Comments on: What we owe

By: abb1

abb1 — Fri, 17 Jun 2005 17:33:21 +0000

Come to think of it, this kind of an open debate in the times when a significant part of the population is swept by some sort of nationalistic fever seems like a distinctly bad idea.

So, thanks, but no thanks. When it comes to torture, I’ll take the good old law of the land over a referendum every freaken time.

By: abb1

abb1 — Fri, 17 Jun 2005 17:18:23 +0000

Ooops. The first sentence should read: The problem is NOT that we need some ‘open debate’.

By: abb1

abb1 — Fri, 17 Jun 2005 17:16:44 +0000

The problem is that we need some ‘open debate’. The problem is that these people who run Gitmo have no judicial (or, indeed, any civilian) oversight, that’s all.

Here’s what the wikipedia says about gestapo in its early years:

…The law had been changed in such a way that the Gestapo’s actions were not subject to judicial review. Nazi jurist Dr. Werner Best stated, “As long as the [Gestapo] … carries out the will of the leadership, it is acting legally.” The Gestapo was specifically exempted from responsibility to administrative courts, where citizens normally could sue the state to conform to laws.

By: Uncle Kvetch

Uncle Kvetch — Fri, 17 Jun 2005 15:28:00 +0000

The instances of prisoner abuse which you cite as typifying US actions were in fact illegal and the perpetrators have been punished.

AM, if you read the NYTimes article that Hilzoy links to in reference to “fourteen year olds [...] ‘suspended from hooks in the ceiling for hours at a time’ while being beaten,” you’ll see that there’s no reference whatsoever to the perpetrators being punished.

By: Uncle Kvetch

Uncle Kvetch — Fri, 17 Jun 2005 15:16:29 +0000

The instances of prisoner abuse which you cite as typifying US actions were in fact illegal and the perpetrators have been punished.

By: Seth Finkelstein

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 17 Jun 2005 10:19:50 +0000

Debating it “blurry” is easy – there’s “It might help prevent terrorism” on one side, and “Ends don’t justify the means” on the other. Debating it “clear” is hard – it involves either admiting there’s some cases torture might work (thus opening an immediate slippery slope), or there’s some cases torture is done to innocents (thus opening an immediate slippery slope).

One notable aspect of Alan Dershowitz’s advocacy here, is that while he presents himself as making pragmatic arguments, they’re in fact a collection of rhetorical flourishes. And that’s symptomatic of the debate.

By: Publius

Publius — Fri, 17 Jun 2005 04:02:15 +0000

Torture by the military: don’t ask, don’t tell.

By: jet

jet — Fri, 17 Jun 2005 02:04:11 +0000

am,
Whether you believe the abuse/torture/rough interrogations are warranted, you have to agree that the military is seriously screwing the pooch on the public relations front. The next 20 years will not see the F-16/15 and certainly not the JSF challenged by any country in the world. So scrapping the F-22 would free up billions of dollars of which a couple of million could be spent on putting together a system of rough interrogation/torture/whatever that would never cross the lines/laws, and thus leak out and cause every newspaper to spend thousands of gallons of ink on it.

There is just no excuse for Abu Gharib and the stories from Guantanamo. The damage done by those stories is on the hands of those generals who lost some of their humanity when they gained the ability to sacrifice humans for hills, and thus require strict civilian oversight. I’m sure the general in charge of Abu Gharab thought very little of a few roughed of innocents while reading through the daily reports of dead US soldiers. The military has just never been good at strict adherence to laws protecting civilians. And I’m not coming down on the military, I’m just saying that judgment is understandably clouded when you can’t stop thinking about your dead friends or worrying about your own skin.

By: hilzoy

hilzoy — Thu, 16 Jun 2005 23:12:52 +0000

am: read my whole post. The part excerpted here only says: Susan Collins apparently thinks we don’t want to debate these issues openly. If we don’t, things may continue to go wrong. That does not say that those abuses typify US actions, nor that they were legal; only that unless we have an open discussion in which we try to decide what limits we, as a country, want those who act in our name to abide by, why these things happen, and how any things we think should not have happened might be avoided, they might go on happening, and we (the people) need to say that we are more concerned with getting clear on these things than with our own peace of mind. I do not myself believe the ‘bad apples’ theory, but nothing in this post contradicts it.

Think of me as calling for something like the military’s “lessons learned” exercises, and as calling for all of us to make it clear that we want to debate these issues, not hide from them.

By: Barry

Barry — Thu, 16 Jun 2005 22:37:10 +0000

am, please stuff it. By now, the ‘a few bad apples’ theory’ belongs with “vast stockpiles of WMD’s”, ‘cakewalk’, ‘rice and flowers’ and ‘flypaper.

By: am

am — Thu, 16 Jun 2005 22:19:28 +0000

You know, don’t you, that this posting contains a fallacy?

The instances of prisoner abuse which you cite as typifying US actions were in fact illegal and the perpetrators have been punished.

It is incumbent upon you to substantiate your insinuation that these actions do in fact typify US behaviour.

We await with interest.

By: Brian

Brian — Thu, 16 Jun 2005 22:13:56 +0000

So now we’re getting our theories on child psychology (what children do and don’t want) from fairy tales?

If there has been actual examples of unprompted children complaining about the Bush handling of detainees, or the budget disaster, or anything really, that would back up dglp’s claim. Until then, it’s a fairy tale.

By: dglp

dglp — Thu, 16 Jun 2005 21:03:31 +0000

Since when do children want things blurry?
That’s one of the most god-awfully patronising things I’ve heard in a long time. Perhaps adults want children to want it blurry, so that adults can continue to avoid the hard questions. But kids? If you recall correctly, it was a child who cried out that the Emperor had no clothes…

By: hilzoy

hilzoy — Thu, 16 Jun 2005 20:32:41 +0000

Which is why we need to let our representatives know that we do not want it blurry. They’re talking about us.

And thanks, Ted ;)

By: abb1

abb1 — Thu, 16 Jun 2005 20:12:44 +0000

They think it’s one of those ‘man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do’ things.

I think it’s mistake, but I have to disagree that it’s childish. It’s something they don’t like, they feel guilty about it, but they think it needs to be done. We all have situations like this (not torture, of course, just something we have to do that we’re not proud of) from time to time and we’re also trying to blur it out and forget. It’s not childish, it’s a normal human reaction.