Tag: Bush administration

Oracle, Optimist, Ostrich, or Obfuscator? Part 3.

Posted on by kathiemm
Dragging Guantanamo captive. Image by Shane T. McCoy and is in the public domain.
Dragging Guantanamo captive.
Image by Shane T. McCoy and is in the public domain.

Among the types of violence that Steven Pinker designates as “rare to non-existent in the west” is that chilling form  of inhumanity, torture. Yet the  western nation in which he lives and writes, the United States, seems up to its eyeballs in the perpetration of the dirty deeds.

Anyone remember what members of the U.S. military did in Abu Ghraib?

And how about Guantanamo Bay? Have you seen the Senate Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Detention and Interrogation Program that chillingly confirmed horrendous acts of torture at Guantanamo and various “black sites”?

Torture, including prolonged solitary confinement, is also flourishing in  penal institutions across the fifty states.

Immigrant children are physically and sexually abused while being held in detention until their fates can be resolved.

Both men’s and women’s prisons are hotbeds for rape and other forms of torture.

Sexual abuse is on the rise in juvenile correctional facilities;  according to one report, the majority of the abusers are women.

And who will deny that police torture people in the streets, in paddy wagons, and in their stations?

According to Pinker,  “The 18th century saw the widespread abolition of judicial torture, including the famous prohibition of “cruel and unusual punishment” in the eighth amendment of the U.S. Constitution (emphasis added).” He praises our enlightened society for recognizing that torture is wrong. But really, should we smugly pat ourselves on our backs if today’s judicial system no longer makes explicit recommendations of torture as a punishment for people they decide are guilty of something (e.g., being the “wrong” color), when its decisions often spawn it?

Pinker’s reassurances do not leave me hopeful for the imminent demise of torture in our institutions.  The genuine optimists,  like Nancy Arvold, Maria Rotella, Stephen Soldz, Prison Hunger Strike Solidarity, and Psychologists for Social Responsibility, work tirelessly to end torture, but resistance to reforms persist.  

Underplaying the problem as Pinker does seems itself to be cruel but not unusual, although we should celebrate the genuine good news when it comes.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

 

Iceland: Unlikely haven for whistle-blower Snowden

Posted on by kathiemm

By guest author Dr. Michael Corgan

National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance whistle-blower Edward Snowden is in limbo, unable to return to the U.S. Might Iceland offer asylum as payback for the way the U.S. treated Iceland in 2006?

Hong Kong protest in support of Snowden
Hong Kong protest in support of Snowden. Photo by Voice of America, in public domain.

The Bush administration in 2006 arbitrarily and unilaterally pulled all U.S. forces out of Iceland even while the State Department had a negotiator at the prime minister’s office supposedly talking about how many U.S. forces we would keep there.

Of course a good number of Icelanders never wanted the U.S. there in the first place and were opposed to NATO membership altogether. The majority, however, did favor a U.S. presence, and the sitting government was led by the rightist, pro-U.S., Independence Party. The prime minister (PM), David Oddson, had been in power for 13 years, longer than any other European PM. His response to the pullout: “We’ll be the only NATO capital without air defense.”

Thus the U.S. treated Iceland rather dismissively as the tiny state it was. Many politicians who had long careers supporting U.S. positions were at least embarrassed.

Would taking in Snowden be a chance for Iceland to show it is still a sovereign state and can make that status count on occasion? Most of my sources said no. Among other things, too much trouble.

Some outside journalists made comparisons to Iceland’s granting citizenship to chess champion Bobby Fischer against U.S. desires–but remember, Fischer put Iceland on the map in 1972.

Everyone spies on everyone else. But so far Snowden (and Julian Assange of Wikileaks) are mostly leaking American secrets. The U.S. government has been warning others to mute their outraged reactions since, I am sure, we could reveal what others have been up to.

Mr. Snowden is a hot potato and carries much more baggage with him than his inside information. Russian leader Vladimir Putin won’t give Snowden citizenship unless he stops spilling secrets. After all, who would be next? Nevertheless, word is out that Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua—all of which have their own reasonable gripes against the U.S. government–have extended invitations to him. Tensions run high.

Only $50-60 billion (Cost of war, Part 1)

Posted on by kathiemm

[Note from Kathie Malley-Morrison:  Today we welcome guest author Neta C. Crawford, for the first in a series about the true costs of the Iraq war. As the U.S. enters  “tax season,” it is good to be reminded about the magnitude of our country’s financial commitment to war.]

Iraq war damage
Image licensed under cc-by-2.0.

Americans deserve an accurate accounting of the true toll of the Iraq war in both blood and treasure.  We may get it if we recall that war is almost always more expensive and more difficult than a war’s boosters tell us. Anyone who tries to suggest otherwise is repainting history.

It is perhaps hard to remember now, but Bush administration officials told Americans before the Iraq war that it would cost $50-60 billion. Bush’s economic adviser Larry Lindsay was fired for saying the Iraq war could cost more, $100-200 billion.

They made no estimate of the thousands–now hundreds of thousands–who have died or been injured and the millions displaced in Iraq.

President Obama suggested last summer that Iraq had cost the U.S. 1 trillion.  But there are lots of figures being cited, ranging as high as $4-6 trillion. Why were the pre-war estimates so low?

The reason the pre-war estimates were so low is the simple fact that the Bush Administration over-estimated the utility of force, believing that Iraqis would be easily defeated and would welcome externally imposed regime change.

But governments often underestimate the difficulty of war to achieve political ends. The Bush administration was optimistic, choosing to believe a best-case scenario when history suggests such scenarios are more often than not unrealistic. Killing people and occupying their country always produces resistance.

Why now, is it so hard to give a firm accounting of the dollar cost at this juncture?  There are four basic reasons and it turns out they are related to the optimistic biases that preceded the war.

Neta C. Crawford is a Professor of Political Science at Boston University and co-director of the Costs of War study www.costsofwar.org

Lawless technology available to all (Just war, Part 10)

Posted on by kathiemm

By guest author Mike Corgan

One senses a barn door closing after the horses have gone out.

There are well-substantiated rumors that NATO convinced Slobodan Milosevic to abandon his war in Kosovo by demonstrating what we could to do to him with our computers beyond just our airstrikes.

Hellfire missile on predator drone
Hellfire missile on Predator drone, inscribed with "In memory of Honorable Ronald Reagan." Image in public domain.

Several years later, Russians, probably with government support, used computers to shut down Estonia for three days over a perceived slight to a statue honoring Russian liberation of Estonia.

Obama administration officials declined to use cyber war against Qaddafi for fear of the example it might set.

We’ve also taken the lead in using drones to strike targets anywhere in the world. What the Bush administration started, the Obama administration has just about perfected. Think of what goes on daily on the Afghan-Pakistan border. Recall the recent stir about killing two Americans by drone strikes in a remote area of Yemen.

Even the Administration realized that here, too, a line may have been crossed. And drones are a relatively cheap technology available to many countries.

The question for us is what rules or laws specific to this new technology are in force? Simple answer, there really aren’t any.

There have been no conferences, no updates of Geneva Conventions, no sustained discussion in public forums about any of these new ways of war that take us far beyond what troops, tanks and ship have always
done.

These weapons are equally effective no matter who uses them and they are available to all.

The capabilities are here. We need to bring out into the open a discourse about rules, laws and norms now.

Michael T. Corgan, Associate Professor and Associate Chair, International Relations, Boston University