Updates sociology

books/sociology/counterrevolution.md

@@ -1748,3 +1748,116 @@ A circular, feedback loop:
     system. Second, there was the notion of systematicity that involved a particular
     type of method—one that began by collecting a set of promising alternatives,
     constructing a model, and using a defined criterion.
+
+    [...]
+
+    This method of systems analysis became influential in government and
+    eventually began to dominate governmental logics starting in 1961 when Robert
+    McNamara acceded to the Pentagon under President John F. Kennedy.
+
+    [...]
+
+    According to its proponents, systems analysis
+    would allow policy makers to put aside partisan politics, personal preferences,
+    and subjective values. It would pave the way to objectivity and truth. As RAND
+    expert and future secretary of defense James R. Schlesinger explained:
+    “[Systems analysis] eliminates the purely subjective approach on the part of
+    devotees of a program and forces them to change their lines of argument. They
+    must talk about reality rather than morality.” 13 With systems analysis,
+    Schlesinger argued, there was no longer any need for politics or value
+    judgments. The right answer would emerge from the machine-model that
+    independently evaluated cost and effectiveness. All that was needed was a
+    narrow and precise objective and good criteria. The model would then spit out
+    the most effective strategy.
+
+    [...]
+
+    Counterinsurgency theory blossomed at precisely the moment that systems
+    analysis was, with RAND’s backing, gaining influence in the Pentagon and at
+    the White House. The historian Peter Paret pinpoints this moment, in fact, to the
+    very first year of the Kennedy administration: “In 1961, the Cuban revolution
+    combined with the deteriorating Western position in Southeast Asia
+
+    [...]
+
+    It convened, as mentioned earlier, the seminal
+    counterinsurgency symposium in April 1962, where RAND analysts discovered
+    David Galula and commissioned him to write his memoirs. RAND would
+    publish his memoirs as a confidential classified report in 1963 under the title
+
+    [...]
+
+    Counterinsurgency theory blossomed at precisely the moment that systems
+    analysis was, with RAND’s backing, gaining influence in the Pentagon and at
+    the White House. The historian Peter Paret pinpoints this moment, in fact, to the
+    very first year of the Kennedy administration: “In 1961, the Cuban revolution
+    combined with the deteriorating Western position in Southeast Asia to shift
+
+    [...]
+
+    One recent episode regarding interrogation
+    methods is telling. It involved the evaluation of different tactics to obtain
+    information from informants, ranging from truth serums to sensory overload to
+    torture. These alternatives were apparently compared and evaluated using a SA
+    approach at a workshop convened by RAND, the CIA, and the American
+    Psychological Association (APA). Again, the details are difficult to ascertain
+    fully, but the approach seemed highly systems-analytic.
+
+    [...] a series of workshops on “The Science of Deception”
+
+    [...]
+
+    More specifically, according to this source, the workshops probed and
+    compared different strategies to elicit information. The systems-analytic
+    approach is reflected by the set of questions that the participants addressed: How
+    important are differential power and status between witness and officer? What
+    pharmacological agents are known to affect apparent truth-telling behavior?
+    What are sensory overloads on the maintenance of deceptive behaviors? How
+    might we overload the system or overwhelm the senses and see how it affects
+    deceptive behaviors? These questions were approached from a range of
+    disciplines. The workshops were attended by “research psychologists,
+    psychiatrists, neurologists who study various aspects of deception and
+    representatives from the CIA, FBI and Department of Defense with interests in
+    intelligence operations. In addition, representatives from the White House Office
+    of Science and Technology Policy and the Science and Technology Directorate
+    of the Department of Homeland Security were present.” 31
+
+    [...]
+
+    And in effect, from a counterinsurgency perspective, these various tactics—
+    truth serums, sensory overloads, torture—are simply promising alternatives that
+    need to be studied, modeled, and compared to determine which ones are superior
+    at achieving the objective of the security system. Nothing is off limits.
+    Everything is fungible. The only question is systematic effectiveness. This is the
+    systems-analytic approach: not piecemeal, but systematic.
+    Incidentally, a few years later, Gerwehr apparently went to Guantánamo, but
+    refused to participate in any interrogation because the CIA was not using video
+    cameras to record the interrogations. Following that, in the fall of 2006 and in
+    2007, Gerwehr made several calls to human-rights advocacy groups and
+    reporters to discuss what he knew. A few months later, in 2008, Gerwehr died of
+    a motorcycle accident on Sunset Boulevard. 32 He was forty years old.
+
+    [...]
+
+    Sometimes, depending on the practitioner, the analysis favored torture or summary
+    execution; at other times, it leaned toward more “decent” tactics. But these
+    variations must now be understood as internal to the system. Under President
+    Bush’s administration, the emphasis was on torture, indefinite detention, and
+    illicit eavesdropping; under President Obama’s, it was on drone strikes and total
+    surveillance; in the first months of the Trump presidency, on special operations,
+    drones, the Muslim ban, and building the wall. What unites these different
+    strategies is counterinsurgency’s coherence as a system—a system in which
+    brutal violence is heart and center. That violence is not aberrational or rogue. It
+    is to be expected. It is internal to the system. Even torture and assassination are
+    merely variations of the counterinsurgency logic.
+
+    Counterinsurgency abroad and at home has been legalized and systematized. It
+    has become our governing paradigm “in any situation,” and today “simply
+    expresses the basic tenet of the exercise of political power.” It has no sunset
+    provision. It is ruthless, game theoretic, systematic—and legal. And with all of
+    the possible tactics at the government’s disposal—from total surveillance to
+    indefinite detention and solitary confinement, to drones and robot-bombs, even
+    to states of exception and emergency powers—this new mode of governing has
+    never been more dangerous.
+
+    In sum, The Counterrevolution is our new form of tyranny.