Tag: politics

It seems that about 40% of the country is convinced that the best possible response to gun violence is for more untrained people to carry around firearms on a regular basis.  Another 40% of the country wants “stronger gun control laws” but what that means depends on who you ask.  And probably about 20% of the country either isn’t sure what the best response is or doesn’t care.

I don’t claim to know what the appropriate response is, but I have some relevant observations.

I’ve known about the ban on using federal research money to study gun violence for a long time.  It’s always been stupid.  If we want to make policy decisions based on anything but emotion then we need data.  Banning federal research money from being used to study one of today’s most prominent policy debates it’s absurd.  This is something everyone should support.  If you think more people having guns will reduce gun deaths then the data gathered in legitimate research should support you.  Maybe it’s true, maybe it’s not, currently we have very little data from which to draw any conclusions.

One accusation from we-need-more-guns advocates is that anyone who wants to modify the process of obtaining firearms is a “Constitution shredder” as if the Constitution is a holy document handed down by God himself.  Here’s a clue for that group: if the Constitution hadn’t been “shredded” in the first place there wouldn’t be a 2nd Amendment to worship.  If the Constitution hadn’t been “shredded” slavery would still be legal and women wouldn’t be allowed to vote.

The Constitution is what “the people” want it to be.  Personally, I’m surprised that given the absolute refusal from the we-need-more-guns groups to enter into rational dialog on how to reduce gun deaths there isn’t more call for simply repealing the 2nd Amendment and ending the “Constitution shredder” argument entirely.

The discussion should be focused on concepts like:

• What does society gain by allowing easy access to firearms?
• What does society lose by allowing easy access to firearms?
• Is that trade-off worth it?
  • Other countries seem to get along just fine without widespread gun ownership.
• Why does the U.S. seem to uniquely, among industrialized nations, have this problem of gun violence?
• What might be reasonable restrictions on firearm access?
  • Many, maybe even most or all, Constitutional rights are tempered with reasonable restrictions for the public good.  Saying no restrictions should be applied just makes you look ignorant.
• Does requiring secure storage of firearms help reduce deaths?
• Should firearm owners undergo mental health assessments?
• How about anger management classes?
• Should safe-handling courses be required for firearm ownership?
• Would any of these changes substantively alter what society loses by allowing easy access to firearms?
  • Does it change whether the trade-off is worth it?

Is anyone with a loud mouth actually trying to discuss and consider these questions?  Or has the public dialog been entirely reduced to “guns are the problem” — “Nuh-uh, guns are the solution!”?

Former Deputy CIA Director John McLaughlin tells NPR, “We may have made a few terrorists uncomfortable for a short period of time in order to get information that we felt was essential to protecting the United States.”

By which he means:

In November 2002, a detainee died from hypothermia after he was held “partially nude and chained to a concrete floor.”

Some detainees were kept awake for up to 180 hours, “usually standing or in painful stress positions, at times with their hands shackled above their heads.”

Some naked detainees were “hooded and dragged up and down corridors while being slapped and punched.”

“At least five CIA detainees were subjected to ‘rectal feeding’ or ‘rectal hydration’ without documented medical need.”

Detainees were kept in total darkness and shackled in isolated cells, bombarded with loud noise and given only a bucket in which to relieve themselves.

The CIA may have waterboarded more than the three detainees it said it waterboarded.

…chained to the ceiling, clothed in a diaper, and forced to go to the bathroom on himself.

Multiple CIA detainees subjected to the techniques suffered from hallucinations, paranoia, insomnia and tried to mutilate themselves.

…became completely unresponsive after a period of intense waterboarding.

At least 26 were held “wrongfully,” partly because there was no information to justify their detention.

The waterboarding technique was physically harmful, inducing convulsions and vomiting.

Detainees were often held down, naked, on a tarp on the floor, with the tarp pulled up around them to form a makeshift tub, while cold or refrigerated water was poured on them.

Others were hosed down repeatedly while they were shackled naked, in the standing sleep deprivation position.

…the CIA instructed personnel that the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah would take “precedence” over his medical care.

CIA officers also threatened at least three detainees with harm to their families—to include threats to harm the children of a detainee, threats to sexually abuse the mother of a detainee, and a threat to “cut [a detainee’s] mother’s throat.”

Quotes from NPR, CNN, and SF Chronicle articles; and from the document itself.

And it goes on and on and on and on….

Is this what you consider acceptable treatment of prisoners?  Would we ever accept this if done to U.S. military personnel?  Is this simply making them uncomfortable?  How could anyone read those descriptions and say all we did was, “made a few terrorists uncomfortable.”?

Having just finished my graduate course on terrorism the release of the summary of the report regarding the CIA’s interrogation activities is particularly interesting to me.  [NPR coverage here.]

A lot of words have been written about whether the treatment of prisoners was “technically torture.”  First, I think it should be seen as a clear sign that you’re doing something wrong when you have to spend that much energy arguing over whether something is technically torture or not.  If the best you can do to defend your actions is to say “it wasn’t ‘technically’ torture, so it was okay” then you’re doing something wrong.

Second, instead of spending pages and pages (as the Department of Justice did) analyzing the legal definition of torture and whether you’ve violated it; let’s use a much easier route.  Sample the population and describe the actions as having been committed against U.S. civilians captured by, let’s say, North Korea.  If we consider it torture for North Korea to do that to our citizens then it’s torture for us to do it to anybody else.

The argument then usually falls back to, “well, so what if it was torture, we needed the intel it resulted in.”  Despite this being a highly disputed claim (especially within the new report) it’s irrelevant.  Torture is wrong.  Efficacy does not matter.  Why?  Why is torture wrong?  The simplest argument is that it’s wrong for the same reason that capital punishment is wrong.  At some point you’re going to do it to someone who is completely innocent and there’s no taking it back.  But it’s wrong beyond that.  It’d be wrong even if you absolutely knew without any doubt whatsoever that the victim was guilty.  Despite the copious quantities of evidence that torture probably doesn’t work, results in backlash, alienates allies, and radicalizes enemies we need no data points here.  This is moral conviction.  Treating another conscious, living thing that way is wrong.

The only thing I find more disgusting than the fact that these actions were carried out in our names is that no one will be held accountable for it.  No one has been or ever will be charged with violating human rights or international conventions.  They did these disgusting things and told the world they did it for us.  Your name, my name, my daughter’s name, our flag, our country have been slapped on the use of torture claiming “We Approve!”

I do not approve.

It was wrong.

We as a country need to change.  We need to apologize to the victims and their families.  Yes, even though the prisoners most likely were awful people, what we did was unacceptable.  The idea that the victim was a bad person does not excuse mistreating them.  We need to do something to ensure it doesn’t happen again.  We need to show why the United States is better than a terrorist organization, not stoop to their level.  If we’re going to claim to stand for freedom and justice then we need to actually practice what we preach.

We need to be better.