Personally, I would point out that it is more important in life to act with adherence to firm moral principles than to bend to the primal urges of the moment.
It is not okay to steal even if we think we can get away with it.
It is not okay to punch a stranger in the face just because a cop isn’t standing there to stop you.
It is not okay to torture someone even if it is kept secret and we think they are probably a bad guy.
We have seen instances in history where we have weakened ourselves to suit our prejudices rather than taking the more difficult course of taking a moral stance in spite of popular opinion. For example, in World War II, we sent Americans who looked like Japanese to prison camps, not because they had done something wrong, but because they looked like the enemy. We have since learned that this was an enormous mistake. There was no question of loyalty, it was a decision based solely on prejudice. Some of those interned were allowed to fight for our Army in Europe, and these Japanese-Americans of the 442nd Infantry Regiment became the most highly decorated military unit in our history. And yet, we sent these people to prison camps for no reason. Our government makes mistakes. We cannot blindly trust our government not to make more mistakes.
It is clear that we have sent innocent people to Guantanamo for no reason. They were not Americans, to be sure, but we imprisoned, and perhaps tortured, people who were not terrorists for all the wrong reasons. (There are ample cites for Bush releasing innocent people from GTMO if you google for them.) Because we are weak, we have been willing to believe without questioning that everyone in GTMO is the worst terrorist we can imagine. And yet, we know for sure that not everyone there has done something wrong. How can we defend a policy of imprisoning and torturing people if we don’t even know if they’re the bad guys?
Not so much on the above quote, but a simple exercise… (please don’t actually do this to your fiance’s nephew (fn) )
Next time you see him, tell him that HE stole $1000, which he didn’t. Then ask him:
Question 1.
“If I asked if you stole $1000 from me, but didn’t, would you tell me ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ ?”
(usual answer No)
now… Question 2.
“If I asked if you stole $1000 from me, but didn’t, and I chained you up, put a cover over your head, and kept hitting you, and told you that the only way this would stop if you told me the truth - would you tell me ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ ?”
2 outcomes:
If your fn says Yes, ask him why he said yes - (usual answer, becasue I wanted you to stop hitting me)
If your fn says NO, repeat question 2… and so on.
Now… this is a VERY BASIC exercise to show that torture is not a good way of getting the truth out from a person under heavy physical stress.
Here’s how you deal with the high school nephew. Tell him that girls don’t have sex with guys who torture or those who condone it. He should understand pretty quickly.
I have always admired the USA, thinking of it as “The Cowboy in the White Hat” always trying to do good in a bad situation. I was so disapointed when my hero turned to Torture (the bad guys tactics)
I don’t want to get drawn into the same torture debate over and over again and I don’t think it’s your job to convince your high school friend one way or the other. But I would ask your high school friend a number of pointed questions and let him draw his own conclusions:
Why does he think the CIA keeps torture secret from the rest of the world? What does that say about their methods?
How do we know a prisoner in Guantanamo is actually a terrorist and not just some farmer who got picked up in some military operation?
Are Americans deserving of different rights from other people? Why?
How would he expect that our soldiers should be treated if captured by an enemy?
If we are in fact the most powerful nation on Earth, what sort of responsibility comes with that?
Does knowing his country tortures prisoners make him feel proud of being a part of that nation? Is that the type of country people should want to die trying to defend?
And if you don’t like his answers, ask him again while beating him with a sock full of pool balls.
Our government has a long history of abusing power by crying “national security” and running covert programs that interfered in foreign governments {even democracies} in a way that we would never want ourselves interfered with. We have to constantly be on guard against the abuse of power as well as outside threats. No, we don’t want to reveal defense secrets that might endanger our military or citizens, but we must also be vigilant in discerning the difference between security and abuse of power. Bringing things out in the open is part of that. We won’t always be exactly correct but we cannot afford to blindly accept the claims of our leaders without question. That’s the obligation of a democratic republic and it’s citizens. For homework your assignment is to study the Pentagon Papers and Nixon’s presidency.
I agree that scapegoating is a cowardly thing to do and for the most part issues of performance failure should remain within the organization, but torture is a little more than that. The logic is that if we want to remain leaders in a free and progressing world we have to live up to some of the principles we keep touting, even if others don’t. Agents and military personal have some moral obligation and legal channels to pursue if they are ordered to commit crimes against the Geneva Convention and International law.
You’re assuming a lot of guilt without evidence. Is that how we do it? If we do not support basic human rights and justice for all people then our highly touted American way of life becomes empty words or worse. This is indeed an unconventional conflict we are in but we don’t serve ourselves or future generations by abandoning our principles. If the goal is world peace we must accept our role as part of the world community that seeks peace and justice for all people, not just ourselves and our allies. That means we still defend ourselves vigorously but remain committed to justice and peace for all. {see Palestine}
It takes more than the fact we’ve not been attacked on American soil to call ourselves secure. The Pre Obama time cost us a lot more lives than 3000 lives didn’t it? Not to mention tens of thousands of non combatant Iraqis. We will not survive in a changing modern world by shutting ourselves off and relying on military might to “keep us safe” We must engage the world and try to live the principles of our great experiment.
As far as Pelosi is concerned I’d gladly see her and other career politicians from both parties find new work. I’d gladly replace her with an honest conservative Republican if one shows up. So far the party leaders don’t seem that interested in finding one.
Given the time they’ve been in office, No you haven’t. Be honest and realistic.
We are for the time being but history shows us that changes on a regular basis. We do have to work with other nations looking toward the future in a changing world. Even now we are dependent on other nations economically and for our disproportionate use of the world’s energy. Should we abandon our principles and rely solely on “might makes right”? If we do, in the name of American interests and security, do we actually help create a better world for the next generation and the one after that?
Here’s my suggestion. It’s past time for the American citizens to make a bigger sacrifice. A sacrifice of their time, intellect, and energy to educate themselves beyond party talking points swallowing whatever BS that professional politicians feed us {again, both parties}
We need to demand accountability from our local and state politicians and spend the time to actually check what they are doing. Then we need to throw out the ones who demonstrate that the American citizens aren’t really their priority , even if we support the party they are running for. Make our local party leaders listen to who we want to elect rather than who the political machine wants and/or owes a favor to. If we don’t have the time and energy for that {and so far we don’t} we’ll get what we deserve in Washington.
Ask him who first intoduced this subject to the newspapers. Ask him what he knows about the idea of “balance of power” and if that’s a good thing. He might want to read a short summary of The Pentagon Papers (that exposed much of the truth about Vietnam) to see how sometimes it is exactly the right thing to do. That is how the people in the country are best kept informed.
Some of the people here are natural born teachers. The more that you can help him to discover the truth of this for himself, the better chance he has of accepting it.
And a couple of more things. Is he aware that there were two boys ages 15 and 16 held without charges at Guantanamo? Does he know that small fortunes were paid for anyone turned in whether they were guilty or not?
Am I right that the term “enemy combatant” was made up just during Bush’s term in office?
Tell that to the members of the French underground and British agents in France during the war who were rounded up and captured by the Nazis as a result of colleagues broken by torture.
Of course, not all broke, but many did. Torture is certainly appalling, but to say it’s ineffective just isn’t true.
No (and Yes). I’ve seen this term tossed around a lot and it’s often misused. The term enemy combatant/belligerent has been around a long time. It’s just a term used to label the enemy armed forces. There are two types. Lawful enemy combatant and unlawful enemy combatant. A lawful enemy combatant (basically) fights on behalf of a state and follows the rules of war (no being a fake Red Cross, no waving a white flag and killing, no pretending to be a civilian and killing, ect); when captured, they are called POW’s and cannot be charged with the crime of fighting/killing. The entire Geneva convention applies to POW’s. They are released then the war is over.
The grey area you’re probably getting at is unlawful enemy combatants; Are they fighting a war against the US against the rules (unlawful enemy combatant) or are they just committing criminal acts (criminals). There’s valid arguments on either side. You can preventively detain an unlawful enemy combatant until the war is over. Further, it’s been understood that common Article 3 of the Geneva convention applies to any person held in your custody (this part covers humane treatment of prisoners).
Why the answer is also yes. What Bush and Obama have done is defined who the enemy is in this particular war. Something like, “supporting forces hostile to the US in Afghanistan or Iraq” = enemy combatant. I just made that up, but that’s generally it.
The point is under torture you will say whatever you think your torturers want to hear to get them to stop. I read of a case where a guy being tortured admitted to being a hermaphrodite (he wasn’t).
Professional interrogators have said repeatedly that torture is a terrible means to get useful information. Other methods are FAR more reliable and better in every way.
This is not a matter of opinion. This is a matter of experience.
If your goal is to elicit a false confession (e.g. get someone to admit to being a hermaphrodite that is not a hermaphrodite) then torture is your thing.
If he likes movies, tell him to watch “Rendition” about holding a person prisoner and torturing them; and “All the President’s Men” about the importance of the freedom of the press. Both are excellent movies and present a fairly liberal viewpoint.
You haven’t read much about SOE operations in the Second World War, have you? There are heroic and well-documented examples of resistance to torture. Everybody does NOT break. (One only has to think of the Christian martyrs of old.)
But most people do. And if their information proves false you return to torture them anew. The Nazis, alas, weren’t complete idiots.
No matter how much we may abhor and disapprove of torture, it works and has been shown in history to work time and time again.
Just one example of someone who didn’t break under the most extreme torture - Jean Moulin.
Let me just follow up on this notion that torture will always elicit false information. Once again it is instructive to look at the Nazi interrogators in occupied France and their techniques. They were only too well aware that their subjects would attempt to deceive them by giving false information. Information elicited from torture would be checked against information from other sources, other torture victims, informants, etc. If they suspected falsity they would return to torture the victim again. And again. And again.
Many maquis cells were discovered and broken up by just these methods. They were in fact so effective that the French payed them the compliment of exact imitation in the Algerian troubles.
Torture can be effective. It can also prove ineffective. It all depends on the skill of the torturers themselves.
EVERYONE breaks under torture…at least if the torturer has a clue about torturing.
“Breaks” however does not mean the person just spills the beans. Indeed, as has been noted around here in other threads, people subjected to torture tend to clam up and become more resistant to giving useful information. Not only useful but timely as well. The act of torturing them prompts them to more of a “fuck you” mindset.
People under torture generally do not lose their minds. They can spill out information in ways that are not of much use to interrogators. That is partly the point of SERE training. They are taught that you WILL break and answer questions but the training allows them to be more careful in what they say to be sure nothing actually useful gets out. That’s the theory anyway.
Read the thread Torture is Most Likely Effective and Ticking Time Bomb where we have already been over all this in detail. Note the veritable mountain of evidence disputing what you have said here. Please cite torture’s effectiveness through the ages.
Here is a quote provided by Kobal2 in the Torture is Likely Effective thread:
Someone else somewhere provided stats on the horrible success rate of the Gestapo (can’t seem to find it here now…hamsters are not being nice).
As for the French paying some kind of homage to the Gestapo by mimicking their techniques in Algeria note that the French use of torture in Algeria was a primary cause of them losing the war there not to mention leading to an attempted overthrown of the French government by parts of the French military. Hardly a ringing endorsement for the use of torture in my book.
I didn 't say the French use of tiorture worked, I know full well it didn’t. My point was that the French used the German techniques because they had worked for the Germans in WWII. If they hadn’t worked then the French wouldn’t have bothered trying.
As for watching too many movies, that’s just a cheap shot unworthy of GD. Unsurprising though from a poster who insists on capitalizing and underlining a word as if that somehow makes it unanswerable. And repeating it. You seem to be of the Bellman’s mind, “What I tell you three times is true.”
You might also point your nephew to Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy, by Charlie Savage, Chapter 9, “The Torture Ban.” The no-visible-marks-left psychological torture methods – sleep deprivation, loud noises all night, heat and cold, shackling in stressed positions, threatening with dogs, defiling Korans, etc. – that our military has been documented as using on prisoners, e.g., at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, originally were invented by the North Koreans, and were successful in getting American POWs to appear in films falsely confessing to war crimes. U.S. interrogation experts (psychologists) studied it and determined the process is useless for any purpose but the production of false propaganda; no reliable information can be extracted, only what the subject thinks the interrogator wants to hear.
But during the Bush Admin, the authorities lost sight of that distinction. The methods were used in the SERE (Survive, Evade, Resist, and Escape) program, in which American special forces personnel were put through such psychological torture, solely to train them to resist it if captured and “Return Home With Honor”. After 9/11, NCOs who had played the part of foreign interrogators in such simulations (but who were not psychologists or interrogation specialists) were put in charge of real interrogations and expected to get reliable information from prisoners, and for the most part they didn’t.
