Puff the Electric Drag

The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man was a witty commentary on the effects of technology on popular culture by Canadian Professor Marshall McLuhan, published in 1951. The same theme has been echoed in other literary works such as The Love Machine, The Electric Horseman and A Clockwork Orange.

Today electronics and cybernetics dominate the culture far more than in 1951: we have e-mail, e-tickets, telecommuting, even "phone sex" (no substitute for the real thing, I kid you not!) According to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, today we also have "high-tech lynching."(1) When I was growing up in a northside Milwaukee tenement, you could see a real live mouse running about; now the only "mouse" you'll find in the typical home is connected to a computer.

So, perhaps it was inevitable that even the most visceral human activity known as smoking (that is, putting the smoke from burning leaves into your lungs, where it can do the most harm) is being challenged by an electronic substitute: the Smoking Everywhere Electronic Cigarette! (2) This gizmo is a steel tube, about the size of a real cigarette, containing a nicotine cartridge, an atomizer, a computer-chip controller and a lithium battery.

When the user puffs on the e-cig, a red light goes on at the other end and a smoke-like vapor is emitted while a nicotine-rich vapor enters the user's mouth. From more than a few feet away, the user appears to be smoking a real cigarette. The user gets the nicotine "hit" that he craves, but without the carbon monoxide, tars and other carcinogens that accompany tobacco smoke. The emitted vapor is odorless and harmless, and no ashes are produced.

The marketing materials for the e-cig claim that it can be used in places where smoking is prohibited, but I do not believe it. Allowing use of the e-cig in such places will give smokers the false impression that real smoking is also allowed, and will make enforcing no-smoking rules too difficult.

But will smokers concerned about their health accept the e-cig as a substitute? The product is too new to tell right now, but there is a real chance it will cut into the cigarette market, especially among hard-core nicotine addicts that have tried and failed to quit smoking altogether. If so, the product could have the salutary effect of reducing new cases of emphysema, lung cancer, and perhaps even heart disease. Nicotine is a powerful addictive drug, but it is far less harmful than many of the other chemicals ingested with cigarette smoke, such as hydrogen cyanide.

As someone who tried smoking (in 1959) and did not like it, I am glad I will never need the e-cigarette. But to those who are too hooked on nicotine to quit smoking anything, I say, "Go ahead and puff the new nicotine delivery device, but just don't inhale!"

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(1) A derisive term he used to describe the sexual harassment charges made against him during his 1991 confirmation hearings.

(2) See www.SmokingEverywhere.com for details.

Invesigating the Interrogators

"Atty. Gen. Eric Holder announced that he was conducting a preliminary review into the actions of certain CIA interrogators ....."

"I think it (the review) is an outrageous political act that will do great damage...."
Former Vice President Dick Cheney (1)

Any act by a government official could be castigated as "political", but Cheney certainly knows that investigating the CIA (or other military or security services) is political poison, which may be why President Obama has urged that the people "look forward, not back" on possible human-rights abuses by the previous administration. Maybe Michael Moore and Dennis Kucinich would applaud the prosecution of Americans for abusing men suspected of terrorism, but the vast majority of us would not. Moreover, the Director of Central Intelligence during most of the Bush presidency was George Tenet, a Clinton appointee.

But what about Cheney's warning that investigating possible abusive acts would damage America's security interests?

First, note that under the leadership of Commander-in-Chief George W Bush several enlisted people were court-martialed for mistreating prisoners at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. I do not recall Mr Cheney voicing any objections to these courts-martial or denouncing them as " political ." He may have objected privately to President Bush (for all we know), but he publicly supported the President right up to his last day in office.

The moral issues involved in "enhanced interrogation techniques " (i.e., torture), such as waterboarding, are far simpler to deal with if we accept as fact that every man subjected to these measures was a terrorist, and so deserved humiliation and pain. Since terrorists will deny knowledge of new plots and the names of other conspirators, they must be tortured until they tell the truth, and thereby save lives of innocent people. If so, what is the problem?

The truth is that the men captured on the battlefields and villages of Afghanistan and Iraq were suspected of allegiance to the Taliban, Al Qaeda, or other terrorist groups, but some were falsely fingered by personal enemies and others were captured by mistake. For example, four men captured in Pakistan in 2001 and held in Guantanamo till June of this year turned out to be Uighurs, who were training to fight against China, which had conquered their homeland. (2) Others just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Torturing non-terrorists is not only morally repugnant, but will yield no useful information.

For this reason alone, aside from protecting the image of America in the world as a just and honorable nation, there must be rules about treatment of prisoners, and they must be enforced. Indeed, the Bush Justice Department did promulgate a set of such rules, which limited interrogation techniques. The Army Field Manual also includes similar limitations.

If the planned investigation determines that no rules were broken, there will be no prosecutions; in that case, it is hard to see what damage would have been done to American security interests. Actually, many domestic criminal investigations end without charges being filed, and these probes are not considered damaging.

I suspect that what Cheney really fears is that the guidelines on treatment of prisoners were seriously violated by CIA and/or other interrogators, and that egregious human-rights violations will be exposed. Citing "national security" is not a defense against every charge; if it were, all of the Watergate defendants would have been exonerated. If anyone is actually charged as a result of this investigation, I trust the American judicial system to render a fair verdict. But no matter how such a trial turns out, the Obama presidency will lose political support, so indicting interrogators would not be a smart political move.

Cheney claimed that the investigation would damage "our capacity...to have people take on difficult jobs, make difficult decisions without having to worry about what the next administration is going to say." (1) As an American who could be a victim of a future terrorist attack, I hope that Americans who have the power to torture suspected terrorists do worry about the possible legal consequences of their actions.

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(1) Los Angeles Times of August 31, 2009, quoting an interview by Fox News.

(2) "Eastern Promises" in the New Republic, September 9, 2009, page 15. The Bush Administration provided Chinese security agents visiting Guantanamo with the names and home addresses of the Uighur rebels, and permitted them to photograph and question them for up to nine hours. Those who refused to answer the Chinese interrogators were thrown into solitary cells.