Responses to Jerry Monaco and Doug Henwood.
At around 19/6/06 4:58 pm, Jerry Monaco wrote:
>
> Those who bring light to the operations of such intelligence agencies
> should be defended on democratic and civil libertarian grounds. If
> the U.S. citizenry in whole or in part does not agree with those of us
> who wish to expose the CIA or its agents then we must try our utmost
> to educate them. You think that it is tactically wrong to do so,
> because we will alienate the U.S. public. Sometimes that might be
> true and at other times it is not. It does not change my basic
> position that whoever does expose the CIA or its agents should be
> defended. I include hypocrites such as Scooter Libby in my defense on
> these particular grounds. To do otherwise is to violate what for me
> is a basic democratic principle.
>
No, I do not think it is tactically wrong to educate the public to the dangers of the CIA. Whether this is best done by exposing CIA agents is debatable, and if I have to summarily express opinion on that debate, I would venture that it is a very poor method.
What I do think is wrong is the idea that exposing a person to be dishonest somehow clashes with the above. You (AFAIK the only one, thus far) try to make connect the two with your last part above: i.e., you actually believe that we should just not bring down Libby/Rove, but actually defend them.
That to me is flawed on two counts (and forgive the lecturing tone here; it is unintentional):
1. Motives behind acts do matter: hence the notions of spirit of the law, and letter of the law. A case in point is the current administration's use of whistle-blower protection (which most of us would support) in a disingenuous way.
2. To defend Rove/Libby is to violate another principle: that we fight against dishonesty. Again, I believe that we are fortunate in that we are not confronted by a conflict (while the right is). As I noted in an earlier response, we have the luxury to both denounce and expose Rove's dishonesty, and subsequently, educate the public on the CIA. Unless we are crass in our expression, nothing we say to denounce Rove can be used against us, later, when we raise the issue (or continue to raise) of the CIA.
With regard to "principles" vs "tactics", it seems to me that you, not I, are the one compromising principles for tactics: the exposing of a CIA agent is a tactic you advocate, and you want to defend any individual who employs that tactic, irrespective of how his principles (in particular, in the application of this tactic) might differ from yours.
> What the Plame affair shows, of course, is that the current regime
> doesn't care about "National Security" even when it is narrowly
> defined in their particular propagandistic way.
Exactly!
>
> But Ravi, I am surprised at you. I don't think you really replied to
> anything, I wrote.
>
> At around 19/6/06 1:11 pm, Jerry Monaco wrote:
>> > I think that one should make a distinction between exposing the
>> > hypocrisy of the current regime and defending the law that protects
>> > the ruling class as a whole.
>
No need to reply to that, since that is my very point! ;-)
At around 20/6/06 10:45 am, Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> No it's not the Peace Corps, but really, you've got to understand how
> The Pig System sucks in decent people who think they're doing the right
> thing. They really do see themselves as defending freedom against Terror
> (or, a generation ago, the Evil Empire). There aren't many people
> besides Michael Ledeen who are so in love with sly, evil gaming in
> itself. Ditto the military - it's full of people who signed up out of
> idealism. Many of them have crises when they find out just what it's all
> about. You're not going to go anywhere in figuring out how power works
> if you ascribe evil motives to participants.
>
Hence the public's respect for these people, and hence the public's potential outrage at their being compromised etc. And hence the pragmatic point that going after CIA agents (or cheering their fall) is not, at the least, a smart tactic.
Doug, its good to have you back among the proles. For a while, with all your talk of 'empire' and such, I was afraid you had drunk a bit too much of the LBO Kool-Aid ;-).
--ravi
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