RSS Feed MenuNewsweek’s Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball report on President Obama’s first-week executive orders pertaining to the treatment of detainees.
Writers notoriously don’t get to write their own headlines, and it sometimes can be a problem. In this case, Isikoff and Hosenball have a real beef against the headline writer, or they should.
The article is called “The End of Torture” No joke. As if, until Obama’s pen hit paper, American officials were routinely breaking kneecaps and playing with dentists’ drills. Not to make light of a complicated situation, but this topic has been so twisted and distorted that it is no wonder America’s reputation has suffered or that so many Americans believe the worst of their own government.
Abu Ghraib was one thing; even if you believe the abuses (A) were torture and (B) resulted from a too-loose interpretation of the law by people at the top, what happened there was nonetheless not ordered, not sanctions, and later punished.
The only officially sanctioned and practiced “enhanced interrogation technique” that may have risen to the level of torture was waterboarding. It is not my purpose to get into the debate right now about whether it did or did not constitute torture, except to say that the retroactive absolutism of the pundit class — it was, no question about it, either according to US law or to universal morality! — is not convincing.
Be that as it may, that technique was used three times, the last being in 2003, and was banned internally by the Bush administration in 2006. So, even if you think waterboarding is unquestionably torture, then the “end of torture” came in 2003, or at the latest 2006.
So what other practices does Obama’s Executive Order end? According to the article, “temperature manipulation and stress positions,” as well as “trick[ing] prisoners into believing they would face physical harm from foreign intelligence services if they didn’t cooperate.” Maybe these are very terrible things. But are they “torture” either under US law or in any reasonable person’s definition?
To their credit, Isikoff and Hosenball only use the “t” word once, with the proper qualifier. But unfortunately, it’s the headline and the first paragraph that will get the most attention — such is the way with all stories — and these will only serve to reinforce the calumny that under George W. Bush, torture became routine in America.
JJWFromME // Jan 25, 2009 at 7:22 pm
A couple things I should say. I am grateful that you’re engaging me in the comments. And I am genuinely impressed with David Frum and the rest of you for creating a site that is open to my comments. Seriously, for the most part, you only see this on liberal sites. I just want to say that this is noted, and I think it’s a good sign. I’ve been reading David Frum closely for a several months, and I am intrigued. Not voting for GOP candidates, but I respect your efforts and am curious about what you’re up to.
JJWFromME // Jan 26, 2009 at 7:54 am
I think this answers the question you were asking earlier: I know that there are cases that require tough methods of interrogation. I’m not informed enough to know exactly where the line of acceptible methods is. I think there are a number of factors involved in whether something is torture. I think waterboarding is in all cases. The Vanity Fair article I linked to mentioned certain things done over the course of 58 days. You might be able to argue that certain things weren’t torture if done over a short period, but there’s a good chance that after 58 days of some of these methods a prisoner wouldn’t be mentally competent to stand trial. That’s Pinochet territory.
JJWFromME // Jan 26, 2009 at 7:55 am
My biggest problem is that the Bush administration essentially *institutionalized* torture. Abu Graib was not a freak occurrence. There were real policy and legal decisions that led up to it. If you lead people in a certain direction, they’ll follow you there, and then some, unless you provide morally clear leadership restraining peoples’ dark sides (and they do have them). Torture should be illegal. It should not be condoned or encouraged by the government’s legal apparatus, as it was under the Bush administration. There may be cases (although I’m certain they’re a lot more rare than the “ticking time bomb” arguers say they are) where someone feels they have to break the law to save lives. In that case they’d have to carry out an act of civil disobedience, and face the legal system afterward. In short, they’d have to tell it to the judge. In certain very rare and extreme cases I might be happy that a person decided to break the law successfully get some information, but I’d probably also pray for that person’s soul. In short, our legal system and government should never support or condone torture. It should be illegal.
JJWFromME // Jan 26, 2009 at 9:41 am
It appears that some military men agree with me: “…they warned [Obama] that every word he uttered would be taken as an order by the highest-ranking officers as well as the lowliest private. Any wiggle room for abusive interrogations, they emphasized, would be construed as permission. …retired Major General Paul Eaton, stressed that, as he put it later that day, torture is the tool of the lazy, the stupid, and the pseudo-tough. It’s also perhaps the greatest recruiting tool that the terrorists have.
http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2009/01/26/obama-and-the-end-of-torture/
senorlechero // Jan 26, 2009 at 12:55 pm
torture is the tool of the lazy, the stupid, and the pseudo-tough. It’s also perhaps the greatest recruiting tool that the terrorists have. …right after the recruitment video of terrorists hacking the heads off infidels with dull knives.