I’d like to note for the record that torturing people makes it impossible to prosecute them without running sham trials that undermine public confidence in the government. One of the main reasons we haven’t closed Gitmo is because we can’t come up with a way to legitimize the ongoing detention of some very dangerous individuals who should never be released. For example, the man who organized the U.S.S. Cole bombing ought to be put on trial and convicted. But it has taken how long for this to happen? And now the prosecution is doing things like this?
When the war court reconvenes this week, pretrial hearings in the case of an alleged al-Qaida bomber will be tackling a government motion that’s so secret the public can’t know its name.
It’s listed as the 92nd court filing in the death-penalty case against a Saudi man, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who was waterboarded by CIA agents.
And in place of its name, the Pentagon has stamped “classified” in red.
When we waterboarded this dude, we became criminals, too. And he put ourselves in a position of having to undermine our system of justice in order to protect ourselves and get justice for the families of the sailors that this man killed.
Not only that but we likely continue to hold people, like Shaker Aamer, because if we released them they’d prove other countries, like the U.K. were in on the torture.
I’ve been thinking about the impact of our torture regime on the response to the Snowden (and Manning) revelations. Setting aside, for the moment, the actual content of what he revealed, I wonder if many people (like myself) react much differently if we actually lived in a nation of laws.
That is, if we’d investigated and prosecuted every American suspected of torture and war crimes, because the law is the law even when the motivations are pure, I wonder if people would feel sympathy for Snowden and Manning (and even for the operatives who waterboarded and otherwise brutalized prisoners), but not outrage at their prosecution. (Or eventual prosecution, in Snowden’s case.)
I haven’t got past the suspicion that the reason most of the prisoners at Gitmo are tortured is to make them supply reasons for their being there in the first place.
Forced feeding is torture, too. Do you disagree? Solitary is also torture, and plenty of prisons operate like it’s SOP.
And you don’t torture because it’s wrong.
Starvation is also torture, and you can’t claim that someone in your custody is “voluntarily” or “consensually” starving himself.
So what do you do? Let him die in agony, and say you have no responsibility to stop a prisoner under your authority him from killing himself?
You send in a professional to judge if the subject is sane. If so, you step back. The day we stop using overwhelming and unwelcome force to save people–and countries–from themselves will be a scary day indeed.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4790742.stm
If so, you step back.
So, you’re ok with prison officials allowing prisoners to kill themselves?
If they find someone hanging himself with a bed sheet, do you “step back” then, too?
Yes, I follow the World Medical Association’s guidelines as regards force feeding.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_Tokyo
Guantánamo doctors must refuse to force-feed hunger strikers – physicians
Writing in the prestigious and influential New England Journal of Medicine, the three doctors called Guantánamo “a medical ethics free zone” and said that medical staff had a moral duty to allow the prisoners to go on hunger strike without coercing them into treatment. They also called on doctors to refuse to take part in force-feeding.
“Military physicians should refuse to participate in any act that unambiguously violates medical ethics,” wrote Dr George Annas, Dr Sondra Crosby and Dr Leonard Glantz, in a three-page article outlining an ethical case against force-feeding of the detainees. All three are senior medical professors at Boston University.
Surely joe knows BU. Maybe he can have an ethical debate with them; right around the corner, after all.
As impressive as an appeal to authority always is, I was hoping for some evidence of thought behind your position.
So far, there is none. You can’t explain why it’s right, or any of the principles behind it. I’ve tried to tease out some thought by being subtle, but it doesn’t seem to work, so now I’m asking directly.
Why?
Can you explain why that is the right position, and why it’s different from other forms of suicide?
I think either position is morally defensible.
One difference between an inmate who is refusing to eat and one that is attempting to hang himself is the matter of immanence. It’s one thing to force-feed someone who is literally on the verge of death and another to force-feed someone to prevent them from reaching that verge. Only in former case is that action strictly corollary to a hanging attempt.
It’s obviously a moral quandary. I think the appeal to authority here is warranted.
Good answer: someone starving himself to death has plenty of chances to change his mind.
You didn’t answer the question:
Do you “step back” when the prisoner is killing himself with a bed sheet? Or is there something special about starvation that makes it different from other forms of suicide?
The Bushies took a giant belly-flop on justice and left it paralyzed and drowning in the deep end. And they did it to show how tough and manly they were.
I wish someone would at least try to clean up the nauseating mess they left behind.
The families of the murdered sailors on the USS Cole deserve to see justice. That would of course aply also to those murdered on the USS Liberty in 1967. But then once again we can object that the Israeli governing class is not Muslim. Doesn’t it work a bit like that? Very disgusting one way or the other. The evidence gathered under torture can not be used in court. I suppose because the US doesn’t torture. It’s so filthy. So this must also apply to any charges against those who have tortured because their victims would be giving evidence of their experiences under torture, which is inadmissible. I’m still looking forward to some deep chatter about Edward Snowden around these parts of the internet.
It’s also why you don’t do dragnets based on “correlations”.