Solution to First Cause of Noir: the Afghan Counterfactual with WaPo update

here are the key slides from Tuesday's lecture.  The question is whether our favorite thing, detection, can deal with forces that seem clearly outside the bounds of reason.  The process of observation-inference-(re)framing depends on a certain amount of (and faith in) rationality.  Torture, mass murder, and invasion are three things that seem to break those boundaries and render reason, analysis, and negotiation fairly useless.  International and domestic law have exemptions for self-defense: you can't bargain with someone who's shooting at you, etc.  But what about short, medium, and long-term, once the immediate threat is past?

 

The police have to treat even the most extreme atrocities as a matter of criminal procedure--once the immediate threat is past.  (In the recent London Bridge attack, the suspect was shot dead on the scene, on the theory that he posed an ongoing immediate lethal threat.  The victims were in the area attending a conference on educational programs in UK prisons called Learning Together.  But again, outside of immediate self-defense:

 There have been very serious problems with the 2002 Afghanistan invasion defined narrowly as a search for the authors of the 9/11 attacks.

 So, what about  . .

 Actually, after invading Afghanistan (we're still there), and invading Iraq (we're still there but the government is controlled by Iran), we did the criminal investigation thing and found the perpetrator--in a nice town Pakistan!   Criminal investigation worked!

 so we get to this:

The claim here is that after initial hostilities, war can be replaced with investigative procedure and criminal justice.  (Societies often have other reasons for preferring war, e.g. Causes 1-5 . . .)

Don't forget our other theme, brought to you by all our detectives plus economic analysis (overview by one of my colleagues is here): do your first choice field.

UPDATE: The Washington Post published the Afghanistan Papers on December 9th, called, as noiristas might predict, "At War with the Truth."  Original research and archival material.