Letters to the Editor
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Don't They Know People Can Hear Them?
As with so many other similar items nowadays in the op-ed columns, online, etc., I no longer bother asking who people such as Beinart and Goldberg think they're talking to - plainly, it's only to themselves and the rest of their set. But what I still find surprising is that they have no fear whatever that others are listening, too.
Oh, well, that's what guillotines are for.
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Waterboarding is OK as long as Others do it.
GG said: Of course, Jonah never has "been strapped down to the board" and thus it's easy (and repulsive) for him to send around with his friend Pete talking about all the fascinating theoretical nuances behind the "waterboarding debate." Identically, he's never been near a war and it is thus fun and easy for him to beat his chest and type about the "need to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall."
As Glenn points out, it is easy for people such as Jonah Goldberg to argue in favor of preemptive war (whether Iraq, Iran, or another country) because he has never been to war. It is also easy for Jonah Goldberg to argue that waterboarding is not torture because he has never experienced it. A more apt statement, however, might be that Jonah Goldberg can argue that waterboarding is not torture because he has never waterboarded anyone (And as an aside he can argue from the pro-war position because he has never been on the receiving end of a military invasion).
Various posts I have seen suggest that those in favor of waterboarding should submit themselves to the process to see if it is in fact torture. However, a better idea might be to have those in favor of waterboarding use the method on someone else. Offer Rudy Giuliani an opportunity to waterboard an individual (a volunteer who knows that he or she will be waterboarded) who may or may not have information regarding some type of terrorist plot. Should Giuliani refuse, then Giuliani's refusal shows that there may be something unseemly about waterboarding, something that may give a person of good conscience pause. Should Giuliani accept, then we would be able to witness the exact nature of a waterboarding, after which I doubt few people would be able to say that waterboarding is not torture.
Of course, none of the Republican candidates for president, or any of the "conservatives" who support the current establishment would ever agree to such a display. However, this points to a larger problem I have with those who are pro-waterboarding (and pro-war), i.e., they will never themselves fight in a war or torture another human being. When Giuliani is asked what he would do if the government is holding a person who may have information regarding a "ticking time bomb" scenario, he responds that he would order the agency holding that person to do what is necessary to get the information. Wrong answer!!!! A truly strong man would ask where the person was being kept and go there and get the information himself.
Torture proponents like to throw out hypotheticals asking "what would you do if your family _________?", with the anticipated response being that you would torture the person who did "X" in order to save your family. However, the response consistent with that analogy would be "I would demand that the authorities torture that individual in order to save my family."
The strength of pro-war and pro-torture people comes from their knowledge that they will never have to actually fight or torture, but instead can order others to perform these functions and go on to more important business (e.g., tax cuts). The strength of anti-war and anti-torture people derives from the knowledge of what actually happens when you fight or torture, or from the ability to imagine what war or torture might entail even though not having actually taken part in either (e.g., death to innocent people, either in war or by the use of torture).
Of course, a part of me likes to think that Democrats are not taking a stand against anything now based on a plan to use these extraordinary powers granted to the Executive Branch as a means of punishing those Republicans who have spent the last seven years trashing our Constitution. Bush, Cheney, Rove, Gonzales and others would be declared enemy combatants and wisked away for an all expenses paid trip to Guantanamo Bay, there to enjoy the pleasures of stress positions, extreme cold, and waterboarding. Another part of my brain, however, feels that the expansion of Executive power is unconstitutional and that the next president would do well to repudiate everything that this current administration has done, and place Bush, Cheney, et al on trial as war criminals with full due process rights and every protection afforded by the Constitution. I suspect that in either instance Jonah Goldberg would be a lot less conflicted.
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While it's always fun to throw rotten tomatoes at Jonah and his
butt buddy Peter, they really are not the underlying problem here.
Just beneath their superficial palaver on the topic are cowardly editors and their managers and publishers/producers -- and ultimately media owners -- who have decided among themselves (and they all agree here, so don't give me some crap about "independence" in the media biz; ain't no such thing), they have decided among themselves that the question of whether this or that "technique" -- waterboarding, or The Water Torture as it has long been known by civilized peoples -- is or is not torture is "open". They have made this decision among themselves, and so they will not allow their newsrooms to call the Water Torture "torture." THAT'S where the "controversy" is.
Don't blame it on Mukasey's parsings and legalistic sleight of hand, either. Editors and publishers and producers and owners came up with this "nuance" long before Mukasey was even a gleam in Cheney's eye.
Yet everyone knows the Water Torture is "torture." There is not a shred of question or doubt about it.
Now the mismatched twin idiots who stroke one another in the video appended to Glenn's post wonder not only whether torture should be called "torture", but also wonder, even if it were actually torture, no matter what it's called, why it shouldn't be available for our intelligence service's use if they deem it need be. They are, after all, the professionals in these matters, not the mismatched twins, so shouldn't they be the ones to make the determination whether to apply torture to this or that suspect? And, once they have made the decision to torture this to that suspect, shouldn't they then, out of courtesy if nothing else, be given legal immunity?
Perfectly reasonable to discuss these things, no?
The more they are discussed, after all, the more difficult it is for the editors and publishers and producers and owners to come to the realization that by ordering the obscuring of what's done to suspects in our names, ie: torture, the more they and their publications and shows are complicit in the torture itself.
And that's what they are having such a hard time with. So long as they can muddy the issue, so long will they be free of the taint.
The sooner it comes into clarity once again, the sooner they will be trussed up like Holiday birds and hauled off to The Hague for their well earned War Crimes trials.