----- Original Message -----
From: "Gary Denton" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Killer Bs Discussion" <brin-l@mccmedia.com>
Sent: Thursday, July 07, 2005 4:50 AM
Subject: Re: Gulags L3
> Answering your thoughtful post.
I also appreciate the thought, research and care you are putting into this
thread. I think I will reconstruct it along three different themes that I
think are woven into the discussion:
1) How hard can one push prisoners who are probably associated with
terrorism or terrorist groups? Where is the boundary of unacceptable
treatment? Is this boundary dependant on the circumstances?
2) How does one handle the status of prisoners taken in ongoing hostilities
if they are POWs?
if they are "unlawful combattants", but there is not enough evidence to
convict them of
a specific war crime?
3)
> > Then it would seem that all AQ has to answer is "name rank and serial
> > number", right?
>
> I don't think so. What is prohibited is usually considered, based on
> article 130: grave breaches to which the preceding Article relates
> shall be those involving any of the following acts, if committed
> against persons or property protected by the Convention: willful
> killing, torture or inhuman treatment, including biological
> experiments, willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to
> body or health, compelling a prisoner of war to serve in the forces of
> the hostile Power, or willfully depriving a prisoner of war of the
> rights of fair and regular trial prescribed in this Convention.
> That would mean things that are not torture and is not causing great
> suffering or serious injury to body or health might be permitted
> depending on how far you go. A lot of the debate within officials
> with long experience and the new political appointees based on leaked
> memos are explorations as to what extent techniques like water
> boarding (drowning without killing) and sleep deprivation and long
> periods of times in uncomfortable positions (that actually do cause
> long-term damage) and techniques that are extremely painful but leave
> no permanent damage (electrodes anyone?) are lawful. Do we really want
> to explore this?
There are two ways to look at this: a priori and a posteroir, if you would.
The first would answer the question on general moral principals: when is it
acceptable to use techniques like the imposition of extreme pain in order
to gain information. It would seem, a priori, that, under the ticking bomb
arguement (someone knows where a ticking bomb that will kill (scores,
hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, millions, take you pick), it is
acceptable to use such a technique....as long as one isn't a complete
pacifist. After all, if it is generally acceptable to kill a gunman who
won't lay down his gun and and is killing people, it should be acceptable
to hurt someone to save as many or more lives.
A posterori, the arguement becomes more complicated. When there isn't an
absolute bright line short of torture, one finds that the number of
"ticking bomb" scenarios tends to expand...with more and more situations
squeezed under that cover. Further, the ramifications of such a policy
tend to spread wider than the official sanction for it's use. If soldiers
know torture is used in "very important situations" and think that saving
their lives and their buddies lives are "very important situations", it's
easy to see how the use can spread beyond the sanctioned use.
>From looking at these data, one would conclude that the use of such
techniques is unethical, even though a theoretical arguement could be made
for ethical use. One would also see that it is against self-interest as
well as unethical for a society like the United States. It undermines the
differences between itself and totalitarian countries.
Is there any time when this is not true? Let's consider the question of
practically first. You mentioned the French official who turned the
inquiry into torture back on the reporters. He said if they supported the
occupation, then they had to accept the torture as a necessary part of it.
You concluded that there was an implication for our presence in Iraq that
can be drawn from that.
The history that I've heard was more general than this. It is that a
counter-insurgency has never been fought sucessfully without such tactics.
Included in this was the British fight with the IRA. So, one does not have
to be a foreign power to have this problem.
But, even ignoring this, one cannot argue that by not invading Iraq, we
would be out of the stream of this history. We are fighting a
counter-insurgancy in Afganistan. Even allowing that we would have been
wise to concentrate on winning the Afganistan struggle, the usual rule of
thumb for counter-insurgancies (8-10 years are needed to win) would
indicates that we could not have counted on being out by now.
Further, the elected government is pushing for a stronger US presence, not
a weaker one. As far as I can tell, the informal group of traditional
tribal leaders have endorsed this position. Having supported the
establishment of an elected government that is, for all of it's limitations
and faults, a real improvement over the Taliban, I think we are morally
compelled to stay for the long haul...(assuming that the invitation stays
open of course). Given that, we will be faced with fighting a
counter-insurgency for years to come....which places us in the
uncomfortable position of trying to avoid a history that no-one has yet
avoided, if we wish to eschew torture.
For a number of reasons, both practical and ethical, the US needs to
confirm that this will be both policy and law and that violations of this
law will be treated with the appropriate punishments. I could list reasons
for this, but I don't think the statement will engender debate from you, so
I won't do it now. :-)
Finally, having stated this, I'll have to admit that there may be
circumstances where I'd understand why this rule was violated. (I always
look for the exceptions to universals, even this one. :-) ) If the
"ticking bomb" were something like a nuclear device packed somewhere in
some container waiting customs inspections...then I'd probably accept "all
means necessary" being used by the government on people who have a real
chance of providing a lead. In particular, if the post mortum _did_ show
that these methods were instrumental in stopping, say, the Port of Houston
from turning into glass, then I'd probably not call for punishment. One of
the ways to handle this would be the way the Israeli Supreme Court does:
one cannot justify one's actions in this manner, but it could be a
mitigating circumstance with respect to any punishment.
How about you? If we take away the easy outs (like a lack of believability
of such a claim or the existence of equally promising techniques that do
not involve torture), would you make the decision to stick to principal and
take a high risk of a major seaport turning to glass? I realize that this
is a hypothetical....and plenty of arguments could be made that this is not
really a practical question, but I still wonder if the rule that
democracies should never resort to such actions is as universal as I'd like
it to be.
I'll address the other two themes in two other posts.
Dan M.
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