Safety Dance Part 2

Sometimes it's hard being a liberal. Hard, that is, when you have to watch other liberals miss all the really important parts of the argument or, worse yet, fail to frame the argument effectively in the first place.

If I hear one more fellow liberal talk about "how America is perceived in the world" as a primary reason not to torture people I think I'm going to jump through the television.

Joan Walsh from salon.com made this argument a while ago on Hardball, and she stuck in my mind because she sounded so lame doing it.

When people on the left argue this point, they often employ the following arguments:

(1) torture diminishes our moral standing and/or makes people hate us;
(2) torture never works.

The first argument is a trap, while the second breaks a good point -- that torture does not work reliably -- by pushing it too far.

Let's take the first: talk to a security-minded (read: scared) conservative, or even a liberal security hawk, and he or she will say -- correctly -- that moral standing is not even of secondary importance in a war, and that all sorts of atrocious things happen in wars. The firebombing of Dresden may even come up.

Now you could counter, correctly, that in a counterinsurgency war a lot of factors are more important than body count, and that public opinion is one of them, but now you're back to playing defense. Essentially, adopting this argument puts you in the position of arguing in favor of opinions rather than outcomes -- never a winning strategy in a national security debate. Not to mention that a smart conservative could gum up the works by pointing out that most of the governments running around torturing Muslims are also run by Muslims.

The second argument -- that torture never works -- goes too far because it's reasonable to assume that some non-zero percentage of the time, some guilty person will be detained and will go on to make a genuine confession or render useful information under duress. Insisting that can never happen makes us sound like we're repeating a slogan rather than cold-bloodedly analyzing reality.

When liberals talk about torture, they need to remember that they're framing an argument against an opponent who is playing to fear. So our arguments need to be about professionalism and problem-solving first, rather than moral standing.

My ideal talking point would be something like

-The name of the game is counterterrorism/counterinsurgency, and CT/CI is a zero-sum game at best. Every time you have to have an agent pick up a phone or jump in a car or do a Google search to run down some bullshit lead from a detainee who lied to get the pain to stop, you have an asset you're not fielding against the enemy, who now enjoys an additional degree of freedom against you. That's a losing strategy, and I'd actually like us to win this one if it's alright with you. So let's have the interrogating done by professionals rather than closet sadists, so we can win this one and move on.

Since a popular jumping-off point for this debate is the "ticking bomb" argument that Alan Dershowitz and others are so fond of, the following argument is also handy:

-Ticking bomb is fine if you're lucky enough to get the right guy, lucky enough to get him at the right time, and lucky enough that he breaks and tells you the truth in time; but all the other times you torture the wrong guy (or the guilty detainee lies to you) you're just running down the clock on your own side. Do you want a counterterrorism strategy based on luck, or based on science and empirical evidence?

Liberals need to flip and reframe this thing -- we should be referring to the "ticking bomb argument" as "the luck argument". Next time you're arguing the point with a torture apologist and he mentions the ticking bomb, you say "ahh, the luck argument! That's fine; you want to keep America safe with luck. I want to keep America safe using science and evidence and ruthless professionalism. But good luck with the luck thing."

This condenses very nicely down to "luck is not a security policy."

The reason I'm woofing on about how to argue a point which really shouldn't even need arguing is because this struggle -- war on extremism, overseas contingency operation, G-SAVE, whatever -- really is going to be a long game, and it's inevitable that we'll take some hits. Our enemies can't defeat us directly, but they can cause us to engage in self-defeating behavior. If the next terrorist attack sends us into some nightmare revenge spiral of secret detentions and internment camps and torture and who knows what else, the Al-Qaedas of the world will have accomplished their objective, which is to destroy American civilization. They made some headway under the Bush administration, so those of us who love our country with our eyes open have to win the argument decisively. The torture apologists need to be not just defeated, but utterly discredited, and the precedent needs to be neutralized, in order protect our most precious common posession: the structure and function of American civil society.

Safety Dance Part 1

It's been a bad patch for the GOP, but there's still some good news to be had. Republicans have finally found something they trust government to do correctly and well: torture and secret imprisonment.

Pretty amazing, when you think about it. Talk to any ten Republicans about, say, universal healthcare. At least nine of them will give a little involuntary shudder and say that your health is waaay too important to entrust to the government, which obviously Can't Do Anything Right.

Mention more aggressive emissions or fuel efficiency standards, and chances are the response will echo what Mike Huckabee said to the Daily Show's Jon Stewart when he raised the issue: "do you really want to drive a car designed by the government?"

Pick any service or activity: food aid for poor people. Civil infrastructure. Education. Wildlife preservation. Regulation of financial markets or power companies or the factories that feed the country. Regulation of anything at all. The provision of any service to anyone whose name does not end in Inc. You're sure to hear the same refrain: the government is guaranteed to screw it up. The old conservative paragon himself, Ronald Reagan, was often heard to say that the scariest words in the English language are

"I'm from the government, and I'm here to help."

Imagine the horror of the modern conservative, living in a society with such an extensive (if poorly maintained) physical and social infrastructure, complete with safety nets for the poor and the aged. A nightmare from which he struggles to awaken! Worse, actually, now that Barack Obama is president. You only have to witness his treatment of the wretched hedge fund managers of the earth to know that the man is a Socialist/Communist/Stalinist/Godknowswhatist. Doesn't he know that government Can't Do Anything Right? From Jon Voight to John Boehner, the political right is scared to death of what such a man could do.

Thankfully, there's a phrase coined by the previous administration which is the antidote to the fear:

"I'm from the government, and I can arrest people arbitrarily, detain them indefinitely, and torture them with impunity".

When conservatives hear that phrase, it doesn't strike them as the scariest in the English language. Apparently it doesn't even rate in the top ten.

When conservatives hear that phrase, it makes them feel...safe.