What they said
Jul. 26th, 2007 09:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumIt ain't none of it new to any of you. I've said it before, long, loud and at tedious length.
And I've been mocked, insulted, ridiculed berated, praised, lauded, pointed to [good and ill], linked, and, mostly, ignored.
In today's WaPo a pair of guys with more pull than I have are arguing some of my points.
War Crimes and the White House
An excerpt.
This is not just about avoiding "torture." The article expressly prohibits "at any time and in any place whatsoever" any acts of "violence to life and person" or "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment."
Last Friday, the White House issued an executive order attempting to "interpret" Common Article 3 with respect to a controversial CIA interrogation program. The order declares that the CIA program "fully complies with the obligations of the United States under Common Article 3," provided that its interrogation techniques do not violate existing federal statutes (prohibiting such things as torture, mutilation or maiming) and do not constitute "willful and outrageous acts of personal abuse done for the purpose of humiliating or degrading the individual in a manner so serious that any reasonable person, considering the circumstances, would deem the acts to be beyond the bounds of human decency."
In other words, as long as the intent of the abuse is to gather intelligence or to prevent future attacks, and the abuse is not "done for the purpose of humiliating or degrading the individual" -- even if that is an inevitable consequence -- the president has given the CIA carte blanche to engage in "willful and outrageous acts of personal abuse."
And it's wrong.
There are moral arguments as to why it's wrong. There are utilitarian arguments as to why it's wrong. Either ought to trump the, specious, claims that it can save lives.
Why? Because as I keep saying, using torture as a means of collecting information doesn't work. As a system, it fails. Someone might tell the truth, but the amount of non-truth which enters the system buries it.
There are those who pretend that's not the case. That somehow we can sift the truth from the lies; without having any troubles. That somehow the dedicated bad person, who is willing to plant bombs, bury people alive, whatever fantasy of justification the torture mongers want to trot out, will somehow break when his body is beaten, his flesh is torn, his mind is assaulted with terrors, the electrodes are supplied with current, the water rises past his nose and mouth, his bones broken, his sleep deprived, his environment changed, etc., etc., etc., ad naseum.
They are wrong. The dedicated will hold out until the bomb goes off. The ignorant, when tormented with those things, will lie; just to make it stop.
If the dedicated break, the things they say will go into the pile with all the lies. Worse, the lies will be made to conform to a narrative established by the interrogators, because they will look for confirmation of previous stories (can we say, "Satanic Rituals" and "McMartin Preschool"? I knew we could).
When cops, without the aid of torture can get so much in the way of confessions to things which didn't happen, what will prevent more, vigorous means from getting bad data?
Nothing.
To go back to the column.
To date in the war on terrorism, including the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks and all U.S. military personnel killed in action in Afghanistan and Iraq, America's losses total about 2 percent of the forces we lost in World War II and less than 7 percent of those killed in Vietnam. Yet we did not find it necessary to compromise our honor or abandon our commitment to the rule of law to defeat Nazi Germany or imperial Japan, or to resist communist aggression in Indochina. On the contrary, in Vietnam -- where we both proudly served twice -- America voluntarily extended the protections of the full Geneva Convention on prisoners of war to Viet Cong guerrillas who, like al-Qaeda, did not even arguably qualify for such protections.
The Geneva Conventions provide important protections to our own military forces when we send them into harm's way. Our troops deserve those protections, and we betray their interests when we gratuitously "interpret" key provisions of the conventions in a manner likely to undermine their effectiveness. Policymakers should also keep in mind that violations of Common Article 3 are "war crimes" for which everyone involved -- potentially up to and including the president of the United States -- may be tried in any of the other 193 countries that are parties to the conventions.
Following orders isn't a defense. It's not even a decent justification.
When the means are something that doesn't work, the ends, no matter how good they look on paper, can't be justified, no matter how clever the sophistries.
And I've been mocked, insulted, ridiculed berated, praised, lauded, pointed to [good and ill], linked, and, mostly, ignored.
In today's WaPo a pair of guys with more pull than I have are arguing some of my points.
War Crimes and the White House
An excerpt.
This is not just about avoiding "torture." The article expressly prohibits "at any time and in any place whatsoever" any acts of "violence to life and person" or "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment."
Last Friday, the White House issued an executive order attempting to "interpret" Common Article 3 with respect to a controversial CIA interrogation program. The order declares that the CIA program "fully complies with the obligations of the United States under Common Article 3," provided that its interrogation techniques do not violate existing federal statutes (prohibiting such things as torture, mutilation or maiming) and do not constitute "willful and outrageous acts of personal abuse done for the purpose of humiliating or degrading the individual in a manner so serious that any reasonable person, considering the circumstances, would deem the acts to be beyond the bounds of human decency."
In other words, as long as the intent of the abuse is to gather intelligence or to prevent future attacks, and the abuse is not "done for the purpose of humiliating or degrading the individual" -- even if that is an inevitable consequence -- the president has given the CIA carte blanche to engage in "willful and outrageous acts of personal abuse."
And it's wrong.
There are moral arguments as to why it's wrong. There are utilitarian arguments as to why it's wrong. Either ought to trump the, specious, claims that it can save lives.
Why? Because as I keep saying, using torture as a means of collecting information doesn't work. As a system, it fails. Someone might tell the truth, but the amount of non-truth which enters the system buries it.
There are those who pretend that's not the case. That somehow we can sift the truth from the lies; without having any troubles. That somehow the dedicated bad person, who is willing to plant bombs, bury people alive, whatever fantasy of justification the torture mongers want to trot out, will somehow break when his body is beaten, his flesh is torn, his mind is assaulted with terrors, the electrodes are supplied with current, the water rises past his nose and mouth, his bones broken, his sleep deprived, his environment changed, etc., etc., etc., ad naseum.
They are wrong. The dedicated will hold out until the bomb goes off. The ignorant, when tormented with those things, will lie; just to make it stop.
If the dedicated break, the things they say will go into the pile with all the lies. Worse, the lies will be made to conform to a narrative established by the interrogators, because they will look for confirmation of previous stories (can we say, "Satanic Rituals" and "McMartin Preschool"? I knew we could).
When cops, without the aid of torture can get so much in the way of confessions to things which didn't happen, what will prevent more, vigorous means from getting bad data?
Nothing.
To go back to the column.
To date in the war on terrorism, including the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks and all U.S. military personnel killed in action in Afghanistan and Iraq, America's losses total about 2 percent of the forces we lost in World War II and less than 7 percent of those killed in Vietnam. Yet we did not find it necessary to compromise our honor or abandon our commitment to the rule of law to defeat Nazi Germany or imperial Japan, or to resist communist aggression in Indochina. On the contrary, in Vietnam -- where we both proudly served twice -- America voluntarily extended the protections of the full Geneva Convention on prisoners of war to Viet Cong guerrillas who, like al-Qaeda, did not even arguably qualify for such protections.
The Geneva Conventions provide important protections to our own military forces when we send them into harm's way. Our troops deserve those protections, and we betray their interests when we gratuitously "interpret" key provisions of the conventions in a manner likely to undermine their effectiveness. Policymakers should also keep in mind that violations of Common Article 3 are "war crimes" for which everyone involved -- potentially up to and including the president of the United States -- may be tried in any of the other 193 countries that are parties to the conventions.
Following orders isn't a defense. It's not even a decent justification.
When the means are something that doesn't work, the ends, no matter how good they look on paper, can't be justified, no matter how clever the sophistries.
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Re: Thank you!
Date: 2007-07-27 06:20 am (UTC)(Though approximately agnostic in orientation, I do seem to think that certain actions and policies are evil, in the sense of being harmful to people and society, and (despite trying to avoid doing it myself) don't have a whole lot of trouble with extending "evil" to describe the people who practice or advocate such actions.)
Re: Thank you!
Date: 2007-07-27 07:21 am (UTC)I think, as a rule, that those who support torture are supportig an evil thing.
Those who say that to not support torture is a moral wrong, well the word for that sort of thing is evil.
I thought it so when Dershowitz argued for it, just as much as I do when Karl does.
It's not the side of the aisle, it's the things they do.
And so his, "discovery" is as patently false as the special pleadings for evolution's being "disproved" because there is debate in the halls of biology over the mechanisms.
TK
Re: Thank you!
Date: 2007-07-31 01:17 am (UTC)On the left, for example, you'll find a number of labels in use. For example, there is no such thing as a principled opponent of affirmative action – anyone who opposes this lofty notion is racist, sexist, homophobic, or bigoted. He has deliberately chosen a position with the intent of oppressing the unfortunate. (Terry happens to be a person on the left who does use the "E-word", which makes this example such a fine one.)
Likewise, in Terry's case, there can be no principled exploration of the issue of whether torture works. Raising the possibility is grounds for moral condemnation.