Posted on 12/17/2014 4:24:07 PM PST by Kaslin
In an interview on Sunday, NBC's Chuck Todd asked former Vice President Dick Cheney whether he is "OK" with the fact that a quarter of the suspected terrorists held in secret CIA prisons during the Bush administration "turned out to be innocent." Todd noted that one of those mistakenly detained men died of hypothermia after being doused with water and left chained to a concrete wall, naked from the waist down, in a cell as cold as a meat locker. Cheney replied that the end -- to "get the guys who did 9/11" and "avoid another attack against the United States" -- justified the means. "I have no problem as long as we achieve our objective," he said.
Charles Fried, a Harvard law professor who served as solicitor general during the Reagan administration, and his son, Gregory, a philosophy professor at Suffolk University, offer a bracing alternative to Cheney's creepy consequentialism in their 2010 book, "Because It Is Wrong." They argue that torture is wrong not just when it is inflicted on innocents -- and not just when it fails to produce lifesaving information -- but always and everywhere.
That claim is bolder than it may seem. As the Frieds note, most commentators "make an exception for grave emergencies," as in "the so-called ticking-bomb scenario," in which torturing a terrorist is the only way to prevent an imminent explosion that would kill many people. "These arguments try to have it both ways," they write. "Torture is never justified, but then in some cases it might be justified after all." The contradiction is reconciled "by supposing that the justifying circumstances will never come up."
The Senate Intelligence Committee's report released last week, for instance, argues that the CIA's brutal methods did not yield valuable information that could not have been obtained through other means. In fact, it says, waterboarding and the other "enhanced interrogation techniques" were often counterproductive, eliciting false information or discouraging cooperation.
Maybe that's true, but it's awfully convenient. If torture is never useful, eschewing it entails no trade-offs. It is a cost-free commitment.
The Frieds' argument requires no such assumption. They acknowledge that torture may save lives but reject it anyway, arguing that "there are things worse than death." They offer an example that most people would consider beyond the pale: Suppose the most effective way to elicit lifesaving information from a terrorist is to torture his child. Is that tactic morally acceptable, provided the payoff is big enough?
If not, then certain forms of torture are absolutely wrong. The Frieds go further, contending that "innocence and guilt are irrelevant to torture," which desecrates "the image of God" or, in the secular version of the argument, "the ultimate value of the human form as it is incorporated in every person."
The Frieds argue that we lose our humanity by denying someone else's, by treating him as an animal to be beaten into submission or an object to be bent or broken at will. "To make him writhe in pain, to injure, smear, mutilate, render loathsome and disgusting the envelope of what is most precious to each of us," they write, "is to be the agent of ultimate evil -- no matter how great the evil we hope to avert by what we do."
That is just a taste of the Frieds' argument, which deserves to be considered at length. It surely will not convince Dick Cheney, but it goes beyond mere squeamishness in an attempt to articulate the moral intuition underlying legal bans on torture and other forms of degrading treatment.
If the Frieds' reliance on the concept of sacredness strikes you as superstitious, consider what can happen when nothing is sacred. During a 2005 debate, John Yoo, who helped formulate the legal rationale for the interrogation techniques the Frieds condemn, was asked whether encouraging a prisoner's cooperation by crushing his child's testicles would be legal, as well. Yoo replied that "it depends on why the president thinks he needs to do that."
If beheading works, does that make it morally acceptable?
With terrorists and pirates, yes. And then boil them in pig grease.
Of course it is you lefty twit, although I would prefer the rack or bamboo shoots under their finger nails.
Our entire Western Culture is like a beaten wife. We are told daily to shut up, go to work, and put food on the table. Obama is America’s wife-beating control freak. Shut up bitch! Who asked you! He wants you to order pizza for friends he met in the parking lot of Home Depot. Quite frankly, I’m tiring of it bigtime.
1. There was a legal definition of "torture," which was illegal on 9-11. Waterboarding did not meet it. That was the legal opinion of OCC in the Justice Department.
2. It was clear that the Geneva Convention did not apply to enemy combatants. At least until one of the dumbest opinions ever from the Supreme Court. Now, nothing is clear.
3. The Army manual on treatment of prisoners prohibits waterboarding or any abuse of prisoners. The Army manual has been adopted by the other uniformed services. The uniformed services did not use the enhanced interrogation techniques.
4. There was no torture at Abu Graib. That was a bunch of stupid soldiers taking prisoners out late at night and then for their amusement abusing them and taking pictures that sometimes faked torture. When it was discovered, they were prosecuted and given prison terms. The press did not discover Abu Graib, the Army did and someone leaked information from the invesigation to the press.
How about when Obama’s military performs the same exact procedure on a seal during training? is that moral?
Is it morally acceptable for Obama to send a drone over terrorists to KILL THEM? is that moral?
How about when a liberal politicians enable abortionists to kill innocent babies. Is that moral?
So when these people get on their high horse about it being “immoral” to waterboard someone they may wish to look in the mirror.
Finally - I don’t accept their premise that one fourth of gitmo detainees are innocent. I don’t buy it.
If it's morally acceptable (because it's not torture), why don't we use it regularly in domestic police interrogations?
No. But it does not make it unacceptable either.
Next silly question?
I Agree — those are pretty dang clear.
(BTW, I hate the “third category” the government created [”enemy combatant”] instead of leaving things at the standard lawful/unlawful combatant.)
What you said!
Jesus Christ: You can’t impeach Him and He ain’t gonna resign.
I agree torture (of the real -- medieval variety) should not be used - but 'waterboarding?'
Because in police interrogations, coerced confessions are not admissible in court.
For the same reason we don't use other (still not torture) methods in domestic police interrogations.
There is a shoe scraping that every year calls the families of his victim just to torment them. I would be perfectly comfortable having him water boarded until he tells where he buried his victim.
Not so comfortable having the jerk that cut me off today water boarded.
I would thinkso.
These same people now say abortion is okay if there’s no love there.
Murder is okay if there’s no love there. That certainly makes less-than-lethal things acceptable, then.
The liberals will have no qualms about applying
“harsh” methods against conservative Americans
should they ever gain the whip hand.
So by Zero's logic should we drone them all?
“The Frieds argue that we lose our humanity by denying someone else’s, by treating him as an animal to be beaten into submission or an object to be bent or broken at will.”
This argument is fundamentally flawed. After all, when we involuntarily confine, restrain, and interrogate a suspect, we are already treating him as an animal. So, if this argument invalidates torture, it must also invalidate the entire concept of the modern justice system.
Hm, so nothing against the treatment of someone who has not been proven guilty; interesting.
Given the police attitudes of today, that's what I think will happen if we give the it's ok because it's not torture
approval to waterboarding — remember that the terrorists in this particular case are, under international law, unlawful combatants and therefore receiving much, much more in the way of rights/privileges than they should — I simply do not trust government to refrain from setting up precedent for violating the Constitution because they're terrorists
and then turning that justification upon the civilian population.
I find it quite illuminating to, upon any government action by "the elite", ask how does this increase government power?
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