When I saw this report, I immediately thought of Obama's new orders restricting CIA interrogations and shutting down secret prisons. What's the connection between striking targets in Pakistan and restrictions on the CIA? It illustrates, once again, the lack of logical reasoning demonstrated by Obama and by many of his supporters.
Air strikes, no matter how precise, carry a high risk of collateral damage. That is, they tend to kill innocent civilians. Even if they get their target, they often kill or main innocent victims. That's just a fact of life, and is true of many types of military operations. In addition, air strikes are usually highly visible events, that can't be easily concealed. When a U.S. strike kills innocent people it causes a great deal of anger and resentment. It undermines attempts to gain popular support in the area in question, and often produces criticism abroad. Sometimes, through bad intelligence or sheer accident, strikes kill the wrong people entirely, and don't even have the benefit of eliminating any actual targets.
Obama, and some of his supporters, believe that air strikes such as those used in Pakistan, are a necessary part of the war against terror. They are willing to accept dead civilians, mistaken targets, maimed children, negative world opinion, increased hostility in parts of Afghanistan & Pakistan, and every other drawback that accompanies these air strikes. But the very same people who are fine with these air attacks, whine and snivel at the thought that a few terrorist suspects might be secretly mistreated in secret prisons, run by an intelligence organization operating in secret. They actually argue that the secret operations of the CIA need to be tightly restricted because the bad publicity is so damaging to U.S. counterterrorism efforts. We can't have an intelligence agency using questionable methods in secret. Oh no, that undermines the very fabric of civilization. But airstrikes, the results of which can be seen on the news, well, they are no problem and should be continued.
Unfortunately, neither military nor intelligence operations can be conducted according to neat legalistic rules that make everything clean and tidy. If you increase restrictions & constraints, you hamper operations; you don't make them more effective. I'm not sure why these concepts are so difficult for some to grasp.
If anything, this is evidence that Obama is against torture and secret prisons on pragmatic rather than idealistic grounds. It's one thing to argue that the majority opinion among interrogators that torture doesn't work is incorrect; it's another to argue that those who believe it are just being inconsistent.
ReplyDelete"If anything, this is evidence that Obama is against torture and secret prisons on pragmatic rather than idealistic grounds."
ReplyDeleteThat's possible, but I think highly unlikely. There's nothing that doesn't "work" about having secret detainment locations -- other than the failure to keep them secret. If it were a pragmatic decision, he could simply restrict interrogation practices. Closing the prisons is a different issue.
"It's one thing to argue that the majority opinion among interrogators that torture doesn't work is incorrect"
First of all, I don't think there is anything like a known majority opinion among interrogators. Most interrogators haven't been heard from, and supporters of more aggressive methods, or of actual torture, aren't going to speak out for obvious reasons. And there is no way to objectively judge the opinions of anyone who does, since we don't have the necessary classified information. Plus then you have people like Michael Scheuer who are against torture, but for things like rendition. So presumably he'd be in favor of restrictions on interrogations, but against closing secret prisons.
Second, most of the argument from opponents of harsh interrogation techniques is moral & legal with an emphasis on the negative effects, not utilitarian. It's immoral, unAmerican, uncivilized, illegal, puts our troops at risk, creates more enemies, undermines support, and so forth, and then as a corollary, it doesn't produce useful intelligence. Most serious analysts taking these positions understand that there is no way to prove whether or not useful intelligence was gained. That's why the utilitarian argument is usually thrown in as an afterthought.
"it's another to argue that those who believe it are just being inconsistent."
They are, unless their primary objection to questionable interrogation techniques is purely or mostly utilitarian. Incidentally, I am aware that plenty of people oppose both the airstrikes and anything they consider torture. Those people are not the target of my post.