Thing with people like the good folks at HRW, is that they lose the forest for the trees. There is one overriding source of resentment which provokes the sorts of attitudes which lead to terrorism, and it is based in the same country where HRW is based. Its actions, its foreign policies, and not just in the past 8 years, but in most of the post-war period, are far and away the biggest driver of what now the rest of us need to defend against. And yet, and yet, HRW attacks symptoms, not the disease; it will take on torture by American authorities, it will take on Guantanamo, it will take on tribunals, but it won't call a duck a duck. Rogue regime, Washington DC, without whose actions we'd be far less likely to take more draconian security measures than we otherwise would like to. And so, I'd have an easier time taking more seriously HRW if they saw not just trees, but also the size of the forest they are describing and who is making that forest burn.
Further adding that, just because people resist the various us occupations accross the world, doesn't make those who resist our friends either.
But all this being said, I've noted that tu quoque argumentation has come back recently in style hereabouts too, so perhaps there's a little of that as well.
I scanned the summary, and didn't see anything like that.
I think of robust as being pre-emptive in focus, employing primarily intelligence both overt and clandestine, as non-intrusive as possible. Obviously, if your internal security policy viz. terrorism is going to have a pre-emption bias, you are going to be looking at as many intelligence sources as you can. I've no indication France has a bad record on using intelligence sources, unlike a number of other EU member states and, of course, the US.
redstar:
Is there anything in the report which is torture? Beatings? I scanned the summary, and didn't see anything like that.
Human Rights Watch interviewed suspects who said that sleep deprivation, disorientation, constant, repetitive questioning, and psychological pressure are common in police custody. Human Rights Watch also documented credible allegations of physical abuse.
Prosecutions are often based on intelligence material, including from countries with poor records on torture, which defendants cannot effectively challenge.
Well, yes, they are common. I'd like to see numbers on what they mean by sleep deprivation, but as for the rest, that's hardly torture, that's standard police interrogation, even the physical abuse, which again is a matter of degrees and is sometimes in reaction. I think we make a mistake to automatically distrust the police at every turn here, and HRW's determination of what is credible is not particularly convincing to me, necessarily. Do they have medical documentation of physical abuse being used systematically? Are medical professionals routinely denied access to detainees? Routine reports of broken bones, haematomas or other evidence of brutality? I don't see this.
Interrogation is uncomfortable for both the innocent and the guilty, unfortunately.
And, as mig aptly points out, the security policy they decry here can also be used to describe Spain's and any of a list of other EU member states.
What [...] constitutes proper security measures to be taken against those who might be suspected in future involvement in hijacking a plane to crash into Paris or to bomb metro or rer stations or blowup a tgv rail as it passes from Lyon to Marseille? Maybe talk to them nicely and hope they start to feel guilty and open up to police with all their heart?
At the risk of sounding repetitive, I'll re-iterate a statistic I find rather important to this discussion: In Sweden, an extremely peaceful country with a population of about 9.5 million, there are 120 murders per year or thereabouts. Call it four murders for every 300 thousand citizens per year, or 1.3 murders pr. hundred thousand citizens per year.
Scaling this to the European Union as a whole (400 million people), and noting that this is a conservative estimate, since few countries are as generally peaceful and uninfested by violent crime as Sweden, we get somewhere around six and a half thousand murders per year.
In other words, we could have two 9/11s per year in the EU alone, and the risk for Death By Fedayeen would still be less than the risk for Death By Psychopath. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine how many 9/11 equivalents we'd need pr. year to make Death By Fedayeen as probable as Death By Car Crash.
And that's even leaving aside all technical discussions about the efficiency of torture as well as the ethical questions about our right to violate human rights to protect ourselves.
Finally, I will note that any large-scale employment of torture and other assorted unpleasantness in counter-terrorism efforts is likely (no, virtually certain) to nurture a cadre of vicious thugs within our police force. Such a cadre can be used for many things, one of those things being suppressing legitimate political dissent.
- Jake Ceterum censeo Chicago esse delendam
As for low murder rates and their relative importance viz other ways to die, while I find this statistic quite heartening, it certainly doesn't provoke in me a sense that we best do without internal security or policing. And in any event, such a policy stance would be doomed to political failure in almost any environment. In fact, the left's too-casual refusal to take security seriously has been a perennial source of political weakness.
Point 4 assumes human rights were systematically not respected. I don't think HRW makes that case.
Point 3 is, imho, Anglo-American centered in terms of outlook and not necessarily appropriate to other countries, and certainly not, imho, France. Much of point 1, esp as regards security cameras and the like, is similarly Anglo-american centered, in europe this is not the same issue and in any event HRW doesn't talk about at all.
As for the traffic fatalities point you make in your first point, you'll note that in France this is taken quite seriously, and with great success (the old figure used to be 8,000/annum,, now it is moving towards 4,000). Unfortunately, in places like the US where the lily-livered civil libertarians object to camera radar (like the US), you'll not get far in driving towards better vehicle safety like in France.
Point 3 is, imho, Anglo-American centered in terms of outlook and not necessarily appropriate to other countries, and certainly not, imho, France.
I can't speak to the French political culture with any authority, but I can offer you the Danish example to consider. The basic trend was there before, but after 9/11 the Social Democrats embraced "security" with hitherto unseen gusto. In fact, they were instrumental in legitimising the terror laws passed in 2001/02 (which by the way have been used in one (1) case since they were introduced: Collective charges brought against Greenpeace for a completely non-violent protest carried out by a handful of activists who may or may not even have had a political mandate).
Surely they received credit for their seriousness? Surely no-one would accuse the Social Democrats of not taking their responsibility towards national security seriously? Wrong and wrong. I could dig out media reports from the past year or two to prove this point beyond reasonable doubt, but they would all be in Danish and besides, it's a pretty dull and depressing exercise.
Much of point 1, esp as regards security cameras and the like, is similarly Anglo-american centered, in europe this is not the same issue
You literally cannot take the train in Denmark without being captured on camera. You cannot buy food without being captured on camera. You cannot find a workplace where you will not be captured on camera. Tell me again how this is not a European issue?
Now you might make the case that Denmark (and many other minor countries on the fringe of Europe) are heavily anglicised. I'll happily grant you that. But you'll be left with a damn small definition of Europe if you exclude any country that has been significantly anglicised. In fact, right off the bat I think you'd be down to the Free City of Brussels.
