The Yin Blog

Just like one "Star Trek" episode . . . without the white gorilla creature

So, the Russians are going to arm one side in Syria, and we're going to arm the other side. For some reason, that sounds familiar . . . . Say, there was a Star Trek episode about that, where Capt. Kirk discovers that the Klingons have been arming one tribe on a semi-primitive planet, thereby gaining an upper hand on another tribe (which Kirk had surveyed years ago). Kirk evens things up by arming his side with exactly the same level of firepower, no more, no less.

"Jim, that means you're condemning this whole planet to a war that may never end! It could go on for year after year! Massacre after massacre!"

- McCoy, shocked at Kirk's plan to arm the Hill People

"A balance of power. The trickiest, most difficult, dirtiest game of them all, but the only one that preserves both sides."

- Kirk, justifying his plan to McCoy

"Well, war isn't a good life, but it's life."

- Kirk, telling McCoy the bitter realities of war

(quotes taken from the Memory Alpha wiki)

I'm no expert on Syria, but I'm pretty sure there are no mugatus there:

 

"Argo" and the Iran hostage crisis

I got to see "Argo" over the weekend and was favorably impressed, as many others have been. Obviously, the story was exaggerated to create more narrative tension, but it's a well-crafted movie. (That makes two out of two in terms of flicks directed by Ben Affleck, as I thought "Gone Baby Gone" was also really well-done.)

By coincidence, Tony Mendez's book Master of Disguise: My Secret Life in the CIA was on sale as the Kindle Daily Deal a few months ago, and I had bought it, so after the movie, I was able to go to the chapter where he described the CIA's underappreciated role in the Canadian caper. You really have to admire the courage of a guy who, in 1980, willingly flew into Tehran on a secret mission to rescue the six Americans holed up with the Canadians.

Seeing the movie did bring back the feelings of anger that I always feel when I think about the Iran hostage crisis. It's pretty well-summed up by the epilogue of the movie, where there's a scene with one of the Iranian hostage takers complaining that Canada violated Iran's sovereignty . . . . But even more, the movie reminded me that in those dark days, we had very few true friends. Canada, of course, took great risks in harboring the six escapees and then giving them forged passports to escape Iran. Great Britain and New Zealand also helped. But that was about it. And when it came to the rest of the hostages, no one lifted a finger to help us. Our "allies" wouldn't even impose economic sanctions in response to the grave violation of the international norms against holding diplomats hostage. (I recommend reading Mark Bowden's Guest of the Ayatollah if you want to get your blood pressure up.)

Anyway, one of the remarkable things about Argo is that it's a tense thriller even though (1) there's virtually no violence directed against the main characters; and (2) we already know how it turns out. That's a credit to Affleck's skills as a filmmaker.

Along a related note, I wonder if enough time has passed that someone could make a killer movie out of Operation Eagle Claw, the failed hostage rescue mission. It's long been a sore point for the United States because of how it ended, but there have been other well-regarded war movies that have had less than a happy ending ("Glory" and "Gallipilli" come to mind). Eagle Claw was stunningly audacious in planning, and Bowden's account of it in his book is gripping -- again, even though I knew the disastrous outcome.

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.)