Contrary to your assertion, it is not against the Conventions to treat a prisoner better than the law requires: the Conventions are not tit-for-tat prescriptions of what we should do to an enemy based on his actions, but an attempt to limit the spiral of savagery that war otherwise becomes.

I will also remind you that the U.S. Army Field Manual forbids most if not all of the tactics I highlighted in my post regardless of a prisoner's status, putting the military on a much higher moral plane than Bush, Cheney, and their minions. That is why our Vice President is trying to defeat the McCain amendment--he doesn't even want that minimal level of behavior required of U.S. interrogators.

Your moral stance, like those of so many on the right today, appears to be that the undeniable barbarity of the enemy justifies our barbarity in return. If that is the case, I suggest that if there is a moral imbecile in this conversation, it is not I.

Posted by: Dave Trowbridge at November 25, 2005 06:03 PM

Dave,

Go re-read the Convention. You'll find that the terrorists are in violation of the rules defining who is and is not entitled to POW status. And, being in violation of those rules, the terrorists are subject to a bullet in the head immediately upon capture by American and allied forces. But, for some reason, our side doesn't do that.

Could you please tell us again, Dave, just who here is the "moral imbecile"? I'll give you a hint: it's not me, John, President Bush, Vice President Cheney, or their "minions".

Posted by: Hale Adams at November 25, 2005 06:21 PM

You can't talk to these people. They won't be satisfied until we've put all our "detainees" (nice moniker, makes them sound like political prisoners) up at the nearest Hilton, with chocolates left on their pillows every night, heated towels, and handed them the keys to their rooms.

Posted by: Andrea Harris at November 25, 2005 06:52 PM

Andrea,

Yes, I know that the skulls of too many people like Dave are made of neutronium. But we have to make the effort, because if we don't, we fall victim to the first rule of propaganda-- if one side makes an outrageous claim, and the other side doesn't rebut it (figuring that anybody with a first-grade education would see through the claim), then most people are going to believe the claim, however utterly preposterous the claim is.

Yeah, people are funny creatures.

Posted by: Hale Adams at November 25, 2005 08:49 PM

Dave, I never said that prisoners cannot be treated well, but that they cannot be granted POW status. That's a position that carries legal rights, but also also results from accepting certain responsibilities.

It has been the explicit policy and action of the administration from the beginning to treat captives humanely. The only area of contention for honest debaters is the subject of interrogation. (The abu Ghraib crimes had nothing to do with interrogation, and were in fact an eruption of civilian prison-guard culture brought in with reservists. They were being corrected by the Army when the were seized on and exploited by dishonest debaters as a weapon of domestic politics.)

Honest people can disagree on the question of how rigorous interrogation should be. (Real torture, by the way, is already illegal.) But that was NOT the subject of my post. My subject was the dishonest use of issues like war prisoners as weapons of anti-Americanism and left-leaning politics. Dishonest tactics such as seizing on some issue like the Geneva Convention with feigned humanitarian concern when it is useful, then ignoring it when it isn't useful.

We saw exactly the same thing in Vietnam, where the My Lai Massacre got worldwide attention, but no one criticized the Viet Cong for intentionally and repeatedly committing war crimes designed to elicit such a response. And this corrupting of law into a weapon of anti-Americanism is just part of the broader Leftish tactic of using almost any humanitarian issue as a weapon, starting with Communists pretending to care about "workers."

And part of the tactic (which you probably inhaled with the leftish air of our college days) is to pretend to be a neutral observer, a mere "concerned citizen" aroused to unexpected action by some abuse. The falsehood of this quickly becomes obvious because a real impartial observer would wish to also praise those things which are done correctly. (There are for instance many stories of Americans bending over backwards to treat prisoners well, some of which I've blogged) And he would also criticize abuses when they are committed by America's enemies. And, a real concerned citizen, once aroused from his indifference, tends to stay interested, and to follow the subject in the future. The fake concerned citizen usually reveals his duplicity by using the "concern" as a chess piece in some political game, and then losing interest as soon as it can no longer be spun for political advantage.

Posted by: John Weidner at November 26, 2005 08:57 AM

Also, I never said that enemy barbarity "justifies" anything.

My issue is that the kind of fake concern that only criticizes America, and winks at other barbarity, is in fact rewarding those enemies who commit atrocities. They know that things like slaughtering civilians will be spun by Western press and leftists as America's failure, and probably as a "response" to America's faults. They know they can commit horrible crimes and not lose their support in the West.

And you are a small part of the machine that rewards terrorists. They are encouraged to do things like blow up that wedding party because they know that many westerners will NOT do things like blog about it in anger and demand that we all support our government in the WoT. And WILL continue to put domestic politics over support for their country.

That's ENCOURAGEMENT of terrorism. Barbarity does not justify counter-barbarity. But dislike of the party in power does not justify ignoring barbarity, and allowing the perpetrators to pay no political price for it.

Posted by: John Weidner at November 26, 2005 09:21 AM

I also like the way opponents to the war treat the atrocities committed by terrorists as being directly caused by us, as if barring our presence in Iraq these terrorists, many of whom are not even Iraqi but are opportunistic invaders from surrounding countries, would have stayed peacefully at home. But they just can't seem to help themselves, the presence of the dastardly Americans (never mind all the other countries that are members of the coalition -- America is the be-all and end-all, no one else counts to the people thinking this way) just forced them to turn from peaceful, hobbitlike creatures to innocent-civilian-exploding, kidnap-victim-beheading, wedding-destroying militia. It's all America's fault, for existing or something. (Here is where I stop -- I can follow imbecility no farther.)

To the singers of the song "Down With the Bush Regime & His Minions" song, America is the center of the universe, the prime cause of everything, the alpha and the omega. Everyone else? Our helpless puppets. It's beyond fanaticism and bigotry into some new kind of alternate universe.

Posted by: Andrea Harris at November 26, 2005 06:38 PM

I understand your concern with balanced reporting and admit that I should have spoken more directly to it. There are certainly people making illegimate use of human rights concerns on both sides of the controversy. But to me it's so obvious that the terrorists are barbarians that it needs no attention on my part.

What does need attention is that my country is becoming increasingly barbaric, one small bit of evidence of this being the implication of your statement that "real torture is already illegal."

What do you call the practices of long-time standing, the cold cell, and waterboarding, if not torture? Have you spent any time at all trying to imagine what those practices feel like to a victim? Weasel-worded definitions of torture that leave them out are a mark of moral imbecility. No one, absolutely no one, should be treated that way by a legal authority. Anyone who says otherwise is, in my eyes, a monster. (This leaves out entirely the fact that in many cases we don't know that the victims are even guilty of anything other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.)

I'll go even farther. In my eyes, such treatment, by itself, declares the authority using it to be illegitimate in the eyes of God. It is the practice of Babylon, the seducer, and the mark of the Beast, an utter denial of the image of God in the other. The terrorists already bear that mark. Let us not join them in Hell.

Posted by: Dave Trowbridge at November 26, 2005 07:25 PM

My that sounds lofty. While we're up here on Mount Olympus with the other Pure Ones, the rest of the world can just stay in Hell. Concern for reputation trumps compassion in a liberal every time.

Posted by: Andrea Harris at November 26, 2005 08:06 PM

Dave writes:

"What do you call the practices of long-time standing, the cold cell, and waterboarding, if not torture? ..... No one, absolutely no one, should be treated that way by a legal authority. Anyone who says otherwise is, in my eyes, a monster."

Dave, I do not lack an imagination-- I wouldn't want to be subjected to such things, either. Having been made to stand at attention for several hours as punishment for some minor infraction of the rules when I was an ROTC cadet long ago gives me some idea what it would mean to be on my feet for 24 hours or more, and it wouldn't be pleasant. The cold cell and the waterboarding would only be worse.

You, Dave, do seem to lack a sense of proportion. If the people who employ forced standing, cold cells, and waterboarding (or other non-lethal, non-disfiguring techniques which have little or no long-term effects on a prisoner's health) are monsters, then what term do you employ for outfits like the Gestapo, Stalin's OGPU/NKVD/MGB/KGB, Saddam's Mukharabat, and so on? There are only so many pejoratives in the English language. If Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Saddam, et al, are merely monsters also, you either blow the actions of our interrogators out of all proportion, or you trivialize the 100-million-plus murders carried out by dictators of the Right and the Left over the last 100 years. Either way, Dave, you only make yourself look like an idiot.

Our foes are murderous cowards who understand only one thing: force. Needless to say, they don't play by the rules. If we have to get a little rough (in a non-lethal fashion) with prisoners to get information, so be it. And it is PRECISELY because we try to play by the rules, Dave, that we don't stoop to the level of the Gestapo or the NKVD to get our information. We, unlike our foes, play by the rules because it's hard to give someone's fingernails, tongue, or life back. We play by the rules precisely because we know that occasionally an innocent bystander will wind up in our hands and will of course have no information to give.

Am I a monster, Dave, because I'm willing to play a bit rough with those who intend us harm? Or am I merely an adult who (unlike some on the Left) understands that in some situations, there is no good alternative-- only bad ones, and doing the good thing means having to choose the least bad alternative.

Posted by: Hale Adams at November 26, 2005 08:41 PM

I'm not buying that "too obvious to mention" line. I've been hearing the same stuff from left-lurchers for way too long about way too many things that are "too obvious" to mention...

"Of Course I hope we win the war. Of Course I'm patriotic. Of Course I'm glad to see the start of democracy in countries X,Y, and Z. Of Course I support the troops. Of Course Osama's a very bad person. But these things are so disgustingly obvious they don't need any attention on my part." You guys quack far too much to start claiming you aren't ducks.

And, apart from your silence, your prissy language when I push you towards the "too obvious" subjects gives you away. "Barbarians." "Balanced reporting." How dainty. No, they are not barbarians, they are 21st Century monsters who deliberately slaughter happy children, who send a married couple to immolate a wedding party. And I don't want "balanced reporting." I've been waiting years for you to show any sign that the victims of terror, and all the simple ordinary people who groan under tyranny and poverty or feel new hope in liberated countries like Iraq are in the slightest way real to you. I don't think they are. I've never seen you post or in the least way react to stories like this. Or this, or this to just grab a few from the overflowing bag...Too "obvious" no doubt.

In fact there's only one kind of thing that seems to be real to you. And that's anything that leads to Get Bush Get Cheney Get Rumsfeld. If there's a chance of that then suddenly you come awake, suddenly you are oozing compassion and feeling people's pain and making lofty moral pronouncements. But it's easy to be Mr Lofty Morals when the people who actually have to suffer from your policies are out of sight and utterly out-of-mind. Not REAL.

When you pontificate on the sufferings of terror-suspects, I always think about this picture. She's the sort who get to do the dying that's the cost of your Pharisaical morality. You can have it. Me, I'll go with the immoral folk who have warm hearts and long to fight evil and free the oppressed.

Posted by: John Weidner at November 26, 2005 10:41 PM

While I'm at it, John, don't you think the oh-so-Olympian war-protesters should remind one of the Alan Parsons Project tune, "Standing on Higher Ground"?

****************

I know the truth
But I can't say
And I have to turn my head
And look the other way

I'm not afraid
And I won't lie
As long as I see no wrong
I won't need to testify

I see the world
And I'm looking from a high place
Way above it all
Standing on higher ground

I breathe the air
While they're running in a rat race
Way above it all
Standing on higher ground

I feel the blow
But I don't speak
And I have to close my eyes
Pretending I'm asleep

Well I see the tears
But I don't cry
As long as I do no wrong
I don't need an alibi

I see the world
And I'm looking from a high place
Way above it all
Standing on higher ground

I breathe the air
While they're running in a rat race
Way above it all
Standing on higher ground

*****************
Too many of the anti-war types are timid, blind, and too afraid to take a stand (or, worse, cowards) for fear that they'll actually offend somebody, or do something politically incorrect. And so they pretend to be standing on Mount Olympus.

Bah.

Posted by: Hale Adams at November 27, 2005 09:38 AM

That certainly fits.

My guess is that it has nothing to do with being afraid, and everything to do with being politicized. The "anti-war" movement is just one of the disguises of Leftism.

And the strange irony is that leftism is now all disguise and no reality. As Wretchard has pointed out, the International Left used to have a core of dedicated revolutionaries and a penumbra of "useful idiots," all those professors and journalists and liberal clergy and hippie vegetarian peaceniks. Now the core is gone, and the idiots ARE leftism.

And there is no longer any dream or plan (however deluded) of building a better world through socialism. All that's left is fear of change, and a reflexive dislike of America, Israel, and all those traditional values and institutions on which freedom and free enterprise rest.

Posted by: John Weidner at November 27, 2005 10:16 AM

"If the people who employ forced standing, cold cells, and waterboarding (or other non-lethal, non-disfiguring techniques which have little or no long-term effects on a prisoner's health) are monsters, then what term do you employ for outfits like the Gestapo, Stalin's OGPU/NKVD/MGB/KGB, Saddam's Mukharabat, and so on?"

Bigger monsters. People who went further along the path we're following. Don't you realize that pointing to even more barbarous practices is in no way a defense?

"Our foes are murderous cowards who understand only one thing: force."

Gotta love that demonization. Of course, the enemy is not really human, so we can do evil things because that's all they understand. Sorry, John, but that's simply surrendering to the old, old myth of redemptive violence that's the true organizing archetype of all governments. We call ourselves a Christian nation, but we really worship Marduk, who created the world by murdering his mother Tiamat, the dragon of chaos. Again and again we justify barbarism by casting our foes into the role of the dragon, the chaos that threatens dissolution of the good and whose role in the myth is to be torn bloodily asunder.

They are very wrong, they are doing great evil, but they are human, possessing the same Inner Light that "enlighten every man," as lttle as they may heed it. We forget that at our peril--and I emphasize "our." What good does it do to win a war and lose our soul in the process?

"Am I a monster, Dave, because I'm willing to play a bit rough with those who intend us harm?"

You have set yourself on the path to that status. You are taking the easy path, ignoring the second of the Great Commandments: love your neighbor as yourself.

And do not fool yourself that you can define "playing a bit rough" to your own satisfaction. Others will inevitably define it for you--the dehumanizing nature of torture inevitably attracts those who will take it further than you ever intended--and it will do you no good to say "but I never meant..." Remember what Thomas More said in A Man for All Seasons? "And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you--where would you hide?"

"Or am I merely an adult who (unlike some on the Left) understands that in some situations, there is no good alternative-- only bad ones, and doing the good thing means having to choose the least bad alternative."

No, you are not, either morally or spiritually, thinking as an adult. Adults understand, like Aristotle and Aquinas, that it is impossible to achieve an intrinsically good end through evil means. Or, as Jesus said, you don't get figs from brambles. At best you merely delay the reckoning: you sow the wind, and your children reap the whirlwind. We are in the midst of that process even now, storing up the wrath to come by our devotion to a futile cycle of violence.

You are right, however, that we have little left but less bad alternatives: the feckless actions of the present administration, building on equally poor choices by former adminstrations, have made that inevitable. Torture, however, is not one of them. It is not less evil, it is wholly evil and cannot be justified.

Posted by: Dave Trowbridge at November 27, 2005 06:08 PM

"We call ourselves a Christian nation"

No we don't.

"...we really worship Marduk, who created the world by murdering his mother Tiamat, the dragon of chaos."

Hmm. I haven't seen any ziggurats around here. Maybe they have them in your neck of the woods.

By the way, I rather doubt that 99% of the population of the United States even knows what the hell you are talking about. "WTF is 'Marduk'? Isn't that that cartoon Great Dane?" This is not to say that Americans are stupid, but ancient Sumerian culture isn't a popular or widely known subject.

In any case, none of the interrogation techniques you and your compatriots are so exercised over are "torture" under the normal definition of that word. If they were, then I have been tortured time and again, because I've often had to stand for long periods of time (gym class at school, staking out space in front of the stage at rock concerts, standing in line at the DMV, etc.), forced to stay in cold rooms (called "offices" here), and had the unwelcome touch of unwanted water on my skin (it's called "living in Florida"), and though I was not a rambunctious child I've had my share of smacks on my person. The only difference is that most of these situations were voluntary, and I didn't engage in blowing up children as a pastime. But by all means, let us show how magnanimous and above-the-fray we are by not so much as mussing the hair on a terrorist's head; I'm sure the victims of future terrorist attacks we chose not to prevent because we were too busy coddling our own fine idea of our superior, civilized selves will thank us.

Posted by: Andrea Harris at November 27, 2005 08:37 PM

Gee, I guess Dave doesn't actually comprehend what I write-- he can't even be bothered to get my name right......

Dave, my name is Hale, not John.

Dave, perhaps the reason those murderous cowards understand only force is because they ARE demons. Part of being human is being able to choose evil, and in so doing become a demon if one chooses evil over and over again.

Dave, I made reference to Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Saddam, et al, not to defend the conduct of American forces, but to point out that YOU have a poor grasp of language-- carelessness leads to lack of clarity, if for no other reason that one soon runs out of superlatives.

Dave, yes, the Commandment is "love thy neighbor". The terrorists aren't my neighbors or yours, but even if we grant them that privilege, I think you misunderstand the nature of love. Love is not affection. It is not respect. It is placing someone else's interests ahead of one's own. Certainly a terrorist wishes to live, but if all he lives for is the pain, misery, and death of others, one must set aside his interests and put the interests of others (who don't want pain, misery, and death) ahead of the terrorist's interests. And sometimes that means torturing or killing terrorists. Yes, that's sad. Yes that's evil. And I don't like it either. So be it. And if you don't like my attitude, go read some C.S. Lewis, especially "Mere Christianity".

Dave, as for the Devil turning on me in the end-- I don't imagine that I will have nothing to answer for come Judgement Day, and neither should you imagine that you will have nothing to answer for. The only question will be WHAT we will have to answer for, and if we can summon up enough humility (if that's the way to put it) to accept God's forgiveness for what we have done.

Dave, spare us this "cycle of violence" and "sow the wind, reap the whirlwind" garbage. If there were any truth to that, we would have heard something by now from the Germans and the Japanese about that little scuffle a few decades back where we slaughtered their armies, bombed their cities into rubble (killing millions of civilians in the process) and occupying their countries for years, even decades afterward. It's funny though-- we haven't heard much out of them since 1945.

Dave, were our parents and grandparents mere children in those days, to undertake a global war to rid the world of Naziism and Japanese miltarism, and (being children) so did not understand that there was no possibility that good could emerge from the violence they unleashed? Or were they adults, who knew that sometimes violence has to be answered with violence? And, being adults living in the real world, and not some over-quoted churchman living in some ivory tower, maybe they understood that massive violence and the destruction of the enemy was the only way to achieve peace.

Dave, I have just re-read your post, and I am struck by how well-schooled you are, to include references to Aquinas, More, Marduk, and so on. And, believe it or not, I actually understand most of them. But I think that schooling is all you know of the world. I think you have so much schooling that you've lost sight of the real world, which is a lot messier than ivory-tower theorizing would lead one to believe.

Dave, until you understand that life is not black-and-white but shades of gray, I don't think you have any business lecturing me or anyone else on what it means to be an adult.

Hale Adams,
ex-First Lieutenant, Air Defense Artillery
United State Army Reserve, 1985-1988

P.S. Dave, if you don't speak Russian, thank me and my predecessors who fought the Cold War on behalf of all those too prissy to actually defend themselves against those who would kill or enslave them. But I suppose the prissy folks on the Left won't be grateful-- after all, I'm nothing but a jackbooted thug.

Posted by: Hale Adams at November 28, 2005 02:33 PM

What does need attention is that my country is becoming increasingly barbaric

I am always stunned to read something like that from a person who appears to be well educated. What have we done in Iraq that can compare to the barbarity of Dresden? The firebombing of Tokyo? The nuclear attacks on Nagasaki and Hiroshima? The naval blockade of Japan? The battle of Aachen? The policy of inflicting mass civilian casualities via bombing to damage a country's economy? Can you tell me, Dave?

What I see is a military that has taken historically unprecedented efforts to avoid collateral damage and civilian deaths. If this were the WWII generation, we would have carpet bombed the Iraqi cities in to real rubble while cutting off food supplies to starve the entire population. Is this the restraint Dave views as a mark of increasing barbarity?

Posted by: Annoying Old Guy at November 30, 2005 10:36 AM