Torture

"They say this is a different kind of war," Tony Lagouranis says. "Different rules for terrorists. Total crap."

Lagouranis was a military intelligence specialist in Iraq until he was honorably discharged due to "adjustment disorder." That seems to be a military psychologist's euphemism for still having his conscience and humanity mostly intact.

I've written before about the toll our nation's embrace of torture takes on the men and women ordered to carry it out. Laura Blumenfeld of The Washington Post puts a human face on this toll in "The Tortured Lives of Interrogators."

Blumenfeld tells Lagouranis' story alongside the stories of two other former interrogators. The other two, "James" and "Sheriff," worked for the Royal Ulster Constabulary in Northern Ireland and for Shin Bet, the Israeli security service. Unlike Lagouranis, James and Sheriff convey a cocky bravado, insisting that they have no qualms about the "verschärfte vernehmung"* they employed. James and Sheriff doth protest too much. They come across as deeply troubled, haunted, FUBAR.

"I've got a clean conscience because I rarely use it," Sheriff says. It comes across like a man in a wheelchair boasting that that his legs are not suffering from overuse.

Lagouranis may have gotten out in time to keep his own conscience from atrophying the way Sheriff's has. He realizes that he, like the people he was ordered to interrogate, has come away damaged:

Not the things I saw, but the things I did. You keep saying 'torturing the innocent,' but the two brothers I tortured were guilty. It doesn't mean you should torture them.

That word "should" denotes a moral imperative: You should not torture. Or in the familiar language of the King James Bible, Thou shalt not torture.

Such moral language strikes some as irrelevant. The question for them is not whether or not one should employ torture, but whether or not one needs to. This appeal to necessity is precisely what Sheriff relies on as an opiate to numb his fading conscience. "You leave us no choice," he would say to his victims.

The problem with this, of course, is that torture does not work. It produces misinformation. Practitioners of torture end up knowing less than they knew before. Worse, they can end up thinking they know all sorts of things that are not true. This "works" only if their only goal is to produce false confessions** or to serve as a deterrent, intimidating (i.e. terrorizing) others.

Members of the Intelligence Science Board underscored this point in their recent testimony to Congress. (Their (long) full report is available as a .pdf: "Educing Information: Interrogation: Science and Art.") From the article linked above:

President Bush has insisted that those secret “enhanced” techniques are crucial, and he is far from alone. The notion that turning up pressure and pain on a prisoner will produce valuable intelligence is a staple of popular culture from the television series “24” to the recent Republican presidential debate, where some candidates tried to outdo one another in vowing to get tough on captured terrorists. ...

But some of the experts involved in the interrogation review, called “Educing Information,” say that during World War II, German and Japanese prisoners were effectively questioned without coercion.

“It far outclassed what we’ve done,” said Steven M. Kleinman, a former Air Force interrogator and trainer, who has studied the World War II program of interrogating Germans. ... Mr. Kleinman, who worked as an interrogator in Iraq in 2003, called the post-Sept. 11 efforts “amateurish” by comparison.

I'm inclined to side with Kleinman on the value of looking to America's World War II program as a model. After all, America won that war. Instead, we've been taking as our models the interrogation programs of the Soviet Union and the methods people like Sheriff have employed in the West Bank. Just think about that for a moment: the "Evil Empire" and the poster-child for neverending hostility have become our models for freedom and security. Somewhere in the White House or the Pentagon, someone actually said, "Let's copy what they're doing in the West Bank, because that sure seems to be working."

So torture is morally corrosive and ineffective and, as the example of the West Bank illustrates, it leads to your own military defeat.

Charles C. Krulak and Joseph P. Hoar make all of these points in their op-ed, "It's Our Cage, Too: Torture Betrays Us and Breeds New Enemies." Krulak is a former commandant of the Marine Corps. Hoar is a former commander in chief of U.S. Central Command. They write of the "disastrous consequences" of the Bush administration's embrace of torture, saying it has:

... nurtured the recuperative power of the enemy. This war will be won or lost not on the battlefield but in the minds of potential supporters who have not yet thrown in their lot with the enemy. If we forfeit our values by signaling that they are negotiable in situations of grave or imminent danger, we drive those undecideds into the arms of the enemy. This way lies defeat, and we are well down the road to it.

So torture is ineffective and corrosive, and a certain path to military defeat. On the other hand ...

There is no other hand. Torture is ineffective and corrosive, and a certain path to military defeat. Everyone knows this.

So given that, why on earth does anyone pretend that this is something we should accept or approve? What's the attraction? Why are Republican presidential candidates so desperate "to outdo one another" in embracing despicable and counterproductive measures? What is it about "ineffective and corrosive" that people like Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani fail to understand? What is it they find so attractive about certain defeat?

Here are the fools on parade in a recent Republican presidential debate:

What is wrong with these people?

- - - - - - - - - - - -

* Or "enhanced interrogations." This is the Bush administration's preferred phrase. The name comes from the Gestapo. The tactics come from the Soviet Union.

** If the goal is a false confession, of course, torture is still an inefficient and unnecessary step. Simple forgery will produce a result that is just as credible as a signed confession produced under coercion and duress. This leads me to suspect, again, that the real reason for this use of torture -- for any use of torture -- is that those who order it enjoy it. Are George W. Bush, Alberto Gonzales and John Yoo really such fools that they do not know that torture is ineffective and self-defeating? Or are they simply monsters?

Comments

[Raka]

85% Duane: We know many many of the 28% (probably the majority) are the PMD/God-Is-Talking-To-Me-In-My-Head/I-Said-Magic-Words-And-Now-Jesus-Lives-In-My-Main-Circulatory-Organ nutcases so it sorta just all gibes, huh?

That long unbroken string combined with my particular window width (~928px) to present me with this startling sentence:

We know many many of the 28% (probably the majority) are the
PMD/God-Is-Talking-To-Me-In-My-Head/I-Said-Magic-Words-And-Now-Jesus-Lives-In-My-
nutcases so it sorta just all gibes, huh?

Call me juvenile, but I think I'd rather enjoy hearing a zealot say "Jesus lives in my nutcases".

[cjmr]

Well, He is everywhere.

[Raka]

Geds: aunursa projects one of the major tendencies of people who buy in to an authoritarian system of thinking... Anything that seems to agree must also be right and anything that disagrees is wrong and objectively evil.

I really hope that this impression is based on something other than this thread. Quoting Tenet and/or referencing Newsmax may not be compelling for most of us (and for good reason), but it certainly wasn't done in the absolutist way your other examples operate.

[85% Duane]

"No thank you. I've already accepted Xenu as my personal galactic overlord."

LOL!

[85% Duane]

"Jesus lives in my nutcases".

As a Christian, I'm required to be offended by your sacrilegious humor.

[85% Duane]

.. also, without checking I'm pretty sure I mispelled the big word.

Take that, O'Dorney!

[Raka]

cjmr: Well, [Jesus] is everywhere.

There is a spin we haven't seen yet from our friends on the right. Jesus is in everything, which includes toxic waste and white phosphorous.

"Improperly discarded barrels from a nearby dry-cleaning facility were discovered leaking high levels of Jesus into the ground below the community garden."

"The civilian bystanders were covered in Jesus, burning with a flame that could not be extinguished by water."

It's not waterboarding; it's baptism!

[Geds]

Xenu is the one out to destroy them and their beliefs, so if you oppose the Co$ you are effectively acting as one of Xenu's agents.

Ah, crap, I always forget that Xenu is the bad guy. I find Scientology is a lot more fun when I jumble it all around and see what comes out, anyway.

I really hope that this impression is based on something other than this thread.

There was a long argument in a comments thread a couple months ago between aunursa and Jesu where aunursa made an assertion and backed it up with faulty sources. Jesu kept calling bull, then aunursa kept going back to the same sources instead of finding the information in a place that was more widely acceptable (i.e. the New York Times instead of Newsmax).

The use of Newsmax and George Tenet calls that to mind. I tend to take that as a theme.

Me being me, I also then tend to take themes that I see and connect them to larger wholes. So, yes, my conclusion is based on more than just this one thread.

It's actually meant as a warning that arguing the point probably won't get very far, even if it seems like a good idea at first (which is a warning I give myself as much as anyone else).

On some level, too, it's meant as a way of saying, "Don't dismiss it as simply "stoopid." There's something beyond that.

[pecunium]

I've been tortured by, and with, this debate for more than 15 years. I'm an army interrogator.

I said, before I joined, that I was glad torture didn't work, because if it did, I had some tough decisions to make.

But there are those who will sell their souls for less than the entire earth, even for less than Wales.

There are those who will see the testimony of one like me, and the support we bring. Who will read the accounts of the people you referred to above, and because they want to believe (in what I am not completely certain) that torture serves some legitimate end; so like those who deny Global Warming, or cling to PMD, they take the weakest of reeds (a guy like Sherrif, who has every reason to lie to himself, and the world) and say, "See, it works, and everyone knows it works, so we have to use it. And the other guys are using it on us, so it's only fair we return the favor." (this last is the, "but Jimmy hit me first defense," it's used every day on playgrounds around the world, so it must be true).

I've said it leaches the humanity out of those who practise it. I've seen it happen.

They don't care.

I say it gets bad information, they don't care.

I say it's just plain wrong, they don't care.

For my pains I am called a liar, accused of insulting their intelligence; told I hate my country and want my friends to get killed.

I'm sorry, I'm whining.

People support it because they can't conceive of what it really means. They refuse to believe the "bad guys" aren't the only ones who will be tortured. We've set this up... the jokes about the convicts we don't like getting raped by, "bubba" are indicative.

Such things ought to lead to reform of our prisons.

The don't because we are, tacitly, willing to condone torture.

God help us.

[pecunium]

Geds: McCain lost any right he had to say anything about torture when he arranged the "compromise" on his torture ammendment.

That 'compromise' gave Bush more than he asked for. McCain made torture legalisable (if not directly legal) and then smiled when Bush added a signing statement saying he wasn't going to obey that law any more than he wanted to.

McCain is worse than worthless, because he then goes out and talks about how he's against torture, and how he worked to keep it illegal.

He's either deluded, or lying.

In any case he's made torture easier for this, and any other, administration to conduct.

[Raka]

Me: I really hope that this impression is based on something other than this thread.

Geds: There was a long argument in a comments thread a couple months ago...

Cool. Thanks for the clarification!

[Lucia]

People support it because they can't conceive of what it really means. They refuse to believe the "bad guys" aren't the only ones who will be tortured.
If the bad guys were the only ones, it would still be wrong, and torturers and their supporters would still be monsters.

[pecunium]

Dahne: google "terry karney" Interrogation. That will get you links to my writing on how it's done.

Aunursa: I'm going to say this bluntly; and without qualification, so there isn't any question about what I mean; George Tenet is lying.

Hard to believe, I know, that someone who is admitting to crimes being committed by his subordinates (some of which crimes are capital), and might be eligible for indictment for conspiracy to commit those capital crimes (torture is defined, by the U.S. as a crime, if the subject dies, the offense is capital), might lie about the justification for it.

1: We know the CIA under Tenet commmitted tortures, and contracted them out.

2: Someone, someday, might decide to prosecute them.

3: Tenet has just defused some of that by saying the torture he approved, saved lives.

But it didn't. Nothing gained from torture can be relied on until confirmed.

Almost no one has information which lasts more than 72 hours. A general might have stuff which lasts a week; even a month, if his army isn't smart enough to change the plans after he gets caught.

Since the people Tenet arranged to have tortured were either low level, or shipped to secondary places (which takes time, and time is the enemy of intelligence), I don't believe him.

He has every reason to lie, and what he says is contrary to my knowledge and experience.

[Geds]

pecunium: Thank you for reminding me of that. I forgot that McCain played a pivotal role in that whole fiasco. I'm also amazed at just how much political capital he's burned up since the Gang of 14 thing, what, two years ago?

Also, thank you for sharing your thoughts on torture. I would try to respond but I cannot come up with anything that seems even remotely appropriate to say. I still think I should mention my appreciation, however.

And, I know I've plugged Lawrence Weschler before, but back in the '80s he wrote a book called A Miracle, A Universe: Settling Accounts with Tortures about the fallout from the military regimes in Brazil and Uruguay. It's not the easiest book to find, but I had no problems ordering it over Amazon.

Anyway, it covers the fallout from the people who experienced the torture as well as their families and those who tried to keep it from getting swept under the rug. It's not the most uplifting book, but it's an important book on many, many levels. The thing that shines through over and over again, however, are the defiant cries of, "Never again," from the victims and the protestations that it wasn't such a big deal from those who perpetrated the crimes.

There is also an obvious undercurrent that says, "Now that this has happened, we can't trust the government." This is especially true in the Uruguay section, where the government re-opened the main political prison after everything was over because it didn't have any other jails. There is both an implict sense that no one trusted the place to be run properly and an implied sense that the government was being incredibly opaque about the place, thereby lending credence to the fears of the populace.

The creepiest thing, though, is that the facility was run entirely on psychological torture. The prisoners were rarely touched, but they were still nearly destroyed and their families were dehumanized by the process, too.

Weschler's book might have been written before the first Gulf War and long before September 11th and Gitmo, but it's the strongest refutation I've seen that "enhanced techniques" are somehow different than "torture."

[Jesurgislac]

Pecunium: torture is defined, by the U.S. as a crime, if the subject dies, the offense is capital

Officially, possibly. Practically, we know it's not. A prisoner of war was tortured to death: the US soldier who killed him was let off with a non-custodial sentence, because giving him a custodial sentence would have lost him his pension.

Someone upthread referenced the Catholic Encyclopedia on torture: I suspect that in the days when the Inquisition was allowed to torture people, they did, regardless of whether it "worked" or not. No matter that sensible people at the time said it didn't work and shouldn't happen.

[nieciedo]

If torture does not work and has been repeatedly demonstrated not to work, then I can only see two reasons why continues to be practiced: stupidity and sadism.

It surprises me how many people seem to lean implicitly toward the stupidity side. Why is it so hard to accept that the the people in power enjoy inflicting pain and dealing death on those less powerful than they? There seems to be an implicit desire to grant even the more abominable of people the benefit of the doubt in this regard.

Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and everyone below them are simply inhumane sadistic monsters who get off (probably even literally) on killing and torturing people. This should not surprise anyone: they would not be in the positions they are unless they have a drive to dominate and control others and aggrandize themselves by the subjection of others. That's how you get to be President. That's why people go into politics. These people are scum, plain and simple.

[X]

It's not waterboarding; it's baptism!

A baptism by fire, no less (sticky fire at that).

@pecunium,

Thanks for your insight. I wouldn't really expect the army to be swayed by the objection that what they were doing was dehumanizing - I mean, so is shooting people, and that's pretty much one of their major MO's. Part of being in the army is doing the barbaric stuff that you think you have to do to reach certain ends.

The objection that it doesn't work and leads to bad information I would think should be the clincher. But it sounds to me these guys are so far buried into cognitive dissonance that they probably can't ever admit even to themselves that the nasty things they've done might actually have been counter productive. If anyone is going to change the policy, it's going to have to come from 'disinterested' higher ups I would think - military or civilian. Someone needs to put on their 'professional' hat, and work out that this is a process that produces no good information, some bad information, and leaves a stream of people eternally angry at us, with a strong need for vengeance (I mean, these people all have Fathers, brothers, sisters, lovers, kids, friends, right? How far would you go for revenge if some other country tortured your significant other?).

As Fred pointed out, if Torture achieved anything whatsoever productive, then you could have an honest debate over it. But it doesn't.

And the scary thing is that I think I can understand why they want to do it. You're faced with some guy who you don't like very much who you're quite sure is withholding some information that you really need... He refuses to give it to you, it's a tempting answer to say "well I'll just lean on him hard till he gives it to me." instead of "well I'll feed and clothe him properly, and try to lead him over
As the old to think his friends are betraying him or whatever."

As the old saying goes, to every question there is a simple, easy to understand wrong answer.

[X]

Sorry, browser mangled a few lines on me there. I was trying to say the art is to lead detainees that their old friends have betrayed them, we're really good guys, etc. It's not as instantly gratifying as making the bad person suffer, but it works so so so much better (and is less dehumanizing, more moral, etc, to boot)

[Geds]

Why is it so hard to accept that the the people in power enjoy inflicting pain and dealing death on those less powerful than they?

As someone who doesn't like to accept the premise, I'd argue it's because a lot of us make the mistake of wanting to believe that people are better than they are.

I've had a longstanding disagreement with a friend of mine. She says that people are crappy and mean and that being horrible is a part of human nature. I say that people are generally good and that people generally want to do good, but shortsightedness and stupidity get in the way.

I reached a point a couple of weeks ago when I realized I'd probably have to concede the field. Something about listening to the applause after Romney called to "double Guantanamo" left me with no doubt.

I still want to believe, though, that people aren't that horrible. It's just too damned depressing otherwise.

[Raka]

nieciedo: I can only see two reasons why continues to be practiced: stupidity and sadism. It surprises me how many people seem to lean implicitly toward the stupidity side. Why is it so hard to accept that the the people in power enjoy inflicting pain and dealing death...

Why do so many people use variations on "I can't see any other reason" and think that it's an indictment of anything other than their analysis? Simplistic binary analyses are almost invariably critically misleading. One-dimensional caricatures of human motivations are almost invariably wrong.

Such a simple worldview is sometimes useful. If you a number of people in an unfamiliar uniform are performing horrific acts of brutality in your immediate proximity, go ahead and make a firm association between the uniform itself and utter inhumanity. You won't be right in a strict epistemological sense, but you'll live longer. One hesitates to support such an approach in the abstract realm of internet debate over the internal impetuses of elected and appointed officials, however.

The preponderance of objective evidence seems to support the view that torture does not produce useful results. Nonetheless, there are many sources that claim otherwise. True, many of these sources are easily discredited (often on grounds of being self-serving, anecdotal, or outright fictional). But there's a very universal desire to take action, and an equally universal desire to simply increase the intensity of the action if desired results are not achieved. There is a strong cultural incentive to appear strong in a sense of embracing "necessary" physical violence. There is a very natural and sympathetic desire to hurt those we believe have hurt us. All of these factors and many others combine to create a desire for torture. Once that desire is in place, the natural and universal human tendency to give credence to evidence that supports our own desires kicks in. And once torture has been committed, the natural and human impulse to defend our past actions colors perspective even more strongly.

This doesn't make torture acceptable-- one of the defining elements of civilized behavior is acknowledging that natural and universal impulses don't always lead to proper behavior. I have no mercy for the justifications of those who support torture. But "monster" is an awfully big stone, particularly if it needs to crush every person who supports torture. I'm not going to be the first to throw it, and I don't think you've got the stones to do so either.

"Monster" is easy. Too easy. It often justifies any treatment of the monsters themselves. It absolves us of any responsibility for potential causes or remedies for their behavior. It allows us to ignore monster's similarities in ourselves in motivation and action. It allows us to pretend that we are inherently and intrinsically different, that we by our very nature our not capable of monstrous acts. And it allows us to feel the false comfort of knowing that those we trust and like are equally immune to monstrousness.

In short, belief in monsters is precisely what allows monsters to arise and flourish.

[Lucia]

If torture does not work and has been repeatedly demonstrated not to work, then I can only see two reasons why continues to be practiced: stupidity and sadism.

It surprises me how many people seem to lean implicitly toward the stupidity side.
Part of what we're missing here is that evil is stupid. It doesn't consider, or weigh, or imagine, or question; it simply goes ahead with whatever it can do to make itself feel bigger (in every sense, including those directly related to delusions of virility). It doesn't see, because it doesn't look, because the light hurts its eyes.

[andlorr]

Okay, I don't think anyone's made this point yet...

They continue to sanction torture because they believe it should work. Just like abstinence-only education will keep kids from having sex, just like the Iraqi people will greet us with flowers, just like reeducation will eliminate homosexuality. They want a world in which torture works. Therefore, they act as if this were that world. And they will fight fiercely any attempt to penetrate their delusion. No argument will convince them they're wrong, because those arguments are based in reality, and reality is not what they want. They make their own reality.

So how do you overcome people like this, once they get into power?

[nieciedo]

Geds:

I also would like to believe that people are, by nature, good. Unfortunately, history gives way too many examples that lead one to question that premise.

I think rather that people have two competing yet also complementary inclinations: the drive to serve the self and the drive to serve others. In the best of all possible worlds, we can recognize that we serve our selves best when serving others and the altruistic inclination and the selfish inclination work in harmony.

But the easiest and most direct route to gratification and pleasure is to simply serve yourself and to hell with others. That's why so many people choose it.

The totality of a person is the sum of his or her choices. The more one chooses to act in a certain way, either altruistically or selfishly, the more habitual that becomes and the easier it is to choose that path in the future. Our actions and choices condition our behavior and identities. If one follows the selfish path enough, then eventually one reaches a point where other people become nothing more than objects, means to and end or obstacles in they way. That's when it become OK -- fun, even -- to torture people or herd them into box cars and ship them off to gas chambers.

In this age of alienation and isolation, it's also very easy for personalities to be fragmented: some people can be perfectly nice to their their familes while sadistic and evil to prisoners they interrogate. However, the basic organic unity of each person eventually lets one sphere bleed into the other. Usually, unfortunate, the violent and sadistic fragment will corrupt what goodness might be found in other fragments.

I think the wisest and safest course of action is to assume that other people are selfish, violent, and untrustworthy monsters who will stab you in the back as soon as they shake your hand so you can prepare for the worst-case scenario. Then, if the worst does not happen, then whatever true goodness may be found in human nature will be a pleasant surprise.

It's certainly better than assuming that everyone is honest, good, and trustworthy only to be consistently -- and dangerously -- disappointed.

Yeesh. How did I become so Hobbesian all of a sudden? It must be Tuesday. :-(

[X]

Amen to Raka's rant. I think he nailed it perfectly.

@nieciedo,

Be careful with that cynicism. Yes we always have to be aware of the bad things that people can and will do, and how brazen they will be in doing them, but to accept it as normal or inevitable is to start accepting and legitimizing it. Neither good nor evil will ever win permanently, the best we can do is contain the evil as best we can, and encourage the good.

Are people good or are they evil?

Is the surface of the earth covered in water or in dry land? Some people point to greater percentage of coverage represented by the oceans and say "water". Others note that almost every single person examining the vicinity of their own feet has observed dirt and conclude "land". The constant existence of rain is proof that the natural order tends towards water, yet volcanoes and plate tectonics clearly show that land would prevail everywhere if outside influences wouldn't interfere. The Hobbesian water-fearers refuse to leave their boats even as they sit stranded in the Kansas prairie, while the hippie land-lovers will deny the existence of the oceans even as the waves close over their heads.

Christ. We're all of us big bundles of impulses, some simple, some complex, many in direct conflict with one another. Out of that swirling morass we take actions, some of which tend towards good and others evil (however we define such things); all of which are shaped by a multitude of influences that we have only the faintest knowledge of ourselves.

People in their natural state are people. Good and evil make for great soundbites and lousy comprehension.

[ako]

I think some of why people torture is the desire to hurt. It's a fairly common, very human thing to want to hurt someone when you're hurt and angry and scared and you think it's their fault.

A lot of people honestly believe it works. And the government is making as many official statements declaring that torture works as they can, to cover for the day when they have to admit they torture people. Throw that in with Fox News, (and I'm not entirely sure it's a coincidence that 24, with the constant terrorist plots that can only be averted by "just a bit" of torture is on Fox), and popular entertainment, and it's easy to form a mental picture of torture as a grim life-saving necessity.

And there's the excuses. Telling yourself it's not quite torture if you "only" deprive them of sleep until they have a breakdown. If the pain is "only" inflicted by making them stand or squat for hours, instead of hitting them. If it's "only" waterboarding, not electrodes or bamboo shoots under the fingernails. If you follow the inquisition rules of citra membri diminutionem et mortis periculum, or the Bush Administration rules of not being " equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death," (disturbingly similar rules, aren't they?). It's the same way a lot of domestic violence is excused "It's only a shove, it's only a slap, I didn't hit her that hard, I didn't break any bones," and I'm expecting the same sliding standard. People can go a long time without letting themselves grasp what they did.

[Bugmaster]

Yeah, I agree with what the anonymous poster at Jun 05, 2007 at 02:40 PM said. People are basically people. Good and evil are nice labels, but extremely poor tools for maintaining a society.

[Geds]

Hooray, anonymous poster!

The thing that's tended to keep me from conceding the field and saying, "Yep, people suck," is that ultimately I think doing so will cause me to become that which I hate. As it is, I'm a skeptic about people and no one who knows me would mistake me for a Pollyanna (I'm mostly accused of being jaded, really).

My friend, you see, comes at the subject still all-too influenced my her strict Baptist upbringing that says, "People suck, Jesus good. Jesus only good." I grew up in much the same place, but was never allowed to be limited by that viewpoint. After a while I noticed that people were predisposed to be selfish, but Christian dogma wasn't anywhere close to a fix for the problem.

Perhaps I'm still too much in to the dichotomy. Maybe some people are good, some people try to be good, some people are self-absorbed louts and some people are sick, sadistic torturers.

And maybe the good can sometimes do bad things and the torturers can stop to help a stranded motorist change a tire.

Maybe I should just acknowledge that I'm only obfuscating the anonymous point.

[nieciedo]

I both agree and disagree. Monsters exist: pretending that they don't will not make them go away.

The weather report says at 50% chance of rain. You don't want to get wet, so you assume that it will rain and bring your umbrella. That's not cynicism: that's called being prepared. If it doesn't rain, great. You have not been terribly inconvenienced by bringing the umbrella. If it does rain, you won't get wet.

At least the Hobbesian water-fearers won't drown.

[nieciedo]

Can we all at least agree that Bush and the torturers are evil monsters? C'mon? Pretty please? With sugar and a cherry on top?

[Bugmaster]

I would love to agree that Bush is an evil monster, but unfortunately, that'd be giving him too much credit. I think he's just a moron who goes along with monsters because he doesn't know any better.

[Raka]

Anonymous poster was me, for better or worse. Apparently my unrestrained pontificating overloaded the "Remember personal info" checkbox.

Great. Now Jesu's gonna think I did it on purpose just to sneak around her killfile.

[nieciedo]

But that makes him almost worthy of sympathy when the emotion he deserves is loathing. There are A LOT of people who qualify for "evil monster" status so he's just a convenient figurehead, but still I would think the job he holds is evidence of evil monstrosity.

[nieciedo]

@ako:

I think some of why people torture is the desire to hurt. It's a fairly common, very human thing to want to hurt someone when you're hurt and angry and scared and you think it's their fault.

Or, it may instead be the case that people torture because they like to hurt others, they like to cause pain. They get a powerful high that is primal, even sexual, at dominating another person and making him suffer just because they can.

[Geds]

Great. Now Jesu's gonna think I did it on purpose just to sneak around her killfile.

There are fates worse than death. I fear you've found one. Vaya con Dios...

Can we all at least agree that Bush and the torturers are evil monsters?

Torture is evil. Those who think torture is a good idea are monsterous. So, to an extent, yes.

I believe there's something of a learning curve, though, especially for the sort who buy in to the "enhanced techniques are't torture" claptrap. If torture is done because the person doing in/ordering it genuinely thinks it's a good thing, it's monsterously stupid and misguided. If they continue to persist in doing it even after learning it's a bad idea and that torture is torture regardless of the labels applied, then they've crossed a line and we can call them evil monsters.

Of course, if they do it because it gives them a stiffy, they're evil monsters from the get-go.

Meanwhile, since the "enhanced techniques" are being retroactively emplaced as the terminology, it doesn't really help to make a case that Bushco et al. are misguided patriots. It makes it look like they're monsters trying to cover their tracks. Sadly, the people involved with the YouTube video seem to have bought in to it.

[Raka]

neiceido: Can we all at least agree that Bush and the torturers are evil monsters? C'mon? Pretty please? With sugar and a cherry on top?

Nope. Just people. On the other hand, that sympathy doesn't mean we have to let them off the hook. No matter how much we understand their motivation, torturers need to be punished-- if nothing else than to send a message that says "Torture is Not Okay".

Bush frankly puzzles me. If his actions were explained by intelligent evil I would expect them to be more coherent and effective. But they're too effective to be purely stupid. Yet so many of his carefully executed schemes serve absolutely no purpose I can discern. Best guess is that he's a reasonably intelligent person who's basically pathologically spoiled; he's been allowed to ignore and/or divert consequences his entire life , and he has thoroughly isolated himself both internally and externally from any perspective he doesn't like. Much like the torturers, there's no need to be kind to him. Go ahead and hate him-- whatever his reasons, he's doing abhorrent things.

The best pragmatic reason to sympathize with and try to understand people who do monstrous things is that it helps us recognize traits and tendencies to guard against in the future.

[Raka]

nieciendo: But that makes him almost worthy of sympathy when the emotion he deserves is loathing.

Why are sympathy and loathing mutually exclusive? There's a fun essay that talks about dehumanization; the bit about bin Laden is particularly apt (short version: he's a guy who had a childhood, laughs with his buddies, is loving to small children, and still badly needs a bullet delivered at high speed).

Monsters (in the sense of people with a notable or consistent history of doing monstrous things) exist, sure. But they're still just as human as you and me. Thinking otherwise is only helpful in excusing our own monstrous behavior towards people we've decided aren't human (like torturing terrorists) or in assuring ourselves that since only monsters do truly horrible things and we know that we're not monsters, the things we're doing must not be all that bad (like all the pundits and voters defending our particular use of torture).

Or, it may instead be the case that people torture because they like to hurt others, they like to cause pain. They get a powerful high that is primal, even sexual, at dominating another person and making him suffer just because they can.

Sure. That's probably a part of it for many, possibly even most torturers. That thrill from use of force and exertion of power is another one of those universal human things; society has found a plethora of ways to sublimate and redirect it through less destructive outlets (sports, board/card/video games, politics, economics, school boards, bureaucracy, academic conferences, internet debates...)

But it's a mistake to decide that because an objectionable motivation exists and is associated with an objectionable behavior, it must be the primary motivation. It no doubt is for some people. But I'd be very surprised to learn that it was for most.

[ako]

Can we all at least agree that Bush and the torturers are evil monsters? C'mon? Pretty please? With sugar and a cherry on top?

This is probably going to sound horribly nitpicky, but I'd say yes and now. I'd say they're evil monsters not because they're fundamentally different in some way, or outside human nature. I think the impulses and desires motivating them are very normal and common, the kinds of impulses and desires found in even very good people.

What makes them evil monsters in my view is that they made evil and monstrous decisions to indulge and gratify these impulses. It's not some innate flaw, but decisions made moment by moment to keep doing evil and keep behaving monstrously. It's deciding each moment to pick group loyalty over justice, and selfishness over group loyalty. It's the moment of deciding that the political points they gain from looking "tough on terror: are worth having someone else tortured for, and every moment knowing they could stop it and they don't! And that if they ever decided to stop being evil and monstrous, and start behaving in a good and moral fashion (something I consider immensely unlikely), and started atoning for their past, they could be good and moral.

I'm being nitpicky for a reason, though. It's one thing to name evil when you see it, but "they're just evil" makes it too easy to stop looking for answers. And if we don't look for answers, there's no chance of finding solutions that fix even part of this.

Or, it may instead be the case that people torture because they like to hurt others, they like to cause pain. They get a powerful high that is primal, even sexual, at dominating another person and making him suffer just because they can.

I think some people like to hurt others out of anger, some because they just get off on pain. Some do it for both reasons. There may be torturers who do this for neither reason, but out of loyalty, or a sociopathic lack of empathy, coupled with pride in their ability to inflict maximum pain without leaving a mark (the ideal of modern torture). Some people who get off on pain are genuinely moral, find someone who enjoys and will consent to spankings and drips of hot candle wax, and don't do anyone any real harm. People are complicated.

Again, I think sadism is part of a good explanation, but not just sadism. (I'm being so niggling on the details because I'm desperate to stop this, and in fact wound up in law school so I can one day prosecute tortures and prevent others from committing torture. So I don't want to let myself accept a too-simple explanation.)

[mg_65]

They are simply monsters.

[Geds]

So I don't want to let myself accept a too-simple explanation.

I, for one, would like to encourage you in not accepting simple solutions. Turning a gray world in to a series of black and white concepts is the sort of thing that makes for very bad decisions.

[nieciedo]

As I said above, I do not believe that there are such things as good people and evil people and I do not see the world in terms of black or white.

However, there are shades of gray that are darker than others. Is there not a point where the quantitative relation of the evil that a person does to the good they might to reaches a nodal point of qualitative change in which the person becomes social evil, as in a force actively harmful to society?

[Raka]

nieciedo: Is there not a point where the quantitative relation of the evil that a person does to the good they might to reaches a nodal point of qualitative change in which the person becomes social evil, as in a force actively harmful to society?

Society has a fair track record (as fair as can be expected) when judging what people do. It's done notably less well when it tries making any decisions based on what people are.

Individuals and society both have every right and reason to judge others based on their actions and react appropriately. That reaction may be disassociation, containment, or vengeance. Divorce, war, imprisonment, embargo... plenty of options. These are ways we say "You done me wrong, and now I do something that stops you from doing me more wrong, sends other potential wrongdoers a message about consequences, encourages you to undo what wrong you can, and/or just makes me feel better because you're being done wrong yerself". How is this helped by creating an artificial and arbitrary distinction that says "You've done me SO wrong that you are a special class of wrongdoer, unlike me and all other nonmonsters"?

It may be satisfying for us to say that. It may make it easier to take whatever steps we feel necessary to react to the wrong. But it ain't right. And it comes with its own costs, which I argue are too high for the transitory benefits.

Unless you're using "evil people" to mean "people who society has felt the need to separate itself from and/or punish", which waters down the concept of evil into meaninglessness.

[Lucia]

All of us are evil in some degree, because (among other reasons) a certain amount of willful blindness is necessary just to get through the day and not run in circles screaming, "WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!" until we drop dead from exhaustion.

There's also a biologically hard-wired tendency to form categories, in particular We and They, and to polarize them. And since We can't be evil, we must be good, They must be evil, and if We are strong We will do everything we can (including but not limited to everything that's useful) to oppose Them.

(I am not sure, but I think it may be a peculiarly American tendency to want there to be exactly two categories of any given class, and for those two to be mutually exclusive -- so if Democrats are good, Republicans are bad, and vice versa.)

[Raka]

Lucia: I think it may be a peculiarly American tendency to want there to be exactly two categories of any given class

Binary determinism is actually pretty pervasive in Western thought and philosophy, all the way from formal logic (where it's indispensable) through the applied theological and political schools (where I'd argue it's a giant boat anchor chained to the ankles of rational discourse).

Blame the Greeks. They started it. America just does it with flashing lights and a thumping soundtrack.

[Lucia]

No wonder I have a headache.

[nieciedo]

As I recall, it was Raka who first introduced the idea of a special exceptional category of "monster" into the discussion. This was not my opinion, since I have repeated several times that I do not believe that any person is "good" or "evil." All that matters, I would say, is the collective social impact of their actions.

My point, which has nothing to do with pigeonholing people into unhelpful categories, was that it is safest to expect "evil" -- that is, harmful actions -- from others until events prove otherwise. It is better to protect oneself against a threat that doesn't materialize than to leave oneself open to a threat unforeseen.

Take Hitler. Calling him a "monster" makes him impossible to understand. It makes him non-human and unapproachable. It also blinds us to conditions that could produce another Hitler. However, if we could go back to 1941, trying to understand and explain him would not help in the immediate short term. In the immediate short term, the bastard needed to be stopped. Regardless of what conditions produced him, regardless of whether he was kind to dogs, regardless of whether he might have had some good (ie socially beneficial) achievements, the fact was that he'd created a violently racist state and had conquered half of Europe and was not still not done yet.

So, one could dither about what his motivations were, what feelings might have drove him to make the choices he did, trying to understand him and find something human in him to recognize -- but what concrete good would it do?

Just like it makes no sense trying to "understand" the mentality of the torturers. Who cares why they do what they do: it doesn't make torture any less evil if it's done out of fear, ignorance, and misplaced anger than out of sheer sadistic hate.

[nieciedo]

Binary determinism is actually pretty pervasive in Western thought and philosophy, all the way from formal logic (where it's indispensable) through the applied theological and political schools (where I'd argue it's a giant boat anchor chained to the ankles of rational discourse).

Correct. Analytical philosophy demands that one can only have A or not-A. That does not accurately reflect reality, where A and not-A and many stages in between often coexist and are fluctuate between those poles.

That's why dialectical philosophy (IMO particulary the Marxian version) is superior.

[ako]

Just like it makes no sense trying to "understand" the mentality of the torturers. Who cares why they do what they do: it doesn't make torture any less evil if it's done out of fear, ignorance, and misplaced anger than out of sheer sadistic hate.

Depends how you want to stop them. If you're taking it upon yourself to track down and shoot every government official who engaged in, ordered, or enabled torture, then the "why" doesn't matter. Having a clearly-written will does.

If you want to stop them in a way that's within the political system, that means understanding people's goals and motivations in a way that lets you see why so many people have chosen to do something as horrifying as make torture legal, and if necessary, give the less guilty (and there are degrees of guilty) a way to get at least some of what they want without supporting torture so they'll help you, or at least not impede you in going after the most guilty. Maybe it's giving the guy at Abu Ghirab who says he only stood by and watched his friends torture without complaining immunity and protection so you can better prosecute the actual torturers. Maybe it means persuading military commanders who didn't torture or order torture, but handed the CIA prisoners that vanished to black sites to understand not just what they helped do, but better ways to protect the country, and how to get useful interrogations without making the prisoner scream in pain.

And it's true that if you had a time machine and could go back and deal with Hitler, knowing now what you knew then, a sniper rifle would be more useful than an in-depth understanding of his psychology. But if you don't know how it's all going to end, and you don't want to find out that your particular ideological snake is a hydra (cut of the head and it just grows more heads), then an understanding of why the "monsters" have political allies, why so many people support these horrors, why soldiers obey orders like that, what the people cooperating and collaborating, and the guy waterboarding a prisoner because his commander ordered him to hope to accomplish, what goals are worthy and should be achieved by other means (like national security), what goals are immoral and should be discarded (like lining Haliburton's pockets), and all those why questions is essential.

Not that everyone needs deals and negotiations, of course. As much as possible, the guilty should be stripped of power and punished for their crimes. But there's a matter of achievable goals, and the system isn't set up so that you can clear out everyone complicit legally without ganging up and stopping you first.

And the current Republican administration looks like a hydra (think of how many people you'd have to get rid of to have no torture-supporters on staff), so it might be smarter to deal with why so many people are supporting it than just defeat the guilty.

(I'm not trying to imply that niciedo or anyone here would take a gun and start killing everyone in the government who was guilty of enabling torture; just that it's the only way of avoiding the problem of getting enough people in the government to help that you can legally stop them.)

[pecunium]

Jesurgislac: Maybe.

In the present climate, no Tenet has nothing to worry about.

But there is no statutory end to the risk of prosecution for that. It's also possible for someone lower down, to finger the higher ups.

Tenet, like The Brit, and the Israeli, is going to have to look over his shoulder, at least metaphorically, for the rest of his days. Nemesis has a file with his name on it.

[nieciedo]

@ako:

If you want to stop them in a way that's within the political system...

That's the key there. I do not believe it is possible to stop them within the political system because the people who benefit from the political system are also the ones who make and enforce the rules of the political system -- and the economic system upon which it is based.

If a machine is fundamentally flawed in its very design, replacing individual parts won't matter.