Let’s Talk About the Future Now, We’ve Put the Past Away
Thoreau peers into his crystal ball in comments downblog:
In the meantime, here’s how I see them extending the principle that it’s OK to hide people away and torture them:
1) They’ll start by covering their fuck-ups: Guys who were under suspicion but turned out to be innocent. They’re already doing some of it, and they’ll do more of it.
2) If they need to prove that they aren’t just going after Muslims, they’ll go after an abortion clinic bomber. Or an accused abortion clinic bomber. They’ll go after a few accused ecoterrorists. Basically, they’ll go after some domestic fringe groups. It’s hard to work up much sympathy for people accused of bombing an abortion clinic or sabotaging a lumber cutting operation, and that’s the point. They’ll set the precedents in the cases where it’s hard to work up sympathy.
3) Rowdy protestors could be next. No, not your average inflammatory blogger, I’m talking about the kids who break windows and spray paint. Again, it’s hard to work up much sympathy for them, and that’s the point.
4) Reporters in a war zone, guys who fail to report “the good news from Iraq” could find themselves spirited away on suspicion of providing information to insurgents. Not too many, just one or two. Probably reporters for media outlets just outside the mainstream, with some plausible evidence fabricated to bolster the accusation.
5) Of course, in the end, there’s the Drug War. You know these tactics will spill over to the Drug War.
My demurral would be to move 4 much further up the list, and maybe a version of 5. I think the media is the pressure point you ultimately hit with the detainee bill practices. In particular, given the media’s reliance on local, non-American stringers and staff in war zones - people who aren’t American citizens and nobody here has heard of - you can assure your “good news” reporting gets reported by applying judicious disappearances and less judicious threats against foreign staff. Given that “the MSM” is already regarded as a pack of traitors by much of the Republican Party’s activist base and its elites alike, you can soon enough get away with hauling off a name reporter who doesn’t take the hint after you’ve spirited away his staff. Eventually you make a show of letting him go (probably), but you’ve sent the message: you’re a target.
Versions of the above have already happened. Foreign staffers have been detained without charges in Iraq and the Administration has pushed for authority to prosecute reporters under the espionage act.
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
September 28, 2006 @ 8:18 am
Given the political instincts of the Republicans, I’d guess that eventually they’ll go for the Hail Mary pass; pulling a reporter out of a press conference with the President, roughing him up during the arrest, and disappearing him. I don’t see why it wouldn’t work as an object lesson to the rest, with our current press corps.
Comment by Nell —
September 28, 2006 @ 8:31 am
Jim’s referring to the case of Iraqi AP photographer Bilal Hussein, now five months and counting in a U.S.-run Iraqi prison with no charges, no review. There was also Iranian-American documentary filmmaker Cyrus Kar, who spent two months in the same situation, until his family sued.
Protesters at the WTO protests in Miami a few years ago had the sh*t beaten out of them by riot police before they had a chance to do anything (preventive violence; better the dreadlocked head than the precious window, eh?). Miami law prof Michael Froomkin occasionally reports on the legal aftermath, which has been almost as ugly.
Comment by Mr. Obscura —
September 28, 2006 @ 8:48 am
Where’s Edward R. Murrow when you need him?
Comment by dave —
September 28, 2006 @ 8:53 am
“They’ll go after an abortion clinic bomber”. The Republicans. That’s comedy gold it is.
Note that they’ve already laid some of the groundwork for #5 with their propaganda campaign suggesting that if you use drugs, you’re helping to fund terrorists.
Comment by Bruce Baugh —
September 28, 2006 @ 10:48 am
I have to agree with Dave that going after abortion clinic bombers seems very unlikely for this crew. Ecoterrorists, now, that I can see, along with gay rights activists or feminists of some stripe. And yes, reporters seem like they should be #2 on the list.
Comment by Brian C.B. —
September 28, 2006 @ 10:58 am
Once this bill passes, like, Monday or something, expect to see the first of the Gang of Fourteen trundled out before the the assebled press at a Guantanamo hearing. Fox, hell, all the networks up to and including MTV will have them in heavy rotation. Expect Monday Night Football to invite KSM into the booth for a chat. When you’re the keepers of the Reichstag fire, you learn when to pump the bellows for best effect. Besides, you need to establish the template good and proper.
Comment by Barry —
September 28, 2006 @ 12:06 pm
I’d expect little immediate use against purely domestic ‘terrorists’, for the simple reason that it’s important for the GOP that the majority of the American people don’t realize that this destroys *their* rights.
Comment by jlw —
September 28, 2006 @ 12:53 pm
Myself, I expect that the main utility for domestic detention and torture will be in ratcheting up the “smelly hippie” effect (known recently as the Michael Moore effect).
In the recent past, if you wanted to make something beyond the pale politically, all you had to do was associate it with the characterture of the old counterculture. Preserve the environment? Yeah, like a bunch of pot-smoking granola-eating hippies. Opposition to the war? Aren’t they a bunch of stringy-haired, bearded bead wearers? I mean, most Americans have such an ingrained aversion to the idea of some leftist telling them how to live their lives (as opposed to some Christian fundamentalist, in which case it’s all good) that even I can’t stand the PETA types, and I haven’t eaten mammals in 15 years.
So, like, where was I going with this. . . .
Oh, right. Like others, I think the economic situation in the U.S. is going to deteriorate over the next decade–we’ve been investing in all the wrong things and liquidating a lot of equity–and all things being equal, there will be a call for actions that run counter to the short-term desires of the powers that be. If you need a way to make such actions impossible, there’s no better way than making such proposals the stuff of the “enemy.” So you detain a few people associated with the reform movement, apply some advanced interrogation techniques, and presto, a signed confession that the reform leaders are in league with Islamists or the Earth Liberation Front or whoever.
I mean, really, that’s all torture has ever been good at–false confessions. And though I’m sure some knuckleheads like Bush might actually buy into the ticking bomb stuff, the people who really run things and plan to run things for decades realize that to run an efficient, modern police state, it’s best to apply maximal power to a few in order to effortlessly move the many.
Comment by Nell —
September 28, 2006 @ 1:00 pm
Another case in point: Sami al-Hajj, an Al Jazeera cameraman who’s been imprisoned for five years, interrogated 130 times, in an effort to get him to say that AlJ is a tool of Al Qaeda.
The BBC’s obtained his letters, which say that he and other prisoners have been beaten and that medical treatment is used as an inducement to cooperate. But hey, it’s all he said/they said, now, isn’t it? And so it may be for the rest of al-Hajj’s life, and ours.
Comment by Garth —
September 28, 2006 @ 2:28 pm
Only if I get to help rough ‘em up! Just kidding… that kind of excess would certainly backfire in the worst kind of way. Even I, upstanding joe-citizen (admitedly of the libertarian persuasion), would spill out into the street in anger (like a mob or a drink, I can wear both hats) and fight The Man.
And I look like The Man.
Comment by Larry —
September 28, 2006 @ 2:41 pm
Mr. Obscura (#3): Keith Olbermann may not be Edward R. Murrow, but he’s been doing a pretty good impression lately.
Comment by Johnathan Pearce —
September 28, 2006 @ 2:54 pm
I would put the War on Drugs at 1. There have been so many abuses of Common Law protections, both in the United States and back home here in Britain (where things are getting worse), that I reckon this is the area where rough interrogation (torture) gets used.
I suppose mistreatment of journalists is a serious possibility.
As for eco-terrorists and the like, it is possible, of course.
Once governments, of any flavour, get the taste for using violence to extract intel. or just scare certain groups, they will use it.
The serious question, of course, is when will the electorates in the West wake up to this stuff?
Comment by John Emerson —
September 28, 2006 @ 4:33 pm
Look at this as a teaching moment. Most people have no idea what “star chamber”, “habeas corpus”, “bill of attainder” or “ex post facto law” mean. Now, when we teach about our history and the founding fathers, we will be able to use contemporary examples (and not from foreign countries either.)
Comment by thoreau —
September 28, 2006 @ 8:08 pm
It may very well be that they’ll do these things in a somewhat different order than I laid out. But I do think they’ll do these things before they move on to, say, rounding up everybody who votes for an opposition candidate.
Garth-
They won’t tell you that the protestor being arrested was just some guy with spray paint. You’ll be told that he was a member of the Marxist Liberation Army (or whatever the name is), that they are an organized terrorist group on US soil (i.e. they have held meetings where they bitch about the US), that he and his co-conspirators had acquired ingredients to build bombs and poisons (i.e. they have some common household cleaning supplies in their apartments), and other stuff like that. An undercover agent provocateur will have coaxed some of them into signing an inflammatory statement calling for violence against the US.
Think about it: They already heard inconvenient protestors into “free speech zones.” If protestors remain inconvenient, and won’t stay in the “free speech zones”, then they’ll portray some protest organizers as dangerous terrorists. This will have 3 effects: (1) It will put the fear into anybody else who thinks about organizing a large protest. (2) It will discredit the dissidents. (3) The dissidents can be quietly disposed of without a court uncovering any interesting info on the agent provocateur.
And I wouldn’t be shocked if they went after an abortion clinic bomber. Radicals who stray off the reservation are an embarassment to the regime, and need to be dealt with. The proper function of the core supporters is to cast votes (so that the rigging doesn’t have to be too egregious), wave flags to make it look like the regime is popular, and hurl accusations of “treason” at dissenters. Taking up arms and showing initiative is the last thing they want from people who are supposed to be considered trustworthy. Somebody might get ideas.
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
September 28, 2006 @ 8:27 pm
That’s a good idea, John Emerson. I know that it’s French and all that, but I’d guess that they’ll get to learn about lettres de cachet as well. Come to think of it, there’s an exciting opportunity for some marketized justice there. How much wouldn’t lobbyists pay to have a “(fill in the blank) goes to prison” card?
Comment by schwa —
September 28, 2006 @ 9:57 pm
We’ve traded in our baby for Guantanamo Bay.
Mostly this all just makes me want to vomit.
Comment by John Emerson —
September 28, 2006 @ 11:16 pm
How much wouldn’t lobbyists pay to have a “(fill in the blank) goes to prison” card?
The resource industries have really been cashing in on the “eco-terrorist” label. I believe that the Patriot act has been used against “eco-terrorists” already, even though they have never killed anyone.
Trackback by Making Light —
September 29, 2006 @ 9:57 am
I Put My Fingers Against the Glass…
Charles Pierce. Glenn Greenwald. More. And finally. Avedon Carol. Jim Henley. Jim Henley. Jim Henley. John Scalzi. Steve Gilliard. And……
Comment by James —
September 29, 2006 @ 3:32 pm
I believe that most people are missing the point of what the torture bill is about.
It does not really affect the interrogation techniques that are being used in places like Guantanamo. Those are already in place and have been used for years, now. However, using those techniques has institutional and individual consequences, and the institutions and individuals in the U.S. Gov. who are affected have been pushing back. Some can’t stomach what they’re being asked to do, or cannot stomach those who are doing it. Some consider it a collosal waste and believe that it generates bad intelligence. Whatever. They don’t like it and, among other things, they are using its illegality to fight it.
This bill means to undercut those arguments. But anyone who thinks that killing the bill, say with a successful Democratic fillabuster (dream on), would benefit the people who are currently being tortured by the U.S. is simply incorrect. The Bush administration glories in its lawlessness.
People have become so used to the apparent lock-step behavior of Congressional Republicans and the shock troops of the right wing punditry that they have forgotten the fact that these guys are a)mentally limited and b)competitive to a fault. That is a prescription for internecine warfare, and it is why they always need a common demon to fight.
I don’t think that Bush can get himself elected “President for Life” and I don’t see him trusting anyone enough to be heir apparent. The Republican Party is more like Yugoslavia under Tito than any other analogy that has been advanced, and I do not think it can maintain its cohesion in its present form.
That is not necessarily an optimistic scenario, of course.
Comment by Garth —
September 29, 2006 @ 5:02 pm
Thoreau,
You frighten me bcse I simply have to agree with you: as they say, “The definition of paranoid is being in full possession of the facts.”
I had conveniently set aside the obvious risk that we are never told the real nature of the enemy, just whatever the propogandists believe will push the right buttons.
Comment by MQ —
September 29, 2006 @ 6:37 pm
Listen, I’m pissed too, but I think this bill pretty clearly excludes U.S. citizens from any of its provisions. Military commissions only have jurisdiction over *alien* enemy combatants. A U.S. citizen can be an unlawful enemy combatant, but he would have to be charged and convicted under our regular court system, with access to habeas corpus. So this doesn’t it seems to me cover the Padilla case. It’s still a bad thing, I’m still scared, but my favorite blogs seem to be overreacting just a touch.
Comment by thoreau —
September 29, 2006 @ 10:57 pm
People have become so used to the apparent lock-step behavior of Congressional Republicans and the shock troops of the right wing punditry that they have forgotten the fact that these guys are a)mentally limited and b)competitive to a fault. That is a prescription for internecine warfare, and it is why they always need a common demon to fight.
I have no doubt that they’ll turn on themselves. The question is whether it will happen before or after they consolidate power and render the opposition incapable of picking up the reins. If they start fighting before they consolidate then the Democrats will pick up the reins of power and give us the incompetent and disorganized big government that they gave us for decades.
But if they postpone the fighting until after the consolidation then the correct term for their internal struggles will be “a purge.”
Trackback by The Agitator —
October 9, 2006 @ 9:15 am
Addendum……
…to the post below. McQ over at QandO cites Galt’s post as the reason why he’ll be voting for the……