Richard Cohen
has another column up in which he continues to demonstrate a level of intellectual honesty rarely found among torture opponents. He asks, "What if Cheney's Right'? And that's a very good question. It's usually ignored by those who confuse their opinions with fact and pretend they know more than those who had full access to all classified information. Here's Cohen:
Torture is a moral abomination, and President Obama is right to restate American opposition to it. But where I reserve a soupçon of doubt is over the question of whether "enhanced interrogation techniques" actually work. That they do not is a matter of absolute conviction among those on the political left, who seem to think that the CIA tortured suspected terrorists just for the hell of it.
Cohen is obviously no fan of Cheney, and thinks he has no credibility, but he doesn't inhabit the same ideological dreamworld as many of his compatriots on the left. Earlier in the piece Cohen writes,
Yet I have to wonder whether what he is saying now is the truth -- i.e., torture works.
If he cared to actually look into it and do five minutes of research -- something most torture opponents haven't bothered with -- he would find that there are numerous examples of torture working to extract correct information. The only real question is whether torture worked in these particular cases, as Cheney and other officials claim. But at least Cohen is willing to ask the question, rather then making an unfounded assumption about the answer.
True, unlike most of the mouth-foamers on the left, at least he has doubts. Dunno if you saw a video recently of Bill O'Reilly talking to a couple of leftist loonies about this, at the end he really exposed them for the stupid fools they really are, he posed the question - Truman, a war criminal for dropping the atom bomb on Japan? One said no and the other inferred yes. Then he said but water boarding is a war crime or inferred it. They had no adequate answer.
ReplyDeleteIt really doesn't matter whether or not torture ever works. I am sure it does in some cases.
ReplyDeleteIt's still torture.
Let me ask you this: Suppose we had absolute proof that raping a 6 year old in front of a terrorist would produce accurate, timely information every single time. Would you really be debating the issue on the merits of utility?
MK,
ReplyDelete"One said no and the other inferred yes. Then he said but water boarding is a war crime or inferred it. They had no adequate answer."
Most are ignorant of history and what the U.S. has done in the past. By the standards of the left & other terrorist rights advocates, numerous U.S. administrations were un-American war criminals.
PersonalFailure,
"It's still torture."
Well, I'm not one to try to redefine torture or to argue for torture-lite. In the cases in which I support torture, I support full medieval methods, electricity, psychological torment or whatever is necessary.
"Let me ask you this: Suppose we had absolute proof that raping a 6 year old in front of a terrorist would produce accurate, timely information every single time. Would you really be debating the issue on the merits of utility?"
No, because the 6 year old is an innocent. Torturing a known terrorist is an entirely different category than torturing an innocent victim. A utility argument doesn't have to be unlimited in scope.
We throw criminals in prison to punish them, and also because we think it has a deterrent effect on crime. Imprisoning their innocent families too would be a greater punishment and probably a much bigger deterrent. But we don't do that because we make a distinction between the guilty & the innocent. In other words, we use a utility argument that is limited in scope.
All of my arguments in favor of torture in certain cases apply only to the guilty, not to the innocent. I'm opposed to torturing the innocent or the merely suspected.