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There really ought to be some sort of remedial civics licensing course for the David Ignatiuses of the world.
A Guantanamo detainee is "transported" by two officers. Is torture merely a matter of public policy?
Here’s the pundit’s latest in the Washington Post. It’s about Katheryn Bigelow’s new film Zero Dark Thirty, her “almost journalistic” account of the hunt for Osama bin Laden.
Note that in his entire article, not once does Ignatius offer even a single word about whether torture is legal (hint: it is not). For people like Ignatius, the law is just irrelevant. It doesn’t even enter into his policy calculations. It’s simply not part of his world. Here’s his summation:
Here’s the bottom line, at least for me: We should oppose torture because it’s wrong, not because it doesn’t work. Perhaps the courier’s trail could have been found through other means; we’ll never know. President Obama was right to ban torture, but the public must understand that this decision carries a potential cost in lost information. That’s what makes it a moral choice.
We should oppose torture because it’s wrong, but it’s irrelevant whether it’s illegal? And “President Obama was right to ban torture?” Well then, shouldn’t the president also ban rape, murder, arson, and embezzlement? After all, under the Constitution, laws are made by presidential decree. Some presidents permit such practices; others prohibit them, exactly as the Constitution provides. Right?
It’s hard to imagine anything (beyond Obama’s spurious “ban” itself) that could better cement in the public mind the notion that torture is a policy choice, not a crime. And that America is a nation under the rule of men, not of laws.
There must be something insidiously seductive about torture for it to cause such monumental illogic, willful ignorance, and mis-focused priorities. Next to the baseline fact that torture is illegal, torture’s ability to recruit the minds of people like Ignatius into arguing that in America, the law should have no meaning, is an excellent reason to oppose it.
Public domain photo by Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Michael Billings.
15 Comments
Thanks, Barry. It’s remarkable what people living in a reality vacuum can convince themselves of.
yep. torture is a METHOD that is attractive to seriel killers like bashar al-assad. it is a METHOD that cultivates an environment of the worst kind of people. even if it did work, if it did, it would actually be worse than hell on earth and i cannot imagine how bad that would be.
reality vacuum… thats the thing about repubers. the reality vacuum is their hideaway. a contrived bubble filled with panic’d people who havent the brain facilities to deal effectively and acceptably with differences. reality vacuum – a cowards reality of flight and escape by which to condemn all others who are different because the difference from their filter is merely visibly superficial as if the filter were a color filter. unsatisfied with mere color differences they ascribe to other frivolities as a counterweight of condescending self importance to don for the day.
freud might call it a psychoses. but on such a large scale, it is hysteria subdued until it bubbles up.
This all flows from those psychotic bastards Bush and Cheney. Yes,Obama is a bum, but they sowed the seeds.
“Zero Dark Thirty” subscribes to the Hollywood movie and TV convention that torture is an intelligence interrogation technique. In the real world, torture is only effective in extracting false confessions. In reality, torture played no role in finding Osama bin Laden.
What on earth would make you think that Ignatius is a Republican, or that the assumption that law is irrelevant to policy is confined to Republicans? The “cynical,” “hardbitten” media assumption that politicians of any party should of course do whatever they think will “work” without reference to legality has applied for years. It had formerly been applied almost exclusively to “realpolitik” in foreign affairs – e.g. what was wrong with Vietnam was that it didn’t work, rather than the fact that it violated a raft of US and international laws. Nowadays, applies to banks too. Action against any bankster criminality makes reference exclusively to what can be tolerated, with none made to what is legally acceptable. The law simply doesn’t apply to a certain class of American policymakers, which is now coming to include some private sector parts of the System.
Torture / Murder / Treason the crime that never dies.
Imagine that moment when you break, completely, someone’s spirit , if you will.
They totally willingly submit to you after that point, it must be like an orgasm .
Imagine KSM kids in a box with big bugs to get to their father. Anybody interview them to recount being in the box at what, 6 & 10 or so. See that’s the problem once you extract the desired information and in the kids case probably the only information they had, they just fall of of the face of the earth. Maybe I’m wrong and they will have a front row seat at their father’s “” Trial “”.
Back to the Torture / Murder/ Treason when you torture beyond human endurance and the “suspect ‘ dies you cross the line to no statute of limitations for Murder up and down the chain of command, weather the coward in the White House is to afraid to look back there will be others to take up the cause of justice and restoring the constitution , a shame President Obama foisted upon himself with free will, shame forever is his name.
“not once does Ignatius offer even a single word about whether torture is legal (hint: it is not)”
How illegal can it be if people who do it don’t have to worry about being prosecuted?
Ignatius has another problem, besides not knowing that torture is illegal, and that is his belief that it works.
That is not true. Google “torture is ineffective” and get all sorts of evidence that torture doesn’t work. Many agents have testified to this. Torture is only used for bureaucratic reasons, not because it actually provides useful information. Nobody can force me to say what I don’t want to say — they will get a story instead.
In his executive order banning torture, President Obama alludes to this.
Executive Order 13491
By the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, in order to improve the effectiveness of human intelligence-gathering, to promote the safe, lawful, and humane treatment of individuals in United States custody and of United States personnel who are detained in armed conflicts, to ensure compliance with the treaty obligations of the United States, including the Geneva Conventions, and to take care that the laws of the United States are faithfully executed, I hereby order as follows: . . .Effective immediately, an individual in the custody or under the effective control of an officer, employee, or other agent of the United States Government, or detained within a facility owned, operated, or controlled by a department or agency of the United States, in any armed conflict, shall not be subjected to any interrogation technique or approach, or any treatment related to interrogation, that is not authorized by and listed in Army Field Manual 2–22.3 (Manual).
The Bush/Cheney administration offered a lot of ballast to the notion of torture as a policy choice. And, as a policy choice, it is most easily argued in terms of effectiveness; that is how we argue policy.
You absolutely nailed it, Barry, by highlighting Obama banning the practice feeds an ambiguity whereby torture isn’t condemned as immoral or illegal, but rather a policy practice that has been “banned” by his administration (don’t anyone look at Appendix M of the Army Field Manual, either).
But, I have to defend Ignatius just a tiny bit… a tiny bit. In my humble experience arguing “torture” in various threads online, if someone cannot accept that torture is immoral, then there is no point in arguing its illegality or its ineffectiveness. Immoral – Illegal – Ineffective: that argument folds back over itself like a moebius strip; one goes round-n-round without an exit.
Because it seems that there is always a convoluted and complex ticking time bomb scenario to be presented that could be effectively defused if you could just torture the information out of someone. And, the illegality of torture is always and everywhere absolved in that instance.
Torture should be everywhere and always taboo because it is immoral. Period. And, if for someone so morally impoverished that they resort to torture, they should be punished to the fullest extent of the law (domestic or international) to cement that taboo in the public consciousness. It ought not to be tolerated. Except as Oscar Leroy noted above, it already is. And, Obama’s “ban” (do not look at Appendix M!) is intended, presumably, for his administration only.
Freddie deBoer had some interesting thoughts about torture, liberals and ZD30 [linked in the order in which they were posted].
I disagree on morality. Eisler took the correct tack on this. We can argue morality ’til the cows come home, is it or isn’t it. So it’s better to stick with legality.
I say sodomy is moral! She says it’s not! That’s hopeless. Legality is best.
Morality was Ignatius’s out — “That’s what makes it a moral choice.” No. Don’t go that route.
Conor Friedersdorf does a better job of making your argument, but I remain unpersuaded in this context. And, I am unpersuaded because, as we observe, torture is already illegal and yet retains the status of “policy” which many are free to debate. I could accept illegality as the baseline premise were it not for all the caveats people resort to (ticking time bomb, hundreds saved) to justify the breach. Were we to hold those malefactors to the notion of, “Okay. You might have saved hundreds, but you broke the law in the process, and there are penalties you must be willing to face for having done so.” I might relent. But we don’t. And, for all of Obama’s bans in the face of Appendix M and secret “off shore” rendition sites, “illegal” is rendered a toothless (not credible) threat.
Unlike Conor’s parallel (gay marriage) I believe someone opposed would have a hard time arguing how that practice harms anyone (the couple or their neighbors), but I do think there is harm to the individual who tortures, and to the society in which that individual lives. And, the harm is substantial. It might be up to me to demonstrate/document that harm, but the assertion that it’s illegal, while perhaps necessary, is not sufficient. And, we’re living among the proof of that.
I’d add a question, donbacon, why is torture illegal? Perhaps, the answer to that question is where – or, on whom – the burden of “proof” resides.
Nixon said that if the president does something it is not illegal. Or, more directly, if the president does something it is ipso facto legal.
And, if a Nobel Peace Prize winning president orders torture, it is not illegal.
Got it?
Something about divine right of kings or some such….
Whenever “legal” arguments are made, I think of what goes missing: justice. It’s like a sleight of hand.