The Washington Post's intelligence and national security reporting team make the case that, in the case of 9/11 planner KSM, enhanced interrogation techniques -- EITs --or torture -- facilitated his cooperation with the CIA. The story has produce a violent reaction among supporters and opponents of using the practice, with supporters crowing and opponents accusing the Post of letting Dick Cheney man their editing desk.
Well, we know that whether torture worked should not effect the moral case for or against it, but in the mind of the public, which seems to look at the practice through the "24" ticking-time-bomb lens, its effectiveness does seem to be related to its appropriateness in extreme situations where lives are at stake. Given this distortion -- most every instance of torture did not take place with a threshold-level "24" scenario in the offing -- it is quite comprehensible why proponents and opponents of torture are so invested in proving that it never works, or that it almost always works.
There is a difference, though.
It's become an article of faith for opponents of torture that it doesn't work because most of the evidence available to us -- the testimony of many military interrogators, psychologists and FBI agents, the incompleteness of the interrogation record, the mental projection that a tortured person would say anything to avoid being tortured, and the historical association of torture with bad people -- suggests that its benefits are dubious. But most every engaged opponent of torture doesn't care whether it worked because the moral wrongness of torture exists in nature prior to an evaluation of its effectiveness. The heuristic is: torture never works, and even if it did, it's still never right.
Proponents of torture techniques (who may object to my use of the term "torture") are more likely to base their judgment on evidence (or hints) that the tradeoff between using the techniques and the value that is derived from them is worth making. The heuristic is: torture is usually wrong, except in circumstances where we can use it to prevent deaths; don't take this tool out of the toolkit.
The standard for proving whether torture worked ought to be the same standard for proving that it didn't work. And proving this is kind of impossible: it is vulnerable to the post hoc ergo propter hoc error. It involves human behavior and its interpretation, intelligence (the value of which is unknowable in isolation) and the fallacy of single causes. There's no double blind study available.
So opponents and proponents look at the evidence and make reasonable inferences. If KSM didn't cooperate until after the EITs began, and if it doesn't seem as if anything else happened at the same time, then, for whatever reason, his torture by waterboarding did work. Or, rather, it didn't NOT work. It didn't work 100%, as he still apparently gave false intelligence. Even among those who received the intel that KSM provided there is a debate about whether he really provided much value; there is no debate that, in addition to whatever value he provided, he also provided a lot of useless information.
Using the same standard, Abu Zubaydah began to give up actionable information well before he was tortured, and he apparently gave up some information after he was tortured. In his case, it's reasonable to say that torture did not facilitate his cooperation.
Was torture the only way to facilitate KSM's cooperation? Unknown, but it seems like other methods were tried and failed. Did his cooperation, once established, provide actionable intelligence that saved lives? Not quite clear, but it seems like most of the people who were directly involved in his interrogations believe that it did. Assuming that the answer to the above questions are yes, then torture opponents would seem to have a problem. As much as torture is abhorrent to them -- and I'll reveal my bias here -- abhorrent to me -- the general public does not separate the right and the good, and they make gradations based on the intent of the interrogator/torturer and the effects of the practice. The heuristic: we are no better than the Nazis if we torture works on me as a moral argument, but it does not work for many politicians, and it does not work on most Americans. An American CIA interrogator whose techniques yield valuable information is much less reprehensible than a Gestapo torturer whose techniques resulted in the death of Jews or gypsies. Doesn't mean the CIA guy was right, but it's still hard to disagree with that sentence.
If opponents of torture (like me) want to change the minds of Americans, we have to be ready to accept that our preconceptions may need some changing, too. The burden of argument rests on us -- we need to persuade people that the act of torture in a democratic society is always wrong, that the ticking time bomb scenario is rarely -- if ever -- the situation interrogators face, and that even if torture works in a few cases, it is not worth the moral (and tangible) costs to our country. If there's evidence that torture worked in certain cases -- or if it wasn't counter-productive -- even if the evidence isn't complete or is fragmentary, it's not going to advance the anti-torture cause to ignore it.
To effectively change the minds of policy makers and the American people, torture oppoents should be prepared to accept -- subject to rigorous standards of doubt, of course -- that torture might not always be counter-productive. It's usually counter-productive -- and might have been almost always counter-productive in the setting of Bagram, the secret prisons and GTMO -- but even as I criticize their moral judgment, I can't dismiss out of hand the conviction of those who participated in the interrogations that the EITs were necessary evils, and that other means were tried and found wanting. No doubt, though, that some of the later claims of the effectiveness of the EITs stem from an attempt to justify what in retrospect are morally questionable practices.
Torture didn't work, Mark. Not in this case and not in any case. Here are KSM's own words on the matter, which he said to the Red Cross:
Now, if he is a liar, which lie is to be believed more? The lies he told during the use of torture or the lies afterwards? I'm gonna go with him lying while being tortured. That's the standard understanding of what victims do under torture. They will say whatever will help to get the torture to stop.
In terms of KSM, however, everyone keeps missing the elephant in the room: Iraq.
KSM was captured on March 1, 2003. He was never given a chance to talk of his own free will without the use of torture, as the memos clearly state he was waterboarded 183 times in March 2003. What significant event took place in March 2003? The beginning of the war in Iraq! I will bet you one pretty penny that most if not all the 183 times happened BEFORE we started shooting in Iraq.
Why would this be? Because Bush and his torturers had no doubt in their minds that there was a connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden. They just captured the #2 guy in the organization. Surely he would verify for them that indeed there was a connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden. Here is the Bush administration's ticking-time-bomb. See, they were running out of time. Their window of opportunity to invade Iraq was running out. They needed the final missing piece (the connection between Saddam and Bin Laden) to make their war on Iraq legal and justified. And because they believed in their heart of hearts that there was indeed a connection between the two dastardly baddies, when KSM denied this, Bush ordered KSM tortured immediately. He needed the proof, and he was sure KSM had it. So they waterboarded him 183 times. Each time, I'm sure he said, "look, there's no there there." I'm sure by #134 KSM was saying "sure, whatever you guys say, there was a connection." KSM just couldn't lie well enough to get them to stop. So they waterboarded him 183 times. Then the war began and his services were no longer needed. As such, they no longer tortured him.
I call BS on Dan. First, I deny that there was any torture. Torture is pulling fingernails, breaking limbs, electricity to the genitals.
Even then, Dan is making up his own story. He tells us "torture didn't work". How does he know that? He quotes KSM. But, he neglects the actual WaPo story in favor of his own story. The WaPo tells us:
"The debate over the effectiveness of subjecting detainees to psychological and physical pressure is in some ways irresolvable, because it is impossible to know whether less coercive methods would have achieved the same result. But for defenders of waterboarding, the evidence is clear: Mohammed cooperated, and to an extraordinary extent, only when his spirit was broken in the month after his capture March 1, 2003, as the inspector general's report and other documents released this week indicate. "
And
"Once the harsher techniques were used on [detainees], they could be viewed as having done their duty to Islam or their cause, and their religious principles would ask no more of them," said the former official, who requested anonymity because the events are still classified. "After that point, they became compliant. Obviously, there was also an interest in being able to later say, 'I was tortured into cooperating.' "
And,
"Mohammed was an unparalleled source in deciphering al-Qaeda's strategic doctrine, key operatives and likely targets, the summary said, including describing in "considerable detail the traits and profiles" that al-Qaeda sought in Western operatives and how the terrorist organization might conduct surveillance in the United States. "
How Dan can claim the interrogation "didn't work" is baffling. Of course it worked.
Dan even makes up his own timeline by claiming "I will bet you one pretty penny that most if not all the 183 times happened BEFORE we started shooting in Iraq". BTW, the 183 is applications, not sessions.
Dan needs to actually read the WaPo story. I suspect he skipped that step.
Rick
"Torture is pulling fingernails, breaking limbs, electricity to the genitals."
I'm sorry, but it really isn't that simple. It just isn't. Your whole premise is faulty.
According to the U.S. code,
(1) “torture” means an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control;
(2) “severe mental pain or suffering” means the prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from—
(3) “United States” means the several States of the United States, the District of Columbia, and the commonwealths, territories, and possessions of the United States.
The definition is pretty clear, and it takes some pretty shady characters and Orwellian doublespeak to argue that waterboarding, mock executions, threats to kill or rape family members, and other events described in recently released government documents don't qualify as torture.
"Once the harsher techniques were used on [detainees], they could be viewed as having done their duty to Islam or their cause, and their religious principles would ask no more of them," said the former official, who requested anonymity because the events are still classified. "After that point, they became compliant. Obviously, there was also an interest in being able to later say, 'I was tortured into cooperating.'"
Do you honestly believe this crap? This CIA official is actually claiming that detainees were somehow relieved by being tortured so that they could "cooperate" with a clear conscience. Not only did it work, but they liked it! Right...
I am thinking we should just let administrations do what ever they want to. The case can always be made that "it's vital to national security" or that "thousands of lives were saved". Everything is on the table: torture, illegal wiretapes, national surveillance, infiltration and spying on anyone, anytime anywhere. Then it's just "catch me if you can".Does anyone think that there is any accountability? As long as we elect those with strong authoritarian personalities we will get authoritarian regimes. Just get your DOJ lawyers to give you blank checks and "get out of jail free" cards. The "debate about torture" has the same theme, irrationality, and cast of players as does the "debate about healthcare". Necessary evils my ass.
Need more minotaurs!
What's this? An incipient spine?
I know you believe that it makes sense to call waterboarding and sleep deprivation "torture" (as if those techniques are equivalent to gouging out eyes with a hot iron), but it is intellectually dishonest not to acknowledge that the techniques that were used on 3 high-level detainees are vastly less brutal than techniques that could have been used. The difference between the civilized (e.g., the CIA) and the savage (e.g., al Qaeda) is that the civilized draw a line that they believe falls short of torture, and then they do not cross that line. The CIA did that. Al Qaeda doesn't.
You, like me, oppose torture. Unlike me, you are (I suspect) afraid to state the harshest interrogation method that you believe falls short of torture. Be honest and tell your readers what that technique is, the one that should be used in the aftermath of an attack that killed 3000 Americans (when fear is running high that another such attack is just around the corner). What is the harshest technique that you would allow to be used on a high-level al Qaeda detainee under those circumstances now that you know that waterboarding and sleep deprivation yielded life-saving information? That is, what is the harshest technique that falls short of your definition of "torture?"
In my experience, very few self-declared opponents of torture will answer that question because they are too busy demonizing those with whom they disagree (not you, though, and you deserve praise for that). Still, you should try your hand at answering my question. It's the hard question. Declaring yourself to be opposed to "torture" is the easy part.
That is, what is the harshest technique that falls short of your definition of "torture?"
To me, the clearest answer to that question would be: "Anything you can't do to an American prisoner in an American prison, without violating the rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution, is torture."
Yes, I know the Constitution doesn't grant those rights to non-citizens or "enemy combatants," but there's really no moral reason it shouldn't. If it's wrong to do to us, I can't see why it isn't wrong to do to them.
Of course, you do run into problems with this argument. The stakes may be higher in time of war, police right here in the USA may occasionally make use of some techniques to get information that we would find cringe-worthy, etc. I'm not saying that definition is the end of the argument.
But it should be the beginning, I think. We need to start by acknowledging that these human lives we now openly allow ourselves to despise are equal in value to our own.
It may be easy to shrug off something that sounds as innocuous as sleep deprivation, but it wasn't just one or two "enhanced" techniques that were applied, it was a whole battery of torture techniques that were used in concert. Sleep deprivation, low-calorie diets, forced nakedness, stress positions, loud music, temperature fluctuations, etc. were all being used in combination. When you're reducing prisoners to lying on the floor (that is, when their hands weren't shackled to a wall or ceiling) in their own filth, there shouldn't be any question that what you're doing is wrong.
No one who has suffered from sleep deprivation due to illness will tell you it is innocuous.
That is, what is the harshest technique that falls short of your definition of "torture?"
.
Why do you want my opinion on that? My opinion (like yours) is meaningless. There is ample definition in the law, both our statutes and the treaties that, per the Constitution, are the law of the land. Waterboarding definitely is. Starvation is. physical abuse is. Here is a hint- you know those 100 or so Iraqi detainees who died under CIA questioning? There is a generally accepted legal principle that treatment of a detainee that results in their death is torture.
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The burden is on you to find a legal framework that allows such activity in the face of clear, well established laws to the contrary. Yoo committed legal malpractice trying to justify this treatment. That is another hint that it is inexcusable and criminal.
The bottom line is that torture is against our laws and against our values.
I am not saying that torture does not "work". But it is upto the torture proponents to show that torture achieves results which are superior to those which can be achieved by traditional non-torture methods. They have failed to show that. The highly misleading Washington Post article does not show that either.
It costs nothing to say that torture is wrong, and besides, it doesn't work. You get to feel superior to those who are open to torture, but you don't have to contemplate what you'd be willing to give up in order to maintain a moral civilization.
It costs nothing to say that torture is upsetting, but since it's saved a thousand lives it's worth it. You get to feel like you're more pragmatic than the woolly-headed idealists who oppose it while tipping the scales so far in favor of using torture - er, enhanced interrogation - so "sparingly" that you can avoid contemplating the path your society has started down.
If we want to get to the root of this, we need to turn the tables. We need to ask the pro-torture crowd: How awful would you feel if it turned out it didn't work? If it only saved one life? Ten lives?
Then we need to ask the anti-torture crowd how bad they'd feel if fifty people died when torturing an accomplice would have spared them. For that matter, how about a thousand?
In other words, we need to get past the self-justification. If you want to be against torture, no matter what, you should be ready to accept what your principles might cause. And if you want to support "enhanced interrogation," you need to be ready to accept that you might be doing more damage to the nation by acting inhumanely in its name than you're doing good.
So it's good to see Marc acknowledging that there might be costs associated with rejecting torture. We're not really the land of the free, home of the brave, if the only reason we don't do bad things is because they're ineffective. Our moral position is only strong if we eschew what is wrong even if it might work. I therefore cringe every time an opponent of torture throws in the "besides it didn't work" bit. It seems like an effort to make rejecting torture the easy decision, when it should be enough that it's the right decision.
To stop us from torture, I'd be one of the fifty or 1000 you talk about. If you abandon your values when you get scared they aren't your values.
My earlier post disappeared. Apologies if it reappears.
Bottom line: If you're really against torture, it shouldn't matter if it works. To say, "torture is wrong, and besides it doesn't work" is as cost-free as telling yourself that it's okay that we tortured because, hey, look at all the lives we saved.
It's not up to torture opponents to prove it doesn't work. It's up to them to prove it's wrong. It's not up to torture proponents to prove it works. It's up to them to prove that the results it achieves could possibly be worth the diminishing of our society that results.
Torture is wrong, even if failing to torture costs a hundred or a thousand lives. To believe anything less than that is to not really be against torture, just against being grown-up enough to accept the costs that come with living in a good and just society.
" in of the public, which seems to look at the practice through the "24" ticking-time bomb lens, its effectiveness does seem to be related to its appropriateness in extreme situations where lives are at stake."
Sorry, just needed a little editing.
(damn Typepad, the worst blogging platform ever...)
" in [Marc Ambinder's idea] of the public, which seems to look at the practice through the "24" ticking-time bomb lens"
there, edited.
I don't accept this premise:
"The burden of argument rests on us -- we need to persuade people that the act of torture in a democratic society is always wrong,"
Why? Do we have to persuade anyone that doing harm to another person is wrong? So the people doing or supporting the harm have to persuade the rest of us that they do more good comes out from their harmful acts.
Once you accept Marc's premise you essentially gave green light for torture because morality is not amenable to logical persuation.
If it were, we wouldn't be fighting about abortion for so long...
What I don't understand though is: How one can tolerate the death penalty and then claim that torture is wrong?
Yoni,
In theory - the death penalty is a... penalty. I am against it but it is a very different discussion than torture. In this context, torture did not happen as punishment for a legally proven and prosecuted crime. Rather we have ordered to torture suspects. What we have been doing is to practice "guilty until proven innocent". We have put the law and individual rights upside down.
Anybody who supports "freedoms" such as freedom of speech, property rights and also the right to wear a loaded gun - should feel very offended and threatened by what our former VP Cheney has done, said and thought. In practice, as usual, this does not work out. Those who scream "freedom" when it comes to your right to wear a gun or who fear national health care are most often defending torture. It does not make sense unless...
Torture is what you say it isn't.
Torturing may or may not work, it depends on the circumstances in my opinion.
Michelle
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Well it vary from case to case, i dont think torture should be at preference, while there are a lot of other tools which can be used for such cases. I was on a visit to one of the major cheap web hosting provider, they caught a guy stealing a server; it does not mean that should start torturing with such minor cases. I still think its better to use some other tools and tricks instead of torture.
Once you accept Marc's premise you essentially gave green light for torture because morality is not amenable to logical persuation.
Exactly. As soon as you carve out a pragmatic exception to a moral and legal rule of such importance, the pragmatic logic overwhelms the moral and legal principles. The exception swallows the rule. And voila, you find yourself living in a country that more easily tases people, beats up suspects, kills detainees, assassinates enemies who we are not at war with, and generally accepts tyranny at home and abroad.
Yes, you are right torturing the mastermind of a plan that murdered 3000 innocent civilians, and if not caught, would have tried to kill thousands more, is much less reprehensible than torturing Jews and gypsies for being Jews and gypsies. Logically, it's not hard to disagree with that sentence, it's impossible, unless you are willing to say that KSM is innocent of mass murder
You misunderstand what he wrote. It's not torturing Jews and Gypsies because they're Jews and Gypsies at all. Perhaps this will make it clearer:
An American CIA interrogator whose techniques yield valuable information is much less reprehensible than a Gestapo torturer whose techniques resulted in the capture of Russian Partisans planning to blow up a troop transport train.
It's hard to understand exactly what he's saying, because he's doing this weird thing of saying "techniques resulted in the killing," which may or may not be acknowledging that the mass murder or Jews and gypsys was accomplished by the WVHA and organs quite independent of the Gestapo, and that the Gestapo's primary job was to coordinate the collection of people in the occupied countries-- legwork to actually be done by local order police, local militias, and Jewish police, under the orders of Judenrats, who were either under the control of or had (reprehensibly) negotiated their arrangement with the Gestapo and Eichmann.
In the furtherance of this objective, the Gestapo tortured a lot of people, Jew and gentile, ethnic national or not, and obtained information, and through the example of their terror, the "cooperation" of many more, and this made it possible for them to put people on trains. The fear of the Gestapo and its tactics was enough to encourage cooperation among even the victims themselves, and this is probably the most striking different in quality between a US torture interrogation and a Gestapo torture interrogation: the second is designed to scare people who aren't even there.
But they're both torture, so I'm not sure if its a distinction with a difference with regard to the acts of a free republic.
just to continue that thought a bit...
I think the thing Americans should be watchful of is wether or not they start taking pride in their acts of torture, or that they begin to see the torture as a means to "send a message" to people that would cross the United States. At this point, I don't think there would be a distinction between US and Gestapo torture. The actual number and quality of the acts committed isn't really relavant.
At some point, I can't help but think that it should be made legal to kidnap and waterboard individuals without any due process, up to the point that they are willing to concede that it amounts to torture. I imagine that everyone can agree on this.
A nation which tortures, no what matter what euphemisms and legalisms it uses, and which places itself on a level with the Gestapo, can hardly be surprised if people regard it as no better than alQaeda. The issue is not and should not be whether torture "works" (for which the overwhelming evidence is negative btw), the issue is whether America wishes to be considered as barbaric and squalid as its enemies. The only thing that defending torture will do is to retrospctively justify AlQaeda. If they attacked a civilized, democratic nation, than would be one thing. If they attacked a nation of torturers, then it's hard to see why they should be condemned. You can't have it both ways - if you torture, you are on a moral level with alQaeda. Make your choice.
To paraphrase Mark Twain "I am not interested to know if torture is profitable in some instances as it certainly diminishes the human character."
I agree with Mark's good article that a large part of the American people do not care about right and wrong and law and ethics in general as long as it might have a tiny little material advantage for them (please see history for more). I would even go further and claim that most Americans do not care about individual rights when it really matters. Their idea of individual rights is to scream "freedom haters" in case somebody critiques the idea of everybody in the republic running around with loaded weapons.
In this context - I was surprised to find the following point by Mark: "the burden of argument rests on torture opponents". Since when? When it comes to moral and ethical issues - since when do we apply "guilty until proven innocent"?
To me - this in itself - is a much much bigger problem than the torture discussion itself. It is a regress of American values and not progress. Torture is not American. Torture means throwing the baby out with the bath water and nothing else. Torture proponents would be advices to read up on Ronald Reagan's speeches when he initiated and signed the internal Anti-Torture memorandums. The arguments that Mark wants to see have been made many times.
There is no "if we don't do it they will do it argument behind it". If anything it only backfires in the sense "that you are no better than your enemy". Torture is not a nuclear weapon. It is cheap and the poorest people and nations can do it. Some of the poorest nations and people are trying to get nukes because we in the West have some... but torture.
Recently an American women was arrested in Iran with allegations of spying and so were two American girls in North Korea. Do we want three American women to be tortured as a necessary evil so that the CIA and FBI and the Vice President can torture some potential terrorists as well? That would be our eternal Faustian bargain in case we followed the torture path. A vicious, downwards spiraling cycle.
But again - from the torture discussions it become clear that torture is not our biggest problem and that terrorists are not our biggest threat. We are.
Hear, hear. Colonial empires torture, humanist republics win their independence without resorting to it. At least this one did. To engage in torture in the course of a war over resources in the third world is just about the greatest political and moral betrayal of the founding fathers possible.
Today on Fox:
WALLACE: So even these cases where they went beyond the specific legal authorization, you're OK with it?
CHENEY: I am.
It seems to me that the more torture did not work, the further these people would have gone. There is no limit to what Cheney would have done.
Read this today on the Daily Dish:
"Military necessity does not admit of cruelty nor of torture to procure confessions."...Abraham Lincoln.
We need to go back to basics....
Does it matter whether it works? NO. But every time someone believes they can point to an instance in which it may have worked, pro-torturers will think this solidifies their argument for it. Where do you stop? If you think you can stop a massacre by torturing a man's wife, or raping his child in front of him, will you use this argument to do so? And what will that make of us after the fact? Could we insist to the world that we are a beacon of morality afterwards? Every civilization has been able to excuse its most grotesque and horrendous acts by pointing to its own exceptionalism...and here we are, no different.
BTW, Marc, the article in the Post proved NOTHING, except that the Post has gladly thrown its last vestige of journalistic ethics aside to shill for a fallen, corrupt and disgraced regime.
As an adamant opponent as torture as a reprehensible moral break from the history of American conscience, it doesn't really matter to me whether torture works.
Having said that, the evidence is clear that torture doesn't work, or at "best", works less effectively than interrogation techniques which don't involve torture, and is more likely to produce false evidence.
But all that is beside the point. The point is not whether torture is useful, the point is whether torture is legal. And it isn't. Plain and simple. And whatever deliberate and willful fools like Yoo may have written, what some people did allegedly in service of this country was clearly criminal. And when, in this country of laws, a criminal act is committed, there are legal consequences. This goes double for those in a position of leadership who pressure those who answer to them to engage in criminal activity.
But even that is not the real issue. The real issue is the cowardice of said leaders, the terror that their actions should even be examined in a legal light. And the "conventional wisdom" (which in the light of American history is neither conventional or wisdom) which demands that light not be shed bodes ill for the Republic. Accountability to the rule of law is precisely what was intended and expected by our Founding Fathers. And anyone who insists that alleged criminal behavior by our leaders not be examined is, metaphorically at least, spitting on their graves.
Torture is illegal.
Torture is morally repugnant.
The US should never torture.
Those who do should be prosecuted.
thank you. even a republican could understand that. (a republican of a different era, to be sure, but still...)
And of course the killing of unborn children is perfectly acceptable? I love it when the left brings up morality.
So, are you pro-torture or anti-torture. I would think, based on your comment, that you would be inclined to be anti-torture. Since it is the hypocrisy which bothers you, not the position. Right?
I think he's FOR torturing pro-choice folks.
"Well, we know that whether torture worked should not effect the moral case for or against it..."
We do? Who is "we?"
This is one of the most basic questions that every freshman in a philosophy course faces. It's the old "your daughter is on one rock; a family of 10 strangers is on the other. You only have enough fuel to save one or the other and the shark-infested tide is coming in - what do you do?"
Who believes that it wouldn't be "torture" for the group that loses that decision? What goes through the heads of the people who watch the other group get rescued, knowing that the sharks are waiting?
As for myself I'd torture ANY non-American if there was even a 50% chance that I'd get information that would save other Americans - even the loons here who disagree.
I'm pretty sure that's why we have borders and refer to ourselves as "Americans." We identify ourselves as having a culture that is worth preserving. We have a moral obligation to save our own people. At any cost? Maybe. There comes a point where, perhaps, we'd take actions that distort the culture that we're looking to save to the point where it's no longer worth saving.
This isn't even close. Dripping water up Gitmo-prioners' noses? Running a power tool next to their ear? Putting a caterpillar 10 feet away from them?
What are you, kidding? THESE are the activities that we're anguishing over?
"There comes a point where, perhaps, we'd take actions that distort the culture that we're looking to save to the point where it's no longer worth saving."
Guess what? You're getting there. As a foreigner, let me tell you that after 9/11, most of the world was with you, ready to help in almost any way. But fairly quickly, it became evident your leadership was paralyzed with fear and anger, and mutual cooperation was not wanted. Ever since, they have so exploited the politics of fear that we hardly recognize you. You have the most exceptional and principled founding documents on earth. The post-war period saw unprecedented acts towards vanquished enemies - the re-building of Japan and Germany, easily two of the most hateful and dangerous regimes ever.
Even during the worst of the cold-war and resource-hungry meddling in third-world affairs, America still stood for something, and behaved with some restraint and morality.
Before 9/11 America had not called its own laws and constitution "quaint". It had not openly abrogated international agreements like the Geneva Convention and UN Convention on Torture, or waged wars of aggression. America now behaves with arrogance towards the "other", any "other". Its political and media leaders ooze hubris as they defend American exceptionalism.
So this is not about a few drops of water up someone's nose. It's about the US regaining it's moral footing and confidence, and engaging the world as a leader in the many challenges we ALL share.
The alternative is to build walls and fly Predator drones on both your borders, in recognition that the world really is out to hurt you. Retract into your new surveillance state, with a more "muscular" foreign policy. Stock-up on guns and rations and hunker down in lovely gated communities and watch Glen Beck shriek about socialism and getting your country back.
The only ones effectively attacking America at the moment are some well-off corporate, media and government elites who are playing the majority for chumps.
There's a lot of revisionism here.
The United States has been arrogant since the Civil War. More arrogant than any other nation? No. But certainly not the humble "aw shucks" image that you present.
We viewed ourselves as "saving" Europe in WWI. We referred to ourselves as the Arsenal of Democracy in WWII, and a "super power" immediately thereafter. These aren't humble sentiments now, and they weren't then.
Did we torture? We sure did. Germans, N. Koreans, ChiComs, Vietnamese, Cold War spies, etc. Much more so than now, for sure.
The biggest difference between now and the cold war is the perception that Europe no longer needs the US military to preserve their liberty.
Europeans found it much easier to admire the United States "morality" and "spirit" than they did swallowing the bitter pill of dependence.
"Well, we know that whether torture worked should not effect the moral case for or against it..."
We do? Who is "we?"
This is one of the most basic questions that every freshman in a philosophy course faces. It's the old "your daughter is on one rock; a family of 10 strangers is on the other. You only have enough fuel to save one or the other and the shark-infested tide is coming in - what do you do?"
Who believes that it wouldn't be "torture" for the group that loses that decision? What goes through the heads of the people who watch the other group get rescued, knowing that the sharks are waiting?
As for myself I'd torture ANY non-American if there was even a 50% chance that I'd get information that would save other Americans - even the loons here who disagree.
I'm pretty sure that's why we have borders and refer to ourselves as "Americans." We identify ourselves as having a culture that is worth preserving. We have a moral obligation to save our own people. At any cost? Maybe. There comes a point where, perhaps, we'd take actions that distort the culture that we're looking to save to the point where it's no longer worth saving.
This isn't even close. Dripping water up Gitmo-prioners' noses? Running a power tool next to their ear? Putting a caterpillar 10 feet away from them?
What are you, kidding? THESE are the activities that we're anguishing over?
You seem to be conflating kin selection with American exceptionalism.
And if you think the tactics are that innocuous, why not expand them to include people we are interrogating in our domestic legal system?
That's one of the advantages of rights as a citizen. Cruel and Unusual Punishment is forbidden.
I have no problem being "extra good" whenever I travel overseas. I don't view myself as a citizen of the world for a very basic reason: there is no such thing.
I accept the fact that I am a US Citizen, and that I have very limited rights in most places I visit. Travel is a privelege, and I treat it as such.
As for enemy combatants? No rights whatsoever. These folks didn't even sign the Geneva Conventions.
So, just to be perfectly clear, you would be ok with Americans being tortured overseas by other governments?
And why do you reference the Geneva Conventions if you clearly believe the US has no need to abide by them?
To Porkbelly (the "reply" nesting might make this align wrong).
I didn't say that the USA has no need to abide by them. We are BOUND to them - when we are dealing with other signatories. That's how the law works.
So I'd have a BIG problem with US citizens being tortured by other signatories of the convention. And I'd have a BIG problem with us even waterboarding prisoners of nations that had signed and abide by the conventions.
But that doesn't apply here. Not even a little bit. Not only hasn't Al Qaeda, Taliban, etc. not signed the conventions - you also might have noticed that they flaunt them. Sharia, for instance, is basically anathema to the G. Conventions.
Re: an American being "tortured," allow me to put it this way: do you remember the young man who was caned in Singapore about 10 years ago? I seem to recall that he was tried fairly and found guilty of vandalizing something.
I had no problem whatsoever with him getting 10 or 15 strokes with a cane. That's the price of being stupid in a foreign land.
If he was beheaded I'd have a real issue with it from a human rights perspective. I'd protest. I'd write letters. I'd call for a boycott of the nation in question (like we did to S. Africa, all those years ago), etc.
I'd torture ANY non-American if there was even a 50% chance that I'd get information that would save other Americans - even the loons here who disagree.
why just non-americans? how bout if some mcVeighite "patriot" knew where the next truck bomb was? would you beat him to death with a flashlight? cause that's not torture, either, i've been told.
See my post above. Citizens have rights. That's part of being a culture.
Humans have rights. All evil in this world comes from treating other humans as less than what they are.
The United States isn't the policeman or government for all of humanity.
All evil in this world comes from the basic sin of Pride. It's not unique to Americans, and we cannot accept the burden of fixing it globally.
As a seperate issue, there is no evidence that torture worked. We keep hearing of secret files that prove it - but you know what would really prove it? The videotapes. Such a shame that Cheney's people had them destroyed.
And if we got such great intel, so good that we foiled plot after plot in the US, why did we not share this with our allies? Is Cheney admitting that we knew about, and allowed, the Madrid bombing? The London Bombing? The Bali Bombing? The Jordan Bombing? If not, those are an awful lot of failures for an allegedly perfectly successful program.
Finally, Cheney was out there yesterday claiming that his administration did not allow any terrorism in the US after 9/11. Why does he always forget the Anthrax mailings? Does he not consider them terrorism? Or did he allow those, too?
Why the hell is some jerk on the internet (me) possessing enough wit to think to ask these questions, and no one in the media is?
Except for this evidence, of course:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/08/30/analysis.interrogations.report/
Nobody is saying that we got 100% information. Clearly nobody knew about London, Bali, Jordan, etc. beforehand. Why do you have such a hard time dealing with that?
And re: the Anthrax - I'm pretty sure that Cheney is referring to Foreign Terrorism. Do you have any proof that Al Qaeda was involved? I'm pretty sure the only people we are interrogating with "enhanced" techniques are foreign nationals, given that whole "Bill of Rights."
Nobody knew about London, Bali, Jordan, etc.? But the same people who were trying to attack the US were also behind those attacks. The al Qaeda suspect were from overseas - they were supposedly organizing all these attacks - how did we miss those? That is a rhetorical question - the point is that Cheney is full of it, not that he is permitting attacks.
Same with the Anthrax attacks. They are terrorism (indeed they were an attempted coup d'etat against one of the branches of government) - we were fighting a war on terrorism, but that seems to escape Cheney's notice. Again, my point is that Cheney is full of crap here.
As for foreign nationals and the bill of rights - constitutional rights accrue to persons, not just citizens. The Constitution can be awkward that way. Try to keep up.
Do you (RobM, et al) realize that your position simply reduces to "we have a right to do as we please..." (hmmm, America uber alles)? The Nuremburg trials established a precedent (specifically developed and embraced by the United States) that there were actions that were outside of what was permissible, EVEN in time of war, when countries are openly attempting to kill large numbers of another country's citizens. This is the entire concept behind the idea of "war crimes". Also established at that time is that RESPONSIBILITY for actions does not transfer in any direction along the chain of command. The enlisted man swinging a single baby by the heels and dashing its brains out is not excused because "everybody else was doing it and I got a memo from Herr Eichmann saying it was ok". Herr Eichmann is not given a pass because he wasn't there when it was done and only signed the 'memo'.
There is no acceptable level of war crimes. War crimes (of which torture is but one) by definition are NOT acceptable. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Wolfowitz etc. all have a vested interest in saying otherwise simply because any casual reading of the war crimes statutes explicitly state their actions as architects of the torture policy, qualify as such.
Short version: Don't do the crime if you can't do the time .....
Thank you for this post. I would add four points.
1. The question is not whether torture "works," but whether it produces reliable information. It would be absurd to suppose that a person being tortured never tells the truth. The problem (apart from the incentive to say anything that will stop the torture) is that the torturers have little or no way of determining which information is reliable. In "Torture and Democracy," Rejali tells a story about a torture victim in Peru (a female physician) who repeatedly told the whole truth but was totally discounted by the torturers.
2. Those who argue that torture "works" would need to show that any valuable information extracted by torture could not have been obtained by other means. As Iraq interrogator Matthew Alexander and other professionals have powerfully argued, non-abusive means of interrogation are far more effective. See Alexander, "How to Break a Terrorist."
3. Torture is not really about interrogation. It is mainly about vengeance and intimidation. And it becomes eerily addictive for the perpetrators. See my essay "Torture Is the Ticking Time Bomb," in my book "Torture is a Moral Issue" (Eerdmans 2008).
4. The full name of the "Convention Against Torture ..." continues: "... and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment." Even if waterboarding, sleep deprivation, stress positions and so on were not torture (which they are), they would still be war crimes in violation of Geneva Common Article 3 and the CAT. It has been a great propaganda victory to frame the question around what counts as "torture," as if cid were not prohibited by law.
Perhaps I should mention that personally, I believe torture to be intrinsically evil and that it should never be used even if it did "work."
--George Hunsinger, Princeton Theological Seminary
Founder, National Religious Campaign Against Torture (www.nrcat.org).
Engram posted this way up top, but I just had to respond:
"You, like me, oppose torture. Unlike me, you are (I suspect) afraid to state the harshest interrogation method that you believe falls short of torture. Be honest and tell your readers what that technique is, the one that should be used in the aftermath of an attack that killed 3000 Americans (when fear is running high that another such attack is just around the corner). What is the harshest technique that you would allow to be used on a high-level al Qaeda detainee under those circumstances now that you know that waterboarding and sleep deprivation yielded life-saving information? That is, what is the harshest technique that falls short of your definition of "torture?
In my experience, very few self-declared opponents of torture will answer that question because they are too busy demonizing those with whom they disagree (not you, though, and you deserve praise for that). Still, you should try your hand at answering my question. It's the hard question. Declaring yourself to be opposed to "torture" is the easy part."
This is absolute nonsense. In order to even entertain this question one is forced to accept the premise that harsh tactics are required to accomplish anything in interrogations.
Before asking this question, Engram, why don't you explain why any harsh tactics should be used at all? When there is a a mounting pile of testimony from experienced interrogators all over the world that rapport building is much more effective, why, praytell, should ANY harsh tactics be used?
By taking on your question, one must already accept that torture is a valid way to solve a problem, but it's just perhaps a bit too far on the path to be acceptable. I reject that premise completely, as any self respecting "self declared opponent of torture" should.
Engram posted this way up top, but I just had to respond:
"You, like me, oppose torture. Unlike me, you are (I suspect) afraid to state the harshest interrogation method that you believe falls short of torture. Be honest and tell your readers what that technique is, the one that should be used in the aftermath of an attack that killed 3000 Americans (when fear is running high that another such attack is just around the corner). What is the harshest technique that you would allow to be used on a high-level al Qaeda detainee under those circumstances now that you know that waterboarding and sleep deprivation yielded life-saving information? That is, what is the harshest technique that falls short of your definition of "torture?
In my experience, very few self-declared opponents of torture will answer that question because they are too busy demonizing those with whom they disagree (not you, though, and you deserve praise for that). Still, you should try your hand at answering my question. It's the hard question. Declaring yourself to be opposed to "torture" is the easy part."
This is absolute nonsense. In order to even entertain this question one is forced to accept the premise that harsh tactics are required to accomplish anything in interrogations.
Before asking this question, Engram, why don't you explain why any harsh tactics should be used at all? When there is a a mounting pile of testimony from experienced interrogators all over the world that rapport building is much more effective, why, praytell, should ANY harsh tactics be used?
By taking on your question, one must already accept that torture is a valid way to solve a problem, but it's just perhaps a bit too far on the path to be acceptable. I reject that premise completely, as any self respecting "self declared opponent of torture" should.
I think you may have come up with a new recruiting slogan for the CIA, "The CIA: less reprehensible than the Gestapo."
We have a saying at the CIA, with friends like Nazis, who needs enemies?
On further reflection I think the question should be:
Does it matter if I wished that torture would work and I could be the hero of the world just like Walter Mitty and Dick Cheney?
What kind of moron believes torturers?