Review of Courting Disaster

Amazon link to the book

My first exposure to this book was a Jon Stewart hostile interview - the kind where Jon so much to say (and is so offended by the guy/gal he's talking to) that he doesn't mind his manners. Which Jon apologized for, which is why the Daily Show is still the best thing on television, which is another topic altogether.

In any case, I didn't know a lot about the book, and I had read in too much depth about the subject belong lengthy news articles and blog posts. But having gotten through it, I can unequivocally state that I was previously misinformed.

For one thing, the waterboarding that we used was strictly limited in application and duration in a way that the Khmer Rouge wasn't, so my previous comparisons of our practices to that group were wrongheaded. For another thing, it's perfectly clear from the book's evidence that Nancy Pelosi knew full well about what the CIA was doing at it's black sites and did not raise objection. It's also clear that some of the people advocating for the release of people at Guantanamo are communists.

The problem with the book is that the communistic tendencies of the lawyers have nothing to do with how Obama is "Courting Disaster." Thiessen routinely engages in guilt-by-association, implicating Eric Holder and various other justice department officials because individuals they worked with in private practice representing Guantanamo detainees. He also commits a worse offense by constantly labeling the people in Guantanamo as "terrorists" and as "enemies." The problem, of course, is that lots of people at Guantanamo were in the wrong place at the wrong time and got picked up, and that the point of the habeas proceedings was to identify those people who we had no business holding.

But Thiessen ignores this point, or only engages it obliquely by trying to make the case that a few false & indefinite detentions are necessary. One example he gives is of a special forces team that came across & captured some Afghan goat-herders who hadn't done anything. Without rope, Thiessen writes, they had to choose between shooting the guys and letting them go. After the guy in charge let them go, they alerted local fighters, who killed almost everyone in the unit, and Thiseen quotes the commander castigating himself for releasing them.

Wow. So his example of the "tough choices" we have to make is A: shooting an innocent person or B: letting them go and killing almost all of your unit. A sounds pretty attractive, until you think about the other possibilities, like knocking them out with chlorofoam. The world is not as black and white as Thiessen would have us believe.

There is also absolutely no mention of rendition. Nothing.

So while I now am completely convinced that we shouldn't prosecute CIA officials for following bad legal advice (and even more that John Yoo should be disbarred), I'm not going to recommend this book unless you know enough context to separate the useful information from the one-sided spin.