A User’s Guide to Self-Immolation: Chapter 8 – Torture
Mark and I had the opportunity to chatter a bit last night with Pomocon James Poulos on the issue of torture, where things currently stand and what some possible paths forward might look like. It was a pretty lively discussion, check out the audio below:
Click here to Listen
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Some of the posts/pieces we mentioned are linked here:
- James at Pomocon here and here.
- James on Daniel Larison’s conversation about empire, linked here.
- Most of Mark’s writing on the subject can be found here at the League, or by clicking here.
- The Bacevich Boston Globe piece is here.
- And Tyler Cowen’s post opposing prosecution that James mentions can be found here.
Comments about the format are welcome and as always anything about the content is fair game. Big thanks to James Poulos for taking the time out of his evening to chat with us. Let us know if you dig this audio style and we’ll look into doing more of these.
Update: sincerest apologies for the auto-play annoyance, I tried to disable the feature numerous times but it kept resetting. Hopefully this does the trick.
Update II: as per usual here I am to clean up Scott’s mess… ;-)
~E.D.
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18 comments
Nicely done, Scott.
What about transcripts for people who can’t, say, listen to this at work?
Listening to this now. I liked the points about only comparing the Bush administration to the Obama administration. I firmly believe that if we are going to dig deep on this we have to go all the way back. Not just Reagan and the ban on torture but all the way back to 1947 and the founding of the CIA. Otherwise this is more about revenge than truth.
1) I’m astounded that the three participants have such a difficult time reaching a conclusion regarding the wisdom of investigating torture, let alone the wisdom of the act. I believe that America can withstand emptying the closet containing the issue. Do you guys really think that America is so effete as to be incapable of surviving such an investigation? The toing and froing was just ugly.
2) At first I thought the “scapegoating” argument was being offered in jest. Sadly I’ve come to the conclusion that, who, Poulos, was sincere in offering up the proposition. Are we to assume that we are in the era of Bread and Circus? Offer up the goat, put on a show and the entire episode disappears down the memory hole.
3) I did not hear Mr. Buchanan on MSNBC so relating the story may have lost something in translation but I fail to see what the point was. A series of failed or wounded presidents? America needs a success? I’m not a Buchanan hater, I really enjoy him, not to say agree, but that story made no sense.
Bob:
1. The problem is that you’re assuming that the results of a prosecution/investigation is that torture would be punished. Much as I would prefer such an outcome, neither I nor, I think, James think that to be the likely outcome. If torture were sure to be punished here, I at least (and I think James would agree) would have few qualms with an investigation/prosecution. But I think it’s more likely that torture would not get punished, and then you would have a precedent where Americans and the American legal system have explicitly approved not only torture, but also the increased secrecy it requires.
2. The point about a scapegoat, at least as far as I was concerned (can’t speak for James), was just that it would be the only way where some form of retribution for torture is really conceivable.
Bob (and for that matter Mike and anyone else who checked this out) – One other thing. Thank you for taking the time to listen.
Mark, you are well aware of my position regarding torture from other threads on this blog. But I did not express a preference here. I only said that I was astounded that the three of you could not reach a conclusion, one way or the other. I don’t care if folks hold positions opposite of mine. I’ll argue the point. What I was, am, objecting to was the, sorry, “pussy” stance adopted by the group. My impression of the whole conversation was “Jez, above my pay-grade.”
“Bob (and for that matter Mike and anyone else who checked this out) – One other thing. Thank you for taking the time to listen.”
You guys are “really neat!”
Bob, I think you make a good point around our pussyfooting. Later last night after the convo had come to an end and I was ruminating on it, I thought to myself, “Well, as Mark suggests, maybe it’s really for the best that America get smacked down a couple of pegs by having to admit that its government has housed some war criminals. Perhaps that’s exactly what is needed.”
Which doesn’t speak to Mark’s concern that the outcome of prosecution might lead to a general acceptance of torture techniques. But I hold my ground that if covertly a majority of Americans are supportive, that it is important that the conversation about it be had out in the open and that perhaps the best way to have that happen is via prosecution.
I just don’t hold it to be very likely that such a move is going to be made. It seems clear that Obama et al want to move on and that their release of the memos was the nod they were willing to make around having any kind of public hearing on the issue of torture. So in some senses we need to find a way of getting to the ultimate conclusion of a prosecution process without the prosecution. Which is not to say that people should stop agitating for it, but rather that we need to find ways of having this very important discussion even if the method of bringing it to a head is denied.
On the secrecy question, It seems to me that opponents of government secrecy claims have a big job to do in putting a floor under their objection. (As a side matter, it’s hard to keep track of who is talking, so maybe in the future you could re-identify yourselves every couple of ties you talk.) Certainly I don’t think anyone wants that the government to be disallowed from keeping secrets altogether (notwithstanding one discussant’s considering whether we could ever know “everything” that the government is doing to keep us safe). But the unknown unknown problem then looms large. How can someone who wants to limit secrecy judge whether the things that are being kept secret are legitimately such if not by knowing what those things are. We can set up specific guidelines about what kinds of things can be kept secret (and we have), but we are still relying on voluntary compliance, or t best the judgement of a secret arbiter. And we have that as well. But all the time, we are presented with disclosures wherein the government has kept secrets that by our (which is to say secrecy opponents’) interpretation were flagrantly illegitimately kept. It seems to me that granting any legitimate secrecy in practical reality guarantees abuses. That doesn’t defeat the opponents’ position of course; they can still bemoan the excessive secrecy. But as a practical matter, short of requiring total transparency, what methods of limiting illegitimate secrecy would the opponents of excessive secrecy in this conversation propose?
In the mid 90’s Congress established a commission to investigate government secrecy, The Moynihan Commission. The information below via Wiki.
The Commission’s final report, issued on March 3, 1997, was unanimous. Among its key findings were that
-secrecy is a form of government regulation
-that excessive secrecy has significant consequences for the national interest
-when policy makers are not fully informed the government is not held accountable for its actions
-the public cannot engage fully in informed debate
Sen. Moynihan reported that approximately 400,000 new secrets are created per year at the top level alone—Top Secret—the disclosure of any one would cause, as defined by law, “exceptionally grave damage to the national security.” In 1994 it was estimated that the United States Government had over 1.5 billion pages of classified material that was 25 years old and older.
Scott, one of the points I regularly harp on with regards to posts here is the lack of specificity. I’m a partisan, who knew, so I tend to find it odd when conclusions are avoided, positions not taken. If my response to every post here was “well said,” “good job,” etc. I would move on. (So now you know how to get rid of me.)
Anyway, I obviously enjoy The League, you guys do a great job.
I think it’s fair to say that you’re one of the many insightful, thoughtful, and challenging commenters who regularly read and comment on posts here, so in turn we obviously enjoy your comments and think you add to an environment here that we all value.
Scott, just finished “No, I Will Not Take Fries With That.” You responded to me before I wrote a word. Scary.
Bob – You’re probably right that we pussy-footed around a firm conclusion a bit too much. There’s a point towards the end where Scott asks a question along the lines of “if there’s no ‘right’ result, isn’t it better to reach the wrong result for the right reasons than the wrong result for the wrong reasons?” I wish we had explored that question a bit more, because maybe it would have led to a firm conclusion as to what the ‘right reasons’ are in deciding between prosecutions, truth commissions, or, less likely, doing nothing at all.
On top of that, I’ll just second what Scott said. I’ll also add that what is great about our commenters at this site is precisely that most of our posts get comments that are truly constructive criticisms, rather than just a bunch of “dittos” or straw men.
Michael: I haven’t much thought about that issue, though it’s certainly worth thinking about more. Part of me, radical that I sometimes am, would argue that no government secrets should be permitted other than perhaps basic privacy laws. Of course, that’s just not going to happen; I have some other initial ideas, but I would need to research them more fully before expressing them with any kind of factual basis.
Thanks to Will, “War Crimes, Then and Now” for linking “War Crimes, Past and Present” from Julian Sanchez.
Sanchez ends with this,
“Dwelling on that last line a bit, I think the actual argument is something along the lines of: ‘Look, do we really want to risk the twilight of the idols that would ensue if we judged all our own leaders by the same standards we expect the rest of the world to follow? If we do it in Bush’s case, we’ll probably have to conclude that Truman’s decision was more heinous by an order of magnitude.’ The cases are different enough that, again, I don’t think that’s so much a direct entailment as a ‘opening the floodgates’ argument against the crimethink of passing moral judgment on the military decisions of American presidents. I leave it to the reader whether that’s a compelling consideration. To my mind, blotting out torture and the killing of civilians seems like an awfully high price to pay for keeping our monuments polished.”
Was this the argument Poulos, via Buchanan, was offering? “Look, do we really want to risk the twilight of the idols that would ensue if we judged all our own leaders by the same standards we expect the rest of the world to follow? If we do it in Bush’s case, we’ll probably have to conclude that Truman’s decision was more heinous by an order of magnitude.”
Was Buchanan polishing the monuments?