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Moral Niceties and the CIA
It’s only natural for a leftist to quip “we are better than that.” That pretty much sums up the moral orientation of the liberal. The critique is little more than a wish for pleasant things that work. The self-righteous preener rarely has an answer to the question “what would you suggest to make us better than that?”
Comedian Evan Sayet has a test for identifying the liberal in the room: he’ll be the one who chooses evil over good. The test is extraordinarily accurate. On abortion a lefty will choose death over life. On economics he’ll see the maker as a greedy money grubber, and the taker as the victim who is denied social justice. He’ll defend the terrorists, who he sees as the oppressed, and who only behead because the imperialists have a foot on their necks.
At this point, I’ve read the initial Findings of Fact in the report, together with supporting footnotes. Some of it is pretty gruesome, and there may have been some serious lapses in discipline and oversight. Those are legitimate areas of concern. But on balance I have few qualms with the methods employed. But as the old saying goes, it’s best not to see how sausage is made. And if you’re going to demand the sausage maker be better than that, intellectual and moral honesty requires you to suggest an alternative means to the end.
Unfortunately, there likely is no alternative. The issue ultimately comes down to whether the end justifies the means. Except that is not the proper question. The end always justifies the means since the end sets the terms for its accomplishment.
The right question is “does the end justify any means?” The standard answer is that an intrinsically evil means can never be used even to achieve a good end. That, however, is colored by extant circumstances. Ordinarily it would be wrong to use excessive force to stop a bandit. But when the bad guy is gunning for your family such niceties must give way. If the assailant won’t stop his attack it is entirely permissible to shoot him in the arms, legs, and other sensitive body parts. That’s a form of torture, but your family is more important than subtle ethical pleasantries. You do what it takes to bring down the bad guy.
So, too, in the war on terror, the circumstances define the appropriate means. The first principle is that we are on the side of the angels.
The 9/11 attack was an act of war, and in war the combatants must inflict pain. A lot of pain. The Japanese would not surrender until the pain became agony. While abstract moral issues can be debated amidst the luxury of peace, but Truman didn’t have time to consult the sages when hundreds of thousand, perhaps millions, of US soldiers were sure to die invading the homeland of a nation of fanatics, Truman also knew that the Emperor had militarized the entire population, civilians as well as soldiers, to defend the homeland. Truman surely foresaw the blood bath in which women and children would be mowed down by US troops. He didn’t need a crystal ball. All he had to do was look at the Saipan Suicide Cliffs, over which Japanese women threw their children to their deaths, then jumped themselves. These civilians were promised immediate entrance to paradise. Sound familiar? Truman did what had to be done.
So must we.
So the question for Dianne Feinstein and her ilk remains: what would make us better than that?
The first, foremost, and fundamental function of government is to protect the lives of its citizens. In war that means bringing the enemy to his knees. It also means depersonalizing him. Soldiers are trained to hate the enemy. Christian love demands that we love our neighbor, even our enemy, but the question at hand is “who is my neighbor?” In times of war only the people who share our common purpose are our neighbors.
That doesn’t justify pointless cruelty. The military has rules against unnecessary barbarity. But in war you must be all in and do what it takes to achieve victory. As the Patton of the movie told his troops, “wade into the enemy, make him die for his country.” Make him suffer. Make his mother suffer. Break him that you may break his confederates.
If that upsets the leftists moral sensibilities then, it must be said again, let’s have them offer a detailed plan that makes us better than that. And have the intestinal fortitude to stand before the families of the dead and tell them to weep for the enemy. Then ask them to demand that the survivors praise America’s haters’ for their moral superiority. When they boo and throw rotten tomatoes tell them that they are moral inferiors. Self-righteous gasbags, however, rarely show such courage.
In the coming days we’ll hear complaints that we’re no better than our enemies. We should be better than our enemies. Better, I say, that we find out what they plan, where they hide, and where their weaknesses lie. If that means brutal interrogation techniques, we must learn to stomach the ugliness that is inescapable in the battle against an abject evil.
We’re on the right side and our actions should be judged from that perspective.
Published in General
To reiterate a point made earlier (Devereaux I think), if you engage in combat without a uniform, you are considered a spy, saboteur, terrorist, etc. Traditionally all armies (Eastern or Western) have treated such combatants as the lowest of the low – deserving of the harshest treatment up to, and including, on the spot summary execution.
It may be that in the end our options are
Please, Dianne Feinstein and your legion of Fact Finders, lead the charge with your own necks and show us how much better we are.
All in favor say “Aye.”
But do we know that the ex-intel’s decision to depart wasn’t affected by the very public aspersion and rejection of his work, which is little understood?
I would be happy if we were just smarter about how we went about this.
Here’s my understanding of it:
Interrogation can yield valuable intelligence. Interrogating captured terrorists is a good thing that saves lives. This is almost completely uncontroversial.
Interrogation using torture yields terrible intelligence – both according to the report and also other studies of the results of torture. This has nothing to do with the intention of the torturer but is a function of being tortured (on the subject’s motivation to speak and recall).
According to the report none of the actual intelligence gained from torture was critical – in terms of being something they hadn’t already gotten prior to torture.
A lot of the intelligence gained from torture was inaccurate and perhaps just made up in desperation. (I know I’d do that if I was being tortured. Even if I didn’t know, I’d make something up.)
All interrogation is not torture. Answering criticism of torture by defending the need for intelligence is a dishonest argument, a red herring. You get better intelligence without torture.
This assessment of the utility of torture is not new.
When we know all this, torturing people to get information out of them is not just incompetent, it’s wilfuly ignoring reality.
So why do we do it, why did we keep doing it, and why are we defending it now?
Ego? Politics? Emotional investment in an apocalyptic vision? I truly don’t get it.
Right on.
Zafar – I must presume that your position comes from extensive and long experience as an intelligence asset interrogator.
If, OTOH, your pos if based upon the fact that the scientific community has not established that coercive methods ARE effective, then I must point out that (a) they apparently ALSO have not established that they are NOT effective, and (b) the scientific community has also seriously told us that we are in imminent danger of drowning due to global warming caused by my driving my auto, so you might want to take their “opinions” with a grain of salt.
It would then quite obviously follow that the senate report would also find no efficacy of coercive methods, as they, too, apparently did no investigation, interviewed no one who actually either did the interrogations or worked with any product that resulted.
As for the allegation that the CIA has inefficiency and bumbling, since I can say the exact same thing about the Senate Committee, the Senate, and pretty much every division of the federal government, it would be wholly unbelievable to think the CIA was exempt – the only such entity in the whole government. Or haven’t you noticed.
Fair point. If there’s anybody here who has worked as an interragator/torturer it would interesting to hear their opinion.
In this case, no we don’t. But it would not be surprising.
It would, but it seems unlikely given the secrecy of the mission.
Pop did tell me that within 15 minutes of initial combat his 20 men outfit was down to 7. His best friend was killed just a couple of feet away. There was no time for crying.
Frustrating as it can be, it is necessary for soldiers and spooks to give personal accounts of their brutal experiences because soldiers will always serve at the behest of politicians and, indirectly (ideally), voters. You can’t be a soldier without civilians. Telling civilians to shut up about things they don’t understand won’t get you the freedom to operate efficiently.
Of course, the silence of soldiers on such matters is as much due to politics as due to not wanting to be criticized from comfy chairs.
You rang.
How do you soldiers think torture resistance training compares to the real deal as practiced by American troops and intel operatives?
Excellent post, Mike. I agree with everything you have said. I just heard Dennis Praeger say that the CIA’s interrogations uncovered a 9-11 type plot against the West Coast and it was stopped. Why are we not talking about that?
Also, as has been pointed out on this thread by others, those who wring their hands over CIA enhanced interrogation and plead for us to be more “humane” and yet have no problem with abortion just leave me cold.
A first and second trimester child in the womb has an undeveloped nervous system. God designed a floatation system for the fetus for a reason: even a touch on the skin is excruciating. And yet it is common practice to dismember a live, un-anesthetized preborn baby with a suction machine, and remove her from her mother in pieces. Imagine what the last few minutes of life feel like for that little one.
Tell me, why is it unacceptable to waterboard a captured terrorist, but it is acceptable to tear an innocent unborn child limb from limb? (Not to mention the despicable, inhumane procedures used for late-term abortions.) When you can answer that question to satisfaction, I may be more interested in what you have to say about the CIA.
That’s a great point to use against the left, but I don’t think torture is strictly a left vs. right issue. Some of us conservatives oppose both abortion and torture.
If anything I’d think conservatives would be more wary than liberals of granting the government the power to torture under any circumstances. History shows that over time those circumstances tend to expand until one day you find yourself on the receiving end of “rectal rehydration” because of some treasonous comments you once posted online on a domestic terrorist website known as Ricochet…
I oppose torture too. I oppose any evil act done with intent to punish and destroy. I also oppose the Democrats and their lapdog media trumping up this one-sided report designed to make their political opponents look bad, doing it in the name of their own special brand of fake compassion, and thereby controlling the national narrative.
We are talking about defeating evil. Evil will either win, because it is relentless, or we will win. Defeating evil is not pretty. There are members of our military and special forces and intelligence communities that do what is needed to protect the homeland, things I am not able or even willing to do. I thank God for them. We would not be here having this discussion without their continual and thankless sacrifice for us.
George Bush was able to discern who is evil and who is not. If we enter a time when our political leaders lose that ability, (a time some would argue that is here today) then the way we define “torture” is among the least of our problems.
I am not opposed to having a reasoned discussion about this, and I know that is what you are proposing, Joseph. It’s possible to discuss things with people whose compassion is real. To your point, there are plenty of conservatives who support some form of abortion, and one reason may be that they just haven’t thought about anything other than compassion for a woman in an impossible situation, or they have experienced such an impossible situation themselves. These people do not leave me cold. It’s the simulated compassion for political gain that really gets me hot under the collar.
Evil will lose, and be utterly destroyed. Eventually. But not by human hands.
Agreed! And in the meantime, God gives us warriors, with and without wings.
I did indeed. Thank you for picking up. If you, or someone you know well enough that you can answer on their behalf, have this experience, I would be really interested in your/their insights.
The US Army and the CIA itself have allegedly found that for a number of reasons the information gained from torture (IGFT) is unreliable. Would you say that was true in your experience? Using the accuracy as a measure, is there a significant difference between information gained from undeniable torture (eg pulling out fingernails) and information gained from enhanced interrogation techniques (sleep deprivation, water boarding)?
If unreliable, how unreliable? Meaning, if a private company was paying for extraction of information would they fund torture or would it not pass the cost benefit analysis? Or would that also depend on the nature of the information being sought? Have you been in real life situations where even some inaccurate information gained quickly from torture proved significantly more valuable than more accurate information on the same issue/subject gained over a longer period from other interrogation?
Assuming that it’s less reliable (and you could tell me that in your experience it isn’t) would you say the relative utility of IGFT, compared to that gained from other interrogation techniques, tends to fall over time? Meaning IGFT gets relatively less valuable depending on your time window. Does this knowledge influence people who are interrogated in terms of what they say and when? Does it influence interrogators? Should it?
Most levels of a bureaucracy have the tendency to keep doing what they’re doing because that’s what they’ve been doing. Call it bureaucratic inertia. Plus changing things could be an admission that what was done in the past was wrong, or ineffective, iow that someone was wrong. Do you think this applies to the CIA and interrogation as well? If so, what steps would you suggest to rectify the problem?
India has a serious unofficial institutional torture problem – and as a consequence we sometimes lock people up after they’ve confessed, only to have someone else found responsible when the crime is actually solved. I believe that a major driver for this thirst for quick information is social and political – the demand that ‘something must be done and be seen to be done’ – because above all, people want to feel safe. Unfortunately this can leave us with the destructive choice between defending our institutions at the expense of justice and defending justice at the expense of our institutions. Do you think this is a third world issue, or actually a universal problem when it comes to IGFT? What are your thoughts on how to deal with it?
Warfighting is a dirty business. Geneva exists as a mutual pact between two belligerents to treat captives humanely, not as fodder to fuel one’s self-esteem. When one opposes brutal animals who violate all the laws of warfare, he should not award them the protections of a civilized society. A distinction must remain between just warfare and barbaric behavior. The faux morality we see now blurs this difference by treating terrorists as respectable belligerents and thus has an immorality all its own.