Liberals usually recognize this point (see also: indirect utilitarianism). The kind of self-styled "pragmatists" who are willing to countenance torture as a means to their ends are shooting themselves in the foot. And it is not necessarily "realistic" to think that belligerent bullying and overwhelming force will secure one's foreign policy goals. As Hilzoy put it, with characteristic wisdom:
Violence is not a way of getting where you want to go, only more quickly. Its existence changes your destination. If you use it, you had better be prepared to find yourself in the kind of place it takes you to.
Yet people keep telling me that my penchant for intellectual honesty is too naive and idealistic to be worth adhering to in the real world of politics. We've gotta play dirty if we want to win. My worry is, when we look at where playing dirty might get us, it doesn't look to me much like victory at all.
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I think that "playing dirty" got us where we are today, but also were we were a decade ago, fifty years ago, and actually, everywhere we have ever been. It's the only way things have ever been played because almost by definition those who turn down power don't have it.
Of course, I don't approve of the designation "playing dirty", and think it has the wrong connotations. What I actually mean is that power is necessarily held by those who behave in a manner determined by the system in which they are embedded.
"Nature, to be commanded, must first be obeyed." This is true of human nature, not just physics. I would contrast playing by the real rules (rules which must be discovered empirically like other instances of natural law) and dogmatically insisting that the rules are what you were told they were in high school civics classes. The actual emergent consequences of those rules do, in fact, determine where you get, but they do so whether you recognize them or not.
The existence of the possibility of violence (generalized to encompass all non-rational methods of influence) doesn't change your destination. Rather, it is one of the causal facts that determine your destination, but it isn't your decision to make violence (meaning non-rational influence) possible, that's just the way things are. In so far as you can change your destination you have to work within the framework of how things are.
See my post on "Political Reality", and the circularity of fatalism.
(There's no reason why we couldn't choose to change "the way things are". The only 'reason' you've suggested is that we actually won't. But that's question-begging, since I'm precisely raising the practical question of what to do. Insofar as we take the question seriously, the answer is not yet settled.)
The republicans (at a high level strategic view) are trying to defend their country and various things that both they and the democrats stand for.
They are concerned about maintining the global structure that allows them to maintain those policies, concerned about the rise of foreign powers that might view them in a hostile manner, and concerned about the effect that such attacks might have.
In order to do that they are willing to betray some of those same ideals. The same pragmatism just playing it on a slightly larger scale.
I guess related to Richard’s point the question becomes what level of influence do we want to debate at.
The bottom level of that is to say 'I almost certainly won't change the election result'. Neither will you me and richard put together.
Aaargh. Genius, it's really impossible to debate what's going on in politics in this country if we aren't willing to describe the Republican Party accurately. It's not just the more conservative voice in contemporary political debate. No, they don't aim at the same things the rest of us do "at a high level strategic view". They can't, because they don't have a high level strategic view. The party literally has no plans or policies. It has ceased to function like a political party, and is now more of a PR firm for corporate looting of the treasury, and sometimes a protection racket. Look at how DeLay was running congress. Look at how Bush has run our foreign policy. There is literally no plan. It's just people using state power, largely for personal enrichment. Even the neocons don't really have a plan-- it's a bunch of aging college nerds pretending to be the Illuminati.
This is quite a bit different from older school Republicans. James Baker was very much an ends-justify-the-means guy, with a plan. Hell, even Nixon had a plan. You would have to look at people like McCarthy and Tweed to get an accurate model for the ideal politician of the current Republican Party.
To the extent that there is any long term plan, it's based on Cheney and Addington's sick fetish with police-state like powers. Even this, though, isn't aimed at solving anything. It's more magical thinking: 'If we take the gloves off, that'll beat the terrorists.' (Note, I say this as someone who is much less left-wing than you might guess, and who was largely indifferent between the two parties prior to Bush's invasion of Iraq.)
As for Richard's worry that we might debase the level of political discourse in this country, how? Have you watched cable news, or read what gets published in the newspapers around here? In the last election, a frequent accusation was that Kerry seemed "too French". That's the level of our political debate-- weird nationalistic slurs. The sorts of widespread attitudes of civic-loyalty and responsibility to the nation which we would need before an intellectually honest debate were possible are simply gone from the society at large, and aren't coming back till a really major political crisis hits.
Finally, as far as smearing Ann Coulter goes, the woman should not be invited on TV shows. Every time she appears on one, she should be attacked, smeared, and the network that invited her embarrassed. She is not a serious political debater, and TV shows that present her as one are serving as propaganda.
Richard-
Bravo!
Derek-
You can just as easily say the same about Democrats...
Derek, I agree, political discourse is already debased. That's why I'm asking people to start doing things differently, i.e. cease to maintain this debased condition.
Importantly, I never said Coulter and other prominent Republicans should not be "attacked" and so forth. They should, to precisely the degree that is intellectually warranted. This is, I'm sure you'll agree, a high degree, so I don't see why anyone would feel the need to disagree with me here. I'm not saying we should smile at her politely. I'm saying we should speak the truth, denounce her when she deserves it, for the reasons that she merits censure and not on false pretenses. Smear her with the truth; that provides us so much ammunition, there's simply no need to resort to slime.
Jared - while the Democrats have their flaws, I don't think they're even on the same scale as the current Republican party when it comes to civic vice.
Oh, sorry Jared, I see you were addressing the more specific complaint that "The party literally has no plans or policies." (I think that's similarly false, but don't really care to pursue the issue here.)
Derek,
They do have a 'protection racket', a 'PR firm' and a corruption aspect to themselves. If you want to address those issues they are to a large extent structural. The way the US creates complex laws with bribes buried in them, the way your committees work the way your democracy functions.
So the anti pork barrel politics movement, getting beyond your ‘first past the post’ system, putting on spending limits and having publicly funded elections. Otherwise, in the long run, you'll just ensure there is a different person getting bribed as opposed to stopping the bribery. (Big companies tend to donate to both main parties anyway).
But beyond that you have the difference between republicans and democrats. If you go to a convention you won't hear people debating about who offers the biggest bribes.
> Look at how Bush has run our foreign policy.
This is the sort of thing you will hear about at a convention, how there are evil states that they don’t want to understand. I think if you don’t understand someone it is more important what that says about you than about them.
> it's based on Cheney and Addington's sick fetish with police-state like powers.
It sounds like you are rephrasing it in such a way as to help you not understand. That doesn’t stop one of the solutions on the table being “get rid of Cheney and Addington” of course.
> as far as smearing Ann Coulter goes, the woman should not be invited on TV shows.
I agree with that - but at the same time don't expect the media to do anything because it probably makes them quite a lot of money. People WANT to see her smeared or to see her smear others.
Ann lives off smears. We only ever hear of her when she says something rude about some group (probably half planned) and based on that she has world wide name recognition. Your media has become one huge womens magazine.
>as someone who is much less left-wing than you might guess, and who was largely indifferent between the two parties prior to Bush's invasion of Iraq
I guess part of the point is that I don’t really need to know where on the political spectrum you sit to evaluate the facts of what you say. Also I have always found that the political spectrum doesn’t fit someone like me, because I can be extreme left on an issue and quite far right on another depending on the facts. I’d vote democrat if I was in the US though – if I wasn’t too disenchanted.
Okay, show me a plan that the Republicans have had under Bush. A plan. I'm serious. Because as I recall, the Bush administration didn't have a plan for our problems in Iraq until sometime in 2005. He actually announced sometime in *2005* that they were going to come up with a plan, admitting that they hadn't had a plan until 2005.
Democrats and Republicans the same? Compare:
http://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/iraq/
Now look at Giuliani on Iraq:
http://www.joinrudy2008.com/issues/
Huh? That's interesting. I thought they were both the same. Yet Hillary seems to have detailed thoughts and positions on Iraq. Rudy thinks...we should stay, I guess. He's not quite clear on what we should do there. Should we continue supporting the local gov't? Don't know. Bring in the UN? Don't know. Yeah, he's got a paragraph saying, "let's stay".
Or consider torture. Why did we start torturing people? To get more intelligence? I've been reading the government memo's authorizing torture. There's a lot of memos arguing that torture isn't illegal. There aren't any memos asking whether torture is effective. There aren't any claiming that certain captives won't talk, but the military/FBI is convinced that with a little rough handling we can break them. None of that. They immediately started arguing that the people brought back from Afghanistan weren't POW's, then within months were arguing for torture. Why? What was the goal? Why did they think these were the steps to take to reach the goal?
Genius, how have you offered any understanding of Cheney at all? You've accused me of not having any. Fine. What's Cheney trying to do? And don't tell me what delegates at Republican Convention would think. Those people are not representative of rank and file Republicans nor the elites of the party. The delegates are about as irrelevant as you can get.
So tell me what Cheney is trying to do. Or tell me what Giuliani's plan in Iraq is, since apparently he has one. Name a single plan, with a goal, some evaluation of facts, and a policy based on getting to that goal given the facts. Because apparently the Republicans have those.
Richard,
Obviously false accusations that Ann Coulter is anti-semitic will worry a much larger number of producers about inviting the woman on their show than pointing out the multiple times she has demonstrably lied. (Consider Imus.)
That's the contemporary political scene.
The populace at large has no interest in seeing their discourse elevated. They even get insulted when others try to elevate it.
Taking a broader view, though, it's worth noting that our society has not always been so sensitive to racism and anti-semitism as moral concerns. I can think of nothing that would improve the world more than seeing intellectual dishonesty join their ranks. But that won't happen until more of us start to make a fuss about it.
> the Bush administration didn't have a plan for our problems in Iraq until sometime in 2005.
what sort of answer would make you happy? The Neocons planed to go into Iraq they planed to set up a democracy and they expected it to be somewhat friendly to the US and they expected to find some chemical weapons and maybe bio weapons and they expected the iraqi public to be reasonably happy about it.
> He actually announced sometime in *2005* that they were going to come up with a plan, admitting that they hadn't had a plan until 2005.
that’s a non sequitur. Maybe he just realized the obvious fact that the current plan wasn’t turning out very well. "flip flopping" I suppose. Which is a good thing because the alternative is as Rita Mae Brown would say - the definition of insanity (doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different result).
>There aren't any memos asking whether torture is effective.
Hmm nice of you to offer such a classic example.
The problem there is that torture IS effective (in the narrow sense). It might not be worth it (I expect it isn't) and it is almost certainly misunderstood and 'misused' (to create false intelligence) but you seem to be demanding they question the aspect of it that is true - which really compounds the issue.
> What's Cheney trying to do?
That’s a very broad question. Shall I put it in a single over generalized out of context sentence?
"He wants to make the US and what he thinks it stands for strong." 9you could probably drop the 'thinks it" part)
Maybe I should ask "What is Hillary tryng to do?" in order to answer correctly.
> Or tell me what Giuliani's plan in Iraq is.
I expect similar to McCain's (see his website)
http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/Issues/fdeb03a7-30b0-4ece-8e34-4c7ea83f11d8.htm
since Guliani defers to the wider republican body.
I don’t suppose that would make you happy because you would see it as a flawed plan (and I agree of course) or that it isn't his plan (not that that matters).
as for assumptions - some of which are valid...
1) that throughout history a huge number of countries have put down insurgencies via superior forces - if so surely the USA can do it - it must just be a strategy issue.
2) the initial plan was flawed, it didn’t give the army the means to achieve it's aims - the new plan is better although it could be improved.
3) If the US leaves Iraq will collapse (ie a mixture of somalia and sudan).
4) the US will not be able to convince Iran not to get involved in Iraq or stop an organization shaped by hatred for the USA from gaining control.
5) with one of these organizations in (loose) control of Iraq things will get unstable on a wider scale. (e.g. Iran will have access to SA).
6) the british lost their aura of invincibility and their empire fell US might also find a similar 'domino effect' as it's enemies see it as an enemy that can be challenged and defeated.
7) that the US is basically a force for good in the world (ie that 6 is a problem as opposed to a benefit)
etc...
Still, I expect this debate is crippled by the fact that I doubt you would accept as rational a position that didnt fit into your world view and you would take as complex and subtle anything that was.
> been so sensitive to racism and anti-semitism as moral concerns.
I think it is also a pitty you need to use two seperate words for them.
Okay, McCain actually has a plan. I will concede that.
This doesn't say much about Giuliani. Saying Giuliani defers to the conventional Republican position makes McCain's plan a non-sequitir. Check out where McCain stands in the pols.
Mitt Romney might be a better rep for standard Republican thinking. Unfortunately he doesn't address Iraq in the Issues section of his website. His section on 'Defeating the Jihadists' deals almost exclusively with Iran, which is weird, because the Jihadists aren't coming from Iran.
http://www.mittromney.com/Issue-Watch/Defeating_the_jihadists
The neocon "maybe things'll turn out right" doesn't qualify as a plan in any but the most charitable sense of the word. I don't think it's unreasonable to say that's not the sense I had in mind. Like, if I say, I'm gonna be rich someday, that's not a plan for getting rich.
Please note, this is a complaint that many of the former administration members have made of the Bush administration. Paul O'Neill. John DiUllio famously said of the administration that it had no concept of policy. That's not enough to convict it, but it matches up with the general incoherence of their behavior.
Torture is effective? At what? At scaring people? Agreed. At producing intelligence? I'm not sure. It may be. Weirdly though, after reading several hundred pages into a book of government documents discussing torture, no one even addresses the issue. It seems to look like they were more concerned with the legal right to torture, than asking themselves what benefits torturing would provide. That's funny. Why would you want to legalize this really distasteful thing without even consulting some evidence on whether it worked?
Why are you so certain torture is effective? Could you cite evidence? Testimony? A lot of people, including judges who lived in legal systems that made use of torture, have suggested it's not. Why should I think they are wrong?
I thought within the context of torture my question about Cheney wold not seem overly broad, but... What is Cheney trying to do when he creates a fourth branch of government not subject to oversight? Why is he pushing hard for torture? Why is he obsessed with increasing the state's surveillance power? Why does he seem to insist on breaking the law for the sake of breaking the law? How's that for a more specific question?
1-7 are fine as assumptions. My point is not that the Rep's make unreasonable assumptions, it's that the party shows no interest in formulating policies that are meant to move us from point A to B. And I think this is because they are uninterested in these policies, because they are not primarily interested in the problem of how to run a government anymore.
As for this: "Still, I expect this debate is crippled by the fact that I doubt you would accept as rational a position that didnt fit into your world view and you would take as complex and subtle anything that was."
I'm not going to resort to personal invective on Richard's website, because he seems like a good guy, but what you just wrote is personal and appalling. In a debate about how the Republican Party is functioning in contemporary political behavior, you move to personally attacking me as close-minded because I disagree with you. If you are aiming at raising the level of discourse that sort of line should be beneath you. Please think about that.
> Torture is effective? At what? At scaring people? Agreed. Poducing intelligence? I'm not sure. It may be.
Torture forces new "witness testimony" which like any witness testimony needs to be verified against other facts. Anything that relies only on witness testimony is a weak case but if that testimony is verified by either independent witness testimony or by other facts then it is reasonably reliable.
Of course it’s a major issue to convict someone based only on tortured testimony – but that is more incompetent policing rather than a limitation of the technique. On the wider issue of course there is the prohibition against torture and as a result the rather bad look for the US to be using it.
> What is Cheney trying to do
to protect the US against perceived threats, he is just willing to go a lot further than most of us would. Just like you are willing to go further than Richard.
> you move to personally attacking me as close-minded
hmm... apologies then - I guess some of the last post shows that assumption to be in error. As hard as it might be to understand, I take very little as personal insults so sometimes miss that I might be offering them to others.
Lets assume you think the US is going to go into a time in history where it is going to be hit by terrorism or be engaged in a serious war.
Now one might argue that there was a need for what might be called "war communism" or more accurately "war fascism". A situation where one tortures or spies on terrorists and spies in order to get information to save more people. To play the same game as them in the areas where they might otherwise have an advantage. One might choose to invoke the strategy early in order to get where one wants to go faster.
I see many on the left with the sort of over inflation of the evils of the other side or the imminent nature of the danger resulting in justifying all sorts of actions.
Having said that, I think there are some events like that coming up though.
I think a few months after Sept 11 before I did much commenting on blogs on politics I was in a meeting with some very rich Chinese businessmen (not about politics of course). What was interesting was that they had a very Noam Chomsky sort of view of the US. The US was a blight on the world, engaging in all sorts of cynical activities, and an imminent danger to everyone - not just the Republicans but the democrats also. For example, apparently the Balkans intervention was a plot to undermine the Euro…
I thought, if that is typical of what rich and powerful people think in China that is very bad news.
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