Matt Taibbi makes a valiant effort to explain to the lunatics the reasons why anti-torture people are anti-torture. It’s a very well-written piece, but he does a better job of explaining why lunatics are lunatics than he does in explaining why we should not torture.
Taibbi’s insight is that pro-torture people are engaging in a faulty if/then mentality. If your are critical of how we treat Islamic radicals then you are not critical of how Islamic radicals treat us. If you defend all human beings’ human rights then you are defending what Islamic terrorists do and taking their side. And so on…
Taibbi does make a stab at explaining the anti-torture position.
My group, the anti-torture group, believes that what should make us superior to terrorists is respect for law and due process and civilization, and that when we give in and use these tactics, we forfeit that superiority and actually confer a kind of victory to the al Qaedas of the world, people who should never be allowed any kind of victory in any arena. We furthermore think that the war on terror doesn’t get won with force alone, that it’s a conflict that ultimately has to be won politically, by winning a propaganda battle against these assholes, and we can’t win that battle so easily if people in the Middle East see us openly embrace these tactics.
One of the things I find most frustrating about this debate is that we never talk about the people who created these treaties about the laws of war and human rights. They were all veterans of the worst conflicts on record. Pretty much all the architecture of international human rights was written by veterans of either the First World War or the Second (or both). They saw what happened at the Battle of Verdun and after the bombing of Dresden. They saw the carnage of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They lived through the Bataan Death March and they liberated the Nazi Death camps. They had not been engaged in frivolous wars. They knew more (hopefully) than we will ever know about the need for intelligence and the existential threats that exist in the world. They were was no generation of bleeding hearts. But it was that generation that decided that we have to outlaw torture under all circumstances, with no exceptions and no mitigation. They created universal jurisdiction for every nation to prosecute those that torture.
Don’t tell me that we live in a more dangerous world. We have potential dangers; they had actualized ones. We’re worried about Iran getting a bomb that is about as lethal as the ones we dropped on Japan. They were worried about the Soviets getting a hydrogen bomb. So, please…can’t we show some respect and deference to our elders? Maybe they knew what they were talking about?
That’s the first thing. The second thing is that torture, aside from being a moral abomination, is considered a moral abomination by the vast majority of the world. And, that’s a good thing. That’s progress. That’s our safety-net against seeing us all slip back into the barbarism of the two world wars. When a terrorist cuts off an American’s head, we react with revulsion and horror. Trust me when I tell you that the world reacts in a similar manner when they see pictures like those from Abu Ghraib or they read about how we shackled people for weeks and threw their heads into walls. And, contrary to what conservatives assert, our level of security is directly related to how people feel about us.
A video of a beheading makes Americans more likely to support not just going after the perpetrators but invading the Muslim country where the beheading occurred and killing people there indiscriminately. Torture makes enemies. It incites a reaction. And it darkens the hearts of the people who are the recipients of the torture. You can oppose torture on purely practical grounds.
Torture doesn’t keep us safer no matter what information we get out of it. To think it does is strictly delusional.
There are other issues, but they are secondary. Obviously, our troops are more likely to be tortured because we have engaged in torture ourselves. Enforcement of anti-torture laws suffers if America is exempt. And, torture doesn’t provide reliable intelligence but does waste resources by causing false leads. But the real issues are that it is morally wrong and makes us less safe.
To demonstrate my point, the fact that al-Qaeda engages in torture and murder makes them less safe. And that is as it should be.
Digby: We’re losing.
And I said there, I never believed we’d win this.
I wrote about that, too.
There’s a more important reason to forbid torture than anything mentioned above. It’s that conducting torture necessarily requires us to cultivate torturers.
The people who murdered detainees at our various extralegal prisons will, if they have not already done so, return to our shores as free men and women. They will move into our neighborhoods. They may even end up in positions of responsibility over our children. The ones from the military — as opposed to the CIA spooks — might well even return as decorated veterans, enabling them to inspire trust and gain access to areas of society that would have otherwise been safe from them.
Let me put this in terms that I am sure will enrage the lunatics: the people who carried out orders to torture prisoners are not good people. They are some of the vilest, sickest, lowest human filth imaginable. The people who, for example, pulped that Afghan cab driver’s legs so thoroughly that the military doctor on the scene likened the injuries to things he had seen when people were run over by a bus, are infinitely worse than suicide bombers. A suicide bomber kills people, most of them fairly quickly and cleanly, but either way a suicide bomber does not spend hours and days inflicting cruelty on completely helpless individuals for weeks, months, and years, and calmly collect regular paychecks from it like it was any ordinary human activity.
(And for heaven’s sake, I am not suggesting that suicide bombers are either sane or morally okay.)
So to the torturers, uniformed or otherwise, I have only this to say: stay over there. We don’t need you back here in the civilized world where we will have to deal with your future violent acts, the child and spousal abuse you will almost certainly undertake, or the more generalized corrosive effect your mere presence will have on decent human beings.
And to the pro-torture lunatics: Go join them. Stop creating monsters and unleashing them on the American public.
I apologize if all that seemed rather inflammatory, but that really wasn’t the intention. I’m just tired of having to tiptoe around the abysses of human degeneration as if there was any excuse for any of it, or worse, as if there were no long-term consequences for a society that spawns monsters.
“There’s a more important reason to forbid torture than anything mentioned above. It’s that conducting torture necessarily requires us to cultivate torturers.“
Typically American self-referential thinking. The REAL victims of US international crimes are…….Americans and American society, of course!
Oh for goodness’ sake, Hurria, give me a break. I’m an American, living in America and participating in the American political system and I am, in part, trying to reach people who don’t give two shits about the consequences of torture to its victims by pointing out the way Americans are harming their own society — because I do care about the victims of torture.
Just between you and me, I don’t give two shits about the defenders of torture or those who are indifferent to torture; as far as I am concerned, they have left the human race if they ever belonged to it. But there are an awful lot of them, and they unfortunately get to vote like the rest of us. Ergo, if we want to get through to those people, playing on their sense of compassion is not enough: by definition, sociopaths don’t have any compassion to appeal to.
This is why the opponents of torture have had to resort to morally irrelevant arguments, like pointing out the ineffectiveness of torture — as if it should matter whether doing evil yields dividends or not. Or pointing out that torture increases the likelihood of (perfectly just) reprisal attacks against American occupation troops.
I’d prefer if we lived in a world where the simple fact that human beings are being twisted and broken by the power of the state was enough to get people to do the right thing, but if we lived in that world, we wouldn’t have to discuss this topic in the first place.
So cut me some slack, wouldja? It’s because so many of us do recognize the basic humanity of our putative enemies and also recognize the lack of basic humanity among many of our countrymen that we are pressing the fight against torture on as many fronts as possible. If that makes me a typical American, I can with that.
Remember what ended the Plame controversy? Not noble reasoning. Libby’s conviction ended it.
What ended the Watergate controversy? Convictions.
The US is a very brutal country and there can’t be major fuck-ups here without brutal retribution. If there is no brutal retribution, well then that means there was no major fuck-up and the argument is indeed lost.
Also available in orange.
I got pretty discouraged about the torture issue at the moment the conversation started. A nation that thinks there are two legitimate sides to the torture question is already on the road to Hell.
I’m having a really hard time with Obama’s apparent position on the torture issue. It sure looks like he is determined to sweep it under the rug and “move forward.” If that’s the case, it becomes very difficult to be supportive of him in a general sense. For me, the Constitutional and moral issues of torture are fundamental and baseline. I can’t just shrug and say well, “I’m with Obama on healthcare, and stem cell research, and global warming, even though I think he is wrong on torture.” If he can’t see the importance of taking the proper stand on such a profound and clear cut moral issue, then there is something deeply wrong with his character and judgement.
Don’t give up on Obama. He’s trying the Wisdom of Solomon here. But that means you get at least a half a baby.
I do believe that Taibbi’s insight is that pro-torture people are engaging in a faulty if/then mentality. In relation to public awareness, not many people had heard of Connie Culp. She is the subject of talk now, because Connie Culp is the recipient of the first face transplant performed on a woman in the U.S. The first ever face transplant was Isabelle Dinoire, French women whose face was disfigured by the family dog (the intent of the pooch is a subject of debate) and undergo the procedure, and costs lot more than an online cash advance. Connie’s face was blasted off by her deranged ex-husband that’s why she got a face transplant, and he got sent to the big house, but it was worth the installment loans for Connie Culp, as she can now breathe, talk, and eat on her own. So to those people who disfigurement and don’t look as pretty as you do, don’t judge them, because you never know what happened to them. Don’t judge people who don’t look the beautiful in your eyes, because you never know. One day it might be all taken away.