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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsMillman: Why did we torture?
(Don't freak out about the URL; Millman is a fascinating thinker.)
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/millman/why-did-we-torture/
Relatedly, torture is a valuable tool to instill fear in the general population. Incarceration is fearful, but if incarceration brings with it terrible physical and psychological pain, including the possibility of permanent injury or death, then the possibility of being apprehended by the authorities is much more fearful, and ordinary civilians will be much more cautious about risking that possibility. If instilling fear is more important to a regime than inspiring confidence, cooperation and loyalty, then torture serves these purposes well.
...
Ive written before about the overwhelming fear that afflicted the country in the wake of 9-11, and how, perversely, exaggerating the severity of the threat from al Qaeda helped address that fear, because it made it acceptable to contemplate more extreme actions in response. If al Qaeda was really just a band of lunatics who got lucky, then 3,000 died because, well, because thats the kind of thing that can happen. If al Qaeda was the leading edge of a worldwide Islamo-fascist movement with the real potential to destroy the West, then we would be justified in nuking Mecca in response. Next to that kind of response, torture seems moderate.
Willingness to torture became, first within elite government and opinion-making circles, then in the culture generally, and finally as a partisan GOP talking point, a litmus test of seriousness with respect to the fight against terrorism. That proving ones seriousness in the fight was its primary purpose from the beginning, in my view. It was only secondarily about extracting intelligence. It certainly wasnt about instilling fear or extracting false confessions these would not have served American purposes. It was never about them at all. It was about us. It was our psychological security blanket, our best evidence that we were all-in in this war, the thing that proved to us that we were fierce enough to win.
My snipping may seem to make the wrong point, incidentally. The first two paragraphs (which I included just because I think they're very good) are Millman's argument about what torture usually is used for: as a proof of control over truth itself ("There... are... four... lights!" . But he argues that Our Torture is Different (tm) because it was largely used as an internal signal of "strength" or will" or whatever.
NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)know what those who put the programs in place knew or their motivations.
The lower-level grunts tortured because someone told them to, that's all. Following orders, and likely some emotional reaction to 911 in which torture was somehow payback or useful or whatever.
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)Emotional reaction to the crimes of particular individuals is not an excuse for collective punishment, also against International Law.
We know what the 'leaders' knew. We opposed their crimes THEN and still do, well, people who are not trying to find excuses for the US becoming no better than those they hypocritically point fingers at.
Do you think that some of those we admonish, like Saddam eg, (we're going to Iraq to shut down Saddam's Torture Chambers, remember that?) also felt his country was threatened and had to use torture to defend it? Did he know stuff the world didn't know?
If we are going to excuse OUR torturers, we must do the same for others.
I excuse none of them, Saddam, Mubarak, Pinochet, the US, the UK or any other monstrous human beings who try to make excuses, AFTER they are caught, for these medeival practices.
marions ghost
(19,841 posts)totally agree.
You either engage in "these medieval practices" or you don't. No civilized society should.
malaise
(268,846 posts)That simple. And being afriad is no excuse.
NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)at Nuremberg -- but not here.
The architects of our torture program are rich, and so are those higher up who gave the orders.
A handful of poor non-officers were punished.
WinkyDink
(51,311 posts)An order which is unlawful not only does not need to be obeyed, but obeying such an order can result in criminal prosecution of the one who obeys it. Military courts have long held that military members are accountable for their actions even while following orders -- if the order was illegal.
"I was only following orders," has been unsuccessfully used as a legal defense in hundreds of cases (probably most notably by Nazi leaders at the Nuremberg tribunals following World War II). The defense didn't work for them, nor has it worked in hundreds of cases since.
http://usmilitary.about.com/cs/militarylaw1/a/obeyingorders.htm
Rule 154. Every combatant has a duty to disobey a manifestly unlawful order.
https://www.icrc.org/customary-ihl/eng/docs/v1_cha_chapter43_rule154
NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)long time since Nuremburg, and the US was in the drivers seat then. Who's trying the US military or the US government? If the US is in the position of the Germans today, who's in the position of the US then?
WinkyDink
(51,311 posts)to us? Do we remain collectively, as a nation, trapped in puerility? Or in senescence?
"GOLLY, DAD, THE CONSTITUTION WAS WRITTEN SUCH A LONG TIME AGO! IT'S JUST A PIECE OF PAPER NOW!"
"I KNOW, GEORGIE, I KNOW. DON'T FORGET DADDY WAS CIA CHIEF! WINK, WINK!"
As for "position," see above document. See the Geneva Conventions.
SEE THE FEDERAL WAR CRIMES ACT OF 1996. IS THAT RECENT ENOUGH FOR YOU?
An Act To amend title 18, United States Code, to carry out the international obligations of the United States under the Geneva Conventions to provide criminal penalties for certain war crimes
The War Crimes Act of 1996 was passed with overwhelming majorities by the United States Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton.
The law defines a war crime to include a "grave breach of the Geneva Conventions", specifically noting that "grave breach" should have the meaning defined in any convention (related to the laws of war) to which the U.S. is a party. The definition of "grave breach" in some of the Geneva Conventions have text that extend additional protections, but all the Conventions share the following text in common: "... committed against persons or property protected by the Convention: willful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, including biological experiments, willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Crimes_Act_of_1996
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Of course, if you think the treasonous and perverted---indeed, tortured---language of the psychopathic John Yoo and Alberto Gonzalez hold weight, then that is that.
Here are their legalisms, words used to evil effect, without basis in US jurisprudence, just words written to "support" war crimes, words worthy of the Chief Inquisitor himself. Evil dancing on the head of a pin.
So one man asks another man to write some words, and both laugh with hilarity that now, NOW, they are above all laws and can tear and poke and invade and beat and heat and freeze and starve and sleep-deprive and rape and sodomize and threaten and humiliate and hang and stand up and cripple and hog-tie and urinate on and KILL---AND KILL---other men.
BECAUSE THEY---BUSH, CHENEY, WOLFOWITZ, GONZALEZ, AND YOO, ETC.---WANTED TO.
THEY WANTED TO KNOW THAT OTHER MEN COULD BE RAPED AND SLAIN ON THEIR SIMPLE SAY-SO.
I hold no illusions that what Bushco wanted was information. What they sought was an outlet for inner perversions.
Let us not forget that Cheney, while Vice-President of the United States, got away with shooting a man in the face. Had the victim died, Cheney would have gotten away with homicide.
Yoo:
JANUARY 2002
A series of memorandums from the Justice Department, many of them written by John C. Yoo, a University of California law professor who was serving in the department, provided arguments to keep United States officials from being charged with war crimes for the way prisoners were detained and interrogated. The memorandums, principally one written on Jan. 9, provided legal arguments to support administration officials' assertions that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to detainees from the war in Afghanistan.
http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB127/02.01.09.pdf
Gonzalez:
JAN. 25 Alberto R. Gonzales, the White House counsel, in a memorandum to President Bush, said that the Justice Department's advice in the Jan. 9 memorandum was sound and that Mr. Bush should declare the Taliban and Al Qaeda outside the coverage of the Geneva Conventions. That would keep American officials from being exposed to the federal War Crimes Act, a 1996 law that carries the death penalty.
http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB127/02.01.25.pdf
NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)prosecuted. As I already said.
So far, however, they haven't been. Just a dozen or so non-officers from white-trash backgrounds. It's 11 years since Abu Ghraib. Bush etc are sitting pretty, as are the psychiatrists who got $81 million for designing the torture program.
Your self-righteousness is tiresome. Bushco GAVE the orders, they didn't follow them (unless you think the moneymen who back them ordered the torture).
Recursion
(56,582 posts)Recursion
(56,582 posts)The general public knew perfectly well, as witnessed by the number of stand up comedians who made jokes about torture during that period (stand-up is a pretty good barometer of what the public is and isn't aware of).
The lower-level grunts tortured because someone told them to, that's all. Following orders
Sorry, no. 7 years in the Marine Corps here and I knew the difference between a legal and illegal order.
If the alleged set-up is that an asset was told "torture this prisoner or we'll shoot you in the head" that's one thing, but that's not what happened. What happened was "torture this prisoner and we'll triple your daily base pay".
Torture does not need defenders, NewDeal_Dem. It has plenty of those already.
NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)penalized (Lyndy England in particular).
Yeah, she masterminded the whole thing.
I'm not defending anything; perhaps you can't tell.
People like England (poor white trash, the military was supposed to be her ticket out of Appalachia) took the fall for people like Bush & Cheney and always will. I despise self righteous cant about this basic fact of life.
England got three years, a dishonorable discharge, and hasn't been able to get stable employment.
"Graner, the alleged ringleader of the abuse, was convicted on all charges and sentenced to 10 years in prison.[2] Four guards and two low-level military intelligence officers made plea deals in the case. Their sentences ranged from no time to 8½ years. No officers have gone to trial, though several received administrative punishment."
The psychiatrists who designed the program got 81 million. Bush gets a peaceful life painting his stupid pictures and Cheney gets to pose as an elder statesman. There are others.
applegrove
(118,579 posts)important in the outake. The idea that backing torture would make people all in. Isnt that what Hitler did with the final solution.....Nazis had no choice but to fight as Nazis to the very death. Turning millions into monsters. There would be no going back. I wonder if Cheney had that in mind.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)WinkyDink
(51,311 posts)bhikkhu
(10,714 posts)The lessons of history were put aside, as if they didn't apply to us. I say "us" because it was a general phenomenon that people were aware of and supported, though only a few participated; that's the way those things work.
Its sometimes useful to draw parallels between the acts of nations and the acts of individuals in interpersonal relations. I've always told my kids its normal to be angry sometimes, but to never act when angry. And I told my wife when raising the kids that its normal to be angry when something wrong is done, but discipline should never be doled out in anger; you let it pass and then decide what the most reasonable and effective response should be. Too many parents think "you made me angry" is an excuse for whatever destructive thing they did to their kids.
Zorra
(27,670 posts)We were/are serving and protecting multinational corporate interests, (generally erroneously called "American interests" around the globe, in sovereign nations that we had/have no right to interfere with/exploit, and money has no morals.
Want to find some out why some unspeakably wicked act is being done to innocent people in secret somewhere? Just follow the money.