Posted on 12/10/2014 1:07:32 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Via the Daily Caller. He’s right, but … I’m not sure anyone, up to and including nutty Joan Walsh, is claiming otherwise. (If Al Qaeda ends up ratcheting down the barbarity, it’ll be because of lessons they’ve learned from ISIS, not from the U.S.) On the other hand, opponents of EIT do frequently say that we need to set an example for the rest of the world in renouncing torture and I’ve never understood that argument either. Who are we setting an example for? Which countries are going to change how they handle terrorists because Dianne Feinstein released the CIA report? Don’t we count on other countries to stick with enhanced interrogation for our own rendition purposes?
There are defensible reasons to oppose EIT. You can oppose it as being immoral, regardless of what intelligence gains might be had from it. You can oppose it for being too dangerous of a slippery slope, a special concern now that Obama’s expanded drone warfare to include jihadis with American citizenship. You can oppose it because it produces bad information under duress, something that’s certainly true in some cases but not as universally true as anti-EIT absolutists insist. You can even oppose it, a la Joe Biden, because it makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside to do so, the left’s own version of American exceptionalism. I don’t really see how you can oppose it as a way to influence other countries, though, except as a minor piece in a propaganda chess game. Renouncing CIA torture won’t stop Vladimir Putin from getting rough with his own prisoners but it will undercut him a bit if he argues that he’s only doing what the United States enthusiastically does to its own detainees. “Not enthusiastically!” we can now say. So, yay. Besides, the propaganda value in having global media revisit this old subject is much greater to someone like Putin than the propaganda loss he’s suffered in having Senate Democrats — who tolerated these practices for years before it became an issue for their base, of course — declare that America is sorry and will never do it again. For instance, here’s how the report is playing on a much-followed Twitter account devoted to Iranian propaganda:
#TortureReport #Ferguson http://t.co/BMY29LXuGc pic.twitter.com/kR1J04Rk6B
— Khamenei.ir (@khamenei_ir) December 10, 2014
The lesson abroad won’t be that the United States regrets what it did but that the United States did it in the first place. Nor, I assume, will this count for much in restoring our “standing” abroad, or however this silly argument goes, when we’re still practicing drone warfare and will continue to do so for years to come. That’s probably the most irritating thing about liberal sanctimony on EIT: They crow about it not because it’s the most dubious practice of the war on terror — “signature strikes” from drones are harsher by any measure — but because the torture program can be laid more neatly in Bush’s lap, without as much culpability for Obama. If you doubt that there’s a partisan undercurrent to all this, eyeball this graph at FiveThirtyEight and note how torture became more popular in 2009, as Obama took office. That seems counterintuitive at first glance; support for torture should decline over time, you would think, as we get farther from 9/11. But that’s not what we see, and the reason we don’t see it is mainly because of a 10-point jump in support among Democrats five years ago — which coincided, of course, with Obama replacing Bush as president. Quite simply, some Democrats are okay with torture so long as a “more responsible” president, i.e. a guy on their own team, is in charge of it. And that’s also why left-wing criticism of the drone program, which is loud enough to get Obama to deliver a speech on the subject now and then but not quite loud enough to make him worry politically (especially when the media leaps to applaud him for being so thoughtful and conflicted ‘n stuff on the subject), has failed to end the practice. Obama’s as guilty as Bush is of war by drone, if not more so, so they can’t get too shrill about it. And so, surreally, we end up with results like this on the left’s hometown cable news network:
By very similar margins Ed Show viewers are pro-drones killing U.S. citizens and anti-torture on terror detainees: pic.twitter.com/qjMqaliYij
— Andrew Kaczynski (@BuzzFeedAndrew) December 10, 2014
One policy is associated with Bush, the other — the more severe policy — with Obama. The results change accordingly. Remember that the next time you’re subject to an impromptu lecture on torture. Exit question: What on earth is Walsh talking about at the end here, arguing that EIT obviously doesn’t work because it hasn’t singlehandedly eliminated every major terror group on the planet? Even by usual Joan Walsh straw-man standards, that’s pretty Walsh-y.
For some reason, he strikes me as the kind of person who enjoys a little pain now and then.
Why did they use this story to cover up the Jonathan Gruber testimony?
In any case, I see this entire topic as a non issue.
If there's not a little pain every now and then, you're not doing it right. :)
They didn’t
To be perfectly honest, Gruber’s testimony as well as the entire hearing are both utterly without consequence.
What is the practical result of a bunch of blowhard government employees asking Gruber a bunch of angry questions?
Answer- Those same government employees will fund entirely Gruber’s beast, and no one at all will be held acocuntable for anything whatsoever.
Pointless waste of time.
It's worse than that for Dems - Americans WANT to win wars and punish terrorists. The only hand wringing is from the Leftists, like Norah O'Donnell clenching her teeth this morning interviewing the past cia chief.
See what happens when he drinks? He becomes rational.
Chrissy must have got the memo that muzzies kill homos.
Torture has always been a part of Islam and ubtil the West understands and accepts that, the enemy has the advantage1
Wouldn’t it be fair if ISIS and Al Qaida water boarded prisoners rather than beheading them? We should ask them diplomatically. In a way not to show disrespect. (I used to be proud to be an American).
You got that right. Seems all of this had been gone thru in '06 and '07. I don't understand the reason for this now.
concur.
why did Americans historically sweep Republicans into office? they are just going to give the democrats all of the money they want anyway, fulfill the democrat agendas.
sigh.
Because there is no other option outside of an Article V convention or something much worse.
Sadly I think we are at the point of something much worse.
They used this non-story to cover up the Gruber testimony7 because the left would wet their pants if the Gruber story were to get any more publicity.
Gruber gave evidence that Obamacare is a big fat lie and that most if not all top officials in the democrat party were fully aware and complicit.
No, they would not.
You know what I would have said to the endlessly blustering republican’ts asking me if I’m stupid or what did I mean when I called the voters stupid?
I would have said No, no you’re stupid because despite the obvious and admitted fraud used in passing this law, YOU ARE GOING TO VOTE TO FUND IT, EVERY LAST BIT OF IT, DESPITE THE FACT THAT YOU TOLD THE PEOPLE THAT ELECTED YOU OTHERWISE.
FURTHERMORE, YOU ARE GOING TO VOTE TO ELECT THE PERSON PUTTING TOGETHER THE BILL THAT WILL FUND IT SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE, AND THERE AIN”T A DAMN THING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT, BECAUSE YOU ARE A LIAR, AND IN TRUTH YOU AGREE WITH ME AND WHAT I’VE DONE.
Isn’t that the truth, Mr. Gowdy and Mr. Issa? Yes, yes it is, now please remind me which among us is stupid.
I would love to see the look on their damned lying faces if the man had had the balls to say that.
I have a lib brother who was all upset about the U.S. using “torture” against the subhumans. First, I told him only three terrorists had actually been waterboarded. And then I asked him what was worse...being waterboarded or having someone put a bullet in your skull or blown to pieces by a drone? Because if we didn’t keep them around for interrogation, we should just put a bullet through their skulls. They do the same to us.
Why did they use this story?
To cover up the Jonathan Gruber testimony.
Republican politicians are not stupid so much as they’re corrupt. Smart enough to know conservative principles work, but disloyal to those principles because they’re slaves to whoever’s double dealing with them, or blackmailing them. And in the larger picture they’re also slaves to their sin.
Don’t get me wrong—the democrat leaders are at least as corrupt as the republicans. But they’re also stupid—right on up to Gruber himself—because their intellectual and moral conclusion is that socialism is more viable than American conservatism.
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