Responding to Raven

A right-wing blogger who goes by ‘Raven’ has noted my recent challenges to a number of her fellow wingers, and has decided to challenge me in turn. Of course, she doesn’t seem willing to challenge me on statements I have actually made. She prefers to pull her challenges out of thin air.

So be it. Let’s take Raven’s questions in turn:

“1) The Clinton Administration’s policies with North Korea have resulted in Monday’s attempted atomic blast by the Norks. Meathead, we would like to hear your defense of Clinton and company on this.”

This is, of course, an example of ‘begging the question’, a popular logical fallacy amongst Raven and her peers. (Raven’s gambit can also be described as the “but… but… but… but… Clinton!” tactic. It’s always amusing to see this dragged out, as it is a clear indication that the underlying viewpoint is not reality-based.) Note also that as of this writing, there is still considerable doubt concerning whether the explosion detected last week in North Korea was, in fact, the result of the detonation of a nuclear device, or if it was, whether that detonation was successful. Raven is, in fact, begging two questions here.

The view that Clinton’s policies are the sole cause of the alleged North Korean nuclear test is not borne out by the facts. Fred Kaplan’s article ‘Rolling Blunder’ clearly delineates the actions that the Clinton administration took, including a credible threat of military action against North Korea in the spring on 1994, and later that year, the signing of the Agreed Framework (PDF) with North Korea. That agreement resulted in North Korea’s fuel rods being locked away under UN supervision. North Korea broke the seals and began processing the fuel rods in 2003 — well into George W. Bush’s first term, and after Bush had waived the requirement under the Framework that North Korea allow inspectors to verify that the weapons-grade plutonium remain under lock and key, and after Bush announced that the US was formally withdrawing from the Agreed Framework.

Former U.N. weapons inspector David Albright has used U.S. intelligence estimates to document North Korea’s estimated plutonium production (PDF) since 1989. The numbers indicate that North Korea produced no weapons-grade plutonium during the period 1993-2000, but has produced between 20 and 43 tons of the material since 2001 — enough to build between 4 and 10 nuclear devices.

North Korea has been a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma for over fifty years. I doubt that any US administration since North Korea came into being has had a solid understanding of the regime and its motivations, and it’s a certainty that there have been plenty of missteps made in our relations with that country by both Democratic and Republican administrations. To believe the assertion that all the blame for the alleged North Korean nuclear test must be placed on Clinton, one must also believe that George W. Bush, who has been in complete and total control of US foreign policy for the past six years, has been utterly ineffective in all dealings with North Korea. That’s a corollary that I somehow think Raven has not thought out.

“2) It’s been disclosed that Hezbullah has many cells here in America. Meathead, we would like to know if you consider this a threat to our country?”

What a remarkably stupid question. If there are foreign agents in the US, and they are attempting to carry out actions inimical to US interests, then of course they are a threat.

“3) Scenerio: Your child has been kidnapped by radical Muslims. They are demanding the US remove all troops from Iraq or they will behead your child. The US has, in custody, other radicals who KNOW where your child is being kept. The only way to extract this info might involve some “torture” — some slapping, punching, sleep deprivation and loud music.

a– would you insist EVERYTHING humanly possible be done to locate and save your child?

b– or would you ask the UN to intervene?

Who lives? Your child or the terrorist?”

Well, first of all, the question posed here is not consistent with the scenario. Raven specifies that the interrogation techniques used will be “slapping, punching, sleep deprivation and loud music”. I seriously doubt that any of those will result in the death of a suspected terrorist. Raven seems to utterly wimp out in this scenario.

Secondly, Raven’s ‘ticking time bomb’ scenario is a complete crock. It is virtually impossible to know with certainty that a suspect knows a certain piece of information unless he has already told you that information. And the ‘ticking time bomb’ (TTB) hypothetical is deliberately and cynically designed to do one thing: remove moral clarity from a discussion. Stephen Griffin has put it succinctly, in his article ‘Torture and the Ticking Time Bomb’:

So let us imagine ourselves in the interrogation room with the suspect. Evidence collected from his apartment certainly seems to indicate that he has knowledge of a looming terrorist attack, but he is begging for mercy. Too bad, isn’t it? All we have done is deprive him of sleep and clothing. And it is a bit cold. Unfortunately, he may be scared and cold, but he hasn’t given us one scrap of useful information. And we’re under some time pressure. Your superior has an idea. For better cover, the suspect was living with his family, a wife and young daughter. We’re detaining them in another room. The evidence seems to show the suspect cares for them. Perhaps if we brought them into the room? Your superior warns you to steel yourself for what comes next. Perhaps the suspect will respond to mere threats that they might be put to death in front of him. If threats are not enough, however, we must be prepared to do the worst. Of course, in some cultures there are acts regarded as worse than death. Your superior looks at you. Do you understand what he is talking about? Of course you do. You are experienced in the ways of the TTB, of doing what is necessary to elicit information under the terrible pressure of a deadline.

I really hope I don’t have to elaborate further this fantastic scenario of moral corruption. Our popular culture is full of faux scenarios of torture and cruelty. Just check out your local video rental store. What’s amazing about the TTB is that it is taken to be “real,” a serious matter for public debate. But it’s no more real than my scenario, a Tom Clancy novel of military adventure or a superhero comic.

The TTB counts on eliciting a certain sort of response. Of course, “the president would have to authorize torture” to prevent millions from dying. But surely it puts a slightly different spin on the situation to imagine that you are the one responsible for making sure the interrogation is effective. And you will have to live with the consequences if you turn out to be wrong. What wouldn’t you do to prevent millions from dying? Well, I wouldn’t engage in torture, child abuse, murder, rape and a whole long list of morally corrupt acts. And I’m willing to bet you wouldn’t either. Scenarios like the TTB are well designed to cloud our reason and judgment. For that reason, we should avoid them and concentrate on the ways in which we can realistically prevent terrorist attacks.

Moral corruption: That’s what the wingers are arguing for, when they insist that we are justified in using torture. No act is too extreme, in their view, if one allows oneself to imagine that any act we commit is justified by the need for self-protection. This is a deliberate willingness to abandon morality for an expediency borne of nothing more than abject fear. Those who advocate torture have chosen to allow their fear to rule them, and are willing to violate the principles of Western democracy, simply to chase the illusory promise of absolute safety.

Raven asks if I would “insist EVERYTHING humanly possible be done to locate and save [my] child”. Of course I would. But the act of torture reduces the victim to subhuman status. It must, if the torturer is to treat the victim as no more than an animal, or a thing. And in so doing, the torturer reduces himself to a thing less than human, as well.

Andrew Sullivan has correctly observed that Western ideals of democracy and freedom are inherently and historically inimical to the state-sanctioned use of torture:

The entire structure of Western freedom grew in part out of the searing experience of state-sanctioned torture. The use of torture in Europe’s religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is still etched in our communal consciousness, as it should be. Then, governments deployed torture not only to uncover perceived threats to their faith-based autocracies, but also to “save” the victim’s soul. Torturers understood that religious conversion was a difficult thing, because it necessitated a shift in the deepest recesses of the human soul. The only way to reach those depths was to deploy physical terror in the hopes of completely destroying the heretic’s autonomy. They would, in other words, destroy a human being’s soul in order to save it. That is what burning at the stake was — an indescribably agonizing act of torture that could be ended at a moment’s notice if the victim recanted. In a state where theological doctrine always trumped individual liberty, this was a natural tactic.

Indeed, the very concept of Western liberty sprung in part from an understanding that, if the state has the power to reach that deep into a person’s soul and can do that much damage to a human being’s person, then the state has extinguished all oxygen necessary for freedom to survive. That is why, in George Orwell’s totalitarian nightmare, the final ordeal is, of course, torture. Any polity that endorses torture has incorporated into its own DNA a totalitarian mutation. If the point of the U.S. Constitution is the preservation of liberty, the formal incorporation into U.S. law of the state’s right to torture — by legally codifying physical coercion, abuse, and even, in Krauthammer’s case, full-fledged torture of detainees by the CIA — would effectively end the American experiment of a political society based on inalienable human freedom protected not by the good graces of the executive, but by the rule of law.

…

Will a ban on all “cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment” render interrogations useless? By no means. There are many techniques for gaining intelligence from detainees other than using their bodies against their souls. You can start with the 17 that appear in the Army Field Manual, tested by decades of armed conflict only to be discarded by this administration with barely the blink of an eye. Isolation, psychological disorientation, intense questioning, and any number of other creative techniques are possible. Some of the most productive may well be those in which interrogators are so versed in Islamic theology and Islamist subcultures that they win the confidence of prisoners and pry information out of them—something the United States, with its dearth of Arabic speakers, is unfortunately ill-equipped to do.

Those who favor the use of torture as a tool against terrorism have convinced themselves that “the end justifies the means”. Those who argue that we must use torture if we are to protect the lives of innocent Americans are morally no different from extremists who argue that they must use suicide bombings to accomplish their goals. Both arguments reduce a human being to a mere tool, to be used in whatever way is most expedient. In short, those who argue for torture are in fact arguing that we cannot afford to hold ourselves to moral standards higher than those of the terrorists. Their arguments arise from the belief that we can be a moral nation, or we can be a secure nation, but not both.

I reject that view. Perhaps Raven and her ilk are willing to give up the right to view themselves as moral beings. I am not.

UPDATE 10/16/06 8:06 PM EDT: Raven has posted the following comment here:

You’re still a wuss…come over to where the debate was started and we’ll go from there. I’m not responding to this here.

Raven predictably refuses to debate, and predictably resorts to an ad hominem attack rather than a reasoned reply.

Utterly predictable, and utterly unsurprising. Raven barks, but has no bite — nor the least trace of intellectual courage.