Arab Spring, education choices, and a thought experiment with Jane Fonda

View 695 Thursday, October 06, 2011

I had hoped to end the Proscription discussions but there is news:

Proscription

Dr Pournelle,

This article appears to give the detail you were looking for regarding the process by which a citizen gets onto the proscription list:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/05/us-cia-killlist-idUSTRE79475C20111005

How one gets off the list is less clear (well, one way is obvious…)

Regards, Stu

Stu Fleming

The article is well written and detailed. Of course it cites anonymous sources; how could that be otherwise? In essence it says that a secret subcommittee of the National Security Council meets and proposes names. “Look, with a spot I damn him.” The names are made known to the President but no positive action from him is required. He could remove a name from the list, but whether he has ever done so is not known. It isn’t even known that he has ever read the list. The Reuters article says:

“The role of the president in ordering or ratifying a decision to target a citizen is fuzzy. White House spokesman Tommy Vietor declined to discuss anything about the process.

Current and former officials said that to the best of their knowledge, Awlaki, who the White House said was a key figure in al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, al Qaeda’s Yemen-based affiliate, had been the only American put on a government list targeting people for capture or death due to their alleged involvement with militants.”

As to Samir Khan, the second American killed in the drone rocket strike, he was not on the list but was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Suppose that this system were in place in 1972, and the National Security Council committee determined that Tom Hayden, already under indictment for his anti-war rallies and the protests at the Chicago Convention, was determined to be an enemy of the United States; a drone aircraft sees him during Jane Fonda’s visit to the North Viet Nam anti-aircraft station. A Hellfire is launched. Hayden is killed. So is Jane Fonda, who is nearby.

I have a number of friends who would say “Serve them right,” with some glee; but this thought experiment does raise some Constitutional questions.

“Two principal legal theories were advanced, an official said: first, that the actions were permitted by Congress when it authorized the use of military forces against militants in the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001; and they are permitted under international law if a country is defending itself.”

One presumes that the Tonkin Gulf resolution which permitted Presidents Johnson and Nixon to send the troops to Viet Nam would certainly justify anything that the current Congressional resolution justifies in the way of dealing with enemies of the United States: neither looked like a formal Declaration of War, but apparently both sufficed. So my thought experiment is fantastic only in that we don’t have drones and hellfires and real time satellite observations and thus could not have seen Hayden and Fonda on their pre-marriage Viet Nam tour and ordered a strike. Whether either or both might have been targeted I do not know. I don’t know who is on the committee.

In 1968 I was proposed for an office in the Department of Defense that might well have put me on that committee, but I was rejected by two of the President’s advisors as “inflexible”. (And no, I do not know what that means. My qualifications involved political advice in the area of national defense during the 1968 campaign plus a still active clearance and considerable experience with high tech weaponry. I can guess what the president’s political advisors meant, but I do not know. It came as a surprise: my wife and I thought we would have to leave California for Washington. I’m rather grateful for the rejection, as it happens.) But of course in those days no such committee existed, nor did we have anything like the capability for carrying out such acts. The closest thing we had in those days involved much larger manned aircraft.

Had we had the physical capability, I do not know if Nixon would have employed them, or whether he would have balked at the use of such capabilities against American citizens convicted of no crime even if they were in a war zone.

It is not a question now. Apparently we have an anonymous committee of persons who report to the National Security Council (Vice President, Secretaries of State, Treasury, Defense, and other Constitutional Officers). The committee itself may or may not have members confirmed by the Senate, but the committee itself is unknown to either the Constitution or the Laws.

“targeting recommendations are drawn up by a committee of mid-level National Security Council and agency officials. Their recommendations are then sent to the panel of NSC “principals,” meaning Cabinet secretaries and intelligence unit chiefs, for approval. The panel of principals could have different memberships when considering different operational issues, they said.

The officials insisted on anonymity to discuss sensitive information.”

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/05/us-cia-killlist-idUSTRE79475C20111005

Perhaps I am unduly disturbed by all this.

For those interested in the Middle East situation I can recommend this:

Available on the web and in pdf format at:

http://www.fpri.org/enotes/2011/201110.kramer.middleeast.html

THE MIDDLE EAST CIRCA 2016

by Martin Kramer

When I received the assignment for today, it reminded me of that 1999 book, Dow 36,000. At the time the authors wrote it, the Dow stood at 10,300, and the book became a bestseller. But today the Dow is only 20 percent higher than it was then-it’s only at 12,700. Last February, one of the co-authors wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Why I Was Wrong About ‘Dow 36,000’.” “What happened?” he wrote. “The world changed.” Well, what a surprise.

Now there was a lot of talk that sounded like “Middle East 36,000” just a couple of months ago. This is a new Middle East, everything you thought you knew is wrong, bet on revolution and you’ll be rewarded handsomely with democracy.

Let’s face it: Americans like optimistic scenarios that end with all of us rich and the rest of the world democratic.

There’s much in the American century since World War Two to foster such optimism. But while you enjoy reading your copy of “Middle East 36,000.” I’m going to quickly tell you what’s in the small print in the prospectus-the part that’s in Arabic. <snip>

 

The LA Times today has an article entitled “Zero-tolerance policies driving up suspensions” in which it laments that anyone is suspended for disobedience or other non-violent behavior. They should instead receive help. “A child who is suspended from school is more than likely waving a red flag for needing intervention and support,” said Dr. Robert Rosa, president and chief executive of the California Endowment. “Metaphorically speaking, this is a time you want to put your arms around a student, rather than push him away.”

Whether this is a good idea for a wealthy school district, it certainly seems inappropriate for a system that is broke and laying off teachers (by seniority, not by effectiveness, of course). We can’t afford to educate those who can be educated and want to be educated and are willing to be polite and self-disciplined; yet we are supposed to dedicate even more resources to those who are unruly and undisciplined? To what end? Of course if “being educated” is an entitlement the taxpayers are required to provide rather than an investment the taxpayers choose to make, that may be the right way to look at it; but given that we can’t afford it, does this make sense?

Our education system is busted, both financially and in effect. It won’t be fixed by admitting that the point of the system is to do what we can for the future citizens and particularly the future productive citizens, but until we understand that it must do at least that much, it will continue to be broke and unfixable.

This is not Lake Wobegon. Half the students are below average. Half of those below average are getting a great deal of attention – some would say at least as much as the other 75%. Is this a rational allocation of scarce resources? It may make one feel good to spend a lot of time helping a spastic child of low IQ, and it is a noble thing to do: but can we afford that, and what will be the effect on the future economy? Will the nation be better off having mainstreamed a disabled child from the 35^th percentile to the 40^th, or by having taught calculus in high school to a 90^th percentile child of very low income?

The answer to that would be different if there were a lot of money; but there isn’t. We’re broke. Every single one of us owes $47,000 on the national debt. That must be paid, and the rest of us will have to pay the shares that those who will never earn that much money will not be able to pay. Education decisions must be made with that stark fact in mind.

Salve, sclave.