Day 10,936
Yes, that is how long I’ve been out of the womb.
I don’t really have anything to say. That seems to be my problem lately. I had such great plans for this blog, but somewhere along the way I got interested in a new video game or two, a couple new career ideas (no, I didn’t switch), the plot for a novel, and well, now it’s nearly Christmas. I have nothing to show for my time but a couple high scores, a great first chapter, and a wife who thinks I’m inconsistent.
So I guess I’ll just blather about what’s on my mind, and see what happens.
The tension between idealism and realism - it’s been on my mind since Amnesty International ripped the US a hole for Guantanamo. I wrote a couple bitter posts about that. In short, I wonder how we can justify abusing one group-of-people’s inalienable human rights in order to protect our own; to put it another way: if America is supposedly about values, rather than mere survival, why are we compromising those values in order to survive? (1) (2)
And recently, as you no doubt know, it has been reported that the CIA operates clandestine prisons around the world to help us in our attempt to forstall future terrorist attacks. And it’s probably true.
But I’m also a realist. A friend of mine, after reading one of those posts, asked, So, how are we supposed to get information out of these people? Ask them nicely?
Half of me wants to suggest that if we believe there are certain inalienable rights - which logically would apply to all humans everywhere - then we should be willing to suffer and die rather than compromise the rights of other people to survive. The other part of me remembers that we fought the Revolutionary War - which probably involved many rights abuses on both sides - in the name of those values. And surely every war since that one has been the same? What does that mean? I’m not sure.
It’s like the whole debate over Truman’s decision to drop the A-Bomb. Or rather, what’s missing from the debate. The significance of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not the massive loss of life, but rather the fact that each required a single bomb, rather than thousands. We had been intentionally bombing civilian population centers in Japan and Europe for a while, killing hundreds of thousands at a time, before those two. We were the good guys: we did it because we hoped that the catastrophic loss of human life - innocent civilian men, women and children - would break our enemies’ will to fight.
Maybe, then, you can justify using torture to extract information via the same logic?
The tricky bit is that you can also justify terrorism by the same logic. What is terrorism, after all, but killing innocent people in order to win a war? If a terrorist’s cause is just, then his suicide bombing is certainly no worse than, say, our fire-bombing of Dresden or Tokyo. The terrorists certainly believe their cause to be just.
In the end, the only thing that seperates us from our terrorist enemies is the rightness of our cause, and the wrongness of theirs. I know their cause is evil. I’m pretty sure ours is mostly good. But I think that at very least we need to be constantly examining what we are fighting and why. There is nothing pretty or nice about the things we are doing - so we better be doing them for the right reasons.
Please, dear reader, tell me what you think. The floor is open. All comments are welcome.
December 7th, 2005 at 6:38 am
Random thoughts before I have to actually wake up…
One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter!
When you leave this country, what rights do you have? Not saying I think we shouldn’t give others the same ‘inalienable’ rights as our own citizens.
I wish everyone would be able to leave everyone else alone. I guess that puts me in the idealist category. However, I think that is never going to happen - the leaving everyone else alone, not the putting me in the idealist category. So, let’s torture them all by making them eat my cooking!
December 7th, 2005 at 1:56 pm
Torture simply cannot be used by anybody who (rightly) makes as big of a stink about human rights around the world as the U.S. does. It’s simple credibility. Now, BushCo has made us into big, fat liars, and it will take either a generation or a war crimes trial (of guess who) put on by us to regain any semblence of honesty again.
Plus it’s just wrong (listen to John McCain on Fresh Air).
As for the Administration’s scary “getting the information that saves lives” scenario, that’s the stuff of television, not reality. But just for arguements sake, let’s say that scenario rears it’s ugly head. Yes, someone can torture the suspect and save the day. Then, we prosecute. Yes, he’s still a hero, but he threw himself on a grenade to do it, because TORTURE IS IMMORAL. Finally, immoral acts in the heat of battle, and immoral acts in the “leisure” space of a dungeon are hardly on the same level.
Dave: those are great points. Thanks for commenting. - SF
December 8th, 2005 at 2:22 pm
nice damn post. i say all of them need to back up to that fork in the road, and try the other prongs.
December 8th, 2005 at 2:32 pm
So I figured I’d write a post about this in my blog, but I’m going to try out my idea here first.
It is a wonderful ideal to say that we believe torture is wrong, but as I am an analytical bastard, let me ask what is torture? Is it not allowing the detainee to not have a shower for 3 days? I know college students who torture themselves. Is the stripping of a man’s dignity a proper method of gaining information? Where is the line? What limiits questioning from torture? If we determine that torture is done while a helpless person is subject to cruel punishment in the attempts to gain infromation, then isn’t a person being held for the crime of murder subject to torture if he is questioned every 30 minutes without allowing him sleep? I only say this to muddy the waters really. I see from a previous post that the information that saves lives is some sort of non reality. I would probably beg to differ. A highly placed operative within a terrorist organization can save numerous lives. He/she would have access to many cells of people and information. To remove the support network as well as those directly responsible for attacks is a necessary part of any war.
When it comes to the United State’s credibility, we have none because we are a bully. Not because of a single president. We have a bad reputation from any number of presidents from both sides of the aisle. Ask someone in Somalia that was part of General Aideed’s clan what they thought of the United States…not going to be favorable. Ask an Israeli what they thought of Reagan, then ask a palestinian. If we are to make a country based on what others of the world see of us, well we might as well pack it in.
Oh, and in terms of “throwing himself ono the grenade” well, if he did torture a suspect, by US law, we cannot prosecute because any information gained in that would not be admissible in court, it is not a case of one man taking the fall, it is the case of one man ruining it for everyone else.
In the end, I am not one who is smart enough to say whether torture is right or wrong, cause I’m still not sure what it is. Frankly, I’d say that our schools today are a form of torture, of the Lord of the Flies ilk. Many corporate meetings are a form of torture. Heck, I’d say that we’re probably tortured by those that put these stories on blogs…just kidding SF, this one is actually a good one.
Insightful thoughts, Monk. Thanks for the post. –SF
December 9th, 2005 at 12:11 pm
“In the end, I am not one who is smart enough to say whether torture is right or wrong, cause I’m still not sure what it is”
What a cop out. Ask a ten-year old, and even they can tell you what torture is.
“When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re geting worried they wnt like the truth (Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum)
“A highly placed operative within a terrorist organization can save numerous lives. He/she would have access to many cells of people and information” Yes, absolutely correct. But that’s not torture, that’s called spying, and it’s what the CIA is supposed to be doing. Torture is a lazy man’s way of buying information with human lives, but it doesnt work because people who are being tortured will tell you anything, true or not, to make you stop.
December 11th, 2005 at 12:45 am
how about playing kenny g non-stop?