All I ever needed to know about torture: A friend of mine dealt marijuana in a white working-class suburb in Westchester County. A Jamaican gang moved in on their territory. One day a Jamaican came to my friend's boss's door and said, "Where's the herb?" The guy said, "I don't have any." The Jamaican took out a gun and shot him in the foot. The guy said, "It's in the back closet."
I just heard Jane Mayer (whose book The Dark Side my wife got me for my birthday; I'm looking forward to it) on Book TV making some good arguments against torture, but reeling out the standard liberal line that it doesn't work and we should bribe people instead. I will never believe this. Does it turn up bad information and bad confessions? I'm sure. Does it sometimes work? It sure did for that Jamaican gang. Would it work on me? Yesss!
Mayer also said that torture deforms the torturers' personalities, radicalizes our enemies, undermines our civil liberties, etc., and we should try and win Arab hearts and minds. I'm down with all that. But claiming that torture doesn't work has always struck me as liberal propaganda. Then I also believe that Bush made America safer, for the last 7 years anyway, by destroying an Arab society. And I demonstrated against this war and have sacrificed work for that position. Fitzgerald said that the mark of a good mind is the ability to hold two
opposed ideas at the same time without going crazy. Bush's war on terror needn't rubbish our intellectual life, too.
"Then I also believe that Bush made America safer, for the last 7 years anyway, by destroying an Arab society."
Even agreeing on torture, how exactly are we safer (even short term) by destroying Iraq?
Torture never works, nor does collective punishment directed at civilians of any kind.
Whether by states, militias, gangs, or well-meaning activists.
The guy would've given up the weed without being shot in the foot, if the Jamaican had the time and a jail to confine him in, and the patience to wear him down. The fact that you or Alan Dershowitz can posit a set of facts where just about anyone would shoot the guy in the foot to make him reveal now where the ticking nuke is hidden, doesn't justify it legally. The Stanford Prison Experiment shows what happens to ordinary guys when you make them guards. Unless you constrain them with a tight set of rules, they become abusive. Abu Ghraib shows what happens when you institutionalize torture. Banning cruel and unusual punishment, constraining the police from abusing prisoners, these are fundamental American values. The fact that gangsters use violence to get their way isn't a lesson that should inform us in forming our government, except in disarming gangsters.
You voice in this column a very interesting and thoughtful Jewish-centric perspective on America, obviously disappointed and upset with some of what "your people" are doing. In that respect you are like WASPs when they abandoned racial prejudice, who saw the light. But sometimes you or others on this blog voice a Jewish-centric belief that America wasn't much before the rise of the Jews. I happen to believe that the US constitution is an inspired and exceptional piece of political engineering that provides within itself for an ongoing process of making our union more perfect, independent of racial identity.
Naomi Wolf's book, the Death of America, points out the role torture played in working a fascist shift, in Germany, Russia, Italy, Chile. Ordinary people are made to understand they are at risk of being locked up without recourse and tortured, so that they fear their own government. The guy who was tasered at a John Kerry (I think) political rally, his fearful agonized scream replayed on television, sends a message. We who believe in American exceptionalism have a duty to defend our constitution and its fundamental values against all enemies, foreign and domestic. The rare instance where torture may be the best of terrible options can be dealt with ad hoc, if the time arises, and whoever does it can ask forgiveness, not permission. Permission to torture in advance is catastrophically un-American.
Doppler
"Bush's war on terror needn't rubbish our intellectual life, too."
No, rubbishing our economic life should be quite sufficient. Folks out scavenging for food won't be spending much time in the salon perusing the New York Review of Books. Books make pretty good fire-starters in those hand-warming barrels, though.
The Lehman buyout just fell through. Should be an awesome train wreck tomorrow, unless Hank Paulson shafts the taxpayers for more multi-hundred billions. "Any way you look at it, you lose," as Paul and Art used to sing.
I was gonna start a new site called "f**kedcountry.com," but somebody's already made it into a re-direct link. Oh well, Plan B … "teenagenymphos.com" is still available.
Accepting the premises of your opponent is a good way to lose an argument before it begins.
Premise:
They're torturing people to get useful immediate info.
So that, premise:
"Works" in this context means facilitating the extraction of useful info from unwilling subjects.
But what if that isn't the goal?
What if the idea was to broadcast around the world images of naked and degraded Arab men?
Covered in feces, terrified by dogs, sexually abused by infidels?
Mission Accomplished.
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Starting from a new premise, one that isn't being proffered by the enemy, hasn't disappointed yet.
Start with the idea they're doing what they set out to do.
Iraq invaded occupied and broken?
Check.
Unfixable descent of Iraq into political and military chaos?
Check.
US on permanent soft lockdown?
Check.
Massive financial transfers with no sunshine at all, under the ruse of national security?
Check.
See, it's easy.
Start with the premise that what you're seeing as symptoms of the mistake were intended results. Start with the probability the pigs are getting what they want.
It's especially weak to take them at their word when they've been provably lying all along.
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The differences between radical jihadists and low-level weed dealers are immense.
Not the least being a hedonistic slant in the latter.
Hedonists are easy subjects for interrogation, being devoted to personal comfort and all.
And the codes of behavior intensify the closer you get to core belief systems of religious commitment.
My guess is your Jamaican at the door, with his cultural and spiritual codes of resistance, would be a lot harder subject for the extractive process than his middle-class victim with the sore foot.
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We're talking about the soul when we talk about these things and how they work.
Torture may or may not consistently get useful information, but it usually does a great job of breaking people's souls.
Broken souls are very gratifying to the swine who run things now.
Sometimes information's just the icing on the cake.
This is an infantile analogy, and I'm frankly shocked to see it on Mondoweiss, penned by Phil. The analogy Phil uses has a frightening underlying assumption, and I can't imagine that Phil intended it. Since the man that the Jamaican shot in the foot did indeed have the pot that the Jamaican wanted, and gave it up upon being shot, the obvious inference is that all the Muslims being interrogated do in fact have something to hide, and, despite the fact that torture is a bad thing, they will, just like the guy the Jamaican shot, give up the information upon being tortured because, well, torture works.
The argument isn't whether or not torture works, Phil, the argument is whether or not the vast majority of Muslims being interrogated and tortured have any pot in the first place.
Additionally, the guy the Jamaican tortured had something physically tangible (a bag of pot) that the Jamaican could have eventually found if the guy didn't admit he had it. If he DIDN'T have any pot, the Jamaican would have continued torturing him indefinitely, perhaps to death. He would have no recourse, because he didn't in fact have any bag of pot to give to the Jamaican. He can't produce a bag of pot out of thin air.
In the case of torture in order to obtain INFORMATION, however, obviously the person being tortured can eventually just say whatever the torturer wants to hear, in order to stop the cruelty. Since the torturer is simply interested in verbal information about alleged terrorist ties (or admittance of guilt or association, etc.), the person being tortured can stop the torture at any time by admitting what the torturer wants to hear – he needn't worry about having to produce a nonexistent bag of pot. This is why the majority of intelligence officials don't believe torture is a valuable tool. The people who push torture are politicians, think tanks, and guys like Alan Dershowitz. Enough said.
Haygood has the wrong slant altogether.
As the System *is* we definately lose, and have been losing for many decades. The Dims would be the same, only slower and more effective, presenting a less loathsome face.
After the System falls apart we have a chance to win. I admit there is substantial downside risk, but I have faith in History.
In any case it is no fun to cling to the dead past.
Take the long view. Rejoice! The worse the better!
Hitler cannot come again because the Capitalist System is defunct. The future is undetermined. Lets be happy to live with chaotic indeterminacy. Return to the Dharmakaya, the fathermother of all.
SILVIA CATTORI: When America says that he is the “number 3 Al Qaida terrorist”, does that bear any resemblance to the truth?
SAMI EL HAJ : Quite honestly I believe nothing that comes from the Bush administration. Because I was also accused of being a “terrorist”. And I know better than anyone what the truth is. Those people lie too much. I never believe a single word coming from that government. I know a prisoner who was tortured so much that in the end he said, “I am Osama Bin Laden”. He said what they wanted to hear so that the torture would end.
SILVIA CATTORI: So, is Al Qaida a creation of the western intelligence agencies?
SAMI EL HAJ: As far as I’m concerned, I have never in my life met anyone who has said to me, “I belong to Al Qaida”. In Guantánamo, I met most of the detainees because the policy of the guards was not to allow the prisoners to live together for a long time in the same cell. They transferred us every week. So we got to know other people. The men I met there are all peaceful people. Since I left, I have spoken to over a hundred of them. Those who were married have picked up their lives again and the others have got married.
-from "Sami El Haj, Al Jazeera Journalist, Tells His Story"
http://www.silviacattori.net/article491.html
Also along these lines, Doppler, the Constitution is defunct. It was nullified by 30 years of anti-constitutional judicial appointments.
Jefferson was proud to say that they had written a Constitution that could last 200 years, and this was an inspired guess. The time is up. We need a new one.
I'm happy to welcome the new and original voice of Roy Belmont.
I think higginslads must be a constitutional lawyer, and a pretty good one. This place is moving up.
Speaking of torture, the Justice Department "torture memos" were written by a creepy character named John Yoo, who now teaches law at Berkeley.
Yoo makes an appearance in a two-part WaPo article (adapted from a forthcoming book) about the domestic surveillance program, the first installment of which debuted today.
Acting attorney general James Comey is quoted as telling Dick Cheney to his face that "[Yoo's] analysis is flawed, in fact facially flawed. No lawyer reading that could reasonably rely on it."
Astonishingly, Bush was unaware that the meeting was taking place. While Bush was across the Potomac handing out Malcolm Baldridge Quality Awards, Cheney was secretly running an illegal domestic spying program out of his counsel's office. Key people in Bush's office did not even recognize the coded name of the program.
GET IT? There's been a silent coup d'etat. Read it and weep:
http://tinyurl.com/6xn8za
lol, no, I'm not a constitutional lawyer, Paul. But thanks for the compliment (if indeed being mistaken for a lawyer is a compliment :)
Your Jamaican gangster wasn't trying to get information. He knew your buddy was dealing weed. Yes he wanted to take his drugs but his main purpose was to discourage competition.
Yes violence can be an effective tool. However, torture's goal is to elicit useful information. Leaving morality aside (thats kinda a joke), the main problem with torture as practiced at Abu Gharaib, Bagram, Guantanamo is that MOST OF THE PEOPLE WE CAPTURED ARE NOT TERRORISTS. The US Army admits that up to 95% of our detainees in Iraq are guilty of nothing.
So we can torture them but that does not mean they know anything. And torture will make victims say whatever they think the torturer wants to hear to get them to stop.
So let us imagine we really believe we are involved in a war with Islamic fundamentalists. Perhaps the best thing to do then would be to teach our soldiers and agents Arabic. Oh but that's more work just waterboarding some haji.
What was it Jefferson said? Something like "I fear for my country when I remember that God is just."
Well Paul Easton,
I disagree that the constitution is defunct, or that anti-constitutional judges are the worst cause of undermining it. Bush believes that Pecos Bill was one of the founding fathers, and didn't read much past that part. Cheney believes in a unitary executive, and abuses his power in ongoing efforts to engineer a classic fascist shift. Pelosi has taken Congress's constitutional duties to advise and consent, declare war, impeach, and put them off limits. The press is more concerned with other issues. Our academic institutions no longer teach that there was anything heroic about our past. Our entertainment media deliver from a tiresome viewpoint that will eventually exhaust itself. But we're still America, not done yet. Still attracting the best and the brightest from around the world to our shores, still inspiring with American exceptionalism. And Barack Obama is a constitutional lawyer. When he takes the oath of office, he will understand that it is the constitution he swears to uphold.
The abuses that our checks and balances were designed to protect against are the very ones running us down right now. We don't need a new constitution. We need new people to uphold it.
Doppler
Bloody hell — Houston is paralyzed by a hurricane; the financial system is melting down tonight, and 'they' try to sneak this in over the weekend? From the JPost:
————
The US Department of Defense has notified Congress of a potential sale to Israel of 1,000 smart bombs capable of penetrating underground bunkers, which would likely be used in the event of a military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities.
The notification to Congress was made over the weekend by the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, the branch of the Pentagon responsible for evaluating foreign military sales. Congress has 30 days to object to the deal.
http://tinyurl.com/5g93r5
————
In-frickin'-sane. And sneaky (doing it on an eventful weekend to burrow in under the radar). Looks like Airman Bush wants to go out in a splendid nuclear fireball.
This will not be good for the banana-backed 'dollar.'
Of course torture works.
What outraged the Iraqis and lost us the war was not Abu Ghraib – it was the fact that American soldiers grabbed random people, and even worse were guided to their "targets" by the translators who, admit it, worked (and work) for the Badr brigade.
Also, women and children being locked up at Abu ghraib was a no no.
Doppler says "I disagree that the constitution is defunct, or that anti-constitutional judges are the worst cause of undermining it".
I agree with the second part. Anti-constitutional judges are the direct cause, but the underlying is is that no one gives a crap, as you point out.
Yes we need a new people. Where are we going to get one? Do you expect new immigrants to save the Constitution? *Obama*?
But also the Constitution was written in the context of a protocapitalist economy. Capitalism no longer works so the Constitution is probably outdated.
Haygood,
Thanks for that nasty piece of information. In spite of the worse the better I am distressed. An all out war in the mideast, possibly leading to nuclear world war, is something I could do without.
I dont expect that anyone who matters will complain. Certainly not Obama I would bet.
There seems to be some malign force afoot. McCain/Palin, Ike, Lehman Bros, and now this. The suicide of Wallace. Two people connected with me are suddenly gravely ill.
But I believe that Darkness is inseperable from Light. Out of the Darkness the Light will dawn.
Easton,
Capitalism no longer works? Of course it does. "Capitalism" is a term coined by Marx, in an effort to demonize those in power during his time. A free market is without parallel in its ability to reward qualities like innovation, efficiency, quality, to regulate price and incentivize adequate supply. There is almost unlimited capacity to improve our energy supplies, our healthcare, our information technology, and anyone, from India to Silicon Valley, who comes up with the right insight and is willing to work hard to commercialize his or her idea, can become a multimillionaire. It happens every day. What isn't working is the Bush administration's perverse efforts to intervene in markets everywhere, to reward companies whose business plan consists of promoting Republicans and lobbying for government largess, government granted monopolies, government contracts, or government control of markets to facilitate secret manipulation. There is no better way to regulate economic activity than through free markets. The trick is in sorting out what is purely economic activity from that which is in part public service, like healthcare, or military, where markets aren't the right approach. If you're against the constitution and capitalism, do you consider yourself an American?
Doppler