quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: How many lives, potentially, is US reputation worth, exactly? While that's certainly a real, serious cost, it pays to remember what it's being measured against, I think.
The problem I'm having with what you're suggesting is that it sounds extremely difficult if not impossible to me to prove all three of those things in a court of law. How can it possibly be known what the harm would have been from, say, a car bombing? How can it be known there was no other alternative to prevent the bombing than torture?
It sounds very much as if the solution you're proposing is not much different from 'no torture, ever'-except it claims to acknowledge the occasional necessity.
Yup. That is what I am saying. No torture ever. Since I don't know everything, however, I am willing to let a jury decide if it really was necessary to prevent great harm and that there were no alternatives. If that isn't crystal clear enough to convince a jury, we shouldn't be using torture.
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quote:Yup. That is what I am saying. No torture ever. Since I don't know everything, however, I am willing to let a jury decide if it really was necessary to prevent great harm and that there were no alternatives. If that isn't crystal clear enough to convince a jury, we shouldn't be using torture.
I can live with that, but I'd amend it to "If it's not crystal clear enough to convince a judge/jury, or if you're not willing to pay the price of being found guilty, don't use torture."
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quote:We wouldn't have to worry about harming our reputation if we'd just kill them on the battle field instead of treating a war like a police action.
Yeah, because after all, all of our enemies can be found out on the battlefield where it's a straightforward matter to kill them outright.
Wait a minute, that's not true at all. Come to think of it, aren't our enemies spread out and hidden all over the world in order to avoid just that sort of outcome? And aren't those enemies recruiting new enemies to join them, aided in part by pointing at us and saying to their dimwitted followers, "Lookit what the Great Satan has done now!"
Yeah, come to think of it, that is something like what actually happens. Someone might almost say this war is...*gasp!*...political! And therefore political considerations such as questions of reputation need to be asked! And therefore, "Just kill them all," is, aside from being impossible, an incredibly stupid suggestion!
Not that I'm surprised.
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Mucus, that's malanthrop talking. Who here is even discussing that besides him?
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quote:Yup. That is what I am saying. No torture ever. Since I don't know everything, however, I am willing to let a jury decide if it really was necessary to prevent great harm and that there were no alternatives. If that isn't crystal clear enough to convince a jury, we shouldn't be using torture.
Frankly, there's something dishonest in saying, "I don't know everything, so I'm willing to let a jury decide," but set the bar for that decision impossibly high. It's not 'letting the jury decide' if the conditions for that decision are set before the question is even asked to predetermine the answer. Better to just cut out the middle-man.
Here's the thing: it's one thing to say it's the right thing to do for a person to use torture in extraordinary circumstances to save a large number of lives, or at least to say it was necessary, and that a person, when presented with that event, ought to do the hard thing and take the punishment if that's what it takes to save those lives. But that's a separate issue from the decision as to what the punishment should be beforehand.
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I don't think the bar to convince a jury is impossibly high. I think it is very high. I think the bar for torturing people should be at least as high.
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: Mucus, that's malanthrop talking. Who here is even discussing that besides him?
I'm not sure what you're saying. Why would I have to wait for someone else to respond to him before I can? In any case, there is some truth to what he says (and some special poignancy since he's actually American).
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quote:I don't think the bar to convince a jury is impossibly high. I think it is very high. I think the bar for torturing people should be at least as high.
Can you imagine any circumstances under which that bar would actually be met? For example, are there any circumstances under which you, personally, serving on a jury, would say, "It's been proven that there was nothing else he could've done, and that it prevented a deadly attack."
Mucus, it just sounded from your post like you were speaking to and about more than just malanthrop was all.
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quote:Can you imagine any circumstances under which that bar would actually be met? For example, are there any circumstances under which you, personally, serving on a jury, would say, "It's been proven that there was nothing else he could've done, and that it prevented a deadly attack."
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I think that most American juries would (unfortunately) be pretty open to that argument right now. Wouldn't you if you were on such a jury?
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: Mucus, it just sounded from your post like you were speaking to and about more than just malanthrop was all.
Well, I was speaking to that bit of truth in what he said.
The sentence was shorthand for*:
It seems within the realm of plausibility to me that if the Americans started out with an under-the-table policy to *wink, wink, nudge nudge* kill questionable prisoners rather than taking them captive, they might actually be ahead of (reputation-wise) the current policy which is a systematic top-down directive to indefinitely detain prisoners, torture them (in some cases to death), and then slowly release the evidence at awkward times.
Thats kinda screwed up.
Contrast this with the experience of POWs during WWII, when it was best (if you had to be captured) to be captured by Americans first, failing that then Germans, and failing that then the Japanese. Why? Because the Japanese were known for mistreating prisoners, torturing them, in many cases to death.
The fact that we now live in a world where that order is probably reversed (if you're a Muslim fighting in the war on terror), being best to be captured by the Japanese, then the Germans, then the Americans speaks to how screwed up our current world is.
(Although to be fair, there was the mass detention of Japanese-Americans so maybe in this regard, stuff has gotten better (Although to be fair to being fair, who knows how far racial profiling of Muslims would get with a "real" war and a Pearl Harbour-like event on top of 9/11))
* but I didn't really feel like writing it out
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quote:I think that most American juries would (unfortunately) be pretty open to that argument right now. Wouldn't you if you were on such a jury?
So, saying that, can you understand why I'm skeptical that there are any actual circumstances under which you think someone shouldn't be punished by the criminal justice system for torture?
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quote:I think that most American juries would (unfortunately) be pretty open to that argument right now. Wouldn't you if you were on such a jury?
So, saying that, can you understand why I'm skeptical that there are any actual circumstances under which you think someone shouldn't be punished by the criminal justice system for torture?
Rakeesh, is this another one of those times when I allow a small possibility that in extreme cases my principle might not apply and you use that as a wedge and I have to take an even harder line?
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No, this is one of those times when you claim to allow for something when in fact the course you suggest doesn't really allow for it at all, kmbboots. We wouldn't be having this conversation if you said, "No torture, period," but instead you're offering up a polite prevarication that makes everyone feel better about our stance on torture. If we're to be against it, we ought to actually be against it. If we think there are rare occasions when it should not be punished by prison time or something, we ought to take an approach that doesn't treat all occasions the same way.
And of course...extreme cases. It's wartime, and we're talking about what soldiers do in the field in a moment of desperation. Of course they're extreme cases.
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quote:Originally posted by Mucus: The sentence was shorthand for*:
It seems within the realm of plausibility to me that if the Americans started out with an under-the-table policy to *wink, wink, nudge nudge* kill questionable prisoners rather than taking them captive, they might actually be ahead of (reputation-wise) the current policy which is a systematic top-down directive to indefinitely detain prisoners, torture them (in some cases to death), and then slowly release the evidence at awkward times.
Thats kinda screwed up.
That's totally not how I interpreted the statement. I interpreted it as being critical of not declaring a "real" war and just killing enemy soldiers on the battlefield. I didn't think it said anything about killing *prisoners* on the battlefield (because if you kill an enemy on the battlefield they aren't a prisoner)...
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quote:If we think there are rare occasions when it should not be punished by prison time or something...
I think there are rare occasions where, in sentencing for the crime of torture, a judge might choose to minimize the time served. But I believe that even that minimum should represent a few years in prison.
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quote:I think there are rare occasions where, in sentencing for the crime of torture, a judge might choose to minimize the time served. But I believe that even that minimum should represent a few years in prison.
Which is all well and good, unless you also believe there are certain circumstances when it's the right thing to do-torture someone, that is.
It's a strange dissonance here. On the one hand, y'all believe (I think it's a solid guess on my part) that it's better to let 10 guilty men go free than unjustly imprison one. We need that sort of certainty in our system-better than that, really. On the other hand, that reasoning doesn't appear to apply to torture-the one innocent or at least not wrong guy has to go to prison in order to make sure the next ten do, too.
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quote:Which is all well and good, unless you also believe there are certain circumstances when it's the right thing to do-torture someone, that is.
I believe it's never the right thing to do. I believe it's occasionally justifiable, but that's not quite the same thing as "right." In the same way, stealing bread to feed your family is still stealing, and should still be punished -- albeit leniently.
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Whereas I believe that if your family is starving to death, and there aren't any other options likely to feed them - when your desperation isn't for yourself but for those you have a responsibility towards, in other words, and when it's a matter of life or death - not only is stealing the bread the right thing to do, but not stealing that bread is the wrong thing to do.
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I don't really think so, Porter, because I think right and wrong, innocent and guilty, morally correct and morally incorrect, are things that depend on context in many cases, maybe all cases.
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I am suggesting that after the torturer is arrested and charged with breaking the law against torturing, he have the opportunity to go to trial. At that trial, he could use a defense that is sometimes used when people break other laws - that they did a bad thing which should remain against the law but, in this particular case was better than not doing that bad thing.
You seem to be suggesting that torture shouldn't be against the law if in some extreme cases it is the right thing to do.
The necessity is a difficult defense but not impossible. Remember it was the one I was planning on using had they not dismissed the case.
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quote:Whereas I believe that if your family is starving to death, and there aren't any other options likely to feed them - when your desperation isn't for yourself but for those you have a responsibility towards, in other words, and when it's a matter of life or death - not only is stealing the bread the right thing to do, but not stealing that bread is the wrong thing to do.
Yeah, I think you are, Rakeesh. Just because in some situations stealing bread is the right thing to do doesn't make it legally OK, and doesn't make it something that we shouldn't enforce/punish.
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I think a case involving battlefield conditions in a foreign, chaotic, faraway nation might be a little more complicated than a case of trespassing. I don't see how anyone could prove, "If I hadn't tortured this suspect, these other people would definitely have committed an attack against my men."
And no, I'm not suggesting that torture shouldn't be against the law because of the extreme-est cases. I'm suggesting that you're not actually for it going unpunished, because the defense you're talking about allowing would be impossible to prove to court standards.
What I am trying to point out is that if we're going to be against torture, we should be against it. If we think there are nuanced situations, though, that might deserve a more careful consideration...we should make our laws reflect that. Not just say, "Well, just untie this gordian knot here and everything's kosher."
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quote:I'm suggesting that you're not actually for it going unpunished, because the defense you're talking about allowing would be impossible to prove to court standards.
Actually, I'm wondering whether the defense here would simply rely on a judge's finding of fact, which is considerably easier to prove than, say, guilt.
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Why do you keep saying that it is impossible to prove? If whoever is doing the torture has enough evidence to convince himself that torture is the only correct action, why won't that work for a jury? And if he doesn't, he shouldn't torture.
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Because to prove something according to the standards you gave, certain things have to happen. For one thing, the enemies involved aside from the person being tortured would have to be caught and questioned to determine what they would have done based on their testimony.
For another, the very success made possible by any torture might easily destroy any possibility of proving its necessity after the fact in a court of law. Because, let's face it, if this guy West had come to you and said, "This man I tortured was known to be involved with these fighters, here's the evidence. These fighters are known to have been behind many attacks on our soldiers and government facilities in the area, here's the evidence. This guy wasn't cooperating with interrogation, here's the evidence. I tortured him and he gave evidence. We attacked based on that intelligence. They were where he said they'd be, and we stopped an attack."
If those things happened, and each piece in the chain was sound, would you, sitting on a jury, really say, "Well, that's good enough for me." Of course you wouldn't, or am I mistaken?
Anyway, the reality is quite different, of course. If this sort of thing actually did make it to court, as you acknowledged there's a very real chance the defense would be accepted by a jury...which is another reason I'm skeptical as to whether or not you actually want it to happen.
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quote:For another, the very success made possible by any torture might easily destroy any possibility of proving its necessity after the fact in a court of law. Because, let's face it, if this guy West had come to you and said, "This man I tortured was known to be involved with these fighters, here's the evidence. These fighters are known to have been behind many attacks on our soldiers and government facilities in the area, here's the evidence. This guy wasn't cooperating with interrogation, here's the evidence. I tortured him and he gave evidence. We attacked based on that intelligence. They were where he said they'd be, and we stopped an attack."
Would that be good enough for you, Rakeesh?
I don't consider that a situation where torture was warranted or the only resort. I think, given the facts I can see, Allen West got off very, very easily.
edit: There are exceedingly few cases where I'm willing to accept torture as justifiable. What you described seems to me like you're regarding torture in these cases as almost a routine activity.
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I think that West got off too easily, too. Looks like he basically did a military version of a plea bargain.
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I don't know anywhere near enough facts, but my initial impression is that there was a sense that torturing people was something that was pretty much okay for our CIA agents and private company mercenaries to be doing and that it might be fine for our soldiers too and this sense led to him getting a slap on the wrist.
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Well, I was abbreviating and distilling out of exasperation, it's true. I shouldn't have done that.
Lemme add in, then, that let's say this suspect is a known, say, planner in the ranks of our enemies. That is, he's been confirmed through multiple independent sources as one of the senior guys involved in choosing targets and planning attacks. His group attacks every few days at a minimum. It's been two days since the last attack. He's not talking. We know, as far as it's possible to know anything that isn't a simple mathematics problem, that he has the information needed, and no other sources have been able to predict attacks them with any success.
And yes, in this hypothetical, it is the last resort. Not the only resort-the other resorts have been tried. Surely that's not implausible, is it? Would that be justifiable?
And yet, if it was, it would be pretty much impossible to prove in a court of law-how do you prove it in a court of law when many if not all of the parties involved are either dead, the original suspect, American soldiers, or undercover intelligence assets?
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So you think that it's permissible to torture people because they have information about attacks that we want that they won't give us other ways?
You seem to be using a situation where torture is clearly not okay. Whether or not there are other ways to get the information (and you're assuming that torture is superior to other ways of getting information, which I don't believe is necessarily justified) is pretty much irrelevant.
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I caught a few moments of Limbaugh the other day. He had a guest announcer doing his show. He reminds me of Mal's comments.
His answer to Afghanistan was simple--kill all the Taliban. Kill them all until there are no more. That, he believes, is what worked so well in Iraq. He suggested we up the forces in Afghanistan to the point that they could just kill all the Taliban.
How do you recognize the Taliban? He didn't say.
How do you stop the Taliban from recruiting outside Afghanistan? He didn't say.
His answer to winning the war in Afghanistan was just that--kill so many Taliban that they can't replace them fast enough.
Why do simple answers and bloody answers seem to be so popular? Wrong, but Popular
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quote:So you think that it's permissible to torture people because they have information about attacks that we want that they won't give us other ways?
So what would be one of those very rare situations you believe it's justifiable, if not a situation where the lives of soldiers or citizens are at imminent risk?
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Rakeesh, presumably the defendant would testify at his trial. "Here is what I knew. Here are other ways I tried unsuccessfully to get the information. Here is how torture was successful in getting the information. Here is what was prevented because I got the information." If his testimony is uncontroverted and he is convincing, why wouldn't a jury buy it?
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quote:So you think that it's permissible to torture people because they have information about attacks that we want that they won't give us other ways?
So what would be one of those very rare situations you believe it's justifiable, if not a situation where the lives of soldiers or citizens are at imminent risk?
If your criteria is "our soldiers could be at risk", I don't see how that would never not be the case.
You're looking at this differently than I, I think. You seem to be trying to set up a set of criteria under which it's okay for people to torture.
I think that is morally abhorrent, especially because you seem to want to make it a commonplace occurrence. I'm just not willing to say that there is no case where I'd always consider torture unjustified. I see the very act of setting up standards as being tempting evil.
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If we allow torturers to go unpunished, how many innocent men, women and children will be tortured? I include children because some of those enemy combatants were under 16 and still held for several years.
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quote:Originally posted by Mucus: It saddens me that American reputation has dropped to the point that killing prisoners on the battlefield would cause less worry than, well, not killing them.
They aren't prisoners if they are killed. They are proud martyrs for their cause, in the midst of a war.
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quote:He would have to have witnesses and evidence, too, right?
No, not really. You don't always need witnesses and evidence of your own to take down someone else's witnesses and evidence, do you?
quote: I think that is morally abhorrent, especially because you seem to want to make it a commonplace occurrence. I'm just not willing to say that there is no case where I'd always consider torture unjustified. I see the very act of setting up standards as being tempting evil.
Well, no, what I'm actually trying to do is to point out that if someone wants to say, "It's not always wrong," (or 'unjustifiable, and I wonder what the heck the difference is, really) then our law ought to reflect that it's not always wrong, as opposed to setting up a convenient prevarication that lets us on the one hand acknowledge that sometimes awful decisions have to be made, but on the other hand we're the good guys standing for truth, justice, and apple pie just the same.
Is it justifiable sometimes? I'm think it probably is. And I believe folks who also think that way ought to want the law to reflect the actual realities involved, as opposed to saying, "If the guy thinks it's the right thing to do, he should do it and accept the consequences," because that strikes me as a species of cowardice when the person saying it also thinks it might sometimes be the right thing to do.
It isn't right to make a person sacrifice something just to make ourselves feel better. I'm not saying it happens often or even anything but rarely, and I'm definitely not saying that it characterizes a lot of the scandals we've been dealing with as a country for the past, ugh, six or seven years or more.
So, no, I don't want to make torture commonplace. That would certainly make things easier when it comes to criticizing me though, wouldn't it?
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quote:They aren't prisoners if they are killed. They are proud martyrs for their cause, in the midst of a war.
If someone surrenders on the battlefield and are then killed, they aren't 'not prisoners', they're 'murdered prisoners' and martyrs for their cause. And hey, if there's one thing America needs, it's to really infuriate everyone across the planet, sparking massive boosts in recruitment and fundraising. Dumbass.
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Rakeesh, the law already does allow for torture to not always be wrong - just like it allows for homicide to not always be wrong. That is what I am saying. The way the law allows for "not always wrong" is an affirmative defense like self defense or necessity.
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Yes, I get that. What I'm trying to question is whether the affirmative defense is something you could actually believe in in a case involving torture. Whether it's something you actually buy into, or it's just something you have to live with being a part of a democracy and all that.
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Then do you also think that there are circumstances under which a torturer should not be punished at all? Sometimes affirmative defenses work out that way.,
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