(no subject)

[elfs]

I am saddened and sickened by the current line of claims flitting around the Internet from the torture supporters to the effect that "torture works because Khalid Sheik Mohammed squawked after we waterboarded him." The most repulsive comes from Ann Althouse, who really is one of the most bloodthirsty souls on the right (when London cops shot an innocent young man in the back in 2006, Althouse wrote: "A further good has been created: as ordinary persons change their behavior and drop the bulky clothing and unnecessary running, the real terrorists will stand out more. Indeed, if anyone ever behaves like Jean Charles de Menezes again, the presumption that he is a terrorist will be so overwhelmingly strong that the police really must kill him." In other words, once we're successfully terrified by our own government, we'll be safe from terrorists! And let us not forget that she approved of our requiring Joseph Padilla to wear a blackout mask 24 hours a day-- a technique which, along with everything else, drove him utterly insane-- because he might blink codes to his compatriots). Althouse's latest lovely comment is this:

Critics of "harsh interrogation techniques" – they, of course, call it torture – bolster their moral arguments with the pragmatic argument that it doesn't even work. How unusual it is for the media to disillusion us about that and force the moralists to get by on moral ideals alone!

The problem with Althouse's comment is, as everyone else has pointed out, there's no evidence the torture worked.

She can say there is all she wants, but let's get down to business: not one thing Mohammed told us led to the arrest of anyone on American, Canadian, Mexican, South American, or European soil. Not one active plot was foiled. Not one ticking time bomb was defused.

Althouse proudly points to Mohammed, claiming that he gave us "high value Al-Qaeda information" which we did not get from other detainees. But of course we did: Mohammed was a high-ranking Al-Qaeda member, and most of the other detainees were not. Mohammed did not give that information up during waterboarding:

During the harshest period of my interrogation I gave a lot of false information in order to satisfy what I believed the interrogators wished to hear in order to make the ill-treatment stop. I later told interrogators that their methods were stupid and counterproductive. I'm sure that the false information I was forced to invent in order to make the ill-treatment stop wasted a lot of their time.

We cannot know (because we didn't try to know) what Mohammed would have said over time, whether or not his ego would have made him talk. That's the usual technique, and we know it works very well; eventually, these guys want to talk, want to feed their pride by revealing how masterful they were. What we do know is that they resulted in a lot of misinformation. Misinformation that resulted in lost time, wasted money, and bad data that will persist in our intelligence files for years.

Althouse keeps claiming the techniques were "effective." For a lawyer, Ann is remarkably bad at showing that to be the case.

But what sickens me is that she falls back on mocking people for using "moral ideals." What the Hell country do I live in where people are mocked for having "moral ideals"? What kind of "conservative" is Althouse for mocking people for their "moral ideals?"

We can disagree all we want about what moral ideals to hold, but to mock someone because their standards are higher (yes, Ann, Andrew Sullivan is a better human being than you are) is simply ridiculous. You don't even say that they're wrong, you just mock them for having high ideals.

Torture's short-term efficacy is, at best, no better than less violent and abusive techniques. But it's long-term effects on our national interests have been devastating. Guantanamo, Bagram, and Abu Gharaib are being used as recruitment tools. The video of Daniel Pearl's beheading can now be found all over the jihadi internet with captions and comments like, "Just like what the Americans do at Guantanamo." It doesn't matter if we never actually beheaded anyone: we let justice get away from us, and now we're no better than any third-world country. If our soldiers are captured and tortured, we have no recourse in the court of world opinion. We, like the French in Algiers, have lost the right to claim any moral high ground.

Thanks to Dick Cheney, George Bush, and (yes) Barack Obama (whose refusal to strongly denounce torture and to back Eric Holder make him complicit)-- along with the squawking scarpines of the screw and strappado, like Althouse-- we are no longer Ronald Reagan's shining city on a hill. We are a cesspit.

Reagan once said:

The United States participated actively and effectively in the negotiation of the Convention . It marks a significant step in the development during this century of international measures against torture and other inhuman treatment or punishment. Ratification of the Convention by the United States will clearly express United States opposition to torture, an abhorrent practice unfortunately still prevalent in the world today.

Althouse's unholy frisson doesn't deserve a place at the table. She desecrates the memory of Reagan, gives aid and comfort to the enemy, and generally continues her tradition of being the stupidest woman alive.

Sorry, I know I'm ranting. But I'm mad about this. Conservatives believe we were once a great country and could be once more. Progressives believe we have a moral future toward which we must strive. George Washington believed in treating prisoners of war with the same rights as those for which our new-founded nation was fighting. John Adams believed, when it came to torture, "I know of no policy, God is my witness, but this – Piety, Humanity and Honesty are the best Policy. Blasphemy, Cruelty and Villainy have prevailed and may again. But they won't prevail against America, in this Contest, because I find the more of them are employed, the less they succeed."

The British, in contrast, understood that it didn't work: "Wherever our armies have marched, wherever they have encamped, every species of barbarity has been executed. We planted an irrevocable hatred wherever we went, which neither time nor measure will be able to eradicate." (Col. Charles Stuart of His Majesty's Army, 1778)

Abraham Lincoln's General Order 233 was one of the first documents recognized as establishing humanitarian orders of war, and became an inspiration for the Geneva Conventions.

It is against such a backdrop of compelling, moral history, that torture supporters breathe their evil. While useful idiots stand up at townhall meetings and fret about how, economically, we'll become "just another country" like France or Germany, Althouse wants to turn American into just such "another country," without the moral authority to lead.

Comments

[amythis.livejournal.com]

Thank you for this.

[orcaarrow.livejournal.com]

Very sound, sober, and logical comments. Thank you.

[sianmink.livejournal.com]

and we had to be lectured on this ineffectiveness by a man who no doubt has ordered the torture and execution many people, not to extract information but solely to inflict pain and suffering.

I wouldn't normally trust the word of a terrorist and a murderer, but you can't argue with his experience.

[christinaathena.livejournal.com]

*applauds*

[(Anonymous)]

Being British and thinking through my knowledge of history, both British and European (not huge but a mild interest), most of the time the torturers already know what they want the victim to say... they just need to convince them to say it.

[urox.livejournal.com]

I believe it was another lj that I read on about a "christian" abortion clinic bomber. The authorities caught the guy. And no one is saying we should torture him. The bomber said that other clinics *will be bombed*. So we have a ticking time bomb scenario. And yet no one is torturing him.

I know torture doesn't work. But I wish that the media would pick up on the double standard of people who think it does.