But at the very minimum he was 100% clear that water boarding is a brutal practice that should be outlawed.

The Bush administration’s more honest critics accept that possibility, but argue that it does not justify these brutal methods. They are right.”

The clear implication is that he thinks water boarding is brutal.

Just so there is no doubt later

“So far as moral and tactical justification goes, this can be set aside. Waterboarding is shameful, and one may leave it at that. To repeat, Mr Obama was right to forswear its use and that of other brutal measures. ”

Perhaps he wasn’t 100% clear that water boarding was torture.

But at the very minimum he was 100% clear that water boarding is a brutal practice that should be outlawed.

Yes, Barry. You called me a New Deal Denialist. Despite my ardent defense of the New Deal, here and at EotAW (which nobody over there will deny—just try calling me that again, over there. In one of his print-publication pieces, Eric Rauchway actually used something I dredged up showing even Milton Friedman describing the New Deal as necessary.)

You called me a New Deal Denialist only because I pointed out the dangers of relying solely on correlation=cause arguments in discussing fluctuations in the level of employment during the New Deal period, particularly in the 1937-38 period, when FDR mistakenly turned fiscal conservative and cut back on work creation programs.

To me it’s obvious: when one is discussing the evidence from that period, one really ought to be equipped with some sort of understanding of Keynesian stimulus mechanisms and how they work, not simply with the statistics that help confirm that the mechanisms worked. To you, somehow, my advice to rely on more than just the numbers makes me a New Deal Denialist. Somehow. Nobody else seemed to think so.

In short, you brought all the intelligence of a rotten canteloupe to that argument, in leveling that utterly nonsensival accusation at me, and it was probably pretty conspicuous to everybody. In my experience, you don’t bring much more intelligence than that, to any argument. But, hey, go ahead: surprise me.

“I’m on your side in the debate, Rich, on the main point at least—that we should prosecute torturers and not worry so much about how ordinary Americans will interpret this. But I think you’ve been a jerk towards Michael. I don’t object to accusations of bad faith on principle, but in this particular case I think he’s arguing in good faith and his case isn’t stupid. ”

Michael Turner has a history – I’ve tangled with him before here and in Edge of the American West. I believe that Rich has tangled with him before, here. Mike is generally like that. I’ve not even sure that ‘Broderism’ is the way to put it; *sshole is probably more accurate.

And why shouldn’t they? This is what power is all about.

And I also think his WWII analogy has some validity. I don’t know for sure what WWII bomber crews knew, but from what I’ve read Americans knew perfectly well that our bombing raids were intended to cook civilians. There were even some liberal Christians and others who objected on moral grounds at the time, IIRC. And from what John Dower writes in “War Without Mercy”, atrocities by Americans against Japanese were sometimes of the face-to-face variety, though usually against the rare Japanese soldier who was captured alive.

I agree that it probably takes a greater degree of something unpleasant in one’s psychological to torture someone standing in front of you than it does to hit a switch and drop some incendiaries on a town. But that’s more a statement about human psychology and how we find it easier to commit atrocities in one form than another, and it’s why so many Westerners seem to think suicide bombing is worse than bombing civilians from a plane. I have problems with this.

I’m not sure if anyone is doing so in this thread, but I have seen people who seem to get offended when Bush’s crimes are compared to the war crimes of earlier Administrations. From my pov the Bushies broke new ground in making torture a respectable option for mainstream pundits to defend (though usually claiming that their preferred methods weren’t really torture). But it’s not like torturing someone is worse than piling up an immensely high bodycount with indiscriminate firepower unleashed in the Mekong Delta, or by burning down entire cities.

It’s just another incarnation of Broderism. It goes something like this:

The DFHs are so mean—calling people “scum” just because they approve of torturing suspects! How uncivil is that? Instead we have to look to the long term—the time when, after Bush admin torture is safely in the distant past, and it is no longer a live political issue, historians can analyze and condemn it. Yes, we have to ease the American people gently into rejection of torture—if there is any hint that it’s a partisan issue, such as, say, by pointing out that one party is still dominated by strong supporters of torture—that may only make people embrace torture, just out of spite! Those people who are so gauche as to have “unyielding moral absolutism” that torture is wrong are really the wrong-est of all, because the failure to yield—anything that could be characterized as absolutism of any kind, whether it’s “torture is good” or “torture is bad” doesn’t matter because they are really equivalent—is really the worst characteristic of all. Needless to say, this absolutism is also ineffective, because everything that has ever been accomplished politically has been accomplished by people who carefully stood back and waited for consensus.

Clive Crook just adds a little more weaseling to that.

Now this is really funny. If you’re not willing to go after WW II bomber vets, then you’re not serious! Let no one do anything about Bush-admin torture until we’ve tracked down those bigger criminals.

Meanwhile an insistence that we should bring people against whom strong evidence exists that they have committed a serious crime to trial is characterized as a “rush to judgement”. If Turner is sincere, he’s a living illustration that sincerity isn’t everything.

Well, maybe Clive Crook is onto something. Maybe it’s about an American Left (or major segment thereof) that needs its revenge against the Bushies now. I sure hope not. Or if that’s the case, I hope this movement doesn’t get much traction. If the perfect is the enemy of the good, the demand for instant results is even worse.