hard work

I have a lot of political ideas that many people regard as extreme. I of course don't seem them as extreme; I seem them as logical and fair. The only way I see to ever improve things is by convincing people of the need for change, which is really fucking hard.

Recently, I sent a group of friends this article, by two retired military leaders (generals or admirals or something way at the top), about how using torture as a tool in the "war on terror" is a terrible mistake. One of my authoritarian friends replied to all of us essentially with 3 points (I'm respecting his wishes not to use his name or exact words). Here are those 3 points and my responses.

1.) That's crap. It makes sense in theory but isn't practicable.

Yeah those retired generals are crap! But what do you expect from elite military leaders? They're known for thinking in the clouds; certainly after decades of distinguished military service at the highest levels they have no idea what is practicable.

2.) Their ideas hinge on the notion that changing the way we deal with people will change how those people think of America. But those people won't change how they think because their religion dictates their opinion of America.

Yeah some people have this rigidly dogmatic view of America that is instilled in them from a young age. And no matter how much evidence you present those people about the role that America really plays in the world, no evidence could ever change their true-believing religiously-warped minds!

What facts might possibly convince these people to change their minds about America? How about these:

1953 -- Allen and John Foster Dulles, using the spectre of Communism, had convinced President Dwight Eisenhower to authorize the CIA and its operatives to overthrow the immensely popular and democratically elected Prime Minister Mossadegh of Iran (the US, of course, was after Iran's oil, and Mossadegh had nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in an attempt to get fair payment for his country's resource). The CIA installed the dictator Reza Shah. This action did provide the US with oil, but it turned Iranians against the US: it radicalized whole sections of the population. The authoritarian government allowed radical (and anti-American) segments of Islam to flourish. During the coup, some estimates are as high as 10,000 of number of civilians killed; more were killed during the Shah's regime. Read Stephen Kinzer's book All the Shah's Men for more information.

1954 -- Jacobo Arbenz, the democratically elected reformist leader of Guatemala is overthrown by the US. Arbenz had incurred the wrath of the US owned United Fruit Company when he overthrew the corrupt Ubico government (the UFC made a lot of money while Ubico was in power because it was allowed to fix prices, avoid taxation, and exploit its workers). The CIA, in collaboration with the UFC, installed the military dictator Colonel Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán in his place. During the overthrow and the subsequent bloody regime of Guzmán, 200,000 civilians were killed.

1963 -- US first assists in installing Ngo Dinh Diem as president of South Vietnam. When he made decisions that were "too independent" and strayed from the US vision of the region, the US backed his assassination. The war that resulted in part from this meddling killed 4 million people in southeast Asia.

1977 -- US backs military rulers of El Salvador. 70,000 Salvadorans killed.

1981 -- The Reagan administration trains and funds contras in Nicaragua, who target civilians in their attacks. 30,000 civilians die.

There are *many* more examples listed here:
www.wordiq.com/definition/List_of_U.S._foreign_interventions_since_1945

Wait those don't sound like the actions of the land of the free do they? The people with a warped view about America are Americans.

For over a hundred years now, starting with the Philippines in 1898, through all those listed above and more, and into Iraq, America has routinely invaded countries for any reason we see fit, which are usually reasons that tend to make our rich people more rich, killing many thousands of non-white poor people in those countries, ruining millions of lives, destroying their homes and resources and farms, and telling them that it is for their own good!

Why don't they love us? Why do they hate us with a religious passion? I can't fucking imagine.

3.) All the hype about torture is going to make the public think that thousands of people are being tortured every day, which isn't the case.

How would we know what is the case when our government won't tell us? They say such information is secret because of national security interests! They refuse to allow any oversight of their behavior, stonewall investigations, ignore Congressional requests, and issue signing statements to reserve their right to ignore laws they don't like.

So what do we know? Quick hits:

• In Iraq as of March 2005:
• As of this week, the military is holding at least 8,900 detainees in the three major prisons, 1,000 more than in late January. Here in Abu Ghraib, where eight American soldiers were charged last year with abusing detainees, 3,160 people are being kept, well above the 2,500 level considered ideal, said Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a spokesman for the detainee system. The largest center, Camp Bucca in the south, has at least 5,640 detainees.
• Wikipedia says there are 775 detainees in Gitmo.
• We know that there are secret prisons all over the world but we don't know how many people are held there.

So in 5 minutes of Google searching, we're probably holding over 10,000 people related to our actions in the war on terror. And that doesn't even start to count people being held here, like Jose Padilla, who has be held without trial or access to lawyers and tortured for the last 5 years (he got limited access to lawyers about a year ago I think).

Many of these prisoners are being held by a military force where over a third condone torture, and less than half say they'd report unethical behavior of a team member. And commanding this military force is an administration that has explicitly reserved the right to torture, who brag about their use of "aggressive interrogation techniques," and who have repeatedly apprehended and abused innocent "suspects" on the flimsiest of evidence. Other prisoners are shipped to countries known for their human rights violations to be tortured there.

But he assures me that it is "isn't the case" that we're torturing thousands of people a day. Rest easy! We sure wouldn't want to let the generals and their "somewhat crap" opinions give anyone the idea that America is torturing any more than just a few hundreds of people per day!

His response was to tell me how oversimplified and naive my views are. This is from the guy who says that changing how we treat people won't change what they think of us since they hate us because of their religion. Certainly there is a religious aspect to people's opinions, but flatly rejecting the idea that treating people better would improve their opinion of us is about as "oversimplified" and "naive" as you can possibly be.

He also said I "blindly" accepted the ideas I argued for. I presented evidence and reasoning; he simply asserts his beliefs. Yeah, I'm the blind one.

This inevitably degraded into a personal attacks, which led to everyone discussing what an asshole I am. While I regret my inability to ignore personal attacks and understand that it would often be preferable to ignore them, I'm constantly amazed how effectively one can avoid discussing the substance of an issue by criticizing your opponents' form (even when your side initiated the downslide into that poor form). This doesn't just work well in group emails with your high school friends. It is a pervasive technique that I recently mentioned in the lightning rod part of this entry.

Don't want to debate the war? Attack your critics' poor form! Questioning a war is insulting to the troops!

Here's an excellent example of Fox News trying to use this tactic on Christopher Hitchens, and his impressive ability to thunder away despite of it.