A large part of the problem I have with having a weblog -- and which makes posting here so infrequent -- is that almost all of the things I’d really like to post about are complex enough that I balk both at trying to get it right, and also at trying to clearly represent what I do get into a post that doesn’t take hours and hours to compose, revise, and then smack my head into the desk over. A quick rant about fraternities in response to an NYT piece with a big blind spot is easy enough. But even I’m not trivial-minded enough to want to write about such things all of the time.
But, nevertheless, here goes, into an issue that I wish were easier to hash out than it is.
I’m not normally much of a Mickey Kaus reader, but every now and again I look at his blog/column/meta-screed. This week it pointed me at an article in City Journal by Heather MacDonald, which accuses lefties and human rights organizations of a couple of things. (Note: it looks like City Journal, with which I’m not really familiar, has something of a conservative pedigree. Or maybe not. I should look further into that, but I’m late. For now, however, I’m going to take the article at face value. Perhaps someone more familiar with the publication can enlighten me as to editorial slant.)
The first of MacDonald’s important charges against human rights activists is a fundamental misunderstanding of what U.S. interrogators have and have not been doing at Guantanamo, and the level to which their restraint has hamstrung their legitimate efforts to get information from detained “enemy combatants.” We think they’ve been fiendishly torturing people; she offers an argument (backed with descriptions from interrogators) that in fact they’ve been less bullying than your average narcotics detective is with a suspect in a crack-dealing case. And that, further, the al-Qaida conspirators, with their focus on eternal reward, are almost impossible to interrogate with the “gloves on,” because there is little they can be seriously threatened with or offered as a reward. They must, therefore, be placed in conditions of physical and mental stress, and even uncertainty about the possibility of being hurt, in order to shake their simple and effective strategy of clamming up and waiting to go to Heaven.
The second is a wrongheaded conflation of the Abu Ghraib abuses with the aforementioned legitimate techniques, and an assumption that the Abu Ghraib guards were the inheritors of a sadistic “torture ‘em” culture that has its origins in upper Administration circles and was first tried out on the Gitmo prisoners, later exported to Iraq. Part of the assumption she attacks is the notion that the infamous “Bybee memo” (which made a horrifying legal argument that you can torture a person without legally “torturing” them, and, anyway, maybe U.S. laws against torture have no bearing on the executive during wartime, which can do whatever it feels necessary, really) makes plain the connection between an administration eager to find legal justification for torture and the Abu Ghraib abuses. She makes the case that in Iraq (unlike in the case of the al-Qaida prisoners), military commanders made it clear that prisoners would be treated in accordance with the Geneva Conventions, and that the investigation of what happened at Abu Ghraib reveals that the abuses were committed by guards, not military interrogators, and were the product of faulty discipline, not any large-scale plan to use torture as a method of interrogation.
I won’t resummarize her article and argument further here, but it’s worth reading. Most people I know have read little about the actual techniques in use at Guantanamo, or the internal legal/policy struggles within military circles about how to define appropriate methods of interrogation there. And as someone who does not equate criticism of the administration with a dismissal of the necessity of defeating al-Qaida, I accept the notion that it should be legitimate to use the same techniques in interrogating a suspected terrorist that one uses to interrogate a suspected murderer. Especially since that could be seen as the same thing.
Her dismissal of the relevance of Abu Ghraib to the issue of how we are allowing interrogators to work is less convincing, perhaps because it’s more cursory. I’ll come back to that in a moment, I will first say that although I have reservations, I’ll grant that critics of the Defense Department and the Bush administration should consider the proposition that the Abu Ghraib outrages are, while horrible in and of themselves, not yet proven to be emblematic of how other prisoners taken in the “War on Terror” are being treated. And McDonald’s article makes some persuasive – if brief – points about the logic of seeing Abu Ghraib as a consequence of the general mismanagement of the Iraq war (that overly sunny forecast again), a problem not to be conflated with the issue of how tough we can be with suspected planners of terror attacks. Her willingness to join in the condemnation of how the administration has run the Iraq campaign does seem to add to her credibility.
But with all that said, I’m left with some questions.
Hasn’t the overwhelming aura of secrecy surrounding the status of, evidence against, and legal standing of prisoners at Guantanamo created the necessity of suspicions about prisoner treatment, especially from human rights organizations the world (including the U.S.) traditionally counts on to act as watchdogs? Especially given our not unblemished human rights record during the Central/South American phases of the Cold War, which involved a number of current administration players.
Isn’t the government’s failure to clarify how it will give accused and suspected terrorists due process a central problem in deciding how far it is legitimate to go in interrogating them? In the case of a suspected felon on U.S. soil, a lot of legal protections surround the interrogation process – particularly the right of the accused to a trial. Given that the prisoners are not (in the case of traditional hostilities) soldiers in the military of a state with which we are at war, they are more like accused criminals. By what process are we attempting to prove guilt or innocence? The government has been as secretive as possible about both the process and the facts in the individual cases – although it is certain that some who have been imprisoned cannot be said to have done more than hate the U.S. from a great distance away. How much stress are we allowed to put a person under whom we have no evidence is a true soldier in a war against us?
What about the accusations that prisoners have been “outsourced” to other countries where extremely rough methods of interrogation – not to say “torture” – are countenanced?
Even if Abu Ghraib (as a shorthand for the torture that took place there) is far removed from the context of interrogation at Gitmo, isn’t the burden now on the administration to demonstrate that our people really are under control? The context, after all, IS (as MacDonald admits) a shocking failure of discipline, which has so heavily damaged the credibility of America’s claim as a nation to respect the human rights of those we encounter in war and peace. But McDonald’s article reads like a scolding meant for lily-livered liberals, quick to imagine savagery on the part of our hard-working military interrogators. What fools we are for not seeing that Abu Ghraib and Gitmo couldn’t possibly be connected!
This is unreasonable: what is reasonable is to examine the possibility that misconduct in one situation may signal a broader problem with how we are handling military prisoners -- especially when many of these prisoners are very similar in terms of language and religion. Her article, indeed, is hopefully evidence that the rot, in fact, isn’t as bad as all that. But her rhetorical stance suggests that the fact that we even needed to ask betrays a weakness on the part of the questioner – rather than the necessity that those questions be asked. (And this is of a piece with the administration’s grudging response when they have been forced at times to actually justify their actions: what is perpetually implied is that it is unnecessary and dangerous for the public to have asked in the first place.)
Finally – and this is perhaps the most pressing question raised by my reading of the article, and not solely aimed solely at the author or those who agree with her wholeheartedly – why are we perpetually seeing those concerned with the preservation of human rights and civil liberties in the West played off against those who are fervent in the belief that Islamic fundamentalists represent an extreme threat to human rights and civil liberties, wherever they take power? I, for one, believe that egalitarian civil society is almost certainly incompatible with theocracy – at least any theocracy currently on offer. And insofar as Islamic fundies declare war on us, and attack us, I have no qualms about taking the fight to them. Or interrogating the captured prisoners. And continuing to imprison those who we can convince a jury were working as our enemies.
But it seems to me to be simultaneously important to preserve due process of law, open examination of our own treatment of prisoners and those we fight against in general, and (overarchingly) the minimum amount of government secrecy consistent with real (not political) security with regard to enemies. A government that makes a habit of secrecy about EVERYTHING, and sends its lawyers on repeat quests to find loopholes in inconveniently restrictive treaties and conventions is not a government that can be trusted to secure the moral high ground – the place we always counted on occupying in the first place. MacDonald chastises those who pursue a “utopian illusion” in applying human rights doctrine to prisoners. But the countervailing notion -- that we can trust the administration to pursue, interrogate, “break” and indefinitely detain the right people, given their record of hiding as much as they can and altering the rules in secret – well, that sounds downright fantastic to me.
Posted by BT at January 13, 2005 12:55 AMso, is it now impossible to envision a world in which democracies and theocracies exist simultaneously and without conflict? (this is a philosophical question)
Posted by: art on January 13, 2005 11:12 AMand, come to think of it, won't the democratic process in Iraq lead to a theocracy in pratice if not name (if allowed to operate fairly)?
Posted by: art on January 13, 2005 11:14 AMMy statement about incompatibility had to do with a (perhaps vague) larger vision of global "civil society," and maybe I was a little quick to use the term "theocracy," insofar that what I had in mind specifically the fairly activist theocracies of the Iranian/Taliban type. That is, not only do those governments establish an antidemocratic order within, they actively work against democratic/egalitarian forces in other nations (not because they simply "hate freedom" as the administration simplistically puts it, but because they clearly see themselves as part of a worldwide struggle in which their duty is to establish the political dominance of their religion.)
But insofar as a country like Saudi Arabia is theocratic (if not exactly a theocracy), well, whether or not you think of that government as an enemy of democratic norms internationally (I kind of think I do, but maybe I'm wrong), it's clearly a good example of a society that is about as un-democratic as they come.
I can *imagine* a theocratic society that respects human rights and preserves one-person-one-vote, but only in a country where
(a) an overwhelming majority belong to the same religion and have little recent history of sectarian strife
(b) the religion in question is pretty mild in its restrictions on how people live their lives, and is tolerant of dissent, and color- and gender-neutral in its attitudes/prescriptions
Frankly, when I put that together, it sounds like a description of the relation of the Anglican church to the government of the United Kingdom. Which is not, last time I checked, a theocracy. In fact, the Anglicans are a good bit harsher than what I described. So, on reflection, maybe my original statement stands: theocracy and democracy still look pretty incompatible.
I'm not certain that conflict between theocracies and egalitarian democracies is precisely inevitable. But it looks likely -- given especially that citizens of democracies tend to think that everyone in the world would be better off in a democracy. And given that the easiest examples I can find of true theocracies are all run by people who think that everyone in the world ought to be members of (and governed by) their religion, there does seem to be something in the nature of the two bound to clash.
As for the Iraq question: my short answer would be, I think yes, we're likely to see a theocratically-inclined government there, because the only leadership the Iraqis have is religious leadership. But it will probably be checked somewhat by the involvement of the Americans, who are unlikely to walk off and leave, say, an ideologically fired-up Shiite administration in place to make the country into another Iran. The open question for me is, to what extent are the conditions for a truly egalitarian democracy to be born rather specific? To what extent is this simply an unpromising grafting of a political system developed under radically different conditions onto a society unlikely to uphold its central tenets? Or is that all nonsense -- that, given a bit of calm and support in the wake of war, the Iraqis are as likely as any nation to become a functional democracy that preserves the rights of all of its citizens? To what extent are my doubts about that the product of cultural tunnel vision -- a familiarity only with authoritarian elements of Arab politics, and an ignorance of democratic ones?
Still, if I had to guess, I'd say that the post-Saddam Hussein environment in Iraq may be a fruitful environment in which to grow a new democracy -- but it's just as likely to be a hothouse for the production of corrupt authoritarians, personality-cult mullahs, and shadowy pols who play the Americans as skillfully as Chalabi did. Let's hope I'm wrong.
In today's NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/13/politics/13intel.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5094&en=358e4a1dfc40b382&hp&ex=1105678800&partner=homepage
Meanwhile, the administration continues to strongly and successfully argue Congress out of new legislation on the issue of interrogation, and (more disturbingly) seems to want to preserve the CIA's ability to practice techniques "right up to the line" of torture, including a procedure by which the subject is made to believe he is drowning.
Even more problematic is the persistence of the argument that says that foreign prisoners should be subject to a much lower standard of restraint than Americans. Given the fact that terrorist conspiracies are in many ways more like crimes than military operations by a hostile and defineable foreign power, we are inevitably going to be in the position of imprisoning people who are essentially suspects in crimes yet to come to trial -- and who will, because of security issues, be difficult to try.
Will we eventually have two judicial systems in this country?
Posted by: BT on January 13, 2005 01:49 PMvery provocative, Bill
obviously, there are many shades of grey at work here--but leaving grey areas in the letter of the law only allows abuses of power to occur (at the expense of the usually powerless)
better, i think, to protect the rights of those who could be innocent (and risk going easy on those who might actually be guilty) than to risk torturing, imprisoning indefinitely, or otherwise compromising the truly (but perhaps not totally demonstrably) innocent--it's the American Way (or used to be)
or perhaps that would be letting the terrorists get a toehold?
Posted by: art on January 13, 2005 03:02 PMi think my point was that our human rights legislation and policies shouldn't discriminate based on country of origin
Posted by: art on January 13, 2005 03:06 PMJonathan had trouble posting a comment, because of what looks like a bug in MT Blacklist. I think I've found the problem (explanations in a later comment). For now, here's his attempted post --
On the conflict between democracy and theocracy: tolerant societies can tolerate anything except intolerance. That is, I can allow you to posit any statement except one which disallows me the same privilege. Taken at the next level, any statement taken to its logical extreme deconstructs itself, making the original statement absurd.
For example, "we go to war to secure peace" sounds suspect, but so does "peace at any price," which would logically include getting murdered, which is not peaceful.
I am troubled by the logic currently debated seeking to justify torture. In the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings chaired by Arlen Specter, he posited, without espousing them, the arguments of Richard Posner who has written of the "ticking time bomb" scenario, in which one has a perpetrator in custody who has planted a bomb, and if you can just get some 1nformation out of him you'll save thousands of lives. The legal experts there (testifying on the Bybee memo) pointed out that this is fantasy: it takes time to break someone, and you don't get reliable answers from quickly torturing; those who have been tortured have reported that they would say anything to make it stop. (I would also point out that you can't actually be sure that you've got the right guy, unless you have overwhelming physical evidence and the time to analyze it, in which case you probably have time to find the bomb without torture.)
From a pure public relations standpoint, the American power play to get rid of Saddam the torturer and murderer and replace him with the ham-handed American attempt at justice fell apart in many eyes when the pictures came from Abu Ghraib; "we came here, see, to get rid of this ticking time bomb called weapons of mass destruction, and to affirm human rights, which, um...err...we're working on getting rid of a few bad apples." What the Bybee memo shows is that at the highest level of the Adminstration, people started asking the question "to what extent should we adopt the methods of our enemies, whom we abhor?" ignoring the possibility that by acting like them, we become like them.
I haven't heard people talk about the morality of ordering someone to torture someone else. If the president is given some authority, even limited, to make that order, it comes at the expense of not only the tortured, but the torturer. The torturer is ordered to commit an act which would otherwise be a crime, to do horrible things in the name of goodness; can it be moral to make that order?
Can we suspend the law in order to fight for the legal system? No. The legal system exists to hold people accountable for their actions; if the system fails to do that, then the system needs fixing. If we were to give up on fixing it, none of us would be safe from the whims of a president with the authority to arrest us, declare us beyond the reach of the courts, hold us incommunicado, torture us, etc. If we give up on fighting for democratic ideals at home and abroad, politics becomes dominated by those most willing to engage in violence.
-- OK, let's see if this works
Posted by: BT on January 16, 2005 11:37 PM[Off the serious topic and onto the completely trivial one of what tripped up Jonathan's post]
Jonathan used the phrase "get some information" at one point (I put a typo in "1nformation" to fix), and then a few lines later, "get reliable information" (which I changed to "answers" to make it work.) It took lots of trial and error to find the problematic phrase, and no searching of my MT-Blacklist could shed light on why, exactly, those word-combinations triggered the spam-guard. I've deleted one (unlikely) candidate of a banned URL.
If I'm able to post this comment, that makes the case even stranger.
Posted by: BT on January 16, 2005 11:55 PMMT Blacklist hates freedom.
Posted by: Scott on January 18, 2005 12:24 PMMy brother-in-law is a major in the Army, and his email sig quotes George Orwell -- "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf." (Though that's not exactly how he phrases it, and there seems to be some debate as to who actually said it once the Googling is all typed and submitted, but none the less...)
Is there a necessary split between the sausage eaters and the sausage makers? Does civilized society depend on a bit of uncivility at the edges of the picture? Are "American ideals" and the "Geneva convention" high-minded luxuries that don't stand up without a bit of truncheon-swinging? Or can a society be built wholely on these sorts of ideals? Under what conditions? And in the absense of those conditions?
I am an idealist, don't doubt it, and truly hope that the answers are no, no, no, yes, and can I get back to you later on those? But it hasn't really much been tried.
Though on the other hand, the harder-edged experiment can't claim to be an unbridled success. It's barely hanging on, though indeed it hasn't failed and does seem to be staying a step ahead of outright oppression.
Posted by: Scott on January 18, 2005 12:52 PM