Unfreely speaking

I've established a new policy for all slacktivist personnel.

In the extremely unlikely event that I or any member of my staff (in the unlikelier event that I hire a staff) should be taken prisoner by a foreign/enemy power and that said foreign/enemy power attempts to film a video of the captive slacktivist personnel coerced into saying false, derogatory, unflattering, unpatriotic, rude or anti-American statements and/or confessing to crimes against the foreign/enemy power, our new policy is this:

• We will say whatever they want, cheerfully, verbatim, without resistance and without regard for the content or meaning of whatever it is we're forced to say.

This being our policy and, as of this post, the world being fully informed that this is our policy, all such statements will be obviously and utterly meaningless. All such confessions would be pointless and invalid. And the bother of coercing all such statements and/or confessions would be, patently, a silly waste of time.

The idea here is that if, hypothetically, Bob the slacktivist intern is yanked off of the streets of Montreal by radical Quebecois separatists who days later release a video of Bob confessing to spying for the imperialist American Anglophone blogosphere and generally denouncing the English-speaking world, then there would be no need for collective worry by the American public that Bob has betrayed his country or that he is succumbing to Stockholm syndrome or failing to take a stand for national honor or any other such thing.

The video would be met with an appropriate mixture of boredom and mockery.

"Voila!" the enemy agents will say, "Your man has confessed!"

"Uh, right, sure, whatever" the rest of the world will say. "He's just following the policy. Can we have him back now? Or did you want to pick up a full 22 episodes of Pointless Political Theater?"

To underscore the meaninglessness and the ridiculousness of all such presumed-to-be-coerced statements/confessions, the international community is further invited to play a variation of the fortune cookie game with any statements made by captive slacktivist personnel, adding a phrase like "in my pants" or "in bed with your wife" to every such statement.

Some readers may feel that I'm not being sufficiently serious here about serious matters, but to treat the ridiculous as though it were not ridiculous is not a sign of "seriousness."

The string of videos recently produced by the Iranian government is a fundamentally ridiculous and pointless charade. Like the journalist Jill Carroll, the British sailors shown in these videos are captives. It makes no sense at all for the Iranians to pretend that people who are not free are speaking freely. And it makes no sense at all for anyone else to agree with the Iranians on this point.

After Carroll was forced by her captors to make videotaped statements, she was condemned by foolish people (Fox News, the right-wing blogosphere, etc.) who responded as though the content of her coerced statements somehow mattered. Once she was free, she spoke freely:

"During my last night in captivity, my captors forced me to participate in a propaganda video. They told me they would let me go if I cooperated. I was living in a threatening environment, under their control, and wanted to go home alive. I agreed," she said in a statement issued Saturday.

"Things that I was forced to say while captive are now being taken by some as an accurate reflection of my personal views. They are not. The people who kidnapped me and murdered Allan Enwiya are criminals …"

It's absurd that any of that needed to be said. Of course the coerced statements of captives are not an accurate reflection of their personal views. Of course such videos prove, mean and signify nothing.

One year ago today, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., discussed the propaganda tapes released by Carroll's captors on NBC's Meet the Press

MR. RUSSERT: What should the American people be thinking when they’re watching those tapes?

SEN. McCAIN: I think they should be thinking that this was a young woman who found herself in a terrible, terrible position, and we are glad she’s home. We understand when you’re held captive in that kind of situation that you do things under duress. And God bless her, and we’re glad she’s home.

MR. RUSSERT: And not listen or take those seriously?

SEN. McCAIN: I would not take them seriously. I would not. Any more than we took seriously other tapes and things that were done in other prison situations, including the Vietnam War.

That's exactly right. Do not "take them seriously."

The Christian Science Monitor article linked above contains another quote from McCain, taken from his book American Hostage. "The point of taking hostages is to get them to make propaganda statements," McCain wrote. "The job of a civilian hostage … is to stay alive."

I would add that the job of the rest of the world is to disregard as meaningless the coerced statements of any captive in any propaganda video. People who are not free are not speaking freely. It is foolishness to regard propaganda videos as anything other than ridiculous.