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Tim Cavanaugh | January 10, 2005

Jeff Taylor asks which is more dangerous, torture or the "ticking time bomb."

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|1.10.05 @ 7:37PM|#

torture always seems to work for jack bower.

|1.10.05 @ 7:47PM|#

...the U.S. maintains a moral high ground that trumps all claims against it.

With moral high ground and a dollar you have... a dollar. Is this theoretical high ground high enough for people that think women shouldn't drive, or that liquor is evil, or [insert subjectively moral bromide here]. Playing the morality card might make you feel better (it certainly seems to work for religious folk), but it doesn't actually seem to provide that much protection against the type of people that are likely to threaten us.

|1.10.05 @ 7:54PM|#

I have to admit that I'm with Junyo on this one. I'm not saying that I think torture is permissable, but that someone looking for a spot in your squeaky clean image will always be able to find one, no matter how much you pollish.

|1.10.05 @ 8:28PM|#

I forgot to add:

Also, keep in mind that in Churchill's case he had definable, measurable risk/reward ratios. He knew what intel they were getting out of Enigma, and the strategic value of it. He also knew how many of his own people were in the line of fire. He determined that there was sufficient risk/reward to let innocents die to for the chance to accomplish the strategic goal, shortening the war. I agree with the basic premise, although my concern as stated above is I don't know how you'd quantify the value of high moral ground; but a great many people here would call his intentionally allowing innocents to die barbaric.

|1.10.05 @ 8:44PM|#

"Is this theoretical high ground high enough for people that think women shouldn't drive, or that liquor is evil" Etc.

As I read it, JAT's point is not that humane treatment of POW's etc will melt Bin Laden's heart anymore that reading Michael Corleone the Miranda will automatically cause him to repent. He's saying it is important for our various purposes, including the WOT, that we hold moral high-ground with respect to the international community. For instance, it's going to be harder to lecture China if we are willing to countenance changing the definition of torture under some "We at at war folks" standard.

|1.10.05 @ 10:21PM|#

Assuming that we have been using torture now routinely as part of the war on terror, which seems a pretty safe bet, we can guess at some of the benefits. Right after 911 we probably really laid it on thick, anything goes, from sleep dep to the Marathon Man and everything in between.

Most likely, we busted up a couple of terror cells and foiled an impending plot or two. We haven't had a major attack since 911, so either, as Reason has suggested, the threat from al Qaeda was grossly overblown, or alternatively that we bit hard into their organization. We'll never know which.

But what has it costed us?

I think the biggest cost is the lost potential allies among the non-militant Iraqis. At the level of attacks that we're seeing daily in Iraq, there almost certainly has to be broad cooperation among the ordinary populace with the militants in order for this to be achieved.

It's possibly true that at one point the Iraqi people were ready to welcome us as liberators, but our subsequent reprehensible actions have made them quite ready (and able) to drive us from their land.

James B.|1.10.05 @ 10:21PM|#

torture always seems to work for jack bower

Well sure Jack Bauer got the the Turk to talk by shooting him in the leg. And there was they guy he killed on Day 2 and cut off his head. But not all our CTU agents are as infallible as Jack.

That b*tch who is running CTU is much more realistic fed. Toturing the innocent son of the SecDef, unwilling to put her dirty orders in writing, and using the Nation Security Establishment to screw over her neighbor. Now that's reality TV.

|1.10.05 @ 10:27PM|#

For instance, it's going to be harder to lecture China if we are willing to countenance changing the definition of torture under some "We at at war folks" standard.

We lecture countries all the time about nuclear nonproliferation without being prepared to scrap our nuclear arsenal. Why? Because we trust ourselves with it, but not them. And while that sounds like the height of arrogance, historically we've proven ourselves trustworthy for the most part, through countless provocations and opportunites for mischief, while they have not. That we're writing legal briefs and examining ways to potentially access better interrogational tools for very dangerous people within the framework of rules and law is by any objective measure light years ahead of a system where you can be jailed and tortured for being pregnant without permission. People that see an equivalence between the two, or would deny the authority of the former to lecture the latter would invariably find some other point of percieved moral failure were this issue not extant.

|1.10.05 @ 10:27PM|#

At the risk of calling down the citation of Emmanuel Kant on myself...

Eventually everyone we torture will face three possible futures: execution, detention, or release. Assuming that at least some will be released, that group will talk about their experiences at the hands of Americans. Obviously, through word of mouth, the stories will spread exponentially, and probably get worse at each iteration.

The effect of all this will be a much tougher row to hoe in nation-building and peacekeeping, in terms of building trust and the progress of security.

Therefore, assuming that the Iraq war is fundamentally about dragging a disconnected country into the humming world economy by eliminating a dictator (as has been suggested), and that such dragging relies on building trust and enhancing security, torture is counterproductive.

The questions of the morality, legality or utility of torture are, to me, secondary to whether such torture effectively helps accomplish the mission.

In some cases, like a Jack Bauer scenario, it might help accomplish the mission and save lives, and therefore I could live with it.

In the case what we are ostensibly trying to do in Iraq, it doesn't help accomplish the mission and makes the security situation even more dangerous in the long run. Therefore I'd like to see everyone involved severely punished, perhaps under mitigating circumstances (like stress or they were following orders).

In the case of the Gitmo prisoners, we have already extracted all of the time sensitive information they had, possibly saving lives, long ago. At some point, however, the torture of these dudes produces nothing mission-critical to the WoT because they've been out of the loop for so long. Those people involved in torture after a certain period could only have been doing it for kicks, and should be prosecuted to the fullest extent.

|1.10.05 @ 11:00PM|#

Why stop there Raggedy Ann? Why not speculate about how, thanks to torture, we're all that much closer to having a cure for cancer?

|1.10.05 @ 11:20PM|#

"At the level of attacks that we're seeing daily in Iraq, there almost certainly has to be broad cooperation among the ordinary populace with the militants in order for this to be achieved."

I don't think so, though this is a widely held misperception. A hundred armed guerillas can easily co-opt a whole village into "supporting" them, though the village doesn't want to. They don't exactly have law and order over there like we have here. This was a problem we never solved very well in Vietnam (and beyond guerilla tactics, the Nam analogy rapidly breaks down for Iraq).

It takes very little popular support for this kind of guerilla operation to keep functioning.

"The questions of the morality, legality or utility of torture are, to me, secondary..."

I have to agree with this sentiment, more than saying

"...how the U.S treats its captives is not just a matter between a jailer his non-official prisoner; it is an issue for all humanity for all time."

The moral high ground is, I submit, of limited utility in dealing with the PRC, for example, who doesn't *care*.

OTOH, there should not be unnecessary cruelty, particularly in Iraq where we want popular support. Hence "suspects" should not be subject to tortue, in my opinion. But someone we clearly know to be an enemy combantant, that we strongly suspect has vital information? In times of war I'd put them in a decidedly different catagory. We're going to shoot to kill the enemy, yet if we capture them, then we're going to wring our hands over some sleep depravation? This is more than absurd.

A clear distinction should be drawn between enemy soldiers and suspects. Nonetheless, I'm opposed to tortue without grounds and purpose, i.e. without clear evidence that it's not just a "suspect", and without reason to believe the enemy in question has information.

|1.10.05 @ 11:40PM|#

Junyo wrote: "We lecture countries all the time about nuclear nonproliferation without being prepared to scrap our nuclear arsenal. Why? Because we trust ourselves with it, but not them. And while that sounds like the height of arrogance, historically we've proven ourselves trustworthy for the most part, through countless provocations and opportunites for mischief, while they have not."

Right, because as we all know, the only country ever to have used nuclear weapons in combat is Iran. Oh, wait...

|1.11.05 @ 12:46AM|#

Jeff Taylor:

"Further, the at-all-costs pursuit of short-term intelligence might make the long-term success of the anti-terror effort more difficult by eroding support for the U.S. worldwide."

And our government using torture is just the type of thing that makes us the American people the targets of terror.

Also, our government's using torture puts in a unjust bad light some of the best things associated with our country, such as capitalism, freedom of speech and all the other liberties that all of humankind deserve.

Lastly, history is replete with examples of governments that commit barbarities against foreign adversaries later visiting the same upon domestic dissent at home.

raymond|1.11.05 @ 1:04AM|#

In fact, the protection of innocent American life might be the only legitimate goal United States policy.

Rather, the protection of fundamental rights.

If protecting only _innocent_ life is the goal, well, there goes the White House.

consider for a moment that ... by consistently refusing to expose individuals to the whim of state power, especially to the point of making their bodies subject to whatever treatment the state deemed fit, the U.S. maintains a moral high ground that trumps all claims against it.

Which is why the first reaction to 9/11 should have been, imo, the abolition of capital punishment and a move to reform prisons.

With, more gradually and subtly, a withdrawal of US unconditional support for allies who oppress their own peoples.

there should not be unnecessary cruelty, particularly in Iraq where we want popular support.

There we have it once again. Bush's "We will do whatever it takes." The ends justifying the means. Anything _but_ the moral high ground. "Unnecessary" cruelty.

And is this thinking even effective? I don't think so.

Tens of thousands of Africans were arrested and detained without trial... Thousands more - 1.5m indeed... - were barricaded inside barbed-wire villages on the reserves, in an effort to starve the rebellion of food and military supplies. A systematic campaign... attempted to win over the hearts and minds of villagers....

To ensure their repentance, detainees were commonly beaten, electrocuted, dragged behind moving vehicles, burnt with cigarettes and tortured both sexually and psychologically.

...[P]arallels with American foreign policy today are apparent enough. The lack of real accountability, the rough justice, ignoring international conventions, maltreating prisoners, detention without trial; in Kenya the British used them all. (The Economist, 1/1/04)

Despite being a pragmatic junyo-esque city on the hill, Britain lost Kenya and, with it, its last important claim to empire-hood. "Necessary" cruelty didn't work.

The other day I heard Bush on tv. He said: "I believe democracy can take hold in parts of the world that have been condemned to tyranny. And I believe when democracies take hold, it leads to peace."

Bitter irony, there. THE democracy got a grip, and carnage reigns.

|1.11.05 @ 1:51AM|#

The strongest argument against torture that I've heard is that gov'ts are prone to turn around and use it on their own citizens. Good point.

Okay Raymond, so you don't think strong arm tactics are going to work. Fair enough. I'm not sure they'll work either, in good part because it'd bother the American public to no end. But what do you propose we do instead? Send everyone in Iraq flowers and a Get Well Soon card?

Sure enough, we shouldn't be in this mess. But we ARE in this mess. We gotta find some way out.

To cut and run now, leaving Iraq to almost certain civil war, is worse than torturing some captured combatants. Point is, how do you propose we escape this mess, humanely as possible?

It's a mess. First thing to be faced is that there's probably no easy way out. Somebody tell me how we're going to leave now without breaking some more eggs.

raymond|1.11.05 @ 2:11AM|#

I just wrote the solution here.

|1.11.05 @ 2:24AM|#

Junyo,

Churchill could have shortened the war by not getting in the way of an invasion of Normandy in 1943.

Pragmatist,

Actually, the PRC does care about its PR image a lot, and part of that PR image includes "moral highground" issues (just follow pronouncements from Beijing for a while - you'll see this phenomenon in play).

If a lot of Sunnis aren't supporting the insurgency, then why the perceived need for the "El Salvador" solution? Or as usual are members of the Bush administration merely grasping at straws?

As to torture, you want to strictly limit it, but the historical record has shown that this is indeed a hard - if not impossible - task to do. You simply cannot create a perfect system for such measures (you are going torture the innocent in other words), and that by itself has a detrimental effect on the war effort there (whether these costs are outweighed by the overall benefits of torture would be hard to determine from the outset and only possible to discern somewhere down the line). Furthermine, asking the uniformed military to get involved in such (as Rumsfeld appears to desire) is carries the possible costs of being corrosive to morale, discipline, etc.

First thing to be faced is that there's probably no easy way out.

We could drive every member of the U.S. military, etc., up to the Kurdish zone, evacuate most of them from there and let the rest of the country duke it out. :)

raymond,

France lost Algeria in a similar fashion. Militarily the French never saw a defeat there, but politically, etc., their actions undermined any future efforts there.

|1.11.05 @ 2:51AM|#

"We lecture countries all the time about nuclear nonproliferation without being prepared to scrap our nuclear arsenal."

Doesn't seem to be working does it ? For instance, when India went nuclear, it repudiated lectures on non-proliferation from the US & other NWS by pointing out the hypocrisy of the nuclear club in vividly explicit terms.

"People that see an equivalence between the two,"

Oh for God's sake, the boogeyman of moral equivalence has been raised. Can someone help out with an example that doesn't involve China ?
As Senator Lindsay Graham said - "But we're not like who we want to be and who we have been." One attack and people are willing to justify torture &, in a different context, death squads ! Who knows where they'll be willing to go if, God forbid, things get worse. Time to declare "mission accomplished" and get the hell out.

|1.11.05 @ 2:51AM|#

Gary, good points about torture. Guess I have to reconsider my position. You're also right about the PRC, now that I think about it.

Maybe I'm wrong about Sunni support, I don't have first hand info. I just know that these people could easily be fighting as they are with little popular support.

The only thing I trust Bush to do is compromise principle. I suppose that alone would be a good argument to just abandon Iraq right now. But hell, why only evacuate most of them? Maybe Rumsfield will want to bring the Kurds out with us. I mean, they make good soldiers, right? We must might need them in the future.... :) Ahhh!!

|1.11.05 @ 3:00AM|#

Raymond, read your solution. Maybe it really would be the best solution. It'll never happen, but I'll cogitate on it and possible ramifications.

|1.11.05 @ 7:14AM|#

"Why stop there Raggedy Ann? Why not speculate about how, thanks to torture, we're all that much closer to having a cure for cancer?"

You know, they've been researching canncer for 40 years annd no cure yet. Maybe those doctors need a little motivation?

"We haff vays of making you discover cure!"

|1.11.05 @ 9:24AM|#

"At the level of attacks that we're seeing daily in Iraq, there almost certainly has to be broad cooperation among the ordinary populace with the militants in order for this to be achieved."

Not really. In the Shiite and of course Kurdish 80% of the country, there is little to no support for the Sunni/Syrian/Baathist/Iranian insurgents, so there goes your "broad cooperation."

Even among the Sunni minority, there are some pretty significant stretches of the country that are pretty calm, all things considered.

The kinds of attacks we are talking about involve relatively small, self-sufficient cells. An attitude of passivity/neutrality or even cowed submission in a few select areas is all they need from the population, and that, too, is a long way from "cooperation".

As always, if you aren't reading Belmont Club, you aren't up on the latest.

|1.11.05 @ 9:25AM|#

Right, because as we all know, the only country ever to have used nuclear weapons in combat is Iran. Oh, wait...
Actually, as far as I know, no country has ever used nukes in combat. And yeah, we had no reason whatsoever to drop a couple of atomic bombs, it wasn't like we were attacked or trying to win the war without having to kill a couple million more people... On the other hand, Iran has demonstrated their reasonableness about warfare by perfecting the 'human wave of bullet catchers' tactic. So it's exactly the same. Riiiight.

Despite being a pragmatic junyo-esque city on the hill, Britain lost Kenya and, with it, its last important claim to empire-hood. "Necessary" cruelty didn't work.

...And in Algiers and Palestine attacks were prevented by information gained from torture. An anecdote proves nothing. Logic does. Is it logical to say that no useful piece of information has ever, nor will ever be gain from torture, or that the benefits will invariably be outweighed by the consequences? Of course not.

Churchill could have shortened the war by not getting in the way of an invasion of Normandy in 1943.

Shoulda, coulda, woulda. Churchill could've shortened the war even more by going to Berlin as a young officer back from WWI and putting a bullet in Hitler's head. Without a time machine that's a pretty useless statement, since it's fairly easy to backseat quaterback with 50 years seperating you from the action, but that's apparently what libertarians are good at, pointing out optimal solutions after the work's already concluded. All we can actually judge is did he make a vallid decision in this particular instance with the dataset that he had available, and the answer to that is yes. The Normandy invasion arrived when they did because of Churchill's decision. Enigma intel helped defend Egypt in '41 and '42, made the conquest of North Africa by the Allies significantly easier, and allowed the D-Day invasions to be planned for '43; according to Hinsley, if Egypt had been lost the Normandy invasions probably wouldn't have occurred until '46.

If a lot of Sunnis aren't supporting the insurgency, then why the perceived need for the "El Salvador" solution?
Because it's nearly impossible to determine which are and which aren't supporting the insurgency. Even a small number can have a disproportionate effect. Are the majority of people in this country criminals? Yet you lock your doors and/or buy insurance. The minority can alter the behavioral dynamics of the majority. A squad on the ground can target that minority, as a cheaper version of a precision targeted weapon, no bombing houses, no unneeded collateral damage, with the versatility to alter it's mission parameters on the fly.

Doesn't seem to be working does it ? For instance, when India went nuclear, it repudiated lectures on non-proliferation from the US & other NWS by pointing out the hypocrisy of the nuclear club in vividly explicit terms.
And you serious believe that they would have just said "...you know, you're right, let's not do it"? Or would they have responded like Jack? Or pointed out that since we already know how, even if we didn't have any nukes we could build them whenever we wanted? That we could do without the luxury of nuclear arms with a massive conventional military and secure borders, which they didn't have. Moral high ground is a lovly phrase, but has no practical meaning, since it can never be high enough.

|1.11.05 @ 9:30AM|#

As far as the moral high ground is concerned, I think some of the arguments bin Laden used were that the US never had the moral high ground because of its support of Israel and the House Of Saud. Not saying I agree, just that it's completely in the eye of the beholder.

To cut and run now, leaving Iraq to almost certain civil war, is worse than torturing some captured combatants. Point is, how do you propose we escape this mess, humanely as possible?

Where have you been? There's been a civil war festering in Iraq since before Saddam took power. There have been several factions in Iraq that wanted to see Saddam gone for decades and now he is. The main problem is the US arrogance in thinking all those factions would look at us as saviors. It was never going to happen. Cutting and running is and always was the only option. We can do it now or waste time like Viet Nam, another place where the US decided they knew how to fight a revolution better than the people revolting. How humane was that little excursion?

|1.11.05 @ 9:37AM|#

Junyo:

"We lecture countries all the time about nuclear nonproliferation without being prepared to scrap our nuclear arsenal. Why? Because we trust ourselves with it, but not them. And while that sounds like the height of arrogance, historically we've proven ourselves trustworthy for the most part,"

If I remember correctly, the US is the only country in history to use nuclear weapons in a war. So, how did the US prove its trustworthiness?

gaius marius|1.11.05 @ 10:05AM|#

The strongest argument against torture that I've heard is that gov'ts are prone to turn around and use it on their own citizens.

there is a profound ignorance among some here as to the purpose of morality -- as though it descended from the clouds for no good reason and we would do as well without it. these people get caught up in arguing utility, on the grounds that the end justifies any means.

the point of morality, as some others here skirt without saying it directly, is to serve as the means to protect against ends which you have not (and often are not able) to consider. moral behavior is a code derived of unimaginably long experience which is intended to protect you and your society from yourself and itself in fits of self-empowering idealism.

the redirection of an established torture apparatus on one's own is one such end -- i submit that one would do best to visualize the utility of morality by considering iraq as a pilot plant for programs for future possible use against the american population.

mr junyo, mr dan and others have no problem with torture -- despite its profoundly immoral basis -- because they naively assume that the ends will be only those which they have considered. this is a conceit that one almost always finds in the amoral.

it is also why such nihilism accompanies ages of unrestricted individuality. antisocial degrees of individualism are inherently arrogant, stupidly assuming that the safeguards of society are not only unneeded but hindrances.

such nihilists haven't -- and indeed, through the veil of future complexity, cannot have -- considered the unintended disasters that await them by acting on their idealism without regard for the morality whose function it is to protect them from such narcissistic idiocy.

gaius marius|1.11.05 @ 10:05AM|#

how did the US prove its trustworthiness?

it didn't, mr a. conceit proves it to mr junyo.

gaius marius|1.11.05 @ 10:12AM|#

As always, if you aren't reading Belmont Club, you aren't up on the latest.

this explains a great deal of your fatuous fascism, mr dean.

|1.11.05 @ 10:21AM|#

The Nation had a good article on torture back in March 2003:

...The specter of the so-called "ticking bomb": the captive who knows of an imminent attack that will cost thousands of lives, imagined vividly on February 4 in the hit Fox series 24, in which US agents used electroshock to extract a confession about an impending nuclear attack.

Should an exceptional captive be tortured to extract potentially lifesaving information?

In the real world, governments don't just torture ticking time bombs: They torture their enemies, under circumstances that routinely stray from the isolated, extreme scenario. Even the most scrupulous regime is bound to do so, for the simple reason that nobody can know for certain whether a suspect really is a ticking bomb.

Henry Shue, a professor of politics and international relations at Oxford who has published an influential academic article on torture, points out that the French experience in Algeria is illustrative. Though justified as a rare measure to prevent imminent assaults on civilians, says Shue, torture quickly spread through the French security apparatus "like a cancer." "The problem is that torture is a shortcut, and everybody loves a shortcut," Shue says. "I think it's a fantasy to believe that the United States is that much better than anybody else in this respect."

The Algerian experience recurred in Israel, where, until the Israeli Supreme Court formally banned the practice in 1999, preventing "ticking bombs" from carrying out suicide attacks served as the justification for hooding, beating and abusing hundreds of Palestinians. "Very quickly, from a rare exception torture in Israel became standard practice, in part because the ticking bomb metaphor is infinitely expandable," says Human Rights Watch's Roth. "Why stop with the bomber? Why not torture the person who could introduce you to the cousin who knows someone who planted the bomb? Why not torture the wife and kids? Friends? All of this becomes justified."

And once torture becomes common practice, it severely undermines a society's democratic norms. As Shibley Telhami, a professor at the University of Maryland and an expert on the Middle East, writes in his new book, The Stakes, "We cannot defend what we stand for by subverting our own values in the process."

|1.11.05 @ 11:20AM|#

Actually, as far as I know, no country has ever used nukes in combat. And yeah, we had no reason whatsoever to drop a couple of atomic bombs, it wasn't like we were attacked or trying to win the war without having to kill a couple million more people...

A, reading is fundamental. To expand - Yes, we have used atomic weapons. Does that disprove trustworthiness? Does is a cop that shoots a criminal and is found to have been justified in his use of force now not trustworthy to ever carry a firearm? Or are you postulating that it would have been better for the million to million and a half casualties that were projected for an invasion of mainland Japn would have been preferable to the 100K-250K casualties that the atomic bombs inflected. Hasn't America used it's nuclear arsenal since then to protect Europe and Asia from Communist aggression? You can chose to baase your viewpoint on anecdotes, I prefer objective reason and conclusions based on facts.

gaius:
Are you capable of making an argument that's not a) wrong, or b) an ad hominem attack? I seem to recall you doing it once, but that might have been my imagination.

mr junyo, mr dan and others have no problem with torture -- despite its profoundly immoral basis -- because they naively assume that the ends will be only those which they have considered. this is a conceit that one almost always finds in the amoral.

First of all, don't presume that you know or understand what I believe, have or don't have problems with (now if I were gaius that sentence would have ended with an insult like you holier than thou twit, but I'm better than that). While I'm sure you're incapable of grasping the concept, some of us live in a non-binary world, without pure black and whites, but very fine and subtle graduations of grey. Morality as you see it is useless in that world.

Almost everyone once thought the Earth was flat. That didn't make it so. You preach a morality based protecting me from myself. And who exactly determines what I need protection from; you, God (and if so which one), magic rocks? If you can't produce an objective standard by which actions can be measured, evaluated, and quantified then you're just another in the long chain of "unimaginably long experience" that stretches back to the first annoying know-it-all who insisted that fire wouldn't work because it's never worked before.

|1.11.05 @ 11:25AM|#

Junyo, Captain Awesome, don't you think the sharp moral distinctions Ronald Reagan could point to between the US and the USSR helped to advance our security over the long term? How might history have been different if people in East Germany didn't bother to hide in the trunks of Trabis because "they're no different than the Communists?" Admittedly, acting in a moral manner denies you certain advantages, but it provides you with many more, especially if the end you seek really is the spread of liberalism, democracy, and human rights.

"someone looking for a spot in your squeaky clean image will always be able to find one, no matter how much you pollish."

Yes, people committed to an anti-American, totalitarian ideology will never like us. But that's really not the issue. It's about the ordinary people those ideologues try to call to the barricades. They're the ones who will either be sufficiently motivated to kill and die to defeat us, or who won't.

"We lecture countries all the time about nuclear nonproliferation without being prepared to scrap our nuclear arsenal." Yeah, how's that going?

|1.11.05 @ 11:55AM|#

gaius marius' remarks on ethics are no more to be taken seriously than his "scholarly" treatment of symbols and the use thereof. After his masterful performances, on that and other issues, it is no longer significant if he is correct in his assertions, any more than it is significant to timekeeping that a stopped clock is correct twice a day. He brings nothing to the table -- perhaps his symbolic intent after all.
I believe Junyo has asked the relevent question, but we may doubt that it will be answered.

regards,
Shirley Knott

|1.11.05 @ 12:43PM|#

"I believe Junyo has asked the relevent question, but we may doubt that it will be answered."

It has been answered by several folks here, including the hosts. Its a different matter that you don't like the answer.

gaius marius|1.11.05 @ 1:23PM|#

don't presume that you know or understand what I believe, have or don't have problems with

i can only know about you what you write, mr junyo. i have no delusion of knowing you. when i refer to you here, it is only to the nihilism you profess.

(now if I were gaius that sentence would have ended with an insult like you holier than thou twit, but I'm better than that).

apparently not, mr junyo.

fwiw, i mean no part of all this to be ad hominem. i find your argument completely repugnant; and so i call it. ad hominem implies a gratuitous insult; i haven't heaved one on this thread and don't want to. i insult what should be insulted -- your argument.

and this

Morality as you see it is useless in that world.

is to be completely reviled as the utterly destructive antisocial nihilism it is. it is precisely the instrument of civilizational destruction which i constantly harp on. a world without morality is a world of savagery adn brutality, mr junyo, and you are advocating it.

indeed, there is nothing gray about your statement -- Morality as you see it is useless in that world -- at all. taking such an absolutist position and then accusing me of reductivism is bizarre. do you not see the irony of that?

You preach a morality based protecting me from myself.

it's not about you. we all need protecting from each other. that's the entire lockean concept behind the rule of law and division of powers. it's the acknowledgement that any of us, regardless of our judgement, regardless of our conviction, regardless of our perceived intelligence and virtue in action, is capable of terrible destruction because we are wrong and don't believe it.

it's when people get conceited enough to abandon the limitations of morality and society -- limitations put in place to protect us from ourselves -- as restraints to their "rational" ego that civilization declines into war and chaos.

mr junyo, you broadcast that conceit like a beacon in your arguments here. your argument is implicitly: "i need no restraint." au contraire, sir -- we all do sometimes.

|1.11.05 @ 1:58PM|#

"gaius marius' remarks on ethics are no more to be taken seriously than his "scholarly" treatment of symbols and the use thereof."

I, like G. Marius I think, believe that torture, like slavery, is a moral question first. Its efficacy is, at most, a secondary concern to me.

This seems to offend you. I don't understand why. Please explain.

|1.11.05 @ 2:12PM|#

I would add that Locke had a lot to say about morality and its importance in a civil society. I find it remarkable that so many libertarians, the natural inheritors of his liberalism, greet his arguments on the subject with such animosity today.

|1.11.05 @ 2:57PM|#

There's already a legal doctrine to account for the actual "ticking bomb" scenario - the Necessity Defense. If you can shoot a guy for coming at you with a knife, you can hook someone up to a car battery if put a suitcase nuke in the Sears Tower.

People who raise the "ticking bomb" question aren't actually trying to defend people who act in a "ticking bomb" scenario, because those people are already protected. As the quick elision on this thread from ticking bombs to general policy demonstrates, they're after something else.

gaius marius|1.11.05 @ 3:02PM|#

I would add that Locke had a lot to say about morality and its importance in a civil society.

ABSOLUTELY, mr schultz. it is no exaggeration to say that locke -- not to mention voltaire -- acknowledged morality as the basis by which their ideas could function in reality.

raymond|1.11.05 @ 4:46PM|#

I disapprove of your torturing me, but I will defend to the death your right to do so.

|1.11.05 @ 11:36PM|#

Ken,

It's not that I eschew Locke, or that I lack respect for morality. On the contrary. However, my hobby of reading history for many years has taught me a few things about morality.

Morality doesn't grow on trees any more than money. Both are man-made. Morality has a source (a society with some measure of shared values) and a context that it can be practiced in (said society). Take morality outside that context and things get real fuzzy, real fast. Communists and libertarians do share the same morality, for one example.

So if I'm at war (suppose justified war), am I immoral if I lie to the enemy when captured? I say no. This is not a context where strict honesty is required. But there are contexts where morality demands strict honesty.

I still maintain: if you're willing to shoot to kill the enemy in combat, then it's logically absurd to get upset about depriving captured enemy soldiers of sleep in an attempt to get info out of them -- or even, of doing worse to them. But as a libertarian, I find the "utilitarian" argument compelling that torture is just too hard to keep under rational control. Sorry if you can't follow my logic here, or if you disagree, but that's how I see it.

|1.11.05 @ 11:51PM|#

Raymond and Gary, if you're still on this thread --

I thought about the cut and run proposal. It looks to me like it poses a moral problem or two.

Many (and I believe you two) argue that we can't fight hard and dirty in Iraq on humanitarian grounds, because we can't just wipe out innocnet civilians. And if we did indiscriminately kill innocents, then we'd be giving up the moral high ground. Well, I'd rather not kill innocents either if it could be avoided. However....

If we're to admit we're wrong about invading Iraq and leave now, does that mean we should also cut Saddam loose again? I'd say that's not moral or humanitarian, because we know Saddam murdered lots of Iraqis.

[btw, we were wrong about WMD's and simply admitting that is a good idea]

By the same token, how can we cut and run now, and leave all those Iraqis to the "insurgents" over there, whom we know are at least as willing to kill Iraqis as they are Americans? If we follow the moral argument strictly here, we've got ourselves a tar baby.

Plus, I don't trust our gov't to do the right thing. But I trust the UN to do the right thing even less. Remind me, who's head of the UN Human Rights Commission again?

I'm not an advocate of Utopian schemes, but it looks to me like if we want to hold the moral high ground, we have no choice but to try and do our best with it. How else can *anything* good come out of Iraq, unless we in fact bring about a humane gov't over there? If that's even possible. But how can we not at least try?

On strategic grounds, I can see a cut and run stratagey as dangerous to us -- and I hold U.S. life and interests at least as sacred as Iraqi life and interests. Suppose we say "gee, we were wrong about Iraq and we're leaving now". The "insurgents", for lack of a better term, take over (a good bet), gaining control of the second largest known oil reserves in the world. Do you think a few Iraqis might be a tad pissed off at us? Suppose maybe they'll want some payback? I think that's a real possibility they'd try and hit us at home. It may happen anyway, but if we don't make some attempt to leave the Iraqi people better off, we're certainly guilty.

Sure, we're guilty too if we wipe out half the civilian population trying to get a few insurgents. So as I said before, I don't see any easy answers here.

raymond|1.12.05 @ 12:24AM|#

if you're willing to shoot to kill the enemy in combat, then it's logically absurd to get upset about...

mustard gas

daisy cutters

land mines

anthrax

sarin

nuclear weapons

rape

terrorism

torture...

The "rules of war" and the Geneva Conventions are a little bit like hate-crime legislation. So, if you're going to kill a black man, then it's "logically absurd to get upset about" dragging him along chained behind your pickup?

"Rules of war" and the Geneva Conventions do not justify war. Certainly not aggressive, pre-emptive war. Their goal is to limit the horror. They are a first step towards outlawing war.

Nor does war - even a "just" or purely defensive one - justify the use of certain means.

Civilised peoples should be moving away from the use of violence to solve disputes - not rushing headlong to embrace it.

|1.12.05 @ 12:28AM|#

"Communists and libertarians do share the same morality, for one example."

I tend to equate rights with morality--don't you? Where Communists tend to hold that rights are a creation of the state, libertarians tend to believe that rights are inherent within the individual--not the same.

To Locke, there were two great threats to civil society--government overstepping its boundaries and a general degradation of morals. There's nothing controversial about the observation that one can not talk about the way individuals should be treated for very long without talking about the way the government should treat individuals and the way individuals should treat each other.

"But as a libertarian, I find the "utilitarian" argument compelling that torture is just too hard to keep under rational control."

That looks like a slippery slope argument to me; just because something can get out of hand doesn't mean it will.

I have a completely different take on the "utilitarian" aspect of torture. Use game theory--I see no situation in which torture is an effective policy; at least, not without making some big, irrational assumptions and going on a perpetual wild goose chase.

Do you have any evidence to the contrary?

Once again, however, the efficacy of torture matters little to me--little more than the pragmatic value of slavery. The institution of slavery and torture, respectively, could be the most effective way of running an economy and the most effective way of keeping children safe; still, they both presume ownership of another human being and subject an individual's rights to the whim of the state.

...That is to say, regardless of efficacy, they are both immoral.

raymond|1.12.05 @ 12:45AM|#

I'm not proposing "cut and run". Not at all. The US must do what you can to fix this mess, and "cut and run"-ing would no doubt result in even more of a bloodbath.

The US is going to have to accept responsibility. Your sacrifice is going to have to be two-pronged: financial, and humble. You're going to have to acknowledge and surrender your hubris, and make financial reparations.

I know this is not as glorious and frisson-inducing as sacrificing your young people.

And I know that the UN, being a human institution, often screws things up. However...

WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED

to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and

to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and

to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained...

It's their job. And if we cooperate, perhaps they can do it effectively.

|1.12.05 @ 1:09AM|#

Ken, I think maybe we disagree. You'll probably also disagree with what follows too.

Raymond, you have far more faith in the UN than I do.

While we're bashing Utopian schemes, do you realize the UN is the Ultimate Utopian Scheme? The UN is an old European dream, born somewhere around mid-19th century I believe. It was born at a time of European world supremacy, when the colonial era was near high tide and Europeans thought they'd make the whole world better by exporting European-style everything, including morality

Read the history of ancient Egypt, Rome, ancient China, or any modern European state. It's an ugly truth that deep in the foundation of every state we find a gigantic grave yard. People die when nations are built, with rare historical exceptions. Yet the building of nations is necessary if you are to create an environment where morality can be practiced (unless you subscribe to anarchism, which I don't).

I, like most, would rather live in a world where fighting and killing weren't required in order to establish -- well, plain and simple law and order. But historically that's not how it works.

Yet the UN would step in and prevent all that fighting. It's a bit of a paradox, eh?

I'm not against what the UN is supposed to accomplish. But people fight wars because they can't find any other way to resolve their conflicts. The UN is supposed find a way to avoid the bloodshed, but mostly what I've seen it do is keep the conflicts alive and well, delaying resolution. That isn't healthy either.

How can we stack the deck in Iraq, in such a way that it "forces" the Iraqis to resolve their differences and build a state, without bloodshed? Show me how to do that, and it'll melt much of my skepticism about the UN's ability to actually do good in the world. It'd also bring me much closer to agreeing with Ken in general.

I think the reality is, outside our shell (the U.S.), it's a jungle out there, and we're kidding ourselves to believe it isn't. Which, I believe, is why Europe has stopped spending much on their own defense, and they've let us defend them since WWII.

gaius marius|1.12.05 @ 10:32AM|#

I still maintain: if you're willing to shoot to kill the enemy in combat, then it's logically absurd to get upset about depriving captured enemy soldiers of sleep in an attempt to get info out of them -- or even, of doing worse to them. But as a libertarian, I find the "utilitarian" argument compelling that torture is just too hard to keep under rational control. Sorry if you can't follow my logic here, or if you disagree, but that's how I see it.

mr pragmatist, i commend you for seeing torture as an effect perpetrated unto others. it is, and many of its apologists are in the process of trying to deny that truth.

but it isn't a complete vision. m schultz touched it for a moment -- To Locke, there were two great threats to civil society--government overstepping its boundaries and a general degradation of morals. damn straight.

we have not only to corcern ourselves about utility, nor of only self-limitation -- we have to worry about what it does to us.

simply being able to construct an extralegal global torture apparatus speaks volumes about the state of civil decay in america, as it did of germany in the 1940s and france in the 1960s. perpetuating the act will have consequences for us in our vision of ourselves and in what we aspire to be. this cannot be lost on us. it is a fundamental and important consideration.

|1.12.05 @ 10:49AM|#

gauis,

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "what it does to us", what does going to war do to us anyway? But my concern about keeping it within rational limits falls right in that same vein, I think. It's *our* lack of control that's the problem.

Within the context of war, concern about what torture does to us (per above) is an argument that makes sense to me. Saying "you can't hurt a flea" in that same context makes no sense to me. And using tortue outside that context impresses me as wrong because a) we're then running on speculation, to torture those who are suspects and not proven combantants/criminals, and b) the control problem is still there.

Above, I meant libertarians and communits do NOT share the same values. Sorry for the typo.

gaius marius|1.12.05 @ 11:54AM|#

what does going to war do to us anyway?

little good, i'm sure we agree.

Within the context of war, concern about what torture does to us (per above) is an argument that makes sense to me. Saying "you can't hurt a flea" in that same context makes no sense to me.

absolutely. i have no problem with prosecuting violent terrorists. we have a global police agency in the cia for just this purpose, and all the diplomatic connections that have been maintained for generations to get others to do their part. devote the resources, get them and bring them to swift and terrible justice.

and, while i abhor war and what it does to people, it is utterly unavoidable sometimes. adventures like korea, vietnam, iraq and ww1 surely didn't get anywhere near that standard for america, but ww2 and the war of 1812 certainly did.

but what is not unavoidable is sating a weakness for sadism and revenge like a bunch of mindless savages. the point of war is to uphold our civilization against external intrusion -- not to provide an excuse to erode and destroy it. death squads and torture camps are -- whatever else they may be believed to be -- manifestations of our succumbing to these primitive animal urges, imo.