Fascinating piece in Slate on how some pro-war conservatives are going green. Why? For the obvious reason that anything that can reduce our dependence on Middle Eastern oil helps disentangle us from Saudi autocracy. I’ve never understood why conservatives in principle oppose tougher fuel standards or conservation measures. Conserving energy is conservative, no? And increasing energy independence is a useful foreign policy tool, no? Where’s the catch? One of my first attempts at policy analysis was a small study for Margaret Thatcher’s private policy institute arguing that the Tories should be far more enviro-friendly. It never caught on. I doubt this new outbreak of sanity will either.
WORDS AND REALITY: Some interesting contrasts from the president’s Inaugural address and actual incidents of torture by U.S. troops in Iraq, made possible by White House memos. A journalist friend of mine who has good sources in the Chinese government recently asked them what their response was to Abu Ghraib. He told me they smiled broadly. “Oh, we loved Abu Ghraib,” they replied. “We just hope your president doesn’t start preaching to us about human rights any time soon.”
RAMESH ON BUSH: Here’s an interesting concession:
Social conservatives have a legitimate complaint with Bush, who does appear to have used them (not to mention gays) for electoral purposes on the marriage question.
Moral values, anyone?
EMAIL OF THE DAY: “The current debate over torture marks the first time the issue has achieved such prominence in American political discussion. But it is hardly the first appearance of the issue. During the Spanish-American War, the use of certain torture techniques by US soldiers in the Philippines grabbed brief newspaper attention. Specifically, in 1902, a soldier was court-martialed for using what was called the “water cure” — forcing a prisoner to consume large amounts of water — as a technique in the interrogation of Filipino insurgents. The soldier invoked “military necessity,” saying that the insurgents presented a grave threat to the safety of his troops and had to be ferreted out.
The Judge Advocate General of the Army took an appeal from the case and addressed the claim that a “military necessity” defense could be raised to justify this conduct. He noted a General Order in effect for the US forces at the time which stated that “military necessity does not admit of cruelty, that is, the inflicting of suffering for the sake of suffering or revenge . . . nor of torture to extort confessions.” Indeed, this has been military doctrine for the US Army since the Revolutionary War, and reflects the famous Order at Trenton issued by George Washington. The Judge Advocate General’s decision goes on, “the [necessity] defense falls completely, inasmuch as it is attempted to establish the principle that a belligerent who is at war with a savage or semicivilized enemy may conduct his operations in violation of the rules of civilized war. This no modern State will admit for an instant; nor was it the rule in the Philippine Islands.”
Of course the Bybee Memorandum and even the DOD Working Group completely ignored military precedents like this and sought consciously to exclude military lawyers trained in such matters. This is an example of the administration’s enforced amnesia about US policy and traditions. The case is reported in 1 THE LAW OF WAR: A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY 814-819 (Leon Friedman ed. 1972).” More feedback on the Letters Page.
The Dish 