The XX Factor: What women really think.

Torture and Competence

Yesterday, in her taxonomy of torture defenders, Dahlia linked to this MSNBC clip in which Joe Scarborough bemoans our lack of support for the clandestine operations of the Central Intelligence Agency. Con Coughlin expresses a similar concern for the blow to the agency's morale here; Ex-CIA director Michael Hayden fears the release of the memos will introduce "institutional timidity," taken to be a bad thing. Thus we learn that the CIA is crippled by its need to answer to those it ought to protect. Left to their own devices—unconstrained by the demands of accountability—the good guys, who are probably very handsome, will roam the surface of the planet dragging bad guys from their respective holes. In Scarborough's words, the CIA operates most effectively when it is told, simply: "Go out and get the job done and dammit you keep my kids safe!"

I am struck by the romanticism of this vision, this willingness to place such faith in a government agency shorn of oversight. Scarborough clearly thinks it's morally acceptable to torture terrorists. But given that no one thinks it's OK to torture innocent people, why assume that the CIA can competently distinguish agents of terror from the general population? Recent history does not instill confidence. Ancient history does not instill confidence. One simply has to believe that the agents of this particular bureaucracy will not be subject to all the incentive-distorting forces that challenge every other bureaucracy.

Joe Scarborough is not a man known for his enduring faith in the capacity of American government to solve complex social problems. And I don't know where he would have gotten his idealized vision of the CIA—those taciturn, hyperacrobatic, brilliant, do-gooder patriots—if not from the Hollywood establishment he so despises.