NRO’s Jonah Goldberg is usually a level headed sort of fellow, not given to wild flights of illogic or unreasonable argumentation. But Mr. Goldberg’s piece justifying some kinds of torture in yesterday’s online edition left me cold.
Sounding very much like a man trying to convince himself of something he believes to be wrong but thinks that if he talks about it long enough and with plenty of conviction he can turn the moral tables on the issue and justify it to his own satisfaction, Goldberg makes some rather startling arguments in favor of torture.
It should be noted that Goldberg is one of the only writers – conservative or liberal – who has made an effort to actually come to grips with this issue on a practical basis rather than a purely moral plane. This is a dubious distinction however because once started down that road, one inevitably makes a hash of both the moral arguments and the practical realities of the issue.
Almost by default, if one tries to define torture, the slope tilts precipitously and the surface is greased – albeit with good intentions. This is because the justification/rationalization for torture can never be based on firm and unbending principle but rather on a foundation of moral quicksand that constantly shifts position according to time and circumstance. Goldberg sees this and recognizes the pitfalls but fails to draw the one necessary conclusion; torture, however you define it, is wrong and trying to construct a framework that allows for it is something akin to herding cats. You can never quite close the corral because it’s a virtual certainty you’ve missed something somewhere.
Where Goldberg nails it is in his characterization of the hysterical denunciations by the American left and international human rights organizations of our detainee policies:
When confronted with the assertion that the Soviet Union and the United States were moral equivalents, William F. Buckley responded that if one man pushes an old lady into an oncoming bus and another man pushes an old lady out of the way of a bus, we should not denounce them both as men who push old ladies around.In other words, context matters.
Not according to some. Led by Time magazine’s Andrew Sullivan, opponents of the CIA’s harsh treatment of high-value terrorists have grown comfortable comparing Bush’s America to, among other evils, Stalin’s Russia.
The tactic hasn’t worked, partly because many decent Americans understand that abuse intended to foil a murder plot is not the same as torturing political dissidents, religious minorities, and other prisoners of conscience. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was not asked to renounce his faith or sign a false confession when he was reportedly waterboarded. His suffering wasn’t intended as a form of punishment. The sole aim was to stop an ongoing murder conspiracy, which is what al Qaeda is. If accounts from such unbiased sources as ABC News’ Brian Ross are to be believed, his suffering saved American lives.
Comparing CIA facilities to Stalin’s gulag may sound righteous, but it is a species of the same moral relativism that denounces all pushers of old ladies equally.
On this, all serious people should be able to agree. However, it should be pointed out that we don’t know exactly what “enhanced techniques” were used on KSM to elicit the information that led to foiling several plots against Americans. While waterboarding may be a necessary violation of the Geneva Convention under the rubric of the “ticking bomb” scenario, what else would be justified? Electrodes on genitalia? Pulling out fingernails? If, as one must assume, torture “works” in these instances, why stop at waterboarding?
In fact, Goldberg makes no distinction between waterboarding and nail pulling in his time sensitive scenario:
But there is no equivalent word for murder when it comes to torture. It’s always evil. Yet that’s not our universal reaction. In movies and on TV, good men force evil men to give up information via methods no nicer than what the CIA is allegedly employing. If torture is a categorical evil, shouldn’t we boo Jack Bauer on Fox’s 24? There’s a reason we keep hearing about the ticking time bomb scenario in the torture debate: Is abuse justified in getting a prisoner to reveal the location of a bomb that would kill many when detonated? We understand that in such a situation, Americans would expect to be protected. That’s why human-rights activists have tried to declare this scenario a red herring.Sullivan complains that calling torture “aggressive interrogation techniques†doesn’t make torture any better. Fair enough. But calling aggressive interrogation techniques “torture†when they’re not doesn’t make such techniques any worse.
Still, there is a danger that over time we may not be able to tell the difference.
While recognizing that the slope is getting slippery and that repeated violations of the Geneva strictures could inure us to the consequences, Goldberg’s arguments go off the rails when he raises the specter of the fictionalized torture portrayed by TV heroes. It is not a question of booing them for causing physical discomfort to a suspect who can lead them to the ticking bomb. It’s a question of what constitutes a “ticking bomb” in the first place.
Do we practice these “enhanced techniques” on terrorists to discover whether there is an imminent threat? Or do we only do it when we’re sure that there’s a plot nearing fruition?
Jack Bauer knows that a terrorist strike is imminent which justifies his brutal treatment of prisoners in most people’s minds. But in the real world, that kind of certainty is almost definitely lacking. And even though the capture of a “high value” terrorist operative would almost by definition be an intelligence bonanza regarding future attacks, the idea that any of them would be imminent and a direct threat to American citizens would almost certainly be unknown. Therefore, torture would be carried out in these cases not to necessarily uncover any plots but rather to see if there are any plots worth responding to in the first place.
How slippery is that slope now?
Goldberg’s reasoning becomes most muddled when he can’t seem to make up his mind about the “taboo” of torture versus its utility in stopping the ticking bomb:
Taboos are the glue of civilization because they define what is beyond the pale in ways mere reason cannot. A nation that frets about violating the rights of murder-plotters when the bomb is ticking is unlikely to violate the rights of decent citizens when the bomb is defused.I suspect this is what motivates so many human-rights activists to exaggerate the abuses and minimize their effectiveness. Slippery-slope arguments aren’t as powerful as moral bullying. Still, their fears aren’t unfounded. Once taboos have been broken, a chaotic search ensues for where to draw the new line, and that line, burdened with precedent and manufactured by politics, rarely holds as firmly as the last. But that is where history has brought us.
In the recent debate over torture, everybody decided to kick the can down the road on what torture is and isn’t. This argument will be forced on us again, no matter how much we try to avoid it. We’ll be sorry we didn’t take the debate more seriously when we had the chance.
First of all, the argument that a nation that frets about torturing terrorists won’t torture criminals or dissenters has no basis in fact whatsoever and indeed, common sense would dictate the opposite. Once the taboo is broken for one reason, it becomes easier to do so for another – something that Goldberg recognizes but for some reason fails to draw the necessary conclusion. We can agonize about the issue but the fact remains, it is the government that sets the policy. And with this Administration (and probably future ones as well) who rightly see America at war, it is hard to imagine the challenges we’ll face tomorrow and what measures they might see as necessary to protect the homeland.
This is why strictures against torture must remain in place – even strictures against waterboarding and other techniques that only cause a prisoner psychic discomfort or physical inconvenience. Without the “taboo” of violating the Geneva Convention, there is no hard surface beneath our feet where we can anchor ourselves against the ravages of our own rationalizations and self justifications. Ends and means can blur together into unresolvable amorphous shapes making it hard to differentiate between what is necessary and what is merely convenient or easy. In this respect, Goldberg’s arguments fail the tests of specificity and consistency.
I applaud Mr. Goldberg’s effort to tackle the issue. And although he reaches what I believe to be are incorrect conclusions, the issue is by no means resolved and there is plenty of room for further debate and reflection.
8:22 am
SPN:
Your comment was deleted for being wildly off topic.
9:52 am
Rick: It is a slippery slope, and one that does need to be debated, and discussed RATIONALLY!
Quick tangent: I always found it interesting, that shows like “24”, which I dont’ watch by the way, and any number of Leftist Hollywood movies, that show the “good guys”, like Alec Baldwin, George Clooney, Sean Penn, et al., carrying out personal or professional vendettas against “terrorists” or “criminals” or even “innocents” (Mystic River anyone??); and it’s all portrayed as being very acceptable and necessary!
And yet, these very same “actors”, and too many other such celluloid hypocrites, are leading the Leftist charge against the Administration, and branding the equivalent, or worse, than the Nazis, Soviets, Taliban, Saddam, Stalin, ad naseume?
Does anyone else not see that typical hypocrasy??
Anyway, my only point on the torture debate Rick is this:
I think it’s ludicrous, to bestow MORE rights, and BETTER treatment on the demonstrable Terrorists, than our own Military members have!
And I find Senator’s Graham, and McCain’s views on this issue, particularly unfathomable!
If anyone should know better, it’s those two!
I’m making reference to the fact, that the Acceptable (in my opinion!!) techniques that the CIA wants to use, and that they and the Military have used in the past (NOT the patented Abuse, that was reported at Abu Ghraib and in Kabul!), comes straight out of the US Military’s SERE school techniques!
In other words, most US Military Pilots, and other selected personnel, have to go to the US Military’s SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance & Escape) school, where they are subject too, EXACTLY: sleep deprivation; food deprivation, stress and stress positions, WATER BOARDING, extremes of temperatures, and Oh yah, sometimes they’ll actually shout at you, and call your Momma a bad name, and maybe slap you a bit, and wag their finger at you!
Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention, the above techniques, and WORSE, happen on a daily basis in this country, on College Campuses across the country, in College HAZING rituals!
I personally, again, draw the line at any form of sexual abuse, any form of actual physical harm, etc.
But I don’t see, why the Terrorists, get off scott-free, and get better treated than our own Pilots, and College Students!
And you know the Irony of all this Rick; the reason we have SERE school in the US Military?
Because of people like John McCain having the crap tortured out of him for 7 long years, and because our ENEMIES, NONE that I can recall, FOLLOW the Geneva Convention: not Nazi Germany, not Japan, not the Soviet Union, not Korea, not Vietnam, not Iraq, and certainly NOT the Jihadis, as they BEHEAD our troops, and CIVILIANS, mutiliate their corpses, and drag them thru the streets!
But of course, that makes us WORSE than all those others, according to our dear Lefitist!
10:05 am
Bravo for a great analysis. It is good to see someone who both takes a hardline against terrorists and has firm principles of decency. Too many people have one but not the other.
10:47 am
On Torture
Being a Christian I live in a world of moral absolutes, a world where Truth (with a capital T) exists, and shades of grey are merely distortions. Most people cannot fathom such a world, and would call me inflexible, elitist, or naive. Â If you are one …
12:38 pm
Rick, good post.
Furthermore, Goldberg justifying torture because ‘Jack Bauer does it’ is ludicrous. By that standard, I may as well be asking, “Why isn’t our military as good at stopping the bad guys as are the Justice League, the Fantastic Four and the X-Men?”
1:33 pm
Dale, great call on the fact that our air force cadets go through waterboarding for survival training. But when we capture head chopping barbarians we have to take them to Quiznos for an oven toasted roast beef sandwich and then to Dairy Queen afterwards for a hot fudge sundae. I have a better idea: when we capture these guys let’s have Andrew “What’s the rage level today” Sullivan interrogate these guys mano a Sullivano. I think Andy might truly lose his head.
2:31 pm
“phychic DISCOMFORT or physical INCONVIENCE”
Let’s hope that none of our prisoners of war would ever have any “discomfort or inconvience” while in our care.
Honestly Rick, I don’t know where you get this stuff. You sound fairly sane most of the time.
2:45 pm
While I think the current political meme that “if we treat our POWs according to the GCs the enemy will do likewise” is about as strawman as it gets, I believe we should limit our coercion methods to what’s allowed under the GCs simply because we’re the United States of America. That said, I do not take from Johah’s article your perceptions. He admits that there is a line that must be drawn, and where that line is should be decided through reasoned discourse so that there are definite limits. But I must agree with GW above that “psychic discomfort” and “physical inconvenience” of moderate intensity and duration do not fall under the rubric of “torture” except as it’s currently being tossed around on the left.
3:17 pm
Rick,
I haven’t seen this posted elsewhere, but here is an interesting historical parallel. Apparently waterboarding, or some variant thereof, is at least a 100 yr-old tradition. According to Edmund Morris’ “Theodore Rex†(2001) p.100, the U.S. Army practiced this torture method on Philippine insurgents whereby
“A man is thrown down on his back and three or four men sit on his arms and legs and hold him down and either a gun barrel or a rifle barrel or a carbine barrel or a stick as big as a belaying pin … is simply thrust into his jaws, … and then water is poured onto his face down his throat and nose … until the man gives some sign of giving in or becomes unconscious … His suffering must be that of a man who is drowning, but who cannot drown.â€
Interestingly, in light of current discussion about Islamic terrorists using torture to force religious conversion, Morris states that Spanish priests developed this method “as a means of instilling reverence for the Holy Ghost.†Also interesting is the implied policy position from President T. Roosevelt that “great as the provocation has been in dealing with foes who habitually resort to treachery, murder, and torture against our men, nothing can justify the use of torture or inhuman conduct of any kind on the part of the American Army.â€
3:51 pm
I am sick of this whole debate …. it has been proven to me that the dems and the rhinos want the brutal terrorists to be given special treatment over out own military. Where was the dem crys when our own military was burned, drug thur the streets, cut up and one beheaded. Good Lord, this is making me so mad. Nobody who captures out boys are gonna follow the GC and if you think so you are in lala land.
I’m to the point now after hearing the so called survey of the Iraq people wanting us out, I say, O.K., we’re gone, blow the hell outta each other, enjoy your blood bath, just don’t ask for out help again.
4:39 pm
Um, Drewsmom. The Iraqis didn’t ask for our help in the first place. We invaded them.
9:06 pm
SHUT UP ED, I DON’T HEAR YOU LEFTY.
THEY WANTED US BUT IF THEY DON’T NOW, I SAY BYE TO THEM AND BYE TO YOU, PERMANANTLY CAUSE THANKS TO YOUR PARTY AND ITS TACTICS WE’RE AL BE DEAD SOONER OF LATER WHEN THEY COME TO AMERICA.
GEE, THANKS ED.
10:13 pm
The other night on “the Unit” they mentioned the idea of “chipping” prisoners.
Suppose you “chipped” 2000 or so prisoners, some of which might know or know where to find out where your worst enemy was hiding. Then you proposed a prisoner swap or truce/amnesty where this 2000 or so were released. You allow them to be released. Now you start tracking them.
What do you think are the odds that you can find your worst enemy ?
How long do you think the releasees will live if your worst enemy finds out that they were chipped ?
Is any of this torture ?
10:57 pm
Understand Drewsmon’s response! I’ll take Jonah Goldberg for $500 please… Rick, your illness is effecting your posts. Hope you get well soon.
11:14 pm
Actually, if this continues, you need to change the name of you blog. I’m sure you don’t want to attract too many of us right-wingers…heh? At least come up with information that does not sound like our “middle of the road” fellow John McCain (You know, the guy that ignores the Constitution).
11:30 pm
Drewsmom,
I just want to say that you are one of the few that responded that I agree with. Thank you. Could not have said it better myself. Keep up the good fight!
7:37 am
Rick,
This is your bias with respect to harsh interrogation, Fundamental Attribution Error. Hat tip http://econlog.econlib.org/, why leftists think the way they do. Goldberg is right about context. I have asked Sullivan to define acceptable interrogation techniques, he simply replies “enjoy your tyranny.” If I shoot a terrorist with a 50 cal, is the pain and suffering prior to death, torture?
When we try to understand the behavior of others, we often make a particularly human mistake. We tend to attribute too much to character and disposition and too little to situation and context. When we seek a better balance, we can adopt a more accepting view of events around us. http://www.chacocanyon.com/pointlookout/040505.shtml
3:27 pm
Maybe I am misreading you Rick, but, do you believe these people should be treated according to the principals of the Geneva Conventions because they qualify or because anyone, under any circumstance, who is detained by the US Armed Forces should be, regardless of any mitigating factors? I’m not sure if this is the argument you are making, but, it seems way too many people assume that these detainees are subject to Geneva when a simple reading of the conventions shows that they are not.
3:30 pm
THANK YOU.
TV and Movies are not real and anyone who references them cannot be taken seriously.
10:02 pm
Submitted for Your Approval
First off… any spambots reading this should immediately go here, here, here, and here. Die spambots, die! And now… here are all the links submitted by members of the Watcher’s Council for this week’s vote. Council li…
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[...] Right Wing Nut House, “Goldberg on Torture: Sophistry on a Stick†[...]
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The Council Has Spoken!
First off… any spambots reading this should immediately go here, here, here, and here. Die spambots, die! And now… the winning entries in the Watcher’s Council vote for this week are “Peace” and War on an Autumn Aft…
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Watcher’s Council Results
The winning entries in the Watcher’s Council vote for this week are “Peace” and War on an Autumn Afternoon by Gates of Vienna, and Observations on Arabs by Rants and Raves. Here is a link to and to the full…
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[...] Goldberg on Torture: Sophistry on a StickRight Wing Nut House [...]