Brad DeLong

What It Was Like to Oppose the Iraq War in 2003: Hoisted from the Internet Iraq War 10-Year Anniversary

John Judis:

Iraq War 10-Year Anniversary: What It Was Like to Oppose It in 2003: There were, of course, people who opposed invading Iraq—Illinois State Senator Barack Obama among them—but within political Washington, it was difficult to find like-minded foes. When The New Republic’s editor-in-chief and editor proclaimed the need for a “muscular” foreign policy, I was usually the only vocal dissenter, and the only people who agreed with me were the women on staff: Michelle Cottle, Laura Obolensky and Sarah Wildman. Both of the major national dailies—The Washington Post and The New York Times (featuring Judith Miller’s reporting)—were beating the drums for war. Except for Jessica Mathews at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington’s thinktank honchos were also lined up behind the war.

Dennis Perrin on the Transformation of Christopher Hitchens: Tuesday Ten Years Ago on the Internet Weblogging

Dennis Perrin: A friend and protégé tries to make sense of what's happened to Christopher Hitchens:

Bright spring afternoon. Hitch and I spend it in his fave D.C. pub just down the street from his spacious apartment. At the long polished bar, he sips a martini, I swig Tanqueray on ice offset by pints of ale. The pub's TV is flashing golf highlights while the jukebox blasts classic rock. We're chatting about nothing in particular when the juke begins playing "Moonshadow" by Cat Stevens. Hitch stops talking. His face tightens. Eyes narrow. I know this look--I saw it on Crossfire when he nearly slugged a Muslim supporter of the Ayatollah's fatwa against Salman Rushdie. I saw it during a Gulf War panel discussion at Georgetown when he responded to some pro-war hack with a precision barrage of invective, followed by the slamming down of the mike, causing a brief reverb in the speakers.

And here it was again.

Doug J: Principled Burkean Arguments for the Iraq War

Doug J.:

It’s in the order of the hedgerows: Conor Friedersdorf has a good round-up of various principled Burkean arguments in favor of the Iraq war.

Andrew Sullivan:

FABULOUSLY ANTI-WAR: No, I don’t mean Madonna. I mean a group called Glamericans. These are drag queens, performance artists, and sundry others who form “a non-partisan group of funky Americans committed to non-violence and its promotion through glamorous, media-savvy, cultural events. We believe in America’s potential to be a peaceful and powerful force in the world. We believe that war is bad for our country, bad for our environment and bad for our travel plans.” Dammit. Let Saddam test nerve gas on political prisoners strapped down in hospital beds. Let him gas the Kurds. Let him protect terrorist groups.

Jonah Goldberg:

I want to rub it in the anti-war crowd’s face so badly. I want to hear the protesters explain why it’s a bad thing we released more than 100 children from an Iraqi gulag for underage political prisoners.

Some idiot named Brendan O’Neill who opposed the war but hated the protesters more than the war:

Most of the new antiwar groups express an entirely personal opposition to war, one based more on moral revulsion than effective political opposition. Protesters voice a personal distaste for violent conflict, rather than organizing a collective stand against it. And when opposing war is about making pompous moral statements about me, myself, and I, you can count me out.

He left out my favorite, from Megan McArdle:

I can’t be mad at these little dweebs. I’m too busy laughing. And I think some in New York are going to laugh even harder when they try to unleash some civil disobedience, Lenin style, and some New Yorker who understands the horrors of war all too well picks up a two-by-four and teaches them how very effective violence can be when it’s applied in a firm, pre-emptive manner.

Atrios puts it well:

I know all the ‘liberal hawks’ perceive themselves as having engaged in some sort of high minded intellectual exercise back in the day, but what they were really doing most of the time was punching hippies. The respectable position, then, was to support the war, never mind the details like how many soldiers to send in and how to deal with sectarian strife. Freedom isn’t free! Just as now the respectable position is austerity, never mind the real world effect it might have on the economy. End the debt!

I do wish that just once, someone who supported the war but who isn’t a total asshole would admit that they backed it because that’s just what serious people did at the time, that they had no idea, in practice, how the war might work out, that they’d never thought about it all.

Tuesday Ten Years Ago on the Internet: Glen Whitman on Marginal Terror Avoidance and George W. Bush

Glen Whitman:

Agoraphilia: Marginal Terror Avoidance: I didn’t watch the State of the Union address, so Thursday’s press conference was the first time I’d actually seen Bush speaking since – wow, maybe not since 9/11. And I noticed something interesting: he’s learned to speak like a real president. No, seriously. The accent is milder now (I grew up in Texas, and even I couldn’t stand the accent as it was before), he speaks carefully and earnestly, and the lurking smirk is gone. He actually exhibited, dare I say it, gravitas.

And that’s too bad, really, because much of what he had to say doesn’t bear much scrutiny. Will Wilkinson has some choice commentary on the evasiveness of Bush’s answer to a question about the cost of making war on Iraq. The basic gist: in response to a question about costs, the president talked about benefits instead.

A Question for Harold Hongju Koh on Changes Over the Last Nine Centuries in the Law of Outlawry...

Come January 6 I will be not in New Orleans but in San Diego, and hence not at the AALS Luncheon with the Legal Adviser of the U.S. Department of State, Harold Hongju Koh.

So I will not get to ask Dean Koh the following question:

Dean Koh,

According to John Reeves, author of the History of English Law from the Time of the Romans to the End of the Reign of Elizabeth, a declaration of outlawry—that such-and-such a man could and should be shot or knifed on sight—proceeded according to a legal process in front of judges at least since the reign of Henry III Plantagenet. To quote:

[T]hose of inferior age, as they were not sub lege, could not properly be ever said to be outlawed, or put out of the law: the same of a woman, who, as she also was never in laughe—that is, in frank pledge, or in a decenna, could not be outlawed; but if she fled upon commission of any felony she might be wayviata, as they called it…. esteemed as one deserted and forlorn….

The time necessary to complete the outlawry was this: the offender was to be demanded at four counties, from county to county, till he was outlawed; but at the first county there was only to be what they termed simplex vocatio; and that was not computed towards the time of one of the four counties; so that in truth five were to pass before the outlawry was had; the outlawry therefore was to be at the fourth of those after the simplex vocatio. At the fifth or, as they called it, the fourth county, no essoin or excuse could be received, nor was it sufficient that any one would engage to produce him at the next county…. [T]he fugitive had till the fifth county to render himself to prison or defend himself and purge his innocence, but after that time the outlawry stood in the way, and he could not return till that was removed by the mercy of the king….

In… instances where the king would have pardoned a conviction of the fact [of the underlying crime], he would readily pardon the outlawry, as in case of homicide per infortunium, or se defendendo; and in general where there was really no offence committed. Process of outlawry would not lie against a clerk…

Today, by contrast, in order to be outlawed—and thus in order to have your death commanded not just by blade or bow or gun but by teleoperated robot drone—there needs to be no public process by which you are commanded and offered the opportunity under the king’s peace to surrender and publicly defend yourself at five different successive county sessions. Instead, all that has to happen is that the high functionaries of the President, men and women not bound to others by feudal ties of mutual obligation or republican ties of election and representation but simply chosen at the President’s pleasure to sit on the National Security Council, in secret proceeding without judicial or other scrutiny, put your name on a list. And if you are a minor? Then a high functionary of the President will say, with a straight face, that you “should have chosen a better father” than one who was himself outlawed.

This is not a good trend in the rule of law as applied to outlawry that we have seen since the thirteenth century, is it?

What steps have you taken while in government to reverse this trend, and return the law of outlawry to something that would not have caused the justiciars of Henry III to raise their eyebrows and suggest that we remember what the common law is?

I cannot ask this question. I would dearly love to hear Harold Hongju Koh answer it.

Spencer Ackerman: Two Cheers for "Zero Dark Thirty"'s Torture Scenes

Spencer Ackerman:

Two Cheers for Zero Dark Thirty's Torture Scenes: [A] bloodied, disoriented and humiliated man… strapped to a wall with his pants around his ankles… having liquid forcibly poured down his throat… shoved into a box that could barely hold your stereo…. It’s enough to make you wretch. It’s arguably the best and most important part of the movie.

Kathryn Bigelow’s new film about the decade-long manhunt for Osama bin Laden begins with an unsparing, nauseating and frighteningly realistic look at how the CIA tortured many people and reaped very little intelligence…. The torture on display in the film occurs at the intersection of ignorance and brutality, while the vast, vast majority of the intelligence work that actually does lead to bin Laden’s downfall occurs after the torture has ended…. Bigelow is being presented as a torture apologist, and it’s a bum rap…. Bigelow instead presents a graphic presentation of what declassified CIA documents indicate the torture program really was….

War Is Cruelty: Middle East Weblogging

Ariel Sharon withdrew from Gaza as a dry-run for withdrawal from the West Bank…

And Gaza was taken over by crazies who want to destroy Israel and launch rockets over the border to try to kill civilians whenever they can.

And Israeli left arguments that withdrawal from the West Bank would bring peace suddenly became a lot less credible.

Walter Russell Mead:

America, Israel, Gaza, the World: As Israeli airstrikes and naval shells bombarded Gaza this weekend, the world asked the question that perennially frustrates, confuses and enrages so many people across the planet: Why aren’t the Americans hating on Israel more?… [T]he real force driving American support for Israeli actions in Gaza isn’t Islamophobia, Jewish conspiracies or foam-flecked religious nuts. It’s something much simpler….

Theoreticians of “just war” say that in order for war to be justifiable, two tests must be met. You have to have a legitimate cause for war (self defense, for example, rather than grabbing land from a weaker neighbor) and you must fight the war in the right way. You must fight fair (that is, fight a just war), and you must fight nice. One of the criteria for jus in bello… is proportionality….

For some, Zionism itself is an illegitimate idea…. For others, Israel['s] occupation of the West Bank and other crimes against the Palestinians have deprived it of a just grounds for war when Palestinians attack it…. But more moderate critics… focus on jus in bello… proportionality. When the Palestinians flick a handful of fairly crude rockets at random across Israel, these critics say, Israel has a right to a kind of pinprick response… [but not] to respond to limited attacks with unlimited force….

The whole jus in bello argument sails right over the heads of most Americans…. An endless war of limited intensity is worse, many Americans instinctively feel, than a time-limited war of unlimited ferocity…. This is the same logic by which someone like Osama bin Laden could justify his attacks on civilians at the World Trade Center, and it is the fundamental logic behind Hamas’ indiscriminate attacks on Israeli civilian targets. Americans don’t like it when their enemies use this kind of logic, but it is a type of warfare they understand….

Thus when television cameras show the bodies of children killed in an Israeli air raid, Jacksonian Americans are sorry about the loss of life, but it inspires them to hate and loathe Hamas more…. They blame the irresponsible dolts who started the war… they admire Israel’s strength and its resolve for dealing with the appalling blood lust of the unhinged loons who start a war they can’t win, and then cower behind the corpses of the children their foolishness has killed. The whole situation strengthens the widespread American belief that Palestinian hate rather than Israeli intransigence is the fundamental reason for the Middle East impasse…

Friday Music: Bossa Nova Terror in the Desert "Iron Dome" Edition

Hoisted from the Archives: Is There Hope for the Rule of Law in America?

Brad DeLong: Social Studies 50th Anniversary Symposium: Is There Hope for the Rule of Law in America?:

That was the question asked by Denver University Professor Alan Gilbert during the morning panel.

Here is the answer I gave, as best as I can reconstruct it:

The question is: "Is there hope for the rule of law in America?" My answer is: No.

Begin with the assassination of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham and Prime Minister to King Charles I Stuart, on 23 August 1628. Nobody at the time doubted the king's power to torture the confessed assassin, John Felton, on the rack--the king's father James I Stuart had tortured Guy Fawkes and the other Gunpowder Plot suspects. But the king's power to torture was part of his prerogative powers of state, and Charles I Stuart sought to reserve his prerogative powers for use in more important arenas--that is, to raise money with them.

Thus Charles I asked his judges to authorize the torture of John Felton not as an act of state under the royal prerogative but as part of the process of the criminal law.

And let's let William Blackstone pick up the story at IV, 25, 326 of his Commentaries on the Laws of England:

[T]rial by rack is utterly unknown to the law of England; though once... [the] ministers of Henry IV [Lancaster]... laid a design to introduce the civil law into the kingdom as a rule of government... erected a rack for torture, which was called in derision the Duke of Exeter's daughter, and still remains in the Tower of London; where it was occasionally used as an engine of state, not of law, more than once in the reign of queen Elizabeth.

But when, upon the assassination of Villiers, duke of Buckingham, by Felton, it was proposed in the privy council to put the assassin to the rack in order to discover his accomplices, the judges, being consulted, declared unanimously, to their own honour and the honour of English law, that no such proceeding was allowable by the laws of England...

With the Great Revolution of the 1640s the prerogative powers of the monarch of the United Kingdom shrank. And with the Glorious Revolution they shrank again. And with the accession of the German-speaking Hanover dynasty they shrank yet again. And by 1789, when James Madison and company moved the then-powers of the monarch of the United Kingdom to make them the powers of the President of the United States, there were no prerogative powers left: the President was 100% Chief Magistrate with the power and the duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, and 0% princeps legibus solutus.

So things stood for 200 years--save for Abraham Lincoln's arrogation to himself of Congress's Art. I §9 power to suspend the "privilege of the writ of habeas corpus in "cases of rebellion or invasion" but only when such suspension was "required" for the public safety.

So things stood until John Yoo.

Now John Yoo is an interesting case. In 2000 he was arguing at the Cato Institute that the President's powers as commander-in-chief were extremely crabbed and narrow--and that President Clinton had, in fact, exceeded his c-in-c powers and undermined the rule of law by ordering American soldiers to obey the orders of a British NATO general. That the president--or, indeed, that any commander--does not have the power to place American soldiers under allied command would have been a great shock to Dwight D. Eisenhower, or Harry S Truman, or Franklin D. Roosevelt, or Woodrow Wilson, or William McKinley, or indeed George Washington himself.

Yoo's claim in 2000 had absolutely no warrant in the constitution, in the law, in precedent, or in history.

But that is how it is with Yoo.

Sources who should know and whom I believe to be reliable tell me that when his tenure case moved through the University of California at Berkeley, historians objected to his use of history in his published articles: "What the frackity-frack is this?" they asked. "This isn't history. This isn't how it happened. This isn't history wie es eigentlich gewesen."

The response of then then-Dean of Berkeley Law School, a response that was convincing to the then-Chancellor of the University of California is said, by sources I believe reliable, to have been that history plays a special role in legal academia and argument. In legal academia, one's claims about history do not have to be true, the argument went. Indeed, a major mode of legal argumentation and academic debate is to make false claims about what the law has been in past in the hope that those claims will then shape what the law will be in the future.

By 2001, with a Republican as president, John Yoo had reversed field from his 2000 position by 180 degrees. He was making a very different set of false claims about what the law of America had been. He was then claiming that the president's commander-in-chief powers contained within them prerogative powers to torture and kill outside of legal procedure that would have astonished George III Hanover, and even exceeded those of William I Conqueror.

When William I Conqueror tortured or killed his tenants-in-chief, he agreed he owed his barons at least an after-the-fact accounting of why, if not any before-the-fact procedural checks.

Backed by John Yoo and company, George W. Bush claimed that he did not owe even an after-the-fact accounting. And Barack Obama holds to the same line.

So I see no hope.

Fidel Castro: I Was Wrong to Tell Khrushchev to Obliterate the U.S.

Fans of the dictatorial and short-sighted Fidel Castro should think that he really wanted to climb the ladder of thermonuclear escalation all the way to the top back in 1962. Effectively halting economic growth in your country for two generations with nothing to counterbalance it is a heavy burden to plead before the Bar of History. Thank God he didn't actually have his finger on any of the buttons...

Jason Kuznicki: "We live in the world that W. created, for good or — mostly — for ill"

http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/blog/2012/10/the-towering-legacy-of-george-w-bush/

Joe Klein: "Romney’s foreign- and national-security policies have been a steaming heap of nonsense from the start"

http://swampland.time.com/2012/10/22/the-third-debate-perfect-symmetry/

Hari Sevugan Wants to Watch Byron York and John McCain Fight Mitt Romney

Hari Sevugan (HariSevugan) on Twitter:

.@ByronYork in his own words on @MittRomney's OBL position: “Perhaps Romney should watch the tape of the planes hitting the towers again.”

.@ByronYork in his own words on @MittRomney's OBL position: “I can’t imagine any serious Republican candidate for president [saying that]"

.@SenJohnMcCain in his own words on @MittRomney position on OBL: shows "naïveté."

.@MittRomney in his own words on OBL: "It’s not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person."

And here is the tape:

LIZ SIDOTI: Why haven’t we caught bin Laden in your opinion?

GOVERNOR ROMNEY: I think, I wouldn’t want to over-concentrate on Bin Laden. He’s one of many, many people who are involved in this global Jihadist effort. He’s by no means the only leader. It’s a very diverse group—Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda, Muslim Brotherhood and of course different names throughout the world. It’s not worth moving heaven and earth and spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person. It is worth fashioning and executing an effective strategy to defeat global, violent Jihad and I have a plan for doing that.

LIZ SIDOTI: But would the world be safer if bin laden were caught?

GOVERNOR ROMNEY: Yes, but by a small percentage increase—a very insignificant increase in safety by virtue of replacing bin Laden with someone else. Zarqawi—we celebrated the killing of Zarqawi, but he was quickly replaced. Global Jihad is not an effort that is being populated by a handful or even a football stadium full of people. It is—it involves millions of people and is going to require a far more comprehensive strategy than a targeted approach for bin laden or a few of his associates.

IFPRI: Famine in North Korea Worsens

http://world.kbs.co.kr/english/news/news_IK_detail.htm?No=93844&id=IK

No. China Is Not Ready to Play a Bigger Role in Global Governance. Why Do You Ask?

Alan Beattie:

China’s IMF no-show: Yesterday, I was all “the emerging markets have a point about running the IMF”. Today it’s facepalm time, as China says it’s not going to send its finance minister or central bank governor to the IMF annual meetings in Tokyo. Apparently it’s more important to strike a pose against that notorious geopolitical bully, Japan, over five uninhabited islands….

[A]s with the IMF voting weights I wrote about yesterday, symbolism is important, and the Per Jacobsson lecture (named after a former IMF head) that PBOC governor Zhou Xiaochuan was going to give on Sunday is a pretty big deal. The deeper point is this. Domestic politics is often one of the major constraints on countries playing an active role in global governance…. If China can’t send its top people to the IMF’s annual meeting because it is more important to posture about Japan ahead of the change of leadership in Beijing in the next few weeks, it doesn’t say much about Beijing’s ability to lead.

Bush Lawyer: Proposed Romney Torture Policy Is 'Indisputably Illegal'

http://thinkprogress.org/security/2012/10/03/947211/goldsmith-romney-torture-illegal/

The Foreign Policy Establishment Says: Don't Vote for Mitt Romney. Don't Work for Mitt Romney. Don't Give to Mitt Romney. Don't Raise Money for Mitt Romney

Ben Smith: Foreign Policy Hands Voice Disbelief At Romney Cairo Statement:

“Bungle… utter disaster…not ready for prime time… not presidential… Lehman moment.” And that's just the Republicans.

Mitt Romney's sharply-worded attack on President Obama over a pair of deadly riots in Muslim countries last night…. It was the second time Romney has been burned by an early statement on a complex crisis: Romney denounced the Obama Administration's handling of a Chinese dissident's escape just as the Administration negotiated behind the scenes for his departure from the country.

"They were just trying to score a cheap news cycle hit based on the embassy statement and now it’s just completely blown up," said a very senior Republican foreign policy hand, who called the statement an "utter disaster" and a "Lehman moment" — a parallel to the moment when John McCain, amid the 2008 financial crisis, failed to come across as a steady leader. He and other members of both parties cited the Romney campaign's recent dismissals of foreign policy's relevance. One adviser dismissed the subject to BuzzFeed as a "shiny object," while another told Politico that the subject was the "president's turf," drawing a rebuke from Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol.

"I guess we see now that it is because they’re incompetent at talking effectively about foreign policy," said the Republican. "This is just unbelievable — when they decide to play on it they completely bungle it."

Romney…[']s campaign faces a near consensus in Republican foreign policy circles that, whatever the sentiment, Romney faltered badly.

"It’s deeply unfortunate when the circumstance of the statement becomes the story," said Rick Perry's former foreign policy adviser, Victoria Coates, who is now a adjunct fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, and who suggested that Romney should simply have "gone earlier rather than save it for midnight" to avoid appearing to play politics on September 11….

"Its bad," said a former aide to Senator John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign. "Just on a factual level that the statement was not a response but preceding, or one could make the case precipitating. And just calling it a 'disgrace' doesnt really cut it. Not ready for prime time."

A third former Republican, a former Bush State Department official, told BuzzFeed, "It wasn't presidential of Romney to go political immediately -- a tragedy of this magnitude should be something the nation collectively grieves before politics enters the conversation."…

The Republicans declined to speak for attribution, for fear of being publicly disloyal to their party's nominee.

Veteran Democratic foreign policy hands, operating under no such restriction, called Romney's quick move all but disqualifying.

"He did jump the gun. It revealed yet again that his foreign policy team is not ready for prime time," said David Rothkopf, a former Clinton State Department official. "It is ugly and amateurish. It also seems strangely out of character with Romney who elsewhere in the campaign seems inclined to be restrained to a fault."

Heather Hurlburt, who heads the National Security Network, a Democratic group, said the statement "shows not just poor judgment and a willingness to use tragedy for political gains, regardless of the security consequences — but also poor management. He has policy people on his team who know better. Clearly they weren't consulted…. As someone who worked at state and with diplomats for many years, it makes me feel sick," she said.

"Romney blew it and revealed how seriously maladroit he is when it comes to foreign affairs and national security," said Steve Clemons, the founder of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation. "An attack on an Embassy, the murder of US officials including an Ambassador, is an attack on all Americans and the idea of America – and Romney gave terrorists what they want – a divided country still torn emotionally and politically by the events of 9-11. Romney talks of leadership but with his reckless commentary when events were fragile and still unfolding, he belly-flopped."

Tom Levenson Watches Conor Friedersdorf Meet the Real World

Tom:

Reality, Meet Conor. Conor, Meet the Real World. « The Inverse Square Blog: [A]cknowledging that Friedersdorf has both reason and the right to feel moral revulsion at some of the acts of the Obama administration, in this fallen world you don’t get the choice of the perfect man or government. Friedersdorf acknowledges the “lesser of two evils” argument with a faint sneer… moral relativism is not for the stalwart Friedersdorf…. Ahh, the eternal righteousness of the resolutely disengaged….

[Friedersdorf's] argument rests on the claim that on the crucial matter Romney and Obama are the same.  Which is why this report in today’s New York Times is such a firecracker up his rhetorical butt:

Against Whacka-Whacka Claims That Al Gore Would Have Been "Likely" to Attack Iraq in 2003 as George W. Bush Did

Seems to me not "likely" but rather unlikely. That's what I thought when I heard this. That's what I believe now:

Former Vice President Al Gore: Sept. 23, 2002: Iraq and the War on Terrorism: Commonwealth Club of California: San Francisco, California: Like all Americans I have been wrestling with the question of what our country needs to do to defend itself from the kind of intense, focused and enabled hatred that brought about September 11th, and which at this moment must be presumed to be gathering force for yet another attack. I’m speaking today in an effort to recommend a specific course of action for our country which I believe would be preferable to the course recommended by President Bush.  Specifically, I am deeply concerned that the policy we are presently following with respect to Iraq has the potential to seriously damage our ability to win the war against terrorism and to weaken our ability to lead the world in this new century.

Don't Bomb My Country! It's Full of Hotties!! Weblogging

Sora Aoi attempts to return China to an understanding of what is really important:

Pornography and patriotism: OF ALL the positions with which Sora Aoi has excited her Chinese fans (and there have been many), this was among the more surprising. As anti-Japanese sentiment flared across China, the former porn star issued an online appeal, in fetching calligraphy, for Sino-Japanese friendship. One placard waved at anti-Japanese protests over the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu islands read simply: “the Diaoyu islands belong to China; Sora Aoi belongs to the world.”...

Ms Aoi, unlike her government, has done nothing to hurt the feelings of the Chinese people, or at least the young men among them. She has more than 13m followers on Sina Weibo, a Chinese microblog, and her public appearances have caused near-riots with a rare pro-Japanese slant.

Statement by the President on the Attack in Benghazi

Barack Obama:

I strongly condemn the outrageous attack on our diplomatic facility in Benghazi, which took the lives of four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens. Right now, the American people have the families of those we lost in our thoughts and prayers. They exemplified America's commitment to freedom, justice, and partnership with nations and people around the globe, and stand in stark contrast to those who callously took their lives.

I have directed my Administration to provide all necessary resources to support the security of our personnel in Libya, and to increase security at our diplomatic posts around the globe. While the United States rejects efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others, we must all unequivocally oppose the kind of senseless violence that took the lives of these public servants.

On a personal note, Chris was a courageous and exemplary representative of the United States. Throughout the Libyan revolution, he selflessly served our country and the Libyan people at our mission in Benghazi. As Ambassador in Tripoli, he has supported Libya's transition to democracy. His legacy will endure wherever human beings reach for liberty and justice. I am profoundly grateful for his service to my Administration, and deeply saddened by this loss.

The brave Americans we lost represent the extraordinary service and sacrifices that our civilians make every day around the globe. As we stand united with their families, let us now redouble our own efforts to carry their work forward.

John Kerry: “Ask Osama bin Laden if he’s better off than he was four years ago!”

John Kerry: “Ask Osama bin Laden if he’s better off than he was four years ago.”

Who Are We Becoming?: Torture Edition

Scott Lemieux: Torture Without Accountability:

Adam Serwer: Investigation of Bush-era Torture Concludes With No Charges | Mother Jones

It is not as though we got anything out of torture. We blackened our reputation for a generation and did substantial damage to our national security. We gave away a piece of our soul. And our torturers and our torture techniques--they are the techniques designed to elicit false confessions.

At least when we sent Maher Arar to the Syrian Mukhabarat, the professionals there figured out pretty quickly that he was innocent and sent him back. Had our CIA kept hold of him, it would have elicited a false confession and still be claiming that he was a mastermind behind 911…

So I write:

I think the good guys have lost this permanently.

Impeaching or trying presidents and cabinet members for policies of torture is a vote loser, or so all the High Politicians think. And going after lower-downs creates very bad precedents for the future--for one thing, it then makes CIA agents slaves of the then-president because they must get their end-of-term plenary pardons before the administration changes. And the Roman Republic's fall teaches it how bad it is for people to fear that losing an election will land them in jail.

POTUS now has plenary power to arrest, detain, torture, or kill anyone on his say-so alone without ever having to explain why--a power William the Conquerer never claimed…

And somebody smarter than I am responds:

I would urge people to think of accountability as a generational project -- this is how it has worked out in Chile, Argentina, South Africa... the thing that can be done now is create opportunities for more participants to tell their stories, put on record what was done and who did it and how, so that the record gets fuller rather than thinner over time.

Hoisted from Comments: T on Niall Ferguson's "The Pity of War"

Hooted Hoisted from Comments, Hoisted...

Hoisted from Comments: T on Niall Ferguson's WWI Book:

His WWI book was awful. It's entire premise is anachronistic, and it shows the same predilection for snide ad hominem attacks as the rest of his writing.

I beg to differ. I thought that Ferguson"s World War One book was pretty good.It suffered to a small degree from AJP Taylor disease, but a very mild case only--you learn a lot from TPOW, while you learn nothing from "Origins of WWII".

My main criticism is that it does not make its central thesis clear. The central thesis is that British intervention in World War I was an absolute trainwreck clusterf%#+ because Britain was strong enough to prevent an early German victory yet not strong enough to impose an early Allied one, and an early German victory would have led to a Europe much like the one we have now while avoiding all the 1919-89 unpleasantness.

I think that Ferguson's central thesis is probably wrong. The Europe we have now is one that is dominated by a large German-speaking Palatinate. The Europe in Ferguson's scenario would have been one dominated by a large German-speaking Prussia. There is a huge difference.

And I think Fergusons harsh judgments of British policymaking in 1914 are wrong as well: the British played the game of nation according to the rules of the time, had very good reason to assume that Germany was weaker and Russia stronger than turned out to be the case, this had reasonable confidence in a rapid victory, and the German High Seas Fleet was a true existential threat.

But it is very clear to me that TPOW is a useful and valuable contribution discourse about political military economic affairs in a way that Ferguson's current ravings are not.

What Tom Ricks--Now That He No Longer Works for the Washington Post--Tells Us He Thinks About Republican Neoconservatives

Brad DeLong (2009): Tom Ricks Tells Us What He Thinks:

The other day this blog referred to right-wingers recklessly calling Obama weak for his careful handling of the Iranian crisis as "clowns." In fact, they should have been called "dangerous clowns." Best Defense regrets the error.

Juan Cole Is Optimistic on Libya's Election Day

Top Ten Surprises on Libya's Election Day

James Fallows: House GOP Apologizes for America. I Say: "Good Move!"

http://bit.ly/PvpwXO

Ezra Klein: Do Democrats Have Their Own Individual Mandate Level Flip-Flop? No.

Why am I not surprised to find Peter Suderman saying something that does not have the truth nature as he plays for Team Republican?

Peter Suderman: Democrats and liberal policy wonks took a similar turn with Medicare premium support, now championed in broad form by both GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney and the party’s leading policy entrepreneur, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan. The story is remarkably similar: The idea started out as a policy promoted by prominent liberal wonks, briefly gathered support from a handful of top-level policymakers near the end of the Clinton presidency, and is now deeply opposed by the majority of Democrats, who often refer to the idea as a plan to “end Medicare as we know it” — or occasionally just a way to “end Medicare,” period. Premium support, which would pay a flat rate toward the purchase of a private insurance plan for each Medicare beneficiary, was first developed by Alain Enthoven, a Democratic adviser who had previously served as a health policy consultant to President Jimmy Carter,  in “The History of Principles of Managed Competition” in 1993. In 1995, Henry Aaron, a scholar at Brookings who served as a senior official in President Carter’s Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, gave the policy its name — premium support — and suggested that it represented a Medicare reform compromise, a “middle ground” that could retains Medicare’s strengths but address budgetary challenges. In 1999, the National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare, which was chaired by Democratic Senator John Breaux and included Democratic Sen. Bob Kerrey, met to develop a proposal to reform the seniors’ health entitlement. The first item in the final proposal put forth by Breaux and supported by Kerrey was “the design of a premium support system.”

Ezra Klein:

There are a few problems with drawing an equivalence between “premium support” in Medicare and the individual mandate in health care. The first, and biggest, is simply who supported it… a few Democratic wonks, and then-Sens. Breaux and Kerrey. Of those Democratic wonks, some, like Alice Rivlin, continue to support a premium support system…. The reason the report from the National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare never went anywhere is that every other Democrat on the Commission voted against the recommendations, and the Clinton White House quickly released a statement opposing premium support. There were, in other words, exactly no leading Democrats who signed onto premium support…. [T]he most significant elected Democrat to sign onto premium support is Sen. Ron Wyden, who crafted a plan with Paul Ryan earlier this year.

Compare that to the individual mandate. The mandate’s first political appearance was in a brief from the conservative Heritage Foundation. It then appeared in legislation co-sponsored by 18 Senate Republicans, including Bob Dole… Newt Gingrich… Mitt Romney… the Wyden-Bennett plan… Lamar Alexander… Chuck Grassley…. As late as June 2009, Grassley was telling Fox News, “there is a bipartisan consensus to have individual mandates.”

To my knowledge, there are no senior Republicans who have maintained or announced their support for an individual mandate in the manner of Rivlin or Wyden.

Premium support, in other words, was once endorsed by a handful of Democratic wonks and heterodox senators, though it was, from the beginning, a policy that gained the vast bulk of its political support from elected Republicans. It never gained any serious traction within the Democratic Party. The individual mandate was a Republican idea that garnered support from a diverse array of Republican leaders and institutions over the course of almost 15 years. And unlike with Breaux and Kerrey, many of those Republican leaders and institutions — like Gingrich and Romney and Grassley and Hatch and the Heritage Foundation — are still around today.

That’s not to say motivated reasoning doesn’t happen on both sides. But premium support isn’t a very good example of it. Rather, the clearest example of motivated reasoning among Democrats probably comes in the civil liberties sphere….

Finally, on premium support, it’s not clear to me that Democrats actually oppose it…

For the record, I support premium support--if Henry Aaron, Ron Wyden, or Alain Enthoven design it. I don't think that what Paul Ryan is proposing is anything that Enthoven, Aaron, or indeed Wyden would call "premium support": it is something else.

For the record, I believe that Glenn Greenwald is correct in being absolutely terrified of the Obama administration's continued and expanded abuses of power in national security. We may all suffer someday from the failure to confirm Dawn Johnson:

Glenn Greenwalda: To avoid counting civilian deaths, Obama re-defined "militant" to mean "all military-age males in a strike zone": Virtually every time the U.S. fires a missile from a drone… American media outlets dutifully… cite always-unnamed “officials” claiming that the dead were “militants.” It’s the most obvious and inexcusable form of rank propaganda: media outlets continuously propagating a vital claim without having the slightest idea if it’s true.

This practice continues even though key Obama officials have been caught lying, a term used advisedly, about how many civilians they’re killing. I’ve written and said many times before that in American media discourse, the definition of “militant” is any human being whose life is extinguished when an American missile or bomb detonates (that term was even used when Anwar Awlaki’s 16-year-old American son, Abdulrahman, was killed by a U.S. drone in Yemen two weeks after a drone killed his father…. “Another U.S. Drone Strike Kills Militants in Yemen”)…

Is the Chinese Communist Party Really Subjecting 1% 0.2% of Its Cadres to Extended Severe Torture Every Year?

If so--if somebody joining the Chinese Communist Party that Deng Xiaoping built at 25 must even now look forward to a future in which there is a 40% 10% chance that they are caught up in some faction fight that leads to their severe torture sometime during their career (and a 3% chance that they are "shot while trying to escape"--that has very powerful and very negative implications for the future of China.

ByElMar emails:

Why isn't this story getting much more attention? It seems to me to be very important: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/15/world/asia/accused-chinese-party-members-face-harsh-discipline.html

Hoisted from the Archives: Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps? Sam Tanenhaus on Whittaker Chambers

Brad DeLong: Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps/ (Yet Another New Republic/New York Times Edition): It seems ungrateful--like complaining about the quality of free ice cream--to complain about Sam Tanenhaus writing in the New Republic and raising the ghost of Whittaker Chambers to curse George W. Bush. But still...

The stupidity! It burns!

Sam Tanenhaus writes that Whittaker Chambers was in his last years a far-sighted and flexible intellectual, a premature reality-based critic of those who saw American foreign policy as the Last Battle beneath the Hill of Megiddo Itself:

The End of the Journey: The result [of Bush] was that the actual dangers we faced from militant Islam were blurred into a generalized atmosphere of apocalyptic crisis. Essential distinctions, and the wisdom with which they were made, were lost.... George W. Bush's worldview is precisely the one that Whittaker Chambers outgrew. It is a punishing irony, and one can imagine all too easily how Chambers himself would have greeted it: with the sly half-smile of a melancholy man who knows better...

The evidence that Whittaker Chambers "outgrew" his worldview of apocalyptic crisis? Here is what Tanenhaus says:

[Whittaker] Chambers, unburdened by intellectual discipline... came to recognize the folly of the rigid dualism he had espoused so vividly. He was in fact among the first on the right to interpret the death of Stalin in 1953, and the subsequent rise of Khrushchev, as signaling a new phase in the "twilight struggle." In yet another of his volte-faces, the most unexpected of all, Chambers refashioned himself into a liberal in his last years. He became a defender of civil liberties (including Hiss's when he was denied a passport) and of the Keynesian policies promoted by John Kenneth Galbraith...

I grant Chambers's (lifetime--not late-acquired) commitment to civil liberties, but the "defender... of Keynesian policies promoted by John Kenneth Galbraith" appears to be a truly howlingly bad misreading of a 1959 National Review article, "Foot in the Door"1. And on the death of Stalin as a signal that it is time for detente--well, let's turn the microphone over to Chambers, writing in 1956:

From Life, April 30, 1956: What the new [post-Stalin] Communist strategy envisages is the mounting, on a world scale, of a vast "partisans of peace" movement. Its formations will be the popular front... [but it will go] far beyond popular fronts, which however manipulable [by the Communists], have manifest limits.... [A]ll that is necessary to change the weather is for the Communist blizzard to stop freezing men's hopes.... [T]he tactical problem for Communism... [is] that of the wind and sun... competing to make a man take off his overcoat. To make the man--the West--take off his coat [his defenses against Communism], it was only necessary for Communism to let the sun shine.... [H]itherto, Communism could not let the sun shine [because of]... the person and official mythology of Josef Stalin. He personified those memories which... scarify the mind of the West with respect to Communism....

[T]he ice is going out, the ice that froze and paralyzed the messianic spirit of Communism during the long but (in Communist terms) justifiable Stalinist nightmare. Communism is likely to become more, not less dangerous....

Communism has not changed.... Communist aggression against the West will not end... [but take] new, subtler, massive forms whose disintegrating energies are beamed first at specific soft spots around Communism's international frontiers and far across them.... With the smashing of the dark idol of Stalin, Communism can hope to compete again for the allegiance of men's minds.... What [Khrushchev's] 20th [Communist Party] Congress [of 1956] meant to do, and may well succeed in doing, was to make Communism radioactive again...

Memo to Tanenhaus: "new phase" does not mean "detente", and "Communism is likely to become more, not less dangerous" does not mean that the Cold War is winding down.

Why do writers like Tannenhaus write such things? Why do magazines like the New Republic publish it?

And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda...

Susie Madrak sends us to:

Yes. Colin Powell Is a Liar. Why Do You Ask? Saddam Hussein's Nuclear/Biological Weapons Programs Blogging

Jonathan Schwarz:

A Tiny Revolution: Colin Powell Gets Mad at Me: In his new book, It Worked For Me: In Life and Leadership, Colin Powell writes this about his 2003 presentation at the United Nations about Iraq's supposed WMD: "I get mad when bl*ggers accuse me of lying – of knowing the information was false. I didn’t."

Well, I'm a blogger, and I accuse Colin Powell of lying. The evidence is overwhelming that he knew much of what he said in front of the Security Council was false.

[…]

On that February 5 in front of the UN Security Council, was Colin Powell certain what he was saying was accurate? He certainly was:

POWELL: My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence.

Later, regarding whether Iraq had reconstituted a nuclear weapons program, he said:

POWELL: [T]here is no doubt in my mind...

That's in public. What about in private? According to Larry Wilkerson, Powell's chief of staff, here's what Powell was thinking at the time:

WILKERSON: [Powell] had walked into my office musing and he said words to the effect of, I wonder how we'll all feel if we put half a million troops in Iraq and march from one end of the country to the other and find nothing.

[…]

[T]he State Department's intelligence staff, called the INR, prepared two memos on the [UN] presentation. They directly contradicted Powell on the aluminum tubes issue, but also warned him many of his claims were "weak," "not credible" or "highly questionable." Here are some (amazingly enough, not all) of the examples the memos give.

Powell at the UN:

POWELL: We know that Saddam's son, Qusay, ordered the removal of all prohibited weapons from Saddam's numerous palace complexes.

The first INR memo, from January 29, 2003, flagged this claim as "WEAK":

second bullet. WEAK. Qusay order to remove prohibited items from palaces.

Powell at the UN:

POWELL: [K]ey files from military and scientific establishments have been placed in cars that are being driven around the countryside by Iraqi intelligence agents to avoid detection.

The first INR memo:

last bullet. WEAK. Sensitive files being driven around in cars, in apparent shell game. Plausibility open to question.

This claim was again flagged in the second INR memo, from February 3, 2003:

Page 4, last bullet, re key files being driven around in cars to avoid inspectors. This claim is highly questionable and promises to be targeted by critics and possibly UN inspection officials as well.

Powell at the UN:

POWELL: [W]e know from sources that a missile brigade outside Baghdad was disbursing [sic] rocket launchers and warheads containing biological warfare agents to various locations, distributing them to various locations in western Iraq.

January 29, 2003 INR memo:

last bullet. WEAK. Missiles with biological warheads reportedly dispersed. This would be somewhat true in terms of short-range missiles with conventional warheads, but is questionable in terms of longer-range missiles or biological warheads.

February 3, 2003 INR memo:

Page 5. first para, claim re missile brigade dispersing rocket launchers and BW warheads. This claim too is highly questionable and might be subjected to criticism by UN inspection officials.

At the UN, Powell described a satellite picture this way:

The two arrows indicate the presence of sure signs that the bunkers are storing chemical munitions...

The truck you [...] see is a signature item. It's a decontamination vehicle in case something goes wrong.

January 29, 2003 INR memo:

*/WEAK. We support much of this discussion, but we note that decontamination vehicles--cited several times in the text--are water trucks that can have legitimate uses...

…Iraq has given UNMOVIC what may be a plausible account for this activity--that this was an exercise involving the movement of conventional explosives; presence of a fire safety truck (water truck, which could also be used as a decontamination vehicle) is common in such an event.

Powell at the UN:

POWELL: These are facts, corroborated by many sources, some of them sources of the intelligence services of other countries.

February 3, 2003 INR memo:

Numerous references to humint as fact. (E.g., "We know that...) We have been told that some are being adjusted, but we gather some others--such as information involving multiple-corroboration--will stay...In the Iraq context, "multiple corroboration" hardly guarantees authenticity of information.

Powell at the UN:

POWELL: [I]n mid-December weapons experts at one facility were replaced by Iraqi intelligence agents who were to deceive inspectors about the work that was being done there.

January 29, 2003 INR memo:

last bullet. **/WEAK. Iraqi intelligence officials posing as WMD scientists. Such claims are not credible and are open to criticism, particularly by the UN inspectorates.

Powell at the UN:

POWELL: A dozen [WMD] experts have been placed under house arrest, not in their own houses, but as a group at one of Saddam Hussein's guest houses.

January 29, 2003 INR memo:

second bullet. WEAK. 12 experts reportedly under house arrest... Highly questionable.

Powell at the UN:

POWELL: UAVs outfitted with spray tanks constitute an ideal method for launching a terrorist attack using biological weapons.

January 29, 2003 INR memo:

...the claim that experts agree UAVs fitted with spray tanks are "an ideal method for launching a terrorist attack using biological weapons" is WEAK.

Now, with that for context, it's useful to look back at what Powell said in a November, 2005 interview with Barbara Walters:

There was some people in the intelligence community who knew at that time that some of these sources were not good and shouldn't be relied upon, and they didn't speak up. That devastated me.

That can be contrasted with this October, 2003 exchange from 60 Minutes II with Greg Thielmann, who headed the office of Strategic, Proliferation, and Military Affairs in the INR until September 2002:

PELLEY: If the secretary took the information that his own intelligence bureau had developed and turned it on its head, which is what you're saying, to what end?

Mr. THIELMANN: I can only assume that he was doing it to loyally support the president of the United States and build the strongest possible case for arguing that there was no alternative to the use of military force.

So yes, Colin Powell lied. If any journalists interviewing him about his new book want to ask him about this, but don't want to seem like you're accusing him directly, feel free to blame it on "bloggers." We're used to him being mad at us.

Jon Schwarz

: http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/003619.html

Twitter / @attackerman: Bin Laden and the Arab Spring

Twitter / @attackerman:

RT @dangerroom: Watching bin Laden twist himself in knots over Arab Spring is fascinating. phrase "Zionist Arabs" appears in the documents.

Henry Farrell vs. David Graeber on American "Imperialism"

Farrell 6-0, 6-0, 6-0:

Because: Imperialism!: Is my post, as Graeber claims, an example of deliberate delegitimization, a “case in point” of dismissing someone interested in “the actual connections between US military power, the banking system, and global trade … as a paranoid lunatic”

Hardly. And Graeber himself doesn’t seem to believe it – he later suggests that he isn’t sure what the difference is between our positions on imperialism. I have no problems at all with someone talking about the connections between US military power, the banking system and global trade. Nor do I think that the word ‘empire’ is at all provocative…. My issue is… [that] his particular account of empire is neither very plausible, nor supported by much in the way of evidence….

Quote of the Day: March 31, 2012

"In our new age of terrifying, lethal gadgets, which supplanted so swiftly the old one, the first great aggressive war, if it should come, will be launched by suicidal little madmen pressing an electronic button. Such a war will not last long and none will ever follow it. There will be no conquerors and no conquests, but only the charred bones of the dead on an uninhabited planet."

--William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

Daniel Larison: Universalism’s Great Flaw

Daniel Larison;

Eunomia » Universalism’s Great Flaw: One passage in George Kennan’s Russia Leaves the War stands out for what it tells us about the common mistake that universalists of all stripes make:

In both cases, the principals overrated the effects of their words. Wilson appealed to what he believed to be the democratic idealism of the Russian people–their yeaerning for civil liberties and self-determination within the framework of a parliamentary system. Lenin appealed to what he believed to be the Marxist-revolutionary enthusiasm of the German proletariat. Both miscalculated. In the case of the Russian people, war weariness, land hunger, ignorance, and bewilderment, plus the harsh reality of Bolshevik power, proved far more powerful than any attachment to democratic ideals. In the case of Germany, patriotism, the habit of obedience, and an attachment to he orderly processes of government were stronger than any revolutionary enthusiasm. Both Wilson and Lenin had made the mistake of attempting to project their respective ideological images onto the world at large and to bespeak an international validity for principles that were actually the product of their own specific environmental and educational backgrounds. (p.244)

Viewed one way, this is simply the mistake of privileging ideological assumptions.... However, universalist ideologues are much more likely to make this mistake because it is one of their basic assumptions not just that everyone desires the same goods but that they also desire them in much the same form and order....

When other nations do not embrace what the universalist is offering (or, just as often, imposing on) them, it is taken for granted that this is a failure on their part, but it is their reaction that is normal and the universalist’s expectations that are misguided.

Nobody Has Any Business Supporting, Contributing to, or Working for Mitt Romney. Nobody

Daniel Larison:

Romney Digs a Deeper Hole on His Russian Blunder: Mitt Romney is clueless:

It is not an accident that Mr. Medvedev is now busy attacking me. The Russians clearly prefer to do business with the current incumbent of the White House.

No, it’s not an accident. It couldn’t have anything to do with Romney’s decision to describe Russia as “our number one geopolitical foe,” could it? Presidential candidates should expect to encounter some resistance from abroad when they choose to use a foreign country as their target for demagoguery. Any foreign leader would prefer the person who wants the U.S. to have a constructive relationship with their government when the alternative is to be loathed and vilified. If this is the sort of cunning foreign policy leadership we can expect from Romney, why would anyone in this country prefer him?

Quotation of the Day: March 26, 2012

"Europe is solid with herself. France, Germany, Italy, Austria and Holland, Russia and Roumania and Poland, throb together, and their structure and civilization are essentially one. They flourished together, they have rocked together in a war, which we, in spite of our enormous contributions and sacrifices (like though in a less degree than America), economically stood outside, and they may fall together. In this lies the destructive significance of the Peace of Paris. If the European Civil War is to end with France and Italy abusing their momentary victorious power to destroy Germany and Austria-Hungary now prostrate, they invite their own destruction also, being so deeply and inextricably intertwined with their victims by hidden psychic and economic bonds….

"[The] Paris [Peace Conference of 1919] was a nightmare, and every one there was morbid. A sense of impending catastrophe overhung the frivolous scene; the futility and smallness of man before the great events confronting him; the mingled significance and unreality of the decisions; levity, blindness, insolence, confused cries from without,—all the elements of ancient tragedy were there. Seated indeed amid the theatrical trappings of the French Saloons of State, one could wonder if the extraordinary visages of Wilson and of Clemenceau, with their fixed hue and unchanging characterization, were really faces at all and not the tragi-comic masks of some strange drama or puppet-show.

"The proceedings of Paris all had this air of extraordinary importance and unimportance at the same time. The decisions seemed charged with consequences to the future of human society; yet the air whispered that the word was not flesh, that it was futile, insignificant, of no effect, dissociated from events; and one felt most strongly the impression, described by Tolstoy in War and Peace or by Hardy in The Dynasts, of events marching on to their fated conclusion uninfluenced and unaffected by the cerebrations of Statesmen in Council…"

--John Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace

Here's Why the U.S. Government Thinks It Can Kill You Overseas

This is bad. Very bad.

Spencer Ackerman:

Here's Why the Government Thinks It Can Kill You Overseas: The Obama administration calls it “targeted killing.” Steven Seagal would call it getting marked for death. It’s the practice of singling out an individual, linked to a terrorist group, for killing, and it’s been played out hundreds of times in the 9/11 era — including, more recently, against U.S. citizens like al-Qaida’s YouTube preacher, Anwar al-Awlaki. The Obama team has said next to nothing about how it works or what laws restrict it. Until Monday.

Attorney General Eric Holder explained the administration’s reasoning for killing American citizens overseas…. Holder claimed that the government can kill “a U.S. citizen who is a senior operational leader of al-Qaida or associated forces” provided the government — unilaterally — determines that citizen poses “an imminent threat of violent attack”; he can’t be captured; and “law of war principles,” like the use of proportional force and the minimization of collateral damage, apply….

The debate over killing Awlaki… began long before a Hellfire missile fired from a drone killed him and fellow propagandist Samir Khan in September…. For months after Awlaki’s killing, the government never disclosed any evidence supporting its decision that Awlaki posed an imminent danger to Americans…. Several legal scholars have wondered why the U.S. didn’t have to provide Awlaki with due process of law before killing him, as stipulated under the Fifth Amendment. Holder contended that the U.S. actually did — even if no judge ever heard Awlaki’s case.

“The Constitution’s guarantee of due process is ironclad, and it is essential — but, as a recent court decision makes clear,” Holder argued, “it does not require judicial approval before the president may use force abroad against a senior operational leader of a foreign terrorist organization with which the United States is at war — even if that individual happens to be a U.S. citizen.”

Holder left several aspects of his argument unexplained. He did not define the terms “senior operational leader” of al-Qaida, nor what it means to be an “affiliate” of the amorphous group. The attorney general only referred to the drones through the euphemism….

Holder did not explain how a missile strike represents due process, or what the standards for due process the government must meet when killing a U.S. citizen abroad. Holder did not explain why the government can only target U.S. citizens suspected of terrorism for death overseas and not domestically.

The decision to kill an American, Holder said, is “among the gravest that government leaders can face.” Targeted killing is not assassination, he argued, because “assassinations are unlawful killings.” Among the few external limitations on the government’s war power that Holder mentioned were the approval of a local government where the strikes occur — which must have pleased reluctant, unsteady U.S. allies in Pakistan and Yemen — and the after-the-fact disclosure of the strikes to Congress.

Some members of Congress do not consider that a sufficient safeguard.

“The government should explain exactly how much evidence the president needs in order to decide that a particular American is part of a terrorist group,” says Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat who sits on the Senate’s intelligence committee. “It is also unclear to me whether individual Americans must be given the opportunity to surrender before lethal force is used against them. And I’m particularly concerned that the geographic boundaries of this authority have not been clearly laid out. And based on what I’ve heard so far, I can’t tell whether or not the Justice Department’s legal arguments would allow the President to order intelligence agencies to kill an American inside the United States.”

Mary Ellen O’Connell, the vice president of the American Society of International Law, found Holder’s legal rationale flimsy…

Daniel Larison Worries About Libya

He take the Hobbesian position that any Leviathan is better than no Leviathan:

Eunomia: Aftermath of the Libyan War: Amnesty International has issued a report on the great humanitarian success that is post-Gaddafi Libya:

Amnesty International on Thursday said armed militias in Libya commit widespread human rights abuses, creating instability and obstructing efforts to rebuild the country. “Armed militias operating across Libya commit widespread human rights abuses with impunity, fuelling insecurity and hindering the rebuilding of state institutions”…. The report..documents “serious abuses, including war crimes, against suspected Gaddafi loyalists, with cases of people being unlawfully detained and tortured — sometimes to death,” it said…

This is the kind of thing that happens when a dictatorship in a country with very weak institutions collapses as a result of war. None of this should come as a surprise to anyone. The reprisals that were already happening during the fighting last year have continued, and they seem to be getting worse. Militias in Libya have become a law unto themselves, and there doesn’t appear to be that much interest in creating a democratic government. Perhaps next time we in the West should not be so eager to help turn a dictatorship into a failed state.

The people who actually know about Libya who I talk to say that Daniel has the wrong counterfactual: a peaceful, orderly Libya under the thumb of Qaddafi was no longer a possibility after the Arab Spring spread from Tunisia, and that unless we were lucky--which I don't think we have been in Libya--the choice then was between rivers of blood (if Qaddafi was overthrown) and oceans of blood (if Qaddafi stayed after the degree of discontent had become common knowledge).

Thus backing the Arab Spring still looks to me to have been a good thing to do--both in the short run of the character of the successor regimes and in the long run of the forward march of human freedom.

Quote of the Day: January 20, 2012

"Parents of other friends were Revisionists, so named by Ze’ev Jabotinsky in the 1920s, when he invented his own brand of right-wing Zionism. The Revisionists’ slogan, which I heard often, was “A Jewish state with a Jewish majority on both sides of the Jordan,” a view that seemed pointless and funny to me in the 1950s and early 1960s, but became much less so after the Six Day War of 1967. The Revisionists were affiliated with the right-wing Herut (Freedom) Party in Israel, led by Menachem Begin, who, before Israeli independence, had led Jewish terrorists against the British colonizers of Palestine. According to my mother, Begin had dated her sister, one of my Israeli aunts, back in Poland when they were both young."

--Emanuel Derman, Models Behaving Badly

Hoisted from the Archives: The Prussian Way of War

Brad DeLong: The Prussian Way of War: Here is something thought provoking:

Consider, if you will, this practically forgotten scene from the pages of German military history:

They came up out of the dark forests, mounted and mobile, driving deep into the flank and rear of their enemy. The shock and surprise of their sudden assault carried all before them. So rapid was the advance that it overtook every attempt by their defenders to form a cohesive position. The attackers were not simply faster than their opponents. Moving in a compact, mobile column, they were also more agile, more flexible, and far more responsive to the commands of their officers.

This great mobile column chopped the bewildered enemy force in front of it into uncoordinated segments, each with little more on its mind than flight. It was a near-perfect marriage between the best available technology, a flexible system of command and control, and officers who understood the possibilities of both. It was war in a new, faster tempo.

And now, a quiz: from whence comes this scene?... the Tannenberg campaign of 1914?... the invasion of France in 1940?... Operation Barbarossa?...

Any of the three would certainly be a good guess, but each would be wrong.... Friedrich Wilhelm I, the "Great Elector" of Brandenburg... winter campaign of 1678-9.... The routed enemy was Swedish, and the mounted force launching the devastating mobile assault and pursuit was actually riding sleighs...

[…]

[T]here is indeed a German way of war and... it had its origins within the Kingdom of Prussia.... Prussian, and later German commanders, sought to maneuver their operational units... in a rapid and daring fashion. The Germans called it Bewegungskreig... the war of movement on the operational level.... Such a vigorous operational posture [required]... an army with an extremely high level of battlefield aggression, an officer corps that tended to launch attacks no matter what the odds, and a flexible system of command that left a great deal of initiative, sometimes too much, in the hands of lower ranking commanders.

Thus the Germans evolved a certain pattern of war making.... Other nations... evolved different patterns. Need to land a larg amphibious force on foreign shores? Call the Americans. Interested in deep strikes and consecutive operations on a vast scale of men and materiel? Study the Red Army in its prime. War as a means of colonial aggrandizement? Look to the British. Levels of firepower large enough to turn the enemy homeland into a parking lot? It's back to the Americans...

This is the beginning of Robert Citino (2005), The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years' War to the Third Reich (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas: 0700614109).

Gene Healy Wriitng in 2009 on Those Who Welcomed 9/11

Gene Healy:

Good News: 9/11 Didn’t ‘Change Everything’: On the eighth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on New York and D.C., things are going much better than most of us dared hope in the initial aftermath of that horrible day.  We’re still a secure, prosperous, and relatively free country, and the fear-poisoned atmosphere that governed American politics for years after 9/11 has thankfully receded.

Not everyone’s thankful, however.  Boisterous cable gabber Glenn Beck laments the return to normalcy. The website for Beck’s “9/12 Project” waxes nostalgic for the day after the worst terrorist attack in American history, a time when “We were united as Americans, standing together to protect the greatest nation ever created.” Beck’s purpose with the Project?  “We want to get everyone thinking like it is September 12th, 2001 again.”

My God, why in the world would anyone want that?  Yes, 9/12 brought moving displays of patriotism and a comforting sense of national unity, but that hardly made up for the fear, rage and sorrow that dominated the national mood and at times clouded our vision. 

But Beck’s not alone…. Less than a month after people jumped from the World Trade Center’s north tower to avoid burning to death, David Brooks asked, “Does anybody but me feel upbeat, and guilty about it?” “I feel upbeat because the country seems to be a better place than it was a month ago,” Brooks explained, “I feel guilty about it because I should be feeling pain and horror and anger about the recent events. But there’s so much to cheer one up.” One of the things that got Brooks giddy was liberals’ newfound bellicosity. That same week, liberal hawk George Packer wrote:

What I dread now is a return to the normality we’re all supposed to seek: instead of public memorials, private consumption; instead of lines to give blood, restaurant lines… ”The only thing needed,” William James wrote in ”The Moral Equivalent of War,” ”is to inflame the civic temper as past history has inflamed the military temper.” I’ve lived through this state, and I like it.

There’s something perverse, if not obscene, in “dreading” the idea that Americans might someday get back to enjoying their own lives.  “Private consumption!”  “Restaurant lines!”  The horror!  The horror!… National unity has a dark side.  What unity we enjoyed after 9/11 gave rise to unhealthy levels of trust in government, which in turn enabled a radical expansion of executive power and facilitated our entry into a disastrous, unnecessary war….

Not only have some of us forgotten “what this country has already done… when imagination is joined to a common purpose,” it’s as if some of us are trying to erase the memory of our complicity in the last eight years — to forget that in the face of a crisis we did transcend our stale differences and cut the president a blank check that paid for disaster. How can we not question the scale of our leaders’ ambitions? How short would our memories have to be?…

The End of the Iraq War

Spencer Ackerman:

Video: Drone Watches Last U.S. Convoy Leave Iraq | Danger Room | Wired.com: On March 19, 2003, U.S. ground forces crossed the concertina wire in Kuwait that marks Iraq’s southern border, beginning one of America’s most controversial wars. On December 17, 2011, at 11:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, the last military convoys rolled off Iraqi soil, back to Kuwait. This time, a U.S. Air Force Predator drone loitered overhead, bearing witness.

This is what a U.S. withdrawal looks like to a robotic plane in the sky. An orderly, blue-tinged column of trucks — 125 of them, according to the U.S. Air Force — moves along a stretch of road. The Predator doesn’t see any of the accomplishments or the sacrifice that U.S. troops achieved, endured and earned in Iraq for the past nine years. Nor does it see the suffering, the bitterness and the loss.

But it does record a minor success. The Predator video feed does not show chaos at the border. There is no insurgent assault seeking to chase the U.S. military out. Nor is there a panicked helicopter flight from an embassy rooftop. Instead, as the final trucks calmly cross into Kuwait, the Predator watches border guards shut a gate, providing a sense of finality.

It may not be so final. The U.S. leaves behind a massive embassy in Iraq guarded by up to 5,500 armed security contractors. Little is known about that hired army — when, for instance, it can open fire on Iraqis to protect U.S. diplomats — but it amounts to a privatized residual U.S. force. And in addition to Iraq’s lingering political problems, the country is still a battleground for competing U.S. and Iranian interests. Still, Pentagon Press Secretary George Little tweeted on Sunday morning that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has “approved the order officially ending the Iraq war: EXORD 1003 Victor, Mod 9.”

And the Predators? They won’t exactly leave Iraq after the pullout. On Friday, Panetta secured Baghdad’s approval to allow the drones to fly — unarmed — over northern Iraq from Turkey’s Incirlik air base. They’ll be spying for Kurdish terrorists.

Beyond that, after December 31, when the pullout must legally be complete, drones — armed and otherwise — will be in reserve at the U.S.’ constellation of bases near Iraq in Persian Gulf states.

“Any operation of any aircraft of any type into the sovereign airspace over Iraq after that date would need to comply with Iraqi laws and policies,” Capt. Melissa Milner, chief spokeswoman for the U.S. Air Force in the Middle East, told Danger Room in October. “We are not aware of any special arrangements or exceptions for any aircraft, and are not aware of any ongoing discussions with [the Iraqi defense ministry] on the matter.”

Dennis Perrin's Christopher Hitchens Obituary

Obit For A Former Contrarian

Commemorating the Death of Christopher Hitchens in a Manner That Hitch Would Have Approved of Department

Mobutu Sese Seko on Twitter:

@kofiabiney I think even 5-year-old analyses nail it: this was an existential global crusade for a narcissist who needed a defining moment. 5 hours ago

@kofiabiney Isn't that enough? But the casual misogyny, the relentless narcissistic Galahad routine about Clinton, his bullshit about Said. 5 hours ago

Perversely, even as Hitchens went through chemotherapy, I (and others) forgot to constantly throw up—not in solidarity but in opposition. 5 hours ago

You read awful things and remember them and pack those sick feelings away for later and are stunned to find that time wrongly tempered them. 5 hours ago

It's amazing to go back & read his old columns and revivify a loathing for Christopher Hitchens that became nearly a muted hobbyist disdain. 5 hours ago

RIP Christopher Hitchens, Defense Against the Dark Arts Teacher, Hogwart's School of Witchcraft and Interventionism

Why Were We Ever in Iraq?

Yes, getting rid of Saddam Hussein would have been a mitzvah--if we had not replaced him with a chaotic mess that was, for half a decade at least, significantly worse than being ruled by Saddam Hussein.

Duncan Black wonders aloud:

Eschaton: At Least The War Is Over: Sort of, anyway.

After all these years I still have no idea what it was all about.

Even at the time conservatives would occasionally admit that the WMD rationale was horseshit. It was as if each had their own individual Great Game reason for it. There were as many reasons for the Iraq war as there were supporters of it.

I suppose, ultimately, it came down to blowing up brown people and pissing off liberals. So it was quite a success, really.

Certainly the national security of the United States has been harmed by the adventure. Iran is no longer contained by Iraq. And there are an awful lot more people in the world who have very good reason to hate America.

Ayelet Waldmann Asks: "Do we really have to mail copies of the Magna Carta to every Senator? Or tattoo the 14th Amendment on their asses?"

The answer is: Yes, we do. And that won't be enough. But it would be a start.

Stupidest Thing I Have Read This Month...

It is not any of the works of Ludwig von Mises or his increasingly unmannerly (and, I think, strikingly ignorant) acolytes. It is Dylan Riley's hatchet job on the late Tony Judt.

Dylan Riley appears to have two major points:

1. Tony Judt is to be condemned because his theses on European political-economic history deviate from those laid down by Soviet historians in the Third Period of the Comintern.

2. Tony Judt is to be condemned because he is inconsistent:

New Left Review - Dylan Riley: Tony Judt: A Cooler Look:[I]t was his talent, limited but real, as a polemicist and a pamphleteer that disqualified Judt as a historian…. His range as a polemicist was relatively narrow: there is a limit to what can be got from attacking the French left or lauding fellow defenders of the Free World…. A pamphleteer may be allowed—even expected—to change his views more or less at the drop of a hat. If the EU is now a moral beacon to the world, now a sad example of failed leadership; or the welfare state now the legacy of organized labour, now the common sense of capitalist politicians—so what? All grist to the mill. A historian will be held to different standards.

The fact that the welfare state is both the legacy of organized labor and the common sense of democratic politicians working in the terrain of the twentieth century North Atlantic--that has eluded Riley. The fact that the EU is both a moral beacon to the world as one of the best and most successful human societies yet constructed and a sad example of failed leadership that has missed opportunities to further ascend the heights that lead to Utopia--that has eluded him as well.

Hoisted from the Archives from March 4, 2004: "I Know! George Bush Should Make a Speech!"

"I Know! George Bush Should Make a Speech!": Archive Entry From Brad DeLong's Webjournal: March 04, 2004:

Matthew Yglesias is overcome with laughter:

Matthew Yglesias: Hahahahahah: This is really very funny.

OxBlog: Posted 8:36 AM by Josh Chafetz: I THINK... [George W. Bush] should make... [a speech] devoted to... the strategic vision behind the war on terror. I want to hear an hour-long address that does the following things: (1) Discusses the dangers... and why they need to be met with a military response. (2) Defends the Bush Doctrine that regimes that harbor terrorists will be treated as terrorists. (3) Lays out Bush's understanding that despotism and oppression are root causes of terrorism, and explains his vision for international democracy promotion.... (4) Explains how non-military options are also being used to promote these goals.... (5) Explains how the war in Iraq served a number of goals related to the above points.... Saddam was a destabilizing force... brutal... democratization has important cross-border effects.... (6) Is honest about the lack of WMD in Iraq. Promises (and follows up on) a good faith effort to find out why our intelligence was faulty.... (7) Lists the countries that made up our coalition in Iraq. Points out that calling the war "unilateral" is an insult to these allies, many of whom are significant players.... (8) Emphasizes the importance of rebuilding... civil society... not just in Afghanistan and Iraq, but everywhere that seeks to overcome a legacy of despotism and oppression. This is not just the right thing to do, it is also the right way to protect America.

That -- written by Michael Gerson, of course, who is an incredible speechwriter -- is the speech I want to hear. And that kind of bold statement would not only reassure the American people that Bush knows what he's doing (his new ads say that he knows what he wants to do, but they don't tell us), it would also put Kerry on the defensive.

I agree with Yglesias. Josh Chefetz has made a rather large category mistake. Chafetz just wants to hear Bush say that he is doing these things--and when he hears them, he will be happy, for "Michael Gerson... is an incredible speechwriter."

I, by contrast, don't want to hear George W. Bush say he will do these things. I want him to do (some of) these things (and I want him to do somewhat different things). I want to watch him do the following:

1. Attack the problem of Al-Qaeda and its ilk through a unified response--military, intelligence, law enforcement, and diplomatic.

2. Not necessarily treat regimes that harbor terrorists as terrorists (Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, South Boston, anyone?), but make them aware that nothing good will happen for them as long as they harbor terrorists, and that invasion is definitely something that we are thinking hard about.

3. Promote democracy around the world, rather than just pretend to.

4. Undertake a serious development and global health effort, rather than just pretend to.

5. Explain the real reasons we attacked Iraq--it wasn't that we failed to realize what Hans Blix's findings meant for the reliability of our intelligence, was it?

6. Retire the architects of the intelligence debacle--Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Cheney, and company. People foolish enough to take exiles' statements at face value don't belong in government.

7. Apologize to those of our allies who correctly thought that containment and inspections was a successful Iraq policy in late 2002 and early 2003 and whom we ignored.

8. Put Marshall Plan-scale resources into building civil society in the Middle East, rather than just pretend to.

But there's no chance of any of that, is there? No chance of any real policy change. So all Josh Chafetz dares hope for is a speech.