"Extra-legal"

Marc Ambinder at the Atlantic posted about White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs's reflections on his "inartful" comments. I commented:

---

novel and potentially extra-legal counter-terrorism campaigns overseas

"Extra-legal" is the wrong, mealy-mouthed word, dude. Illegal is the word you're looking for. As in "crime".

has fleshed out assertions of executive power by the previous administration

As in "war crime". As in "unconstitutional".

Maybe the "professional liberals" are mad because they're tough on crime, unlike those of you who are happy to trade away one eternal liberty after another for successive temporary securities. Maybe we're values voters who thought we were voting our values -- *serious* values, freedoms that are actually worth fighting for -- and aren't seeing them displayed.

Torture, various

So I've been spending *way* more time than is comfortable reading about the unfolding torture memos saga. At Obsidian Wings, hilzoy posted about the "Perfect Storm" of policy-making ignorance. In the ensuing discussion, I wrote:

---

I agree with Nell that Shane & Mazzetti's "ignorance" explanation makes no sense.

they make it a technical, bureaucratic, institutional kind of failure rather than what it clearly is: a complete failure of moral judgement and courage on the part of powerful people

-- but I don't think the institutional/bureaucratic failure and the moral failure should be contrasting explanations. When Gary says:

most personnel working constantly with classified material tend to disregard material in the public domain

-- that's IMHO an extremely believable and important point. The allure of having the Special Classified (hermetic, esoteric) Knowledge makes people lose track of the fact that it isn't as good -- it's not been gone over by as many minds, it hasn't been looked at from as many sides. It will tend to be tactical and technical rather than strategic, or strategic rather than meta-strategic -- which is usually the level where moral thinking comes in.

---

Meanwhile, over at The League of Ordinary Gentlemen, E.D.Klein was writing about how long it might take the tide to turn for current torture apologists. My comment (re: discussion):

---

I’d also like to know where this “recruiting tool” meme comes from.

From logic. … Do you not think the countrymen of the men we’ve wrongly tortured (and sometimes killed) would not have similar anger against the country that did that to them?

I would take it even further than that. Torture is *evil*, it is what the Bad Guys do. When we do it — when we excuse it, when we *endorse* it — we become Darth Vader, the obvious embodiment of Evil. We make people opposed to us look like the Good Guys. Of course it’s a wonderful recruiting tool — lots of people (especially the young kind who make good soldiers) *want* to fight Darth Vader, they *want* to be a Good Guy and fight the Bad Guys.

How could you expect it to be otherwise? Unless, of course, you yourself would rather be on the winning side than on the side of undoubted moral Good.

War crimes and reconciliation

Glenn Greenwald interviewed Scott Horton about his Harper's article on how to prosecute Bush Admin war crimes. My comments:

---

"Get over it", they tell me.

Recently I've posted about my hope for war crimes trials in several different fora, and every time someone pops up to tell me to "get over it".

I have a question, for those whose memory is clearer than mine.

Back in the 90s, did Democrats use the retort "Get over it!" a lot, to Republicans who were talking about Clinton's sex life, etc.? Or did this start within the 8 years, and if so, when and why? I have the vague sense that I first encountered it as a catchphrase used to dismiss misgivings about Bush v. Gore, but I may be wrong.

---

First the national trauma, *then* the reconciliation

South Africa could have a "Truth and Reconciliation Commission" because they had already had decades of national conflict and trauma. Post-WWII Germany could have de-Nazification because their country had been bombed to flinders.

The United States has not collectively *earned* Truth and Reconciliation, because most people in this country simply don't feel bad enough about what's gone on under Bush/Cheney. Obama showed no hints of righteous wrath during the campaign, which was undoubtably politically prudent -- there's no way an *angry* black man could have won this election.

Americans are very resistant to feeling bad about ourselves, but what about when we *should*? How do we get to the point of truth and (maybe) an eventual reconciliation, unless a large proportion (even a majority) of Americans are willing to say, "this was evil and it was done in our name." I gave up hope on that account in November 2004.

Obama's Denver speech

From the post-speech discussion at Obsidian Wings:

---

socratic_me reported:

My sister, a long time very conservative Republican from the middle of Oklahoma, decided tonight that she was voting for Obama. ... Her reason: She is tired of the fact that Republicans always want her to be frightened and angry and Obama has clearly set forth for her a better way.

The "socratic_me's sister" metric proves once again I am not a very good politician.

I'm one of the few people who was disappointed by the speech because he made almost no acknowledgment of the fear, rage & shame I feel when I think about the Bush administration. Torture, black sites, mercenaries, ceaseless surveillance, imperialistic invasion, rape both figurative and literal, arbitrary and unchecked Presidential power aka tyranny -- as Glenn Greenwald said yesterday, those are the issues that no-one at the DNC seems willing to call out and reject.

But socratic_me's sister won't vote for change if she feels ashamed of her country -- even though she *should* feel ashamed. My approach would be wrong, Obama's is right -- or at least, it is likely to work.

But it still sticks in my craw that we won't get war crimes trials, and I'm afraid that without them we're going to get future war crimes.