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22 April 2009

Blaming the Lawyers

President Obama has relieved CIA operatives from investigation of their use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” on terrorist suspects following the 9/11 attack. He also has refrained from absolving the lawyers who formulated the justification of the use of those techniques by demonstrating their legality. Holding the lawyers accountable for the policy that the formulation justified, however, is tantamount to attributing the Reagan Administration’s actions in the Iran-Contra affair to the clever machinations of Oliver North, or the invasion of Iraq to David Frum, the writer of Bush’s “axis of evil” phrase.

The executive responsible for reprehensible acts will always rely on the most convincing arguments in order to rationalize them. Regardless of his morals, the better he is at making executive decisions, the more likely it is that he will select skillful lawyers to formulate those arguments. It is not certain who that executive person was in the case of the “enhanced interrogation techniques”--George Bush, Dick Cheney, or a number of other influential members of their or previous federal administrations. It is not likely, on the other hand, that any of the lawyers who have been named as formulators of the justification were in a position to force adoption of the policy to use those techniques. It is not the sharpener of the axe who is to blame for the wrongful execution--not even the executioner.

The Obama Administration must face frankly the truth that our country has been governed in the past in ways that have allowed violation of our people’s fundamental principles. He should call on the country to hold to account the democratically elected leaders under whose charge those violations occurred and/or admit our common error in entrusting them with leadership as we resolve to prevent such occurrences in the future. Without taking one or both of these steps, blaming the lawyers won’t prevent similar crimes in the future.

In our nation of laws, lawyers will always find a legal way to pursue our objectives, whether or not they are morally defensible. We must all independently be sure that those objectives, and the methods used to pursue them, are consistent with our values and beliefs.

11 April 2009

9/11 Should Not Change Our Mentality

Mackubia Thomas Owens is wrong to conclude in his April 11-12, 2009, Wall Street Journal OpEd article that 9/11 should have changed the America’s mentality when it comes to the treatment of criminals. The failure of the Geneva Conventions to address modern international terrorists does not excuse the U.S. from honoring our own principles of humane and civil behavior. Our own standards are not defined by treaty.

Luckily for Timothy McVeigh, he was quickly found to have been a disaffected loner, and so not subjected to coercive interrogation methods. But would the U.S. government have been justified in using water boarding to prevent further violent protests by the SDS and other radicals it imprisoned in the 1970s after for bombing public buildings? Would they have been exempt from that and other unusual treatment techniques solely because they were U.S. citizens? Or are our enforcement and defense actions constrained more strictly by our conscience as the person responsible for taking them than by the identity of the person against whom they are aimed?

07 April 2009

Curing Irrational Exuberance

The pain and suffering of the American people that Ariana Huffington says on the April 7, 2009 Huffington Post she wants to alleviate was caused by a sudden awakening by the suppliers of our banking system's liquidity to the fantasy of overvalued stocks, real estate, credit card debt, etc. Sure, that misery will disappear for a short time with a morphine-like infusion of cash directly to consumers through credit unions and community banks. But such a measure will not prevent financial disasters due to "irrational exuberance" in the future.

A careful approach, relying on the smart guys who unfortunately got us into this trouble in the first place, and under close supervision in spite of the bankers' complaints about interference, is the cure the Obama team appears to be prescribing. Let's give them begrudging support for a few more months.

01 April 2009

Money is Just Another Commodity

Sarkozy, Merkel, and their sympathizers are truly resentful of their second-tier status in the G-20 and see their insistence on a policy of financial-regulation-first as a good way to take advantage of the egg put on the face of the U.S. by the global credit crisis. Yes, greater transparency, not to mention predictability, of the latest instruments of financial wizardry must be sought in order to avoid crises like the current one in the future.

As an analogy for the global surplus of easy money, let us consider the parallel case of a world glut of another commodity, like wheat or corn. Surely, the collapse of the world price of an important food commodity could cause widespread harm to the global agricultural industry. So, how does Europe respond to the genetic engineering of seeds that could increase crop yields?--by clamoring for more regulation and even advocating import restrictions. The immediate victims of scientifically expanded food production might be the farmers dislocated from their traditional way of life. They would get the financial aid they needed in order to emerge from the crisis with improved methods of farming or with transformed livelihoods. Certainly, the genetic engineering that caused their dislocation must be regulated to prevent real harm to consumers; but the regulation would have second priority to relieving the economic victims of the advance in agricultural technology.

There was an abusive use of complex credit tools, like CDOs, CDS, etc., that led to the global credit crisis. However, It is most important first to relieve the economic harm that resulted from the inattention of financial regulators that permitted things to get out of hand. We learned that lesson in the 1930s. After setting the world back on a healthy material growth path, we should definitely correct the regulatory defects that allowed the crisis to happen. Even France and Germany will suffer from unnecessarily prolonging the recession.

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