JayB

Noting that the obscene amount of money spent every year in commercial propaganda leads to sales is "farfetched"? Apparently, you didn't go to business school. Nope - no plans to either. You? Me neither, but again I don't need to go to school in order to take note of the obvious: manipulative commercial propaganda is necessary to get people to buy products they otherwise wouldn't buy because they don't need them. I know it is your greatest wish to portray people like me as elitists who only have disdain for the "great grazing herd", but this terminology is yours, not mine, and I only disdain the demagogues, not their victims. I am hardly alone in refusing unsustainable consumerism and people follow different path to reach the same conclusions so I fail to understand how your question would be relevant, except of course to shift the goal posts and not discuss the role of commercial propaganda in getting people to purchase stuff that is harmful to them and their environment. I won't repeat the questions I posted for Justin, who seems to share your perspective on this matter, but I hope that you'll consider them and respond, because I'm just as curious about how you think about these things. For the sake of discussion, let's take your position as granted. Don't sane adults have a right to engage in activities that put their lives, health, etc at risk if they so choose, so long as the way that they do so confines the direct risk and potential harm to themselves? Isn't there an argument for preserving the right to engage in risky/harmful behavior so long as it satisfies the above test?

"Senate Leaders Balk at Closing Guantánamo Prison" http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/19/senate-leaders-balk-at-closing-guantanamo-prison/?hp "Sigh. It all seemed so simple once, didn't it, Nancy..."

But there is a critical difference between keeping something legal, and legalizing something, even disregarding the nature of the subjects. A "laissez-faire" mentality sounds perfectly fine for something that is already an equilibrated aspect of society, but I am wary of the inductive argument that this must also be the best way to liberate a currently restricted behavior. When deliberately changing conditions 'we' probably have a responsibility to buffer the inhumanities of the transition to this greater freedom. Of course nobody here is advocating instant deregulation of drug legalities and markets, but it is obviously more interesting to find something to argue about. Also, as much as social darwinism offers a perfectly cruel and simple solution to problems like overeating and addiction, I'm not convinced that it's the best that we can do. And I find it particularly unsettling that the selective pressures that are weeding people out at present are not natural circumstances but rather highly engineered industries by which a few disproportionately wealthy deceitfully prey on their own society. Society may be perpetually ill because this is a necessary side-effect of (largely) private profits. I agree with you on the first paragraph, but differ in that I think that the current state of affairs is much worse than the endpoint we'd reach if all drugs were currently produced, distributed, and sold like alcohol and nicotine. The bit about selective pressures and disproportionately wealthy deceitfully preying on society bit is where I think I disagree with you the most, and consequently what I'm most curious about. The first question that might help me better understand your perspective is - how do we know that the way that they live and the choices that they make aren't an accurate reflection of their true preferences? Even if there was an objective way to determine this - and I don't think there is - how would we determine who gets the power to determine what choices made on their behalf are acceptable, and where should the line be drawn concerning the freedoms that people have when choosing between various items available in the marketplace? I'm talking about goods and services that satisfy all of the existing rules that we have in place to prevent the sale of goods that are defective, adulterated, etc. Moving onto the role of deceit in building wealth - do you really believe that this is the central mechanism by which people build commercial fortunes in a situations in which competition prevails? People get conned into buying a crappy product that doesn't satisfy their expectations...and they don't seek out available alternatives, but just keep buying the same thing over and over again? Is this model even possible in the absence of government intervention to create a protected cartel that it insulates from competition? Where competition prevails, are consumers really at the mercy of businesses, or is it the other way around? If it's the former, how is it that you have - evidently - managed to carve out a psychic niche for yourself as an informed, independent, and autonomous fellow that external observes can be confident is making choices that represent his true self interest, and isn't in need of an external authority to supervise his eating, etc?

Noting that the obscene amount of money spent every year in commercial propaganda leads to sales is "farfetched"? Apparently, you didn't go to business school. Nope - no plans to either. You? Is there something special about you that renders you immune to its effects and thereby permits you to exist as an autonomous dissident amongst the great grazing herd? If so, how did you acquire those qualities, and is this a status that others can attain independently?

Witever.

I think that starting with legalized marijuana sold under very restricted circumstances and seeing how it goes is the best that anyone can realistically hope for in practice. When it comes to principle, I'm not sure that protecting people from the harm that they may or may not inflict on themselves constitutes a legitimate argument for criminalizing things that adults do to themselves or other consenting adults (note that this is not an argument about enforcing rules that govern where, when, or under what circumstances it's legal to consume or be under the influence of drugs) . Seems like you'd have a pretty compelling argument for confiscating all of the climbing gear in the country and outlawing climbing if it were. I'm not sure that you can make a logically consistent case for keeping climbing legal if you want to keep the consumption of cocaine, etc illegal on that basis. It probably goes without saying that I don't lose much sleep worrying about the sale and marketing of fast/processed food - but I do wonder how a fellow like yourself accounts for the rise of Whole Foods and all of the other assorted organica, micro-brews vs mega-brews, etc in light of the concerns that you've posted above. Are there any limits to the model of consumer-as-hapless-naif that might mitigate against adults that aren't in the habbit of using drugs from doing so if they were marketed like anything else? Any other factors - from religious to rational to cultural - that might stand in the way of ADM enslaving mankind with Crankies brand cereal?

Indeed - no one is arguing that we should do one instead of the other, but that was never the point. It's not as though policy makers have been confronting their choice while we've held the detainees in a booth with two doors, and the fate that befell them depended on the spin of a roulette wheel where red equaled a painful interrogation, and black meant being stuffed back into a hut on a bombing range whence they were promptly blown to pieces. The point is, we've resorted to both tactics in response to different opportunities and circumstances. Killing terrorists outright, let alone killing civilians in the process, is clearly a greater affront to all of the moral principles that get compromised during a waterboarding session. If you wish to argue the contrary, I welcome reading that argument. If waterboarding the likes of KSM constitutes a moral stain on our national soul that can never be cleansed, then it stands to reason that executions by explosive, especially those that kill civilians along with the intended target, are far worse offenses in any moral framework that claims even the slightest basis in logic or reason. It's worth asking, then, whether our moral status as a nation really been elevated by relinquishing waterboarding or an equivalent to "special circumstances" that the President has to specifically endorse while there's no indication whatsoever that we'll give up the use of airstrikes to kill the sort of guys that we subjected to waterboarding when we could get our hands on them. Ditto for the litany of other tactics that the Obama administration has retained. Do the policy choices that he's made on matters ranging from trial by military tribunal to rendition really represent significant moral departures from those developed and used by the Bush administration? I'll grant you there are practical and political advantages to modifying your rhetoric and making cosmetic policy changes in response to public sentiments, but I was never under the impression that the most impassioned critics of the Bush administration were relegating morality to the bottom of the list of their stated motives when they were equating the man to Hitler, scoping the real-estate ads to pick out their new digs in Toronto, etc. I'm also not convinced that the flurry of inaction and scarcely audible din of mild disapproval with which the left has greeted Obama's policy choices on military tribunals, renditions, etc would have greeted the very same moves by the McCain administration. What this says about the motives of the once impassioned critics of the Bush administration who were ready to douse anyone nearby with a monsoon worth of high-decibel spittle whenever any of the above came up for discussion, yet are strangely composed at the moment is for each of us to evaluate on our own. I'm reasonably confident that I know your answer already, but if you feel like spelling it out, type away.

I'm not sure how to spell it out any more explicitly than I have, other than attempting to summarize it as "If you are outraged by torture you should (logically) be more upset about assassination by explosives." The fact that this evidently isn't the case is what's interesting to me, and I suppose that this thread was an attempt to get the more vocal critics of the tactics used by the Bush administration to explain why torturing the likes of KSM was a moral travesty that desecrated our national values (now outlawed, with gaping loophole, by Obama), but using missiles/bombs to kill them and anyone around them (still part of our tactical repetoire under Obama) didn't throw the same folks into paroxysms of rage, despair, and recriminations. I personally think that this supposed conundrum can be explained in a single sentence. Obama isn't Bush, and politics, rather than principle, motivated the last eight years of years of teeth gnashing. How else to explain the relative quiescence that's greeted the parade of announcements from the Obama administration that they'll be keeping most of the architecture that the Bush administration put in place to prosecute the GWOT? Just to revist some highlights, here's a repost of the headlines that I included earlier in the thread: [font:Comic Sans MS]"Obama’s War on Terror May Resemble Bush’s in Some Areas" http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/18/us/politics/18policy.html "Moreover, the nominee for C.I.A. director, Leon E. Panetta, opened a loophole in Mr. Obama’s interrogation restrictions. At his hearing, Mr. Panetta said that if the approved techniques were “not sufficient” to get a detainee to divulge details he was suspected of knowing about an imminent attack, he would ask for “additional authority.” To be sure, Mr. Panetta emphasized that the president could not bypass antitorture statutes, as Bush lawyers claimed. And he said that waterboarding — a technique that induces the sensation of drowning, and that the Bush administration said was lawful — is torture. How about Military Tribunals? "U.S. May Revive Guantánamo Military Courts" http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/02/us/politics/02gitmo.html Et....cetera. "Obama Considers Detaining Terror Suspects Indefinitely" http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124223286506515765.html "Obama preserves renditions as counter-terrorism tool" http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/washingtondc/la-na-rendition1-2009feb01,0,4661244.story "Under executive orders issued by Obama recently, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the United States. Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said that the rendition program might be poised to play an expanded role going forward because it was the main remaining mechanism -- aside from Predator missile strikes -- for taking suspected terrorists off the street." "Obama Moves to Block Release of Detainee Abuse Photos" http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/military/jan-june09/photos_05-13.html "President Obama has decided to bar the release of photos showing U.S. personnel mistreating detainees in Iraq and Afghani[/font]stan amid concerns the backlash could jeopardize troops abroad." Plus a bonus from today's headlines: "Obama revives tribunals for Gitmo detainees" AP Link One need only imagine the avalanche of "principled" outrage, recriminations, and imaginary threats to leave for Canada that would have greeted the very same policy moves by a McCain administration in order to firmly establish this point. If the deafening silence that's greeted all of the above across the leftosphere permits any other conclusion, I'm certainly open to hearing why. Again - I'll restate that I'm not criticizing Obama here. He clearly understand the political and practical necessity of catering to public sentiment while, aside from a bit of rhetorical window dressing, retaining the tools that he feels will be necessary to combat AQ and their ilk.

You can voice an objection to whatever you wish - but voicing objections is one thing, having a morally and logically coherent argument that you base your objections on is quite another. I haven't been saying that torturing the likes of KSM in an effort to extract information that may help prevent AQ or their equivalent from pulling off an attack in which tens, hundreds, or thousands of civilians isn't something that one can make principled and practical objections to. Just that I have a great deal of difficulty understanding how someone can oppose using a tactic like waterboarding on ethical grounds, without having considerably stronger objections to blowing the same person - along with his children, family, pet chickens, etc to pieces with an airstrike in order to achieve the same end...preventing the said person from orchestrating, assisting in, conducting, etc terrorist attacks in which they deliberately kill as many civilians as possible. I think that it makes good practical sense to blow them to pieces with a missile or bomb instead of apprehending them, since killing them in this fashion is likely to cost us far less politically than capturing them, detaining them, and interrogating them - even if this means killing multiple other people who just happen to be in the same madrassa. I'm just not about to pretend that it's more moral, or that making pledges not to torture AQ operatives that we happen to capture alive is anything but a practical and political concession so long as we'd gladly execute them with explosives when given the chance. Also makes more practical and political sense to kill all pirates at a distance and let the ocean critters tend to their disposal than actually try to apprehend them, detain them, and try them - but I'd never argue that it's the more moral thing to to. I also think that it's politically and practically sound to have rules that give the impression that we'd never use any techniques that could reasonably be described as torture, no matter how dire the threat, or how many innocent lives are at stake - even though the reality is that in practice, there's virtually no country out there that wouldn't make an exception in certain circumstances. Thus we have the loophole that Obama wisely, but discretely, included in the rules that prohibit torture. Just trying to have an honest discussion here, Matt. I'm not prepared to pretend that some largely rhetorical changes in tactics, driven by what's politically and practically expedient, amount to a fundamental change in the calculus that we use to decide what's permissible to prevent additional terrorists attacks, but if that makes everyone else happy - I'll go along for the ride. *The protectionism aside was in response to RM's reply, which was in response to a comment I made in another thread. Seemed like that'd be clear enough to anyone who was scrolling through the thread, but I'll try to be more explicit. **Substitute WWII for any conflict between two parties involving violence. "If we do X then we're no better than the Y that we're fighting against." Police shoot and kill people who are...shooting and killing people, etc - but the fact that they're both using guns to kill people doesn't render them morally equivalent to one another. Seems germaine to the "If we do X then we're no better than the terrorists..." refrain or RM's comments about bombings and Nuremburg above.

"Look at a copy of "On Snow and Rock" by Gaston Rebuffat, turn to p.23 and read the photo caption which begins,"At a moment like this there is no longer any charm in this enchanted world, no more poetry in this poetic universe." The last line says,"Fear is an ugly thing, but temerity may be disastrous." Great passage - thanks for sharing that.

FWIW the height of Niagara falls is listed (first hit on Google anyway) at 183 feet. Obviously way more volume on Niagara, but that should give everyone a clear reference for the magnitude of this drop.

The fact that we wouldn't get nearly as worked up when discussing whether a president authorized jaywalking as a necessary expedient for prosecuting the GWOT suggests to me that the moral dimension here is more central than the legal one. With regards to warfare, we've had this discussion before on this board, and there are very serious people who are prepared to argue that using physically equivalent means - such as dropping large numbers of bombs on population centers - to prosecute a war renders both sides of the conflict morally equal to one another. Given the respective ends that the Axis and Allied powers were using force to pursue, and likely implications for humanity in the event that a particular side prevailed, that's a very difficult argument to make - but I'd be interested in reading what you have to say if you choose to pursue that argument. With regards to protectionism (way different conversation) I used the term as shorthand for the government using it's power to create cartels that it insulates from competition, and which are accordingly free to force consumers to buy their goods when they wouldn't otherwise do so, or pay a higher price for them than they would if competitors - both foreign and domestic - were not subject to the various sanctions that the government imposed on them. Neither party has a perfect record on this, but if you are prepared to argue that the Republican party is just as likely to endorse economic policies that are consistent with this practice I'd certainly be interested in reading the case that you put forward.

Purely a moral analysis. I've just been arguing that killing members or AQ - let alone any non-terrorist bystanders - with high explosives is actually a greater moral transgression than using waterboarding and whatever other forms of torture were used to extract information from KSM and other "high value" captives. Consequently, anyone who is unwilling to endorse "enhanced interrogation" of known or suspected terrorists under any and all circumstances for moral reasons should be calling for rules that categorically rule out using airstrikes to kill them. I can understand the strategic and PR reasons for doing so, since torturing OBL in an effort to extract information about ongoing terrorists plots after capturing him would inflame world opinion much more than blowing him and anyone within a 100 meter radius to pieces in an airstrike, but those are practical considerations, not moral ones. I'd agree that there are a great many practical reasons that support the Obama administration's policy on this issue - "special circumstances" and all - but let's not kid ourselves about our moral status while we're still willing to drop JDAM's on houses containing terrorists to achieve the same ends.

I have conclusive evidence that proves that you can tear through a few inches of rib cartilage by hitting a drop that's many, many times smaller than that. Incredible.

Those are the rules, I think that they're important, and I'm glad that we have them - but I don't think I'm alone in recognizing the fact that there are situations where the conventional rules no longer provide a reliable path to the most ethical outcome. The fact that the Obama administration has quietly added an loophole that allows the president to authorize "additional measures" if the conventional interrogation techniques don't generate the information we need to contend with a particular crisis seems to be a tacit concession of this point. It's also worth adding that the fact that we have specific rules of conduct and obligations that we assign to the handling of captives does nothing to clarify the questions concerning the relative morality of waterboarding vs missile strikes. Having said that, I think we're in agreement that it's bad PR, that the strategic damage it does generally exceeds the value of the intelligence that it generates, that there are probably ways to get the same information from captives that are more clever, less cruel, and more reliable, and that the Obama administration has generally gotten things right on this front.

I'm one of the many people who was already aware of the mental and physical differences between the two acts for the person who commits them. It's not clear to me that it's obvious that the guy who drops the firebombs on Tokyo is going to sleep any easier than the guy who waterboards KSM or an equivalent - that would seem to depend on the fellow's individual constitution and the historical circumstances in which the act took place, how his peers and society at large viewed the conflict and his actions, etc. Anyhow - now that you've taken the time to restate the what we both understood from the beginning, I hope that you'll eventually follow that up with an argument that makes it clear why waterboarding terrorists to prevent additional terrorist attacks on civilians is less ethical than slaughtering them (and anyone who happens to be in the vicinity) with explosives to prevent additional attacks on civilians. *Glib - maybe. One liners - much to the dismay of many here - no.

Back to the Future...

Is this the public-(exept-me)-as-hapless-pawn-of-marketers meme again? It's consistent with a certain political perspective, but the scenario you're invoking seems at least as far fetched as some of the pandora's-box-of-licentiousness-and-vice hypotheticals that I've heard conjured up whenever the subject of legalizing marijuana comes up. There's been a massive decline in smoking, which seemed to be well underway before most of the restrictions on smoking and advertising cigarettes were in place, so it's not clear to me the public is always incapable of making choices about addictive substances that are at odds with the motives of the people selling them. Having said that, there was a time in this country when opiates, cocaine, etc were branded and sold, and you could even order your herioin + syringe straight from the Sears catalog. That did correspond with the most extensive opiate addiction in this country's history (so far as I know), and spawned no small amount of personal misery both for the addicts and anyone who suffered as a direct and indirect consequence of their addiction. Pretty much every aspect of the current drug policy represents a worse state of affairs - from my fringe perspective on personal liberties, to the social and criminal consequences at home and abroad. On all of these fronts, I also think it's considerably worse than what we'd get in a situation where society is bombarded with messages about the desirability of a particular brand of crack, and adults are free to buy and consume as much of it as they wish in their own homes or in private businesses. People like to have sex and modify their consciousness's with various chemicals. The sooner we stop lying to ourselves about the kind of people we are and modify our laws to decriminalize all manifestations of the above drives that take place in private settings, the better IMO. Hell - at least they'd be selling real chemical compounds that produce real physiological effects, which is considerably more honest and ethical than the entire system of commerce behind the entirely legal business of, say, homeopathy, but that's a separate discussion.

Another move by the Obama administration that I'm happy with. I'll never be completely happy so long as I have to choose between voting for the party of creationism on one hand, and protectionism on the other - but I'll take what I can get where I can get it.

Per your judgment - what's the critical moral difference, for whom is this most significant. I'd probably find it easier to launch a missile at a house containing KSM from a fighter jet than waterboard him, but that does nothing to render the former more moral than the latter in any moral analysis that's anywhere close to honest and rigorous. I'm very interested in how you understand and analyze these things, so I hope that if you respond, you'll take the time to put forward something more substantial than a glib one-liner.

"Drug Decriminalization in Portugal: Lessons for Creating Fair and Successful Drug Policies by Glenn Greenwald" ...decriminalization has become increasingly popular in Portugal since 2001. Except for some far-right politicians, very few domestic political factions are agitating for a repeal of the 2001 law. And while there is a widespread perception that bureaucratic changes need to be made to Portugal's decriminalization framework to make it more efficient and effective, there is no real debate about whether drugs should once again be criminalized. More significantly, none of the nightmare scenarios touted by preenactment decriminalization opponents — from rampant increases in drug usage among the young to the transformation of Lisbon into a haven for "drug tourists" — has occurred. The political consensus in favor of decriminalization is unsurprising in light of the relevant empirical data. Those data indicate that decriminalization has had no adverse effect on drug usage rates in Portugal, which, in numerous categories, are now among the lowest in the EU, particularly when compared with states with stringent criminalization regimes. Although postdecriminalization usage rates have remained roughly the same or even decreased slightly when compared with other EU states, drug-related pathologies — such as sexually transmitted diseases and deaths due to drug usage — have decreased dramatically. Drug policy experts attribute those positive trends to the enhanced ability of the Portuguese government to offer treatment programs to its citizens — enhancements made possible, for numerous reasons, by decriminalization. Report: http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=10080 Podcast: http://www.cato.org/event.php?eventid=5887

No argument there. Regarding the Taliban using folks as human shields - what's the point? That's not ethical and neither is torture. Is this a race to the bottom rung? Now Jim, I think you'd agree that there's plenty of room for making distinctions between various alternatives in the "not ethical" category. The most important question in ethics, IMO, is "Compared to what?" Seems like there are many cases where the luxury of choosing between what appear to be genuinely good and bad options is absent, and we're left with choosing between alternatives that - in more ideal circumstances - would fall squarely onto the "not ethical" side of the moral ledger.

I'm not opposed to using bombs, missiles, artillery, etc to kill terrorists. Provided that we are talking about people who strive to intentionally kill as many civilians as possible, using whatever means they can get their hands on, using all of the above to kill them while striving to minimize civilian casualties strikes me as immensely regrettable but necessary. Having said that, in ethical terms, killing suspected/confirmed terrorists with explosives seems much worse than detaining and waterboarding (or whatever other tactic that the US has used) them. Killing non-terrorists in the vicinity, even while striving to minimize these deaths, seems infinitely more so. What puzzles me is why waterboarding a sack like Khaled Sheikh Mohammad generates so much breast-beating, gnashing of the teeth, etc, while blowing him - and anyone around him - to pieces with a JDAM would have elicited little more than a shrug.

What's the Obama admin's final word on interrogations? I seem to remember them rhetorically and nominally outlawing "enhanced interrogation techniques," except in those cases where the president specifically authorizes them. Has this changed? "Obama’s War on Terror May Resemble Bush’s in Some Areas" http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/18/us/politics/18policy.html "Moreover, the nominee for C.I.A. director, Leon E. Panetta, opened a loophole in Mr. Obama’s interrogation restrictions. At his hearing, Mr. Panetta said that if the approved techniques were “not sufficient” to get a detainee to divulge details he was suspected of knowing about an imminent attack, he would ask for “additional authority.” To be sure, Mr. Panetta emphasized that the president could not bypass antitorture statutes, as Bush lawyers claimed. And he said that waterboarding — a technique that induces the sensation of drowning, and that the Bush administration said was lawful — is torture. How about Military Tribunals? "U.S. May Revive Guantánamo Military Courts" http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/02/us/politics/02gitmo.html Et....cetera. "Obama Considers Detaining Terror Suspects Indefinitely" http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124223286506515765.html "Obama preserves renditions as counter-terrorism tool" http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/washingtondc/la-na-rendition1-2009feb01,0,4661244.story "Under executive orders issued by Obama recently, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the United States. Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said that the rendition program might be poised to play an expanded role going forward because it was the main remaining mechanism -- aside from Predator missile strikes -- for taking suspected terrorists off the street." "Obama Moves to Block Release of Detainee Abuse Photos" http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/military/jan-june09/photos_05-13.html "President Obama has decided to bar the release of photos showing U.S. personnel mistreating detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan amid concerns the backlash could jeopardize troops abroad." ------------------------------------------------------------------ Note that I'm not criticizing the Obama administration's approach here. The correct mix of politically deft symbolism and pragmatism IMO. However - the chorus of non-indignation that's greeted these moves by the erstwhile principled opponents of all of the above is sufficient to confirm what their true motives have been all along. I'll also add that despite the fact that I think that the Obama administration has made the right strategic moves on this front - all of this fretting about water-boarding the likes of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad is a bit precious and bizarre in light of the fact that pulping women, children, and other innocents with explosives while targeting suspected terrorists with missiles, bombs, artillery shells, etc is considered a regrettable but necessary tactic, and seldom if ever inflames public sentiment in the same fashion that "enhanced interrogations," etc have. That's a mysterious aspect of conventional morality that I'll leave it for others to figure out.