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America, Attacks, CIA, CIA torture, Military, Military Industrial complex explained, Pentagon, Sept 11, Terrorism, Torture and terror, Torture revelations, Twin Towers, Why no more 9/11
I came back from work determined not to think about politics today. Alas, the internet… Today (and this will probably be true tomorrow, and the next day, and the next…), every post, status, headline and vlog relates to the report into CIA torture during the War on Terror.
The sheer variety of techniques revealed has shocked many. They include waterboarding, rectal feeding, sleep deprivation, stress positions and noise exposure… They range from the inventive to the ridiculous, the functional to the vindictive. People say that in the process, we have lost our moral superiority over the terrorists. In agreement with this, the dumbass Iranian President Rouhani found the effrontery to call America a ‘symbol of tyranny against humanity’ – a semi-literate burp of a phrase, but one that has found many a nodding head on our side of the fence. Naturally, there have also been hysterical protests in the lands of Sharia.
You know, I sometimes wonder about the general state of health in the Muslim world. They have held the pose of outrage for so long, their joints must be aching raw by now. Even before the report was published or the rumours circulated, standard opinion in the Middle East had us down as evil, ruthless conquerors.
Would that this were accurate!
It isn’t. The (regrettable) truth is that we have light-footed our way through a killing field to avoid hurting those who hate us. When we shoot, we fire with as much accuracy as the highest technology permits to avoid excess casualties. We have responded to the purest evil with a balanced mind, open ear and moderated instinct. Had we let our natural inclinations think for us, we would have carpet bombed the Arab world as soon as the sun rose on Sept the 12th. We didn’t, because we’re better than them. And this general kindness can only be paid for with something worse behind the scenes.
We torture the Afghan so we don’t have to bomb his village. We waterboard the Egyptian so we don’t have to arrest his whole social circle. These are messy and cruel short-cuts, but they are short-cuts around places they’d surely rather we didn’t go.
D, LDN.
Defend the Modern World 
“The (regrettable) truth is that we have light-footed our way through a killing field to avoid hurting those who hate us.
I had never any cause to disagree, fundamentally, with any post on your blog as this one. I had noted, just this morning, the Drudge headline: ‘Rove Defends Use Of Rectal Feeding Tubes.’
I’d not bothered to link to or read the story. Now Rove, Karl Rove – GOP Party bigwig and political calculator – was defending GW Bush from Senator Feinstien’s report on CIA torture techniques. As it happens, Senatrix Feinstein was in a rush to smear the Republican Party and Bush – to get one last jab in – before committee chairs changed over to GOP hands in January due to the recent elections. But this is neither here nor there, but merely political jousting.
The point, in reading that Rove headline: what more than these seven words, in this order, does anyone need to know something is wrong with the GOP, Republicans, ‘conservatives’/’conservatism’, the Democratic Party members, who were well informed of the torture, the methods, and the US?
The term ‘light-footed’ seems out of place, too light-hearted in the age of killer drones and acceptable collateral damage.
I leave you with the words of Winston Churchill, by no means a shrinking violet, written after World War I while he was secretary of state for war:
“All the horrors of all the ages were brought together, and not only armies but whole populations were thrust into the midst of them. The mighty educated States involved conceived – not without reason – that their very existence was at stake. Neither peoples nor rulers drew the line at any deed which they thought could help them to win. Germany, having let hell loose, kept well in the van of terror; but she was followed step by step by the desperate and ultimately avenging nations she had assailed. … When it was all over, Torture and Cannibalism were the only two expedients that the civilized, scientific, Christian States had been able to deny themselves: and they were of doubtful utility.”
PS
Please don’t take this as moral pedantry or schoolmarmish finger-wagging. I quite know what you are getting at, and agree to a point. I just think we have breached a barrier best left not even approaching.
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I understand your views and would hold them myself if the torture report had exposed a case of real, extreme torture. Whilst ‘rectal feeding’ sounds horrific, I assume it is used to administer nutrients to those on hunger strike. Forced feeding is often used in a national prison system (I’m not sure about America).
Waterboarding is so tame that KSM is said to have ‘laughed off’ most of these sessions (according to the same report).
If we were talking about amputating fingers, crucifying with nails, hurting a child, using a lash (all of which are common punishments in Saudi) then I would wholeheartedly oppose such a degrading of our civilizational standards. In reality, the techniques revealed were already known about for the most part. This report served mainly to confirm them.
As to Churchill, the ‘doubtful’ utility remark is spot on. I don’t think torture is useful either. The intention for my post here was to (perhaps cruel-heartedly) declare a lack of sympathy for those Islamic radicals who had to undergo these light-touch methods of interrogation.
I think we agree at heart, but disagree in mind as to what constitutes torture? Is that a correct assumption to make?
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“I think we agree at heart, but disagree in mind as to what constitute torture?”
This is true but somewhat academic. I have a larger concern. You may think it a paranoid one but I’d insist it has merit for concern.
Defend the Modern World does what the government refuses to do. The government, the State, had some time ago come down on the side of Islam, culturally, legally and irrevocably. EU prosecutions for repeating what is axiomatic, doctrinal, canononical, and essentially Islam are, I think, routine, especially for those with a public soapbox. By this, I conclude the government the greater ultimate danger. If it makes the case for torture of combatants, i.e., of the enemy, and if that case holds sway publicly, what recourse has the citizen who disagrees publicly with the zeitgeist when it is used on him? Does he say “all right for him; but not for me”.
Whatever predictive merit – or not – my concern has with what may come to pass, I certainly believe it merits concern. The government had long ago ceased to be protector of rights. It has become instead chief arbiter of all things political, social, cultural. It’s not that far a journey to keeper of gleischaltung, i.e., conformity, i.e., meaning first, ‘bringing all aspects of life into conformity with a given political line’. And second, as a prerequisite for realizing that goal, ‘the obliteration or at least marginalization of all opposition.’
No country may take for granted that such things do not happen in civilized societies – not after being witness, at least historically, to what took place in Germany, first after WW I… then the Versailles Treaty… then Weimar… then… the deluge.
I seem to have attempted a thesis in less than 300 words. Oh well, here’s the gist of it I don’t trust the Government.
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“I think we agree at heart, but disagree in mind as to what constitute torture?”
This is true but somewhat academic. I have a larger concern. You may think it a paranoid one but I’d insist it has merit for concern.
Defend the Modern World does what the government refuses to do. The government, the State, had some time ago come down on the side of Islam, culturally, legally and irrevocably. EU prosecutions for repeating what is axiomatic, doctrinal, canononical, and essentially Islam are, I think, routine, especially for those with a public soapbox. By this, I conclude the government the greater ultimate danger. If it makes the case for torture of combatants, i.e., of the enemy, and if that case holds sway publicly, what recourse has the citizen who disagrees publicly with the zeitgeist when it is used on him? Does he say “all right for him; but not for me”.
Whatever predictive merit – or not – my concern has with what may come to pass, I certainly believe it merits concern. The government had long ago ceased to be protector of rights. It has become instead chief arbiter of all things political, social, cultural. It’s not that far a journey to keeper of gleischschaltung, i.e., conformity, i.e., meaning first, ‘bringing all aspects of life into conformity with a given political line’. And second, as a prerequisite for realizing that goal, ‘the obliteration or at least marginalization of all opposition.’
No country may take for granted that such things do not happen in civilized societies – not after being witness, at least historically, to what took place in Germany, first after WW I, then the Versailles Treaty, then Weimar, then… the deluge.
I seem to have attempted a thesis in less than 300 words. Oh well, here’s the gist of it I don’t trust the Government.
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I think government is not to be trusted either. I sympathise with your views, I really do. But I don’t regards any of these methods as ‘torture’.
If I’m ever proven to be part of an Islamist terror network, I grant the government the right to use noise exposure and force feeding. Torture is illegal. Interrogation involves pressure – psychological and physical. I would expect this treatment.
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*I missed out the ‘s’ in constitutes.
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My use of ‘light-footed’ was aimed mainly at the conduct of the US in Afghanistan in response to 9/11. We could, had we wanted to, have reduced the Islamic world to rubble after that attack. I don’t believe we should have and I’m glad we didn’t. We should aim to maintain very lofty moral standards.
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The best response post 9-11 would have been to completely pull-out U.S & Western troops from the Middle-East that were/are in effect defending the Saudi Monarchy and let the fat sheikhs to fend for themselves against their regional enemies.
The Saudis are playing a very cynical game of funding and enabling Wahabbism/Salafism but at the same time diverting the logical outcome of such hate teaching,(Saudi Monarchy is itself unislamic, in strict Salafi Sunni ideology, the proper form of Islamic government is a caliphate) outside their own country, far away from threatening the Saudi Royals.
The proper response would have been to let the Saudi reap what they sow: currently as things stand, the rest of the world is reaping what the Saudis are sowing.
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The hystrionics over the enhanced interrogation program are ridiculous. Seriously, a few guys were treated no worse than US servicemen in SERE training – admittedly for a longer period. But remember, these were some of the most evil human beings on the planet who were actively attempting to destroy the West.
Further, I accept the premise of the psychologists involved, namely that “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques do not themselves produce useful information; rather, they produce the condition of total submission that will facilitate extraction of actionable intelligence.”
I find it impossible to believe that no useful intelligence came from that program whatsoever.
We have neutered our forces through our unwillingness to accept facts – war is messy. Espionage is messy. Critics are in a state of denial; “Keep me safe but don’t hurt anybody to do so.” Well, that’s impossible and the critics need to accept it, and deal with their hurt sensibilities. These armchair critics want to (figuratively) eat sausages but don’t want to acknowledge how they’re made.
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