The United States Does Not Toture

[elfs]

The other day I was talking with an acquaintance I rarely see and who I normally see only in a conservative and professional setting. As we were talking, the radio broke through with a news article covering this week's release of the torture memos. He asked me how I felt about those, adding, "I mean, these guys are the worst, aren't they? They're bad dudes. They just want to kill us."

After laying out my own case in short soundbites: A committed terroist will lie to us and send us in the wrong direction, someone who doesn't know will say anything will lie to make it stop, even the CIA admits that no useful information ever comes out of it, it makes us look bad in the eyes of the world.

"Yeah, but these guys have no state. There's nobody to reign them in."

I said, "It's not about them, it's about us. This is definitely a case of what matters if a man gaineth the world but loses his own soul... or in our case, not a man, but our country. America." Since my interlocutor was a very commited Christian, I could see that one getting through. I had a flash of inspiritation. "I mean, America's soul was defined by its founding, and here, I have to ask, what would George Washington do? Washington forbade the mistreatment of prisoners, period. There were no exceptions. He didn't need to do it, even though many of the people he was fighting were German mercenaries culled from the criminal class. Those were bad people. They used whips, thumbscrews, and starvation on our soldiers. But we didn't torture them. We don't have to now."

That seemed to shut down the conversation. Besides, his assistant had rejoined him and the moment had come to move on to other matters.

But really, in 1775, Washington issued this order to the Northern Expeditionary Force:

Should any American soldier be so base and infamous as to injure any prisoner, I do most earnestly enjoin you to bring him to such severe and exemplary punishment as the enormity of the crime may require. Should it extend to death itself, it will not be disproportional to its guilt at such a time and in such a cause, for by such conduct they bring shame, disgrace and ruin to themselves and their country.

And in 1776, learning that his troops were about to mete out punishment to a regiment of captured Hessians after the Battle of Trenton, Washington ordered a halt to "the gauntlet," as his soldiers called it, and said,

Treat them with humanity, and let them have no reason to complain of our copying the brutal example of our enemy in their treatment of our unfortunate brethren. Provide everything necessary for them on the road.

George Washington provided some of the very first moral guidance on the treatment of prisoners of war, and the rest of the world has tried to follow our example.

The Christian Nationalists who constantly proclaim this country is theirs, arguing with them that Jesus never tortured anyone and wouldn't condone torture doesn't seem to get anywhere with them. But you can get under their skin by asking them if they think that George Washington was one of the greatest Americans who ever live, and then pointing out that Washington, one of the founders of our nation, and our first President, and one of our greatest generals, explicitly forbid the kind of conduct, and made it our moral imperative not to toture. We can't remain the country we are, or become the country we long to be, and condone what happened over the past six years.

Comments

[stephdray.livejournal.com]

These are some great tidbits to know. I plan to use them. Thank you.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Yes. Good George quotes.

[heofmanynames.livejournal.com]

Very well-said indeed - and thanks.

[tehrasha.livejournal.com]

But George was a slave owner, so that negates any moral authority he may have had... or at least it does whenever his or any other founding father's opinions lean to the right. More irony than the hull of a battleship.

[drewkitty.livejournal.com]

Lincoln ordered executions, too, and was very much a racist.

http://www.unitednativeamerica.com/hanging.html

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/dakota/dak_lincoln.html

http://rofasix.blogspot.com/2009/02/was-abe-lincoln-america-worst-president.html

Shall we therefore ignore all the good that was in him, to keep the Union together and speak stirringly of justice?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln_on_slavery

http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/cooper.htm

[tagryn]

I thought Stratfor did a good job putting the torture issue in context here. It isn't as cut-and-dried an issue as most of us would like. Key point:

The endless argument over torture, the posturing of both critics and defenders, misses the crucial point. The United States turned to torture because it has experienced a massive intelligence failure reaching back a decade. The U.S. intelligence community simply failed to gather sufficient information on al Qaeda’s intentions, capability, organization and personnel. The use of torture was not part of a competent intelligence effort, but a response to a massive intelligence failure...Bush was handed an impossible situation on Sept. 11, after just nine months in office. The country demanded protection, and given the intelligence shambles he inherited, he reacted about as well or badly as anyone else might have in the situation. He used the tools he had, and hoped they were good enough. The problem with torture — as with other exceptional measures — is that it is useful, at best, in extraordinary situations. The problem with all such techniques in the hands of bureaucracies is that the extraordinary in due course becomes the routine, and torture as a desperate stopgap measure becomes a routine part of the intelligence interrogator’s tool kit.

[drewkitty.livejournal.com]

So we should torture instead of developing humint? And take the hit that torture has inflicted on our greatest intelligence recruiter, Thomas Jefferson?

[tagryn]

If it was as easy as just waving one's hands and saying "OK, just go out and develop intel!" it would be simple. Consider that the same folks doing intelligence work (CIA, etc.) on al-Qaeda are the ones who got the Iraq assessments so wrong, and it doesn't exactly fill one with confidence that they know much about what's going on in the Pakistani tribal regions, for example. As the article states, the problems in U.S. intel are long-standing and deep, and turning to torture was a last resort because of the lack of good information on al-Qaeda.

Also, some of the methods for developing good humint aren't "pure," either. Its a nasty business, dealing with turncoats, traitors, and spies, and expecting that one can do it well and still stand atop the moral high ground that the opponents of torture demand is unrealistic. For example, demanding that a possible double-agent not to have ever been involved with atrocities, or to have renounced allegiance to bin Laden, isn't going to work, however satisfying it would be to require. So, loosening the restrictions on what the CIA can do with regards to field intel gathering would be a step in the right direction.