The Enlightened Despot

Jeffrey Toobin, the only remotely sensible person allowed to speak on television about the news on a regular basis, has a crazy idea: we shouldn’t torture Najibullah Zazi. TNR’s Michael Crowley finds this scheme tempting, but he has his reservations:

It’s a well-argued case, and I think I agree. But, let’s play Devil’s Advocate

If it were up to me, I don’t know what I would do; I would need to know more facts. I am not a proponent of torture, which I think has done enormous harm to America’s image abroad and moral fiber at home. But I ride the subways these guys may have been planning to attack and I would like to be quite sure we’ve found all of them. At a minimum, this is a  good opportunity to stress-test* the debate about interrogation techniques, because it may be that life can imitate 24 after all.

I would genuinely like to know: what does “I am not a proponent of torture” even mean here? It seems clear to me that he isn’t using a euphemism screen here (real torture is inexcusable, of course, but what’s a little waterboarding between friends?). But at the same time, he is obviously on the fence about something, and I don’t know how to interpret this such that that something isn’t the question of whether Zazi should be tortured. But if that’s right, why does he so confidently assert that he isn’t a proponent?

The most likely interpretation I can come up with is that Crowley is saying he isn’t enthusiastic about torture, and thinks we’ve done far too much of it in the recent past, but that he isn’t willing to rule it out altogether. This is a much more honest framing of the pro-torture position than one generally sees, but it is the pro-torture position. It’s not as if there are lots of people saying with a straight face “I think we should torture whomever we can, whenever we can.” Willingness to resort to torture in extreme cases to prevent major acts of mass murder is the most pro-torture position that’s on the table.

Now, not being a crazy person, Crowley disagrees with the Dick Cheney about just how often that situation comes up. That speaks well of him. But - whatever some neocons might feel in their hearts - no one* has embraced a more stridently pro-torture philosophy than the one Crowley appears to be leaning toward here.

* No, commenters on Michelle Malkin’s blog don’t count.

Some catch-up to attend to after two missed installments, so, without further ado, the links:

• Terrorists were arrested for attempting to blow up a synagogue a few blocks away from my childhood home. I assume the punishment is especially severe for that sort of thing. Unfortunately for them, they were using fake bombs sold to them by the FBI. The men had been under investigation for almost a year.
• The NYT reported the other day that ammunition sent to the Afghan government by the US and its allies had been discovered in Taliban hands. No one was under any illusions about the existence of ties between the Taliban and elements within the government so, in a sense, this isn’t news at all. It would be surprising if some of our ammo weren’t being used against us. But this sort of concrete discovery can sometimes focus thinking on an issue we already knew about.
• California is facing bankruptcy, and not just the moral kind. Voters rejected five out of six ballot measures introduced to address the fiscal crisis in a special election on Tuesday. The good news is that there has been a surge in public support for overhauling California’s constitution. Just about everyone who has even briefly thought about it agrees that the requirement for a supermajority on all matters budgetary is a complete disaster.
• CATO’s Jerry Taylor is apparently still not afraid to get jerrytaylored.
• The boy who hacked Sarah Palin’s email during the campaign has asked that the case against him be thrown out on the grounds that her emails were public records.
• Peter Kirsanow thinks that despite Dick Cheney’s unpopularity, Americans would want him in charge of any effort to defend the earth from destruction via asteroid. That is, to the extent that Peter Kirsanow thinks.
• Felix Salmon says there is nothing to worry about in the possibility of a downgrading of US debt, because the ratings agencies are now irrelevant. I hope he’s right, and there have certainly been some positive signs, but I think some more concrete steps need to be taken to make the ratings system in its present form as irrelevant as it deserves to be.

The quote of the day is this beautiful piece of understatement from Ben Smith:

The Palin family media strategy can be hard to figure.

You don’t say. He’s reacting in particular to the magazine cover above, which, in case you missed it, includes this equally quotable gem from Bristol Palin:

If girls realized the consequences of sex, nobody would be having sex. Trust me. Nobody.

Ah, Bristol. Ah, humanity.

Finally, apropos of nothing in particular, here’s Nino Brown’s defense of his murderous - though fictional - reign as a crack kingpin:

The other day, I dismissed something Dick Cheney said as crazy  - a natural enough impulse - but I’m suddenly having second thoughts. Here’s the quote, in all its glorious context :

“We fail to recognize the fact that we’re alone out there in terms of trying to achieve the objective of forcing the Iranians to give up their nuclear weapons,” Cheney said at a dinner following the Intelligence Squared debate, in which Elizabeth Cheney and former Coalition Provisional Authority spokesman Dan Senor debated former diplomat Nicholas Burns and Mideast scholar Ken Pollack on the topic of negotiations with Iran.

The former Vice President characterized the Iranian goal in negotiations on ending that country’s nuclear program as mere stalling for time, and the Europeans as trying to “restrain the U.S.” from military action.

“Everybody’s in a giant conspiracy to achieve a different objective than the one we want to achieve,” Cheney said.

That first sentence, of course, really is crazy. There is plenty of disagreement over just how bad it would be if Iran had nukes and to what lengths we should be willing to go to prevent this, but most countries are right there with the United States when it comes to having a preference for a world in which Iran is not a nuclear power.

That last bit about the conspiracy sounds crazy as well, but on further reflection, I think it’s actually a pretty obvious truth, on this and every other issue. Of course everybody else is working to achieve things other than what we want to achieve - that’s what makes them part of them, rather than part of us. No two countries - and no two people, for that matter - have exactly the same interests. So whoever you are, the world is united in not wanting things to go your way. Of course, since they all disagree about what they do want, it’s not usually a very idiologically coherent or effective conspiracy, but it’s still pretty irritating.

Hell is other people, Dick. Have some ice cream.

As I said before, I will not defile this space with the attempted comedy of Wanda Sykes. So, instead, here’s (part 1 of) Steven Colbert filling the same role back in 2006:

Dr. Strangecheney still cracks me up:

Apparently our photo artist wasn’t the only one to notice the Dick Cheney-Peter Sellers connection.

Amazing work from our Fake Photogaffes™  expert. I bring you Dr. Strangecheney:

This is actually an update on a somewhat old story, but I missed it the first time around:

The Egyptian-born physicist, a U.S. citizen since 1988, lost his security clearance late last year, along with his job at the Bettis nuclear propulsion lab in West Mifflin, where he’d worked since 1990.

The clearance was revoked by order of Jeffrey Kupfer, acting deputy energy secretary. He said he had “reliable information” that Dr. El-Ganayni was a security risk but refused to let him see any evidence or defend himself.

The scientist filed a federal lawsuit seeking an independent review, charging retaliation for statements he made opposing the war in Iraq and the Bush administration’s post-9/11 treatment of Muslims. He said the government invoked national security as a smokescreen to hide its lack of evidence.

It’s not really Bush himself I am so looking forward to seeing the end of. His refusal to grow up and do his job does not reflect well on his character, but his sins of being lazy and indifferent wouldn’t be such a big deal if he hadn’t been made president. Had he had nicer babysitters, his terms in office could have been fine. But the organization that has in fact grown up around him, with evil at the top, and petty, incompetent cronies the rest of the way down, has done a lot of harm, and looked shabby doing it every step of the way. Good riddance.