Despite the Facts, What Do You Believe?

The incoming, pre-attack helicopter above Bin Laden's compound was noticed and tweeted by a
recluse who said he had come to Abbottabad, Pakistan to get away for a while. The meaning of the helicopter, which he reasoned at the time was probably not local (Pakistani or Taliban), would come clear later. 

But that solo tweet would give the world a precise time of the attack, whatever official story might be told and in case anyone wanted to question it. 

The tweet would also affirm a world in which more people than ever before in history are free enough and able to testify to things as they really happen. Video on phones, Youtube and tweets may be forces for democratization more powerful than any particular U.S. State Department policy you can name.

One effect of widespread spontaneous intelligence is that authorities are under more pressure than ever to be authentic. While there is aways a moral reason for telling the truth, there is also a pragmatic one. The price of being caught in a lie is high and the chances of being caught are growing as communications technologies spread around the world. 

It is noted that some in Arab countries are using Google Earth to observe that their leaders have much, much, much more space to live in than the people they govern. (This tends to make some people believe they are being wronged.)

That being said, not everything that matters is in the public eye. Moreover, belief is important not only in terms of what actually happened - or didn't - but in what should be allowed to happen.

Swiftly in the wake of the attack and execution of Bin Laden the world was treated to online photographs of his bullet-riddled head, photos subsequently (within hours) repudiated as fakes. Our government, we are told, is debating whether the real photos are fit for public consumption. (Have any of them gone to the movies lately, or watched CSI Miami? And what would these new alleged actual photos actually prove?)

Bin Laden's body is gone - buried at sea, we are told, to assure a swift interment that respects Muslim tradition.

Bin Laden is really dead, we are told, verified by DNA our government took from his sister five years ago while she was in medical treatment. (Did anyone actually see them take her DNA?)

I do not make these observations to stoke conspiracy theories or provoke doubts about our government's candor. I do believe Bin Laden is dead, as reported. ('Birthers' may yet wonder.) At some point, the weight of official testimony (and some logic) is good enough for me. 

But questions of authenticity and "so what?" rise swiftly as one reads online debate about the attack, its rationale and timing and aftermath. Much of what people say they "know" or believe seems a function of belief systems already in place and the desire to believe one alternative interpretation over another. 

Some observers - and they do seem generally to be more Republicans than Democrats, though this is not a partisan issue - were quick to suggest that Guantanamo torture, specifically water-boarding, played a pivotal role in identifying the courier who led US intelligence to the compound.

Former Defense Secretary Richard Cheney was quoted saying he thought it reasonable to infer that water-boarding had been vindicated as a technique for securing vital information. This conclusion was quickly challenged by Democratic Senator Diane Feinstein, who seemed to be saying she "knew" the Guantanamo torture had not been effective in this regard.

On these points I have no idea what the torture revealed and I wonder what Cheney and Feinstein really "know." (Might they publicly disclose what they know so we can determine if this constitutes proof of anything that we need not debate further?)

I do not believe in the legitimacy of torture to begin with, not only because the Geneva Convention prohibits it and because seasoned experts say torture does not work (it can produce many lies and half truths and emboldens your enemies to use it on you) but because torture as an instrument of war - like poison gas and nuclear weapons - seems morally wrong to me. So whether torture may extract a key fact from an individual prisoner is beside the point. 

Opposition to torture is itself a belief - an article of faith, if you will, about humanity, even in wartime - that does not submit to proof. Unfortunately it does not seem to submit to reason either because the people who believe in it cannot be talked out of it, notwithstanding evidence and experience and morality. 

While we live in a world in which much more can be seen and reported and known - which hopefully will encourage our government (more than many) to tell more truth and fewer lies -  we remain challenged to do those things that we believe in, despite 'evidence' and claims and counterclaims.  

In terms of our own faith and beliefs, in confronting the dangers of terrorism we would do well to keep asking who we are and who do we want to become. Perhaps in struggling with and within ourselves we will find the real war on terrorism is being fought there, and "winning" will mean we successfully defended America as a moral beacon for the world.