the dark side
This is a kind of bleg, I guess: I recently finished reading Jane Mayer’s The Dark Side: the Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals, and it’s a pretty disturbing book. Now, there’s no question that Mayer has an agenda, and that that agenda leads her to structure the narrative in ways that point rather crudely to Pretty Good Guys (e.g., Jack Goldsmith) and Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Guys (Dick Cheney and David Addington). And she occasionally relies on unnamed sources. But if you take all of that away, and see the book only as an anthology of information in the public record — newspaper articles, interviews with named figures, books by former Bush administration officials, government documents, and so on — it’s still a convincing demonstration of how certain high-ranking leaders ignored international law and overturned decades (even centuries) of American practices towards enemy combatants.
Yet I have seen almost no response to this book in the conservative press. What’s up with that? The Dark Side has been reviewed in most major newspapers and magazines, but not from any of the conservative organs I’ve seen. Have I missed something? And if not, what are we to make of this silence? Do conservatives think Mayer’s book is so bad that it’s unworthy of response? (If so, they’re wrong.) Are they just trying to avoid acknowledging uncomfortable truths, and would prefer not to think about what the Bush administration has done in prosecuting its war on terror? Or — perhaps the most interesting possibility — do they agree that Mayer has accurately described the administration’s actions but simply judge those actions very differently, as necessary and even commendable responses to the Islamist threat?
P. S. Please note that my question here does not concern whether the Bush administration has acted wisely or unwisely, but rather why conservatives seem to have been so silent about this otherwise much-discussed book.
I haven’t read Mayer’s book yet, so perhaps this is incorrect, but my understanding is that the good guys in her book are also conservative Republicans. My suspicion is that this is what makes it less interesting to conservatives right now (i.e. in the height of the election season). There isn’t an interesting way in which to paint liberals or Democrats, either in the person of the author or of the subjects as biased or naive about torture or civil rights in her narrative, and so any response would have to be a substantive defense of the use of torture, which, understandably, most conservatives are not comfortable defending.
— sabina's hat · Sep 22, 03:18 PM · #
Are you really seriously wondering why the conservative press hasn’t reviewed that book? Or is that just a discussion starter?
“To what degree is intellectual honesty compromised by political agenda? Decribe and discuss.”
— cw · Sep 22, 03:27 PM · #
^^yeah, i think this is an edition of simple answers to simple questions.
— raft · Sep 22, 03:32 PM · #
Might just be a matter of lack of interest. Many may thing, like Cheney, that our treatment of enemy combatants needs to take a turn to the dark side in the aftermath of 9/11. If you like that particularly sausage, you may be just as happy not to learn how it was made.
That would be a slight twist on the last possibility you raise, but basically the same idea.
— Greg Sanders · Sep 22, 04:04 PM · #
lack of comment has been the official conservative press line on torture and indefinite unreviewable detention from the get-go. the exception has been trivializing everything, as in calling waterboarding “squirting them with a squirtgun” and the legal mess “not reading them their rights,” always while assuming the conclusion by calling them “terrorists.”
and, as demonstrated by Ambinder’s post about the right-wing think tank lockdown on the economic mess, there is considerable message discipline in the “conservative press.”
http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/09/conservative_think_tanks_on_ba.php
— Donald · Sep 22, 08:20 PM · #
I’d like to thank Alan for asking such a direct question about this, and I appreciate the spirit I think was behind it. However, I thought that the conservative movement as a whole had pretty much not so much turned a blind eye to torture but actually had embraced it. For example, I used to read Jonah Goldberg regularly and he took a bit of time looking into the issue of torture before finally deciding that he would suppport it. His post was the first time I ever saw the name John Yoo, and he also referred to Mark Levin, if I recall correctly. Given the deafening silence regarding torture as a moral problem from conservative pundits, I thought this train had left the station a long time ago. That has alienated me from the conservative movement.
I’m glad to hear there are still conservative commentators like Alan with the capacity to be shocked and appalled about torture.
— Steve N · Sep 22, 10:14 PM · #
After Mayer’s scurrilous hatchet job on Clarence Thomas a few years back (which carefully examined whether Thomas had ever rented an X-rated video), my hunch is that most conservatives just don’t pay attention to her. Yes, that’s ad hominem, but with so many thousands of books published every year, everyone uses some sort of credibility screen to determine what’s worthy of attention.
— SB · Sep 23, 06:44 PM · #
It is a slap to the face of Judith Voist to use the title of her best-selling book as a reference to scum like Cheney. Alexander had a bad day because he didn’t get sneakers in the color he wanted. Cheney is responsible for actual death. Needless death. Avoidable death. And the death of innocents.
Then again, after eight years of outrage, I have no outrage left for such silly worries.
Don’t hold your breath looking for conservative self-reflection. The movement is dead and their party is morally bankrupt. As Andrew Sullivan continually points out, we need to burn it to the ground and start anew.
— Hookers and Blow · Sep 24, 11:53 AM · #