Oh, Blogger Formerly Known as Hindrocket, why can’t I quit you? You say the wingnuttiest stuff imaginable — it’s so precious! And you’re able to get worked up so easily — it’s adorable!
Take today, for example. You got really, really upset when you were in an airport and were evidently forced at gunpoint to watch CNN:
That’s where I spent an hour or more at a gate this afternoon, listening unwillingly to CNN’s coverage of the “torture” issue. That’s pretty much all they talked about; they were nearly rubbing their hands together with glee. The premise of CNN’s coverage was that those nasty Bush officials surely ought to be prosecuted and imprisoned for waterboarding poor Khalid Sheikh Mohammed; the only question is whether they will somehow wriggle out of it.
Yeah! Stupid CNN, thinking that it was bad of the Bush Administration to commit war crimes. After all, KSM is a bad guy! And we got such great information from it — why, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed confessed to pretty much everything imaginable! Okay, some of it was probably stuff he didn’t actually do, but that’s the purpose of torture: to get people to confess to things they didn’t do, so there, morans!
Not that we torture, of course. Except, of course, for Barack Obama, who is torturing U.S. troops zOMG11!!!!!!onethousandonehundredeleven!!
As I listened to an hour of almost non-stop wailing about waterboarding, I couldn’t help wondering how many people have been waterboarded by U.S. authorities during the first three months of the Obama administration. Some hundreds, I would think–surely far more than the three terrorists over whom such tears are now being shed. Those “victims” don’t count, apparently, inasmuch as they are only U.S. military personnel.
Yes, folks, Barack HUSSEIN Obama is torturing our troops, probably personally. It’s all part of his secret plot to sell us to the Swedes who will come in and make us all drive Volvos and eat lutefisk and shop at IKEA and then they’ll surrender to the Muslims! Will nobody stop this monster? Why won’t someone think of the troops?
And, hey, they volunteered.
Well, that’s no reason to — wait, what?
But if waterboarding is “torture,” then it’s illegal. So why is the U.S. military still using it as a training device, last we knew? If we’re going to start prosecuting people, don’t we have to prosecute the many civilian and military leaders who have for decades inflicted waterboarding, or condoned the use of waterboarding, on our servicemen?
Uh…huh.
Let me draw an analogy. If I walk up to some unsuspecting person and poke a hole in their ear with a sharp object, that would be illegal. I’d be guilty of assault (at the very least). I’d go to jail. If, however, a person comes to my jewelry shop and asks me to pierce their ears, and I do so, I am not, in fact, guilty of a crime.
Or if I lie down on a bed, and suddenly someone knocks me out and cuts me open and starts pulling parts of me out, they’re obviously a very sick criminal. Unless I’m in a hospital and they’re removing my gall bladder — then they’re trained medical professionals doing their job.
Or if I meet a girl at a bar, and shove her into my car and force myself on her, then I’m a rapist and I’m going away to prison. But if I invite her to my house and she says yes, and we have a night of consenual sex, then nobody’s guilty of a damn thing, other than getting some good lovin’.
You see, John, the fact that soldiers volunteer for SERE is not beside the point — it is the point. There are all sorts of activities that are perfectly legal when people consent to them them, and completely illegal when they don’t.
Waterboarding? That’s in that category. When our soldiers experience waterboarding in order to learn how to deal with it should they be captured — that’s a learning experience, one that is useful, if frightening. (Indeed, very useful — no doubt, U.S. soldiers are today more at risk of torture than they were in 2001. Thanks, Dubya.)
But if we waterboard a prisoner, one we have in custody — if we inflict pain and trauma on a person against that person’s will — that is a war crime. That is illegal, and deeply immoral. If the U.S. government is still engaged in waterboarding prisoners, then Barack Obama will be no less guilty than George W. Bush — and I would support his impeachment if that turned out to be so.
But if the Obama administration is guilty of teaching soldiers how to deal with torture, then that just proves they understand the world America lives in. Unlike you, John Hinderaker. Unlike you.
I think civilization is too complicated for right-wingers. No, seriously. The idea of there are certain boundries that you have to negotiate with various people, and that those boundries change depending on situations (yes, including consent) seem to be too much for them to wrap their heads around. They seem to like “this is bad” and “this is good” and “this is bad sometimes, but good others” seems too much for them to be able to wrap their minds around.
I disagree. First of all, the right is not a monolith. Secondly, even the wignuttiest knuckleheads on the right are capable of coping with double-standards.
Example:
Life=sacred when we’re talking about
1. Unwanted foetuses.
2. Israelis killed by terrorists
3. Americans killed by terrorists
4. Political dissidents killed by regimes they don’t like.
5. People who need (or are believed to need) guns to defend themselves
Life= expendable when we’re talking about
1. Death row inmates
2. Palestinians killed by Israelis
3. People who can’t afford healthcare
4. Political dissidents killed by allies
5. Gays and tansfolk who commit suicide because of homophobia/transphobia
6. Victims of hate crime
7. Wanted foetuses whose parents can’t afford to feed them after they get born because of stingy welfare programmes
8. Burglars killed by people defendig their property
9. Innocents killed when gun use for self-defence goes wrong
10. People shot trying to immigrate illegally
11. People who hang themselves in prison
12. Probably a lot of people I’ve forgotten (sorry)
William Saletan made an effective analogy between SERE and BDSM: we allow adults to consent to being made uncomfortable and even caused pain. It’s consent that makes it OK. The Hindraker theory is that by being an accused terrorist, you lose your right to have things done to you only by your consent. This is true within a limited scope; you do, for example, lose most of your liberties, just as anyone in the U.S. criminal justice system does. But just as we don’t allow female prisoners to be raped (well, we’re not supposed to allow it under the law), we shouldn’t allow accused terrorists to be tortured.
As Antigone says, to be able to grasp this requires that one be able to think in sliding scales rather than only in binaries. There isn’t a yes/no switch regarding whether someone is still a person with rights based on her circumstances; people in one situation will have more rights than people in another, but the options aren’t either you have all rights or you have none.
Saletan also makes the point that there’s a significant difference between inflicting pain on someone for a purpose he agrees is good (SERE trains soldiers to withstand torture) versus inflicting pain on someone to achieve your own goals that are in direct conflict with his goals (torturing someone to force him to give information he otherwise wouldn’t).
And even the SERE soldiers, who know they’re there for a good purpose and to serve their country, who volunteered to do this, who know nobody wants to hurt them, sometimes get severely traumatized by the experience. At least one has called for the school to be shut down.
This is off-topic and I don’t want to make a huge digression, but given how many more male than female prisoners there are, I think this sentence would have been better if it hadn’t had the word “female”: “But just as we don’t allow female prisoners to be raped (well, we’re not supposed to allow it under the law).”
i love you.
that is all :)
Amp,
Sorry about that — I was trying to connect it to Jeff’s reference to “meeting a girl at a bar.” The obligation not to expose prisoners to the risk of rape exists regardless of the prisoner’s sex and to fail to meet that obligation is to violate the prisoner’s 8th Amendment rights (Farmer v. Brennan, 1994).
Except, perhaps, statutory rape. I suggest inviting a woman home instead.
Except, perhaps, statutory rape. I suggest inviting a woman home instead.
This is an excellent point.