Sunday, November 05, 2006



Convenient secrecy

The CIA is trying to bar detainees challenging their imprisonment in its secret global gulag from talking about their treatment in court. Why? Because apparently the "alternative interrogation techniques" (otherwise known as "torture") they have been subjected to are classified, and publicly discussing, say, exactly how long they were frozen or hung by the arms for, or how many times CIA torturers beat or waterboarded them, could cause "extremely grave damage to the national security". Of course, this also prevents those detainees from effectively challenging their detention on the basis of mistreatment or that the "evidence" used to justify it is the poison fruit of torture, and it means that they also would not be able to give evidence at any future trial if by some miracle the US comes to its senses and prosecutes the CIA's torturers for what are clear breaches of US law. But I'm sure that has absolutely nothing to do with it...

15 comments:

I feel quite ambivalent about the whole war on terror thing. The real problem here is that the resistance hides within the civilian population, so that they can't be fought without civilian casualties. Concern about this is a relatively recent thing. Past solutions include:

- The Roman Empire just killed everyone anyway ("they made a desert and called it peace")
- The Germans made reprisals against the civilian population.
- The Allies bombed German and Japanese civilians into a state of numb despair.

So while I find the USA's approach, including torture to get intelligence, repugnant, I don't know that I can come up with a better alternative. I know that some of it seems against the 'rules of war'. But under the rules of war they could have bombed Kabul flat before invading Afghanistan. They chose not to.

War is a dirty business. 'Civilised' armies lose. In WWII the Allies were happy to attack the populations that supported their enemies. What has changed?

Posted by Anonymous : 11/05/2006 07:22:00 PM

"War is a dirty business. 'Civilised' armies lose. In WWII the Allies were happy to attack the populations that supported their enemies. What has changed?"

- The public has more information from a freer press
- The public is less tolerant of genocide and torture.

Posted by James : 11/05/2006 10:47:00 PM

A better alternative, KD, would be to simply not attack the civilians at all.

It is a deception to state that the resistance is hiding among the civilian population - the resistance are civilians too.

They are individuals, in their own country, in the towns and cities of their birth, fighting against a foreign invader.

Wouldn't you in similar circumstances?

Posted by Anonymous : 11/05/2006 11:11:00 PM

I think more importantly
'there is no serious threat'
or at least 'no one has recently REALLY hurt a developed country'

at some stage that will fall apart I guess

Posted by Genius : 11/05/2006 11:16:00 PM

Hmnn. Gary, consider Afghanistan for a minute. This country sheltered, supported and encouraged the 9/11 attacks. So they definitely started it. An invasion by the USA is a perfectly reasonable response. If the civilian population are part of the resistance, then they are combatants. This was the view taken in WWII. The resistance is not just defending Afghanistan, but seems keen to continue the war against the west by whatever means.

What is wrong with bombing combatants? The answer is "war is hell" and its fair enough to be anti-war. But, in many respects the USA is being far more restrained that it was 65 years ago.

James, as you say, the public has become less tolerant of attacks on civilians. What worries me is that could easily change. Civlisation is only skin deep. A serious attack, as noted by Genius, could change things dramatically. I think that the Anti-Western extremists don't realise how fickle public opinion is, and how easily it could change. The potential results make me shudder.

Under those circumstances, I'm not sure waterboarding is as bad as firestorm bombing. A combination of engagement with Islam, less oppressive foreign policy and aggressive action against people who want to blow up western cities might be better than the alternative. Western populations have thousands of years of experience in perpetrating large scale murder. We haven't done it for 60 years, but I don't think human nature changes that quickly.

So I am very afraid - of us. In that context, waterboarding doesn't seem quite so bad.

Posted by Anonymous : 11/06/2006 07:21:00 AM

KD – I don’t buy your argument for three reasons:
1 – the product of torture has to be valid for your argument to stand. It’s not. As has been repeatedly demonstrated, people will say anything to stop the pain. Hence the majority of information extracted under torture is essentially worthless.
2 – for it to work you’d have to torture people with information. Unfortunately again, many people targeted for waterboarding have proved as likely to be innocent civilians (dobbed in for a bounty) as terrorists. So now you’re tiptoeing right out onto the far limbs of statistical morality – how many people do you have to torture how badly in order to get a single piece of useful information? And if you fail to get much useful info, do you just torture more people more painfully?
3 – residents of the West are statistically vastly more at risk from local criminals than from terrorists. Why should we exempt local criminals from torture if it’s so effective? And if we should torture them too, then exactly what is left of our “civilisation”?

Civilisation is indeed a thin veneer, and torture pulls us away from it far more than toward it.

Posted by Anonymous : 11/06/2006 11:02:00 AM

Kiwi-donkey:

your argument, I think, is that we shouldn't see torture by the USA of captured 'combatants' as such a bad thing, because
(a) this 'soft' approach (relative to massive bombing) causes less death and destruction, and
(b) doing anything possible to prevent a major attack on US civilians is a good thing, because if such an attack occurred public opinion would quickly become in favour of murdering all the residents of the country which supported the attackers.

correct??

I think the flaws in this are that:

(a) the way the US conducts itself (eg torture in general, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo in particular) is visibly increasing the hatred of that country around the world and drawing reasonable people passionately to the cause of destroying the USA. A large scale attack on the US, with devastating consequences flowing from their blind desire for revenge, is made MORE likely by the current treatment of detainees.

For instance, as a fairly civilised person, I find extradition and torture behind closed doors, without trial of any sort, an abomination when done to ANYONE. It makes my blood boil, but not quite enough to lose my better instincts and try and kill Americans. As a thought exercise though, imagine if those being extradited/tortured were Kiwis who resisted, say, China's invasion of New Zealand. In that case I'd probably take up arms, or at a minimum wish the destruction of the Chinese government.

So the link between torturing in an attempt to get information to 'win' a vague 'war on terror', and having the actual effect of recruiting soldiers to the other side of the 'war', is pretty clear, I hope. Sure, bombing of every Afghan around would be a Bad Thing, but torture is also a Bad Thing. The latter is definitely INCREASING the chance of the large scale attack on a western city that you are worried about. This argument about the counterproductive instrumental role of torture sits quite apart from other arguments against it... liberty, rights, justice.

(b) while such a large scale attack might create public sentiment for mass murder, I don't think you have taken into account that small incursions into freedoms and liberties, and gradual worsening in the treatment of detainees, desensitise the public and make them MORE willing to support heinous acts being committed in their name. So waterboarding, etc, probably makes a ruthless 'bomb them all' reaction to any major attack on the US population more likely. The classic example is Nazi Germany...gassing of Jews didn't happen overnight. But gradual changes in the treatment of Jews occurred, each seeming acceptable and reasonable, 'necessary' even to counter some fear, leading finally to the most disgusting and evil acts in modern history.

So yes, I agree with your view that indiscriminate bombing of Afghanistan would have been terrible. And also that this was the norm in WW2. But norms change, and our standards of morality and conduct have changed. By any modern standard, the conduct of the USA is barbaric. It's also counterproductive, because it increases international hatred of the USA and increases the likelihood of even more heinous acts being accepted by the US populace in their name sometime in the future.

Posted by Anonymous : 11/06/2006 11:19:00 AM

Monkey, Husynut, thanks for the responses. Yes, you are on track on addressing my concerns (albeit wth the simplification required on a blog).

Huskynut, I think you are broadly correct, but your arguments still leave some space for aggressive interrogation (mental terror rather than physical terror) of individuals captured in arms/combat against the west. Local criminals are not really comparable in that respect.

Monkey, your slippery slope argument is quite fair, I think. We do become more brutalised by degree. But I think we draw an artificial distinction between what we label 'torture' and other exercises of power and fear, which are applied daily by authorities all over the world. Indeed, it could be argued that power and fear are the basis of the rule of law.

I suppose the counter-argument would be that a process of international deliberation has set the boundaries of what is acceptable and what is not. The problem being - the world has changed since these boundaries were set.

I don't particularly want to be right on this point, but I am trying to follow the arguments.

On the USA strategy - yes, deeply, deeply flawed. To me the flaws go back 60 years with the "he may be a bastard but he's our bastard" approach to foreign policy. In many cases the USA promoted democracy and freedom. In many others, it propped up dictators who oppressed their people, and it is now reaping the consequences.

So, to argue against torture, it would be good to also articulate a meaningful alternative What should the USA do now? Is there a realistic foreign policy alternative that is more than just slogans?

Posted by Anonymous : 11/06/2006 02:03:00 PM

Icehawk: or we could adopt the methods of the Pakistani government, and just carpet-bomb Porirua and Mangere. That'll teach 'em!

Posted by Idiot/Savant : 11/06/2006 05:36:00 PM

Yes, but the problem is that torture is a term that has no meaning on its own - it only gains meaning by definition. One could argue that behavior management regimes at Paremoremo are torture.

So the real question is, where do you draw the line? Are the current definitions still adequate?

And Icehawk, how would you have fought WWII? I ask the question because I think it is important to separate the anti-US tactics arguemts from the anti-any war arguments.

Posted by Anonymous : 11/06/2006 06:27:00 PM

Argh! Must these discussions _always_ come to... but really, what is torture?

Next comes the line "Okay, so we torture one, but we save squajillions! Surely it's good to torture in that case?"

I'm sorry, I'm just having blog comment box deja vu and I feel a bit woozy.

Posted by Muerk : 11/06/2006 06:46:00 PM

Sometimes, you have to ask the hard questions.

Posted by Anonymous : 11/06/2006 07:40:00 PM

> "he may be a bastard but he's our bastard"

this is exactly the way to win a war against terrorists - just dont turn up for the fight and help someone you dont care about to do it for you.

The terrorists are thus denied any chance of victory over you. It is also really good for getting you cheap oil.

Posted by Genius : 11/06/2006 08:40:00 PM

"Sometimes, you have to ask the hard questions."

And we'll torture you until you give us answers we like.

Posted by Anonymous : 11/06/2006 09:03:00 PM

So, the arguments against 'torture' are:

1 - It doesn't work because people say what you want
2 - It's not a good way to win hearts and minds
3 - We brutalise ourselves

(1) really only applies if you are trying to extract a confession. I doubt it applies to simple information.
(2) is arguable. Wars are not won by winning the hearts and minds of the enemy. They are won by killing them. Let's not dress it up. That is what war is about.
(3) is a general feature of war.

And if we suppressed all information about torture, arguments (2) and (3) wouldn't apply. So if we are against torture, it must be because IT IS WRONG. And that our institutions rely on not doing things that are wrong. We are a more moral people than that.

Do we get any credit for that? Can we make a favorable comparison with the values of the anti-western fanatics? Or if they are not to blame, can we obtain some moral shelter by adopting the same tactics as them?

Posted by Anonymous : 11/06/2006 09:24:00 PM