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.

Lessons (not) learned from Vietnam

The recent PBS series on the Vietnam War and the recent debate over the national anthem got me thinking about the parallels between then and now, and I'm putting my thoughts into this stream-of-consciousness post about how little has changed since the end of the war.  Specifically, how little we (as a country) have learned since then.  Let's look at the lessons we thought we learned, but then discarded.

First, the US government (the White House and the Pentagon) fell back into the habit of sending troops to fight wars for flimsy justifications, vaguely-defined objectives, and inadequate equipment and resources.  This hasn't happened all the time, but more often than not, the troops went in without what they needed for victory: a coherent plan, resources that matched the objective, and a valid reason to fight.  When it comes to smaller, shorter conflicts, the score is about even.  Grenada and Panama didn't become quagmires, but Somalia and Lebanon did.  In regard to large-scale conflicts, the tally is pretty one-sided.  The 1990-91 Gulf War had a clear mission and sufficient resources, if a rationale that was more about economics than security; but on the other side of the ledger, we have Afghanistan, the Balkans, and Iraq Part II.

There was supposed to be a deep discussion about America's use of military power in the wake of Vietnam, but it never really got off the ground.  Not enough to lead to any meaningful changes, anyway.  The senior officers who hoped to avoid a repeat of the Vietnam quagmire succeeded for a few years, and during that time they managed to implement meaningful reforms.  For example, when Colin Powell served in the White House as a military assistant to Secretary Weinberger, he helped craft the "Weinberger Doctrine", which acted as a litmus test for when to commit US troops.  The war hawks eventually outmaneuvered those senior officers, though, and critics who charged that the Doctrine was so narrow that it practically guaranteed US troops would never be deployed anywhere.  Vaguely-defined missions began to come back into favor in the 1990s, and became standard procedure after 9/11.

Washington also ably deflected any deep discussion by transitioning from a draftee military to an all-volunteer force.  Richard Nixon wisely calculated that halting the draft would deflate anti-war protests, and he was right.  Once the overall population stopped having a stake in America's wars, they stopped worrying that they might someday get dragged into a quagmire conflict.  This weakened the bond between the military and the general population, and gave military leadership much more license to send the military anywhere they wanted.  Somewhere along the way, Congress (which holds the power to declare war) stopped holding the president accountable in any meaningful way.  How it got there is a story about a lot of boring political maneuvering, but the moral of the story is that "accountability" was a sham.  Political appointees and mid-level staffers took the fall for military failures, partisan bickering replaced debate, and nobody asked the questions that should have been asked after Vietnam.  Which brings us to the present, where history is repeating itself.

I'm almost done here, but I'd like to make one more point.  To me, this isn't an academic debate.  I served in the Army for four years and spent five years after that as a defense contractor.  During that time, I made several trips to combat zones and deployed locations.  My experiences have made me very skeptical of how the government employs the military, to the point where I oppose a military intervention by default unless I see a very good reason for it.  I'm probably not evaluating a military intervention impartially, but I don't really care if I'm being fair or not.  I think being extremely skeptical is preferable to not being skeptical enough.  Every soldier, sailor, airman, and Marine is someone's child/parent/sibling/friend, and if the president and the senior generals put them in harm's way, they need to be absolutely certain that the sacrifice is worth it.  Anything less is morally repugnant in my opinion.

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

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).

Trump's Half-Baked Strategy for Afghanistan

On Monday evening, August 21st, President Trump gave a speech laying out his plan for addressing the war in Afghanistan, a place where the US has occupied since 2001.  Given Afghanistan's track record of resisting and outlasting invading armies, I'd be pessimistic about the plan's odds of success even if an exceptionally brilliant general or statesman like Clausewitz or Metternich had drawn it up; and Trump is certainly not on the same level as them.

First, a few things to say about the speech's tone and timing.  The speech itself is far more eloquent and articulate than many of Trump's previous oratories - could this be a sign of a shift in the administration's collective culture now that Bannon has left? Possibly.  It's too early to tell, but there was a distinct change in Monday's speech.  The emphasis on the bonds within the military makes me speculate that McMaster, himself a career soldier, had a major role in writing the speech.  The speech also stresses the importance of national unity, which many pundits attribute to the recent events in Charlottesville, as well as Trump's verbal bungling in the aftermath.  The speech's timing also conveniently benefits Trump: although he couldn't have foreseen the Barcelona terrorist attack, laying out a policy that escalates the war in Afghanistan certainly helps Trump look tough in the face of terrorism.

That covers my thoughts on the speech's timing and tone.  Now for its content - and we've got quite a bit to unpack here.

First, there's the speech overall.  As I already mentioned, Trump signaled his intent to ramp up the war in Afghanistan.  This confirms that Trump plans to keep America's foreign policy on the same military-centric, interventionist foreign policy it has been on since the Truman Administration.  He might make a few changes around the edges, but the core approach remains fixed.   Trump has effectively fallen prey to what retired Colonel Andrew Bacevich disparagingly labeled the "bipartisan military consensus" in his book, The Limits of Power.  This is a significant point in Trump's administration, because it represents an important indication of the path his policy will lead, not only in Afghanistan, but in other fronts in the war on terror.  Expect to see him maintain or increase the op-tempo in Yemen, Somalia, and Iraq eventually.

The policy which he outlined in his speech is also self-contradictory and painfully naive.  Early on, he expresses a distaste for nation-building, stating "I share their [the American people's] frustration over a foreign policy that has spent too much time, energy and most importantly lives trying to rebuild countries in our own image instead of pursuing our security interests above all other considerations." However, later in the speech, he states that the United States will "participate in economic development to help defray the cost of this war to us." I could be wrong, but economic development sounds a lot like nation-building.  In fact, the economic component is a key part of nation-building.  Additionally, leaving a nation in ruins creates the conditions which Trump himself acknowledges exploit to establish a safe haven.  There's not going to be any way around nation-building, and Trump will soon learn this; unfortunately, an understaffed State Department will pose an obstacle.  Trump's strategy also seems determined to avoid making the mistakes of the previous war: leaving a power vacuum in a broken and divided country.  This applies to Afghanistan in the 1990s, but particularly Iraq, which is fresh in many generals' minds.

A dearth of nation-building efforts implies an emphasis on military force, and Trump's strategy reflects this.  He's evidently opting for a Bidenesque emphasis on counter-terrorism over counter-insurgency.  Trump has also wised up to NATO's importance, emphasizing that this will be a multinational effort.  How well that goes over with the other NATO countries is anyone's guess, though.

Trump also indicates that he wants the Afghan military to take the lead.  There's logic in that, but also huge potential for trouble.  A nation's army must maintain a strict monopoly on force; but in Balkanized countries like Afghanistan, there's a lot of overlap among the military and a particular faction.  Trump's approach will only make insurgents target US forces more, because they'll see us as allies of their enemies.  Also, the US has been in Afghanistan for seventeen years, so our adversaries have already formed their own opinions of us, and those opinions likely won't change.  Trump stated he's open to a political settlement with the Taliban; if so, letting the Afghan army take the lead will make any settlement more difficult to achieve.

Trump also shows a serious lack of understanding for how the Afghanistan policy rebounds into other areas.  First, publicly criticizing Pakistan and lauding India probably won't incentivize Pakistan to cooperate; and since one of Pakistan's key allies is China, this could potentially make dealing with North Korea more difficult.  In fact, China has already responded.  Second, eschewing nation-building will create a void that other nations could rush to fill, and Russia has already been expanding its influence in Afghanistan through the use of "soft power."

This might all be cause for concern, but the "bipartisan consensus" hasn't really been bothered by half-baked plans in the past.  Whether that's due to indifference or because nobody wants to tell the emperor that he's naked I can't really say, but my guess is that the US wants to keep a flag planted in Afghanistan as part of some grand geopolitical scheme.  Trump's bungling won't make a difference, but it will throw a bit of sand in the gears.  This is one of Trump's major tests as president, and he failed miserably.  His speech showed how little he understands about Afghanistan, military tactics, geopolitics, and the consequences of his words.

Finally, there were a few parts of the speech that I wanted to mention briefly:

• Trump's comment that "historically I like following my instincts." As professor Michael Horowitz of U-Penn insightfully notes, this is a clever way of preemptively shifting blame to the generals if the strategy goes south.
• In keeping with his fragile ego, there were a handful of times when he seemingly went out of his way to remind people that he's the president.
• He also threw a bit of red meat to his base by reinforcing the perception of Democrat weakness on military matters and talking about terrorists in the language of force.

That was what I took away from Trump's speech.  I have a feeling the next 3 1/2 years are going to be a bumpy ride.  Trump is woefully, hilariously, out of his league.