Certain Doubt

He had me at “Yes We Can”

Wednesday, December 8th, 2010

Barrack Obama had me. He had me at “yes we can.” he had me at “Change is coming to America.”

He had me. But he has me no more.

Over the past two years as president, Obama’s confident message of “change we can believe in,” has morphed into a mumbled: “…uh, let’s have change everyone agrees on, okay?… please?” Gone is the dynamic speaker who inspired hope in so many of us. In its place is a weak, indecisive man whose policies seem little differen tfrom those of his predecessor. We wanted an FDR. What we got was Mr. Rogers.

Go down the list. On the domestic front we have had hundreds of billions in continued bailouts of banks and insurance giants. Bailouts of large corporations like General Motors. All this largess has come with no strings attached. There has been virtually no oversight over who gets the government handouts and what it is used for. The cave in to health insurance corporations and big Phrma in the health-care bill is a blatant example of an administration that surrenders before the battle has even started. Add in continued record unemployment, massive home foreclosures and individual bankruptcies coupled with incredible multi-billion dollar bonuses for corporate executives and you have a growing divide between rich and poor that Obama seems unwilling to do anything to change. The President says he is trying to promote compromise. However, the astonishing alacrity with which he continues to give in to republicans and their corporate paymasters makes him seem like a weak, cowardly, unprincipled man who is unwilling to stand up and fight for anything.

Americans love a good scrap. We’ll even support a hopeless underdog if that underdog is willing to stand up to the bully and poke him in the eye. By giving in to republicans like Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, Obama is coming off looking like a weakling who is so afraid of the bully on the beach that he will lie down and kick sand in his own face. Compromise is not a bad thing. However, the President’s seeming unwillingness to fight against conservatives on any issue is revolting in the extreme.

As bad as the domestic front is, the international situation is worse. We have a continuous war in Afghanistan with no end in sight. We have undeclared wars in Pakistan and Yemen, and the ramping up of rhetoric for war in Iran and possibly North Korea. We continue to print money to fuel our out of control military spending, and we continue to exhibit an unsustainable imperialistic foreign policy that is, in many ways, even more pronounced than it was under George W. Bush. Even Guantanamo which Obama promised to close within a year of becoming president is not only still open with lots of prisoners still being held without even the hope of a trial.

Now we have the flap over the release of “confidential” diplomatic cables by the whistle blowing site “Wikileaks.” The Obama administration’s response to the release of these documents has been appalling. That Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the entire diplomatic core received a huge black eye over the release of the documents is undeniable. The Wikileaks cables demonstrate convincingly that the United States government under Obama is continuing down the same path of imperial hubris that was the hallmark of his predecessor. The U.S. continues to meddle in the affairs of other countries even to the point of engaging in unethical and immoral illegal acts like spying on members of the United Nations and engaging in sabotage of climate control talks in Denmark.

The government’s response to the revelations is equally revealing. Just as under George W. Bush the Obama administration’s reaction is not to apologize or admit error. It is not to change its behavior. Instead, the government’s only action is to circle the wagons and attack, destroy or at least silence the founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, by any means possible. On an individual level, viewing the revelation of one’s unethical and even illegal behavior as a personal attack is not the reaction of one who possesses strong moral character. On an international level, any country that reacts to its secrets being revealed by launching attacks on the whistle blower who revealed them is not exhibiting courage. Is the Obama administration so desperate to appear strong and tough that they can’t own up when a few of their secrets get revealed?

Reacting to someone who exposes you as a fool by clobbering them over the head does not make you any less of a fool. It just makes you a bully.

Subsequent posts will deal with why I believe further support for Obama is futile. For now let me just say that hope as a commodity is not infinite. I’m afraid my supply for Obama has been exhausted. Somewhere between now and the next election President Obama may grow a spine and start fighting for the things in which he believes. He may. But given his actions to date, I very much doubt it.

Tags: Assange, certain, change, corporations, courage, doubt, hope, influence, money, Obama, Politics, republican, Thomas Vincent, Vincent, wikileaks
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Secrets

Tuesday, November 30th, 2010

I am growing increasingly sick to my stomach over the “outrage” by government officials and members of Congress over the release of diplomatic cables by the watchdog group Wikileaks.

Sen. Joseph Lieberman weighed in first. In fiery language he:

“…condemned the release, saying, “Wikileaks’ deliberate disclosure of these diplomatic cables is nothing less than an attack on the national security of the United States, as well as that of dozens of other countries. By disseminating these materials, Wikileaks is putting at risk the lives and the freedom of countless Americans and non-Americans around the world. It is an outrageous, reckless, and despicable action that will undermine the ability of our government and our partners to keep our people safe and to work together to defend our vital interests. Let there be no doubt: the individuals responsible are going to have blood on their hands.”

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton went even further:

“Let’s be clear. This disclosure is not just an attack on America — it’s an attack on the international community,” Clinton said Monday at a State Department news conference. Such leaks, she said, “tear at the fabric” of responsible government.
“There is nothing laudable about endangering innocent people, and there is nothing brave about sabotaging the peaceful relations between nations,” she added.

But the loudest vitriol came from New York’s Rep. Peter King, the ranking Republican on Homeland Security, who said that: “This is worse even than a physical attack on Americans, it’s worse than a military attack…”

King maintained that WikiLeaks is “engaged in terrorist activity.” He said that by releasing secret documents, the organization is “enabling terrorists to kill Americans.”
“… if the lives of some Americans are endangered by the illegal release of classified information by the Wikileaks website, then the government should “go after” the people who control WikiLeaks for violating the espionage act.” 1

King wants Attorney General Eric Holder “to prosecute Assange under the Espionage Act and has also called on Clinton to determine whether WikiLeaks could be designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.”

It is astounding to me that anyone who has the slightest connection to these released cables should have the unmitigated gall to stand up and decry their release. Comparing Julian Assange and Wikileaks to a terrorist group for making public acts of diplomatic indiscretion, hubris, and outright governmental duplicity is like seeing Hannibal Lechter stand up and express outrage that his recipes have been published online.

Am I calling the U.S. State Department a bunch of cannibals? Of course not. I am merely saying anyone who has committed acts they are not proud of – acts that could even be illegal – has no right to express outrage when those acts are made public.

The silly part about Clinton, Lieberman, and King’s vitriolic attack on Wikileaks is the innocuous nature ofmost of the material released. For example, according to the Guardian the cables contain such earth shattering revelations as:
-alleged links between the Russian government and organized crime.
-claims of “inappropriate behavior” by an unnamed member of the British Royal Family.
-the fact that Muammar gaddafi never goes anywhere without his “voluptuous blonde” Ukranian nurse.

Even the potential bombshells such as the revelation that the State Department has been engaging in clandestine spying against members of the UN and the fact that London and Washington has grave fears over the security of Pakistan’s nuclear program are not all that shocking. While the scope of both of these revelations – collection of biometric data such as DNA from UN officials and even plans to remove nuclear material from Pakistan – will undoubtedly raise some eyebrows around the world, they are not exactly news.

For example, in a New York Times article from May 2009, David Sanger wrote:
“As the insurgency of the Taliban and Al Qaeda spreads in Pakistan, senior American officials say they are increasingly concerned about new vulnerabilities for Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, including the potential for militants to snatch a weapon in transport or to insert sympathizers into laboratories or fuel-production facilities.

And this from the Observer in March 9, 2003:
The United Nations has begun a top-level investigation into the bugging of its delegations by the United States, first revealed in The Observer last week…The operation is thought to have been authorized by US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, but American intelligence experts told The Observer that a decision of this kind would also have involved Donald Rumsfeld, CIA director George Tenet and NSA chief General Michael Hayden.

The fact that so much of the content of the cables that has been released is of the mundane, watercolor gossip variety – Prime Minister Silvio Belusconi is described as the “mouthpiece of [Vladimir] Putin”, Nicholas Sarkozy is “an Emperor with no clothes” and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il is called a “flabby old man,” – makes Secretary Clinton’s protestations seem even more bizarre.

The real damage, if damage there is, from the Wikileaks revelations is better described by Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the senior Republican on the House Intelligence Committee:

“The catastrophic issue here is just a breakdown in trust,” he said Monday, adding that many other countries — allies and foes alike — are likely to ask, ” ‘Can the United States be trusted? Can the United States keep a secret?’ “

Here lies the real nut. Like a shiny porcelain cap that falls off revealing the stub of a rotten tooth, the real sore point for the U.S. Government is simply that the cables give the world a clear look at just what a bunch of duplicitous liars we are.

In the Words of historian and writer Norman Solomon:

“No government wants to face documentation of actual policies, goals and priorities that directly contradict its public claims of virtue. In societies with democratic freedoms, the governments that have the most to fear from such disclosures are the ones that have been doing the most lying to their own people.
The recent mega-leaks are especially jarring because of the extreme contrasts between the government’s public pretenses and real-life actions.”

As Solomon rightly points out, the standard response when leaks occur is to blame the leaking messengers. Like that scene in “Casablanca” where Claude Rains says: “The major has been shot, round up the usual suspects.” The U.S. Government is saying “We got a custard pie in the face. Round up Wikileaks and accuse them of attacking our national security.”

Solomon’s response is as poignant as it gets: “…what kind of ‘national security’ can be built on duplicity from a government that is discredited and refuted by its own documents?”

In the end, the Representative Hoekstra comes close, but he doesn’t win the cigar. The question revealed by the diplomatic cables shouldn’t be “can the United States keep a secret?” The real question is: “should the United States be keeping secrets?”

Tags: Clinton, diplomacy, duplicity, Secretary of State, secrets, spying, Thomas Vincent, Vincent, wikileaks
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Stupider

Monday, November 29th, 2010

Stupid:

- Slow to learn or understand; obtuse

- Dazed, stunned or stupefied.

Will machines surpass people? Like a pesky weed, the question keeps popping up again and again. Some are sanguine about the possibilities:

“It seems plausible that with technology we can, in the fairly near future,” says sci-fi legend Vernor Vinge, “create (or become) creatures who surpass humans in every intellectual and creative dimension.”

Others are less so:

The science fiction author Ken MacLeod described the idea of the singularity (the point where machines surpass us) as “the Rapture of the nerds.” Kevin Kelly, an editor at Wired magazine, notes, “People who predict a very utopian future always predict that it is going to happen before they die.”

I believe if – or even when – machines do overtake man, it will not be because of advances in artificial intelligence but instead because of retreats on the human front. To put it bluntly, humans are not losing the race against machines because machines are speeding up; they are losing because man is slowing down.

By any measure, mankind – at least the American version – ain’t getting any smarter. For example, You can’t pick up a paper today without reading about declining test scores and failing schools. One only need take a ride on any inner city bus to wonder if our intellectual gene pool isn’t leaking. And no wonder. Survivor, Dancing with the Stars, Monday Night Football, Fox News, and Sarah Palin. At the rate we’re going, give us another decade and the average IQ of all Americans will be about as robust as soggy toast.

In many ways, I feel the tipping point at which machines pass us by has already been reached. The best evidence I can give of this is our use of machines in war. In a recent front page article in the New York Times entitled “War Machines: Recruiting Robots for Combat,” John Markoff presents a great example of how we have already lost the battle:

In a mock city here used by Army Rangers for urban combat training, a 15-inch robot with a video camera scuttles around a bomb factory on a spying mission. Overhead an almost silent drone aircraft with a four-foot wingspan transmits images of the buildings below. Onto the scene rolls a sinister-looking vehicle on tank treads, about the size of a riding lawn mower, equipped with a machine gun and a grenade launcher.

Three backpack-clad technicians, standing out of the line of fire, operate the three robots with wireless video-game-style controllers. One swivels the video camera on the armed robot until it spots a sniper on a rooftop. The machine gun pirouettes, points and fires in two rapid bursts. Had the bullets been real, the target would have been destroyed.

In his piece, Markoff dutifully trots our arguments for and against the use of robotics in warfare. The arguments against, largely fall under the heading of morality, ethics, legality and foreign policy.

“Wars will be started very easily and with minimal costs” as automation increases, predicted Wendell Wallach, a scholar at the Yale Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics and chairman of its technology and ethics study group…The short-term benefits being derived from roboticizing aspects of warfare are likely to be far outweighed by the long-term consequences,” said Mr. Wallach, the Yale scholar, suggesting that wars would occur more readily and that a technological arms race would develop

On the side of man machine interaction in war, Markoff quotes an array of “military strategists, officers, and weapons designers” whose defense of robots in war focus on the “practical” benefits that the machines offer – they are never distracted, they never panic, they never tire, they are more precise in targeting – in other words, they are more effective at killing than humans. As an added bonus, manufacturers never miss an opportunity to note how robots take soldiers out of the line of fire. Lastly, the claim is made that civilian casualties can be reduced because of the aforementioned precision and the fact that because they are machines “they can fire second.”

(The claim about reduced civilian casualties seems somewhat dubious in light of the high rate of “collateral damage” in recent Predator drone strikes in Pakistan.)

The point here, however, is that Markoff and those he quotes who have been examining the issue of robots in war, virtually all raise straw men arguments. Drones and robots may keep soldiers out of harms way and even cut down on civilian casualties. So what? So does not fighting wars in the first place. Robotic sentries like MAARS may be able to “follow the military rules of engagement,” by “using voice warnings and tear gas before firing guns.” Super. Wouldn’t it be better to simply close our bases and bring our occupying forces home? If we did that, we wouldn’t need the robots at all. I fail to see how even the best robotic sentry in the world can win us friends and influence in foreign lands when what the people there really need are good roads, bridges, hospitals, and most importantly, jobs!

Sadly, even some of the arguments against using robots in war border on the absurd. For example, how can one be guilty of “war crimes” for employing a weapons system when there are no existing laws, international or otherwise, governing the use of that weapon? As for the argument that robotic soldiers will make war more likely, Humans have been killing each other for millennia before robots came along. Not being able to keep soldiers “out of harm’s way,” never stopped presidents from finding ways of entering foreign wars before now. Even if the U.N. decided to outlaw drones and bots tomorrow, I fear man would still be just as likely to engage in war.

The most ridiculous discussion about robots in war, however, has to be the imbroglio over whether to allow robots to make autonomous life and death battlefield decisions or whether to require that humans remain the ones pulling the trigger. Supporters of robotic warfare may try to reassure us that the United States will always hold to the convention that humans must remain in control. All it will take for that convention to be swept away, however, is for someone we are fighting against to decide to allow autonomous robots to do their fighting for them. The superior tactical advantage enjoyed by those employing automated killing machines means that all armies would have to follow suit or risk losing the next war.Given their obvious disregard for life and liberty, it seems clear that should they get their hands on robotic military technology, al Qaeda would not hesitate to send autonomous robots against us.

With regard to the debate over human soldiers versus machines, I feel it is too late already. The genie is already out of the bottle. The more prevalent robotics becomes, the sooner the day will come when we face killing robots deployed by an enemy without even the few meager scruples we still employ.

The final absurdity – the ultimate in surrealism – is a battlefield where the parties on both sides of a conflict employ fully autonomous killing machines. After all, since robots are so much better and more efficient at killing than humans, why involve humans at all? Of course, if no humans are involved in the conflict, why fight at all? Therein lies the real question in the debate. It is not important whether humans control the machines or whether the machines should be let loose like savage hunting dogs. The only truly important thing is, the decision to go to war in the first place. I’m sad to say I see little hope on that score. From Viet-Nam to Iraq and Afghanistan and on to Yemen, Iran and North Korea, the people who make the decisions to deploy our armies seem to have learned nothing. If anything, our leaders seem less moral, less sensible, less wise and certainly less intelligent in their decision making to go to war than they have ever been. And it is this decision making that is the critical part of any evaluation of intelligence.

In the end I am not worried about robots getting smarter. I’m more concerned that we humans are getting stupider.

Tags: artificial intelligence, dumb, intelligence, machines, robots, singularity, smart, stupid, war
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Much Ado About Nothing

Thursday, November 11th, 2010

The recent court case surrounding the Government’s targeted Assassination program is likely to wind up being “Much Ado About Nothing.”

In my last post: “Down The Rabbit Hole,”
I commented on the recent suit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) against the government and their efforts to maintain a secret “kill lists” of terrorists, a list that can include American citizens.

In the piece I put forth my opinion that I thought the ACLU and the CCR had a good case. I still think their arguments are valid. I am not so sanguine today, however, on their chances of winning their case.

The case revolves around the Obama Administration’s attempts to target and kill Anwar Al-Aulaqi, the American born cleric the government accuses of being involved in recent attempted terrorist actions against the United States. On Aug. 30, the ACLU and the CCR filed suit in Federal court on behalf of Anwar al-Aulaqi’s father, Nasser al-Aulaqi. According to the conservative site the Investigative Project:

Awlaki’s father has claimed that his son has been added to CIA and Pentagon targeting lists using secret criteria and evidence for determining whether a U.S. citizen can be targeted for lethal action. Based on this, the lawsuit is asking a federal judge to prevent the government from intentionally killing Anwar Awlaki without showing that he presents a concrete, specific, and imminent threat to life or physical safety. It also asks that the government show that there are no means other than lethal force that could reasonably be employed to neutralize the threat.

Interestingly, the government’s response doesn’t address the issues the ACLU and CCR want addressed – namely whether the Obama Administration should be allowed to maintain secret lists of enemies slated for assassination without any oversight. Instead, the government is focusing first and foremost on the narrow procedural question of whether Nasser Al-Aulaqi has legal “standing” in the case. As he is only a relative and not the party who is actually being targeted, the government’s contention is that he cannot challenge the government’s action in the name of his son.

Even more bizarrely, the government insists that even if Nasser has standing, the case should be dismissed because the court lacks the authority to rule on the matter because the “…requested injunction would necessarily and improperly inject the courts into decisions of the President and his advisors about how to protect the American people from the threat of armed attacks.”
In its response to the government’s claim the ACLU and the CCR presented an impassioned argument raising the specter of unchecked Presidential power. Again from the investigative Project:

…this is “a case concerning the Executive’s authority to carry out the killing of an American whom it has named an enemy of the state,” Jaffer argued. He called the policy “extreme” and “terrifying.” If the court accepts the government’s argument “then the President will have unchecked authority to assassinate any US citizen, and it will be unreviewable by a court,” he said.

This argument, which commentator Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com sums up concisely as: “…if the president has th[is] inherent authority. . . . then what can’t he do?” is akin to the concept in debate known as “the slippery slope.” Instead of addressing the charges, however, the government’s lawyers responded in true high school debate tradition, calling the charges “ridiculous” and “absurd.”

The challengers also sought to display the government’s desire to have the case thrown out because the courts have no authority to rule on an executive’s decisions on how to protect the American people as an extreme position:

Speaking broadly about the government’s claims of supremacy in this area, Jaffer explained, “this is a bigger case than the government is suggesting. It’s not just arguing that the court has no role to play now. They are saying that the court has no role to play period.”

As I said, I think the ACLU and the CCR have a strong argument to make. Regardless of how one feels about Al-Aulaqi and what he may or may not have done, regardless of whether Nassar Al-Aulaqi has “standing,” granting the executive – any executive – unreviewable authority to target and kill American citizens using secret criteria and classified evidence is a terrible precedent to set.

Any decision that gives the president the power to unilaterally decide this or that American is a danger to the country and to then target and kill them extra-judicially is a power that is ripe for abuse.

The government’s argument that the courts have no place reviewing the president’s powers is specious. The very function of the judiciary as laid out in the constitution is to watch over both the executive and the legislative branches of government. Are the government’s lawyers contending that the executive should be allowed to do anything anytime, anywhere? It seems to me that is no longer the definition of a president, but rather that of an autocrat.

Unfortunately, however, I think the entire case is moot. Not only has the judge in the case, US District Judge John D. Bates, decided not to examine the merits or implications of the targeted killing program, he has limited the case to the procedural question of whether Anwar al-Awlaki is willing and able to bring the suit himself, and whether the judiciary should insert itself into the issue.

In my opinion, the argument that, “…Awlaki must show that his son is willing yet unable to bring the suit himself,” is laughable in the extreme. The man is under constant threat of assassination. Would you turn yourself in to a government who is actively trying to kill you? Would you throw yourself upon the mercy of a court that hasn’t even ruled on whether it has jurisdiction in the case?

However, Judge Bates has seemed skeptical of such arguments. “Why shouldn’t I look at the public statements of al-Awlaki and conclude that he does not desire to bring this case?” he asked. “He doesn’t respect the U.S. court system. He doesn’t believe it has any jurisdiction over a Muslim?”

Curiously, virtually all the “public statements” the government used to make their case that Aulaqi is a notorious terrorist come from MEMRI and SITE, two “independent” internet sites devoted to releasing video of terrorist organizations. Although the government and now Judge Bates seem convinced by these videos, MEMRI and SITE are notorious at producing their videos without ever sourcing where they came from. This is not to state I think Al-Aulaki is an innocent bystander. However, if a major source of the government’s “evidence” about a given terrorist are videos whose source is unknown, that does little to reassure me that the government’s decisions about who is to be assassinated should be unreviewable.

The case had the promise of being one that could frame a necessary debate about executive power. Sadly, however,it has devolved from a major policy debate to a rather boring procedural decision. And given Judge Bates history, – (he was the judge responsible for dismissing two suits brought by Valerie Plame and her husband as well as dismissing the GAO’s attempt to learn with whom Vice President Cheney met in his secret energy conference. ) – the question of whether the Judge is likely to rule in favor of anyone challenging the powers of the executive branch is….

Certainly Doubtful.

Tags: ACLU, Assassination, Aulaqi, Awlaki, Bates, CCR, Certain Doubt, Executive, government, judge, legal, Much Ado About Nothing, Obama, president, tergeted killing, Thomas Vincent, Vincent
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