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Hurrah, for once, for the European Union The EU and the US have failed to reach an agreement on airline passenger data sharing. This is a euphemism. The US is demanding information on all travellers that the European Court of Justice says violates our privacy, and the EU countries have been trying to square the circle. They have failed so far.
Let us be clear. The member states want to do it. All 25 of them, despite Germany’s constitutional data protections. They would love to give the FBI your travel plans, bank account details and dietary preferences. UKgov is particularly keen, and makes sure such information is always sent ahead from UK flights to such friendly, peaceful and enlightened regimes as the People’s Republic of China (it bullied the other EU states into accepting the principle of requiring carriers to retain all communications data for state inspection). What is stopping this becoming an universal convention is not European states but the independent, supra-national institutions of the Union.
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Do they really “give the FBI your travel plans, bank account details and dietary preferences”? Do the FBI care anything other than the travel plans?
Well said, Guy.
I have been thinking for a while now that the only thing preventing HMG from being more pernicious than it is now, is that fact that it is somewhat constrained by the EU (and I never, ever thought I would type those words).
Yes; the USA is demanding Passenger Name Record data in at least 43 categories. See this explicit evidence from Statewatch of the sort of thins that was happening until the ECJ ruling earlier this year (and still may be happening unlawfully).
Note also that a “category” of information (which seems always how data-sharing requests work, broad, not specific) can include a lot of data. One of these categories of information is “any collected APIS information” for example. Look this up and you find: “Advanced Passenger Information System (APIS) is an [US government] automated network capable of analyzing biographical data on individual air passengers”. Another is “general remarks”; another “all forms of payment information”.
I have a thought for the USA on this.
If they really want all this information on people visiting their country, they should do away with the visa waiver scheme, and require the information from those obtaining visas.
In that way, individuals could knowlingly choose whether or not to provide all of this private information in advance, by deciding whether or not to visit the USA.
We, in the UK and EU-wide if so chosen, could introduce a similar scheme with respect to USA passport holders, thus showing individual USA citizens the pain and benefit in such an approach. Alternatively, we could allow them in (as now) under a visa waiver scheme (with their dollars) while not reciprocating (at least to the same extent) in taking our pounds and euros over their.
With a policy of either reciprocity or magnanimity, how could we be wrong?
Best regards
And have you seen this too from the USA, erstwhile bastion of freedom: Niall Ferguson in the Telegraph writes “Don’t flout Geneva – or the tables could easily be turned”:
Best regards
Nigel,
Not sure Mr. Ferguson has got this right. The jihadis have no intention of ever observing either the letter or spirit of the Geneva Convention. We have all seen what they so gleefully do to their civilian captives?
Captured American (or Western) servicemen will be horribly brutalised and then murdered, regardless of how impeccably the USA behaves in return.
Of course Europe is entirely unserious about airline passenger information in counterterrorism because the terrorist use only trains there. Smaller body count, less terrorizing. Opinion may change when terrorists fly planes into european targets.
Then again, maybe not, because europeans don’t feel a lot of loyalty to each other as countries. Too much history, cultural and linguistic differences, contempt.
Thaddeus,
If a 21st century superpower can’t defend itself from 7th century jihadists without sinking to their level, (or even sinking appreciably) we are doomed and might as well fold our hand now.
The conduct of terrorists and torturers does not make it acceptable conduct for us. We need to return to a more classical idea of combat and go after the funding sources.
The only reason the rest of the world can even find the Middle East on a map is because they have tanker loads of oil money to help them live in their reality detached state. I’ll wager that virtually all terrorists, regardless of national origin, can be traced back to oil money.
I, for one voting citizen, am fed up with our ‘leaders’ waging war against us in the name of fighting ‘terror’.
How can politicians follow polls like hungry jackals, and yet call themselves ‘leaders’?
Hear, hear, Midwesterner.
Midwesterner,
I do agree with you (and I should have said as much above) that a grand jettisoning of every civilised custom and convention is a bad idea in its own right, not least of all because of the way these ‘exceptions’ have a nasty tendency to become the standard, e.g. before you know it, torturing suspected dope-smokers/sex criminals/speeding motorists/tax evaders becomes routine.
I just wish that Mr. Ferguson had made that point instead of the rather naive one about jihadi reciprocity of decency. That’s a non-starter. It is our own citizens that we should be primarily concerned about.
I’m due to pitch up in the US for a bit on October 16th. I was last there in ’97 and am now absolutely paranoid. It’s the little things. I’ve got a mini multi-tool on my key-ring gonna have to remember to remove that because it’s got a very short and blunt knife on it. Do the new rules on liquids include gas lighters?
It’s my goddamn honeymoon. And I’m going to America because I’m a class 1 Ameriphile. And I resent the fact that I’m already feeling like a criminal when I have zero desire to blow-up an airliner or abandon my business in Manchester. I’m a 33 year old graduate. I’m not about to become an illegal immigrant. I’m so clearly not muslim that I’m not gonna blow myself and my (newly married) wife up either.
Ah, it makes me sick.
I really don’t mind “profiling” because the number of agnostic white, middle-class, Englishmen who have blown themselves and others up in recent years is =0.
Midwesterner has a good point. Hit the root. Quite why we are all pretending to be great mates with the Saudis whose generous export of Wahabbi Islam is the crux of this whole problem has me totally scubied. And quite why the great powers of the West aren’t prepared to squish the Iranian state leaves me totally confused.
Because if we’d even given the impression that we were organised, united and serious an awful lot of this barbarism wouldn’t have even got off the ground. Much less lorded it like Mr Armanidinnerjacket did in NYC recently.
“Speak softly and carry a big stick”. The ayatollahs have come to the conclusion that we left the stick at home.
They need to be reminded quite how big that stick is. And how many nails it’s got in it. They need to be stickucated.
Great idea, let’s do it.
There’s always Cuba … lovely in Autumn.
UK – Houston, TX
Come on Guy, it’s time you abandoned the conflation of “state” with “executive” when talking about the EU. I suspect the legislature and judiciary of most EU member states wouldn’t let this pass.
“Speak softly and carry a big stick”
This may sound strange Nick, but the point at which I realized how much trouble we were in, was when this administration named their first move “Shock and Awe”. It immediately worried me that they would get the second part wrong as well.
Midwesterner,
Although I normally get your comments straight off… I’m not quite sure what point you’re trying to make here.
When I first heard of “Shock and Awe” I thought, great, at last the gloves are off and the West is about to astonish the Islamic world with it’s capacity to kill people and break things. I even vaguely pondered that we might manage to sort this nonsense out once and for all. Well, that was one of my more optomistic moments…
Instead we got a half-assed invasion. Not enough troops, a no show for terror weapons such as MLRS and MOAB. No B-52s doing their rolling thunder thing.
Our governments have become so media obsessed they’re not prepared to fight wars using “disproportionate” (read “decisive”) force. End result: years of misery for everyone.
I dispare.
And if I was the PBI on the ground in Iraq I’d be mighty pissed.
So I heard the EU costs 1% of the EU GDP? Now, if we got rid of all the other governments and just had the EU, made it an article of its constitution that it can’t cost any more than that, it would be rather cost effective…
Oh, dreams.
My advice is to stay in your EUtopian paradise. Why take a chance of being tortured for your travel plans?
I already am much less willing to make quick trips to the USA because of the hassle. Given how much of the US economy is related to overseas trade, one can speculate what the long term effects of making travel to and from the US so damn annoying.
Nick,
When I see hysterical people shrilling threats at belligerent threatening dogs, I know those people are utterly impotent.
I don’t really know how to convey what I am saying without an example.
I once adopted a dog that was to be destroyed for regularly attacking people and occasionally causing some injuries. Sweet looking dog, but vicious and determined. The dog and I reached an understanding the first time she tried to sink her teeth into me. I have good reflexes and she not only missed me, she sustained a swat upside the head. Then I chased her around the house until she rolled over on her back. From that point we got on just fine and she was a great dog. For me.
However, no one else could handle her at all. In my absence, she was a terror. My father tried and she theatened him with bared (and proven) fangs. One day I was working in the floor above and I needed him to move her. She snarled etc and he declined. But I needed him to move her. I told him to put on one of the welding gauntlets and a heavy protective jacket and go try her again. He put them on, took one step towards her and she scrambled away fast. He never even got near her. She didn’t understand gauntlets and heavy weight lined denim, but she knew he was determined and fully capable. He never again had any problems.
No shouting. No histrionics. Just quietly carrying out his plan comfortable with the knowledge he had the means to back it up.
That ‘Shock and Awe’ was not much more than ‘Fizzle and Giggle’. That name and tactic was the first obvious stupid of many. Promising to deliver that to a people that had endured a couple of decades of Saddam was doomed to failure.
When I first heard that promise to deliver shock and awe, I thought of Teddy Roosevelt and his policy of ‘speak softly and carry a big stick’. This administration made an arrogant promise and delivered it with beligerance. It was/is a deliberate rejection of speaking softly. The underfunded, underarmed, understaffed, pompously publicized military action that followed was the sound of the other shoe dropping. No soft speach. No big stick.
Guy, I owe you a debt of thanks. Based on information and advice you provide to us, I applied for my US passport. It had lapsed many years ago. I just received it. No chip.
Thanks.
Reading the comments above, my understanding is that it would be acceptable to require passengers to sign a release allowing data to be forwarded to the FBI.
Nigel,
The problem isn’t so much who is coming here fully legally with a visa, it is who isn’t. On a related note, DHS recently decided that all foreigners entering the country have all fingers scanned in. Previously it was just two (why just two? You’ve got me there). Why it took 5 years from 9/11 to move to all ten fingers is a good question.
One reason they want the info is so that passengers can have their backgrounds fully checked before they land, in order to expedite customs. Complaining about giving this data or not is really absurd: the passengers are supposed to provide it anyways when they land in order to get into the country, this system just makes sure that passenger lists can be compared against intelligence service lists, so that terrorists don’t slip into the country before the data is cross checked.
If the EU doesn’t provide it, it just means that foreign visitors to the US will endure many more hours waiting in US customs and immigration hold, inflaming anti-US resentments, which is of course something the leftists in the EU want to encourage, particularly among the muslim passengers….
If a 21st century superpower can’t defend itself from 7th century jihadists without sinking to their level, (or even sinking appreciably) we are doomed and might as well fold our hand now
You’re right. We’ve got bunches and bunches of modern high-tech methods we could easily use to protect ourselves.
We’ve got secret CIA prisons….nope, not any more.
We’ve got international telephone surveillance…nope, all of a sudden it’s illegal.
Well, we’ve got data mining….nope, all of a sudden it’s illegal.
Former politicians from previous administrations are doing everything they can to protect America….like Richard Clark and Sandy Berger.
Wait, wait, we’ve got wiretapping….nope, all of a sudden they’re illegal.
We got humint on the ground…nope not allowed if they have shady backgrounds.
OK, we’ve got psychological methods of getting information…nope, can’t use the ol’ panties on the head trick anymore.
At least the press is on the side of America and would never leak anything important….like the New York Times or Washington Post.
Srange that most of these programs were started by Democrats and now that they are actually needed, they’re frowned on when Bush uses them.
Well, we do have that piece of crap Patriot Act.
How exactly again are we supposed to defend ourselves without sinking to their level?
Get real. 15 seconds at their level would take care of the problem for another 400 years. Close your eyes, stop up your ears, yell Naa, Naa, Naa at the top of your lungs and it’ll be over before you know it.
I am not happy with the size, scope, or the increasing intrusiveness of the American government. It has been a disastrous period in our history over the past century as we adopted and adapted numerous political ideas, mostly European and statist, in various watered down forms under the rubric of “social welfarism” and “progressive reforms”.
It would be very pleasing if a large part of the current governmental apparatus could be dismantled, and the productive citizenry freed from the enormous burden of trillions of tax dollars wasted, and untold billions more spent on legalisms and regulatory hoop-jumping.
I do not object, however, to reasonable steps taken to secure the safety of the country in a time of war. This is a concept that some people here simply do not comprehend, so I will repeat it—WE ARE AT WAR.
It was declared on us several decades ago, and we went whistling on our merry way, pretending that nothing really was happening, just “isolated” acts of murder and destruction, kidnapping and murder, hostage taking and murder, hijacking and murder, piracy and murder, and a bewildering series of plots to commit all of the preceeding in ever more daring and suicidal ways.
So, now, from different angles, we are subjected to the complaint that we’re not very nice anymore, we ask too many questions, we demand too much information, we are mean to people, we don’t live up to a starry eyed, totally illusory code that no one, including us, has ever lived up to, and certainly, no one ever, ever, even pretends to expect from our adversaries, and, finally, the ultimate whine—“But we just want you only to inconvenience the bad guys, and then not too much.”
If you don’t want to come to the US because we asked too many questions about you, well, we’ll miss you, but we’ll survive, especially if those questions also keep out some of the guys who were just arrested for plotting to blow you and your airplanes out of the sky.
As far as sinking to some unacceptable level, tell it to the marines on Guadalcanal, or the guerrillas in the Phillipines, or the 8th Air Force.
Where did this “we’re too good” crap come from? We aren’t, and we’ve proved it over and over again.
When we finally have to prove it to the world, and a very surprised, and largely dead, Islamic fascist community, who were gulled by all this high sounding moralizing and sniffy PC “Oh, we can’t ever do something like that!” bushwa, I imagine the same ones moaning and groaning here will be all aghast and offended that such terrible steps were taken.
You live and dream in an airy, fairy wonderland, where the good guys wear white hats, and always hold their fire when there’s women folk around, and ride off into the sunset, like Shane, with children yelling “We love you’ as the music swells, and the credits roll.
Get real. This is a fight to the death. If you don’t want to get your hands dirty, fine. If you just hate all this ugliness and inconvenience, take a pill.
There are brave men and women risking their lives so you can jet around the world, attend your meetings, write your snippy little articles, and exercise your precious freedom to bitch constantly about how ishy and terrible it all is.
Poor little Aunt Pitty-Pats. It must be just dreadful for you. We sympathize, truly we do. Or we will, when we have time—we’re kinda busy right now.
Martin,
In the context of international agreements the state and the executive are in practice pretty much the same thing. Hence policy-laundering through international agreements.
In the particular case of Britain, there is next to no possibility that the legislature or the judiciary would get in the way. In some other EU countries, treaties are by default received into and deemed superior to, domestic law.
Even without the special context of an international agreement, it is generally fair to equate the state with the executive. Separation of powers is rarely very effective these days.
Hooray for Europe! Defenders of privacy, liberty and the rugged individual. Thank the gods (or whatever) that there is someone out there willing to take on those arrogant yanks.
veryretired,
there, there, feel better now?
Dear Mr. VeryRetired,
You are my hero.
So I heard the EU costs 1% of the EU GDP? Now, if we got rid of all the other governments and just had the EU, made it an article of its constitution that it can’t cost any more than that, it would be rather cost effective…
The EU probably does cost !% of overall GDP, because of its imperial structure. Laws are passed in the imperial cities of Brussels and Strasbourg, but it is the duty of the provinces to employ the taxeaters who actually enforce the said laws. Most of the time, the plebs and serfs think the laws were made in their own provincial parliaments, and don’t even realise they are imperial decrees. The poor saps even waste their time complaining to their tribunes in the provincial parliaments about the laws they have passed, at the behest of the empire.
So the real cost of the EU is the 1% at the imperial centre, plus almost all other government spending throughout the empire, needed to enforce imperial law.
Still dreaming?
If a 21st century superpower can’t defend itself from 7th century jihadists without sinking to their level, (or even sinking appreciably) we are doomed and might as well fold our hand now
You have a point there….um… assuming that these 7th century jihadists are using swords and not 21st century strap on bombs, weapons, support equipment and (last but not least) 21st communication technology used by the world media who cheerfully spread the jihadists propaganda as well as any doom and gloom!
Yes, if the USA can’t defeat a gaggle of mad, sword bearing fanatics…might as well give up now. I see your logic. Yes.
Michael Farris,
Yes, I do. Every once in a while it is necessary to tell people with their heads firmly up their behinds to pucker up and kiss mine.
“Every once in a while it is necessary to tell people with their heads firmly up their behinds to pucker up and kiss mine.”
Your head is firmly up other peoples’ behinds? Or did I (or you) miss a step somewhere?
When I first went to the States, in 1973
I had to go to the Embassy in Grosvenor Square to get a Visa.
I dont see why that should not be revived.
It is an incovienience certainly but perversly I am happier dealing with the US Govt direct than I am with giving my details via my own.
Ah, dear Michael,
I see reading compehension is difficult for you, as is humor. Pity.
It is rare indeed when I disagree with veryretired.
Usually, I read his comments and he has said what I wanted said and I can go on to another thread. This time, VR, I disagree.
We are not at ‘war’. Our enemies are at war. But we are not at war. We are what can only be described as being at ‘police action’.
War? Where are the privations? Where is the reallignment of production to defeat an enemy? Where is the drawing down of new cars and new houses and the building up of the machines and munitions of war? Who is the enemy? Where do they get arms from? Why haven’t we attacked? Where are their munitions depots? Why are they still there? Where do their soldiers train? Why are they still training? Where do their soldiers hide? Why do we let them? Where are the institutions where they recruit and rally their troops? Why do they still stand? Who funds them? Why do we allow it?
Why, like one of those malignantly stupid Rottweilers in the funny videos, are we chewing on and growling at our own leg? While our enemies sit safe from us and howl with glee?
Why is good news so hard to find, yet bad news overwhelms the senses? Because in a sad parody of history, we are living out John Paul Jones famous cry, “I have not yet begun to fight.” But unlike him, we aren’t willing to lash ourselves to this battle. We justifiably lack faith in our leadership. We lack the national will.
We are also unwilling to be accused of ‘collateral damage’. Unless it’s in the form of torture during interrogations. To people who ‘may’ know something. Yet everyday, innocents are dying in horrific numbers.
Where is the idiot that invented the phrase ‘disproportionate response’ WTF! To see what that phrase means, turn it on its head. ‘Proportionate Response.’ Responding with equal proportions. Is that a recipe for peace? Absolutely not.
It is a recipe for a permanent state of bloodshed. A static state in which military industries can predict steady profits with conventional accounting methods. A state where Mullahs can live their entire time on earth leading the soldiers of Islam. A state where children grow up knowing nothing but war. A state of perpetual low grade destruction and never any construction. A state of locked borders and blocked shipping. A state of bombed out schools and fortified research labs.
Why are things like this? Could it be that we want to have it both ways? We want to call them enemy soldiers when it suits us to deny the rights of a court trial. Yet at the same time, we declare they are not soldiers, so military rules don’t apply. We want to torture them for information. Yet we want to use that information to try them for crimes. We want to stop our enemies, but not at the price of our discomfort? We want to prevent terrorism, but not if it interfers with commerce? We want to defend ourselves, but not at the cost of declaring a real enemy.
We must start by declaring war on an enemy instead of a tactic. Why haven’t we? Because we are unwilling to face the deprivations that would come with that declaration. We like cheap oil. It’s the cocaine that keeps us high. But like cocaine, it’s an artificial high. We apparently believe we would die without it.
We won’t. We may face a deprivation of war. We will undoubtably become stronger for it. We are a 21st century superpower. Not a dark age tyranny who can out dirty the other guys.
What are these options that trainer so plaintively and sarcastically bemoans the loss of? Are they the unfaceable power of a military machine unleashed? Or are they the peeping and snooping, registering and regulating, arm twisting fingernail pulling of a police state conducting its daily business?
Trainer whines that “nope, can’t use the ol’ panties on the head trick anymore.” What could better demonstrate that we are not a nation at war. Both the act he describes and the morality he proposes are ghastly reminders of how wrong we’ve gone.
Whether any of you less outspoken defenders of torture and domestic spying admit it or not, this phrase is the essence of your case. And since when does any rational person on this site expect government to ever give up a new found power? No. It won’t be over before we know it. It is the beginning of a new level of government power.
How soon you all have forgotten that we already had intrusive security prior to 9-11. We simply got out escalated by the terrorists. This is a race that we lose even if we win. How telling it is that none of the security stopped those hijackers. It was private citizens armed with brains and will who defeated the terrorists who missed their target. Our government wants us to be docile in the grip of its protection. Just as the passengers of the other flights were good citizens following accepted procedure of ‘wait to land and let professionals handle this’.
I hold that the those who died in Pennsylvania were heroic front line soldiers in a war. And the passengers on the other flights were victims of an over protective and over interfering state. Their very obedience to the rules cost them possibly their lives, and certainly the opportunity to be heros.
We are exchanging freedom for comfort. Soon, we’ll have neither.
Mid—complex and layered response. Forgive me if it takes me some time to work through it.
Short answer is that the very squeemishness that I referred to is the reason we are now so afraid of being seen as too brutal, too warlike, too destructive, too mean, etc., etc.
What I have been warning about for quite some time is that there is a limit to the unilateral restraint being shown by the US and her allies. While you agonize over procedures which have no permanent effects, and rhapsodize about the bravery of those who ignored the conventional wisdom, your conventional wisdom has lost touch with the reality of the situation.
You are morally indignant, and disgusted by all the bad news, and your solution is—what? Total war? Declaring a state of emergency so enough privations and sacrifices can be totalled up for you to feel better about it?
Are these terrorists soldiers? No, they are exactly as they have been described—illegal combatants, with no rights under military law, civil law, or international law.
They violate every rule of warfare, have not agreed to or abided by any convention of international conduct, and exult in their utter contempt for all these precious rules and clauses and treaties and civilizing social agreements you find so important for our side while you cannot even bother to pretend they will be observed by our opponents.
Here’s a solution: We declare that any illegal combatant we have captured or will capture will be given 5 minutes to tell us everything we want to know, and then he or she will be tried by a drumhead tribunal and, if found guilty, summarily executed. Perfectly legal under the Geneva conventions I am told.
Solves all that waterboarding anxiety, doesn’t it?
Veryretired, you may wish the US were at war, but the president certainly doesn’t agree with you.
And a good thing too. If the Iraqi adventure (set piece military action followed by shit shower of incompetence during occupation/’rebuilding’) really were the US’s idea of an effective strategy then the US is well and truly screwed and bullying foreign gubbermints for useless data isn’t going to help except in getting votes from easily fooled and/or intimidated.
But go ahead and rant some more, it probably does your blood pressure good.
Interesting that the EU doesn’t want this data in the hands of the Americans but is fine with China.
Midwesterner, yes we are at war and not with a tactic but with people who utilize this tactic. The Western way of war is over. It would be better to have a visable, “enemy” nation with soldiers, ammo depots, etc. but this is a new age and many of our western tactics would be useless.
We have to adapt or we will lose. You seem to think we already have. The enemy understands the power of propaganda which is far more lethal than any super power’s mechanized army. You and many others are an example of how an easily manipulated media can manipulate the opinions of even the brightest among us. No offense.
The enemy we are fighting are not centralized. we have no choice but to adapt to a brand new way of war, no matter how “low” it makes us look.
I understand some of your frustration. You say that all you get is bad news. Well yes, there is a lot of bad news you really have to dig to find anything other than that. The idiotic political sniping as well as the world media seem to be defining this war.
You made a good comment but i agree with “veryretired” on this. I don’t have the talent for writing as you and others but I’ve been around. I read, investigate and discuss issues about this war. I do believe we made some blunders. I also understood a long time ago that it was going to be long, complicated and violent. I didn’t think the media would be so lethal (unknowingly I’m sure).
Not the FBI, actually. US Customs. Actually, I believe that the EU said that they could give the data to the FBI, but the US refused because US civil liberties law prevents the FBI from getting that information whereas it’s ok for customs. The EU rules are basically the reverse.
VR,
That was a vent. That’s why it came out the way it did.
From the first move of Gulf Two, I and probably a lot of other people, pounded the coffee table and yelled “Idiocy” at the TV. This whole operation was a farce from the start. We listened and still listen to pompous lectures from Rumsfeld et al on how warfare has changed and new rules apply.
So the army scittered along taking no territory, chasing down no enemy and protecting no assets. The opposing army was allowed to disperse into a fog of undercover combatants. Our ‘ambassadors’ clomp in and point the soles of their cowboy boots at the ‘conquered’ and tell every one how bad we are.
This fiasco has grated on me from the start. I have tried throughout to support this war and its ‘new’ way of fighting. It’s bogus.
We have no focus, no coherent goal, no measurement for success beyond ‘well, various unnamed people won’t do what they’ve been doing anymore.”
You tell me, when will we win? How will we know we’ve won? Who will we have defeated? How will they concede defeat? How much of this miserable crap will end when those undefinable goals are met? How much of this crap will we keep doing just in case we guessed wrong?
What’s your plan?
What’s the end game for this escalation of means against an utterly evil enemy?
Forget total war. We’re not fighting any war. Soldiers are not cops. We cannot sort ‘good’ Muslims form ‘bad’ Muslims. Is it any wonder that our soldiers are taking a beating while we lose ground steadily? I hope you don’t think it’s because we have poor soldiers. We have excellent soldiers. Then why are they failing? It’s because they’re soldiers and we’re using them for social workers and cops.
You say I’m the one calling for total war. We are against an antagonist that has never failed to escalate. You are calling for escalation of means race until what? Until every possible terrorist is in prison? How do you propose to achieve that happy state? How many friends of the US will we abuse and alienate to achieve that goal?
You say they are “–illegal combatants, with no rights under military law, civil law, or international law.”
Well just out of curiosity, who gets to assign this status? I don’t trust our government or anybody else’s to decide who is and who isn’t human. Everybody is entitled to a trial before they can be declared a non person. I distrust international trials even less than I trust our politicians. So where does this status come from?
At least one US citizen has been assigned that status. Born in New York, arrested in Chicago, assigned non-person status by who? Who decides that some citizens are not entitled to the constitution? For that matter who decides if anybody is not entitled to be a person anymore. You’ve apparently got the conviction part decided. Who gets this power?
Our problems trace to a single source. We are trying to do this on the cheap and dirty. We don’t want to face any discomfort on our part. Why?
Our politicians are running things on opinion polls. One poll says ‘I’m angry, do something.’ Another poll says ‘I want cheap fuel.’ Another poll says ‘Don’t use anymore soldiers.’ Another poll says ‘I’ll trade freedom for safety.’ Another poll says ‘The constitution should take a back seat to our safety.’
We are entrusting our future and our safety to people who are sniffing the ass end of public opinion polls to decide where to ‘lead’ us.
My proposition is a simple one. Return to the fundamental basics of classical warfare. Treat people who identify themselves collectively as a single collective entity. Name our enemy. You’ve yet to name our enemy that we are at war with. Who is it?
kcbiskit, I saw your comment after I posted. My comment to VR is being held yet again. Some of it addresses your statements. I will separately also.
Farris,
I don’t know what your point is because it is so well disquised behind straw men and personal insults.
I don’t see much to be gained from replying to you any further, as you have nothing to say.
kcbiskit,
Terrorism is as old as warfare. What would you call Samson’s foxes?
Or some ancient suicide terrorism?
You may not believe these events are true, but certainly the tactics were known.
I say that nothing has changed but the scale. Our failures are not because we haven’t adapted to the new style of warfare. But because we have.
VR, I apologize for the tone of my comment. I have great respect for you and am venting frustration and anger indiscriminantly.
Thank you for your patient and courteous responses.
Whew!
Proper bit of passion there!
(But you know I cant resist!)
Next, here’s Roz, with the Weather…
michael farris,
War is still on. Occupation is no longer part of the model.
What is needed is a new map.
The one drawn in the aftermath of 1918 is not working out well.
Midwesterner,
How do you know you have won a guerilla war?
Generally you don’t know when you have won except the attacks sort of peter out and then cease altogether.
In the normal course of events it can take from 5 to 20 years.
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I can tell you how to know when you have lost a guerilla war: when you stop fighting.
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As to the unexpected or even predicted happening in Iraq. The unexpected always happens in Iraq. In addition some one can always be found who predicted the problems.
The question always is not lack of mistakes but effective changes in planning. Based on lessons learned.
A Different Kind of Strategy.
From the disaster at Guadalcanal the island hopping strategy was developed.
Israel/Lebanon is the new model. Jab and run. Guerilla war tactics with divisions.
“I don’t know what your point is because it is so well disquised behind straw men and personal insults.”
Kind of like your first post on this thread.
I don’t think Guy is correct when he talks about the ECJ as an “independent supra-national institution of the EU”. It was my understanding that the European Court is, and always has been, completely separate from the EU. Wasn’t the UK one of the founders even though it wasn’t in the EU at the time?
HJHJ,
You are confusing two different institutions, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg and the Court of Justice of the European Communities in Luxembourg. The latter is an EU institution, the former is not.
Mid,
No apology needed. I wouldn’t even reply if I didn’t respect you and the deep convictions behind your positions.
More later—playoffs on TV. Go Twins.
Mid,
I note that you said you were just having a rant. I thought the point was worth replying to anyway, because I see it a lot.
“Whether any of you less outspoken defenders of torture and domestic spying admit it or not, this phrase is the essence of your case.”
The argument of most of the “pro-torturers” is that panties on the head isn’t torture. This is the fallacy of discontinuity. Treatment of prisoners exists on a continuum from superstar treatment to death by torment. There is no border line marked in reality between “torture” and “not torture”. Some things are clearly torture, like thumbscrews and electric shocks, and some are clearly not, like shouting at people and making disparaging remarks about their intelligence. (Otherwise I want my old French teacher brought up in front of the ICJ for warcrimes.) The problem is where in between them to put the line. The terrorist sympathisers want to move it in the direction of being nice to people, the anti-terrorist investigators want to leave it where it was: sufficient to get results, not so bad that you wouldn’t be willing to go through it yourself.
I make no comment on where the line should be drawn, not having experienced interrogation myself, but I do think it is helpful from both perspectives that a firm line (or series of lines to match justifications) should be drawn, and not moved around to suit the political climate. That’s what the current debate is about. It is not about whether torture should be allowed.
The terrorist sympathisers want to leave it fuzzy and free-floating, because they haven’t yet moved it close enough to ‘5-star hotel’ to suit their Islamist buddies. They still find it helpful to their case to pretend that it is Bush moving the line rather than them, though. Bush wants to nail it down, so nobody can moan he’s crossing a line nobody can see, and nobody can push the appeasement any further.
From the point of view of protecting future liberty, surely this should be applauded?
“And since when does any rational person on this site expect government to ever give up a new found power?”
How do you think we got the freedom from torture in the first place? Five hundred years ago, my government routinely used torture. Today it doesn’t. There must have been some point at which they gave up the power. This weird idea that moves towards totalitarianism are irreversible is visibly contrary to the obvious history of democracy.
Fundamentally, governments (and other institutions) give up powers when it profits them to do so. All you need to do is arrange sufficient profit.
I do not personally appreciate more than the minimal necessary restrictions on my liberty, but I am firmly of the belief that in the long run progress is as easy as regression, if that’s what people really want. The trick is to persuade them it’s possible.
I think the sharing of travel plans to promote travel safety is pretty fair but I respect other views. What disappoints me is the mischaracterization of the torture debate in the comment thread that has gone unrebutted.
The Americans are not looking legalize torture. The New York Times, Andrew Sullivan, and The Guardian think so, but the administration is seeking clarification of very ambiguous language. And it was forced to address this by the Supreme Court
Without this, an interrogator could be prosecuted for :torture” by allowing a woman to question a Muslim. (degrading). I think enforced sex discrimination is an example of lowering to the enemy’s level.
Ah hell Mid, I just typed a lengthy response (what a surprise, eh) and had it in preview when I either hit the wrong button or something else happened and it’s gone. I’ll have to work up the energy to try to do it again, but not now, Phooey.
Dear Admin—any chance you can recover something from preview? I had the turing code on it and all.
[Admin: alas no, it will have been flushed at your end. Sorry]
VR,
Been there done that more times than I can stand to remember.
Did you preview it at all before you ‘flushed’ it? Every preveiw constitutes a backup to the cache file
If you are in Firefox, in my WinXP system, you would go to
C:Documents and Settingsuser nameLocal SettingsApplication DataMozillaFirefoxProfilesrandom number.defaultCache
Just look in the profile folder for the cache file. Reorder the folder by date/time. Look for a file about the right size and time down near the time of your boo boo. Open with Firefox. If you guess wrong, try to remember if what you are looking at is before or after your mistake. Move in the appropriate direction.
If that doesn’t work, try this. It gives slightly different path and goes into a lot more detail.
I can’t at the moment remember the system for Explorer. Maybe someone else does.
Good luck. You want to hear ‘rant’, catch me after I’ve deleted something by ‘minimizing’ with the red ‘X’ instead of the white ‘_’.
Thanks, Mid, I’ll go over it with the computer jock when she gets home from work. I think I forgot to hit the post button before I red-xed.
I am constantly humbled by my ineptness with these machines. I’m from the slide rule generation, and, come to think about it, I didn’t much understand how those things worked either. Thank heavens the kids can program the dvd player and the tivo dealy.
VR,
While I wait for your efforts to pay off, I’m sitting with my pockets still full. I’m not done yet and on this topic, don’t know if I will be anytime soon.
Since you are one of the very few people who rationally defend giving government these powers of interrogation and inquisition, I will address my comment in the first person to you. But it is just as much or more intended for those irrational commenters who resort quickly to calling their opponants Islamophiles, terrorist apologists, and any number of other ad hominems when their reason fails.
These interrogation, punishment, etc tactics are part of a flawed strategy. Even if done to tactical perfection they will still lead to strategic failure.
They are based, not surprisingly, on individualist assumptions. That is after all, what we are. But this is their fundamental strategic flaw. Armies enforce their will on nations. Police enforce their will on individuals.
We cannot now, and never will be able to police the world. We can never find and account for all of the potential terrorist acts, much less all of the potential terrorists. An individualist model cannot be unilaterally applyed from the outside onto a collective society.
If our lives and safety depends on finding and extracting information out of suspects through whatever means, even volunteered confessions, we are really and truly screwed. The safety of a nation should never be allowed to depend on capturing and interogating someone. Or even a couple dozen someones. If we have really allowed ourselves to slip this close to oblivion, it’s time to throw out this government. In the ballot boxes if not in the streets, let’s have another revolution and get it right this time.
Like it or not, we are facing collective bodies working for our destruction. And while you all are figuring out how to play rough with some of the harbingers, the demographics are massing over the horizon.
You say we must do these things if we are serious. I say these things are placebos. They give us the illusion of doing something. They feel good. At least to a certain kind of person.
So many on this site wonder at silly people who won’t take Cameron at his word. Yet many of these same people look at crowds of banner waving, effigy burning street marchers chanting death to the west. Angry mobs kill people for cartoons in an obscure language or a line quoted in a lecture. And you guys are trying to catch a few of them, put panties on their heads and psych them into telling us what’s up.
You say I’m squeemish. I’m disgusted. You think I’m hiding from reality. I’m trying to bring your attention back to reality. You say this is essential to our safety. I say in that case, it’s already too late.
It’s almost a cliche, the vicious dog that manages to tear an article of clothing from someone. And then energetically rip it to shreds. Content in the knowledge that it’s “doing something”.
I propose we go back to a conventional method of defense. Your benchmark for success is apparently zero terrorist attacks carried out. I point out to you that the curve never hits ‘zero’. Government interventions can exponentially reach spectacular degrees and still we won’t reach ‘zero’ terrorism. That premise, that goal is flawed.
I watched with great dissappointment, Knute Gingrich deriding any opposition to extentive government powers as trading a city for our rights. I had hoped that with his knowledge of history, he could keep his reason in the face of such irrational and purely emotional arguments.
In the early part of our war in Afghanistan, we were very successful. Our successes and failures in Afghanistan directly equate to our goals and methods switching from military to police parameters.
In Iraq, our half assed military endeavor was successful in what it attempted and our police effort is where our failure has bloomed. That military fantasy doomed the police activity to even quicker and more complete failures.
We must hold collectives responsible for the actions they produce. If a US citizen working out of the US or Britain or Canada or Australia found a way to carbomb the captial building in Pyongyang, would we as a nation let it go unpunished? Of course not! No matter how much we might enjoy the result, we would still enforce our laws and not permit a single citizen to write and execute foreign policy on our behalf. We would, internationally speaking, act as a collective against one of our own citizens. Because if we didn’t other nations could justifiably come in and do it for us.
We need to accept these self proclaimed nations for the collective entities they are, act against their sum total, and let them do their own housekeeping.
We cannot, we must not even attempt, to sort ‘good’ Muslims from ‘bad’ Muslims. We must act nationally against nations.
On a slightly more humorous (for you, not me) note, I think I may have thrown away the remote control for the DVD. It dissappeared at the same time I took out the garbage. I had placed a trash can between the couch and coffee table for sorting mail.
I have the entire winter olympics on DVD, but not finalized yet. So they can not be read by another machine, yet I can’t finalize them with this one. Doh!
The latest on this from the EU, courtesy of The Register.
Best regards
And an article in the Guardian.
Best regards