Many on the right think President Obama's Oval Office address last night should have credited "the Surge," and they would have preferred thanks to his predecessor for taking and implementing a decision that Senator Obama and others fiercely criticized. The left would have preferred a more ringing indictment of the Bush Administration, and a "never again" promise. The war's strongest supporters will, with notable exceptions, remain convinced that going to war was the right decision, that its positive effects are under-appreciated, and that the unknowable alternative history would likely have been at least as violent, and more difficult to influence. The war's strongest critics will remain convinced that going to war was undeniably the wrong decision, that any positive effects could have been achieved or even outbid by other means, and that the unknowable alternative history might have been much less violent and expensive, and have allowed America to retain much greater influence and freedom of action. No one knows for sure where actual history is leading, but everyone is prepared to blame someone else if things go poorly, and all will feel fully justified in their own eyes.
The President chose to let left and right cancel each other out:
As I have said, there were patriots who supported this war, and patriots who opposed it. And all of us are united in appreciation for our servicemen and women, and our hope for Iraq’s future.
It was his demeanor, called "half-hearted and detached" by one as-ever implacable critic, that expressed and may have resonated with a broader public sense of exhaustion regarding the whole subject. He seemed to be saying, "We're working hard to make the whole thing as boring and forgettable as possible." He did not promise "never again," possibly because he is not in a position to keep such a promise, otherwise because for the foreseeable future an Iraq Syndrome ought to handle the matter anyway. With 50,000 troops still in Iraq and in a re-negotiable position, with 100,000 troops in Afghanistan - and still an angry, self-righteous, globally committed, and incredibly well-armed nation - the U.S. will remain involved in wars and warfare, but we are, for now, exceedingly unlikely to undertake a new major military expedition except as a true last resort, and we are even less likely, next time, to assume an ability to change regimes and contain aftermaths. The experience of the '00s has erased the imperial hubris inherited from the '90s on both economic and military fronts. Call it our intellectual war dividend: Revolutions, we now recall, are not always, or even usually, velvet ones. Wars, we now recall, do not always, or even usually, end more quickly and at less cost than predicted. And, incidentally, incomes, revenues, and stock and property prices, we now recall, do not always, or even usually, rise continuously. In this sense Iraq was just one self-chastening among others.
My personal view remains that we were destined to become deeply, bloodily, and expensively engaged in and around Iraq: Too much unfinished business, too much political, economic, and moral involvement. Following 9/11,with both our fear and our blood still high, our confidence boosted by a seemingly easy victory in Afghanistan, we chose to act rather than react, to pre-empt rather than retaliate, to take the dice in our own hands rather than bet on someone else's throw. To indulge for a moment in a-what-might-have-been, if we had not acted when we did, then, sooner or later, by whatever concatenation of collapses or aggressions, we would have found ourselves on propinquitous ground, sea, and air taking and giving heavy fire anyway. The world economic and political system or "order" that we uphold and depend upon is itself too dependent on what flows out of the geographical Gulf for us to abide indefinitely all of those other gulfs: the gulf in our knowledge, troubling gaps in our sense of control and predictability, the increasingly intolerable moral chasm in our then existent policy. Nature abhors a gulf of gulfs, and "if we knew then what we know now" is a vain exercise, since we never would have learned what we now know except by having acted, suffered, and desperately fought to rescue ourselves. Compare what our armed forces, the political class, and the interested public now have learned about Iraq and environs, and all related issues, as compared to what we generally knew in the year 2000. Operation Iraqi Freedom was as much an exploratory expedition as a "real war" - for the country - if too real for our carefully counted soldiers and much less carefully counted budget.
As for the Iraqis, it is an index of our former naivete, insuperable except by experience, that we hoped to "give" them freedom, and, through their happy example, to spread it to the rest of the Arab and eventually the Islamic world. We simply allowed ourselves to forget what our own history would have taught us, if only anyone ever learned from history. Maybe deep down we remembered, but put it out of our minds -choosing to believe (not all of us, but easily enough of us) what we needed to believe. You can say we chose to trick ourselves into acting, and, even though we saw the bucket of water placed strategically above the partly open door, we decided to blunder forward anyway. Except the bucket was full of blood, and most of it Iraqi, the critics will say - and they are right. Yet can anyone with much knowledge of the history of the region pretend that the violence and destruction would likely have been avoided for very long? That they weren't bleeding out month by month already - with an ever-present option on the next catastrophe, against a background of misery and despair? That goes for the violence and destruction of the first liberation, the liberation from Saddam - it had to come someday; it goes for the violence and destruction of the second liberation - from foreign masters and would-be masters, including but not limited to us; it goes for the violence and destruction of the third liberation, from the "thousand Saddams" that now compete in Iraq for position.
By intervening as we did and how we did, we helped set the timetable of revolutionary violence and put ourselves in place to absorb and channel it, but it may be another form of hubris to assume anything more. Here is the simple summary that the President supplied, using terms that his predecessor might just as well have used, putting a hopeful emphasis on how Americans enabled Iraqis to take their fate into their own hands:
The Americans who have served in Iraq completed every mission they were given. They defeated a regime that had terrorized its people. Together with Iraqis and coalition partners who made huge sacrifices of their own, our troops fought block by block to help Iraq seize the chance for a better future. They shifted tactics to protect the Iraqi people; trained Iraqi Security Forces; and took out terrorist leaders. Because of our troops and civilians – and because of the resilience of the Iraqi people – Iraq has the opportunity to embrace a new destiny, even though many challenges remain.
The difficulty for Americans, especially for onetime proponents of the war like myself who hoped for a simpler, smoother, and much less costly transition - though who had been willing to contemplate a much costlier initial battle - was coming to understand why the Iraqis themselves were so resistant to seizing that historical opportunity and acting in their own collective interests.
So here is what I think we have re-learned, and had to re-learn: Prior to "Operation Iraqi Freedom," as the name emphasizes, the Iraqis were un-free. They were unprepared and perhaps unwilling to enter history as free human beings, and, though we removed one seemingly insuperable obstacle, the terror regime, we could not relieve them of the struggle that alone gives meaning and, potentially, durability to freedom. Without us, the Iraqis might have put off a new effort of self-liberation for many years. They might never have gone the final distance as a people (or set of captured peoples), but such a description ignores the extent to which they were held back and hemmed in, trapped by history at the cradle of civilization, at the crossroads of the world, on an ocean of oil, and at the same time pushed forward by larger forces - the same ones that gave Saddam his weapons and his dreams, the same ones that enslaved the Iraqis together in a "republic of fear," the same ones that made the world so interested.
"Operation Iraqi Freedom" could therefore only have ever meant a willed confrontation with catastrophe. We can take this knowledge with us on the next "operation," and there will very likely be a next one, different because of our additional knowledge and our new cautions, but sooner or later on the same terms.
On “Down in the Dungeon with the Torture Trolls (warning: rated J for Japanese graphic violence)”
I am one of the aukosmatikoi of this Mathematikos.
I am listening.
But listening is a process of discovery and self-examination.
I did not truly understand why the torture memos bothered me until I listened here.
"
The real reason the detainees are not entitled to POW status is to be found in a distinction first made by the Romans and subsequently incorporated into international law by way of medieval European jurisprudence. As the eminent military historian, Sir Michael Howard, wrote in the "October 2, 2001 edition of the Times of London, the Romans distinguished between bellum, war against legitimus hostis, a legitimate enemy, and guerra, war against latrunculi — pirates, robbers, brigands, and outlaws — "the common enemies of mankind."
The former, bellum, became the standard for interstate conflict, and it is here that the Geneva Conventions were meant to apply. They do not apply to the latter, guerra — indeed, punishment for latrunculi traditionally has been summary execution."
"
Torture
hahahahahahahahahahahahaha
I just wondering where this moral high ground has been for the last 35 + years as babies were ripped, torn and slashed from their mothers....where was the horror as solutions were pumped into amniotic sacs to cause death by chemical burning...
hummmmmmmmmmmm
where was there outcry to end the torture.
roflmao
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Yup. In fact they did. We have never had a President so squishy as we have now.
It really amazes me when the left tries to use the founding fathers to support one of their arguments. The ideologies between the Left and the those of the founders could not be more opposite.
You do know that the least a "outed" gay dude in the times of the founding fathers could expect in punishment was to have boiling tar poured over them and then feathered. Then placed in stocks and ridiculed in a public square. That would have been considered lenient.
By all means, let's start looking back to those principles. Hmmm?
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Considering that the accepted the maintenance of the South's "peculiar institution," I think the obvious answer is that they would have accepted just about anything in the interest of preserving the nation - even things that many felt were totally immoral, in the interest of some day being able to eliminate them.
Your deployment of the phrase "institutionalized torture" is prejudicial, as is your insistence on a broad, collectively self-flagellatiing definition of "torture."
Let others determine whether what we choose to do is "torture," and whether that makes it a bad thing, and and whether that makes them want to do something about it. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that in Japanese and Arabic, just to pick two languages, have very different usages.
By adopting an open, results-oriented commitment to maximally humane but sufficient physical compulsion where necessary, we let our enemies use their own (on this score likely fertile) imaginations. If your objective is to reduce the morall abhorrent incidence of torture, then consider in addition that many who might, under your favored scenario, end up being tortured informally by Jack Bauer, or drugged, would instead simply talk, knowing that soon enough they would end up talking anyway.
The harder you look at a word, the harder it is to understand it.
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and yet you spend significant amounts of time trying to either persuade or browbeat others.
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I am really only concerned with myself and what I have learned in discussion with the Mathmatikos.
I'm Alyosha.
"I could not do it."
You have to decide who you are for yourselves.
"
Pardon, you are correct.
Dachau
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Ok, I'll give you that. but you don't control the process. As for the founders, I suggest that if Washington had a standing order that proscribed a certain behaviour, that anyone apprehended having broken it would have been summarily punished, up to and including execution. not exactly whats going on right now huh?
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Are you talking about the same founders who hanged Muslim pirates without trials?
Guardian on April 24, 2009 at 8:24 PM
Yup.
Would they have approved systemic institutionalized torture?
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Well, what would the Founding Fathers do????
Tell meh.
Would they have approved of institutionalized torture?
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Are you talking about the same founders who hanged Muslim pirates without trials?
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It is not a matter of politics for me.
Like I have said repeatedly, release all the memos and let the judiciary decide.
What would the Founders do in this situation?
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For example, we defined "water torture" already. The Bybee memos attempt to redefine the practice as not-torture. It became SOP with government approved equipment, trained personnel, procedures, protocols, and funding.
Systemic, institutionalized torture.
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This is no longer a matter of law, it's a matter of politics. Obama made it one. I'm surprised you don't see the pattern yet. First it was wall street (actually first it was an inoculation against criticism using his race). Publish lots of memos, hold press conferences, explain half the story. Stoke the rage machine, then turn around and in a closed do meeting make sure the bankers know he's "the only one between them and the pitchforks". Now it's the lawyer and officials who could organize against him. So here we go again. But this time it's going global.
This isn't about legality, this isn't about being proper. This is about political power and demonstrations of it, pure and simple.
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But that is not my point....my point is that the soldiers were so horrified by the results of torture that they forgot their training and shot unarmed men.
Would they want us to have institutionalized torture?
I'm pretty sure WWII paratroopers might have pistol whipped some intell out captured prisoners. But that was extralegal, spontaneous, and in-situ.
And neccessary.
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I will take you at your words, though I will ask what is "institutionalized torture". Torture done on a regular/uniform basis by an organization (i.e. it's a common fallback)? That's what I think you're getting at.
No insult intended. Just wanting a definition.
Further more, some of these pansies being interrogated will call it torture no matter what we do.
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At some point, tolerance goes out the window.
Hath not the master said: "I came not to send peace, but a sword." This was not a sword of violence but of separation. At some point, the good will be separated from the bad. Not that I say this will happen simply because God hath said so (though he hath said it), but sadly, it is the nature of man to devolve into warring tribes and cut each others throats.
At some point, one side will be irreconcilably separated from another by their own actions. Then what? Do we excuse their intolerable acts? Do we make peace with a foe who wishes us death?
The founding fathers thought otherwise. Our declaration of independence gives us the duty to.
At some point, tolerance MUST go out the window and inevitably replaced with war.
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Bush could’ve used the psychological model of enhanced interrogation and many in the opposition would’ve still spoken out against it. What would you have said then?
Me? nothing. I am against INSTITUTIONALIZED TORTURE.
Is the psychological model of enhanced interrogation torture? I think that is what the Israelis use actually.
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Dr. Manhattan on April 24, 2009 at 6:39 PM
Threats, drugs, drink and deceit....do you what oxytocin is? sodium pentathol? cannabis? Oxytocin is a neuro-hormone that can be used for empathy bonding.
We should be using those techniques...they don't to be redefined like water torture, which is what we called it when the Viet Cong and the Japanese did it to our men.
Let me make it clear.
Torture is illegal in America.
Release all the memos.
Let the DoJ decide.
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No. Tolerance is the left.
The line between intellectual discourse and pointless trolling has been crossed so many times already. And it's a big broad line at that.
Tolerance is what keeps us divided. To put up with crap in the name of tolerance is what got us into this mess. There comes a point where you make a stand. This far and no more.
Tolerance will get you gay marriages, Presidential bowing before Islamic Kings, trillion dollar deficits and countless capitulations that further weaken our country and economy.
Tolerance will get you killed on a battlefield and tolerance will destroy the country if left unchecked.
This whole country was founded on the Principles of intolerance. I'm hanging on to those values.
F**k tolerance. It way too expensive and way over rated.
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I like the Psychological approach. It's far more effective... but what happens when that's spoken out against?
One must draw a line at some point and stick to it no matter who or what persuades him (or her) otherwise.
The thing I'm getting at is this: Bush could've used the psychological model of enhanced interrogation and many in the opposition would've still spoken out against it. What would you have said then?
If there is anything I hate about trolls, it's a decided lack of inconsistency? Not that I'm calling you one Strangelet, but consistency from all people isn't too much to ask.
And lastly, about the Germans at Dachau... they knew what was going on and said nothing, did nothing, and expected nothing. I'm not sure who was more naive: the Americans doing the shooting or the Germans that got shot?
At some point you cross the line between being a bystander and being an accomplice. They knew what was going on! All those who would've fought against it had already started fighting, or died doing so.
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No...that is a personal decision. It every man's own choice to be Ivan or Alyosha.
"Following orders" is a cop-out.
I'm Alyosha.
I neither rely on the Highlander to be Ivan or judge him if he is.
Freewill.
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The Highlander helped me understand what bothers me so much.
It is the institutionalization of torture as part of established American policy.
Like I said, release ALL the memos and let the DoJ decide.
There is a thought experiment I'm fond of....what would the Founders do?
I think Obama should step out of this entirely.
The debate should not be partisan.
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I recommend the Churchill model.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.