Sacred Disorder

Here’s an altogether amazing column from David Broder, the longtime Washington Post columnist. Broder, often called the “dean of the Washington press corps,” argues against prosecution of anyone involved in the development and execution of the program to torture detainees.

The column, to be published Sunday, is dense with the usual contemptuous regard for fact. For example:

Obama needs to take it on himself, as he started to do — not pass the buck to Attorney General Eric Holder, as he seemed to be suggesting in his later statements on the issue.

This — in a column arguing against prosecutions because of their political consequences — is amazingly un-self-reflective. Apparently, Broder has already forgotten that the Bush administration thoroughly politicized the Department of Justice as a PR instrument to rationalize every criminal action it wanted to take. Now, Broder turns right around and, ignoring the proper independent operation of the DOJ himself, urges Obama to effectively intervene in the agency’s work in order to protect criminals for political reasons.

I love this succinct graf too:

But having vowed to end the practices [of torture], Obama should use all the influence of his office to stop the retroactive search for scapegoats.

Astounding. First is the odd phrase “retroactive search,” as if that’s something unusual. Exactly what criminal investigation is not “retroactive”? Perhaps Mr. Broder prefers to investigate crimes before they occur?

Then there’s the most amazing of all: use of the word “scapegoats.” It’s another one of those Orwellian language moves for which the press has become infamous. They’re not criminals or suspected criminals. They are scapegoats. If you conduct an investigation and find plenty of evidence of a criminal act, how are you scapegoating anyone? Is someone beside the suspected people responsible for the torture? Teletubbies? Mr. SquarePants? Monica Lewinski?

I suppose he means the suspects are scapegoats in a political game. So, if there’s a political motive present for anyone advocating prosecution, the crimes should be ignored? In the world of David Broder and the rest of the Washington political and media class, apparently so.

As another example of the delusional self-aggrandisement of the punditry, check out this video of David Gregory, recently cited by Glenn Greenwald. At the beginning of the video, Gregory, who is the host of Meet the Press, says he’s going to do some analysis. What follows is literally a recitation of talking points. There’s no “analysis” at all. It’s the verbal equivalent of linking to other people’s writing.

I find this video clip from last Sunday’s “This Week With George Stephanopoulos” astonishing. Here we have a group of Washington pundits seated about a table, agreeing that the Bush administration monsters who devised torture routines enhanced interrogations should not be prosecuted.

Particularly reprehensible is Peggy Noonan, who worries that “Somethings in life need to be mysterious.” We should simply look the other way and “keep walking.” Indeed, the recently released memos that read like instructions to the torturers of the Spanish Inquisition should not have seen the light of day. What possible good could come of admitting error, much less literal prosecution of people who only meant well by subjecting detainees deprived habeas corpus to simulated drowning nearly 200 times within a month?

What this video exemplifies is Hannah Arendt’s famous description of “the banality of evil” by which the most heinous, inhumane acts are normalized. That these people are supposed to be “watchdogs” of the Fourth Estate is more evidence of the complete corruption of media. They are literal complicitors in the normalization of torture and the Orwellian use of language to render it something less than the horror it is.

The “banality” extends of course to the depth of their own intellects. There’s no need for these “journalists” to consider Constitutional law or the Geneva Accords and other international treaties. Moral and ethical inquiry are completely beside the point.

They sound like high school sophomores trying to excuse a practical joke that went bad.

It’s hard to find anyone in media who supports prosecuting Bush and his thugs for their numerous crimes. Even torture is defended, as this clip of Joe Scarborough illustrates. Typically, he makes up facts to support waterboarding, totally ignoring the actual fact that the process has long been considered torture by our own government. In truly Orwellian manner, he simply renames the torture “aggressive interrogation.”

Read Glennzilla’s take on the subject.

In his most recent “Think Again” column for the New York Times, Stanley Fish takes up the news that the American Psychological Association, after a year of intense internal conflict, has adopted a resolution that forbids members to participate in interrogation techniques (torture) at US detention centers.

This follows prohibitions long established by the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association.

Fish sets out to demonstrate that the application of psychology, like the use of rhetoric, is “never clean,” in that, no matter the circumstances, it is always trying to persuade. (He also points out that not all psychologists are clinical psychologists, making the Hippocratic Oath fuzzier than is the case with physicians.)

Thus, he effectively argues, the ethical boundary outlawing participation of any sort in these interrogations is arbitrary, even worrisome since it fails to acknowledge that persuasion is part of every application of psychology.

The post has produced over 200 comments, many of them highly insightful. The most predictable objection is to Fish’s failure to recognize that many physicians are also involved in research instead of client care, so it’s unreasonable to write off the AMA’s earlier decision on the basis that patient care always takes priority.

I think the value of Fish’s post, though, is to observe that the notion of moral neutrality among psychologists is a myth, that in fact psychology has been allied with law enforcement and the military for decades — ideologically and financially. It has also cooperated, if tacitly, in reinforcement of religious values by pathologizing some “sinful” behaviors such as homosexuality.

So, his observations about this particular decision by the APA (which occurred only after the membership demanded a vote) are a great starting place for a discussion about the occupation itself. Check it out.

Saturday’s New York Times published a follow-up story on the controversy over psychologists’ participation in “enhanced interrogations,” which I wrote about recently.

The American Psychological Association, which is holding its annual conference in Boston this week has been debating whether to designate participation in such interrogations as a violation of its code of ethics. It’s also become an issue in the election of a new president of the association.

On one side you have those who claim participation by psychologists helps prevent the interrogations from turning into torture. The other side points to the ample contrary evidence that the psychologists are helping “break down” detainees with techniques whose aims violate international law.

I find the argument ridiculous. It’s been demonstrated again and again that these techniques only produce “false confessions” and all manner of bogus information. Why would any ethical psychologist want to participate in any practice that makes subjects so miserable that they will say anything to end their torment?

I find it fascinating, by the way, that none of the follow-ups I’ve read include mention that Martin Seligman, a former APA president and the creator of influential “positive psychology,” is among those under scrutiny. It was reports of his participation — which I frankly think has probably been overstated — that turned this into a news story in July.

Read the Times piece here.

As anyone who knows me personally knows, I am a huge fan of Glenn Greenwald, the former constitutional lawyer turned author and blogger for Salon. Unlike the usual pundit, Greenwald questions everything, does the investigative work journalists are often too lazy to do these days, and has a talent for seeing the bigger picture.

Today, his blog features a brilliant piece about the way the Washington Post editorial page postures grandly about Russia’s violation of “the rule of law,” while it has consistently backed George Bush in his own violation of domestic and international law. The following two paragraphs are particularly startling in their description of what America has become:

What we’ve done over the last seven years — at least much of it — isn’t a secret. It’s worthwhile to state frequently in clear, dispassionate terms what our country has done. Our Government has kidnapped people off the street and from their homes and sent them to places like Syria to be tortured for months (including completely innocent people) and then invoked National Security claims to bar them from holding our Government accountable in a court of law. We’ve disappeared others into secret prisons beyond even the reach of the Red Cross, or encaged them in a lawless black hole on a Cuban island. We’ve tortured them, sometimes to death, even with the knowledge that many were innocent. We attacked and completely demolished another country that couldn’t attack us even if it wanted to. And our President openly declared that he has the power to break our laws, spy on U.S. citizens with no warrants, and indefinitely imprison even our own citizens with no process of any kind. Those are all just facts that aren’t really subject to dispute or debate.

Worst of all, having done all of that — not for weeks or months following the 9/11 attacks, but for years, still — we’ve collectively decided, without much turmoil or debate, that it should all be forgiven, that none of it should be punished or even investigated, that it’s best just to keep these crimes concealed and, when accidentally disclosed, to immunize the criminals. And all of that is being done right out in the open, so that our formal human rights reports are self-evident, almost laughable, farces, and even countries like Zimbabwe, when their governments want to engage in tyrannical acts, can and do rationally point to the U.S. as the leading example which they’re following.

Read the entire post here.

Oh, by the way, Greenwald wonders what allows the Post’s editorial writers, like many members of the political class, to point a finger at other nations’ transgressions of human rights while legitimating our own. It’s cognitive dissonance.

I’m sure you’ve read about “positive psychology.” You may have even read books by Martin Seligman, its principal theorist and advocate. Among them are Learned Optimism and Authentic Happiness.

Now it turns out that Mr. Smiley has been cited in a new book for a most unhappy line of work. This is from psychoanalyst Stephen Soldz’s blog:

Among the blockbuster revelations in Jane Mayer’s new book, The Dark Side, is that world famous psychologist and former American Psychological Association (APA) President Martin Seligman actively aided the development of the CIA’s torture techniques, based as they were upon Seligman’s “learned helplessness” theory. Apparently Seligman aided CIA consultant torture psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, in the development of these techniques.

Mayer’s book is due out Tuesday. But Scott Horton has read it and produced a summary, which is now posted on Andrew Sullivan’s blog. Here is the relevant section:

“She traces the development of the torture techniques to the work of two contractors, Mitchell and Jessen, and disclosed the specific techniques they developed. She notes that the techniques rely heavily on a theory called “Learned Helplessness” developed by a Penn psychologist Martin Seligman, who assisted them in the process. All of this was done under the thin pretext of being a part of the SERE program. Seligman is a former president of the American Psychological Association. This helps explain why the APA alone among professional healthcare provider organizations failed to unequivocally condemn torture and mandate that its members not associate themselves with the Bush Administration techniques.”

Read Soldz’s entire commentary here.