Fuzzy Thinking About Torture

I like Patrick Buchanan and usually find myself agreeing with him on most political issues. His column this week about torture is therefore disappointing.

Buchanan first makes an eloquent case against torture:

Many contend that torture is inherently evil, morally outrageous and legally impermissible under both existing U.S. law and the Geneva Convention on prisoners of war.

Moreover, they argue, torture does not work.

Its harvest is hatred, deceptions and lies. And because it is cowardly and cruel, torture degrades those who do it, as well as those to whom it is done. It instills a spirit of revenge in its victims.

When the knowledge of torture is made public, as invariably it is, it besmirches America’s good name and serves as a recruiting poster for our enemies and a justification to use the same degrading methods on our men and women.

And it makes us no better than the Chinese communist brain-washers of the Korean War, the Japanese war criminals who tortured U.S. POWs and the jailers at the Hanoi Hilton who tortured Sen. John McCain.

Moreover, even if done in a few monitored cases, where it seems to be the only way to get immediate intelligence to save hundreds or thousands from imminent terror attack, down the chain of command they know it is being done. Thus, we get sadistic copycat conduct at Abu Ghraib by enlisted personnel to amuse themselves at midnight.

Unfortunately, Buchanan goes on to nullify everything he just said:

The morality of killing or inflicting severe pain depends, then, not only on the nature of the act, but on the circumstances and motive.

The Beltway Snipers deserved death sentences. The Navy Seal snipers who killed those three Somali pirates and saved Captain Richard Phillips deserve medals.

Consider now Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, mastermind of 9-11, which sent 3,000 Americans to horrible deaths, and who was behind, if he did not do it himself, the beheading of Danny Pearl.

Even many opponents against torture will concede we have the same right to execute Khalid Mohammed as we did Timothy McVeigh. But if we have a right to kill him, do we have no moral right to waterboard him for 20 minutes to force him to reveal plans and al-Qaida accomplices to save thousands of American lives?

Where to begin? First of all, we execute people only when their guilt has been determined by due process of law. Buchanan seems prepared to allow torture with little or no regard for whether the prisoner actually possesses the desired information.

Second, prisoners, even those under a death sentence, are to be treated humanely right up to the moment of their execution. A little odd, yes, but we do this because we are a civilized people with respect for life. We take it only under the gravest circumstances and with much reluctance.

Third, there is a difference between killing someone in self-defense vs killing a prisoner who is under your control. The civil law makes this distinction very clear. Why it should be fuzzy to an intelligent man like Buchanan is unclear.

Mark Shea has an excellent new column about the morality of torture. More comments here.

We're Better Than This

I used to call myself a "conservative" in political matters. Now it appears I will have to give up that label. Why? Because I'm against torturing prisoners, a practice which is fast becoming a litmus test of true conservatism.

I would like to think that most conservatives would feel the same way if they would just get past their fear/anger and think about what they are saying. "Whatever it takes to protect Americans is ok with me" is a common feeling. Really? Whatever it takes?

Answer me this: Suppose the only way to get important information is to seize the young son of the suspect and crush his testicles? Not the suspect himself, mind you - I mean a child who has nothing to do with any crimes or terror. According to John Yoo, one of the Bush lawyers who wrote the recently-released torture memos, the president can do that and more. Is this really what you want to defend?

"But that's not what we're doing," you might say. Are you sure? According to Mr. Yoo, the Bush administration saw no legal impediments to it. And we now know that Bush, Cheney, and a whole host of lower officials lied about what they were doing to prisoners. What else did they allow that we don't know about yet?

"It's the only way we can get the info we need." Well, no, not according to an FBI agent who helped question Al Qaeda leaders and not according to the CIA Inspector General. Professional interrogators are near-unanimous about the uselessness of harsh techniques. It appears they were overruled by the political leadership.

The truth is that these "ticking bomb" scenarios everyone likes to talk about are nonexistent in the real world. They happen only on stupid TV shows like 24. Remember, too, that there is no way to be sure that the person you are interrogating possesses the information you seek.

For those who think torture is so hard to define, there is a simple solution. International law, all kinds of treaties and agreements, Catholic "Just War" doctrine, and the beliefs of just about every religion on the planet require that prisoners be treated humanely.

Now answer me this: if you put your prisoner through controlled drowning 183 times in a month, or you keep him naked in a cold cell for days on end, or you slam his head into a fake wall, or you put him in a box with insects, or you keep him awake for weeks at a time, are you treating him humanely? No, you're not. Still confused? You can always apply the Golden Rule. If it's torture when Al Qaeda does it to captured Americans, then it's also torture when we do it to them.

Shepherd Smith on Fox News said it very well, and is catching heat from his network's audience for it. "This is America. We do not (beep) torture." (The beep is an ugly word he should not have said on television. Video here.

Indeed, this is America. But we do torture. Or at least we did, and I'm not at all convinced that Obama will stop it from happening again. We're better than this! The fact that we don't do these things is what separates us from the people we are fighting! If we torture prisoners and ultimately prevail, what will we have become? Will the America that survives be the one we wanted to save?

I'm disgusted that so many people I respect are giving in to their fear and supporting this evil. And here is the worst part: evil never wins in the end. It turns around and bites the one who wields it. We're setting precedents that will come back to haunt us. Do not be surprised if someone you love finds himself on the waterboard. I give it ten years.

If I have to choose between 1) losing the war and 2) losing the war and losing my soul with it, I choose number one.

Make your choice now. Make the right one. Your eternity may depend on it.

Ending the Rule of Law

From the Washington Post:

The Justice Department sent a legal memorandum to the Pentagon in 2003 asserting that federal laws prohibiting assault, maiming and other crimes did not apply to military interrogators who questioned al-Qaeda captives because the president's ultimate authority as commander in chief overrode such statutes...

Sent to the Pentagon's general counsel on March 14, 2003, by John C. Yoo, then a deputy in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, the memo provides an expansive argument for nearly unfettered presidential power in a time of war. It contends that numerous laws and treaties forbidding torture or cruel treatment should not apply to U.S. interrogations in foreign lands because of the president's inherent wartime powers.

"If a government defendant were to harm an enemy combatant during an interrogation in a manner that might arguably violate a criminal prohibition, he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the al Qaeda terrorist network," Yoo wrote. "In that case, we believe that he could argue that the executive branch's constitutional authority to protect the nation from attack justified his actions."

This practical implication of this expansive interpretation is that the president, and anyone he/she designates, is not bound by any law whatsoever. He/she can do anything as long as it is done in the name of national defense. Why stop at torture? How about summary executions? Rape? Child molestation? If that's what it takes to defend America, it's legal. The logic applies equally well. This is Mr. Yoo's argument, made on behalf of his boss, President George W. Bush.

Many of the same Republicans who could not talk enough about the "rule of law" when Bill Clinton lied under oath think exempting George W. Bush from a few laws is no big deal. Here's the problem: the genie is out of the bottle. Every president from now on will have these same powers. That includes liberal Democrats. Anyone think either of them won't try to open the door even wider? It will be fun to watch Bushies try to argue that President Obama is overstepping his authority. I can easily imagine the Obama Justice Department finding some legal logic to justify the imprisonment and torture of pro-life activists, for instance.

A ridiculous thought? Maybe. But if it happens, you can thank George W. Bush and his enablers, who have made a mockery of the very Constitution they claim to protect.

Torture Double Standard

WASHINGTON - The United States branded China an authoritarian human rights abuser Tuesday, citing alleged torture, state control of basic aspects of daily life, tight controls on religion and harassment of foreign charities.

The report detailed the lengths some Chinese officials have taken to enforce their country's well-known "one child" policy, and gave a chilling account of alleged torture in China, including the use of electric shocks, beatings, shackles, and other forms of abuse. It includes an account of a prisoner strapped to a "tiger bench," a device that forces the legs to bend sometimes until they break. [more]

This is rich. It was only a few days ago that the President of the United States exercised his veto power to make sure that agencies of the U.S. government are able to use "beatings, electric shock, burns, or other forms of physical pain" on, well, anyone they wish. (It is not clear whether we have a tiger bench. If we don't, I'll bet Dick Cheney has it on his Christmas list.) But we don't torture people, they say. Please.

Of course, I am quite sure that whatever the U.S. does is a pale comparison to the Chinese torture machine, both in quality and quantity. The rest of the world will not make that distinction, however. Thanks to the evil acts of the Bush Administration, the U.S. now has no more credibility about these torture and prisoner abuse than Eliot Spitzer does about chastity. This is a legacy that will be with us long after Bush retires to Crawford.

The U.S. Tortures People

From today's Washington Post:

President Bush said Saturday that he has vetoed legislation meant to ban the CIA from using waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics because it "would take away one of the most valuable tools on the war on terror."

In his weekly radio address, Bush said, "This is no time for Congress to abandon practices that have a proven track record of keeping America safe." [more]

The bill Bush vetoed would have required the CIA and other intelligence agencies to follow the same standard that applies in the military. For the record, here are the practices that Bush thinks are so indispensable:

• Forcing the detainee to be naked, perform sexual acts, or pose in a sexual manner.
• Placing hoods or sacks over the head of a detainee; using duct tape over the eyes.
• Applying beatings, electric shock, burns, or other forms of physical pain.
• “Waterboarding.”
• Using military working dogs.
• Inducing hypothermia or heat injury.
• Conducting mock executions.
• Depriving the detainee of necessary food, water, or medical care.

Here's my question: if doing these things is the only way America can be kept safe, do we really deserve to be safe? Exactly what is it, pray tell, that distinguishes us from the terrorists we are fighting? Why is it that they are considered barbaric and we are not?

Bush has, on many occasions, looked into a camera and told the public "The United States does not torture." Why, then, does he use the veto to preserve for the CIA the right to perform acts that any sensible person can see are torture? The answer is that he is lying. Note what Bush said today: he is preserving techniques that "have a proven track record." That means we have already done these things. He's not just saving up for a rainy day.

Listen closely, Republicans. George W. Bush is a liar. When he says the U.S. does not torture, Bush is lying just as surely as Bill Clinton was lying when he said he had no sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky. To hide his lies, Clinton parsed the definition of "is." To justify his lies, Bush parses the definition of "torture." Where is the difference? Republicans who were up in arms about Clinton's lies give their own guy a pass.

Bush's lies are, in fact, far worse than Clinton's lies, which concerned only his personal acts. Acting in your name and by the authority you gave him, President Bush just made evil into official American policy and then lied about it. Congratulations. I hope you're proud of him.

I'll make a prediction here and now: this evil will not keep us safe. Instead it will do the exact opposite. Bush is putting the American people in more danger than ever. In this life or the next, he will pay a price for endorsing this evil. So will we all.

One more point: the fact that John McCain says he opposes torture is one of the few things that I find attractive about his candidacy. Yet McCain inexplicably sided with Bush when this bill came before the Senate last month. This tells us something important. Remember it in November.

The Joy of Waterboarding

Think for a moment: on September 10, 2001, would the thought have ever crossed your mind that six years later presidential candidates would be arguing about whether the United States should or should not torture people? No, the mere thought was preposterous. Times have changed.

It now seems clear that the U.S. has, at the very least, used a technique called waterboarding on at least two captured terrorists. Depending who you listen to, the information thus elicited either saved lives or was totally useless.

Be that as it may, there has been much discussion on whether waterboarding does or does not qualify as "torture." The Bush Administration is no help in this regard. They tell us a) the U.S. does not torture while b) simultaneously refusing to define what they consider to be acts of torture.

The first inclination of many Americans is along the lines of "whatever it takes to keep us safe" without giving much thought to the details. A few actually relish the idea of bringing pain to our enemies and want to get even tougher. We have been told by people up to and including Vice President Cheney that waterboarding is no worse than a dip in the backyard pool. They point out that our own military forces use waterboarding as a training tool. Therefore it must not be torture, they say, curiously forgetting that our military trains people to face it precisely because it is torture. Mark Shea explains:

Here's the deal: have you ever had an experience of being dunked when you weren't ready for it as a teenager? Ever wrestle as a kid and have somebody cut off your wind for half a second? Remember the panic when you needed to breathe and couldn't?

Now: You are strapped to a board spread-eagle. You already can't breath too deeply in this position. The board is tipped back into a dunk tank and you are head down in the water. The water runs into your sinuses unless you breathe out through your nose. But breathing out means you can't hold your breathe for long. You feel the urge to breathe but you mustn't. Your whole body begins to flex in panic and terror. Your knotted fists bang ineffectually on the board. But the people doing this are not trainers. They are Professionals. They aren't waiting for you to say, "Okay guys, I get the idea of what it's like, You can take me out now!"

They are waiting for your lungs to feel as though they will burst, for the moment *past* the moment of supreme horror when your autonomic system kicks in and you inhale--and gag on--a lungful of water, when you would scream if there were any air in your lungs, when you start to black out.

Then, they pull you from the water, pound on your chest, and bring you too, coughing and retching and more terrified than you have ever been in your life. You have five seconds to start talking--even if you have nothing to say.

And then it all starts again.

And people in these comfy comboxes and elsewhere in cyberspace and on the Rubbber Hose Right (not to mention in the office of the Vice President) have the *gall* to say "That does not rise to the level of torture."

A second and a half of not being able to reach the surface of the lake when I was a kid is still the stuff of nightmares decades later. Those who pretend waterboarding is not torture are either so out of touch with reality that they should not be allowed to operate heavy machinery or they are moral imbeciles.

The group of those who think waterboarding is just fine includes Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, and Tom Tancredo, all of whom want to be Your President and all of whom promise not to torture anyone as long as they get to decide what constitutes "torture." They also promise to do whatever is only to really bad guys. If one of them makes it to the Oval Office look for the definition of "really bad" to expand greatly. It may even include you.

These definitional games are a distraction from the real issue: if the only way we can defeat the enemy is to become the enemy, we have already lost the war. The U.S. somehow managed to win World War II without torturing German or Japanese prisoners. Even today the professional interrogators say torture is useless and even counterproductive in getting information from prisoners. If there really is a "ticking bomb" someplace, there is no reason to think that torturing a prisoner (assuming you have one, and assuming your prisoner has knowledge that will help before it's too late) will prevent the bomb from going off. More likely it will send the authorities off on tangents while the real bomb ticks down to zero.

Yet whether waterboarding or any other technique yields tangible results is morally irrelevant. An intrinsically evil act does not become good merely by virtue of positive consequences. Torture supporters who claim to be Christians also have to deal with some decidedly inconvenient scriptures:

Matthew 5: 43-45 You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.

Luke 6:35-36 But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.

Romans 12: 19-21 Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay,"says the Lord. On the contrary: "If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head." Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Admittedly, these are hard teachings to accept when you are dealing with evil people who want to harm you and your loved ones. They are, nonetheless, what the Lord demands of us.

Now it is true that Christ did not explicitly tell us "don't torture people." This is probably because it is patently obvious, to everyone except Dick Cheney, that that we cannot reconcile things like waterboarding with the command to love our enemies and overcome evil with good.

As noted above, most people haven't thought through this very deeply and their initial response is that anything goes if it will protect us from "those animals." But we aren't torturing animals. We're doing it to people, human beings created in the image and likeness of God. Calling them animals is simply a way to avoid admitting this inconvenient truth, just as Jews in Nazi Germany were designated as "subhuman" and babies in the womb are, right now, called "fetuses" by those who wish to "terminate" them. It's not killing, you see, if there is no person involved.

Do you really want your country to start down this road? I don't. I also want to be safe from those who would like to attack us. Even more, though, I want to live in a nation that stands for something; a nation that is worth defending; a land of the free and a home of the brave.

Torture does not require bravery. It is, in fact, a cowardly and evil act that brings nothing but pain on both sides. For the prisoner, the pain is immediate. For the torturer and his enablers, it comes later. But it will come.

McCain's Desperation Move

The GOP presidential race finally started to get more interesting with the CNN/YouTube debate this week. Of particular interest to me was John McCain's attack on Ron Paul (video, transcript) over Dr. Paul's alleged isolationism.

Before examining the exchange itself, the first thing we have to consider is why McCain chose to initiate this bit of verbal aggression. Ron Paul is widely regarded as a "minor" candidate who has no chance of winning the nomination. He barely registers in national polls. Since he is not a threat to the so-called "leading" candidates, it would seem smarter to just ignore him. After all, no one went on the attack against Tom Tancredo or Duncan Hunter. From a strictly political perspective, what was McCain trying to accomplish?

We should also note that this was clearly part of McCain's plan for the debate. He had been prepped to look for a chance to go after Ron Paul. His chance came, oddly enough, in response to a question about whether a national sales tax would be a good idea. Rather than give the questioner the courtesy of a full response, McCain changed the subject and launched his well-rehearsed line at Ron Paul. Again, why?

The answer is simple: McCain is losing. He needed to do something dramatic to revive his campaign. The tirade against Ron Paul played to McCain's strength, i.e. his heroic military career and strong-leader image. Appearing on the Laura Ingraham radio show the next day, McCain again went out of his way to strike at Ron Paul. In fact he used almost the very same words; I'll bet he did so in other interviews as well. It was pre-fabricated "outrage."

Whether this tactic will have any impact in the polls remains to be seen. I'm dubious. Anyway, the main message I got from McCain's performance is that he must have had horrible grades in history. What he said was completely wrong. Here it is:

I just want to also say that Congressman Paul, I've heard him now in many debates talk about bringing our troops home, and about the war in Iraq and how it's failed.... And I want to tell you that that kind of isolationism, sir, is what caused World War II.... We allowed -- we allowed Hitler to come to power with that kind of attitude of isolationism and appeasement.

It is unusual, to say the least, when someone who routinely attacks liberal because they "blame America first" decides to himself blame the U.S. for nothing less than the rise of Hitler. In fact, anytime any politician says the word "Hitler" it is a good bet they are up to no good.

The truth is that the U.S. had absolutely nothing to do with Hitler's rise. Here are the facts: Hitler came to power in January 1933 when President Hindenburg of Germany appointed him as Chancellor in a perfectly legal manner. After Hindenburg's death in August 1934, the German cabinet decided to leave the presidency vacant and make Hitler the nation's supreme leader, or Fuhrer. This was validated two weeks later in an election that Hitler won with 84.6% of the vote. One could argue that voters were intimidated or ballot boxes rigged, but there is no doubt that Hitler was very popular at the time and would have won anyway.

What exactly is it that McCain thinks the U.S. should have done about Hitler? Tell Hindenburg who he was supposed to appoint as Chancellor? Force the German people to vote for someone else was more to our liking? Invade the Rhineland? Please. You don't have to be an isolationist to recognize how crazy this is.

Yes, Hitler turned out to be a bad guy and in hindsight it might have saved a lot of lives to remove him earlier. No one knew that at the time. If McCain wants U.S. policy to be that we do whatever it takes to keep every country in the world from installing as its leader anyone who might someday somehow become a threat to the U.S., then he's going to keep the Pentagon mighty busy.

It's not "isolationist" to say that "we don't attack nations that haven't attacked us." It's common sense. The United States is not an empire. We defend ourselves when threatened, but in 1933-34 Hitler wasn't threatening us. Right up until Pearl Harbor he actually tried very hard not to provoke the U.S. while he dealt with his European enemies. In December 1941 both Japan and Germany declared war on the U.S. We responded and the rest is history.

This episode leaves us with two possible lessons about John McCain. Either he is ignorant about the facts of the greatest war this nation has ever fought - which ought to disqualify him from being a wartime president - or he is willing to re-write history in order to manipulate the public for his own political gain. Neither alternative makes him look very good.

Having said all that, I commend McCain for what he said about torture. This is a subject on which he has tremendous moral authority, and it's sad that so few of his Republican colleagues are willing to listen to him when he says things like waterboarding is torture.