The Washington Post has lately become an extreme apologist for our nation's torture program. Today, Richard Cohen had a typical WaPo hand-wringing piece in which he attempts to have it both ways and lament how elusive the truth is. In an op-ed piece entitled Torture's Unanswerable Questions, he writes:
Call him Ishmael.
Call him a terrorist or a suicide bomber or anything else you want, but understand that he is willing -- no, anxious -- to give his life for his cause. Call him also a captive, and know that he works with others as part of a team, like the Sept. 11 hijackers, all of whom died, willingly. Ishmael is someone I invented, but he is not a far-fetched creation. You and I know he exists, has existed and will exist again. He is the enemy.
Now he is in American custody. What will happen? How do we get him to reveal his group's plans and the names of his colleagues? It will be hard. It will, in fact, be harder than it used to be. He can no longer be waterboarded.
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He knows the new restrictions. He knows the new limits.
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This business of what constitutes torture is a complicated matter.
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No one can possibly believe that America is now safer because of the new restrictions on enhanced interrogation and the subsequent appointment of a special prosecutor.
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I am, as you can see, full of questions. I have, as you can see, few answers.
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I am torn between my desire for absolute security and my abhorrence of torture. The one thing I know is that ideology does not provide an answer.
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The questions of what constitutes torture and what to do with those who, maybe innocently, applied what we now define as torture have to be removed from the political sphere. They cannot be the subject of an ideological tug of war, both sides taking extreme and illogical positions -- torture never works, torture always works, torture is always immoral, torture is moral if it saves lives. Torture always is ugly. So, though, is the hole in the ground where the World Trade Center once stood.
In response to Cohen's deliberate ignorance, I offer the following:Oh, Richard -- your thesis is so full of holes and so incoherent, of course it's unanswerable.
First, you say Ishmael "knows' he won't be tortured. How does he know that? Because our President says "We don't torture?" Seems we've had a President who said that before. Is it because practices such as waterboarding are against our domestic law and international treaty obligations? That's been true for generations. You say he knows the restrictions and limits. How so? At the highest level our current national leaders have stated that we will not hold accountable the most senior government leaders who crafted and implemented our torture programs. Absent accountability, how can Ishmael -- how can any of us -- know that our government will not embark down that dark road again in ten years, in ten months, in ten days?
All I can say is that Ishmael is a bigger fool than you if, absent accountability at the most senior levels, he believes that there are any constraints on the violence our government officials can and will inflict upon other human beings in your and my name, as well as that of our fellow citizens.
You betray your callousness when you write of your "desire for absolute security..." As a nation, since we so readily send our children (and our fellow citizens' children) off to fight and die in wars, we tacitly recognize that there are things worse than suffering and death -- that there are ideals and values that are truly worthy of the sacrifice of human life. One of those fundamental values is the recognition that we are a nation of laws -- that collectively we recognize that there is right and wrong, that we institutionalize this recognition into law, and, at least some of us, are willing to sacrifice to defend the "rule of law."
So, Richard, the answer to your "unanswerable" question is very simple. Torture has been, is, and at least for the time being, will remain against our laws. I am sorry that you consider the "rule of law" to be an "ideological" concept. To me, and many others, it is one of the most fundamental values upon which this nation is based.
Therefore, Richard, if you truly want your absolute security, if you truly want Ishmael to have to continue to wonder whether he will be tortured, simply change the law to allow Ishmael -- and Mohammad, and Julio, and Liam, and Bob and Mary, and even you and me and our children to be subjected to torture anytime your government believes it is appropriate.
Change the law, Richard. Make all the torture we have inflicted, and all the torture we may want to inflict in the future out of a desire for absolute security -- make it all legal. Even better, make it legal retroactively.
That's your answer, Richard. Change the law. However, I believe even you would not have the stomach to do that because that, Richard, is what "ugly" truly is.
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