Saturday, April 25, 2009
While I'm flying home...
...read Stuart Taylor's essay on the "truth commission" that we really need.
"A democracy as resilient as ours must reject the false choice between our security and our ideals," President Obama said on April 16, "and that is why these methods of interrogation are already a thing of the past."
But is it really a false choice? It's certainly tempting to think so. The fashionable assumption that coercive interrogation (up to and including torture) never saved a single life makes it easy to resolve what otherwise would be an agonizing moral quandary.
To be sure, the evidence in the public record is not conclusive. It comes mainly from Bush appointees and Central Intelligence Agency officials with records to defend and axes to grind. There is plenty of countervailing evidence coming from critics who have less access to the classified information that tells much of the story and have their own axes to grind. There are also plausible arguments for renouncing coercive interrogation even if it does save some lives.
But it would be an abdication for the president to proceed on the facile assumption that his no-coercion executive order is cost-free. Instead, he should commission an expert review of what interrogators learned from the high-value detainees both before and after using brutal methods and whether those methods appear to have saved lives. He should also foster a better-informed public debate by declassifying as much of the relevant evidence as possible, as former Vice President Cheney and other Republicans have urged.
Any moral clown can denounce enhanced interrogation and torture on the grounds that it does not work. There is no choice in that, other than between sadism and humanity. The president does a disservice, though, if he avoids that difficult question, which George W. Bush pointedly did not do, by covering up information that sheds light on whether it was effective, whether it did, in fact, "save lives." Only then will the utilitarians -- and, let's face it, most people are utilitarians on this question -- be able to judge the policy, the Bush administration officials who implemented it, and the Congressional leaders who condoned it.
9 Comments:
By 
, at
Sat Apr 25, 09:39:00 AM:
But what should we make of an administration that ignored repeated warnings by military personnel that information gleaned through use of torture techniques is unreliable?
By , at
Sat Apr 25, 10:24:00 AM:
For me, and I think many Americans, there is no need to make a choice, regardless of its efficacy as a means of gathering intelligence. Even if the torture of an al-Qaeda operative saved 1000 lives or a million, I would still be against America adopting torture as a matter of policy. We executed Japanese war criminals for waterboarding, and I don't see why our moral compass should change now.
By , at
Sat Apr 25, 10:34:00 AM:
We can all agree that the possibility of getting incorrect information from waterboarding puts it very much at the disadvantage of all those other techniques which only ever produce accurate information.
Speaking of inaccurate information...
By 
CDR J, at
Sat Apr 25, 11:24:00 AM:
For the umpteenth time, there is a difference between torture for torture's sake, and enhanced interrogation techniques. John McCain, and many of the other VietNam and Korean POWs, suffered years of torture - beatings, mock executions, and more.
Some of the techniques that are being banned do not approach torture.
Apparently, the CIA and the military are going to be reduced to a) making sure that the prisoner is comfortable and all his needs are met and then b) asking nicely (pretty please with sugar on top) if they could please, please tell us what we want to know.
NONE OF THIS will prevent American military personnel from being tortured and executed if they get captured.
By Dawnfire82, at
Sat Apr 25, 12:39:00 PM:
"Even if the torture of an al-Qaeda operative saved 1000 lives or a million, I would still be against America adopting torture as a matter of policy."
So your good conscience is worth the lives of almost everyone in the state of Rhode Island.
That is the most disgusting thing I've read on the Internet in a long time. What utter moral degradation!
Let me repeat... you would rather see 1,000,000,000 Americans die than feel like your moral superiority has been sacrificed.
And again. Your feelings, your fucking emotions, are SO important that you would rather see other people die than offend them.
What contemptible, selfish weakness. It's one thing to offer up your own life for the sake of your little moral code. It's your life. You can do that.
But how dare you deign to offer up the lives of others.
I hope you sleep well, knowing that while *your* life may have been saved by these techniques you so despise, you would rather see others die than be similarly saved by them.
By , at
Sat Apr 25, 01:39:00 PM:
In response to Mr. Squealer: Citing an article by Paul Begala has it's hazards. For example, all but one of the 7 executed were also charged with other little things like the Rape of Nanking (several hundred thousand civilians butchered) and the Rape of Manilla. All were charged with abuse of POWs which included literally working the POWs to death and conducting torture (of the type that kills/maims)and routine summary execution. I didn't look for waterboarding specifically, but I seriously doubt that it was anywhere near top of the list of reasons for execution. So, if you really want to see a Bush official twisting in the wind, you'll have to work a little harder.
By Escort81, at
Sat Apr 25, 02:41:00 PM:
Dawnfire82 - Well said. But, tell us how you really feel!
Maybe Squealer means he just doesn't want it to be stated policy, not that he doesn't want it to happen (not too far off from what many believed Senator McCain's position was during the campaign).
It is difficult to try and lead your life everyday, believing that you must have Absolute Moral Authority on every issue. Thank goodness we have columnists like Maureen Dowd to guide us.
By , at
Sat Apr 25, 08:32:00 PM:
Greetings:
Once again, the POW calculus:
1) You don't ever want to fight anyone twice;
2) Some POWs may have useful information;
3) Capture, relocation and detention of POWs
requires the use of scarce resources.
If I catch them, I'll do the math.
By CDR J, at
Sat Apr 25, 08:53:00 PM:
Also, under the Geneva Convention, NONE of the people we have captured are defined as prisoners of war. They are illegal combatants. They do not fight in uniform, they do not have a centralized command structure that controls them, and they hide among civilians (a war crime). They could be executed after a summary court martial. They are not accorded the protections that true POWs have - being required to only provide name, rank and serial number. Face it, they have names - usually Abu something or other, but no rank and no serial number.
Again, for the record, I do not condone torture - beatings, electrodes to the genitals, tearing out fingernails, bamboo splints under the fingernails, etc. The things we have done to the people at GITMO, Bagram and elsewhere do not constitute torture. However, we can, and must, use "enhanced" interrogation techniques to extract useful information from these people.
