The Fish Rots From The Head

Via P O'Neill this short (about 22 seconds) extract from a Paul Berman interview. Berman: "my thoughts and Dick Cheney's thoughts have nothing in common".



Berman is a "muscular liberal" isn't he? (At least, I hope the term doesn't mean Arnold Schwarzenegger when practicing free-market economics.) Could someone please explain what the egg of truth thing means? And if 'democracy' is so important, whose philosophy is more important? Dick Cheney who has been voted into office several times or Paul Berman?

On a similar theme, I return to perhaps the most disgusting post ever by Christopher Hitchens.

The most surprising thing about Seymour Hersh's latest New Yorker essay on the Abu Ghraib depravities is surely its title. It is headed "The Gray Zone." Can that be right? It seems to be generally assumed that the work of the sniggering video-morons is black and white: one of the very few moral absolutes of which we have a firm and decided grasp.
But Hersh's article wants to argue that the fish rots from the head, as indeed it very often does (even though, metaphorically speaking, one might think that the fish's guts would be the first to decay). And in order to argue this top-down process, he decides to propose that it began with Sept. 11.

(The link in Hitchens' piece no longer works; I have altered the text above the include a link which does.) You can tell he's insincere from the opening gambit of trying to argue with what the title means. In fact it comes from a paragraph very close to the end of the piece.

"Congress is going to get to the bottom of this," the Pentagon consultant said. "You have to demonstrate that there are checks and balances in the system." He added, "When you live in a world of gray zones, you have to have very clear red lines."
Senator John McCain, of Arizona, said, "If this is true, it certainly increases the dimension of this issue and deserves significant scrutiny. I will do all possible to get to the bottom of this, and all other allegations."
"In an odd way," Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, said, "the sexual abuses at Abu Ghraib have become a diversion for the prisoner abuse and the violation of the Geneva Conventions that is authorized." Since September 11th, Roth added, the military has systematically used third-degree techniques around the world on detainees. "Some JAGs [Judge Advocate General's (JAG) Corps] hate this and are horrified that the tolerance of mistreatment will come back and haunt us in the next war," Roth told me. "We're giving the world a ready-made excuse to ignore the Geneva Conventions. Rumsfeld has lowered the bar."

I suppose the chief difference between 'journalism' and 'blogging' is that one involves actual researching material and the other sitting on your arse complaining about grammar. I will leave the reader to work out which of those I consider 'the Dupe', as Norman Geras unaccountably calls him, to be. I'm a blogger, so I'll draw attention to Hitchens' poor grasp of what a metaphor is.

Via Mike Power, a rather wonderful Vanity Fair article by Philippe Sands¹.

The Bush administration has always taken refuge behind a “trickle up” explanation: that is, the decision was generated by military commanders and interrogators on the ground. This explanation is false. The origins lie in actions taken at the very highest levels of the administration—by some of the most senior personal advisers to the president, the vice president, and the secretary of defense. At the heart of the matter stand several political appointees—lawyers—who, it can be argued, broke their ethical codes of conduct and took themselves into a zone of international criminality, where formal investigation is now a very real option. This is the story of how the torture at Guantánamo began, and how it spread.

I know I've mentioned this before. I'll almost certainly mention it again. 'Decency' = apologia for torture.

[1] A suspiciously French sounding name. So, Miss-you Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkey, do you think whether your argument is "correct" or "incorrect" is a more relevant point than who are the people making the arguments?

Update Sat 20:47. There's an argument going on in the comments between regular commenter Justin and Hawkforce (who I think is a Harry's Place regular). As I couldn't post my response in the comments, I'll take the liberty of posting it here.

EJH: [To 'Why can't we expect better things of them?] "Because the history of superpowers suggests otherwise?"

I largely agree. We seem to be talking about that most booby-trapped of subjects: morality. The good things which have come from superpowers have been morally neutral.



The USSR did pretty much all the above for Afghanistan. Apart from the peace bit of course.

Seriously, I nearly wrote either a post or a very long comment somewhere to the effect: When we were in India, we build the railways and constructed an efficient civil service because it suited the Empire. These things may have lasted and helped India become the world's largest democracy, but they were done selfishly. The nation-building in Iraq was done, in theory, altruistically. That is to say, it was done on the cheap. Educating, say, Indian kids in Latin to serve the Empire was an investment. Educating Iraqi kids to read, er, because it's a bit touchy-feely, but who gives a fuck when it comes down to it? is a waste. And it was money saved. Well, the US has learned one thing from history. They learned that we educated Ghandi. And they're determined it won't happen to them. We, poor fools, gave up India with limited bloodshed. Cheney hopes to improve on us. He's doing great.