Get it?

Man, torture is so funny. Thanks, Chris Muir, for lightening up what's really a downer of an issue. Abu Ghraib -- it's really just like a fraternity prank! Gitmo -- it's like a cocktail party!

Torture.

Let's be clear what we're talking about here. I have no doubt that what goes on in the prisons run by the U.S. military is kind, compared to those of our enemies, both current and historical. I also have no doubt that Messrs. Muir and Limbaugh would not particularly enjoy being subjected to the tactics they mock so well.

The question isn't, are we better than our enemies? (Thank you, Senator Durbin, for demonstrating Godwin's Law on the Senate floor). The question is, do the ends justify the means?

"On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food, or water. Most times they urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18-24 hours or more. On one occasion, the air conditioning had been turned down so far and the temperature was so cold in the room, that the barefooted detainee was shaking with cold. . . . On another occasion, the [air conditioner] had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated room well over 100 degrees. The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his hair out throughout the night. On another occasion, not only was the temperature unbearably hot, but extremely loud rap music was being played in the room, and had been since the day before, with the detainee chained hand and foot in the fetal position on the tile floor."

We can read this -- from the FBI account cited by Durbin -- and ask ourselves, what kind of people are we if we countenance such a thing? We can read it and ask ourselves, isn't this better than the alternative, the possible deaths of our countrymen if we don't get information from these prisoners?

Both of these are the wrong questions. The question should be, as Alinsky put it, do these particular ends justify these particular means? In other words, does treating a prisoner like this mean that he will tell us what he needs to know? Is it effective? And if so, is it morally efficient -- the means that works, but is no more brutal than it must be? Certainly we can agree that we shouldn't treat prisoners worse than we have to. Even if we cannot expect reciprocity -- terrorists are not known for following the Geneva Convention -- we are not holding prisoners of war in order to punish them, but instead to neutralize them and, possibly, to get information that will help us defeat Al Qaeda.

Joseph Levyveld, in a magazine article in the New York Times, considers the morality of torture. Certainly, says Levyveld, "real" torture, that practiced by truly repressive regimes, is beyond the pale. But what of "torture lite," the kind that leaves no scars? Levyveld, in the end, says that "torture lite" is an acceptable part of the War on Terror -- as long as we don't have to know about it.

But what surprised me was that he didn't seem to consider whether or not "torture lite" actually works. In a recent article in the Atlantic, Stephen Budiansky cites the example of Major Sherwood Moran. Moran was a Japanese interpreter / interrogator during WWII. His Suggestions for Japanese Interpreters Based on Work in the Field has been posted on the web by the veterans of the Marine Corps Interrogator Translator Teams Association. (Also read the excellent The Use of "Torture" in Interrogation by Maj. Anthony F. Milavic, USMC (Ret.), also on the MCITTA site.) Moran got his prisoners to talk by being nice to them. The letter is worth reading in its entirety, but this will give you some idea.

I can simply tell you what my attitude is; I often tell a prisoner right at the start what my attitude is! I consider a prisoner (i.e. a man who has been captured and disarmed and in a perfectly safe place) as out of the war, out of the picture, and thus, in a way, not an enemy. (This is doubly so, psychologically and physically speaking, if he is wounded or starving.) Some self-appointed critics, self-styled "hardboiled" people, will sneer that this is a sentimental attitude, and say, "Don't you know he will try to escape at first opportunity?" I reply, "Of course I do; wouldn't you?" But that is not the point. Notice that in the first part of this paragraph I used the word "safe". That is the point; get the prisoner to a safe place, where even he knows there is no hope of escape, that it is all over. Then forget, as it were, the "enemy" stuff, and the "prisoner" stuff. I tell them to forget it, telling them I am talking as a human being to a human being, (ningen to shite). And they respond to this.

...

I now wish to take up an important matter concerning which there is some difference of opinion. At certain bases where prisoners are kept, when some visitor comes to look over the equipment and general layout, as he comes to each individual cell where a prisoner is kept, the prisoner is required to jump up and stand at attention; even if he is asleep, they prod him and make his stand stiffly at attention. Again, when a prisoner is being interviewed, as the interpreter or interpreters come into the room used for that purpose, the prisoner must stand at attention, and for the first part of the questioning he is not asked to sit down. Later on he is allowed to sit down as a gracious concession. He is treated well, and no attempt is made to threaten him or mistreat him, but the whole attitude, the whole emphasis, is that he is a prisoner and we are his to-be-respected and august enemies and conquerors. Now for my own standpoint. I think all this is not only unnecessary, but that it acts exactly against what we are trying to do. To emphasize that we are enemies, to emphasize that he is in the presence of his conqueror, etc., puts him psychologically in the position of being on the defensive, and that because he is talking to a most-patent enemy and conqueror he has no right and desire to tell anything. That is most certainly the attitude I should take under similar circumstances, even if I had no especially patriotic scruples against giving information.

...

There may be some who read the above paragraphs (or rather just glance through them) who say it is just sentiment. But careful reading will show it is enlightened hard-boiled-ness.

...

I wish you could see the interest on the on the prisoner's face as I am dramatically asking such a question as that. It's like telling a story, and at the end he is telling his part of it.

That last part rings true. We are hardwired storytellers, we humans, and everyone is eager to tell their own story.

From the Atlantic article:

Moran's whole approach -- and Hans Joachim Scharff's, too -- was built on the assumption that few if any prisoners are likely to possess decisive information about imminent plans. (And as one former Marine interrogator says, even if a prisoner does have information of the "ticking bomb" variety -- where the nuke is going to go off an hour from now, in the classic if overworked example -- under duress or torture he is most likely to try to run out the clock by making something up rather than reveal the truth.) Rather, it is the small and seemingly inconsequential bits of evidence that prisoners may give away once they start talking -- about training, weapons, commanders, tactics -- that, when assembled into a larger mosaic, build up the most complete and valuable picture of the enemy's organization, intentions, and methods.

Now of course there are differences between a Japanese soldier of a half-century ago and a member of Al Qaeda. But back then we considered the Japanese a fanatical enemy -- the original suicide bombers. Can we learn from our history?

We need to rephrase the question. The question is not, is torture ever justified? Or, are we better than our enemies? Or even, are we doing the right thing?

The question is: are we doing the thing right?

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