On that whole, "looking forward" thing

[pecunium]

I see a lot of apologists (mostly for torture, but some for things like wiretapping), saying we need to look foreward, not backwards.

One.. huh? Prosecutions have to look bacwards. A crime has to happen before it can be prosecuted.

That's the first oddity. The other one is that I saw, in the dim and distant past of 2008, a lot of people saying, "Well sometimes the law has to be broken. If a cop knows someone has info, and the only way to get it is to torture the guy, then he needs to do it. No jury will convict someone who saves a kid's life by beating up a perp."

This is often followed by a bravura follow-on: "I'd do it if I had to, and I'd turn myself in and face the music."

Ok, lets assume that's true.

Why aren't the people who authorised the tortures saying, "Yeah, I ordred peopel to do it. I had to, it was to save lives. So go ahead, charge me. I'll prove it was needed, and no jury will convict me?"

Comments

[calimac.livejournal.com]

"If a cop knows someone has info, and the only way to get it is to torture the guy"

That's two "if"s that have to be, but outside of fiction cannot, be shown to be justified.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Sort of.

They are conditional. Look at the German case. Cops had a guy who confessed to a kidnapping, but wasn't going to tell them where the boy was.

The cop threatened to torture him. Guy said, "OK, here is the place I left the boy."

Argument is (and this is the classic buried baby) there was no time to wait for other methods to work. (I think this wrong, but that's not important to the hypothetical), so the cop resorted to force.

The cop got the info, turned it over, an turned himself in.

He, as I recall, was convicted/copped a plea.

I think the cop was wrong. I think the sentence justified (as I recall he got a short term in prison. I also recall the torture was a threat, not an actual blow, but I could be wrong).

I also admire him a bit. He had a tough call. He made it. He made no excuses for it. He didn't try to cover it up, or say it was right. Just what he thought he had to do.

Well, these guys all say they were in a bigger pickle than this cop.

They also say there was nothing they did which needs to be investigated. John Bybee refuses to answer Senate questions (hey... maybe that's grounds for impeachment... one can always hope).

In short, they don't act as if they really think what they did is so lily white they will be acquitted.

[ironphoenix.livejournal.com]

Yeah, see, that is the essence of civil disobedience, to me: doing something that is against a law because one sees it as the right thing to do, accepting that the law will impose consequences, and facing those consequences squarely.

Whether he was right to threaten the perp pr not, how and why he went about it can't be faulted.

What bothers me about the other folks is that they won't stand up and defend their convictions publicly before the law and the people who elected them or those who appointed them, and face down the law for imposing a sentence for doing what must have been so clearly the right thing. It was the right thing, wasn't it? Wasn't it?

Next you'll tell me that there isn't a Santa Claus...

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

This is one of the basic elements of the movie Dirty Harry, which does about as clearly certain job of setting up a justification for torture as you can get. And it doesn't work because it is too late for the victim.

Of course, as film viewers we have a certainty about events which the characters maybe ought not to have. And things follow as they do to make a dramatic story, rather than to be realistic.

I don't think Harry Callahan is willing to face a court. He knows he's right, dammit! But there's one lesson from it.

Don't boast to a cop about committing a crime.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Taken as a stand alone, Dirty Harry is enigmatic. The movie ends with him, looking more than a trifle worn/depressed, skipping his badge, like a stone, into San Fransico Bay.

As presented, he did what he felt he had to do, and his role as a cop is finished.

That gets lost in the baggage making more films created.

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

I'd forgotten that last scene.

Yeah, all the sequels rather spoil the effect. Though Sudden Impact is a bit more than a .44 Magnum killfest. Eastwood made other tough-cop movies, and the rest only seem to use the character for the catchphrase.