TheAgitator.com
If North Korea Does It, Does That Make It Torture?
Friday, April 24th, 2009Spencer Ackerman asks the question, in reference to two American journalists currently being held there.
The sad thing is, I suspect that if pressed, Cheney & Co. would actually rather argue that it’s perfectly acceptable for foreign governments to use these methods on American citizens than forego the ability of the American government to use them. We don’t know the full extent of the use of waterboarding. So far, federal officials have admitted to using it on only three high-ranking Al Qaeda leaders.
But the analogy with respect to stress positions and other methods isn’t strained at all. There’s evidence that several Gitmo detainees subjected to prolonged stress positions, sleep deprivation, and exposure were later determined to be innocent. Which means there really is very little moral distinction between our using those methods on them, and North Korea using similar tactics against innocent Americans.
Absolutely, because we know those reporters are actually terrorists and no better than Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, right? One guy killed 3500 americans, cut the head off of daniel pearl, and plotted to kill thousands more but these 2 civilian reporters are americans and americans just love to torture so they’re exactly the same. Give them the board.
Tokin42 – Do you trust the government with the power to determine when torture is necessary and acceptable? Any government. I don’t.
I was just going to be sarcastic but now I’m irritated. the free nations on this planet, including ours, should be punished for what they have allowed to happen in N. Korea. Millions dead from starvation, rampant disease which is more than curable in any other nation, the absolutely horrific lives these people have lived for generations because the fat and lazy free people are more than happy to turn a blind eye. We’d like to help as long as we don’t have to spend any treasure or blood, so we’ll just continue to talk about it for 50 years. Ackerman should be punched in his suckhole for even mentioning N. korea in an attempt to make an american administration look bad, he’s a dirtbag.
Radley:
Not just the torture.
America is crying foul over the Iran’s treatment of reporter Roxana Saberi, sentenced to 8 years for espionage after a closed trial. For the Muslim world, America’s complaints ring hollow after what we have been doing under Bush, with our own secret trials and indefinite detention. Indeed, the Iranians could say that (a) at least they didnt kidnap some poor joe on trumped up accusations (b) promptly held a trial instead of pretending that they didn’t need one for 5 years and (c) gave her at least a definite sentence, not indefinite detention.
That we can even be considered in the same universe as the wackos in Tehran is very very sad.
It seems that when it comes to fighting terrorist nobody has a clear answer.The rules of war were not written for those that blend in with civilians and many are not states but groups.We cannot treat them as P.O.W’s but should we treat them as criminals with all the rights afforded in this country?I’m talking about those killed or captured outside the U.S.Maybe we should never take anyone alive.
Tokin,
What the hell are “the free nations on this planet”? I don’t know of any and if there were one, it wouldn’t use force against North Korea. Why stop at North Korea anyway? I’ve got a list of over 100 hell holes on this planet that were made hell holes by governments. Look out Canada (#99)!
So many are so eager to send Mrs. Murphy’s boys over to die to end some tyranny somewhere. Superman’s dilema. Saving everyone every second of every day at the speed of light forever. And, Superman gets to determine what is a crime and what isn’t because he’s the unstoppable force.
Just how did Lil’ Kim get control of North Korea? What the hell happened after Hawkeye and Radar left?
Tokin,
Whose blood are you willing to spend?
Tokin,
You really just don’t make any sense. Are you trying? Whatever sucks about North Korea and whatever role America caused in that awfulness, doesn’t change the point. If it’s legal when the U.S. does it then it is legal – and moreover, certainly we can’t complain – when another country led by god-awful dictators do it.
If you want to talk about the people who it is being doen to and whether they are innocent then you are skipping an important step in the process which is how to insure they are guilty or not? Guilty of what? Crimes in communist (or any other) nations will inevitably be stupid or unjust when viewed through our legal standards? Is torture the punishment in itself? Is that legal?
Like the torture apologists you seem to want to run torture through any rubric that will make it come out justified when America does it but not necessarily when someone else does it. How awfult he people it was done to, or whether it worked are all irrelelevant questions to whether it is ….. LEGAL.
Michael Pack, the answers are actually very clear. Just because the rules were not written with the present circumstances in mind doesn’t make them less clear. There is nothing wrong or inherently illegitimate with a debate in this country of whether we should change our policies and adopt torture in the future. But there is something wrong with saying that torture magically becomes retro-actively legal because it might have worked once.
I fear the ability for people to apply vastly different moral codes to different people depending on who they are is being underestimated.
Tokin42:
At least America stopped North Korea from enslaving the rest of the peninsula and threatening Japan, and has been actively providing food aid etc. The misery of the N.K. people happened despite, not because of, the USA’s best efforts
#8,so tell me,how should we treat terrorist caught outside this country?I was and am against the Patriot act,I also feel most terrorist threats come from outside the U.S.Do we detain them for good or try them in a U.S court.I don’t think torture produces good imformation and should not be used.That said ,these people are not criminals or P.O.W’S.You’ll soon see the same problem in Pakistan.
Another thing bothering me is the intermixing of law enforcement and warfare.The reporters in Iran and North Korea are suffering due to the lack of the rule of law.There are many things a nation can and should do in war that are not acceptable in civilian law enforcement.You cannot compare the two.That’s why I so hate the ‘war on drugs’.
Michael Pack – Good points, but while war is different from law enforcement, in no case is torture acceptable. It is and should always be unacceptable.
Hut: “Do you trust the government with the power to determine when torture is necessary and acceptable?”
No, but you wanna know what? I think I could do that, if I were put to it.
“Any government. I don’t.”
Me, either, but that’s because that bag will include good sensible people with rotten stupid people and they all get to work with the same blank check. This is about the manifestly — metaphysically — false equivocation of government and the individuals comprising it.
Here’s my thing about this whole torture deal: it’s just stupid to keep on blandly asserting that “it doesn’t work”. (Look: Solzhenitsyn’s “Gulag” manuscript didn’t just jump down out of Samutin’s attic waving frantically at the friendly KGB officer, okay?) Knowing that that
much is nonsense, I’m also convinced that because the essence of this whole matter is about an ordering of values, and because of the real live dangers before which these values and methods of sorting them might be brought to test, the shards of so-called debate flying at each other from both sides of the rough fence in public debate are pretty witless.
Just for instance: let’s consider a premise of this instant item. If we’re really to complain to North Korea on a general principle of prohibition of torture, then the theory of it must necessarily ignore some basic facts like the differences between journalists and people who really would just fucking cut your head right off if they could sneak up on you, and how one might handle them because of those really essential differences.
Billy Beck, your inability to understand the difference between cinder blocks and poured high-strength concrete aside, that was very well said.
Billy – I agree with you that journalists are different than terrorists, and that is a good point. But my contention is that when you start to allow governments the power to torture, soon it will be torturing whoever it pleases. There are many examples of this from warrantless wiretaps to the torture we are talking about today.
[...] almost never remark on all this noise about torture, and this comment at Balko’s hints at why –”Hut:
Gotta run but I’ll be back, just wanted to respond to billy #7:
I’ve mentioned before I come from a millitary family where almost everyone serves, including the women. My only uncle is a DAV, injured in Korea and I also have 1 cousin still MIA from the korean conflict. Thanks for asking now it’s your turn, what have you done to make a difference?
Watch the movie “Strip Search”.
It is a great movie that shows mirror dialogue and scene cuts between a female American being questioned for suspected terrorism in China and a male Middle Eastern in America.
I was blown away that this was done in 2004. I watched it last week and thought it was new.
Shorter Tokin: America, FUCK YEAH!
The pros tell us:
If you want false confessions, then torture “works” very well.
If you want actionable intelligence, then you’re better off sticking to the FBI standard.
The Bush admin needed an Saddam-Al Qaida link and it wasn’t there. What else could they do?
‘Thanks for asking now it’s your turn, what have you done to make a difference?’
I appreciate your family’s sacrifices, but… from my viewpoint Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq, Panama, Cambodia, WWI, The Spanish-American War, the Civil War, etc have not been beneficial to the American people.
Have any of these wars really been about ‘helping’ anyone? Have any of these wars helped us defend our borders?
Back:
#8:
I wasn’t the one who brought up N. Korea, that was that dirtbag akerman. I obviously wasn’t clear about my point but N. Korea is a button of mine and if radley wants to go back through all my posts he’ll note that I’ve mentioned it quite a bit. There is zero equation between the activites of the N. Korean dictatorship and our elected representatives, the differences between how things work should be patently obvious. I find the comparison especially offensive since the world has sat on its hands for 50 fuckin years while knowing full well what was going on inside that country. If what has happened to the N. Koreans isn’t enough to make people act then wtf is? Ackerman doesn’t give a crap about the n. koreans OR the a-holes who got waterboarded, all he cares about is scoring political points. That makes him a dirtbag.
#10
I didn’t mean to lay the entire blame for the problem in the lap of the US, but we have been the most able to do something. I never said that means we should have invaded, or should invade, just that there have been a lot of options and no one has done anything other than attempt to put a band-aid on it.
#6
Boyd, there is something wrong with you. I just haven’t figured out what it is yet.
Actually, the people with the most ability to do something are (a) Kim Jong Il and (b) the Chinese.
I cannot ask this elsewhere because it runs against Libertarian Dogma, but have we actually determined that American waterboarding = others’ waterboarding? My understanding is that the “water cure” prosecuted as a war crime (and the one used in DPRK) is vastly different from the American one.
Anyway, I think that, regardless, American torture should be evaluated on our terms, and comparisons to other nations is fallacious, whether it’s an attempt to be negative or positive about the subject.
But, but, but,
9-11!
No, the sad thing is that it doesn’t matter what Cheney & Co think where other countries who torture are involved…….they DO torture and they WILL CONTINUE to torture, no matter what the current, or any future US administration does.
As long as the world is willing to take the words of terrorists as gospel when it comes to whether or not they were tortured, and deny the evidence of others which they openly post on the web, the world will get what they deserve……..more torture against their own citizens, and the US will be powerless to assist in the resolution of the larger problem…….which isn’t torture.
jwh, let see if I get your point – other terrible countries do these terrible things, so we should also get to do them.
“what have you done to make a difference?”
I refrained from signing up for a job which could compel me to kill innocent people in far away places.
Marty #21 “I appreciate your family’s sacrifices, but… from my viewpoint Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq, Panama, Cambodia, WWI, The Spanish-American War, the Civil War, etc have not been beneficial to the American people.
Have any of these wars really been about ‘helping’ anyone? Have any of these wars helped us defend our borders?”
Absolutely! No offense to anyone but wtf did any of those “police actions” accomplish besides establish our overseas empire?
I also feel most terrorist threats come from outside the U.S.
Lee Harvey Oswald
Timothy McVeigh
Bruce Edward Ivins
IOW, fail.
@17:
I served in Korea. That enough for you?
Dave W., three guys in fifty years isn’t all that many. And anyway, Oswald was an assassin, McVeigh targeted the government directly rather than indirectly (remember the definition of terrorism) and while the Anthrax mailer was certainly a terrorist, Ivins may or may not have been him: there seem to be a lot of people who think he saw himself as the next Hatfill and killed committed suicide in despair.
That’s crazy. Ivins didn’t commit suicide at all.
Dave W., check the Wiki article on him.
Right at the top of wikipedia’s “Domestic terrorism in the United States” page:
“In the United States, acts of domestic terrorism are generally considered to be uncommon. According to the FBI, however, between the years of 1980 and 2000, 250 of the 335 incidents confirmed as or suspected to be terrorist acts in the United States were carried out by American citizens.”
Tokin42 | April 24th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
I was just going to be sarcastic but now I’m irritated. the free nations on this planet, including ours, should be punished for what they have allowed to happen in N. Korea.
Not sure why all you chaps are giving Tokin42 the business over this post. We should be ashamed for all the reasons s/he mentions. We drew a line on a map and the people living up above that line are fucked three way to Sunday.
This nation is a crock of shit at the moment. Either we live up to our principles, or we do not. I will give the Bush Junta a tip of the cap for making it a debate. When the conservatives said they want to drown the federal government in the bathtub, I did not realize they meant the nation as well.
Fuck this shit. Where is my monocle? Where’s my feinting couch?
How quickly people forget about the 3K plus dead people from 9/11, some jumping off the world trade center towers instead of burning to death. I cannot believe you care so much about how we gain intelligence. There has not been another terrorist attack on our soil since and I, for one, am happy about that.
Shane Haithcock #38 “There has not been another terrorist attack on our soil since and I, for one, am happy about that.”
Not sure I follow you-you’re assuming that the only reason there hasn’t been another attack here since 9/11 is because the government tortured people?
JS, I’m saying I’m more concerned with the end result than I am worrying about how our Government gains its intelligence from those who want to do us harm. I’m absolutely fine with that.
Well they could keep us totally safe the way they did in the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany but I don’t want to be kept safe at all costs. I don’t want to be kept safe it means leaving everything that America is supposed to stand for. I don’t want to be kept safe if it means our government suspends posse comitatus or starts up a bunch of secret prisons or takes away our freedom (not that we have much of that left). In short, I’d rather die at the hands of terrorists than live in a police state. If your life is so precious to you that you don’t mind anything the government does as long as you’re safe then I guess you would have ok with living in Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union.
JS, I’m saying I’m more concerned with the end result than I am worrying about how our Government gains its intelligence from those who want to do us harm.
Why do you trust the government to only torture “those who want to do us harm?” Whatever has the government done so very well to make you trust it so?
I think it’s funny how conservatives trust the government with a leftist passion when it comes to national security.
Those who are concerned about end results need to look at the big picture.
1. Intelligence gathering: torture does not give reliable information because the tortured will say anything to stop the torture. The Luftwaffe and British MI refused to use it because the information was unreliable. The only reason to torture is to obtain ‘confessions’ and induce fear, and so those who want to use it are politicians and politically-linked security services e.g. the Nazi SS, KGB etc.
2. “Keeping us safe:” it is a well known principle of counter-terrorism that we have to win hearts and minds. Torture, general abuse, killing civilians etc, does not win hearts and minds. If you don’t care to look at history, look at Iraq: the people in Anbar got sick of Al Qaeda and its thugs, and the US portrayed itself as a friend of the people.
If you want to look even bigger picture: the USA has consistently beaten the countries that torture, over the long term: Soviet Russia, Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany.
3. Rule of law: US law forbids torture. Not just the Geneva conventions, but U.S. law. If the U.S. wants to torture, then it needs to go through Congress. However, here Bush just decided he can create his own law, or reinterpret the law beyond reason. The problem is that, if a President can just ignore THAT law, why not other laws? Why can’t the President torture Americans? Why not imprison US citizens without trial? Do conservatives really want an out of control President?
Note that all of these reasons do not even mention morality, principles etc but are strictly utilitarian. If you want to consider morality, consider that Washington owned slaves, killed people in battle and oversaw executions. Yet he famously considered torture to be barbaric, and instructed his troops to treat captured British soldiers with respect.