Ha. I’ve already relocated to Caracas, where the long arm of international law can’t reach me.

In fairness, this is the internet and I could be anyone. But for the record I’m an American and a conservative. Not the most conservative guy around, but definitely not a liberal or a leftist (not that I’ve run into many liberals or leftists who sympathize with al Qaeda!).

Heck, we’ve already turned your name over to Interpol. And the JBS. Didn’t you know?

Are you kidding?

If Charlie is a European leftist (many of whom have well-established ties to Islamic radicals) I wouldn’t necessarily believe him.

Now, unless McCarthy was generally on the side of truth, justice and the American way, I’d find him suddenly developing a bleding heart for SS men accused of murdering American prisoners to be highly suspicious.

You’re just going to have to trust me on this: I really, really, REALLY, hate Khalid Sheikh Mohammad. None of my opposition to torture stems from any empathy I feel for the man. I support constraints like the Geneva Conventions precisely because, when respected, they protect prisoners from the vengeful instincts of people like me.

So we don’t hate murdering terrorists?

“I recall that Joe McCarthy was denounced for investigating charges of torture of war crimes suspects from one of the SS divisions. Do any of the McCarthy-haters ever give him credit for this?”

Everything I’ve been able to read on the Senate subcommitte hearings regarding the Malmedy case has said that McCarthy lied, distorted facts, and ultimately threw a tantrum while there.

I recall that Joe McCarthy was denounced for investigating charges of torture of war crimes suspects from one of the SS divisions. He was “sticking up for the Nazis!” Do any of the McCarthy-haters ever give him credit for this?

I tend to think that his motivations derived from his representation of a state with a large ethnic German population. .

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think it is well established that some of the major German war crimes suspects were subject to torture. One of the Commandants of Auschwitz comes to mind.

Even ordinary German POW’s were subject to torture-like conditions like being held in open fields with no shelter for months at a time. Also starvation or near-starvation conditions.

Everyone who writes about these subjects seems relegated to a category similar to that of the Holocaust deniers.

The path of least mental resistance is to assume, pridefully, that because we’re America, The beacon of goodness and freedom, whatever we do cannot be evil–according to the exceptionalists, our policies are good by default, requiring Orwellian reinventions of well established philosophical and moral norms to conform to the “America– always the Good Guy” proposition. If the USA can never be the Bad Guy, anything we do in war and peace is morally defensible, far above and beyond mere torture.

So…torture is not really torture, and even if it is, the ends justify the means anyway so who cares–We’re America! and we F**ckin Torture. If it helps protect our sacrosanct way of life, it must be defensible. When we do it it must be legitimate–despite all the historical and contemporary evidence and experience to the contrary.

You see, we’re exceptional, so Manzi and others must re-invent the wheel lest they come to terms with the moral horror of what has transpired in our name.

I don’t want to rehash what has been written above, most of which I agree with, but I think it’s worth pointing out that Manzi assumes that torture is an extension of war simply because they are both violent and may involve the same perpetrators. The goals of war and torture, however, are very different, and are often used for completely different ends.

The strategic goal of war is to break the will or the ability of the enemy to fight. Once the enemy decides not to fight anymore, or cannot fight anymore (e.g., due to lack of weapons, fuel, or food), that goal has been accomplished. Once a soldier has been captured, he lacks the ability to fight for his cause, and is no longer treated as a combatant (because he is no longer very likely to injure or kill you).

The immediate goal of torture is to break the will of the subject, to cause him to say or do whatever the torturer wants — to enslave him.

In U.S. history, prior to the Bush Administration, no political leaders ever believed that torture was an advisable or desirable adjunct to the prosecution of war. Communist states, on the other hand, have often found torture advisable regardless of whether a war was being fought or not.

A further distinction can be drawn in that armed forces heavily depend on accurate information — the truth — in prosecuting a war. Obtaining the truth, on the other hand, never seems to be much of a goal for torturers (viz, various inquisitions). For instance, it seems likely the goal of torture by the CIA was to obtain evidence of links between Al Qaeda and Iraq, regardless of whether there were any actual links.

Rather, the main political goal of torture seems to be to inflict suffering and humiliation on the person tortured and, by extension, the group (nation, political affiliation, religion) they represent, and to emphasize the dominance of the torturer and the group they represent. The Chinese and Vietnamese tortured American soldiers not because they believed that anyone would believe that any confession of guilt was freely obtained, but to degrade those soldiers and, by extension, the U.S., and to show the world that they had the power to force those soldiers to say whatever they wanted. And I believe the goal of Cheney and the other supporters of torture in this country was to similarly degrade those in their control, many of whom seem to have been simply guilty of being Arab or Afghani in the wrong place and time.

Thanks to the advocates of torture, or those who would throw up their hands at the prospect of even arguing against torture, let alone seeking to see it punished, we are now the barbarians.

If it were simply a matter of military casualties, I would probably not be struggling, especially if both sides were volunteer forces. I realize, too, that “torture vs. war” is largely about The Law, and the implications for a nation that disregards it as a foundational principle; and that torture is forbidden under long-standing laws and treaties, whereas (some) warfare is not.

But laws, and “just war theory,” arise out of morality. And my moral sense is just as outraged over civilian deaths as it is over torture, which leads me, in order to be consistent, towards pacifism because no war, just or otherwise, is capable of avoiding the deaths of innocents.

I don’t like going there because I am generally not an absolutist.

And then, this thought occurs to me: What if, for every civilian death caused by a country’s military, that country was legally obligated to surrender an innocent civilian life of its own? Is that a meaningful rubric for “just war”?

The implications of that fascinate me.

Maher Arar was mistaken for a terrorist with the same name and shuttled off to a black site to be tortured for months. He kept telling them who he was and providing details to back up his claims but no one acted on them until he had been interrogated for months without result. Then they found that, indeed, he was who he said he was and had no connection to terrorism. Did they apologize and send him home? No. They kept him in a cell for another month while they covered their butts and ended up dropping him, blindfolfed and broke, in the back woods of Albania and left him to find his own way home.

AFAIK, the memos–the ’smoking guns’ in this situation–deal with a few specific individuals. They don’t cover the other reported incidents you refer to. I could be wrong, and if so, please correct me.

Yes, I agree with your point about government’s fallibility, and that is another practical reason to shun the practice.