Torture and Pacifism
Marc Thiessen at National Review:
Jonah is absolutely right that opposition to waterboarding is an honorable position — but it’s a little more like pacifism than opposition to the death penalty. As I explain in Courting Disaster, the evidence is overwhelming that waterboarding helped stop a number of terrorist attacks. Which means if you oppose waterboarding in all circumstances, it means you are willing to accept as the price another terrorist attack.
That does not mean we have to waterboard Abdulmutallab, or even use enhanced techniques on him. Use of those tactics should be rare, and reserved only for those who we are confident are withholding actionable intelligence on active threats.
Those who argue that we should not used enhanced techniques even on the KSM’s of the world are effectively arguing from a position of radical pacifism. They are opposed to coercion no matter what the cost in innocent lives. We should respect their opinion, they way we respect the right of conscientious objectors to abstain from military service. But that does not mean we put pacifists in charge of decisions on war and peace. Same should go for decisions when it comes to interrogation.
Even the most cursory reflection on history demonstrates how blinkered this argument is. Were the Americans who fought World War II but objected to torturing knowledgeable German and Japanese POWs therefore radical pacifists? Are decorated combat veterans from Afghanistan and Iraq suddenly transformed into pacifists when they raise objections to waterboarding?
It wasn’t so long ago that torture advocates insisted that it must be preserved as an option to prevent imminent attacks with weapons of mass destruction. Their ticking time bomb scenario was always unrealistic, and a flawed foundation for a legal regime, but somehow we’ve reached a far worse point in the debate where torture is deemed acceptable absent any imminent threat, or else opposing torture is deemed tantamount to pacifism, despite the obvious and incontrovertible fact that plenty of people who demonstrably aren’t pacifists oppose it.
UPDATE: Isaac Chotiner adds:
The only bright spot in the cases of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian who tried to blow up that Christmas Day flight, and the five men who went to Pakistan to receive terrorist training, was that members of the wannabe-terrorists’ families approached authorities because of their children’s behavior. As an ever-larger percentage of right-wing commentators demand that Abdulmutallab be water-boarded or worse, it does seem worth asking whether parents will offer their children up to law enforcement if they—the parents—believe their kids will be tortured.
Nor will captured terrorists say things like “there are more guys like me coming” if the result is always torture to find out more.
Here, Mr. Friedersdorf equates waterboarding with torture, and “closer to” with “equals,” apparently in the belief that no one can read.
— y81 · Jan 2, 11:59 PM · #
y81, I’m assuming that your “closer to” is referring to Thiessen’s “a little more like” since neither he nor Conor used that that phrase. Were that all Thiessen wrote you might have a point, however later in the post you’ll note the line “Those who argue that we should not used enhanced techniques even on the KSM’s of the world are effectively arguing from a position of radical pacifism.” This later, stronger wording could indeed be interpreted as “equals,” at least in my opinion.
As for your second point, it should be fairly obvious that Conor’s identification of waterboarding with torture is his political position and not merely a rhetorical trick. That’s only implied here, but he has stated it more explicitly before.
— Xelgaex · Jan 3, 01:26 AM · #
Y81,
Do you disagree that strapping someone to a board and simulating drowning in a way that terrifies them so thoroughly that they’ll say anything to make it stop is torture?
— Conor Friedersdorf · Jan 3, 01:34 AM · #
“As I explain in Courting Disaster, the evidence is overwhelming that waterboarding helped stop a number of terrorist attacks.”
I haven’t read Courting Disaster, but I don’t recall reading in any other sources about overwhelming evidence to this effect.
— cw · Jan 3, 07:59 AM · #
CW,
Yes, I thought the same thing but neglected to flag that passage.
— Conor Friedersdorf · Jan 3, 10:35 AM · #
“As I explain in Courting Disaster, the evidence is overwhelming that waterboarding helped stop a number of terrorist attacks.”
As I explain in Courting Disaster, the evidence is overwhelming that smashing the suspect’s testicles helped stop a number of terrorist attacks.
As I explain in Courting Disaster, the evidence is overwhelming that killing the suspect’s children helped stop a number of terrorist attacks.
The argument that this or that technique is okay because “it works” is morally disgusting.
It’s astonishing, isn’t it, that one of our two major political parties is openly, un-apologetically, pro-torture?
— Socrates · Jan 3, 06:33 PM · #
As a regular reader and writer on torture issues, I am unaware of this overwhelming evidence. If anyone has any links to his evidence outside of his book, please post them.
Steve
— steve · Jan 3, 08:58 PM · #
Well, imagine that there’s a ticking time bomb about to destroy Los Angeles, and you’ve got the guy who planted it in your station house, and…
The only argument torture supporters know how to make, have ever made, is the “ticking time bomb” argument. They’ve been able to convince themselves that the argument is irrefutable by purposefully ignoring all the refutations.
— Chet · Jan 3, 09:48 PM · #
Instead of radical pacifism, I would use radical anti-torture to describe those who would not use water-boarding to extract information in extreme, critical situations where information is needed quickly or the result would be many deaths. It’s realistic to prepare for these situations in war. The difficult decisions are to establish the limits of torture — clearly using torturous techniques includes water-boarding — the person is tortured with the sensation of drowning. This is not the same as smashing balls and killing family members. What needs to be decided is what techniques are allowable. Who would support the prohibition of water-boarding if their family was in danger and immediate information was needed? Most people would scream “Bash his balls!”
As a nation we need to clarify limits — a lot of this argument among opponents of torture is dancing around the reality of critical situations — of course we shouldn’t institutionalize torture, but should we use torture which doesn’t disfigure, maim or kill in critical situations to save lives? A hypothetical question — what if over a million lives were at stake? Is there ever a justification for torture? These are serious questions which must be answered before any guidelines make sense.
— mike farmer · Jan 3, 09:49 PM · #
Socrates,
Would that be the political party that argues that partial-birth abortion—the procedure in which a viable human fetus has a scissors jammed into the base of its skull to have its brains sucked out—is a constitutional right?
— Tim O'Rourke · Jan 3, 11:40 PM · #
Well, me, for one. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t do it, it just means I don’t think it should be legal. I’d kill the man who raped my child, but on the same principle I don’t think revenge killings should be legal. I’d do it knowing that I would probably go to jail for it. There should be powerful – powerful – disincentives to these acts to ensure that they’re countenanced only in extreme situations. But the minute you’ve provided a legal loophole for torture, or for murder, in come flooding all the people who claim that “to the best of their knowledge” the act was justified. We give the police considerable latitude to take lives, and what’s the result? Our endemic police murder problem. Why would torture be any different? (By all available evidence, it hasn’t been. See the Fouad al-Rabiah case, in which we tortured an innocent man to extract the “confession” necessary to justify his torture.)
Ah, yes. Tim shows up just in time to remind us that conservatives believe the dignity of and respect for life, which begins at conception and ends at birth.
— Chet · Jan 4, 12:55 AM · #
Thiessen’s philosophical gropings are clumsy, but they can easily be put on solid ground.
Radical pacifists say, “War is never worth it,” and mean it.
For most people, though, it is understood that there are, in fact, legitimate reasons why one should choose to wage war. It is further understood that these reasons are instrumental in nature; war may be inappropriate in a wide variety of circumstances, but actually necessary in others. Sometimes — rarely but conceivably — war is the least bad option in a realworld set of shitty options.
But not for the radical pacifists. They reject the legitimacy of any instrumental considerations. The act itself is intrinsically evil; it should never be done, no matter what.
In other words, radical pacifists are deontologists: either explicitly or by instinct, they reject pragmatic deliberations for war outright. For them, right is always prior to the good; and anybody who can’t see that — well, they’re usually thought to be nefarious or blinkered or both.
I’m sure you can see the parallels with Sullivan et al. Torture is intrinsically evil. End of story. It doesn’t matter what good can come of it; it doesn’t matter what evil may be avoided. No — instrumental arguments are out of place on this subject, because under no circumstances whatsoever is torture appropriate.
So to be charitable to Thiessen, it’s possible to read him as saying, the radical anti-torturers argue in ways that we consider, in other arenas, to be grossly naive, to be actually dangerous so long as we’re living in a dangerous world: precisely because survival is the greatest good, precisely because survival uber alles demands a pragmatic approach to the world and our options in it.
Now, it happens to be the case that pragmatism demands more than a narrow analysis of primary effects. Secondary, tertiary, and quaternary effects must be plugged in. We mustn’t just think about stopping a single attack and saving hundreds of lives, we must also weigh torture’s effects on reputation, legitimacy, cooperation; slippery slopes, adverse coalitions, broken windows; hatred, propaganda, distrust. These things also have an impact on our survival and prosperity, and they must be accounted for.
General rule of thumb, I should think: as the danger to national survival escalates, we should see the rebuttable presumption against torture weaken, and eventually fall if things get dire enough. That is, if you see national survival as a primary good. Some people do not.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Jan 4, 12:58 AM · #
Conor, my comment addresses your post as well. You are right in one respect: it is certainly consistent to be pro-war and against the mistreatment of detainees; people do in fact inhabit this mindspace; it would indeed be absurd if Thiessen were arguing otherwise.
I just don’t read him that way, though. I think he’s saying, albeit clumsily, what I wrote above.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Jan 4, 01:16 AM · #
Torture is itself an escalating danger to national survival, not a bulwark against it. No nation has ever tortured itself to peace, prosperity, victory, or safety.
— Chet · Jan 4, 01:44 AM · #
Chet, I agree. Right now at least, torture makes things worse, not better. However, it’s possible to conceive of circumstances and scenarios where this would not be the case.
And I’m glad you agree that the debate should be a pragmatic one, rather than a series of conclusory statements about intrinsic evil and whatnot.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Jan 4, 02:25 AM · #
I feel like we can have the debate on both those sets of terms. Torture is intrinsically evil. Can intrinsically evil actions be warranted, because they prevent a greater evil? Sure, but that doesn’t mean that we ignore that an evil act was committed. My ideal world is a world where torturers torture as a sacrifice, because they know what awful consequences they’re about to bring down on themselves.
Surely someone for whom averting the deaths of millions of residents is not worth, say, five years’ imprisonment isn’t the sort of person we can trust to be our nation’s torturer. Nobody has trouble with the moral calculus when all the consequences are going to land on someone else.
— Chet · Jan 4, 03:33 AM · #
Nothing is intrinsically evil. Or good or valuable or right or wrong. Disorienting, but true as far as we know.
I’m not sure what my ideal world is, to tell you the truth. Probably one where I win and never die (against all odds). Or maybe one where my tombstone declares that I died saving my family from drowning.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Jan 4, 05:22 AM · #
I think that Thiessen is saying that those who oppose waterboarding in all cases are effectively willing to let their families die. Radical pacifists do the same thing. I agree with Conor that it’s pretty difficult to make the case that those WWII folks who opposed torture were radical pacifists. However, if it comes down to someone dying because you are not willing to do what’s necessary, it’s effectively the same thing. Just sayin’,
Now new polls show that Cheney has won the argument with the American people. Waterboarding is probably a necessary evil. No one likes it. It probably prevented further attacks and mayhem. And Americans are OK with it.
— jd · Jan 4, 02:00 PM · #
“Now new polls show that Cheney has won the argument with the American people.”
Just like Clinton won the whole impeachment argument with the American people. Both “victories” are based on folks not giving a crap about anything as long as they think it doesn’t directly affect them in the present. That’s not exactly a great way for any society to make decisions.
Mike
— MBunge · Jan 4, 04:38 PM · #
“I think that Thiessen is saying that those who oppose waterboarding in all cases are effectively willing to let their families die.”
Isn’t that what civilization is supposed to be all about? Isn’t the creation of moral and ethical standards that go beyond what benefits me and mine the whole principle that allows human beings to rise above barbarism?
Degenerates like Thiessen are playing aroud with the dark heart of Man like children playing with matches in a room full of gasoline-soaked hay bales.
Mike
— MBunge · Jan 4, 04:43 PM · #
Well, Rasmussen polls. So, not really, in other words.
— Chet · Jan 4, 05:01 PM · #
Isn’t the creation of moral and ethical standards that go beyond what benefits me and mine the whole principle that allows human beings to rise above barbarism?
I’d say it another way, that a sophisticated analysis of what benefits me and mine is what allows one to rationally elect certain moral and ethical standards. What benefits me and mind still comes first, now and for always.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Jan 4, 06:46 PM · #
“What benefits me and mind still comes first, now and for always.”
Fortunately for you, most of the people in this world who would benefit from your death don’t feel the same way.
Mike
— MBunge · Jan 4, 06:49 PM · #
Luckily for me, not many people would benefit from my death. And if they would so benefit, I’d benefit from theirs as well.
What comes first for you? Liberté, égalité, fraternité? The Idea of the Good? Gaia? Jesus? Seriously, what?
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Jan 4, 07:34 PM · #
I bet I know: Right and Wrong, and Justice. Or maybe Hope and Change and Progress. Am I right, Bunge?
Me, when I say the words “I am the way, the truth and the light,” I say them in front of a mirror as my mantra.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Jan 4, 07:56 PM · #
“What comes first for you? Liberté, égalité, fraternité? The Idea of the Good? Gaia? Jesus? Seriously, what?”
Here’s a tip. If you want to come off as genuinely confident in your beliefs, don’t throw a hissy fit when someone points out an obvious criticism.
You’ve described yourself as a barbarian. You may be an intelligent, educated and even cultured barbarian, but so were a great many Nazis and Communists of the 20th century. If you don’t understand your own beliefs and their implications, that’s not my problem.
Mike
— MBunge · Jan 4, 08:21 PM · #
Of course, once again, Conor Friedersdorf is fretting over something that is not really that important. THREE people were waterboarded and Conor and Andrew and countless others on the other side obsess about it. (At least Conor isn’t a Trig birther like Andrew). Meanwhile, the community-organizer in chief Barack Obama dismantles the United States as we know it. Do you have any sense of proportionality, Conor?
— jd · Jan 4, 09:12 PM · #
In fact, more than a hundred people were tortured to death in US custody, according to a DoJ investigation. Over 40 people are known to have been waterboarded, several of whom were not in any way implicated in terror except by anonymous phone tips.
Better trolling, please. Don’t you get tired of being made to look like a total idiot, jd? Amazing.
— Chet · Jan 4, 09:46 PM · #
You are a complete asshole, Chet. I don’t respond to you anymore because you are not only rude, you are also a liar. You never back up anything you say, even when you are asked to. You won’t acknowledge what you’ve said even when it’s been pointed out to you 12 inches above your last post. Dr. Manzi has said he will not respond to you anymore. It appears that Conor doesn’t respond to you anymore. Sanjay has asked you to back up your facts with links, as I have, and you simply say that “everyone knows it’s true”. If you were at a cocktail party, you would be standing alone holding your drink wondering where everybody went. But since you’re blogging, you’re not aware that everyone has left the room.
Maybe you’d like to back up your ridiculous claims of all these deaths with a link that goes somewhere besides the Huffington Post or Media Matters. Maybe you’d like to try writing a post without insulting people, you complete and utter asshole.
I’ve explained it to you before, but you don’t get it. Allow me to explain again: Shut up!!
— jd · Jan 4, 09:59 PM · #
Hissy fit? I was just jiving, Bungissimo. Doing my thing, yo. No need for attribution error.
And oh baby do I understand the implications of my beliefs. In fact, I happen to be the world’s leading expert on the matter. Seriously: on that subject I’m the priviest person in the world, have access to all the secret files and shit.
But now you have me curious. If I say pretty please, will you tell me what your Numero Uno is, since it’s not ‘me and mine’? Seriously — what’s your most important thing in the world? (You have pondered this, yes?)
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Jan 4, 10:15 PM · #
Oh, and ooga ooga. Me eat now.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Jan 4, 10:17 PM · #
Okay, this is too much, are JD and Chet really deadpan characters made up by CW or Consumatopia as an elaborate satire just now coming to fruition as comment threads devolve into them battling one another? If not I am seriously considering just disabling comments on my posts.
— Conor Friedersdorf · Jan 4, 10:50 PM · #
I have in the past, but I’m happy to do so again: Here’s a report by an international human rights organization on more than a dozen detainee homicides. This is the DoJ’s official report in several parts. Here are five deaths by ‘interrogation’ reported from Pentagon documents by the Denver Post. Here, the Guardian reports on 2 men beaten to death during interrogations. All because of techniques that produced no useful intelligence.
You’re a troll, jd, and not even a very effective one. Manzi and Conor are free to do as they see fit; you apparently missed the exchange I had with Conor in one of his recent threads. He’s hardly ignoring me. As for Sanjay – huh, where’d he get off to? Haven’t seen him around much since he ran off with his tail between his legs. Nobody thought he was the one of us who knew what he was talking about, anyway. Funny, never hear anything from Schwenkler, either, not since his embarrassing rout in his own thread this summer. And, of course, the ACORN stuff Conor hyped for months has turned out to be an all but complete fabrication. If I’m so stupid, why am I so often right?
No, troll. Not when it’s this much fun – and this effortless – to show you out as a sniveling child.
— Chet · Jan 4, 10:51 PM · #
Why not simply ban JD? Unlike myself he never has anything of any sense to add.
— Chet · Jan 4, 10:52 PM · #
jd == pwned
— D · Jan 5, 04:08 AM · #
Only in the horrible place that is the mind of Chet.
— jd · Jan 5, 04:53 AM · #
“Okay, this is too much, are JD and Chet really deadpan characters made up by CW or Consumatopia as an elaborate satire just now coming to fruition as comment threads devolve into them battling one another?”
I claim JD. Cosmo is Chet.
Actually, I don’t have the energy for it anymore. I would like to point something out though, Connor. You started addressing issues that attracted the rightwing partisan crazies. Your posts got linked to and they came here to express their outrage. Partisan crazies only want to express outrage, to yell and bust stuff up. No matter what you say to them or what happens in the world they only continue to express outrage and thrash around (outrage is the entire basis for the teaparty movement, which is why I am actually slightly worried about this country when I never was before). That definitely changed the atmosphere here for the worst. TAS used to be very fun and congenial. I think what you posted about was worthwhile but it comes at a cost. I guess the lesson is, If you want to host a long-term civil discussion, then you have to be really careful who you invite.
— cw · Jan 5, 05:20 PM · #
Since fairness is the hallmark of all moonbat lefties, cw, can you find it in your expansive, compassionate (yet always dispassionate, no outrage allowed) heart to admit that it’s not just us right-wing partisan crazies who have been attracted here? Just sayin’. It’s only fair, right?
And speaking of civil discourse and dispassionate reasoning, Conor has aligned himself with a guy who has been obsessed with Sarah Palin’s Down Syndrome child and whether or not it was hers. Yet, somehow, we are the crazies.
I actually agree with Conor on the big issues much more than you, I’m sure. However, you come here because you like to help some conservatives beat up on other conservatives. How brave and intelligent you are.
— jd · Jan 5, 06:55 PM · #
jd,
There are way more rightwing crazies here (or were here since almost no one is here anymore) than leftwing crazies. I don’t know if I have ever seen a real leftist here. I don’t think so. And I don’t know if you could even recognize a genuine left-wing crazy. Freddie and Chet are pretty moderate.
And I agree Andrew Sulivan is an obsessive about certain personalities. He used to be (positively) obssesed with Bush. Then he was all obsessed with Hillary clinton. Now he’s obssessed with Palin. I actully think he’s right about most of what her writes about Palin, though I disagreed with with him on Bsuh and CLinton. But he has correctly identified Palin as 1. a fraud. 2. A symptom of a dangerous phenomenon. The baby stuff is less important, but is definitly eveidence of some kind of weirdness on her part.
And yes, Andrew sullivan is way less crazy than you are. You are crazy becasue you are reality-proof. Most of what you write here has no connection with reality. For instance you and others of your ilk talk about Obama as a radical leftist when anyone reading the paper could see how totally moderate he is. Look at his cabinet: Gates, Mankiwa, Summers? Look at Afganistan. You don’t seem to be rational. Rational people can correctly identify what is happening around them. With crazy people the inner-reality trumps the outer.
And I used to come here to mess around, make jokes, blather, argue, etc… Like at a cocktail party with people you know and like. I came here becasue I wanted to engage with rational people who had differnt political beliefs than me. I wouldn’t have much fun at the Daily Kos because I know alot what they are going to say. Not much engagement.
In closing, jd, you are a right-wing crazy (and obviously, a closeted homosexual). Deal with it.
— cw · Jan 5, 07:36 PM · #
Why do I only see cw’s 2:36 post when I’m previewing one of my own?
— Chet · Jan 5, 07:42 PM · #
God, you’re so smart cw. The way you look at things. I’m getting a tingle up my leg because I’m just so thankful that you’ve let me see the way things really are. Freddie’s a moderate and hell, so is Obama (Van Jones, Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, Anita Dunn, ACORN, Robert Creamer, Saul Alinsky). I mean it’s just so obvious by what you read in the paper that Obama’s a moderate. (Government Motors, Government banks, Government health care) Yes, I’m convinced now. Especially since cw has weighed in.
It’s just so pathetically typical for people like you that there are never any real left-wing crazies around. It’s just normal folks like you on one side and on the other side the right-wing crazies. Just like Pauline Kael who couldn’t figure out why she didn’t know a single person who voted for Nixon. Same as it ever was.
And, sure enough, just like the rest of your ilk, you can’t get through a post without calling me names. Bunches of names. Great. Just great.
— jd · Jan 5, 11:58 PM · #
It’s painful learning that you have been completely duped, but it’s something we all have to face at some point in our lives. So what’s the next step? I envision a two-pronged program.
Prong 1: re-education. There are camps for this, curtesy of the Obama administration. I’ve already informed my local community organizer and arrangements are underway. The agents should be knocking at your door sometime after midnight tonight. Or maybe tomorrow, or the next day. Or it could be next week or in a couple months or even years. You will never know when they come. That’s part of the program.
Prong 2: We’ve got to get you of that closet. Some gay friends of mine have offered to take you out for a night of cocktails and caberet, after which they will—gently, lovingly—introduce you the fabulous and glamourous world of gay sex. You will be sore for a couple of days after, but it will be the kind of sore that you will cherish and be proud of, each painful step a confimation that, yes, you are now, a man.
You have an exciting future ahead, my friend. A new life. Congratulations.
— cw · Jan 6, 01:08 AM · #
Oh shit, a list of names! Well, that settles it.
— Chet · Jan 6, 04:29 AM · #
CW, wie gehts? ¿Dónde has estado? Moi moi, meesa rather die here, than at the core.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Jan 6, 05:23 PM · #
KVS,
I have been sort of burned out. I still am, I think, notwithstanding today’s flash of blog energy.
— cw · Jan 6, 11:16 PM · #