“Do Unto Others…”
By Jim Marcinkowski on November 5, 2007 at 9:15 PM in Current Affairs
By Jim Marcinkowski
The debate about whether “waterboarding” constitutes torture misses the point.
Imagine for a moment that you are the chief law enforcement officer investigating the kidnapping of an infant. You have a suspect in custody who is believed to be the only person who knows where the child is being kept. Without food and water, it will be just a matter of time before the child dies. Should you be allowed to break out the waterboard?
Or how about a meth lab operator who is cooking his product in an unknown location in a residential neighborhood, where the chances of it exploding and killing a good number of innocents is extreme? Waterboard?
What about the conspirators to the exposure of an undercover agent, where there is a strong probability that the exposure will result in the death of those assisting our government? Should a full investigation include the use of waterboarding?
What compels an affirmative answer? Is it the certainty of innocent death, or the number of deaths? What should the number be? One, ten, or perhaps one thousand? If ten thousand sounds about right, and it can be shown to work, why not use it when one hundred victims are at risk? Why not use it to save one innocent, helpless infant?
The point is, if you believe waterboarding is an acceptable practice, say so. Let’s do it! Let’s encourage the Congress of the United States to pass a crime bill to train our law enforcement officers in these “enhanced” interrogation techniques. After all, we could probably save thousands of lives in just a few years.
Now I know that there is a segment of the population that would probably welcome such a move. But for those with functioning brains and hearts, ask yourself why it sickens you to even think of adopting such techniques as standard law enforcement procedures. Is it because they may be applicable to you?
Or would it be okay as long as it was only used on foreigners? George Bernard Shaw once wrote, “The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that’s the essence of inhumanity.”
As Americans, we do not sacrifice our humanity for the expedient, nor do we believe that true justice can be achieved without the temperament of legal and moral process. Honor does not derive from winning at all costs, but in winning (or at times, even losing) without shame. While America has on countless occasions sacrificed its blood for honor around the world, we have never sacrificed our honor out of fear of losing more blood.
This week the Senate will vote on whether to confirm Judge Michael Mukasey as Attorney General. The vote will not only determine whether a vacancy in that office is filled, it will be a statement of what the United States stands for around the world.
So far Judge Mukasey has declined to state his position on whether he believes waterboarding is torture and therefore illegal. He claims not to have received a “secret” White House briefing on the matter. Yet the judge is an intelligent, accomplished man. How could he have misconstrued what is clearly a question of principle requiring a very simple answer? If the White House dangled a “secret” briefing on the use of rubber batons to beat confessions out of prisoners, would he be similarly indecisive?
From the time of its founding, this country has been described as a “shining city on a hill,” a beacon and an example of not only freedom and democracy, but of an unwavering moral commitment to what is good, what is human and what is right. As the Senate decides on this confirmation, they should keep in mind the words of U.S. Justice Robert Jackson in his opening statement at the Nuremberg trials: “The real complaining party at your bar is Civilization.”
Call the vote.
(Release: November 13)
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Yogi-man and Retired gave two excellent summaries on the earlier thread, but I think you’ve managed to add some, somehow. It could never be justified morally, but when and where is torture justified legally? The issue seems to be that waterboarding has just crept under the net and technically could be used for any purposes. Those who are against it are so horrified by [even] the notion of its use, that the important wider debate on absolutely defined use and controls has not be aired. Forgive me, I think that is where things are at. Is that right?
Thanks, Jim.
Humm….You sure are tempting me to say yes on this one since this administration should be on the waterboard, but not even then can I say yes.
Jim, you can really hold up the mirror, can’t you. Excellent post.
Yes, torture sickens me. It’s because it makes me ask myself, ‘could I do that?’ What combination of fear, hate, anger and self-loathing would I have to be possesed by, to torture.
Worse yet, if I’m really honest with myself, I have to admit to the possibility, given the right circumstances.
That’s why it sickens me.
…and remember what Jesus said;
‘don’t be an asshole’
The plain fact is that Congress could outlaw waterboarding tomorrow by making its specific use a federal crime punishable by serious incarceration and claiming jurisdiction over anyone who uses it, or accepts and reports information derived from it, that is in the pay, directly or indirectly, of we taxpayers. The fact that this hasn’t even been discussed yet indicates that Congress–Republican and Democrat–is not willing to accept the potentially catastrophic political fallout of taking a moral stand.
The CIA’s position is that its form of waterboarding, when employed as part of a carefully-selected and monitored repertoire of techniques in interrogation programs that are custom-designed for each subject, (in a word) works. Democrats in particular perceive that if they try to take a stand against this position, Republicans will chop them up in little sound bite pieces and lead them down the path of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in 2008. And they are probably right, given the apparent impatience of many Americans for ending the war on terrorism.
I am not holding my breath waiting for any profiles in moral courage on this issue from either side of the aisle. No, that pun was not intended. This is not a humorous issue, either if you are the individual strapped on the waterboard or just a plain citizen worried about what its use is doing to our nation’s soul.
It should be a law that each and every waterboarding done should be carried out personally by bu$hler. Let HIM fuckin do it.
Jim,
the judiciary committee ignores common sense and votes in favor for a a/g who doesn’t want to condemn waterboarding because it might offend bush. it’s all about protecting bush’s legal backsides from going to prison for his intentional breaking of felony laws on the books.
Well, we do have such a wonderful track record of only detaining & waterboading the guilty.
I agree completely that waterboarding of any degree is torture, and Mukasey should not be confirmed. But I’m also under the impression that if he is not confirmed, Bush will be in a position to place anyone he chooses in as interim Attorney General, until a new nominee is picked.
If this is true, then isn’t this vote a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation? And what is Congress really good for anyway.
This report puts teeth in Obermann’s Special Comment.
Study after study for generation after generation has confirmed that torture gets people to talk, torture gets people to plead, torture gets people to break, but torture does not get them to tell the truth.
Of course, Mr. Bush, this isn’t a problem if you don’t care if the terrorist plots they tell you about are the truth or just something to stop the tormentors from drowning them.
If, say, a president simply needed a constant supply of terrorist threats to keep a country scared.
If, say, he needed phony plots to play hero during, and to boast about interrupting, and to use to distract people from the threat he didn’t interrupt.
Whoops, link to report:
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/11/cia-rendition-t.html
There’s obviously something about waterboarding that the guys who do it really dig. To really work, the boardee should have some reason to believe “These bastards are going to kill me, if they keep this up.” Now if there is one thing Khalid and the other high value guys know, it’s that we very badly want to keep them alive. To really ‘work’, you need to let the boarders and their pals just kill a few guys. The point of the killing and the torture is not hot info on who is really pissed about the killing and torture, it’s to terrorize a population.
I think Abu Graib and Gitmo are what jails and police stations in this country would be like without the Warren court. When we contra-ed Central America, I was very worried about the death squad guys infecting our military with this crap and I fully expect the Iraq experience to infect our police.
The reason they have adopted torture is not because it’s effective. It isn’t. Rather, it is because they are deliberately trying to dismantle the postwar world order, they are deliberately using torture as a wrecking ball against the ramparts of international law as it is currently understood. Repeat — the main goal is to destroy the Geneva conventions so we can get back to a fundamentalist world order — i.e. Crusade.
The argument should never be posed as one whether torture is “effective” or not. Neither should it be posed as a “moral” issue, since that is a weaker argument than whether it is “effective” – for precisely the reason that it can be argued that if it is “effective” and will save lives, then it is “moral”.
The argument should be posed that torture is never AS effective as other means, no matter what the time pressure, no matter what the cost of failure to elicit the desired information, and no matter what the circumstances.
“Moral restrictions” fall by the wayside very quickly for humans when they are under pressure. SOP need not.
The most effective way to get information from some one is to threaten them with immediate death. There is no question of “withstanding” death. There is no question as to the consequences of a failure to talk. There is no shorter time frame involved. Answer or die. If no answer, you kill them – then repeat the question to the next person with the same information you need. When you absolutely, positively have to have the right answer, this is the way to go. Of course, even then someone willing to die for his cause will not tell you. But if that is true, torture won’t get you the answer either.
You have to acknowledge that sometimes you simply can’t get the answer you want. Your operations should not be relying on getting answers from other people in the first place.
In all other circumstances, trickery, engagement, bribery, surveillance or other means will get you answers far faster and more reliably than torture. You’re better off releasing the prisoner and following him than torturing him.
It’s that simple.
This reminds me somewhat of the classic annecdote where two prisoners are in a helicopter. They ask the first prisoner, “Who is your battalion commander?” He refuses to talk, and they immediately throw him out of the chopper. Then they ask the second prisoner, “Who is your battalion commander?” He talks, alright. He says, “You just threw him out of the helicopter.” They got the answer from the battalion commander’s driver real quick.
Morality, law, and covenants should be persuasive enough, but they’re either flouted altogether or willfully distorted by the George W. Bush administration to suit their pre-selected modes of conduct. Even after setting aside all the high-minded stuff, Bush and his team should be influenced by the fact that practicing torture and facilitating torture by proxy (in, say, Egypt) increase the likelihood that torture will be used on US military, diplomatic, and intelligence personnel and on persons known or suspected to have been associated with or in contact with those personnel. The likelihood of being tortured is also increased for personnel of NGOs and charitable organizations, and for contractors, missionaries, and tourists.