Bradley Manning's solitary confinement

For those of you who don't know, Bradley Manning is the private accused of releasing secrete information to Julian Assange that was recently leaked to the press via wikileaks.

I posted the following links on facebook recently:

Glenn Greenwald's critique of the way the US Marine corp is treating Bradley Manning.

I'm not a big fan of Glenn Greenwald, he's not on my blog roll. He's been a pretty big critic of the Obama administration and the way he's continued Bush's war on terror. Its hard to disagree with Greenwald on most of his charges actually, but I'm just not a regular reader.

But here are two people who are on my blogroll who agree with Greenwald on this issue:

Megan McArdle.


"The way our society treats prisoners is shocking, and to me, frankly un-American. Extended solitary confinement, prison rape--we tolerate things that we would never allow if we thought there was any chance that they might happen to us. But since prisoners come from a different social class, and are often members of a racial minority, we ignore it. In fact, we joke about it. America wouldn't treat stray dogs the way it treats the millions of human beings it has incarcerated. This is not just a problem for them, though it is, horrifically so. It turns us into torturers and rapists, because we are the ones who pay for the system, and implicitly endorse its terrorizing prisoners."


Matthew Yglesias:


"But Manning hasn’t had a trial and hasn’t been convicted. Somewhat punitive post-arrest pre-trial measures are kind of a necessary evil, but the prolonged confinement of Manning under cruel conditions go well beyond the necessary into the straightforward evil."


I am a big fan of Atul Gawande who wrote this about solitary confinement which is an article practically impossible to pull out a single quote from. You must read the entire thing to appreciate the horrors of solitary confinement, but he clearly makes the case that solitary confinement is torture.

Posting these links on facebook led to a pretty lengthy discussion that I won't repeat here, but I think the main defense of Manning's treatment is that Manning is a really, really bad person and basically deserves what he gets. That the information he leaked has caused countless lives and real suffering in the world. Leaking this information is not a far cry from actually directly enabling suicide bombers, assisting in the sex trafficking trade, and directly killing American soldiers who are working in secret in the most dangerous places on earth because what he leaked seriously damaged the US military's ability to take down these secret networks and put American soldiers lives at risk. I won't dispute in a direct way any of this although it hardly answers the question why is solitary confinement necessary.

But, it leads me to a larger thought. Is what we're doing the best way to limit or end sex trafficking? Suicide bombers? Terrorists?

There's no doubt in my mind the US military has a key role to play in challenging the modern threats that exist in the world today. There's also no doubt that the US military and other military's around the world need to protect the information they have to keep their soldiers safe and to protect us more effectively.

But there are real limitations to what the military can accomplish in this regard. We are no longer facing a Cold War scenario where our most serious dangers consist of opposing world powers and the key to winning is based on how much more intelligence we have compared with to our enemies.

The world is much more messy now than it used to be. Information is now much more difficult to protect and its also becoming less relevant.

Terrorism, the sex and drug trades, suicide bombers. These are all symptoms of poverty and chaos. These are regions of the world where governments barely exist, where the economy barely functions, and people are marginalized because they lack opportunity, education, and access to functioning commerce. The power in these environments lie in secrete underground organizations - drug cartels, mafia organizations, and terrorists.

I'm not sure how or if it's even possible to eliminate these threats, but it seems in order to minimize them, we need more transparency, more trust in our institutions from those most effected by these horrors.

We also need to enable trade, build schools, and open borders. Allow people access to education wherever they can get it. And then do our best to build schools closer to where they live. If not in Afghanistan then in Pakistan or in Jordan or in Iraq.

The key in my mind is not more bombs and guns, it is more schools, more commerce, more free trade (not perfectly so), more open borders (not completely open). Allowing more people opportunity and in my mind giving them a greater chance to limit what ails the world than bombs and guns could do.

It seems to me that we need to build the trust and strong relationships with those who live in these regions. Keeping secrets may, in the end, hinder our ability to do this.

Immigration and the DREAM Act (and some general snarkiness)

Just wanted to share this link with anyone who happens to stumble upon this blog. I found it profound.


"It's worth noting that the southwestern portion of the United States just was Mexico, once upon a time. There is an undeniable economic and cultural continuity between Mexico and the United States. The border distorts and disrupts it, but it cannot and will never put an end to it. The pattern of traffic between these two countries is not something to choke off, but something sensibly to regulate and rationalise."


and


"The DREAM Act sends the message that although American immigration law in effect tries to make water run uphill, we are not monsters. It says that we will not hobble the prospects of young people raised and schooled in America just because we were so perverse to demand that their parents wait in a line before a door that never opens. It signals that we were once a nation of immigrants, and even if we have become too fearful and small to properly honour that noble legacy, America in some small way remains a land of opportunity."


Ok, what follows is a rant, a vent. I have really smart, reasonable friends that may disagree with the some of the points I make in the second half of this post. Also, there are reasonable disagreements on the issues I bring up. What I see right now, almost systemically, however, is something really wrong in the Republican party. I think it comes from some combination of corruption from being in power for too long and this crazy Obama is a socialist, power over country sentiment, and FOX news/AM talk radio that's brought them where they are today.

So, I just need to do it :-). Feel free to ignore all of it. No offense if any of these issues feel targeted at you. I'm venting :-).

How many issues have the Republican party demogogued over the last 10 years or so, to the point of unreasonableness, let's just count a few off the top of my head:

• Immigration: Hard working Mexicans drain our society's resources! Let's stop every single Mexican from entering our country despite unrelenting market forces!


• Banking: The great recession was caused by Barack Obama who took office after it began! By the way, it had nothing to do with unregulated bankers who took advantage of lax regulation to gamble the world's reserves making record profits on both the downside and the upside! But hey, regulating banks is always a bad idea - resist!


• War: Preemptive invasion on the cheap - but don't worry we'll be welcomed as liberators and Democracy will flourish wherever we decree it.


• Nuclear Proliferation - Its not enough to fight the war on terror, Russia is and will always be our enemy. Just say no to START - let's keep the Cold War going! By the way, Europe sucks too!


• Health Care: There is a market solution to elderly - kick them off of medicare, give them a voucher (that will not rise with medicare inflation, and I'm sure some for-profit insurance company won't mind giving them insurance with that voucher despite the fact that an elderly person will likely cost much more than any voucher will cover.


• Health Care Part II: Same thing for anyone with a chronic condition. But there's a free market solution for every problem!


• Tax Cuts: Tax cuts always increase revenue! (Need I say more - well for some people I do :-)


• Education cuts improve education quality - no need for reform, its magic! Teachers work harder when you pay them less money - and they will surely pay for their supplies out of pocket.


• Tax cuts for the wealthy: The wealthy are the only drivers for our economy -despite the fact they make up 1% of our economy, but they control something like 20% of our wealth - so they must know what they're doing right? So, if you want to boost the economy, put more money in their pockets and they will magically guide our economy into the next century.


• Global Warming: Its fiction because, well if its wasn't then we recognize their are no free market solutions for global warming and anything without a free market solution doesn't exist.

I could go on, but I think you get the picture.

Janet Brewer just signed an Immigration Law

There's been a lot of discussion and a lot of controversy surrounding the Immigration bill recently signed into law. I can't say I'm an expert nor can I say I'm very motivated to get through the entirety of the bill, parsing it line by line.

By I do have some general thoughts on immigration that I think are important to take into consideration at times like these:

Point One: Immigration brings vitality and strength to a free market economy

You don't believe me?

Off the top of my head, eBay, Google, Yahoo, Intel were all started by immigrants. I heard a statement recently, and I can't source it, but it made a lot of sense. One of the reasons our country has been so resilient and so prosperous over the years is because it's an immigrant nation. Immigrants tend to be the cream of another country's crop. They are more risk tolerant - already taken an unspeakable number of risks getting to a foreign land. In many respects, the same attributes that are required to start a business also are required to immigrate.

Point Two: Diversity brings prosperity

Just one argument on this point: innovation comes when you get as many people contributing in their communities, in their neighborhoods as possible.

The more homogeneous a certain population is, the less likely someone who doesn't fit into the mold will feel confident enough to make a strong contribution. And that missed contribution is innovation lost.

Point Three: Mexico brings its own challenges.

Is there another border in the world like the border between Mexico and the United States? The US is the wealthiest (by any measure) country in the world, Mexico is far from it.

Can you find any two countries that share a border as large as this one that has a greater economic disparity?

North and South Korea may be in the ballpark, which pretty much proves my point. I don't believe there's a lot of immigration between North and South Korea. But South Korea has a good portion of our army stationed there, and that is one of the most hostile, dangerous borders in the world. One war was already fought, we've been close to more. Immigration control is enforced primarily by North Korea, with a massive heavy hand to keep their citizenry inside.

Mexico, on the other hand, is a Democracy and our ally. They have massive problems with corruption and a drug economy that is by far their largest industry servicing customers primarily within our borders. The drug industry is choking its economy, driving many people across harsh desert lands into our country to find work.

Additionally, a significant part of their population comes here illegally to support vast and sophisticated drug networks.

Nothing we've done and nothing we will do will have much effect on drug trafficking. The profit margins for illicit drugs are too high, and there's just not the political will to do what it takes to stop it.

Conclusions
So, what's my opinion on this issue? First of all, I don't trust Russel Pierce or anyone else, probably, in the AZ legislature to create laws on this issue that will make sense. Ideally, we should trust our local police force and our border patrol to do their jobs. There are already laws on the books that deal with this issue. This debate is largely on enforcement of existing laws. But enforcement needs to be viewed holistically. We want our law enforcement to enforce all of our laws, and the most egregious crimes should take priority.

I've heard a lot of people argue that they just want our immigration laws enforced. But that's not enough of a statement. Do you want more time spent enforcing illegal entry to our country or illegal entry into your house? Car theft or illegally working at the neighborhood fast food restaurant? Kidnapping or lawn mowing?

Ok just one last point
I can understand that we should control our borders, I guess. But a part of me asks the question why we care so much. I can think of some historical examples of why we should be more accommodating:

During WWII, a lot of Jewish immigrants fled Germany to find refuge elsewhere. Certainly, this was a time when every country should have welcomed them in with open arms.

Our invasion into Iraq resulted in thousands (millions?) Iraqi refugees, refugees who have struggled finding work (some of them educated) elsewhere.

The earth quakes in Haiti resulted in untold catastrophe. Many of them could come here and elsewhere to work, send money back to the island to rebuild. This is a much more efficient and effective way to get money into the local population

Ok, I promise, only one more point
I get why a lot of people simply can't tolerate immigrants from the countries to our south Growing up in Yuma and living now in Phoenix, you see run-down, poor, largely Hispanic neighborhoods and you assume they are filled with illegal immigrants. Nobody wants blight in their neighborhoods or cities. And it seems, illegal immigration brings blight.

But it seems to me that the blight has been exacerbated by our efforts in recent years to crack down on immigration. We are a far cry from North Korea style border enforcement, so I'm sure, theoretically, its possible to get an almost complete control of our borders the way North Korea was able to do with theirs. But do we really want to live in a country like that, willing to do the kinds of things it seems to require to get there?

I hope the answer is no, so its just a matter of how hard we want to crack down on it. But the more we do, the more this community is marginalized. They lose freedoms, they lose opportunities. Either they stay in their home country with little hope. Or they come here knowing (or they should know) that they will not have the backing of law enforcement. Crimes against the illegal population go largely unreported. They are not subject to workers protection. There exists an undercurrent of slavery among this population even in this country. When you marginalize a population or a community, you should not be surprised that rundown blight is the bi-product.

It used to be, when we were completely lax about our borders, that Mexican workers would come and go. They would come for seasonal work on a farm (over a summer) and go back for the winter. Primarily only one bread winner would come while the rest of the family remained. At least so far, it seems that harder we make it for people to cross, the less likely they go back. Once they get here, there are strong incentives to stay put and just as strong incentives to bring the rest of their family over as well. So, harsher laws can actually increase the illegal population.

Ok now the conclusion
There are a lot of complexities to this issue, a lot of moving parts. I've only touched on a few at a very high level. Mainly I worry that laws like this one are being passed without a deep consideration of the many issues at stake. I think its important that we start having these conversations.