I think I may have read the wrong article, the one you linked to was just a (slightly arrogant) description of why the Geneva Convention doesn't do shit for the war on terror because the Terror War isn't being fought against a country but against loosely organized factions who never signed any treaties agreeing to certain ground rules for treating prisoners.
If he hadn't mentioend the huge teeth of the guy in the first paragraph in what I assume is meant to be a dig at him, I would say it was completely devoid of feeling or alignment.

yeah. well, it just bothers me the billion and one meaningless ways some conservatives have found to say "it's totally cool if america tortures people." especially this argument which says "we only have to conduct ourselves to the standards of al-qaeda." but if that doesn't bother you then i understand if you don't find the article troubling.

It's totally NOT cool if America tortures anyone.

I'd buy you a drink if I could. The Chicago Boyz are having a blog meet-up:

Sunday, June 20, 11:45 AM

China Garden restaurant
1100 Wilson Blvd
Arlington, VA
(703) 525-5317

They're pretty cool people and they're not all "boyz". Have a nice weekend. --scott

I dont want you to think i stand for the war, against it, or have any political polarization one way or the other, but tactically speaking it seems to me that as long as we're having a war where the opposing force is using torture, it would be intentionally crippling ourselves to not respond in kind.

actually i think it's pretty clear that the torture and all the following revelations of it have weakened our position and moral authority regarding the war beyond repair.

thanks scott :) i might check it out.

Right, I can't really see the tactical advantage we gained by abusing these prisoners. No one has even ventured a suggestion that there was some valuable intelligence gained by this. It was gratuitous. Part of my pride in America has always been that we don't do that, no matter what the other side is doing. You know, like your mother always said, "I don't care if little Susie is torturing prisoners. You're not little Susie!"

Yeah GI Joe always taught me that also...are we talking about the general torture of bad guys to get information or the shameless and vaguely homoerotic abuse of prisoners at Abu-Ghraib?

I don't think a US soldier or official should hesitate to torture someone if it will save untold lives from disaster. But I don't think there should be a legal way to do it. As soon as torture is on the books as legal in the US, it's legal on the books everywhere, and it took a long time to get many nations to recognize international rights in the first place.

What's happening now is that people are breaking the law but saying they should not be punished (or actually in some fine-print sense did not break the law, same thing). That isn't good for anybody.

yeah i mean i'm not naive...i know torture will always happen, even by americans, and it some cases it might be justified. but 1) don't have the president just decide he's like so special and above the law so he can say torture is legal and 2) make sure you're torturing people who are actually really evil and might know stuff. not just people off the street. that's not winning you any points with the iraqi public.

like when keifer sutherland tortures people on 24. i'm down with that.

I think you really read a lot of (what you think is) the ideology of the National Review into that article as background context. All it contained was a legal and probably accurate assessment of the applicability of the Geneva Convention. It did NOT say that torture was broadly acceptable. "Now, this doesn't mean that there aren't other rules governing the behavior of American soldiers, including the Uniform Code of Military Justice. This doesn't mean the military should be free to torture any belligerent who's not party to the Geneva Convention, or that such behavior doesn't carry real costs for American prestige around the world. And this doesn't mean that those responsible for the Abu Ghraib fiasco shouldn't be punished." How much more specific could this guy be? If you threw up in your own mouth, it's your own fucking fault you goddamn nancy.

That being said, I think Kriston is right about not wanting legal torture being on the books, but it being acceptable under certain very limited situations. I think it can be compared to Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War, which was later ruled unconstitutional (AFTER the war was over). Generally regarded as an appropriate decision, but not one we want to legitimize for regular use. Furthermore, the weakening of our moral authority has a lot less to do with the Abu Ghraib scandal and a lot more to do with education and news coverage in the Arab world. When you're taught in public schools that Americans are all evil and every news station shows dead babies all day, blaming Americans for them (without the appropriate context), Abu Ghraib is the expectation, not the aberration.

ah, yes. god forbid i have a visceral reaction to somebody describing in technical detail why it is acceptable for americans to be torturing other people. what was i thinking?

i realize the tone of the article isn't inflammatory, but doesn't it make it any scarier to anyone else that he describes the legality of torture in such a rational manner? i mean i don't care why we are permitted to do this. i mean, just, no. i don't care. i don't care if we can legally torture anybody. we shouldn't be doing it under law. of course torture is acceptable under limited circumstances as long as you have good reason, but not as sanctioned by the united states. jesus. and anybody who takes time to reason out why it's legally okay disgusts me.

I don't think a US soldier or official should hesitate to torture someone if it will save untold lives from disaster.

yeah i mean i'm not naive...i know torture will always happen, even by americans, and it some cases it might be justified.

You can't have it both ways. --s

Yes you can. It's a thesis that Mark Bowden outlined a while back in Atlantic Monthly. Basically, it's hypothetically possible that the US could capture the one guy that knows where the nuclear bomb is stashed, a la Tom Clancy novels, and it would be eminently justifiable to do what it takes to make him talk. It's hypothetically possible, and extremely unlikely. More likely is that the US would capture the guy who knows where a regular bomb is planted, which could save hundreds or dozens or a couple of lives. Now it's sort of a philosophical issue whether it's as justifiable to torture to save dozens as it is to save millions.

But in a way, it all doesn't matter very much, because 1) it's all very unlikely, 2) the issue scales dramatically depending on your hypotheticals/personal ethics, and 3)any ease of restrictions on torture endangers US troops, since any nation could claim national security. So I'm saying that if torture absolutely must be committed, then let it be done, and let the commander who issues the order be convicted for breaking the law. Sacrifice. Sometimes it's worth doing illiberal things in order to protect liberal democracy, but that's an arena for the individual to act, not the state--which should continue promoting the unambiguous application of the rule of law, freedom, apple pie, etc.

maybe i haven't made it clear: i understand that torture is sometimes necessary and can save dozens or hundreds of lives, and in those cases, as rare as they may be, i think it's okay. what i find throw-up-able is torture in any way being legal in the united states. the people, from the team that wrote the memo saying bush was above the law in regards to torture, to jonah goldberg who explain why it's technically okay, are gross and disgusting and i don't care if you think i'm overreacting. also, everything that kriston so eloquently says, especially this: "Sacrifice. Sometimes it's worth doing illiberal things in order to protect liberal democracy, but that's an arena for the individual to act, not the state."

wow. Where did this thread come from? How did I miss it so completely? I just wandered in here from Scott's site, in fact...

I gotta say, I disagree strongly with you, Kriston. Admitting the propriety of an action will produce legal or practical protections for it. You can't produce a legal system that relies on vigilante justice in order to achieve its goals. Winks and nods need to be kept to a minimum.

As I just got done mentioning in a thread at Burton Terrace, in general I believe in rule utilitarianism. You might therefore think I'd be up for the hypothetical moral calculus that inevitably accompanies these torture arguments. But I'm not.

I think that in a perfect rhetorical vacuum, torture can be justified. In practice, allowing, excusing or considering it conflicts with a number of other sometimes impractical but nevertheless important principles that we've developed and would do well to stick with: the presumption of innocence; due process; a desire to be merciful. Admitting that torture can be justified is part of an acceptance of an inhumane realpolitik mindset that can lead to some very ugly things.

So yeah, sometimes the pain of some innocents is worth less than the heads of some evildoers. But I think there are principles that are worth more than either.

All of the preceding assumes that torture is an effective means of gathering intelligence, which is an assumption about which I'm not at all confident.

Catherine, your reaction to that article is completely inappropriate. You're acting like he said things he simply did not say. You stated that the article was "somebody describing in technical detail why it is acceptable for americans to be torturing other people." That is inaccurate. His argument was that the Geneva Convention did not prevent american torture of terrorists. That is all. He did NOT say it was necessarily acceptable. In fact, he specifically states that the Uniform Code of Military Justice is still applicable and that those who used torture at Abu Ghraib could still be punished. That is not condoning torture.

We live under the rule of law. If we, as a society, want to completely ban torture in all situations (which is not so clearly the right decision as you may think), then we can do so by passing laws, signing treaties, etc. But we don't just read into past treaties and laws interpretations that we now find convenient. That's not how democracy works (or at least, should work).

Also, in response to Tommy's post.... I don't think that admitting that torture can be justified necessarily puts us in a worse place than we are right now. I mean, we think killing is justified in some situations, right? That's worse than torture, in my mind, but you're not prepared to say that all war is unacceptable are you? In a perfect ideal world, both would be completely unacceptable. But we live in the real world, and with real world exigencies sometimes shit has to happen.

This is not to say that I encourage torture. Personally, were I in charge of these things, I doubt I'd ever see a situation where I find it to be justified. But I can see the argument in some situations, and it's certainly not enough to make me throw up in my own mouth.