The Jack Bower theory
Its been a while since I have posted. Not much has changed in my personal live, I'm still dealing with all of the same shit, but c'est la vie. Earlier this month, I went to New Orleans to volunteer fixing houses in the lower ninth ward. I will blog on this when I get a chance, but Will was there with me, and he has posted some pictures and thoughts on his blog Two other blogs, belonging to the group I volunteered with (lowernine.org) and another group we worked with can be found at http://www.onsiterelief.com/blog/ and http://lowernine.blogspot.com/ . Like I said, I will post something about my thoughts on the trip soon, but there was something else on my mind I wanted to mention.
I was listening to the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing with Attorney General Mukasey today, and they were asking him about the legality of waterboarding as an interrogation technique. While he said that it was currently prohibited, he seemed careful to avoid ruling it out as ever being allowed, speculate on it's applicability in hypothetical scenarios, or offer any indication as to whether it has ever been used, legally or not, by the US government.
My opinion on the matter is this. Waterboarding, as well as any other technique that is widely considered to be torture, or which we would be horrified to see committed on the members of our military, or an American citizen being held in a foreign country, should be expressly prohibited. There should be no loopholes, or ambiguity on the issue. we need to be willing to set an example to the rest of the world as to how civilized people should treat each other, and how we expect them to treat us, even if we know that some people will not follow the rules, and we will likely continue to see videos of prisoners being beheaded. We need to take the high road, and recognize that one of the many variables in the complex function that breeds terrorists, is the way we are portrayed as treating people of other cultures.
I offer one caveat to what I just said. Passing a law against torture is a bit like passing a law against murder. We all know that murder is wrong and is a crime, and no one goes around killing people without the expectation that if caught they will be punished. However, if an armed intruder were in your house, and you had a gun, you would likely shoot him. If you were on a highjacked plane and had the chance to kill the highjacker, you probably would. Most people, if given the choice between the life of one innocent person, and 1000 other lives would choose to kill the one person, to save the 1000, or choose to kill one innocent person to save another person close to them. In all of these situations, whether you would act the same way or not, you can probably agree that the legality of your actions would not be the determining factor of how you act. The important considerations would be the morality of the actions given the dire situation, and the consequences of the various courses of action in the short run. I am a very non-violent, pacifistic person, but even I would have few qualms with killing a highjacker for instance, if it would save a planefull of people, and I certainly would not be thinking about the possibility of spending my life in jail when making that decision.
The point I am trying to get to is that while torturing should be illegal, like any other illegal activity, there are those times where the fact that it is illegal is overridden by the exigent circumstances. If there was a terrorist in custody, who you had very good reason to believe knew the location of a nuclear device that was about to go off in a highly populated loaction (lets call it the '24 scenario'), would you care if torture was illegal? or would you just torture the guy anyway? I think even I would break the law and waterboard his ass, as much as I am generally very much against torture. A law against torture would prevent it in all but the most dire of situations, situations where you simply dont care if you spend the rest of you life in jail for being wrong. after the fact, the courts would have to sort out whether you acted appropriately. If you truly did save thousands of lives, then I would imagine you would not be severely punished. even if you were wrong, and the person did not give any information, I would imagine that your good intentions would be taken into consideration. But if you routinely torture people, in which case you are probably getting false information anyway just to get you to stop, then there should be no special consideration, and you should be punished. Every law has its exceptions, but that does not keep us from having laws.
I really enjoy the show 24, even though I am very against the things that the government does in pursuit of the war on terror (gitmo, extraordinary rendition, etc.), but I think that this is one of the things that appeals to me on that show. Jack Bower breaks all sorts of laws, and does all sorts of inconscionable things, but he does them because he feels he has no choice, he does them knowing full well that there will be consequences, and ready to face them. But he does not mistreat people without it being absolutely necessary. Perhaps I am over simplifying the matter, but the way it is being addressed by our government is over complicated, and leaves too much ambiguity, which I truly believe is harmful to us in the long run.
I was listening to the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing with Attorney General Mukasey today, and they were asking him about the legality of waterboarding as an interrogation technique. While he said that it was currently prohibited, he seemed careful to avoid ruling it out as ever being allowed, speculate on it's applicability in hypothetical scenarios, or offer any indication as to whether it has ever been used, legally or not, by the US government.
My opinion on the matter is this. Waterboarding, as well as any other technique that is widely considered to be torture, or which we would be horrified to see committed on the members of our military, or an American citizen being held in a foreign country, should be expressly prohibited. There should be no loopholes, or ambiguity on the issue. we need to be willing to set an example to the rest of the world as to how civilized people should treat each other, and how we expect them to treat us, even if we know that some people will not follow the rules, and we will likely continue to see videos of prisoners being beheaded. We need to take the high road, and recognize that one of the many variables in the complex function that breeds terrorists, is the way we are portrayed as treating people of other cultures.
I offer one caveat to what I just said. Passing a law against torture is a bit like passing a law against murder. We all know that murder is wrong and is a crime, and no one goes around killing people without the expectation that if caught they will be punished. However, if an armed intruder were in your house, and you had a gun, you would likely shoot him. If you were on a highjacked plane and had the chance to kill the highjacker, you probably would. Most people, if given the choice between the life of one innocent person, and 1000 other lives would choose to kill the one person, to save the 1000, or choose to kill one innocent person to save another person close to them. In all of these situations, whether you would act the same way or not, you can probably agree that the legality of your actions would not be the determining factor of how you act. The important considerations would be the morality of the actions given the dire situation, and the consequences of the various courses of action in the short run. I am a very non-violent, pacifistic person, but even I would have few qualms with killing a highjacker for instance, if it would save a planefull of people, and I certainly would not be thinking about the possibility of spending my life in jail when making that decision.
The point I am trying to get to is that while torturing should be illegal, like any other illegal activity, there are those times where the fact that it is illegal is overridden by the exigent circumstances. If there was a terrorist in custody, who you had very good reason to believe knew the location of a nuclear device that was about to go off in a highly populated loaction (lets call it the '24 scenario'), would you care if torture was illegal? or would you just torture the guy anyway? I think even I would break the law and waterboard his ass, as much as I am generally very much against torture. A law against torture would prevent it in all but the most dire of situations, situations where you simply dont care if you spend the rest of you life in jail for being wrong. after the fact, the courts would have to sort out whether you acted appropriately. If you truly did save thousands of lives, then I would imagine you would not be severely punished. even if you were wrong, and the person did not give any information, I would imagine that your good intentions would be taken into consideration. But if you routinely torture people, in which case you are probably getting false information anyway just to get you to stop, then there should be no special consideration, and you should be punished. Every law has its exceptions, but that does not keep us from having laws.
I really enjoy the show 24, even though I am very against the things that the government does in pursuit of the war on terror (gitmo, extraordinary rendition, etc.), but I think that this is one of the things that appeals to me on that show. Jack Bower breaks all sorts of laws, and does all sorts of inconscionable things, but he does them because he feels he has no choice, he does them knowing full well that there will be consequences, and ready to face them. But he does not mistreat people without it being absolutely necessary. Perhaps I am over simplifying the matter, but the way it is being addressed by our government is over complicated, and leaves too much ambiguity, which I truly believe is harmful to us in the long run.
posted by Unknown | Wednesday, January 30, 2008
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