Get a Grip, Please

Michael Tomasky calls for "World War III: Democrats and America vs. Trump and Russia."

Republican leaders, he kindly allows, are not actually traitors. But they are a hair's breadth from traitors. Those are his exact words.

A foreign government may have determined the outcome of a presidential election. And not Canada or Costa Rica, but Russia: the United States’ chief historic adversary and an oligarchy ruled by a tyrant who has systematically taken away rights.... On top of all the above, leaders of one of our two political parties—I’ll let you hazard a guess as to which one—argued against letting the American public know about all this before the election, reportedly saying it would be too partisan. That’s not hardball politics. That’s a hair’s breath away from treason.

Not one person in the Republican leadership had any authority to block the declassification of that CIA report. Also, not one person in the Republican leadership had any authority to require it to be declassified. Their "arguing" was purely advisory. The head of the CIA could have done it. However, given the politically explosive nature of the revelations, he likely deferred to his boss, the President of the United States, whose original classification authority is broad enough to have ordered the review partially or wholly declassified before the election.

For some reason, a man well known for unilateral actions taken without any Congressional approval elected not to do it.  Barack Obama chose not to go public with this without Republicans providing him with political cover.

McConnell, according to the Post story, showed no concern about the truth of the allegations. And bear this nugget in mind: This was not Barack Obama trying to persuade him to join in this bipartisan effort. This was Lisa Monaco, the president’s counterterrorism adviser; and Jeh Johnson, the Secretary of Homeland Security secretary; and FBI Director James Comey. McConnell told Comey, in essence, to go take a jump in the lake. McConnell was interested only in party, not at all in country. That’s not treason, but it sure isn’t patriotism.

So Obama decided he didn't want to do this on his own. Again, though, that was completely his decision alone.  Barack Obama didn't need to persuade anyone to join in any bipartisan effort. He had the full power to do what he decided to do independently, and no Republican could have stopped him.

All the Republican leadership is plausibly guilty of is refusing to give the President political cover to destroy their candidate in the last days of an election. Why would they refuse this tremendous opportunity to show their patriotism? Perhaps because the FBI isn't on the same page as the CIA.

And yet, there is skepticism within the American government, particularly at the F.B.I., that this evidence adds up to proof that the Russians had the specific objective of getting Mr. Trump elected.

A senior American law enforcement official said the F.B.I. believed that the Russians probably had a combination of goals, including damaging Mrs. Clinton and undermining American democratic institutions. Whether one of those goals was to install Mr. Trump remains unclear to the F.B.I., he said.

The official played down any disagreement between the F.B.I. and the C.I.A., and suggested that the C.I.A.’s conclusions were probably more nuanced than they were being framed in the news media.

The agencies’ differences in judgment may also reflect different methods of investigating the Russian interference. The F.B.I., which has both a law enforcement and an intelligence role, is held to higher standards of proof in examining people involved in the hacking because it has an eye toward eventual criminal prosecutions. The C.I.A. has a broader mandate to develop intelligence assessments.

Having said that, I think the CIA is perfectly correct here. Of course Russia was involved in influence operations to try to sway the outcome of the election, and there's every reason to think that they wanted Trump to win. As I wrote yesterday, this preference makes sense just given Clinton's repeated devotion to a No-Fly Zone in Syria that would have put American warplanes flying against Russian warplanes, creating an extreme risk of war between these nuclear powers. The fact that Trump thinks of Russia as a great place to do business is icing on the cake. They didn't need any additional reason to prefer him: the Syria policy difference is fully sufficient to explain the Russian support. They have invested heavily in a major strategic push there, which at best would have been badly endangered by Clinton's policy; at worst, they'd have found themselves with a nuclear exchange over downed warplanes.

So, to recap:

1) Republican leaders are not only not traitors, they didn't have any power to betray you. They couldn't do anything to stop this from being declassified. Talk to Barack Obama. He's the one who made the call.

2) The FBI dispute with the CIA gives Republicans plausible reasons to question the wisdom of suffering a huge political blow, even though I think the CIA is quite right. It's not ridiculous to think the FBI is right, and given the dispute, I can see why ordinary rational people would not elect to pay a huge cost to get this out there right before an election.

3) That Russia supports Trump in no way implies that Trump has been suborned or bribed by Russia. There are perfectly rational strategic reasons for them to support Trump that are more than adequate to account for their support. Clinton represented a serious threat to Russian interests, and maybe a serious threat to the Russian mainland if things escalated into full-scale nuclear war. Indeed, Russia's reaction to our election is perhaps the most fully rational thing that the 2016 election has produced.

So let's tone down this talk of 'treason.'  It's not wise, and it's not warranted.

Lot of Hacking to Go Around

Why would someone at DHS hack the state of Georgia, though? Presumably they could get whatever information they wanted, either just by asking or certainly with a Federal court order.

The Real Threat to Science is on the Left

So writes John Tierney:

First, there’s the Left’s opposition to genetically modified foods, which stifled research into what could have been a second Green Revolution to feed Africa. Second, there’s the campaign by animal-rights activists against medical researchers, whose work has already been hampered and would be devastated if the activists succeeded in banning animal experimentation. Third, there’s the resistance in academia to studying the genetic underpinnings of human behavior, which has cut off many social scientists from the recent revolutions in genetics and neuroscience. Each of these abuses is far more significant than anything done by conservatives, and there are plenty of others. The only successful war on science is the one waged by the Left.

He goes on to argue that "two huge threats to science are peculiar to the Left—and they’re getting worse." The first is confirmation bias, which is getting worse as the sciences follow the arts in sorting out conservatives in favor of those with left-leaning minds.

The second, obviously related, is the threat that comes of mixing science and politics.

Dostoevsky vs. Socrates

It's interesting to me that this article in the Guardian leaves Dostoevsky's question rhetorical.

Oh, tell me who was it first announced, who was it first proclaimed, that man only does nasty things because he does not know his own interests; and that if he were enlightened, if his eyes were opened to his real normal interests, man would at once cease to do nasty things, would at once become good and noble because, being enlightened and understanding his real advantage, he would see his own advantage in the good and nothing else?

It was Socrates, of course -- he makes that argument in the Protagoras, at the very beginning of the philosophical tradition. It's presented as part of a utilitarian argument -- i.e., that good and evil cash out in terms of pleasure or pain -- that Socrates doesn't seem very wedded to in other dialogues. But his idea that evil is a kind of ignorance is something that appears very regularly in his words as Plato reports them. I won't reproduce the long argument here, but if you want to follow it, scroll to "When men are overcome by eating and drinking and other sensual desires which are pleasant..."

We have firmer reason to think that Socrates held this view, too, because Aristotle also ascribes it to him in the Nicomachean Ethics (scroll to section two of this part, which is Book VII).

Also it is interesting to me that the Guardian author, Pankaj Mishra, seems to regard the rhetorical question as adequately forceful to settle the matter -- at least in the light of, as he cites them, Nietzsche, Max Weber, and Freud. In fact, Socrates has kind of a good argument. Aristotle devoted a substantial part of a book to considering the problem.

We know that people do act in ways that they certainly must know are not in their best interests. The classic case is addiction, but that medicalizes the problem in a way that may make it seem as if the moral philosophy no longer applies. Rather, many who drink as if they were alcoholics prove to have no physical addiction to alcohol. They know, of course, that there is a long term harm that is all but certain if they continue in this manner; the only thing that can save them from it is dying young.

But of course dying young is a possibility, in which case the harm is completely avoided, and whatever pleasures came from the drink were obtained free of charge. So you have a case of an immediate certain gain (at least of pleasure) in return for an uncertain future harm. However, the gain is marginal, and the harm is extreme.

This is one kind of calculation that Nassim Taleb says human beings regularly make badly. So it may be the answer is not that humans are irrational, but that this is a place where human reason regularly leads to a conclusion that is in conflict with itself. The best choice is regularly indicated by reason to be just what a more formal examination of the case would suggest it is not. That is, we very regularly choose the short-term certain gain and dare the uncertain (but quite likely) immense future harm. But our formal examination suggests this is not the wise way to proceed, even though it is how we do in fact reason.

Perhaps it is that we came up in a more dangerous world, one in which the probability of living long enough for those future harms to materialize was not so very high. Socrates, though, was an old man when he died (of execution, not illness). Life spans haven't grown that much in recorded history; it's just that more people died of things like childbirth and childhood. And it would seem that both of those examples would favor an evolutionary response that mitigated against pursuing immediate pleasures in favor of longer-term gains.

So let's not treat this as an easy or settled matter. It's still an interesting question.

A Journalist and the Principle of Distinction

A Marine-turned-journalist was suspended by the Blaze for taking some shots at ISIS while on assignment for them:

Jason Buttrill, a former Marine and a foreign affairs correspondent for the Glenn Beck-owned Blaze ... fired six times at ISIS fighters with a rifle while on the Mosul front.

 

"Exclusive: TheBlaze’s Jason Buttrill shoots at ISIS members and shares footage from the Mosul front," reads the headline. The story is still live on the site despite The Blaze's recalling Buttrill from Mosul and suspending him from the publication. 

 

The reprimand by The Blaze comes after Jason Stern of the Committee to Protect Journalists warned Buttrill that his actions could be deadly for other journalists in or near war zones. 

 

“Jason, journalists are detained and killed all over the world over false accusations of being combatants,” Stern tweeted on Friday. “This doesn't help.” 

I don't care much for the argument Stern is making. America's enemies haven't respected non-combatant roles like that of the journalist for at least half a century, so the idea that some journalist's misconduct will lead to more problems is a bit blind, I think.*

 

No, my question is about the ethics and legality of it. Mr. Buttrill was there as a journalist; should he be taking part in combat? I don't know the details, but for the sake of argument, let's assume that this was not self-defense. If someone isn't officially part of one of the combatant groups, and it is not self-defense, should that person engage in the fighting?

There is part of me that wonders what right-minded person would not shoot at members of ISIS, given the opportunity. But another part of me is bothered by this. Doesn't it violate the principle of distinction between civilians and combatants? If that's right, then Buttrill might have been an unlawful combatant.

Or, maybe I don't really understand this. I am not any kind of lawyer, so this is quite likely. Or, maybe in a war like this where the enemy doesn't make even a pretense of following the law it just doesn't matter. And, of course, whether it's lawful or not doesn't necessarily answer the ethical question.

 

Any thoughts?

 

###

 

*I have the same problem with arguments against torture that go "if we do it, they'll do it." I am not supporting torture, but that particular argument against it doesn't make sense since pretty much every enemy we've faced for the last century has used torture against captured American soldiers. Maybe the Nazi's were an exception, but the Japanese certainly did, and every enemy since.

My Theme Song for the Last Several Months

Just a bit further, then time to catch up. Think I might head out to the woods for a while.

However, I'm a bit afraid I'll go away for a week and come back to find Hillary's taken over in a CIA-led coup. :-(

Bad Advice From The Boss

Headline: "Obama Urges Troops To “Criticize Our President” & “Protest Against Authority” In Final Address."

Servicemembers wanting to take the President's advice here might want to brush up on a couple of articles of the UCMJ, just to be safe. A servicemember can criticize the President, and it sometimes may even be that one should, but some of the things that President Obama has said about his successor could merit significant punishment.

Don't worry, though: I'm sure there will be plenty of criticism of the President to go around.

Not Exactly a Russia Hawk

On the other hand, our apparent next Secretary of State does have extensive experience working closely with Russia on oil and gas contracts. He has shown himself capable of getting things done with Putin's government, in other words.

In the wake of yesterday's revelations that Russian hacking was aimed at benefiting the Trump campaign, I suppose the appointment of someone with close business ties to Russia must be troubling to Trump's critics. On the other hand, it nicely explains why Russia would have supported him against Clinton. Clinton's stated intent was to throw up a No Fly Zone in Syria that would have had American warplanes flying against Russian ones, the very next step away from war. Trump, like this new Secretary of State nominee, thinks of Russia first and foremost as a business partner.

Why would Russia try to put its finger on the scale of America's election? This is why. It is, from the perspective of statecraft, quite a sharp set of moves: for the cheap price of some influence operations, they avoided the immediate risk of a hot war with the United States, and gained an opportunity to advance their business interests in a more favorable environment.

I do not take seriously the suggestion that Trump or his new nominee are Russian pawns -- but they don't have to be. It was a good move for Russia if they are just not quite so eager to start a new war, and interested instead in economic development. The fact that both men have extensive business interests in Russia also gives the Russians levers to work against them (which is one reason Trump really should put his stuff in a blind trust, though I doubt that he will -- I expect him to pass the business to his children, where it will still serve Russia' interests). You don't need to bribe them or suborn them. You just give them reasons not to want to fight, because there's so much to gain by not fighting.

Putin is a vicious man, but he's also a very smart one. Russia has a weak position but he has played it excellently. Without in any sense excusing his acts of tyranny, it is easy to admire his skill. I wonder if anyone on our team is going to be as good at this game, or if we even have anyone who sees it as a game of strategy in the same way.

"Combatting Political Islam"

A piece by two experts on the subject, David Reaboi and Kyle Shideler.

For decades, a bipartisan American foreign policy consensus has endorsed engagement with and promotion of Islamists in an attempt to use them as a counterweight, to either other Islamic terror groups or larger geopolitical adversaries.

Seeking to engage Muslim Brotherhood officials or franchises has a long historical pedigree within our foreign policy establishment. As Ian Johnson documented in his outstanding history, A Mosque in Munich, America first turned to Islamists in the early days of the Cold War in order to nurture alternatives to the Soviets. During that time, however, many in the U.S. foreign policy establishment seemed to recognize that, ultimately, the long-term objectives of the Islamists were both anti-democratic and harmful to American national interests. An internal analysis from the period noted that leading Muslim Brotherhood figure Said Ramadan—then a guest in the Eisenhower White House who was backed by the CIA—was “a fascist” and obsessed with seizing power.

Unfortunately, such a blunt assessment of the U.S. government’s Islamist interlocutors seems as quaint today as a 1950s TV commercial. By 2009 skepticism of Islamists’ long-term goals had been thoroughly abandoned, as President Obama formally announced the full-throated promotion of political Islam as the legitimate expression of democratic will throughout the Middle East.

In addition to the piece, you should really read that Mosque in Munich book. It goes sadly well with the immediately previous post. It's a great story of an early CIA mission with all the swagger they used to have in the postwar period, and it provides a helpful introduction to the deep history of some of the current conflicts involving political Islam. If you know someone who likes such stories, it might make a good Christmas gift.

At Least Someone Has A Sense of Humor About It

Courts to "Install" Clinton?

As far as I know, nobody is even thinking about filing a suit along these lines -- but the thought has crossed the mind of a writer at the Huff Po. This approach would not end well.

...at least one court decision suggests there is some federal authority to invalidate the election outcome after the fact.

In 1995, the U.S. Supreme Court let stand the ruling of a federal district judge in Pennsylvania that invalidated a state senate election and ordered the vacancy be filled by the losing opponent.

The Pennsylvania state senate held a special election in November 1993 to fill a seat that had been left vacant by the death of the previous democratic senator, and pitted Republican Bruce Marks against Democrat William G. Stinson for the spot. Stinson was named the winner, but massive fraud was later uncovered that resulted in litigation.

Two of the elected officials who testified in the Pennsylvania case said under oath that they were aware of the fraud, had intentionally failed to enforce laws, and hurried to certify Stinson the winner in order to bury the story. The narrative recalls the Washington Post’s revelation that Republican Mitch McConnell was aware of the CIA’s conclusion that Russians had intervened and opted to do nothing.

In February 1994, after Stinson had already taken office, a federal judge ordered he “be removed from his State Senate office and that [his opponent, Bruce Marks] be certified the winner within 72 hours.”

Stinson appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, but ultimately, this was the first known case in which a federal judge reversed an election outcome. In January 1995, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the ruling to stand.

On what basis could a Federal court claim the power to decide who would run a co-equal branch of government? Or do we not recognize any limits on Federal courts now?

We're getting into dangerous waters.

Obama on the South

"I think there's a reason why attitudes about my presidency among whites in Northern states are very different from whites in Southern states," Obama told Zakaria.

I assume there's some polling to back that up, but I notice that Northern states voted against his chosen successor in spite of his personal endorsement of her. States that have voted Democratic every election for decades went against him. Maybe race was the reason; certainly the demographics suggest it was a factor. But why beat up on the South when you lost Ohio and Michigan and Pennsylvania?

Stop parodying yourself

That was Morgan Freeberg's response to the "snowflake" microaggression meltdown, but it applies equally to this self-knowledge-free-zone WaPo article about how Big Brother is not the real problem; the real problem is the overwhelming noise of thousands of angry children:

This is Little Brother — millions of irrational people spreading lies, sowing doubt and fomenting violence. Thanks to Little Brother, the government — Trump and his incoming administration, in this case — doesn’t have to directly threaten the political opposition or spread propaganda on its own. Leaders only need to find indirect ways to validate supporters’ most vile emotions and make lying acceptable, as House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) did recently when he said it was all right for Trump to spread falsehoods. Little Brother and his NRA-protected guns can take it from there.

So what is Little Brother?

Like the pack of wild children in “Lord of the Flies,” Little Brother is unsupervised, isolated from civilization and potentially murderous. And thanks to the Internet, the vicious, dog-eat-dog world of Little Brother is impossible to escape.

Little Brother screams so loud, no one can think. When human beings experience anger and fear — the dominant emotions of Little Brother and his Internet clickbait — their IQs drop. People cannot use their rational minds when thousands of angry children are shouting at them online. That’s Little Brother.

I guess we need some of that anti-dog-eat-dog legislation.

I'm melting

Stop calling me a snowflake you big meanie.

In related news, how much fun is it when your hyperliberal cousin posts her Facebook outrage over a November Congressional vote to steal $150 million from the Social Security fund by linking to an impassioned speech by an unnamed person identified as one of the 35 brave Senators who cast "nay" votes, all while expressing outrage that the media buried the story, hmmm, very suspicious . . . .

. . . And it turns out the vote was in November 2015, the outraged speaker was Mike Lee (R-Utah), the President signed the bill, and all 35 "nay" votes were from Republicans.

The fact that Lee credited Rand Paul with a principled opposition to the bill might have been a tip-off.

So What Happens Now?

Headline: "Bombshell Secret CIA Report Says Russia Aimed to Steal White House for Trump."

We've gone the full distance, now, from 'It's irresponsible and dangerous to try to discredit election results' to 'this rigged election was stolen by a conspiracy led by a hostile foreign power.'

The Electoral College hasn't voted yet. The President of the United States has ordered the results of the election to be reviewed in full, with the results of the review kept secret from the American people. That link, by the way, is to Russia Today -- a site the President's team would tell you was part of the very conspiracy he is citing. So the emphasis on his refusal to come clean with the American people is Russian propaganda designed to undermine our faith in the government.

It's also the truth.

I have no idea what's going to happen next.

Trump Airline

My wife ran across this.

Eric Hines

Nailed it

They might be describing me personally.  Lately I've been loving his cabinet picks, but before the election I didn't dare hope for so much in that area, or any other.  Nevertheless, at my nadir of enthusiasm for the Republican candidate, I loved that for once we had a guy who didn't whimper in the face of a partisan and close-minded press:

The public took the media's vitriol and hate directed at Trump as the highest recommendations he could possibly get. That's why the media, the pundits, the celebrities and even the polls were all in mass denial about Trump's chances until the very night of the election.

"For many Republicans who weren't enthusiastic Trump supporters but wanted something to like about him, his refusal to give the media a free pass on their combative bias was a big thing," wrote Stephen Kruiser at the PJMedia website. That, by the way, is why Trump spent so much less than Hillary Clinton on his campaign. The media covered him heavy and hard, thinking it would take him down. The over-the-top, saturation coverage did just the opposite.

Sports humor, from me, yet

I'm still so happy about the EPA pick I could bust.  Today is a lighter-hearted choice, the Ambassador to the Court of St. James.  Jim Geraghty muses that Woody Johnson may change the names of the N.Y. Jets to the "Concordes," but otherwise hopes that this new appointment will lead to benign neglect on the home front:

Keep in mind, under Woody Johnson, it is entirely possible that the U.S. Embassy in London will sign a lot of really expensive free-agent diplomatic staff who will perform well for a year and then decline in production rapidly.

Dontcha just hate those white guys

This sour and humorless GQ piece can't hide the fascinating quality of an eccentric group's spoofy effort to create a non-PC libertarian utopia on the Croatian border.  When the journalist can't think of any cogent criticism, she drips with contempt over the white-male aspect and whines about the boredom and discomfort of her trip.  Throwing in a bit of Trump snark is obligatory, of course.

This attempt to create a modern Galt's Gulch doubtless is pretty nuts; its flaky youngsters, like residents of George Washington University and Burning Man East in South Dakota, will have a lot to learn about defensive borders for their little piece of paradise.  Unlike the author, though, I find the underlying impulse refreshing.

Who Knows Who John Glenn Is?

Language warning: this Gunny talks like a Marine.