More on torture

My earlier post on torture provoked a strong reaction where it was originally posted. Most of it negative, coming from people who didn't see why I had to talk about ideas so much. Their assertion was that war was a matter of going out and kicking butt, and torture (when necessary) is a form of that, so what's the big deal.

Here are some followup posts. I realize that the element of continuity is lost when I post only what I said, but for the most part my statements were complete enough in themselves to not need a whole lot of context. My posts are copied below in blue text.

The war in Iraq is a war of ideas. In the end, all wars are wars of ideas. The day the US loses the moral high ground is the day the US will cease to matter in world affairs.

We are in a unique position today, with the most powerful economy and military in the world. This is not a happy accident. It is because the US constitution has for over 200 years protected us from the tyranny of the state, promoting freedom and respect for individual rights, creating an atmosphere in which people are encouraged to do their best because they hope with some confidence that their efforts will be rewarded. More than anything else, the US is an idea, which has grown strong because it is an idea that appeals to whatever is good and virtuous in so many of us, in the US and abroad.

We are at war right now. The state of war, in itself, is an emergency which suspends many of the considerations and decencies of ordinary life. I am all for winning the war, but I do not believe that any war can be won in the long term by sacrificing our own values. I do not care how many people we have to kill to win this war and to minimize our own losses. Killing people has a long tradition in democracies. Our laws have always allowed killing in self-defense, in legal executions. Wars are a matter of self-defense; we don’t fight to conquer new territories any more.

But our laws don’t allow torture. This is because the majority of people see a difference between killing and torture. While there are many situations where killing might be necessary, there are none which have proven to be a convincing justification for torture, as can be seen in the political will of our people and the actions of our courts. We have fought many wars since independence. All wars involve cruelties and excesses at times, but we have a long tradition of punishing our own soldiers when they cross the line between fighting a war, and the rape, murder and plunder of a conquered people.

This is what separates us from those whom we fight. This is why decent people can continue to support us, and continue to call our cause moral after we leave mangled corpses and smoking craters in the enemy’s countryside.

Now there is a group of people who would change this. They claim that war justifies anything, that it breaks all the rules, and that there is no imperative other than to survive. This is happy talk. It makes some of us feel all tough and manly and hairy-chested. It makes some of us feel like we have a unique grasp on reality, which the pansy bleeding heart types can’t begin to see from the comfort of their armchairs.

This is not true. History shows us that militaries might win battles, but only ideas can win wars. The war against terrorism is a war of ideas, which pits civilization against barbarism. We can’t win it by becoming barbarians ourselves.

There is justification for being flexible, for adapting to the new conditions of war. No one before our times has faced the possibility of terrorists armed with weapons of mass destruction. This is a new situation, which perhaps calls for new rules. Many of us see this, which is why there is talk of permitting torture in specific conditions. That was the purpose of my original post – to try to define why, when and how a free country could permit itself to resort to torture.

This post produced more protests. The points raised were:

1. Ideas don't win wars, the military does. Our military has won every war for us, with the exception of Vietnam, and that was because "we failed in our will". Ideas are useful for making the peace easier, but they are not necessary.

2. Why do we talk about whether or not to torture. Perhaps waterboarding isn't torture. Shouldn't we instead talk about what kind of activities are perhaps extreme questioning and what crosses the line into torture?

My response is copied below (in blue text).

Vietnam is no exception. As you say, Vietnam was lost because we lost our will, which is another way of saying that we lost the war of ideas against our own populace. You can lose Iraq the same way, when the majority of Americans decide that they no longer support the war. The war of ideas is not fought just against the enemy; it is first fought within your own culture, among your own people, to acquire and sustain their support for your military actions. If you break their trust, if you ignore their values, if you resort to torture when your own people consider torture contemptible and uncivilized, then you lose their backing for your military adventures. The reaction of many Americans when the Abu Ghraib pictures were published is a small indication. We DID lose some of our resolve for this war when we saw those pictures. We lose more every day with the trickle of news stories about yet more torture revelations. If you think it is only among the liberals who were anti-war anyway, then you are kidding yourself.

I do not talk about what constitutes torture because it is stupid and unnecessary. Talking about specifics before you agree on principles is a waste of time. It is the quickest way to bog down a discussion with intricacies and irrelevancies while you avoid looking at the big picture that is staring at you in the face.

We are not lacking a definition of torture. Our courts have been establishing what is torture and what is proper interrogation in police lockups, holding cells and jails for decades. It is disingenuous to claim that the argument is about what constitutes torture. We know it already. Do you want to know if a particular method is proper interrogation or torture? Apply it to a suspect being questioned in police custody, then ask a court to rule on it.

If we were talking about things that our courts allow on our own prisoners and suspects, there would be no need for this discussion. The fact is, we are definitely talking about stuff beyond that allowed by the courts. Whether it is waterboarding, or pulling out fingernails with pliers is irrelevant. You can argue about degrees of pain and anxiety and humiliation, which are all subjective things. The real question is, IF there is a pressing need to obtain critical information about an imminent attack on the country, AND torture is the only way to obtain it, THEN do we allow torture or not?

If we do, then the form the torture takes is immaterial to this discussion. I presume it will be a form that is EFFECTIVE, and if effective means pulling out fingernails and crushing testicles, so be it. I presume it will be SUPERVISED, because my country is doing it with my tacit consent, and I want my country to be accountable to me and to every person that votes. I presume it will be RECORDED, so there is no argument about what happened, so we can say at the end “this is what happened, this is why it happened, this is why we think it was necessary."