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Viking Moose|11.18.05 @ 3:39PM|#
i was gonna start off with a semi humorous, oft repeated throw away line.
then i would follow up with berating the torture apologists.
this whole thing is just so damn upsetting to me, i wanna do either anymore.
what happened to us? we are not like this.
it's just so fucking upsetting.
|11.18.05 @ 3:40PM|#
They see nothing wrong with destroying America in order to save it.
theOneState|11.18.05 @ 3:46PM|#
I'll do it, Viking.
I'm sure Tim has some good points, but I didn't actually read the article b/c I got stuck on the subheadline: "Torturing people to death is not a serious way to wage war on terrorism".
Nobody's arguing that, Julian. The real moral question is how CLOSE to death we are allowed to bring them when we torture.
But seriously, torture apologists piss me off.
Viking Moose|11.18.05 @ 3:49PM|#
the one state:
kinda like the line "how much oil are we talking about?"
sigh.
Uncle Sam|11.18.05 @ 3:49PM|#
Government is that agency that allows us to hire someone (sociopaths) to do the dirty work for us and no one has to suffer any severe conseuences...except for the occasional scapegoat.
We don't even have to know about the dirty work.
|11.18.05 @ 3:52PM|#
Torturing people is awesome. This must be the Friday Fun Link.
|11.18.05 @ 4:12PM|#
Good job, Julian. Thank you.
Viking Moose:
what happened to us? we are not like this.
I know. But our government is.
it's just so fucking upsetting.
What you said. I feel sick and bitter that my tax money pays for this savagery.
|11.18.05 @ 4:14PM|#
Obviously torture is something that our government would never do.
They just want the right to engage in torture!
|11.18.05 @ 5:09PM|#
The president keeps insisting we don't torture people, but that a law against torturing people would "tie his hands".
I just don't get it, Big Dan.
|11.18.05 @ 5:26PM|#
On the other hand, the people who are trying to write a torture prohibition into law aren't perfect either. Therefore, we can't choose between them and the torture apologists.
|11.18.05 @ 5:30PM|#
I don't think that's a fair or accurate spoof of Cathy Young.
theOneState|11.18.05 @ 5:36PM|#
The president keeps insisting we don't torture people, but that a law against torturing people would "tie his hands".
Meantime, Clinton administration officials are saying that they wouldn't LET such a law tie their hands.
I think they have the right attitude, but it's weird that the superior position on this is that you wouldn't let a mere act of Congress prevent you from torturing someone if you really, really had to. It's a rational position in its own way, but it really puts the decision in the hands of someone who has to determine in advance whether or not he'd be pardoned. (So, you know, we'd have to have large campaign contributors trained as interrogators just in case.)
|11.18.05 @ 6:03PM|#
Hey, I'm re-reading Atlas Shrugged (and Lord no, I'm not an Objectivist--I alternate quite often between saying, "Good point" and rolling my eyes) and am about to the point where the bad guys torture John Galt. I'll have to see if Rand makes any deep pronouncements about torture. In less than fifty pages, I hope.
I'm not usually overly idealistic, but I just don't see why the U.S. has to stoop to torture or even to torture-lite. We're supposed to be above such things.
|11.18.05 @ 6:39PM|#
I think they have the right attitude, but it's weird that the superior position on this is that you wouldn't let a mere act of Congress prevent you from torturing someone if you really, really had to.
Slavoj Zizek tends to spin out ideas that are right, wrong and otherwise but I find he quite often throws some good insights in to the mix. Here's a passage from a longer essay published a couple of years back (sorry for the length):
Even the 'liberal' argument cited by Alan Dershowitz is suspect: 'I'm not in favour of torture, but if you're going to have it, it should damn well have court approval.' When, taking this line a step further, Dershowitz suggests that torture in the 'ticking clock' situation is not directed at the prisoner's rights as an accused person (the information obtained will not be used in the trial against him, and the torture itself would not formally count as punishment), the underlying premise is even more disturbing, implying as it does that one should be allowed to torture people not as part of a deserved punishment, but simply because they know something. Why not go further still and legalise the torture of prisoners of war who may have information which could save the lives of hundreds of our soldiers? If the choice is between Dershowitz's liberal 'honesty' and old-fashioned 'hypocrisy', we'd be better off sticking with 'hypocrisy'. I can well imagine that, in a particular situation, confronted with the proverbial 'prisoner who knows', whose words can save thousands, I might decide in favour of torture; however, even (or, rather, precisely) in a case such as this, it is absolutely crucial that one does not elevate this desperate choice into a universal principle: given the unavoidable and brutal urgency of the moment, one should simply do it. Only in this way, in the very prohibition against elevating what we have done into a universal principle, do we retain a sense of guilt, an awareness of the inadmissibility of what we have done.
In short, every authentic liberal should see these debates, these calls to 'keep an open mind', as a sign that the terrorists are winning. And, in a way, essays like Alter's, which do not openly advocate torture, but just introduce it as a legitimate topic of debate, are even more dangerous than explicit endorsements. At this moment at least, explicitly endorsing it would be rejected as too shocking, but the mere introduction of torture as a legitimate topic allows us to court the idea while retaining a clear conscience. ('Of course I am against torture, but who is hurt if we just discuss it?') Admitting torture as a topic of debate changes the entire field, while outright advocacy remains merely idiosyncratic. The idea that, once we let the genie out of the bottle, torture can be kept within 'reasonable' bounds, is the worst liberal illusion, if only because the 'ticking clock' example is deceptive: in the vast majority of cases torture is not done in order to resolve a 'ticking clock' situation, but for quite different reasons (to punish an enemy or to break him down psychologically, to terrorise a population etc). Any consistent ethical stance has to reject such pragmatic-utilitarian reasoning.
|11.18.05 @ 9:46PM|#
I bet real military torture-snuff films are the hot ticket on Republican DVD players these days.
|11.18.05 @ 11:52PM|#
I don't think that's a fair or accurate spoof of Cathy Young.
I agree. Worst of all, and probably because it's not accurate, it's very unfunny.
Hakluyt|11.19.05 @ 3:51AM|#
Given the recent revelation about the secret torture center in Britain during WWII (and a few years after) I'm curious how common the use of torture in American history is. Certainly we know that in Latin America U.S. personnel (military, CIA, etc.) at least watched foreign government personnel torture people (some did more than observe).
|11.19.05 @ 5:38AM|#
I am guessing that if a law gets passed prohibitin all agressive questioning. What will happen is that the activity will continue, but the results or the information derived will be more guarded. And people more interested in their careers than mission accomplishment will look the other way while it happens.
Hakluyt|11.19.05 @ 6:08AM|#
kwais,
In many circumstances there simply is little to no risk for the perpetrator.
Tom|11.19.05 @ 11:15AM|#
http://www.exile.ru/2004-June-24/war_nerd.html
Once again Gary Brecher settles it.
No army ever fought a CI campaign without resorting to torture. Goes with the territory. At most, it's like holding by your offensive line: you don't want them doing it where the ref can see it, but if you had an OG or tight end who refused to do it, you'd fire his ass.
Because you can't win without it.
So why did everybody from Bush on down act surprised? Well, the key word is "act." And the answer is: they were lying. After all, lying's a big, legitimate part of warfare. It's the President's job to go on TV and act shocked when pictures like the ones from Abu Ghraib come out. Nobody with a grain of sense believes he's actually lying awake at night worrying that we might have violated the Geneva convention by dunking some Jihadi's head in a bucket to give him time to rethink his whole position re: drowning for Allah vs. telling us where his friends are hiding out. Maybe Jimmy "the Parson" Carter would've been really, truly upset, but the less said about that pansy-ass mama's boy, the better.
Larry A|11.19.05 @ 11:39AM|#
the military will face a powerful temptation to keep ten innocent men secretly incarcerated rather than risk the embarassment of releasing one genuine enemy.
I think you have this backwards.
If released the ten innocent men can go to the press and shed embarrasing light on what's happening in the concentration camps.
The one genuine enemy released will go blow up something, giving the military/CIA a major "I told you so" opportunity to press for more latitude.
|11.19.05 @ 4:50PM|#
Rick, I work for your goverment, and I would put a bullet through my head before I would torture another human being.
This isn't the Flying Spaghetti Government Monster doing this, Rick. This a specific number of people, who are individually responsible for their crimes.
Hakluyt|11.20.05 @ 2:49AM|#
joe,
Rick, I work for your goverment, and I would put a bullet through my head before I would torture another human being.
You are no position to really make such a decision, so the sentiment is rather empty.
|11.20.05 @ 5:28PM|#
joe,
I believe that even if given orders to do so, you wouldn't torture. But the people in our government who are actually committing torture, or farming it out to other nations, are unlikely to do so except for the fact that they have government sanction. Note that there is increasing evidence that torture is becoming, at least, unofficial government policy.
You're right to call this torture, criminal. And for justice to prevail, and as a disincentive to further torture, these crimes have to be prosecuted regardless of how high up the chain of command the responsibility resides.
|11.20.05 @ 5:40PM|#
joe:
This a specific number of people, who are individually responsible for their crimes.
If it were just a case of different individuals in our government torturing, and not government policy, the Bush administration wouldn't be trying so hard to water down any anti-torture resolutions.
Hakluyt|11.21.05 @ 2:42AM|#
Rick Barton,
Note that there is increasing evidence that torture is becoming, at least, unofficial government policy.
I suspect it always has been.
|11.21.05 @ 4:04PM|#
Rick,
It has become the official policy of the government because of the actions of specific individuals, not because there is a government.
Bush, Cheney, Gonzales, Rumsfeld, Myers, Yoo - they didn't have to do what they did because they work for the government. They imposed this shame on our country and on our goverment of their own accord.