On The Ethics and Practicality of Hanging ISIS Prisoners...

Posted a news article I found earlier on Facebook and got quite a discussion. The gist of it is the Jordanians have threatened to kill ISIS prisoners if any harm should come to a Jordanian pilot captured alive by ISIS during the air campaign.

I posted that I supported this policy. After all, one of the reasons armies are (supposed to be) kind to enemy prisoners of war is reciprocity--they don't want any bad things happening to their own people who fall into enemy hands. ISIS, given its propensity for killing prisoners en masse (you see this mostly with Syrian Army soldiers), taking and beheading hostages, etc. clearly needs to be taught this lesson.

Some people took issue with my supporting this policy on the grounds of both morality and practicality...

The first to object was Zaid Jilani, who pointed out that the guilt or innocence of anybody tried and convicted by Jordan is questionable given the practice of judicial torture, especially in regards to terror suspects. In case you need a source other than Wikipedia, here's al-Jazeera and here's Human Rights Watch. He also said "civilized people" don't execute prisoners, which is not something I agree with but that's not relevant to the issue at hand. My friend Evan, a college professor, said if anything merited killing ISIS prisoners, it would be that they had committed capital crimes, not that ISIS had killed prisoners/hostages first.

These are some very good arguments. If the Jordanians captured a bunch of teenage conscripts forced to fight by family members held hostage (I don't know if ISIS actually does this, but knowing them I wouldn't be surprised) or people like this teen "volunteer" suicide bomber, that would be victimizing them twice. The same if the captured female suicide bomber is telling the truth about being an unwilling participant in the scheme. During WWII the Allied powers didn't retaliate for Nazi crimes by making indiscriminate massacres among POW camps, although organizations that routinely violated the rules of war could expect little mercy. All too often the argument "don't sink to their level" is basically an exercise in putting the scrupulous at a disadvantage vis-a-vis the unscrupulous (think honorable Ned Stark vs. the crafty Cersei or Littlefinger in Game of Thrones--if Ned had been more willing to be more ruthless or dishonest about his ultimate intentions he could have won even as late as the attempt to arrest Cersei in the throne room), but this is not one of those situations.

On the matter of practicality, Zaid pointed out that ISIS glorifies the deaths of its soldiers in battle, so they wouldn't be unduly upset if some of their prisoners were hanged. Furthermore, martyrs can make useful propaganda tools, so giving them more is not a good idea. And if those hanged were not guilty of major crimes, the PR problem is multiplied on top of the morality problem. To use a WWII analogy, this isn't like bombing Germany--there are many Germanies and some of them are U.S. allies (i.e. Jordan, Saudi Arabia), so PR, propaganda, etc. is much more important.

(I didn't come up with that analogy, but it's a good one.)

Furthermore, this article depicts an ISIS emir captured by the Kurds praising them for their mercy and claiming to have been deceived by ISIS "caliph" al-Baghdadi, so even a high-ranking (and presumably guilty of capital crimes given ISIS's propensity for killing prisoners, making Yezidi women into sex slaves, etc.) enemy commander could be worth more alive than dead. The captive emir, for example, could be used to make particularly effective anti-ISIS propaganda videos and encourage ISIS soldiers facing the Kurds to surrender rather than fight to the death. Showing mercy to a defeated enemy is not just an ethical issue, but can be a practical one as well.

That said, avoiding making martyrs is not the be-all, end-all. The Allied powers made millions of martyrs for fascism during WWII and yet the occupied Axis countries are not ungovernable hellholes. Furthermore, there are martyrs and there are martyrs. If the Jordanians hanged some teenage conscripts, ISIS and opponents of Jordan's government more generally could give them such hell over it that it might not be worth it. But if the Jordanians have got an ISIS technical specialist (like the chemical weapons guy just killed in an air strike) or commander, the threat of hanging them might deter ISIS from killing its remaining hostages (since these people, unlike foot soldiers, aren't a dime a dozen) and their deaths would damage ISIS's cause so much that the "martyr factor" wouldn't compensate.

Think the bombing of the Axis countries during WWII--whatever hay Goebbels (or his Italian or Japanese equivalent) might make it of, their physical ability to make war was damaged. Severing the spinal cord of a mad ax murderer might make him more angry or psychotic than usual, but if he's paralyzed he can't do anything. And as far as the "repentant ISIS fighters make good propaganda" angle is concerned, someone who is remorseful and willing to denounce his former comrades is useful--an unrepentant fanatical twit is not.

So however much hanging ISIS prisoners might appeal to one's instinct, this course of action should be trod very carefully. It would have been better if the Daily Mail article had included more detail about who these "ISIS commanders" the Jordanians have got are, so whether hanging them is moral and/or worth the trouble can be examined. However, it is not a course of action that should be closed off completely either. However vile and racist the Confederates could be in the Civil War (see the Fort Pillow Massacre or Confederate slave-raiding during the Gettysburg campaign), the threat to kill or enslave Confederate prisoners was enough to deter (most) Confederates from treating black prisoners as slave rebels.

The American Principate Or, The Right-Wing Dystopia That Wasn't

Writing stories in order to play on present-day political issues is walking a dangerous road, since the stories will lose much of their urgency if the political winds shift. This is especially dangerous if they're set in the present day, or in the very near future, since current events can render them obsolete. Let the following be a lesson to you...

One of my unfinished novels--which will almost certainly never see the light of day--is called The American Principate. The Principate refers to the early Imperial period in Rome. The Republic still survived--on paper--and the emperor was referred to as princeps or "first citizen." Instead of being a monarch, he just happened to have hold multiple Republican offices at the same time and command the majority of its military. However, the wider culture was so anti-monarchical that even the emperor couldn't openly call himself king.

How does this apply to the American context? Well, those of you who were politically aware during the presidency of George W. Bush will surely remember there was a lot of fear in certain circles of creeping dictatorship due to things like the Patriot Act, Guantanamo, etc. Things like Muslims being put in internment camps were bandied about as if they were plausible. This was mostly on the left (in particular on sites like DemocraticUnderground), although some Libertarians and dissident conservatives got in on it too. This supposed quote from Julius Caesar made the rounds on the Internet. That was when I started writing the book, to tap into that zeitgeist.

My scenario begins in 2007 with an Iranian nuclear test. The United States under a president who is not George W. Bush (cough) and Israel jointly raided the Iranian nuclear facilities. The Iranians retaliated by sinking the carrier USS Ronald Reagan (symbolizing the later repudiation of Reagan's ideals in his name by men who claim to revere him) in the Persian Gulf using a nuke modified to fit on one of their Sunburn missiles, although in retrospect I would have simply had them use "missile spam" to do it, with the nuke appearing later on. The United States nukes Tehran and launches another war of "regime change."

(If I were writing this now, the nuke would be a giant land-mine, since fitting a big first-generation atomic bomb onto a cruise missile and hoping it gets through a carrier battle group's defenses is REALLY hard to swallow. The nuking of Tehran would come in reprisal for the Iranians detonating said nuke under a large number of US ground troops during the actual invasion, delaying the pivotal events in the United States by weeks.)

This kicks off a massive antiwar movement in the US that the administration uses the Patriot Act and other ostensibly anti-terrorist measures to suppress. Protesters are interned in Guantanamo alongside real or alleged al-Qaeda members. The Secret Service assassinates Not-Bush for this (acting under the orders of dissident members of Congress) and Not-Cheney becomes president. He uses a combination of regular US Army units (most of whom follow his orders) and "Red State" National Guards to defeat Congress's forces (some regular troops but mostly "Blue State" National Guards) in a yearlong civil war. Most countries begin selling off American assets and calling in US debts as soon as the mayhem begins and it's the Chinese that save the Not-Cheney regime's bacon with some large loans--in exchange for a free hand against Taiwan and later the extradition of Chinese dissidents in the U.S. to be executed. The prologue depicts the destruction of the last major Congressional military force and the battlefield execution of Not Ron Paul, who was retreating with them to the Congressional strongholds in New England for a last stand.

Once firmly in power, Not-Cheney federalizes the electoral system in order to ensure that both major parties' delegations to his puppet Congress are sympathetic to his aims (i.e. Republicans like Ron Paul would be excluded and Democrats like Joe Lieberman permitted) and third parties are excluded entirely. When Islamists take control of Egypt and Saudi Arabia U.S. forces repress them and occupy those countries. Domestically the regime uses a guest-worker program to ensure it has adequate soldiers for the wars without a draft (that would risk popular discontent), buys off unions with an equipment-heavy military buildup that generates manufacturing jobs, and throws some bones to the Christian Right. The most notable is the suppression of pornography and even artistic nudity using the "erotoxin" argument (this to keep the appearance of legality, since explicitly doing so on Christian grounds would fail the "Lemon Test").

(The story itself takes place in 2015 and involves a college student given the choice between jail and the military who goes on the run and join a resistance group.)

Those of you reading this may be surprised I plotted this out, given how conservative I am on most political issues. However, most "right-wing dystopia" novels (think The Handmaid's Tale or the relatively new Christian Nation) are written by leftists and REALLY implausible. Although The Handmaid's Tale is a very well-written book, the back-story--the US military launching a coup and imposing a Christo-Taliban regime in which an obvious 1980s televangelist is a major figure and women are forbidden from reading and writing--is, simply put, not going to happen.

And Christian Nation, which depicts Sarah Palin (and more importantly, her successor) establishing an overt Christian theocracy, doesn't even have the quality-writing defense. The one person I've spoken to who thinks the book is remotely plausible is basically a Christian fundamentalist's straw-man of an atheist--he claims not to believe in the Christian God but pretty obviously hates Him. This is exemplified by how he kept a thread on my alternate-history forum on the movie Noah going for weeks asking questions about the film to obviously reinforce his own views--i.e. he asks if Noah's daughters-in-law are different races or is non-whiteness depicted as a punishment for sin, are the deaths of children depicted, etc.--rather than seeing it himself.

Although I have too much respect for Bush and Cheney as people (even if I disagreed with many of their actions and policies) to think they'd ever, EVER actually do this, my intention was to write something more subtle as a cautionary tale. The power of the Executive Branch, in particular in the realm of war, has been growing unhealthily over the last few decades. Our government becoming a a de facto presidential regime with representative government as window-dressing is a lot more realistic than the U.S. becoming an overt Christian theocracy or even a president declaring himself President-for-Life or even Emperor. It's easy to write off ridiculous scenarios like the other two books I've mentioned because they're implausible, but something subtle will make you think.

From a writing POV, if I'd sent this to publishers in 2004, I'd have good odds of selling it if it were good enough. However, once 2007 passed and Iran doesn't test a nuke and Bush leaves office like every other president before it, it would have been good only for the landfill.

Iraq Goes Into Saudi Arabia? With Allies?

Here's a new timeline from my alternate history message-board. The gist of it that the Persian Gulf War begins a few months later than it did in our history, Iraq invades Saudi Arabia as well as Kuwait, and Yemen joins the fun by attacking Saudi Arabia from the south and mining the entrance of the Red Sea (presumably to prevent naval interference via the Suez Canal).

Behold, Lines In The Sand: A History of the Gulf War.

I was around six years old during the Gulf War and my uncle was in the Marine Corps. He went to the Persian Gulf and was part of the decoy force that made Saddam think the liberation of Kuwait would come by a naval invasion rather than "Hail Mary" offensive that hit the Iraqis from the west through their own country. Given how my uncle was involved, I was greatly interested in what was going on and watched CNN a great deal. I was obviously very glad to see Saddam defeated and retained the rather negative image of the man in my head for many years, contributing to my early support for the 2003 Iraq War.

(Which was not a good idea for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with Saddam and his sons being a bunch of wicked hooligans who deserved what they got. Once exposed to anti-war arguments that consisted of something other than war-for-oil conspiracy theories and race-related tangents, I came to oppose it.)

However, I vaguely remember something from that time period about people getting their hands chopped off.  In retrospect, I'm thinking those were arguments the anti-war people were making about how oppressive the Saudi and Kuwaiti governments were. This article here references anti-war people mocking the idea that the Gulf War was a war for freedom/self-determination, while there was an article in the (very) left-wing magazine Counterpunch that claimed the Iraqi annexation of Kuwait was welcomed by oppressed foreign workers and others. The article I linked to isn't the one I remember, but it makes the similar point. The Kuwaiti government promised to let women vote once the Iraqis were ejected, something that took quite awhile to accomplish.

(To be fair, that seems to be the result of popular sexism being represented in the Parliament, not Kuwait's ruler being a particularly sexist fellow.)

And then there's our dear friends the Saudis, who persecute Christians (and to add insult to injury would have hanged an underground church leader on Christmas Day), support al Qaeda, spread the poisonous Wahabi ideology, persecute Shi'a Muslims, tyrannize women and foreign workers, execute people for witchcraft, etc. The ruling class imposes a harsh brand of Islam on the people while blatantly not following it themselves. They interfered with U.S. soldiers' religious practices (trying to ;find third-party corroboration of this is hard), even though there was a joke going around at the time that the Saudi anthem should be "Onward Christian Soldiers." The House of Saud deserved a post-9/11 liquidation far more than the Ba'athist regime in Iraq did, if we're using support for terrorism as the metric.

So sufficient to say, the idea of Saddam and some allies kicking the hell out of the House of Saud is greatly appealing. And the Saudis took the Asir region from Yemen back in the 1930s, so them joining the fun is perfectly understandable. And author Neo_Desperado said that if things go well, the Jordanian monarchy might throw in with Saddam in order to reclaim the Hejaz, which the Saudis took away from Hashemite dynasty. In the timeline, the U.S. is rushing to reinforce the Saudis, but the author has compared it to the early days of the Korean War, in which our boys didn't do so well at all.

The idea of the U.S. losing a war doesn't appeal to me (or taking over-many casualties in a victory, which in this timeline could easily include my uncle), but the dismemberment of Saudi Arabia (I suggested a restored Hashemite state in the Hejaz, an independent Shi'a state in the Eastern Province, the Yemenis taking back the Asir, and the al-Sauds reduced to a rump in the Nejd where the al-Rashids can destroy them later) would be quite interesting. Perhaps after the Iraqis get the thrashing the timeline's opening photo implies they (eventually) get, some kind of arrangement that liberates the peoples of the Arabia Peninsula (natives and foreign workers both) from their backward feudal rulers and from the looting-happy Ba'athists would be in order.

If I didn't have so much else to do, I'd gladly help write an alternate-history story or even a novel set in this timeline. It could be told from the perspective of the Jordanians marching south into the Hejaz, to provide relatively sympathetic protagonists. The Iraqis could be, in TVTropes terms, the "Token Evil Teammate" and when the time comes for the U.S. to go all Norman Schwarzkopf on them, they can get the worst of it.

In Support of the Bahraini Protesters...

Hosni Mubarak has been removed from power and the Egyptian military is overseeing reforms in the county's corrupt, schlerotic government (I hope), but here's something else potentially going wrong in the Middle East.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobile/world-middle-east-12471243

Bahrain is a largely Shi'a state ruled over by a Sunni royal family who employs foreign thugs to keep their people down.  It's also home to the U.S. Fifth Fleet.

There are Egypt-style protests brewing there that may well bring down the monarchy just like the Egyptian protesters brought down Mubarak.

There's one key difference though--the presence of a militarily-powerful neighbor that doesn't want its own oppressed masses getting ideas.  And I'm not talking about Iran, although that designation certainly applies.  I'm talking about our "friends" the Saudis.  The BBC article suggests the Saudis might intervene militarily if the al-Khalifa family looks like it's losing control of Bahrain, much like how the Soviets intervened in Hungary to crush the rebellion that had thrown out their Communist puppet government in 1956.

I hope Barack Obama tells the al-Sauds to keep their oppressive, terrorist-enabling fingers off Bahrain.  If the U.S. doesn't want a Saudi military intervention in Bahrain, it's not going to happen.  A long causeway connects Bahrain to the Saudi mainland and anything on that causeway is vulnerable to aerial and naval attack.  If we don't want Saudi troops crossing the causeway, they're not crossing the causeway.

I'm sure certain parties are going to go on about the dangers of radical Islam in this situation, with Iran standing in for the Muslim Brotherhood, but that would be rather foolish.  Based on the slogans the BBC is reporting, this is a non-sectarian popular uprising, not an Islamist one.

The only way terrorists will benefit from this is if the Bahraini monarchy or the Saudis crush the uprising and it appears the U.S. supported or allowed it to happen.  Then Osama bin Laden and his ilk will have a field day recruiting people who will be very upset at the United States and its allied regimes.

However, if the U.S. tells the Saudis to keep out and the Bahraini monarchy falls, something tells me that will generate a lot of good press for the United States among the Bahraini public and in the wider Middle East.

Taking a Stand Against "Libel Tourism"

http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/judicial/112397-protecting-american-free-speech-sens-patrick-leahy-and-jeff-sessions

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100810/pl_afp/uspoliticsmediaindustrynewspapersrightsinternet

Jim Hill, a bigwig in the Spalding County Republican Party, is a friend of Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld and brought this matter to my attention.  It's not every day that I come out and praise Democrats, but it's very good that Sen. Leahy supported and President Obama signed this bill.  Ehrenfeld was a victim of "libel tourism" in Britain when Khalid bin Mahfouz, a wealthy Saudi, sued her in a British court over her book Funding Evil, Updated: How Terrorism is Financed and How to Stop It.  Mahfouz also went after the writers of Alms for jihad and as a result, Cambridge University Press went so far as to request it be removed from libraries in the United States.  I suspect this has something to do with how few copies Amazon.com seems to have, since Cambridge University Press agreed to destroy all unsold copies.

("Libel tourism" is particularly bad in Britain, whose libel laws impose the burden of proof on the defendant and not the plaintiff.  How delightfully medieval.)

According to his New York Times obituary, Mahfouz had been libeled in the past--people falsely accused him of being Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law.  However, this still does not mean that the "chilling effect" due to fears of libel judgements does not exist.  The United Nations Human Rights Committee has taken issue with British libel laws, as have others.

The UN: http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/hrcommittee/ireland2008.html

The Global Journalist: http://www.globaljournalist.org/stories/2004/07/01/libel-tourism/

The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/07/books/review/Donadio-t.html?ex=1350532800&en=a46a9c67602861ee&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

In particular, the UN report and the New York Times point out that due to the Internet, British libel laws are causing a "chilling effect" worldwide.

And in many of these cases, it's rich people from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia--my least favorite Middle Eastern country, more so than Iran--who are behind it.  TGJ reports that the Saudi ambassador to Britain successfully pressured the Daily Mail to not publish an excerpt of While America Slept, which is about 9/11.

Kudos to the House and Senate for their strong support of this bill and kudos to Obama for signing it.  Freedom of speech forever.