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I’m Not Sorry, Either
Just up on the website of the Wall Street Journal, Bret Stephens’s latest column. An excerpt:
I am not sorry Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the operational mastermind of 9/11, was waterboarded 183 times. KSM also murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Danny Pearl in 2002. He boasted about it: “I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew,” he said after his capture.
I am sorry KSM remains alive nearly 12 years after his capture. He has been let off far too lightly. As for his waterboarding, it never would have happened if he had been truthful with his captors. It stopped as soon as he became cooperative. As far as I’m concerned, he waterboarded himself.
I’m not sorry, either.
Are you?
Published in General
We can probably all agree that some things are torture (the rack, pulling fingernails off with a rusty pair of pliers), but we probably not agree on where the torture line starts. I find sitting in a car with my mother-in-law tortuous, others might find her charming and delightful. Some people might argue that having a guard walk by while they are sleeping is torture if it interferes with their REM sleep, I find that laughable. At least one Gitmo prisoner argued that improperly inflated basketballs were torture.
For me, torture needs to cause intense physical pain or lasting psychological damage worse than what we require our Navy Seals to endure(1). I don’t think the modern version of waterboarding (2) rises to that level.
(1) I missed comment #5, where FightinInPhilly makes the same point.
(2) It’s worth noting that many people confuse what is currently called waterboarding with what the Japanese did during WWII (Sen. McCain made this mistake). They may be variants, but the variations are critical. When referring to the Japanese treatment of POWs during WWII, waterboarding referred to a large set of water-based tortures that could actually kill people. The practice the US engaged in caused no lasting damage, either physically or psychologically.
So, she’s not a Ricochet member yet then.
That strikes me as a very, very useful rule of thumb.
Exactly. Which is why the mainstream media has worked so hard to capture the word “torture” for its own uses.
Not that I’m aware of. Anything’s possible. Though, she still uses AOL dial-up, so even if she is a member, I think she would find Rico2.0 tortuous enough on its own that I’m not all that worried about her stumbling across this post.
And, as I said on a previous thread, “enhanced interrogation techniques” is every bit as convenient, just in the other direction.
I’m personally hurt that my brilliant 2nd response has gone unnoticed, so I’ll make a broader point. :)
If we don’t agree on what “torture” is, we will never agree on whether we can use it or not. Many of us are talking past each other.
McCain and Noonan make a category error when lumping the CIA program in with the practices of Imperial Japan or the North Vietnamese. Forget the violation of the Geneva convention, forget that the abuse suffered by both McCain and WWII veterans goes many orders of magnitude beyond what the CIA did after 9/11, the torture SERVED NO PURPOSE. It was purely vindictive, or for sport. John McCain couldn’t have told his captors boo about the specs of aircraft or flight plans or bombing techniques that they didn’t already know. The American, British, and Australian captives in Ofuna (of Unbroken fame) posed no threat, knew no actionable intel. Yet they were systematically tortured and abused for years. If you’ve read much into the subject you’ll know that being a POW in the mind of the Imperial Japanese soldier was a profound disgrace- and torture and beatings and the rest were simply what these animals deserved. This is why we’re different.
We can disagree on the use of enhanced interrogation techniques. For me, if I were a CIA agent and found myself standing outside the smoking hole of another 9/11, I’d hate to have to parry the question “did you do everything you could do to prevent this?” with the response, “well, everything I was willing to do.”
Rachel, why don’t you put out a post on this topic? Oh but wait …
That shouldn’t happen either, of course. It’s extremely important to draw distinctions between torture and aggressive interrogation. (I’m on record on this! I wrote about it at The Federalist just yesterday.) My view on the recent report is that the CIA did probably cross the line at points, but taken in context, it wasn’t too egregious. Figure out where we could do better, and move on.
My concern about the CIA’s actual behavior is somewhat less than my concern over our anxiousness to justify it completely. I can do, “regrettable at points, but very understandable given challenging circumstances.” But there seems to be a lot of general eagerness among conservatives to suggest that there is no cause at all for moral concern here, and that’s more troubling. Torture is a serious matter. We should care whether our government is doing it, and we should take seriously the ethical hazards. Just saying, “hey, look how awful this person is! Do you feel sorry for him?” seems more like a dodge.
Ha, just as I click “post”…
Amen.
That our “center right” debate revolves around a term chosen for emotional impact by anti-Bush Democrats is a sign of how corrupted the discussion has become.
From Bret Stephens’ piece:
I am sorry that Mr. Cheney, and every other supporter of enhanced interrogation techniques, has to defend the practices as if they were torture. They are not. Waterboarding is part of the military’s standard course in Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, or SERE. Tens of thousands of U.S. servicemen have gone through it. To describe this as “torture” is to strip the word of its meaning.
I agree, one issue is where to draw the line and reasonable people can disagree on the exact placement. It is also important to distinguish what was done as a matter of policy and what was done without authorization. Did the CIA cross the line as a matter of policy or did CIA personnel improperly cross the line at points?
Torture is a serious matter and I believe those involved in setting the interrogation policy took it as such. The infamous memos authored by Prof. Yoo demonstrate the serious and thoughtful manner in which the issue was dealt with. This clearly was not a case “do whatever you want to these despicable creatures” but rather a sincere effort to draw a line between acceptable and unacceptable methods. I have not seen a similarly sincere effort to argue the line was improperly drawn and where it should have been. Rather the word ‘torture’ has been thrown around to end discussion not further it.
^This.
And I’d say there’s one further question: did an unhealthy sort of culture develop around the interrogation programs, to which authorities turned a blind eye? I believe that morally responsible people can and did support strenuous interrogation while seriously trying to respect ethical limits. I see John Yoo as one of the good guys, for sure. But such programs can also attract genuinely malicious people. I don’t understand what happened well enough to give an informed read on where precisely we went too far, and who was responsible. Again, it doesn’t seem to me like the abuse was egregious (as such things go) but it also doesn’t seem like blasé dismissal of any ethical concerns is appropriate. On the liberal side (and also among my Catholic moralist friends) you definitely get a fair amount of complaining of a sort that feels sort of like moral preening. But on the conservative side you also get a lot of defenders of torture who seem *far* less conscientious than a John Yoo.
I’m not sure that, for me, it’s the lack of moral concern that is troubling. Rather, its the fact that we conservatives seem to think that the government can do nothing right…except torture. We are pretty confident that the lady at the DMV is going to screw something up, but the creepy dude who extracts information from suspected terrorists? That’s guy is all right!
On the other hand, there is the very real possibility that the moral preening you speak of and the implicit (if not explicit) threat of legal sanction will foster the unhealthy culture in which intelligence agents (and others) are unwilling to take the lawful but difficult steps necessary to keep the people of the US safe.
My own take on the conservative defenders of the program is not so much that they condone torture but rather they presume the techniques were not torture and they can make the moral distinction between approaching (or even slightly crossing) the line on the likes of KSM and doing do so with a random individual. In the same way it is possible to justify the incarceration of a convicted criminal in solitary confinement and doing so to the innocent.
If the senate report was an investigation into allegations that the CIA was attracting/recruiting sadists, mark me down as concerned. But its a broad brush you’re painting with there, Spin. I don’t think the prior comments reflect the sentiment you’re articulating any more than I think you’re advocating we put these guys up at the Ritz with free back messages. :)
Programming note: Bret Stephens will be the guest on this week’s Ricochet Podcast.
Rachel, you’re less concerned with the CIA’s behavior than the enthusiasm with which conservatives defend it? I can’t wrap my head around that.
But, to turn this around a bit, conservatives aren’t the ones who constantly want to talk about this issue. Remember, for all the Richochets of the world, we conservatives still don’t control The Narrative. That’s set largely by liberals in places like the Senate and the MSM. It’s they who have raised the issue for the umpteenth time. I have no desire to talk about this, but when liberals bring it up in this “how dare you besmirch our reputation” tone, it gets our backs up, ok?
If I get too excited in response to the suggestion that we’ve lost our moral way because we dared to pour water on the face of a brutal mass murderer who had information we thought might save thousands more American lives, please forgive me. I’m only that mad because these suggestions dishonor the memories of those who died on 9/11 and in the fight since, and slander the good men and women of the CIA who went out in the world and did nasty work that you wouldn’t or couldn’t so that we could sleep safely. *YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH.*
Excuse me. That’s why we get animated.
P.S. Tom, I misread your earlier post. I think I lost it when I saw the word “survived” near the word “Republic” in reference to this topic. You were saying that we survived worse conflicts, say WWII or the Civil War, without instituting such a program of “torture.” I will say, however, that there were all sorts of moral failings in those conflicts (Japanese internment, the suspension of civil liberties by Lincoln during the Civil War, etc.) that arguably trump this issue by orders of magnitude, so I’m not so sure that your original argument–that the use of EITs somehow proves that we lost our way morally in a manner that’s historically unprecedented–holds merit.
But you are ok with the death penalty?
Waterboarding is NOT torture. How is it that all these conservatives buy into that meme. It is not torture. There is no lasting harm, there is no scaring. It won’t even kill you. It just feels like it.
To the Hand Wringers: Grow up!
The world is a horrible place. There are evil people with evil plans. If you are religious, do you doubt the other side has a team on the field?
It matters *why* we do something. If I am getting information to save lives, that is a reason to use pretty extreme methods. I don’t want my guys to destroy themselves doing it, so that is why they need to rotate, and not do certain things.
All this moral agonizing on what we do to evil people to survive is the talk of teenagers, who think they can live in a perfectly moral world.
Obama just kills the guys with drones, and here you are, wondering if pouring water up someone’s nose 186 times makes us less moral.
Please. I say again: Grow up.
Yes.
I just wanted to stipulate that this is a valid concern.
What if it is administered in an unorthodox manner/orifice?
As for me….
I’d be more understanding of this frustration if the critics were starting these conversations. As it so happens, Peter started this and asked for response. You don’t like some of those responses and now you’re mad… at us?
It’s possible to favor these methods without being a monster, and it’s possible to oppose them without being a squish.
So we are clear: I call it all torture. I don’t even have the argument, because I think it’s a distraction. I’m willing to call it all torture, everything from casting a sideways glance at the suspected terrorist, all the way up to, and including, racking the guy. Because I don’t care what you say, or how your wring your hands, if it were someone you loved who might be in one of those beheading videos, you wouldn’t give a rat’s puhtooti what the CIA did to someone who might have information that might lead to stopping it. It’s high time we stop fooling ourselves here. We are only taking the high road because for most of us, the low road isn’t even available. We aren’t the ones who make the decision. We aren’t the ones to do it.
I’m solutions oriented. Let’s torture them to death. Win-win.
It’s possible to favor these methods while calling them torture, and it’s possible to oppose them without calling them torture.
The core question is, is the simple act of waterboarding torture? Many, including me, say No. I favor waterboarding, but I wouldn’t favor torture.
You can say waterboarding in and of itself is not torture while agreeing that at some point, too much waterboarding becomes torture.
FightinInPhilly made this point very well back on Pg 1.
Death by woogum-boogum!