Today's Washington Post reports:
The Bush White House so strictly controlled access to its warrantless eavesdropping program that only three Justice Department lawyers were aware of the plan, which nearly ignited mass resignations and a constitutional crisis when a wider circle of administration officials began to question its legality, according to a watchdog report released today.
The unclassified summary by five inspectors general from government intelligence agencies called the arrangements "extraordinary and inappropriate" and asserted that White House secrecy "undermined" the ability of the Justice Department to do its work.
We've known for some time that details about the surveillance program were held quite close within the Bush Administration, but I don't think we knew just how close.
Only three Justice Department officials -- Ashcroft, former Office of Legal Counsel lawyer John C. Yoo, and intelligence policy lawyer James Baker -- were read into the electronic surveillance initiative. Many of their superiors were kept in the dark, the unclassified summary reported for the first time today.
One former department lawyer, Jay S. Bybee, told investigators that he was Yoo's superior in the Office of Legal Counsel but was never read into the program and "could shed no further light" on how Yoo became the point man on memos that confirmed its legality. By following this route, the memos avoided a rigorous peer review process.
The report said Yoo prepared hypothetical documents in September and early October 2001 before writing a formal memo in November, after Bush had already authorized the initiative. . . .
The full outlines of the program remain murky and subject to strict classification, but the inspectors general report said that Yoo "did not accurately describe the scope" of other intelligence activities in the President's Surveillance Program, presenting "a serious impediment to recertification of the program."
I don't have a number, but you think the supervisors of lawyers privy to the secrets should also be privy?
Cart, horse.
If those responsible did no wrong, they should not be bashful. If they violated American law, they should not be free.
Knowledge is good.
short answer is NO
this was an SCI program. Certainly in the DoD, rank does not entitle one to the "need to know". most folks understand that in order to keep things secret, not everybody can pull rank to learn the interesting cocktail worthy gossip.
Need to Know is need to know.
3 may seem small, but it provides enough lawyers to share thoughts, yet is small enough to attempt to safegaurd secrets.
the philosophy proposed would mean that as when went up the chain of command, it wuld entitle one to know details of programs over which you had no meanful oversight, but wanted access to for your self agrandizement.
Anyone?
1. If the Attorney General decides to undertake a Need-To-Know program and that the President does not Need-To-Know, is that OK with you? If the assistant AG decides to undertake a NTK program and that the AG doesn't need to know, is that OK with you?
2. If supervisors can not be read into the activities of their reports, in what credible sense can they supervise them? What's the point of calling the Attorney General the "chief law enforcement officer of the federal governement" and "head of the Department of Justice" if he does not have the legal right to know what his underlings are doing?
Knowledge is good."
You flaming idiot. You want our enemies to know our secrets ? To know what we know about them and how we found it out ? What would you like, public hearings on C-Span about the inner details and workings of our national security apparatus ? How about if we divluge publicly all the technologies we use to intercept communications, all the abilities of our satellites ? Perhaps we can install GPS transponders on our fleets and our planes, so you can track them on Google Earth ? Would THAT satisfy you ? Oh, and the public execution of everyone who ever worked in the Bush administration, of course ....
Well, at least we know on which side of the tyrannical divide Pete and LM stand.
This is why all wars should be badass Total Wars, which is why I'm pretty unhappy we haven't nuked Iran and Iraq and North Korea and some of Russia and Afghanistan and Pakistan and Evil.
1. If the Attorney General decides to undertake a Need-To-Know program and that the President does not Need-To-Know, is that OK with you? If the assistant AG decides to undertake a NTK program and that the AG doesn't need to know, is that OK with you?
The President is where the buck stops, and presumably always has a NTK. For the AG, see below.
2. If supervisors can not be read into the activities of their reports, in what credible sense can they supervise them? What's the point of calling the Attorney General the "chief law enforcement officer of the federal governement" and "head of the Department of Justice" if he does not have the legal right to know what his underlings are doing?
It is not uncommon when dealing with SCI/SAP programs for a more senior supervisor to take responsibility for supervising particularly sensitive work of someone more junior than they would ordinarily directly supervise. You may have missed that the Attorney General (Ashcroft) was one of the DoJ officials read into the program. There's nothing bizarre about the guy at the top, in rare cases, saying "underling, you report directly to me on this one, okay?" Each intermediate supervisor does not necessarily have the right to be in the loop on every detail of every classified project.
"Not a fan of the law, are you, PeteP?"
What I'm not a fan of is inane platitudes like 'knowledge is good' being applies so simplisticly to such an important topic as the security of this country.
Le Messurier - you are right. My bad. Sorry.
"The first objective in war should be to win" - 'and that right quickly', I would add ( to semi-steal a line from Shawshank Redemption ) :-).
RPT - ""The first thing we do," said the character in Shakespeare's Henry VI, is "kill all the lawyers."
Well, at least we know on which side of the tyrannical divide Pete and LM stand."
Given the choice of where to stand in a gun fight, I choose to stand on the side where the trigger is :-)
Folks - we are fighting religious fanatics who hate the very concept and foundations of our society ( for example - this message board, IOW free speech ), and the very thigns we hold most dear. They think God has directed them to die trying to destroy us. They behead captives on video tape and proudly broadcast it around the world. They hijack airplanes and pilot them into civilian buildings, and glorify the ones who did it. They strap explosive devices to little children ( sometimes retarded ones ) and pregnant women, send them into the marketplace or school etc, and hit the remote control button.
We can not fight them with what we think of as 'civilized methods'. We can not treat them as mere criminals, nor as 'honorable soldiers'. This is not a boxing match, the Marquis of Queensbury is absent with his rulebook, and there is no referee. If we are to win ( and therefore survive ), we must fight them accordingly.
( snip )
"If those responsible did no wrong, they should not be bashful."
And you say **I** am 'not a fan of law' ?
Arthur, we will be searching your house tonight. OK ? And your car. Also, every time you drive somewhere, you will be pulled over, questioned, and searched. OK by you ? After all .....
IF YOU DID NO WRONG, YOU SHOULD NOT BE BASHFUL, right ???
Where did you go to law school, Tehran ?
I thought the usual phrasing is "if they're not guilty, then they have nothing to hide".
Remember, there are no choices other than slavish devotion to peacetime rules and total war, with all the awesome explosions and 24-esque baddassitude it implies.
I don't know about you, but I choose awesome over slavery.
Remember, when the government can totally disregard rules, in an open-ended war, it can only end well.
If "they" have no rights, then the process of classifying someone as a "them" needs to be limited as strictly as the process of taking someone's rights away normally.
In other words, we should still require warrants. We'd just call them "warrant to treat as enemy, and by the way enemies can be wiretapped" instead of "warrant for wiretapping".
I'm not sure why the Attorney-General was told. Probably because he would have to deal with the flack if the program became public, and so should be prepared.
And as for John Yoo, it was a good idea to pick one smart lawyer to know, to ask questions about legality. Rank wasn't important for that job-- he was not told because he was important, but for his expertise.
There was no need to ask anybody else unless the President wanted advice on whether to proceed with the program. Apparently he didn't.
But seriously - IMHO the real issue isn't the number of lawyers read in on this particular SCI - it's the Attorney General's prerogative to have as few or as many lawyers as he thinks necessary inside the SCIF to get the job done. The interesting part of this mess is WHO was read in under the A.G. - Yoo and Baker and nobody else? We may never know why, but the process that led to those guys and only those guys being on the inside, and who made that decision, might be a key to the real scandal here.
Yoo may end up being the fall guy, but somebody else made the decision to read him in and/or set him up to take the blame if everything went south. One thing we can be sure of, neither he nor anybody else in DOJ (not even Ashcroft) originated this unholy mess.
Now excuse me while I go adjust my tinfoil helmet...
Did you just casually state you approve of the Japanese-American internment?
Oh, really? What about the existence of a huge surveillance program that spys on Americans without bothering to get warrants?
Do you think MAYBE HE SHOULD KNOW ABOUT THAT?
Your post doesn't give ANY indication of a line too far, so I'm sincerely asking: where does it end? Somewhere before secret death camps, I hope?
agreeing with P, let me walk you through a example
T 1: AG: Ashcroft
T 2: DAG: xyz
T 3: AAG: yxz
T 4: some Div. Chief zxw
T 5: Branch twr
T 6: actual Lawyer who renders an opinion
some issue involving an SCI program comes in from NSA or CIA
T's 1, 4 and 6 get read in on the program. Ashcroft has ultimate oversite and the worker Lawyer gets oversite from the Div. Chief, but the access is restricted to 3, instead of 6, and that decreases the risk by a factor of 4-10, because far few memos and status briefs are required. and of course because fewer folks know, those that do are much more careful about a risk, because the source is more detectable.
thats why the SCI is "special Compartmental--- Intel" or
SA is "special access"
access is not by rank, but by positions. The security Officer working with the Commander, designs a access plan that severely limits who has the need to know to a limited set of positions.
LOL, had to edit this to aviod the error below
In other words, we should still require warrants. We'd just call them "warrant to treat as enemy, and by the way enemies can be wiretapped" instead of "warrant for wiretapping"."
How do you 'warrant' an unknown person, with no identifying data points ? How do you collect information when you don't know in advance how or who or where it may come from ?
In the old model of years ago, we 'spied' on 'the germans' and 'the japanese', meaning their countries and their military structure, and 'being at war' was in effect 'the warrant'. How do you do that against an enemy who has no country, and no structure ?
Then feel free to urge Congress to pass a law stating that the President can do whatever he feels like, notwithstanding anything in the U.S. Code as long as he says we're at war and feel free to propose a constitutional amendment repealing the President's obligation to take care that the laws of the United States be faithfully executed.
Did you just casually state you approve of the Japanese-American internment?
I'm sure he does approve of that. People like that are always quick to dispense with the rights of others in the name of the "necessities of war." This is why the Founders wisely did not include a wartime exception to the President's obligation to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.
As for the question of WHO was his champion? Not that I'm a conspiracy nut or anything, but perhaps the answer is in no less an authoritative source than Yoo's biographical entry in - Wikipedia: "Yoo's expansive view of Presidential power led to a close relationship with the office of Vice President Dick Cheney." Res Ipsa Loquitur?
(in case only Sarcastro gets it - the use of the words "authoritative" and "Wikipedia" in the same sentence was intended to be, at best, mildly sarcastic).
I do not think much of your arguments, but I salute your ability to type so voluminously while while cowering under your bed, fearful of your Nation's Enemies, real and imagined.
How about... because it would be part of a witch hunt which you happen to be in favor of. How about because those employees would run up hundreds of thousands in legal bills, even if innocent (and you know it). How about.... we really do have secrets to keep and irresponsible ideologues like you will gladly give them to all of our enemies if it in any way hurts Bush or his former minions.
I do not think much of your arguments, but I salute your ability to type so voluminously while while cowering under your bed, fearful of your Nation's Enemies, real and imagined.
And I salute you ability to continue to issue pious calls to persecute people who are no longer even in a position to look under your bed in what you imagine was their attempt to persecute you.
When Lenin came up with the term Useful Idiots, he was thinking of people who advocate such policies.
Maybe when the bedwetters are done cleaning up after themselves, they can control their fear long enough to suggest some answers.
Yeah, it's not like "The Founders™" were involved in passing the Alien and Sedition Acts during an undeclared war, or anything.
Plus the guys he likes are totally innocent and all of you know it, presumably because you were all high up in the Bush Admin.
You mean the customs authority (aka border police)?
I thought the hook for the wiretaps was that the telephone calls were intERnational.
It is like breaking the endzone plane in football. Once you step your foot (telephone call or other) over that national border, the search authority of the customs department snaps in to action.
And customs has ALWAYS had the authority to search citizens and non-citizens alike without a warrant, when they cross that border.
(Hell, California thinks they have the authority to search you for plants whenever you cross the border from the US to their state.)
My personal problem is the attempt to criminalize political opposition.
Now when people think differently from Democrats they are subject to imprisonment and financial ruin.
It isn't about "the law". If the Democrats had such a hallowed opinion of "the law" the Sec. of Treasury would pay his taxes.
No, it is about criminalizing political differences.
That worked out real well for the Roman Republic.
And I suppose if the Republicans did, a few AUSAs would still have their jobs.
Shhhh! That destroys the narrative that this was a wild program of the government to "spy on its citizens."
They always leave out the word "international" in these discussions. It detracts from the moral outrage.
The issues underlying the proposed inquiries are warrantless surveillance (unlawful) and torture (unlawful and immoral). For anyone who does not wish to discourage recurrence of such unlawful conduct, which endeavor would be advanced by identifying how the conduct occurred most recently, I must ask: Why do you hate America?
The idea that you think domestic security is a "war" frightens the rest of us.
This was not a battle, we were not asking lawyers to supervise columns of tanks or wondering what the Constitution says about submarine operations.
For the record, if it were sworn under oath that all the calls monitored were, in fact, international, I would have no objection.
An Act that generated such a huge backlash as to eject the (non-founder, A&S supporter) Adams from the Oval Office and insert his opponent (founder, A&S opponent) Jefferson in his stead.
Sorry, but that seems to be what you support.
In fact, that is what you support, isn't it? The government should be able to surviel, search, or even arrest anyone, in the name of "the war". That's all well and good, but please don't pretend you aren't undermining the very framework of our most basic freedoms.
Nascent in 2001 and yet thoroughly already thoroughly discredited. See, e.g.
Humphrey's Executor v. United States, 295 U.S. 602 (1935)
United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683 (1974)
Morrison v. Olson, 487 U.S. 654 (1988)
What a poor child it is to be born into such disregard!
Somewhere, a clock is striking 13...
Let's see now. 9/11 was NOT a lapse in domestic security, right? Now I understand why the "rest of us" are frightened.
Geeees!
But, as we know, is not always told.
I though Manhattan wasn't part of Real America anyway, so it's not really domestic anyway. I mean, it's full of queer-loving latte-sipping pansies, Democrats, trial lawyer, pedophiles and other folks that aren't really American anyway.
I got them covered with the rest of the "queer-loving latte-sipping pansies", thank you very much!
Let's see now. 9/11 was NOT a lapse in domestic security, right? Now I understand why the "rest of us" are frightened.
</blockquote>
spying on more American citizens would have prevented 9/11?
And you know why Yoo was chosen because . . . ?
How would you categorize what I refer to as 'the war with Islamic terrorism' ? If not 'war', then what ? Do you consider 9/11 to have been an Act of War, or merely a 'criminal act' ? Do you see no difference between 'domstic security as re:domestic acts' and 'domestic security as re : attacks from foreign powers, against the Homeland' ?
"This was not a battle, we were not asking lawyers to supervise columns of tanks or wondering what the Constitution says about submarine operations. "
Are you truly under the impression that the current conflict is fought with such things ? Hint - the enemy has neither tanks nor subs nor planes. Does this mean to you that it is not a war ?
Or was he the one they asked because he was the one they knew would give them the answer they wanted?
First, define what "international" means to you.
It is my understanding that many calls between two countries neither of which is the US still go through hubs in this country, because we do have the best systems for that sort of thing. International or not?
Also, what do we do when we are "legally" (even in your opinion, I am assuming) monitoring the phone number of a known or suspected enemy who is based in another country, and he calls the number of someone in the United States who was hitherto unknown to us? International or not?
If we are monitoring the number of a known terrorist in another country, and he gets a call we can trace back to someone in the US, is this international or not?
In all three cases, I have heard strenuous objections from the left about monitoring these calls. In the first case, the argument that this not "international" seems to be totally without substance, and would preclude us from monitoring mostly everybody. In the second and third, by the time we identify the recipient or originator of the call in the US and get a warrant, it's far too late to do any good, isn't it?
Wow. In four lines you've demonstrated complete ignorance of the Constitutional Convention (neither Adams nor Jefferson were present), Adams' own life (Adams' failure to win re-election was due primarily to his own party not trusting him, partly because of Alexander Hamilton's maneuverings and partly because Adams refused to indulge the High Federalists' lust for an outright war with France), and White House history (the Oval Office didn't exist in the Adams administration, being located in the West Wing which was built at the behest of Teddy Roosevelt).
Wrong: "FISA expressly allows immediate eavesdropping without a warrant."
As explained in the article I'm citing, Powerline repeatedly made the same phony point you're making. I documented this in detail, and I was happy that Greenwald noticed. (Some of the links in that article are broken.)
Since I've seen no evidence of such, would you please provide evidence? Which of Comey's statements require such a strong conclusion?
The truth is, PeteP and his ilk don't really care about the Fourth Amendment.
Comey objected vehemently to what Bush was trying to do. If at this late date you are still unfamiliar with Comey's views, I suggest you revisit VC threads from 2006 and 2007.
You guys are in favor of immediately impeaching Obama and Holder, right?
It is neither an act of war nor a criminal act. It was an act of terrorism, which I have no reason to assume falls into any predefined set of categories just because you insist it's one or the other.
Terrorism is sui generis.
If one of the parties is not in the US, the call is international and subject (IMO) to an effective "border search exception". Conversely, a call is not international if it has both ends in the US.
NSRO, "oval office" is a figure of speech. Jefferson had a large input in writing the Constitution while Adams represented the US in Europe and the A&S acts were, in fact, wildly unpopular.
If you can point out where I suggested that Obama deserves a free pass on this issue, then your comment might be something other than worthless and silly. He's been hearing lots of criticism on this point from me and other liberals. Not just recently but also before the election.
Neither Jefferson nor Adams had any role in the Constitution (Jefferson was in France, Adams in England). Jefferson did, however, influence Madison to add a Bill of Rights.
You're right that the A&S Acts were unpopular (best we can tell, of course), and the criticism of your reference to the Oval Office was pedantic in the extreme.
Who says the GOP isn't capable of coming up with new ideas?
In fact, it's been the Left which has really challenged Obama on this issue. The Right has no standing to do so, since it supported Bush's policies. As this thread shows, the bedwetters remain eager to sacrifice all our liberties if anyone will just promise to keep them safe from the Great Muslim Boogeyman.
Obama, at least as far as we know, is operating within the new FISA law passed last summer. While I strongly opposed that law, and cut off all support for Obama as a result of his vote for it (in violation of a previous promise), his policies have at least the minimal virtue of being apparently legal. That can't be said of Bush, which is where the impeachment talk came from.
And Bush did lots of other things which led to calls for impeachment. If warrantless wiretapping had been the only complaint against Bush, the number of people calling for impeachment would have been much smaller. This is another problem with nicehonesty's 'logic.'
I can think of ~ 3,000 Americans who could have used some of that protection on 9/11. 17 more the USS Cole. A few hundred more in the Marine Barracks in Beirut. Just to name a few.
Now, go roll over on the wet spot you made.
Lazarus - I'll thank you to keep my ilk out of this !
Nice job trying to rewrite history. 9/11 didn't happen because we didn't have enough intelligence, or because we weren't tapping enough phones. We had plenty of important intel pre-9/11. The problem is that we ignored it. Bush decided to read the famous PDB and then spend a month clearing brush.
For his first 234 days in office, this was Bush's brilliant idea for how to fight terrorism: SDI. On 9/9/01, Rummy argued that SDI was more important than counterterrorism.
I once did a very thorough analysis of all of Bush's public statements, in those 234 days. In the period pre-9/11, Bush almost never mentioned OBL and AQ, despite the recent attack on the Cole. The folks who killed 17 US sailors were mentioned less often than Dubya’s two dogs, pet cow, and cat. OBL came up exactly as often as the Navajo code talkers. Bush mentioned black music and safe boating more often than he mentioned OBL and AQ. Six times more often, to be precise.
So please stop pretending that 9/11 happened because we weren't willing to do illegal wiretapping.
Your point is irrelevant anyway, but if you had bothered to read the report, you'd have seen that it concluded that no important intelligence was gained by the illegal surveillance that couldn't have been gained legally.
Quibble accepted, though I did (quite imprecisely) consider the first 10A's to be effectively part of the original Constitution.
Whether 9-11 was an act of war depends not on its unusual tactic of terrorism, but the intent and nature of the perpetrators. 9-11 was undertaken by an international organization which has declared war on the west, which has a long track record of taking war-like actions, and which we have every reason to believe will continue - including the use of weapons of mass destruction.
We have (wisely) declared that this is war, even if not undertaken by a recognized nation state. As a result, we are engaging in war.
If 9-11 is not an act of war, and we are not at war, how do we justify the use of Predator attacks against civilian targets in various nations around the world?
Your argument, if taken to its logical conclusion, requires that we fight these terrorists only using the techniques of law enforcement - an approach which already failed terribly.
If what we are engaged in in sui generis, then we need to establish rules for it. In the meantime, we have to adopt an existing paradigm, because if we just sit around, the terrorists will strike again and again, killing more and more innocents.
Even the most libby Libertarian has to recognize that the most important purpose for granting government coercive power is for our collective protection.
And I declared myself King of Neptune but declaring something doesn't really make it so, at least for those of us living in objective reality.
What's all this declaring have to do with anything? 9/11 is what it is, entirely independently of this linguistic nonsense. A spade is a spade, even if you call it a shovel.
Terrorists are hostis humanis generis, and subject to military force where they go.
Why can't is be not war and also not common crime concurrently? You are really going to have to explain why you believe in this rigid dichotomy instead of acknowledging that terrorism does not fall neatly into either legal category but might just be a wholly separate thing with its own properties and attributes.
It is what it is, stop trying to cram it into predefined categories that make no sense.
Right, we need to establish rules. Fortunately, we have already have a set of rules about how to establish new rules (you might even call it a meta-rule or constitution) that specifies how one goes about this rule-making. Those rules could then be promulgated by the appropriate authorities.
The administration, however, didn't take this task all that seriously, or else they would have briefed in the DOJ and the Congress and endeavored to find a set of rules that reflects the gravity of the situation and the importance of our system of separate powers. Instead, they read everyone out, including the DOJ, and proceeding in a rule-free fashion.
Protection consists not just in corporeal form but also encompasses the protection of liberty and the the protection of our traditional form of government.
We wouldn't want them to get away with it like Bush and his cronies did, now would we?
As Jim Comey once said about David Addington, who was probably Yoo's recruiter and handler: "No good lawyer...".
"Did you just casually state you approve of the Japanese-American internment?"
Did you just casually state that you would have supported trials for FDR and Lincoln on leaving office? Well, had they been alive and all.
There are enough holes in the no-holds-barred arguments without claiming ones that aren't there. Then again, there were efforts to bar several holds, so the problem we had as I see it was deep-seated mistrust running several directions, preventing the mustering of a united front against terror.
Perhaps that just goes with the lone superpower territory. In any case, it is a sure means of eroding it.
The "war on terrorism" belongs in the class of "war on drugs" and "war on poverty" -- filed under "not wars."
A discussion that should occur at some point involves the reason(s) the president did not ask Congress to declare war. Lack of courage? Lack of foundation? There must have been a reason, particularly for a guy who seemed consumed by the idea of acting as if there were a war.
If you also carried out armed attacks across the globe, while seeking to conquer nations (Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq) to join in your effort, a claim you made to waging war would be a bit more serious.
Why do you insist in seeing 9-11 in isolation, when it was clearly just one operation in a sustained campaign of violence against our nation? It is that sort of blinkered vision that lead to 9-11 in the first place. It certainly helps an enemy if you refuse to even acknowledge that they are at war with you, no matter how many attacks they make.
Oh really? Where is the legal backing for that? Where are the rules codified? How do we determine if someone is a terrorist and subject to this treatment? How do we reconcile this with the consequent violations of national sovereignty? What do we call the activity of combating them - action which involves using all of our national means of warfare? Overseas Contingency Operation?
I see no reason not to classify it as warfare. Just because currently those actively engaged in violence against us are (mostly) not acting as part of a nation state does not mean that war is inappropriate. What the hell do you call the activity in Afghanistan right now?
If you want to invent an OrenFare, go ahead. But right now, we don't have such a refined category into which it can be put.
However, should we arrive at such, it would almost certainly fall into the category of war of some sort. The "Cold War" was a real war, even though it was highly unconventional and not declared. It involved the loss of lives 100,000 US soldiers, after all.
You realize that even if they are implementing the exact same program, the law (FISA &friends) was amended a few times in between those two events. It's quite possibly Bush was breaking the law, the law was changed now Obama can do the exact same thing without breaking the law.
A few centuries of English common law, dating back to the 14th century and the 'writ of outlawry'.
There are no rules that are of binding effect on a sovereign nation dealing with hostis humanis generis except those they impose on themselves (e.g. 18USC2340 or the CAT) voluntarily.
Spatial and temporal proximity to a qualifying act.
Usually the Foreign Ministers/Sec.State (or equivalent) meet and pretend like they are angry. In my experience, nothing comes of it.
How about "Counter-Terrorism Operations"? Simple language, gets the point across. No unnecessary verbiage, no confusing distinctions, a phrase so simple that it's a wonder no one in DC managed to think of it.
And I see no reason to not to call a horse an automobile, but the fact is that the conflict does not meet the standards required by war -- to wit, a conflict between sovereigns.
Let me phrase it another way, if you insist that this must be called 'war' then we will need another word to designate the conflicts between sovereigns that were traditionally understood to fall under that term. I don't know, call it 'WEER'. The problem is that you want to apply the concepts of weer to what is not a weer, but rather a war, which is no more appropriate that applying the rules of basketball to a game of rugby.
In Afghanistan, there is a mix of counter-terrorist operations and counter-insurgency operations -- simple languages, gets the point across. We are operating against terrorists and insurgents.
As I've said, the conflict between the US and AQ lacks any of the indica of war as the word is traditionally understood (but I've already conceded, we can call it war under your new definition).
Oh, and as I recall my history, the Cold War was more of an internal Soviet problem (illogical paranoia that the US was on the verge of a first strike) than a bonafide war in any sense. None of our boys were killed by Russian soldiers, so those 100,000 might have died in some other conflicts altogether.
Horsefeathers. A war against an international Islamist conspiracy is a subset of the general category of war.
It lacks exactly one criteria - it is a war between one sovereign and a non-sovereign entity, instead of between two sovereigns. It seems anachronistic to cling to the specific requirement that a war be between two sovereigns, in an era when technology allows non-sovereigns to take on the threat level of sovereigns.
Oh, and as I recall my history, the Cold War was more of an internal Soviet problem (illogical paranoia that the US was on the verge of a first strike) than a bonafide war in any sense. None of our boys were killed by Russian soldiers, so those 100,000 might have died in some other conflicts altogether.
Your history is very wrong. The cold war was an effort of at least 50 years by Russian Communists to establish world domination. It was fought on many battlefields and in many modes, often by proxies, but with a clear intention of destruction of the West and its replacement by Soviet imperialist power. Khrushchev's "We Will Bury You" was not a response to a paranoia about first strikes. The paranoia you refer to existed only during a short period during the Reagan Administration. The imperial ambition (both nationalist and ideological in nature) lasted far longer. This conflict involved force of arms on several sides (US: Korea, Vietnam; USSR: Afghanistan, Hungary, Czeckoslovakia; proxies: Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chile, various African countries, Thailand, the Phillipines, the Middle East, and many other places).
That the Soviets managed to get 100,000 of our troops killed without using many of their own soldiers (some of our soldiers were killed by Russians) only highlights why the old sovereign to sovereign definition of war is too narrow. A conflict in which we lost so many men, and spent so much effort and money, needs to be recognized for what it was: war. You seem to be clinging to a narrow, legalistic interpretation of the word "war" that is inappropriate. The dictionary definition does not even support your Oren definition.
Whether the war against radical Islam ("war on terror" was always a dumb term) turns out to be as long lived and as dramatic is open to question. The enemy is more divided, but also more fanatical. The military power balance is radically in our favor, but modern technology allows compensation through major attacks by unconventional warfare (smuggled nukes, Iranian EMP attack, biological attacks). Note that the both an EMP attack and various biological attacks would be far more deadly than any warfare fought in America since the Civil War. In other words, we are at war. It's really pretty simple.
The phrase "we will bury you" in Russian is not as a threat of violence. Perhaps you should talk to an actual Russian speaker before jumping to conclusions.
That's a joke right? AQ is going to march through the streets of Boston? They're going to burn Washington to the ground?
Either you've gravely underestimated the threat to the US from war with an actual sovereign nation (most likely, total nuclear annihilation) or you have no concept of what AQ is actually capable of.
Yup, and I'm going to go the bar and smash my face with a bottle and claim I was beaten up.
You might as well count the Russian casualties in Afghanistan (incidentally, how did helping that young upstart bin-Laden go -- a man with that kind of potential is really going to get things done!)
Indeed. Moore is very confused about a simple fact: AQ does not represent an existential threat to us. Even in his most apocalyptic fantasies ("smuggled nukes, Iranian EMP attack, biological attacks"). In other words, he's an unhinged bedwetter.
The core concept of terrorism is to provoke irrational fear. AQ's best hope is to hurt us indirectly by provoking such fear (FDR's famous statement about fear applies in this instance). Moore and his ilk reliably rise to the occasion. Somehow spending as much on weapons as the rest of the world combined (link, link, link, link) isn't enough to make them feel safe against an enemy that essentially consists of a bunch of nuts in a cave. (And somehow that spending is considered appropriate even though we have no land border with a hostile neighbor, and even though we are protected by two oceans.)
A further irony is that people like Moore typically live in places that appear on no terrorist's list of favorite targets. Moore, NYC has a lot more direct experience with terrorism than the place where you live. The folks in NY manage to get by without rubber sheets, and overwhelmingly vote D, even though they live much closer to Ground Zero than you do. They've decided to ignore your hysteria.
Oren, the claims were that Bush was violating the Fourth Amendment (and, in general, "shredding the Constitution"), and had imposed a Stasi-like police state on the country. Obama and Holder have defended and continued those same policies.
Can you point out which law or laws have been changed so that Obama's continuation of Fourth Amendment violations (and, in general, "shredding the Constitution") and imposition of a Stasi-like police state is now both legal and acceptable in the U.S.?
Putting Lincoln aside for the moment, the internment of the Japanese was (wrongly) upheld by the Court. That doesn't leave any room for any trial of him. The same may well be true for what Obama is doing, but mere legality isn't a defence against criticism for what was in FDR's case a blatant wrong.
Only a few sovereign nations possess the capability of making a major nuclear attack upon the US. Would you have us believe that nobody else is a threat, and that action against any other nation is not war.
You also seem to be suffering from a deficit of imagination. The threat from AQ today is the deaths of hundreds to thousands of Americans (something rather significant). The threat from AQ in the future (ranging from today to a decade or more) is a truly devastating biological attack (remember, martyrs are not too concerned about the side effects of a biological attack using contagious agents) or the detonation of one or more nuclear warheads, acquired from rogue statues (e.g. NK) in our cities.
Either would kill more Americans than were lost in World War II. Wouldn't you consider that to be a bit of a threat?
As for their ability to acquire the weapons, this I know: they occasionally have lots of money, while nukes are spreading to less stable regimes (NK now, who knows in the future). Furthermore, the ability to produce and distribute highly deadly biological pathogens is within the reach of AQ. It is (sadly) much easier to produce a deadly biological weapon than a nuke - as long as the purpose of the weapon is terrorism rather than military (military weapons have much tighter specifications, for good reasons).
So yes, AQ and its spin-offs represent major threats to the US - certainly as great a threat as many nations we have gone to war with in the past.
I see. So the Soviets were not responsible for the Korean War? They were not responsible for the ability of the Viet Minh to be militarily serious? Reading your snarky reply, one must conclude that you think those wars were not part of the Soviet campaign, but rather were unrelated things that "just happened." Again, you need to look a bit more closely into history.
You might as well count the Russian casualties in Afghanistan (incidentally, how did helping that young upstart bin-Laden go -- a man with that kind of potential is really going to get things done!)
But of course they were casualties of the cold war - specifically of Russian imperialism, although we provided some help (not as much as the Russians provided North Vietnam).
Who helped the guy? The US didn't. Furthermore, in that war, UBL was a Johnny-come-lately who had almost no impact.
You usual respect for logic and facts seem to be missing in this dialog.
(1) The 4A was never the problem in the NSA interception programs. They were illegal because they were quite clearly violations of FISA (see our esteemed 4A expert Orin's posts about that).
(2) Bush was accused of "shredding the Constitution" (and unfortunate term) because he did not carry out his duty to faithfully execute the law but rather decided to carry out a program that was a violation of FISA.
(3) The actual program itself was quite reasonable (had it been done in compliance with the relevant statutes), I would have even voted for it. In fact, FISA was amended and the program was brought into compliance.
(4) What constitutes "legal and acceptable in the US" is chiefly a job for Congress, not the POTUS, something W was loathe to accept. They write the law, they determine what is legal.
The deaths of "hundreds to thousands of Americans" is a terrible tragedy, but it's not an existential threat. The last 9/11 was not an existential threat, and likewise for the next one. Regardless of how big the wet spot is on your bed.
The number of Americans "lost in World War II" was 418,500. So I guess you're afraid that AQ is going to do something more than 100 times bigger than 9/11. Really? And WWII was not an existential threat because of the number of casualties. It was an existential threat because we faced modern, industrialized nations that had the potential to invade and occupy us. AQ does not.
The fact that we have gone to war against nations that posed little or no threat to us is nothing to be proud of. We should learn from those mistakes, rather than use them as an excuse for making more mistakes.
Only the former -- none of the non-nuclear armed states pose any real threat to the territorial or governmental integrity of the US.
NK will not give a nuke to AQ, because to do so would be immediate nuclear destruction of their country, top-to-bottom.
Oh, and fundamentalists that don't believe in evolution make very poor biologists. I'm not worried about them developing anything more harmful than a nasty case of the crabs.
The Chinese were responsible for the Korean war.
As for Vietnam, that was a self-inflicted wound. The key in pok3r is knowing when to hold and when to fold.
If the concern was strictly loss of life, we'd be more worked up about the flu and car crashes than we are over Al Qaeda. Since 9/11 alone, cars and flu have killed about 100 Americans for every one Al Qaeda has managed in its whole existence.
We know how to save thousands of American lives. Lower the speed limit and raise the age for licensing drivers. But those lives, curiously, we balance against the cost (both money and liberty) of saving them.
Not only has that type of cost-benefit analysis been almost entirely absent from our responses to 9/11, but there's no evidence our military adventures have done a thing to reduce the threat posed by portable WMDs, the only real weapon our enemies have against us when we don't offer ourselves up to them on the battlefields of discretionary wars.
(1) Are you really so dense you can't find where FISA was amended in 2008 (note: many years after the program started) I'll just have to link it for you directly.
(2) None of the wiretapping ever violated the 4A. If you can't understand the difference between a statutory violation and constitutional violation, you have no place on this blog.
(3) Obama has not, to my knowledge, willfully ordered the violation of Federal Law. If he were to do so, he would be in violation of his oath to uphold the law.
Where did "existential threat" enter into this discussion? Is a conflict only a "war" if it involves an existential threat? How about WW-I? How about the Iraq War (Desert Storm)?
You appear to imply that we should and can only be at war if an existential threat is involved.
That presumes that the leadership isn't under existential threat from lack of money; that the leadership believes we could trace the origin of the nuke; that the leadership remains rational; that the leadership retains control of all of their nuclear weapons even during regime change. Those are mighty big presumptions. I do not share your confidence. Then there's Iran and Pakistan...
That's a mighty weak thesis to rest our defense on. AQ's former top chem/bio person had a doctorate from harvard in biological sciences. AQ is capable of considerable practicality when needed (such as working with Iran even though they are the hated, heretic Shia).
Furthermore, it rapidly becoming easier to bio-engineer pathogens - to the point that hobbyists are now doing genetic engineering in their garages. Some years ago I was interested in a product that involved genetic engineering, and determined that adequate lab equipment could be had for around $50,000 and a few thousand a year in reagents. A good high-grade pathogen lab would cost a whole lot more, unless you were fundamentalists with martyr tendencies, in which case you just might not take as many precautions (CF Aum Shinrikyo).
Not even close. Stalin himself gave permission to Kim Il Sung to start the war. Kim needed that permission since he was a KGB asset (and former captain in the Soviet army) and feared Stalin, and was furthermore dependent on the USSR for material. The Chinese were an ally of the USSR at the time, of course, but they didn't start the war. Stalin did not even consult Mao, as he felt that the Korean action would give him leverage against Mao. (1) (2).
The Vietnam War was a direct application of the Kennan Doctrine of containment. It was feared that failure to stop North Vietnam would lead to Soviet allied communist takeovers of SE Asia, including Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Thailand, and would threaten the Philippines. In fact, three of those countries were taken over by the Communists as a result of US loss of will and subsequent withdrawal from the conflict. The fear that Russia, very short of Naval ports, would gain a warm water port at Cam Rahn Bay was proven correct.
There is plenty of reason to believe that the US could have quickly won that war, had it been much more aggressive early on. As demonstrated by the limited victory achieved in 1972 (after 13 days of heavy bombing of the North), the North was unwilling to be bombed into oblivion.
Furthermore, the population of the South was not significantly in favor of a communist victory, and most of the fighting throughout the war was carried out by NVA fighters. The VC (the pseudo-indigenous movement in the South) only had about 100,000 fighters, and lost half of them in GIap's ill conceived offensives in 1968 - especially the Tet Offensive (which is why Giap was never again allowed full control of the war). Note that it was Giap who ordered the Tet Offensive by the ostensibly southern "freedom fighters." Of those 100,000 the core were former Viet Minh, ordered by the north to remain in place after the victory over the French and the agreement that Communists and those who chose to live under Ho would go North, and those who chose not to live under the Communists owuld go south (and many, many did).
But the concern is not the past threat, it is the future threat - specifically by application of WMD's. What many seem to miss is that modern technological changes and resulting social changes are rapidly enabling small terrorist groups to be extremely deadly - as the technology for bio-weapons becomes cheaper and the information becomes widely and instantly available, and as nuclear technology proliferates.
AQ is not "the enemy" - it is the most visible part of the enemy, which is the tens of millions of jihadists, and governments that enable them.
Aren't you making the argument against large deployments like Iraq? If the danger is portable WMDs, how does killing a relative handful of jihadists make all those "tens of millions" we don't any less able or inclined to smuggle something into the US and set it off? Wouldn't our limited resources be better spent on border security and infiltrating the terrorist groups?
As to your claims about biological weapons, I am now at least assured that neither of you has ever spent any time actually learning biology or, heaven forfend, in a real lab. Your notions of modern technology must have come from comic books.
Oren, you are remarkably pugnacious.
Yes, I have studied biology. I have worked in three research labs, although that is not my field of expertise. My daughter is a neuroscientist with significant expertise in genetic engineering, and has worked with dangerous pathogens in a Level 3+ government lab.
So save the stupid ad hominems and try some facts, if you know any.
Your patience here is much appreciated. These are not easy questions and it is essential, but difficult, to muster the perseverance necessary to puncture too easy answers that imagine them away. I'm very curious for your response to LM's last question.
It is not inordinate fear that motivates John Moore, nor political/ideological point-scoring his interlocutors here, rather discerning the least bad answers to these horrible questions.
As for the reappearance of the bed-wetting charges, I have difficulty seeing how they are any more effective for those who raise them here than they were in the hands of a certain genocide advocate in a previous thread. Likely prudent to steer clear of the tactics of genocide advocates, with the possible exception of turning them against said advocates for the purpose of ridiculing them.
"The same may well be true for what Obama is doing, but mere legality isn't a defence against criticism for what was in FDR's case a blatant wrong."
Indeed, but not every wrong is amenable to judicial trial. W will be tried in the history books as surely as FDR was, nor is that verdict entirely just, given the totality of FDR's service.
That seems to be your oblique way of admitting that terrorism isn't an existential threat. Really? Now you tell us. For years, GOP leaders like Rice were telling us that it is (example, example, example, example).
And your WWII comparisons embody the same alarmist message. But please keep up the good work of reminding everyone that the GOP has nothing to offer except xenophobia and militarism.
I don't want to open up the Iraq discussion here.
However, when it comes to strategies and tactics for dealing with those millions who want to kill us, some reasonable ones may include removing certain countries from their list of possible sanctuaries (Iraq, Afghanista- the latter more immediate, the former more speculative), killing lots of their most ardent fighters (Iraq was very useful in that regard), and installing democracies or something close to them in order to attempt an overthrow of the social order in which these sorts of fanatics thrive.
One can imagine a wide range of actions, ranging from the extreme (re-colonialization of Muslim lands) to the subtle (operations to change their pathetic and dangerous educational system).
Sorry but I can't keep going on. We'll have to part ways between those that believe in continually-arriving (but never quite here) cataclysm and those that believe that tomorrow is going to be a lot like yesterday and maybe, just maybe, a little bit better.
Special case 1: Of course if you consider any violation of any customary or written law or treaty an equally great violation (shades of Larry Niven and his 'death penalty for jaywalkers and murderers alike, so we can harvest their organs'-future history) then the above is trivially true.
Special case 2: Likewise if you think that War in itself is a greater crime than either Aleph, Beth, Gimel, Daleth or Heth. That also makes it trivially true.
However both this special cases are rather fringe opinions.
So lets take a concrete example:
The Allies were in a war against the Axis.
The Axis started to use terror bombing against cities. Guernica. Warsaw. Rotterdam.
Bombarding cities from the air was believed to be specifically outlawed by the Hague convention. This was not a fringe view. People in the UK cabinet opposed the bombing of factories in Germany that were producing military equipment because "it was illegal to destroy private property". In their view the only legal use of strategic airpower was direct attacks military forces in the field/on the sea/in the air or in their bases: army bases, naval bases and airbases.
However soon the Allies were terror bombing even more enthusiastically and effectively than the Germans had ever done.
Other deeds the Axis was infamous for was
Random reprisals against enemy civilians.
Executing non-uniformed captives.
Habitual mistreatment of uniformed captives.
Genocide.
Of these the Allies were also commonly guilty of
Executing non-uniformed captives.
Summary:
Executing non-uniformed captives
> Allowed but seen as distasteful (Aleph)
Random reprisals against enemy civilians
> Disputed legality (Beth)
Terror bombing of civilians
> Clear violation of accepted rules (Gimel)
Habitual mistreatment of uniformed captives.
> Clear violation of accepted rules (Daleth)
Genocide
> Only reason it wasn't clearly banned in international agreements was that it was supposedly inconceivable (even though a good amount of willful ignorance of history went into this supposition) (Heth)
At first blush this should be even easier since the Allies habitually did something quite high on the infamy scale: Terror bombing.
So if the original 'if A do that they sink to the level of B' was true, the Allies should have graduated to Genocide. Or at least using captured Axis soldiers as slave labour.
Whoops. One of the Allies did the latter, but they didn't balk at using their own civilians as slave labour even before the war with the Axis. Preexisting depravity.
The Western Allies did NOT 'graduate' to Genocide as a result of their Terror bombing campaign.
And it was NOT a moral tossup between the Axis and the Allies, it DID matter who won (Comments by Pat Buchanan, Taki or random Belgian Nazis from VB are discouraged).
Special Case 1 would sound like "Executing Herbert Hans Haupt, Heinrich Heinck, Edward Keiling, Herman Neubauer, Richard Quirin and Werner Thiel is morally equivalent to the Holocaust" or "Keeping Axis POWs as slave labour is morally equivalent to the Holocaust". Fringe views (Again, no comments by Pat Buchanan thank you).
Special Case 2 would sound like "Norway declaring war on Germany when invaded by Germany is morally equivalent to the Holocaust" This is Beyond the Fringe.
There will of course be yelps that I am engaging in unfair practices by mentioning the Holocaust. No, it is the proponents of the original 'if A do it they are as bad as B' who mention the Holocaust, since the Holocaust is the moral marker for 'as bad as B'. This is obvious in articles like the recent "The UK didn't mistreat uniformed captives, because if they had they'd been as bad as the Nazis!" article (google for Churchill and Torture).
Therefore here is a Holocaust-free additional practical example
World War One
Aleph: Executing non-uniformed captives
Beth: Warships flying false flags and masquerading as civilian shipping from neutral countries
Gimel: Unrestricted Submarine Warfare
Daleth: Preventing Germany from importing Food
Heth: Genocide
The Entente was guilty of Aleph, Beth, and Daleth.
The Central Powers of Aleph, Gimel and Heth.
And thus the Entente soon graduated to marching the Irish into the desert to to starve, murdering them directly, and letting fierce Scottish mountain tribes sabre them for sport. Not.
Special Case 1: "The Royal Navy sinking All shipping destined for Germany is as bad as the Armenian Genocide" or "The use of Q-ships is morally equivalent to the Armenian Genocide".
Special Case 2: "The Belgians, deciding to fight instead of simply surrendering when Von Kluck came calling, is morally equivalent to the Armenian Genocide".
So no, George Lucas has not written reality. There is no law that a country that surrenders to the dark side by breaking one law or custom of war will automatically go on to break all the other laws of war.
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