Is Torture Ever Moral?
by Patrick J. Buchanan
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After opening the door to a truth commission to investigate torture by the CIA of al-Qaida subjects, and leaving the door open to prosecution of higher-ups, President Obama walked the cat back.
He is now opposed to a truth commission. That means it is dead. He is no longer interested in prosecutions. That means no independent counsel—for now.
Sen. Harry Reid does not want any new “commissions, boards, tribunals, until we find out what the facts are.” Thus, there will be none. The place to find out the facts, says the majority leader, is the intelligence committee of Sen. Dianne Feinstein.
Though belated, White House recognition that high-profile public hearings on the “enhanced interrogation techniques” used by the CIA in the Bush-Cheney years could divide the nation and rip this city apart is politically wise.
For any such investigation must move up the food chain from CIA interrogators, to White House lawyers, to the Cabinet officers who sit on the National Security Council, to Dick Cheney, to The Decider himself.
And what is the need to re-air America’s dirty linen before a hostile world, when the facts are already known.
The CIA did use harsh treatment on al-Qaida. That treatment was sanctioned by White House and Justice Department lawyers. The NSC, Cheney and President Bush did sign off. And Obama has ordered all such practices discontinued.
This is not a question of “What did the president know and when did he know it?” It is a question of the legality and morality of what is already known. And on this, the country is rancorously split.
Many contend that torture is inherently evil, morally outrageous and legally impermissible under both existing U.S. law and the Geneva Convention on prisoners of war.
Moreover, they argue, torture does not work.
Its harvest is hatred, deceptions and lies. And because it is cowardly and cruel, torture degrades those who do it, as well as those to whom it is done. It instills a spirit of revenge in its victims.
When the knowledge of torture is made public, as invariably it is, it besmirches America’s good name and serves as a recruiting poster for our enemies and a justification to use the same degrading methods on our men and women.
And it makes us no better than the Chinese communist brain-washers of the Korean War, the Japanese war criminals who tortured U.S. POWs and the jailers at the Hanoi Hilton who tortured Sen. John McCain.
Moreover, even if done in a few monitored cases, where it seems to be the only way to get immediate intelligence to save hundreds or thousands from imminent terror attack, down the chain of command they know it is being done. Thus, we get sadistic copycat conduct at Abu Ghraib by enlisted personnel to amuse themselves at midnight.
While the legal and moral case against torture is compelling, there is another side.
Let us put aside briefly the explosive and toxic term.
Is it ever moral to kill? Of course. We give guns to police and soldiers, and honor them as heroes when they use their guns to save lives.
Is it ever moral to inflict excruciating pain? Of course. Civil War doctors who cut off arms and legs in battlefield hospitals saved many soldiers from death by gangrene.
The morality of killing or inflicting severe pain depends, then, not only on the nature of the act, but on the circumstances and motive.
The Beltway Snipers deserved death sentences. The Navy Seal snipers who killed those three Somali pirates and saved Captain Richard Phillips deserve medals.
Consider now Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, mastermind of 9-11, which sent 3,000 Americans to horrible deaths, and who was behind, if he did not do it himself, the beheading of Danny Pearl.
Even many opponents against torture will concede we have the same right to execute Khalid Mohammed as we did Timothy McVeigh. But if we have a right to kill him, do we have no moral right to waterboard him for 20 minutes to force him to reveal plans and al-Qaida accomplices to save thousands of American lives?
Americans are divided.
“Rendition,” a film based on a true story, where an innocent man suspected of belonging to a terrorist cell is sent to an Arab country and tortured, won rave reviews.
But more popular was “Taken,” a film in which Liam Neeson, an ex-spy, has a daughter kidnapped by white slavers in Paris, whom he tortures for information to rescue her and bring her home.
Certainly, Cheney and Bush, who make no apologies for what they authorized to keep America safe for seven and a half years, should be held to account. But so, too, should Barack Obama, if U.S. citizens die in a terror attack the CIA might have prevented, had its interrogators not been tied to an Army Field Manual written for dealing with soldiers, not al-Qaida killers who favor “soft targets” such as subways, airliners and office buildings.
COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.
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1 Comment by John Seiler on 28 April 2009:
Pat is just wrong on this one.
Torture already is filtering through the whole U.S. “justice” system, right down to your local police precinct. As Paul Craig Roberts has detailed, local police have been federalized. Your local cops now commonly give you “orders,” as if you were an Iraqi civilian under occupation. See William Norman Grigg’s site for numerous, and mounting, evidence of the abuse of U.S. civilians by their own local police. (http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/)
This is all the result of Bush pushing torture of Iraqi and other civilians. He, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Gonzales, Condi, and others should be prosecuted for their violations of U.S. law, the Geneva Conventions, and simple common decency.
Otherwise, you and your family could be subjected to the torture and humiliation shown in the Abu Ghraib photos.
2 Comment by John Seiler on 28 April 2009:
I didn’t see the “Rendition” movie Pat mentions. But I did see “Taken.” Did he see it?
In the most gruesome scene, Liam Neeson uses electric torture on the head Albanian who kidnapped his daughter in Paris to turn her into a white slave. He promises the Albanian that, if he talks, the torture will end. The Albanian talks. Neeson then turns UP the strength of the electric shocks — and leaves.
Is this what we want Americans to be doing?
And let’s remember that it was the U.S. government’s bombing of Serbia, killing 5,000 Christian Serbs, that created an “independent” Kosovo as a lawless haven for dope peddlers, terrorists, and white slavers. And I know Pat Buchanan opposed that war!
So, the message of “Taken” and of Pat Buchanan is that, after the U.S. government causes a problem with its murderous interventionism, the problem then is “solved” by torturing the criminal products of that interventionism.
By the way, and on a positive note, “Taken” is unique in the recent catalog of Hollywood productions in being in favor of virginity.
3 Comment by Josh Cooney on 28 April 2009:
I agree with Mr. Seiler about the federalized and militarized police force. Cops are becoming younger, more aggresive, and many enter the police force directly from the military. Many of them are examples of the cultural epidemic where we see young angry males just itching to prove their masculinity and authority.
I don’t see this issue on the leftist radar screen nor Obama doing anything to correct it, however.
4 Comment by Bob on 28 April 2009:
Pat says that when the knowledge of torture is made public, it makes us no better than the communist Chinese, etc, as if prior to that knowledge we are not like them. No, Pat. We are already no better than those others because we do torture and have made it “secret law.”
It appears Pat would have the US’s image be like that of a fundamentalist preacher who preaches against homosexuality even as he engages in it.
5 Comment by Gilbert Jacobi on 28 April 2009:
“So, the message of “Taken” and of Pat Buchanan is that, after the U.S. government causes a problem with its murderous interventionism, the problem then is “solved” by torturing the criminal products of that interventionism.”
John Seilor is mistaken to compare the war against Serbia to Iraq. The sheikh was planning 9/11 long before the U.S. invaded Iraq. If any American invasion “caused” him to do this, it was the 1st Gulf war. The waterboarders weren’t trying to solve any Iraq war problem, they wanted to find out what other terror attacks were in the pipeline.
Muslim fanatics have been killing and torturing Westerners since long before America got seriously militarily engaged in the Middle East. The difference today is that now their blood-lust has grown to the point that they are no longer content with isolated victims but want to wipe out whole cities. When it got to that point, it became justified for us to take any means necessary to stop them. It is true this may expose captured American military to retaliation. This is unfortunate, but not as bad as what might happen at home if we unilaterally disarm our interrogators.
6 Comment by C Bowen on 28 April 2009:
There are reports of torture being administered with the intent of “proving” an Iraq-A Q connection. As there was no real evidence of such a connection and it was rather a propaganda point, the purpose of torture applied in that case was not for ‘truth’ but to provide a political talking point–the historical tradition of the purpose of using torture–political, not “national security.”
If the administration, if the military, had bothered to give the death penalty to say, Lydie England et al, maybe the apparatus would have some credibility–but they were cowards, even in that case, and should be called as much.
The real issue is that Obama should offer pardons or go full bore for an investigation. The system is corrupted with these distractions about abstract morality of torture that serve only to make the neat dichotomy feel good about themselves and their various treasons (nation-state and moral.)
7 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 28 April 2009:
The question is not whether torture is ever moral. The question is whether our present rulers can ever be trusted with such power. The answer is obvious. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. That means eternal vigilance against rulers, not against foreign enemies. Let us never forget there would have been no 9/11 if our evil rulers had enforced the law against foreigners. And that in the minds of our rulers, you and I, citizens, are no better than foreign criminals. Wake up.
8 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 28 April 2009:
It is an absolute shame to see Pat Buchanan so wrong on this issue, and it illustrates in stark fashion that Pat Buchanan is still in many respects a creature of the Establishment, of the elite political class in Washington, rather than a defender of the people – of the republic – against that Establishment, for what Pat is endorsing here is nothing short of a two-tiered justice system: one law for powerful elites and another, far less forgiving one for us regular folk.
Pat starts by asking the wrong question: “Is torture ever moral?” The question he should be asking is “Is torture ever legal?” The answer is No. Ergo persons in high office in the United States government may have committed high crimes – war crimes. Atrocities. If there is reason to believe they have – and there are more than ample reasons to – then the United States is *compelled* to investigate and prosecute these crimes as per the Convention Against Torture treaty, which should be familiar to Buchanan as it was signed into law by his hero Ronald Reagan while Pat was advising the man. *Compelled* to investigate, I say: It is a violation of US and international law to elect otherwise.
Pat believes that when “the knowledge of torture is made public, as invariably it is, it besmirches America’s good name and serves as a recruiting poster for our enemies and a justification to use the same degrading methods on our men and women”. That knowledge already is public. Our good name is already besmirched, and our behavior already acts as a recruiting tool for our enemies. But to investigate these crimes, to abide by our treaties and Constitution, to re-establish and then uphold the Rule of Law – that is the only path to restoring our national honor.
It is irrelevant whether Americans are “divided” as to the morality of torture. The law is not. And Pat should know “that in America the law is king”. No man in a republic of laws stands above the law, regardless of public opinion, regardless of his position or influence. The US has the harshest criminal justice system in the world – we imprison more of our citizens than any nation in the history of the world. Pat argues here that this law – this stern, unforgiving, inflexible law that sends such a massive portion of our citizenry to prison – is only for the little people; that the elites, the powerful, the men who make and enforce these harsh laws should be outside them, even when – as in this case – they break the very worst of those laws egregiously. Even when they commit war crimes.
Reject Buchanan’s position: it is un-American. Powerful men have broken our republic’s laws and besmirched our country’s honor. Our laws compel us to investigate and prosecute these crimes. One can either support investigations and the Rule of Law, or support immunity for elite lawbreakers and a two-tiered justice system wherein working people are punished mercilessly even for victimless crimes while elites are free to commit the most heinous crimes imaginable with no accountability whatever.
9 Comment by Samuel Bass on 28 April 2009:
Amen, Dr. Wilson. Has the US occupation been innocemt of the hitting of “soft targets,” like wedding parties, for instance? Or, under Clinton, the repeated bombing of water treatment facilities? Were the hundreds of thousands of children (Mrs. Albright’s worthy sacrifices) military targets? Would Mr. Buchanan then sanction torture, by whatever name he wishes to call it, to prevent further atrocities of this sort from happening? A Democrat in the White House seems to bring Mr. Buchanan back to the Republican fold, with all the intellectual inconsistency (to be least unkind) that entails.
10 Comment by Etienne Gervaise on 28 April 2009:
@1 & 2 John
The government causes all of the worst problems in this country. Nowadays, buildings that I used to enter freely 10 years ago require that I submit to humiliating treatment by mohammedans, or else clean out my pockets in the presence of animals who hang out in front of liquor stores in their free time. The local police are at least better disciplined. Thanks for the DHS Mr. Conservative Bush!
Specific problems include forcing banks to make loans to the unqualified or else face charges of racism at the hands of the Justice Department. A mere 5% default rate in the US sent the world market into a tailspin. A flood of illegal immigrants that has not been checked adds gasoline to that fire.
Airline travel? I don’t even want to list how bad an experience that’s become in 40 years.
Dumbing down schools in order to weed out those who’ve learned to think rather than regurgitate political correctness to dim-witted students.
Foreign aid to our enemies, oh Lord I could go on for days.
Repeat after me, “The government is the problem. The can never be the solution.”
11 Comment by Etienne Gervaise on 28 April 2009:
Maybe we should start waterboarding limp-wristed reporters, and follow that up with the scuzziest members of the tort bar. Recidivist criminals should be deported to their homelands.
12 Comment by Paul D. Alexander on 28 April 2009:
With all due respect, what evidence does the US government have that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is, indeed, the “mastermind” of the 9/11 atrocity? Or that he was behind the beheading of Daniel Pearl? All we have is their word for it, and surely we realize by now that the US government, like all governments, is surrounded by the stench of lies.
And that the government’s word is worth about what a fiat-money paper dollar is worth.
13 Comment by Nicholas Moses on 28 April 2009:
Obama is opposed to prosecutions and to “Truth Commissions” because he doesn’t want to set a precedent for his own prosecution if down the road he decides to start waterboarding “right-wing extremists” singled out by the DHS. How about THAT?
I largely agree with the other posters. It does not matter whether torture can be moral. The contemporary U.S. government is morally incapable of exerting force on behalf of the general welfare of the nation.
14 Comment by J Meng on 28 April 2009:
I saw TAKEN and it had no redeeming qualities in terms of a moral. Although it was a brilliantly shot and edited cinemagraphic action-adventure, saturated with special effects, violence and emotion (which actually drives the film), it allowed for almost every violation of law by both the “good” guy and the “bad” guys. Liam Neeson’s character does everything possible to obtain leads on his yuppie daughter’s whereabouts (who got herself into the mess in the first place, because she had disobeyed her father), from murder to even shooting a former French colleague’s wife in the shoulder at dinner in their home to get the husband to talk. Yes, blood flows and nothing is sacred in this one. And the ending is so uplifting: Liam brings his spoiled daughter back to America and to a female rock star (whom he saved from a kidnapping attempt in the beginning of the movie) who has promised to teach his daughter how to sing so she can be a rock star. There is no conversion to something higher; just another piece of homage to decayed art and yuppieism. If you want fast-paced action and lots of it, and have little concern for substance, I highly recommend this movie. But, don’t take your children.
15 Comment by MAP on 29 April 2009:
Count on Dr. Wilson @ 7 to cut to the core of the topic. “eternal vigilance against rulers, not against foreign enemies” Words of wisdom and truth.
16 Comment by Eagle on 29 April 2009:
Movies may be a silly way of explaining the situation. Particularly ones like ‘Taken’ which play on the emotions of parents who would not be objective in similar circumstances. But if we are to use Hollywood movies to discuss the situation, then I propose ‘A Few Good Men’. In it Jack Nicholson’s character musters a strong case for his behavior as a ruthless leader of warriors, but in the end the law triumphs and a message based on principle is punctuated.
Mr. Toddard does an excellent job of making the argument against torture on legal grounds. Clearly it is illegal.
More important, still, is the moral argument, which I believe is equally clear.
To those that would claim “it works”. Let’s for a second say that it does? What if waterboarding worked on only 5% of the known terrorists? What next to get more results? Would we kidnap their mothers and gouge their eyes out in front of them? Maybe take their daughters and rape them? When all else fails, should we just nuke the entire middle east? Hey, it might save some lives “over here”. What good does it do us if we become no better than or worse than the worst of them?
And, yes, it’s true that much of the terrorism we are experiencing may well be a result of ‘blowback’ and not merely the execution of Islamic political will. Though, to be objective, the true Mohameddan believers would like jihad regardless of the levels of intervention. But to beat those lunatics one cannot be fooled into becoming like them. We should not become pacifists either. We should restrict immigration, regulate trade with Islamic enemies very tightly, and apply political and cultural pressures. Maybe even expel them from the west.
In the end, though, I believe it is not the sword that will defeat Islam; it will be the example of Christendom and all its superior traits. We can see that this is already having an impact in some Islamic societies, only to be reveresed by heavy-handed military intervention, political meddling, and cultural intervention with the distribution of the west’s pornographic entertainment.
The trully brave maintain their integrity. And only they can attain a true and lasting victory.
17 Comment by Grumpy Old Man on 29 April 2009:
Pat’s very good on interventionism and the follies of Empire, but he’s wrong here; in fact, he seems to agree with Commentary on this issue, of all things. It seems Pat has a residual attachment to chest-pounding patrioteering. One can be a man’s man without being brutal, and a leader without being demagogic.
Most of the people caught up in the “anti-terror” dragnet appear to have been caught almost at random, sold by their local rivals for reward money, etc. If ever there really were a ticking bomb and someone roughed up a conspirator to find it, I doubt any jury would convict. However, that’s a red herring, something that happens rarely if ever.
What we have in reality is greased feet sliding down a slippery slope toward brutalization and tyranny.
18 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 29 April 2009:
We ought to make a clear distinction in our thinking between what is done by governments with calculation and what may justly be done by harmed private persons or even in the heat of battle. I have not seen “Taken” but I gather it concerns private vengeance–a very different thing from government torture.
19 Comment by Sean Scallon on 30 April 2009:
“But if we have a right to kill him, do we have no moral right to waterboard him for 20 minutes to force him to reveal plans and al-Qaida accomplices to save thousands of American lives?”
But what if waterboarding doesn’t work? Then what? Electric shock treatment? Make stand naked with dogs in front of him or pile on top of a human pyramid of prisoners? Where does it end until we get the information we need to stop an attack? So sadism is okay so long it protects the nation-state? And thus must the child be sacrificed to Molech so to provide a good harvest?
That is why supposedly civilized republics refrain from torturing anyone and why they sign treaties to make sure their fellow nations do not do so either. It’s that simple. And if once again the low level soldiers and agents who are asked to do the dirty work are punished with prison and court martials while the policy makers who justfy such behavior get off scot-free as they usually do, then we will show once again within our empire, only the “little people” go to jail or die in war while their masters get to profit from their memoirs as not doubt messers. Cheney and Bush II will do.
20 Comment by David Collins on 30 April 2009:
“One may not do evil so that good may result from it.” I remember reading that in the Catechism of the Catholic Church; as far as I’m concerned, waterboarding, even to save lives, is evil.
Pat’s so wrong.
21 Comment by Gilbert Jacobi on 30 April 2009:
@7Dr. Wilson and @20David
While keeping in mind Dr. Wilson’s reminder of the capacity of our own government to do evil, which I overlooked in my post, I would say to Mr. Collins that if good resulted from it, it must not have been evil.
22 Comment by Fred Breisch on 30 April 2009:
No matter what results from it, it is evil.
23 Comment by David Collins on 1 May 2009:
The end never justifies the means, Mr. Jacobi.
24 Comment by Nicholas MOSES on 1 May 2009:
@19: With all due respect, and I do not mean to mock you, but to illustrate a point, what are these “supposedly civilized republics”? Materialistic post-World War II United States, decadent post-Imperial Great Britain (a functional republic in all but name for ages now) and atheist revolutionary France? Many republics, empires and kingdoms far surpassing our levels of moral consciousness and civilisation have employed torture. (It would be remiss not to observe that nearly all contemporary “civilized republics” also believe capital punishment to be cruel and unusual.) Certainly, that fact does not justify the practise; nevertheless, part of the reason why most of us react with such visceral horror at the idea is the fact that the modern educational apparati of such societies as the three prior have drilled it into us.
Now, one can certainly make the case that applying “restricted” torture such that the practise does not stray into dismemberment or sadistic cruelty is ultimately impossible; indeed, this seems to have been the judgment reached by the Catholic Church after watching legitimate attempts at extracting information come to naught during the Inquisition. But the fact remains that the Church proscribe the practice in totality until the 19th century. I’m not saying that wasn’t a wise decision, just that torture was not considered magisterially “evil.”
25 Comment by jose goldfinger on 1 May 2009:
It’s surprising that so many readers of this site have accepted the BS that “enhanced” interrogation is morally wrong, is never justified, nation of laws, etc., etc. If “enhanced” interrogation works and saves American lives, it’s not only ok, it’s criminally negligent if it’s not used. End of story. Abuse for amusement is not ok and any a******s who are caught playing that game deserve a swift kick in the ass.
There is a much stronger case for prosecuting the fools that constructed the “wall of separation” between the CIA and FBI than those who were actually concerned about protecting our citizens.
Final thought – Anyone who really believes that the Sons of Islam are going to make nice with our captives if we are nice to theirs is not in touch with reality.
26 Comment by Nicholas Moses on 1 May 2009:
@25: I tend to agree, at least to the extent that a debate on torture ought to address principally the questions of 1. whether it goes so far as to violate the morally inviolable, 2. whether such limitations can be reasonably checked, and 3. whether it can be a necessary or effective means of extracting information. As to the first point, I challenge anyone to explain to me why, if detention, seizure of goods or capital punishment is ever an acceptable means of administering judgment, the infliction of pain–provided the infliction does not cause serious permanent mutilation or involve sexual misconduct–without killing must necessarily be unacceptable. As to the second and third points, the jury is still out.
27 Comment by Eagle on 1 May 2009:
I am appalled with this line of reasoning which is indeed inconsistent with a civilized and Christian republic.
I would underscore my points at post #16 by once again saying: The trully brave maintain their integrity. And only they can attain a true and lasting victory.
And I would repeat Professor Wilson’s admonition to not confuse personal vengeance with government policy. The decision-making for both is entirely different.
28 Comment by Kirt Higdon on 1 May 2009:
#26 – Why have restrictions on serious permanent mutilation or sexual misconduct? Surely permanent mutilation is less serious than death and it certainly is not clear to me why it could be justified to torture a prisoner’s lungs by water-boarding, but not her genitals and breasts by electro-shock.
It is disgusting and disheartening to hear and read Christians trying to justify torture and even to read of the latest Pew Research survey that frequent church goers are more likely to favor frequent or occasional torture than those who seldom or never go to church. Why the search for loopholes? Why imply it’s OK as long as it’s private vengeance? This is not even smart in worldly terms; remember that the agencies and instruments of coercion are in the hands of our enemies, who consider us “terrorists”.
29 Comment by DAVE ST.JOHN on 1 May 2009:
This Buchanan reader is sorely disappointed in Pat’s approval of torture. I am ashamed of my country and I am ashamed for Mr. Buchanan and Taki Mag as well.
30 Comment by Eagle on 1 May 2009:
Mr. Higdon,
By reminding about the difference between vengeance and policy I was in no way implying that it is OK to torture, simply that when we put scenarios in our mind to contextualize the decision-making around torture one can understand how the empassioned person would be driven to the wrong behavior under personal rather than national circumstances. This is not to condone it, but to understand it. It applies to the discussion around the film ‘Taken’.
That said, I am also disheartened by the justifications for torture as policy being posted here.
31 Comment by Kirt Higdon on 1 May 2009:
One neo-con reviewer (I don’t recall which) gleefully endorsed Taken as a 9/11 vengeance film because the bad guys were Moslems and the final bad guy to be slain, a degenerate Arab shiek. The reviewer said that explained the movie’s popularity and I think he was largely right. National policy of torture and summary execution was being justified by personalizing it, though the personal circumstances not to mention the hero’s feats were as improbable as movies of that sort generally are. But it was entertaining, well acted and well produced over all. That is what makes movies of that type so dangerous.
32 Comment by Eagle on 1 May 2009:
It is somewhat like the Tom Clancy novels of the 1980-90s and their movie versions. They are great propoganda – well written, but unrealistic. They conned many a good person because they represented what many good people wanted in their public figures, diplomats, and the military. Who wouldn’t want the Jack Ryan’s of the world running things? Trouble is the real world’s retired investment bankers who run Washington have neither the integrity nor bravery of a Jack Ryan.
33 Comment by Dan W on 1 May 2009:
Just for the sake of argument: If the Germans during WWII had tortured downed US or British aircrew for information, they might have been able to use the information to save tens of thousands of innocent women and children who were killed in bombing raids. Even if the aircrews did not know the next city to be bombed, at least the pilot and navigator would have in his head a shortlist of alternative targets if weather prohibited attacking the main target.
A systematic gathering of coerced information might have been compiled to give advance warning and evacuate people from the cities likely to be hit next. There would hardly be any risk of getting the wrong guys, either, anyone arriving in Germany 1943 by parachute was no doubt an enemy combatant.
For the price of causing a temporary discomfort to these men, thousands of innocent lives could have been saved. So is torture ever moral? It seems the Germans knew, but present-day Americans do not.
34 Comment by Tom Eddlem on 2 May 2009:
The Bush administration’s policy of “harsh treatment” can be summarized as “causing as much and as unbearable pain as possible without leaving a mark.” That pretty much defines torture.
Pat Buchanan asks “do we have no moral right to waterboard him for 20 minutes?” and then says “Americans are divided.” But under a constitutional system of government, the people don’t vote on it. It doesn’t matter what the people think. It’s already prohibited by the Eighth Amendment ban on “cruel and unusual punishments” and criminalized in our legal code as a felony.
If there are no prosecutions in the face of our former top leaders confessing to committing felonies almost daily on national television, do we need any more proof that we are no longer a nation of laws?
35 Comment by Nicholas MOSES on 3 May 2009:
@28: Mr. Higdon, forgive me, but I’m not sure I understand that slippery slope. If “permanent mutilation is less serious than death,” then does that mean that if capital punishment is ever justified, then every form of non-killing torture conceivable must necessarily be justified as well? Or is any form of punishment or any deliverance of criminal justice by the hands of man unjustifiable?
I may not speak for everyone, but I do believe it is possible to do worse things to a man than to kill him. As for the torture a female prisoner via the means you have hypothesised, I can only confess that I am chauvinist enough to believe that men and women, at least to some extent, ought to be treated differently, the fairer sex perhaps a bit more delicately than my own.
Regarding the political views of the average American Christian, we may continue to be disillusioned, though I think most of us on this forum have long understood that “Christianity” in the United States counts for very little, sociologically speaking. Nevertheless, I maintain my case that torture as interrogation and Christianity are not unflinchingly incompatible. I don’t know what Mr. Higdon’s particular confession is, though I’m remembering that he is, like myself, a Roman Catholic. I base my views on the following premises:
1. that the Catholic Church and the Popes officially approved of torture for interrogation in the Inquisitions, even if the more prudent clerics had serious reservations therein, and
2. that countries far more civilized and far more deeply Christian than the United States have practiced torture far more regularly.
Again, I readily acknowledge that the Catholic Church ultimately found the grave difficulties of prudent application of interrogative torture difficult or impossible to overcome and so abolished the practice, and even acknowledge that this was a prudent and quite possibly overdue action. I also acknowledge that the mere fact of the practice of torture by true believers justifies its practice neither by the former nor by cynical atheists masquerading as Evangelical Protestants.
However, I also believe that some people, including truly conservative Christians, are given to unwarranted moral panic about this and other issues.
36 Comment by J Meng on 3 May 2009:
@31, Kirt Higdon: I must admit that when I watched TAKEN I made no connection like the neo-con reviewer as a 9/11 vengeance film. You are right, Liam Neeson’s character epitomized national policy in a personal way. And you are right, again, because of its cinemagraphic and technical proficiency it is a very dangerous film: brilliant propaganda. If you remember, Hollywood was instrumental in shaping American opinion favorably towards the British prior to our entry into WWII.
37 Comment by Bob Johnson on 3 May 2009:
“Let us never forget there would have been no 9/11 if our evil rulers had enforced the law against foreigners.”
This is so important a point, Prof. Wilson.
The threat of terrorism in America is a lot like the fools of medieval courts: however disruptive said fools may have sometimes seemed to the system, they were only there because they were allowed to be by the individual at the apex of the system.
It is imprudent to support taking drastic measures (especially measures that set dangerous precedents) for the sake of giving one side an advantage in what is basically a consensual game the US Government decides to play with certain extragovernmental groups having their origin in the Middle East.
38 Comment by Bob Johnson on 3 May 2009:
Also, if one hold that the government lacks the right to search property for evidence without a court order, it is untenable to hold that the government posseses the right to torture without a court order.
39 Comment by Kirt Higdon on 4 May 2009:
#34 – Mr. Moses, your search for a torture loophole becomes increasingly confusing. First, let’s be clear what we are talking about here – torture to gain information or confession, not any infliction of pain for the purpose of punishment. Even fanatics who would refer to a parent’s swatting of a child as child abuse would not call it torture.
Some people may find certain things worse than death, but mutilation is generally not one of them, since the vast majority of people are willing to suffer amputations or organ removals for the sake of saving their lives. You base your objection to the sexual torture of women on male chauvinism – what we use to call chivalry. Of course while there have been isolated instances of sexual torture of females by US forces, the vast majority of cases of sexual torture by US forces are performed by male and female interrogators against male prisoners. This gets a pass from you?
Your citing the official approval of torture by the papacy at various times conflates infallibility and impecability and broadens both to an extent which would startle even the most ultra of ultramontanists. Do you really believe that a pope is incapable of material sin or error in any official act? You probably don’t since you hedge by pointing out the imprudence of torture. But if a pope is capable of material sin against the virtue of prudence, he’s capable of material sin against other virtues – charity for example.
Approving torture because countries more civilized and Christian than the US (no very high standard) have practiced torture more is even more irrelevant. Without knowing what countries you’re talking about I can’t judge whether I agree with you on their merits, but in any event you can’t justify specific sins by overall good conduct.
This discussion reminds me a lot of the position taken by many rightists concerning Truman’s nuclear bombing of Japan. The right becomes the apologists for the crimes of the left. Rather than take advantage of this moment to uproot the culture of torture from our midst, a culture at least dating back to when Nazi prisoners were tortured to force confession to war crimes, the conservatives set themselves to the task of finding some torture justifying loophole.
40 Comment by Gilbert Jacobi on 4 May 2009:
@33 Dan W
It’s a stretch to compare the attitude of America’s political class toward their constituents, contemptuous though it is, to that of the Nazis toward the German people. Hitler was warned many times that the cities should and could be much better protected by shifting fighter aircraft from marginally useful tactical ground support missions to the strategic imperative of intercepting bombers. But since making offensive war was Hitler’s raison d’etre, the cities were left to the uncetain protection of anti-aircraft artillery. I am not sure you are correct that torture was not used on Allied aircrews, but in any case, it was no mystery what their targets were. The Nazis certainly used torture where they thought it would yield militarily useful information, as against French and Eastern European partisans, to prevent sabotage.
@13 Nicholas Moses …” It does not matter whether torture can be moral. The contemporary U.S. government is morally incapable of exerting force on behalf of the general welfare of the nation.”
As skeptical as I am about government, I’m not prepared to agree with such a blanket condemnation. What those of us who have defended a limited use of torture are doing is not justifying torture, but rather justifying America’s right to exist, which we implicitly give up if we refuse to use any means of thwarting a massive attack.
41 Comment by Dan W on 4 May 2009:
@ Gilbert Jacobi,
No intent here to compare the American political class of today with the Nazis. That would be silly.
I am sure you are right about Nazi captors on several occasions torturing their prisoners.
Still, there was no systematic gathering of information, by torture, from captured Allied aircrews. And these men did have valuable bits of information that could have been compiled to save tens of thousands of German lives. They had been briefed on alternative targets and they knew which targets had been cancelled on earlier raids. The next targets were not known to the Germans. The cities were filled with refugees and there was no way to evacuate them as a precaution.
If the Germans had employed the logic and methods of the recent US administration, they could just as handily have made their case to justify systematic torture.Fortunately, they did not.
42 Comment by Fr. David A. Bosnich on 4 May 2009:
Mr. David Collins is correct. The Catechism of the Catholic Church condemns torture by name. In Veritatis Splendor, the late Pope John Paul II lists torture as an intrinsically evil act. This means that it is never justified under any circumstances. Waterboarding is a torture tactic if ever there was one. I was apalled to see Mr. Raymond Arroyo and Fr. Robert Sirico on EWTN claiming that “enhanced interrogation tactics” such as waterboarding might be validated by the just war theory. These neoconservative Catholics argue that we do not have enough information to make a judgement. Nonsense. Waterboarding and all torture must stop now.
43 Comment by Gilbert Jacobi on 4 May 2009:
@40 Dan W
My point was that, whatever the Nazi’s reason for not torturung captured aircrew, it wasn’ because they were morally superior to “present day Americans”.
44 Comment by Kirt Higdon on 5 May 2009:
#39 – Mr. Jacobi, no country has a “right to exist” that supercedes the moral law established by God. Did the Hittite kingdom have a right to exist? Did Yugoslavia? Zionist rhetoric notwithstanding, not even Israel has a right to exist. God originally commanded the establishment of Israel, but allowed it to fall and pass out of existence when the Israelites failed to heed the warnings of his prophets.
BTW, I am pleased to note that such Catholic writers as Mark Shea and Scott Richert have been pointing out in various venues Pope John-Paul II’s condemnation of torture as “intrinsically evil”.
45 Comment by John Médaille on 5 May 2009:
Apparently, Pat has not heard that some actions are intrinsically evil in themselves, and that the ends do not justify the means. The state of Catholic moral catechises is appalling. We always liked to blame this on the left, and to some degree that is certainly correct. But there is some of the smoke of Satan on the right as well.
If no acts are intrinsically evil, Pat, can’t abortion be just as easily justified?
46 Comment by Nicholas MOSES on 6 May 2009:
@39: First of all, yes, I would agree that we are talking about interrogation and not punishment. I am in full agreement that, as a rule, the acceptable threshold of pain for interrogation should be much lower than that for punishment (so that while the influction of death or even mutilation may be acceptable forms of criminal punishment, they would not be acceptable methods of interrogation).
As for sexual torture, no, of course they do not get a pass! What I was referring to was the torturing of females AT ALL. But I readily admit I was far from clear. Also, I feel I should apologise for my flippant use of the word “chauvinist.” I am like you: I do not consider that word, as it is used by most feminists, to describe a particularly relevant concept.
Third, yes, of course popes as individuals are well capable of error. I readily conceded that the official authorisation of torture during the Inquisition was most probably not, at least, a wise move. Did these popes commit a sin by authorising it, many centuries before Veritatis Splendor? That is a question I would feel presumptuous attempting to answer.
Finally, I understand that torture was used for interrogation in Europe in the past, until the last few centuries. I readily noted that the practice of torture by Churchmen or by countries who were, on average, more moral than our own, does not justify its practise on our part. I am of the opinion, however, that of all the signs of our civilisational decay and pathetic state of dechristianisation, the sight of a Christian at least considering the theoretical acceptability of torture for interrogation ought not register fairly high on the list of things that should appall or disgust us. But maybe I am reading too much into the tones of electronically written posts.
I am bowing out because if I do not, I will never finish updating my books.