Torture and Killing

I have a hard time taking Thomas Friedman's argument seriously. The test is simply to reverse roles. Assume this is the story of American prisoners captured by Japanese or Germans in WWII. Would Friedman make the same please to "let bygones by bygones"? I doubt it. I've bolded key bits:

Weighing everything, President Obama got it about as right as one could when he decided to ban the use of torture, to release the Bush torture memos for public scrutiny and to not prosecute the lawyers and interrogators who implemented the policy. But there is nothing for us to be happy about in any of this.

After all, we’re not just talking about “enhanced interrogations.” Lawrence Wilkerson, the former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, has testified to Congress that more than 100 detainees died in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan, with up to 27 of those declared homicides by the military. They were allegedly kicked to death, shot, suffocated or drowned. Look, our people killed detainees, and only a handful of those deaths have resulted in any punishment of U.S. officials.

The president’s decision to expose but not prosecute those responsible for this policy is surely unsatisfying; some of this abuse involved sheer brutality that had nothing to do with clear and present dangers. Then why justify the Obama compromise? Two reasons: the first is that because justice taken to its logical end here would likely require bringing George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and other senior officials to trial, which would rip our country apart; and the other is that Al Qaeda truly was a unique enemy, and the post-9/11 era a deeply confounding war in a variety of ways.

Did the US decide to not prosecute Japanese war criminals because that would "rip the Japanese country apart"? Did the Allies refuse to hold the Nurenberg trials because they would "rip the German country apart"?

Go read about war crimes and decide for yourself.

Personally I don't buy either claim. My reaction to the "rip our country apart" is recorded above. I'm also cynical about the "unique enemy" argument. Hitler was pretty clear that he considered Jews to be a "unique enemy" since he called them vermin and pursued a policy of extermination. Does the fact that his "enemies" were unique mean that Hitler should have been given a pass for the horrors he inflicted on the world? I'm pretty sure everybody but the fringe nutwing right would agree that Hitler was evil and if he hadn't killed himself he should have been tried for crimes against humanity and war crimes.

Bush may be merely a bush leaguer in this debate (pun intended), but Bush shouldn't get a pass. You don't let off the guy who holds the corner store up for $20 buck because it isn't in the same league as a $1 million bank heist.

I used to like Friedman's essays, but I've now come to the view that they are mostly "me too" journalism or take a trend and push it too far. What appears bold and original really isn't. Usually he is simply catering to the readers' prejudices.

In this essay, after many paragraphs working hard to explain American exceptionalism, he makes this ridiculous claim:

Conversely, if we, with Iraqis, defeat them by building any kind of decent, pluralistic society in the heart of their world, it will be a devastating blow. Odd as it may seem, the most dangerous moment for us is if Al Qaeda is beaten in Iraq. Because that is when Al Qaeda’s remnants will try to throw a Hail Mary pass — that is, try to set off a bomb in a U.S. city — to obscure its defeat by moderate Arabs and Muslims in the heart of its world.

This is truly astonishing. The US has spent hundreds of billions of dollars in Iraq, but I'm not aware of even a few tens of millions being spent on civil society functions that would create a "pluralistic" society. Sure, the US has spent modest sums fixing water and electricity, but the US destroyed a lot of that so it makes sense you need to repair what you ruined. But where are the great academies that the US has built to teach law, teach civil society, establish voluntary civic associations, create arenas to spread inter-group understanding? I don't think any money has been spent on this. Billions on war. Maybe a few pennies on civil society. But nothing on "pluralism".

So where does Friedman get this crazed view? At best this is self-congratulatory journalism, feel good journalism that reassures Americans that they don't go in and destroy countries under a beserk President. Nope, this war was necessary because it was the first step in building a better world, a "pluralistic" world. Now that is hallucinatory dreaming on steroids!

And where does Friedman come off as a prophet with his keen seer's eye that foretells of Al Qaeda's plans for a "Hail Mary pass"? What nuttiness. This guy is writing for a major newspaper and he publishes this rubbish?