On Thursday (13-August-2015), GOP presidential contender Jeb Bush publicly refused to rule out torture, according to reports like this:
Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush on Thursday declined to rule out resuming the use of torture under some circumstances by the U.S. government.
“I don’t want to make a definitive, blanket kind of statement,” Bush told an audience of Iowa Republicans, when asked whether he would keep in place or repeal President Barack Obama’s executive order banning so-called enhanced interrogation techniques by the CIA.
Had our government aggressively investigated, prosecuted, and punished the apparent war criminals of the prior administration (notably led by Jeb Bush’s brother), government-sponsored torture would not still be “on the table”. We already have, for example, a Senate Report that concluded that the practices of the prior administration were more brutal than disclosed, that the CIA lied, and that the abuses were ineffective (from the above link):
A Senate report released last year cited CIA records in concluding that the techniques were more brutal than previously disclosed, that the CIA lied about them, and that they failed to produce unique, life-saving intelligence. The CIA and its defenders take issue with the report.
The decision of a Democratic-controlled House, Senate, and President to not pursue the apparent crimes against humanity perpetrated by the prior administration is a shameful embarrassment that may well haunt us for decades to come. We Democrats have blood on our hands. We could have acted, and we instead chose the politically expedient route (a choice that was itself utterly ineffective — we got NOTHING for it). On this question, we were a Profile in Cowardice.
I do not want to live in an America that views torture as acceptable US policy.
I am sympathetic to the argument that you have to choose where you spend you’re limited political capital. You are correct that the consequences of allowing torture in the future can put our global standing in peril and is unequivocally wrong..
Impeaching Bush would have taken at least a third of Obama’s political capital during his first term. I don’t think you could have done both Health Insurance reform and an impeachment in the same term and succeeded politically and get reelected. What do you think?
Other steps could have been taken, like holding those in the CIA accountable, which has not been done, and should be. Obama should have sued congress over blocking gitmo detainees, over the premise that the law forced the government to hold people indefinitely which is unconstitutional.
That fact is the public isn’t as forward thinking as we are. 69% opposed impeachment of bush, Impeachment would rally Republicans and Independents against the democrats. Maybe Obama could try and spin it our way, but Fox News and the
GOP would spin it back twice as hard. Obama hasn’t been good at PR during his term,.
If we went through with impeachment and healthcare reform, it’s very likely we could have a president Romney right now. So if you had to choose between the gains of impeaching, and a losses to our country associated with a president Romney, what would you choose?
I’m not sure how Barack Obama, as President, could have pursued impeachment. He could have, however pursued criminal investigations and followed them by prosecutions if sufficient evidence existed (and it surely does).
In my view, the collective decision by Democrats to NOT pursue these war-crime investigations is a significant reason why so many Americans feel they should still be “on the table”.
A criminal trial would have demonstrated and published the evidence that the abuses were unnecessary, that they violated the legal standards we defined at Nuremburg, that they were intentional, and that the perpetrators lied to congress and the public about them.
Mr. Obama was re-elected in 2012 despite the relentless efforts of the GOP to smear him. I do not believe that significant numbers of those who voted for Mr. Obama in 2012 would have voted the other way had the war-crime prosecutions been pursued. In fact, I suggest that many voters who were disillusioned by Mr. Obama’s apparent betrayal during his first term might have turned out and voted FOR him had he kept this often-repeated promise of his 2008 campaign.
I therefore reject your assertion that pursuing war-crime prosecutions would have resulted in the election of Mitt Romney.
I understand why impeachment wasn’t pursued, that’s not what I’m talking about. I made explicit reference to “the decision of a Democratic-controlled House, Senate, and President”. I surely wasn’t referring to an impeachment of Barack Obama.
Barack Obama was inaugurated on January 20, 2009. On January 10, 2009, a united government, controlled by the Democratic Party and led by a President who campaigned in part against the apparent war crimes of the previous administration, could have initiated investigation and prosecution of Richard Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, George W. Bush, and other members of the prior administration.
I’m pretty sure that one doesn’t impeach a President who is no longer in office. Impeachment is a political process; I envision a criminal process. Impeachment is driven by the House of Representatives; I envision an investigation led by the Department of Justice.
I therefore disagree that prosecuting the apparent war crimes of these individuals would have taken significant political capital. It might, actually, have created some.
of prosecuting the previous administration of war crimes, you are out of your mind. Never. Going. To. Happen.
And do we apply the same standard to other governments?
When we have clear documented evidence that a foreign government is torturing its perceived enemies, would you have us maintain a similar refusal to “make the precedent”?
Perhaps you can clarify who is an who is not allowed to perpetrate war crimes in your world-view.
China tortures. North Korea has institutional torture. The prison system in the US and various other countries is torture. I think torture is an unfortunate reality. I don’t LIKE it, but I accept that the cost of eliminating it isn’t worth the price. I certainly don’t like the idea of sending our troops overseas to die to prevent waterboarding any more than I think they should die for access to oil. It’s all the cost-benefit of the entire situation.
“allowed” is the tough word here. Who enforces what is not “allowed” with the political or wartime prisoners of foreign countries? Despite our superpower status, the position as world police is untenable. If you expect sanctions, an economic reason to not torture – well, good luck getting international agreement on that.
I can’t imagine a president like Obama prosecuting GWB for war crimes as he’s sitting there pressing the button on drone strikes that are turning children into piles of pink goo and being called “collateral damage”.
I share your feeling about the US being the world police.
I have a more pragmatic answer to your objection. It is the same answer we routinely apply to other crimes — we can’t stop thievery, but if we catch a perpetrator stealing from a victim, we prosecute the perpetrator (unless the perp is well-connected, of course). The cops can’t stop speeding, but if you blow by a trooper at 90 in a 35 mph zone, you ought to get a ticket.
I not only can imagine, I expect a president — any president — to investigate, prosecute, and punish any government official who commits crimes against humanity. In my view, a society that firmly adheres to that standard is much less likely to accept the drone strikes that we each abhor.
…is how precedent could turn to payback. I agree with you that this might have been worth pursuing, but the way politics works is that if Obama prosecutes the Bush administration, the next GOP President will turn around and prosecute the Obama administration even if objectively their actions were not at all comparable.
I actually have no problem with this.
If there is evidence that war crimes were committed that were ordered from the Oval Office, I want that evidence to be pursued.
I am confident that NOTHING transpired in the Oval Office during the Obama administration that is remotely comparable to the document orders that were issued by the Bush administration.
I’m just worried that Republicans will turn around and prosecute anyway just to get back at the Democrats.
…Republicans don’t need no stinkin’ evidence (see Benghazi).
I have the absurdly optimistic hope that as the GOP continues to pursue such nonsense, it will backfire on them.
I have to say, regarding Benghazi, that Ms. Clinton thoroughly embarrassed herself and us with her email server shenanigans. Had she simply followed established policy, this story would have died a long time ago.
I am absolutely NOT willing to tolerate officially-sanctioned torture in order to protect such arrogant behavior by either Democrats or Republicans.
n/t
Do you have a link for that?
That’s contrary basic security, common sense, and just about everything that’s been published.
Yes, it is from the campaign, but it is thorough and includes links to external verification. I think the two big takeaways are that it was allowed and that no classified material was transmitted this way. I agree that it feels counterintuitive.
I appreciate the link.
I think there are a great many people, some of them knowledgeable and not all of them political operatives for the GOP, who take issue with the substance of that campaign material.
In any case, this seems like a topic for a different thread.
The phrase coming to mind right now is “There’s a first time for everything.” I think it’s certainly valid to want to hold ourselves to the highest standards.
it will be perverted for political gain at the earliest opportunity. I would prefer “prosecution for war crimes” not be in the tool bag of political gain.
I agree that I would prefer that prosecution for war crimes not be in the tool bag of political gain.
I profoundly disagree that we should therefore not prosecute war crimes at all. I suggest that we should instead pillory those who betray our moral standards by trivializing war crimes by conducting empty political witchhunts.
We executed Japanese war criminals for waterboarding American prisoners. We should not ignore a President, Vice President, and similar high-ranking US officials who did the same.
And what did he spend it on? Nothing of much worth, in my opinion. The war criminalswere treated as above the law, out of a combination of cowardice and the corrupt reciprocity of the elite. It was, and is, an utter and irredeemable disgrace.
Sure it’s not single payer, but it took up nearly half of his presidency to get done.
I see no evidence that ignoring the war crimes committed by the prior administration gained anything at all. I suggest that it is an immoral calculus even it if did.
By ignoring those war crimes, I think the Obama administration and the Democrats betrayed the grassroots who put them in office. I think the political capital squandered by that betrayal cost far more than the betrayal gained.
If my party can’t stand against torture, what on earth can it ever stand for?
In the 2010 midterm election, voters gave the Democrats a stern rebuke. It seems obvious to me that the Party completely squandered whatever political capital they had. If they had shown some spine and even attempted to correct some of the craptacular abuses of the Bush Administration, I believe the country would have strongly supported them. Certainly some high-ranking Bushites should have been punished for the torturing and murders. That none of them were is a national shame.
…so this comment of her’s may give us insight as to where he is coming from.
Former First Lady Barbara Bush said of the war in Iraq: “Why should we hear about body bags and deaths? It’s not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?”
To the Bush family, there is them and there is us…and we don’t matter as much.
I share your contempt for the moral framework of the Bush family, at least as it has expressed itself through the actions of two members who have been President.
I am more concerned that the electorate seems to accept or even welcome this evil. I find it ironic that the same party that agitates so aggressively against Planned Parenthood, citing is “moral values”, seems to welcome the embrace of torture (at least when our guys do it to their guys — I assume when it’s the other way around, the GOP leads the charge of moral outrage).
Perhaps we are seeing the well-documented influence of a strong money field on a conventional moral compass. This is the phenomenon that causes a moral compass to point in the direction of increasing wealth, in the same way that a conventional magnetic compass is distorted by a strong local magnetic field.
Perhaps the intense money field created by the accelerating volume of money flowing from everybody else to the very wealthy is scrambling our moral compasses so that they indicate that whatever the wealthy do (including lie, torture, and kill) is ok so long as it is done by the wealthy and done to “somebody else”.
Finally, I note that this effect of an intense money field on a moral compass is completely non-partisan, and affects Democrats as well as Republicans. The solution is a “gyroscopic moral compass”, but that is the topic of another thread that I don’t have time to write at the moment.
There is one book that I recommend to all. It’s The Spirit Level by Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson. Yes indeed our moral compasses are being scrambled by this wealth disparity. In the book, Pickett and Wilkinson show how nations with high disparity have much harsher penalties for crimes with lengthier sentences and little in the way of forgiveness. I think part of it is the fear that high disparity brings with it. John Henry is a billionaire and lives in a gated compound with (I can only assume) a security detail. Reports of his mansion tell of a “safe room” not doubt his reaction to his fear that the common folk one day will strike back. In this case, we are striking back at “ISIS” or whomever is assigned The Two Minutes Hate.
..that body bags and deaths aren’t relevant to a discussion about war? I am very much hoping there is context to that comment that you left out.
Jeb must be a tough spot. He knows that war wasn’t the most popular of endeavors and probably understands moral qualms about torture, but how easy would it be for any of us to publicly say our brother was not only wrong, but possibly criminally so?
is that it was Jeb and W’s mother who said it. This was also her:
…this is a family whose patriarch was key to an mooted coup d’etat in this country after Roosevelt’s election.
noted for his diplomatic skills that put us in the first Gulf War.
(I visited H.W’s museum in College Station a couple of years ago. The roof didn’t cave in).
You don’t get away with blatantly marching into to a neighboring country for the purposes of annexation. Plus Saddam was given several months to pull back without resort to force.
though diplomacy was part of Bush I’s failed foreign policy. Here:
See the Glaspie transcripts for some primary sources that support Mortimer’s conclusions.
I was thinking of the immediate runup to the war while you were going further back.
Torture is a concern for progressives when it applies to Republicans, during election years, and of course, during months without an ‘r’ in them.
Obama issued an executive order in 2009 which said torture is bad and he would study it. But Gitmo is open, there have been technical machinations like when the CIA transferred technical ownership of torture facilities to Afghanistan where US authorities continue to operate them, etc.
I do not gave a problem with this, as I think torture can be necessary and should be safe, legal, and rare, as it were, but the timing of this rediscovered passion and outrage is interesting. (Maybe not you, Tom, but some commenters). The beat goes on.
Please see my cross-posted comment, above.
In particular, I call your attention to the last paragraph of my comment.
Sadly, it it appears that you, too, seem to be operating with a conventional moral compass in a strong money field. Don’t feel bad, it’s not your fault.
….to refer me back to a comment as if I had ignored your wisdom when you posted it AFTER mine?
You were writing yours as I was writing mine. We both started in much the same place.
…that you posted the same material on multiple blogs.
I meant that I posted my comment at the same time that porcupine posted hers. I had not read hers when I posted and she had not read mine.
I’m sorry if my language was confusing.
….it means what I choose it to mean. Neither more nor less.
It is a question of who is to be master, that’s all.
On a thread about torture, you come back to belabor my choice of words to describe the simultaneous submission of two comments.
I suggest it has very little to with “who is to be master” and a lot more to do with your indefensible support of torture.
“Safe, legal and rare”? Torture? Your original comment is repulsive and disgusting. I’m not surprised you attempt to bury it with trivia.
First, as you point out she wasn’t disputing the definition of torture, and second I believe she was using a literary quote that came to mind, and just giving you a good-natured ribbing with it.
Lighten up Tom
I’m sorry, I’m not ready to joke about any of this.
As far as I know, this is the first time in American history that there has been documented, well-vetted evidence that torture was ordered from the Oval Office. As a nation, we have chosen to ignore it for political expedience — simultaneously bleating loudly about the manufactured “moral outrage” of Planned Parenthood. Against that backdrop, the brother of one of one perpetrator refuses to “take torture off the table”, largely because many Americans are perfectly ok with torturing “somebody else”.
I don’t see anything remotely humorous about this.
I like to torture Republicans in off-years too.
A majority of Americans think that torture is sometimes justified.
From a December 2014 Washington Post/ABC News Poll:
From YouGov (December, 2014):
And according to Pew, support for torture has increased since 2004:
There are a lot of scared people out there.
Torture is immoral. Period. I’m not sure that any of the anti-abortion activists who raise a moral argument against abortion are remotely interested in evidence that abortion is effective at solving subsequent issues. If an action is immoral, then there it is pointless to examine whether that action is effective.
I agree that the growing support of Americans for torture is the problem. As I wrote in the threadstarter, I don’t want want to live in a society that views torture as acceptable.
.
Is it so inconceivable that I want to move to a society were torture is viewed as abhorrent? Perhaps something more similar to American society of, say, the period from the end of WWII to September 11, 2001?
None of us have sat in the oval office with dozens of aides giving us advice on how best to keep the country safe. What in hind sight may or may not be beneficial. Whether another Pearl Harbor or World Trade center is on the horizon. Torture people in an attempt to detect the next attack, kill civilians as collateral damage, having a drone target mis-identified.
What do you think about not prosecuting perhaps the largest “crime” against humanity where innocent people were slaughtered in an instant on the decision of one individual. Harry Truman dropped the bomb, should he have been prosecuted?
We actually followed the Geneva conventions when it came to prisoners and believed in the rule of law. The war in fact, was partly fought to validate the rule of international law and norms. We also outlawed chemical and gas weapons, had the UN charter commit world powers to multilateralism and diplomacy, and focus on establishing an order based around the new concept of human rights. Why we squandered all of that to torture a second rate criminal organization that got lucky one September morning is beyond me. How we shredded our Constitution in a way we never did during the graver crisis of the Second World War is beyond me. Someday, maybe, this war on terror will finally end. Even the death of our enemies leader is apparently not enough to rollback the security state.
We were also wise enough not to destabilize irrelevant areas with a front of choice as we did in Iraq. ISIS is the direct result of American mismanagement in Iraq. No way I am voting to put that outfit back in charge.
After WW2, we executed Japanese officers for the exact same tortures that Bush & Cheney authorized and defended. Is there any clearer indication of just how far off track we have gone since 1945?
I see where they’re going to revive 24,though, so Jack Bauer can sell us some more torture-justification fantasy.
I don’t know why people can’t tell the difference. I used to watch Walker, Texas Ranger (still do occasionally in syndication) and it’s a thrill to see Chuck Norris et al kick the guts out of the obvious (to the TV audience who saw him do it) perp. However, I’d be the first to cry foul if law enforcement did that in the real world. If people actually think that torture is OK because they see Jack Bauer do it on 24 that is some mighty twisted logic.
That Jack Bauer’s time’s-running-out-we-need-this-info-NOW rationale is the same one mouthed by Cheney? Do you really think the writers and producers of 24 didn’t believe they were making torture more acceptable to their viewers?
…or at least assumed since I’ve never seen 24, but some of us can distinguish between fantasy and reality, so I don’t have to like or understand the “logic”. Certainly a Vice President of the United States can do better than steal his military policy from a TV show.
Decades of research demonstrates that television advertising has a measurable effect on attitudes. That’s why advertisers pay so much for television advertising time.
I think the point kirth is making is that shows like this one (I’ve never seen it either) manipulate the attitudes of its audience in the same way that television advertising manipulates what we want and don’t want — whether or not we are consciously aware of that manipulation.
The point is not the influence of the show on Mr. Cheney — the point is, instead, the influence of the show on way the public responds to Mr. Cheney’s decision to order waterboarding.
…by the fact that so few Americans serve, or know someone who serves in the modern military. This results in a comic book approach to war by much of the non-serving public, which is magnified by bestselling fiction that glorifies torture for its own sake.
Like I say, watching Walker has not made me a proponent of police brutality.
Tom got it. The show didn’t influence Cheney, it gave him a preconditioned audience for his bullshit. If it’s OK for Jack Bauer to torture some evil terrorist, it must be OK for a Warrior Hero in Iraq to do it. That the Christophers of our nation can remain unaffected by fantasies justifying evil (or believe that they can) does not mean that large numbers of television viewers remain unaffected.
Torture is torture. Torture is immoral. Period. If the aides to a president are advocating torture, and the aides are not dismissed forthwith, than the administration has a moral problem.
Torture is different from murder. Torture is different from drone attacks. Torture is different from Truman’s decision to use nuclear weapons against Japan. What I think about Hiroshima and Nagasaki is irrelevant to this discussion, as is what anybody thinks about drones.
Humanity learned a very long time ago that torture is an evil that is perpetrated only by those who are themselves evil.
We ignore this learning at our extreme peril.
Obviously the moral argument should trump the security argument any day of the week. America shouldn’t torture and it’s not what our values are. There was a time not long ago when John McCain could credibly articulate this without his patriotism or security bona fides being questioned. Today we are living in a much worse environment when it comes to public opinion.
Fortunately, the security argument is relatively weak as well according to the CIA and Senate’s own report. It is likely KSM gave us bad information the more he was tortured down the line, the less reliable the information became. This is verifiable, and American lives were likely imperiled by the lousy information we got. If so many of our citizens are depraved enough to devalue enemy life, a new trait in American public life compared to past wars, than the argument that our troops will be put in harms way-either be the enemy torturing them or the bad intel leading them to harm should be sufficient to convince the Bauer fans out there. Both arguments are compelling and show how poorly Jeb Bush is prepared to lead the national security of this country.
I agree, and I don’t like to include that in the case against torture because it opens the door to a scenario where it DOES work.
I think it is a example of a moral standard where the ends do not justify the means.
Assisted the torture program:
https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2015/07/19/psychology-association-worked-with-defense-officials-loose-interrogation-guidelines/DsPxSETzHmc4QsSjLjR9mN/story.html