Tag: Torture
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Racially Profiling “Jihadists” Sounds Like Common Sense. Here’s Why It Doesn’t Work
Over the weekend there was a series of bombings, and attempted bombings, in New Jersey and Manhattan (where I live). Authorities have identified and arrested one Ahmed Khan in connection with the attacks, which injured dozens of people in the New York area. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump was quick to seize on this incident…
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Why the SSCI Report on CIA Torture Doesn’t Matter
In 1984, the United Nations adopted the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. The treaty forbade signatories from carrying out torture or related practices, or from deporting to detainees to other places where they knew these acts would be carried out. It would be ten years before the U.S.…
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Credibility is about Outcomes, not “Resolve”
In wake of Vladimir Putin annexing Crimea into the Russian Federation and supporting Eastern separatists against a Ukrainian government it perhaps rightly views as illegitimate, U.S. policy hawks argued the entire crisis could have been prevented: had President Obama followed through on his August 2013 commitment to bomb the Syrian government in retaliation for its…
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Forget the Islamic State, Focus on the United States
America’s War on Sexual Violence, Mass Atrocities & Religious Persecution Should Begin at Home Without question, the so-called “Islamic State” is an abomination that should be wiped from the face of the earth. However, it is unclear whether America is the right agent to see this through. Part of the trouble relates to the Obama Administration’s strategy, which…
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“Enhanced Interrogation,” Tortured Logic
Underlying any interrogation technique are a number of assumptions about how people think and behave. Contemporary cognitive science and psychology suggest rather robustly that the axioms which have historically lent credence to some of today’s most-popular interrogation techniques are more-or-less false. For instance, investigators have long believed (and many continue to believe) that fidgeting, avoiding…