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TortureCiting an unattributed south Asian newspaper, the UK Guardian today strongly hints that torture was used against a British citizen in Pakistan to help uncover the recent air terror plot:
And thus is the celebration of lives saved somewhat dampened. The use of torture runs not only against the foundational sensibilities of civilized humanity, it is often counter-productive: Torture victims may say anything, implicate anyone at all just to make the pain stop. Having indicted other innocents, the tragedy of torturer’s already diminished moral standing is compounded by the time and energy he wastes on sequential innocents as the wrong path turns upon the blind alley before finally arriving at dead end. It is tempting to ask of ourselves whether it is right to extend to a terrorist the protections of a civil society he intends to violently overthrow. While understandable, such sentiments are misdirected. We do not eschew torture out of sensitivity to such people’s feelings, but because, our society being a beacon of light in an often darkened world, we would not willingly stoop down to the level of the barbarians we fight. We decline to become what we behold. We are better. Balanced against all that of course is the “ticking bomb” scenario – the theoretical reductio in which we have a terrorist whom we know has planted a bomb that will, if undetected, kill hundreds or thousands (or millions) of people. I suspect most people, even the most decent ones, would willingly avert their eyes – all other options being exhausted – to whatever lesser evil is employed against a guilty party to forestall an even greater crime committed against a multitude of innocents. It is a fundamental duty for governments to protect their citizens against physical destruction – the people’s collective moral health falls somewhere lower on the hierarchy of responsibilities. And the dirty little secret about torture is, that when applied over time against someone with actual knowledge that they would decline to otherwise share, it works. Innocent victims will make up wild lies to make the pain stop, but the lesson of history – and the reason that torture has survived intact ever since mankind’s fall from grace – is that everyone else eventually breaks. Framed this way, the question can become one not of “if” we should apply duress, but when and how. How do we “know” our suspect has the knowledge we seek? If we are relatively certain, does that alter the level of discomfort we can inflict? What constitutes permissible discomfort, and what impermissible inhumanity? Upon what scale do we balance the needs of physical security for the many against the rights of the individual? These are profoundly difficult questions, and not least complicating is that we cannot even come to a definitional agreement of what does and does not constitute torture. To even raise the question is to invite scathing criticism, it is untouchable. And because we cannot talk about it, we leave it to those who are forced to operate in the dark corners and alleyways of the world to figure it out for themselves. Especially now that we extend torture to mean “offenses against inherent human dignity.” If that’s how we judge torture, I’ve got quite a bone to pick not merely with the upperclass midshipmen from back “when I was a plebe,” I also believe I’ve got an actionable case against my S.E.R.E. school instructors – highly motivated gentlemen who introduced me to many of the “stress positions” and techniques we’ve lately heard so much about. Writing with respect to the detention center in Guantanamo, a recent UN commision stated that
As a serially maimed Black Knight said to King Arthur in the movie “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” I’ve had worse. Except that in this case, it’s true. Bureaucratic bromides like these, while doubtless heartfelt and self-evidently well-intended reveal an inherent and profound lack of seriousness about the gravity of the issues at hand. Absolutes of every strain may smooth the ruffled feathers of a dovecote elite, but they also push hard against the well-worn fabric of the world in which we operate – a world containing many more shades of gray than black or white. Every Saturday night, Agent Jack Bauer – the hero of the hit Fox TV show “24″ – violates the civil rights of one of the bad guys, sometimes shooting them in the legs, at other times holding a knife edge to their eye sockets, sometimes murdering them in cold blood, but all in the name of stopping some monstrous terror plot that would kill thousands. No one intends that the evidence thus obtained might be permissible in a court of law, and it usually doesn’t matter – like a 1950’s police show, crime never wins in Bauer’s world: It dies. The audience is secretly pleased at this recurring formulation, not just because the plot is revealed, evil gets a comeuppance and a massacre is averted, but also because, not saddled with his responsibilities, nor gifted with his talents, they nonetheless get to feel morally superior to Agent Bauer. High irony then, that this is how we maintain our moral high ground: By silently imploring those who would protect us to do the necessary evil of which we disapprove, and for which we shall condemn them. I wonder how many crimes have been committed in the name of the greater good? 24 comments to Torture |
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“High irony then, that this is how we maintain our moral high ground: By silently imploring those who would protect us to do the necessary evil of which we disapprove, and for which we shall condemn them.”
Well said, sir. I remember back in 2002, or so, watching William Safire hold forth–on Meet the Press, I think– about the Bush administration’s proposal for military tribunals. About how un’murrican they were– Dreyfus, and drumhead court-matrials an all that. When asked just how we should handle foreign terrorists taken on the battlefield in another country, his response was something to the effect that we shouldn’t take them prisoner at all. So rather than have a military/judicial process, subject to debate, oversight, review and so forth, let’s just let the Lance Corporal shoot them in the head. But of course if we catch him at it, we’ll court-martial him, in accordance with our constitution. Because we’re better than that.
That was the day I stopped paying attention to Bill Safire…
I’d like to know just how Rauf was broken. I’ve not had any professional training on this, but my reading of most recent reports is that simple and less dramatic methods work best. Enforced standing, cold room, the occasional hand-slap. This may be the high irony of it all: serial maiming, shooting in the leg, amateur night at Abu Ghrahib, and the other bugbears are straw men–unique, objectoinable, indefensible, and unnecessary. If we look at the kind of interrogation techinques that work, and that may have been used here (and certainly are used by the terror-touched Brits and Israelis), we have a lot less disagreement. But if we take Jack Bauer or MPs Gone Wild as the touchstone, then we worry about “what other horribles might they come up with” and we end up with unworkably broad standards of “inherent dignity of the human person.”
Captain, if you take the pliers and the rubber hoses out of the equation, your question of “how” and “know” are sufficiently unloaded because the less offensive, more effective methods, cause less long term harm and can be more broadly applied.
I guess there’s still that 0.0001% of the time when you’ve got the guy with the gel explosive and the issued boarding pass, but that’s bad facts making bad law. I wish the debate would focus a little more on the little things that would make a lot of us a lot more secure.
I think that’s right, DD – the larger point being that there is an aversion to even discussing when a “stress position” or discomfort crosses the line into impermissive “great mental or physical injury,” which had been the accepted UN standard for decades.
The problem is not that that we ever approved of blow torches and pliers – those are clearly and impermissively criminal – it’s that, because we’re unwilling to even talk about this, we’re leaving the folks on the line sawing on the branch without knowing which end to sit on.
We will not win this one cleanly. Much of it we will never hear about. But remember that once the Marines faced the Japanese on the islands, there was no honor, no fairness. There was kill or be killed. Flamethrowers, grenades, take no prisoners combat. Now the war is being engineered to attack our civilian populations by people who choose to blend in. If pressed, how far will we go? What limit would you put on the way we gather information to prevent a nuclear attack? If it’s your wife and kids on the plane, how far are you willing to have the CIA go to catch the Islamic terrorist with the bomb?
Awful, awful things are coming, and I do not see how we will avoid it.
Using it in the “ticking bomb” situation: Well, yah, reluctantly. (and if yer the guy who used it, don’t expect to sit next to me at dinner) Any other situation? Nope.
Using pain to force compliance leads, I think, to bad effects on both the agent and the patient.
See the writings of Miss B. at http://ballastexistenz.autistics.org
When she was a little kid she was subjected to worse things than plebes or SERE school guys had to put up with.
Please read everything on that site. She may not be able to speak, or walk, but she writes as least as well as you do, Lex, and that’s pretty good
Hey, They started it. They don’t play by the rules. Neither should we. This is about survival.
Pssst,
There is no first amendment right for the broadcase media.Red Lion Broadcasting Co.v. FCC, 395 U.S. 367 (1969). Anything seen on the airwaves is cleared by the central federal goverment. Rupert Murdock is a toadie.
Anything on Fox is propaganda.
Putting aside for a moment, the ethics of torture, let us consider its efficacy.
Most should realize that torture usually results in “bad intelligence”. As the thumbscrews are tightened, or voltage increased, the detainee will tell his interrogator anything, just to make the pain stop. Thus, it makes one wonder if a tortured Rashid Rauf in Pakistan, writhing in pain told his interrogators what they were pressing to hear: “Yes, the attack is imminent!”
Never mind none of the alleged plot terrorists had yet purchased tickets; had made any bombs, and most did not have passports ?
Oh, Unkawill; no kiddin! However, I thought this was about how we could at least try to stay clean and decent while doing nasty things to those nasty folks. That may not be possible.
re: “Anything seen on the airwaves is cleared by the central federal goverment. Rupert Murdock is a toadie. Anything on Fox is propaganda.”
Time for your meds, Ima.
jtg – looks like your friend has dealt admirably with affliction. I’m grateful to never have had to show such strength.
When we say, “ticking bomb?
Maybe people should be rated like safes and file cabinets? You know, guaranteed to resist 15, or 30 minutes of maximum ouchitude?
It’s never been “Will you break, or not?” but “How long can you last?”
If yer not willing to die, and the enemy is willing to take his time, he can always break you. If he has lotsa time, and is good at psychology, he can break you without hurting you.
there’s no discharge in the war!
those who know, know.
Lex, you devil, you jumped right into another briar patch with this topic!
I agree with you 100%. You have laid it out in the most effective manner an inarticulate person like myself has been trying to ‘capture’ since Afghanistan. I wish more people could not only read what you’ve wrote, but also try and really understand it….
In this case though, we (Westerners) are ‘clean’. What they do in Pakistan during interrogation is their business….
Bottom line about this issue is the sheep want to be protected but they don’t really want know all the techniques the sheepdog may have to employ to do it. After 9-11 righteous and extreme outrage was exhibited by many a pundit and even some folks who have since softened or changed their minds about the subject. Bill O’ Reilly comes to mind personally.. Regarding the same topic I remember him saying about interrogation (battlefield or other) early on: “I don’t want to know how they do it… but I want them to get the information to stop other terror acts”. That stuck with me all these years because I just knew that eventually the ‘ASPCA’ crowd would turn on the sheepdog. I’ll not approve of it because it was ineffective but even the Abu Ghraib stuff was more sicko than really hurtful. John McCain’s body was broken, horribly, but his spirit never was. He lives on as a contributing member of the human family.
More: Everybody here has seen the “Band of Brothers” right? Most all of us (I hope) agree that WWII was a righteous cause and that we defeated an evil force in the Nazis. Think about it next time you watch it because you will see a questionable “incident” about every 5 seconds during the cinematic firefights that our own soldiers in Iraq would never, or very rarely, employ today……
Just let the sheepdogs do their job sheep.
B2
Fliterman, is there poop out there that Rauf said “attacks were imminent” and that bit is what sent the bobbies out to arrest the Britons under surveillance? Nothing in the cited article indicates this, and it would make quite a bit of difference if that was all he revealed. What if he actually revealed quite a bit more, repeatedly and with a consistency and conviction that a trained interrogator would recognize as truth? And, how shocked would our consicences be if he did this because he was made to stand for a day or so, in front of a comfortable chair, before giving up the timing of the attacks (and who knows what more)?
But, let’s take your assertion as true: he gave the timing of the attack and that kicked off the arrests? This makes the “torture” inefficacious? You sure do presume some damned effective surveillance. Geez, if surveillance and coordination could be counted on so, we’d not have had 9/11 as quite a few of those monsters should’ve been “made” and watched by a competent authority. I’m not going to second guess the Brits for moving quickly on this one, and, well, we’ll have to see what the next 28 days brings. Don’t read anything into the guy getting loosed this early … people have similar names, and “mistakes are made” that don’t reflect on the overall concept of operation.
Lex, I think there has been a great deal of talk over the past five years of means and methods of torture, but they always drift to the absurd. The closest I’ve seen to a reasonable discussion was that following the disclosure that Khalid Sheikh Mohamed was approved for waterboarding (some seemed to say approve, others decidedly not). Again, based on my understanding of the compariative usefulness of the techinques, the point of diminishing informational returns is reached well short of techniques that which would disgust the average human. Have a look at “A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror” by A. McCoy. I disagree with him on moral conclusions, but the facts are rather interesting. Seems like not an unreasonable request, yours, that the Congress lay out some particulars about what can and can’t be done in our name.
Lastly, poster #5, what justifies approving torture (and reaping its benefits) whilst repudiating those who torture on your behalf? Like any other high-stress service, interrogation scars the interrogator. But those who perform it in our name and within our laws should be accorded our respect and whatever recuperative measures are required from us. They also serve who sit behind a desk and ask questions of a fairly groggy, somewhat chilled jihadist.
Remember “A Few Good Men”?
“You want us up on that wall!
You don’t want to know the truth; you can’t handle the truth!”
Is this a war or is it going to be containment? If it is war, do we propose to win it; if so, how do we go about it?
What don’t we know about what it took to win WWII? Instead of Ernie Pyle, we now have CNN on a day to day, in your face basis. Do we need to know all that? Do we want to know?
Could Jack Nicholson’s character have been right?
Oh, Miss B. doesn’t feel so bad, to hear her tell it. (as long as the normals don’t mess with her head too much)
You might want to look at http;//autisticbfh.blogspot.com
The August 14 entry is right funny, I think. In a smart-ass way. Hey, she *is* the Autistic Bitch from Hell!
Umm, that’s http://autisticbfh.blogspot.com
I’m taking my meds.
Freedom of the press only applies to the press, printed material is protected by the First Amendment.
According to the United States Supreme Court, broadcast media is limited by the scarcity of the electromagnitic spectrum and thus can be regulated by the central government; the FCC.
Broadcast media has to toe the line or loose their license. That is why propaganda rule the airwaves.
I can’t remember where I read a report, that said the British moved in and arrested these folks because they had lost track of 4-5 of them. Plus, the British knew they were starting to buy airline tickets.
Lost track of several possible terrorist plus a report from Pakistan that the attack is about to happen. Yes, the Brits did good.
Now the question is, Can the British keep these folks in jail or will their courts set them free.
I’ve been thinking about this lately, and I think I’ve come up with a compromise that will work for all concerned. We’ll back off on torture if you back off on stem cell research.
Captain Lex,
Very well put, sir. You capture the issues better than I’ve seen anywhere else. There’s been a great lack of reasoned, informed public discussion around “rules of engagement” for stressful interrogations.
In the absence of such a discussion, I’ve made up my own 3 stage sliding scale of seriousness in evaluating things that you read in the papers which may or may not constitute “torture”.
1. If it’s no worse than what I have, personally, gone through in the name of fun, camaraderie, or tradtion, I don’t give a sh*t about that incident and the reporter doesn’t have a clue what they’re talking about. In this category my personal yardsticks are becoming a Shellback when crossing the equator on a carrier in the 1980’s, becoming a Bluenose when crossing the arctic circle in s P-3, fratternity initiation in college, etc. About 70% of the “torture” reports fall into this first category.
2. If the alleged treatment is harsher than that, but no worse than what our own service people go through in training, the “victim” still gets no sympathy from me, but I do think that (a)it’s a good thing that we’re using such stressful but not ultimately harmful techniques to extract useful information, and (b) there should be ROE to define what boundaries you do not cross, and some approval process for the more, er, challenging techniques.
Again, from personal experience I include SERE school (and that water board IS effective, but I can attest that there are no lasting effects, and the “soft sell” good cop routine is even more effective), the helo dunker, boxing in flight training (what WAS that about, anyway?) etc. Plenty of other military folks went through more physically strenuous challenges than did those of us in naval aviation. Marine boot camp, the SEAL’s BUDS school, and Army Special Forces training are all highly stressful but fall short of any reasonable definition of torture. I’d say another 25% of media-reported “torture” incidents fall into this category.
3. That leaves us maybe 5% (and I think I’m being generous here) of reported incidents that maybe, possibly, I might have some qualms about. Almost invariably these are cases of abusive misconduct by individuals, ala Abu Ghraib, rather than officially sanctioned actions.
The “ticking bomb” scenario is probably the only case where it’s necessary, rarely, to go beyond the second category above.
We don’t know exactly what the Pakistanis did to Rauf, and I suppose it’s possible that it was actual, no fooling, by anybody’s definition, torture. More likely, if his interrogaters were any good at their jobs, it was more along the lines of my category 2
No deal, Eric – I feel strongly both ways about stem cells, so giving into you on that would be like, well: Torture.
Screwbird – much of what I’ve read leads me to believe that a lot of these guys sing like birds when they get swept up. For one, I think they’re actually proud of themselves. For another, a lot of these guys are the kind of hypersensitive types who think that they/their tribe has been getting screwed and it’s time for either a)someone elses son to blow themselves up to rectify the imagined slights to their dignity, or b) blow themselves up in quick, transitory moment – no pain! – before arriving in paradise.
Some are harder nuts to crack. Those are the psychopaths, largely.
I belive and I know that there is a link somewhere, that the US intercepted a go order to the bad guys.
“Could Jack Nicholson?