Torture

In the course of defending Dick Cheney's assault on the Obama administration, Bill Kristol has this to say: But of course an intelligent and knowledgeable advocate--even if he's personally not so popular--can do a lot to get an issue front and center. And the debate of that issue can do political damage to the existing administration and its congressional allies. The real question any Republican strategist should ask himself is this: What will Republican chances be in 2012 if voters don't remember the Bush administration--however problematic in other areas--as successful in defending the country after 9/11? To give this issue away would be to accept a post-Herbert-Hoover-like-fate for today's GOP.

Is this the oddest argument in favour of torture yet? Karl Rove says that failing to torture prisoners only encourages al-Qaeda. Taking, for example, the memoranda about the enhanced interrogation techniques and making them public has been a value to our enemy. It has served, frankly, I think, as a recruiting tool. They can now take these memoranda and go to prospective, you know, recruits and say, This is the worst that the enemy, the United States, would ever do to you, and they’ve even forsworn these things. We can help you, prepare you to deal with these things, but even the enemy is so weak they’re not going to use these techniques on you.

This is where the Republican party is now. Karl Rove's latest Tweet is this: Precautions taken 2 guarantee compliance w/ federal prohibition on torture. U might characterize diligence as overcautious. Got that? A - highly questionable! - "compliance" with anti-torture statutes was "over-cautious". That is, it was mistakes were made in trying to comply with, you know, the law. As I say, these people damn themselves with their own proud confessions. And sometimes they only need 140 characters with which to do it.

There's a good deal in David Hare's speech to the Index on Censorship awards* with which I would disagree, but not this bit: "The principal lesson of the new century is the following: that you must condemn censorship, intimidation, bullying, coercion, torture, encroachment on human rights and illegality in your friends with exactly the same rigour you bring to its condemnation in your enemies." And in fact, one might go further. It is precisely because we expect more from our friends than from our enemies that we must be vigilant in holding them to the standards they profess to believe in themselves.

Ross Douthat has a very interesting, honest post about torture here. (With subsequent posts here and here.) As if by magic, National Review appears with an editorial defending the Bush administration's approach to interrogation here. I don't find it especially persuasive, and doubt you will too. Conor Friedersdorf has more too. Amidst the debate on torture and "torture-lite" (or "enhanced" interrogation), one element of US policy is often overlooked: Extraordinary Rendition. To some extent you can argue about policies applied at Guantanamo and CIA black sites around the world, but there's no denying, I think, that Extraordinary Rendition amounts to anything less than state-sponsored torture.

Hope has a short half-life. Right now most of the world is simply happy to see an end to the Bush years. Even so, there's no denying that Obama generates much more excitement internationally than, say, Hillary Clinton would have had she been elected President. Much, though not all, of this excitement is generated by Obama's personal story, not his policies. Nothing either wrong or surprising about that, though foreigners do like all the stuff about how Obama intends to restore America's standing in the world. But there will come a time, not immediately but sometime, when flesh needs to be put on those rhetorical bones. A time when promises must be followed by action. A time for cheques to be cashed. And that means action on Guantanamo Bay and Extraordinary Rendition.

An endorsement Obama could have done without. He better hope McCain wins the GOP nomination because any other Republican candidate will be happy to use this to argue that Obama is the terrorists' friend. More than 80 volunteer lawyers for Guantanamo Bay detainees today endorsed Illinois Senator Barack Obama's presidential bid. The attorneys said in a joint statement that they believed Obama was the best choice to roll back the Bush-Cheney administration's detention policies in the war on terrorism and thereby to "restore the rule of law, demonstrate our commitment to human rights, and repair our reputation in the world community.

Marty Peretz writes: Torture is a repugnant practice, and especially so if it becomes a habit.  It may have become that, although I don't know.  No one outside the alleged practitioners does.  But, believe me, I'm not trying to shrug the matter off.  Andrew Sullivan has persuaded me of its centrality to a humane society. So far so sort of good. Then, alas, he concludes: One last point.  The two prisoners the tapes of whose questioning were destroyed by the C.I.A. were certifiable monsters: Abu Zubaydah, an Al Qaeda planner of the 9/11 atrocity, and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the mastermind of the Aden bombing of the USS Cole in 2000.  It's a bit strange that such monstrous men should evoke so much concern.

Public Service Announcement: the news that the CIA has taken to destroying videotape of its interrogations depresses but does not surprise. It also reminds me that you really ought to see Alex Gibney's new documentary Taxi to the Dark Side when it is released in January. It's a dispiriting, devastating indictment of the Bush administration's detention and torture policies that have done so much* to destroy the United States' reputation around the world (as well as, of course, increasing the dangers faced by captured US servicemen). Anyway, loony tunes conservatives will be able to ask why the Academy Hates America whe the movie is, as I'd bet it will be, nominated for a Best Documentary Oscar. Steve Clemons hosted a screening earlier this week and has more here.

Deroy Murdock's remarkable National Review Online column saying Americans should be "proud" of waterboarding prisoners was bad enough. In response Ramesh Ponnuru suggested that the logic of Murdock's argument was that the Bush administration should be waterboarding more prisoners. Murdock now tells Ponnuru that: [T]he whole point of my piece is that I AM complaining that we do NOT waterboard enough. Yes, we need to waterboard more. At the moment, waterbaording appears to have been banned by both the CIA and the Pentagon. As I say pretty directly in my piece, Bush should reinstate waterboarding publicly and proudly, and I called him deluded for thinking he would gain anything by going along with the Left and ditching waterboarding. . . .