I sometimes ask my students, "So why don't dictators with big Swiss bank accounts just split and live out their lives on the Riveria before things go really sour and they're forced to run for their lives?" Well, some do--there was a happy ending for Idi Amin, for example, who lived out his life in relative comfort in Saudi Arabia.
But a lot don't because the people around them know perfectly well what happens if the guy at the top cuts and runs: they end up prosecuted as criminals by the next regime.
In a shabby kind of way, this is what has just happened with this whole thing. The Supreme Court made a decision that made the people around Bush shit their pants, because they recognized that there was some significant possibility that they'd be prosecuted for war crimes at some later date. So they're seeking preemptive immunity, and desperately trying to lock it in before the uncertainty of November. The sad thing is that so many Republicans in Congress were willing to hand it to them so easily--normally this is a good opportunity to stall, or suddenly have to attend to that blister on one's foot that's been posing a medical problem all summer long, or something.
But very shabby. Beyond all the grand stuff about American democracy, it has a banana republic bathos about it. Makes me feel as if I'm going to go to the Post Office and see Bob Mugabe's picture over the counter, right like I'm living in Harare again.
Tim, what do you know about presidential records, or, what's your sense of how much insight we'll gain in twenty or thirty years into the deliberations of the executive branch?
Increasingly, I'm bothered by our failure at our "city on a hill" role. I think even repressive governments have to take their populations into account; many of the descriptions of the end of the Eastern Block make it sound like the governments fell because the people pushed. And I do think that people pushed, in part, because they could see something better and freer working. It's easier to believe that something could work for you if it works for others.
Now we seem to function in exactly the opposite fashion. We are the richest and most secure nation of the face of the earth. We fear only terrorists: there are no serious internal problems, and no country dares attack us. Nearly every other country on earth has a worse risk profile than we have: serious material lack, potentially existential enemies (inc. us), internal problems, etc. And if we need to curtail our freedoms to deal with our problems, it seems all too easy to make the case that every other country may need to restrict freedom more, out of a sense of prudence. China has over a billion people, is transitioning its economy, and has rural riots including tens of thousands of people--aren't they allowed a few secret prisons, and a little torture, for the sake of secure, safe, and orderly general population?
5: Yes. Also worrisome is the Iran Freedom Support Act which the House just passed. I posted this in the "What Does a Person Do?" thread, but it's worth mentionign again.
Isn't the torture bill basically a rubber-stamping of something that the "unitary executive" was already doing, and (to judge by past actions) would continue to do regardless? Given that Congress has deteriorated into a bad joke, and seems in practice to have little real power of oversight, one could reasonably argue that "twilight of the republic" arrived some time before this. It's just that this episode really drives that point unmistakably home.
NO. 17. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 1721. What Measures are actually taken by wicked and desperate Ministers to ruin and enslave their Country. (Trenchard)
Sir,
As under the best princes, and the best servants to princes alone, it is safe to speak what is true of the worst; so, according to my former promise to the publick, I shall take the advantage of our excellent King's most gentle government, and the virtuous administration of an uncorrupt ministry, to warn mankind against the mischiefs which may hereafter be dreaded from corrupt ones. It is too true, that every country in the world has sometimes groaned under that heavy misfortune, and our own as much as any; though I cannot allow it to be true, what Monsieur de Witt has long since observed, that the English court has always been the most thievish court in Europe.
Few men have been desperate enough to attack openly, and barefaced, the liberties of a free people. Such avowed conspirators can rarely succeed: The attempt would destroy itself. Even when the enterprize is begun and visible, the end must be hid, or denied. It is the business and policy of traitors, so to disguise their treason with plausible names, and so to recommend it with popular and bewitching colours, that they themselves shall be adored, while their work is detested, and yet carried on by those that detest it.
Thus one nation has been surrendered to another under the fair name of mutual alliance: The fortresses of a nation have been given up, or attempted to be given up, under the frugal notion of saving charges to a nation; and commonwealths have been trepanned into slavery, by troops raised or increased to defend them from slavery.
It may therefore be of service to the world, to shew what measures have been taken by corrupt ministers, in some of our neighbouring countries, to ruin and enslave the people over whom they presided; to shew by what steps and gradations of mischief nations have been undone, and consequently what methods may be hereafter taken to undo others: And this subject I rather choose, because my countrymen may be the more sensible of, and know how to value the inestimable blessing of living under the best prince, and the best established government in the universe, where we have none of these things to fear.
Such traitors will probably endeavour first to get their prince into their possession, and, like Sejanus, shut him up in a little island, or perhaps make him a prisoner in his court; whilst, with full range, they devour his dominions, and plunder his subjects. When he is thus secluded from the access of his friends, and the knowledge of his affairs, he must be content with such misrepresentations as they shall find expedient to give him. False cases will be stated, to justify wicked counsel; wicked counsel will be given, to procure unjust orders. He will be made to mistake his foes for his friends, his friends for his foes; and to believe that his affairs are in the highest prosperity, when they are in the greatest distress; and that publick matters go on in the greatest harmony, when they are in the utmost confusion.
They will be ever contriving and forming wicked and dangerous projects, to make the people poor, and themselves rich; well knowing that dominion follows property; that where there are wealth and power, there will be always crowds of servile dependents; and that, on the contrary, poverty dejects the mind, fashions it to slavery, and renders it unequal to any generous undertaking, and incapable of opposing any bold usurpation. They will squander away the publick money in wanton presents to minions, and their creatures of pleasure or of burden, or in pensions to mercenary and worthless men and women, for vile ends and traitorous purposes.
They will engage their country in ridiculous, expensive, fantastical wars, to keep the minds of men in continual hurry and agitation, and under constant fears and alarms; and, by such means, deprive them both of leisure and inclination to look into publick miscarriages. Men, on the contrary, will, instead of such inspection, be disposed to fall into all measures offered, seemingly, for their defence, and will agree to every wild demand made by those who are betraying them.
When they have served their ends by such wars, or have other motives to make peace, they will have no view to the publick interest; but will often, to procure such peace, deliver up the strong-holds of their country, or its colonies for trade, to open enemies, suspected friends, or dangerous neighbours, that they may not be interrupted in their domestick designs.
They will create parties in the commonwealth, or keep them up where they already are; and, by playing them by turns upon each other, will rule both. By making the Guelfs afraid of the Ghibelines, and these afraid of the Guelfs, they will make themselves the mediums and balance between the two factions; and both factions, in their turns, the props of their authority, and the instruments of their designs.
They will not suffer any men, who have once tasted of authority, though personally their enemies, and whose posts they enjoy, to be called to an account for past crimes, though ever so enormous. They will make no such precedents for their own punishment; nor censure treason, which they intend to commit. On the contrary, they will form new conspiracies, and invent new fences for their own impunity and protection; and endeavour to engage such numbers in their guilt, as to set themselves above all fear of punishment.
They will prefer worthless and wicked men, and not suffer a man of knowledge or honesty to come near them, or enjoy a post under them. They will disgrace men of virtue, and ridicule virtue itself, and laugh at publick spirit. They will put men into employments, without any regard to the qualifications for those employments, or indeed to any qualifications at all, but as they contribute to their designs, and shew a stupid alacrity to do what they are bid. They must be either fools or beggars; either void of capacity to discover their intrigues, or of credit and inclination to disappoint them.
They will promote luxury, idleness, and expence, and a general depravation of manners, by their own example, as well as by connivance and publick encouragement. This will not only divert men's thoughts from examining their behaviour and politicks, but likewise let them loose from all the restraints of private and publick virtue. From immorality and excesses they will fall into necessity; and from thence into a servile dependence upon power.
In order to this, they will bring into fashion gaming, drunkenness, gluttony, and profuse and costly dress. They will debauch their country with foreign vices, and foreign instruments of vicious pleasures; and will contrive and encourage publick revels, nightly disguises, and debauched mummeries.
They will, by all practicable means of oppression, provoke the people to disaffection; and then make that disaffection an argument for new oppression, for not trusting them any further, and for keeping up troops; and, in fine, for depriving them of liberties and privileges, to which they are entitled by their birth, and the laws of their country.
If such measures should ever be taken in any free country, where the people choose deputies to represent them, then they will endeavour to bribe the electors in the choice of their representatives, and so to get a council of their own creatures; and where they cannot succeed with the electors, they will endeavour to corrupt the deputies after they are chosen, with the money given for the publick defence; and to draw into the perpetration of their crimes those very men, from whom the betrayed people expect the redress of their grievances, and the punishment of those crimes. And when they have thus made the representatives of the people afraid of the people, and the people afraid of their representatives; then they will endeavour to persuade those deputies to seize the government to themselves, and not to trust their principals any longer with the power of resenting their treachery and ill-usage, and of sending honester and wiser men in their room.
But if the constitution should be so stubbornly framed, that it will still preserve itself and the people's liberties, in spite of all villainous contrivances to destroy both; then must the constitution itself be attacked and broken, because it will not bend. There must be an endeavour, under some pretence of publick good, to alter a balance of the government, and to get it into the sole power of their creatures, and of such who will have constantly an interest distinct from that of the body of the people.
But if all these schemes for the ruin of the publick, and their own impunity, should fail them; and the worthy patriots of a free country should prove obstinate in defence of their country, and resolve to call its betrayers to a strict account; there is then but one thing left for such traitors to do; namely, to veer about, and, by joining with the enemy of their prince and country, complete their treason.
I have somewhere read of a favourite and first minister to a neighbouring prince, long since dead, who played his part so well, that, though he had, by his evil counsels, raised a rebellion, and a contest for the crown; yet he preserved himself a resource, whoever got the better: If his old master succeeded, then this Achitophel, by the help of a baffled rebellion, ever favourable to princes, had the glory of fixing his master in absolute power: But, as his brave rival got the day, Achitophel had the merit of betraying his old master to plead; and was accordingly taken into favour.
Happy therefore, thrice happy, are we, who can be unconcerned spectators of the miseries which the greatest part of Europe is reduced to suffer, having lost their liberties by the intrigues and wickedness of those whom they trusted; whilst we continue in full enjoyment of ours, and can be in no danger of losing them, while we have so excellent a King, assisted and obeyed by so wise a Parliament.
fuck. I really picked the wrong time to stop drinking. at least there's kotsko's new simultaneous cry/masturbate thing to try. it's like hints from abelard!
that the bill was passed in this incredibly shoddy pre-election fashion.
I would very much like to see the bill if anyone has a link to a copy - from what I'm seeing (as opposed to what I'm hearing) I am beginning to suspect this not so much a bill as a pre-election sham. Specifically a pre-election electioneering sham.
I've always thought that the significance of a lot of what Bush does (Guantanamo, Patriot Act, war powers claims, executive powers claims, secret prisons, stripping habeas corpus, stripping citizenship, and now this) has been the precendent. A recent article somewhere pointed out that strengthening the executive per se has been a goals for Cheney and his team. There's the pretense that Cheney's restoring the executive after it's been recently weakened by the courts, the Church Amendment, the War Powers Act, etc, but to me it's clear that it's the Constitution that he has in his sights.
There have always been people who thought that the Constitution is a fossil and that limited government, the separation of powers, checks and balances, and civil liberties impede efficiency and should be redefined out of existence. In the past these people have usually been liberals. Now they're militarist conservatives. (Talk to Jim Henley).
I don't really understand the "how much suffering will this bring about" question. There are a bunch of habeas lawsuits that the DC Circuit will dismiss, which may well mean that lawyers lose access to their clients. If they manage to win at the Supreme Court that'll take years more--and they could lose. So those people are worse off. As far as torture, I know it happened before this bill, it had apparently stopped at CIA prisons post-Hamdan because interrogators were afraid of criminal liability in light of Hamdan's holding about Common Article 3 and Justice Kennedy's dicta about the War Crimes Act. That will probably change now.
I don't really understand the "how much suffering will this bring about" question.
I think it's a question about the number of victims -- asking if we're really likely to torture all that many people even if it is legal. I think it's misplaced, because the only answer is, 'We really have no way of knowing.'
The number of people tortured has probably dropped quite a bit, because the military seems to have cleaned up its act some--the new field manual affects more than the CIA program.
But people underestimate the size of the CIA program, and I don't know what the deal is with joint military-CIA task forces.
And, this is a loaded gun lying around in case of another attack.
Hey, Ogged, once upon a time, records would eventually provide a pretty good look at the inside of some government deliberations down the road a ways.
But these guys have been reclassifying old documents at a terrifying rate, things that have been in the public sphere for twenty years in some cases. Moreover, I'm pretty sure that the one lesson they learned from Watergate is, "Don't leave incriminating records", and "Next time a court asks you for some documents they know you have, just destroy the motherfuckers and let them try to get you on obstruction". So I'm guessing that this Administration will probably annihilate a goodly portion of the normal record trail that Administrations leave behind.
There's so much of it, mind you, that they can't do more than a fraction, but I do think we'll ultimately know less about the interior of this White House than any other. That's also a function of the extent to which many White House reporters have become court eunuchs (e.g., Bob Woodward).
I wonder how much really is getting destroyed and how much is being hidden. If members of the congress and the administration believe seriously that they will be vindicated by history future generations, they may actually intend to keep some of the information around, although I guess that's more likely to be kept in the form of memoirs with the potentially damning stuff left out.
I sometimes ask my students, "So why don't dictators with big Swiss bank accounts just split and live out their lives on the Riveria before things go really sour and they're forced to run for their lives?" Well, some do--there was a happy ending for Idi Amin, for example, who lived out his life in relative comfort in Saudi Arabia.
But a lot don't because the people around them know perfectly well what happens if the guy at the top cuts and runs: they end up prosecuted as criminals by the next regime.
In a shabby kind of way, this is what has just happened with this whole thing. The Supreme Court made a decision that made the people around Bush shit their pants, because they recognized that there was some significant possibility that they'd be prosecuted for war crimes at some later date. So they're seeking preemptive immunity, and desperately trying to lock it in before the uncertainty of November. The sad thing is that so many Republicans in Congress were willing to hand it to them so easily--normally this is a good opportunity to stall, or suddenly have to attend to that blister on one's foot that's been posing a medical problem all summer long, or something.
But very shabby. Beyond all the grand stuff about American democracy, it has a banana republic bathos about it. Makes me feel as if I'm going to go to the Post Office and see Bob Mugabe's picture over the counter, right like I'm living in Harare again.
Posted by Timothy Burke | Link to this comment | 09-28-06 9:51 PM
I'm beginning to think that the strategy is for us to be so bewildered that we all say Oh, but they must know better and rationalize it away.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 09-28-06 9:58 PM
Tim, what do you know about presidential records, or, what's your sense of how much insight we'll gain in twenty or thirty years into the deliberations of the executive branch?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 09-28-06 10:05 PM
Increasingly, I'm bothered by our failure at our "city on a hill" role. I think even repressive governments have to take their populations into account; many of the descriptions of the end of the Eastern Block make it sound like the governments fell because the people pushed. And I do think that people pushed, in part, because they could see something better and freer working. It's easier to believe that something could work for you if it works for others.
Now we seem to function in exactly the opposite fashion. We are the richest and most secure nation of the face of the earth. We fear only terrorists: there are no serious internal problems, and no country dares attack us. Nearly every other country on earth has a worse risk profile than we have: serious material lack, potentially existential enemies (inc. us), internal problems, etc. And if we need to curtail our freedoms to deal with our problems, it seems all too easy to make the case that every other country may need to restrict freedom more, out of a sense of prudence. China has over a billion people, is transitioning its economy, and has rural riots including tens of thousands of people--aren't they allowed a few secret prisons, and a little torture, for the sake of secure, safe, and orderly general population?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 09-28-06 10:25 PM
I feel it should be noted that the forthcoming electronic surveillance bill is also very scary.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 09-28-06 10:57 PM
I'm still looking forward to Ogged's upate tomorrow:
"Suckered: It's a fake. Sorry. Damn well done though."
Posted by sam k | Link to this comment | 09-28-06 11:02 PM
5: Yes. Also worrisome is the Iran Freedom Support Act which the House just passed. I posted this in the "What Does a Person Do?" thread, but it's worth mentionign again.
Posted by Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 09-28-06 11:07 PM
yeah, that's not comforting. why do they have to append Freedom to everything?
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 09-28-06 11:12 PM
I'm beginning to think that the strategy is for us to be so bewildered that we all say Oh, but they must know better and rationalize it away.
Otherwise known as the Matilda Gambit.
Posted by Matt F | Link to this comment | 09-28-06 11:23 PM
Isn't the torture bill basically a rubber-stamping of something that the "unitary executive" was already doing, and (to judge by past actions) would continue to do regardless? Given that Congress has deteriorated into a bad joke, and seems in practice to have little real power of oversight, one could reasonably argue that "twilight of the republic" arrived some time before this. It's just that this episode really drives that point unmistakably home.
Posted by Doctor Slack | Link to this comment | 09-28-06 11:55 PM
8: Because the less you have the more you wave it around.
Posted by mcmc | Link to this comment | 09-28-06 11:56 PM
Posted by Cato | Link to this comment | 09-29-06 12:12 AM
fuck. I really picked the wrong time to stop drinking. at least there's kotsko's new simultaneous cry/masturbate thing to try. it's like hints from abelard!
Posted by alameida | Link to this comment | 09-29-06 5:38 AM
I really picked the wrong time to stop drinking.
You can always sniff glue!
(No. Don't do that.)
that the bill was passed in this incredibly shoddy pre-election fashion.
I would very much like to see the bill if anyone has a link to a copy - from what I'm seeing (as opposed to what I'm hearing) I am beginning to suspect this not so much a bill as a pre-election sham. Specifically a pre-election electioneering sham.
max
['And I might be wrong.']
Posted by max | Link to this comment | 09-29-06 5:54 AM
Yay to "hints from Abelard".
Posted by redfoxtailshrub | Link to this comment | 09-29-06 7:06 AM
I second 15.
In regards to Labs' iii, I don't know how much actual suffering this will bring about, but it has a certain canary-in-the-coal mine quality to it.
Posted by Glenn | Link to this comment | 09-29-06 7:16 AM
I've always thought that the significance of a lot of what Bush does (Guantanamo, Patriot Act, war powers claims, executive powers claims, secret prisons, stripping habeas corpus, stripping citizenship, and now this) has been the precendent. A recent article somewhere pointed out that strengthening the executive per se has been a goals for Cheney and his team. There's the pretense that Cheney's restoring the executive after it's been recently weakened by the courts, the Church Amendment, the War Powers Act, etc, but to me it's clear that it's the Constitution that he has in his sights.
There have always been people who thought that the Constitution is a fossil and that limited government, the separation of powers, checks and balances, and civil liberties impede efficiency and should be redefined out of existence. In the past these people have usually been liberals. Now they're militarist conservatives. (Talk to Jim Henley).
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 09-29-06 7:38 AM
Was Abelard able to masturbate effectively after his operation?
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 09-29-06 7:39 AM
Yep, that's the message that will win it for the Democrats in '06: sounding very much like Republicans!
Posted by neil | Link to this comment | 09-29-06 8:10 AM
Hey, where'd my link go?
Posted by neil | Link to this comment | 09-29-06 8:12 AM
Yes, looking back, it was a mistake for the Democratic Party to come out as pro-Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 09-29-06 8:21 AM
21: Seriously. Remember when they nominated him as the VP in '04? Stupid, in retrospect.
Posted by mrh | Link to this comment | 09-29-06 8:44 AM
I don't really understand the "how much suffering will this bring about" question. There are a bunch of habeas lawsuits that the DC Circuit will dismiss, which may well mean that lawyers lose access to their clients. If they manage to win at the Supreme Court that'll take years more--and they could lose. So those people are worse off. As far as torture, I know it happened before this bill, it had apparently stopped at CIA prisons post-Hamdan because interrogators were afraid of criminal liability in light of Hamdan's holding about Common Article 3 and Justice Kennedy's dicta about the War Crimes Act. That will probably change now.
Posted by Katherine | Link to this comment | 09-29-06 8:45 AM
I don't really understand the "how much suffering will this bring about" question.
I think it's a question about the number of victims -- asking if we're really likely to torture all that many people even if it is legal. I think it's misplaced, because the only answer is, 'We really have no way of knowing.'
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 09-29-06 8:51 AM
I read it as saying 'we're probably going to torture people anyway and they barely have access to their rights as it is.'
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 09-29-06 8:52 AM
ah. Okay.
The number of people tortured has probably dropped quite a bit, because the military seems to have cleaned up its act some--the new field manual affects more than the CIA program.
But people underestimate the size of the CIA program, and I don't know what the deal is with joint military-CIA task forces.
And, this is a loaded gun lying around in case of another attack.
Posted by Katherine | Link to this comment | 09-29-06 8:55 AM
Hey, Ogged, once upon a time, records would eventually provide a pretty good look at the inside of some government deliberations down the road a ways.
But these guys have been reclassifying old documents at a terrifying rate, things that have been in the public sphere for twenty years in some cases. Moreover, I'm pretty sure that the one lesson they learned from Watergate is, "Don't leave incriminating records", and "Next time a court asks you for some documents they know you have, just destroy the motherfuckers and let them try to get you on obstruction". So I'm guessing that this Administration will probably annihilate a goodly portion of the normal record trail that Administrations leave behind.
There's so much of it, mind you, that they can't do more than a fraction, but I do think we'll ultimately know less about the interior of this White House than any other. That's also a function of the extent to which many White House reporters have become court eunuchs (e.g., Bob Woodward).
Posted by Timothy Burke | Link to this comment | 09-29-06 11:02 AM
I wonder how much really is getting destroyed and how much is being hidden. If members of the congress and the administration believe seriously that they will be vindicated by
historyfuture generations, they may actually intend to keep some of the information around, although I guess that's more likely to be kept in the form of memoirs with the potentially damning stuff left out.Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 09-30-06 6:37 PM
By "keep some of the information around" I mean: hidden/classified now, but to be opened in a few decades.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 09-30-06 6:39 PM