When his Cabinet tried to get Calvin Coolidge to up the budget for military aviation back in the days of open cockpits and silk scarves, the president is said to have quipped, "Can't we just buy one airplane and have the pilots take turns?"
It is a joke many in today's Air National Guard would not find funny. Under the Pentagon's plan, which its base closing commission will vote on this week, 30 Air National Guard sites from Cape Cod in Massachusetts to Houston to Portland, Ore., would be closed or downsized; 29 of 88 flying units would end up with no aircraft.
But beyond the political turf squabble, Air National Guard issues now being considered by the nine member Base Realignment and Closure Commission (BRAC) also involve the future of the Air Force, including the ability - and possibly the intention - of the United States to project and use its military power worldwide.
This round of base changes "represents the last opportunity we will have for a generation to reset our forces," Gen. John Jumper, Air Force Chief of Staff, told commissioners over the weekend.
While they may be busy fighting wars on several fronts today, Air Force planners are looking ahead 30 years at what they call "Future Total Force," including Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard forces.
"The Future Total Force will allow us to provide combat capabilities in a way that only a global power can provide them: striking with little notice, anywhere in the world, with precision; moving our armed forces and their equipment to any location, at any time, to support our national objectives," Michael Dominguez, assistant secretary of the Air Force for manpower and reserve affairs, said at a recent seminar in Washington. "As the single global power, we can't be content with dominating local commons - the planet is our commons. And, for good or ill, the world looks to us to enforce the rules, maintain the security, and sustain the stability of the global commons."
With different equipment and extended missions at a time when the United States is likely to remain the world's only superpower for decades, the Air National Guard will probably see its structure, location, and mission change as a result. In some ways, it already has seen the change.
Air National Guard crews in New York, Texas, North Dakota, and Arizona can fly pilotless spy and attack missions over Iraq from their home stations, Secretary Dominguez notes. In future years, such drones could take over some important aerial refueling and transport duties as well.
More Computer Work
Similarly, Air Guard personnel are slated to be part of what the Pentagon calls "C4ISR" (Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance) - which is likely to mean more work at computer terminals and less flying.
In the military of the future, however, this could give Air Guard units more power and responsibility than they currently have.
"Air Force leaders want to use the base - closure process as a way of reorganizing the reserves, especially the Air National Guard, so that it is better postured to support the regular Air Force in overseas missions," says military analyst Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Va. "They feel they must take steps to make the Air National Guard more efficient and relevant to national needs, because budgets are not growing but missions' needs are."
The Pentagon sees all this in terms of force projection necessary as long as the US bears responsibility for keeping an eye on the "global commons." But elected officials view the sought - for changes in terms of lost jobs and more.
Under the Pentagon's plan, five states - Connecticut, Delaware, Montana, Nevada, and North Dakota - would lose all their aircraft. Regional air defenses against terrorist and other attacks are at stake, as well as the ability of governors to use Air Guard units to fight forest fires and deal with other emergencies. Constitutional questions have been raised as well, involving the role and authority of governors, which has led several states (including Pennsylvania, Indiana, Washington, and Oregon) to threaten lawsuits against Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Will Homeland be Safe?
But mainly governors and members of Congress in affected states voice their concern in terms of defending against another terrorist attack on the US.
"This boils down to regional homeland security," says US Sen. Maria Cantwell (D) of Washington. Senator Cantwell notes that if the 15 F-15 fighters and eight KC-135 fuel tankers leave the 142nd Air National Guard fighter wing in Portland for other facilities in Louisiana, New Jersey, Oklahoma, and Kansas, "the nearest fighter jets available [to the Pacific Northwest] in an emergency may be as far away as Fresno, Calif."
Meanwhile, other critics see the proposed changes in Air Guard forces as a part of another worrisome trend.
"Rumsfeld is trying to create more of a force that can intervene in third-world hot spots," says national security analyst Ivan Eland of the Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif. "Creating a force that makes it more flexible and easier to intervene overseas means the politicians will be tempted to use it more, thus creating more blowback attacks on the US homeland."
"Unfortunately," he adds, "these changes [in the Air National Guard] will reduce our ability to deal with such attacks."
All this has made the debate over the future of the Air Guard the most contentious part of the base - closing and realignment process.
BRAC commissioners this week vote on whether to accept, reject, or modify the Pentagon's recommendations. Their final version will go to President Bush by Sept. 8. Mr. Bush may either accept or reject that version without further modification. If he accepts it, it then goes to Congress, which also has as its only choices a yea or nay vote on the full plan.
Monday, August 22, 2005
Gitmo Jive by Lieutenant Colonel Gordon Cucullu, United States Special Forces (Retired)
In the fall of 2001, the U.S. Naval Facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (“Gitmo” to those who live here) was teetering on the edge of oblivion, with a skeleton crew of fewer than 2,000 servicemembers on duty. Now a contingent of more than 10,000 resides here. Behind that surge: the need for secure confinement of a collection of human debris snatched from the battlefields of Afghanistan in early 2002.
These “detainees” are not innocent foot soldiers, or confused Afghan opium farmers drafted by the Taliban. They are Islamic fundamentalists from across the Middle East, rabid jihadists who have dedicated their lives to the destruction of America and Western civilization. Among the residents are al-Qaeda organizers, bomb makers, financial specialists, recruiters of suicide attackers, and just plain killers. Many of these men met frequently with Osama bin Laden. The terrorist Maad Al Qahtani, a Saudi who is a self-confessed collaborator with the September 11 hijackers, is one of many infamous captives.
In the opening salvos of the global war on terror, our forces took a lot of prisoners from the battlefield. Estimates are that more than 70,000 Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters were captured and screened. Of that number, approximately 800 were deemed of such high value for intelligence purposes, or such a severe threat in their own person, that they needed to be interrogated and confined in a secure locale from which they could not easily escape or be rescued. Welcome to the new Gitmo.
I was able to observe conditions at the detention facility, firsthand, at the end of June, when I was invited to join a group of ten former military and intelligence analysts on an inspection tour. Briefings commenced aboard our aircraft shortly after take-off, and continued until landing. We were met planeside by Brigadier General Jay Hood, the commanding officer of Joint Task Force Gitmo, whose soldiers are responsible for the security, interrogation, housing, and oversight of all the terrorists confined there. General Hood and his staff fielded all questions and criticisms, and were very forthcoming.
Who are these Men?
While we observed absolutely no evidence of torture of prisoners at Gitmo, it is clear that the daily atmosphere is rife with harsh abuse: The prisoners are constantly assaulting the guards.
Our young military men and women routinely endure the vilest invective imaginable, including death threats that spill over to guards’ families. All soldiers and sailors working “inside the wire” have blacked out their name tags so that the detainees will not learn their identities. Before that step was taken the terrorists were threatening to tell their al-Qaeda pals still at large who the guards were. “We will look you up on the Internet,” the prisoners said. “We will find you and slaughter you and your family in your homes at night. We will cut your throats like sheep. We will drink the blood of the infidel.”
That is bad enough, but the terrorist prisoners throw more than words at the guards. On a daily basis, American soldiers carrying out their duties within the maximum-security camp are barraged with feces, urine, semen, and spit hurled by the detainees. Secretly fashioned weapons intended for use in attacking guards or fellow detainees are confiscated regularly. When food or other items are passed through the “bean hole”—an opening approximately 4 inches by 24 inches in the cell doors, the detainees have grabbed at the wrists and arms of the Americans feeding them and tried to break their bones.
When guards enter the cells to remove detainees for interrogation sessions, medical visits, or any number of reasons, detainees sometimes climb on the metal bunks and leap on the guards. They have crammed themselves under the bunks, requiring several guards to extract them. Some have attacked unsuspecting soldiers with steel chairs. Determined to inflict maximum damage, detainees have groped under the protective face masks of the guards, clawing their faces and trying to gouge eyes and tear mouths.
Keep in mind that our soldiers—young men and young women—are absolutely forbidden from responding in kind. They are constrained to maintain absolute discipline and follow humane operating procedures at all times, at risk of serious punishment. Documents recently obtained by the Associated Press through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit show that one detainee punched a guard in the mouth, knocking out his tooth, then began to bite the MP. Several guards were required to repel the prisoner’s attack; one soldier who came to the rescue delivered two blows to the inmate’s head with a handheld radio. For this he was dropped in rank to private.
In a different incident, an MP doused with toilet water responded by spraying the offending inmate with a hose. For this he was charged with assault. Another American soldier was disciplined for cursing at inmates. One guard punched a detainee after being struck and spit on while placing the man in restraints in the prison hospital in October 2004. (“My instincts took over after the hitting and spitting,” the soldier wrote in his report.) He was recommended for a reduction in rank to E-4, loss of a month’s pay, and extra duty for 45 days.
How cooperative a detainee is determines where he is housed, how much free time he is given, whether he lives alone or in a group, and what color clothing he wears. The most dangerous wear an orange jump suit. Those who heed instructions earn a beige jumpsuit, and those who are deemed to be fully compliant wear white. The latter groups have daily recreation periods, live in groups of as many as ten, and receive extra privileges. The compliance rating, by the way, has nothing to do with cooperation with interrogators. Indeed, many fully compliant detainees have maintained stoic silence, while some of the most notorious, dangerous prisoners speak freely with interrogators.
Nearly all of these hardened terrorists have been well coached on how to be an American captive. Given any opportunity, they will all claim torture and human rights violations. They have been schooled on counter-interrogation techniques, on how to construct and maintain a cover story, and other subterfuges to fool or deflect interrogators.
Some detainees, including one classified as a “high value intelligence source” that I was able to observe, take pride in discussing their activities and capabilities with interrogators. The man I saw brags about Americans he has killed, other Muslims he has terrorized, attacks he has planned and carried out, and what he will do to the Americans if he has a chance. He is a leader, and affirms his high rank within the al-Qaeda chain. He has started or ended riotous behavior by fellow prisoners on more than one occasion.
With twisted irony, this individual condemns prisoners who maintain silence for being “ashamed” of their past. “They ought to proclaim their feats as proof of their commitment to the cause of Islam,” he tells interrogators, while munching continuously from a box of doughnuts provided by the interrogator. Why the doughnuts? “He throws his food at the guards,” General Hood says, “so he loves to eat the doughnuts during the interrogation sessions.”
Too Hard? or Too Soft?
We asked Hood if he was possibly being too lenient with these men. “This system of rapport-building works,” Hood assures us. In support of the soft-handed approach, he cites an extraordinary amount of actionable intelligence that continues to flow out of the interrogation rooms of Gitmo.
His revelation was a surprise to me. During my own career in the U.S. Army Special Forces, I had been taught that intelligence, like bread, gets stale quickly. That may be true for tactical intelligence of the sort I used in the field. Strategic intelligence, the kind that we continue to collect at Gitmo, however, seems to have a much longer shelf life. Today’s interrogators are succeeding at mapping out the complex organizational and financial structure of al-Qaeda in increasing detail, thereby uncovering networks that need to be attacked and dismantled. They are uncovering new “sleeper” cells. They are learning of temporarily shelved plans for new terrorist attacks, some of which have subsequently been thwarted by law enforcement authorities in America and Europe.
Another surprise for me was learning that many of the U.S. interrogators are women. We have all heard the salacious stories about using women to tease or embarrass the detainees. I saw a different reality. The camp behavioral expert, a female Ph.D. who has more than two years of experience at Gitmo, informed me that female interrogators have been very effective.
“We assume the role of sister or mother,” she explained, “something that is quite acceptable and natural in their culture.” She dresses demurely for her sessions. “I wear long sleeves, an ankle-length dress, and little makeup.” The interrogation room she enters is sparsely furnished with leg cuffs to secure the prisoner, a one-way mirror, cameras, and a distress button to summon help if needed.
“We review what we know of their backgrounds, try lots of approaches, and work on them to find something that they can relate to. Once we can get them to relate on a common item, even something irrelevant and mundane, then we can begin to probe.” It is a long, complex process requiring great patience, and more than a little human empathy. It categorically rejects the use of drugs, coercion, or duress.
Intelligence gleaned from Gitmo is blended with information from other sources to connect dots. We learned that one non-cooperative detainee had his cover penetrated just last month by having his photo identified by a freshly captured fighter in Afghanistan. Once confronted with his real identity, he began to talk.
It is important to keep in mind that these men, while exceedingly dangerous and even pathological in their desire to kill Westerners, are generally well-educated and broadly traveled. Several detainees have advanced degrees in law, engineering, and medicine from American and European schools like the University of London. Others are highly skilled technical experts with advanced training and knowledge of electronics and demolitions. (Some of these are contributing to our knowledge of al-Qaeda bombs found in Iraq.) Many of these men occupied the top al-Qaeda echelons, and met frequently with bin Laden.
A lot of these men came from middle-class or wealthy families. They come from 17 different countries, but a great many are Saudi Arabian. They are not driven by poverty, unemployment, or class deprivation. They are motivated by a virulent form of Islam that promotes jihad and death to Western civilization. They will kill Americans—including women and children—without conscience, for they are convinced that restoration of the Islamic caliphate is their sole mission on this Earth.
Gitmo Guards in the Crosshairs
Many readers will have heard stories about detainees sleeping in air-conditioned berths, while the American troops guarding them sweated in tents. You may have heard that American soldiers were eating MREs while the terrorists dined on three “hots” daily, providing about 2,600 calories of carefully varied food. Those stories were correct.
Conditions for camp guards have been improved dramatically, however. I ate heartily with the soldiers and sailors working the camps (the Navy supplies a large number of experienced Masters at Arms), and learned how they feel about their mission. Universally, they are proud of their work, although somewhat disappointed that the American public is not more aware of the difficulties they undergo to keep us safe.
One young woman at my table, an Army private first class, was asked what she thought about rhetoric in the American media, and from the mouths of elected officials like Senators Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Ted Kennedy (D-MA), describing our service members at Guantanamo as “Nazis.” Frowning, she answered, “It hurts my feelings to hear that junk. We try to do as good a job as possible down here. These detainees are dangerous. They try to kill us every time we get close to them, and would certainly kill Americans if released.”
I asked her if morale was affected by such political statements. “I’ll tell you this,” she replied, breaking into a grin. “Every time we get called those names we decide we’re going to show ’em. We focus on our mission and work harder.”
Guards pull several days of duty inside the wire, and are then rotated out. They need the relief from the intense pressure inside. But the time outside is not R&R; training continues on a constant basis. Gitmo has some of the most detailed and comprehensive procedural rules in the military. Supervision is constant, random inspections are common, all supervisors in the chain of command are held responsible for the actions of subordinates, and soldiers are schooled to report infractions.
The American servicemembers at Guantanamo do not have the satisfaction of tossing a grenade or shooting back at the terrorists in their midst. They will not be recognized when awards for valor are bestowed. In the face of vile abuse they must respond with supreme restraint, aware that even the slightest infraction will draw the fury and condemnation of hyperbolic politicians and reporters who loathe our military and want nothing more than to embarrass and damage American interests in this war.
For defense against irresponsible and slanderous charges, these men and women rely on ordinary Americans—those of us who rest at home in the shadow of safety they cast.
These “detainees” are not innocent foot soldiers, or confused Afghan opium farmers drafted by the Taliban. They are Islamic fundamentalists from across the Middle East, rabid jihadists who have dedicated their lives to the destruction of America and Western civilization. Among the residents are al-Qaeda organizers, bomb makers, financial specialists, recruiters of suicide attackers, and just plain killers. Many of these men met frequently with Osama bin Laden. The terrorist Maad Al Qahtani, a Saudi who is a self-confessed collaborator with the September 11 hijackers, is one of many infamous captives.
In the opening salvos of the global war on terror, our forces took a lot of prisoners from the battlefield. Estimates are that more than 70,000 Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters were captured and screened. Of that number, approximately 800 were deemed of such high value for intelligence purposes, or such a severe threat in their own person, that they needed to be interrogated and confined in a secure locale from which they could not easily escape or be rescued. Welcome to the new Gitmo.
I was able to observe conditions at the detention facility, firsthand, at the end of June, when I was invited to join a group of ten former military and intelligence analysts on an inspection tour. Briefings commenced aboard our aircraft shortly after take-off, and continued until landing. We were met planeside by Brigadier General Jay Hood, the commanding officer of Joint Task Force Gitmo, whose soldiers are responsible for the security, interrogation, housing, and oversight of all the terrorists confined there. General Hood and his staff fielded all questions and criticisms, and were very forthcoming.
Who are these Men?
While we observed absolutely no evidence of torture of prisoners at Gitmo, it is clear that the daily atmosphere is rife with harsh abuse: The prisoners are constantly assaulting the guards.
Our young military men and women routinely endure the vilest invective imaginable, including death threats that spill over to guards’ families. All soldiers and sailors working “inside the wire” have blacked out their name tags so that the detainees will not learn their identities. Before that step was taken the terrorists were threatening to tell their al-Qaeda pals still at large who the guards were. “We will look you up on the Internet,” the prisoners said. “We will find you and slaughter you and your family in your homes at night. We will cut your throats like sheep. We will drink the blood of the infidel.”
That is bad enough, but the terrorist prisoners throw more than words at the guards. On a daily basis, American soldiers carrying out their duties within the maximum-security camp are barraged with feces, urine, semen, and spit hurled by the detainees. Secretly fashioned weapons intended for use in attacking guards or fellow detainees are confiscated regularly. When food or other items are passed through the “bean hole”—an opening approximately 4 inches by 24 inches in the cell doors, the detainees have grabbed at the wrists and arms of the Americans feeding them and tried to break their bones.
When guards enter the cells to remove detainees for interrogation sessions, medical visits, or any number of reasons, detainees sometimes climb on the metal bunks and leap on the guards. They have crammed themselves under the bunks, requiring several guards to extract them. Some have attacked unsuspecting soldiers with steel chairs. Determined to inflict maximum damage, detainees have groped under the protective face masks of the guards, clawing their faces and trying to gouge eyes and tear mouths.
Keep in mind that our soldiers—young men and young women—are absolutely forbidden from responding in kind. They are constrained to maintain absolute discipline and follow humane operating procedures at all times, at risk of serious punishment. Documents recently obtained by the Associated Press through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit show that one detainee punched a guard in the mouth, knocking out his tooth, then began to bite the MP. Several guards were required to repel the prisoner’s attack; one soldier who came to the rescue delivered two blows to the inmate’s head with a handheld radio. For this he was dropped in rank to private.
In a different incident, an MP doused with toilet water responded by spraying the offending inmate with a hose. For this he was charged with assault. Another American soldier was disciplined for cursing at inmates. One guard punched a detainee after being struck and spit on while placing the man in restraints in the prison hospital in October 2004. (“My instincts took over after the hitting and spitting,” the soldier wrote in his report.) He was recommended for a reduction in rank to E-4, loss of a month’s pay, and extra duty for 45 days.
How cooperative a detainee is determines where he is housed, how much free time he is given, whether he lives alone or in a group, and what color clothing he wears. The most dangerous wear an orange jump suit. Those who heed instructions earn a beige jumpsuit, and those who are deemed to be fully compliant wear white. The latter groups have daily recreation periods, live in groups of as many as ten, and receive extra privileges. The compliance rating, by the way, has nothing to do with cooperation with interrogators. Indeed, many fully compliant detainees have maintained stoic silence, while some of the most notorious, dangerous prisoners speak freely with interrogators.
Nearly all of these hardened terrorists have been well coached on how to be an American captive. Given any opportunity, they will all claim torture and human rights violations. They have been schooled on counter-interrogation techniques, on how to construct and maintain a cover story, and other subterfuges to fool or deflect interrogators.
Some detainees, including one classified as a “high value intelligence source” that I was able to observe, take pride in discussing their activities and capabilities with interrogators. The man I saw brags about Americans he has killed, other Muslims he has terrorized, attacks he has planned and carried out, and what he will do to the Americans if he has a chance. He is a leader, and affirms his high rank within the al-Qaeda chain. He has started or ended riotous behavior by fellow prisoners on more than one occasion.
With twisted irony, this individual condemns prisoners who maintain silence for being “ashamed” of their past. “They ought to proclaim their feats as proof of their commitment to the cause of Islam,” he tells interrogators, while munching continuously from a box of doughnuts provided by the interrogator. Why the doughnuts? “He throws his food at the guards,” General Hood says, “so he loves to eat the doughnuts during the interrogation sessions.”
Too Hard? or Too Soft?
We asked Hood if he was possibly being too lenient with these men. “This system of rapport-building works,” Hood assures us. In support of the soft-handed approach, he cites an extraordinary amount of actionable intelligence that continues to flow out of the interrogation rooms of Gitmo.
His revelation was a surprise to me. During my own career in the U.S. Army Special Forces, I had been taught that intelligence, like bread, gets stale quickly. That may be true for tactical intelligence of the sort I used in the field. Strategic intelligence, the kind that we continue to collect at Gitmo, however, seems to have a much longer shelf life. Today’s interrogators are succeeding at mapping out the complex organizational and financial structure of al-Qaeda in increasing detail, thereby uncovering networks that need to be attacked and dismantled. They are uncovering new “sleeper” cells. They are learning of temporarily shelved plans for new terrorist attacks, some of which have subsequently been thwarted by law enforcement authorities in America and Europe.
Another surprise for me was learning that many of the U.S. interrogators are women. We have all heard the salacious stories about using women to tease or embarrass the detainees. I saw a different reality. The camp behavioral expert, a female Ph.D. who has more than two years of experience at Gitmo, informed me that female interrogators have been very effective.
“We assume the role of sister or mother,” she explained, “something that is quite acceptable and natural in their culture.” She dresses demurely for her sessions. “I wear long sleeves, an ankle-length dress, and little makeup.” The interrogation room she enters is sparsely furnished with leg cuffs to secure the prisoner, a one-way mirror, cameras, and a distress button to summon help if needed.
“We review what we know of their backgrounds, try lots of approaches, and work on them to find something that they can relate to. Once we can get them to relate on a common item, even something irrelevant and mundane, then we can begin to probe.” It is a long, complex process requiring great patience, and more than a little human empathy. It categorically rejects the use of drugs, coercion, or duress.
Intelligence gleaned from Gitmo is blended with information from other sources to connect dots. We learned that one non-cooperative detainee had his cover penetrated just last month by having his photo identified by a freshly captured fighter in Afghanistan. Once confronted with his real identity, he began to talk.
It is important to keep in mind that these men, while exceedingly dangerous and even pathological in their desire to kill Westerners, are generally well-educated and broadly traveled. Several detainees have advanced degrees in law, engineering, and medicine from American and European schools like the University of London. Others are highly skilled technical experts with advanced training and knowledge of electronics and demolitions. (Some of these are contributing to our knowledge of al-Qaeda bombs found in Iraq.) Many of these men occupied the top al-Qaeda echelons, and met frequently with bin Laden.
A lot of these men came from middle-class or wealthy families. They come from 17 different countries, but a great many are Saudi Arabian. They are not driven by poverty, unemployment, or class deprivation. They are motivated by a virulent form of Islam that promotes jihad and death to Western civilization. They will kill Americans—including women and children—without conscience, for they are convinced that restoration of the Islamic caliphate is their sole mission on this Earth.
Gitmo Guards in the Crosshairs
Many readers will have heard stories about detainees sleeping in air-conditioned berths, while the American troops guarding them sweated in tents. You may have heard that American soldiers were eating MREs while the terrorists dined on three “hots” daily, providing about 2,600 calories of carefully varied food. Those stories were correct.
Conditions for camp guards have been improved dramatically, however. I ate heartily with the soldiers and sailors working the camps (the Navy supplies a large number of experienced Masters at Arms), and learned how they feel about their mission. Universally, they are proud of their work, although somewhat disappointed that the American public is not more aware of the difficulties they undergo to keep us safe.
One young woman at my table, an Army private first class, was asked what she thought about rhetoric in the American media, and from the mouths of elected officials like Senators Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Ted Kennedy (D-MA), describing our service members at Guantanamo as “Nazis.” Frowning, she answered, “It hurts my feelings to hear that junk. We try to do as good a job as possible down here. These detainees are dangerous. They try to kill us every time we get close to them, and would certainly kill Americans if released.”
I asked her if morale was affected by such political statements. “I’ll tell you this,” she replied, breaking into a grin. “Every time we get called those names we decide we’re going to show ’em. We focus on our mission and work harder.”
Guards pull several days of duty inside the wire, and are then rotated out. They need the relief from the intense pressure inside. But the time outside is not R&R; training continues on a constant basis. Gitmo has some of the most detailed and comprehensive procedural rules in the military. Supervision is constant, random inspections are common, all supervisors in the chain of command are held responsible for the actions of subordinates, and soldiers are schooled to report infractions.
The American servicemembers at Guantanamo do not have the satisfaction of tossing a grenade or shooting back at the terrorists in their midst. They will not be recognized when awards for valor are bestowed. In the face of vile abuse they must respond with supreme restraint, aware that even the slightest infraction will draw the fury and condemnation of hyperbolic politicians and reporters who loathe our military and want nothing more than to embarrass and damage American interests in this war.
For defense against irresponsible and slanderous charges, these men and women rely on ordinary Americans—those of us who rest at home in the shadow of safety they cast.
Sunday, August 21, 2005
Conformity on Campus
We hear a lot these days about the importance of diversity in ensuring that ideas are heard fairly. But the individuals who are most insistent about this are interested only in racial and sex diversity. Intellectual and ideological diversity is not what the enforcers of political correctness on campuses and other sectors have in mind.
After years of denying the ideological uniformity of colleges, accumulated evidence has now caused many academics to shift to claiming that the lack of political diversity on campus doesn't matter. It doesn't affect what gets taught. However, academic one - sidedness matters very much indeed and is clearly having harmful results.
Anne Neal, President of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni
There are now countless stories (and large volumes of hard data) about political pressure in college classrooms, and faculty hostility to non - liberal viewpoints. When confronted with this evidence, what did the higher education establishment do? Did it conduct its own surveys to see if the claims were valid? Did it try to determine whether the education of students was being impaired? Did it affirm its commitment to the robust exchange of ideas? No. It offered the classic institutional dodge: Deny the facts and attack the accuser.
Roger Bowen, president of the American Association of University Professors, stated that political affiliations are of little consequence in the classroom. Professor of political science David Kimball asserted that "any concerns about indoctrination are overblown." John Millsaps, a spokesman for the University of Georgia, insisted "we have no evidence to suggest that students are being intimidated by professors as regards students' freedom to express their opinions and beliefs."
My organization, which represents college trustees and alumni, wanted to move beyond anecdotes and test the claim that politics was not affecting the classroom. So we commissioned the Center for Survey Research and Analysis at the University of Connecticut to undertake a scientific survey of undergraduates in the top 50 colleges and universities, as ranked by U.S. News & World Report. We went right to the student population who are directly affected, who have no reason to misrepresent what is happening there, and asked them about their experiences.
What did we find? Forty - nine percent of students stated that professors frequently inject political comments into their courses even if they have nothing to do with the subject. When we asked students if they felt free to question their professors' assumptions, almost one third said they felt they had to agree with their professor's political view to get a good grade.
We also explored whether students were being exposed to competing arguments on today's issues. Forty - eight percent of all students reported that presentations on political issues seemed completely one - sided, and 46 percent said professors used the classroom to present their personal political views. Forty - two percent said reading assignments represented only one side of a controversial issue.
The students voicing concerns are not a small minority - nearly half reported abuses of one kind or another. And they are not just conservatives: a majority of the respondents consider themselves liberals or radicals. Moreover, the majority of the students we surveyed are studying subjects like biology, engineering, and psychology - where there is no reason for politics to enter the classroom in the first place. It does anyway: Fully 68 percent of all students heard their professors make negative classroom comments about George Bush, versus 17 percent who were exposed to criticisms of John Kerry.
One simply cannot deny, after these findings, that faculty are importing politics into their teaching in a way that affects a student's ability to learn. This should trouble us all. Responsible academic freedom involves not only the professors' prerogatives, but also the freedom of students to learn free of political indoctrination.
David French, President of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education
Faced with clear evidence that colleges lack ideological diversity, many campus apologists say "So what?" At FIRE, which represents students in academic freedom battles, we face the question "so what?" every day. And I can assure you the problem of ideological uniformity on campus goes far beyond the fact that many red - state suburban kids now get their views attacked in the classroom. Ideological uniformity in higher education has led to daily, systematic deprivation of the civil liberties of students and professors.
First, ideological uniformity has led to the suppression of dissenting speech. I'm not talking about extreme expressions of dissent; I'm talking about things such as an "affirmative action" bake sale sponsored by that notorious radical organization, the College Republicans. I'm talking about students who question whether an academic department should show
Fahrenheit 9/11 in all classes before the election to persuade students to vote for Kerry.
These aren't isolated cases. In 2004, FIRE received more than 500 credible complaints of deprivation of civil liberties on campus. We surveyed the speech policies of the 200 leading universities and found freedom - squelching speech codes at 70 percent of those schools. In the last four years, as many as 50 universities have made attempts to eject evangelical student organizations, or to restrict them so thoroughly as to effectively rob them of their distinct religious voices. At many campuses, students are subjected from the moment they arrive to mandatory "orientations" and diversity training designed to shock many of them out of the views they bring from home.
At FIRE, we have people from across the ideological spectrum on our staff and on our board. And even the most dyed - in - the - wool liberal on our staff will acknowledge that 80-85 percent of our cases involve suppression of speech by the Left.
We're reaching a tipping point. The higher education establishment will either open itself back up to the full marketplace of ideas, or it will see its ivy-covered walls battered down by force - whether class action litigation or extreme legislation. We have reached the point where the self - regulation of higher education is no longer credible.
Universities say it's people like me, red staters who grew up in middle-class suburbs, who need their views challenged. In my experience, the exact reverse is true. I went to a Christian undergraduate school and then went to law school at Harvard, and I can tell you that the professors at my Christian college were more open to challenges to campus orthodoxy than my professors at Harvard Law School.
When I applied to teach at Cornell Law School, an interviewer noticed my evangelical background and asked, "How is it possible for you to effectively teach gay students?" If I had not given what I consider to be, in all modesty, an absolutely brilliant answer to the question, I don't think I would have gotten the job. I sat in admissions committee meetings at Cornell in which African - American students who expressed conservative points of view were disfavored because "they had not taken ownership of their racial identity." An evangelical student was almost rejected before I pointed out that the reviewer's statement that "they did not want Bible - thumping or God - squading on campus" was illegal and immoral.
Academics who say "so what?" need to realize that ideological uniformity leads to restrictive speech codes and the suppression of Constitutionally protected speech on campus. It leads to the exclusion of people of faith from campuses. It twists hiring and admissions and classroom discussion.
No campus official should define what is orthodox in politics, religion, or law. Yet that happens every day to thousands of students. It is a deprivation of their civil liberties, and it will stop sooner or later, one way or another. The real question is: Will the academy wake up and begin to put its own house in order, or will it act like Dan Rather - delaying reform until an entire culture has revolted, then shuffling off into oblivion muttering about a right-wing conspiracy?
Fred Siegel, Professor of History at New York City's Cooper Union
Academia, taken as a whole, has become dominated by freeze-dried 1960s radicals and their intellectual progeny, who have turned much of the humanities and social
sciences into a backwater. In 1989, when Eastern Europeans were reclaiming the ideals of human rights and political freedom, students and faculty on the Stanford campus were marching with 1988 Presidential candidate Jesse Jackson shouting "Hey hey, ho ho, Western Culture's got to go." Up the road, Berkeley - dominated by its university - announced it was adopting Jena in communist East Germany as a sister city, this just a few months before the wall fell.
Academics have been getting it wrong over and over again. Criminologists were convinced that crime couldn't be cut; sociologists were sure that welfare reform couldn't work because it didn't go to the root causes of poverty; and Sovietologists were certain that the USSR of the 1980s had matured into a successful, even pluralistic society. As for radical Islam, the consensus view of the Middle Eastern Studies Association was that the danger to America came from a "terror industry" conjuring up imagined threats in order to justify American aggression.
But even as academia's batting average has declined, its claim to superior knowledge has expanded. The old ideal of disinterested scholarship, or at least the importance of attempting to be objective, has been displaced. In 2003 the University of California's Academic Assembly did away with the distinction between "interested" and "disinterested" scholarship by a 45-3 vote. As Berkeley law professor Robert Post explained, "the old statement of principles was so outlandishly disconnected to what university teaching is now that it made no sense to think about it that way."
The reality, as Post recognized, is that many professors now literally profess. Far from teaching the mechanics of knowledge, they are in fact preachers of sorts, spreading a gospel akin to that of Howard Dean. For professors part of grievance studies departments, like "Indian" poseur Ward Churchill, there was never any expectation of objectivity. They were knowingly hired as activists and are now puzzled as to why this has become a problem for some of their students and the larger public. After all, what they preach is built into the very orientation students are given when they arrive on campus. New students at many schools are quite literally given a new faith.
In the absence of intellectual competition (other than the disputes between left and lefter), academia will continue to get it wrong. This might be of limited concern if not for the fact that the sheltered students who emerge from this one-party state are left bereft of any means of negotiating with reality once they engage in politics as adults. Instead of being given the background knowledge of American institutions they need to make judgments as citizens, they are fed attitudes. Credulous undergraduates fall prey to priestly performers who claim to be initiating them into the subterranean mysteries. Those who buy into this worldview are left both insufferably pretentious and substantively silly.
After years of denying the ideological uniformity of colleges, accumulated evidence has now caused many academics to shift to claiming that the lack of political diversity on campus doesn't matter. It doesn't affect what gets taught. However, academic one - sidedness matters very much indeed and is clearly having harmful results.
Anne Neal, President of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni
There are now countless stories (and large volumes of hard data) about political pressure in college classrooms, and faculty hostility to non - liberal viewpoints. When confronted with this evidence, what did the higher education establishment do? Did it conduct its own surveys to see if the claims were valid? Did it try to determine whether the education of students was being impaired? Did it affirm its commitment to the robust exchange of ideas? No. It offered the classic institutional dodge: Deny the facts and attack the accuser.
Roger Bowen, president of the American Association of University Professors, stated that political affiliations are of little consequence in the classroom. Professor of political science David Kimball asserted that "any concerns about indoctrination are overblown." John Millsaps, a spokesman for the University of Georgia, insisted "we have no evidence to suggest that students are being intimidated by professors as regards students' freedom to express their opinions and beliefs."
My organization, which represents college trustees and alumni, wanted to move beyond anecdotes and test the claim that politics was not affecting the classroom. So we commissioned the Center for Survey Research and Analysis at the University of Connecticut to undertake a scientific survey of undergraduates in the top 50 colleges and universities, as ranked by U.S. News & World Report. We went right to the student population who are directly affected, who have no reason to misrepresent what is happening there, and asked them about their experiences.
What did we find? Forty - nine percent of students stated that professors frequently inject political comments into their courses even if they have nothing to do with the subject. When we asked students if they felt free to question their professors' assumptions, almost one third said they felt they had to agree with their professor's political view to get a good grade.
We also explored whether students were being exposed to competing arguments on today's issues. Forty - eight percent of all students reported that presentations on political issues seemed completely one - sided, and 46 percent said professors used the classroom to present their personal political views. Forty - two percent said reading assignments represented only one side of a controversial issue.
The students voicing concerns are not a small minority - nearly half reported abuses of one kind or another. And they are not just conservatives: a majority of the respondents consider themselves liberals or radicals. Moreover, the majority of the students we surveyed are studying subjects like biology, engineering, and psychology - where there is no reason for politics to enter the classroom in the first place. It does anyway: Fully 68 percent of all students heard their professors make negative classroom comments about George Bush, versus 17 percent who were exposed to criticisms of John Kerry.
One simply cannot deny, after these findings, that faculty are importing politics into their teaching in a way that affects a student's ability to learn. This should trouble us all. Responsible academic freedom involves not only the professors' prerogatives, but also the freedom of students to learn free of political indoctrination.
David French, President of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education
Faced with clear evidence that colleges lack ideological diversity, many campus apologists say "So what?" At FIRE, which represents students in academic freedom battles, we face the question "so what?" every day. And I can assure you the problem of ideological uniformity on campus goes far beyond the fact that many red - state suburban kids now get their views attacked in the classroom. Ideological uniformity in higher education has led to daily, systematic deprivation of the civil liberties of students and professors.
First, ideological uniformity has led to the suppression of dissenting speech. I'm not talking about extreme expressions of dissent; I'm talking about things such as an "affirmative action" bake sale sponsored by that notorious radical organization, the College Republicans. I'm talking about students who question whether an academic department should show
Fahrenheit 9/11 in all classes before the election to persuade students to vote for Kerry.
These aren't isolated cases. In 2004, FIRE received more than 500 credible complaints of deprivation of civil liberties on campus. We surveyed the speech policies of the 200 leading universities and found freedom - squelching speech codes at 70 percent of those schools. In the last four years, as many as 50 universities have made attempts to eject evangelical student organizations, or to restrict them so thoroughly as to effectively rob them of their distinct religious voices. At many campuses, students are subjected from the moment they arrive to mandatory "orientations" and diversity training designed to shock many of them out of the views they bring from home.
At FIRE, we have people from across the ideological spectrum on our staff and on our board. And even the most dyed - in - the - wool liberal on our staff will acknowledge that 80-85 percent of our cases involve suppression of speech by the Left.
We're reaching a tipping point. The higher education establishment will either open itself back up to the full marketplace of ideas, or it will see its ivy-covered walls battered down by force - whether class action litigation or extreme legislation. We have reached the point where the self - regulation of higher education is no longer credible.
Universities say it's people like me, red staters who grew up in middle-class suburbs, who need their views challenged. In my experience, the exact reverse is true. I went to a Christian undergraduate school and then went to law school at Harvard, and I can tell you that the professors at my Christian college were more open to challenges to campus orthodoxy than my professors at Harvard Law School.
When I applied to teach at Cornell Law School, an interviewer noticed my evangelical background and asked, "How is it possible for you to effectively teach gay students?" If I had not given what I consider to be, in all modesty, an absolutely brilliant answer to the question, I don't think I would have gotten the job. I sat in admissions committee meetings at Cornell in which African - American students who expressed conservative points of view were disfavored because "they had not taken ownership of their racial identity." An evangelical student was almost rejected before I pointed out that the reviewer's statement that "they did not want Bible - thumping or God - squading on campus" was illegal and immoral.
Academics who say "so what?" need to realize that ideological uniformity leads to restrictive speech codes and the suppression of Constitutionally protected speech on campus. It leads to the exclusion of people of faith from campuses. It twists hiring and admissions and classroom discussion.
No campus official should define what is orthodox in politics, religion, or law. Yet that happens every day to thousands of students. It is a deprivation of their civil liberties, and it will stop sooner or later, one way or another. The real question is: Will the academy wake up and begin to put its own house in order, or will it act like Dan Rather - delaying reform until an entire culture has revolted, then shuffling off into oblivion muttering about a right-wing conspiracy?
Fred Siegel, Professor of History at New York City's Cooper Union
Academia, taken as a whole, has become dominated by freeze-dried 1960s radicals and their intellectual progeny, who have turned much of the humanities and social
sciences into a backwater. In 1989, when Eastern Europeans were reclaiming the ideals of human rights and political freedom, students and faculty on the Stanford campus were marching with 1988 Presidential candidate Jesse Jackson shouting "Hey hey, ho ho, Western Culture's got to go." Up the road, Berkeley - dominated by its university - announced it was adopting Jena in communist East Germany as a sister city, this just a few months before the wall fell.
Academics have been getting it wrong over and over again. Criminologists were convinced that crime couldn't be cut; sociologists were sure that welfare reform couldn't work because it didn't go to the root causes of poverty; and Sovietologists were certain that the USSR of the 1980s had matured into a successful, even pluralistic society. As for radical Islam, the consensus view of the Middle Eastern Studies Association was that the danger to America came from a "terror industry" conjuring up imagined threats in order to justify American aggression.
But even as academia's batting average has declined, its claim to superior knowledge has expanded. The old ideal of disinterested scholarship, or at least the importance of attempting to be objective, has been displaced. In 2003 the University of California's Academic Assembly did away with the distinction between "interested" and "disinterested" scholarship by a 45-3 vote. As Berkeley law professor Robert Post explained, "the old statement of principles was so outlandishly disconnected to what university teaching is now that it made no sense to think about it that way."
The reality, as Post recognized, is that many professors now literally profess. Far from teaching the mechanics of knowledge, they are in fact preachers of sorts, spreading a gospel akin to that of Howard Dean. For professors part of grievance studies departments, like "Indian" poseur Ward Churchill, there was never any expectation of objectivity. They were knowingly hired as activists and are now puzzled as to why this has become a problem for some of their students and the larger public. After all, what they preach is built into the very orientation students are given when they arrive on campus. New students at many schools are quite literally given a new faith.
In the absence of intellectual competition (other than the disputes between left and lefter), academia will continue to get it wrong. This might be of limited concern if not for the fact that the sheltered students who emerge from this one-party state are left bereft of any means of negotiating with reality once they engage in politics as adults. Instead of being given the background knowledge of American institutions they need to make judgments as citizens, they are fed attitudes. Credulous undergraduates fall prey to priestly performers who claim to be initiating them into the subterranean mysteries. Those who buy into this worldview are left both insufferably pretentious and substantively silly.
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