understand about torture and the rest of the "dark side" is this. Not only has our embrace of the dark side violated our laws and profaned our values. And not only have we received no safety in exchange for our willingness to cash in our national ideals. No, the real irony, the real tragedy is that war and secret prisons and torture and the rest have created and continue to create a new generation of Muslim extremists intent on revenge. We know this. We try to stopper our minds, but our intuition won't be silenced. It's why we're so afraid.

P.S. You can also find this piece cross-posted at Truthout, where there are already some interesting comments.

Torture Tales

There are various factors behind America's growing embrace of torture, but among them, largely overlooked, is a brilliant campaign of cross-promotion between right-wing ideologues and right-wing entertainment.

First, the right reduced the entirety of torture to a simple talking point: "Can you really say torture never works?" And then answered the question through thriller novels and television shows.

There's a reason Glenn Beck so assiduously hawks what he calls the "conservative porn" of novelist Vince Flynn. When Flynn's series character, covert operator Mitch Rapp, saves the day through torture, his deeds vindicate the authoritarian worldview Beck advocates. Beck even has a list of his top ten thrillers at Borders, with Flynn and another rightist thriller writer, Brad Thor, in the top two slots. Nor is Beck alone: he is joined in his promotion of pro-torture novels by Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Hugh Hewitt. And of course the right loves no one so much as Jack Bauer, the "24" operative whose defense of America always depends on torture -- a love the show returns in kind.

All of which raises an important question: why? Given that expert interrogators like the Air Force's Matthew Alexander and Steven Kleinman and the FBI's Ali Soufan and Jack Cloonan agree not only that torture is unnecessary, but that, by producing false leads and creating new jihadists, it has made America less safe; given the existence of scientific evidence demonstrating why and how torture produces false information; and given that there is no reliable evidence that America's resort to torture foiled any jihadist plots, we have to ask, why does the right continue to promote it?

Because fictional questions about torture's efficacy obscure real questions about its criminality. The UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading Treatment, signed by Ronald Reagan and ratified by the Senate, not only prohibits torture, but categorically rules out all exceptions. By Article VI of the Constitution, the UNCAT is the supreme Law of the Land (because the treaty also requires party nations to investigate and prosecute credible allegations of torture, President Obama is himself now in violation).

It's surprising the left has been so feckless in its response. True, the left is no marketing juggernaut. After all, this is the movement that chose the stunningly vague and uninspiring product name "the public option" for its make-or-break health care rollout. But because the best thrillers are the most realistic, the form is ideally suited to dramatically examine the actual motivations behind torture (panic, incompetence, proxy revenge). Or to make plain the real fruits of torture (new jihadist recruits and increasingly radicalized Muslims). Or to show how torture, once permitted in military and intelligence circles, metastasizes to civilian law enforcement and otherwise. Or to detail the way torture brutalizes our society and destroys the psyches of the young men and women we encourage to do it in our names. And yet some of the most commercially successful thrillers are those whose take on torture is the most cartoonish.

If the leftwing mass media continues to ignore political thrillers, this important means of shaping the public debate on torture and other critical issues will remain the exclusive weapon of the Glenn Becks of the world. Worse, as reviewers like Kirkus go under and newspapers and magazines curtail their book coverage, writers and publishers, aware that the best means of publicizing their thrillers will be an appearance on Beck or Limbaugh, will shape their stories to please the talking heads whose ministrations they increasingly crave. There's already an orthodoxy among some publishers that the audience for thrillers is largely conservative, an understandable (though mistaken) conclusion caused by the fact that the only mass media hawking thrillers today is rightwing. And with the sad recent news about the demise of Air America, that mistaken orthodoxy is likely set to deepen.

Those of us who value the rule of law and the blessings of liberty in America need to wake up. Novelists, bloggers, screen and teleplay writers, journalists, talk show hosts -- if we don't start hanging together, then, as Benjamin Franklin said, assuredly we shall all hang separately.

P.S. Proud to say I'm now blogging both at Truthout and at the Huff Post, where this piece ran today on the front page. If you have a chance, stop by and leave a comment (already responded there to a bunch) -- thanks.

Paper Earthworks and Digital Tides

Don't be misled by the self-serving narratives Amazon and Macmillan have advanced following their recent eBooks battle. Amazon's narrative is "We're Pro-Consumer;" Macmillan (and paper publishers in general) counter with "We're Anti-Monopoly." Neither of these narratives is untrue, but neither addresses the real cause of this war.

What's happening is this. Amazon is doing everything it can to speed the transition to eBooks because, in a digital world, Amazon's costs of shipping and storage essentially disappear. Paper publishers are doing everything they can to slow the transition to eBooks because, in a digital world, paper publishers' high hardback margins essentially disappear.

That's it. One side wants to improve its profits through lower costs; the other, through higher margins. Everything else is commentary, much of it misleading.

Paper publishing has been around a long time and hasn't changed much. Think of it as a castle, surrounded by earthworks built out of the high margins publishers enjoy on hardback books. Now imagine digital as a surging tide comprised of two elements: (1) increasingly low-cost, high-quality digital book readers; and (2) lower-priced digital books. Amazon has attacked publishing's fortifications first by introducing the Kindle, and second, by selling eBooks at a loss. Publishers can't counter the first strategy (and even if they could, it wouldn't matter -- Apple, B&N, Sony, and plenty of other players are constantly improving and lowering the costs of digital readers). They have found a way to temporarily counter the second, by forcing Amazon to price eBooks no lower than $15, which is what the battle with Macmillan was fought over.

But it was only a battle. In the wider war, digital readers will continue to get better, cheaper, and more widely adopted. As for the price of eBooks, publishers can only control the price of the what Amazon buys from them. If you were Amazon, therefore, and publishers had stymied one of the two prongs of your strategy for speeding the transition to digital, what would you do?

That's right. You'd speed your own transition to becoming a publisher. This has been happening anyway; all Macmillan has done is provide Amazon with an incentive to do it faster. In the coming months, therefore, expect to see Amazon announce that it's poached some combination of editors and writers from major paper publishers. It will then publish its own eBooks at whatever price it believes will most effectively speed the transition to digital. Drive the price of eBooks low enough, and consumers' perceptions of the value of all books will radically change. It's this changing perception publishers fear. Consumers will buy a $17 hardback if the eBook costs $15. Charge $5 for that same eBook, and $17 for a hardback becomes an impossible sell.

Earthworks are a static defense. Publishers can do a few things to make the walls marginally higher and thicker, but that's about it. Meanwhile, the force of the digital tide is always increasing. Eventually, a kinetic and ever stronger offense will overwhelm a static, finite defense. Either publishers don't know this, in which case they're deluded; or they do know it, in which case they're just playing for time while their employees update their resumes. Either way, their position is grim. If they want to survive, they can't just hunker down behind their crumbling walls. They need an offense.

What would that offense be? The only solution I can imagine is for the major paper publishers to stop selling digital rights to Amazon and other retailers and establish their own well branded and managed online store. It's probably too late for them to make such a move anyway, but even if it weren't, the chances that a media industry could do something so radical are vanishingly small. And even if they did manage to pull it off, they'd keep eBook prices high to shore up their paper profits -- which is of course what they're doing now. Piracy would increase, and Amazon would muscle in with its own line of low-cost eBooks. To make it work, publishers would have to radically lower eBook prices and cannibalize their high-margin hardback sales. I've never heard of a company managing such a bold move, and I don't think a publisher will be the first to pull it off. But in a land of zero-cost distribution, with their primary competitive advantage further eroding every day, publishers need to establish their own direct link to consumers. If they don't, they'll offer no significant value in the changing ecosystem in which they find themselves, at which point they will become extinct.

I hope I don't sound unsympathetic. I make a good living selling hardback books through paper publishers and I have many friends in the industry who will suffer as it changes, so on a personal level the transition to digital isn't something I welcome wholeheartedly. But when analyzing a trend, it pays to set aside sentiment.

I used the word "extinct" above. It's hard to avoid the imagery the word naturally conjures: dinosaurs, blinking in frightened confusion as they find themselves encircled by new, hungry-looking predators encroaching on the territory that was once exclusively theirs. Dinosaurs had famously small brains. If publishers have an advantage in this regard, they need to start exploiting it.

If the Hippocratic Oath Applied to Intelligence

I'm just about done with Tim Weiner's phenomenal Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA. Two themes are at the heart of the book.

First, the Agency has been incompetent from its inception. The roster of incompetence includes subversion operations that cost the lives of hundreds of agents and accomplished nothing; CIA-managed coups that backfired; the Bay of Pigs; and many others. Even operations that "succeeded" were pyrrhic. Installing the Shah via a CIA-sponsored coup in Iran in 1953, for example, created enmity that resulted in the Khomeini revolution and hostage crisis of 1979 and continues to this day.

Second, the Agency and its political masters have consistently lied to the American public about CIA domestic law breaking. Anyone horrified at the notion that the modern CIA kidnaps and tortures terror suspects at secret prisons should understand that these activities aren't aberrant, but are in fact the legacy of programs like Project Artichoke and Project MKULTRA, in which the Agency built secret prisons in Germany, Japan, and the Panama Canal Zone, prisons where suspected double agents were tortured and dosed with heroin, amphetamines, sleeping pills, and LSD. And, like the interrogation videotapes the CIA now claims it destroyed in 2005, the CIA also destroyed its records of these earlier illegal activities.

It's tempting to conclude from all this that the CIA should never have been in the operations business -- after all, incompetence measured against subversion of the Constitution seems a bad bargain. But it's hard to see what CIA analysis has accomplished, either. Mostly the analysts have been disastrously wrong (on the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, for example, the Agency continued to insist even after Russian tanks crossed the border that it couldn't be a full-scale invasion), but even when the Agency has been right, it hasn't made a difference. When policy makers agree with CIA conclusions, they use those conclusions to justify what they were going to do anyway. When policy makers disagree with those conclusions, they simply ignore them. Either way, the conclusions become irrelevant. You can have the best information and analysis in the world, but if it has no impact on policy, it's still a waste of resources.

Counterproductive operations, activities that subverted the rule of law, irrelevant analysis... it's hard to read Legacy of Ashes and conclude other than that America would be better off today if the CIA had never existed.

Of course, no politician will ever abolish the Agency. The CIA is too useful a tool for demonstrating to the public that a politician is doing something about a problem, and an iron law of American politics (perhaps all politics) is that a politician can never say, "We're doing as much as can reasonably be done about this problem, and attacking it further would only make things worse." Also, the CIA is too easy to ignore when ignoring it is convenient, too easy to manipulate when CIA support is useful, and too easy to blame when something goes wrong (say, a mistaken and unjustified war).

So what can be done? The solution, I think, lies in a critique of Weiner's book by Nicholoas Dujmovic, available on the CIA's website. Dujmovic writes:

The intelligence services that are often judged to be superior to CIA—the Israeli Mossad, the Cuban DGI, the East German Stasi, and even the British SIS -- are far more limited in focus and scope. CIA from the beginning was charged with worldwide coverage in all intelligence areas, something no other service, except perhaps the Soviet KGB, was required to do. If making no mistakes is Weiner’s only standard, he has adopted an unrealistic one -- a Platonic ideal for intelligence -- that CIA, dealing with the world as it is, could only have failed to meet.

That last line is just a straw man: Weiner doesn't require that the CIA make no mistakes. No reasonable person would. But if Dujmovic's point is that the CIA is too diffuse to be effective, why not focus its mission? Eliminate its operations arm, which has consistently done more harm than good. As for analysis, do politicians really need secret information to formulate sensible policy toward, say, China? And even if they did, history suggests they wouldn't use it except to justify what they were going to do anyway. So eliminate operations and ruthlessly focus on questions that only good intelligence can answer: the whereabouts of Pakistani nukes, for example, or the nature of terrorist financial networks, or how close Iran is to acquiring nuclear weapons. Resources are always finite, and an organization that's focused in part on China will inevitably be less focused on Pakistan -- and will probably perform poorly on both.

P.S. I'm proud to report that I'm now being syndicated on Truthout, which puts me in the company of Mel Goodman, Jeremy Scahill, Andy Worthington, and some other journalists and writers I've learned a lot from and admire. If you have a chance, stop by and leave a comment on today's post -- many thanks.

The Best Lack All Conviction

If you want a pristine example of why people view Democrats as feckless wimps, here's Obama's statement from yesterday on what the Dems should do about health care reform following Brown's Massachusetts victory:

"Here's one thing I know and I just want to make sure that this is off the table. The Senate certainly shouldn't try to jam anything through until Scott Brown is seated. People in Massachusetts spoke. He's got to be part of that process."

Translation:

"It's not enough that the rules make it difficult to pass legislation. We're also going to make sure we don't take full advantage of the rules. In fact, we're going to make up nonexistent rules, like having to delay a vote until a new guy gets seated, and impose those nonexistent rules on ourselves. We wouldn't want anyone to think we don't fight fair; accordingly, we're going to tie one arm behind our back and fight that way."

Can you imagine Republicans doing this under like circumstances? Of course not. GOP leverage of the filibuster is the very reason Brown's election has stymied the Dems. I don't like the way the GOP has used the filibuster (I think the rule should be eliminated regardless of which party has a majority), and I don't think the rule is good for the country or that it's been used in good faith, but hey, Republicans are just exploiting the rules to what they see as their advantage. Something Democrats are obviously themselves afraid to do.

But neither the surface maneuvering, nor the substance of the underlying argument, is what matters politically. What matters politically is this: voters sense Republicans are effective; Democrats, fearful. Republicans, unafraid of what people think of their tactics and focused on results; Democrats, obsessed with being liked. The comparison is not flattering to Democrats.

I just finished reading Rory Miller's new book on violence, tentatively entitled "Seven" (I'm writing the foreword). Rory talks about how criminals don't see their victims as humans, but rather as resources, and how difficult it is for a normal person to understand this criminal perspective. We're deeply invested in believing in our common humanity, in the power of reason and the presence of empathy... and it's hard for us to accept that, with certain people, we can negotiate as effectively as we could with a hyena.

The Democrats are in a similar state. Despite all evidence to the contrary, they remain in denial -- still clinging to the belief that with enough compromise, enough compassion, they can placate their Republican enemies and negotiate the passage of some sort of compromise. They don't understand that Republicans don't want something passed. They don't want anything passed. They want to "break" Obama and the Democrats and inherit the ruins after.

Yes, a political strategy aimed primarily at breaking a party rather than at building the country is irresponsible, reprehensible, disgraceful, etc. But until Democrats start acting like they understand the nature of the fight they're in, voters will continue to look at them and wonder, with reason, "Jeez, if they can't handle a bunch of bully politicians, how can they handle Ahmadinejad (or any other officially designated boogeyman)? What will they do, complain to Ahmadinejad that he's not being fair?"

It's one thing to show your belly if there's a reasonable chance submission will result in mercy. But when submission repeatedly results in your opponent attempting to disembowel you, you might want to consider another strategy.

Unless, of course, you just really like submitting. With the Democrats, you have to wonder.

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Indeed. One party is harmful and knows exactly what it's doing; the other is innocuous and doesn't have a clue. One party's inept; the other, insane. Welcome to America.

Democratic Crybabies

The Democrats are so pathetic.

Their latest plea is that if Martha Coakley doesn't win in Massachusetts today, they'll lose their critical 60-seat Senate block and with it, health care reform.

It's bullshit. If the Democrats wanted to pass health care reform, or anything else, they could do it today. Any time they wanted, with a simple majority vote, they could end the filibuster rule that enables Republicans to block legislation.

This is so simple, it's useful to break it down the way a child might approach it.

Democratic Senator: Sorry, little girl, we can't pass health care reform without 60 votes.

Child: In school they taught us there only 100 Senators. So don't you need only 50 votes?

Dem: Yes, but there's a Senate rule that allows the minority party to do something called a "filibuster," and when they do, the majority party needs 60 votes to overcome it. Filibusters used to be rare, but now the Republicans do one for every bill we try to pass. Those meanies.

Child: Well, where did the rule come from?

Dem: The Senate passed it.

Child: By a majority vote? I mean, 50 Senators?

Dem: Yes.

Child: Then don't you need only 50 Senators to repeal it?

Dem: Huh?

Child: I mean, if you think Republicans are meanies who aren't being fair about the rule, why don't you just change the rule?

Dem: That would make the Republicans really mad!

Child: So you're afraid of them?

Dem: Of course not!

Child: Then why don't you change the rule?

[Silence]

Child: I was afraid of bullies, too. But then I stood up to one and he backed down. You should try it.

The only thing my hypothetical child might be missing -- and only because she's so innocent -- is that the Democrats might actually like the filibuster they're always complaining about. Here's a link that nicely lays out how the filibuster works and why the Democrats are motivated to keep it: essentially, because they can use it to excuse their failure to fulfill their promises to their constituents while simultaneously invoking mean Republican abuse of the rule in their fundraising efforts.

So are the Democrats cowards or cynics? I'm not sure. Sometimes, watching them, I see a study in learned helplessness -- they've let themselves be beaten down so many times they just want to cringe in the corner and give up. Other times, I see the Stockholm syndrome -- they want to lick the hands of the people who are punching them. Or maybe they do indeed know exactly what they're doing -- their "inability" to cope with those obstreperous Republicans is great for fundraising. Regardless, listening to them whine about how they can't pass legislation because they don't have 60 votes is like listening to a guy who says he can't work because he's wearing handcuffs -- handcuffs he's put on himself, and to which he's holding the key.

Ironically, undergirding the cynicism and cowardice is stupidity. I doubt the average voter knows that much about the details of health care reform or any other proposed legislation or platform. Most people don't choose a product because they really know the product's features; instead, they make an emotional decision based on the product's brand. At this point, the Republican brand is "bully." Not good, you might think, because most people hate bullies. But the Democratic brand is "coward." And looking out at a scary, uncertain world, a lot of people would rather be led by a bully than by a coward. Until the Democrats grasp this obvious, fundamental point, their fortunes will continue to come down to the results of single special elections, their turns in the White House to interludes between bouts of Republican incompetence so profound that desperate voters will temporarily grasp at any alternative. You can call this state of affairs a lot of things, but "prescription for getting things done" will never be one of them.

Between one party that's "corrupt and inept," and the other that's "batshit insane," what can be done? Digby has the best and most level-headed plan I've come across. Read it on Hullabaloo here.

P.S. Yesterday Scott Horton blew gigantic holes in the government's attempt to cover up torture and murder at Guantanamo. Overseas papers are all over the story, but the American mainstream media won't touch it. Make a difference -- post, tweet, or forward Scott's article and do what you can to make America a nation under the rule of law.