Nothing I’m not used to. Yesterday, James Taranto took yet another dig at my early attitude to reports of “poor treatment” of terrorist captives. In January 2002 and for a while thereafter, I somewhat summarily dismissed reports of mistreatment of detainees as probably enemy propaganda and certainly not something that should worry us too much:
These terrorists are not soldiers. They are beneath such an honorific. They are not even criminals. In that respect, Dick Cheney’s and Donald Rumsfeld’s contempt for the whines of those complaining about poor treatment is fully justified.
I’m not proud of those sentences, but they rested on a basic level of trust that of course enemy combatants might be treated roughly, but would not be subject to systematic abuse, torture or beatings. This was the American military. This was the Bush administration, people I trusted. I had no idea – and perhaps I should be held responsible for my naivete – that memos were being written allowing for torture and abuse to occur under the legal cover of a president’s wartime authority. Abu Ghraib had not yet been exposed. The hundreds of incidents of abuse, the dozens of prisoners who died while in captivity, the smaller number who have indeed been confirmed as tortured to death: these facts I did not then know. But after Abu Ghraib, I obviously changed my tune. If that could happen, I worried about what else could have occurred. I read the record. I explored the evidence. I came to a different conclusion. The facts available to me changed; and so I changed my mind. Why is that open process to be mocked? When you blog half a million words a year, and you do so for five years, and you use the blog form as a way to think out loud, the notion that your views will remain identical throughout strikes me as preposterous. When the facts available to me change, I change my mind. But then I guess I’m not James Taranto.
RESPONDING TO CRITICS II: Now for some criticism from the left, i.e. from Atrios and Kos. (Atrios Dowdifies my quote, making it seem as if I wrote it, while in context I’m actually relating the arguments of someone in the Bush administration.) I’ve long written about the “flypaper theory,” the idea that somehow it’s a good thing to attract terrorists to Iraq to fight them there, rather than here, and to deploy an aggressive American force to counter Islamist terror in Iraq. From the beginning, I’ve written about the potential benefits and costs of such a strategy. And to be honest, I still don’t know how to judge it. I’m not prepared to dismiss it out of hand; but the evidence against its efficacy also seems to me to have accumulated over the past couple of years. You can read my treatment of the issue over the years here, here and here. I’d say that the weight of the evidence now bears against this idea; but I don’t think the debate is over, or that the concept was obviously nutty from the start. If you want to read a blog that will always take the position of the Bush administration on the war, there are plenty out there. Ditto if you want to read a relentlessly anti-Bush blog, like Kos. But this blog is a little different. It’s an attempt to think out loud, which means there will be shifts over time in argument and emphasis. It may appear wishy-washy or excitable or whatever. But it’s my best attempt to figure things out as I go along. If you don’t like it, read someone else. If you have a point to make, please email me. I try and read as much criticism of my fallible work as I can.
QUOTE FOR THE DAY: “We are not legislating, honorable members, for people far away and not known by us. We are enlarging the opportunity for happiness to our neighbors, our co-workers, our friends and, our families: at the same time we are making a more decent society, because a decent society is one that does not humiliate its members… Today, the Spanish society answers to a group of people who, during many years have, been humiliated, whose rights have been ignored, whose dignity has been offended, their identity denied, and their liberty oppressed. Today the Spanish society grants them the respect they deserve, recognizes their rights, restores their dignity, affirms their identity, and restores their liberty. It is true that they are only a minority, but their triumph is everyone’s triumph. It is also the triumph of those who oppose this law, even though they do not know this yet: because it is the triumph of Liberty. Their victory makes all of us (even those who oppose the law) better people, it makes our society better. Honorable members, There is no damage to marriage or to the concept of family in allowing two people of the same sex to get married. To the contrary, what happens is this class of Spanish citizens get the potential to organize their lives with the rights and privileges of marriage and family. There is no danger to the institution of marriage, but precisely the opposite: this law enhances and respects marriage.” – Spanish prime minister Luis Zapatero, hailing the inclusion of homosexual couples in his country’s marital laws.
The Dish 