Tuesday, December 18, 2007

This Election Is About Torture

In 2004, after the Presidential debates had concluded, conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan noted an interesting omission from the question list. Neither George W. Bush nor John Kerry had ever been asked about torture. Abu Gharib was still of relatively recent vintage, and it seemed like the sort of topic that should have gotten some play. But no. We got a free pass. It's easy to keep on torturing when nobody is reminding us that we do it. It's harder when you have to stand up in front of the world and explain why simulated drownings are now part of the American example we try to set for the world.

A couple years later, as new allegations of torture started to trickle out, one of my co-bloggers argued that we should just "rip off the band-aid" and come clean with everything, all at once. Otherwise, he argued, the torture issue would never leave the public eye. I responded that perhaps torture should stay in the "public eye" until we, you know, stop torturing. It's an important issue, and as members of a quasi-media body, we have an obligation to keep it on the agenda until such time as the government and American people come to a consensus that we cannot abuse the bodies of those under our custody.

It's been nearly two years since I wrote that post, and torture continues to dart in and out of the media consciousness. But I humbly submit that there is no more important issue facing the nation today. One party seems specifically pro-torture, the other party just enables it. Some candidates take strong stands against torture, others are equally bold in saying that it is necessary for the defense of the nation.

It pains me to say we need a "debate" on torture. But we do, because it's a salient issue that divides the party. Is America going to be the type of place that tortures? Put people on the record. Don't let them duck and dodge and hem and haw about whether the particular "harsh interrogation procedures" qualify. Water boarding is torture. If it was torture to Jim Crow Mississippians when used on Black criminal suspects, it's certainly torture now. And yes, the media has an obligation to call a spade a spade, and tell us that when Bush threatens to veto a bill that would prohibit waterboarding, he is protecting his right to torture. Enough language games.

If there is a debate to be had, then a debate we deserve. But what can't happen is pretending that this isn't the issue on the table. If we are going to be a nation that tortures, then we need to take responsibility for it the way a democratic nation should: we need to openly deliberate over it, vigorously debate it, and have critical media coverage about it. To do anything else is a disservice to who we are as a people, and what we represent as a nation.

10 comments:

PG said...

Sullivan's reference to Abu Gharib is something of a red herring. Although I think what occurred there may have happened in part because of a failure in the Bush Administration to have a strong anti-torture stance, there is nonetheless no sensible comparison between what the CIA did with KSM et al. and what Pvt. England did at Abu Gharib. The CIA waterboarded known terrorists to get information. England and her cohorts tortured people for their own amusement. (I seriously doubt you would see anyone in the CIA grinning and giving a thumbs up in the waterboarding video.)

Thus Abu Gharib wasn't mentioned because it was so very easy to condemn. Yes, of course torturing people for one's own amusement is wrong. That's why the people directly responsible for Abu Gharib crimes are being tried, convicted and imprisoned, and a few of their superiors are demoted or left the military. Abu Gharib is the case that everyone short of true lunatics like Rush "Abu Gharib was a fraternity prank/ performance art" Limbaugh could condemn without breaking a sweat.

This near-universal condemnation of Abu Gharib is actually a stumbling block to ending the kind of torture condoned by the conservative you quoted in an earlier post. That conservative can feel all good about himself for being anti Abu Gharib, anti-torture for the fun of it. But that frees him to find "torture for a good cause" morally permissible. He's already gotten his anti-the really bad kind of torture bona fides.

I'm a bit confused as to why you think waterboarding should be a major issue for the 2008 election however. As long as no candidate says he will overturn the CIA's own order against waterboarding, nor permit it to be done by the military (whether at Gitmo, Afghanistan, Iraq, wherever), the only remaining torture question is whether we're going to continue rendition, which allows us to get the information without having the torture on our hands. Rendition seems to me a far worse policy than our own conduct of torture, because at least if we do it ourselves, there are rules and accountability. With rendition, there's a black hole.

David Schraub said...

My understanding is that most of the Republican candidates have sanctioned water boarding in some cases. No?

PG said...

But what are those cases? If they're the standard "ticking nuclear bomb, we KNOW this guy has the info" moronic hypothetical, then I'm not very stressed about it because, well, it's a moronic hypothetical. If we are actually in that situation and we knew waterboarding would somehow magically assure that we got the right info to save millions of lives, I think most people would agree to the waterboarding. It's because I find that situation so ridiculously implausible (if for no reason other than human nature; I love America but if someone decided to get info out of me through torture, I'd throw him as much false info as possible) that I'm not much bothered by a candidate who says he might waterboard in that situation.

Realistically, most Americans would want their president to be willing to waterboard in that scenario. It's a distraction from the real situations where waterboarding might be used. Again, as long as there's a ban on CIA and military waterboarding and on rendition, I'm not going to lose sleep at night waiting for the moronic hypothetical to occur.

David Schraub said...

But we know the current administration isn't restricting it's torture regime to that, and I don't really have confidence in any one (save McCain) really limiting themselves to the ticking time bomb. That's just the example they use to make torture rhetorically appealing -- there's no indication that it represents an actual hard moral limit on their conscience.

PG said...

What is the Bush administration's current torture regime? I thought the CIA hadn't used waterboarding since 2003. Are they using other methods that are deemed torture? Is the military?

David Schraub said...

I think the rendition program itself counts as part of a torture regime, and who knows what's happening at those Black Ops sites. Plus, the administration still claims the right to torture if it wants to, so the issue is still on the table.

PG said...

If your side of the debate is "We can never waterboard or do anything else deemed torture in any situation, ever," I think it's probably going to lose against the side that says, "We won't make it a policy or a practice, but we will do it if we have to," at least in any vote conducted among the general populace. People just don't have enough of a moral distaste for doing bad things to bad people that they will take that option off the table. It's not a debate we need on this subject, it's an education campaign. We need to know what tactics are in the arsenal, against whom they might be used, and how effective they are. As long as people think torture wins the cost/benefit analysis -- that we get more out of it than we lose -- no candidate is going to say "Never."

David Schraub said...

I've always been in the "torture as civil disobedience" camp, wherein you torture if you feel you absolutely have to, and then the polity can decide whether or not you made the right call. I don't think most GOPers would agree with that stance -- they want to immunize the torturers from legal liability, and they want to preserve its use in a far wider range of cases than we do.

PG said...

then the polity can decide whether or not you made the right call

Like we have a vote on whether to send the heroic torturer to prison? Or he gets a pardon? Or jury nullification? Or...

How do you see this happening?

David Schraub said...

The latter two (or prosecutorial discretion not to pursue the case). The point is, it's kicked back onto our heads.