Bring It On!

Speaking Truth to Power Line

September 29th, 2006 | by Craig R. Harmon |

Paul Mirengoff wrote a couple of articles on the treatment of detainees that were critical of the three Republicans who, for a time, held up consideration of the Detainee Treatment Bill. In this
one, Paul responds to a critic who objects to Paul’s calling these Republicans and those who defend them, “Terrorist rights advocates” on a number of grounds.

The critics argument does not interest me so much as the last two paragraphs of Paul’s response. I wrote Paul two emails laying out my own objections to points raised in those two paragraphs. I reproduce them here for your edification. I hope you like them. By the way, if I hear back from Paul, I’ll let you all know what he has to say in response:

Without further ado this is the first email:

Paul,

I am a frequent reader of Powerline. I rarely disagree greatly with much that you gentlemen write. I would like to make a point about something that you wrote in the above titled post:

“I can understand why David would rather be called a “detainee rights advocate” than a “terrorist rights advocate,” but to me the former phrase is too antiseptic. We’re talking about a specific type of detainee — terrorists (and almost always foreign terrorists).”

I disagree. The primary problem is that there is question regarding many of these detainees whether they are terrorists. By the government’s own accounting, very few of the Guantanamo detainees are Al Qaeda agents. There have been allegations that some, perhaps many, of the detainees were rounded up by Afghanis and turned in to us not because they were, in fact, AQ agents but because we were paying for AQ agents and Afghanis figured, “How the heck will these Americans know that this or that person is not an AQ agent? If we tell them the are AQ agents, they will pay us so let’s go round us up some ‘Al Qaeda agents’ and turn them in.” Chances are very good that not all of these detainees are terrorist and therefore “detainee rights advocate” is the better designation, not because it is antiseptic but because “terrorist” may not be accurate with respect to all of the detainees.

In other words, we know that all of these guys are detainees. We cannot, I fear, with confidence make the claim that they are all terrorists.

Respectfully,
Craig R. Harmon

The second email is as follows:

Paul,

Another point:

“Finally, moving past the question of labels, let’s note the irony and underlying absurdity of the McCain position, as David presents it. If a terrorist is “in the crosshairs of a US sniper,” then McCain and company “want his head blown off.” But if we instead happen to capture the terrorist, we can’t waterboard him in order to obtain vital information, even though we waterboard some members of our own armed forces during training, and even though we may well save more innocent lives by waterboarding the terrorist than by shooting him.”

If a terrorist is in the crosshairs of a US sniper, that terrorist is still at large, still armed and, therefore, still a threat to our troops and, potentially to Americans who, if he is not taken out, he might kill in a terrorist attack at some later time. Therefore, to neutralize him is simply the normal conduct of war. In our custody, he is disarmed and a not even potentially a direct threat to anyone. I see neither irony nor absurdity in wanting to neutralize a threat in battle but wishing to treat that same person humanely while that person is helpless and in our custody.

There’s also a significant difference between waterboarding our troops after assuring them that they are in no danger, briefing them on what to expect to experiencey, who know they will survive, that it is a training exercize, who trust the person who applies the waterboarding on the one hand and the same technique applied to a detainee. This is in no way comparable to a detainee for whom waterboarding is, from his point of view, an execution. He has not been briefed, he does not know what to expect, he does not trust his interrogators to stop the waterboarding before he succumbs. The whole point is to terrify him, convince him that he is dying and that he will die if he does not talk.

We can, I suppose, quibble about whether waterboarding is or is not a mock execution or whether ‘torture’ is or is not an appropriate term to use but, again, I see no irony or absurdity in not wanting to terrorize a helpless human being, however much one want’s to get information from him. I believe that the word you are looking for is not ‘ironic’ or ‘absurd’ but ‘humane’.

There is also the issue of whether the individual is or is not actually a terrorist or just somebody pulled out of his home and dragged off to the American soldiers and sold as a terrorist. There is no benefit to anyone in terrorizing a helpless and innocent person who can tell you nothing that you want to know because he knows nothing to tell you. Even if he was fighting either as an Afghani in what he views to be defense of his homeland against an invading force or even fighting as a foreigner who came to Afghanistan to defend the Taliban and UBL. Such a person may have been a combatant without having the slightest idea of what plans AQ have or who or where other AQ people are. To abuse even these people is of little potential benefit. If they have no useful knowledge, they have nothing useful to tell. Recognizing that this will be the case with some number of detainees, it is not absurd to not wish to debase ourselves by tormenting and terrorizing an innocent man or a man who has no useful information to give in the first place.

That leaves the true, high-value AQ agents. Those who have detailed information, who can identify and perhaps locate or help locate other terrorists, who have knowledge of plots and so forth. There is obviously utilitarian benefit to using coercive interrogation techniques on such people but is it absurd for McCain, a recipient of honest to God torture, to insist that no American ever inflict extreme pain from long stress positioning and hypothermia or extreme physical and emotional distress upon even such a high-value agent? I don’t think so. Not everyone is a utilitarian. Some people are idealists whose ideals do not involve treating even such people who are helpless in our custody in such a manner. As hard to understand as it may seem to be, some people are willing to pay the cost in potential American lives to not allow us to descend down the path that they see as leading to a moral cesspool. After all, the ‘high up official in Al Qaeda’ might not be who we think he is. There have been any number of times that we’ve been told that so-and-so, number two man in such-and-such a place in Al Qaeda has been captured or killed only to find out later that he was not that person. Therefore, even they might not have any useful information to give.

There are costs to those who torment people even for the cause of trying to save American lives. It cannot help but be psychologically harmful to routinely torment and terrorize people. They say that killing the first human being is the hardest, that it becomes easier after that, that the killer becomes inured to the fact that he or she has taken human life. They become hardened in order to live with the knowledge of what they’ve done. I think it likely that a similar thing happens to someone who torments and terrorizes others.

Institutionally, there are costs. Torment and terror become the first club out of the bag rather than the specialized tool reserved for the job for which no other tool will do. The danger is that we may forgo normal interrogation techniques which may be just as effective with some detainees without inflicting pain and torment. Institutionally our interrogators may become not chess masters, outfoxing their opponent but more akin to thugs.

Nationally there are costs to our reputation abroad as unquestioned respectors of human rights and dignity. There are costs in giving jihadis a recruitment tool: “Those Americans are torturing our brothers; we must bring Allah’s justice to bear upon them; will you join us?”

Many people simply see the costs outweighing the benefits of torture.

We should, perhaps, look, too, at those benefits. Nothing guarantees that the detainee, once you have him talking, is telling you the truth. A silent detainee is useless but a ceaselessly talking detainee may be just as useless if his talk is untrue, told simply to stop the pain and the terror (remember, some percentage of detainees have no usefull information to give). Sending us off on wild goose chases benefits nobody and saves noone.

Worse, they may turn in acquaintances or enemies as “fellow terrorists” thus giving us another innocent detainee to terrorize, to give us useless or less than useless information.

There is a saying, “Garbage in, garbage out.” Successful intelligence relies on minimizing garbage and the ability to separate out gems from gravel and to take bits of useful info and to make a meaningful picture out of those bits. I’ve mixed metaphors there horribly, I know, but I think the meaning is clear. Coercive interrogation may occasionally turn up truth but it may be burried among so much trash that the truth get’s missed anyway.

I grant you that standard interrogation may do this too but my point is that the benefit of coersion may not be as great as we think.

In any case, there are many who, in making the cost benefit calculation, have decided that the costs outweigh the potential benefits. That may be to calculate wrong but I don’t agree that it is to be absurd.

In short, ‘absurd’ is much too harsh a judgement to lay on men who believe that such things ought never to be done by an American to any helpless human being, innocent or guilty.

Respectfully,
Craig R. Harmon

P. S.: The above is not necessarily my position. It is, however, the best case that I can make for the position of McCain et al. I don’t agree with it but I don’t think absurd is the right descriptor for it, either.