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November 30, 2005
Clear Thinking On The Torture Issue
Jonah Goldberg at The Corner has posted a well-reasoned email on the torture issue. The author emphasizes some points that are personal favorites, and he makes several more observations that hadn't occurred to me. Any emphases are mine.
I am opposed to torture under all circumstances, and there should be laws against it. Those who break them, should be punished. As a former Army Counterintelligence Agent, I conducted battlefield interrogations of enemy prisoners of war as well as strategic debriefings of higher value targets, and I've served in bad places where bad things will happen if you don't get the information.
On more than one occasion, I had discussions with some of our operators regarding the obtaining of information in the ticking bomb scenario. Our discussion ran along the lines of "It's against the law. It's against the UCMJ. We'd go to jail. But if we knew the bomb was ticking, and this guy had the information that could save dozens or hundreds or more people, or if the team (the operators and the unit) were going to be wiped out if we didn't get it, I'd whip out a hatchet and an entrenching tool and go to work on him."
We were comfortable with this fairly horrible ambiguity and the bad consequences that would accompany it only because the military ethos was to sacrifice ourselves for others, and the notion of incurring legal jeopardy to save others struck us as a righteous cause, but it had to be predicated on the necessity of the ticking bomb. We did not want torture legalized. We did not want a guide book. We were fine with the notion we'd be punished had we ever used it - we never got into the neighborhood, much less seriously considering using it on anybody, BTW, we were just prepared to do what we had to do because it occurred to use that we could be in that position. There are some things that are too horrible to give a moral and legal imprimatur to, and torture is one of them, just as the law doesn't permit cannibalism but won't convict shipwrecked sailors and air crashed rugby players for engaging in it. We know these taboo and downright wrong practices sometimes rear their heads for good reason, but they are animalistic behaviors that come from a bestial place in the human soul, and no civilized society can long withstand a handshake deal with such beasts. Better to keep them caged.
The real problem with the current debate is the defining of torture downwards.
Exactly. As with so many of our political debates these days the terms of the argument are never clarified, which pretty much makes the ensuing discussion useless.
What exactly do we mean when we refer to "torture"? Clearly electric shocks and rubber hose beatings count as torture; but what about keeping someone's cell at 55 degrees? Or scaring the bejeesus out of the prisoner--even if only verbally?
The definition problem presents a very useful Trojan horse for the Left to continue their attack against our national interests and culture. It's a very easy jump from advocating a ban on torture (the undisputed kind, which is already long illegal) to trying to ban coercive methods which are allowed under international law (law which the Western democracies have always adhered to more than say, the Warsaw Pact--as the emailer points out). Coercive methods that might yield information that would prevent the deaths of many innocent people.
A truly balanced and intellectually honest media could do so much to help sort out this debate. Alas.
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Comments
Coercive techniques like waterboarding?
I'm firmly opposed to the "we don't want to take anything off the table" argument. Fact is, like you said, if it needs to happen it's going to happen, illegal or not, and chances are if the good outweighed the bad, those culpable would be exonerated.
But to not make a law against it does two things. One, it opens it up for abuse. Two, it sends a clear message to the rest of the world that we're not willing, as a country, to value human rights over self-interest. What does it say when the vice President of the most powerful country in the world is lobbying hard FOR torture?
Posted by: Fargus at December 1, 2005 08:43 AM
I'm pretty sure that "waterboarding" falls under the those techniques already banned. Sure, all torture is "coercive" but what the emailer (and I) was referring to by coercive is the stuff like sleep deprevation, etc.
The point is that clearly there is a line--somewhere--between obvious torture and necessary coercion. The Leftists who genuinely wish for a US defeat would place that line in one spot; most average Americans would put it somewhere else; and the Baathists (and perhaps even a majority of Iraqis) would place it in yet a different spot. (Just like the Nazis who knew their lives depended on surrendering to a G.I. instead of a Red Army soldier, I bet the insurgents dread the day when the US will be gone, and they happen to be captured by an Iraqi.)
I think we're all on the same page here. Real torture is degrading and evil and should never be practiced, least of all by us. But that line is still there whether we like it or not, and we have to make sure it's placed in the right spot.
Posted by: Jeff at December 1, 2005 12:11 PM
