The Yin Blog

Mukasey on targeted killing vs detention

Former Attorney General (and former Chief U.S. District Court Judge) Michael Mukasey has an op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal that poses an important question: is the Obama Administration's heavy reliance on targeted killing via unmanned aerial vehicles potentially compromising national security by eschewing the possibility of capturing targets and interrogating them for actionable intelligence?

I think it's a good question, and one that doesn't need to presuppose the availability of waterboarding or other forms of torture. People like former FBI Special Agent Ali Soufan have, in fact, gathered coercion-free confessions and intelligence from captured al Qaeda members since 9/11.

Yet, Mukasey notes persuasively that the Obama Administration's reflexive decision to delegitimize the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay has made it harder for it to capture detainees, for GTMO was the most feasible detention location. Thus, we find ourselves in the position where, perhaps, it's easier to kill than to capture, and so we kill blasting away with Predator drones.

A plausibly persuasive analysis of the decline of al Qaeda's capabilities

Hopefully this isn't an unduly optimistic analysis about the degredation of al Qaeda's capabilities with regard to pulling off another 9/11. It does sound plausible and persuasive.

UPDATE: In connection with the above-linked analysis, consider John Yoo's thoughts about our post-9/11 counterterrorism policies, particularly the use of military force against al Qaeda.

Why can't we be like [insert country of choice]?

A friend of mine posed the question on Facebook as to why we can't have a rational immigration policy, like Canada or Australia.

Without defending our dysfunctional politics, I've increasingly come to believe that comparisons of the U.S. with other countries is not a very useful metric. (I used to do this, for example, in wondering about guns and violent crime rates.)

As far as immigration policies go, neither Canada nor Australia is a useful comparison for very specific reasons: Canada's only border is shared with us, rather than a populous country with a low standard of living; Australia shares no physical border at all. They don't face the immigration issue that we do.  If Canada were located between the U.S. and Mexico, who knows what immigration policy it would have.

In addition, our role as the sole superpower, as the defense protector of the Western world, etc. makes comparisons inaccurate, because in a sense other countries are free-riding off us. If we stopped providing a nuclear umbrella -- thus making countries like Canada, Australia, all of western Europe other than France and England, Japan, and South Korea -- decide whether they wanted to risk being unprotected, developing their own nuclear weapons program, or paying us a fair share to protect them, I suspect that their fiscal balance sheets would look a lot worse than they do now (and ours would be marginally better). If we took steps to stop Canada and other countries from demanding cheap pharmaceuticals from our companies (in effect, we subsidize Canadians), that too would change things.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that we're perfect or that we can't learn from other countries (although looking at the yawning chasm of unfunded liabilities that western Europe faces regarding its generous social welfare programs suggests otherwise). But I think our problems may be unique to us in our own context.

Wow, China is stripped of a women's gymnastics team Olympic medal!

The IOC found that a member of China's women's gymnastics team in 2000 was underage and hence ineligible, which results in the disqualification of the entire team.  That team had won the bronze medal, which now goes to the United States.  At the same time, it looks like the IOC has cleared China's 2008 team of similar charges.

I have to confess, I had thought that the IOC would be too feckless to do something like this.  It appears that I was wrong.

Jack Bauer is "amateurish"!!

That's what interrogation experts would say about his techniques for questioning suspected terrorists:

Some of the study participants argue that interrogation should be restructured using lessons from many fields, including the tricks of veteran homicide detectives, the persuasive techniques of sophisticated marketing and models from American history.

The Doomsday Clock

I have vague recollections from the Cold War in the 1980s of the "Doomsday Clock," whose time supposedly reflected experts' predictions of the likelihood of nuclear annihilation.  The idea of the clock is that its proximity to midnight denotes the world's nuclear climate.  It was initially set at 7 minutes to midnight in 1947, and got as close as 2 minutes to midnight (1961, H-bomb tests by the U.S. and U.S.S.R.) and as far away as 17 minutes to midnight (1991, arms control agreement reached).

The keepers of the clock are apparently prepared to move it from its current position of 7 minutes to midnight, based on worsening conditions.

Here is what I'm wondering: if midnight marks "global catastrophe," does that mean that someone actually intends to move the clock to midnight in the event of thermonuclear war?

Is "Battlestar Galactica" must-see national security TV?

(Mild spoilers for the first two episodes of season 3 of SciFi's "Battlestar Galactica" ahead. . . .)

At this point, I think it's a fair question to ask whether "Battlestar Galactica" is must-see TV for anyone interested in national security law.  Yes, it is just a TV show, and it's "science-fiction."  Yet, just as literature can inform the world of legal academics (hence, the existence of law and literature courses), so too can a different medium such as TV.

But why "Battlestar Galactica"?  Interestingly, during the summer at the SEALs conference, co-blogger Bobby and I had a discussion about the show wherein Bobby accurately predicted that season 3 would present a situation that looked like Iraq today, with a militarily superior occupying force oppressing a conquered people, members of whom become insurgents and resort to sneak attacks, suicide bombings, and assaults against collaborators.  Sounds familiar?

Only, imagine that the insurgents are the humans, and the occupiers are the enemy Cylons.

Done exploitatively, such a set-up could quickly devolve into thinly-veiled partisan demagoguery, either in favor of or against the Bush Administration.  And if that's how the show had proceeded, I would not be wondering if it's must see national security TV.  Instead, the first two episodes show that the humans struggle with the idea of sending suicide bombers to attack dual-use military/civilian areas, especially ones where humans may be killed.  The insurgent leader's efforts to rationalize the practice as the same as sending a soldier on a one-way mission do not convinced the others as to the correctness of his decision.  I found that exchange especially thought-provoking, because it is all too easy to fall into an "us" vs "them" mentality that overlooks the fact that even amongst the enemy, there may be differences of opinion.  (This point is reinforced in Lawrence Wright's The Looming Tower, which reports that even some top Al Qaeda leaders argued against directly attacking the United States pre-9/11.)  Similarly, even among the Cylons, there is a division of thought about the best way to put down the insurgents, with the more militant Cylons arguing for round-ups and mass executions.

Problems with an assassination policy

My colleague Nick Johnson responds to a provocative idea of targeted assassinations instead of traditional warfare.  (Nick raises a number of reasons that it would not be a good idea.)

"Death is life for us"?

So says Al Qaeda about yesterday's killing of terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi:

"We want to give you the joyous news of the martyrdom of the mujahed sheik Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

"The death of our leaders is life for us. It will only increase our persistence in continuing holy war so that the word of God will be supreme."

I hesitate to apply Western thinking to this statement, as there's a danger in applying one's own cultural biases to expressions by persons from different cultures/values/etc.  Still, does Al Qaeda's statement make sense?  I mean, if they think it's joyous that al-Zarqawi was killed (and therefore "martyred"), we seem to share a common goal.  I'm sure that our military would like to help bring them more joyous news.  If only Osama bin Laden would just surrender . . . .

I should be clear that I don't mean to be mocking Al Qaeda's perception that al-Zarqawi has martyred himself, or even that his death might not inspire more terrorism.  All of that is entirely possible.  What I do wonder is how it can be "joyous," as opposed to something like "regrettable but constructive."

Irony, thy name is the Air Line Pilots Association

Hmm, I wonder who pro-labor groups root for in this fight. . .:

In a twist of irony Friday, the Air Line Pilots Association closed offices around the country as a number of its own members walked out on strike.

Since March, the union's clerical and support services have been in negotiations, hoping to reach an agreement before the contract expired at midnight Wednesday.

Is it pro-union to support the pilots' union, or to support the pilots' union's union?