Sorry. Tried to find another word, none of them fit.
A country that tortures people is not my country no matter what it calls itself. Western civilization has spent hundreds of years working itself _away_ from torture and terror as instruments of statecraft. No possible short-term advantage could be worth betraying who and what we are -- or claim to be.
Not only does it reduce us to the level of those we say we're better than, it also doesn't work very well. Tortured people will say anything to get it to stop.
I think torturing a murderer to get information to prevent future killings is a much higher moral level than people who consider little children legitimate targets.
Sometimes, yes. The whole point of "rare" in my post is that extraordinary situations happen and they need to be dealt with appropriately. Refusing to take action when needed is immoral--inaction is not a state of grace that absolves you of responsibility for what happens next.
In the various debates on torture one exchange I've seen come up again and again is this: A: We should have a law forbidding torture. B: But what about [hypothetical situation] A: Well, then the guys on the scene should break the law and do what has to be done.
That's the stand I'm most opposed to--creating laws as posturing, even while acknowledging that some things are sometimes necessary.
And if more than 59 million people had agreed with you, somebody else would have the responsibility. But I'd still think we'd need to have all options available to win the war.
In a war where we're shooting people and dropping bombs on them, declaring one type of violence off-limits is posturing, not morality. Those people want to destroy our culture and impose theirs on us. Avoiding acting them against them to keep our hands "clean" is how Al Qaeda could grow to where it pulled off 9/11.
In a war where we're shooting people and dropping bombs on them, declaring one type of violence off-limits is posturing, not morality.
I disagree. We have always declared some types of violence off-limits but not others. Frex: We interned Japanese in WWII but we didn't use them for chemical warfare experiments as the Japanese did to prisoners.
This is not a new problem. We've fought a lot of cultures who wanted to impose their values on ours and who had no problem with torture as an instrument of their own policy. (Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and North Korea pop to mind to name but a few. We managed to beat them all just fine without sinking to their level.
Torturing innocents is an evil thing which I never have or will condone. Torturing people who have committed evil acts and have the information necessary to prevent further atrocities is an ugly but in some rare scenarios necessary part of winning this war.
I can tell the difference between the enemy and us. US soldiers have never been protected from torture by the Geneva Convention or other treaties, because our enemies explicity reject them. Outlaw don't deserve the protections of civilized rules. Societies too "civilized" to do what's necessary to survive don't survive.
I think... the point may not entirely be who gets tortured, but who does the torturing. Those who want to are exactly the wrong people to do it, because they don't care about answers or truth, they care about pain. Those who don't want to... should not have their souls stained by that sort of ick.
If someone believes that the situation is such that the rules must be broken, and does so, then... that person must take the punishment for breaking the rules, not get exempted because it's a loophole. If the person was right, then a lesser punishment, perhaps. But still a real one, or you get the people who just like the torture, and then they find some way to cook the answers so they get away scott free.
If someone is going to crack his honor on the anvil of necessity, he shouldn't be someone already without honor.
Though I don't see where the articles linked say that torture should be legal or safe. Just that polls indicate people believe it's sometimes justified. I can believe that, without wanting it to be "legal under certain circumstances." I think the "headline" proposed is sensationalist.
The US military doesn't have many sadists, and they're deliberately screened out of the HUMINT community (prison guards are less well checked). So I think we can count on them being honorable who are focused on the mission, not the pain. But saying "break the rules if you're right" is the lawmakers abdicating their responsibility and throwing it onto the troops. Soldiers deserve to have clear guidance. If they don't have that, they know senators will denounce them as torturers if they go too far, and as the cause of the disaster if they don't go far enough. That was how the counter-terrorism community was treated in the '90s and it produced a culture of risk-aversion that let Al Qaeda grow unhindered. We paid a terrible price for that.
As for "safe" in the headline, it's just there for the humor value. Obviously it's not funny for everyone.
What we need is a way for our intelligence gatherers to get important information from enemy captives in a big hurry, without their co-operation, with high reliability, and without damaging the person under interrogation.
Now that is a lot to ask for, admittedly, but that I think is the intent of the quote that was the original title to this thread.
I know we have various researchers looking into different sorts of "brain scanners" for lack of a better term. Also better lie detectors are under development. There are probably pharmaceutical methods around as well. Seems to me what we need to do is perfect these techniques so we can get the information we need when we need it WITHOUT resorting to methods which produce unreliable information and compromise our collective ethics.
Some will surely argue that even this approach is unethical, but that's where the "rare" part of the quote comes in. If you can read minds, and the government has that ability, then you watchdog the crap out of them. It's for emergencies only. And it would be our moral responsibility to ensure that it stays that way.
Sounds like great tech, and I'm all for deploying it as soon as it works. In the meantime the guys in the field need a usable set of rules to work with.
US soldiers have never been protected from torture by the Geneva Convention or other treaties, because our enemies explicity reject them. Outlaw don't deserve the protections of civilized rules. Societies too "civilized" to do what's necessary to survive don't survive
Shooting "insurgents" caught in the act of sabotage and murder in the field was di rigeur in every war leading up to this one and for good reason. Holding them for interrogation under stress (with the possibility of commuting their death sentence to imprisonment-for-the-duration) is just as important.
Not upholding the Geneva (or other, similar wartime) conventions ought to have consequences. If it doesn't there's no reason anyone ought to bother with them: The only ones who do won't be warring with each other anyway.
Aside: Whatever your opinion on "torture" (you'd have to define it before it was worth anything these days: Oh the humanity--! They let a menstruationg woman touch him!) the tag, "it should be safe, legal and rare" is hilarious. Talk about exposing certain intellectual cupidities in one swift blow...
Comment on WoC: http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/007831.php#c17
"in those rare situations you do whatever you have to and deal with the consequences afterwards. The president has the power to pardon people and no one is going to fault an interrogator who saves millions of innocent lives in doing so."
Passing a law and telling people they should break it if they need to is bad policy. Nobody is ever going to be faced with hard proof there's a nuclear time bomb in Manhattan. What they'll get is "somebody else said there's an operation in progress and this guy knows the details." If it's going to kill 10 people, does that justify torture? If there's a 50% chance of being right, does that up the minimum to 20 deaths? Do we give pardons to people who acted in good faith but were given bad data? This is Congress abdicating responsibility and throwing it onto the interrogators, who only know that someone will call a press conference to condemn them whichever action they take.
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timeasmymeasure
EVIL
Date: 2005-12-07 06:48 pm (UTC)A country that tortures people is not my country no matter what it calls itself. Western civilization has spent hundreds of years working itself _away_ from torture and terror as instruments of statecraft. No possible short-term advantage could be worth betraying who and what we are -- or claim to be.
Re: EVIL
Date: 2005-12-07 07:13 pm (UTC)Re: EVIL
Date: 2005-12-07 07:42 pm (UTC)Re: EVIL
Date: 2005-12-07 07:53 pm (UTC)Re: EVIL
Date: 2005-12-07 08:09 pm (UTC)Re: EVIL
Date: 2005-12-07 08:17 pm (UTC)Re: EVIL
Date: 2005-12-07 08:26 pm (UTC)In the various debates on torture one exchange I've seen come up again and again is this:
A: We should have a law forbidding torture.
B: But what about [hypothetical situation]
A: Well, then the guys on the scene should break the law and do what has to be done.
That's the stand I'm most opposed to--creating laws as posturing, even while acknowledging that some things are sometimes necessary.
Re: EVIL
Date: 2005-12-07 08:31 pm (UTC)Re: EVIL
Date: 2005-12-07 08:37 pm (UTC)Re: EVIL
Date: 2005-12-07 08:39 pm (UTC)Re: EVIL
Date: 2005-12-07 08:54 pm (UTC)Re: EVIL
Date: 2005-12-07 07:41 pm (UTC)Re: EVIL
Date: 2005-12-08 10:39 pm (UTC)I disagree. We have always declared some types of violence off-limits but not others. Frex: We interned Japanese in WWII but we didn't use them for chemical warfare experiments as the Japanese did to prisoners.
This is not a new problem. We've fought a lot of cultures who wanted to impose their values on ours and who had no problem with torture as an instrument of their own policy. (Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and North Korea pop to mind to name but a few. We managed to beat them all just fine without sinking to their level.
Re: EVIL
Date: 2005-12-08 10:47 pm (UTC)We have met the enemy and he is us
Date: 2005-12-07 07:23 pm (UTC)Do we want US soldiers tortured and the torturers not punished because the US starts to torture prisoners?
If we are supposed to be 'civilized', we have to act in a civilized manner.
No matter what, the US has to keep its principles and morals.
Although under this current administration, that's certainly difficult.
Re: We have met the enemy and he is us
Date: 2005-12-07 07:44 pm (UTC)And another thing
Date: 2005-12-07 07:30 pm (UTC)Condoning torture is wrong.
The US is better than this. We have to be.
A certain Jewish carpenter once said "Do onto others as you would wish them do onto you."
Re: And another thing
Date: 2005-12-07 07:45 pm (UTC)Re: And another thing
Date: 2005-12-09 01:26 am (UTC)If someone believes that the situation is such that the rules must be broken, and does so, then... that person must take the punishment for breaking the rules, not get exempted because it's a loophole. If the person was right, then a lesser punishment, perhaps. But still a real one, or you get the people who just like the torture, and then they find some way to cook the answers so they get away scott free.
If someone is going to crack his honor on the anvil of necessity, he shouldn't be someone already without honor.
Though I don't see where the articles linked say that torture should be legal or safe. Just that polls indicate people believe it's sometimes justified. I can believe that, without wanting it to be "legal under certain circumstances." I think the "headline" proposed is sensationalist.
Re: And another thing
Date: 2005-12-09 06:35 am (UTC)As for "safe" in the headline, it's just there for the humor value. Obviously it's not funny for everyone.
Back to that "safe" concept
Date: 2005-12-09 07:04 am (UTC)What we need is a way for our intelligence gatherers to get important information from enemy captives in a big hurry, without their co-operation, with high reliability, and without damaging the person under interrogation.
Now that is a lot to ask for, admittedly, but that I think is the intent of the quote that was the original title to this thread.
I know we have various researchers looking into different sorts of "brain scanners" for lack of a better term. Also better lie detectors are under development. There are probably pharmaceutical methods around as well. Seems to me what we need to do is perfect these techniques so we can get the information we need when we need it WITHOUT resorting to methods which produce unreliable information and compromise our collective ethics.
Some will surely argue that even this approach is unethical, but that's where the "rare" part of the quote comes in. If you can read minds, and the government has that ability, then you watchdog the crap out of them. It's for emergencies only. And it would be our moral responsibility to ensure that it stays that way.
Just my $0.02
Re: Back to that "safe" concept
Date: 2005-12-09 08:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-08 05:40 am (UTC)Shooting "insurgents" caught in the act of sabotage and murder in the field was di rigeur in every war leading up to this one and for good reason. Holding them for interrogation under stress (with the possibility of commuting their death sentence to imprisonment-for-the-duration) is just as important.
Not upholding the Geneva (or other, similar wartime) conventions ought to have consequences. If it doesn't there's no reason anyone ought to bother with them: The only ones who do won't be warring with each other anyway.
Aside: Whatever your opinion on "torture" (you'd have to define it before it was worth anything these days: Oh the humanity--! They let a menstruationg woman touch him!) the tag, "it should be safe, legal and rare" is hilarious. Talk about exposing certain intellectual cupidities in one swift blow...
no subject
Date: 2005-12-08 08:16 pm (UTC)http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/007831.php#c17
"in those rare situations you do whatever you have to and deal with the consequences afterwards. The president has the power to pardon people and no one is going to fault an interrogator who saves millions of innocent lives in doing so."
Passing a law and telling people they should break it if they need to is bad policy. Nobody is ever going to be faced with hard proof there's a nuclear time bomb in Manhattan. What they'll get is "somebody else said there's an operation in progress and this guy knows the details." If it's going to kill 10 people, does that justify torture? If there's a 50% chance of being right, does that up the minimum to 20 deaths? Do we give pardons to people who acted in good faith but were given bad data? This is Congress abdicating responsibility and throwing it onto the interrogators, who only know that someone will call a press conference to condemn them whichever action they take.