So far, I’ve been reluctant to enter the torture debate. That’s not because it isn’t important (it is) or because I’m unsure of my views (I oppose torture). Rather, this issue has encouraged the tendency of the blogosphere to generate more heat than light. The public discourse doesn’t benefit much from the polemics of bloggers who, on the whole, lack specific knowledge of interrogation practices at Guatananmo and elsewhere, or of the legal principles involved.
But I was provoked by a recent post at David Frum’s newmajority.com, which is representative of recent efforts to salvage some honor for the Bush administration. Sure, the argument goes, waterboarding was torture. But,
Be that as it may, that technique was used three times, the last being in 2003, and was banned internally by the Bush administration in 2006. So, even if you think waterboarding is unquestionably torture, then the "end of torture" came in 2003, or at the latest 2006.
The author, one Michael Anton, goes on to argue that the President recent executive ordering limiting interrogations to military standards therefore can’t be described as banning torture. He asks,
So what other practices does Obama’s Executive Order end? According to the article, "temperature manipulation and stress positions," as well as "trick[ing] prisoners into believing they would face physical harm from foreign intelligence services if they didn’t cooperate." Maybe these are very terrible things. But are they "torture" either under US law or in any reasonable person’s definition?
It’s hard to judge whether Anton is really as ignorant as he would like to appear. Because there is no question that the methods are torture. One reason is that the US has signed international conventions prohibiting them, and treaties are, as every high-school student ought to know, the law of the land. Another is that they are explicitly identified as such in various military manuals on interrogation. For purposes of criminal prosecution, incidentally, there’s no distinction between torture and less dramatic violence. Coerced statements are inadmissible, period, in a court of law.
But don’t take my word for it. Ask Susan J. Crawford, the chief judge of the military tribunals at Guatanamo, who explicitly identified the "sustained isolation, sleep deprivation, nudity and prolonged exposure to cold" to which Mohammed al-Qahtani was subjected as torture. The opinion of a "reasonable person" is legally irrelevant. It will now be impossible to try the alleged 20th hijacker.
It’s true that al-Qahtani was interrogated in 2002, and that the torture techniques used on him were later banned. But if you’re inclined to wonder, like Anton, why "America’s reputation has suffered or that so many Americans believe the worst of their own government", you might begin with the fact that the public was lied to for years about what was being done in its name and, ostensibly, in its defense.
It would be nice to think that Obama’s executive order only formalized prohibitions that were already in place. But it’s just such disingenuous defences of what the Gestapo called verschaerfte Vernehmung that show why it was necessary.
January 24th, 2009 | 5:13 pm
Gratuitous references to the Gestapo? I think I’m finished reading this blog for the foreseeable future.
January 24th, 2009 | 5:28 pm
Why gratuitous? When confronted with suggestion that these practices are perhaps not very nice, but really not so bad , isn’t it worth recalling by whom they have been used, and how they have been defended?
January 24th, 2009 | 5:45 pm
It should be pointed out that Obama really hasn’t entirely repealed Bush’s position but has represented it more cleverly. He still reserves the right, in exigent circumstances, to call for a review by a special panel to see if harsher techniques might be necessary. Also, his new AG Holder has been deliberately evasive when asked about the more severe interrogation methods to provide O’s administration latitude later on should they need it. I have my own misgivings about torture as a standing policy as well but the difficulty here is the attempt to replace prudence with some inelastic doctrine. O has argues precisely for this–this is what he means by stating that there is actually no tension at all between our ideals and the practical demands of our defense. However, given his own cautious maneuvering, he doesn’t seem to be sincere on this score.
January 24th, 2009 | 6:10 pm
This video from before the inauguration seems sincere.
Obama has rejected waterboarding as certainly being against our ideals, and around 1:34 says he’ll take Cheney’s advice and review what was done.
What more honesty do you expect?
January 24th, 2009 | 10:21 pm
There is a debate to be had about coercive interrogation techniques, about whether to allow them, and if so, whether only in extraordinary circumstances, and whether to call them “torture.”
Not that any sane observer of our politics at this moment thinks such a debate is remotely possible.
Dogma # 13 of Democratic Party Circa 2009: Bush Administration TORTURED. There is NO QUESTION that water-boarding, heat-adjustment, etc. is TORTURE. (The moment YOU ask a single question about this, you will be SHAMED, compared to a NAZI.) Because it is undeniable that America’s ONCE STERLING REPUTATION HAS THEREBY BEEN SULLIED.
Now this is hard, impenetrable dogma. One may not mention that 95% of those overseas who pronounced themselves disabused by the Abu Graihb pictures of America’s great reputation, already hated the U.S., longed in their hearts for pictures of some U.S. atrocity to be found. One may not mention that waterboarding was used three times. One may not mention that said waterboarding uncovered intelligence information that seems likely to have prevented specific attacks. One may not ask whether it is wise to seek to publicly debate each and every point of our interrogation policies, so that terrorists may train themselves accordingly, knowing chapter and verse of what is permitted and what is not.
Oh no, because one will be met by a chorus of torture, Torture, TORTURE.
Bush takes down a regime that tortured in the extreme sense of the term each and every day of its existence, and this is the civilized democratic response to the questions he and his team faced with top-level terrorist suspects?
Make no mistake: this is a political morality play. Why did a world reaction ensue, why were the photos of what our soldiers did in Abu Graihb shown again and again and again. Because, for a number of key people on the left, in Europe and here also, one had to villain-ize the Americans. One could not simply see them as liberators, one could not pass over the fact in proportionate moderate dissapproval the fact that in a large-scale operation such as this, some bad apples would probably do some bad things. One had to find some questionable thing, something that would make the heart of contemporary man to squirm, that would lend itself to some plausible Categorical Imperative of Democracy/Civilization. “Our Values,” as Obama says.
As we probe into the top-level interrogations, in Guantanamo, into the more numerous interrogations in Iraq, are we really learning that a pattern of increased acceptance of illegal methods, and an increased pushing the envelope of accepted methods, was occuring? I haven’t seen it yet. I haven’t seen anything that suggests the abuses remotely approached those of the U.S. in Vietnam (esp. in connection with Operation Phoenix) or especially, of the French in Algeria, where a pattern of begin with water-boarding, move onto worse, really did happen, and on a wide scale. But in both those instances, the evidence shows far more restraint than what armies and governments routinely did in centuries past. And this is to say nothing about what the Cheka and the SS did.
Every time a bullet hits a human body, and the person lives for more than a second, there is excruciating pain. We issue bullets to all our soldiers and police.
Right now, there are scores of regimes that are regularly torturing their subjects in every heinous manner imaginable. Imagine that we had cameras and sound equipment in all those rooms and shacks…right now we could watch the suffering, and ask ourselves the moral question of whether our nation ought to try to prevent it. And the fact is, the U.S. probably has the power to prevent a good deal of it, at least in the short run. Here, in your imagination let me play for you the screams of some atrocity that has undoubtedly occured this week in North Korea, or how about China or Zimbawbwe? Will you dare squirmingly look me in the eye and say, just as the victim is wailing out to her apparently silent god, “Well responsible foreign policy requires that we not do anything about this?” Will you?
If you’re responsible, you will. You will accept that OUR actions, and OUR lack of actions, permit certain people, some innocent, some villanous, to suffer excrutiating pain. And that such actions/inactions in some instances are the most responsible and moral ones.
When North Korea finally falls, the stories we will learn…the tortured and twisted humans we will meet…and, of course, we really could, post-1991, have probably prevented it.
But none of this, apparently, is fit material for the political morality play of the moment.
Again, the debate is appropriate. A debate about what is appropriate for our police interrogations. For our military interrogations. We are going to want those interrogations to still permit certain psychological manipulations and certain degrees of discomfort and uncertainty. Then, a debate about our intelligence service interrogations. And finally, one about interrogations of terrorist leaders and those suspected of withholding attack-preventing intelligence. And I am willing to let those last three debates be conducted with a good deal of secrecy by our elected representatives and appointed bureacrats.
I trust them a bit.
But presently, the Dogma is coming close to saying that any discomfort, uncertainty, psychological distress, IS TORTURE. Same word as what we use to describe what the Cheka did. You play Ozzy Osborne five-hundred times to a prisoner, you’re no better than a Cheka man. You’re a traitor to American values. And, we’re taking you to court.
So, presently, there is no debate. Were there a debate, I could join in certain kinds of hand-wringing and worrying about what our CIA and military officials are up to, about how the official endorsement of techniques on a highly limited basis might leak out into a larger unofficial culture of near-torture employment. I do worry about this. I do worry about our CIA and equivalent organizations, and the various ways they must be degrading the souls of those who serve in them. But now, I am asked, no, told, to sign on to a blanket denunciation. Even Goldman hasn’t the decency to speak about this topic in a way that permits debate, that lends his opponents the assumption of basic moral decency. Even he joins in the one-size-fits-all usage of the word torture, the usage that IMMEDIATELY besmirches various of our public servants with the sins of the Cheka.
I do not bow before the all-powerful repitition of the word torture. So label me Evil.
January 24th, 2009 | 10:33 pm
One clarification to prevent obvious twisting. I relate the fact that the U.S. does, by actions and inactions, allow excruciating suffering, not to suggest that actual torture, which by my definition does entail such suffering, should be allowed. I relate it only to give some context to what we choose to be morally outraged by.
January 24th, 2009 | 11:34 pm
On the contrary, I am perfectly willing to debate these issues. I have merely stated, and am happy to reiterate, the following facts:
(1) Interrogation techniques authorized by the Secretary of Defense and practiced by uniformed American service personnel are defined as torture under international conventions signed by the U.S, under U.S. law, and by traditional military standards.
(2) The same techniques have been described as torture by the official appointed by President Bush to oversee the tribunals at Guatanamo.
(3) The use of such techniques, whether called torture or not, leads to exclusion of evidence in U.S. Criminal Courts.
(4) The same techniques, historically, have been openly used by fascist regimes.
(5) If one wonders why *Americans* might be suspicious of their government, one might perhaps consider the former Administration’s consistent denial of (1).
As I read over my post, I find that’s all I’ve said. I haven’t said that our practices are the worst in the world, because they aren’t. I haven’t denied that our policies are the source of pain and suffering all over the world, because they are. What I do “demand”, to the extent that I’m capable of demanding anything, is that debate about this issue be carried on honestly. I think Mr. Anton’s rhetoric is calculated to avoid that, and I said so above.
If you want to make the case that torture is justified, and even necessary under certain circumstances, go ahead. Deroy Murdock and Alan Dershowitz, to mention two names that come immediately to mind, have already done so. For my part, I stand by the principles of limited government, rule of law, and humane punishment articulated by our Founders–even though it is inevitable that, being human, defenders of these principles sometimes violate them. If that makes me a liberal, a Kantian or…a Democrat, then I cop to the charge.
January 25th, 2009 | 1:46 am
The thing about this debate that is so mind-boggling to myself and a considerable amount of the population is that it is a debate in the first place.
Torture, whether it results in “good information” or not, whether it “may have saved thousands of lives” or not, is recognized by the United States as a violation of the Geneva Conventions, and therefore as a war crime.
The utilitarian argument that is being used, that this is the only way that this information could have been collected, and therefore is necessary for the protection of US citizens, is absolutely absurd. First, many argue that there are other forms of interrogation that can be used that are just as effective. Second, even if this were the case– that torture was the only way to get this information– it matters not. The fact of the matter is, whenever torture is used, the proposed justification is the sentiment that it is the only way information will be given. So then, if a foreign country tortured American POWs because they believed it was the only way they could get them to speak, would we all collectively sigh and say there was nothing wrong with them doing this to Americans? Of course not! We would all recoil in horror over the brutality of their techniques and demand that they be brought before an international criminal court and be given the harshest of penalties.
This is what is so frustrating at times about America– even when the evidence is right in front of our face that we (no, not Bush, Cheney, or the administration– this is OUR failure as we voted them into office) have engaged in behavior that is unquestionably wrong– we have a tendency to defend ourselves with some form of “American Exceptionalism,” where everything we do is right, even when it is wrong.
In conclusion, the logic here is simple:
Waterboarding is torture.
The Bush administration ordered the use of this “enhanced interrogation technique” on detainees at Gitmo.
Therefore, the Bush administration ordered the use of torture.
Torture is a war crime.
The Bush administration tortured.
Therefore, the Bush administration committed a war crime.
The ends do not justify the means. Period.
January 25th, 2009 | 6:06 am
EM: continuing in your line of logic,
The Bush administration committed war crime(s).
The Bush administration was elected to office by vote of the American people.
Therefore, the American people are guilty of war crime(s).
President Bush (and now President Obama) was (is) charged with protecting the American people in much the same sense that you have some responsibility to protect your family. Would you condone torture to save the lives of your family?
January 25th, 2009 | 11:37 am
That as US president would institute a policy of torture is just an aberration. The astonishing thing, the dangerous thing, is that there is a larger political debate on this, that support for that policy has become a touchstone for some faction of the right wing in this nation. Throughout our nation’s past, torture was seen, correctly, as the kind of government practice that necessarily corrupts and leads to more authoritarianism, as something that free nations had to avoid and condemn. Barry Goldwater and George McGovern would have given the same, instant answer on torture. There has been a dangerous change in US politics in the last two decades. And no, it wasn’t because of 9/11. That helped reveal it. But the fundamental change was there before.
January 25th, 2009 | 11:45 am
No, that doesn’t follow. Electing a government that commits war crimes is not a war crime under international law or any standard I know of. In fact, collective punishment on the basis of arguments like that *is* a war crime. Which raises some unpleasant questions about Israeli operations in Gaza, that we needn’t get into here.
Also, the comparison of the President to a parent is not appropriate. The president is charged–as we all heard last week–with protecting and defending the Constitution, not the American people.
It’s true that one purpose of the Constitution is to provide for the common defense, and thus implies a duty of protecting Americans’ live and property. The Constitution is not a suicide pact, etc. But it also lays out a legal framework of powers and prohibitions within which that defense can be conducted–a framework that, in my view, clearly prohibits torture. By your argument, is there anything the president cannot do if he judges it necessary to protect the people? Why not cancel elections? Why not close Congress?
But even if the President were comparable to a head of household, that would not legally justify torture. If, on some scenario (which is hard to imagine, but let’s run with it), a father felt compelled to torture to save his family, he would still be prosecuted–and rightly so. It would then be up to the jury to decide whether to convict or nullify.
So let me propose a maxim: if you think a threat is serious enough to justify torture, you should be willing to face charges. Isn’t it worth the risk of imprisonment, or even death, say, to save a city? But such an ethic of responsibility is precisely what the previous administration has avoided. As Russell points out, they have proved liars, criminals, and cowards by standards that would been absolutely instinctual until fairly recently.
January 25th, 2009 | 12:30 pm
RC: In response to your logic– yes, I agree with you on some level that we are responsible for this at the end of the day, as we voted them into office, and as our government (supposedly) acts upon the “will of the people,” it is us who is to blame for allowing this to happen.
However– the administration was very misleading when presenting its case to the public about what was happening at Gitmo. After reports of torture started to leak into the MSM, Bush held a press conference in which he stated, “this government does not torture people. We stick to US law and our international obligations.” Clearly, we now know this was not the case.
To respond to your second question, the President of the United States, yes, is responsible for protecting its people. However, as I stated in my original post, there are other methods of doing so that are not forms of torture, which would not be violations of the Geneva Conventions. In addition, not all of the detainees at Gitmo are guilty of anything. The manner in which they are being treated– picked up (kidnapped in many cases), transported to Gitmo, and immediately tortured and treated in ways which assume their guilt, not giving them any means to defend their case– is completely unacceptable. So, even if your utilitarian argument that the ends justify the means was legitimate, it would be irrelevant in that these men don’t always HAVE any information to give, or at least the information they are looking for.
Not to mention, it has been shown that these methods of torture, which disorient the person to the point that they become delirious, hallucinate, and regress to childlike states, do not often result in credible information when they eventually give in and say whatever it is those who are doing the torturing want to hear. Torture does not often result in reliable information, and this has been shown in multiple studies.
So, based on at least three points:
1) The interrogation techniques used at Gitmo are forms of torture, violating the international laws of the Geneva Conventions (making this unacceptable behavior under ANY circumstances)
2) The fact that not all who are tortured are even guilty in the first place
3) Torture does not always result in reliable information
the previous administration was wrong to have so blatantly ignored the Geneva Conventions in administering these kinds of “interrogation techniques,” no matter how “evil” these guys may have been. Nobody is saying that Gitmo is free from detainees who certainly have committed heinous crimes against humanity– but in the torturing of even these men who actually ARE guilty, what message are we sending to the world by exhibiting the same disregard for human life and moral standards that we have used as an argument for their guilt in the first place?
Tony Blair once said it best– that Gitmo is an anomoly, and should be closed.
January 25th, 2009 | 12:50 pm
I forgot to add– the American people are not guilty of war crimes as they were deliberately misled by the administration about what was really happening, whether via overt lies that detainees were not being tortured, or by declaring them exceptions to the Geneva Conventions based on the assessment that they “aren’t POWs but rather enemy combatants” (American Exceptionalism?!). However, where the guilt does begin to fall on the shoulders of the American people is when the American public lets this go and does not push for those who were involved in this ordeal to be brought before an international court and deal with the consequences of their actions.
We now know that our government tortured, and if we choose to ignore it and act like nothing happened, or as some politicians appear to prefer to call it, “look forward, not backward,” the guilt will fall on us for not even attempting to hold our elected officials responsible for their behavior.
At the end of the day, torture violates America’s treaty obligations, the military code of justice, the United Nations convention against torture, and US law. We prosecuted Nazis for torturing Norwegians in 1948. The Nazis used the argument that, they were not in uniform, therefore they were not POWs, and they could torture them because of this. The punishment for this torture? Death.
The Nazis were wrong, and the Bush administration was wrong.
January 25th, 2009 | 3:21 pm
Thanks Sam and Erin, you went to a lot of trouble and I appreciate that.
EM: Which leaves unanswered my final question.
And, I’m sure you were just as vehement concerning president’s being brought before the bar of justice during the Clinton administration re: his dealings with our Chinese friends and his actions at Waco.
January 25th, 2009 | 4:28 pm
Robert Cheeks asks:
That question, of course, applies to any political alternative. It’s not too difficult to imagine scenarios where everything from banning smoking to the creation of a police state will save a good number of lives, all of whom are someone’s family members.
Is Robert Cheeks ready to side with any political action that saves someone’s family members?
I’m a liberal and favor living in a free society. That carries risks, some of which turn into very real deaths. No, I’m not an absolutist, so no, I don’t get terribly worked up about laws that require us to fasten our seat belts when driving. But I want people to be free to smoke, to climb mountains, and to cross oceans in row boats, even though some will die as a result of those actions. And I want the government to refrain from torture and to have an open and proper criminal process, even though that means letting free some criminals, and even though some people will be murdered and raped who otherwise would not be.
January 25th, 2009 | 9:11 pm
Wow. What amazing little logical boxes a number of you have sealed yourself into, with perfect smugness.
Here’s a little more logic for you:
1) Bush is obviously guilty of war crimes, and y’all have insisted upon the sheer obviousness of this to-anyone-with-a-brain-and-conscience. (I apparently have neither, thanks a million.)
2) Obama has a brain and a conscience.
3) Should he refuse to prosecute, he will be guilty of not enforcing the law of the land. He will ratify torture past.
4) Should he refuse (which he so far has) to say that under absolutely positively no circumstances whatsoever his administration will engage in coercive interrogation techniques, he will be an aider and abettor of potential future torture.
5) Therefore, if Obama fails to do either 3) or 4), he must be impeached.
6) Of course, since this is also, y’all say, a matter of international law, then even if an Obama who fails to do either 3) or 4) is not impeached by squeamish Americans, the international courts must pronounce him guilty, and the international community must then assemble a force to arrest the criminal.
Clinton was quite negligent and skittish about our security, and 3,000 Americans died. No amount of rewriting history by Clarke or document-pilfering by Berger can hide that.
Bush prevented any other serious attacks from occuring. Undeniable fact.
While, yes, coercive interrogation does not always yield good intelligence, sometimes it does. As it apparently did in the three instances of waterboarding Bush authorized. Undeniable fact, and one that may well have saved lives.
There are three key issues here:
1) Why extend Geneva protections to non-signing combatant groups such as terrorists?
2) Even when within the U.S. criminal system, any too-broad definition of torture(i.e., saying any level of uncertainty of consequences, physical discomfort, or psychological tactics constitutes torture) will greatly impinge upon the quality of our police-work. It may be admirable to be totally against every and anything that could conceivably be torture, but when this stance is legalized, you may wind up with a system in which most of our jails (because uncomfortable) become illegal, or in which various forms of plea-bargaining are prohibited. After all, if the essence of what makes water-boarding torture is the impression one is going to die, then there is really only a removal-of-time difference when an interrogated crime suspect is given a false impression that he is going to get the death penalty.
3) What are you going to do with those high-value prisoners who potentially are witholding terrorist-attack-preventing info? Basically, you can a) have a set of guidelines for coercive interrogation, subject to review by various government officials, or you can b) totally ban such interrogation, and rely in the truly extraordinary situations to the willingness of key officials, whether in the oval office or in one of the services, to do “do what you gotta do.” Such actions obviously expose everyone involved to prosecution, if anyone is willing to make a charge.
And not one of you admits that these are even issues! “Sorry, T = T, debate over. We win, and you, holder of hands with evil, you lose.”
January 25th, 2009 | 11:28 pm
Carl: I believe I did admit that (3) is an issue. And my view is: if the President or his subordinates feel that the risk is sufficiently great to justify torture, they should be willing to face prosecution. If you’re not willing to risk your own life, it’s probably not worth risking somebody else’s. Whether or not the decision was justified is a decision for a jury who, under our common law system, have the right to refuse to convict on charges they regard as inappropriate.
As for (2): discomfort is not torture, as the most cursory reading of the relevant statutes will show.
As for (1): Because it’s not about *them*. It’s about *us*, and what kind of powers we allow our government to assume. In my view, the proper thing to do would be to convene a new international conference on the detention and interrogation of terrorists. But can you imagine the previous Administration exposing its policies to that sort of debate?
January 26th, 2009 | 4:08 am
WOW..! While I certainly expected an engaging debate in this forum, I was not prepared for personal attacks? smug? In no way did I mean to come off as smug– perhaps it was my inability to understand why this topic is being debated in the first place, as, Mr. Scott, as you yourself pointed out, “1) Bush is obviously guilty of war crimes, and y’all have insisted upon the sheer obviousness of this to-anyone-with-a-brain-and-conscience. (I apparently have neither, thanks a million.)” which is the portion of my post that leads you to believe I am a smug person?
Also, I never singled you or anyone else out to insult their intelligence or possession of a conscience. In fact, I assume that we all are very much aware of this fact, furthering my confusion that even though we all know he tortured, there are still those who argue that the ends justify the means. My main argument, as follows, is that I can’t understand, why when we all know that war crimes were committed, we are treating as if is not a black and white issue. I understand that there are times when torture does yield good intelligence. But it doesn’t matter. We are no different in the eyes of international courts than any other country who orders these kinds of techniques on detainees to secure information from them, whether they believe in their hearts it will save the lives of their people or not. If this were a legitimate defense, nobody who tortured detainees would be found guilty, as that is the POINT of the techniques– they are the last resort to securing information when it is deemed important enough to national security to suffer the consequences of using said techniques. And as Mr. Goldman has stated, the Bush administration should accept the notion that they should be brought before a criminal court to defend these policies. If they are, in fact, innocent, then they will be able to prove themselves in court.
Also, Mr. Scott, I resent your comparison to myself or anyone else who opposes American policy that orders torture as a “holder of hands with evil.”
Am I really exhibiting “evil” qualities by advocating for human rights and the government’s adherence to the Geneva Conventions?
Finally, you ask:
1) Why extend Geneva protections to non-signing combatant groups such as terrorists?
The Commentary to the Fourth Geneva Convention asserts that “Every person in enemy hands must have some status under international law: he is either a prisoner of war and, as such, covered by the Third Convention, a civilian covered by the Fourth Convention, or again, a member of the medical personnel of the armed forces who is covered by the First Convention. There is no intermediate status; nobody in enemy hands can be outside the law.”
RC: Sorry about that– that question is hard for me to answer, impossible really. I have no way of knowing if I would torture to save the lives of my family, but whether I would or wouldn’t isn’t the important question. Rather, if I did cave in and torture on grounds of saving the lives of my family, I would still be guilty of a war crime. If I had information that someone was about to go kill someone else, would I not be guilty of murder if I tracked this person down and killed them before they had a chance to kill? Of course I would be guilty. Whether my intentions were good or not, or whether my actions were morally appropriate, under United States law, I would be found guilty, regardless of moral intention. But what is really important anyway, is that i was not basing my argument on the assessment that the ordering of torture techniques was morally wrong (although I do, personally, find it morally wrong). Rather, my argument was based on the notion that we signed treaties that require us to never torture, no matter the circumstances, and if we do, we are then guilty of war crimes.
As far as former President Clinton is concerned– perhaps I would have been as vehement that he, also, be brought before international courts to assess his guilt or innocence after the events of Waco unraveled. However, I was 8 years old at the time, so I did not have too much to say about it while I was in 3rd grade :)
Regarding his Chinese “friends,” I assume you are referring to campaign financing? If this is what you are referencing, I by no means believe that, while he should have paid the consequences if his campaign did not meet campaign standards on financing, even if former Pres. Clinton were found guilty of this act, it would not even be close to the same degree of illegality as ordering the use of torture.
I apologize I am not much of an expert on the Clinton scandals, although I am certainly aware there are many… ha! But, to conclude this post, I am very curious– based on your responses to me, it appears that you believe I am a lefty bleeding heart liberal simply because I oppose the torture that ensued during the Bush years– am I wrong in this deduction?
I think that is about all I can take for the rest of the “night”– and Mr. Goldman– you make many good points, and are much better at articulating your thoughts into thoughtful and compelling arguments than I am!
January 26th, 2009 | 6:19 am
EM: I enjoyed the exchange. Your position that the gov’t should never engage in ‘torture’ is morally and ideally speaking the correct one in all possible worlds.
I do think you’re a liberal, but how liberal I don’t know and if it weren’t for liberals with whom would I engage in dialectics?
The question of moral standards, which transcends the liberal/conservative dichotomy, becomes interesting for me when the self is imposed into the event and so I like to see what people, including myself, would do under extreme cases.
I think it is possible Bush’s Gitmo policy may have saved a great many American lives; perhaps it didn’t, but for some reason Al Qaida has not struck the US in the past seven years or so. But then that reasoning does indeed follow along the idea that the ‘ends justifying the means.’ Also, because of some small knowledge of Al Qaida, their standards and objectives, I’m in real danger of seeing them as evil ‘externalized,’ as non-humans with whom it is not possible to co-exist. It is the same phenomenon that existed during the Cold War.
If the Democratic congress determines that Bush’s Gitmo policy thwarted Al Qaida attacks he won’t be prosecuted. If Obama shuts down Gitmo and Al Qaida slaughters more Americans he won’t be re-elected and may find himself impeached.
Some comments:
American antipathy toward ‘torture’ is rooted in events during the period 1750-90 in the conflict between the Eastern aboriginal population (Iroquois Confed., Five Nations of Ohio, ect) and the border settlers living in Ohio-Alleghenia.
Many more Americans died at Waco then mujahadeen at all the American interrogation and redention centers around the world.
The branch of Islam that includes Al Qaida and similar sects has a rather interesting gnostic/apocalyptic component that must be considered in addressing the problems they impose.
I’m looking forward to reading your future comments on the issues that are presented here at PoMoCon.
January 26th, 2009 | 10:42 am
The Geneva Conventions is not the only law at issue. Reagan signed and the Senate ratified the UN Convention Against Torture, which defines torture precisely as the intentional infliction of pain for the purpose of obtaining information. There also is a variety of US legislation against torture.
Japan was not a party to the Geneva Conventions during WW II. It used torture for precisely the purpose discussed: to obtain information that would save Japanese lives from enemy attacks. That did not stop the allies from prosecuting the Japanese officers who did so for war crimes. Waterboarding was one of the acts for which they were prosecuted. Americans had no qualms about doing these prosecutions, because — at the time — Americans broadly believed that torture of prisoners was beyond the pale, and should be prosecuted as a war crime regardless of the law of the nation committing it. It remains surreal to me that this is now a politically arguable point in our nation.
January 26th, 2009 | 1:52 pm
That question, of course, applies to any political alternative. It’s not too difficult to imagine scenarios where everything from banning smoking to the creation of a police state will save a good number of lives, all of whom are someone’s family members.
This is a really good point–in fact I’d like to emphasize one particular alternative that might save lives in some scenarios that I suspect a lot of torture’s defenders would quickly hesitate from.
Would you surrender to the demands of a terrorist in order to save your family’s life?
January 26th, 2009 | 2:23 pm
Throughout our nation’s past, torture was seen, correctly, as the kind of government practice that necessarily corrupts and leads to more authoritarianism, as something that free nations had to avoid and condemn. Barry Goldwater and George McGovern would have given the same, instant answer on torture. There has been a dangerous change in US politics in the last two decades. And no, it wasn’t because of 9/11. That helped reveal it. But the fundamental change was there before.
I’ve wondered about this too. The only possible explanation I can come up with is how Americans have internalized the narrative of our Cold War victory. Our nuclear standoff with the Soviets was always premised on mutually assured destruction. The sane way to play that game was to seek a draw, for neither side to be destroyed. You have to be violent enough to deter the enemy, but not so violent that the enemy cannot deter you.
Somehow in our national mythology, we’ve come to remember this as a game of chicken–in which to win you not only have to be able to deter the enemy, but have to be completely undeterable yourself. The only thing necessary for absolute, unconditional victory is to be utterly unwilling to accept any outcome but absolute, unconditional victory. Give me victory or give me annihilation. I don’t believe that’s actually how Reagan and Cold War hawks won the real Cold War, or even how his Reagan’s fans today would describe that victory. But in a world view in which our victory over the Soviet Union is proof straight from God that Capitalism is better than Communism (and I think there is some truth in this premise), then the victory of the Just and Courageous must be a necessary truth of all possible worlds. Which means that if any possible scenario exists–any speck whatsoever across the entire conceivable multiverse–in which America fails to come out on top, that is proof that America is either wrong or timid.
Hence the obsession with Ticking Bomb scenarios.
January 26th, 2009 | 6:20 pm
I have to weigh in here; I seem to see this theme circulating around in this debate- That the Geneva Conventions and assorted treaties should not apply to terrorists;
Although I am not an expert in international law, it seems that when we went around the world lecturing Communist regimes on “human rights” we didn’t seem to think that arguments over the jurisdiction of treaties and conventions was worth considering; even now, Fidel Castro and Robert Mugabe could simply point out that every action they take is scrupulously within Cuban or Zimbabwean law. Every government, it seems has a John Yoo on staff.
The genious and majesty of the Founding Fathers writings was that they saw “rights” as being universal, something that only the Creator could give or withold; Wouldn’t they be amused and horrified that we are debating whether human rights such as due process and habeas corpus are given or witheld depending on laweristic debate over someone’s citizenship status?
I haven’t fact checked the quote from Erin on the Geneva Conventions, that “nobody in enemy hands can be outside the law”, but it strikes me as about right, a bit of common sense morality, that every condition needs some sort of boundary, some set of rules that we agree to. Holding people as quasi-prisoners of war, quasi- criminals, sort of this, but not kinda that, seems to lead inevitably to some horrible injustice. It seems of a piece with the basic American belief that all power needs to have some check and balance to it.
In this view, the Bush Administration’s logic of “trust us, we only do it when we really, really, need to” should be laughable to anyone with even the briefest experience of Government power.
January 26th, 2009 | 10:16 pm
I would add three more observations to the discussion.
First, for liberals such as myself, the issue of torture has a moral valence, such that it is prima facie wrong. In this, the argument shares the same sort of moral structure as that found among those fighting against abortion. (That in turn, suggests potential links between the two causes). Torture remains fundamentally an act of injustice to the person, and no authority can render it otherwise.
Second, the utilitarian and often sentimental arguments for torture’s use (ticking bomb, do it for the children, Jack Bauer scenarios ad nauseum), open up as many problems as the purport to solve. The criticism of torture generally is this corrosive aspect in civil society. How does one safeguard oneself from the lure of power implicit in the act of torture itself? A society then ends with two systems, one of civil justice, and then that darker one of presumed guilt, pain and punishment. And which becomes the more powerful? How then do you defend against the assault on liberty?
That brings the third aspect of the torture debate: its fundamental anti-Constitutionalism. The point of Law and Constitution is to restrain this very urge to power. The wickedness of the recent past lies here, in the willingness to supercede this rule of Law, asserting standards that were at bottom, subjective. Once you’ve broken this rule of Law, introducing the notion that the Constitution does not apply to all, you sadly set down a path that leads back finally to that city of destruction from which you once fled.
January 27th, 2009 | 12:22 pm
Been busy, thus the belated response.
Erin, sorry to have been unclear. I did not mean to accuse you of “holding hands with evil,” by no means. I meant to accuse “you”(i.e. critics like you) of accusing “me”(i.e. defenders of Bush Ad.) of “of holding hands with evil.” And I admit you’re actually a bit measured on this issue…
…but the bottom line is this: those who continue to define torture so simplistically and those who continue to hold that all such activities are fundamentally unacceptable and evil DO necessarily accuse their opponents of such a holding of hands. The refusal to recognize such consequences of the way one debates is in fact a primary cause of the divisiveness of our political discourse which Obama rightly laments. By saying “T = T” I’m alluding to the case-closed nature of the way you and others less polite than you are arguing the issue. “We all know that Bush tortured,” you say. Uh, as you can see, I show a deep unwillingness to define waterboarding as torture. Do you begin to see why I might be offended by the very way in which this whole debate is conducted, when why questioning of its basic noun and basic verb is repeatedly IGNORED. When I debate, I do like to take the trouble of saying “side B says this” and “side A says this,” even when I take side A to be quite superior, and quite more accurate in representing the matter.
And BTW, I am not quite ready to be a “defender of the Bush Ad. on this issue.” I admit that I don’t know the full scope of the evidence. And I do have serious questions about some of the techniques being used at Gitmo and about how these migrated elsewhere. My stance is, with those who do not enter the room with a case-closed mindset, I’m ready to debate what the better or worse policy is. And while I’m ready to say that “better or worse” is not simply a practical question, but means a morally better and morally worse policy, I do not assume in advance the actual political practice can ever yield policies that are 100% morally pure, ones that all Kantian angels would always choose.
No. That is why I allude to inconvenient facts such as the fact that getting SHOT BY US TROOPS IN BATTLE is a worse fate, often a far more painful fate, and in many instances a less morally-justifiable one, than being coercively interrogated or even, TORTURED. Were those SLAIN in Pakistan recently by Commander-in-Chief Obama all guilty? All fully deserving of death by US decree? Why are we in info-rich 2009 unable to face that it is things such as this that are the very substance of the executive and police power? (For the Biblically-minded, I might mention that the book of Romans says something about the magistrate holding a “sword.”) Or why do we single out the moral quandaries that arise with the necessity at times to interrogate enemies, and let all the other moral quandaries take a pass?
A few odds and ends. As for Geneva, two points. 1) the case being presented here is not complete–I’ve read much better explanations by conservative defenders of Bush–not going to link to them now, due to laziness, but the point is that this is presentation of Geneva is quite contestable. I.e., IMO, it is simply wrong. 2) Strict understanding of executive power/national interest, mean that a nation is in its rights to break a treaty when it must do so. This is elementary, and if you read George Washington and Alexander Hamilton on the 1793 declaration of neutrality, you will see why. How this basic principle works with the treaty-power is more a complex and contsitution-centered issue, and Hamilton and Madison went head-to-head on it, I think with Hamilton emerging with the better argument. You can sort through that yourself, but you can see why I am going to laugh if I’m accused of being a total constitution-ignorant blockhead on the treaty issue since I know Hamilton and Washington were with me.
Samuel, you say that of course “discomfort” is allowed by your defintion of torture. But could you really say that about the “strategic employment of discomfort for the sake of eliciting information the prisoner wants to withold?” Insert, “uncertainty about consequences for not talking,” for “discomfort,” and you can see why, if waterboarding does not do physical damage to the prisoner, that categorical rejection of it logically mandates categorical rejection of most if not all “uncertainty techniques.” The psychological distress that is so fundamentally horrible (and I agree it is horrible, and morally perilous to those agents who are regularly ordered to use it) about waterboarding (again, evidence suggests we only dared to use it THREE times) has to do with the impression that one is going to drown.
Look, I’m not an expert on this stuff. See the seminal Atlantic article in 2003 or 2004 by Bowman. And this particular issue is perhaps pointless now, since every terrorist on the planet by now probably has some idea of how to resist such a technique, thanks to our extensive debate over it.
Finally, those of you who repeadedly allude to the authority of international law are falling into a trap, and a very big mistake. I am dead serious that that talk logically takes you to demand the arrest of our President if he does not prosecute our ex-president. But the more fundamental failings of this overall mindset are sketched out in Chantal Delsol’s masterful (and short!) Unjust Justice: Against the Tyranny of Internation Law. Her basic point is that we are going to corrupt politics by making it, at some incipient international level, the final standard of morality, and worse, we are going to degrade morality by doing so. I’d quote it if my length hadn’t already tried all patience.
January 27th, 2009 | 12:42 pm
Been busy, thus the belated response.
Erin, sorry to have been unclear. I did not mean to accuse you of “holding hands with evil,” by no means. I meant to accuse “you”(i.e. critics like you) of accusing “me”(i.e. defenders of Bush Ad.) of “of holding hands with evil.” And I admit you’re actually a bit measured on this issue…
…but the bottom line is this: those who continue to define torture so neatly and those who continue to hold that all the contested activities are fundamentally unacceptable and evil DO necessarily accuse their opponents of such a holding of hands. The refusal to recognize such consequences of the way one debates is in fact a primary cause of the divisiveness of our present political discourse, which Obama rightly laments. By saying “T = T” I’m alluding to the case-closed nature of the way you and others less polite than you are arguing the issue. “We all know that Bush tortured,” you say. Uh, as you can see, I show a deep unwillingness to define waterboarding as torture. Do you begin to see why I might be offended by the very way in which this whole debate is conducted? My questioning of its basic noun and basic verb is simply ignored. When I debate, I do like to take the trouble of saying “side B says this” and “side A says this,” even when I take side A to be quite superior, and quite more accurate in representing the matter.
And BTW, despite what it may seem, I am not quite ready to be a “defender of the Bush Ad. on this issue.” I admit that I don’t know the full scope of the evidence. And I do have serious questions about some of the techniques being used at Gitmo and about how these migrated elsewhere. My stance is, with those who do not enter the room with a case-closed mindset, I’m ready to debate what the better or worse policy is. I’m also ready to say that “better or worse” is not simply a practical question, but means a morally better and morally worse policy; however, I do not assume in advance that actual political practice can ever yield policies that are 100% morally pure, ones that all Kantian angels would always choose.
No. That is why I allude to inconvenient facts such as the fact that getting SHOT BY US TROOPS IN BATTLE is a worse fate (and often a far more painful experience) and in many instances a less morally-justifiable one, than being coercively interrogated or even, TORTURED. Were those SLAIN in Pakistan recently by Commander-in-Chief Obama all guilty? All fully deserving of death by US decree? Why are we in info-rich 2009 unable to face that it is things such as this that are the very substance of the executive and police power? (For the Biblically-minded, I might mention that the book of Romans says something about the magistrate legitimately holding a “sword.”) Or why do we single out the moral quandaries that arise with the necessity at times to interrogate enemies, and let all the other moral quandaries take a pass?
A few odds and ends. As for Geneva, two points. 1) the case being presented here is not complete–I’ve read much better explanations by conservative defenders of Bush–not going to link to them now, due to laziness, but the point is that this is presentation of Geneva is quite contestable. However, were I wrong about 1), I still know 2) that srict understanding of executive power/national interest, mean that a nation is in its rights to break a treaty when it must do so. This is elementary, and if you read George Washington and Alexander Hamilton on the 1793 declaration of neutrality, you will see why. How this basic principle works with the treaty-power is more a complex and contsitution-centered issue, and Hamilton and Madison went head-to-head on it, I think with Hamilton emerging with the better argument. You can sort through that yourself, but you can see why I am going to laugh if I’m accused of being a constitution-ignorant blockhead since I know Hamilton and Washington were with me.
Samuel, you say that of course “discomfort” is allowed by your defintion of torture. But could you really say that about the “strategic employment of discomfort for the sake of eliciting information the prisoner wants to withold?” Here’s another basic problem: insert “uncertainty about consequences for not talking” for “discomfort,” and you can see why, if waterboarding does not do physical damage to the prisoner, that categorical rejection of it logically mandates categorical rejection of most if not all “uncertainty techniques.” The psychological distress that is so fundamentally horrible (and I agree it is horrible, and would be morally perilous to those agents regularly ordered to use it) about waterboarding (again, extant evidence indicates we only used it THREE times) has to do with the impression that one is going to drown. You are made uncertain about your long-term fate in a deeply distressful manner. You are thus manipulated. But again, when we strategically or even deceptively “plea-bargain” with captured enemies about death or life-imprisonment, is not the same thing happening? So if we define carelessly, we are going to ban a whole bunch of perhaps necessary techniques.
Look, I’m not an expert on this stuff. See the seminal Atlantic article in 2003 or 2004 by Bowman. And this particular issue (waterboarding) is perhaps pointless now, since every terrorist on the planet by now probably has some idea of how to resist such a technique, thanks to our extensive debate over it.
Finally, those of you who repeadedly allude to the authority of international law are falling into a trap, and a very big mistake. I am dead serious that that talk logically takes you to demand the arrest of our President if he does not prosecute our ex-president. But the more fundamental failings of this overall mindset are sketched out in Chantal Delsol’s masterful (and short!) Unjust Justice: Against the Tyranny of Internation Law. Her basic point is that we are going to corrupt politics by making it, at some incipient international level, the final standard of morality, and worse, we are going to degrade morality by doing so. I’d quote it if my length hadn’t already tried all patience.
January 27th, 2009 | 1:50 pm
And here I thought that culture11 was a good place to read responsible conservative thinking.
“Clinton was quite negligent and skittish about our security, and 3,000 Americans died. No amount of rewriting history by Clarke or document-pilfering by Berger can hide that.” (Carl Scott)
That is both ugly and stupid. Misspell a few words and it could have been written by the mouth-breathers at Freerepublic or Powerline.
January 27th, 2009 | 3:01 pm
Oh, I don’t know, I think Mr. Scott may have hit the proverbial nail on the head. The beloved Bubba was definately more concerned with thongs then Muslim terrorists.
January 27th, 2009 | 6:28 pm
“The beloved Bubba was definately more concerned with thongs then Muslim terrorists.”
Uglier and stupider yet! Please keep it up – this kind of thinking is driving the progressive tidal wave you see across the country.
January 27th, 2009 | 7:32 pm
Strict understanding of executive power/national interest, mean that a nation is in its rights to break a treaty when it must do so.
What “a nation” has the right to do is irrelevant–the question is what the American president who swears the American presidential oath of office has the right to do. The Constitution requires him or her to obey ratified treaties. Period. No doubt many presidents would prefer otherwise. But they’ve sworn an oath to their God and to their people–not to other countries–that they will uphold that Constitution until the moment they leave office. If we, the nation, wish the give to give the president the power to ignore treaties, we can amend the Constitution to do so. We have not.
The Conventions Against Torture has a simple definition, which includes any severe physical or mental pain inflicted for the purpose of acquiring information. If logic has any meaning, this includes waterboarding. And it is the law of the land, ratified by Constitutional procedure.
I can’t get into every point you make above, in part because I think a lot of it was already answered by other commenters. But let me illustrate the difference between torture and other suffering, such as battlefield casualties. Many, many people in history have willingly accepted imprisonment or death for their beliefs. Someone presented them a choice between a punishment and renunciation of what they held sacred, and they willingly took the punishment.
Torture–even the doesn’t-leave-a-mark kind like waterboarding. hypothermia, stress positions. etc–is quite different. All but the most fantatically devoted–those who have basically severed their connection to the external world of pain signalling neurons–can eventually be made to give up whatever they believe to be most sacred. Their children, their spouses, their nations, their Gods. Torture is dubiously effective at gathering information, but it is ruthlessly effective at gathering fake confessions. Go back in time to the Christian martyrs and start waterboarding them. You’d probably be able to break most (not all) of them.
If you kill a man, you’ve ended his life. But when you torture a man until he denies what is most sacred to him–what he would gladly die to maintain–then you’ve gone much further than ending a life–you’ve negated it, and in doing so, corrupted yourself.
There are many sides to the torture debate.
1. That torture is tacticially ineffective–the disinformation generated costs more than the good intel gained.
2. That it’s strategically ineffective–that a democracy cannot long conceal an instance of torture, and the loss in international standing is eventually more dangerous than whatever threat you were trying to contain.
3. That it’s corrupting–that a government that gets in the habit of torturing enemies for information will eventually start torturing its own people for control. That the use of torture will attract the worse kind of personnel to work for the government. That the use of torture convinces the people that the government cannot be trusted to obey its own laws when the laws clearly forbid the particular kinds of torture we’re talking about.
4. That it’s evil. Imperfectly targeted bombs and collateral damage may cause more suffering than raping “comfort women”, but the latter is still more evil.
The thing is, I only have to be right about ONE of these points for torture to always be a bad idea. Mr. Scott, I don’t think you personally are being evil or unwise. You had the courage to admit that some of your points were debatable, rather than certain. I’ll admit the same of some of my points.
The difference is that for your overall argument to be right, you’d have to be correct about EVERY SINGLE ONE of these sub points–they are all necessary for your argument that coercive interrogations are a good idea, whereas my side has a great diversity of sufficient points against coercive interrogations. For example, even if you don’t call waterboarding “torture”, each of my numbered points above is still applicable to waterboarding.
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