When All Else Fails Invoke 9/11
Michael Goldfarb writes:
It’s not clear the United States government can prosecute a lawyer for holding a minority view, let alone convict an American hero for dunking a terrorist responsible for the murder of thousands.
Note how this defense of torture relies on a rhetorical trick — namely the implication that Americans were torturing only men responsible for the September 11 terrorist attacks. That is wildly inaccurate. It is telling that even a staunch torture defender is forced to resort to misleading locutions to make his case, and is apparently unable to defend at least some of the torture that went on.
The same post contains an unrelated passage that leaves me speechless:
I wonder why the same people squealing about the alleged moral indignity to which these monsters were subjected are the same people who want the government to keep morality out of their bedrooms and doctors’ offices. Why should the government be forbidden from making a moral judgment about gay marriage or abortion but compelled to make a moral judgment about the treatment of terrorists plotting to murder Americans citizens?
I just haven’t the energy to dissect this right now, but if no one else does it I’ll dutifully return later on.
UPDATE: Though it still seems to me that Goldfarb’s post is a defense of American interrogation practices generally, a commenter below has caused me to see that it is possible he is referring only to KSM — if that is the case, my particular criticism here is incorrect, and I apologize for my misreading.
The Cheney line was that any and all persons, citizen or not, was open game for the administration’s torture program whether they be hiding out in their bedroom, doctor’s office or Tora Bora.
Knock yourself out with this one. But Weekly Standard, along with National Review and other rags of movement conservatism are relics for whom the bell has rung. At best, they’re mere curiosities that sometimes border on being side-circus freak shows. It’s really a waste of time belaboring their points.
— JB · Apr 23, 11:10 PM · #
Well, just to begin, the government is an actor in torture but a consenting gay relationship should not involve the government.
The government is not a monolithic “it”; it’s the representative of the people. In fact, it’s other people representing The People! As such, they (Government) are bound both by being moral agents and by knowing that torture is opposed by their constituents, whereas gay marriage is supported by major portions of the country. So the “moral question” is different between these cases. In fact many people believe that allowing gay marriage is the moral position (imagine that.)
We don’t even know if they’re Monsters, and what if they were? Does the same moral calculus hold for other parties? If a Saudi court thinks that someone who has premarital sex is a “Monster”, should they torture the person to extract a confession?
— Firas · Apr 23, 11:13 PM · #
The social-con angle is stupid. But Goldfarb is clearly not talking about just any terrorist, but KSM, who actually was largely responsible for 9/11.
It is telling that even a staunch water-boarding detractor is forced to resort to misleading locutions to make his case!
— Blar · Apr 23, 11:39 PM · #
“Why should the government be forbidden from making a moral judgment about gay marriage or abortion but compelled to make a moral judgment about the treatment of terrorists plotting to murder Americans citizens?”
Since I presumably don’t share Goldfarb’s views on abortion or gay marriage I guess my perspective is different, but it seems to me that in these cases government is allowing its citizens more freedom, which is what is supposed to happen in a free society unless there’s a good reason not to do so. Torture is fundamentally about removing peoples’ freedom to an astonishing extent. Put another way, the government itself isn’t aborting fetuses or getting gay married. But it is torturing. Or, rather, was. In one instance, the government is giving individuals the right to choose what to do, in the other it is making that choice.
Now, admittedly, if you believe abortion is murder I can understand seeing the government as an accessory before the fact for letting it happen, though it is far from the case that banning abortion gets rid of it. Law or no law, it’s individual women that have been making this choice for millennia. In fact, with respect to abortion, the intent seems to be to devolve responsibility on this matter to the individual for any number of reasons, such as privacy and personal autonomy—basically, to increase freedom. I don’t know if that’s a “moral decision” or not, so much as that it’s in keeping with a society that generally wants to maximize liberty. Same goes with gay marriage, at least in the states that have legalized it. Torture, on the other hand, has no precedent in American life and is basically built around breaking peoples’ wills to resist. It is an authoritarian technique that is based around taking rather than granting liberty, and as such it is an alien concept in American thought, and a radical revision of the values that have animated America for over two centuries. It must be stopped.
Also, do keep in mind that this is the guy who cheered on attacks on women and children in Gaza in hopes that it would make Hamas squeal. He has some strong authoritarian instincts, which are not particularly American as we have come to understand, and not really worth engaging, but I had some free time at work, so why not.
— Lev · Apr 23, 11:45 PM · #
Oh, before I’m done, I’m not saying that terrorists (and even terror suspects) don’t deserve to have their freedom diminished a little. Of course that’s well and good. But torture does this to an astonishing degree. Its point isn’t justice and, regardless of what Hayden and Mukasey say, it’s rarely about getting intelligence. Anyway…
— Lev · Apr 23, 11:54 PM · #
“I just haven’t the energy to dissect this right now, but if no one else does it I’ll dutifully return later on.”
There is no need: it dissects itself.
— vimothy · Apr 24, 12:10 AM · #
Indeed. It lies there, feet pinned to the table, belly slit down the middle, innards lain open to the world …
— John Schwenkler · Apr 24, 02:32 AM · #
@John Schwenkler: It is a little bit too direct a look into the viscera of a certain kind of id, isn’t it? Or maybe, rather, a vulgar splaying of the legs, with neither shame nor virtue.
As Lev stated above, freedom — the American commitment to liberty — is at stake in the torture “debate” (and who ever thought Americans would have to debate this topic?). The tension between positive and negative liberties — the freedoms to and the freedoms from — has always been at heart to our country’s experiment. This is why the Bill of Rights isn’t written as a list of things we, as citizens, are free to do; as written it is how those rights are protected, by listing those things our government is forbidden to do at all. Torture, which is entirely about the demonstration of power over another, is the total and complete evisceration of man’s precious ability of self-determination, by stripping man to the core. To sanction torture is to sanction the government’s ability to remove one’s liberty, one’s dignity, indeed, one’s essential humanity. Sanctioning torture takes our commitment to freedom and subsumes it into the exercise of vicious authority — it eviscerates all liberties, positive and negative.
The argument between liberal and conservative has always been two-fold: do we privilege the freedoms from or the freedoms to (or do we need even draw such distinctions), and how do we maximize those freedoms?
This is why I don’t understand men like Goldfarb: There is nothing of the conservative or the liberal in such arguments as those above. There is only the vicious authoritarian.
— James F. Elliott · Apr 24, 06:29 AM · #
Indeed. It lies there, feet pinned to the table, belly slit down the middle, innards lain open to the world …
Actually, its dissection isn’t really a dissection, dissection keeps Americans safe, and furthermore, it deserved to be dissected!
— vimothy · Apr 24, 04:24 PM · #