Torture And Brave Neo-America

Politics International Politics
1

A Brave New World had its oracle in George Orwell and Brave Neo-America has its own prophet in George Bush. There’s a certain poetic symmetry about this that suggests – on a cosmic level anyway – the possibility that life once again imitates art.

As we take this brave new step of adopting torture as the latest Good Intention on the road to wherever it is we’re headed, it’s worth taking the time to ponder the full import of what this means to us and what it may mean about us.

Why, for example, after more than two hundred years of temptuous and often tenuous existence as a nation are we now “forced”, as Vice-president Dick Cheney has put it, " . . . to work . . . sort of the dark side. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies, if we’re going to be successful. That’s the world we operate in, and so it’s going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective."

What has fundamentally changed about the world around us that requires us to abandon the high road of our forefathers and now start “to work . . . sort of the dark side”?

Are we facing a new, more vicious enemy unlike any the world has ever seen?

That’s the official answer of course but I wonder what’s new and more vicious about Islamic religious fanatics willing to wantonly slaughter women and children – and themselves – for the kingdom of God, or their intepretation of the Koran as their heavenly license to kill?

Hasn’t Islam been around since the 6th century A.D. and haven’t Islamic fanatics been slaughtering innocent people by the thousands in the name of God almost as long? Even the particular brand of Islam which Osama bin Laden adheres to, Wahhabism / Muwahhidun, has been around at least as long as the United States.

What has really changed that wasn’t true in 1776, 1812, 1846, 1861, 1917, 1941, 1950 or 1963?

What if, just for the sake of hypothesis, it’s not something fundamental about the world around us which has changed but we ourselves? What if we have somehow lost our way as a nation and now find ourselves wandering the low road of world affairs and just haven’t realized yet that we’ve lost our way as a nation and now have fundamentally different “objectives” than we had before?

2

[quote=“spook”]What has fundamentally changed about the world around us
…
Are we facing a new, more vicious enemy unlike any the world has ever seen?
…
what’s new and more vicious about Islamic religious fanatics willing to wantonly slaughter women and children – and themselves – for the kingdom of God, or their intepretation of the Koran as their heavenly license to kill?
…
What has really changed that wasn’t true in 1776, 1812, 1846, 1861, 1917, 1941, 1950 or 1963?
[/quote]

I think you are asking good questions, spook.

From my perspective, what has changed is not so much the "viciousness

3

[quote=“Hobbes”]
Today, the fear is that a small cell of dedicated fanatics (financed by a single patron with access to vast oil wealth) could purchase a single nuclear device from the former Soviet Union and kill literally millions. . . So I think the answer to you question is [color=black]

4

Informed conclusions with a difference ala republican (repeat until convinced): 911 … Iraq … WMD … terrorists … 911 … Iraq … WMD … terrorists … 911 … Iraq … WMD … terrorists … 911 … Iraq … WMD … terrorists …

(Caution: above post may contain a pinch of sarcasm.)

5

spook:

I agree with you 100% that the possibility of the US suffering a mass-destruction level attack is not new. Apologies if I gave that impression. So there are now at least two pieces of this puzzle on which I think you and I agree:

[color=red]b[/b] There are fanatics (Islamic and otherwise) out there who hate the US and are willing not only to murder large numbers of innocent civilians, but also to die themselves to make their point = Not New[/color]

[color=blue]b[/b] There exist weapons that are powerful enough to kill a large percentage of the population of the US in a matter of minutes, hours or weeks = Not New[/color]

The reason that I characterize the current danger as being fundamentally different, is that I do not believe that the past has given us a realistic danger of combining fanatical terrorism with weapons powerful enough to kill millions. In other words, in my view, b[/b] is new.

With this in mind, let me respond to your (very good) points:

Government sponsored suitcase bombs.

I have not read about the scenario you describe, but I have no trouble believing that it is something the defense analysts considered.

Big Nations
To the extent that we are talking about the USSR or China, I feel that this is a case of serious [color=blue]B-threat[/color], and small [color=red]A-threat[/color]. The reason I think the [color=red]A-threat[/color] is small, is that I do not believe that the governments of either of those countries were ever likely to sacrifice their own lives (or their country

6

I don’t think A + B is new; terrorists have been seeking such devices for a long time and, if they had gotten hold of them, would most likely have used them already.
New is that the terrorists have proven that they do not need B, excuse the pun, to cause mass destruction and new is that this has been used to stretch an argument that finally led to war.

I think it’s not unreasonable to assume terrorists keep on seeking those devices and will one day use them (though I rather wish it will never happen) but Iraq with or without Saddam is not going to make much if any difference. Maybe the possibility for Saddam (Iraq) potentially selling WMD to terrorists has been eliminated, but the way I see it the “whole thing” wasn’t directly related to 911.

7

You may well be right, Rascal. I am sure that you are right that terrorists have been trying to get WMDs for a long time. In my opinion, a combination of factors such as:

(i) steadily increasing numbers of WMDs held by an increasing number of actors;
(ii) steadily decreasing the cost of producing the weapons;
(iii) advances allowing smaller/more portable devices that are easier to smuggle and hide;
(iv) deterioration of the security personnel in place to guard the former Soviet weapons; and
(v) economic conditions in Russia/Central Asia making bribery of officers/sale of these weapons more likely,

have turned the remote possibility into a far likely scenario. This is what I meant by

8

Most of the above posts are about the rationale for torture - that we are facing a new threat far more severe than anything we have seen in the past. Terrorist may have access to nukes, nerve gas and biological weapons. Fine, I can accept that.

However, I have a couple of problems with this argument as a justification for torture. The first is that, more often than not, the victims of torture are innocent. True, you may catch a real terrorist, and start torturing him. So he confesses, and names names - often the names of anyone he can think of. Those people are arrested and tortured - they confess and name others, who are arrested and tortured until they confess - ad infinitum. It was that way during the Spanish Inquisition, in Nazi Germany, in Pinochet’s Chile, in the Khmer Rouges Cambodia, in today’s North Korea, and just about everywhere else where torture is employed as an interrogation method. True, some of the victims really are guilty and maybe they even deserved what they got, but many are innocent. What do you say to them? “Whoops, we’re sorry.”

Another little problem is that much of the supposed benefit is illusory. Anyone can be forced to confess - but what use is that? And is any useful information obtained? Most of the prisoners at Camp X-ray in Guantanamo Bay have by now confessed to everything from assassinating Kennedy to having sex with dinosaurs. They’ve incriminated everyone from Mother Theresa to Abraham Lincoln. They’ve pinpointed Bin Laden’s hiding places in Antarctica and Mars. Basically, they’ve said whatever they thought their torturers wanted to hear. So have we found Bin Laden yet? Have we found WMDs? Have we obtained one useful iota of information? Or was all this for nothing?

Quite frankly, I think there is only one reason why America is resorting to torture. It’s the same reason that every other brutal society has for doing the same thing. It’s sadism, pure and simple. We torture prisoners simply because we can. It makes the torturers feel powerful and invincible. That’s always been the reason for this barbaric practice.

It’s also very sick.

Sorry if this isn’t my most cheerful post.

cheers,
DB

Rush Limbaugh on Abu Ghraib: “I’m talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You ever heard of the need to blow some steam off?”

cbsnews.com/stories/2004/05/ … 6021.shtml

9

[quote=“Dog’s_Breakfast”]
However, I have a couple of problems with this argument as a justification for torture. The first is that, more often than not, the victims of torture are innocent. [/quote]

I guess you missed spook’s excellent link here:

time.com/time/magazine/artic … -1,00.html

From it we find:

[quote]
In March 2002, when authorities grabbed Abu Zubaydah in Pakistan, the CIA whisked him to a secret facility outside Bangkok and asked the FBI to send some agents to Thailand to assist in “sweating” him, as it’s known in the trade. Leery of that idea, FBI boss Robert Mueller declined and issued a verbal order that any G-men who visited the CIA outpost should read the debriefing reports but stay out of the interrogation room. Abu Zubaydah soon began to sing and, among other things, quickly fingered Khalid Shaikh Mohammed as the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.[/quote]

See above.

Yes, the interrogation methods at Gitmo are [i]really[/i] tough. :unamused: Maybe we should drop the methods described below and just start beheading them live on TV.

And we’re using them indiscriminately!

10

I’ve been reading these posts and going back and forth over the points made as I’ve been working today. The A+B calculation is easy for some to make because they accept every worst-case claim as true.

I, though, recall when Saddam Hussein, the Darth Vader of terrorism, refrained from crossing the doomsday line during the '91 war when he had biochem-tipped SCUDS but chose not to launch them against Israel. Later, he made the decision to eliminate his weapons of mass destruction stockpiles as we now know. Once he did that it would have been essentially impossible for Iraq to reconstitute them no matter how much intention he had because it would have to have done so in secret and single-handedly given its pariah status and it just didn’t have the technical capability to pull it off.

So it’s not an easy calculation for me to make because there’s been so much hype concerning the issue of Islamic terrorism and its true capability over the last three years that it’s difficult to draw a rational line as to where the true level of threat lies – notwithstanding the fact that many of the A+B threats of the past were merrily underappreciated in the pre-911 world because of naivete, eg. trigger-happy, cash-rich drug cartels increasingly beleaguered by the U.S. war on drugs:

pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline … /scenario/

11

Nice post DB. You are absolutely correct that so far we’ve only been discussing one part of the broader question, and I think you bring up a lot of cogent points to get us started on “Part II.” Unfortunately I don’t have time right now to give thoughtful responses to many of your thoughts, but for now (very quickly) perhaps I could prevail on you to help me understand your “sadism” point:

— Your “It makes the torturers feel powerful and invincible” rationale seems like it may provide an explanation for why certain sick minds may engage on this sort of thing on an individual level (or small group level), but are you also saying that this mental sickness (for lack of a better term) is what might motivate a top general or a hawkish think-tank writer in WAshington to advocate torture when they set the macro-policy?

— Do you think that the military’s top brass honestly believe that torture works (and they just know less about it, and are therefor simply factually incorrect on that point?)

— Or do you think that they do know torture doesn’t work, and that they they advocate these techniques because they get some kind of twisted sadistic pleasure from knowing that their policy directives might lead to torture somewhere in the world – even if they are not the ones doing the torturing?

12

[quote]—>“Iraq with or without Saddam is not going to make much if any difference.” Disagree for the reason you articulate in your next sentence…

—>“Maybe the possibility for Saddam (Iraq) potentially selling WMD to terrorists has been eliminated” Agree[/quote]
Given that it’s merely a possibility (or rather speculation) the first sentence may actually be valid as it stands, or at least we need to highlight that there are several more countries that are now or soon able to produce such devices. Thus, in the overall context - and that is as far as it relates to 911 - choosing Iraq as a target (to prevent WMD sales to terrorists) does not seem to make much more sense then throwing a dart on a map with those rouge states and picking a “winner” from there.

WMD can be of many kind as you say and I agree they can be considered different categories of threat, though 911 itself was bad enough without that actually any B were used; to me it does not make much difference if there are 3,000 or 1,000,000 deaths - both threats have to be eliminated but there has to be a better balance (for the lack of a better word) between the threat, in particular if it’s just a possibility/speculation, and the means used.

13

I’m fine with that. I’m even willing to say (I’m assuming you will agree with this) that Iraq was not the largest threat facing the US or the world at the time the coalition invaded. In fact, I’ll go even one further and say that even if the world intelligence community had been right (that Saddam did have WMDs at the time of the invasion) – even under those circumstances I don’t know if I’d say Iraq was the #1 threat.

As for whether it was like throwing darts at map…:idunno: … I think that’s a longer discussion (and certainly one that’s already gotten its fair share of attention on these boards). Suffice it to say that one doesn’t always deal with the biggest threat; sometimes one deals with the biggest threat that one thinks they have a realistic chance of being able to do something about – and even then sometimes it’s harder than one expects. Anyway, I know you think the coalition was wrong to go into Iraq. Point noted. :post:

Well said. You’ve got us right back on track again with the topic at hand. I couldn’t agree with you more in terms of framing the issue as one of balancing the threat against the means used. My personal view is that it is moral and right to weigh the expected suffering of threat against the expected suffering caused by any torture that would be used to combat the threat.

An opponent of torture can attack with the threat side, as you and spook have both done to some extent, (i.e. the danger really isn’t that great, or it isn’t any greater than it was 20 years ago), or the “means” side (i.e. torture doesn’t really work anyway) – as DB did.

But so far all of these arguments are basically buying into a somewhat utilitarian moral framework for making the decision. Everyone has argued that the ends achieved are not worth the suffering caused. Which makes me very curious…

Does nobody out there agree with the following?

[color=darkblue]"Torture is always wrong. Period. Even if

(i) there was a 100% certainty that Taipei was going to be destroyed in a terrorist attack, and all our families would be killed;
(ii) there was a single terrorist who had confessed to planting the bomb, and to knowing where it was; and
(iii) the bomb was scheduled to go off in any time, and there was no chance of finding it without torturing the guy;
(iv) we knew the terrorist was weak willed and would probably tell us the correct location under torture;

even then, torture would be wrong. The moral choice would be to allow all of our families to die from the blast or the radiation. [/color]

Does anyone here believe that? Or is it just a matter of deciding how effective it would be and weighing the suffering of the torture victims against the suffering and death of those who may be harmed by the threat?

14

Hobbes

I’m not sure if anyone would disagree with torture in the situation that you outlined. I think you have made the moral dilemma almost too easy by having only one terrorist who has confessed to planting the bomb.

My question would change the parameters a bit.

i) there was a 100% chance that Taipei will be destroyed

ii) you have 1000 people in custody, 999 of them are completely innocent but 1 is guilty

iii) you don’t know which one of the 1000 is guilty

Is it okay to torture all of them?

I just think that this scenario makes for a much more difficult moral choice

15

I don’t see why anyone is really surprised about the existence of torture. It doesn’t herald us losing our way - it has long been a part of our empire-building. There were many accounts of torture being used during the US occupation of the Philippines, a nation deemed ‘unfit to govern itself’ because the natives were an ‘inferior race.’ Torture exists wherever there is widespread dehumanization, a necessity for effective military action. If troops can sympathize with the enemy, they will only get in the way. Thus, wherever there are wars, there will be torture. However, torture differs in degree and with restrictions. The US does not parallel Pinochet’s use of torture, the Spanish Inquisition, Saddam or its various former puppet dictatorships in Latin America. There probably has not been any war in which torture was not used to some degree. This is a sweeping assertion, so I guess Fred’s influence has rubbed off on me.

16

One other thought

We build up these scare scenarios(i.e. you have a half and hour before the bomb goes off would you torture someone) but is the U.S. or any other countries really facing these kinds of situations right now?

Has the torture, abuse or whatever you want to call it that has been occuring in Iraq and Guantanamo a result of these kinds of “doomsday scenarios”? People can think up situations where torture seems to be the only viable option but I am not sure if they have that much basis in reality for the situation they are facing right now.

I mean many people may say it’s okay to torture someone to locate a bomb but will they say it’s okay to torture someone so you can find out where his buddies are or whatever other information you are looking for. I may be wrong but I don’t think people are looking to find the location of some bomb from the people in Guantanamo(sp) or in Iraq but this is where these actions of concern are occuring.

Is it okay to torture people(possibly innocent, possible not) just on the suspicion of some sort of possible terrorist action that they may or may not do.

I’m typing this off the top of my head so I apologize if I havent been clear enough with what I am attempting to explain or ask.

17

[quote=“Gilgamesh”]Hobbes
I’m not sure if anyone would disagree with torture in the situation that you outlined. I think you have made the moral dilemma almost too easy by having only one terrorist who has confessed to planting the bomb.[/quote]

Gilgamesh,

Yes, no question that your hypo makes the choice harder. But we already know that [i]most people oppose torture in most situations. What I was trying to figure out was whether there was anyone in our little community who felt that torture was categorically wrong. In all circumstances. Based on principal, rather than the statistics of factual circumstance.

You might be right that no forumosans would oppose torture in the extreme hypothetical I gave. But I wouldn’t be too sure… There are certainly philosophical schools of thought that claim that certain actions are morally wrong regardless of the benefits that might flow from them. I’m not terribly knowledgeable about his philosophy, but perhaps if the late German philosopher Immanuel Kant is haunting these forums under another alias he might be able to explain to us why torture is an absolute moral wrong – even in the circumstances of my hypothetical…

18

What I’m wondering essentially is how does one get in a situation where torture is necessary for self-preservation? Isn’t torture only necessary against a rational yet fanatical enemy whose will to kill you supersedes even his instinct for self-preservation? He’s only really ultimately dangerous because he’s willing to kill you even at the price of his own destruction so there’s no price you can deter him with.

That’s why the U.S.S.R. wasn’t the ultimate A+B threat to us despite all the destructive power at its disposal. We relied on their desire for self-preservation being stronger than their desire to “bury” us.

Now we have enemies for the first time in our existence as a nation who will do anything, pay any price, to achieve our destruction? How did we get such enemies?

19

[quote=“spook”]
Now we have enemies for the first time in our existence as a nation who will do anything, pay any price, to achieve our destruction? How did we get such enemies?[/quote]

Read a history of Islam. When have they ever had friends anywhere?

20

Sorry to be nit picky, but the “Brave New World” was forecast in a book by Aldous Huxley, the same man who wrote “Doors of Perception” where the band “The Doors” took its name. In fact, in the “Brave New World” people were kept in line by promoting promiscuity and casual drug use to take there mind of the problems at hand, as opposed to the heavy handed tactics of the government in