Talking Over Torture
Jonah Goldberg poses thoughtful questions about the torture debate. I’d like to take a crack at answering and hopefully persuading him. He begins by saying that he would be happy if the United States never water-boarded anyone again. He goes on to say this:
But I still have big problem with how the “is it torture?” argument tends to dominate these debates. Torture is a taboo word, and for good reason. Like incest, bigotry or, in some circles, censorship, the word torture separates good from evil, right from wrong. Once we decide something is torture, we end the debate over what the right policy should be. The right policy is to never torture.
The debate ends, or should end, when we decide that something is torture partly because as a country, we’ve already had a debate about what the right policy is — elected officials went so far as to enact legislation that makes torture illegal, and to sign treaties prohibiting it. Unless I’ve missed something, advocates of waterboarding made no attempt to change these laws. They just assert that the executive branch has the power to water board, or else that a practice we’ve always considered torture before, that we’d call torture if it were done to our soldiers, and that other countries have long considered torture is actually something else.
That’s one reason why supporters of waterboarding reject the term torture, preferring “enhanced interrogation methods” or some such; because conceding that it’s torture is like surrendering. It’s also why opponents of waterboarding are so intent to win the argument that it is torture. I don’t doubt they believe it, but they also recognize that the taboo value of the term is their strongest weapon against the practice. They certainly aren’t going to win much ground trying to muster sympathy for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
I agree that the rhetorical fight Mr. Goldberg describes in this paragraph is part of what’s going on.
And so the discussion descends into a battle of semantics, dictionary entries and checklists. Joe Carter lists a bunch of definitions and if he persuades the reader that waterboarding fits the definitions, bada bing: he wins.
Since torture is illegal, I think it is appropriate that those who oppose it win when we decide that some practice is torture.
My problem with this taxonomical approach, as I’ve written before, is I think context and intentions matter. The Catholic Church — as Carter and Marc both know far, far better than I — has a theory of just war. That means war is sometimes justified, right? It also means it is sometimes evil and criminal. The question depends on the circumstances. Similarly, killing is sometimes murder and sometimes it is self-defense or (for some) lawful and justified execution.
No one has ever explained to my satisfaction why torture, or let’s say some kinds of torture, is objectively and in all ways worse than killing. Which would you rather happen to you? Would you rather be waterboarded or killed? Which would get you a stiffer criminal penalty, waterboarding someone or murdering them? Why do you think that is? Which do you think deserves the greater criminal penalty?
I’d rather be water-boarded than killed, but that hardly matters in the way that Mr. Goldberg seems to imagine — what his questions elide is that someone killed in battle during a just war is a threat to the morally justified side, whereas a terror suspect captured is already a prisoner. That is why the Catholic Church would never say that torturing him is moral. He is already under your control, and as an individual represents no threat to you. Surely Mr. Goldberg can understand the distinction. Imagine that we were raping prisoners, and an apologist for that practice said, “Well, just war theory tells us that we can kill these people on the battle filed, and I’d rather be raped than killed, so it follows that once they are in our prisons we’re justified in raping them.” Does that example help to clarify the problem with this reasoning?
It seems, going by Marc’s response, that CIA waterboarding is not quite the same as what they did during the Spanish inquisition. That’s good to know. But even if the two were more similar, Carter leaves out a hugely important difference. Waterboarding someone for punishment or to force them to renounce their faith and convert to Christianity is morally a very different thing than waterboarding someone to find out how to stop the next 9/11. It may be that the latter waterboarding is still wrong – that’s a real debate – but it surely must be less wrong than waterboarding for sport. A kid who kills dogs and cats for fun is a sadistic bastard. A vet who euthanizes dogs and cats when it’s necessary to ease their pain is something very different.
The question is whether the kind of water-boarding we’re doing is wrong. Even if we discovered a different kind of waterboarding that is more wrong, that is hardly relevant. It is also unclear to me that we can establish “our motivation” for water-boarding. Is it the intention of the actual CIA employee that matters? Or the intention of the president? or the average intention of American citizens who support the policy? Or what? (Of course, torture advocates are mostly willing to use the practice even absent evidence of an imminent 9/11 like attack, as calls to water board the underwear bomber demonstrates.)
Admittedly this is an extreme hypothetical, but if someone had information on where a nuclear bomb was under Washington DC — where I live and my family lives — and if some form of torture was the only way to save my life, my wife and daughter’s lives and the lives of a million other people and the social, political and economic security of my entire country, qualms about the ethics of torturing the guy who could abort the detonation if he revealed the location wouldn’t rate very high.
Opponents of torture/waterboarding hate these ticking time bomb scenarios not simply because they have no good response to them other than to wish them away as scare tactics and red herring fantasies. I suspect what they really don’t like about the ticking bomb scenario is that it undermines torture’s status as a taboo word. If torture is sometimes permissible, if torture is one of those things – like killing and war – that can be justified depending on the circumstances, then the opponents of waterboarding lose a very powerful rhetorical weapon and actually have explain why a specific human being in a specific situation should not be waterboarded. That’s much harder than simply invoking the abracadabra power of “torture.”
Whether ticking time bomb scenarios in fact weaken the taboo against torture is an open question. Let’s concede it for the sake of argument. What is more important is that logically it shouldn’t weaken the taboo. Mr. Goldberg invokes his family and the million DC residents he saved by torturing someone in a hypothetical because we wouldn’t blame him for having tortured. Again, this is less powerful an argument than Mr. Goldberg imagines.
If saving the life of his wife, daughter, and a million people, plus the entire infrastructure of the federal government, required Mr. Goldberg to rape a single innocent 9 year old girl, or to crush the testicles of a single innocent 6 year old boy, perhaps most people wouldn’t blame Mr. Goldberg for doing what he thought best in a harrowing moral dilemma, but even if everyone said that Mr. Goldberg made the right decision, it would hardly be a repudiation of taboos against child rape or testicle crushing. It wouldn’t made us think twice or qualify the statement every time we said “raping innocent children is wrong.” It would hardly mean that we should institutionalize child rape as something that is sometimes legal, because there is some hypothetical situation we can conjure where it might prevent a catastrophic terrorist attack.
Among the many problems with the ticking time bomb scenario is the fact that it is basically about what an individual should do in an awful circumstance, not what legal regime a country should adopt when weighing the treatment of prisoners. The United States not only should prohibit torture in the handling of detainees, it already has done so. Today’s torture advocates think that the law should state otherwise, but are unwilling to admit as much, so they construct Orwellian descriptions like “enhanced interrogation techniques” to describe water-boarding. The semantic debate about torture is their creation, and at bottom, it matters because if it’s proved that water-boarding is torture, they’ll have been proved to have broken the law.
Nor, apparently, the innocent people we’ve tortured, sometimes to death. They are, after all, funny looking people with funny sounding names.
— Chet · Jan 9, 02:38 AM · #
Beyond the question of whether the practice is torture, this piece shows that we have yet to grapple with another important point: hyphenization. Mr. Friedersdorf cites “waterboarding,” “water-boarding” and “water boarding.” If we as a society cannot agree on the proper spelling of our preferred torture practices, I submit that the terrorists have already won.
— krogerfoot · Jan 9, 03:56 AM · #
Yes, it’s not an argument of moral relativity, but a contextual argument. acting to save one’s family is an emotional reaction that overrides rationality/morality, and depending on the circumstances would likely be taken into account in a court of law. We can act immorally in certain situations that’s understood and forgiven in the context, but it’s still immoral. But when we have an enemy combatant in our custody, policies and procedures should be rational and moral. We have no way of knowing why the person is fighting, for one thing, but whatever reason doesn’t render him/her non-human — so, we don’t spit on him, don’t beat him for fun, don’t play russian roulette with him to win a bet, don’t starve him, don’t use him as a playtoy for sadistic amusement, we don’t torture — if water-boarding has been determined to be torture, then there’s no justification.
The only explanation could be the context of 9/11 and not knowing how large and imminent the threat was at the time — it was a stressful, emotional time.
— mike farmer · Jan 9, 04:11 AM · #
Conor, I think you’re somewhat missing Goldberg’s point, at least regarding the terminological fight. Something similar happens with the debate over abortion and the term “person” — the battle is waged over the meaning and semantic domain of an imprecise word rather than the morality of a given practive, and so it distracts people from digging a little deeper to try to examine and question their beliefs.
In other words, rather than arguing about what is or isn’t torture, it would be more helpful to discuss how one decides which sorts of practices are and are not “rational and moral”, as mike farmer puts it. In the same way, a more useful abortion discussion would revolve around elucidating why we do and should privilege human life over animal life and then determining to what extent a fetus at a given stage of development meets those criteria.
— kenB · Jan 9, 04:25 AM · #
Jonah’s parsing of the parsing is the kind of thing he normally excoriats on the left. The one and only reason he truly has to defend torture is… his guy did it. If it had never happened before, and Obama had started it, well, his book Liberal Fascism might actually have a point.
— Derek Scruggs · Jan 9, 05:31 AM · #
kenB,
Part of my point is that we’ve already decided, as a country of laws, that torture is a practice that is verboten. In that context, determining what is torture and what isn’t means determining what acts are legal and what acts are illegal. That seems pretty useful to me.
On the other hand, if the argument is about what the law should be, well, you have a point.
— Conor Friedersdorf · Jan 9, 10:05 AM · #
Conor,
I think it’s interesting that Goldberg loves to take on his critics, but I’ve never seen him respond to anything you’ve written about him.
(Or has he responded and I’ve just missed it?)
Why do you think that is?
(I am willing to bet that Goldberg almost always knows when something’s been written about him…)
— Socrates · Jan 9, 03:03 PM · #
determining what is torture and what isn’t means determining what acts are legal and what acts are illegal
Well, that means that anything that isn’t torture is permissible, which actually raises the bar for preventing detainee abuse — regardless of any dictionary meaning, relatively few Americans would be willing to consider, say, severely beating a prisoner to be torture, because we tend to think of “torture” as thumbscrews, iron maidens, and other sorts of exotic ways of maximizing pain; yet I presume that you would prefer to put severe beatings outside the pale as well. This, I think, is the problem with the rhetorical strategy of trying to identify a given practice with a certain emotively-laden term rather than arguing against it on the (de)merits.
— kenB · Jan 9, 04:38 PM · #
You are missing a significant part of what Jonah is arguing. We call things like the gauging of eyeballs torture. We also call water-boarding torture. The problem is that water-boarding and eyeball gauging don’t seem like moral equivalents. So to use one word to describe both is unfair to those who are sympathetic to the use of water-boarding. In this sense, it seems you are overstating the cultural consensus around water-boarding as torture. It’s not 100% clear to me, for example, that water-boarding is “torture” in the same way that attaching a car battery to someone’s genitals is torture. It may be torture-like or torture-ish, but I do have a hard time conjuring up more violent images and then equating them semantically with water-boarding.
— Lasorda · Jan 9, 04:42 PM · #
kenB, I disagree with your assertion. More than a few Americans recognize torture to include the severe beating of a suspect in custody. But let’s assume for moment that you’re right, that most people don’t know torture unless it’s accompanied by medieval instruments. It still doesn’t make it permissible. I doubt the average American realizes he can be guilty of simple assault— by a legal definition— without actually landing a blow. Were he to commit simple assault, however, his ignorance would not absolve him.
What’s legal is what matters here, not commonly held assumptions. Mistreating someone who is a captive— who is at your mercy— is torture.
I can understand a debate about what qualifies as mistreatment when it comes to say, exposure to loud noises or verbal hostility. But how can people like Lasorda/Goldberg quibble about water torture when the United States prosecuted Japanese soldiers for using this very treatment on our own soldiers? Those prosecutions set a clear precedent for classifying water boarding as what it is, torture. To call it “torture-ish” is like calling the invasion of a private home by prying a lock rather than knocking the door down merely “breaking-and-entering-ish.”
(By the way, I agree with Lasorda that there’s no moral equivalent between water torture and eyeball “gauging.” Granted, measuring his eyeball seems like a bizarre way to make a guy talk, but it’s probably harmless.)
— turnbuckle · Jan 9, 05:35 PM · #
The comparison with the Spanish Inquisition would have been considered most puzzling from the inquisitors’ perspective. After all, what the Bush administration did was merely to save some American bodies from being blown up, the inquisitors saw themselves as extracting confessions which would save souls from eternal damnation.
— Lev · Jan 9, 07:11 PM · #
I don’t know about that. I think many in the Bush administration (and their torture apologists at National Review and The Weekly Standard) are convinced they were doing the Lord’s work.
— Socrates · Jan 9, 10:22 PM · #
Waterboarding belongs at the borderline between the classes of activities known as interrogation and torture. Why I think so will become apparent in a moment. Putting aside the impossibly vague legal “claim” Conor makes, so that for the moment we ignore the thickets surrounding U.S. law on this, intl. law and its U.S. applicability on this, and the special U.S. law surrounding executive power on this, let’s just concede that waterboarding is at the very least on the borderline, or slightly within the large class of things that are torture.
Now morally speaking, you must make further distinctions within the class of torture itself. If you refuse to distinguish b/t different grades of torture, then you are saying What Our Select Intelligence Guys Did (to 3 or so Al Quaida) = What the French Armed Forces slid into on a widespread scale in Algeria = What the Soviets/Nazis/Baathists did systematically. Anyone who knows those cases knows that it would be an OBSCENE moral equivalence to equate what our guys did to what the French did, or to go a horrid step further, to equate what either did with the last class did. Shockingly and grotesquely obscene.
1) involves waterboarding—it involves disorientation, discomfort, and deception in interrogations; the key deception is that worse could happen to you if you don’t talk. 2) involves what Lasorda describes—shocks administered, beatings, etc., enough pain and harm to get what a lawful govt. needs, but no more than that—but note that it did result in quite a few plainly documented deaths and instances of sadistic behavior in the French case. 3) involves the entire kit and kaboodle—it NEEDS its guys to be monsters.
To be opposed to 1) categorically, and to demand legal definition of this categorical prohibition, does not and cannot simply involve the difficulty of the ticking-time-bomb scenario. Lawyers must push any legally-defined prohibition to the limits of its applicability. Thus, a categorical prohibition would logically demand the removal of every sort of a) discomfort caused by less-than-typical treatment in feeding, lodging, processing, etc., b) the removal of pyschological distresses beyond those associated with the fact of detainment, c) the removal of deception in interrogation, especially deceptions that cause pyschological distress, and especially, d) the removal of deceptions that cause one to fear death or bodily harm. EVERY PROSECUTOR OR INTERROGATOR WHO HAS BLUFFED A SUSPECT INTO ERRANTLY BELIEVING HE WILL RECIEVE A DEATH SENTENCE IF DOES NOT COOPERATE HAS DONE THE LAST SORT OF DECEPTION. And that is what waterboarding is: a physically administered non-harmful (involving pain-like responses but strictly speaking non-painful) deception that you are going to drown/die. And, so if we define torture in the manner that categorically forbids waterboarding, this is where the logic takes us.
Obviously, we can we set up the law to say something inconsistent, i.e., “no waterboarding,” but “yes to deceptive interrogation that makes a prisoner fear a death sentence down the line.” I’m guessing Conor would want the law set up that way.
I am for policies that limit the administration of anything even on the debateable borderline of torture to very tightly controlled and limited channels that proceed directly to the President’s responsibility. Anyone who’s seen the film Brazil knows that grave psycholocial damage can be done, by entirely non-painful and non-physically-harming ways. Various aspects of our advancing brain-sciences can only increase the possibilities. We do not want to define things in a way that encourages a U.S. regularization of and science of coercive interrogation to develop. But we still need some form of coercive and deception-employing interrogations in very special cases. Perhaps, we need one for the panty-bomber right now. I do not know, but I know that Obama administration, enacting policies that Conor seems to approve of, has made it impossible for our agents to even consider whether we need one.
So aughtie, this discussion. I repeat myself, and so does everyone. But perhaps now that it is a bit plainer that every President faces versions of the tough moral dilemmas without easy answers that Bush did, my repetition will get through to someone.
— Carl Scott · Jan 9, 11:13 PM · #
Yes, but not in the way you think. “Our guys” are known to have tortured more than a hundred people to death. That’s the conduct you’re defending? Obscene, indeed.
Well, they can lie and deceive, just like your hypothetical prosecutors do. They just can’t torture, and waterboarding is torture.
— Chet · Jan 10, 01:59 AM · #
Also, I would not agree with Carl Scott-s definition of non-harmful. What kind of harm are we speaking of? If a person subjected to waterboarding, especially if this is done repeatedly, develops psychological traumas and various PTSD symptoms, could we really say that it was not harmful, just because it did not involve physical harm and/or lasting physical consequences?
Now, what if that person turns out to be innocent, but we’ve already waterboarded them into insanity and have ruined their lives forever? What if every time they close their eyes they return to those moments?
Things are not so simple.
— Marko · Jan 10, 06:06 AM · #
“Surely Mr. Goldberg can understand the distinction.”
No, he can’t. Jonah Goldberg has demonstrated over and over and over again that he is neither particularly bright nor that well educated.
Mike
— MBunge · Jan 11, 03:01 AM · #
People like Carl Scott are depressing. He writes as though he’s proposing or advancing some argument that hasn’t already been examined and found wanting. But he is. Human societies of one form or another have been thinking and debating the subject of torture for millennia and over that time, certain conclusion were settled on.
1. Torture is anathema to the values of a decent civilization.
2. Torture isn’t all that effective at extracting information.
3. There are certain situations were the use of torture could conceivably be both practical and moral, but such situations are so incredibly improbable that their existence does not invalidate 1 or 2.
4. Something is considered torture if you would consider it torture when it was done to you, to a loved one or to one of your own captured by the enemy.
Finally, if Mr. Scott has subjected himself to waterboarding in any circumstance, even in extremely friendly and controlled conditions, he’s entitled to describe it as involving “disorientation, discomfort and deception”. If that’s not the case…well, I can’t actually say what Mr. Scott is without running afoul of Godwin’s Law.
Mike
— MBunge · Jan 11, 03:12 AM · #
Chet,
This is a serious question — could you provide the link to your source that “our guys” tortured 100 innocent prisoners to death and that these sessions of torture (and the resulting deaths) were sanctioned and approved by the USG?
— Arminius · Jan 11, 06:02 PM · #
I have already in this thread. It’s down towards the bottom.
— Chet · Jan 11, 06:17 PM · #
Marko, agreed. Psychological harm is real harm, even if harder to measure. It is undesirable that we have to employ secret agents and interrogators that decieve others, that sometimes trick them or otherwise convince them into betraying their friends and belief-system, but unfortunately, we have to. It is undesirable that our elected officials concluded they had to use an activity on the borderline of interrogation and torture in three instances, but that is what they concluded. The same general thing can be said about Obama’s drone attacks, which make no mistake, have killed and will kill innocents, and which do open opportunities for abuse. Vigilance against the agents and agencies that we allow to do these morally dicey things must be maintained, but the systematic distrust about them cultivated mostly on the far left, and which has come into massive play on this issue, is ruinous.
The new law of Jan 2009 is that our agents cannot threaten “imminent” death, which I presume was language inserted largely to prevent waterboarding. But as everyone knows, they can still threaten later death sentences. So. The psychological harm caused by the deceptive threat of non-imminent death is not Torture, not monstrous, not evil. The psychological harm caused by the deceptive threat of imminent death is Torture, is monstrous, is evil, and all defenders of its use, even very sparingly so in the most remarkable of circumstances, deserve moral castigation. That is the massive moral advance, the fundamental gap between what is torture and what is not, that all this moral grandstanding which has given our enemies minute knowledge of our interrogation procedures has resulted in.
Notice how Mike Bunge does not address any of my arguments—he just slams me with the authority of a deceptively-described consensus.
And notice how Conor’s arguments depend so much upon semantics. Words, and the definitions of words, employed as weapons, as if they were tempered steel swords with the sharpest of edges, or as if they were distinct atoms each having an unquestionably unified meaning. T = T = T. The debate has not led him to subtler notions of the T-word, no, it has led him to basically say, as I once heard in a song, “It’s a legal matter, from now on.”
— Carl Scott · Jan 11, 08:10 PM · #
“Notice how Mike Bunge does not address any of my arguments—he just slams me with the authority of a deceptively-described consensus.”
All of your arguments have already been addressed. They’ve been addressed over and over and over and over. If someone keeps questioning that 2+2=4, I’m not going to keep explaining pre-kindergarten math to them.
And what the heck is a “deceptively-described consensus”? Is that another way of stating “What you say is true, but I don’t care because the thought of anonymous brown people being tortured still gives me a boner?”
Mike
— MBunge · Jan 11, 08:37 PM · #
<p><i>Whether ticking time bomb scenarios in fact weaken the taboo against torture is an open question. Let’s concede it for the sake of argument.</i></p>
Fair enough, but I would rather not concede it for the sake of argument.
It has never once happened in all of world history. One would think that a conservative— that is, a person supposedly constitutionally skeptical of arguments that “today is different from all of world history,” and skeptical of government power— would resist giving the government the power to torture given that fact.
Now, even if that scenario does arise in the future or in science fiction, the individual who decides to torture a suspect in order to save dozens (or hundreds, or thousands) would have to take responsibility for his act, and depend on (1) a presidential pardon, (2) prosecutorial discretion, and/or (3) jury nullification (per Antonin Scalia, who said “Is any jury going to convict Jack Bauer? I don’t think so.”)
It is true that Hollywood screenwriters have created not-real scenarios wherein viewers are sympathetic towards Jack Bauer’s torturing of suspects. Perhaps they could conjure up a scenario in which America would be destroyed by an al Qaeda-Venezuela-ACORN superalliance unless we raised the top federal tax rate to 41 percent. That probably wouldn’t garner much support for that legislation from conservatives. Nor should the hypothetical “ticking time bomb” lead us to abandon the past few centuries of Western moral thought on the issue.
— Elvis Elvisberg · Jan 11, 09:36 PM · #
Chet,
Thanks for the links. I started reading the first report and it opens by saying the following: “Since August 2002, nearly 100 detainees have died
while in the hands of U.S. officials in the global “war on
terror” [I like the scare quotes]. The report was written in early 2006, so maybe there have been additional deaths, but this is still very different from saying that 100 innocent prisoners were tortured and killed based on explicit USG policy. In addition, I’d like to know what the military has said in response to this report and any other investigations of its actions — did the authors of these reports get all their facts correct, how did they establish a causal chain of command, etc. There is a big difference between saying some prisoners captured by the U.S. were tortured and killed even though this was NOT official U.S. policy and saying we deliberately set out a policy to torture and kill all the prisoners we captured during the war on terror.
What annoys me about the Andrew Sullivans and Joe Carters of the world is that they consistently refuses to make such distinctions and insist on moral preening of the worst kind whenever the topic of torture comes up. And for the record I agree with Sullivan and Carter that waterboarding is torture and morally illicit.
Conor,
A much more difficult moral question that hardly anyone who talks about torture ever seems to consider (a sort of real-life ticking time bomb scenario) is whether or not the order to shoot down Flight 93 was morally licit? In the end, thanks to the heroic passengers on that flight, the USG didn’t need to shoot the plane down, but if you were President that day Conor, would you pull the proverbial trigger? There is a great discussion of this subject here:
http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/008659.html
— Arminius · Jan 11, 11:06 PM · #
“What annoys me about the Andrew Sullivans and Joe Carters of the world is that they consistently refuses to make such distinctions and insist on moral preening of the worst kind whenever the topic of torture comes up.”
The problem with making distinctions about torture is that it only serves to excuse or legitimize the acts of torture about which the distinctions are being made. What exactly is the useful difference between the U.S. utilizing a policy of torture that inadvertantly results in the death of 100 prisoners and 100 prisoners being deliberately tortured to death? God may care about the difference, but I don’t see how Man thinking about it does anyone any good.
Mike
— MBunge · Jan 11, 11:16 PM · #
Mike,
The difference is we didn’t use a “policy of torture that inadvertantly results in the death of 100 prisoners.” We had multiple policies for difference types of detainees and it is in the context of each one of those policies (and the deaths that followed) that we need to direct our analysis to make sure that prisoners (innocent or guilty) are not harmed, much less killed. The fact that x% of prisoners die every year in the U.S. penal system does not mean the USG has a policy for deliberately killing those prisoners and the distinction DOES matter when we want to think about how to reform the U.S. penal system (or systems, as there is the federal system, multiple state systems, and county jails).
— Arminius · Jan 11, 11:25 PM · #
If you continue you’ll see that those were interrogation-related deaths that were classified as “homicides.” In other words, these individuals – like Asad Abdul Kareem Abdul Jaleel – were tortured to death.
I guess I don’t understand. We know that torture of detainees – under the rubric “enhanced interrogation” – had been the policy of the US government. We have a substantial number of memos specifically authorizing those techniques, many drafted and signed by Dick Cheney himself. Alberto Gonzales testified that the use of those techniques were the official policy of the United States.
To come back and say “oh, well, maybe it was just a few bad apples” is ludicrous. It’s the mark of someone who is not interested in honest debate on this subject.
But there is no distinction to be made. There were no “bad apples.” It’s simply a matter of objective, well-known fact that torture of detainees – described by the Nazi-coined term “enhanced interrogation” – was the official policy of the US government in regards to detainees in the War on Terror and the Iraq war.
I don’t know what “moral preening” is supposed to mean.
— Chet · Jan 12, 12:04 AM · #
I still don’t understand your argument. Detainees were not tortured by accident – their torture was the deliberate and explicit policy of the US government in regards to treatment of detainees in the war on terror. At least 100 individuals died as a result of such torture.
If you deliberately torture someone, and they die, their death is not an accident, it’s a homicide. Even if you intended that they remain alive. They died while you committed a felony against them; that’s a homicide. There’s no such thing as “accidentally” torturing someone to death. That’s an impossibility.
— Chet · Jan 12, 12:07 AM · #
Goldberg is absolutely wrong to argue that there are no good responses to the ticking time bomb scenario. Perhaps he means that he chooses to pretend like nobody is making them. This makes sense, since the neocon crowd is quite adept at plugging their ears and yelling their mantras (not to mention running their own cable news networks) in order to drown out any opposing viewpoints. In fact, Friedersdorf’s analysis, as well as the comments of Mike Farmer’s above, provide two excellent responses to the ticking time bomb scenario.
I humbly offer a third: the thought experiment is flawed from its inception. Consider what it asks us to believe: that authorities don’t just suspect an imminent large-scale attack on innocent civilians (their native countrymen, of course), but know that one is imminent. Furthermore, they know that a given suspect has information that will save lives, and they know that the only way to obtain the information necessary to prevent the attack would be to torture said subject, or enhancingly interrogate them, or perform conscious-shocking procedure X, or whatever other label Goldberg would like to hide behind.
But how is it that authorities have such certainty in these facts, and yet cannot not gather the intel as to where the attack is, or how to prevent it, without resorting to extreme measures? As with most amateurish thought experiments (and many professional ones), the major flaw lies not in the conclusions but in the assumptions.
The danger of accepting, for the sake of argument, the thought experiment is that its conclusions can sound perfectly reasonable. If we know that visiting unspeakable horrors upon a suspect will save the lives of thousands or millions of innocent people, then we are hard-pressed to explain why we should sacrifice all those lives for a moral principle.
Of course, we never know these things, and our leaders never know them either, no matter how many national security briefings they are privy to. Our justice system recognizes our fallibility: this is why a detective’s hunch is not enough to secure a conviction (except perhaps in Jack Bauer’s world).
Friedersdorf’s statements above reveal (inadvertently or not) the scenario’s latent absurdity: we as justified in believing that raping a 9 year old girl is necessary to save the world as we are believing that water-boarding an adult terrorist suspect will. Admittedly, the latter case is more likely than the former, but the ticking time-bomb is not a statistical argument: the scenario leaves little room for statistical analysis before the big kaboom, and the correct statistical choice is probably to doubt the certainty of the authorities’ information anyway.
Perhaps more depressingly, Goldberg reveals the hand that the neo- and social-conservatives alike have taken up these days. Their arguments inevitably come down to semantics and/or appearances. According to the right’s rules, if Goldberg can just convince the audience that water-boarding is not torture, then he wins the argument. (Nevermind that Goldberg does a poor job of arguing this with a non-sequitor and invalid thought experiment, in which he tries to actually justify torture by its very label.)
I find this to be an alarming development in conservatism in general: a post-modernist casting of politics in which truth and meaning can be redefined via rhetoric. The right has adopted the ideology of the far left from 20 years ago, making strange bedfellows with the convoluted ideas of French intellectuals, neo-Marxists and radical feminists (to name a few).
The stodgy old conservatives used to appeal to pillars of absolute truths and moral convictions. Capitalism was right because it derived from correct conclusions about human nature. Moral laws were right because they were given to us by God, or derivable from natural law, etc. The left was a bastion of relativism: multiculturalists who held nothing sacred but demanded political correctness from all, folks who want to redefine the meanings of our founding documents and impose artificial systems of control in order to make up for the failings of human nature.
How far we have come when the left makes appeals to traditional pillars of moral decency and the right argues that the meanings of words like “torture”, and the techniques which have long been included in such meanings, are fluid and at the whim of circumstance and/or the diktat of The Leader. After decades of conservative resistance to the threat of Soviet totalitarianism, Jonah Goldberg (along with others, such as the father-daughter Cheney duo) could today be mistaken for operatives of Minitrue, busily churning away at the next edition of the Newspeak dictionary. One wonders in which volume these loyal party officials will do away with the word “torture” altogether.
What Goldberg misses but we all see is that the debate over water-boarding and other “enhanced interrogation techniques” is not just a legalistic debate over the semantics of “torture”. The fact is that we among the human population who still have consciences recognize that pain-inducing false executions like water-boarding, and other techniques that debase and psychologically scar their victims are attacks upon humanity itself, and no matter what they are called, are to be condemned and punished.
That there are circumstances, contrived or otherwise, where many people might forgive the perpetrator due to emotional motives does not, as Mike Farmer points out, allow for the acceptability of such behavior in general. Juries understand that extenuating circumstances can exist for otherwise unacceptable behavior. Our justice system accounts for this, both in civilian and military courts. There is no reason to leave the torture debate up to the rhetoric of political hacks on Sunday morning talk shows when a rich history of jurisprudence avails itself to us. We don’t turn to Jonah Goldberg to define what is murder and what is justifiable homicide, and neither should we leave it to him and his ilk to define what is torture.
— Matunos · Jan 12, 08:36 AM · #
Chet,
Moral preening is the effort to sound well-informed about complicated ethical matters and then writing as if anyone who disagrees with you or doesn’t share all your assumptions is somehow ethically challenged.
Which describes our conversation pretty well in this combox so far. For example, I do not agree with your simplistic assumption that ALL enhanced interrogation techniques should be classified as torture. Furthermore, I’d want to know a lot more about every single one of those 100 deaths (if that number is accurate — you are sending me to sources with axes to grind without sending me to any sources that critique the ACLU, etc.) before I would be ready to condemn the specific techniques authorized by the Bush Administration — in other words, were the interrogations carried out according to policy? This is the key question related to the issue of “bad apples” and the answer to this question is not clear cut, so don’t tell me I’m not interested in an honest debate. Ironically, I think the clear-cut cases of torture are when we used waterboarding, and no one died from this technique.
— Arminius · Jan 12, 04:22 PM · #
There’s only one moral position on torture, and anyone who is arguing in favor of torture by definition is ethically challenged. What else could they possibly be? It would be like arguing in favor of rape and murder.
I’m not “classifying” anything, I’m telling you that’s what the term “enhanced interrogation” means – it means “torture.” That’s what it meant when it was coined by the SS during WWII as an official euphemism for torture. The two terms are complete synonyms. There’s no such thing as an “enhanced interrogation technique” that isn’t torture. If it’s not torture, it’s just a regular interrogation technique.
Oh, but you didn’t need any evidence at all to conclude, as you had before, that we only “waterboarded 3 high-value targets”? That the US hadn’t ever tortured anybody to death? Look, I’ve given you the direct DIJ reports. It’s in about 14 different parts – there’s no way you’ve read the entire thing yet. I’ve all but deluged you in posts, and it’s still not enough? Please. You’re in denial.
But we know it wasn’t “bad apples.” Remember? The memos? The testimony? We know that officials all the way up to Dick Cheney authorized these techniques. Is that a fact you’re prepared to simply ignore? Gosh, can’t imagine why anyone would consider you “ethically challenged” on this subject.
But not when we broke both of a detainee’s legs with a steel pipe? Not when we hurled detainees against a concrete wall, repeatedly? Not when we subjected them to insanity-inducing sleep deprivation for a week at a time? Not when we subjected detainees to electric shocks and Palestinian hanging? People died from those techniques, but you don’t think those are “clear-cut” cases of torture?
— Chet · Jan 12, 05:50 PM · #
Chet,
First of all, there are in fact serious questions about what exactly constitutes torture and what does not — that is why all sorts of serious moral philosophers, theologians and scholars bother to discuss the isssue in the first place.
Second, there are obviously different interrogation techniques that would be appropriate in different situations. For you to be obtuse on this point is silly. For example, how we interrogate a criminal is different from how we interrogate an enemy combatant (wearing a uniform) is different from how we interrogate a terrorist.
Finally, I have another very simple question — point me to the specific Bush Administration policy document, DOJ memo, etc. that authorizes the USG to do one of the following:
1) break a detainees legs with a steel pipe;
2) throw a detainee against a concrete wall repeatedly;
3) deny a detainee sleep for a week without checking on the detainee’s health and mental stability;
4) apply electric shocks to a detainee;
5) use a Palestinian hanging on a detainee.
This should be a simple assignment since you are so familiar with all the Bush Administration documents — just a link and a note on which page I’ll find the authorized technique. Thanks.
— Arminius · Jan 12, 07:14 PM · #
“This should be a simple assignment since you are so familiar with all the Bush Administration documents — just a link and a note on which page I’ll find the authorized technique.”
Arminius, exactly what is your argument here? That the Bush Adminstration never authorized torture and this has all been nothing more than a few “bad apples”?
You said “we didn’t use a policy of torture that inadvertantly results in the death of 100 prisoners.” Then how the hell did those folks die and who is responsible for it?
Your insistence on distinctions seems to have nothing to do with truth or accuracy but only denying moral culpability.
Mike
— MBunge · Jan 12, 07:26 PM · #
Mike,
On the contrary, I think it is elementary that we need to make distinctions (and establish our facts) before we can assign blame and in fact hold those who committed crimes culpable.
As I have said before, I acknowledge that the Bush Administration did authorize waterboarding (I believe three prisoners, none of whom died) and I think they were wrong to do so as waterboarding is torture.
What I do deny is that the Bush Administration authorized the use of the kind of practices that did actually get prisoners killed. Instead I do in fact argue that those deaths are the results of bad execution of otherwise good Bush Administration policies (the bad apples theory). And those military or CIA personnel who committed these crimes should be prosecuted and punished. For more on my views, please see this older but excellent Heather MacDonald article on the subject:
http://www.city-journal.org/html/eon_01_27_05hm.html
Also, anything by Andy McCarthy is worth a read.
— Arminius · Jan 12, 08:50 PM · #
“What I do deny is that the Bush Administration authorized the use of the kind of practices that did actually get prisoners killed.”
Upon what is that denial based? Do you even know how those prisoners were killed and where they died?
No offense, but the argument that Bush Adminstration officials are not responsible for what happened to those prisoners unless they specifically wrote a memo which said “Torture that guy to death!” is kind of childish.
Mike
— MBunge · Jan 12, 09:25 PM · #
Mike,
Read the Heather MacDonald article and you’ll understand the basis for my denial. And attributing blame to the President and his advisors for every detainee death or abuse is also kind of childish. No offense taken — don’t forget what Christ says about children:
“A discussion arose among them as to which of them was the greatest. Jesus, who knew their thoughts, took a little child and placed it beside him, after which he said to them, “Whoever welcomes this little child on my account welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes him who sent me; for the least one among you is the greatest.” [Luke 9:46-47]
— Arminius · Jan 12, 11:15 PM · #
What the heck is that McDonald article supposed to prove? That she can selectively quote individual sentences from reports when she feels they support her position? I sure hope you’ve got more than that…or are you indulging in some willful ignorance on this matter?
By the way, The President is the Commander-in-Chief. That sort of makes him responsible for the actions of those under his command.
And again, you’re making distinctions to obfuscate and not to clarify. You say “The President only approved some kinds of torture! He didn’t approve the torture that actually killed people!” Even if that’s true, if the 1st kind of torture hadn’t been approved, if the mistreatment and abuse of prisoners in certain ways hadn’t been permitted and ordered, would the deadlier kind of abuse happened?
When you open Pandora’s Box, you’re responsible for EVERYTHING that comes out of it.
Mike
— MBunge · Jan 12, 11:26 PM · #
<i>When you open Pandora’s Box, you’re responsible for EVERYTHING that comes out of it.</i>
Well put. That is the problem here, that is why those who harp on the imaginary “ticking time bomb” scenario are so misguided. The regularization of torture results in torture. Sending the message that torture is acceptable results in torture. That’s why we banned torture. That’s why if the ticking time bomb scenario ever actually happens sometime on the planet Earth, the torturer will have to face a risk for his actions. Torture regimes cannot be contained.
What’s more, it puts our troops in an awful spot, and it doesn’t even get useful information. It’s about vengeance, not safety or justice, and it’s beneath us.
— Elvis Elvisberg · Jan 13, 12:34 AM · #
Why? Surely not because of the danger. Even in 2001, less people died in the single worst act of American terrorism in history than died in completely conventional motorcycle accidents. Several years in a row now, absolutely zero American citizens have died in terror-related incidents within the domestic United States.
The head of a drug cartel certainly represents several orders of magnitude more danger to Americans than even Osama bin Laden. Why not torture the corner drug pusher to locate his supplier? Why not waterboard the supplier to locate the capo? Why not apply shocks to the genitals of a few capos in order to find the boss?
The amazing thing is that hardly any techniques were specifically authorized in the memos, because they specifically authorized basically anything and everything. It was declared open season on detainees. The phrase “open season” actually appears in some of these memos. Commanders were advised to get “creative.”
You can hardly order commanders to devise new means of torture, and then step back when they do so and claim it was just a few “bad apples.”
Sigh, when are you going to start doing your own homework? You’ll find at least half of those techniques given specific legal cover by the Office of Legal Counsel, on the second page.
— Chet · Jan 13, 01:00 AM · #
Conor,
I would say strategic bombing in wartime counts as a “policy.” And we adopt such policies even though we have a “taboo” against killing innocent people, or doing things that are very likely to kill innocent people, as strategic bombing is very likely to do. We’re not “repudiating” the taboo, we’re just making what we believe to be a justified exception to it. And the same would apply to torture.
So I think this argument that it would be wrong to adopt a torture policy because we have a taboo against torture isn’t very consistent with how we actually behave in other contexts.
Also, you write “someone killed in battle during a just war is a threat to the morally justified side, whereas a terror suspect captured is already a prisoner.” But I would say that a prisoner who has information that we need to prevent a catastrophe and who refuses to provide that information is a threat just as an enemy soldier on a battlefield is a threat.
— Jerry · Jan 13, 05:29 AM · #
Then why not kill them?
— Chet · Jan 13, 04:30 PM · #
Chet,
Once again I appreciate the link. Although you continue to accuse me of not doing my homework, I did in fact go to the link and read the memo. Not one of the five specific items I listed above appear in that memo (although waterboarding does). So now I question your ability to answer a simple question.
Furthermore, the memo proves just what Heather MacDonald says it does in her article — that even when USG policy was designed especially for high-value targets (and once again, this memo went to the CIA and was designed for their use only — this was not policy for the average prisoner at Camp X-Ray or in Iraq) the policy is clearly written by civilized folks who want to exercise restraint. Otherwise you just throw someone against a concrete wall (not a flexible wall) and/or break their legs with a steel pipe and say ‘to hell with it, I don’t care about being civilized’.
Once again, since you make another outlandish claim about Bush Administration policy I ask that you please point me to the specific document that tells commanders detainees should be considered “open season” for any and every sadistic technique they can think of. You won’t send me that link because such a document doesn’t exist and if you go to MacDonald’s articles you’ll read of the specific techniques that were authorized.
Finally, your discussion of drug dealers and motorcycle accidents is just plain confused as you are mixing hundreds of discrete activities that make up the fabric of everyday life (i.e. dealing with crime and accidents) versus a single discrete activity that can have an instant enormous impact on thousands of lives directly and millions more indirectly. Again, how we deal with these separate types of activities is dependent on context.
— Arminius · Jan 13, 05:07 PM · #
“Walling”, Arminius, it’s right there on the second page, like I told you. Same with Palestinian hanging – “stress positions”. They don’t even use a euphemism for “sleep deprivation.”
So, you know, now I’m questioning your ability to even read.
Yeah, “walling.” Which the memo specifically authorizes.
You (and Heather Mac Donald) continue to be easily proven wrong.
Dead is dead, Arminus. Whether it was discretely done (pardon the pun) matters not a whit. And you can hardly maintain your dodge when all the rhetoric about Al-Queda and Islamic terrorism is not that they get lucky in one-off events, but that they represent a persistent, wide-spread, shadowy terror network with presences in dozens on international countries.
Certainly organized crime meets that definition. Organized drug trading kills far, far more people than organized terror ever has or will. The threat is obviously, profoundly worse. So why doesn’t it justify “harsh treatment” of drug dealers? Why should a drug capo, who is far more of a personal danger to the lives of Americans than a terrorist – the capo is already here in our country! – not be subject to brutal walling? To stress positions and sleep deprivation?
Why do you insist that people even more dangerous than terrorists be coddled with hot meals, private cells, and cable TV? Shouldn’t we treat a dangerous drug pusher (or a serial killer, or serial rapist, or serial pedophile) at least as roughly as we treat a mere terrorist? Why are you siding with the kiddie rapists on this?
— Chet · Jan 13, 05:47 PM · #
Chet,
1) You specifically referenced “throwing a detainee against a concrete wall” in a previous comment. The memo you linked to does not authorized this practice.
2) On page 3 of the same memo, second paragraph, the memo describes stress positions that are authorized. These do not match the definition of a Palestinian hanging.
So in both cases you made a very specific claim about what was authorized by the USG in a policy memo and the claim is not supported by the document you reference.
MacDonald responded to Lederman and I think she won the argument, but I urge readers to go to the relevant links and judge for themselves.
As for why we don’t routinely treat organized criminals with the same techniques we would use on a terrorist captured in the U.S., we just don’t agree on the danger posed by both threats and it would be a long convoluted debate in this combox to begin discussing our differences. But even if we did agree, for U.S. citizens we are obviously constrained in what we can do by our laws. Foreign nationals can be treated differently because they aren’t subject to U.S. law.
— Arminius · Jan 13, 07:03 PM · #
“Walling”, Arminus. They’re not throwing these guys against the walls of a bounce house (why would you think that would work, anyway?) But I guess you need that “plywood wall” as some kind of fig leaf, that’s fine.
Palestinian hanging was used. That’s a matter of historical fact. It was used against low-to-no-value targets at Abu Ghraib, where Mjr Gen. Geoff Miller was sent to ‘Gitmo-ize’ their interrogation procedures on Donald Rumsfeld’s specific orders. Abu Ghraib held only Iraqi detainees, not high-value terrorists.
But that’s absurd. The danger from these two sources is a matter of empirical evidence, and the evidence is that Americans are at a far greater risk of death from organized domestic crime than from the statistically insigificant (nonexistent!) threat of being injured or killed in a domestic terror incident related to Islamic terror.
US soldiers and interrogators are subject to US law. Foreign nationals are subject to our obligations from the Geneva Conventions. There’s no legal loophole for torture, as Conor has already pointed out – that issue is already settled, it’s illegal for agents of the United States to torture a captive in any capacity. You seem to be making an argument that Conor is wrong. That’s a far cry from the “bad apples” defense. Why the sudden change in focus? Is that because you’re realized that the “bad apples” defense simply doesn’t hold up?
— Chet · Jan 13, 07:30 PM · #
Chet,
“Then why not kill them?”
Because it would prevent us from getting the information.
— Jerry · Jan 13, 08:05 PM · #
Chet,
The question is not whether Palestinian hanging was used, but whether it was authorized. You are shifting the debate because you lost. The Fox News story you linked to says quite clearly that the detainees death was ruled a homicide (i.e. there was no warrant to do what was done to the detainee). So I am sticking to my bad apples theory until you provide a source that proves your outlandish claims.
What our specific obligations under the Geneva Conventions are when dealing with terrorists was exactly the issue the Bush Administration was coming to terms with after 9/11. One could argue that terrorists are not convered by the Geneva Conventions and so all bets are off. Of course, there are other U.S. laws dealing with torture, so even without the Convention, the USG is constrained in what it can and cannot do to a terrorist detainee. But again, other than waterboarding, I think the approved techniques meet the spirit of the Conventions, even if some Euro bureaucrat/lawyer would disagree. So other than the three individuals who were waterboarded, I maintain it was not Bush Administration policy to torture detainees.
— Arminius · Jan 13, 08:33 PM · #
So they’re not a threat, then. It actually has nothing at all to do with any danger to us from them.
— Chet · Jan 13, 08:35 PM · #
Which is was, as I’ve proven, according to top officials and administrators at Abu Ghraib (where it was used.) It was directly authorized by Donald Rumsfeld. The signature from his own hand appears on the authorization, according to legal testimony that has never been refuted.
Right, it was a homicide, because he died as a result of torture specifically authorized by Donald Rumsfeld. When someone accidentally dies as you torture them, you’ve committed a homicide. The legal finding of homicide does not corroborate the “bad apples” defense. (I don’t know what “warrant” is supposed to mean, there’s no such thing as a “torture warrant” because a warrant can’t authorize something that is illegal under all circumstances.)
One could not successfully argue this because it is not true. There are no classes of persons not covered by the Geneva Conventions.
You do so in error, as I’ve proven.
— Chet · Jan 13, 08:40 PM · #
Chet,
You are wrong about the Geneva Conventions — they only apply to lawful combatants captured during wartime and no one, to my knowledge, has tried to argue that terrorists fit this classification.
You are also wrong about your proof — you have not provided a single link to a single memo (signed by Rumsfeld or anyone else in the Adminstration) that authorizes the five practices you outline above (or any torture other than waterboarding for that matter).
So far, you pointed me to a memo that authorized stress positions (not Palestinian hanging) for a prisoner detained by the CIA. You also claim that Rumsfeld authorized the stappado (I like this term better as it doesn’t conjure the image of some unfortunate Palestinian chap) — again please provide the link. All you link to are provocative stories (two are from left-wing websites) that insinuate this or that about torture but tell us nothing about what was or was not authorized regarding the treatment of prisoners and how they were to be interrogated. For example, apparently everyone makes a big deal about how General Miller was brought over to Iraq to “Gitmo-ize” the interrogation procedures at Abu Ghraib. To me this is a good thing as the authorized interrogation techniques used at Gitmo are humane and effective (with the notable exception of waterboarding).
You are using hyberbole to make your case, not the facts on the ground.
— Arminius · Jan 13, 09:12 PM · #
“So they’re not a threat, then. It actually has nothing at all to do with any danger to us from them.”
Yes, they are a threat. They’re terrorists who are refusing to provide the information we need to prevent a catastrophe.
— Jerry · Jan 13, 11:03 PM · #
Quite incorrect. The Geneva Conventions apply to all of their signatories, of which the US is one, and they specifically abjure torture and mistreatment – including mental and psychological mistreatment – not merely against enemy combatants and citizens, but against all human beings detained or captured by the United States.
You’re asserting that the former administrator of Abu Ghraib lied in open court? Perjured herself? That’s a pretty substantial charge and it requires some proof of your own. (Which I can assume you do not have.)
Anyway, why would I bother? You’ve proven yourself beyond dishonest on this issue, either that or functionally illiterate.
I did – to the open court testimony of the administrators and military commanders who were directly ordered by Donald Rumsfeld to do so. You’ve simply pretended that evidence doesn’t exist. Why would I bother to converse with you any further?
Is that so? “ The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of “coercive management techniques” for possible use on prisoners, including “sleep deprivation,” “prolonged constraint,” and “exposure.”
What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners”, according to a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. According to their own standard operating procedures, interrogations at GITMO regularly included “stress positions” aka Palestinian hanging, sleep deprivation, starvation, beatings, and so on. Effective? Only at eliciting false confessions. (It’s well-known that acute mental stress actually disables the areas of the brain that are involved in truthful recollection. )
Jerry –
What catastrophe are you talking about? Please be specific. If you have information about an upcoming catastrophe why have you not provided it to the US government?
— Chet · Jan 14, 01:46 AM · #
“What catastrophe are you talking about? Please be specific.”
A terrorist catastrophe, such as the nuclear bombing of a major city.
“If you have information about an upcoming catastrophe why have you not provided it to the US government?”
I’m talking about a possible “ticking time bomb” situation.
— Jerry · Jan 14, 03:45 AM · #
Which has never, ever happened. So how could it possibly justify the torture that has already occurred?
— Chet · Jan 14, 05:18 AM · #
“Which has never, ever happened.”
How do you know?
“So how could it possibly justify the torture that has already occurred?”
I didn’t say that it has justified any torture that has already occurred. I haven’t said anything about any torture that has already occurred. I have been arguing against Connor’s positions that prisoners are not threats and that it would be wrong to establish a torture policy because we have a taboo against torture.
— Jerry · Jan 14, 06:21 AM · #
“I have been arguing against Connor’s position. . . that it would be wrong to establish a torture policy because we have a taboo against torture.”
Please explain this, Jerry, because what you claim to be arguing against is a quite sensible and uncontroversial position.
A thing is taboo when a culture/nation regards it as seriously, seriously off-limits. It’s not really a taboo if extenuating circumstances void it. When a country crafts policy directing state agents to take an action, that action cannot also be taboo. Obviously, we don’t have rape or murder policies. Likewise, we cannot forge torture policy, only interrogation policy.
That’s not to say that lawyers can’t find ways to satisfy their employers and effectively remake interrogation policy into torture policy. As long as they still call it “interrogation,” Goldberg is impressed. Semantics set the tone here, not the actual treatment. Don’t say what’s really going on is “torture,” because that word, in Goldberg’s evaluation, is a conversation stopper. He wants options for brutality to stay in the conversation.
— turnbuckle · Jan 14, 04:13 PM · #
Chet,
I don’t know what Col. Karpinski said in open court (I can’t find the link you provided), but here is what she told Amy Goodman about Rumsfeld’s orders:
“COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: About the situation at Abu Ghraib, I was first informed by an email that I received on classified—what they call “classified traffic.” I opened it up late one night on the 12th of January of 2004. And it was from the commander of the Criminal Investigation Division. He sent me an email and said, “Ma’am, I just want to make you aware, I’m going in to brief the C.G.,” meaning General Sanchez, “on the progress of the investigation at Abu Ghraib. This involves the allegations of abuse and the photographs.” That was the first I heard of it.
I did not receive that email or phone call or a message from General Sanchez himself, who would ultimately attempt to hold me fully responsible for this, but from the C.I.D. Commander. And I was alarmed at just that short email. I was not in Baghdad at the time. I was at another location very close to the Iranian border, so we made arrangements to leave at the crack of dawn to drive down to Abu Ghraib to see what we could find out about this ongoing investigation and went through the battalion over to Cell Block 1A. The people who would normally be working on any shift were not working. The sergeant that I spoke to said that their records had been seized by the investigators, and they started a new log to account for prisoners, make sure that their meals were on time, those kind of things, and he pointed out a memo that was posted on a column just outside of their small administrative office. And the memorandum was signed by the Secretary of Defense, and—
AMY GOODMAN: By Donald Rumsfeld.
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: By Donald Rumsfeld. And said—it discussed interrogation techniques that were authorized. It was one page. It talked about stress positions, noise and light discipline, the use of music, disrupting sleep patterns, those kind of techniques. But there was a handwritten note out to the side. And this was a copy. It was a photocopy of the original, I would imagine. But it was unusual that an interrogation memorandum would be posted inside of a detention cell block, because interrogations were not conducted in the cell block.
AMY GOODMAN: This was the command of Donald Rumsfeld himself?
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Talking about the techniques?
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: The techniques that were allowed. And there was a note—handwritten note out to the side of where the list of tactics, interrogation tactics were. It said, “Make sure this happens.” And it seemed to be in the same handwriting as the signature. That’s what I could say about the memorandum.
AMY GOODMAN: People understood it to be from Rumsfeld?
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: Yes, they certainly did. And I never heard a word—I did—certainly did see the reference to photographs in the original email, but when I asked the soldier, when I asked the sergeant, when I asked the commanders out at Abu Ghraib, what did they know about, they knew nothing about it. They had heard that there were some photographs, but they did not know any specifics.”
So once again we have a infamous Bush memo that details what interrogation techniques are acceptable and the list includes the innocuous “stress positions, noise and light discipline, the use of music, disrupting sleep patterns.” Again, go to the Heather MacDonald article for a more thorough review of what all these techniques entailed and not one of them comes close to the five specific claims you made above.
So again, I remind you that you made very specific claims (five of them to be exact) about what the Bush Administration authorized to take place at Abu Ghraib (or anywhere for that matter)and not one shred of evidence to back up your claims. I’m still waiting for you to admit you were using hyberbole to make your case.
As for the Geneva Convention, what you write is not true. Article 2 of the Convention makes it very clear: a non-party may earn the privileges and immunities of the treaty if it “accepts and applies the provisions thereof.”
Andy McCarthy goes into more detail about what this means here:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=M2YwODMzZjhjOWJlNDhiNDNjZGEwZGM4Zjk5MWZmODk=
and here he addresses critics who specifically think that a treaty is somehow bidding to parties that do not sign it or respect its reciprocal demands:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MzA5MWQ2NjQwMzUyM2Y0ZDQxNDc4OWJkYTMwOWRjMzk=
Finally, I will continue to call you out for using hyperbole, as it seems to be a habit of yours. You write about the training class at Gitmo that used the Chinese torture chart, but the article is vague on exactly how much of that chart was actually taught (e.g. the chart talks about keeping prisoners in filthy conditions, but was that technique taught and encouraged at Gitmo?) And the article acknowledges that the chart’s origins were unknown to the trainers and that this was one class of many. Again, look at the procedures actually authorized by the Bush Administration documents and every single one of them (again, leaving aside the three individuals who were waterboarded) are innocuous and DO NOT include the strappado. Stress positions can take many forms and you continue to assume that every mention of “stress positions” in a document suggests the strappado but when you read the document in question (as I did for the link you provided) the stress position described turns out to be standing up for a long time or extending your arms for a long time.
— Arminius · Jan 14, 05:15 PM · #
And how does recourse to a completely impossible situation do that?
— Chet · Jan 14, 06:01 PM · #
Exactly. Rumsfeld directly authorized torture of detainees at GITMO. The same techniques were then specifically exported to Abu Ghraib and other detention sites across the world.
Heather Mac Donald is simply in error, as I’ve shown.
Article 4 is the relevant article, not 2. There’s no Geneva Convention article that says “do whatever you like to terrorists.”
More than 100 people are dead as a direct result of Bush administration-authorized torture. That’s not hyperbole, Arminus, and if you detect passion or emotion in my discourse it’s the outrage at the disgusting conduct Rumsfeld and Cheney made me a party to. I’m not engaged in hyperbole in the least; you, on the other hand, are engaged in a fairly immoral attempt to minimize the significance of war crimes.
— Chet · Jan 14, 06:17 PM · #
Chet,
You say “Exactly. Rumsfeld directly authorized torture of detainees at GITMO.” But again, you never provide a single shred of evidence that he did in fact authorize torture. The techniques described in the Bush memos are NOT:
1) the five techniques you previously swore were authorized by the Bush Administration (which you now ignore);
2) torture by your definition or mine.
And you have proven nothing about Heather MacDonald — all you did was link to an argument she had with Marty Lederman. As I said before, I think readers should go to the links and judge who “won” that argument.
Finally, I’m curious what you think Article 4 of the Geneva Convention says about terrorists? Because according to Andy McCarthy it says NOTHING, because it wasn’t designed with terrorists in mind.
The deaths of detainees deserves our moral outrage, just as the deaths of the thousands of innocent civilians here in the U.S. and even more tragically in Afghanistan and Iraq that are killed by terrorists.
— Arminius · Jan 14, 06:39 PM · #
“A thing is taboo when a culture/nation regards it as seriously, seriously off-limits. It’s not really a taboo if extenuating circumstances void it. When a country crafts policy directing state agents to take an action, that action cannot also be taboo. Obviously, we don’t have rape or murder policies. Likewise, we cannot forge torture policy, only interrogation policy.”
As I said, I think strategic bombing in wartime counts as a policy. Strategic bombing kills innocent people. Would you say we therefore have no taboo against killing innocent people?
I say that we have taboos both against killing innocent people and against torture. But we can also have policies that represent exceptions to those taboos. In the case of killing innocent people, a policy of strategic bombing is an exception. In the case of torture, a policy of allowing the torture of prisoners to acquire information needed to prevent a catastrophe is an exception.
— Jerry · Jan 14, 10:52 PM · #
They absolutely are. “Walling”. “Stress positions”. Sleep deprivation. Use of dogs. Exploitation of religious phobias. All the rest. You’ve just allowed the euphamisms (and Heather Mac Donald, apparently) to confuse you.
People died from this stuff, Arminus. How did that happen if it was just roughhousing in the romper room?
Of course it doesn’t say anything about terrorists. “Terrorist” didn’t even exist as a term when the Geneva Conventions were drafted, how would they have known?
Article 4 enjoins the conduct of its signatories and covers the treatment of all persons not specifically covered by the other articles. It’s the catch-all. There’s absolutely nothing in the Geneva Conventions that defines a class of people who can be tortured with impunity. There’s no one the Geneva Conventions doesn’t cover. Especially us.
— Chet · Jan 14, 11:39 PM · #
Chet,
Just to remind you, I thought we were having a debate about the specific hyperbole you employed when arguing that the Bush Administration authorized torture. Specifically, I asked you to show me where they authorized the following five specific actions:
1) break a detainees legs with a steel pipe;
2) throw a detainee against a concrete wall repeatedly;
3) deny a detainee sleep for a week without checking on the detainee’s health and mental stability;
4) apply electric shocks to a detainee;
5) use a Palestinian hanging on a detainee.
Again, you have been unable to point to any documents that authorize these actions. You suggest that the walling described in one memo is equivalent to number (2) — I have pointed out that there is a substantive difference (not just a semantic one) and you continue to insist that the word “walling” appearing in a memo that GOES ON TO OUTLINE WHAT THIS MEANS IN PRACTICE is equivalent to a warrant to throw prisoners against a concrete wall repeatedly. Why? The same is true for stress positions and sleep deprivation — both techniques are detailed the the Bush Administration policy documents and it is clearly outlined what is allowed and not allowed.
People died because they were not being interrogated according to the Bush Administration guidelines, plain and simple.
Article 4 does not cover the treat of rogue combatants, like a terrorist who refuses to wear a uniform, kills civilians with impunity, and fights from civilian cover. Period, end of story unless you can quote me the relevant passages that you are interpeting as the “catch-all”. As I said earlier, there may be other international treaties and there is certainly U.S. law that governs how we should treat terrorists, but the Geneva Conventions do not apply to terrorists.
— Arminius · Jan 15, 04:16 PM · #
Jerry,
I agree it’s tragic when wartime bombing results in the deaths of civilians/innocents. On a certain gut level, the destruction of those not party to the fight is worse than non-lethal brutality inflicted on those who have plotted or might plot attacks on Americans.
However, it’s important to bear in mind that the Bush administration— and to a degree, Obama’s administration has failed here too— gave us only rhetorical assurances that the captives we tortured were truly guilty of criminal hostilities. With less than 10% of Gitmo detainees captured directly by American troops, and with so many detainees left for long periods unable to face charges— assuming charges even existed— how can you feel confident that we were torturing dangerous men? I know there’s a certain ruthless rationale that insists you have to break some eggs to make an omelette or that even if a captive wasn’t guilty of the charges against him, surely he was guilty of something. But that’s a pretty dicey, pathetic rationalization for savage treatment.
There’s an important difference between civilian wartime deaths and torture. The deaths of innocents during a bombing mission is not a part of the policy, it’s a collateral effect. Further, it’s not an inevitable one. Presumably, the military does everything in its power to avoid it. Torture policy, on the other hand, makes brutality of a defenseless individual not an unhappy side effect but the primary, inevitable goal.
We regret it and ideally do our utmost to make amends for accidental wartime killings. How can an administration possibly regret and do penance for the traumas of torture while continuing to defend its practice as policy?
— turnbuckle · Jan 15, 08:48 PM · #
And I’ve told you repeatedly that the Bush administration rarely authorized specific techniques; rather, they authorized techniques in general, and invited interrogators to “get creative”, thereby directly fostering the environment that led to these abuses. This is according to testimony as well as by a significant number of released Bush admin memos, which I have linked to.
100 people didn’t die of “hyperbole”, Arminus. Stop being disingenuous.
Article 4 covers all human beings detained for any purpose in wartime. That’s obvious from any plain reading, and it’s why the Bush Administration’s tortured legal justifications have been rejected by every legal body. There are no people to whom the Geneva Conventions do not apply; there is absolutely no language in any article of the Geneva Convention that defines a class of person who can be treated with impunity.
— Chet · Jan 17, 07:14 AM · #
Apparently in today’s Harper’s:
This, of course – fatal torturing in secret black sites – is the conduct that Arminus thinks is “humane and effective”. Disgusting.
— Chet · Jan 18, 06:26 PM · #
Hey Chet,
Here is Article 4:
“A. Prisoners of war, in the sense of the present Convention, are persons belonging to one of the following categories, who have fallen into the power of the enemy:
1. Members of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict as well as members of militias or volunteer corps forming part of such armed forces.
2. Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, belonging to a Party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory, even if this territory is occupied, provided that such militias or volunteer corps, including such organized resistance movements, fulfil the following conditions:
(a) That of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;
(b) That of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance;
© That of carrying arms openly;
(d) That of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.
3. Members of regular armed forces who profess allegiance to a government or an authority not recognized by the Detaining Power.
4. Persons who accompany the armed forces without actually being members thereof, such as civilian members of military aircraft crews, war correspondents, supply contractors, members of labour units or of services responsible for the welfare of the armed forces, provided that they have received authorization from the armed forces which they accompany, who shall provide them for that purpose with an identity card similar to the annexed model.
5. Members of crews, including masters, pilots and apprentices, of the merchant marine and the crews of civil aircraft of the Parties to the conflict, who do not benefit by more favourable treatment under any other provisions of international law.
6. Inhabitants of a non-occupied territory, who on the approach of the enemy spontaneously take up arms to resist the invading forces, without having had time to form themselves into regular armed units, provided they carry arms openly and respect the laws and customs of war.
B. The following shall likewise be treated as prisoners of war under the present Convention:
1. Persons belonging, or having belonged, to the armed forces of the occupied country, if the occupying Power considers it necessary by reason of such allegiance to intern them, even though it has originally liberated them while hostilities were going on outside the territory it occupies, in particular where such persons have made an unsuccessful attempt to rejoin the armed forces to which they belong and which are engaged in combat, or where they fail to comply with a summons made to them with a view to internment.
2. The persons belonging to one of the categories enumerated in the present Article, who have been received by neutral or non-belligerent Powers on their territory and whom these Powers are required to intern under international law, without prejudice to any more favourable treatment which these Powers may choose to give and with the exception of Articles 8, 10, 15, 30, fifth paragraph, 58-67, 92, 126 and, where diplomatic relations exist between the Parties to the conflict and the neutral or non-belligerent Power concerned, those Articles concerning the Protecting Power. Where such diplomatic relations exist, the Parties to a conflict on whom these persons depend shall be allowed to perform towards them the functions of a Protecting Power as provided in the present Convention, without prejudice to the functions which these Parties normally exercise in conformity with diplomatic and consular usage and treaties.
C. This Article shall in no way affect the status of medical personnel and chaplains as provided for in Article 33 of the present Convention.”
Can you point to the section that covers terrorists?
And it’s also nice to finally have you concede that the Bush Administration didn’t authorize torture as official policy. Instead your argument is now that at some point in the War on Terror (any citations?) the Administration “invited interrogators to “get creative”, thereby directly fostering the environment that led to these abuses.”
Keep it up big guy, this is too much fun.
— Arminius · Jan 20, 08:49 PM · #