[Update: Looking back at this, and then at the post on MyDD, AmericaBlog, and the New York Times, I’m kinda outraged. I mean, the research for this post – looking up actual mine deaths – took me like five minutes. I spent longer making the graphs legible. How freaking wrong is it to do an article or post on mine safety, and not like look at, say, mine safety? Particularly if you’re the newspaper of record or an A-List blogger?]

Here’s a post that’s going to get me in trouble with my left blog friends. I wrote this a few weeks ago, and put it aside; it didn’t seem topical any more, and I’m getting tired of hammering mainstream Democratic issues. I wrote it hoping it might suggest some constructive paths, but knowing full well that we’re going to have to climb a tall wall of disbelief to get there.

Today, the New York Times and MyDD, among others, are leading with stories on mine safety and Administration policy.I’m a fan of regulation. My dad was in high-rise construction. On jobs he ran over a thirty-year career, maybe a dozen men were killed. He never felt it was a trade worth making, and safety was a primary focus of his attention as a boss. And for one of my first jobs I worked one summer as the guy who had to go up on the high iron and convince the steelworkers to use their newly-required safety equipment. The assumption was, I think, that as the boss’ son I wouldn’t get hung by my feet twenty-two stories in the air. They didn’t think they needed any equipment to be safe.

But now that they use it, heavy construction is far safer than it was in the 1960’s.

The air in Southern California when I grew up – in the sixties – was brown and stinging all summer long. There were 10.4 million registered vehicles in Los Angeles County & Orange County in 2004. There were probably about 4 million (based on the number statewide) in 1970. And the air quality is much better today.

Why?

It wasn’t the consumers pushing for it, or the enlightened manufacturers of cars (or factory owners) doing to be be crunchy. It was regulation.

Cars today are vastly safer than they were in 1970. Market forces?

Not so much, regulation.

So in the news recently are the mining tragedies that have killed 21 miners so far this year. And a lot of coverage has focused on the lower fines, and perceived lax enforcement by an industry-friendly Administration.

So I started a post on the importance of re-regulating the industry, and toughening regulation to save miner’s lives.

And I went to the Mine Safety & Health Administration to trend out the pattern of deaths.

And got the data that made up this somewhat surprising graph:

If I extend it through 2006, and annualize the 21 deaths reported through Frb 21, here’s the graph I get:

Will we see 240 deaths in mines this year? Not likely. But even if we do, go ahead and note the gold average line on both graphs. On the left, a Democratic MSHA. The right half? A Republican one.

Dammit. The facts just didn’t support my position. And they don’t support the New York Times’, or Scott Shields’.

What’s the deal?

I did some more digging, and found an interesting article on safety from the California:

The Division of Safety and Occupational Health (division), within the Department of Industrial Relations, is responsible for enforcing California’s health and safety standards. In the spring of 2004, approximately two years after Skyway construction started, it began an informal partnership with KFM allowing the division to conduct periodic compliance assistance inspections. These inspections represented additional access to the site beyond what the division normally would have under state law. To obtain this additional access, the division agreed that no citations would be issued if KFM promptly corrected unsafe conditions or procedures identified during these compliance assistance inspections.

KFM’s reported injury rates for the Skyway were approximately one-fourth the average injury rate of prime contractors on other large Bay Area bridge projects and approximately one-fourth to slightly more than one-third the state and national rates for construction. However, the division does not have a process to verify the reasonable accuracy of employers’ annual injury reports from which injury rates are calculated, because according to the division’s acting chief, the division believes that with its finite resources it must focus on higher priorities. As of September 2005, KFM has recorded 23 injuries in its annual injury reports. Based on evidence available to us, there are indications of 15 alleged workplace injuries and an alleged illness that potentially meet recording criteria. Because there were conflicting positions presented to us by the sources we reviewed and because we are not the entity to make the determination of whether injuries or illnesses are recordable, we notified the division of our concerns and it informed us that it opened a formal investigation into the matter. KFM has a safety program that includes elements identified by safety experts as necessary to promote a safe worksite, but experts note that one element in its safety program—the use of financial or other incentives as rewards for a safe workplace—may lead to the underreporting of injuries.

So basically, instead of periodic or post-incident inspections, citing and fining the contractor when violations occur, the inspectors visit on their own schedule, identify problems, and if the contractor fixes them, no further action is taken.

Now if you credit the 15 possible injuries to the 23 reported ones, you still have an accident rate less than half the typical construction project.

I don’t know if the MHSA is doing anything like this (I assume they’d be publicizing it if they were, and I’ve looked). But I do know that people manage to their metrics, and if our metrics are high fines, we’ll get high fines. If they are low deaths…well, let’s just say that fines alone are not be the metric we ought to be looking at.

And there’s a good post-millenium Democratic issue – how do we take the regulations that got us from the polluted, deadly 50’s to today and make them smarter? How do we make them effective, not at fining or delaying or harassing industry, but at meeting the goals we set when we established the regulations in the first place?

Let’s track deaths and injuries and pollution instead of violations. And let’s fight for policies that lower them – rather than those that track revenue from violations.

If you’re not reading ‘Intel Dump’ regularly, you should. The J.D. Henderson article Joe cites below was great, and the post today by Kris Alexander is as well.

Shop and Awe

During 2003, I was an intelligence officer assigned to CENTCOM in support of Operations Enduring and Iraqi Freedom. I worked hard to win, but the military machine of which I was a tiny part can only secure a partial victory. If U.S. trade policy were better adapted to the post 9/11 world, we might ultimately win by dropping more currency than cruise missiles. Call it “shop and awe”.

I spent the initial phases of Iraqi Freedom in Qatar. Right after, we had declared “mission accomplished”, CENTCOM lowered the force protection level enough for a few of us go exploring the in the souk, or market, in Doha, Qatar. Two of us wandered into a shop selling beautiful Persian silk rugs.

“You are American soldiers?” the proprietor asked in accented English. Damn, the haircut gives us away every time.

“Yes sir,” I replied. “Where are you from in the world?”

“Iran,” he stated glaring defiantly from under his turban–a challenge probably borne from watching too much “reality” TV on Al Jazzera.

…go over and read the rest. I’ll spoil the lazy by bringing across his conclusion so I can riff on it:

So, four years after 9/11, why did our government spend so much political energy promoting CAFTA while ignoring trade with the Greater Middle East? Is the economic development of Guatemala more important than Pakistan? And why aren’t we demanding that the Europeans open up to agriculture imports? Currently the Iraqi and Afghani economies are clawing their way back into life. When they re-enter the global economic stage, will they run aground on Western trade policy?

The countries where we are trying to spread democracy need concrete evidence of our commitment to their long-term well-being. Last summer, the Bush administration fumbled around with the idea that we are no longer in the Global War on Terror, or the GWOT. The new term was GSAVE, the Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism. It’s all empty semantics without real changes in our policy. Parts of the private sector are getting it right. Why can’t our government?

After 9/11, we were told to keep spending and traveling so the terrorists wouldn’t win. With some adjustments to our trade policies, we might have been on to something. So go buy a rug, and strike a blow for freedom. I know a guy in Doha who will give you a deal.

The most powerful things we have in America are not our military. The most powerful things we have are our markets, and the attraction that we have for the Sumis of the world.

California Secretary of State Bruce McPherson has approved the use of flawed (many would say fatally flawed) Diebold voting machines in the June election.

I think that’s a horrible idea, and am working on a series of posts on why.

But if you’re in the group who agrees with people like Bruce Schneier and Avi Rubin that this is a bad idea (using flawed voting machines which can cast doubt on the outcome of elections), please click here to go to Sen. Debra Bowen’s campaign site (disclosure: she’s running against Bruce McPherson for Secretary of State; I know her well; I support her completely) and send the Secretary a message suggesting he rethink his poor decision.

I’m working on a series of posts on this, and trust me – this isn’t a right or left issue.

In the comments to my post below, uber-commenter Chris raises a simple and direct question:

I’ll play your game, AL: what metrics would you find acceptable in determining that the war in Iraq has failed? Do we have to stay in country for 20 years, as allahthatjazz suggests above? or is there any set of conditions that could take place within the calendar year that might make you reconsider your position?

I replied:

What’s the metric? Militarily, ongoing, organized, large-scale fighting between militias. Politically, the renunciation – and not just a theatrical renunciation – by significant blocs from the political process.

The real metric is the willingness of the US public to support the war, and what frustrates me (and I’m not yet articulating it) is the circular nature of the argument, which goes “we can’t support the war because the American people aren’t supporting the war enough to win”.

So let’s go to today’s newspapers…in today’s Washington Post:

In the days that followed the bombing of a sacred Shiite shrine, Iraq seemed within a hair’s breadth of civil war. But an aggressive U.S. and Kurdish diplomatic campaign appears for now to have coaxed the country back from open conflict between Sunni Arabs and Shiites, according to Iraqi politicians and Western diplomats speaking in interviews on Monday.
…
Among those most upset by the Sunni boycott threat was Talabani, an ethnic Kurd who was able to take a central role in the negotiations because he was perceived as a neutral party.

Ironically, the Kurds stood to gain the most from a civil conflict. They have long wanted an independent state, and revolted against Saddam Hussein in 1991 only to be brutally repressed. But Talabani was deeply troubled by the Samarra crisis, said Peter Galbraith, a former U.S. diplomat who was in contact with Talabani throughout the crisis.

“I’ve known President Jalal Talabani for over 20 years,” Galbraith said. “It is the most pessimistic I’ve seen him, and that includes being in Iraq the night the uprising collapsed and we were fleeing for our lives. Here, he was profoundly disturbed about the future of Iraq.”

Here’s a central figure in the population that flat-out wins when the nation of Iraq collapses – depressed by the risk of collapse, in a position to profit from that collapse, and stepping up to keep it from happening.

I don’t recall any parallels to that in Lebanon in the late 1960’s and 1970’s. And while the risk of collapse is obviously there, no I don’t think we’re near it yet and I still believe that we can avoid it. The question is – will we?

Over at Kevin Drum’s, he’s welcoming the changing of the guard at The New Republic, complimenting them while trying to articulate what he thinks they are missing:

Like a lot of people, I find TNR to be a maddening magazine. At the same time, I also find it indispensable. …just take a look at their masthead. I’m not a fan of every single one of TNR’s senior editors (a title that’s essentially code for “staff writer,” not someone who actually does any editing) but 80% of them are top notch. It’s hard to think of any other political magazine that can match that collection of talent, and they consistently churn out a remarkable amount of top notch political journalism.

So what’s their problem? … Their writing is better than most of their competitors. Do they need to cut down on what sometimes seems like knee jerk contrarianism? Maybe. One Michael Kinsley is enough.

[ellipses mine – A.L.]

No, Kevin, explains, there’s just one problem.

Do they need to finally figure out — plainly and unambiguously — that the Iraq war was a mistake?

Bingo. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem likely to happen, and as long as they decline to learn the obvious lesson from our current adventure in Mesopotamia they’re just not going to find a very big liberal audience. And that’s too bad, because an awful lot of good stuff is being held hostage.

[emphasis mine – A.L.]

It’s been interesting, in the week of my blogging hiatus (taking two hours every day to watch TV just blows your at-home productivity all to hell), to watch the CW solidify as Bush’s popularity declines, and right wing idols Buckley and Fukayama step onto the train and declare the war a catastrophe.

I’m wrestling with it myself.

What I’m wrestling with as a first step is my belief in the power of groupthink. In the power of the innate human desire to go along with the group, and the effect it has on people.

When I was in college, I was a pretty serious photographer. I made some money doing it; I sold some pictures (journalism to local and regional papers and sports photos to some calendars) as well as took some fairly serious classes. I took a class from a photographer named Joe Czarnecki – I’ve remembered his name because of what he did.

He told us that he wanted to calibrate our meters, and walked up to a wall held up his expensive light meter, and announced that it was an EV of – I don’t remember – and that it would thus be an exposure at 1/250 at, say F 2.8 (I’m making up the values).

One by one, we walked up to the wall, looked through our SLR’s or at our meters, and announces that yes, the right exposure for ASA200 film was F2.8 @ 1/250.

I walked up to the wall, held up my camera (I had a meter stuck to the top of a rangefinder Leica) and it read something completely different. I remember looking at it, and in what even then felt like an act of complete, if minor, cowardice, announcing that I agreed with the group within a 1/4 stop.

Several others came by, agreed, and then once we were all in, Joe walked back to the wall.

“Oops,” he said. “I must have made a mistake. It’s really F1.4 at 1/60.” And he looked at us with what I can only describe as contempt.

The room was full of mortified silence. Everyone else had done what I did.

Czarnecki explained that his point was simple. When our eyes disagreed with what other people were telling us, we should trust our eyes.

He had a larger point, about artistic vision, which he went on to make. But his basic point – believe your eyes and don’t give in to the pressure of the group is a memory that’s pretty well rooted in me; and as I see sensible people like Kevin Drum explain that the only thing that keeps The New Republic from being the anchor point of modern liberalism is this one issue where they just won’t go along, the image I keep having is of my professor leaning into the wall, holding his light meter, and going “Oops”.

I’m supposed to be writing about e-Voting – which I think is the most important issue – the port issues, the horrible bombing of the al-Askari shrine in Iraq, or something else momentous and weighty.

Instead I want to blog about Jeopardy.

Kevin Drum just went and took (and I presume, passed) the test to get onto the show.

And sitting here watching the Winter Olympics I had a major flash of deja-vu, and thought I’d take a moment and write about it. You see, it’s time to start panning for our annual Arbor Day party.

Eight years ago, almost exactly, we got cable TV installed so we could watch the Winter Olympics. I’m not sure why I have such a jones for the Winter Olympics; I took a couple of years off to see if I could get good enough at something (cycling track sprints) to go (the answer was no – actually, HELL no). We got it taken out the week after it ended – and we’ll probably do that again now.

This was the Nagano Olympics.

You may recall the TV coverage of that Olympiad. It – kindly – sucked.

So our family sat around the TV and did what normal Americans do. We watched Jeopardy. And I got engaged in the all-American enterprise of abusing the contestants.

“How the %$@@! can you not know the answer to that question!“

“What are you doing on national television! You’re an idiot!“

My sons, who worship and respect me in all things, gently suggested that if I was so smart, perhaps I ought to try out and go on the show.

I explained to them that no real people go on game shows; I believed that everyone involved was an unemployed actor.

Six weeks later, I was driving to the Sony lot in Culver City to take my test. I’ll skip over the details of how I wound up there, except to note that my sons have always been good at forging my signature, and that the father of multiple sons is always walking a fine line, risking losing his status as the alpha primate in the household.

I’d crammed an encyclopedia of television, and one of sports, and walked in confident I’d pass the test and take home bragging rights to my sons.

I did pass, and I not only bragged but abused the boys. My chores? Theirs now. After all, I’d passed the Jeopardy test.

My confidence lasted two months.

My office phone rang. “Hi, Marc! This is Greg from Jeopardy! We’d like you to come down on Thursday and tape with us. Does that work for you?“

Abada-abada-abada – I told him I’d have to see if I could clear my calendar and get back to him.

When I can’t make up my mind, I tend to do impromptu focus groups. So I called several friends.

After the third one suggested that he’d come to the office and drag my sorry butt to the studio, I called Greg and got my instructions.

I drove onto the lot with my four changes of clothes, parked, and walked to the studio, where I checked in.

They had a covey of unemployed comedians (actually, if they were working, they weren’t unemployed, I guess) who acted as our handlers. They were funny, engaging, helpful, and full of lore.

“Don’t eat the pink donut! If someone eats the pink donut, the show will have technical problems.“

I ate the pink donut.

So we went out on the set, and played some practice games.

What you can’t see on TV is the bank of lights recessed around the question screens; a producer hits a button when Alex is done asking the question, and then and only then can the button you have in your hand buzz you in. There’s a certain amount of anticipation – kind of like a drag racer – and the lights are activated by someone listening to Alex like you are. So you can’t key off the lights…

If you buzz too soon, your buzzer locks out for about half a second. Every time you hit the buzzer, it locks for a moment (less than half a second, I think); so the key here is to hit it once, and then with the right rhythm.

We got our pictures taken with Alex; here’s mine – note the somewhat sour look on his face; I’d just given him rabbit ears in our first picture. I’d expected a dry – oh, no one’s ever done that before – and got a bolt of pure rage. He was furious with me.

I’ll note that I got the call the day after I got the first – and only – buzz cut of my adult life.

So I assumed – between the pink donut and pissing the host off – that I was going to be in the pool of people who didn’t get on – they film five shows a day; there is one returning winner, and so they need ten new contestants a day, and they bring fourteen.

I didn’t mind not getting on – it meant I got props for going, and didn’t actually have to go on – and just rolled with it.

There was a young guy – one of the straightest people I’ve ever met (he made Kevin Drum look like Mike Ness) – who went into the first game, and blew everyone out. He was great!

I kind of became his handler. He was so stressed when he came off that he’d sweated through his shirt and his jacket; I’d help him get new clothes out, get a drink, and remind him to breathe.

Game two, he blew everyone out again.

Game three, the audio system failed, so we had lunch early. The handlers glared at me. They got it fixed, and he blew everyone out.

Game four, they called him, and then, surprisingly, they turned to me…

…and I was on Jeopardy!

The game itself was a kind of a blur; it’s funny that today I still clearly remember hanging out in the green room and eating the pink donut, and that I only have four memories of the game itself.

I was ahead early, and there was a moment when I went “whew! this isn’t so hard!” On the tape, you can see me visibly exhale and relax.

When we did our stories – the little self-revelatory anecdotes – mine ran wayyy too long. I frantically tried to wrap it up while Trebek glared at me some more.

The third contestant with us was a nice woman from Oregon who answered maybe three questions the whole show. When she buzzed in the first time, I rember looking at her in amazement. the tape shows me looking at her with a “where did you come from?” look.

And at the very end, when I realized that I didn’t know the answer to Final Jeopardy, I started to write a smartass answer until I realized that they’d been very clear – if we did anything political, or obscene, or obviously stupid, our taping would be ended and we’d be gone. I frantically rewrote my answer to something lame but plausible.

The question?

“What holiday is celebrated on March 7 in California, April 23 in Nebraska, and March 26 in Spain?”

I’ve hated Arbor Day ever since then…

The winner wasn’t me – and he went on to win all five games that day.

It was huge fun. I won a cool trip to the Caribbean and got to take the boys for a week, and I’ve got this picture of me and Alex Trebeck.

My advice for Kevin? Practice buzzing with a ball-point pen. And eat the pink donut.
–

OK, imagine an issue where this site closely aligned with a Daily Kos diary.

Right now, if you live in California, there’s something you need to do. Here’s what’s on Kos:

The Plan:  CALL 5 SENATORS on CA Senate Rules Committee (see #s below)

You will be requesting Subpoenas on KEY WITNESSES — on election industry and certification insiders who did not come forth on the 16th to testify under oath.

The Goal:  Subpoena-induced sworn testimony from voting machine vendors and errant testing labs, voting machine examiners.

  THIS IS EASY.  YOU CAN DO IT.  YOU MUST DO IT.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

FIRST

Here is your contact list for the Rules Committee, you need not be Californian:  Urge support for subpoenas of election industry and certification insiders who didn’t testify on the 16th.

IT’S ONLY 5 CALLS/ EMAILS

Senator Don Perata (Chair) D

(916) 651-4009  
District office (510) 286-1333
Senator.Perata@sen.ca.gov

Senator Jim Battin (Vice-Chair) R
(916) 651-4037
Jim.Battin@sen.ca.gov

Senator Roy Ashburn R
(916) 651-4018
senator.ashburn@sen.ca.gov

Senator Debra Bowen D
EMAIL ONLY Debra@debrabowen.com – (Ms. Bowen is mounting this case and will be busy preparing, emails are welcomed– See below*)

Senator Gilbert Cedillo D
(916) 651-4022

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

SECOND-  What to say:

Be concise, be polite, be professional. Here’s your message: ask for “Rules Committee support for subpoenas of election industry and certification insiders who won’t otherwise inform the Elections Committee as to what’s going on”.

The key people:  Diebold head programmers, federal testing labs (Ciber, Wyle) that repeatedly certified these flawed systems, voting system examiners who took taxpayer money, spent hours on  so-called “security exams” on systems your 12-year old sister can hack, then repeatedly recommended for certification.

This is about volume of calls logged, emails sent.  Not only should YOU make calls, but this needs to go out to your list.

Polite, professional, short clear message, FIRM is what works. Your passion and conviction will speak volumes.

Once subpoenas go out, that will have nationwide impact. Never before have the key witnesses had to answer questions under oath in public.  That will unravel the garment, and we are so close.  Demonstrate that the citizenry of America wants those guys compelled to testify, with subpoena power, under oath.  Per Bev Harris…”Perjury will follow”.  It’s our best shot that is achievable before the critical Nov. elections.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

THIRD – if you want to do more:

Suggestions from Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting.org-

Next comes gathering evidence in the form of public records.  I’ll work with any who volunteer to send customized public records request letters, will help
you learn the ropes, will suggest some really juicy stuff to ask for.  This year, it is all about mentoring individuals to regain their power as citizens. Just one
person can make a difference.

But you need evidence, and records requests are the best way to get it. For the power of a single records request by a single individual, look at what Joan Quinn achieved in the article called “Voting machine examiners chickening out” on our home page, I think it’s the third article down on www.blackboxvoting.org.

* UPDATE:  State Senator Debra Bowen, working feverishly on the forefront of election integrity, wrote me last night to request that we email her offices rather than call. Her words:

“Email is great because it is easy for us to log and report — and we can actually prove how many emails we’ve received!”

“We are going to need an enormous amount of people power in the next couple of weeks.   Together we can change this whole pathetic mess.  Let’s stand up for our democracy RIGHT NOW.”

“Please email me in support of issuing subpoenas rather than calling  — you will save my staff a great deal of time logging calls, and you know what kind work we have
to do right now.  You can always call and fax later!”

Use this address:  

Debra@debrabowen.com

“Anyone cross-posting, please include the contact info — www.debrabowen.com  and the email address.  My team will strategize
about this in the next 24 hours.  There is so much happening at once.”

“I have a stack of documents to read, so I’m going to log off.  We’ll get our  contact plan out before offices open on Tuesday, but email doesn’t have to wait for the end of a holiday weekend.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

THANKS EVERYONE, IN ADVANCE, FOR MAKING FIVE EXTREMELY IMPORTANT PHONE CALLS FOR DEMOCRACY.

For more information on election issues, see my website: Who’s Counting? Recommend the Chapters on “Technology” and “The Companies” as a Primer.

Tags: Diebold, McPherson, California elections, Election fraud, Action Alert, Election reform, 2006 elections, Debra Bowen (all tags)

WHY MY OSTENSIBLE PARTY, THE DEMOCRATS, WILL NOT BE ABLE TO USE BUSH’S CORPORATE HISTORY AGAINST HIM

From today’s NY Times

The bill, which has been vigorously opposed by consumer-rights groups, had long been the top legislative priority of credit card companies and some banks, which insist that many debtors abuse the bankruptcy laws to escape debts they should be able to pay. The companies sharply stepped up campaign contributions to members of Congress in recent years as they promoted the legislation.

Among the biggest beneficiaries would be the MBNA Corporation of Delaware, which describes itself as the world’s biggest independent credit card company. Ranked by employee donations, MBNA was the largest corporate contributor to President Bush’s 2000 campaign.

The company has also recently acknowledged that it gave a $447,000 debt-consolidation loan on what critics viewed as highly favorable terms to a crucial House supporter of the bill only four days before he signed on as a lead sponsor of the legislation in 1998. Both MBNA and the lawmaker, Representative James P. Moran Jr., Democrat of Virginia, have denied that there was anything improper about the loan.

I’m too disgusted to comment.

Posted by Armed Liberal at July 26, 2002 09:27 AM

I posted this four years ago, and it presents two problems that Democrats will have to deal with in this election cycle, as the culture of corruption in Washington begins to be an issue.

First, the moral issue, which is simply that we won’t solve the problem by solving only the Republican half of it.

Next the instrumental/political one which simply is that the Democrats can’t make a strong stand on the specifics of corruption – even though their proxies at TAP are hammering Rick Santorum right now – because they themselves are too vulnerable.

As I’ve said, I think there’s an opportunity for the Democrats to use this and make both moral and political progress – but it will require cleaning their own house first. I think that’s a smart political move, not a dumb one, because it iwll show the American people that they are serious about changing the culture in Washington.

Until then, it’s just chaff.

Perpetual class act Juan Cole is advertising for a libel attorney – on contingency, of course.

Res ipsa loqitor, as the lawyers say.

We’ve been down this road before.

The New Yorker article everyone is citing on the genesis of Administration policies on prisoner treatment – I think that the term ‘torture’ is one that tends to stop thinking – has me continuing to wrestle with the issues involved.

I’ll start with the statement that this isn’t something that will drive my overall view of the war. In total, our treatment of prisoners can be compared favorably to what we did in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, and is worlds ahead of the ways that prisoners are treated by anyone else.

What’s at issue is the way we’re treating a population of partisans – combatants who are technically not entitled to Geneva protections – and who stand somewhere on a continuum between terrorists and troops.

I want here to make a case to my fellow supporters of the war that overly-harsh – and I’m honestly not sure where the exact line is – treatment of really bad, or suspected really bad, people is a really bad idea.

It’s not a really bad idea because they don’t deserve it, or because the inevitable case where something horrible happens to an innocent means we should put down our guns and come home because the whole effort is morally compromised.

It’s a really bad idea because it throws away the most effective weapon we have in dealing with the larger Iraqi and Afghan population, the people we have to win over to win the war. It throws away the clear difference between us and them. But don’t take it from me, take it from John Boyd (in ‘Patterns of Conflict‘)

From Slide 108:

Action:

Undermine guerilla cause and destroy their cohesion by demonstrating integrity and competence of government to represent and serve needs of the people – rather than exploit and impoverish them for the benefit of a greedy elite.*

Take political initiative to root out and visibly punish corruption. Select new leaders with recognized competence as well as popular appeal. Ensure that they deliver justice, eliminate grievances and connect government with grass roots.*

Infiltrate guerilla movement as well as employ population for intelligence about guerilla plans, operations, and organization.

Seal-off guerilla regions from outside world by diplomatic, psychological, and various other activities that strip-away potential allies as well as by disrupting or straddling communications that connect these regions with the outside world.

Deploy administrative talent, police, and counter-guerilla teams into affected localities and regions to inhibit guerilla communication, coordination, and movement; minimize guerilla contact with local inhabitants; isolate their ruling cadres; and destroy their infrastructure.

Exploit presence of above teams to build-up local government as well as recruit militia for local and regional security in order to protect people from the persuasion and coercion efforts of guerilla cadres and their fighting units.

Use special teams in a complementary effort to penetrate guerilla controlled regions. Employ (guerillas own) tactics of reconnaissance, infiltration, surprise hit-and-run, and sudden ambush to: keep roving bands off-balance, make base areas untenable, and disrupt communication with the outside world.

Expand these complementary security/penetration efforts into affected region after affected region in order to undermine, collapse, and replace guerilla influence with government influence and control.

Visible link these efforts with local political/economic/social reform in order to connect central government with hopes and needs of people, thereby gain their support and confirm government legitimacy.

Idea:

Break guerillas’ moral-mental-physical hold over the population, destroy their cohesion, and bring about their collapse via political initiative that demonstrates moral legitimacy and vitality of government and by relentless military operations that emphasize stealth/fast-temp/fluidity-of-action and cohesion of overall effort.

*If you cannot realize such a political program, you might consider changing sides.

(emphasis and footnote his)

(slide 118):

Observations Related To Moral Conflict

No fixed recipes for organization, communications, tactics, leadership, etc.

Wide freedom for subordinates to exercise imagination and initiative – yet harmonize within intent of superior commanders.

Heavy reliance upon moral (human values) instead of material superiority as basis for cohesion and ultimate success.

Commanders must create a bond and breadth of experience based upon trust – not mistrust – for cohesion.

I’ll also wag a finger at the antiwar media; their decision to oppose any real moral position supporting the war – not just to make either-or assumptions, but to clearly suggest that there is no moral side in favor – is more damaging than we understand.