Time to repeal Godwin’s Law ?

Why hasn’t Barbara Amiel followed Conrad Black into suspicion, legal trouble and hopefully in the end obscurity?

We’re the good guys, so we’re entitled to bend the rules a little. That’s the plot of a thousand cop shows, and at least half the time it turns out badly on TV. I’m beginning to agree with conservatives that TV has corrupted our minds, or at least their minds. Today’s Boondocks is particularly apropos. Anyone who is really shocked at the level of prisoner abuse in Iraq should have to sit through a season of Oz.

Faced with this kind of viewpoint being put forward in a major newspaper, it’s hard to see how Godwin’s Law can stay in place for long. Certainly I can’t think of any analysis of Amiel’s argument that would not lead rapidly to a violation.
Not to be overly nitpicky, but since this actually confirms Godwin’s Law as stated (“As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one”), why would we want to repeal it?

mg: the relevant part of that “law” is that once the nazi comparison is brought up, that [discussion] is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress.

I’m not sure I’d bother bringing up the nazis for the sort of mentality Amiel embraces and justifies. It is so obviously ridiculous and appalling there’s no need for comparisons.

But John has a very good point…

Even aside from the handcuffs being an unnecessary thing in that context of a 97-year old – and I’m struggling to imagine the scene, I’ve never lived in America and I’ve never seen anyone, of any age, handcuffed for breaking speed limits, so the idea is compeltely absurd to me but whatever – I can’t grasp what she sees in common between that kind of incident, and the tortures in Iraq. I just can’t. Even when handcuffs are normally used, you handcuff someone to stop them escaping or protesting while you’re arresting them. Not for “humiliation” purposes. Dear god. That is such a barbaric idea.

The whole concept that law enforcement is a matter of morally exemplary punishment involving cruelty instead of well, simple enforcement of laws to make things work and rules be valid for everyone!, is something I can’t comprehend.

pepi — Yeah, I know, but that’s not strictly Godwin’s Law, but rather a tradition that’s associated with it.

A larger point is that that tradition is also largely descriptive at this point, that is, if you are aware of the tradition and are still insisting on invoking the Nazi comparison, you’re very likely losing the argument one way or another, Godwin’s law notwithstanding.

…
A corollary of that, of course, is that you can’t win an argument with someone like Barbara Amiel, which you can’t, so it all works out.

Pepi,

I come from a family of police officers, and have spent quite a lot of time riding w/ them and around them. Rest assued that hand-cuffs and similar measures are quite regularly used not primarily as a means of restraint but as a form of domination to show power and to humiliate. Using such against an 97 year old woman may be less common, but the practice in general is quite regular.

Some time this year, I predict, an elderly person is going to drive into a crowd of people and claim that the car just “took off by itself”. Then commenters will wonder why nobody took steps to keep the driver off the road. I’m not saying that in this case the woman was incompetent, but something tells me that there is more to this.
At lease more than the simple fact that America is fascist, or that since no Jew can be a citizen of Jordan or Saudi Arabia and because the people of the ME and North Africa have been largely successful in ethnic cleansing over the last 50 years, that we should respect this and seek to eliminate the state of Israel as well.

But then again, the more liberal and intelligent folks will disagree with me about this, so who am I to say?

DailyKos *and* Tacitus have spontaneously both revoked Godwin’s law for the duration. DailyKos reader explicitly, the Tacitus reader by saying that usually comparisons to the Nazis are nuts, but the picture of the dog-handlers and the prisoner made him think black coats and silver death’s heads.

Have you all been reading too much Ted Rall?

reuben, that was freaky – it almost sounded like you were serious!

I live in Highland Park, TX, which is easily the safest and probably also the loveliest of any metropolitan US in-town wealthy enclave. The cops here are vigilant, friendly, and thoroughly professional.

So apologies in advance to the 97 year-old Granny, but in fact those very elderly drivers who do not pay attention to basic responsibilities (such as registering one’s car) are vastly more likely to be dangerously inattentive drivers.

The scenario Dave hypothesizes has already occurred. An elderly driver recently plowed into and killed ten people in LA. From CBS’s report:

“Police have said Weller told them he didn’t realize until too late that Arizona Avenue, crammed with pedestrians and produce Wednesday, was closed to traffic. They said Weller believes he might have hit the gas instead of the brake as he tried to stop.

“Witnesses said Weller’s car sped down the entire length of the open-air market, knocking down stalls, scattering produce and hitting as many as 50 people. Ten victims, ranging in age from 7 months to 78 years, were killed.”

some Western societies, and America in particular, use these procedures as a way of softening up the accused by humiliation and to underline the power of the authorities.

Hate to pile on Babs here, but checkpoints with four-hour lines, ‘security fences’, etc are also a way to humiliate and empower. And, gosh, isn’t it curious that so many of the privately-contracted interrogators in Iraq got instruction in Israeli-style techniques?

Back to the main point, though, but one problem in the US is that the extreme localisation and diffuseness of policing responsibilities creates plenty of opportunities for cops to use their badges as a free pass for power trips. That’s to say, if you’re the lone law-enforcement officer within the limits of a small rural city, it’s easy to get away with things that would probably get flagged up in a metropolitan force. And the fact that this arrest did get flagged up shows the greater ability of larger police departments to, um, police themselves.

(Contrast this with gendarmerie/carabinieri systems such as that in, say, Canada, where the lone Mountie in a remote village is still as much part of the RCMP as one in a big city. And it’s only large municipalities that contract out of RCMP policing.)

One of the things you are missing here is that in the US the push is on to treat all traffic stop victims the same and thus end racial profiling. In theory, it was supposed to be that nobody would be handcuffed without cause but in practice, everyone is now treated as if they were a black teenage male driving an expensive sport ute…, that is treated as dangerous and criminal until proven otherwise. Also known as DWB, driving while black.

Pepi: She wasn’t handcuffed “for speeding”, but for unpaid tickets (ie, arrest warrant for moving violations) and pulled over for an expired registration.

Likewise, the blame for handcuffing her does seem likely to be reasonably placed on anti-discrimination policies that require everyone be handcuffed, even if the officer is quite sure they’re no threat at all. Because otherwise, hey, discrimination lawsuit.

None of which touches on how incredibly wrong Amiel is, of course.

Nick: Fences are also a way to “keep real-no-shit-terrorists out”. You know, the sort that go into nightclubs or busses and blow themselves up while strapped in plastique and nails. Does the fact that the fences might make someone sad or inconvenienced in an impersonal way make the fence a humiliating torture? (The answer we are looking for here is “No.”)

david salmanson & digivald: oh, I see. I hadn’t taken that anti-discrimination reason in account. But surely that’s a case of anti-discrimination run wild?

Are you saying that, just to avoid racial profiling and lawsuits, everyone is treated the same regardless of the _violation_ or crime they actually committed? How can that be? Race is not a relevant discriminating factor, but the actual violation is. It’d be mad not to consider it.

Maybe I’m not understanding what instances you actually refer to. I mean, who exactly gets handcuffed and for what crimes? Does that _normally_ include people who commit violations of driving regulations, or only those who commit crimes _while driving_? (or, who get stopped while they’re driving, but they’re wanted for non-driving related crimes)

There must be a difference there, right? what is it that triggers the handcuffs?

digivald – I know, I’d confused those two violations, but see, they do belong to the same level of driving-related violations – as opposed to actual crimes. Actually, breaking speed limits is a more serious offence than expired registration.

I don’t understand what is meant by “arrest warrant for moving violations”? I’m genuinely not familiar with the US context on that. I’ve never known people to get arrested for not paying tickets ever, at all. At most, get stuff confiscated if you keep refusing to pay even after they’ve sent you the bill repeatedly.

I think we must be clear to distinguish Godwin’s Law, which is a mere positive statement of the nature of usenet discussions, and remains valid, from the normative corollary to Godwin’s Law, whose implication is that no comparison to the Nazis is ever valid. I think the corollary can safely be jettisoned.

Amiel’s piece is not an apoligia for torture, it’s bad extrapolation. The basis for her comparison is a lack of knowledge of how we do things here. It’s then followed by the assumption that for the US what is allowed or prohibited to civilian law enforcement is the same as what is allowed or prohibited to military police.

1) a) In Texas, in the case of an outstanding traffic warrant, you are not handcuffed based on whether you are a threat to the officer, you are handcuffed because you broke the law multiple times (see b) and are now going to jail. Thus an officer handcuffing an arrestee is doing his/her job, which is unrelated to being a dick about it.
b) You have several chances to avoid getting arrested: schedule a court appearance, show up, pay the fine. The system can even be gamed so that Mrs. Kelton could have rescheduled the court appearance for a a year or two (possibly rendering the point moot since she is 97) or by the judge giving her extra defensive driving options (for many violations, you can automatically get one ticket dismissed via defensive driving each year, and the judge has the option of dismissing other tickets if you repeat it for each one).
c) Mrs. Kelton slacked it at least twice (once for the warrant, another time to get pulled over and arrested). She’s in Texas, and in Texas the privilege of driving is accompanied by the responsibility to pay lip service to speed limits, to not be a nuisance on the roads, to show up in court, and to pay your fines. Obviously she repeatedly failed at this.

2) The US Consitution explicitly allows the Congress to set different law for the military than for civilians. While case law and tradition affect how much this is used, the power is there.

In effect, Amiel took a utterly banal event (and age is no excuse for flouting the law repeatedly) and combined it with an assumption to say, “Are we sure we want to be doing this?”

Dan, you seem to be the only person who has read the column as being anything other than a convoluted apologia for torture.

Silly me–I must have been fooled by subtly ambiguous phrases like “Clearly, terrible things, including rape and sodomy, were committed”, and “Torture is reprehensible in any event”. And anyway, who am I going to believe–John Quiggin or my own eyes?

Look, Amiel is making a crystal-clear point: there are forms of harsh treatment that pretty much define the term, “torture” in anybody’s book, and there are forms of harsh treatment that are more ambiguous. Simply adopting the broadest definition and shouting “torture!” whenever anything unpleasant-sounding occurs to a prisoner can lead to some rather odd labelings (hence the anecdote about the 97-year-old in handcuffs).

Likewise, shouting “she condones torture!” at anyone who dares question the appropriate breadth of the term’s applicability is a cheap and dishonest dodge of a difficult and important issue. And the fact that Kevin Drum and others embrace the same low tactic doesn’t make it any more excusable, if you ask me.

John, I’m actually not yet entirely certain about the first, but I’d definitely consider the latter two to be well beyond the pale in terms of treatment of prisoners. However, the claim Amiel seems to be making (and I admit I don’t know if it’s accurate or not) is that this type of egregious act was in any event way out of line by the military’s own standards, and was from the beginning subject to investigation and punishment–unlike lesser forms of “pressure” (Amiel mentions sleep deprivation, for instance), which were more widespread, and more accepted, practices. She further argues that some polemics in the wake of the torture scandal have conflated these two classes of case, accusing the military hierarchy of condoning the very worst abuses as a matter of policy (or else simply eliding the possibility that anyone could have made any distinction between the two classes of practice).

Once again, I can certainly understand you disagreeing with Amiel’s position on this issue. And a healthy debate on it properly includes at least some hard-line opposition to all harsh treatments. But arguing forcefully against Amiel’s position is very different from distorting or dismissing it. The former is a productive contribution to the debate; the latter is not.

dan, echoing John Quiggin’s questions (and mine) again – please, do point out which specific instances you (or Amiel, according to you) consider “ambiguous” rather than clearly falling into the definition of torture.

Also, please point out why your own (or Amiel’s) uncertainty whether to call something torture or not should be more relevant than specific laws and conventions that the US adheres to.

Especially after both Bush and Rumsfeld now have been forced to acknowledge the Geneva convention is actually valid in respect those ambiguously undefined non-war-prisoners too.

Or should your personal doubts on definitions of torture count more than those laws?

Of course Amiel is not directly condoning torture. Of course she is condemning it. Should we give her a pat on the back for that? It’s a crime! It’s obviously not condonable.

But she, and you, are finding ways to excuse its occurring at all, to blur its definition, to “contextualize” and bring ambiguity where there is none*.

That’s a way of making apologies for what happened.

She is saying humiliation is necessary sometimes. How is that not an apology? A very sick and ambiguous one too, since she asks “if we handcuff old ladies for driving violations, what should we do with terrorists” – instead of saying _exactly_ what she has in mind there. At the very least, she is excusing the ideological premises on which that abuse took place, even if she’s not embracing what it led to.

That’s a very dodgy position position. It is obviously apologetic.

(*if you think there is ambiguity, again, please point to the specific instance in the report that might be considered acceptable prison practice, and please point out on what basis it is acceptable, ie. according to which law or convention or human rights declaration – not according to personal definitions or opinions)

‘Bryan, quite. See the discussion here.’
oh i see, Ted Rall is against torture and I’m against torture therefore i’m Ted Rall. it’s all so clear to me now. especially the part of all that deals with you.

John, I once again can’t fathom how you’ve managed to interpret Amiel’s words the way you have. Her clear, unequivocal point–as demonstrated by the very passages you quote–is that the terrible images of torture coming out of Iraq are being used to cast aspersions on Rumsfeld, his administration, and America in general that she believes are unfair because the behavior in the images was “rogue” behavior, not sanctioned behavior. She repeatedly concedes that the documented brutalities were inexcusable–and goes on at length about how little supervision and control was exercised over those responsible. Her conclusion is that this was a specific managerial slip-up, not a general moral collapse. Meanwhile, she asserts, the practices that were widespread, systematic and sanctioned were far milder, morally defensible, and unfairly conflated with the practices documented in the shocking pictures.

Now, my point here is not to support or defend Amiel’s opinion–I frankly neither know nor care much whether her interpretation of events is correct, and I’m perfectly ready to see her claims of non-culpability at the top of the hierarchy completely demolished. It’s also entirely fair to criticize the moral distinctions she makes between the practices that she believes were sanctioned and those she believes were never sanctioned. But at the very least she deserves to have her own position correctly and fairly represented.

dan simon: sorry? Shouldn’t you be asking Bush or Rumsfeld or anyone in the administration or military? Actually they’ve already replied to that question. They have acknowledged the Geneva convention does apply to this case. They said the military was specifically instructed to follow the convention – which clearly wasn’t true for the abusers, but seems to be in general for everyone else. One of the generals from command yesterday replied they do welcome the Red Cross investigating more into it. The Red Cross is the organisation checking that the Convention is implemented. Etc. etc.

So _it looks like_ the very people you claim to be supporting are acknowledging (bit late, but better late that never!) that the Geneva Convention does protect precisely those kind of prisoners of war too. Or combatants. Or whatever you want to call them.

I don’t know where you derive your belief that it is otherwise, but, if you have any quarrel with any of that, please address your complaints to the government and the military leadership.

— Also, I’m still wondering how you managed to miss that part of Amiel’s article where she explains why that lady needed to be handcuffed (it’s quoted right at the top of this post, see, up there?) and asks, If a 97-year-old woman is handcuffed for a traffic offence, what is the appropriate procedure for murderous guerrillas?

I’m sure it’s just gross misreading of her sincere concerns for legality, to assume she’s implying something of an apology for the torture-mentality, if not for the torture itself.

sorry, forgot the link to the article:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19207-2004May11.html

It also contains a handy short summary of how the Geneva Convention applies:

The Third Geneva Convention, which applies to prisoners of war and captured insurgents, says that they “may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to any unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind” as a way to make them answer questions. The Fourth Geneva Convention, which covers people under foreign occupation, says “no physical or moral coercion shall be exercised against” them, “in particular to obtain information from them or from third parties.”

In case you (dan simon) were referring to that internal ‘disagreement’ on how sleep deprivation and other techniques _approved_ by the US are a violation of the convention – that’s still not the same as saying the _torture_ cases themselves were allowed by the GC, cos no one is bloody saying that. Not even those who don’t acknowledge even the approved tactics were NOT ok by the GC.

It’s a really simple concept, if you’d followed yesterday’s debate you’d have understood it. But hey, you can still catch up.

The new version of Godwins Law has to be related to how long in a thread it takes before someone starts talking about the end of the world:

_(lileks.com) The West doesn’t have the power to change Islam; it only has the power to destroy it. We have a lot of nukes. We could kill everyone. We could just take out a few troublesome nations, kill millions, and irradiate Mecca so that the Fifth Pillar is invalidated. The hajj would be impossible. Every pilgrim a martyr. I don’t think we’ll do either; God help us if we do, but inasmuch as we have the capability, it’s an option. But it would be a crime greater than the crime that provoked such an act, and in the end that would stay our hand. They know we won’t do it….There is another path, of course. Simply put: if a US city is nuked, the US will have to nuke someone, or let it stand that the United States can lose a city without cost to the other side. Defining “the other side” would be difficult, of course – do you erase Tehran to punish the mullahs? Make a crater out of Riyahd? These are exactly the sort of decisions we never want to make. But let’s say it happens. Baltimore: fire and wind. Gone. That horrible day would clarify things once and for all. It’s one thing for someone in a distant city to cheer the fall of two skyscrapers: from a distance, it looks like a bloody nose. But erasing a city is a different matter. Everyone will have to choose sides. That would be one possible beginning of the end of this war._

Great, Yippee, Nuclear Fallout, Yummy, hmmm…now we need to make sure that the command of the nukes is not in the hands of the same people who run the prisons.

_But it would be a crime greater than the crime that provoked such an act, and in the end that would stay our hand_

…did you really need to have to say it, like it might not be true?

So, Amiel is a crook. Who’d have thought. Her columns spoke of such impeccable ethical principles…