IN A TIME OF INSANITY ONLY PHILOSOPHY IS THE PALLIATIVE!

IN A TIME OF INSANITY ONLY PHILIOSOPY IS THE PALLIATIVE!

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
August 1, 2010

* * *

A GERMAN READER WRITES:

Jim,

I would be interested to learn how you as a well respected American thinks about Marc Thiessen’s new book, COURTING DISASTER, HOW THE CIA KEPT AMERICA SAFE AND HOW BARACK OBAMA IS INVITING THE NEXT ATTACK: (2010).

As President George W. Bush's top speechwriter, Thiessen was provided unique access to the CIA program used in interrogating top Al Qaeda terrorists, including the mastermind of the 9/11 attack, Kalid Sheikh Mohammad (KSM). Here is an excerpt from Thiessen’s riveting new book:

”Just before dawn on March 1, 2003, two dozen heavily armed Pakistani tactical assault forces move in and surround a safe house in Rawalpindi . A few hours earlier they had received a text message from an informant inside the house. It read: 'I am with KSM.'

”Bursting in, they find the disheveled mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, in his bedroom. He is taken into custody. In the safe house, they find a treasure trove of computers, documents, cell phones and other valuable 'pocket litter.'

”Once in custody, KSM is defiant. He refuses to answer questions, informing his captors that he will tell them everything when he gets to America and sees his lawyer. But KSM is not taken to America to see a lawyer. Instead he is taken to a secret CIA 'black site' in an undisclosed location.

”Upon arrival, KSM finds himself in the complete control of Americans. He does not know where he is, how long he will be there, or what his fate will be.

”Despite his circumstances, KSM still refuses to talk. He spews contempt at his interrogators, telling them that Americans are weak, lack resilience, and are unable to do what is necessary to prevent the terrorists from succeeding in their goals. He has trained to resist interrogation. When he is asked for information about future attacks, he tells his questioners scornfully: ‘Soon, you will know.’

”It becomes clear he will not reveal the information using traditional interrogation techniques. So he undergoes a series of "enhanced interrogation techniques" approved for use only on the most high-value detainees. The techniques include waterboarding.

”His resistance is described by one senior American official as ‘superhuman.’ Eventually, however, the techniques work, and KSM becomes cooperative-for reasons that will be described later in this book.

”He begins telling his CIA de-briefers about active al Qaeda plots to launch attacks against the United States and other Western targets. He holds classes for CIA officials, using a chalkboard to draw a picture of al Qaeda's operating structure, financing, communications, and logistics. He identifies al Qaeda travel routes and safe havens, and helps intelligence officers make sense of documents and computer records seized in terrorist raids.

"He identifies voices in intercepted telephone calls, and helps officials understand the meaning of coded terrorist communications. He provides information that helps our intelligence community capture other high-ranking terrorists,

”KSM's questioning, and that of other captured terrorists, produces more than
6,000 intelligence reports, which are shared across the intelligence community, as well as with our allies across the world.

”In one of these reports, KSM describes in detail the revisions he made to his failed 1994-1995 plan known as the ‘Bojinka plot’ to blow up a dozen airplanes carrying some 4,000 passengers over the Pacific Ocean.

”Years later, an observant CIA officer notices that the activities of a cell being followed by British authorities appear to match KSM's description of his plans for a Bojinka-style attack . . . .

“With these actions, Barak Obama arguably did more damage to America’s national security in his first 100 days of office than any President in American history.”

Manfred

* * *

DR. FISHER RESPONDS:

Dear Manfred,

How our American politics must puzzle you. I have reduced your excerpt considerably as you can see, but included the terror hyperboles and the outrageous final indictment of President Obama to the annals of history.

America is not a very sane society at the moment. Fear is the motivator in all dimensions of American society, and fear is a great opportunity for the doomsayers, Armageddon preachers, and justifiers of a suspension of moral philosophy and good sense.

If you are a student of history, you know that the Spanish Inquisition was justified on moral grounds to save the Roman Catholic Church from heretics. The sad thing to report is that the Inquisition exists in some form to this day in the Church.

While we celebrate our conquest of space, and past the time away with our latest electronic wonder, many American states still have capital punishment. There isn’t a single study that indicates that capital punishment is a deterrent to murder, quite the opposite.

This is by way of introducing you to my take on the subject of waterboarding and the inhuman treatment of terrorists. Have we remained as primitive as our cave dwelling relatives? Can we not find a more humane way to deal with the intransigence of our enemies once captured? Does the ends of a civilized society justify any means? Are we bent on meeting savagery with savagery? Will there be no end until inhumanity makes beasts of us all?

* * *

It is now going on a decade since 9/11 and the destruction of the Twin Towers in New York City with the loss of 2,749 lives. Nine years later we continue our preemptive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, seeking a new euphemism for victory, stability.

Neither war is winnable in the conventional sense. Each society is radically different than our own. Yet, we have attempted to impose our Western society culture and values on these two ancient civilizations in the interest of quelling the spread of terrorism. We have failed. We are following the script of the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire.

More than a thousand years elapsed between the founding of Rome in 753 BC to its fall in the early Middle Ages. The Stoics, who were committed to law and order, preserving a strong hierarchical authority with roles and responsibilities to establish state security and stability, influenced Rome.

The Dark Ages followed the fall of Rome eventually to lead to the high Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Enter Machiavelli, the founder of modern political science. He was a civil servant of the Florentine Republic and courted favor with the Medici’s. He is mentioned here because he justified means to realize favorable ends, using cunning, deceit and political intrigue to that end.

Machiavelli was something of a peripheral player during his time, but that has not stopped us from finding his works justification for suspect methods by reading our time into his political treatise, such as outlined in THE PRINCE (1532), published five years after his death.

* * *

Please be patient with me. An author like Thiessen is like a Machiavellian of our time. He understands history, understands methods of governance, and knows the working mind of those in power.

A speechwriter is actually a vestigial organ on the body politic, but finds some efficacy by reaffirming blindness and xenophobia, and at the same time, redefining the borders between what is morally right and what is politically advantageous, making them seem synonymous.

Consistent with Machiavelli, nothing is considered either too good or too evil if it helps to attain and preserve the expedient.

* * *

John Locke, who gave us AN ESSAY CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING (1690), says the difference between an insane man and a fool is that a fool from right principles draws a wrong conclusion, while an insane person draws a just inference from false principles.

Locke saw all knowledge derived from sense experience. If you have followed my many missives, you know that I subscribe to his thesis. He disagreed with Machiavelli’s political animal thesis believing man seeks to be happy in a state of social harmony as a social animal.

Man, Locke argued, comes into this world with a mind that is basically a tabula rasa. According to him, and William L. Livingston IV’s THE DESIGN FOR PREVENTION is consistent with this, natural law presides over the destiny of man, and natural law is based on reason and equality, seeking peace and survival for man.

My response to your excerpt, then, is a conceptual one between the political science of Machiavelli and the empiricism of Locke.

Thiessen’s book would appear to be an attempt to provide the rationale to justify in a political science sense, waterboarding. He makes the quantum leap from the revelations of interrogation to the “saving of 4,000 lives,” which will obviously track with many readers who fail to compute their own experience with radically departure from good sense with good results.

Nor are such readers likely to compute the pusillanimity of nine years of senseless war with sensible results. Iraq didn’t have weapons of mass destruction, which was meant to justify that preemptive war. On the other hand, over the last 3,000 years no foreign power has been successful in conquering or, indeed, nation building Afghanistan into another power’s image and likeness. This, too, will fail; only the nomenclature of failure will change from “victory” to “stability,” or some other designation.

* * *

The seeds of the rise of terrorism go all the way back to post-World War I, and then those seeds were replanted after World War II. These seeds deal with causes, not symptoms, causes that continue to plague the postmodern world. Books on causes don’t sell well.

Thiessen’s book is likely to be a best seller because it mesmerizes the reader with the symptoms of terrorism and the justification for draconian interrogating methods, while the causes of terrorism continue to proliferate.

We don’t have less but more terrorism than nine years ago for it has metastasized to every corner of the globe. Now why is that? Has inhuman means of interrogation reduced terrorism? Clearly, the answer is “no!” Then why are all these brilliant people that command leadership positions in our society so handicapped? Obviously, it is easier to probe outer space or invent a new electronic tool or toy than to answer this conundrum.

So, my answer is unequivocal. I do not support waterboarding or any other draconian method of interrogation. Nor do I buy the justification for doing so. I have often differed with President Obama on his policies but I am supportive of him on this.

* * *

In Locke’s Book II, “Of Ideas” in this treatise on HUMAN UNDERSTANDING, he writes:

“Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper void of all characters, without any ideas. How comes it to be furnished? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from experience. Our observation, employed either about external sensible objects, or about the internal operations of our minds perceived and reflected on by ourselves, is that which supplies our understandings with all the materials of knowledge.”

My aim in all my missives is to get people to think, not in terms of my perceptions and reflections, but how my ideas aid them in unraveling their own. I am a moral philosopher and make no apologies for being so. Goodness, compassion, kindness and understanding always triumph in the end.

Be always well,

Jim

* * *