1984 at the airport?
And I don’t mean TWA and hot pants.
Since Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s failed terror attempt, airport screening methods have been criticised and scrutinized. This article outlines some innovations that could be added to current procedures. There are a number of moral issues lurking beneath the surface.
The first innovation, a “mind reader,” was developed by WeCU (”we see you”) technologies and involves projecting images onto airport screens that a would-be terrorist would likely recognize. The technology relies mostly upon hidden cameras and sensors that detect signs that a person recognizes the image.
Does terror have a nationality?
New fears. New travel restrictions.
I’m sure we’ll have a lot to say here at The Public Philosopher about the attempted terror attack on Christmas Day, 2009. Today I’d like to write about the new screening procedures that have been implemented. I flew from Oslo, Norway on January 2 back to the United States and, along with every other passenger, I was frisked and had my carry-on luggage hand searched.
That protocol will not be followed moving forward–not for every passenger, anyway. The Obama administration has announced that this heightened scrutiny will be indefinitely applied to citizens of Afghanistan, Algeria, Cuba, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Paksitan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Somalia, and Yemen and anyone who is traveling from or through these countries.
The procedures will be applied to all citizens of these nations–even those who have lived elsewhere for decades. Read more
Exit strategy or “No Exit”?
Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass (who was also the State Department’s Director of Policy Planning under George W. Bush) likens our commitment to Afghanistan to Sartre’s play, “No Exit,” in which the characters cannot seem to escape one another.
“Hell is other people,” one says. Why is this relevant? Because in both Iraq and Afghanistan, America finds itself involved (some might say trapped) in difficult situations (some might describe them as hell) where its ability to exit successfully depends largely on its local partners.
In order to successfully “sell” this war to an increasingly war-weary public, the administration has emphasized its intentions to leave the region sooner than later. Unfortunately, Haass reminds us, “conflicts are easier to get into than out of.”
-Colin
Obama and Afghanistan
Déjà vu all over again?
On Tuesday night, President Obama addressed the nation from West Point and outlined his plan to commit more troops and resources to Afghanistan. After watching and reading the speech, as well as taking in reaction from (mostly liberal) commentators, it seems that the crucial question is this: Has Obama embraced the Bush Doctrine?
The Bush Doctrine, made famous posthumously as a result of Sarah Palin’s ignorance of it, was a widely criticized approach to foreign relations that allowed for pre-emptive aggression against states which are deemed potentially dangerous. Under these guidelines, we can - and should - invest American resources and lives in occupying territories that harbor suspected terrorists, even if they haven’t attacked us yet.
Liberals have responded to the Bush Doctrine in two ways. Some have rejected fear-based interventionism, replacing it with humanitarian interventionism. Let’s get to our enemies before they get to us, but let’s do it by promoting political reform, diplomacy, education, and human rights. Others have argued that our efforts are better spent at home; America can help others only if it helps itself, and most of our so-called “help” goes unappreciated anyway. Here’s Glenn Greenwald:
“The greatest cause of Terrorism is our endless wars, invasions, bombings, occupations and other means of interfering in the Muslim world, and our escalation will only fuel the anti-American hatred and resentment that — as even our own Government has recognized — is the primary fuel of the threat we’re supposedly trying to arrest.”
And Tom Friedman:
“Given our need for nation-building at home right now, I am ready to live with a little less security and a little-less-perfect Afghanistan.”
More on war games
Last week I wrote about the depiction of war in video games and suggested that the line between virtual and actual conflict seems to be getting thinner. Now, two Swiss human rights organizations have determined that some video games feature violations of international law. The orgs, Trial and Pro Juventute, argue that the violence included in many of today’s “military games” would actually constitute war crimes, and that allowing gamers to simulate such actions legitimizes them.
Opponents of these games can object either on consequentialist or virtue-based grounds. Either war crimes in games have a traceable effect on the values and behavior of games and thus society, or there’s just something inherently wrong with allowing war crimes to take place, even in a virtual setting (or both). It’s hard to prove the consequentialist argument, and the virtue-based argument seems a bit censorial… Would we censor all forms of media in this way?
The Swiss orgs responded that games are especially dangerous because of their interactive nature. We don’t just watch war crimes take place - we make them happen (and are often rewarded with bonus points).
-Colin
War tax?
Last week Congressman Obey submitted a bill that would impose a surtax to pay for the continued war effort in Afghanistan. The goal, according to TNR, is to raise awareness of the real costs of the war in a way that will make the tradeoffs of the conflict more obvious.
A quick take is that this kind of regulation is definitely justified. Military spending has always occupied a strange netherworld where it is rarely if ever discussed as a direct trade off with social programs. Of course, this bill is not likely to pass. But it raises interesting questions about why the obvious trade offs in public spending are not more fully discussed. What is it that makes military spending so popular? Is it dedication to an amorphous “victory?” More questions than answers here — perhaps a smart commenter can explain why American political discourse has evolved this way.
-John
Fighting on a virtual battlefield
Should we be worried about “war games”?
In my fourth and final installment in the “Colin blogs about war” series, I want to take on the portrayal of warfare in video and computer games. While this is especially interesting to me as a gamer, it’s also more important than you might think: the latest “war game” to be released, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, boasted the biggest launch in the history of entertainment, raking in $550 million in the first few days of sales. The game’s producer reported that gamers spent over 5.2 million hours on MW2’s multiplayer platform during its first day.
Needless to say, lots of people are shooting lots of virtual people on LCD screens. This particular genre (first-person shooters, or FPS) is not without controversy, however. While games have featured often gruesome amounts of violence since their inception (along with movies, books, and most other forms of entertainment), some new developments have made the intersection of games and battle a bit more complicated.
Privatizing war
How much of the war effort should we “contract out”?
In this third entry of what is becoming a series on the ethics of war (drones last week and R.O.T.C. recruiting the week before), I want to take a look at a controversial trend in American defense strategy. That trend is the rapidly increasing extent to which we outsource responsibilities normally handled by the military to private contractors.
I noted in last week’s post that drones are often flown by civilian contractors, thousands of miles away from the conflict. That’s just the proverbial iceberg’s tip. In mid-2007, the U.S. military had about 145,000 troops on the ground in Iraq, but most of us had no idea that 126,000 private personnel had accompanied them, almost doubling the total force. These contractors are often responsible for critical mission activities, such as guarding politicians and diplomats. General David Petraeus actually admitted to being accompanied by a private security firm, not the U.S. military, as he travels in Iraq.
The drone dilemma
When does efficiency cost too much?
The U.S. military and intelligence services have been using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs or “drones”) since the Gulf War for surveillance, transportation, and combat. Drones are usually launched and landed by specialists on the ground, but they are often controlled by civilian contractors on American bases, thousands of miles away from conflict. Originally used only for gathering intelligence, drones are now used widely for what some call “targeted killing” - secretive attacks on enemies often carried out by the CIA, which runs its own drone program.
As Jane Mayer suggests in The New Yorker (I highly recommend this article), the use of unmanned technology to execute combat operations is quite controversial. There seem to be two large problems with drones: (1) We’re waging war with “machines” instead of soldiers; and (2) we’re using these machines in what many are calling assassinations, which are in violation of U.S. and international law.
What’s wrong with having drones do the fighting for us? It largely eliminates the human cost of war, and by extension, it makes the engagement seem costless and painless. Without the sense that our sons and daughters are sacrificing their lives in our defense, a declaration of war is checked only by its financial cost and strategic value.
Ivy League vs. armed forces
Should elite universities welcome the military back?
Some of our top academic institutions have refused to allow military recruiters on campus or sponsor R.O.T.C. programs since the 1960s, during the height of the anti-war movement. Harvard and Yale students interested in R.O.T.C. must trek to other campuses to take part, and enrollment is almost nonexistent.
Born out of anti-war sentiment, these policies are now defended on the basis of the military’s “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy toward homosexuals. A letter of protest against on-campus recruiting from the faculty of Columbia University Law School makes the case:
This recruitment directly violates the Law School’s longstanding non-discrimination policy, which forbids employers from recruiting on our campus if they discriminate based on, inter alia, sexual orientation. Under the “don’t ask, don’t tell” law, which bars openly lesbian, gay and bisexual individuals from military service, military employers discriminate explicitly based on sexual orientation.
Supporters of campus recruitment have accused schools like Columbia of hypocrisy. These institutions accept scholarship money from the military for soldiers-turned-students, and often house national security programs that serve mostly mid-career military officers. Why tolerate the military sometimes but not all of the time? Read more
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