The president says that the US went badly off course in its conduct of the GWOT, the former Vice President disagrees. All the usual lines are drawn in the sand, nothing new to learn and few, if any, minds to change.
Except these lines jump out at me:
“I know some have argued that brutal methods like water-boarding were necessary to keep us safe. I could not disagree more,” Obama continued. “As commander-in-chief, I see the intelligence, I bear responsibility for keeping this country safe, and I reject the assertion that these are the most effective means of interrogation. What’s more, they undermine the rule of law. They alienate us in the world. They serve as a recruitment tool for terrorists, and increase the will of our enemies to fight us, while decreasing the will of others to work with America. They risk the lives of our troops by making it less likely that others will surrender to them in battle, and more likely that Americans will be mistreated if they are captured. In short, they did not advance our war and counter-terrorism efforts – they undermined them, and that is why I ended them once and for all.”
This sort of thing, this belief that fighting terror creates it, has been so often repeated as to seem unexceptional – it is now accepted uncritically by those who really ought to know better.
Examining the president’s claims point by point, the effectiveness of the enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs) is at least arguable. We could have an educated argument if he’d agree to release the memos that Cheney sought in the last round of declassification and dissemination. But apparently that is not to be.
As for the undermining the rule of law, I suppose that using a legal framework to determine the dividing line between illegal torture and rough handing could in itself be illegal. Until the pliers and blowtorches come out, “torture” seems to be very much in the eye of the beholder, but I’ll take the president at his word and grant him a more refined moral sense than his predecessors.
And, it now seems obvious that EITs and Guantanamo detentions provided ammunition to those of our “allies” looking for a reason to look down their noses at us, even as they decline to offer up alternatives. In a case like this, anyone who wants to be offended certainly has my permission.
But does anyone really believe that our enemies used the revelation of enhanced interrogation techniques as a rallying point for recruitment? That fence sitters were pushed into becoming suicide bombers by the thought of three hots and a cot in Cuba? Or that our soldiers captured by this enemy wouldn’t choose waterboarding as an upgrade from real torture and beheading?
The claim is silly on its face – all of these things came after September 11th for example, not to mention the Khobar Towers, embassy bombings in Kenya and Nairobi and the first attack on the World Trade Center. No one has accused Spain of using EITs, yet Madrid got bombed. Britain put no detainees on a Caribbean Island, yet explosives went off in the London tube. The list goes on and on.
Whatever else you might say about him, the president is an intelligent man. I really hope he doesn’t hold such a superficial understanding of the motivations of our enemies.
And I wonder who he believes would.
snicker snicker snicker….
Since the comment was for me, I’ll take the time to respond.
It’s been nearly 8 years since 9/11. The fact that SERE has been the model for our interrogation techniques, at least with the CIA and it would appear the DoD, for that long without any reflection as to whether this is indeed the right way to do business, well that’s just not what I’d expect of any organization that has its collective act together.
Let’s just say that we can excuse the fact that no one in the government, or at least the CIA and DoD gave much thought to how we’d go about ethically and legally extracting information from captives before 9/11, so surprise, we suddenly find ourselves in the position of having to do just that post 9/11. So everyone resorts to SERE techniques (though not the FBI who loudly complained about what they were seeing in GTMO), without any thought to where SERE came from, why it was put in place, what it was intended to do, nada. SERE was just there, everyone knew about it and just assumed it would work. We should be comfortable with that?
There’s a lot of work out there about how to interrogate people, and indeed how to put in place systems that may allow for what might be considered abusive techniques in the event such might be required. The Israelis, who’ve had to give a lot more thought to this issue than clearly anyone in our government ever felt was necessary, have in place such a system, and I suspect that they’re not the only ones.
Bottom line, our enemies don’t set the tone of our behaviour, supposedly we’re better than that and I’d say on the whole that’s how our people act in the field. Why less should be expected of people who act on our behalf behind closed doors escapes me.
No James, the comment was not for you. It was for an amalgam of you and Taxi1wire I created in my mind, so the comment is irrelevant. I apologize to Taxi1wire because my comment bordered on questioning his fitness as a leader. It applies to neither you nor him and is based on a faulty reading of you both.