Hullabaloo

Tuesday, May 03, 2011

 
Growing Up With "24"

by digby


MSNBC just did a story on something that I had wondered about as well --- why were so many big celebrations after the announcement of bin Laden's death particularly raucous among college students around the country? They showed footage of various campuses and interviewed a couple of the students who explained that they were in the 6th grade when it happened and were just thrilled that it was finally over and that justice was finally done. It was truly a huge, patriotic moment for them.

I realized that the "War on Terror" has been going on for half their lives, so it seems like forever to them. And it reminded me just how much the zeitgest of the moment is "reality" when you are young. The GWOT and the militarization of America is just the way the world is to young people today. Which is probably why they also believe in this:

A new study by the American Red Cross obtained exclusively by The Daily Beast found that a surprising majority—almost 60 percent—of American teenagers thought things like water-boarding or sleep deprivation are sometimes acceptable. More than half also approved of killing captured enemies in cases where the enemy had killed Americans. When asked about the reverse, 41 percent thought it was permissible for American troops to be tortured overseas. In all cases, young people showed themselves to be significantly more in favor of torture than older adults.

Torture has been around as long as there have been wars, but media coverage of enhanced interrogation techniques has risen the visibility of torture since the attacks of September 11. Could the generation who came of age since the towers fell have a different notion of what’s acceptable in a time of war? “Over the past 10 years, they’ve been exposed to many new conflicts,” says Isabelle Daoust, who heads ARC’s humanitarian law unit. “But they haven’t been exposed to the rules.”

The reasons may be even more nuanced than that—a combination of social and political factors new to the national conversation since the Bush administration claimed that today’s enemy was different from the ones we’ve fought in the past. Intelligence attained through controversial interrogation techniques, Bush’s lawyers at the Department of Justice argued, may be the only way to save American lives. A 2006 dossier detailing the U.S. government strategy to combat terrorism described the difficulty of pursuing new enemies who constantly “evolve and modify their ways of doing business.” As a result, the document suggested, the military would have to evolve its understanding and treatment of the enemy.

Legal scholars see societal influences that may be responsible for de-stigmatizing torture, including increasingly graphic media. “I think it suggests the national conscious is becoming more and more corroded and more accustomed to the violation of fundamental principles of human rights and international law,” says Lawrence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard, who blames programs like 24 that trivialize serious issues. (Tribe, along with nearly 300 legal colleagues, sent President Obama a letter last month decrying the prison conditions of Bradley Manning, the army private accused of leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks.)

It's a new world. Just as it was when I was growing up in the 1960s under the influence of the peace movement and the changing social norms of that time. It took me quite a few years to realize that everyone (except my parents) didn't see things the way that I did. I just thought that my worldview was the world. At that age it's all you know. It will be interesting to see how they evolve over the next few years.


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digby 5/03/2011 11:00:00 AM