N.Y. Times Op-Ed Says It All (Wrong)

This Op-Ed in the Times sums up the issue of torture pretty well, and then proceeds to get everything wrong.

His title sums up the issue for me - We're All Torturers Now. Which I like, because he is onto something that I have said before. His point is basically that everyone knew about Abu Ghraib before the election, that's what he feels this administration represents, and still we re-elected Bush. Therefore we must be on board and equally culpable. Certainly not what you would expect from the libs, but I'm sure they'll be backtracking on that candor when next someone questions their patriotism. Everything after the title however, is full of all the liberal views you would expect.

The basic point in the torture debate is not whether Alberto Gonzales is on board with "coerced interrogation", but are we. This is what Author Mark Danner says:

So far as we know, American intelligence officers, determined after Sept. 11 to "take the gloves off," began by torturing Qaeda prisoners. They used a number of techniques: "water-boarding," in which a prisoner is stripped, shackled and submerged in water until he begins to lose consciousness, and other forms of near suffocation; sleep and sensory deprivation; heat and light and dietary manipulation; and "stress positions."

Eventually, these practices "migrated," in the words of the Schlesinger report, to Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, where for a time last spring the marvel of digital technology allowed Americans to see what their soldiers were doing to prisoners in their name.

Now, I believe that when the country found out about Abu Ghraib and what was being done "in their name", the response was that we do not condone that and want justice done. And, as far as I know, it is. And the first item in the list is something most people would not support either, as most would conclude suffocation constitutes physical abuse.

But what of the others? "...sleep and sensory deprivation; heat and light and dietary manipulation; and 'stress positions.'" Sleep deprivation? Dietary manipulation? So we're torturing our own troops?

At present, our government, controlled largely by one party only intermittently harried by a timorous opposition, is unable to mete out punishment or change policy, let alone adequately investigate its own war crimes.

Mr. Danner, I believe we are quite able to investigate our own crimes. We have one of the most free and open societies on the face of the earth. Your side has been heard and defeated in open elections. Sorry about your timorous opposition.

But reality has a way of asserting itself. In the end, as Gen. Joseph P. Hoar pointed out this week, the administration's decision on the Geneva Conventions "puts all American servicemen and women at risk that are serving in combat regions." For General Hoar - a retired commander of American forces in the Middle East and one of a dozen prominent retired generals and admirals to oppose Mr. Gonzales - torture has a way of undermining the forces using it, as it did with the French Army in Algeria.
The general's concerns are understandable. The war in Iraq and the war on terrorism are ultimately political in character. Victory depends in the end not on technology or on overwhelming force but on political persuasion.

And there's the real beauty. Our servicemen are in greater danger now? As much danger as say, Nick Berg? or Jack Hensley? I don't think our enemy signed the Geneva Conventions. And the best part is that it's not defeating these people and their ability to wage war, but persuading them. The Iraqi people don't need persuading. Nobody needs persuading to live free. And the people who hate us are not going to be persuaded. They must be defeated.

I am greatly interested in some opinions on torture. Is sleep deprivation torture? Dietary manipulation? And, finally, I am not very familiar with the Muslim religion, but I understand that pigs are a very powerful symbol, and they will have nothing to do with them. Would you accept slaughtering a pig in front of a prisoner known to be Muslim, and painting him with the blood? Is that torture?