According to Michael Goldfarb, that’s what we ought to call the interrogators who got timely information that saved lives. (via memeorandum)
That’s what we ought to call the men and women who interrogated the worst of the worst. For those most committed to the ridiculous crusade for terrorist rights, “enhanced interrogation” is not only immoral and illegal, it’s ineffective. That argument, like Khalid Sheik Mohamed, doesn’t hold water. Obviously it works sometimes, and there are plenty of senior officials, including both the current and former DNI, who have said as much. More responsible critics are satisfied to argue that the technique is illegal. Maybe they’re right, but there are plenty of lawyers, and at least one Supreme Court Justice, who will argue the other side of that. It’s not clear the United States government can prosecute a lawyer for holding a minority view, let alone convict an American hero for dunking a terrorist responsible for the murder of thousands. If they want any chance at getting twelve guilty votes, they’ll have to hold the trial in Berkeley, which will at least make things easier on Professor Yoo.
Actually Goldfarb calls them “American Heroes.” I don’t disagree.
But it isn’t only Americans who have to resort to such methods. The matter has come up in Israel too. Here’s Stephen Flatow:
I followed the story of the bombing on Bus 26 quite closely; my 20-year-old daughter, Alisa, had been killed by an Islamic Jihad suicide bomber on a bus in Israel four months earlier. A few days after the Aug. 21 attack, Israeli and American newspapers reported that the man who masterminded it, Abdel Nasser Issa, had been in Israeli custody two days before the bombing.
Israeli authorities had arrested Mr. Issa on suspicion of terrorist activity and questioned him the same way they would question anyone else: posing questions and waiting for answers. Mr. Issa revealed nothing unusual to his interviewers. It was only after the bus bombing that Karmi Gilon, then chief of Israel’s secret service, the Shin Bet, authorized the use of ”moderate physical force.”
The next morning, Mr. Issa, who had not been told of the bombing of Bus 26 the day before, told the Israelis about his plan for that attack. He also provided information that led to the arrests of 37 Hamas militants who had been planning additional bombings.
Mr. Gilon told reporters that the blood of the next victims of terrorism would have been on his hands if physical pressure had not been used in the interrogation of Mr. Issa. And Yitzhak Rabin, then Prime Minister of Israel, said that had the Shin Bet applied such pressure earlier, the attack on Bus 26 might have been prevented.
Here the question isn’t hypothetical. The Israelis had a suspect whose importance they didn’t realize until it was too late. Had they known Issa’s importance they would have applied the “moderate physical pressure” as soon as they had apprehended them. Four innocent lives would have been saved. Is there anyone who would say that Israeli authorities were wrong?
If I remember correctly the pressure Israel applied in cases of “ticking time bombs” was violent shaking and sleep deprivation. But to Israel’s critics, it was still too much.
Legal Insurrection boils the argument down to this:
And if a President of the United States had information, from the best sources available, that a nuclear weapon, or nuclear materials which could be used in a “dirty bomb,” had been or were about to be smuggled into the United States, is there anything that President should not do? If a leader of al-Qaeda — or a member of the Pakistani military — believed to know the location of the nuclear weapons and the plans of attack were captured by the CIA in Pakistan, would waterboarding be off limits?
If your response is that there was no evidence that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed knew of a nuclear attack, then you are heading down a slippery slope. If there is any situation, such as an imminent nuclear attack, in which waterboarding could be used, then you are arguing over details and degree, not a moral absolute.
And if you are morally absolute as to waterboarding, then please tell us, which American city you would sacrifice? This is the honest debate which needs to be had, once again.
The morality of coercive techniques is easy if they are ineffective or, as some allege, counterproductive. (“The suspect will be so eager to stop the torture he’ll say anything.”) But experience suggests that the question isn’t so simple. Coercive techniques may indeed be effective and it is up to those who condemn them to explain why innocents must pay the price for their morality.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
KSM was supposedly waterboarded so often because his interrogators were convinced there were significant links between Al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. Some “heroes”.
Another thought on these American “heroes”. If someone asked your son what he wanted to be when he grows up and he said, “A Marine!” you’d be proud of him. But if instead he said, “A waterboarder!” you’d take him to a doctor. Even if you believe torture is sometimes necessary, there’s nothing heroic about inflicting pain upon a helpless person.
Please read this op-ed by an actual terrorism expert and see if you still believe torture made us safer. We are not living in an episode of 24.
Lefty,
No I would not want my son to say I’d like to be a waterboarder. But that misses the point. If he would be in the army and he was tasked with the job is not the same thing as aspiring.
BDeevDad,
Did you read the account from Stephen Flatow? I’m guessing that the ineffectiveness of enhanced interrogation is a bit more ambiguous than the op-ed writer at the Times claims.
Oh, the poor boy was waterboarded. Tsk, tsk. We waterboard our pilots to train them in resisting interrogartion by enemies. Nor will restraint by the US ensure any safety for Americans taken prisoner in the future. To find an enemy who, most of the time, treated American prisoners in accordance with the existing laws and customs of war we have to go back to the Nazis. Every enemy since has been worse. The first time the Taliban in Afghanistan took an American prisoner (a SEAL) they cut his throat immediately. The terrorists elsewhare do worse to any Americans they capture.
Call me when you find evidence of American interrogators pulling out fingernails, slipping bamboo slivers under nails, strapping electrodes to genitals, or pounding kidneys to pulp and I’ll agree that is torture and that those responsible should be prosecuted.
The amount of mindless complacency in this country is mind-boggling. We haven’t been attacked by a major terrorist attack on our soil for seven-and-one-half years. So naturally the great minds among the leftists assume that we will never again be attacked, that our safety is not due to the efforts of our intel and military people, and that they can go back to the 9/10 mindset where they think of no political issues other than the trivial. Got news for you ducky, it ain’t so.
In German class today we were asked to make up pithy sayings (like “Clothes make the man” but in German), One I devised was this, translated into English: When the wolf is at the door, don’t piss on the guardian. This Administration and its votaries are pissing on our guardians.
Those who don’t feel that waterboarding is “real” torture may want to read the account of one who tried it on himself.
I’d also like to pose a question or three. Let’s say that a city from your own country is in danger of destruction. However, it may be in your power to save it if you perform the right actions.
Would there be any moral or ethical limit to the acts that you would personally perform to save that city? That is, would you ever reach a point where you would say, “I can’t do this; it isn’t right”?
Would you commit mental torture? Physical torture? Would you commit rape, or murder? Would you do it to one person, or a thousand, or a million? Would you destroy a city in another country that has about the same population of innocent people as your country’s city? If the foreign city was bigger than your city, but the people who lived there, while innocent, happened to hate your country, would it make a difference to you? Would you not only destroy that foreign city, but torture everyone in it to death, adults and children alike? Would there be any point at which you would stop?
If you say that there is no limit – that you would perform any action whatsoever to save that city, no matter how vile the act – then just how different is your morality from that of the people who are planning to destroy your city?
So, in other words, you believe Western civilization should just up and surrender to terrorists.
They do not value human life at all. They gleefully murder their own children in order to take out everybody that disagrees. They aren’t going to surrender to harsh language. If you believe that acts of violence against them can never be performed, then you might as well hang out the white flag right now.
And in answer to your question, if I seriously believe it will keep millions of people from being killed, yes, I’ll personally torture the guy. And no, there is no moral equivalent. Torturing an individual to save millions is not even close to what our enemies do (torturing thousands for pleasure and as a prelude to murdering millions more.)
If you are incapable of seeing the difference, then you don’t deserve the freedom that millions of your fellow countrymen have sacrificed their lives for.