Some thoughts:
I relate a story told by Judge Mukasey, George W. Bush’s last attorney general. He was down at Guantanamo in February 2008. He looked at “high-value” detainees — the worst of the worst — on video monitors. He did not see Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, however. (Remember that “KSM” is the guy who “masterminded” the 9/11 attacks, which killed 3,000 people. He’s also the beauty who beheaded the Jewish journalist Daniel Pearl. Etc.) KSM was not in his cell; he was off having his Red Cross visit.
Mukasey did see the exercise room adjacent to KSM’s cell, however. And he remarked something: KSM had the same elliptical machine that he, the attorney general, did, back in Washington — at his apartment building, the Lansburgh. Only there was this difference: Mukasey had to share that elliptical machine with the other residents of the building; there was a scramble in the morning to get to it. KSM had an elliptical machine all to himself.
As I say in my column, how much more tenderly do America’s critics expect us to treat these people? Are we to administer abdominal massages, the kind that recently made ex-vice-presidential news? (Wouldn’t the “world community” call that “torture”?)
Of course not. It’s Obama now, not Bush.
how much more tenderly do America’s critics expect us to treat these people?
Not waterboarding them would be nice.
Also, and I do fault Obama for this, giving them an actual trial as opposed to holding them indefinitely.
It is a war crime to give a combatant a civilian trial also.
Not waterboarding them would be nice.
Yes, because obviously, there is nothing in between.
[rolling eyes at yet another logical fallacy from Chris Gerrib]
Rand – nobody really cares what’s in or not in KSM’s cage. Focusing on what’s in the cage is completely non-responsive to what gets people upset.
What gets people upset is that, while in his cage, KSM was tortured. Good guys don’t torture people.
What gets people upset is that KSM’s never been tried and sentenced. Americans don’t lock people up forever without some kind of trial.
We can’t believably say that we’re the Good Guys while we ignore our own laws and principles. That’s the issue, not how many elliptical machines KSM has.
There are a lot of things that get a lot more people upset than waterboarding KSM. I’ll bet that you can’t find a majority who are.
I guess the disgust at water boarding is the reason Obama has decided to out source (it’s called rendition) more of that kind of thing. Because the moral difference between actually engaging in “aggressive questioning” and having someone else (who can’t be brought before a congressional committee and is not subject to the UCMJ) do it is mighty indeed.
Right and wrong aren’t majority things.
“Right and wrong aren’t majority things.”
Then why bring up why “people” are upset?
Chris L. – I am using “people” in lieu of the article’s construction “America’s critics.” Since “people” is the plural of “person” I thought (and still think) that my usage is correct and standard English.
Since “majority” also has a specific meaning in English, and Rand specifically stated his opinion about what the majority of (presumably) Americans think, I pointed out that right and wrong are independent of whether or not a majority of people hold a given view.
I guess it’s just a lot easier legally speaking to blow terrorists up without a trial than it is to capture and interrogate them without one.
Which a good number of people predicted would be the end result, a couple of years ago…
Myself, I still want to know why, when the Geneva Conventions call for the immediate trial and execution of illegal combatants (including those found without uniforms, or trying to disguise themselves within civilian populations), we are supposed to threat these folks under the sections of Geneva reserved for legal combatant soldiers under uniform acting in accordance with the laws of ground warfare… can anybody explain that to me?
I saw the use of “people” as a way of saying, it isn’t just you. You seem to be trying to back up the opinion by attributing it to others as well. If you weren’t trying to do that then I apologize.
Big D – the answer is in your question – immediate trial. Until they are tried, they get POW status.
Chris L. – no problem.
Chris Gerrib, you are, as usual, wrong. Spies and others outside the Geneva Conventions are NOT POWs. They do NOT get the protections of the Conventions. You can look it up for yourself.
Chris Gerrib claimed:
Good guys don’t torture people.
Not true.
Whether or not torture is permissible and moral depends on the context.
Torturing a suspect — who is maintaining his innocence — to get a *confession* is irrational and evil and a violation of the suspect’s rights.
But torturing for *information* is a different matter and may be justified in certain instances.
In the case at hand, KSM is not a mere suspect — he is a self-avowed mass murderer and a proud, bragging member of a group seeking the destruction of all freedom, the elimination of all individual rights of any sort and the enslavement of mankind under a brutal totalitarian dictatorship that enforces Islamic sharia law.
All this KSM made clear upon his capture — *prior* to any water boarding.
No one who actively works for the destruction of all individual rights can claim any of his own. Under these conditions, torturing KSM to extract whatever information he may have about additional terrorist operations is thoroughly proper and moral — it‘s the right thing to do.
Regarding a trial for KSM, the military was prepared to move forward with a trial and KSM was bragging about how he was looking forward to boastfully justifying the murders of 9/11 and Pearl as well as publicly re-stating his often-made promise to commit more such murders if he ever gets the chance. It was the Obama administration that stopped this trial and proposed moving it to a civilian court in Manhattan instead. It has remained stalled ever since.
Rick C. – I did look it up. Art. 5. The present Convention shall apply to the persons referred to in Article 4 from the time they fall into the power of the enemy and until their final release and repatriation.
Should any doubt arise as to whether persons, having committed a belligerent act and having fallen into the hands of the enemy, belong to any of the categories enumerated in Article 4, such persons shall enjoy the protection of the present Convention until such time as their status has been determined by a competent tribunal.
I read that as, “until they get a trial they are POWs.” After conviction, they get treated as criminals. Either way, we still don’t torture people.
Michael Smith – so it’s okay to torture bad people?
“Should any doubt arise” is the key phrase you seem to be ignoring. For combatants captured in a war zone that obviously don’t meet any of the clear requirements for being a lawful combatant, there is no doubt, and per the geneva conventions we can basically do what we as a nation want, up to and including summary execution at the place and time of capture. At the time the treaty was written, since that was more or less the norm anyways, this was the presumed default position. It is in fact implicitly encouraged by the treaty, since the whole purpose of the Geneva conventions was to encourage combatants to follow the rules and thus preserve the lives of innocent civilians in the war zone. People who chose not to follow the rules need to pay that price, otherwise all the advantage lies with the rules-breakers, and the treaty goes by the wayside.
That said, it is also presumed that whatever the captor does to the unlawful combatant will meet the captor’s own legal framework. And that’s where it all falls apart in the modern day since neither the US Constitution nor the UCMJ has any provision for what to do with unlawful combatants other than treat them the same way we would lawful combatants. Certainly we have no provisions for torturing them or holding them indefinitely without trial.
The correct thing to do from a US legal standpoint would have been a military tribunal in theater followed by execution after their conviction, or conversion to POW status if they were found not guilty. Since the charge is being an unlawful combatant, and in neither theater is there an actual lawful combatant force extant, conviction should pretty much be a given. However, this was politically a non-starter for both the Bush and Obama administrations, and were left in this grey area where there are no right answers.
Chris Gerrib asked:
Michael Smith – so it’s okay to torture bad people?
I didn’t say that. I said it was okay to torture KSM, and I explained why.
“Michael Smith – so it’s okay to torture bad people?”
Mr. Gerrib, that kind of smart alecky question is not reasoned arbument and can only be construed as an attempt to get someone’s goat. Which means you should simply be ignored and shut out. If that’s not what it is, the question simply shows an unwillingness to actually think about what someone else is saying.
Mr. Smith did not say “it’s okay to torture bad people.” He said that whether torture is permissible and moral depends on the context and circumstances, and he gave examples.
If you disagree, try to make a cogent argument, not a pointless question.
If a psychotic killer had locked up my wife and three kids somewhere where they were going to suffocate in a few hours, and the killer was caught by the police and told them he had done this but wouldn’t tell them where my wife and kids were, I would want him tortured to reveal information about their location. I would be willing to conduct the torture myself. I believe this would be the correct moral thing to do. I do not believe that would make me his moral equal because I have “stooped to his level.” I didn’t capture innocents and lock them away in a place where they would suffocate. I am trying to save my wife and family.
And I agree that right and wrong aren’t majority things. So where do you get your moral basis from? I have my own idea about that, but you are the one who brought it up. There are lots of people who did heinous things in history, and many of them thought they were doing the right thing. What is your basis for saying they were wrong? Is torture an absolute moral wrong? Who says so?
Heh. “reasoned arbument” I thought spell checker was on. Anybody for “reasoned arbument?”
David – considering that we’ve released something like 70% of the people sent to GITMO as “illegal combatants,” I’d say “doubt” is a mild word. More to the point, KSM was captured in Pakistan, a country we are not at the moment at war with. This was not somebody “scooped up on a battlefield.”
Here’s my problem – it would be easy to actually convict KSM in court (military or civilian). When we did that, there would be no moral questions or issues. But because we choose not to, we make ourselves look like corrupt idiots, and jag-offs like KSM look like Superman.
Michael Smith & Jeff Maudlin – Smith makes a case for torturing KSM, saying No one who actively works for the destruction of all individual rights can claim any of his own. In short, Smith’s case is “KSM is a bad guy, it’s okay to torture bad guys.”
Is torture an absolute wrong? No, it’s no more absolutely wrong than it is absolutely wrong to kill somebody (war, self-defense, etc). But choosing to torture somebody, especially absent a true ticking bomb, is extremely hard to justify.
It’s especially hard to justify as an official policy when it’s officially illegal. Breaking your own rules at your convenience is the same as having no rules at all.
Chris Gerrib wrote:
Smith makes a case for torturing KSM, saying No one who actively works for the destruction of all individual rights can claim any of his own. In short, Smith’s case is “KSM is a bad guy, it’s okay to torture bad guys.
Well, if your reading comprehension skills and/or reasoning ability are so poor that you are unable to see why my position does not amount to, “it’s okay to torture bad guys” — then I cannot help you.
Well, if your reading comprehension skills and/or reasoning ability are so poor that you are unable to see why my position does not amount to, “it’s okay to torture bad guys” — then I cannot help you.
Yes, none of us have been able to help him in that regard over the years. The only way he can win arguments here is when he argues against straw men.
Such is the way of the intellectually lazy. I found Jeff’s “killer analogy” compelling: indeed, the would-be killer is, by his own actions, logically estopped from arguing against something so relatively “minor” as torture when murder is at stake — indeed, the would-be killer has a positive duty to save those whom he’s confessed to putting at harm, but given that he’s unlikely to do so, anything up to and including killing the assailant is, sadly (for him), ethically permissible. Murderers forfeit all rights, after all.
The plain English of Smith’s post is that KSM can be tortured because he “actively works for the destruction of all individual rights.” That’s the only defense offered for KSM’s torture – KSM is a bad, evil person.
Where does Smith say anything different?
My logic and reading comprehension is fine. This collective wish to somehow blame their moral failings on my “reading comprehension” problem is a sign of poor logic, reason and debating skills. Try again.
No, Gerrib, you trivialize the fact that KSM is a mass murderer actively working on the mission-critical project of future mass murder by calling it “bad” and then dismissing the argument. It would be wrong to coerce information out of, for example, a lone serial killer, even if he admitted to his crimes, because his mere apprehension prevents future murderers until his fate can be objectively determined.
See, your inability to grasp and argue these fine points — and worse: flippantly dismiss them — is just evidence for “the collective” to question your cognitive skills. So, please “try again.”
Chris Gerrib says:
That . . . KSM is a bad, evil person . . . is the only defense offered in defense of for KSM’s torture. . . . Where does Smith say anything different?
Where do I say anything different? In my original comment — the entire content of which you, apparently, believe you can get away with pretending does not exist. That might work, except for the inconvenient fact that people can read.
You evade the fact that KSM — as I have pointed out — is not MERELY a “bad person” — you evade the fact that he is not the neighborhood shoplifter or the corner pickpocket or some chiseling con artist — you pretend that he is morally indistinguishable from these criminal, though comparatively harmless, individuals.
The question is this: If you are willing to pretend such a thing, what makes you think that I, too, will go along with the pretense?
The puzzling thing is what you hope to accomplish with this pretense. Do you actually hope that we will forget what KSM is? Do you entertain the fantasy that we will awaken tomorrow possessed by your sympathy for these creatures — and oblivious to our own knowledge of the facts?
My best guess is that you have no such hope — that you are merely here to aggravate and irritate — that you seek not to persuade or be persuaded — not to offer evidence in support of your position or evaluate the evidence offered by others — but only to cause frustration and disgust in your betters, whom you otherwise cannot engage in rational discourse.
If so — if such is the motive of your comments here — it makes you the emotional and intellectual equivalent of a juvenile delinquent with a can of spray paint, who derives pleasure from contemplating the disgust and the anger of those whose property he defaces with his obscene graffiti.
What gets people upset is that KSM’s never been tried and sentenced.
He is not a criminal. No trial is required. He conducts warfare without following the rules of war. Doing so, he has waved all rights and protections. You must play by the rules to get any protection the rules offer. He deserves a bullet in his brain the moment he is of no more military use.
Americans don’t lock people up forever without some kind of trial.
Yes we do, that’s what you’re complaining about. We are at war. Releasing them allows them to continue to kill our people, which has already occurred too many times already.
Trials are for criminals. These are not criminals. They have a higher calling. They are animals and should be exterminated. There are exceptions and the military is quite capable of determining those without a trial.
As for waterboarding… I’ll trade 3 minutes of that in exchange for 3 to 6 months of chronic bronchitis every year.
The argument in support of torturing KSM is that he’s a really super-duper evil person actively planning other attacks. I get that.
There are (at least) thousands of people just like him around the world. Arguing that he’s Super Evil and can thus be tortured is arguing that everybody whom the President designates as Super Evil can be tortured. If you don’t see that as a massive moral loophole I’m sorry.
Regarding the original post – focusing on the condition of KSM’s cell is like asking Mrs. Lincoln if the seats at Ford’s Theater were comfortable – it shows an instinct to seize the capillary.
A loophole to what? Have people “tortured” at random? On presidential whim? Really?
On presidential whim? Yes. KSM was tortured on the orders of the President.
Can Marge the bank teller be far behind?
1) The location of capture wouldn’t magically convert the status of Rommel to “civilian trial.” It doesn’t much matter if he was captured in Chicago by a Boy Scout Troop. Unless they want to charge him with an additional crime – which wouldn’t negate “being a declared enemy.”
2) If there was a civilian trial for Rommel, I’m not sure he could be convicted of anything sane. “Waging war” is not a civilian crime. Or a war crime. Neither is “Being a nasty tank commander.”
3) Rommel could be held indefinitely without trial. We’d be insane to release him after a year or two – even though he’s done “nothing wrong” other than being an effective leader.
4) Rommel wore his uniform -> POW. KSM doesn’t, but does repeatedly proclaim his allegiances. If you need a trial to determine “Yes, he’s a member of AQ – a declared enemy,” it won’t shock me – but that happens to be the only legitimate claim to bring before a civilian court. “Is he a member of AQ?”
I happen to agree that there should be a short military tribunal to answer that single question nearly immediately in the cases of non-uniformed captures. Practically the entire fiasco can be attributed to the failure to decide that single freaking point.
If you capture Rommel’s cook, he’s in his bloody uniform, and you hold him indefinitely. Not for “aiding the enemy” but for being the enemy.
But the route we’re on is to make up new laws for all of the military situations that civilian law has never addressed – specifically because the civilian courts have never had jurisdiction before. And there is a whole lot of pretzel logic going into them.
Chris – is that quotation from the Geneva Convention from the 5th Accord, or the 3rd? The US is a signatory only through the 3rd Accords (back during the Interwar Pause; I forget offhand if it’s from the late ’20s or early ’30s). If it’s from the 5th (as most people have quoted regarding our treatment of detainees in other fora; written and largely ratified by other nations during the mid-’60s), then it is quite simply not applicable to how the United States conducts war.
Under the 3rd Conventions – as ratified by the US Senate – armed combatants taken prisoner on the field while out of uniform fall under the heading of “Francs-Tireurs,” and under international law (as agreed to by the signatories) may legally be summarily executed by firing squad. That most other signatories have since ratified more recent variations of the Accords does not matter – international laws signed by other nations do not trump the US Constitution regarding ratification of treaties, nor may the Constitution be amended by treaty. I commend to you the writings of Steven Den Beste, ca. 2002-2004, on the subject (while an engineer and not a lawyer, Mr. Den Beste’s writings make heavy use of links to source material, including [on this subject] the Yale Law Library).
The argument in support of torturing KSM is that he’s a really super-duper evil person actively planning other attacks. I get that.
Actually Chris, it’s not. The argument goes that since he refuses to play by the rules of warfare, anything we do to him and his co-conspirators is fair game. We were not the first to throw out the rulebook (see my above post) – and the rules of war are instituted explicitly to protect the civilians (who do not don their nations’ uniforms) from the ravages of total warfare. In a period of total warfare, as during the World War, millions of troops may die, but several times more civillians often do as well. KSM and his ilk had hoped to provoke us into a total war against various nations – what they had not planned on was our ability to target those responsible for the war so directly, as opposed to holding their governments responsible for their actions (as the rules of warfare have been understood since their first institution nearly 200 years ago). In this manner it becomes an unfortunate coincidence that we prosecuted a second, state-level war against the Hussein regime in Iraq for failing to live by the terms of the cease-fire from the first Gulf war, during the initial war against AQ and its ilk. However, in terms of root causes the two wars are in fact only partially related (it was feared that Hussein’s violations of the cease-fire would be used to up-arm AQ et al, and that only a state-level war would disrupt that connection).
What we do with non-state detainees, after they’ve suspended the rules, is entirely up to us. Because they remain valuable sources of information so long as they live, it is considered preferable that we use them in that manner. However, that is not the argument to support torture. Their decision to become malevolent NON-STATE actors, thus violating the primary rule of warfare over the last two centuries, is. When the rulebook is shredded, let none complain that some action or another is against the rules; there are none thereafter – particularly when the primary complainers themselves began the shredding.