Posted on 11/11/2005 9:07:04 AM PST by SirLinksalot
When torture is the only option ...
DAVID GELERNTER
SEN. JOHN MCCAIN's proposed legislation incorporating into U.S. law the Geneva Convention ban on mistreating prisoners. The bill, which bans cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment, passed the Senate 90 to 9. To say it's got momentum is putting it mildly.
But President Bush says he will veto the bill unless the CIA is exempted. Vice President Cheney has led the administration's campaign for the exemption. It's a hard sell; pro-torture politicians are scarce around Washington.
But of course you don't have to be "pro-torture" to oppose the McCain amendment. That naive misunderstanding summarizes the threat posed by this good-hearted, wrong-headed legislation. Those who oppose the amendment don't think the CIA should be permitted to use torture or other rough interrogation techniques. What they think is that sometimes the CIA should be required to squeeze the truth out of prisoners. Not because the CIA wants to torture people, but because it may be the only option we've got.
McCain's amendment is a trap for the lazy minded. Whenever a position seems so obvious that you don't even have to stop and think — stop and think.
SNIP
Michael Levin published an article challenging the popular view that the U.S. must never engage in torture. "Someday soon," he concluded, "a terrorist will threaten tens of thousands of lives, and torture will be the only way to save them."
Suppose a nuclear bomb is primed to detonate somewhere in Manhattan, Levin wrote, and we've captured a terrorist who knows where the bomb is. He won't talk. By forbidding torture, you inflict death on many thousands of innocents and endless suffering on the families of those who died at a terrorist's whim — and who might have lived had government done its ugly duty.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
You can just call me a combat boot wearing, heavy metal loving, Harley-Davidson riding, monogamously married biker. Not quite the same is it?
I agree with this. There is tremendous truth in this.
In my remarks I am not arguing for torture, in fact the discussion about torture is a distraction from what I believe is the real agenda. Torture is already illegal under military law. Soldiers who commit torture are already sentenced to do serious time if they are caught, 5 or 10 or 20 years in prison. This is serious.
The problem isn't in making illegal conduct that is already illegal, and that we already agree is wrong and counterproductive. The problem is in subjecting soldiers and intel agents to civilian law for actions taken in a war-zone. The problem is in allowing civilian lawyers and courts to inject themselves into military discipline and classified information.
The men who committed abuses at Abu Graib are all doing hard time. Subjecting them to civilian trials was unnecessary, and would be to add OJ Dream Team theatrics to matters which have directly to do with military discipline. Imagine letting OJ's Dream Team going after classified intelligence, during a war, either to hang an intel agent, or to get him off.
Imagine having your military leadership dragged through courts in the middle of a war as multiple trials allow anti-war attorneys to harry and harrass the people trying to conduct the war. Imagine the marines who customarily used flamethrowers to clear japanese bunkers, and who often shot the wounded, being dragged through the courts when we did not yet know how the war would end.
Do you remember the soldier who was tried for shooting the "dead" Iraqi? Can you imagine the circus if he was convicted of murder in a civilian court? Can you imagine the effect on military morale if anti-war attorneys were able to drag men off the front lines to face civilian courts?
In a military trial, soldiers are judged by soldiers, based on military codes of conduct. That is as it should be.
It's called Good Cop/Bad Cop, and its a cliche because it works.
Moran didn't threaten it, because he didn't have to. He just didn't deny that someone else might bring it up.
Moran would not be able to make it work, if his goverment explicitly denied that it would ever be used.
I agree with you, but we're off on another tangent. If the question is: Should soldiers be tried in civilian courts, then my answer would have to be: No. You'll get no arguments with me on this whatsoever. However that's not really the question here. President Bush isn't even arguing that he'd veto the bill based on the treatment of soldiers. He wants the CIA exempt, not the infantryman.
The ACLU will try to launch one. Just watch.
I don't know about that. Do you have links? (I don't want to pay to get the Atlantic article, if you refer to that.)
Sounds right. One necessary check on military abuse comes from the civilian sector, as in the case of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam.
But that check didn't come civilian courts.
Sorry, I can't substantiate it. It seems rather obvious though. If I'm wrong, let me know.
Which means I'm not entirely in agreement with Bush, who is trying to thread the needle as he often does.
How can you try a CIA man for actions taken at a secret facility in a secret third country without access to classified intelligence? It can't be done. To attempt it is to subject intel agents, in war, to a civilian court, and to force classified information into the open.
The governments who have offered our agents a safe zone would be exposed, secret agreements allowing our people to operate there would be exposed. Lawyers who would never risk themselves in wartime would be assigning themselves the right to pass judgement on the ones who do. Obviously my concern here is for the infantrymen as surely as the CIA agent.
The response to this would be to drive intel activities further into the shadows, which I believe should happen anyway. When you make spying a career path with a regular salary and a retirement package you've already hamstrung yourself when by its very nature it is supposed to be felonious behavior.
Some things are understood by people involved in certain activities.
Some things just don't need to be said.
Yes, a carrot can be very effective.
A carrot and a stick is significantly more effective, even if the stick is never seen or felt.
I'm not suggesting that every 'suspect' is routinely tortured. I'm saying that every suspect 'knows' his name, address, how he acquired his weapons, who supplies him with food, rent, etc., etc. Miranda rights don't work very well in a war against a fascist enemy which considers it a virtue and holy obligation to lie to infidels.
This is a good example. At My Lai, soldiers committed a massacre, and other soldiers intervened to stop it. The men who committed it were court-martialed and the officers in charge sentenced to life, if I remember correctly.
But you are right that general revulsion against that event on the part of the civilian public, as expressed through the free press, helped to insure that it didn't get swept under the rug. The press, and public opinion, is an important part of the formula. People will only voluntarily send their kids to war if they believe it to be a moral cause, and if the military goes out of control that kind of support will dry up quickly.
So its very important that the military be used in a clearly moral cause, using clearly moral standards of military behavior. In the long run that is the only way to maintain public support for the military, and it goes a long way to undermining the enemy's own support, when even the enemy's own people can see that our men are decent.
But men who are accused of crimes during war should have the right to be judged by their peers, fellow soldiers, who are the only ones who will understand the peculiar conditions under which the crime was committed. This is also the best venue in which even classified information can be brought in without it going to the public.
Suppose a nuclear bomb is primed to detonate somewhere in Manhattan, Levin wrote, and we've captured a terrorist who knows where the bomb is. He won't talk.
The playing of loud music, being placed in a very hot of very cold room, not being allowed more than two or three hours of sleep per night, and like at abu graib, panties on the head, barking dog, or being naked with other men **gasp** while not professional and not authorized by those few soldiers, is also NOT torture.
I argue that POWs who REALLY suffered torture at the hands of the nazis, the japanese, the koreans, chinese, the vietnamese, the soviets, and the muslim terrorists would cringe at the suggestion that what is being called "torture" today, is even close to comparable to what they endured, which was real torture. At least, my father argues that, as he was a prisoner of the vietnamese for a short time and told me last year he’d of gladly endured the worst of what was dished out at abu graib rather than what he got in Vietnam. What more can be said than that?
Also, in most cases, if you capture someone that is not specially trained to resist coercion and actual torture or just the threat of it, it is the THREAT of torture that leads to information extraction. As an example, my father has told me over the years, that there were times, when lives were on the line, that known VC prisoners were taken up in helicopters and asked information. If they refused to talk, hanging them half out the platform at 300 feet very much got them in the talking mood. Other times, you can literally just beat the snot out of them, like any good old bar room brawl, and they will talk. The average prisoner will tell you everything you want to know, and then make stuff up when they have nothing else to tell you. The result was, from my father's first hand knowledge, that the information extracted from such methods, definitely saved numerous soldiers and Marines. It allows the ambush of ambushes, the location of depots, location of officers, codes and other information, etc so on.
So the real bottom line is, nothing we have done to islamic terrorists is ANYTHING near as bad as they've done to our captured military personnel, who understand very plainly that surrender is not an option, because if they surrender, they will promptly be executed on he inter net, so I find it offensive when some people suggest that any kind of mental or physical torture makes us no better than the terrorists. To date, WE have not beheaded any terrorists. Televised or otherwise.
Further, if it was your spouse, parent, sibling, child, close friend, anyone you care about, and their life could be saved because the CIA, or someone in the military dangled a prisoner out a helicopter, smacked around, deprived him of sleep, stuck him in a hot or cold room, or even if they did put panties on their head, stripped them bare, or had a dog barking at them, to get his mouth running, and that information led to your loved one NOT being killed, which DOES HAPPEN, would you care that any of those things had to be done so long as your loved one was alive? I for one, would NOT!
It would be nice if the liberals in this country showed as much concern for our military personnel and our civilian population as they do for the "rights" of the terrorists, who, under the Geneva convention we shouldn't take prisoner at all and could shoot on sight with NO quarter being give, since they are un-uniformed enemy combatants, not fighting under a nations flag or as part of an army, and who are dressed as civilians making them "terrorists" under the Geneva conventions and giving them NO protections, allowing us to shoot them on sight ad never take them prisoner. From my perspective, we're being very generous and compassionate that we're taking them prisoner at all and not just killing them all when they give up, like the Geneva Conventions allow us to. Liberals only seem concerned about our military when more get killed so it adds to their precious body count.
I mean, considering our military has the clear right under international law and the Geneva conventions, which our enemies NEVER adhere to, to shoot all terrorists on sight and take NO prisoners, it is insulting for anyone to suggest that using intimidation, coercion, psychological techniques, and mild physical abuse is out of line and should not be allowed, when time has PROVEN that most of the time, such methods provide good intelligence and prevent the needless deaths of troops in the field. Furthermore, I argue that those who are against such techniques have never had anyone they love at risk in a combat zone. After all, the terrorists behead all prisoners, what more are they going to do to them if we use the methods I mentioned to extract information? Murder them TWICE? That's my take on it.
How about the Nazis and Japanese? They used torture, should we have used torture on them as well?
Should we become just as bad as our enemies?
If we do what is the difference between us and them?
Absolutely nothing.
Maybe you want to live in that kind of nation but I damned sure don't and I will fight to my last breath to make sure it doesn't happen here.
Almost all Germans are ashamed of what happened in their nation, all decent Freedom loving Americans should be ashamed of what is happening in ours.
No, I haven't. That is your problem, I will never accept the propaganda that we are being fed from Washington.
Torture serving Justice. That is the most distorted attempt at logic I have seen in a long time.
Extensive citations from Moran's report can be found here
http://tianews.blogspot.com/2005/05/enlightened-hard-boiled-ness.html
Only Lt. Calley got convicted for My Lai. The military sentenced him to life imprisonment, but Nixon removed him to "house arrest", and then pardoned him, responding to public pressure. Calley only served 3 years under house arrest, I think.
So in the end, the civilian sector undermined the military's superior ethics!
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