Having never made an effort to either listen to or read Michael Smerconish, I foolishly tossed him aside with all the other Right-Wing Radio flunkies. After reading his inaugural Inquirer column, I came away suprisingly indifferent. He comes across as someone I largely agree with on a majority of issues, but I suspect if pushed for clarification, the differences would be more apparent.
In his "Suburban Manifesto" column in this Sunday's Inky (amusingly filed under Philly Women), he starts off predictably, stating that the editorial page is "[too] liberal too often", and that he is in not a "Kool-Aid drinker".I originally started down the road on Smerconish that he was a white guy with working-class roots from one of the river wards, just like me. I made the assumption that he came from a household descended from European ancestors (Irish, German, Italian, etc.), practicing a religion (Catholic, Jewish?) and that the angry white guy conservative mantra ("they" destroyed the neighborhoods, "they" are the reason I didn't get the promotion, Congress gives "them" all the money) that conservative talk radio thrives on. I don't know if any of that is true - but the portrayal of the balding everyman Philadelphian Archie Bunker doesn't hold water when your rich, live on the Main Line, and are a veteran of the George Herbert Walker Bush Administration. He's more one of "them" than one of "us". But that's besides the point. Afterall, he's rich and has a radio show, books, and two newspaper columns. He MUST be right. So where do our opinions intersect?
I agree on profiling Islamic terrorists (so long as that doesn't mean all Muslims are terrorists), that political correctness should be strangled in its sleep and that Osama appears to have fallen off the board (although he appears to blame the military, who follows orders, and not the Bush Administration, who gives orders). He states that the Iraqis are responsible for their destiny, and that timetables for the Iraq operation are appropriate. I'm fine with his positions on border control, reproductive options, gay marriage, embryonic stem-cell research, professional politicians, campaign finance disclosure, entitlements, global warming and even Mumia (although I think he, like most, doesn't realize that many Mumia supporters are actually oppossing the death penalty in cases where the verdict is somewhere below certainty but above reasonable doubt.
There's just one nagging problem, a problem that I've seen manifested in family, friends, co-workers, and many others. And it's not even the statement, so much as the logic that underpins it. Here it is:
"I'm for torturing terrorists who possess information. To those who say 'Torture doesn't work,' I ask: Then why do our best interrogators seek to use it as a technique?"
Forget the fact that we frequently torture the wrong people, who have no information. Forget the literature and expert opinions that state that torture doesn't work. Forget the fact that torture was championed by Dick Cheney.
It's the appeal to authority - if the best torturers ask for it, then it must work.
Ignore the fact that there haven't been any "best interrogators" speaking out on the issue. He believes that if "his" people in authority say it's so, then that's good enough for him. When "they" see themselves as being due authority and attention, "they" also tend to conclude that their opinions are also right, because after all, they made them.
Today, I came across a Mefi thread pointing to a New Yorker article addressing this very problem, viewing it within the framework of Fox's 24.
This past November, U.S. Army Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, the dean of the United States Military Academy at West Point, flew to Southern California to meet with the creative team behind “24.” [U.S. Army Brigadier General] Finnegan, who was accompanied by three of the most experienced military and F.B.I. interrogators in the country, arrived on the set as the crew was filming.
[...]
In their view, the show promoted unethical and illegal behavior and had adversely affected the training and performance of real American soldiers. “I’d like them to stop,” Finnegan said of the show’s producers. “They should do a show where torture backfires.”
[...]
Finnegan told the producers that “24,” by suggesting that the U.S. government perpetrates myriad forms of torture, hurts the country’s image internationally.
[...]
Joe Navarro, one of the F.B.I.’s top experts in questioning techniques, attended the meeting; he told me, “Only a psychopath can torture and be unaffected. You don’t want people like that in your organization. They are untrustworthy, and tend to have grotesque other problems.”
[...]
The third expert at the meeting was Tony Lagouranis, a former Army interrogator in the war in Iraq. He told the show’s staff that DVDs of shows such as “24” circulate widely among soldiers stationed in Iraq. Lagouranis said to me, “People watch the shows, and then walk into the interrogation booths and do the same things they’ve just seen.”
In fact, the "expert" who most likely influences torture-enthusiasts is the actor playing Jack Bauer - Kieffer Sutherland, who said the following in a recent television interview with Charlie Rose:
He condemned the abuse of U.S.-held detainees at Abu Ghraib prison, in Iraq, as “absolutely criminal,” particularly for a country that tells others that “democracy and freedom” are the “way to go.” He also said, “You can torture someone and they’ll basically tell you exactly what you want to hear. . . . Torture is not a way of procuring information.” But things operate differently, he said, on television: “24,” he said, is “a fantastical show. . . . Torture is a dramatic device.”
So, we have ample evidence contradicting Smerconish's assertion. But since these experts disagree with his world view, I suspect he would dismiss them. Surely our elected officials, nearly all accomplished and wealthy in their own right, elected democratically by the people of the United States, having full access to all the threats that we face and never hear about day by day, know better than these "so-called" experts.
There's one small problem with all of this - this stripe of conservative lacks the ability to parse out whether or not "their" people are lying to them. They all bought the WMD in Iraq line hook, line, and sinker. We now all know it was wrong, either accidentally or intentionally, and based on the advice of yes-men, ideologues, stenographers, and con-men. Yet "they" wouldn't lie, would they?
And here we are, staring again into the abyss on Iran. What do you think "they" will do? Do you trust what they are telling you, Smerconish?
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