Just now on Charlie Rose, Washington Post reporter Barton Gellman, co-author of the thoughtful Cheney bio running this week, said that opponents of torture are "gutless" when they insist it doesn’t work. The real challenge, he said, is this: What if it does work? Does this society license it?
Gellman was taking on a liberal orthodoxy: the idea that We shouldn’t torture because it doesn’t work. Opponents of the Cheney-waterboarding policy say this all the time: you don’t get good information from torture. I think that’s a load of B.S. If torture doesn’t work, then why have people done it since the dawn of time? Of course it works. Though, yes, other stuff works too…
I’m against torture as much as anyone else. There should be policies against torture, and those who torture and abuse prisoners should be prosecuted for it. The real problem is that torture is an inevitable component of war. It is going to happen, regardless of policy. It’s like brain damage in boxing. As Alan Dershowitz has said, if you and I thought we were going to be able to save a buddy’s life by putting the thumbscrews on a prisoner to get vital info, would we stop ourselves? No way. And anyway, look what we’ve done in Iraq. When you destroy all the sinews of a society, there’s going to be brutalization and torture. Imagine a modern society where 3 percent of the population has been killed and everyone of any means has fled… Imagine living in the Mansur district of Baghdad and losing your child and your father and worrying who’s
next… Imagine being a 19-year-old kid from California plunged into that hellhole…
Some of the outcry over torture, like Andrew Sullivan’s, seems to me an attempt to rationalize support for an evil war. Oh, it was a good idea, and then they stooped to torture. It was never a good idea; people who start wars and fail to reckon with the consequences are gutless.
Sure, this is true. Torture can work.
The part that we don't talk about is that torture feels good, because it is by its very nature a sign of dominance. Everything about civil society is about suppressing the need for dominance. That is why we should never condone torture.
Would you rape someone's wife in order to get him to talk?
I suppose Alan would believe it's OK for a Palestinian to torture him in order to get him to stop his hateful rhetoric about them.
Did you see what Israel, er, I mean Fatah was doing?
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,489898,00.html
No big deal when an Arab totures another Arab, right? It's only really newsworthy when it's an infidel doing the torturing.
As almost all of the students of most Soviet universities, parallel with our normal education we had 1 day /week (we had 6 day working week at the time) dedicated to military training and we graduated in the rank of lieutenants (Reserve).
We were always very briefly told about Geneva Convention and that no torture is allowed. Half-wink.
As geologists, i.e people well familiar with field life, maps, topography, etc. we were trained as artillery recon officers.
Artillery recon is a very serious and extremely dangerous activity demanding crossing the front lines into the enemy territory covertly, creating covert posts of observation on the enemy side, finding camouflaged targets and targets of utmost importance and later artillery fire correction.
That also includes taking prisoners and bringing them back for interrogation. But the interrogation would be done by "specialists" and not by us, so we could pretend that we have nothing to do with this.
It did sound disgusting to me and probably together with all other things that did disgust me about Soviet regime lead to my decision to leave the country (took me 10 years).
But once I remember a huge discussion between us, boys, that really, theoretically, torture is terrible and everything, but if the life of your buddies depend on it? Most of us by that time went through the 2 year draft service and were quite experienced soldiers and understood very well unit brotherhood…
When it was my turn to speak I said that if the lives of my detachment will be in danger, I will never hesitate to impose pain on a potential source. However, I will consider myself as a military criminal and will step down, report myself to the authorities or commit suicide if the punishment would not in my eyes restore my honor.
In my opinion torture can be very effective and will be used unfortunately as long as wars exist, but any attempt of LEGITIMIZATION of its use is beyond unhuman and that is why I consider Dershowitz to be among the most disgusting specimens of human trash ever.
It is quite probable that Fatah (Dahlan) was torturing people in Gaza at Israel's orders. Dahlan has always been Israel's favorite Palestinian Quisling.
Torture can in fact work if the torturer/interrogator has at least three people to interrogate and knows that all the people he is interrogating can answer the questions he is asking.
Even in that situation, the interrogator is out of luck if the subjects had a chance to prepare before hand or each subject gives a different answer to the questions.
Usually, torture is used to produce collaborators not to get useful information — at least this is the opinion that I usually heard from Palestinians, Zionist interlopers and pre-Neocon US state department officials.
If one wishes to obtain useful information, there are better ways to obtain it, and torture in fact impedes a good many other data gathering techniques.
Phil,
What do you mean when you say torture "works?"
Have we stopped a potential terrorist attack through the use of torture? I doubt it. If we had, with or without torture, I am sure the Bushies would be trumpeting it. As is, their claims of breaking up potential attacks have all turned to dust on close examination.
Have we gotten a lot of useful information from torture? Well, it would be hard to imagine our policy failing MORE than it has already. So if we hadn't used torture would things be much worse?
Furthermore, I happened to watch the same interview. Gellman said that the broad consensus among professional interogators was that torture is counterproductive. The prevailing wisdom, according to Gellman, is to "turn" the captive's loyalty so he starts workng for you. You do this by coopting him, not torturing him. What you quoted Gellman saying was really an intellectual aside in which he posited that the tough question is: What if torture works? Do you use it? But that is academic. Fortunately, torture doesn't work so we don't have worry about that question.
The ticking bomb scenario is a puerile canard. It just doesn't happen in real life. And of course, the terrorist would know that he would just have to withstand the abuse for a short time before the bomb would explode. That is easier to take than open-ended torutre.
Instead of wasting our time on such gross stupidity, we should be thinking about how to adopt policies that do not mint more terrorists than we can possibly ever torture.
I agree that torture and brutality are endemic to war. That is why the Geneva Conventions and the Army's code of military conduct are so important. They are there to try to blunt our worst instincts. Shame on Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney for undermining them.
Oh and one more thing. Phil, this type of circular reasoning is beneath you:
"If torture doesn't work, then why have people done it since the dawn of time?"
I guess by that logic, there is something to the fact that blacks, women and gays are inferior and slavery must have some merit, too.
There are loads of stupid ideas that have been around since the dawn of man. I was under the impression that one of the points of Mondoweiss was to point more than a few of them out.
The argument "If X didn't work, why do people do it? It must work cause so many people do" holds little water.
We used leeches to bleed people for many years. It must have worked! So many people used the method!
A lot of people use astrology! Therefore it must work!
First – torture is barbaric, beasty, is and should always remain illegal and warrant heavy persecution for its use including death. Now that said…
When most of the people talk about "if torture works" the meaning of the word "works" is unclear. Works in what sense? Works always? Every time? In all circumstances?
The question should be asked:"Is excessive physical or psychological pressure can be instrumental to make people do things against their will and best judgment? The answer is – in most of the cases.
So, such pressure can be put to use for illegal purposes of extracting the information beyond legal means. The value of such information in different cases can be dramatically different.
The argument "if people used it for a long time it must work" is, as the astrology example shows, not very good.
However, another argument – "I know that my cowardly superiors, as well as cowardly public believe that torture works, so we should do it to the detainees so we are not accused of being sissies" – seem to be a real argument behind torture use.
Usually these people has no idea what a dedicated person who lost his family, friends, whose livelihood is devastated and children have no future is capable of. They can put steel and rocks to shame.
I agree with Alex that the real issue is the state's LEGITIMATION of the policy of torture. It raises the question, what are we fighting for?
And apart from the moral and ethical concerns, there is also the sociological question of why different cultures exhibit such different attitudes toward the practice–
http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/Comp/ArticleLayout/CdaArticlePrintPreview/1,2506,L-3316939,00.html
Interesting arguments But what about situations like Daniel Pearl. No information seemed to be forthcoming yet torture and decapitation took place. Or Ilan Halimi, tortured for a week in a French basement, again not to get information about a terrorist network but purely from sadism, Islamic sadism. What say you?
John Evelyn, while travelling on the continent, visited during his stay in Paris on the 11th of March 1651 a torture scene in prison. This was public entertainment at the time. The spectacle that Evelyn beheld was that of a suspected robber being put on the rack which ‘severed the fellow’s joints in miserable sort, drawing him out at length in an extraordinary manner’. After this the executioner poured for good measure two buckets of water into him ‘which so prodigiously swelled him, as would have pitied and affrighted any one to see it’.
There was another performance following this but, says Evelyn, ‘the spectacle was so uncomfortable, that I was not able to stay the sight of another.’
The question is why he was able to stand the sight of one of these performances at all and why he did go there in the first place. Evelyn was a cultured and, for his time, humane man.
I remember that Virginia Woolf, discussing this very same passage in Evelyn’s Diary, surmised that the fact that we would not readily schedule in such a sight for our forthcoming holiday was because we had now a more finely organised nervous system, or some such explanation.
I think that is nonsense. I believe that the capacity for compassion and pity depends on the possibility of empathy. ‘This is me suffering there…’
What we have achieved in some parts of the world is a wider recognition of fellow human beings including those of a different nationality, creed or colour. Evelyn had little possibility for empathy. The fellow being tortured was a Frenchman and a prole.
Israel is one of the few countries claiming to be a western type democracy where the torture of prisoners has been fairly standard practice.The first report on this appeared apparently in the Times of London in 1977. Since then there has been fairly steady comment on these Israeli practices in the reports of human rights organisations and those of the US state department.
Why did Israel so readily resort to this practice and why do we even know of boasts about new torture techniques leaving no physical marks (such as tying a man’s arms behind the back of a chair and then let him lie on his own arms which seems to cause excruciating pain but apparently leaves no marks).
Is it an exclusivist religion that makes some Israeli’s unable to even conceive of their antagonists as fellow human beings? The late professor Sahak had a lot to say about this.
Possibly Arie, its because Israel is the only country that lives under constant terorist threat and labors under the problem of how do you confront a bunch of sick psychotics without losing it. And they have done remarkably well. And if you don't think all countries practice torture under certain circumstances I think your being naive in the extreme. Its got nothing to do with relgion on our end. Perhaps your should direct your opprobium to the Moslem world. They se3em to enjoy the public execution
"a bunch of sick psychotics". Thanks Bill for giving us this further insight into the mind set required for torture.
Oh I don't know Arie, what would you call guys who get their kicks out of cuting people up.
Oh I don't know Arie, what would you call guys who get their kicks out of cuting people up.
Journalists.
The people who refusd to do things that would have saved their lives because those things were ethically or morally repugnant are mostly all gone. So they can't testify, and we can't look to them and say well they're more noble than we are and we should emulate them. We have some record of some recent figures who spoke eloquently to this point, and their words are intimidating. Red Cloud, for one.
That's the thing with nobility, it doesn't grovel, it isn't craven, and when put to the test it dies before dishonoring its principles. The magical thinking is that it works in the long run, that something will be preserved even as the carriers of honor go down to the treachery of the coward.
Another form of magical thinking is that people are justified in doing whatever they have to in order to survive. The moral valence is their own survival. That's biologically correct but the diametric opposite of nobility – it's self-worship.
It is impossible to argue ethics or morality with people like that.
Roy -
One could not have put it better. So rarely now a voice of honor is heard.
Thank you.
Great point Roy.
Larry,
Fair enough that it was an intellectual aside for Gellman. I had just turned on the TV and jumped into the interview at that point.
I think slavery's a v. good analogy. Slavery works. It truly is productive. It's also hateful and wrong. Mankind took a long time to come to that position. People still enslave other people, because they get something out of it, free labor for stuff they often couldn't pay someone to do…
As to the efficacy, I believe torture works in good part because I know it would work on me. I would damn sure give up info while being tortured. I dont have any of that confidence about leeches; and I think that torture falls into a category of human Knowability in a way that leeches or astrology dont– in the same way that I know I'm going to get worn out if I do both the Met and the Guggenheim in an afternoon…
(And as for astrology, frankly, I believe in it; I think that some day science will ratify some of the principles of astrology,and explain those principles; just because science hasn't gotten there yet doesn't mean I have to base my epistemology of the world on JAMA)
You say that the ticking bomb is a canard. Fair enough; I accept that it is a v rare occurence in real life, unlike the movies. But I think it does happen. As Dershowitz (someone I contemn re middle east policy) does. And I think in that situation, policy is going to mean v little.
I also give Bush credit for stopping acts of terrorism. Larry, years ago you and I differed over whether Ronald Reagan had defeated communism thru his toughness. You said that communism was faltering and about to fall over; and you gave him no credit. I gave him some credit, even though I hated the guy. I hate Bush even more, I think he should be impeached now. But I do think that the 6 years without a major terror attack in the U.S. is on his balance sheet as a credit. The Bushies have at times crowed about this, and I believe hinted that some of it came out of Gitmo.
I think that Gitmo should be closed, I think that torture should be policed, banned etc. But again I return to my central belief, which is that War is hell, war is torture, there is nothing humane or thoughtful or uncruel about what we have done to the Iraqi people. When 18 bodies show up beheaded by some IRaqi sect, with signs of torture, are we not in some measure responsible for that?
(PS Larry, I noticed that you responded, apparently to my direct challenge, re Wily Neocons, but I havent read it yet. I'm under deadline and am losing braincells. Will get to it soon!)
Phil,
The central question is whether Bush could have accomplished all that you credit him with WITHOUT resorting to torture and without violating our civil rights. I strongly believe that we can protect ourselves from terror without having to compromise our core values. Do you disagree?
And if Bush gets credit from you for the fact that there have been no domestic attacks in six years, shouldn't you also be faulting him for the 9/11 attacks, which were also on his watch? Clearly that plot could have and should have been broken up without having to torture anyone and without the "help" of the Patriot Act. It's like me saying that the Orioles are having a great season but I only count the last four games.
Larry,
Touche.
Still, here's the problem. I actually do think that Bush's civil liberties crackdown/Patriot act has made us safer.
I think that Mafia neighborhoods are safe. I think that there wasn't much crime in cities in totalitarian countries. And Giuliani did make the city safer, and Giuliani is at heart fascistic…
I am not going to vote for Bush or Giuliani as a result. But intellectually, these conservative realities seem like truths to me. The one thing Bush has going for him, that the people really responded to, even as I worked for Kerry, is He responded with strength to an attack.
I am a progressive; I believe, and want to believe, that mankind is improvable. I love what Roy Belmont wrote about nobility; I aspire to those values in my own life. I tear up at the Lincoln Memorial thinking of MLK's speech there. The ending of slavery in the 1800s in colonies and Russia and U.S. was a great thing, in human history. It doesnt mean that thuggishness isn't effective- or even called upon sometimes. I was for the war in Afghanistan, which surely crushed a lot of innocent people.
Now I'm blathering…
"It doesnt mean that thuggishness isn't effective- or even called upon sometimes"
You mean for instance when a group fires missles into your country targeting civillians and kidnaps your soldiers?
Setting aside ethics issues, the big problem with torture is that the information it produces is wholly unreliable. Bad intel can be even worse than no intel at all, of course. Mark Bowden wrote an excellent piece for the Atlantic a couple of years back on torture vs. coercion, focusing primarily on what works vs. what doesn't. The more pain figures in, the less reliable the info that results from the coercion/torture—simply because people will literally say anything to get the pain to stop.
Also, I don't agree that crackdowns always quash crime. What gets tightly controlled in totalitarian societies is crime-gathering data and public information, not criminal activity. Remember all the Soviet hosannas of a relatively crime-free society, compared with the West? That big lie didn't take long to collapse once the archives were opened in the early '90s. Totalitarian states major in corruption, so crime finds its avenues through official channels without oversight.
"I also give Bush credit for stopping acts of terrorism."
But we have had exactly the same number of terrorist attacks in the six years since 9/11 as we had in the six years before 9/11 — namely none. The only way you can regard this as a policy success is to assume that in recent years the threat has grown so much that just keeping even has been an achievement. But as any reader of the comments section of this blog will know, the imagining of existential threats can be a highly addictive activity.
And even to the extent the threats are real, they are the creations of the same policies that are "saving" us.
I begin by stating that I hate these wars and have never supported them, nevertheless:
there is much evidence that the insurgents themselves are responsible for much of the violence;
and, would this policy ban all wars? Such as World War II?
Larry, Phil, David
You guys cannot believe what America is (was?) to millions of its foreign admirers. I came from that stock, from sorting through anti-American propaganda, learning English with stupid Communist textbooks and articles from "Morning Star" and "Daily Worker". And the most important thing for us was – your openness, your honesty, your desire for dialog and your vibrant political process. As far as I am concerned these times age a-gone. And this is not just my opinion, this is an opinion of many of my friends all over the world (Russia, Sweden, Finland, Germany, England, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan to some extent China) who belonged to the same American-lovers "club" – my colleagues, scientists, beatniks, Harley-Davidson riders, etc….
Two points: That desire to be "safe" is a road to slavery, if you ask me. If I remember my books right, it was Franklin who said that "those who are willing to sacrifice their liberty for security deserves neither". A society that values security above its core values and honor is like a spineless body – its organs are functional, but its ventures are doomed.
Two – America was very safe while it was mainly being itself and was not a self-appointed guardian of Human Civilization. All and any attempts to project its power other than by Coca-Cola, Hollywood and Detroit will lead to resistance, hate and acts of violent retaliation.
Everybody loves a strong, huge, lovable, smiley simple guy, but when he starts to bully around he puts himself in an imminent danger precisely because he is so huge and powerful – the only hope to get rid of his bullying is to seriously damage him, so an overkill attack from the weak is very likely.
Also since the world sees very clearly that our foreign policy is made in Tel-Aviv, we look stupid. Just plain stupid like very big bully that takes orders in form of advice from a little smirky fellow that found the back door to his weaknesses. And we cannot afford to look stupid. Because stupid is what makes America lovers all over the world also look stupid. And these guys are our most valuable asset in the world today, people who work for America in millions of daily breakfast conversations, classrooms, street fruit stands. Kennedy understood that better than anyone, BTW.
I concede that I've lost this debate to Sam, Alex and Larry. Their points are stronger.
I still disagree but I will shut up, or collect evidence…
I do not think it was a debate. In rare occasions the blind wise men can actually talk to each other and actually put the whole picture of the elephant together. A what is needed is a little bit of civility.
Firing Missiles
It always baffles me that Zionist interlopers believe that they have the right to live in peace and security in a stolen country, generally on stolen land and often in stolen homes after plundering, murdering and expelling the native population.
Islamic Sadism
I wonder if there is anything negative that Pearlman would not blame on Islam.
If he actually knew anything about Islam and Judaism, he would be aware that as religions they are very similar. The Maimonides family even wanted to make them more similar by introducing the practice of wudhu and modifying the Jewish synagogue services according to the model of Islamic prayer services.
There are still a lot of questions about the kidnapping and killing of Daniel Pearl. There were probably groups within the US government that were probably threatened by his investigation of Islamist groups in Pakistan and might have wanted him dead.
Anti-Semitism may have been involved in the torture and killing of Halimi, but the gang ("The Barbarians") was mostly African and only part Muslim. The mastermind of the kidnapping appears to have been a Christian.
Islam did not play any obvious role in the crimes of the "Barbarians."
As for the real Islamic position with respect to torture, I refer you to "State, Society and Law in Islam: Ottoman Law in Comparative Perspective" by Haim Gerber.
Gerber, who is a Professor at Hebrew University, points out that the Ottoman Empire was the most evovled Islamic state in history. In many regards during the 19th century (and may even during the 18th century) the Ottoman Empire was more a Rechtstaat than Switzerland in the first half of the 20th century. Ottoman Muftis consistently declared torture forbidden under Islamic law unlike modern American judges and modern Israeli judges.
In contrast Jewish law permits the torture of Jews in certain circumstances and has no prohibition of the torture of non-Jews.
As a matter of practice, Zionists have been engaging in the murder and torture of Palestinians at least since the creation of the Bar Giora and Hashomer militias at the beginning of the 20th century.
Zionist militias tortured and killed British soldiers after 1945. In 1947-48, Zionist militias undertook mass murder, mass expulsions, and gang rapes.
The killing of unarmed Arab women and children as infiltrators during the early 50s by the IDF is well documented. Ever since the State of Israel has dealt with Arab populations by means of brutality, oppression, torture, and mass murder. Often Zionists have justified such actions directly or indirectly by slicing and dicing Jewish scripture.
In Eastern Europe we find that many of the most famous Soviet torturers were ethnic Ashkenazim. One could almost say that the Soviet torture manual was written by ethnic Ashkenazim. Nowadays, under the influence of Zionist and very often ethnic Ashkenazi Neocons, US intelligence has apparently adopted Soviet torture techniques for US use.
Maybe we should be talking more about Jewish or ethnic Ashkenazi sadism than about Islamic sadism.
Joachim Martillo Ajami is a troll who simply peddles racist half-truths. Don't feed him.
Troll Watch: Sometimes one has to move far over the mental red lines to attain a truce. No freedom without addressing the antagonistic memories.
I hope the tale of the dominant and superior West granting the people born into these spheres a little over confidence at times it feels, will not increase too much, with its accompanying ideology lending a halo to the "moral willingness" (Yaron Brook) of the will-to-punish.
This is a wonderful impartial design, I think. It's like a space of silence in the lager blame games and truth exhibitions. It's only the second time I have seen anything "outside the box" in this respect:
http://yorketowers.blogspot.com/2007/04/can-it-really-be-beyond-compass-of.html
Not only does torture not work, but your idea that its prevelence has something to do with its efficacy is childish and unworthy. Look at how many American and Israeli policies are written in stone yet totally unrealistic and unsustainable.
Torture — as a means of eliciting information — has the efficiency of flapping your arms as a means of flying. This is not the express purpose of torture. The CIA was explicit in its Cold War era torture training, given to capitalist "democratic" nations like Portugal, that torture had nothing to do with eliciting information and everything to do with neutralizing dissent. CIA torture (and this has everything to do with Israel by the way) drives the target insane. He kills himself and the state doesn't even have to worry about paying for the bullet like the PRC. There is no information gained.
There is nothing more common than a Jew putting on airs of manliness to misquote military mythology in a Hemingway-esque fit of testosterone, at least in our media. Let us correct your meme. That crap about buddy-love has nothing to do with buddy saving; this is how it really goes — after the gooks or terrorists or whatever ice your boy, you go after them until your magazine is empty, men, women, children, zippo'ing their huts and animals. It's the story of Amalek. There is nobody saved, not even in the original myth, just more killed to get even.
Noname:
You definitely make a strong argument, but in my opinion ANY argument that puts uselessness of torture ahead of its immorality is wrong because it says that we may have a different view on torture if it was useful.
Me, I do not care if it is useful or useless – anybody who uses it commits a crime against humanity and a government that legitimize it in any form is criminal and should be a subject to international tribunal.
Now, your words about Israel going after anti-occupation fighters in a manner that has no other purpose than self-admiration in the most freudesque, sick and nauseating way – I cannot agree more.
Its a pity that you do not sign your real name.