Wednesday, April 29, 2009

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?

2 comments:

Unknown said...

For what it is worth; I am with you on this one. I should stop there, but I have to say that the whole torture thing makes me so... I don't know how to say it. There is no justification for what has been done. I don't believe anyone involved is innocent or should escape trial. I don't accept the whole"just following orders" excuse.

I applaud what you have written. There is more here from you than in your usual posts. I also like your usual post which says enough and brings things of importance to my attention, thank you for those, too.

RYviewpoint said...

Thomas: I'm torn both ways on this issue. I like Obama's desire to look to the future and not open up an ugly fight over this. There are many really important issues facing the US right now. On the other hand, this has created an issue that has shocked the world (and sensible Americans), so it needs to be dealt with.

It needs to be defused from political wrangling. There needs to be an unimpeachable special prosecutor put in place and there needs to be truly bi-partisan commission/congressional hearing that sits in judgement to ensure that the tone does not fall down to political wrangling.

It will be very tough. As for the lawyers advising the administration, clearly you don't want to suppress their freedom to advise. But if you can show that they were partisan and willingly decided to bend the law to a breaking point by giving advice to ignore the legal responsibilities of the US, then they must be punished.

For the Bush administration, this same kind of delicate dance needs to be done. On the one hand, if it is credible that they simply took the legal advice and followed it, then they must be judged more leniently. On the other hand, the evidence seems to point to them acting before they got the legal advice and in fact "ordered up" the legal advice to cover their crimes, then they must be dealt with more severely.

As for the military, a handful of poor foot soldiers (Charles Graner and Lynndie England) have been tried for crimes, but it isn't clear to me that they were in a position to judge for themselves what their obligations were. On the one hand I read that military training includes reviewing the Geneva convention and making it clear that you have a right to refuse an "unlawful" order. So the question comes down to: were the military grunts truly educated and do they realistically have the ability to refuse orders? (Does a request from interrogation officers to "soften up" prisoners constitute and order? Also, you need to read Philip Zimbardo's The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil to understand that torture by underlings may be excusable because the blame belongs with the superiors.)

As for the commanding officers, you have to decide not just the same issue that applies to the lower level soldiers, but the question of to what extent the chain of command was broken by including CIA operatives and "contractors" into the operations, e.g. how much real "command" did General Janis Karpinski really have?). My gut level reaction is that more officers should have refused orders. But I really don't know enough to stand by that claim.

In short, the whole thing is ugly. Even though there is an impulse to "don't stir up the mess", it seems clear that it needs to be dealth with. It will be messy. The proceedings will be muddied by extremists on both sides. But, in the end, some kind of judicial review is needed to exorcise the devil and help make clear to all where the limits of the law stand, what are the obligations, and when can people be excused of responsibility.

Sadly, you can only learn from the past if you in fact confront the past and deal with it. This can be very painful, but that is exactly when the greatest lessons will be learned.