[Peace-discuss] Paleocons vs. neocons & liberals

[C. G. Estabrook]

[The author of this piece is Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer and a 
contributing editor to "The American Conservative," a paleoconservative journal 
that has been opposed in principle to the US war in SW Asia. In the midterm 
elections of 2006, the magazine urged its readers to vote for Democrats saying, 
"It should surprise few readers that we think a vote that is seen -- in America 
and the world at large -- as a decisive 'No' vote on the Bush presidency is the 
best outcome."  They recognize that they were betrayed by the Democrats. --CGE]

	Neocons, NYT Demand More War, Torture
	2008-12-30

The neoconservatives are drifting back into the Democratic Party fold from 
whence they came, attempting to limit the terms of the discourse on foreign and 
security policy so there will be no surprises from the new administration. Media 
neocons like Bill Kristol and David Brooks are jumping on the Hillary bandwagon, 
convinced that she will, if anything, prove to be more hawkish than her 
predecessor, Condoleezza Rice.

The mainstream media is also doing its bit. The New York Times leads the way in 
stifling any real debate, recently featuring on its opinion pages a 
"Transitions" series that incorporates the views of designated "experts." The 
choice of contributors, including Madeleine Albright, William Cohen, and Peter 
Bergen, has guaranteed a consensus that America's use of its military might in 
the international arena is a force for good. One piece, titled "Let Russia Stop 
Iran," was written by three Israelis who are members of the Institute for 
International Security Studies, a think-tank in Tel Aviv dedicated to Israeli 
security.

Notable among the contributors are two leading neocons, Danielle Pletka and 
Reuel Marc Gerecht, both of whom support torture and war with Iran. Pletka is 
vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise 
Institute (AEI), and Gerecht is currently a senior fellow at the Foundation for 
Defense of Democracies (FDD), a think-tank that focuses heavily on Israeli 
security. Gerecht was also at AEI but recently lost his sinecure in a purge that 
reportedly was initiated by Pletka. Michael Ledeen also was removed and wound up 
with Gerecht at FDD, and Joshua Muravchik is also reported to be leaving AEI.

Pletka is Australian born and is reported to be a close associate of Martin 
Indyk, also an Australian by birth, who became U.S. ambassador to Israel under 
Bill Clinton. She was educated in the United States, worked in Israel and the 
U.S. as a journalist, and eventually found a niche on the Senate Foreign 
Relations Committee, where she served as a staffer. AEI regards her as an expert 
on the Middle East, though there is no evidence in her official bio that she 
speaks either Farsi or Arabic.

Pletka's "The Syrian Strategy" might be described as predictable in that it 
dismisses diplomatic attempts to improve relations with Syria, which would, 
inter alia, divide it from Iran and potentially remake the status quo in the 
Middle East. Per Pletka, Syria has been "funneling killers into Iraq to oppose 
coalition forces, assassinating its opponents in Lebanon, arming Hezbollah to 
attack Israel, and starting a nuclear weapons program with help from North 
Korea," all of which are assertions that intentionally narrow the terms of the 
discourse but are debatable or even manifestly false.

Pletka reasons that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad "can maintain his grip on 
power only as long as he is seen as a vital instrument of Israel's defeat," and 
she rejects those who believe that Syria actually wants to become a "normal" 
state, asserting that it wishes to remain a pariah. For Pletka, it's all about 
Israel, but not surprisingly she provides no evidence to support her claims 
about Damascus. Nor does she appear to have an answer to the challenge posed by 
Syria apart from unrelenting hostility, a simplistic solution to a complex 
problem that is completely divorced from reality. Her viewpoint would appear to 
be undermined by the Israelis themselves, who are talking to the Syrians in Turkey.

Gerecht is a more interesting character altogether. A student of Bernard Lewis, 
he believes that the only thing that Muslims truly understand is the mailed 
fist. He has said that Iranians have "terrorism in their DNA," and he advocates 
negotiating with Iran only as a prelude to bombing. He currently resides in 
Prague, where his wife, Diane Zeleny, is director of communications for Radio 
Free Europe, a position she was given after being on the receiving end of a 
grievance filed by the American Foreign Service Association in 2006 when she 
broke every rule in State Department assignments to obtain a godfathered 
appointment to head a media response center in Brussels. Zeleny was allegedly a 
favorite of the redoubtable Karen Hughes, the self-styled soccer mom turned 
public diplomacy czarina whose gaffe-filled "listening tours" to the Muslim 
world were amusingly described in the world media. Gerecht has been involved in 
trying to establish a neocon beachhead in Europe based in Prague, an effort that 
has produced several security conferences featuring celebrities such as Richard 
Perle.

Pletka approves of the torture of terrorist suspects, but Gerecht, as a former 
intelligence officer, has made a study of the practice and is heavily into its 
benefits. Like many neocons, he is fond of the therapeutic effects of 
institutionalized violence but has never served in the military, preferring to 
leave the dirty work to others. Unlike many of his neocon colleagues, Gerecht 
does speak Farsi and has some actual understanding of what is going on in the 
Middle East, though with the usual Likudist lean in terms of how he interprets 
developments.

It is astonishing that the New York Times would even print a piece advocating 
torture, but the article is just one more indication of the access that the 
neocons have to the nation's editorial pages. Gerecht's "Out of Sight" argues 
that Barack Obama will undoubtedly recognize the utility of rendition, in which 
terrorism suspects are sent to their home countries to be interrogated, i.e., 
tortured. He sets his stage carefully, raising the specter of "the slaughter of 
civilians by Islamic holy warriors" and then posing a choice "between 
non-deniable aggressive questioning conducted by Americans and deniable 
torturous interrogations by foreigners acting on behalf of the United States." 
He dismisses the third option of non-coercive questioning of suspects, citing 
the imaginary, Jack Bauer-esque "ticking time bomb" scenario in which a 
terrorist has information that can stop an attack and "save thousands of 
civilians." Gerecht concludes by rejecting calls to close Guantanamo, because it 
would release an apparent horde of "enemy combatants" prepared to wreak havoc 
worldwide.

Curiously enough, in 2005 Gerecht was opposed to rendition. He claimed in the 
Weekly Standard that torture is a useful interrogation tool, similar to his 
current position, and he also cited the ticking-bomb fantasy, but he insisted 
that the abuse be carried out by American interrogators rather than foreigners. 
His preference was partly derived from his view that foreigners are 
intrinsically unreliable, but it was also shaped by his belief that the CIA 
should not be relinquishing control over potential sources of intelligence, or 
as Gerecht puts it, "willfully diminishing the flow of reliable information."

The principal flaw in Gerecht's argument, if one might dignify it by calling it 
an argument, is that rendition and torture both are fallible processes that lack 
any mechanism to protect the innocent. Fear of arbitrary action by government is 
why America's founders created a constitution that enshrined individual rights 
and liberties and why most Americans demand a rule of law with inbuilt 
safeguards, even for suspected terrorists. That Bush and Cheney have managed to 
pervert the system and get away with it, a development that both Gerecht and 
Pletka applaud, does not change the fundamental moral and legal issues.

Nor is there any actual evidence that torture has ever saved anyone's life, much 
less "thousands of innocents." And it has not made the United States any safer. 
Washington's torture of Muslims has created more enemies than friends around the 
world. "Enhanced interrogation" can also lead to other abuses, including the 
mistreatment of American soldiers who are captured by militants who themselves 
have been tortured. Selective use of torture lowers the bar for everyone. 
Torture is disgraceful for the government and country that order it, and it 
dehumanizes the CIA officers called upon to do it.

Professional interrogators know that most people subjected to torture will say 
anything to stop the pain, meaning that the information obtained under duress 
just might not be reliable. The process whereby one arrives in the torture 
chamber is also questionable. It is not known how many of the hundreds of people 
rendered to other countries for torture were actually terrorists. There are 
several well-documented cases of errors being made, and it has been suggested 
that very few renditions were justified, even if one accepts the perverted logic 
that established the rendition and torture programs in the first place. One 
might also question Gerecht's presumption of the guilt of the prisoners at 
Guantanamo. He assumes they are terrorists to justify keeping the offshore 
prison, but there is considerable evidence that many of the inmates were merely 
in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Ethically and legally there is also a long tradition of rejecting torture, which 
Gerecht and Pletka ignore in spite of the oft-repeated neocon insistence that 
policy be guided by "moral clarity." German and Japanese officers were executed 
after the Second World War for torturing prisoners, and the principle was firmly 
established that torture, including waterboarding, is a war crime. The U.S. is 
signatory to the UN's anti-torture convention. But then again, Nuremberg also 
determined a war of aggression to be the ultimate war crime, and since both 
Gerecht and Pletka embraced the invasion of Iraq and welcome yet another 
preemptive war against Iran, one presumes that they consider themselves to be 
above any conventional moral or legal restraint.

Gerecht and Pletka, both of whom are inordinately fond of Israel, should also 
note that the Israeli Supreme Court has banned torture, and the Shin Bet 
security service has discovered that interrogating prisoners without coercion 
actually produces more and better intelligence. Many American interrogation 
experts would agree based on their own experience. The most pathetic thing about 
neocons like Pletka and Gerecht is that they frame imposing arguments to sustain 
a worldview in which suffering inflicted on innocent people becomes an 
abstraction, like a model in a political science class, completely respectable 
and devoid of consequences. One suspects that they can embrace torture because 
they know it won't happen to them or to their friends hunkering down at their 
desks at AEI and FDD. Only some hapless Arab or Afghan will get the chop, and 
what does it matter if he's innocent?

http://antiwar.com/orig/giraldi.php