Fabricated Memos and Credibility Problems

The much-hyped Nunes memo became public a few days ago, and I've been noticing a very interesting reaction to it in various corners of the internet; specifically, a lot of people are buying into it, lock, stock, and barrel.  Now, the memo is obviously a steaming poo pile, but here's the thing: there are a lot of people who believe the memo to be true have a plausible argument for that belief.  I don't mean the hardcore Trump supporters; at this point Trump could tell them he can walk through walls and they'd believe him.  The people I'm thinking of are the ones who have been holding a long-standing suspicion of the government.  All the government.  Because the truth is, there is plenty of good cause for suspicion.

The assorted government agencies tasked with protecting America and its citizens - from TSA to the FBI to the DEA to NSA to CIA - have a credibility problem of their own making.  It's not enough to say they all dropped the ball at one time or another, because "dropping the ball" implies that they failed because of something like bad luck or an innocent mistake.  That's not the case at all.  The credibility problem stems from the fact that these agencies misused their authority in a variety of unsavory ways.  Two successive presidents and countless members of Congress told us we had to accept infringements to our Constitutional rights to combat an amorphous terrorist threat.  The Director of National Intelligence perjured himself.  Police forces began to resemble military units and no-knock SWAT raids became more common.  An intelligence failure allowed an al-Qaida bomber onto a US-bound flight from Ghana through the Netherlands.  And those are only a handful of post-9/11 examples.  Do some digging, and there are many other historical ones: COINTELPRO, Watergate, the McCarthy hearings, the Pentagon Papers, the Tonkin Gulf Incident, and countless coups and covert wars. And all the documentation gets hidden behind a "TOP SECRET/NOFORN" label, nobody gets punished, and nothing changes.  Given these organizations' history of past transgressions, it's natural to be skeptical of the FBI.

So does that mean the Nunes memo is correct? No, absolutely not.  First, consider the source: Nunes, Trump, the GOP leadership.  They've all discredited themselves long before this memo became public.  Nunes was already caught trying to cheat on Trump's behalf once; and Trump's accusations fall short when you factor in that two individuals have already pleaded guilty for crimes pertaining to the Russia investigation, that there is a documented paper trail between Trump campaign officials and representatives of the Russian government, and, of course, there was a meeting at Trump Tower in June of 2016.  And those are just the things we all know about.  Add to that Trump and many of his cronies are well-known serial liars and conspiracy-theory peddlers.  Finally, remember that as president, Trump has the authority and the resources to expose any illegal spying if he chooses.  He can declassify NSA intercepts that targeted him, if they exist; he can order the Department of Justice to review the FISA warrants for impropriety.  Occam's Razor says the simplest explanation is more likely to be true.  Ask yourself: is it more likely that the investigation is legitimate and substantive or that the FBI is playing a central role in a broad "deep state" conspiracy against the small group of people in Trump's orbit?

Because that's what this is being packaged as: a deep, sinister conspiracy.  The people pushing this idea performed a very subtle sleight-of-hand, one that's easy to overlook if you're not paying attention.  They shifted the narrative from a claim that the government (in particular, the NSA) is collecting all Americans' communications (true) to an accusation that the government mobilized the resources of the entire intelligence/law enforcement community against the Trump clan in an unlawful attempt to neutralize it (horseshit.)  We're witnessing the birth of a conspiracy theory on par with "9/11 was an inside job" right before our eyes.  This "echo chamber" groupthink would normally be an object of ridicule, except that similar conspiracy theories have already driven people on the extreme fringes to violence not long ago.  That's not something to take lightly.

If we could trust our institutions, there wouldn't be an issue; but our politicians and political appointees have squandered that trust for decades.  Now we're reaping the bitter fruits of that wastefulness.  The agencies, and their civilian overseers, have misused and abused their authority so badly, that now many people reflexively think they're lying and choose to believe con artists like Nunes and Trump instead.  They're the spies who cried wolf, and just like the old fable goes, we're ignoring them at the very time when we should be believing them.

There needs to be serious reform once Trump is no longer president.  He's only the byproduct of some deeper issues, and we need system-wide reform.  He's a complete shit-show, so maybe he'll be the impetus that motivates the people in Washington to finally implement some long-overdue reforms.

More War on Terror allegory - Marvel's Civil War and The Ultimates 2: Grand Theft America

This is a sort-of continuation to my August 30th post, because it's about how the War on Terror was portrayed in a few other works of fiction.  I guess the War on Terror inspired a lot of creative works, both nonfiction and fiction.  Anyway, there are two works I'm zeroing in on; coincidentally, both were produced by Marvel Comics.

The first one was Marvel's Civil War storyline, which ran from July 2006 to January 2007 and affected pretty much every character in the Marvel universe.  (It doesn't have much in common with the 2016 Captain America movie, besides a mega-battle between two groups of superheroes, though.) At least two Marvel employees have stated that it was largely inspired by the War on Terror.  Axel Alonso, Marvel's editor-in-chief, said "Much of the public debate around that time was, 'How much of your civil liberties are you willing to give up for your security? Many of us were riding on trains having our bags inspected by soldiers. We were in constant 'orange alert' in New York. That discussion was the seed for what became Civil War." Mark Millar, who gets most of the credit for creating the storyline, made similar statements.  The War on Terror's influence is easy to spot throughout the series: for example, the extra-dimensional prison symbolizes Guantanamo and the "Superhuman Registration Act" represents the PATRIOT Act.  Like every other comic book, Civil War is mostly a punch-up between people with superpowers and gaudy spandex outfits; but in between battles, it manages to slip in a handful of moral conundrums specifically pertaining to the War on Terror.  Questions such as these:

• Do you still support the government when it's doing something morally questionable? What if the government's actions are outright illegal? Are people obligated to follow a clearly unjust or immoral law? Who are the "bad guys" in these scenarios - the people who break unjust laws or the people who enforce those same laws?
•  Are there any situations where it's justified to deny individuals legal rights and inflict harsh, possibly cruel, punishments? Civil War stretches the comparison to the War on Terror a bit, because the individuals in question have superpowers, but it's easy to make a connection between the hi-tech gulag-like conditions depicted in the comic and "enhanced interrogation" measures (torture) and denying due process to Gitmo detainees.
• How far is "too far" when it comes to protecting the country? Are detestable acts suddenly permissible? What if those acts betray the country's values?

I wish I had images of the comic panels where these issues are brought up, because that would be a better way to highlight them than me trying to describe them.  I couldn't find any good images, though.  Anyway, Civil War was a slightly above-average comic storyline, but it did touch on some major events in a thought-provoking way.  

The other comic in question was part of Marvel's Ultimate line of comics, which was a retelling of the entire Marvel franchise in an "edgier" way.  This particular storyline, called Grand Theft America, came out in December of 2004 (and took until May 2007 to finish, for some reason.) The comic's plot goes like this: the Ultimates (this comic's version of the Avengers) operates like a superpowered SEAL Team 6 when they're not saving the world.  As the comic opens, they're on a mission to destroy some hostile nation's nuclear facility.  Fast forward a few months, and several nations that have grudges against the United States launch a coordinated attack against America using their own superpowered team, each of whom has abilities comparable to one of the Ultimates' members.  Naturally, the Ultimates counterattack and save the day.  It's basically a standard punch-fest, kind of like Civil War; but the preemptive raid at the comic's beginning is analogous to the Bush Doctrine, as well as the low-visibility counterterrorist raids which elite units like SEAL Team 6 and Delta Force conducted around the globe.  

This comic also does raise several important moral/legal questions (although not as obviously as Civil War.) regarding the raid on the nuclear site at the beginning.  Is a raid that violates a nation's sovereignty permissible if that nation possesses both nuclear weapons and a hostile or unstable government? Or any nation with nuclear weapons? Are covert raids (in general) acceptable under just war doctrine? How is that raid's benefit weighed against the costs of any blowback or retaliation?

Some of these questions have been heavily debated, and not just by comic book readers.  The Cold War and the invention of nuclear weapons led to a lot of discussion among scholars and military thinkers about how those two things changed the rules of the game.  I'm going to present two viewpoints on the issue.  First, just war advocates set a pretty high bar when it comes to what is considered a just war; to meet their standard, the war must be for a morally justifiable reason, be the last resort, be ordered by a legitimate authority, and the initiator must have a reasonable chance of victory.  These advocates might acknowledge that the Ultimates' raid was justifiable under the circumstances, but they would likely require convincing proof that the target nation posed a threat - meaning that it absolutely possessed nuclear weapons and that its leadership showed intent to use them.  On the other hand, Eisenhower-era hawks showed much more willingness to use force.  A 1954 presidential panel concluded that the United States needed to employ covert action liberally to combat the Soviet Union.  Here is a quote from that panel's chairman concerning the importance of covert action:

It is now clear that we are facing an implacable enemy whose avowed objective is world domination by whatever means and at whatever costs. There are no rules in such a game. Hitherto acceptable norms of human conduct do not apply. If the US is to survive, longstanding American concepts of "fair play" must be reconsidered. We must develop effective espionage and counterespionage services and must learn to subvert, sabotage and destroy our enemies by more clever, more sophisticated means than those used against us. It may become necessary that the American people be made acquainted with, understand and support this fundamentally repugnant philosophy.

These questions are still significant many decades later.  It's not too hard to apply the debate to North Korea or Pakistan, or even the United States (Trump's not the most rational head of state, folks). This comic was first published in 2004, so 9/11 and Operation Iraqi Freedom undoubtedly influenced the writers.  Especially since Mark Millar (remember him?) was one of those writers.  By the way, there's a special term for this dilemma.  It's called the "Dirty Hands" question, and I think you can guess what it means in context.

That's all I have to say, but I'm posting a few additional links below if you'd like to get other perspectives on various aspects of the just war debate.

https://www.law.upenn.edu/live/files/1291-dipert-preventive-war
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a547264.pdf
http://www.iar-gwu.org/node/213