One note symphony
Sep. 27th, 2006 10:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumI'd much rather be writing about something else (e.g. photography, since Photokina has opened and I can now talk about the program I was working on), but the people in D.C. are feckless boobs, who seem to think that 1: torture is a good thing, or 2: that being against torture is a bad thing.
This is a distinction with a difference, because the latter (trimming their sails to what they see as political need/expedience, might be persuaded of the folly of the last.
Because genies, outside of stories, don't easily go back into bottles.
So the people who are afraid to be seen as "soft on terrorism" are being stupid. This is the same problem which led to the passage of the PATRIOT Act. The need to do, "something," trumps the need to do the right thing.
What has the president said...? If you don't make it legal to torture people, I'm going to stop torturing them.
Bullshit. If (and I think that a pretty small if) he's having people tortured now, his signing statement on McCain's Detainee Treatment Act gives the lie to his being bound by the intent of laws. He said, when he signed it, that he was going to obey it, if he felt like it.
This president's open admission to not only committing felonius wiretapping, but his insistence that he will keep on doing so, pretty much puts paid to any idea that mere law will restrain him. What he is asking for isn't permission, but imprimature, and the ability to avoid punishment.
So those who are against torture only have to stand up for the rule of law. We have a law, a damned fine law, dating from 1997, which makes war crimes; as outlined in the Geneva Conventions, statutory violations of U.S. law. (Which is why I gnash my teeth when I hear that "contractors" from CACI and Blackwater, et alia, are immune from prosecution because they only tortured/killed/robbed/raped/whatever, "over there" and they are immune from local laws (under the SOFA we imposed on the locals, at gunpoint... if they start to arrest and try people anyway; under much harsher laws than we would be willing accept in fair negotiation, well a promise made under durress isn't binding, and I don't see this administration doing anything to address that little bit of friction in our relations with folks in Iraq and Afghanistan).
We have a law, on the books, which applies. But I digress, this is about laws which are proposed, not laws which aren't being enforced.
There are lots of torture apologists who say, "We have a system in place to prevent it. When someone finds the perpetrator of a "Buried child" kidnapping, he can beat the snot out of him until he tells us where the victim is, and then a couple of juries can decide the matter (one jury being the one which has to try the offender, with the tainted evidence; and all the problems that poses, and one to try the "Good Guy" who was "forced" to resort to torture)."
Fine, let the lawmakers institutionalise that. Let them say, "Torture is anathema; only to be used in the most egregious of circumstances. Only to save lives. Those who do it will be prosecuted, and any evidence they obtain is inadmissable againt the person they tortured. The only mitigating factor they can introduce to their trial, for practising torture, is that lives were saved. If they don't save lives, there is no mitigation. Intent is immaterial, only results count. If the victim dies, without lives being saved, it's a capital offense. If no lives were saved the torturer can also be sued in civil court."
And apply that from the bottom, to the top.
If torture works, those who use this model have nothing to fear. They have every incentive to use it only when they can be assured of the assumptions of the ticking-bomb. They have (almost) nothing to fear, if they are right (from my point of view, that torture is a moral wrong, never to be countenanced; this model has the sole grace that the system [as designed] has a built in check on those who would use torture, and it would soon serve to stop people from committing torture, because those who did will end up in jail, or broke, or both).
For those lawmakers afraid of being seen as "soft", well they have options. They can propose alternatives like this one (and make the administration defend its desire to toture, ad libitum).
They can call it a political trick; an attempt to force, in haste, a decision which would change who and what we are (if they want they can appeal to the not-so-latent sense of religious purpose which infuses the U.S. and say that if we are to be a model among nations; as Reagan described us, "a city on a hill," and that we have a duty to be better than our enemies) and filibuster it, with a promise to come back to it after the hoopla of the election is over. Call the White House on the arm-twisting they are doing.
This isn't something minor like a three-strikes intiative. This isn't as trvial as whether lethal injection is cruel and unusual (and how about that for "vague" when is that gonna be claraified, or "unreasonable search and seizure").
This is, at bottom, a debate about who we are, and what we will become.
There are those who say we have our very own gulag. I don't think so, not yet, but this is a major step on the road to having one. Because this law would allow what has been hidden; what we have had to lock away in dark corners of the world, and to farm out to nations like Syria, to be done here.
This could determine whether this government, "of the people, by the people and for the people," perishes from the earth.
The Senate
The House
This is a distinction with a difference, because the latter (trimming their sails to what they see as political need/expedience, might be persuaded of the folly of the last.
Because genies, outside of stories, don't easily go back into bottles.
So the people who are afraid to be seen as "soft on terrorism" are being stupid. This is the same problem which led to the passage of the PATRIOT Act. The need to do, "something," trumps the need to do the right thing.
What has the president said...? If you don't make it legal to torture people, I'm going to stop torturing them.
Bullshit. If (and I think that a pretty small if) he's having people tortured now, his signing statement on McCain's Detainee Treatment Act gives the lie to his being bound by the intent of laws. He said, when he signed it, that he was going to obey it, if he felt like it.
This president's open admission to not only committing felonius wiretapping, but his insistence that he will keep on doing so, pretty much puts paid to any idea that mere law will restrain him. What he is asking for isn't permission, but imprimature, and the ability to avoid punishment.
So those who are against torture only have to stand up for the rule of law. We have a law, a damned fine law, dating from 1997, which makes war crimes; as outlined in the Geneva Conventions, statutory violations of U.S. law. (Which is why I gnash my teeth when I hear that "contractors" from CACI and Blackwater, et alia, are immune from prosecution because they only tortured/killed/robbed/raped/whatever, "over there" and they are immune from local laws (under the SOFA we imposed on the locals, at gunpoint... if they start to arrest and try people anyway; under much harsher laws than we would be willing accept in fair negotiation, well a promise made under durress isn't binding, and I don't see this administration doing anything to address that little bit of friction in our relations with folks in Iraq and Afghanistan).
We have a law, on the books, which applies. But I digress, this is about laws which are proposed, not laws which aren't being enforced.
There are lots of torture apologists who say, "We have a system in place to prevent it. When someone finds the perpetrator of a "Buried child" kidnapping, he can beat the snot out of him until he tells us where the victim is, and then a couple of juries can decide the matter (one jury being the one which has to try the offender, with the tainted evidence; and all the problems that poses, and one to try the "Good Guy" who was "forced" to resort to torture)."
Fine, let the lawmakers institutionalise that. Let them say, "Torture is anathema; only to be used in the most egregious of circumstances. Only to save lives. Those who do it will be prosecuted, and any evidence they obtain is inadmissable againt the person they tortured. The only mitigating factor they can introduce to their trial, for practising torture, is that lives were saved. If they don't save lives, there is no mitigation. Intent is immaterial, only results count. If the victim dies, without lives being saved, it's a capital offense. If no lives were saved the torturer can also be sued in civil court."
And apply that from the bottom, to the top.
If torture works, those who use this model have nothing to fear. They have every incentive to use it only when they can be assured of the assumptions of the ticking-bomb. They have (almost) nothing to fear, if they are right (from my point of view, that torture is a moral wrong, never to be countenanced; this model has the sole grace that the system [as designed] has a built in check on those who would use torture, and it would soon serve to stop people from committing torture, because those who did will end up in jail, or broke, or both).
For those lawmakers afraid of being seen as "soft", well they have options. They can propose alternatives like this one (and make the administration defend its desire to toture, ad libitum).
They can call it a political trick; an attempt to force, in haste, a decision which would change who and what we are (if they want they can appeal to the not-so-latent sense of religious purpose which infuses the U.S. and say that if we are to be a model among nations; as Reagan described us, "a city on a hill," and that we have a duty to be better than our enemies) and filibuster it, with a promise to come back to it after the hoopla of the election is over. Call the White House on the arm-twisting they are doing.
This isn't something minor like a three-strikes intiative. This isn't as trvial as whether lethal injection is cruel and unusual (and how about that for "vague" when is that gonna be claraified, or "unreasonable search and seizure").
This is, at bottom, a debate about who we are, and what we will become.
There are those who say we have our very own gulag. I don't think so, not yet, but this is a major step on the road to having one. Because this law would allow what has been hidden; what we have had to lock away in dark corners of the world, and to farm out to nations like Syria, to be done here.
This could determine whether this government, "of the people, by the people and for the people," perishes from the earth.
The Senate
The House
