Tortured Logic

Foreign policy is back in good hands again. We are witnessing a veritable sea change in the way that America deals with the rest of the world, and it is long overdue. An honest assessment of the dramatic moves being made by the new foreign policy establishment under Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton will show that America is finally on the path of responsible leadership that is becoming of our stature in the world. I have long argued that America's current position as the world's lone superpower is stable but will not last forever; however what we do during this critical period will have repercussions around the world for many decades to come. During this time it is important to portray confidence, not fear; understanding rather than "my way or the highway." The rest of the world is not inclined to be either "with us or against us" no matter what we do just because we are a superpower; they are with us if we lead by our shining example, and they will be against us if we are belligerent, unempathetic, and uncooperative.

The narrow neoconservative views of the world we live in, espoused by George W. Bush and his friends who have fallen out of power, live on today in the form of angry attack dogs who have recently come out on the airwaves en masse to decry the sea change we are witnessing. They are led by folks such as Dick Cheney and Karl Rove, who whine that America is less safe today than during their tenure, when we actually happened to lose about 3,000 American lives on 9/11 on their watch and over 5,000 more Americans and 25,000 limbs on living soldiers in theaters of wars that they initiated. In the world these people live in, most countries outside America are scary and evil and intent on destroying our way of life, and us. Neoconservatives by and large successfully prey on the minds of American citizens who do not have a good understanding of history and culture outside of America's. Their solution to survival in the frightening world that they portray is to carry big guns and point them at everybody.

I'm not one to say that Latin or Asian dictators or Al-Qaeda terrorists or Somali pirates aren't bad people; I just believe that Barack Obama understands these phenomena better than the neocon dunces do and concordantly, there are far better ways of dealing with these problems that we can now finally pursue. Let's sift through the action that's in the headlines today and compare the points of view against the reality of the world we live in. Because you aren't going to get any dose of reality from these talking heads who have fallen from power, nor from their missile-humping minions such as Sean Hannity or Bill O'Reilly.

The torture memos. Obama recently released memos describing the types of torture America committed against our prisoners under Bush. He also announced that America would no longer engage in torture. The ending of the practice of torture by our government is controversial for several reasons. Throughout history, it has been commonly practiced by the law enforcement and national security apparatus of most countries around the world. It achieves multiple purposes: (1) The extraction of sensitive information, which is why Bush enabled it in the post 9/11 world when much of America was busily peeing itself with fright. (2) As a deterrent to would-be criminals or terrorists: if you know you'll go to jail and get your skin slowly peeled off with a cheese grater, you might think twice about some nefarious act you are being asked to do. (3) It demoralizes the resistance to your government.

Let's separate the hysteria from the facts. (1) Extraction of information: Abu Zubaydah was considered to be among Osama Bin Laden's deputies, and he was caught during a dramatic shootout with the local troops in Pakistan. When you grab hold of an extremely high-level terrorist target such as this, you know he has a ton of valuable information about how Al-Qaeda operates, as well as potential future attacks. There was a choice to torture him or not torture him, and we decided to mess him up: he was water-boarded about 180 times according to the newly released memos. He was subjected to exposure to nasty insects and "stress positions" such as being forced to stand in tiny closets. If he spilled the beans, that's all well and good. However there has been no evidence presented of how torture was successfully used against Abu Zubaydah or ANYONE in the last eight years to make us safer. The Bush administration just expected us to take their word for it. Meanwhile the CIA, the armed forces, and numerous other agencies have conducted lots of studies on the effectiveness of torture to get information; the bottom line conclusion has consistently been that torture does not achieve valid results. Victims of torture often tell interrogators what they want to hear, and not the truth. There is a ton of evidence on this fact. Since people like Cheney and Rove have never chosen to read this evidence, and have also never been water-boarded, they wouldn't know that and their contention that this practice is effective is absurd. (2) Rather than acting as a deterrent, there is overwhelming evidence that our use of inhumane tactics and incarceration of detainees in Guantanamo has grown the anti-America terrorist movement, as well as anti-US government sentiment within our own nation and among the citizenry of our staunchest allies. (3) Far from breaking the spirit of terrorists, our brand of incarceration and torture has been a rallying cry for Muslims the world over, and has converted normal people into terrorists. Don't take my word for it; statistics clearly demonstrate how Islamist movements have grown exponentially since 2001.

Mr. Cheney, if fueling the terrorist movement against us is your idea of making America safe, I'll take being "less safe" any day. Thank God we have now ended it. All of this does not even touch on the fact that even the founding fathers of America considered torture to be morally reprehensible. That is why the 8th Amendment to the Constitution states "there shall be no cruel or unusual punishment." Finally, if we do it ourselves, we have no legs to stand on if Americans are captured abroad by another government or non-state actor. As McCain has said over and over, it exposes our own troops to grave danger.

The Chavez Handshake. Right-wingers across the country are up in arms that Obama would dare shake the hand of the democratically elected President of Venezuela at a conference of American states. Whether Chavez is a savory character or not, he is the leader of a nation that is close to us geographically, and is the fourth-biggest supplier of our oil and gas imports. The conference they were at resulted in a foreign policy coup: the two nations have made overtures about re-instating embassies on one another's soil. This is an excellent development for many reasons. Dialogue through diplomacy is an excellent way to achieve the common goals between any two nations. Much of the business of international relations is conducted over bottles of whiskey shared in embassy meeting rooms between friends from different countries; these meetings have resulted in treaties that have improved the lives of millions of people.

The criticism of this positive moment from the right-wing is based on a larger narrative: that Obama is going to somehow lessen America's standing in the world by opening up dialogue with leaders of rogue nations. To the contrary, Obama's confidence in America is strong enough that he is willing to speak to leaders of nations such as Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela even though their behavior has been troublesome in the past. Obama recognizes that America is immensely powerul relative to these countries and does not face any sort of serious threat from any of them. Standing in the world is not only a function of military might; it is also the product of the power of ideas. By demonstrating that he is breaking from the past, when many nations felt that America was ignoring their interests, Obama is setting the stage for further cooperation. Although we have not seen many tangible results yet, we are still in the early days of the administration. The increased warmth towards Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America will help increase trade and goodwill between America and other countries. It will also lead to the downfall of authoritarian and socialist regimes, which is good for America as well as the citizens of these nations.

Under Bush, who used the cold shoulder to deal with Latin American leaders, populist socialist movements thrived in multiple countries. That is simply not in America's interest. Although we have yet to see if Obama's administration can reverse this trend, it is always worth trying something new when old ideas have failed. I challenge anyone to look at examples in history where opening up dialoge led to a dangerous outcome. The classic example that is always brought up is European and American appeasement of Hitler during his rise. That's overdramatic and does not apply to any of today's leaders. The most dangerous among them is Kim Jong Il of North Korea. He is only a threat if he is a suicidal maniac, which appears to be up for debate. In extreme cases such as this, there is no easy answer on how to deal with them. There are simply no good answers that any scholar has for conducting relations with a suicidal maniac.

Our foreign policy must be shaped by an understanding of the forces behind rogue actors and how they gain power. This understanding will be key toward dismantling the factors that allowed these rogue leaders and the movements behind them to establish a foothold. The downfall of today's conservatives is that they never like to look in the mirror and admit that America ever screwed up. But America's actions in the past were a strong impetus that helped create many of America's worst headaches: Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Al Qaeda, and even Saddam Hussein included. On the other hand, the positive we have done for helping the world flourish far outweighs the effects of our mistakes. Admitting that we have made mistakes in the past is the first step toward correcting them. Now we can try to do some things differently, and better. We are finally on the path of creative solutions once again with the scrapping of torture and the opening up of dialogue with the rest of the world.