I haven't really been following this issue, mostly because I'm pretty sure that whatever the government is doing to these terrorists wouldn't 'shock my conscience.' Like my man Scalia says, sometimes you're going to have to take these terrorists and 'smack them in the face.' But, some folks are more easily shocked than I am, and they are in full moral outrage mode this morning with the release of a 2003 memo by John Yoo (now a professor at Berkeley!) approving 'harsh interrogation techniques.' Oh, the humanity!"
Translation: "Whatever my conservative government does in my name is fine, and I won't worry that they might have tortured innocent Iraqis and turned them into terrorists, because we are righteous and good, even when we dunk detainees in freezing water."
No wonder Bush hasn't fretted the public opinion consequences of torture. His base loves it, and if anything, wants more of it.
Sigh.
9 comments:
The reason we are a nation that tortures is that a good chunk of Americans think that we are a nation of Men and Wussies. The Men do what needs to be done, and Wussies will cry and whine and overthink and overanalyze and overmoralize the situation. The Men have been driving the ship the last seven years, and that is why you have torture. Because torture is one of the things that Needed To Be Done.
This has been the unnerving part of the whole story to me: that the Administration pounced so readily on an opportunity to "take the gloves off." That there wasn't much second-guessing going on; that in fact, we went right into creating a torture and incarceration infrastructure, that, as it gets uncovered, looks more and more complete.
9-11 was a horror, no doubt, but the torture stuff started up waaay too easily, like at the flip of a switch. That's what unnerves me. That it was right at our Administration's fingertips the whole time.
I think there is a segment of the population that has been scared enough to give the green light to torture. They see images of terrorists cutting the heads off of prisoners. They hear about soldiers finding the plans for some US schools in terrorist hideaways. They hear about various other plots to hurt us.
I would bet that similar fears made people be ok with placing US citizens of Japanese ancestry in detention camps. I would bet that similar fears made people supportive of the Sedition Act in 1918.
Of course, none of this makes the current situation ok. From what I have read, the current situation didn't happen all that fast. The OLC put a lot of effort into giving the ok to torture, or at least a lot of effort into finding a slect few that think it is ok. John Yoo is a scary individual. Everything I read about him suggests he is ok with an unprecendented level of power in the executive branch.
I kind of agree with Bitebark here, the administration seemed far to quick to go to this option.
and I agree, steve, that there are a lot of Americans who have been scared into supporting torture. But Goldfarb isn't scared. He simply doesn't care that we are torturing people and he certainly doesn't care that we might be torturing the wrong people. That is what scares me even more. They aren't responding out of fear. They see this as funny.
Don't want this to be a pile-on, but I agree: The Fear Caucus has been a great excuse for what's happened -- I remember most specifically in 2004 the supposed soccer moms-turned security moms -- but I really do believe that the Brutality Caucus has been a bigger vote getter. There were as many people humiliated and furious as scared by 9-11. Hence the willingness to do the worst to our perceived enemies.
And when I say that we started up with the torture at the flip of a switch, I of course mean that relatively; not that we went out overnight and got ourselves some afghanis to waterboard, but rather that we began building the regime pretty quickly. The Bybee memo, for instance, which gave the infamous "torture is = to organ failure" definition, was issued Aug 1, 2002, less than a year after 9-11. Yoo was thinking about the legal ground rules to the GWOT pretty soon after the planes hit the towers, IMO.
Jack Goldsmith (from the OLC) was the one that suggested the administration was acting out of fear when they gave the ok to torture. They were so scared that a similar attack would occur that they were willing to take drastic (and illegal) steps.
I can buy the brutality argument, but fear is what I hear mostly when I get into a discussion in the net about the GWOT. In the end it doesn't matter, IMO. Fear is just as bad of an excuse.
We came back to the US right before 9/11. During and immediately after I ran into a lot of people that really wanted payback. I was amazed at the fear/hate seething out of people who probably hadn't ever even spanked their kid for fear of promoting violence. Then a few years later we were back and I was then amazed at the sense of fear I ran into. My parents in middle America in a town with no possible threat of terrorist attack, were afraid. I credit the alert system, the media, and some generational issues for much of the tension. It was very difficult to have a rational conversation with anyone about the folly of the war at that time (2003) and we were even told by well meaning friends not to voice our opinions too loudly in public if we didn't want some trouble.
All that to say, my armchair psychologist assessment was and still is that people who are afraid can often make what they perceive to be survival rationalizations (even when in reality they aren't actually under threat). I think that coupled with the degrees of separation between the average American and any torture or actual shooting predisposes plenty of people to rationalizing the war, torture, immigrant harassment, religious discrimination, and plenty of other attitudes/activities they would normally not go along with. Add to that an administration that will carry out these policies rather than appeal to the public to get back in touch with our better selves and we find ourselves in our current situation.
I saw this where we lived (outside the US) when the government declared a "war on drugs" and started allowing extra-judicial killings. Initially, plenty of tea stand conversations included a good bit of "well, if they weren't involved in something bad they wouldn't have been shot. The police know who the bad guys are." However, once it became evident that plenty of the killings were as much political and started getting close to home, all of a sudden they were overstepping the rule of law.
I think the leadership has given the mob what they wanted for a time. Unfortunately, it may take a financial crisis to get us on the right track rather than a moral awakening.
Later
BB
The war on (some) drugs is a great example. I remember the same thing with the militia movement. It was mostly harmless, but those in power did a great job in changing the perception of people to the point where many people thought everone in a militia was Tim McVeigh.
A similar thing happened with Waco and Ruby Ridge. Public perception seemed to change when people had an idea on how much of an overkill had occured. I don't think people have much of an idea how bad waterboarding really is. Maybe if they did, some would change their support.
steve, i fear that the public would only care if that waterboarding was done to a conservative Christian anti-abortion protester.
I have heard it too many times--and even from trolls on this blog. Torturing some "terrorist" who is clearly evil--is fine.
Streak- I think that sometimes we have to be reminded of the following: Kingdom: Animalia, Phylum: Chordata, Class: Mammalia, Order: Primates, Family: Hominidae, Genus and species: Homo sapiens. At times we are very much the tribal, territorial, aggressive, and cruel members of the animal kingdom. Those flagship characteristics we hold up as those that make us more than simply animals reacting based on instincts (protect the nest, eliminate rivals, etc....) are not anywhere present when we start talking about torturing another human (or any other animal, for that matter). There are plenty of people who suffer under threat and persecution but hold true to their moral ideals, whether they are religiously based or not. The US, on the other hand, or at least the leadership and those of us who let them stay there, seems to believe these judeo-christian principles that the nation was supposedly founded upon don't apply if we are threatened. In places that really matter, the nation's collective faith is pretty shallow. Apparently it's only sufficient for the good times. When the going gets tough, we revert more to our place in the taxonomy tree.
Later- BB
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