Torture, Schmorture

It seems pretty clear that the rack and finger crushing cause permanent physical damage and that is why they are not part of training. But that does not mean waterboarding is not torture; it means it is not maiming, which is good, as far as it goes, but is not the question at hand. I think few would dispute that electricity applied to the genitals is torture; it’s probably what many of us think of as the ultimate in torture. Evidently, though, the Khmers tried that first and then escalated to waterboarding if it did not work. It took me a moment to figure this out: direct application of pain will generate lots of endorphins, and therefore quickly lose effectiveness. After awhile, you’re getting the guy high more than anything else. The body’s defense mechanism against suffocation, though, is to escalate, rather than suppress, the urgency. It’s the gift that keeps on giving.

There are still people in jail for abuse at Abu Ghraib. Why punish them and nobody else?

Bubba, don’t you see – those were a few bad apples.

A bit depressing and makes it harder to carry on some conversations, but I gotta agree with Rich. It’s past time we stopped avoiding even calling a spade a spade and called it the fucking shovel it is.

Aside from the fact that doing physical harm to obtain information is ignoble, unlawful, and ineffective (see the Army Field Manual), the biggest proponents of physical force are physical cowards. Dick Cheney, for example, took a pass on military service and the concomitant mild physical discomfort associated with basic training. What a sad, unsavory lot.

I think you’re not being 100% fair to Crook. I read the paragraphs around the one you excerpt as him arguing that it’s not clear that waterboarding is illegal under US law, and thus that there are risks in pursuing a legalistic strategy against it.

Paragraph before — Not so fast. Common sense may tell you waterboarding is torture, but the law is less clear-cut. Congress should make waterboarding a crime, for the reasons I have stated, and it has had many chances before and since 9/11 to do so. The fact is, it has chosen not to. Some of those in Congress now calling for prosecutions, including Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House, were briefed about these methods in the panic-stricken aftermath of 9/11 and offered no objection.

Paragraph before ellipsis– 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. But the law does not set these points aside. If the lawyers who worked on the memos can show a court that they worked in good faith, under extreme pressure, to design methods that fell short of torture – in its legal, not commonsense, meaning – they would be innocent of knowingly shielding illegality. They have a strong case. What would acquittals mean for US standing in the world? Those calling for prosecutions do not appear to have considered this possibility. They ought to.

If the lawyers who worked on the memos can show a court that they worked in good faith, under extreme pressure, to design methods that fell short of torture – in its legal, not commonsense, meaning – they would be innocent of knowingly shielding illegality.

and if my disreputable Uncle Adolf could show a court that in good faith he believed himself to be 15 years old, female and a member of the cheerleading squad, he would have a decent defence against a charge of gross indecency behind the cricket pavilion. In the real world …

P O’Neill, CC is lying. As has been reported in many places, waterboarding was prosecuted by the US in war crimes trials as torture.

It has also been prosecuted domestically, by the Reagan administration, a bunch not known for its overly ambitious commitment to human rights and the rule of law.

His real argument is that waterboarding will fall in a legal gray area, making acquittals likely.

It hasn’t when people have been prosecuted for it before.

banned commenter

“Similarly, Crook sees prosecuting the torturers as politically too risky for the Obama administration. I have to admit, he could be right. ”

Oh, please. You do realize that this argument makes a mockery of justice, don’t you? What’s next: if a celebrity kills somebody, don’t prosecute because he’s popular? Or perhaps we should just go back to lynch mobs. That way only the really unpopular criminals will get it.

You do realize that this argument makes a mockery of justice, don’t you?

Of course I don’t realize that, Rich. I’m far too stupid.

Here’s some more stupidity for you: I agreed with John Rawls that the firebombings of Japanese cities in WW II (culminating in Hiroshima and Nagasaki) were war crimes. However, given that these attacks on civilians were legitimized to the American public for so long, that they were sold as necessary to bring the war to an end, I would oppose prosecuting anyone still living who was complicit in those war crimes, and would settle instead for a simple national admission of wrongdoing and an apology to the Japanese people. This soft-pedaling of genocidal aerial assaults on civilian populations would also be a “mockery of justice” (by whatever deep reasoning you’re employing here, I assume; I find it unfathomable), and could trigger a reversion to mob-rule barbarism in America (again, I only assume, by reasoning of yours so deep I can’t quite follow it). But I’m so incredibly stupid that I believe quite the opposite.

Cool, Michael Turner, I don’t think that I’ve ever seen the War on Terrorism justified with respect to WW II so classily. As RB points out, I also admire your counterfactual assertions which no doubt only coincidentally would excuse higher-ups from the same things that soldiers are currently imprisoned for.

Here’s another weird, incomprehensible (by you) statement about justice: mercy isn’t yours to give. That’s why we have trials. You can opine about what you think should be done all you want, but when there is strong evidence that someone has committed a serious crime, they get put on trial. Excusing them for political reasons is pretty much the definition of injustice.

However, given that these attacks on civilians were legitimized to the American public for so long, that they were sold as necessary to bring the war to an end, I would oppose prosecuting anyone still living who was complicit in those war crimes

… a prosecutor would also probably pass on prosecuting anyone still living who was complicit in those war crimes, since the distribution of wartime production and civilian populations were intertwined in the Empire of Japan in a way that they were not in the European theater of WWII.

It’s in the latter case that you could probably find prosecutable cases. Firebombing Dresden to frighten the Soviets would be hard to justify in a court of law, if you ever managed to take it there. Then again, there are all those genocides no one has apologized for. I’m still waiting for the Mongolians to stop being so glib about all the blood on their hands.

. . . . your counterfactual assertions which no doubt only coincidentally would excuse higher-ups from the same things that soldiers are currently imprisoned for.

That’s odd, because if anything, I’m much more in favor of pardons or amnesties for the soldiers than for the higher-ups, since the higher-ups obviously bear greater responsibility for creating the conditions (or even passively neglecting conditions, in environments historically conducive to detainee abuse) under which those soldiers committed their crimes. Then again, I’ve already admitted to being incredibly stupid, so please don’t bother telling me how you arrive at this “no doubt” conclusion of yours about what anything I said entails, since I couldn’t follow such deep reasoning no matter how hard I tried.

when there is strong evidence that someone has committed a serious crime, they get put on trial.

Actually, when the evidence is strong, the far more usual route is a plea bargain. It’s when the evidence is weak that you’re likely to get a trial.

Excusing them for political reasons is pretty much the definition of injustice.

I don’t propose excusing anyone. I do propose something more like clemency for those willing to own up to wrongdoing. And the prospect of clemency is more likely to lead to some owning-up. It’s also likely to make those segments of the American public sympathetic to claims for the legitimacy of torture in certain circumstances (large segments, as I’ve pointed out) more amenable to reason on the subject.

No, mercy is not mine to give. But I’m not disposing mercy. I’m only dispensing opinions. Everyone’s entitled to an opinion, even an opinion as incredibly stupid as mine.

JM: The problem with this “argument,” if we have to call it that, is that the briefings were of the official WH line at the time: that what was going on was all perfectly legal, and that the US ‘does not torture.’

My dim brain struggles. Let me make sure of your position here, JM: To us, it is plainly obvious (or very easy to work out) that waterboarding was torture and therefore illegal. But for Nancy Pelosi et al., even with the benefit of considerably greater detail received in briefings, and operating under the onus of representing wise leadership on difficult issues, moreover in the legislative branch and therefore responsible for making law in the first place, and perhaps even more important, ostensibly independent of (actually, with a sacred trust to provide a check on) the Executive branch, well . . . it was somehow different for them. What is obvious to us needn’t have been obvious to them. They could, in good conscience, just shut their brains down, not train their sense of right and wrong on what they were hearing and seeing, and could be thoroughly innocent of any concerns about legality or wrongdoing. And simply because the White House (held by the opposing party, in Pelosi’s case) was saying it was all cool, perfectly legal, there was nothing to worry about?

Is that what you meant?

If so, please tell me you were being sarcastic.

“Just wondering: is there anyone else here who actually read what I wrote who thinks that I’m “justifying” the War on Terror, or the use of torture? I think the War on Terror is ridiculous, and I think torture is wrong. And I think waterboarding is torture. Is there anyone else here who read what I wrote and actually doubted I held those positions?”

Not me. I think Rich is being a jerk. Though I’m more on his side in wanting prosecutions, even though I have this sick suspicion that you might be right about the outcome.

But no worries. The chances of Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld being prosecuted are somewhere between slim and none (unless it happens overseas).

Further out on the left, Arthur Silber (I’m too lazy to link) argues that prosecutions will just increase the level of American exceptionalism, and he might be right about that, in the same way that some people think the half-baked investigations of Iran/Contra showed that “the system worked”. Still, I’m of the opinion that anything that David Brooks, David Broder, Tom Friedman and Barack Obama all oppose is probably something worth doing.

Sure, I think that you’re justifying it after the fact. What matters is what you advocate, not why you say you’re advocating it. You can think the War on Terror is ridiculous, that waterboarding is torture and is wrong — and if I’m defining deviancy down I guess I’m supposed to congratulate you for that — but if that translates to something like the torturers were just like WW II bomber vets, and that we shouldn’t bring them to trial, then I really don’t see what good those beliefs of yours do.

In case you hadn’t noticed, it is not “plainly obvious.” Not even close.

It’s plainly obvious.

What tells us something is that the government that knew it was torturing prosecuted soldiers for prisoner abuse. If that isn’t a blinking neon “COME GET US” sign I don’t know what is.

What tells us something is that the government that knew it was torturing prosecuted soldiers for prisoner abuse

Looking at the list of courts-martial, nonjudicial, and administrative punishment for that incident, there is no reference to torture. How neat and clean!

But it all fit neatly with their ‘bad apples’ compartmentalization of culpability after Abu Ghraib, allowing the president to say as late as 2007 that the US “does not torture.”

RB, I think that you and I can both applaud this.

IIRC, Spain has extradition arrangements with much/all of Latin America, and of course the same within the EU.

People have been paying a little too close attention to waterboarding and forgetting that that wasn’t the only thing done to these detainees. Clive Crook and his ilk may distract people by saying “but it isn’t clear whether waterboarding is torture or not”; however they tend to stay mum or conveniently not mention the use of “walling” (slamming people against walls), exposure to extreme heat and cold, and the myriad of stress positions these guys were subjected to. While they might not be using the rack, they certainly did use specially designed harnesses to throw people against walls. I’d like to see the defense of these techniques and that one detainee from Bagram Air Force Base mentioned in the ICRC report really did suffer from a “spontaneous brain stem compression”.

I love the assertion that, since it MIGHT work, occasionally, we need to entertain the possibility of actually using torture.

Hogwash. For every time it works, there are many fold more wild goose chases we get sent on; it spreads like wildfire until irrational abuse becomes the norm rather than the carefully crafted exception. Finally, and most importantly, it forces us to cede the high ground and lose the battle for hearts and minds, where terrorists are most surely defeated.

Mr. Crook, how about a careful cost benefit analysis of torture. That should fit in nicely with your line of work….

What is entirely missing from any of these discussions is international law. That binds nations. All of them. Including America. Shocking I know.

Henry,

Through out the article he makes it clear that he considers water boarding a brutal practice, that fits the common sense definition of torture, and it should be outlawed even if it is sometimes narrowly effective at getting results. His fear is that these tactics do not fit the legal definition and that a trial might result in acquittals that further tarnish the US and legitimize such practices.

Could you please explain how that position is reprehensible. If you cannot, could you please apologize?

“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. But the law does not set these points aside. If the lawyers who worked on the memos can show a court that they worked in good faith, under extreme pressure, to design methods that fell short of torture – in its legal, not commonsense, meaning – they would be innocent of knowingly shielding illegality. They have a strong case.

What would acquittals mean for US standing in the world? Those calling for prosecutions do not appear to have considered this possibility. They ought to. “

Henry,

‘P O’Neill – I read Crook as saying that it is bad behaviour, but not torture, and certainly not on a par with flaying, finger crushing and other things that have long term adverse consequences. Since the evidence that repeated waterboarding has had long term consequences (creating psychological cripples) is strong to the point of being nearly overwhelming, I think that he is being disingenuous. And as for the claims that the people who want to see prosecutions are motivated by revenge rather than by justice …”

Try reading it again –

Clive says ->

“Not so fast. Common sense may tell you waterboarding is torture, but the law is less clear-cut.”

“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. But the law does not set these points aside.”

“The Bush administration’s more honest critics accept that possibility, but argue that it does not justify these brutal methods. They are right. The damage that practices such as waterboarding do to US standing in the world, their power as a recruiting aid for terrorists, and – to my mind, most important of all – the harm they do to the country’s idea of itself as a force for good outweigh any plausible benefits. Methods that shame the nation are both wrong and counter-productive even if they can claim a measure of success in the narrower sense.”

Over and over again he makes the point that waterboarding is wrong and shameful that Obama was right to end such practices.

But do they fit the legal definition of torture as would flaying or having your fingers crushed?

His worry is that answer might not be so clear.

As for ->

“The drive for prosecutions is a furiously partisan project. The Democratic left is plainly out for revenge more than for justice – and Mr Obama is wavering in the face of their rage. ”

That was poorly worded but to some degree accurate and besides the point. Just human nature. But what matters isn’t if some tiny part or most of the Democratic left is out for revenge instead of justice but if prosecution would result in justice.

What someguy and others have said: almost the main point in Crook’s piece is that the legal question about waterboarding is different from the moral question, so waterboarding’s being morally wrong (as Crook agrees it is) doesn’t imply that it’s legally prohibited under current U.S. law. (I guess he doesn’t assume that current U.S. law is morally perfect — how strange!) His conclusion is that in the case of prosecutions, acquittals a) might be legally correct (even if morally abhorrent) and b) would have bad consequences. I’m not in a position to judge his legal claim, but I don’t see any moral defence of waterboarding in his piece — on the contrary, he say the law *should* prohibit waterboarding but only doesn’t because Congress (Nancy Pelosi and co.) wrongly failed to make it do so.

I haven’t read Crook’s piece, but presumably we’ll find out for sure if he’s evil or not when he responds to his critics.

http://clivecrook.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/04/more_on_torture_prosecutions.php

“The earlier cases do not prove that waterboarding as practised during the Bush administration was illegal, only that waterboarding carried out in certain ways and under certain circumstances has been successfully prosecuted.”

Mr. Crook says he’s not a lawyer, but he sure sounds like one …

So, it might actually be the case that (as a child might say, one who held incredibly stupid opinions like mine) the real problem is that waterboarding—and torture generally—is wrong

Why?

The child is the key here: I own one of these and apparently I can discipline her in various ways if she does bad things.

Will I be arrested if I waterboard her for not picking up her toys? If so, why?

“And that among the bad ways of trying to right a wrong, in a democracy, one might count acting vindictively in ways that provoke the electorate to react so as to try to vindicate the original wrong.”

Michael and Clive are basically in full agreement here, as best as I can make out. Waterboarding is torture, but don’t spook the voters! They have to be handled very carefully, where “carefully” means “don’t actually bring torturers to trial”. On this theory, people will be willing to say that torture is wrong as long as no people who actually commit torture are ever punished for it. Because of course no laws will ever be solid enough. We have laws against torture now, but Clive argues that because just maybe they aren’t tight enough, we might not get a conviction. It will always be thus. Torture will always be of unsympathetic foreigners, there will always be scum who are in favor of it, there will always be some way in which just possibly they might try a legal defense, and there will always be people like Michael whose supposed disapproval of torture will not prevent them from disapproving any attempt to do anything about it.

Still unburying myself from under fast-drying troll-snot:

JM writes: It might have occurred to you to consider the parallel experience of opposition leaders who made the mistake of taking the WH’s case for WMD in Iraq seriously, going to far as to quote it. This, too, has been used to spread the blame around for supporting the war in Iraq in an identical form of propaganda, practiced by the same group of people.

Could you please identify this “same group of people” for me? I’ve heard criticisms and excuses along these lines left, right and center. Maybe some of it is disingenuous, but a lot of it is not. Maybe some of it is intended to excuse liars and schemers, but a lot of it is not. There are ways of “spreading the blame around” designed to make the blame-blanket seem vanishingly thin. As far as I’m concerned, it’s the same thick layer of crap no matter how much you spread it.

I was furious when Dem leadership went along with the march to war against Iraq, because I could see their self-serving calculations: on the one hand, the longer they dragged out opposition, the more the Bush administration could question their patriotism. On the other hand, if they went along, either BushCo would be proved wrong (good for the Dems, who could say “We were misled by those dastardly Republicans”), or (however unlikely) WMD would be found post-invasion and they could say they were patriots who didn’t stand in the way of protecting America from terrorists. They took the easy way out.

I would say that the supposed “liberal media” actually faced a very similar moral hazard: they could report without fear or favor, truly investigate, but only at the cost of having their patriotism questioned. Or they could chose to be seen as patriotically supportive, until the debacle they supported went sour, in which case they would have even more to report on — wars and high level political scandals are always very good business for them.

Bizarrely, within what C. Wright Mills would still today call the Power Elite, it fell to mostly to people like (moderate Republican) James Baker and (moderate Democrat?) Gen. Eric Shinseki to sound the alarm about what a stupid idea it would be to invade Iraq. You know, wishy-washy middle-of-the-roaders, who felt it was their patriotic duty to look at things objectively and think about them rationally? I guess that’s not an effort we should expect of people who need to sell advertising space in their newspapers, or who want to get re-elected.

But all this is water under the bridge, as far as I’m concerned. In an ideal world, there would be a war crimes tribunal, and in all likelihood people like Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, etc. would go down. (Like most Americans, I think they largely fabricated the WMD/al-Qaeda “links” case for invading Iraq. Unlike most Americans, I think they should be prosecuted for it.) This is the real world, and if, in this real world, a black guy with a weird name can almost come out of nowhere and wrest the Dem nomination from an heir-apparent like Hillary Clinton, succeeding in part by repeating over and over that he opposed the march to war when Hillary fell into line with it, and if this same guy can then go on to win the election against a war-hero senior senator, well . . . I’ll settle for that. Life is short, and that’ll have to be vengeance enough. Then again, I am notoriously stupid.

Rich Puchalsky, determined to make up my mind for me, writes:

[Clive Crook and Michael Turner agree that the voters] have to be handled very carefully, where “carefully” means “don’t actually bring torturers to trial”.

Actually, I don’t see where I’ve said no torturers would be brought to trial. One thing I might suggest however (if anyone were so stupid as to ask anyone as stupid as I am) would be to hold hearings in which people who actually did the torturing would be offered immunity in exchange for testimony. After all, if what they did was illegal, but they were led by the administration to believe it was legal, they are plausibly victims too, in an important (and possibly legally actionable) sense: they were ordered “under the color of law” to commit acts known to be damaging to the average person’s mental health. They might themselves have a legal case against their bosses. The real perpetrators of concern would still be those who ordered any legal fabrications as convenient, and those who executed the fabrications knowing full well (if one could establish such) that they were engaged in fabrication.

On this theory, people will be willing to say that torture is wrong as long as no people who actually commit torture are ever punished for it.

Well, I hope the above dissuades you from thinking that I take such a simplistic view. That is, if you could follow it. It may be that I’m far too stupid to write anything very clear on this subject.

Because of course no laws will ever be solid enough.

I don’t see why they couldn’t be. (If they aren’t already, and not being a lawyer, I wouldn’t know.)

We have laws against torture now, but Clive argues that because just maybe they aren’t tight enough, we might not get a conviction. It will always be thus.

Torture will always be of unsympathetic foreigners

Not necessarily. As I understand it, (unofficial) torture is still pretty common in U.S. prisons, and if clarification of the law has a chilling effect on that phenomenon, I’m all in favor it.

there will always be scum who are in favor of it

For the record: if what you meant was “favor it in certain extreme circumstances, as with uncooperative terrorism suspects,” I think you just called a few members of my family scum. Don’t worry, I’m not taking it personally. After all, by the same measure, you just called most Americans scum.

there will always be some way in which just possibly they might try a legal defense

An excellent argument for co-opting some of them where it would be useful to hack at the real root of the problem, as I sketch above in suggesting immunity for some of those involved.

and there will always be people like Michael whose supposed disapproval of torture will not prevent them from disapproving any attempt to do anything about it.

It should be clear to anyone who is carefully reading what I write here that I don’t disapprove of all attempts to do anything about it. What is this, only the 15th (or is it the 19th) attempt to put words in my mouth, Rich? Have you no shame? Or is it just . . . reading comprehension problems? Oh, wait, no: your IE browser is scrambling my comments with someone else’s over at Free Republic, right?

Wait a sec: My “supposed” disapproval of torture, Rich? You’re accusing me of arguing in bad faith here? Oh. OK. Just wondering now: have you gone and fucked yourself lately? I think you’re overdue. In the post-coital mood, you might be inclined to treat my idiotic opinions a little more charitably.

I do promise, but I don’t take orders.

If, as Crook says here, he did not mean to suggest that waterboarding isn’t torture (and I don’t doubt his word), then I clearly owe him an apology.

On the risk that you were actually being sarcastic, that Crook says now he didn’t mean to say waterboarding wasn’t torture doesn’t change what he originally said, which was that waterboarding wasn’t torture, or there wouldn’t have been all that business about flayed fingers and stuff. Classic distraction tactic that.

You got him to swallow his words: attack harder.

Ah yes, for completeness, I think your parallel to WWII is a little bit ludicrous.

JoB: During the trial it will emerge that it takes some bloody sociopath instinct to be able to do that . . .

If we part company anywhere, JoB, it’s here. Maybe I missed the CIA-internal recruiting poster that said “We’re looking for a few bad apples”, but I think the capacity for this sort of cruelty–especially under the multiple validations of legal sanction, organizational loyalty, patriotism and plain old vengefulness for seeing one’s fellow citizens ruthlessly slaughtered in a terror attack–would come quite easily to a very large proportion of the population. I don’t think I’m necessarily better than those people. Maybe I just took a different path in life. And maybe that’s all that really separates you from them, for that matter. A dead certainty that you’re not at all like them, well, that might be the first step toward thinking it’s OK to torture someone because they have some rare “bloody sociopath instinct” that could make them a terrorist.

As I like to say, the beginning of corruption is the belief it can’t happen to you.

Ah yes, for completeness, I think your parallel to WWII is a little bit ludicrous.

Quite naturally. I write from a different perspective–specifically, the third floor of this building, which burned to the ground during the Tokyo firebombing. It was right on the fringes of the conflagration, which extended for miles. It is difficult for me to pass old women in their 90s in the streets of Tokyo (quite a few of them here) without wondering–how do they see me? As a man who, being white, is related in some way to other men who incinerated family members and friends? All I can say for sure is, we don’t talk.

I don’t really know of another short word [besides “supposed”] that’s accurate

Oh, come on, Rich. You’re not really trying. You got off to a good start with your tellingly accurate “scum”, and it has four letters, which is very suggestive of how to proceed. Since I’m (according to you) only a “supposed” opponent of torture, surely I’m scum too, right?

How about “shit”? Can you call people like Clive Crook (and me) “shit”? Try it out — and a few more such epithets, let them really roll around in your mouth. Shit and scum aren’t really that different, after all. Admit it: when you wrote “scum”, you were really thinking “shit.” And why limit it to shit?

Then, there’s second gear: sexual insults. And after you’ve trapped some scum in your basement, the better to exact the justice so irresponsibly shirked by mainstream society, you can shed even more limits, you can really speed things up. You can strip the scum, kick the shit around, and to really humiliate them, you can make them mime sexual acts with each other.

After a little training in the details, you might try your hand at, yes, waterboarding.

Surely, scum deserve no less. And shit deserves much worse. And isn’t this all about what these people — I mean “scum” (sorry, not easy to maintain your very high level of verbal precision) — really deserve?

Rich, Michael has a bad case of something my best friend has – righteous “I’m not PC!” contrarianism. Contrarianism is an egotistical condition where somebody gets off by contradicting things. Amazingly, by some major coincidences, the things being contradicted are those for which the contrarian is *not* subject to actual persecution for. It’s pretty much pure egotism.

Michael,

I’m sure I underestimated the capacity for cruelty but I’m rather confident you overestimate it -this being said I don’t have data on the matter and I agree nobody should be complacent on this matter of where they would put the limit when put under pressure. So let’s call that quits.

On your being in Japan, that makes it less ludicrous for sure. Still: bombing is at a distance, and waterboarding is not (watch out for Cheney going for this defence!) and moreover, as this was a first bomb of its kind the bombers really couldn’t start to imagine what they were asked to do. I think in both cases the authorizers are the main villains (although for Dresden & Enola Gay I do believe the more atrocious outcome does not automatically translate in a more heinous villain), but only in the case of direct, physical torture like in waterboarding is the personal aspect of the crime by the physical do’er unmissable.

I sure would hope that if I’d torture somebody whatever the context, somebody would have the grace of jailing me for it.

Yep. In the original article every instance in which waterboarding and torture are put together are in imagined examples of yokel “common sense” or the hot-blooded declamations of partisan opponents. He’s very careful to call it a “method” and imagines that such treatment could never be successfully prosecuted because look over there.

It was a weasel article.

JoB: bombing is at a distance

Bomber crews over Tokyo reportedly vomited at the stench of burning meat. Presumably, they realized what kind of meat was burning. Presumably, word got around among crews who hadn’t yet flown such missions about what kind of meat was burning. Noncombatant human meat, for one thing. (Not much of any other kind of meat available in the urban cores of Japan, at that point in the war.)

and moreover, as this was a first bomb of its kind the bombers really couldn’t start to imagine what they were asked to do.

You missed the part about how the U.S. firebombed about 60 Japanese cities, before hitting Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nukes? (Of the major ones on Honshu, I believe only Kanazawa and Kyoto were spared.) Oh, well, that’s OK–so do most Americans. They figure I must’ve added a zero by mistake, or perhaps am confabulating.

But forget about the Greatest Generation Memory Hole. We have people walking around today, not just free but lionized, despite complicity in bombing massacres of similar scale in Southeast Asia in the 60s and early 70s — if that would make this sort of genocidal-scale crime more immediate for you. Henry Kissinger, for one. No, really, you can look it up!

Rich (“I mean scum in a nice way”) Puchalsky wants to know if I’ve thought about this at all. As if someone as stupid as I am could think!

No, when I’m not outsourcing my replies on this issue to wilted produce in my refrigerator’s vegetable bin, I enslave my brain to, well, Eric Holder, sorry to say. His apparent stance: he’s extending a promise, backed up by his boss, that those who engaged in what should properly be considered torture while apparently believing that they were operating in compliance with U.S. and international law, because the Bush DoJ told them they were, will be protected and even defended by the DoJ itself. In the meantime, determinations can be made as to whether the case made for waterboarding (and other torture) by the Bush DoJ was illegal and involved criminality. If it is found to be illegal, and moreover criminal, then, in one of those funny strategic twists that elude the Rich Puchalskys of the world, the more torturers getting a pass (if they can show good-faith discharge of duties), the better. Because that’s more eyewitnesses who feel free to speak out against their bosses, whom we all revile, right? Bonus points for the torturers who were truly traumatized by the experience of torturing, and who sue their bosses or who otherwise denounce them. After all, what will the wingnuts say then? Will they call them traitors? Let ’em! Works for me.

If the Bush DoJ stance is not found to be involve criminality, that would suck, of course. But then at least the Obama administration can say it abided by the letter of the law, while clearly and openly holding its nose about violations of its spirit. And if this discussion is not mainly about primacy of the rule of law, and equality under the law, even for “scum”, what is it about?

I find non-apology-apologies highly irritating

I know what you mean, but IMO the situation actually called more for a straightforward “non-apology-eff-off”.

oooh, “eff off”, hark at me. All that nagging from Keith Ellis is apparently having an effect.

Maybe you’re just not very smart, as you keep saying.

I’m really not, Rich. Which is why I need your help on a point of terminological accuracy. Do you think we should standardize on the term “scum” for “Americans who think torture could be justified in some circumstances”, while reserving the term “shit” for torturers? Or is that a hairsplitting distinction? Also, what do we call the people who wrote the torture memos?

I wouldn’t be asking you any this, if it weren’t for your strong moral stance on these issues, and your deeply felt concern for accurate description. I greatly respected you for these things to begin with, but even more so after you bravely declared the majority of Americans “scum” for their craven opinions on this issue. That’s the kind of stirring, uniting, strong-moral-backbone rhetoric that all of us torture-resisters can get behind. You do us proud.

Don’t worry JoB, if I was going to “go all Rich on you,” I’d find some pretext for classifying you as scum even though you aren’t an American.

Rich’s main charge against me seems to be that I bring in “distractions.” It’s a mere “distraction” to point to unprosecuted U.S. war crimes conducted on a much larger scale than the torture under the Bush administration, he feels. But my point is: if you’re really concerned primarily about justice, don’t you start with the bigger crimes and work down the list?

Another major charge of Rich’s is that I counsel doing nothing. Well, this is silly. I applauded Obama’s decision on his second day in office to end these practices. But what I think has to happen now is whatever is best for justice in the long run. Going straight after those who directly tortured could be very counterproductive for that goal.

It’s actually roughly analogous to the argument against torture from the point of view of effectiveness alone: cajolery and cultivation usually beat cruelty and suffering. Among those who perpetrated torture directly there are psychological casualties, almost certainly. Let them think about what they are owed for their psychological wounds. Some perhaps were guilt-stricken at the time, others may just be coming around to the realization they were involved in wrongdoing, however it might have been legally rationalized. Let their consciences come fully into the light. Yet others probably were the “bloody sociopaths” that JoB thought might have constituted 100% of the ranks of torturers, but who may well be a smallish minority who transgressed even the upper limit of Bush DoJ guidelines, and who would therefore certainly be subject to prosecution even under the apparently very lenient Obama/Holder doctrine recently announced. We’ll know them soon enough, if only by their choices (early and often) of legal counsel.

A rush to judgment now could merely scatter those who could otherwise be most helpful in going after the higher-ups. In the meantime, probably nothing is lost by waiting for ripeness. Hard drives can be wiped, videotapes blanked, and documents shredded overnight, so anything that could have gone down those particular memory holes probably disappeared by the eve of the Obama presidency, if not months or even years before. We’re a mere four months past the Bush regime, and legal ambiguity is only starting to clear up enough for those who were complicit (and those who merely witnessed), including some people who might have been waiting 5 or 6 years to come out of their institutional crouches and start talking.

So if it’s not about the scale of war crimes, nor about the best strategy for improving the chances of successful prosecution of higher-ups for these war crimes in the Bush administration, what is it about, for the Rich Puchalskys? 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.

[This latest edition of Turner’s Contrarian Ego Parade comes to you courtesy of a withered rutabaga in the back left corner of his vegetable bin. Certainly he himself is not nearly intelligent enough to have written the above.]

Crook appears to be arguing that, if it’s possible to do something worse than waterboarding, this is sufficient to stop it being torture. “It’s not torture – we could have put a THIRD live rat in his brain!”

Shorter BB: can’t figure out what’s wrong with Turner’s argument, so I’ll make something up.
Shorter Alex: can’t be bothered to read anything in detail, so I’ll make something up
Shorter Rich: both!
Shorter me, now: goodbye.

Thank you for the correction and the brevity.

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. He doesn’t come across to me the way David Brooks or Tom Friedman do when they argue against prosecutions, because for one thing he doesn’t seem to be opposed to prosecutions. He just wants it done carefully, I think.

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.

dsquared, I suspect that politicians draw a slightly different lesson: it probably won’t hurt us in the long run if we take the easy path and ignore this.

Donald Johnson 04.30.09 at 5:32 pm

“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.

It fairly clear from Crook’s first piece that he does not think water boarding is shameful like farting in an elevator or adultery.

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.