Tuesday, 24 January 2006

Underbellies

My daily dose of humor was supplied by the original headline for this article, which was “Report cites evidence that US ‘outsources’ torture.” I had brief visions of lines of ex-CIA types outside unemployment offices.

In all seriousness, though, I wonder how much real indignation there is about such things. All societies—including our oh-so-enlightened European allies—have practiced torture (or Gitmo-style “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Torture”) since time immemorial, and while its use has generally been restricted to suspected scumbags in recent history, it still happens, wink-wink nudge-nudge denials, treaties, commitments, ad nauseum notwithstanding.

And, ironically, the incentives for torture may be higher in a democracy than a non-democracy. If the Spanish Popular Party government had waterboarded a few folks to gain enough intelligence to stop the Madrid train bombings (or at least to avoid erroneously attributing the attacks to the Basque separatists), they’d still be running the show. No dictatorship has ever been turned out of office because they couldn’t stop terrorist attacks.

In democracies, when it comes to questions of “us or them,” the constituency for “them” is George Galloway, Michael Moore, Robert Fisk, and a few other demented fools; not the makings of a broad coalition of voters, particularly when you have smoldering ruins as the backdrop of your campaign. Any rational government, left, center, or right, is going err on the side of “us.” And thus, sadly, those of us utopians who’d rather not see torture are probably going to be stuck with it.

4 comments:

Any views expressed in these comments are solely those of their authors; they do not reflect the views of the authors of Signifying Nothing, unless attributed to one of us.

Does the opposition of torture on moral grounds (“personal” moral grounds if you are a post modernist and don’t really believe that anything is absolutely moral or immoral) automatically make you “for ‘them’ ”?

I do not believe that logic (“yer either fer us or agin us” arguments aside) can support this.

I am not addressing in any way the argument of the so called policy merits of torture or whether information gleaned from torture is often useful in critical situations (the “even if it’s only 1% of the time” argument won’t cut it if you realize that there is some point where the damage done to our ability to act diplomatically outweighs the marginal benefits, not to mention the possibility that having torture policies at all could fuel attacks meaning that torture policy needs to save more lives than it endangered…that is, if good diplomatic relations and the lack of torture policy saves more lives than having a torture policy, then it doesn’t make sense for anyone other than jingoistic sadists….BTW, I wonder why “erring on the side of caution” in the face of the empirical inability to test this proposition [how does one measure “lives not endangers”] always seems to mean favoring torture?)

But I’m not asking ANY of that. I ask this:

Applying ONLY the rules of logic and absolutely NO politics, does opposition to torture (for any reason) automatically equate to being “for” terrorists?

 

I don’t think it’s an automatic equation; rather, I’d argue the temptation for any democratic government is to avoid any perception of coddling terrorists (or suspected terrorists, or people who look funny, or whatever) at the expense of public security.

And that, of course, is putting aside the policy merits and even the moral ones.

There might be a case, though, where torture would be counterproductive for a certain class of party (the granola-eating postmaterialist leftists, for lack of a better phrase); I suspect that when Germany’s complicity under Schröder in the CIA rendition program comes out in full, the Greens will be hurt by it in a way that their Social Democratic ex-coalition partners won’t. Since the granola-eating postmaterialist left isn’t usually the lead party in a government, though, I can’t see them ever being in enough control of the government to stop a party whose interests might be served by torture from doing so.

 

Although we’re both Americanists, you know much more about comparative stuff than I, so I’ll pose the question: does Schröder’s complicity mean that (at the very least) leaders in parliament (including party leaders from each party) knew?

If yes, I see the Greens being hurt as you describe (unless they remain the only viable choice for the constituency for whom this issue matters). If not, I don’t think the impact on them is clear…I can even see it helping them.

And, really, smart-a$$, does a PhD member of MENSA really lack a better phrase? :)

 

Well, the foreign minister in Schröder’s government was a member of the Greens, and he probably knew about the rendition program.

Which reminds me, I suppose I ought to renew my Mensa membership :p

 
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