Enhanced Interrogations Part I: The Torture Never Stops

In theory, I shouldn’t be of two minds about Obama’s recent announcement that he is leaving open the possibility of prosecuting members of the Bush Administration for various Constitutional violations in their prosecution of the “War on Terror”. I applaud the use of enhanced interrogations. Yet, I think a public airing—even a trial of the major players—would actually be good for the country in the long run, even given the obvious dangers of inevitable politicization. But that's for the next post.

In the meantime, I have no problem with the contents of any of the memos written that provided legal justifications for enhanced interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, stress positions, sleep deprivation, wallbanging, and various forms of cultural degradations.

First, the Geneva Conventions are at the very least outmoded, if not outright irrelevant. Most of their provisions (as most “war laws”) are/were written after the fact; e.g, poison gas was not outlawed DURING World War I, and all of Nuremberg’s hanging offenses were, technically, legally ex post facto. [It’s not as if that would have been used as a defense, and the Nazis in the dock didn’t try; they realized they were lucky that they weren’t simply lined up against a wall and summarily executed, as Churchill had suggested.]

Given an even grudging acceptance of the Conventions, however, I would hold strongly that its provisions would NEVER actually cover “enemy combatants”; as they don’t consider themselves bound by any rules other than Kill The Infidels And Win The Virgins, they ALWAYS present a clear and present danger.

(One could concomitantly argue that the terms “enemy” or “unlawful combatants” are oxymoronic, as terrorists practice something other than combat. First-degree Aggravated Murder. In theory, an analog to piracy would not be all that forced, if we would treat modern pirates like we used to: hanging them.)

I would also argue that the list of interrogation techniques covered in the released top-secret Bush-era memos fall short of ANY legal definition of torture. I would further argue that practitioners of terror could be legal “dead men walking”, e.g., for all intents and purposes, they should be considered to have been “summarily executed”, pace Churchill, and anything that happens to them afterward would be of no legal consequence, i.e., get your intel and then put a bullet in their heads.

One will ask the inevitable questions whether we are, as Obama warned against in his inaugural address, becoming engaged in the “false choice between our security and our ideals.” I would say that, like conservatives who have been carp about the “author’s intent” vis-à-vis the Constitution, human-rights leftists have been as “strict constructionist” about the Geneva Conventions, which, as I have said, are at best historically anachronistic.

There remains the possibility that we would begin to resemble mid-‘70’s Chile or Argentina. However, in theory, if we take terrorists at their word that they are commanded to Kill The Infidels And Win The Virgins, and they present the aforementioned clear and present danger(s), they have automatically forfeit their lives and rights (not necessarily in that order) with due process.

In Part II I will explain why I think the idea of trials are a) necessary and b) inevitable.