Torture as a Partisan IssueMike Rappaport

The recent release of OLC Memos raise additional questions about the morality of the Bush Administration's decisions concerning coercive interrogations.  For a sensitive assessment, see again Dale Carpenter's post.  While I believe that such coercive interrogations are sometimes morally justified, there are reasons to doubt that what they did always fell into that category.  In particular, the waterboarding of someone 183 times in a month is extremely problematic.  To make only one basic point, one better be sure that the person actually knows something before engaging in such conduct.  It must be truly horrible to be subjected to such waterboarding if one has already told all one knows. 

Of course, the legitimate concerns about this waterboarding do not justify treating this as a partisan issue.  In fact, those concerns demand that it be treated as going beyond partisan matters, but of course that is not going to happen these days.  On this matter, consider these two points by Kenneth Anderson:

Most prominent among those briefed on waterboarding was Nancy Pelosi. According to the Post’s interviews, members of the Congressional oversight committees understood that they had to weigh the limits of inhumane treatment of people known to have Al Qaeda connections against the threat of new attacks. They believed that these techniques struck the right balance in the circumstances. Yet I haven’t heard of any serious call for prosecuting Speaker Pelosi or any of her colleagues for complicity in torture.

Even today, with sizable Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress and a Democratic president, waterboarding is not specifically prohibited as torture under the criminal law. Such a law could be passed at any moment and signed by President Obama — and yet it has not happened. Why not? We could end the debate over what is acceptable and not, now and into the future, by explicit legislation on what constitutes criminal torture — indeed, Congress could do so by simply running through the list of techniques in the released memos. I believe that Congress should be forced to make hard political choices.

It is interesting that I have not seen any discussion of passing a specific law on such matters.  Lots of discussion about the need for prosecuting the people who authorized or conducted the coercive interrogation techniques; nothing about passing a law detailing what constitutes prohibited torture .  (I don't say that there has been no discussion of passing a law; I just haven't seen it.) 

Comments

[dearieme]

Suppose that a US soldier/spy/diplomat falls into the hands of some barbarians and is waterboarded 183 times in a month. No doubt we'd all be told that this torture constituted a legitimate cassus belli.

[Elena]

To be honest, I figure American POWs don't have to worry about waterboarding so much as electrical clamps, baseball bats, and good old-fashioned beatings.

[krome]

This is not a substance issue, this is a political issue.

And as to our forces, have we ever fought an enemy that complied with Geneva Conventions (or similar concepts of civility)?

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