Our treaty with terrorists
It's a little bizarre that much of the past week's discussion on giving full Geneva Conventions protections to terrorists reminds me of an old Bill Cosby schtick. In his comedy routine, Cosby imagined what it would be like if, during various battles in U.S. history, a referee had been present to do a coin toss. In the Revolutionary War, George Washington won the coin toss and decided that the Americans could wear whatever uniforms they wanted, hide behind trees and shoot the British however and whenever they wanted; the British had to wear red and march in straight lines. At Little Big Horn, Sitting Bull won and decided that Col. Custer had to wait at the bottom of the hill as Sitting Bull and all the Indians in the world rode down on him.
What a handful of Republicans in the Senate along with most Democrats are doing with regard to fighting the war on terror makes it seem like the U.S. won the coin toss, but we're letting the terrorists set all the rules.
As a primer on this subject, I encourage you to check out the article I referenced a little over a week ago in this post by Andrew McCarthy.
Once you've read that one, this more recent piece by McCarthy shows just what sort of Bizzarro World Republicans John McCain, Lindsay Graham and John Warner would have the United States counterterrorism officials operate in.
No, the problem here is McCain & Co. Yet again, they appear poised to risk our security in the service of a purportedly pro-military standard that won’t protect a single member of the armed forces.
The president’s Code for Military Commissions would vest jihadists — unlawful enemy combatants who scoff at the dignity of true soldiers and intentionally target civilians — with a plethora of rights: fair notice of the charges, counsel paid for by the American taxpayers they are trying to murder, the presumption of innocence (notwithstanding that they were presumed guilty on the battlefield), lavish discovery of the prosecution’s case, and more.
Nonetheless, the trial rules would allow evidence to which the accused has been denied personal access. Not denied all access, mind you; just personal access. (More on that in a moment.) This suggestion, naturally, has led to star-chamber claims by McCain, Graham, and Warner. (“It would be unacceptable, legally,” Graham blustered, “to give someone the death penalty in a trial where they never heard the evidence against them.”)
Of course, the kicker in all this is that McCain and company would have this country fight terrorists with not just one hand tied behind our backs, but hogtied. McCain & friends, along with misguided editorialists everywhere, for some reason believe that if we make it clear that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions doesn't apply to terrorists (which it obviously doesn't, despite what five misguided superlegislators in black robes say), that somewhere down the line when we are locked in battle with a real nation-state that actually abides by the Geneva Convention strictures (i.e. wearing uniforms, not targeting civilians, etc.) that they'll feel free to torture our captured soldiers because of how we've treated terrorists.
It's Bolshevik Storytelling, and McCarthy hits the nail on the head.
Thus is the McCain Amendment theme reprised: The way we treat Islamic terrorists will somehow impact the way our own soldiers are treated when captured. It’s hard to imagine a more preposterous premise on which to base policy.
Our enemies don’t give a damn about the Geneva Conventions or, frankly, about the inspiring life story of Senator McCain. The life story that animates them is Mohammed’s. Thus do they invoke, for example, the Battle of Qurazya, in which the prophet is said to have ordered hundreds of captured prisoners decapitated and interred in mass graves (while women and children were condemned to slavery). Thus, too, do they cite scriptures which instruct, for example, that “when ye meet the Unbelievers in fight, smite at their necks” (Sura 47:4); that they must “slay [their enemies] wherever ye catch them” (Sura 2:191); and that “[t]he punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger … is: execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides …” (Sura 5:33).
Let’s not mince words here: Our soldiers, if captured by Islamic terrorists, will be tortured and killed. That’s what Islamic terrorists do. That’s why awed admiration is the only proper response to the bravery of our men and women in uniform. They fight for us despite knowing, as we should all by now know, that nothing we do affects the jihadists’ behavior.
On the other hand, if we were to fight another conventional war against the honorable combatants of a nation-state, that country’s forces — like our own — would be solemnly bound to (as well as self-interested in) compliance with their Geneva Convention obligations regarding prisoners of war. Again, how we deal with al Qaeda now is irrelevant to the treatment our forces will receive in any future conflict.
So, no, we don’t owe jihadists the same trial rights we owe any honorable combatants, much less our own troops. The very notion is an insult to those putting their lives on the line in our defense. That aside, though, the incentives these senators would create are perverse. It is an elementary rule of human nature that when behavior is rewarded, it begets more of the same. Rewarding terrorists with rights to which they have no legal entitlement can only encourage their methods — a cost McCain, Graham, and Warner would apparently have us bear despite the absence of any discernible benefit.
I'm not sure where I read it, but one commentator likened the McCain & pals proposal to having the American military hiding behind the shield of American civilians -- bass ackwards. Under the McCain structure, we don't interrogate captured terrorists because to do so violates the Geneva Conventions which protect our soldiers. But not interrogating the terrorists allows plots to go forward which kill hundreds or thousands of civilians. So, in order to (vainly) protect our troops on the battlefield, civilians have to die.
And all along the troops thought they were protecting their families back home.
It's been only five years, and already we have politicians who have forgotten the enemy we face.
0 comments on “Our treaty with terrorists”
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I have very mixed emotions about this. On one hand if we need to get information and it isn't forth coming what do you do? On the other, this is the United States of America, not Cuba, or China, or North Korea. The fact that we are employing some of the same techniques that they have, and do, worries me.
I guess my biggest concern is not if we torture Osama Bin Laden, it's that most of the people that have been at the general detention centers were innocent, the US govt. has said that 90% of detainees have been innocent, but some (many ??) they were tortured as well.
I really don't like the "Not torturing them will not keep our people from being tortured or killed" argument. To me that is not the argument to make, if a group of ppl or government are going to torture and kill innocent people or soldiers it will happen regardless of what we have done in the past. My main concern is what it does to us, the people of the United States, and how we and our government are perceived. How can we go to China, and Cuba, and N. Korea and complain about torture and in human rights abuses when we do the same things they do?
There now seems to be evidence that the airline bombing plot uncovered last month was no where near ready to go, but the information gathered was done so under torture. If that's true, it is conceivable that we have lost a number of surveillance targets and possibly tipped our hand on how we conduct surveillance for nothing. How many people could die in the future because we got inaccurate information from someone who was tortured.
I think this question and it's consequences go much deeper few tag lines that are thrown around and I am constantly dismayed by what we as conservatives are willing to accept because someone with an "R" in front of their name says or does it.
df
Nobody is talking about torturing anyone. Nice try at deflecting the issue.
Matt wrote:
"Of course, the kicker in all this is that McCain and company would have this country fight terrorists with not just one hand tied behind our backs, but hogtied. McCain & friends, along with misguided editorialists everywhere, for some reason believe that if we make it clear that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions doesn’t apply to terrorists (which it obviously doesn’t, despite what five misguided superlegislators in black robes say), that somewhere down the line when we are locked in battle with a real nation-state that actually abides by the Geneva Convention strictures (i.e. wearing uniforms, not targeting civilians, etc.) that they’ll feel free to torture our captured soldiers because of how we’ve treated terrorists."
Maybe I'm reading this wrong, if Matt's not alluding to torture in the above paragraph he's the only conservative writer in the last year to not use the names and language above and not have torture wrapped into the theme.
By the way, I am hardly tryig to deflect anything, I think the lack of conversation among us conservatives about this (torture) is to our detriment.
-df
This isn't about torture ... unless you think that mild sleep deprivation (think college finals) is torture, or having to listen to loud music...
That's what we're talking about here. For crying out loud, if the military catches a terrorist, they're no longer even allowed to play "good cop/bad cop" with the guy.
Common Article 3 prohibits "assualts upon personal dignity" -- a devout Muslim could find being questioned by a woman such an "assault." Reasonable? I don't think so.
(If you really want to tie the lawyers in knots, consider a female CIA agent filing a sex discrimination claim because she is prohibited from questioning Muslim men. How would the courts reconcile those two competeing claims?)
The language being promoted by the president would basically encode the Constitutional provision against "cruel and unusual punishment" into Common Article 3. I think that's eminently reasonable. If you disagree, I'd love to hear where you'd draw the line.
When we agitate for change in Cuba, China and North Korea we refer to how those governments treat their own citizens. In this case we are talking about how we treat unlawful enemy combatants. While some would not make a distinction between those two situations, I think there is a huge difference.
By the way, I do not believe in aggressive interrogation techniques in the pursuit of testimony for a legal proceeding on an act already committed and I don't think the president does either. However, such techniques have to be made available in order to stop an imminent threat to innocent life. At the very least, the bad guys have to beleive that their questioners have the ability to use those procedures. If unlawful combatants think they have the full rights of a POW they will never provide any actionable intelligence.
I am happy this debate is finally happening. The president for too long has been doing this "on his own", which has been to his detriment. When people dump on Bush I think they at least partially forget that he is the one person in the US who wakes up everyday wondering whether he has done enough to protect the American people, knowing that the buck ultimately stops with him. The rest of us, including the cowards in Congress, get to pontificate from the sidelines with little or no accountability for anything we say or do. While many on the left have convinced themselves that Bush is an evil guy, in my mind I think he has an almost impossible job of walking the thin line of protecting the American people and staying true to our values and he does it the best he can. This whole debate brings others into the boat with him and it is a debate he should have forced on Congress long ago.
I'm sorry Matt, I have to disagree with you, this is about torture. This is about cold rooms, days upon days of sleep deprivation, and water boarding. These are about techniques, in some cases, developed thousands of years ago, but perfected most recently in the former Soviet Union, North Korea and China. It's real easy for us to pass this stuff off, as almost every right leaning radio talk show host does with "we do worse things in college hazings", but in saying that we gloss over the real things, the truly evil things, that are being done in the name of the United States of America.
I might not have articulated it very well in my first post, I'll try again. How would you, as an American feel, if you found out that 5,000 innocent people had been tortured, not made to stand in a dark room for a few hours or to stand naked in a room, but actually put into places or positions that caused severe pain for days at a time, or were water boarded, or were sent to Syria for information gathering purposes? Like the Canadian citizen we're hearing about now. What if we then found out that a certain percentage, even 1% of these people died? Would that make us proud to say we're Americans?
Bruce Said:
"By the way, I do not believe in aggressive interrogation techniques in the pursuit of testimony for a legal proceeding on an act already committed and I don’t think the president does either."
I wish I could agree, I think the questions by reporters in the last few weeks are beginning to make it clear that the President does know what is going on, and likely approved it at some point. I do not envy the presidents position, I can't imagine the level of stress that he must deal with on a daily basis and the decisions he has to make. A difficult job is an understatement, that said he signed up for it and is ultimately responsible for what happens under his watch.
df
Sorry df, but I live in the real world.
5,000 innocent people tortured? You'd do better with your argument if you'd used five instead of 5,000, because all of the evidence we have is that we've been erring on the side of being too trusting. Since Gitmo's been open, we've freed a couple hundred terrorist suspects, believing them to be captured in error or that they were no longer a threat. More than a dozen of those have since been killed on the battlefield after once again taking up arms against us.
One percent -- 50 -- of those 5,000 innocents killed? There's no evidence that a single captured terrorist suspect has been killed. The reality is tough enough to deal with as it is without adding complexities that haven't happened.
But here's the big problem with your argument right now: It's not relevant to the current discussion. You can bemoan how we treated Khalid Sheik Mohammed -- the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks -- because we reportedly waterboarded him. Fine. That's not what this debate is about.
(For the record, I think I'm pretty OK with waterboarding suspected terrorists because it appears to be a mainly psychological tool. We don't actually drown the person, but it "feels like" you're drowning and no long-term -- or even short term -- physical harm results. This is certainly a point that people can disagree with in good faith and a vaild subject of debate.)
The debate before Congress right now is whether anything more than merely asking nicely for information will be allowed going forward. Under the McCain Club (and Democrats) proposal, good cop/bad cop is forbidden along with sleep deprivation, loud music and being interviewed by women.
I'll ask you again since I didn't get an answer this last time: Where do you draw the line? Let's say that the CIA captures Osama bin Laden tomorrow. What techniques can they use to interrogate him?
Frankly, that's what this is all coming down to. McCain & Co. don't want to draw the line and by so doing leave it up to ex post facto litigation. That litigation ultimately leaves it up to judges -- both foreign and domestic -- some of which have found the things I've listed to be violations of Common Article 3. So, without clear direction from the Congress, you've got CIA agents afraid to do just about anything for fear of being sued and financially ruined for trying to protect this country.
You write: "I do not envy the presidents position, I can’t imagine the level of stress that he must deal with on a daily basis and the decisions he has to make. A difficult job is an understatement, that said he signed up for it and is ultimately responsible for what happens under his watch."
Certainly true. And if you were in his shoes which side would you rather err on: Using good cop/bad cop, a female interrogator or even waterboarding Khalid Sheik Mohammed or another 3,000 dead Americans?
[...] The Heritage Foundation’s James Jay Carafano has a short primer on the current debate before Congress. For those who are interested, we also have a debate on a post down below on the same issue. [...]
I have to admit I'm a bit surprised by some of the things you posted above.
"There’s no evidence that a single captured terrorist suspect has been killed."
Please see the pictures here, not for the faint of heart, the top 20 or so pics include some of the dead terrorist suspects.
http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/iraqis_tortured/
Also see the congressional report on Iraqi torture here.
http://www.house.gov/judiciary_democrats/iraqrept2/section1.pdf
This article:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1520136,00.html
An excerpt from an interview Eric Haney, a retired command sergeant major of the U.S. Army, and founding member of Delta Force.
"Q: What do you make of the torture debate? Cheney ...
A: (Interrupting) That's Cheney's pursuit. The only reason anyone tortures is because they like to do it. It's about vengeance, it's about revenge, or it's about cover-up. You don't gain intelligence that way. Everyone in the world knows that. It's worse than small-minded, and look what it does.
I've argued this on Bill O'Reilly and other Fox News shows. I ask, who would you want to pay to be a torturer? Do you want someone that the American public pays to torture? He's an employee of yours. It's worse than ridiculous. It's criminal; it's utterly criminal. This administration has been masters of diverting attention away from real issues and debating the silly. Debating what constitutes torture: Mistreatment of helpless people in your power is torture, period. And (I'm saying this as) a man who has been involved in the most pointed of our activities. I know it, and all of my mates know it. You don't do it. It's an act of cowardice. I hear apologists for torture say, "Well, they do it to us." Which is a ludicrous argument. ... The Saddam Husseins of the world are not our teachers. Christ almighty, we wrote a Constitution saying what's legal and what we believed in. Now we're going to throw it away.
Q: As someone who repeatedly put your life on the line, did some of the most hair-raising things to protect your country, and to see your country behave this way, that must be ...
A: It's pretty galling. But ultimately I believe in the good and the decency of the American people, and they're starting to see what's happening and the lies that have been told. We're seeing this current house of cards start to flutter away. The American people come around. They always do."
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I used to have a job that afforded me much more time to read on the web than I have now, I haven't been able to find links for the info I'm about to say, it is all from memory. Take it as it is, or not...
I specifically remember reading articles that have stated at least 100 captives have died in US custody, one in particular in a detention center in Europe where the person was put into a position that caused him to suffocate and die within 20 minutes of being left alone. There were attempts to revive him, but they all failed.
Another article I Read spoke specifically about the US government admitting that 90% of the people detained were determined to be innocent and freed. That's where my 5,000 innocent people argument came from, the numbers might not be exact, I was only trying to make a point.
Matt wrote:
For the record, I think I’m pretty OK with waterboarding suspected terrorists because it appears to be a mainly psychological tool. We don’t actually drown the person, but it “feels like†you’re drowning and no long-term — or even short term — physical harm results. This is certainly a point that people can disagree with in good faith and a vaild subject of debate.
So, if we were in a conflict with Venezuala and it was reported that captured soldiers were being waterboarded, or placed in cold rooms, or dropped into holes in the ground for months at a time to gain information that would be OK with you?
Matt wrote:
Where do you draw the line? Let’s say that the CIA captures Osama bin Laden tomorrow. What techniques can they use to interrogate him?
To be intellectually honest the answer would be no techniques. That said the American side of me wants to say give me a hammer and let me do it.
Matt wrote:
And if you were in his shoes which side would you rather err on: Using good cop/bad cop, a female interrogator or even waterboarding Khalid Sheik Mohammed or another 3,000 dead Americans
That assumes that the information could not be gotten any other way. It might not have been, in our position we can't know that. Everything that I see that has been written by people who know about torture says that in the long run it doesn't work because people will say anything to stop the pain. That is theory behind the UK airline bombing threat, apparently the person that provided all of the information had been shipped to Saudi Arabia and tortured for information. Now we find out that the plan was no where near ready to go, only one person had a passport, and no chemicals had been purchased. On top of that the group was already under surveillance and would have been stopped had anything been started. Instead we have potentially lost leads, potentially broken avenues of information gathering that could lead to more plots being uncovered, and a huge mess in the skies.
and finally, Matt wrote...
5,000 innocent people tortured? You’d do better with your argument if you’d used five instead of 5,000...
Well, we now know of one, the Canadian who was shipped of to Syria, beaten and left in a 6 foot deep hole for ten months with his family having no idea what happened to him. You don't think there's been a few more in the last few years?
df
I put a response up last night, but I don't see it now. I checked it after I hit submit and it was there. Any idea Matt?
df