Glad you posted something on torture. Gives me a chance to add this from The Washington Post:
When UPI's Pam Hess asked about torture by Iraqi authorities, Rumsfeld replied that "obviously, the United States does not have a responsibility" other than to voice disapproval.
But Pace had a different view. "It is the absolute responsibility of every U.S. service member, if they see inhumane treatment being conducted, to intervene, to stop it," the general said.
Rumsfeld interjected: "I don't think you mean they have an obligation to physically stop it; it's to report it."
But Pace meant what he said. "If they are physically present when inhumane treatment is taking place, sir, they have an obligation to try to stop it," he said, firmly.
Well worth popping in to the Daily Dish if you're interested in the torture debate. He's posting a lot on the subject including this:
THE WSJ AND TORTURE: Here's an interesting case. In the Iraq court-room yesterday, a woman described being tortured by Saddam's thugs in Abu Ghraib, back when he controlled it. Her account of torture is as follows:
"They forced me to take off my clothes," said the woman, referred to only as Witness A by the court. "They kept my legs up. They handcuffed me and started beating me with cables. It wasn't just one guard, it was many guards." ... "I agree that things in Abu Ghraib were, until recently, bad, but did they use dogs on you? Did they take photographs?" asked one defense attorney, attempting to raise the issue of U.S. prisoner abuse at the prison. "No," she replied.
According to the Wall Street Journal's definition of torture, this woman wasn't subjected to "anything close" to torture. Repeated beatings are specifically not torture, as argued by AEI legal scholar, John Yoo, who helped craft Bush administration policies. The woman was not water-boarded, she was not shackled in stress positions, she was not subjected to hypothermia, she was not sexually abused and she was not threatened by dogs. She did not, in other words, come even close to being tortured, according to the Wall Street Journal. Do they still abide by their position? Does vice-president Cheney agree that she was merely subjected to "coercive interrogation techniques"?
Like the Sullivan article (as I usually do). With my philosopher's hat on, he is right to say that Krauthammer overstepped the mark in his Ethics 101 example - it is not of course true that even in the ticking bomb scenario, torture is the right thing to do. You have to argue the case. In my opinion, I actually think it *is* justified, but that's not a conclusion you can just leap to.
Sullivan's main argument is an old philosophical fave, the "slippery slope". It's an argument on practical grounds, rather than on point of principle. He almost certainly has a point about the dangers of exceptions to moral laws becoming the norm. But if the danger posed by *not* invoking the exception were sufficiently great, it may still be justifiable despite the slippery slope danger.
And finally, I think Sullivan underestimates the likeliness of the ticking bomb. The Israelis have already had these situations (though not yet with a nuke) - it's not just a "hypothetical rarity", it's a reality. And as the availablity of portable WMD's increases along with the supply of suicide terrorists, the threat will only increase.
I’d note for my colleagues’ consideration that the State of Israel, no stranger to terrorist attacks, has declared cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment illegal. In 1999 the Israeli Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision to this effect that contained words we may wish to reflect on today. “A democratic, freedom-loving society,” the court wrote, “does not accept that investigators use any means for the purpose of uncovering the truth. The rules pertaining to investigations are important to a democratic state. They reflect its character.”
I'm aware of the Israeli Supreme Court's decision - it's in Dershowitz's The Case For Israel which you still haven't read, you lowly dog.
Dershowitz points out that this is was an extraordinarly brave decision by the Supreme Court, one that condemns Israelis to death who might otherwise have been saved - and it by no means clear to him or me that this was the right decision.
I assume that AD provides evidence of specific attacks / murders that could have been prevented had torture been sanctioned by the Israeli supreme court. Please post said evidence.
And even then, Sullivan's argument is not primarily about saving lives - it's about inalienable rights and freedoms.
1a. My scanning days are behind me. Read the book. You won't regret it.
1b. But it should hardly be surprising to anyone that there would be real cases of ticking bomb terrorists in the hands of the Israeli security services. And why else would the Israeli Supreme Court have ruled on this?
1c. The Krauthammer article gives such an example anyway (Waxman).
2. The problem with any kind of "inalienable" right is what to do when it conflicts with another inalienable right. Krauthammer's Ethics 101 is an example of this.
I thought I'd already posted this but now I can't find it. (Forgive me if it pops up twice.) It was intended as a reply to JP's last comment, though may have been superceded by Wembley's extensive contribution.)
Re: ticking bomb - I think Sullivan's position (and possibly mine) is that there may be circumstances in which you need to extract vital information 'by any means necessary', but that doesn't mean you should change the law. It's worth quoting at length.
It is possible to concede that, in an extremely rare circumstance, torture may be used without conceding that it should be legalized. One imperfect but instructive analogy is civil disobedience. In that case, laws are indeed broken, but that does not establish that the laws should be broken. In fact, civil disobedience implies precisely that laws should not be broken, and protesters who engage in it present themselves promptly for imprisonment and legal sanction on exactly those grounds. They do so for demonstrative reasons. They are not saying that laws don't matter. They are saying that laws do matter, that they should be enforced, but that their conscience in this instance demands that they disobey them.
In extremis, a rough parallel can be drawn for a president faced with the kind of horrendous decision on which Krauthammer rests his entire case. What should a president do? The answer is simple: He may have to break the law. In the Krauthammer scenario, a president might well decide that, if the survival of the nation is at stake, he must make an exception. At the same time, he must subject himself--and so must those assigned to conduct the torture--to the consequences of an illegal act. Those guilty of torturing another human being must be punished--or pardoned ex-post-facto. If the torture is revealed to be useless, if the tortured man is shown to have been innocent or ignorant of the information he was tortured to reveal, then those responsible must face the full brunt of the law for, in Krauthammer's words, such a "terrible and monstrous thing." In Michael Walzer's formulation, if we are to have dirty hands, it is essential that we show them to be dirty.
Post 7/7 it was very easy to imagine a ticking bomb scenario. After the failed attacks there was a very real possibility that someone was out there ready to try again and that someone else knew of their plan. In the wake of the attacks, I was angry and probably willing to sanction anything. I was glad when I heard that a terrorist had been shot dead in Stockwell, and inevitably felt a certain shame at this bloodlust when the victim turned out to be a blameless Brazillian. (I still support the police and accept that there may be times when shooting a suspect is the only option. But I am glad that we still care enough about the cost of human life to have a thorough inquiry and that we still investigate whether or not any laws have been broken, despite exceptional circumstances.) It is precisely because emotions run high after an attack, that we have to be careful what freedoms we are willing to sacrifice in the heat of the moment.
The abuses in Abu Ghraib were NOT part of a ticking bomb scenario. They were part of much more general intelligence gathering. A fishing trip of sorts. If torture is legalised there is a very real danger that we will see many more Abu Ghraibs.
Dan says: Re: ticking bomb - I think Sullivan's position (and possibly mine) is that there may be circumstances in which you need to extract vital information 'by any means necessary', but that doesn't mean you should change the law.
Just time to note that Dershowitz takes the opposite line ie make it legal:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/01/22/ED5329.DTL Want to torture? Get a warrant Alan M. Dershowitz San Francisco Chronicle January 22, 2002
http://edition.cnn.com/2003/LAW/03/03/cnna.Dershowitz/ CNN Dershowitz: Torture could be justified March 4, 2003
Plenty of anti-Dershowitz stuff on the web, for anyone interested.
Wembley: The threat is not that our nations will be overrun by islamist fundamentalists. Taint never gonna happen.
JP: If they play their cards right and ride the demographic wave, this is absolutely a possibility, especially in Europe.
Wembley: The threat is also NOT that inocents in our society will be murdered in the name of... (Islam/Jesus/the white race/insert cause). Because this WILL happen. It is all bar a racing certainty, the only details left being the scale, timing and locality.
JP: don't follow your logic here, please explain. You seem to be saying that something is NOT a threat because it WILL happen. That seems a non-sequitur to me, but it's late on a Sunday night, so maybe it's me.
One more article on torture. Here's Naomi Klein arguing that the US has used torture for years and that the only thing's that has changed is the openness. (Though I'm not sure if she's actually going so far as to suggest that the Bush administration is to be commended for it commitment to greater tranparency...)
The torture warrant idea is very interesting (and weirdly chimes quite well with the Klein article I posted - see above). Basically AD argues that given that torture is de facto used in extreme cases, it is better to prescribe its use within certain defined legal limits.
The counter position is put in the CNN interview (also posted by JP), namely that torture should never be legitimised, simply as a matter of principle (although there may be practical reasons as well.) The objection (similar to a point made by Sullivan) is that an extreme scenario (the ticking bomb) is being used as the basis for a general rule.
It remains a tricky one. I think I'm still with Sullivan on this one. But it does leave the question - how do we address or police the covert acts of torture that are going on, not just in far off lands ruled by despots, but within our own (democratic) societies. How do we hold to account actions that no one admits have even taken place?
Perhaps (as in the case of Abu Ghraib) freedom of speech (and a free press) are enough to do the job of bringing abuses to light?
Terrorists killing our citizens ... will happen, inevitably, and as such is a persistent low-level threat, and will be fatal to a few unfortunate individuals.
How many civilians would have to be threatened by a potential terrorist act for this to become a high-level threat, in your opinion?
Demographics schmemographics.
I'll try and find some stats on the subject
No torture. Ever. Of anyone. Under any circumstances.
Even in Krauthammer's Ethics 101 example? Even if it's a member of your family who could be saved? Even if torturing one person would prevent one billion others being tortured?
From Christopher Hitchens article above, here is a summary of his argument against waterboarding:
1. Waterboarding is a deliberate torture technique and has been prosecuted as such by our judicial arm when perpetrated by others.
2. If we allow it and justify it, we cannot complain if it is employed in the future by other regimes on captive U.S. citizens. It is a method of putting American prisoners in harm’s way.
3. It may be a means of extracting information, but it is also a means of extracting junk information. (Mr. Nance told me that he had heard of someone’s being compelled to confess that he was a hermaphrodite. I later had an awful twinge while wondering if I myself could have been “dunked” this far.) To put it briefly, even the C.I.A. sources for the Washington Post story on waterboarding conceded that the information they got out of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was “not all of it reliable.” Just put a pencil line under that last phrase, or commit it to memory.
4. It opens a door that cannot be closed. Once you have posed the notorious “ticking bomb” question, and once you assume that you are in the right, what will you not do? Waterboarding not getting results fast enough? The terrorist’s clock still ticking? Well, then, bring on the thumbscrews and the pincers and the electrodes and the rack.
19 comments:
Glad you posted something on torture. Gives me a chance to add this from The Washington Post:
When UPI's Pam Hess asked about torture by Iraqi authorities, Rumsfeld replied that "obviously, the United States does not have a responsibility" other than to voice disapproval.
But Pace had a different view. "It is the absolute responsibility of every U.S. service member, if they see inhumane treatment being conducted, to intervene, to stop it," the general said.
Rumsfeld interjected: "I don't think you mean they have an obligation to physically stop it; it's to report it."
But Pace meant what he said. "If they are physically present when inhumane treatment is taking place, sir, they have an obligation to try to stop it," he said, firmly.
(First found the quoted bit in this from Harry's Place.)
Also, here's Andrew Sullivan, also on the subject of torture. (May require you to register in order to access it.)
Re: previous comment.
I should have made clear that in the quoted passage 'Pace' is Joint Chiefs of Staff General Peter Pace.
One more thing: The Sullivan article is a direct response to the Krauthammer article posted by JP. (In other words - JP you should read it.)
Well worth popping in to the Daily Dish if you're interested in the torture debate. He's posting a lot on the subject including this:
THE WSJ AND TORTURE: Here's an interesting case. In the Iraq court-room yesterday, a woman described being tortured by Saddam's thugs in Abu Ghraib, back when he controlled it. Her account of torture is as follows:
"They forced me to take off my clothes," said the woman, referred to only as Witness A by the court. "They kept my legs up. They handcuffed me and started beating me with cables. It wasn't just one guard, it was many guards." ...
"I agree that things in Abu Ghraib were, until recently, bad, but did they use dogs on you? Did they take photographs?" asked one defense attorney, attempting to raise the issue of U.S. prisoner abuse at the prison.
"No," she replied.
According to the Wall Street Journal's definition of torture, this woman wasn't subjected to "anything close" to torture. Repeated beatings are specifically not torture, as argued by AEI legal scholar, John Yoo, who helped craft Bush administration policies. The woman was not water-boarded, she was not shackled in stress positions, she was not subjected to hypothermia, she was not sexually abused and she was not threatened by dogs. She did not, in other words, come even close to being tortured, according to the Wall Street Journal. Do they still abide by their position? Does vice-president Cheney agree that she was merely subjected to "coercive interrogation techniques"?
Like the Sullivan article (as I usually do). With my philosopher's hat on, he is right to say that Krauthammer overstepped the mark in his Ethics 101 example - it is not of course true that even in the ticking bomb scenario, torture is the right thing to do. You have to argue the case. In my opinion, I actually think it *is* justified, but that's not a conclusion you can just leap to.
Sullivan's main argument is an old philosophical fave, the "slippery slope". It's an argument on practical grounds, rather than on point of principle. He almost certainly has a point about the dangers of exceptions to moral laws becoming the norm. But if the danger posed by *not* invoking the exception were sufficiently great, it may still be justifiable despite the slippery slope danger.
And finally, I think Sullivan underestimates the likeliness of the ticking bomb. The Israelis have already had these situations (though not yet with a nuke) - it's not just a "hypothetical rarity", it's a reality. And as the availablity of portable WMD's increases along with the supply of suicide terrorists, the threat will only increase.
Mmm, do I want to know what "water-boarding" is?
Interesting that you cite Isreal as an example. As I'm sure you're aware Israel's supreme court specifically outlawed the use of torture despite the exceptional circumstances (and threat) that Israel faces on a daily basis.
This is effectively Senator John McCain's argument against torture - even the Israeli's don't allow it, so the US shouldn't either.
I’d note for my colleagues’ consideration that the State of Israel, no stranger to terrorist attacks, has declared cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment illegal. In 1999 the Israeli Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision to this effect that contained words we may wish to reflect on today. “A democratic, freedom-loving society,” the court wrote, “does not accept that investigators use any means for the purpose of uncovering the truth. The rules pertaining to investigations are important to a democratic state. They reflect its character.”
I'm aware of the Israeli Supreme Court's decision - it's in Dershowitz's The Case For Israel which you still haven't read, you lowly dog.
Dershowitz points out that this is was an extraordinarly brave decision by the Supreme Court, one that condemns Israelis to death who might otherwise have been saved - and it by no means clear to him or me that this was the right decision.
I assume that AD provides evidence of specific attacks / murders that could have been prevented had torture been sanctioned by the Israeli supreme court. Please post said evidence.
And even then, Sullivan's argument is not primarily about saving lives - it's about inalienable rights and freedoms.
1a. My scanning days are behind me. Read the book. You won't regret it.
1b. But it should hardly be surprising to anyone that there would be real cases of ticking bomb terrorists in the hands of the Israeli security services. And why else would the Israeli Supreme Court have ruled on this?
1c. The Krauthammer article gives such an example anyway (Waxman).
2. The problem with any kind of "inalienable" right is what to do when it conflicts with another inalienable right. Krauthammer's Ethics 101 is an example of this.
I thought I'd already posted this but now I can't find it. (Forgive me if it pops up twice.) It was intended as a reply to JP's last comment, though may have been superceded by Wembley's extensive contribution.)
Re: ticking bomb - I think Sullivan's position (and possibly mine) is that there may be circumstances in which you need to extract vital information 'by any means necessary', but that doesn't mean you should change the law. It's worth quoting at length.
It is possible to concede that, in an extremely rare circumstance, torture may be used without conceding that it should be legalized. One imperfect but instructive analogy is civil disobedience. In that case, laws are indeed broken, but that does not establish that the laws should be broken. In fact, civil disobedience implies precisely that laws should not be broken, and protesters who engage in it present themselves promptly for imprisonment and legal sanction on exactly those grounds. They do so for demonstrative reasons. They are not saying that laws don't matter. They are saying that laws do matter, that they should be enforced, but that their conscience in this instance demands that they disobey them.
In extremis, a rough parallel can be drawn for a president faced with the kind of horrendous decision on which Krauthammer rests his entire case. What should a president do? The answer is simple: He may have to break the law. In the Krauthammer scenario, a president might well decide that, if the survival of the nation is at stake, he must make an exception. At the same time, he must subject himself--and so must those assigned to conduct the torture--to the consequences of an illegal act. Those guilty of torturing another human being must be punished--or pardoned ex-post-facto. If the torture is revealed to be useless, if the tortured man is shown to have been innocent or ignorant of the information he was tortured to reveal, then those responsible must face the full brunt of the law for, in Krauthammer's words, such a "terrible and monstrous thing." In Michael Walzer's formulation, if we are to have dirty hands, it is essential that we show them to be dirty.
Post 7/7 it was very easy to imagine a ticking bomb scenario. After the failed attacks there was a very real possibility that someone was out there ready to try again and that someone else knew of their plan. In the wake of the attacks, I was angry and probably willing to sanction anything. I was glad when I heard that a terrorist had been shot dead in Stockwell, and inevitably felt a certain shame at this bloodlust when the victim turned out to be a blameless Brazillian. (I still support the police and accept that there may be times when shooting a suspect is the only option. But I am glad that we still care enough about the cost of human life to have a thorough inquiry and that we still investigate whether or not any laws have been broken, despite exceptional circumstances.) It is precisely because emotions run high after an attack, that we have to be careful what freedoms we are willing to sacrifice in the heat of the moment.
The abuses in Abu Ghraib were NOT part of a ticking bomb scenario. They were part of much more general intelligence gathering. A fishing trip of sorts. If torture is legalised there is a very real danger that we will see many more Abu Ghraibs.
Dan says: Re: ticking bomb - I think Sullivan's position (and possibly mine) is that there may be circumstances in which you need to extract vital information 'by any means necessary', but that doesn't mean you should change the law.
Just time to note that Dershowitz takes the opposite line ie make it legal:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/01/22/ED5329.DTL
Want to torture? Get a warrant
Alan M. Dershowitz
San Francisco Chronicle
January 22, 2002
http://edition.cnn.com/2003/LAW/03/03/cnna.Dershowitz/
CNN
Dershowitz: Torture could be justified
March 4, 2003
Plenty of anti-Dershowitz stuff on the web, for anyone interested.
Wembley: The threat is not that our nations will be overrun by islamist fundamentalists. Taint never gonna happen.
JP: If they play their cards right and ride the demographic wave, this is absolutely a possibility, especially in Europe.
Wembley: The threat is also NOT that inocents in our society will be murdered in the name of... (Islam/Jesus/the white race/insert cause). Because this WILL happen. It is all bar a racing certainty, the only details left being the scale, timing and locality.
JP: don't follow your logic here, please explain. You seem to be saying that something is NOT a threat because it WILL happen. That seems a non-sequitur to me, but it's late on a Sunday night, so maybe it's me.
One more article on torture. Here's Naomi Klein arguing that the US has used torture for years and that the only thing's that has changed is the openness. (Though I'm not sure if she's actually going so far as to suggest that the Bush administration is to be commended for it commitment to greater tranparency...)
Just read the Dershowitz articles (thanks JP).
The torture warrant idea is very interesting (and weirdly chimes quite well with the Klein article I posted - see above). Basically AD argues that given that torture is de facto used in extreme cases, it is better to prescribe its use within certain defined legal limits.
The counter position is put in the CNN interview (also posted by JP), namely that torture should never be legitimised, simply as a matter of principle (although there may be practical reasons as well.) The objection (similar to a point made by Sullivan) is that an extreme scenario (the ticking bomb) is being used as the basis for a general rule.
It remains a tricky one. I think I'm still with Sullivan on this one. But it does leave the question - how do we address or police the covert acts of torture that are going on, not just in far off lands ruled by despots, but within our own (democratic) societies. How do we hold to account actions that no one admits have even taken place?
Perhaps (as in the case of Abu Ghraib) freedom of speech (and a free press) are enough to do the job of bringing abuses to light?
btw, the Niall Ferguson article posted by Andy on the Pinter thread is relevant here too.
http://impdec.blogspot.com/2005/12/pausing-for-thought-on-nobel-prize-for.html
Terrorists killing our citizens ... will happen, inevitably, and as such is a persistent low-level threat, and will be fatal to a few unfortunate individuals.
How many civilians would have to be threatened by a potential terrorist act for this to become a high-level threat, in your opinion?
Demographics schmemographics.
I'll try and find some stats on the subject
No torture. Ever. Of anyone. Under any circumstances.
Even in Krauthammer's Ethics 101 example? Even if it's a member of your family who could be saved? Even if torturing one person would prevent one billion others being tortured?
Peter's bro' Christopher Hitchens submitted himself to water boarding. His article on the experience makes clear its definitely torture:
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/08/hitchens200808
From Christopher Hitchens article above, here is a summary of his argument against waterboarding:
1. Waterboarding is a deliberate torture technique and has been prosecuted as such by our judicial arm when perpetrated by others.
2. If we allow it and justify it, we cannot complain if it is employed in the future by other regimes on captive U.S. citizens. It is a method of putting American prisoners in harm’s way.
3. It may be a means of extracting information, but it is also a means of extracting junk information. (Mr. Nance told me that he had heard of someone’s being compelled to confess that he was a hermaphrodite. I later had an awful twinge while wondering if I myself could have been “dunked” this far.) To put it briefly, even the C.I.A. sources for the Washington Post story on waterboarding conceded that the information they got out of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was “not all of it reliable.” Just put a pencil line under that last phrase, or commit it to memory.
4. It opens a door that cannot be closed. Once you have posed the notorious “ticking bomb” question, and once you assume that you are in the right, what will you not do? Waterboarding not getting results fast enough? The terrorist’s clock still ticking? Well, then, bring on the thumbscrews and the pincers and the electrodes and the rack.
Hat-tip Daniel Finkelstein
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