[inteldump] Phillip Carter: Torture and self-interest

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Posted by Phillip Carter:
Torture and self-interest
http://inteldump.powerblogs.com/posts/1194363263.shtml


   [1]Bret Stephens writes today on the op-ed page of the Wall Street
   Journal that we should adopt a necessity uber alles approach to
   waterboarding and coercive interrogation. His basic point is that
   results, not principle, should determine the outcome of the debate
   over waterboarding and Judge Michael Mukasey's nomination to be
   Attorney General, much as results were the critical factor in
   President Truman's decision to drop the atomic bomb:

     Among historians, there is a lively debate about whether that
     result was achieved. In the cases of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the
     evidence that the bombings ended the war and saved as many as a
     million Allied and Japanese lives is overwhelming. A somewhat
     better argument can be made that the bombing of Germany failed to
     justify its price in human suffering, particularly the bombing of
     non-strategic targets. Yet as historian Richard Overy has noted,
     "There has always seemed something fundamentally implausible about
     the contention of bombing's critics that dropping almost 2.5
     million tons of bombs on tautly stretched industrial systems and
     war-weary urban populations would not seriously weaken them."
     Whatever side one takes here, the important point is that the
     debate fundamentally is about results. Note the difference with the
     current debate over waterboarding, where opponents argue that the
     technique is unconscionable and inadmissible under any
     circumstances, even in hypothetical cases where the alternative to
     waterboarding is terrorist attacks resulting in mass casualties
     among innocent civilians. According to this view, it is possible to
     wage war yet avoid the classic "choice of evils" dilemmas that
     confronted past statesmen such as Churchill and Roosevelt. Or, to
     put the argument more precisely, it is possible to avoid this
     choice if one is also prepared to pay for it in blood -- if not in
     one's own, than in that of kith and kin and whoever else's life
     must be sacrificed to keep our consciences clear.

   But not so fast. On the [2]op-ed page of today's Washington Post,
   former Navy General Counsel Alberto Mora and former Asst. Sec. State
   John Shattuck argue that it is in our interests not to use
   waterboarding or any other form of torture. And indeed, that such
   coercive interrogation practices undermine our national security and
   hurt our interests abroad. They write:

     Cruelty diminishes the international standing of the United States
     and impedes our ability to achieve crucial foreign policy
     objectives. Opinion polling in Europe and South Asia last year,
     including surveys by World Opinion.org and Public Diplomacy.org,
     found that majorities believe the United States engages in torture
     and disregards international treaties on the treatment of
     detainees. Overwhelming majorities in Germany and Britain, our
     closest European allies, condemn America as doing a "bad job" on
     human rights.
     The promotion of democracy and human rights is a key element of
     U.S. foreign policy and fosters a rules-based international system
     anchored in the protection of human dignity. But our ability to
     achieve this goal -- indeed, even our adherence to this strategic
     objective -- is severely compromised when our own conduct is widely
     perceived to violate human rights.
     As bad as the damage to our foreign policy has been, the damage to
     our national security may be even worse. Because the application of
     cruelty is a crime under the laws of many of our allies, our
     ability to build and maintain the broad alliance needed to
     efficiently fight the war on terrorism has been crippled. After Abu
     Ghraib, when the dimensions of our policy of cruelty became more
     visible, international assistance across the range of military,
     intelligence and law enforcement arenas dropped as foreign
     officials grew concerned that their cooperation might constitute
     aiding and abetting criminal activity.
     The damage is significant even at the tactical level. Some military
     officials today believe that the proximate causes of Abu Ghraib
     were the legal opinions issued by the Justice Department that
     sanctioned abusive interrogations. There are other serving military
     officials who maintain that the leading causes of U.S. combat
     deaths in Iraq are, respectively, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, as
     gauged by their effectiveness in stimulating the recruitment and
     fielding of jihadists on the battlefield.
     Judge Mukasey is able and accomplished. But if he is confirmed as
     the next attorney general, his legacy will depend on his ability to
     do what he has been unable or unwilling to do in his confirmation
     process: recognize torture and cruelty for what they are and
     protect our nation by stripping certain interrogation methods of
     their disgraceful camouflage of false "legality."

References

   1. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119430812489583231.html?mod=todays_us_opinion
   2. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/05/AR2007110501594.html