TORTURE, American Style
I assume that everyone understands the politics of the torture debate. The Democrats see an opportunity to seize the moral high ground by comparing Republican wickedness with Democratic sensitivity and humanity. The hardcore left sees the torture issue as another weapon with which to condemn the War of Terror, along with profiling, wiretapping, border security, rendition, military commissions, Gitmo detention, bombs, bullets and weapons in general.
Generally, they detest anything that compromises the moral purity of the United States. Never mind that leftward writings on American history typically assert that American history is an unbroken record of misogyny, racism, imperialism, colonialism, genocide, brutality, and capitalist exploitation. Patriots must take pleasure in their belated discovery of our precious heritage of moral grandeur.
The relevant passage in international law defines torture as any act by which "severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person." United States law adopts this definition in prohibiting torture. So the CIA lawyers ask the Office of Legal Council to, in effect, define "severe." The OLC lawyers produce a rather comical list of permissible techniques of coercion, e.g., you can bitch-slap your prisoner upside the head but you mustn’t punch him with a closed fist. These methods of coercion are delicately term "enhanced interrogation" techniques.
The liberals and leftists aren’t buying this. If they recognize any form of coercion as acceptable they have not taken the trouble to disclose it. We would be putting words into their mouths if we said they believe that interrogation must be gentle and reassuring, a form of therapy intended to relieve the prisoners of any form of stress which might constitute mental suffering. We simply don’t know what they consider suitable methods of interrogation. They decline to define.
And they are not content to condemn torture as morally indefensible. They insist on having it both ways by asserting the torture, er, "enhanced interrogation" is ineffective because the information gained is unreliable.
Sure it is. And so what? There is no form of intelligence-gathering which is guaranteed reliable. There are disinformation techniques for them all. We know that the rule in the French Resistance was that if the Gestapo took one of their operatives they had just 24-hours before he told the tale in full. It is enough to condemn the Gestapo as a pack of merciless sadists. No need to characterize them as incompetent bunglers as well.
Col. Leo Thorsness who experienced a great deal of torture in North Vietnam has some expertise on the subject and I’m inclined to accept his judgment over that of the usual agitated wind-bags. I quote: "Torture, when used by an expert, can produce useful, truthful information. I base that on my experience. I believe that during torture, there is a narrow "window of truth" as pain (often multiple kinds) is increased. Beyond that point, if torture increases, the person breaks, or dies if he continues to resist."
Thorsness and Bud Day don’t consider waterboarding torture. John McCain does. It looks like torture to me. Torture or not, Colonel Thorsness has this to say: "If I were to catch a "mad bomber" running away from an explosive I would not hesitate a second to use "enhanced interrogation," including waterboarding, if it would save lives of innocent people."
Senator Schumer (D-NY) concurs. He had this to say on tape (you will find it on the Internet) during a hearing of the senate judiciary committee on June 8th, 2004. "I think there are probably very few people in this room or in America who would say that torture should never, ever be used, particularly if thousands of lives are at stake. Take the hypothetical: If we knew that there was a nuclear bomb hidden in an American city and we believed that some kind of torture, fairly severe maybe, would give us a chance of finding that bomb before it went off, my guess is most Americans and most senators, maybe all, would say, Do what you have to do."
Advocates of American moral purity condemn this. For the sake of clarity they should specifically state how many American lives they are willing to sacrifice for their high ideals—a hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand? Their unwillingness to do so exposes their moral posturing for what it is.
So what can we conclude? It will be odious and destructive to make torture a national policy. We are unwilling to deliberately sacrifice lives in defense of a legal or moral principle. Perhaps we can only hope that we have responsible officials who are willing to do the dirty at the risk of prison or dismissal when it is necessary; and that they will be allowed to get off with light sentences and their pensions.
Not a very satisfactory, much less absolutist, resolution is it? Damn, there must be some way to escape the real world.
Professor John Frary of Maine is a scholar, patriot, gourmand
and curmudgeon, as well as former US Congress candidate and retired history professor, and an associate editor of the International Military Encyclopedia. and can be reached
at: jfrary8070@aol.com
