“I really object to your calling the US an “empire.””

Actually, I was quite careful to avoid calling the U.S., as it currently exists, an empire despite the fact that we occasionally act like one. That’s why I said we must not allow ourselves to become an empire. Perhaps I was insufficiently clear on that point. With that in mind, I would point out that a fair and comprehensive accounting of our westward expansion, inasmuch as it treated native peoples as conquered, makes it clear that it was imperial in nature (hence the reference to Manifest Destiny). The fact that we didn’t explicitly call it empire doesn’t change the nature of what we were up to at the time. We were invading and conquering territory and the nations that occupied it, and we attempted to assimilate or exterminate native populations.

As to the whole discussion of the drug war, you’ll have no disagreement from me on anything you wrote, and I am well aware of Mr. Liddy’s role in the whole thing. It’s a pointless and destructive endeavor that threatens Mexico as a functioning state, and it is quickly becoming unsustainable on a number of levels for us. Prohibition never works. Some people are always going to get high, and there is no compelling case that I’m aware of that refutes that fact. If you can’t beat the thing then you don’t necessarily have to join it, but criminalization clearly does nothing to resolve the issue.

In regard to America’s moral status in relation to our enemies, it’s likely the case that we are not going to agree on the finer point I’m making when I draw the comparison. I’m not suggesting that the U.S. in its totality is identical to our enemies. What I am saying is that when we willingly and knowingly cross the bright line between right and wrong, and that’s what we did when we chose to torture detainees, we lower ourselves to their level. We sacrifice our standing in the world. The fact that we refined our torture so meticulously and that we were so innovative in our employment of it does not improve our position it worsens it. It indicates close consideration of what we were doing, and, as I’ve pointed out in a previous post, our consciousness of guilt during that consideration was abundantly clear. In that sense, limited though it may be, we are no better than our enemies. The differences are methodical not qualitative.

You say that most people can’t say which law we broke, but the OLC memos (especially Bradbury’s) discuss repeatedly which part of U.S. law is in question. The punishment for violating that law is clearly laid out in the statute. The fact that most people are ignorant of those details only suggests that they have not read the memos, or, at the very least, have not read them closely enough.

Additionally, I disagree with the notion that prosecuting former administration officials is an inherently political act, and I certainly disagree that prosecutions (or a truth commission) would open a Pandora’s box of undesirable consequences. Prosecutions in this case are a matter of law. The political game at play here is the notion that we have a choice in whether or not to prosecute. The law is clear, and the Pandora’s box we are in danger of opening in this case is the precedent we set if we allow persons in high political office to violate the law with impunity. If we set such a precedent then we effectively create a separate legal class for those in power, and in a nation of laws, which Obama has increasingly taken to calling us of late, separate legal classes are untenable.

The fact is that we can salvage our moral standing. That is why I greatly desire to see this matter addressed within the institutions (i.e., the courts) that have served us so well during our history. I don’t expect a perfect resolution here, but I do not believe turning the page and moving on is an option for us without some sort of reckoning.

This will be my final post on this topic, but I would be happy to read any response you may have. As you point out, other duties call. I’ve enjoyed our exchange and hope we can have another in the future.

2. Your summary of my opinion is only wrong in emphasis at some points and in others you characterize me incorrectly, while in general you are correct. All in all, it was a pretty fair summary—except for your conclusion: “Therefore, we were justified to declare war on Mexico in 1847 based on subsequent positive outcomes.” I’m fully aware that the rest of what you say is true. There was a strong anti-war faction in the Congress at the time and for me it’s significant that JQ Adams (he ended his life as a Representative) voted “no.” I believe that this was his last public act and that he died soon afterward. Adams was the architect of the Monroe Doctrine and so many other of our “empire-building” and national security policies that I imagine that if I had been alive at the time I would have followed his lead. He knew what he was doing. So no, I don’t think our actions then were justified. However, in contrast to European powers at the time, our conduct was still more moral: we never annexed the rest of the country, even though we had conquered it, much like Cortés had before and we paid them for the land—$25 million in gold. It wasn’t so much stealing as it was extortion. I do not justify extortion, although I can understand Polk’s urgency to get the territory because of the geopolitics of the age. I wouldn’t put him on a “truth commission” trial for it because, well… he did what he had to do.

As for the Mexicans, I’m sorry my rhetoric (thanks again for the compliment!) went way overboard. I do not believe that they were “idiots.” I just believe that they were Mexicans and they were caught up in something a lot bigger than they were (the USA!) and had no way to understand it based on their own history and culture.

Part of this history and culture explains why the never exploited California: they already had a great port on the Pacific (Acapulco) and a centuries-old trade route to Asia. But like everything else at the time—and even today to a great extent—this port and trade route was someone’s property and that “someone” (in reality groups of people) had paid good money to the government for the ownership rights. Therefore, nobody had any reason to exploit other ports since what we call competition they called treason. Also, I see some validity in Weber’s thesis about the capitalist mentality in Mexico: they were just happy to stay where they were. They lacked the entrepreneurial spirit of Americans. This is part of what I mean when I say they were caught up in something bigger than they were: the industrial revolution/capitalism.

I don’t really know why they failed to defend California. They had a sea route there. We marched across the worst desert on the continent from Saint Louis without even having any good maps and found San Diego practically undefended. The reasons must have to do with the internal politics of Mexico, where at the same time the war was going on factions were fighting for power in Mexico City.

As for the military, the Mexicans had a huge army of Indian conscripts and we had a volunteer army of American hicks. American hicks know how to use their heads in a fight and that’s what they did. Indian conscripts didn’t stand a chance, really, especially if you consider the leadership (or lack of it) that they had. Everyone wanted to be the hero and nobody wanted to do the dirty work. A classic case of “too many chiefs…”. That’s just Mexican culture.

As a side note, the war was the definitive defeat of this social class in Mexico—called the criollos—and the beginning of today’s Mestizo Mexico. Therefore, our conquest of their country had unintended benefits even for them because they got rid of a parasitical social class that had maintained its grip on power through the ages. Plus, they got the $25 million, which they used, of course, to fight their civil wars instead of investing it in something useful.

I have to make this clear: I don’t think the Mexicans were or are idiots. They did the best they could with what they had but it wasn’t good enough. The smart thing for them to do would have been to bow to destiny like the Japanese did a few years later and adapt their country to superior power and wealth. But that would be too much to expect them because their history is completely different.

3. Your numbers 4 & 5 are correct. I can’t see how anyone could argue with them, least of all the Mexicans! They’re the ones flooding our borders. If you get a group of ten Mexicans together, a cross section of social classes and regional identities, at least half will say they’d go to the US if they could. That goes double for students, who are mainly well-off. All ten will want to go. Maybe we don’t realize it fully, but America is still the land of opportunity for most of the world, in spite of our torturing a few fanatic Muslims who want to kill us for no reason except their own impotent rage at being left behind by history.

4. One last point about Mexico: As bad as the Mexican war was, and as bad as our other interventions in their country were (and there have been many), none equals the wanton death and destruction we have unleashed on them in the war on drugs. Beginning with the criminalization of drugs and the idea that they are bad for you, which is an American idea from the beginning, and ending with the police/military power being used to enforce this Puritan morality, Mexico has been bulldozed and extorted by us. Mexico is full of drugs and has been since ancient times. The Aztecs were big drug users, like everyone else. Even today, some Indians out there in the desert will use peyote routinely just to get through the day, which consists of carrying water up the hill and taking their clothes down to the creek to wash them and so forth. They would ask you that if they can find a plant that allows them to enjoy carrying water and beating their clothes against a rock, then what the Hell is wrong with that? They still don’t know that drugs are wrong and that God wants us to be sober 24/7.

I don’t know if you remember when the drug war began, back in the early ’70s—another of Nixon’s great ideas designed by Gordon Liddy. We wanted Mexico’s cooperation to stem the flow of drugs across the border and they told us to take a walk. Then Liddy came up with “Operation Intercept” which created impossible bottlenecks at the border crossings and with this an unacceptable loss of revenue for the Mexicans. They lasted only a few days under this kind of pressure. The rest is history, as they say. I’m still waiting for the Mexicans to tell us to get off their backs about it, but fat chance!

5. I really object to your calling the US an “empire.” The only way to justify that is to define the word in a way that it has never been used before. In other words, you’d have to define the word in an ad hoc way so as to fit US foreign policy. That’s not fair! It’s even unconstitutional—the Constitution prohibits bills of attainder and calling the US an empire is a rhetorical bill of attainder!

6. You say, “If we truly wish to regain our moral stature in the world–that is, if we wish to become truly morally superior to the enemies we fight–then we must hold accountable those who broke the law.” I disagree. For one, our use of torture does not make us equivalent to our enemies, who are much worse. In fact, our enemies hold our moral standards up to ridicule in themselves. They are not Islamic. For another, we do and are holding those who broke the law to account. Even if their punishment is not what you’d demand, it’s an utterly different world from that of our enemies. Even this debate is enough to prove my point: can you seriously imagine this debate happening in any Arab/Islamic country?

7. I believe that members of the Bush administration have already stood up and defended their practices and justified them. That’s one reason why Cheney is suing to get the blacked-out portions of the torture memos published.

As for the consequences, I’ll leave that to the lawyers to debate. From what I’ve read so far, this is far from an obvious conclusion. Most people can’t even say with any precision what law was broken, let alone what punishment they deserve. Also, it will be opening a Pandora’s box to prosecute the former administration for their political decisions, let alone the Pandora’s box that would be opened up by a “truth commission.” But for politicians, having their names dragged through the mud like this is punishment in itself (I’m not saying it’s enough punishment). This relatively minor punishment is just light-years more than anything that could ever happen to torturers in the Arab/Islamic world—one reason why the spectacle of the Palestinian doctor challenging Libya at the UN anti “racism” conference had so much impact. If someone had stood up at a UN conference and accused the US of torture, the reaction would have been… ho…hum… so what else is new? You don’t need to be brave, like the Palestinian doctor, to do that! It’s the world’s best parlor game at the moment.

PS: “The Life of Brian” is probably the funniest movie ever made. I missed three fourths of it because I was laughing so hard. So I had to see it again. And again.

As to this last post, let me see if I can sum it up: 1) The Mexicans were idiots because they, like the Spanish before them, had not exploited California’s resources advantageously (and don’t get excited about the word “exploited” because I use it neutrally); 2) The Mexicans were idiots because they didn’t properly defend California once the U.S. had declared war; 3) The Mexicans were idiots because, despite the fact that they had superior forces, they failed to crush the American army when they had the chance to do so; 4) All former Mexican possessions now part of the U.S. are substantially better off now than they were at the time we seized them; and, 5) Current Mexican possessions are inferior to current U.S. possessions. Therefore, we were justified to declare war on Mexico in 1847 based on subsequent positive outcomes.

I’m going to proceed based on the assumption that that is a fair representation of your thesis. Please do tell me if I’ve erred in my analysis.

That said, you already know the ethical and moral standard by which to judge that argument. Your case is rhetorically strong (you seem to have a natural talent for that), but rhetoric and morality are not the same thing. Rhetoric without a grounding in morality is a dangerous thing. It can lead you to bad places like, for instance, an argument in favor of empire of which your post is a pretty fine example.

You seem to be a student of history. What does history tell us about empires? They accomplish some good things. (For a superb example of that I would refer you to the excellent scene in “Life of Brian” in which Jewish rebels try to answer the rhetorical question, “What have the Romans ever done for us?”) They also perpetrate some truly horrible things like oppression, persecution, limitation (sometimes elimination) of rights of conquered subjects, extermination of native cultures (sometimes accomplished by exterminating the natives), and the list goes on. One common characteristic of empires is that they view their conquest of new territories as their right–sometimes even as their obligation (see Manifest Destiny). Ultimately, however, the thing that history teaches us about empires is that they all fall. Sometimes they take whole civilizations with them.

So empire is a messy business. If we wish to avoid the fate of empires then we must not become one, but that assessment misses the point. It’s a rhetorical rebuttal to your case, and your case constitutes the classic logical fallacy known as the red herring. The moral argument remains unaltered. The fact that we gained an advantage due to our decision to go to war with Mexico does not excuse the wrongful act by Polk. By any objective moral measure, he should have been held to account for what he had done, and such a reckoning very likely would have altered the behavior of future presidents. Which leads directly to my point about holding Bush to account for his decision to torture. Doing so will act as a deterrent to future illegal presidential behavior.

Now, here is my rhetorical case as based in my moral claim. If we truly wish to regain our moral stature in the world–that is, if we wish to become truly morally superior to the enemies we fight–then we must hold accountable those who broke the law. As I said previously, if members of the Bush administration believe that they were justified in breaking the law then let them stand up and say so. Then let them do their rightful duty and suffer the consequences for what they have done.

Aside from that, Mexico lost the war because it’s Mexico. They had the stronger army and the stronger military tradition but they lost because of how they acted. For example, Taylor’s army in the north, at the beginning of the war, was utterly defeated by the Mexicans and his soldiers were just waiting to die the following day—since they knew that the Mexicans took no prisoners. Dawn broke to find the Mexicans gone to Mexico City to declare victory and give the general (Santa Ana) a political boost. Again, Scott should never have even gotten close to Mexico City, let alone occupied it, if it weren’t for Mexican idiocy. Generals refused to man their posts so as not to let the other guy get the best position for heroics and in the process let us outflank them. In sum, they would have had to have been a stronger player on the continent way before the war to have made any difference. Instead, they assumed that God and the Virgin had granted them some kind of supremacy and to this day can’t understand how the gringos have bested them, which is why third world dependency theories and even Nazism has such appeal for them. It offers them an excuse.

“The reason I say so is that presidents have done worse before Bush and the result is a narrower moral compass or more fidelity to our human essence.”

You are correct to point out that prior U.S. presidents have done worse things than what Bush is accused of presently. The flaw in your reasoning, however, is to assume that previous extralegal acts–that is, acts outside contemporaneous law and not to be confused with illegal acts which violate contemporaneous law–by those presidents have taken the form of single acts which were later determined to be morally dubious and hence have not been repeated. (Dropping atomic bombs on Japan comes to mind.) In such instances, you can rightly argue that we made errors, learned from them, and subsequently righted our moral compass. Roosevelt’s decision to detain Japanese-Americans is a bit for fuzzy because it was an ongoing event, but detainment is not a moral equivalent to torture no matter how unjust the reasons.

Which brings me to our most recent former president. Where the Bush administration has deviated from those prior presidential wrongful acts is that it constructed a bureaucratized, centrally-controlled program to carry out actions that had previously been ruled as torture (more on that in a moment) thereby violating the law. Additionally, and more insidiously, the torture which Bush is accused of authorizing arose not simply because of the specific actions interrogators were taking (which can be parsed out individually, without regard to context, as either “torture” or “not torture”) but because of the fact that they were codified into a coherent program that, taken as a whole, constituted torture. That ruling was the result of an ICRC investigation of the treatment of detainees in U.S. custody, and whether we like it or not that ruling carries the force of law in the eyes of the Geneva Conventions. One particularly telling clue of the Bush administration’s consciousness of guilt in these matters is that the OLC memos in question specified that all of the techniques they described should take place in facilities into which the ICRC would not be allowed.

“But Bush’s actions were what brought on that ruling. They hadn’t been ruled as torture before.”

Unfortunately, this statement is demonstrably untrue although I make no claim that you are currently aware of that fact. Waterboarding in and of itself was ruled to be torture and a war crime by the U.S. courts, and Japanese officers were hanged for doing it to U.S. military personnel after WWII. That is ample legal precedent to automatically exclude waterboarding as an interrogation technique, and there is no credible means by which to claim ignorance of such a precedent when reviewing applicable case law for the purposes of determining the legality of it. The OLC memos conspicuously omitted that precedent. Having done so, the authors of those memos are likely guilty of professional misconduct as well as criminal negligence or criminal conspiracy.

One last note, if we take the appropriate steps in response to this situation then we will right the moral compass, as you so aptly put it. That is a testament to American resiliency, but it does not lessen the moral outrage that these wrongful acts represent.

“Did the acquisition of California justify a bogus causus belli against the Mexicans?”

No, it did not. Again, the principle is the same regardless of the justification for the wrongful act. The fact that you admit that the public motives of the president were bogus in this case undercuts any moral argument made in support of the cause. The fact that the U.S. has benefited in this case in no way mitigates the wrong.

Your claim that, had Polk not lied to Congress, started an illegal war, and subsequently brought California into the Union, California would now “resemble Baja California and San Diego would be just another little shit Mexican town with dead dogs and garbage strewn all over the streets and the people living in ignorance and fear”, while rhetorically compelling, is unsupportable speculation. We have no means by which to divine how Mexico would have developed had California remained a part of it. Just as the U.S. benefited greatly for having California in its possession so Mexico may have likewise benefited. If Mexico had won the war it might have become a stronger player on the continent, and the balance of power might have been significantly altered. Those scenarios are also unsupportable speculation. We simply have no way of knowing how history might have unfolded if things had come out differently.

You’re right that I was being sarcastic in talking about the “soul.” But I thought it meant something like “moral compass,” not “the essence of what makes us human.” Maybe it’s more or less the same thing. My point is that—whether it means what you say or not—Bush’s authorization of torture does not imply that we’re doing anything like that. The reason I say so is that presidents have done worse before Bush and the result is a narrower moral compass or more fidelity to our human essence.

What I see is that Bush was attempting to stay within the law, while still using what people here are calling torture. Whether these practices are torture or not is a judgment for the courts to make and they have made it in some cases. But Bush’s actions were what brought on that ruling. They hadn’t been ruled as torture before. He didn’t authorize breaking people’s kneecaps. He authorized waterboarding. By now this has been ruled as torture, so that’s why I admit he authorized torture. But at the time, he had a case that it wasn’t.

Thanks for catching my inconsistencies. I guess I was confusing “duties” with “morals.” However, my above point still stands: the practices authorized by Bush had not been ruled as torture when he authorized them, so he has a legitimate case that he was not openly flouting the law, like you say.

You say, “subsequent desirable consequences do not legitimize the commission of a wrongful act. The ends, in a more familiar turn, do not justify the means.” Maybe and maybe not. Did the acquisition of California justify a bogus causus belli against the Mexicans? Polk plainly lied to Congress to get his declaration of war and the war caused untold damage to Mexico, not to mention the Americans who died. Would you have voted against the war in 1847? I would have. But then, I would have been wrong since California today would resemble Baja California and San Diego would be just another little shit Mexican town with dead dogs and garbage strewn all over the streets and the people living in ignorance and fear.

Your opinion. You’re entitled to it, but I think you’re committing a fallacy here. This looks like a classic false dilemma to me although you could wedge it into a straw man framework if you wanted to do so. You define the term “soul” within its religious context when you know (or at least you should know) that it has a colloquial context that operates outside of religious thought. In that colloquial context, “soul” means something along the lines of “the essence of what makes us human”. Or, if you prefer, “the essence of what makes us more than mere animals”. In that sense, torture does quite clearly endanger our souls, your protestations notwithstanding.

“The larger point is that our moral compass will never run a true bead because we have so many morals. We can’t possibly ever live up to them all since in the real world they come into direct conflict so much. In the case of authorizing torture, the president is torn between his duties of upholding the law and keeping the people safe.”

“Duty” means something like “what is owed” while “moral” means something more along the lines of “a sense of difference between right and wrong”, but you seem to use these terms interchangeably. You state clearly that you believe both upholding the law and protecting the people are duties of the president, and you could mount a substantial argument on that claim. What you seem to be missing, however, is that duties must be performed within a moral context in order for them to be properly executed. Within that framework, subsequent desirable consequences do not legitimize the commission of a wrongful act. The ends, in a more familiar turn, do not justify the means. If it is the position of those within the Bush administration that they openly flouted the law (a wrongful act) in order to potentially save the lives of Americans (a desirable consequence) then it is their subsequent duty to make themselves accountable for the wrongs they have committed. They can answer for their decision to operate outside the law by submitting to the law and accepting whatever consequences may come. To do otherwise is to further violate any sense of morality and to continue compounding wrongful acts with subsequent wrongful acts.

Your claim that we can never live up to our morals because we have so many of them is an equivocation. Nobody I’ve come across so far in this debate is suggesting that morality is easy, but its difficulty of implementation does not excuse us from working toward perfecting its implementation. Again, my suspicion here is that you are confusing morals with duties.

“A legitimate case can be made for his side of the argument, even if you disagree with it.”

A case can be, and has been, made for his side of the argument, and the emerging consensus among independent legal professionals is that it is most certainly not legitimate. Bradbury’s own successor within the Bush administration repudiated that argument and warned those who had been acting according to its conclusions that they could no longer consider themselves indemnified by it. That is damning evidence from a person who was ostensibly on Bush’s side.

“Bush’s case might be enhanced if we really knew what information we got by torturing KSM. But we don’t because Obama blacked it out.”

Bush’s case regarding justification for what you admit is torture is irrelevant. U.S. law, as well as at least three treaties ratified by the Senate (I would refer you to Article VI, Section 1 of the U.S. constitution on this point), unequivocally and unconditionally condemn torture in all cases and in all circumstances. It is a crime.

the fact of the matter is, the President is elected to uphold and enforce the laws of the land (enacted by Congress)

True, but he’s also elected to be CIC, which means keeping Americans safe. That’s exactly what he did.

ED Kain:

I think that the idea that we’re losing our soul by condoning torture is just another wedge issue used by politicians to get votes. For one thing, there is no such thing as a soul, so we can’t ever lose it. But if you mean something like “we’re losing our moral compass,” then it’s just wrong because it’s ahistorical. Do you think we’ll now be judged by god when we die and sent to Hell if we condoned torture? If so, then your opinion is irrelevant to me. Do you think that we’re losing our moral compass? Then, how do you explain the fact that we have condoned less and less of this kind of conduct by our government as time goes by? You yourself mentioned the internment of Japanese Americans. Earlier, Wilson had authorized mass deportations of the Wobblies, jailed people for pacifism, and jailed even more during the Red Scare. Today, he’s known as Meester Idealist, which is probably making a lot of people alive at the time turn over in their graves. I could go on, but the point is that our moral compass is narrowing its bead on the magnetic north of ethical behavior, not the opposite, which would be true if we were “losing our souls.” The very fact that we’re even having this discussion proves my point.

The larger point is that our moral compass will never run a true bead because we have so many morals. We can’t possibly ever live up to them all since in the real world they come into direct conflict so much. In the case of authorizing torture, the president is torn between his duties of upholding the law and keeping the people safe. That’s the essence of the “ticking bomb” scenario. In Bush’s case, although I know everyone here disagrees, he was not even breaking the law. He was trying to stretch the limits of the law. A legitimate case can be made for his side of the argument, even if you disagree with it.

Bush’s case might be enhanced if we really knew what information we got by torturing KSM. But we don’t because Obama blacked it out.