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1. Isn’t this essentially the type of character exhibited by the “Keep Calm and Carry On” posters made famous in London during the Blitz? Or, for a modern example, by the Israeli people every day of their lives?

   — James F. Elliott · May 1, 09:22 PM · #

2. And that’s why a culture of glory is superior to a culture of life.

   — Senescent · May 1, 10:29 PM · #

3. I completely agree. al-Qaeda can try to destroy our society—I think it’s highly unlikely they’ll succeed—but let’s make them do it themselves and not help them out, shall we?

   I guess I honestly don’t see what “conservative” torture proponents see is worth saving in America. They don’t care about freedom because they support rendition and indefinite detention of American citizens. They don’t care about justice because they supported pardoning Scooter Libby. They don’t care about tradition or human rights because they support torture, which is out of keeping with both. Once you give away all that to fight the terrorists, what will even be left to save? What is it that they’re conserving?

   I think we need a new name for these folks is all.

   — Lev · May 1, 10:34 PM · #

4. I’ve made precisely that point for ages, actually.

   http://lhote.blogspot.com/2008/07/glenn-loury-makes-case-that-we-should.html

   — Freddie · May 1, 10:57 PM · #

5. Great example with the Israelis, Mr. Elliott. No tough tactics with terrorists there, nope. Just jolly stoicism.

   By the way, read Jonah Goldberg’s column today if you really think that the British were such soft-hearted souls during the Blitz.

   — MC · May 1, 11:09 PM · #

6. David Foster Wallace said the same rather eloquentl a couple years back in the Atlantic’s commemorative issue, invoking Lincoln’s “sacrifices on the altar of freedom” idea.

   — Sanjay · May 2, 12:39 AM · #

7. I’m happy to risk the life of my loved ones for all sorts of higher goals. I’m not willing to risk their lives, or, indeed, the life of one American soldier, to save Khaleed Sheik Mohammed from the waterboard. Sure, there are some things we won’t do to keep safe. At some point we lose our souls. What needs to be argued is that water-boarding of precisely three Al Queda operatives is such a point. That’s an argument I would like to see.

   — Ben A · May 2, 02:24 AM · #

8. Ben A: As I understand, under the Manzi standard, we’d be allowed to incinerate cities full of Arab women and children, and we’d be allowed to hand over hundreds of thousands of Arab conscripts to a totalitarian police state for indefinite confinement. And we could have a place in Kensington where we did, in fact, torture KSM and his kind. We just have to maintain plausible deniability for the president. That’s what respect for precedent demands.

   — y81 · May 2, 03:21 AM · #

9. Conor:

   Thanks.

   Ben A:

   Why do you believe there were only three people waterboarded under this policy?

   y81:

   Well, if A-Q had developed and deployed one of the greatest militaries in the world, defeated and conquered several of the most powerful nations in the world, occupied a significant fraction of the world’s surface representing a good chunk of the world’s economic output, exterminated millions of people in death camps, launched a full-scale military assault in which they destroyed most of the US Pacific Fleet, caused several hundred thousand U.S. deaths in battle and posed a credible long-term threat to occupy the U.S. homeland and enslave the U.S. population, I’d probably contenance pretty much what the U.S. leadership did at that time, which I’ll note, did not include waterboarding captured combatants of any kind as a matter of policy, to my knowledge.

   — Jim Manzi · May 2, 12:41 PM · #

10. Jim: 3 of the 14 is what I have been reading in press coverage. And I’d really like to know: what if that is correct? If it turns out that the procedures described in the Bybee memo were applied to 14 people, and of the 14 the 3 who were waterboarded were all highly knowledgeable Al Queda operatives — do you consider that an unacceptable/immoral practice?

    To your larger point, however, I think there is very reasonable concern that once waterboarding or any type of extreme treatment is allowed in exceptional cases, this will ratchet up the level of mistreatment throughout the system. For this reason, it may be as a prudential matter we never want to waterboard KSM, because we are concerned that this will inevitably lead to the mistreatment of prisoners who aren’t KSM, and who don’t plausibly have high value information. That’s an argument I understand and respect. That’s not the same as the argument that waterboarding KSM in itself is a war crime, or ignoble, or worth risking an innocent life to avoid.

    — Ben A · May 2, 01:25 PM · #

11. Ben A:

    I tried to make the point in my post (as always, a failure of communication reflects on the author, not the reader) that I thought the argument that waterboarding is “inherently immoral” was unpersuasive, and that the moral and prudential issues are deeply entwined.

    — Jim Manzi · May 3, 12:54 AM · #

12. Al Qaeda has managed to inflict more casualties on American soil, including many more American children, than the Nazis and the Japanese combined. So possibly a dramatic response, though not one including incinerating foreign women and children by the hundreds of thousands, is justified.

    Incidentally, I don’t think either the Axis or AQ posed or poses any credible threat to occupy American soil. But both would certainly be happy (or would have been happy) if they could re-orient America’s foreign policy.

    — y81 · May 3, 01:16 AM · #

13. Jim,

    My apologies. I am sure the error is mine — I was reacting to Conor’s quote rather than your full post. Always an error…

    — Ben A · May 3, 03:52 AM · #

14. That’s not the same as the argument that waterboarding KSM in itself is a war crime, or ignoble, or worth risking an innocent life to avoid.

    Your error is focusing on object rather than subject—you’re talking about how many lives we would sacrifice so that KSM is not waterboarded, rather than how many lives we would sacrifice to so that Americans are not waterboarders.

    — Consumatopia · May 4, 12:16 AM · #

15. Consumatopia,

    That’s a nifty turn, but if you want to meet them head-on, you have to tighten the circle. The question becomes, how many familiar lives would I sacrifice so that Americans are not waterboarders?

    If somebody asked me that question, I’d have to think about it for a long while.

    — Sargent · May 4, 02:25 AM · #

16. Sargent,

    That might be an interesting question with regards to how I rank the various attachments within our lives, but I don’t see how it has any policy implications. It’s possible that there are all sorts of scenarios in which I might choose to do what’s convenient for me and mine rather than the right thing for the country as a whole.

    But consider another question—what expected value of harm to familiar lives am I willing to accept so that Americans are not waterboarders? This is not easy to determine exactly, but it would be a good bit more than 1/300,000,000. There are all sorts of risks that me and mine take daily that are much greater than that for things less important to me than the honor, dignity, and conscience of our nation.

    In reality, I think it likely that institutionalized waterboarding would cost more American lives than it would save, and I also think there are a wide variety of policy levers available to the world’s mightiest superpower to reduce that number other than waterboarding. There is no shortage of arguments that Ben A would admit to understanding and respecting.

    But there is one that he did not that is nonetheless a good argument.

    — Consumatopia · May 4, 03:24 PM · #

17. Consumatopia,

    I agree that to evaluate waterboarding one needs to look at the impact on both victim and victimizer. It isn’t clear to me this makes the case any more obvious. To go back (now that I’ve read it) to Jim’s original post: war replete with horrible actions. Killing another human being with a flame-thrower is horrible, killing another person by blowing up their tank with them inside is horrible. No one want Americans, all things being equal, to have to participate in these actions. But the moral calculus balancing risk to innocent lives vs. Americans being responsible for burning enemy soldiers alive turns out to be complicated. Just to reiterate Jim’s original point, the issue of waterboarding KSM seems no less complicated. And in this context, it’s relevant (to me, at least) that KSM is personally far more morally culpable than the average enemy soldier in any war ever fought by the US.

    — Ben A · May 4, 08:30 PM · #

18. To go back (now that I’ve read it) to Jim’s original post: war replete with horrible actions. Killing another human being with a flame-thrower is horrible, killing another person by blowing up their tank with them inside is horrible. No one want Americans, all things being equal, to have to participate in these actions. But the moral calculus balancing risk to innocent lives vs. Americans being responsible for burning enemy soldiers alive turns out to be complicated.

    The list of reasons separating what we do on the battlefield from what we do to people in our custody is fairly long. By taking captives we implicitly agree not to abuse them. The captives are more or less helpless and completely under our supervision. The battlefield actions are taken to stop the target from doing something while a coercive interrogation is done to force a captive to say something. There are double-effect concerns distinguishing pain as a side-effect and pain as an intended tool.

    Whether these are relevant moral criteria in and of themselves, they all seem likely to have psychological effects on the waterboarder and sociological effects on waterboarding institutions, including the nation as a whole.

    And in this context, it’s relevant (to me, at least) that KSM is personally far more morally culpable than the average enemy soldier in any war ever fought by the US.

    I admit that it’s relevant—the level of risk I would accept for avoiding torture of KSM is less than the level I would accept for avoiding the torture of a complete innocent.

    But there’s still a big gulf between “the U.S. waterboards no one” and “the U.S. only waterboards assholes”, and I’m willing to accept a greater than 1 in 300,000,000 chance of death to stay on the right side of that gulf, which means that, yes, I would be willing to risk at least one American life to avoid having Americans waterboard anyone, even KSM.

    — Consumatopia · May 4, 09:31 PM · #

19. <i>there’s still a big gulf between “the U.S. waterboards no one” and “the U.S. only waterboards assholes”,</i>

    That’s absolutely correct and fair. And the position you take on waterboarding is a reasonable one. I would take it myself with respect to, e.g., physical mutilation. I don’t want the US to do that at all, except in the most fantastical ticking-bomb scenario. I don’t want to hear “we only physically mutilate really bad guys.”

    To run the example the other way, I suspect there’s some treatment that you wouldn’t want the US doing to a lawful combatant that you would countenance to get information from KSM. Maybe sleep deprivation for 3 straight nights is an example, maybe there’s something else. Or maybe this is an area where you take a hard line: don’t sleep deprive KSM for 72 hours even to lower risk of civilian deaths. If so, I don’t think most people are with you on that. Which is why I think that the crux of the waterboarding debate is about where to draw the line, not whether to have a line.

    — Ben A · May 4, 10:02 PM · #

20. To run the example the other way, I suspect there’s some treatment that you wouldn’t want the US doing to a lawful combatant that you would countenance to get information from KSM.

    Not really. If the standard of treatment we give KSM isn’t equivalent to either that of combatants or that of criminals, that’s dishonorable. There’s a question of how much risk to American lives I’m willing to accept for American honor. But carving out exceptions to our principles for particular enemies is nothing but a badge of honor for the people we hate most. If the principle is one we believe in generally, then we shouldn’t let a bunch of cave dwellers make us give it up.

    There’s some amount of sleep deprivation that’s permitted in police interrogation. I don’t believe there’s any simulated suffocation and drowning permitted, and I consider it obvious that an America that didn’t have to resort to such methods would be a better America.

    — Consumatopia · May 5, 12:13 AM · #

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