I am a better human being than Pres. Bush and Dick Cheney because I oppose torture

Great Debates
61

Odd how the premise for this debate has been virtually ignored.

I am willing to give EC the benefit of the doubt here on part A, largely because most posters on this board are liable to be better human beings than most politicians.

I’m still on the fence as to whether an isolated stance on the use of torture by the government makes ECa better human being than those who support Bush et al in this matter. We would have to know more about EC’s positions on other issues (for instance, his stock would go down if he happened to support clubbing baby seals and using the walkie-talkie function on his cell phone in the public library).

62

…so do you honestly think that “rewards”, " and “sleep depravation” work, in the context of Guantanemo Bay?

63

But in answer to that, you don’t have to prove POWs guilty of anything in order to hold them prisoner, just that they are in fact enemy combatants.

So at Guantanamo, we have three classes of people.

Enemy combatants who can be held indefinately without trial as long as conflict in Afghanistan goes on, but once the war is over you have to let them go and they can’t be charged with anything except war crimes (shooting at US soldiers isn’t a war crime). In my opinion most prisoners at Gitmo would fall into this category, I imagine Bush administration officials have a different view. These people aren’t guilty, but you don’t have to be “guilty” to be held.

Illegal combatants who can be charged with crimes. Murder, etc. You don’t get to shoot at US soldiers just because you don’t like them and they invaded your country, if you don’t fall into one of the categories quoted above you could be charged with murder for shooting a US soldier. However the problem is how are you going to prove it? In practice, it seems most would have to be treated as plain POWs.

People in the wrong place at the wrong time. Taliban soldiers move into a guys farm, US soldiers show up, firefight ensues, US soldiers capture everyone including the farmer, everyone gets sent to Gitmo including the farmer. But how is he going to convince the guards he wasn’t an irregular? It seems pretty difficult to do, especially if the actual irregular soldiers clam up. So this guy gets treated as a POW too, unless he can show somehow that he’s not.

So, you either get held (but not tried) as a POW, tried as a criminal, or let go as a noncombatant.

Note than in no case can you torture anyone, and in no case can you hold POWs or criminals incommunicado.

And one more thing. Nobody except an amatuer is going to be pulling off fingernails or the rack or rape or such. You don’t need any of that. Read the Gulag Archipelago, Soviet interrogators would have scorned such stuff and only amatuer guards or psychopaths would do such things. Hunger, cold, sleep deprivation, isolation, and psychological tricks are all you really need, as long as you have a few weeks or months to work with.

64

I’m not sure what the context is. If you mean the guys there now, then probably not. If you mean the guys there immediately after the invasion of Afghanistan, then yes.

But I’d leave it up to the experts in the interrogation field. What I’m 100% against is treating al-Qaeda members as POWs. If that wer the case, we’d be violating the GC if we insulted them (you son of a whore!) for not giving us information.

Emphasis added.

65

The OP says “better human being”; it says nothing about laws/treaties, or hypothetical situations ( so, tomndebb, in this case we are talking about torture ). I’m arguing morality, not law. Like this :

That may indeed be the law, but how is it morally defensible ? The idea that you have no right to fight back is just silly; should the French have imprisoned the French Resistance after WW 2 ?

66

Agitate to revise the GC then. Don’t bitch about it just because you don’t like it. I would actually agree…its high time the GC was brought up to date and provision was made for irregular soldiers…and for terrorists as a class. If nothing else at least the various classes (and their rights) would be well defined.

-XT

67

No, of course the FRENCH wouldn’t charge French resistance members. But the occupying authority (in this case Nazi Germany) certainly would and did. If you were a French soldier captured by Germans you got sent to a safe POW camp. If you were a French resistance fighter you got a cigarette and a blindfold.

But this wasn’t because they were Nazis and we were the good guys, we would do exactly the same thing to any German “resistance” fighters, and famously did to the German undercover sabotage team they sent to mainland US.

And later, we sent spies against the Soviet Union. If the Soviet Union caught the spies they would be sentenced to death. That doesn’t mean we would have killed them ourselves when they came back, does it? No, it just means that anyone operating as an uniniformed spy or saboteur can be tried and convicted under the law and the spy’s home country has no cause for complaint. In practice during the cold war we would often exchange spies, but it certainly wasn’t against international law to charge them with crimes. That doesn’t mean it was immoral to spy against the Soviet Union either, does it?

68

While you may be arguing some (not clear to me) point regarding the morality of torture, when you address specific points raised by other posters, you don’t have the moral right to simply change the meaning of what they have posted, redefining it to suit your argument. If you believe that John Mace has taken the issue outside the scope of the thread or that his argument is not pertinent, it is appropriate to decline to engage him, to point out that you are each arguing separate issues, or to indicate where you believe he has fallen into a logical or factual error. It is not valid to simply declare that every post is either for or against torture and that any post with which you disagree gets put in the Pro column. It is particularly not valid to declare that another poster has made a claim that he or she has clearly not made. The declaration that civilians must be accorded fewer rights than soldiers (horribly translated as “they are subhuman”) is simply not part of the argument John Mace advanced.

69

But also note that these people qualify as POWs:

The trouble is that you’re expecting the Geneva Conventions to follow logical rules and to stop wars and killing. But that isn’t the case. The Geneva Conventions assume as a given that countries are going to be shooting and bombing and killing and invading each other. Given said war and killing and invasion, and given that countries aren’t going to agree to do anything that gets in the way of their killing and invading each other, how can we go about making said killing and invading a little less unpleasant without actually impeding the ability of countries to invade and kill each other?

The Geneva conventions regarding prisoners are in place because it doesn’t matter if a soldier is dead or taken prisoner, he can’t fight any more, and given that he can’t fight any more why bother killing him? Tell you what, I won’t kill your guys once they’re prisoners, you won’t kill my guys, it won’t affect the war one way or another, so why not?

70

The OP expanding (or clarified) the scope of his thesis, in post #7, to include activities such as sleep deprivation. If you have a problem with that expanded scope, take it up with him, not me.

71

We also don’t want POWs to be pressured in any way shape or form to give information to the enemy. When both sides agree to this, it works great. We take POWs, and hold them (nothing more) until the war is over. But if we intercept a spy or some other operative, we want to be able to interrogate them to get info they may have. Both sides take that risk when they use non-uniformed personnel.

Al-Qaeda, though is a different deal altogether. They are not signatories to the GC, and do not operate according the rules of war. Again, my example of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed comes to mind. Taliban fighters in the Afghan war, should indeed be treated as POWs. As should any of Saddam’s army.

72

No, I’m just arguing from an ethical/moral standpoint, not a legal one. As far as I’m concerned, if you invade my country I have a perfect moral right to kill or disable you, whether or not I’m part of an organization, have a commander, or “carry my arms openly” ( which is just stupid, frankly ). My moral constraints are : No unnecessary brutality ( kill them, not torture/humiliate/mutilate ), and don’t knowingly involve bystanders. By my standards I have a perfect right to shoot an invading soldier in the back with a concealed weapon; if he doesn’t like it, he should’ve stayed home. I don’t have a right to, say, sneak an agent into his home country and blow up some random building or poison the water supply. I feel no moral obligation to hand my enemy all the advantages by fighting like an army when I’m not.

73

Right, but if you’ve got a right to shoot him in the back, how can you object if he returns the favor?

74

First, I can object because he’s the invader. Second, I expect him to do so anyway, Convention or not.

75

I can’t see what is your point exactly. The situation of civilians not involved in fights and not criminals but ending up for some reason under the custody of a belligerant power is also covered by a protocol of the Geneva convention. POW are protected by it. Criminals, be it civilians or militaries are just that, criminal, and benefit from the rights mentionned in the UDHR.
There’s no category altogether of people who can be detained until the end of the hostilities and don’t benefit either from the protection of the Geneva convention or from the rights suspected criminals are entitled to. If your point was that such a category exists, you’re wrong.
The people we’re talking about are political prisonners, in the usual meaning of people arbitrarily and sometimes secretely detained and deprived of all rights (as opposed to the meaning sometimes used in some democracies for criminals politically motivated who get more rights as a result) . There’s no difference between the american “ennemy combatants” (a completely unexisting category of people made up by the Bush administration) and a political prisonner arbitrarily arrested and detained in some third world dictartorship. None.

76

My citizenship and the human rights situation in my country are both completely irrelevant to the issue at hand. I could be a North-Korean citizen and it wouldn’t change a thing.
My sarcastic comment was intended to remember ** Sam Stone ** that he’s supposed to live in a democratic country where he’s busy supporting Stalinian practices (like sleep deprivation, stress positions, etc… on arbitrarily detained people, methods that have been closely practiced studied at the Liubianka.

As for the OP I think that for once a specific definition of what exactly ‘torture’ IS would be in order…before we decide who is ‘evil’ or who should start sharpening their knives. This is something that is always danced around in these threads as no one can ever seem to make a solid definition of what exactly we are debating. Is torture inflicting disconfort? Is it only ‘torture’ if we take it to the point where life itself is endangered…or beyond? Is it ‘torture’ only if there is perminent damage to the subject? Is it ‘torture’ if its done only in an extralegal environment?

For myself I have no problem with some interrigation techniques including sleep depravation and some of the psychological techniques used. I would probably have no real problem with putting suspected terrorists (especially the high ranking ones that have been captured) through some fairly uncomfortable practices. Where would I draw the line? I’m not sure because I’ve never actually seen more than speculation as far as what exactly US personnel have done…and to whom. I have no doubts that some of the things done would go beyond the line I myself would draw…depending on who exactly was being put to the question and how effective the techniques used were in actually getting the information out of them. To me thats the main rub…that most of the really radical torture techniques used (I’m talking the ones that inflict a great deal of pain, or inflict pain over long periods of time, that cause perminent harm, or even death) don’t seem to be effective. Others however (combinations of sleep depravation and perhaps drugs, psychological techniques, etc) I’m not so sure they can be so easily dismissed…especially if they actually produce results and don’t cause perminent harm.

For all of you ‘torture is evil in all cases no matter what’ types what exactly do you propose as an alternative to interrogating suspected terrorists…or pure out and out terrorists caught red handed? Simply lock them up and make no attempt at all to interrogate them? Ask them nicely and if they refuse simply shrug and move on? Some of these folks, especially the high ranking ones have information that could be the key to taking down whole cells of terrorists…or in learning their plans and other vital operations information. Whats your alternative to the current methods used? Its really easy to sit back and bitch about something you don’t like (and REALLY easy to sit on your high horse and thump your chest while saying ‘I don’t like torture!’…as if the rest of us living in the real world DO like it), but if you don’t offer alternatives it kind of rings hollow. So, Evil et al…whats your alternative? What SHOULD we do IYHOs?

-XT
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77

My citizenship and the human rights situation in my country are both completely irrelevant to the issue at hand. I could be a North-Korean citizen and it wouldn’t change a thing.
My sarcastic comment was intended to remember ** Sam Stone ** that he’s supposed to live in a democratic country where he’s busy supporting Stalinian practices (like sleep deprivation, stress positions, etc… on arbitrarily detained people, methods that have been closely practiced studied at the Liubianka).

First, once again, these techniques have been used and mastered by torturers in the worst regimes on the planet. They might amount to way more than “some discomfort”.

Second, of course, the US authorities are going to show as rosy a picture as possible. Letting people believe that it’s “just a little sleep deprivation” and no big deal is of course a good PR move. But…do you wonder how these methods can be efficient if it’s no big deal?

Third, and most importantly, how can you know what methods are employed, given that they are used on people you don’t even know are detained? That’s the direct result of permitting and ** supporting ** secret arrests without charges, without counsel, without contacts. For all you know, people could be tortured with red hot irons and shot with a bullet in the head when they’ve finished with them. That’s what you get by allowing secrecy and excusing the lack of due process.

Indeed. That’s my point. Keep praying that CIA agents are all boy-scouts.

There’s NO alternative to oppose secret arrests without charge but with torture in a democracy. The lack of such things is the very reason why we want to live in a free country.

These arguments could be used as well for any criminal activity, and for prisonners of war.

78

Well, I won’t do it again, but I don’t see how this constitutes wishing death on someone.

79

Once again, this category is completely unexisting except in the mind of Bush. You don’t have to let them go at the end of the war simply because you’ve no ground to keep them at the first place. They’re arbitrarily detained and as such have no rights (though they should have the right to just walk away and receive a big amount of money for kidnapping and illegal detention).

IOW, they’re detained arbitrarily until their innocence is proved.

That’s precisely one of my points. The methods supposedly acceptable and more palatable PR-wise are actually methods that have been used in such a beacon of democracy as Soviet Russia. And it’s not because they were more pleasant for the prisonners. They were just absolutely awful as in “How could I find a way to kill myself?” They just don’t look awful when they’re mentionned.

80

True…you could have been. That would simply have made it MORE ironic. Perhaps when you said ‘You should try someday to live in free country where people usually believe in liberty and individual rights. It should be a very enlightening experience to you. Not everybody is accustomed to give a pass to Stalinian methods, you know. Not yet, at least.’ you were being wistful? That YOU wish you lived in such a happy land? :wink:

Thats true. Of course, the ‘torturere in the worst regimes on the planet’ also eat red meat…AND veggies! They also put on their pants one leg at a time!

In other words, those techniques (and ones far worse) are used by the worst regimes on the planet…and by regimes not so bad too.

Well yes…undoubtedly. And those opposed to the US for whatever reason tend to paint things in the worst possible light. Somewhere in the middle probably lies the truth. The mere fact that we all have some vague idea at all of whats going on kind of speaks as a plus in my book…and the fact that by and large if the citizens of this country don’t like what they are seeing eventually things will be self corrected. Can the same be said of ever other country out there? How about yours?

Well, my answer to this is…I DON’T know. I have to hope that the part of the government that is supposed to represent we, the people, is doing its frigging job and has its head out of its ass…i.e. the Congress and the Senate. The various intelligence subcommittees are SUPPOSED to be up to speed on whats being done in our names, and they are SUPPOSED to be a check on the President, the military and the various intelligence agencies doing whatever the hell they want. I have to hope (and I’ve seen no evidence presented to the contrary) that the intelligence agencies are under some kind of oversight from the government. If not…well, then I’d have a serious problem. I think most American’s would feel the same way.

Nope…I simply hope that the government, elected by the people, is doing its job and keeping tabs on what the hell the CIA is doing in our name.

You totally dodged my question. I didn’t mention secret arrests without charge. I asked what your alternative to interrigation methods I said I was ok with if you need to extract vital information. Do you have an alternative or simply ‘all torture bad’?

But you know they aren’t (at least not in THIS country…how 'bout France?) so your assertion here is full of straw.

-XT