A Torture Enabler's Career Path

A news story that I thought should have gotten a lot of attention was President Trump's decision to nominate Gina Haspel to be Director of the CIA.  Unfortunately, like many other important stories, it was pushed out of the news cycle by later events.  If you don't know who Gina Haspel is, that's okay.  There are probably a lot of people who don't.  Here's a quick rundown of the most important details about her: Haspel oversaw a CIA "black site" in Thailand in 2002, where agents used various forms of torture like waterboarding to extract information from detainees.  (I strongly encourage you to click on that link and read the accounts of the torture from people at the site.) She also was part of a concerted effort to obstruct a federal investigation by destroying recordings of CIA employees torturing detainees.  Neither of those things impeded her career progression, because she is currently the CIA's Deputy Director.

Haspel didn't get to where she is overnight, though: America has gotten far too accepting of an unarguably immoral practice since 9/11.  "Enhanced interrogation," Camp X-Ray, preemptive wars - they all led us to where we are now.  Our government's hands weren't clean before that, of course; but torture wasn't promoted so openly and wholeheartedly before the War On Terror.  "Dubya" basically started a course of action that has proven difficult to reverse.  Obama, to his credit, managed to rein in some of the torture programs, like the "black sites"; but he couldn't halt it completely.  And his unwillingness to make good on his campaign promises ensured that it would be an uphill battle to hold anyone accountable. There's also an argument to be made that Obama's decision to not confront the torture issue paved the way for Trump's endorsement of it.

In addition to the obvious moral (it's cruel and evil) and practical (it doesn't work) objections, there are also political ones.  It's hard to say to say "You shouldn't torture people" to countries like China, The Philippines, or Saudi Arabia when three successive presidents have said "It's okay" in one way or another.  It also sends a bad message to other liberal democracies, including our allies in Europe.  How can the US present itself as a "beacon of democracy" when we engage in such a barbaric practice? On a domestic level, it also says to the intelligence community that participating in torture, and then trying to cover it up, is not an impediment to career advancement.  Expect to see the CIA and other agencies start loosening restrictions on torture soon, if they haven't already.  ICE has already taken its cue from Trump's tone and adopted more aggressive tactics, so government agencies are taking note and responding accordingly.

"Torture is bad" is such an easy and obvious judgement to make that I'm not going to spend time explaining why.  Promoting someone who had a hand in it sends the message that torture is acceptable, maybe even desirable.  The longer torture is seen as acceptable, the harder it will be to dislodge once we decide it's not tolerable any longer.  If you disagree with my position on torture, you're welcome to do so, but don't waste your time or mine trying to change my mind.

Batman, Captain America, and the War on Terror

Art and life mirror each other all the time.  Fictional "technology" has inspired a number of scientists, entrepreneurs, and inventors; and countless works of fiction have been based on actual historical events.  This blog entry will focus on one ongoing event that has exerted significant influence on American policies since 2001.  That event, obviously, is the War on Terror; and two movies which incorporated aspects of the War on Terror in their plots are The Dark Knight and Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

First, let's look at The Dark Knight.  There are two parts of the movie that resemble American war-fighting methods.  Toward the middle of the movie, Batman abducts Lau, a criminal organization's accountant, from Hong Kong.  (Side note: Batman escapes using a CIA-designed personnel recovery system.)  Batman's escape strategy is bolder and more dramatic, but it is virtually identical to a controversial (and in many countries, illegal) counter-terrorism tactic called extraordinary rendition.  The big difference is that instead of being dragged back to Gotham, the prisoner gets delivered to a secret prison in a country where cruel treatment is acceptable. 

The next incident in The Dark Knight that parallels the War on Terror occurs toward the film's end.  Batman uses his corporation's resources to access every cell phone in Gotham, in order to find the Joker.  This also resembled an American government tactic for fighting the War on Terror, although the general public wouldn't learn about the government's mass surveillance programs until about five years after The Dark Knight premiered.

Now, let's look at Captain America.  The central conflict is that Hydra (doesn't that just sound like an evil organization?) has infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D and plans to use its helicarriers (which make AC-130s look like BB guns) to eliminate Hydra's adversaries.  A Hydra scientist invented a mathematical equation that could identify which people might oppose Hydra; while the helicarriers acted as a high-altitude sniper rifle, and had the advantage of being out of range of antiaircraft weapons.  In many ways, Hydra's master plan is like America's criteria for deciding who ends up on the receiving end of a drone strike.  It's called a "signature strike", and here's a good definition courtesy of Foreign Policy magazine's Dan DeLuce and Paul McLeary:

"Signature strikes were first used during George W. Bush’s administration, and the name refers to the fact that the targets — by virtue of their ages, actions, and locations inside countries known to house terrorist operatives — bear the “signature” of militant activity. U.S. intelligence and defense officials believe the strikes have inflicted heavy damage on al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. But critics say the rules for the drone strikes against large numbers of military-age men are too vague and carry an unacceptably high risk of killing innocent civilians who have no connection to any terrorist plot."

I want to bring up one other point to tie this back to political theory.  Both movies hint at the moral and philosophical conflict of freedom vs security.  That dilemma is something else that comes up a lot in real life.  The Founding Fathers leaned heavily toward the "freedom" side of the scale, especially when it came to restricting government power, and it's pretty noticeable in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, as well as writings many of them left behind.  The back-and-forth debate between security and liberty still goes on, and probably will continue for many decades.  And the secretive organization that promotes iron-fisted control is usually the villain in both works of fiction (SPECTRE, The Galactic Empire, Cobra, Hydra) and in the history books (the Gestapo, the KGB, just about any secret police force).