An appropriately horrifying Halloween topic

Torture.

Bush’s Attorney General  nominee, Michael Mukasey, hailed as “Oh my God, after an ideologue like John Ashcroft and an incompetent stooge like Alberto Gonzalez the next best thing to Oliver Wendall Holmes Jr returning from the grave” when his name was identified (which sentiment was increased by the knowledge that he wasn’t a darling of the social conservatives) is in trouble because he keeps hemming and hawing and very carefully choosing his words regarding …

Torture.

The US, officially, does not “torture.”  That’s because (a) it’s wrong, and (b) the Bush Administration has gone to great lengths to water down the term (hence the quotation marks), reducing its purview by allowing “harsh interrogation techniques.”

The key during Mukasey’s testimony has been his unwillingness to call waterboarding torture. 

Mukasey sent his response to Democrats Tuesday and while he said the waterboarding procedure described in their letter “seem over the line” and was “repugnant” he declined to declare it illegal.

It’s “repugnant,” but it may be okay do to it?  Is that what our national concept of justice has come to?

He said he could not do so because he doesn’t know whether the U.S. has used it, doesn’t want to jeopardize interrogators and doesn’t want to give America’s enemies insight into U.S. techniques. “They are putting him in an untenable position on this,” says White House spokesman Tony Fratto.

The problem, of course, is that we have almost certainly been using waterboarding as an interrogation technique.  If we have, and if it’s identified as “torture” by the government (which it is certainly classified as by various human rights organizations and by US administrations past), then the folks who have done it, who have ordered it, and who have allowed it, could, in fact, be tried for war crimes.

Well, maybe.  But that’s the fear.  So because it “might” have been done, Mukasey is unwilling (as a representative and nominee of the Bush Administration — which, in fact, is the body that has put him in an “untenable position”) to call it torture, or illegal. 

So, frankly, he ought to be voted down.  If the AG publicly dithers on what’s “illegal,” he’s not a good AG.

To give Mukasey his due, it’s altogether possible, even likely, that he considers it torture, and, once in office, would work from the inside to end it as an accepted interrogation technique.  But to a certain degree, this is not about Mukasey, but about Bush and his Administration’s “do whatever we think necessary” pursuit of the War on Terror.  If Mukasey is a victim of that — well, he knew the job was dangerous when he let himself get nominated for it.

But enough about that.  What do I think?

The “torture” debate has been, unfortunately, prone to way too much posturing and false binary choices.  On the one hand, the side with the moral high ground simply says, “Torture is wrong, and so it should never, ever, ever be done.  Ever.”

At which point the other side, possibly pragmatic, possibly just evil, says, “Well, what if someone held the only clue to an atomic bomb located in a major metropolitan area, and they wouldn’t talk.  Would it be okay to use torture then?”

At which point the moral high ground side either says “No,” which makes them look like ridiculous fools willingr to sacrifice millions of people for some abstract principle, or “Yes,” which then lets the other side say, “So torture is okay.”

The problem is, that’s a false choice.  And it comes down to the nature — and effectiveness — of torture itself.

The moral high-grounders note, correctly, that torture is generally not a useful tool.  Under torture, folks will say whatever they think is necessary to stop the torture.  Unverifiable or open-ended information is not amenable to torture.  Asking folks under torture to “name names” or describe plots and co-conspirators or verify info that is fed to them will net you only what the tortured think you want to hear.  Which makes the horrible decision to intentionally hurt someone in order to coerce them into talking all the worse for being worthless.  What does it profiteth a man if he sells his soul and get useless intel in return?

And that’s what most of interrogation is.  Short of a verifiable question like, “Where is the bomb planted?” torture’s utility is extremely limited.

But in those rare, narrow bounds — yes, there is some utility.  And, yes, faced with an imminent, massive threat about which that verifiable information can be gleaned (such as the location of the hypothetical nuclear device) … well, yes, I can see torture being both useful and, given the stakes and the utility, arguably defensible.

Or, put another way, if it the only answer to finding out where my daughter had been kidnapped to was waterboarding a prisoner, I would be the first one in line with a bucket.  What it would do to me to do it would be horrible, but it would be worth it for information that could only be gathered that way and that could be verified immediately.

And, yes, I would expect to be charged with assault and torture, and would let others vet and judge the needfulness of my crimes (for a crime it would be) and its mitigating justification.  Do something awful? Take responsibility for it, dammit –– don’t pretend that it’s not awful, or that it wasn’t a “least worst” answer, or that other folks have no right to pass judgment on it..

Desperate times call for desperate measures — but not as a matter of policy, only as a dark, terrible aberration of norms and morals.  And only as something that demands review, judgment, and taking of responsibility.  It’s not as nice and neat as the moral high-grounders might like (neither is war, something that may also be exceptionally necessary at times) — but it’s miles away from the “anything goes” attitude that the current Administration seems so desperate to keep intact.

It’s not easy, or trivial, to admit that I think that there are cases where torture is justified. 

Happy Halloween.  Boo.