The difference, of course, is that those in the internment camps were Americans, while most of these guys are terrorists captured on the battlefield. I do think the comparison is inappropriate, but internment was the atrocity, not this.
How do you know all these detainees were "captured on the battlefield"? Because we've been told that? By the same people who said we were not using extraordinary rendition and not using torture?
I'm surprised that you think torture is not an atrocity. The US claims to be "giving the gift of democracy" and "spreading freedom". Ignoring international conventions on the rights of prisoners of war (and do not start the weaselly bullshit about whether these people are POWs or not) doesn't seem to be a good way of liberating a nation.
> How do you know all these detainees were "captured on the battlefield"? By the same people who said we were not using extraordinary rendition and not using torture?
Because if the CIA was just ignoring the rules, they wouldn't be trying to lawyer their way around what's "enhanced interrogation" versus "torture." They'd just be pulling out fingernails.
> Ignoring international conventions on the rights of prisoners of war
You fundamentally misunderstand the rationale behind these conventions. The reason we don't torture the soldiers of civilized nations is because we assume that they will reciprocate when it comes to our soldiers. Stateless militants can't be expected to do that, so the rationale for following those international conventions disappears.
You fundamentally misunderstand the rationale behind the conventions, and particularly the parts of them that apply specifically in conflicts that are not conflicts between state parties (e.g., Common Article 3.)
Anyhow, there is also the Convention Against Torture isn't even related to conflict or POWs, but applies universally, and obliges parties to it (including the US) to prosecute (not merely avoid engaging in) torture, whoever does it, wherever they do it, and in whatever context they do it. Torturers are hostis humani generis, the common enemy of all mankind.
Disagree: For a lot of us (non-Americans at least) we used to think that the reason why why don't do those kinds of things (torture, use chemical weapons etc) was because they were more cruel than necessary.
Also the fact that these conventions were valid for any war the signing country was involved in, not only those against other who signed (correct me if I'm wrong) seems to point in the same direction, no?
Also, downvote brigade: Fine, I totally agree that rayiner was downvoted and flagkilled twice. rayiner deserved that IMO.
However stop downvoting when he or others are providing insights, even if that insight is uncomfortable, OK?
We generally try to uphold high moral standards even if they won't be reciprocated. Many of those conventions provide additional incentive of reciprocation, but that's not the only relevant factor.
Oh come on, be serious: Most of us would much rather prefer to be shot dead or blown up in a split second than being even slightly tortured and locked up indefinitely. If not it must be because we don't know what we are talking about.
Throwing water on someone and leaving them in a 59-degree room is worse than shooting them dead? Keeping someone awake until they hallucinate is worse than shooting them dead? Really?
I can imagine torture that's worse than death. I don't think any of the things revealed in the article qualify. Which is precisely what I'm getting at. If you're not a pacifist and you think it's okay to kill people in war, I think you have to go to pretty tortured lengths to say that these enhanced interrogation techniques are unjustifiable in light of that. If you're a pacifist who doesn't think that killing is justifiable in the first place, that's a totally different thing.
IIRC, Solzhenitsyn notes in one of the early volumes of The Gulag Archipelago that you can kill a guy by tossing him in a room and throwing cold water on him. I don't know what it is about hypothermia that doesn't seem serious until you experience it personally but that must be what's going on here.
Reading Solzhenitsyn in the context of today's news might be worthwhile for people. If people can read all that, note the similarities between the NKVD's tactics and attitude toward the law and the CIA's, and walk away contentedly thinking to themselves "but our guys have good intentions and are a lot more selective!" we are hosed as a country.
What gives you the right to decide that for other people? Objectively having your genitals cut off is much less bad than dying. But I know plenty of men who would rather take a bullet than feel a knife sliding into them. The methods used by the CIA are exactly like this; and that is entirely by design. Why else would you do these things if not to cause massive psychological pain?
Why do you continually focus on the cold room and ignore all the other kinds of torture in this report? It's unconvincing and reflects poorly on your argument.
Simulated drowning again and again over months and years and never being released (meaning it can happen again anytime) comes across as way worse than being shot dead to many of us, yes.
Also, just being locked up with nothing to do can be painful in itself.
Oh man, I find your responses to this thread hilariously ironic. A week ago on a thread concerning H1B's and immigration to the US, you refuted someone's claim that America could accommodate almost unlimited migration because this ignored the issues of having these people absorb and internalize the cultural norms that make the US a great place to live and which others places that aren't so great to live lack. You used the example of bribery being a cultural norm in the country your parents emigrated from and one of the things that caused your father to leave.
Well consider me convinced! We definitely need to limit immigration to America otherwise we could end up with large numbers of people whose cultural norms allow them to condone torture and try to make jokes about it! Can you imagine what a cluster fuck this nation would be if the majority view was that repeated anal rape leading to multiple attempts at self-harm was something to be made light of!? No we definitely need to make sure that we only accept a small enough number of immigrants that we can ensure that things like the concept of the rule of law, the right to trial, and the right to not be, you know FUCKING TORTURED, are fully assimilated by them. Gods knows what things would be like if they somehow managed to not internalize these concepts.
I am extremely doubtful about your assertion that most people would rather be shot dead than locked up indefinitely.
You're also making assumptions that people die instantly on the battlefield and in drone attacks. That's not the case. They can (and do) die in slow, lingering, painful ways in such cases.
You're being disingenuous here. It's like the difference between a police officer shooting an armed criminal on the street (which may be a matter of necessity, though recent examples highlight just how problematic such a standard can be) and beating them up in jail when they're already in a custodial situation and thus present no threat to the public.
It's true that is the scale of awful behavior, the CIA's program would rate something like 3 or 4 out of 10 - other regimes have engaged in things like pulling out people's fingernails, administering electric shocks, actually killing or raping family members rather than simply threatening to do so so, and worse - much worse. It's also true that atrocious actions by the US during the 'war on terror' are less bad than prior atrocities in previous conflicts like Vietnam or the Phillippine-American war of 1899-1902, a largely-forgotten conflict which would be considered genocidal by modern standards (and which is very much worth studying because it has so many similarities to the war on terror - gruesome murders by the rebels, widespread use of waterboarding by the US (then called the 'water cure'), subsequent political fallout and so on).
But even when we look at these things from a purely utilitarian standpoint rather than an idealistic one, the fact is that it our ability to project soft power - that is, to promulgate our values internationally so as to further our interests - is severely impaired by our all-too-apparent willingness to abandon the standards we propound in the areas of human rights and so forth. I'm not too impressed by the authoritarian regime in Cuba, for example, but the fact that we have a mini-Gulag in Guantanamo Bay makes it impossible for the US to criticize that regime in any meaningful fashion - even when it does the same or worse, it can fall back on a Tu quoque argument, and while that's a logical fallacy it's nevertheless a very effective one. On a more serious level, it has severely blunted our ability (along with that of the UK and other coalition countries, albeit to a lesser extent) to put pressure on North Korea over that country's appalling human rights record.
The basic problem for the US is this: we don't necessarily aspire to hegemony, but a de facto hegemony is the best guarantor of our long-term interests. We can't impose that by force, or want to, but we can get close by exercising soft economic and ideological power backed up with the availability of force against those who directly threaten our interests. At times the world is too messy and we'd like to take our ball and go home - let everyone else think what they like, the US land mass and economy is large enough for us to function as an autarky in an unconnected world. But the reality of a global technological world is that oceans no longer serve as impassable moats; disengagement and indifference to the emergence of other hegemonic powers would sooner or later result in disadvantage.
> You're being disingenuous here. It's like the difference between a police officer shooting an armed criminal on the street (which may be a matter of necessity, though recent examples highlight just how problematic such a standard can be) and beating them up in jail when they're already in a custodial situation and thus present no threat to the public.
In war, we justify things a lot more morally ambiguous than a police officer shooting an armed criminal that's an imminent threat. Workers at a munitions factory who are just carting things around? Those folks get killed in war in airstrikes that are totally consistent with international conventions. Is waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed worse than blowing up some sap who just showed up to work on the wrong day? I just find it ridiculous to play that line drawing exercise.
I agree 100% with the rest of your analysis, though. Whatever the moral case may be, we shouldn't engage in enhanced interrogation because it yields low-value or even misleading information at the cost of tremendous political capital.
That's true, and in many cases people who may be contributing to a country's war effort (thus making themselves legitimate targets) are there involuntarily as a result of having been drafted or otherwise pressed into service. Arguably the worst aspect of industrialized war is the inexorable military logic of attacking the enemy's productive rather than military capacity, as a natural extension of cutting an army's lines of supply.
I agree that trying to establish bright-line rules often seems a futile exercise because it's so easy to come up with ethical inconsistencies. I do have a theory about the moral calculus of conflict but it's inchoate and this comment isn't really the place for it. To sketch the outline, though, the severity of a given outcome in a conflict can be mitigated by the degree of risk involved in bringing it about; so while the imposition involved in sleep deprivation or keeping someone cold is mild compared to someone being horribly maimed by a piece of shrapnel, it's the massive prior asymmetry between captor and prisoner that's problematic in the case of torture. Of course, you could argue that this asymmetry is also strong where only one side in a conflict has an air force or where one side is using remote-controlled military assets like drones, whose 'pilots' experience no physical risks whatsoever. This is going to become a huge problem within a few short years with robotic infantry assets - as soon as they're 'good enough' to deploy effectively there will be huge pressure to do so, even if they are just slightly extending forward positions over a short distance.
Is waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed worse than blowing up some sap who just showed up to work on the wrong day?
Yes. Waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is viewed by the vast majority to be morally far much worse than bombing a munitions factory. That is why doing it costs the tremendous political capital.
Now ask the same group if there are ever circumstances where it can be acceptable to bomb an ammunition factory. Can you imagine that even being up for debate?
> Those folks get killed in war in airstrikes that are totally consistent with international conventions.
The deaths caused by the aggressor of a war are not consistent with international conventions, they are, in the words of a judge in at the Nuremberg tribunals, the consequence of the ultimate war crime.
rayiner isn't the one being disingenuous. CIA interrogation techniques are not the equivalent of the police beating up someone in a cell, the purpose is to gain valuable information. It isn't done for revenge or in situations where the stakes are anything less than the life and death of innocent people. Someone who has information on a literal ticking time bomb is the very definition of a threat to the public. So is someone who can reveal information about the plans of a warlord to subjugate a tribal village, or sell people into slavery or provide financial resources to known killers. If US intelligence isn't willing to hurt bad people before they can hurt innocent people, then what the hell is the point of any of it? You've drawn a very false equivalency.
The moral high ground is very valuable real estate indeed, and the US does hurt itself by doing things that reflect poorly in the eyes of the global public. But we're rightfully and pragmatically more concerned about artillery and soldiers occupying plain old fashioned military high ground. We interrogate to prevent people who openly wish us harm from gaining the power to turn their words into deeds. You can always earn cool points by pointing out historical atrocities, but in the end what matters is that we're still here, alive and prospering. Do you honestly believe that if the US government always behaved like perfect angels that N Korea or Cuba would suddenly listen to our moral lectures? That our behavior would somehow inspire them to change the fundamental cultural mores that come from decades of national poverty and the mindset that comes along with it? Because I don't think it will. Human rights violations will still exist even if we behave with moral perfection. Sometimes the best way to stop the bad guys isn't to set a good example, but instead to waterboard someone until he tells you where to send a SEAL team.
For better or worse, the US has the sanctioned role of providing security for the world. If that means we have to strip someone naked and throw them against a wall then so be it. It's unpleasant, but it sure as hell beats the alternatives.
CIA interrogation techniques are not the equivalent of the police beating up someone in a cell, the purpose is to gain valuable information.
Much as police violence in custody has often been defended with the argument that the police were attempting to obtain information that would lead to a conviction.
It isn't done for revenge or in situations where the stakes are anything less than the life and death of innocent people. Someone who has information on a literal ticking time bomb is the very definition of a threat to the public.
Ostensibly, but for one thing there is usually no actual ticking time bomb because we don't live in the universe of 24, and for another if there was a ticking time bomb there'd be no way to protect against misinformation about its location until it was too late.
The TTB argument implicitly assumes that intelligence gained through torture will be correct and actionable, but this isn't backed up by evidence. If the bomb is on West 63rd street and the torture subject directs you to East 47th street, you won't know you've been lied to until you get there and find out there is no bomb. Conversely, what if the person does not actually know what you want to know, like the 26 detainees mentioned in the report who were picked up despite not being suitable targets for interrogation? When they keep saying they don't know where the ticking time bomb is, how do you tell that they're not just holding out on you?
For better or worse, the US has the sanctioned role of providing security for the world.
Hmmm, no. As I outlined above, its in our interests to hold such a position at present. I think you need to think a bit longer about this, because your views on this subject seem rather shallow.
More legal argument. Given that the current US legal system doesn't apparently protect me, a US citizen, from administrative assassination, I'm worried that I can be administratively shipped off for torture.
That is: the actions outlined in this summary of a report, and in other tacit admissions by US elected leaders, go way beyond arguing that the actions are "legal" or "illegal". The actions outlined in the summary speak to a government that does not care about most human beings at all.
All of morality is not contained within the law. Segregation was legal for a while. Apartheid was legal for a while.
It's not a legal argument at all. Go up to a random person on the street (not in San Francisco), and tell them that the rights of people caught fighting against the U.S. in Afghanistan are just as important as those of law-abiding immigrants trying to build a life in the U.S.
To the contrary. I think you have to have a very legalistic dedication to procedural due process to assert that people abroad advocating the violent overthrow of the United States should have the same rights as ordinary accused in the United States.
I have to disagree: the instant that something becomes a privilege, and not a right, is the instant that some administrator can decide that I personally don't deserve that privilege. There goes my personal protection against our police force, and my personal ability to speak my mind.
Beyond that, if it's good policy for US citizens to have freedom of speech, or right to a fair trial, or to not be tortured, then it's good policy for all humans to have those rights.
By asserting the "random person in the street" argument, you're asserting a tyranny of the majority. You should know better. Shame on you.
I never was fond of you, but this confirms that you're truly a vile human. I cannot believe that there is an actual torture apologist on HN.
In your follow-up comment, you rationalize it by saying that they are not worthy of the same treatment as those from civilized nations.
I don't know if you're a sociopath or you harbor a lot of hate and anger, but in either case, I hope you get the help you need before you hurt someone.
