The Party of Torture

I saw this for sale at a conservative t-shirts website. I'm not necessarily one to say that torture is a subject about which we shouldn't joke. Torture-related satire and other forms of torture humor are, I think, a clear way of coming to grips with the horror of what our government have become. It's a difficult subject to contemplate, and express a view on, without resorting to humor on some level.

But that of course isn't what's happening here. Instead we see conservatives deciding to embrace torture as constitutive of conservative identity. If you're a conservative, you like torture. If you're against torture, you're not a conservative.

Comments

I assume that you intentionally forgot to add the last senetence: And that is not necessarily a bad thing.

Posted by gregor | July 12, 2008 1:46 PM

So, you've put the Che T-shirt on E-Bay?

Posted by tao9 | July 12, 2008 1:48 PM

I doubt if that website also sells "I'd rather be waterboarded" t-shirts.

Posted by Duncan Kinder | July 12, 2008 1:51 PM

Note, too, that the conservatism identity being constructed here is not one which merely embraces torture as sometimes-necessary evil. Torture is this conservatism's idea of a good time.

Posted by Ryan | July 12, 2008 1:52 PM

If you're a conservative NKVD operative, you like torture. If you're against torture, you're not a conservative NKVD operative.

Fixed for accuracy.

What? What's that you say? You're shitting me, right?

Posted by calipygian | July 12, 2008 1:59 PM

Hmmm, I'm not sure about the tone of this particular site, but it seems this is a bit of an over-generalization.

I am an unaplogetic liberal on most things, but have respect for some conservative ideas (like, uhm, bettering yourself without making excuses).

And I don't think Wingnut sites don't speak for all conservatives. I'm not sure the folks you are talking about could even be called conservatives anymore. Just ask Andrew. It's as if we a more varied nomenclature for right-leaning factions: GOP, Right Wing, Conservatives, evangelicals.

It's really not fair to call all of them conservatives as if it were a slur, anymore than it is fair to use liberal as code for pinko commie .

As an example you touched upon, I suspect there was a time when a politician expecting more from the American People (and not the government) was quite a conservative idea. Now, expecting people to be bi or, heaven forbid, even tri-lingual in a global economy is now elitist, out of touch, radical liberal, America-hating....basically, uhm...French.

Posted by reversed | July 12, 2008 1:59 PM

reversed, conservatism, as it actually exists in this country, is what you see running the GOP, in the pages of the Weekly Standard and NRO, and on the radio from Rush Limbaugh.

Now, that makes some folks who consider themselves conservatives sad-- ie, the folks at the American Conservative-- but that's the lay of the land in America today.

And conservatives like torture.

(Also, "bettering yourself without making excuses" is neither liberal nor conservative. It's a a statement of personal outlook, not public policy, and is neither here nor there in this conversation.)

Posted by Elvis Elvisberg | July 12, 2008 2:12 PM

I have respect for some conservative ideas too. But there is a penumbra of tolerance among actual conservatives for this sort of depraved death-eating, which extends beyond the isolated wackos and bubbles up among all sorts of mainstream figures. And the only weapon liberals have against it is the use of shame, shame targeted, not at the wackos (who surely don't give a shit what liberals think), but at their wink-wink fellow-travellers.

So, yes, using a broad brush is entirely appropriate in this case.

Posted by lampwick | July 12, 2008 2:13 PM

Great color scheme, too. Red below white, the color of blood dripping out of a corpse, painted on a death-black background.

Posted by lampwick | July 12, 2008 2:17 PM

Well, it all depends on who's being waterboarded for some of us, right? :-)

Posted by Swan | July 12, 2008 2:19 PM

That website has a whole lot of paeans to Reagan and a lot of anti-Commie slogans, and the only living conservative mentioned anywhere is… Fred Thompson.

and besides guns and border control, it seems that torture is the Only issue they're loud and proud about.

talk about an intellectually bankrupt movement

Posted by Will | July 12, 2008 2:20 PM

You could still sell shirts like this to a few rednecks back in the '80s and '90s, but nowadays it seems like the public has taken a decided "polite" turn against it. Everyone wants to be the racist who is keeping it halfway in the closet instead of the racist who is wearing the shirt, it seems. I bet some companies market these shirts at the behest of someone else, just to annoy and frazzle liberals, rather than in the realistic expectation that they're going to sell a lot of them.

Well, it all depends on who's being waterboarded for some of us, right? :-)

Like what if you're an East German and you just caught a bunch of Stasi guys streaming out of a defunct Stasi office after the fall of the wall? Waterboard that sucker! A lot of those people weren't brought to justice because of a plodding justice system, destroyed communist records, and statutes of limitations. When the normal justice system can't catch the real perp but a private individual can, sometimes street justice is the only real justice!

Posted by Swan | July 12, 2008 2:26 PM

And the only weapon liberals have against it is the use of shame,

This is pathetic and ridiculous.

It's also tripe. Liberalism is filled with hate-filled hypocrites who do no hesitate to destroy those who contest their agenda.

But these "I'd rather be waterboarding" characters should be dealt with firmly.

Posted by McGruff | July 12, 2008 2:31 PM

I suppose at some level this is still meant as a joke, and not meant to suggest that conservatives actually *enjoy* waterboarding.

But still: If a conservative saw a T-shirt that said 'I'd rather be aborting babies', would they accept it as a joke or satire? I don't think many would. They'd call it a sign of liberal moral depravity. So I think it's fair to take a humorless reading of this.

Posted by Ryan | July 12, 2008 2:42 PM

Good Lord, when I saw that T-shirt on here, I honestly thought it was a liberal T-shirt that was a satire of the right wing - along the lines of the "Endless War/End This War" bumper stickers. Then I saw who was selling it. Now I'm not sure why I thought that. Ugh!

Posted by JDinBalt | July 12, 2008 2:49 PM

Instead we see conservatives deciding to embrace torture as constitutive of conservative identity. If you're a conservative, you like torture. If you're against torture, you're not a conservative.

Similarly, liberals embrace gay marriage. All liberals thus want to marry gays. All gays are liberal and all liberals are gay... *snore*

Matthew's the Atlantic's in-house leftist agit/prop machine. =)

Posted by MarkG | July 12, 2008 2:50 PM

What's interesting is that other regimes that have used torture have had the decency to deny it. I'm absolutly stunned that US conservatives have explicity embraced torture.

Torture was a weapon of the state in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, El Salvador, Guatemala, etc. While it would be expected that the leaders (Pinochet et. al.) would deny torture like the current US administration is doing, to my knowledge, the supporters of those regimes didn't actively justify or promote torture.

These regimes and their supporters sought official deniability. They recognized that, even if they did choose to torture, it was something that was in itself morally evil but that, given the circumstances, they chose to perpetuate torture in secret rather than extoll its virtues. They knew that torture was an extremely effective weapon for instilling terror and fear into the entire population, and knew that they weren't doing it for any "ticking time bomb" scenario but simply because torturing someone to death and letting nightmare stories trickle into the population through whispers was a great weapon to squelch any opposition, real or imagined.

While I would clearly disagree that torture could ever be acceptable, much as I would disagree that killing a hundred thousand indigenous Guatemalans would ever be acceptable, I at least prefer the outright lying of those regimes to the "intellectuals" like Alan Dershowitz or John Yoo who seek to make torture philosophically or legally acceptable.

Uruguayan poet Benedetti: "Suicide doesn't redeem the torturer, but at least it's something"

Posted by kmg | July 12, 2008 2:51 PM

Judging by the numbers of pins you knocked down, that was a good roll, Matt.

Posted by Tom in Ma | July 12, 2008 2:54 PM

Jesus loves torture.
EOS.

Posted by John McCain: More of the Same | July 12, 2008 3:00 PM

Just change "conservative" to "Republican" in your post and then we won't have to listen to all of this whining from the nation of "conservative" whiners out there.

Posted by jim | July 12, 2008 3:06 PM

At this point we need to understand the dire need to crush the Republicans at the ballot box this year, or else we risk legitimizing torture and a host of other far right failed policies for a generation.

Posted by cm | July 12, 2008 3:19 PM

But asshole fucktards like Mr. Mixner claim that waterboarding isn't torture.

Posted by SLC | July 12, 2008 3:21 PM

I am very much anti-torture, but I still find the shirt funny. I don't think I'm the only one. Just a form of dark humor I suppose. But I don't think that makes me a death-eater.

Posted by labolibert | July 12, 2008 3:23 PM

reversed writes: "It's really not fair to call all of them conservatives as if it were a slur, anymore than it is fair to use liberal as code for pinko commie ."

Fair? Who gives a flying fuck about fair at this point? I want these maggots to suffer. Payback time! I want conservatives to be jumping out of windows on the morning after Election Day. I want Obama to appoint judges who will make the heads of the Scalia/Thomas ilk EXPLODE. I want Dumbya Bush's name to go down in history as a synonym for "fascist asshole."

The Bushpigs turned this country into a sewer as Repiglicans cheered and conservatives ignored everything but their bulging pocketbooks. Then when it all started to go sour some of them decided Dumbya wasn't "one of them" after all. This after almost a decade of juggling his balls on their tongues. (See Peggy Noonan for a perfect example of this.)

Conservatives had better get used to the flavor of shit, because they're going to be eating a lot of it in days and years to come.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | July 12, 2008 3:25 PM

The pet name Glenn Beck gives his conservative listeners is "sick freaks," which is an FCC-friendly form of sick fucks.

On this--and pretty much only this--Beck and I are in perfect agreement. Most hard-core conservatives at this point are sick fucks.

Posted by jlw | July 12, 2008 3:38 PM

I was bowled over when James Dobson embraced torture as a bedrock conservative value in the WSJ a few months ago. Hating gays, screwing over poor people, and destroying the planet, sure, but it honestly kind of shocked me that the Christian right would so openly endorse actual torture.

Posted by EarBucket | July 12, 2008 4:02 PM

jlw writes: "Most hard-core conservatives at this point are sick fucks."

Yup. And most of them beat their wives and molest their children and pets, too. Except for the women, who go to dogfights and beat up homeless people and spread gonorrhea on purpose instead.

I guess once they became sick fucks they didn't know when to stop.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | July 12, 2008 4:02 PM

Similarly, liberals embrace gay marriage. All liberals thus want to marry gays. All gays are liberal and all liberals are gay... *snore*

Matthew's the Atlantic's in-house leftist agit/prop machine. =)

Ummm, that analogy only works if Matt, having seen that shirt, had said 'conservatives embrace torture. All conservatives thus want to be torturers. All torturers are conservatives and all conservatives are torturers.'

Saying you support something does not imply you wish to partake of such.

That's not even an Al-caliber level of hackery.

Posted by really? | July 12, 2008 4:08 PM

EarBucket,

I'm against torture as a method of interrogation, primarily because I think that in the long term, it's impossible to have a legal system based on torture without attracting sadists to the job- the Charles Graniers, Gabor Peters and Nikolai Yezhovs. It appears to be impossible to torture (on a societal level) without rancor and bloodlust, which makes torture an inherently evil thing. That said, there is a long tradition of Christian thought that disagrees with me. In the long tradition going back to St. Augustine, coercion and physical suffering, and even death, are not the ultimate evils that too many secular liberals think of themsleves as.

While I'm opposed to torture, for example, I don't necessarily have a problem with some developing countries incorporating (mild) corporal punishment into their judicial system, as the Left-wing government of Bolivia has recently done, as a punishment for crime. Interrogative torture is another thing entirely.

Posted by Hector | July 12, 2008 4:22 PM

Hector writes: "It appears to be impossible to torture (on a societal level) without rancor and bloodlust, which makes torture an inherently evil thing. That said, there is a long tradition of Christian thought that disagrees with me. In the long tradition going back to St. Augustine, coercion and physical suffering, and even death, are not the ultimate evils that too many secular liberals think of themsleves as."

This is because Christianity views all human beings as garbage, anyway - fully deserving of eternal torture and pain. Ducking witches or burning them at the stake wasn't seen as intrinsically evil.

Fortunately most modern secular human beings (and even some Christians) disavow this sort of reptile-mind bullshit. Mark Twain is 1000 times the moral teacher that Augustine was.

"While I'm opposed to torture, for example, I don't necessarily have a problem with some developing countries incorporating (mild) corporal punishment into their judicial system, as the Left-wing government of Bolivia has recently done, as a punishment for crime."

It always starts out "mild," and then somebody gets hurt, and eventually... well, you get the drill. I think you may be more than a little crazy, Hector.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | July 12, 2008 4:35 PM

I'm not sure I see how mild corporal punishment for crimes is significantly more cruel than the monstrous penal system we currently have in place.

Posted by John | July 12, 2008 4:42 PM

I'd rather be waterboarding Bush.

Posted by Roddy McCorley | July 12, 2008 4:43 PM

I am an unaplogetic liberal on most things, but have respect for some conservative ideas (like, uhm, bettering yourself without making excuses).
So, it's not a liberal idea to better yourself without making excuses? What does that even mean?

Similarly, liberals embrace gay marriage. All liberals thus want to marry gays. All gays are liberal and all liberals are gay... *snore*
Congratulations on having made one of the least logical statements I've read all day! Did you even read Matt's post?

Republicans seem to know nothing outside of branding. If their team does something, they rush to make it acceptable to the public at large simply by incorporating it into their brand. No matter how disgusting it is. After doing so, they then say that promoting torture is their way of being "fair and balanced" rather than "right or wrong". Then they complain about liberals being "moral relativists". If it weren't so incredibly sad, it would be hilarious.

Posted by slag | July 12, 2008 4:46 PM

Moe,

In case it was unclear, I oppose torture for purposes of interrogation, at least in the United States today. One could legitimately question however whether the country that nearly obliterated the Vietnamese countryside and killed half a million Filipinos and innumerable Native Americans and Black Americans, is that much more civilized than our predecessors.

Posted by Hector | July 12, 2008 5:13 PM

Torture is this conservatism's idea of a good time.

Keep in mind what the conservative identity is all about: male status anxiety and fear of lost masculinity. As with the cheerleading for the Iraq war, support for torture is the means by which one deals with male menopause. It makes them feel like they have a larger penis than all the people doing the hard work to stop torture.

Posted by Tyro | July 12, 2008 5:29 PM

Democracy! Whiskey! Sexy! Torture!

Posted by Chris M | July 12, 2008 6:07 PM

"Liberalism is filled with hate-filled hypocrites who do no hesitate to destroy those who contest their agenda."

Yes, no matter how many houses of congress, lawless presidents, judges, CEOs, and media blowhards are on their side, conservatives are always lonely, blameless, heroic victims. And American Christians, that tiny powerless minority, face constant persecution.

Posted by Ken C. | July 12, 2008 6:37 PM

John says: "I'm not sure I see how mild corporal punishment for crimes is significantly more cruel than the monstrous penal system we currently have in place."

True enough. I suspect a lot of people would prefer a "mild" beating to a stretch in prison. Our prisons are an absolute disgrace.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | July 12, 2008 8:02 PM

And conservatives like torture.

No, they like defeating enemy. Liberals like advancing enemy rights.

Leftists see the enemy as innocent until proven guilty in a civilian court of law back in the USA. And all enemy should have the right to the 1st, protection against soldiers doing house searches, the right to the 5th if caught.

The other day, the remains of two mutilated soldiers were found. A reminder this enemy takes no prisoners and engages in brutal, real torture as opposed to a few dozen unauthorized beatings the US did over 4 years time that personnel are being prosecuted for, and the 3 authorized water boardings that saved thousands of lives at Heathrow and in Singapore.

Just as the Filipinos beating the Boijinko plot out of Ramzi Yousef saved 12 trans-Pacific jets from being bombed out of the sky.

I have no problem with hard interrogation of enemy that follow no laws of war themselves and extend no Geneva reciprocity - if it saves lives of Americans.
I would also have no problem if American authorities determined that since Islamoids take no prisoners except to mutilate and kill them later- that Geneva was breached and it would be lawful to grant no Quarter. And order that dispatch of wounded or surrendering enemy was at the discretion of the chain of command since Geneva Recipricity requirements were in the breach...

Which is just what we did in Korea when we found out that the NORKs and Chicoms were taking no prisoners - and we stopped when China said in meetings that they would stop their and the NORKs "no prisoner" policy. We tried and failed with the Japs to get them to show more mercy to captured allies. which led to payback the Japs understood. And when Hitler went ballistic late in the war and threatened to execute allied POW aircrews as war criminals, Churchill stopped it by telling diplomats to tell their Nazi counterparts that not only would be start executing Nazi aircrew POWs, he had plenty of rope to start on the million German POWs he got in N Africa.

Posted by chris ford | July 12, 2008 8:58 PM

not that i expected anything better from chris ford, but could we ask for a better demonstration of matthew's point? as bugs bunny would say, what a maroooooon.

Posted by howard | July 12, 2008 9:10 PM

Well, Chris is the kind of Ku Klux Klan member who likes to burn "niggers" to death after gouging out their testicles, so what can you expect from him?

I, on the other hand, believe in quickly and efficiently dispatching assholes like him with a .45 hollow point in the right quarter of the forehead - the police sniper's target - so he drops like a stone with no nervous system twitch.

That can still be messy, however, so it's better to poison people like that with something quick.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | July 12, 2008 9:23 PM

"In case it was unclear, I oppose torture for purposes of interrogation, at least in the United States today."

More qualifiers, please.

Posted by too many steves | July 12, 2008 10:13 PM

I'm watching "Judgment at Nuremberg" right now, the great 1961 flick with Spencer Tracy and Burt Lancaster and Maximilian Schell, among others.

It's sad to realize that no such movie could ever be made about the Iraq War, because the US was the aggressive party in that war and also the one employing (and led by) the war criminals.

Fuck the Bushpigs and all who sail with them.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | July 12, 2008 11:14 PM

As is often the case, I agree with Mr. Ford more than I disagree on the issue of prisoner's rights when dealing with unlawful combatants -- the ununiformed terrorists in "Allah's Army." Those types gleefully intermingle with civilians in order to draw fire on the civilians.

If future US policy treats these bastards as lawful combatants, military policy in the field should be altered such that they will be shot on sight when caught in arms. Under curfew during riotous uprisings, exactly the same standard applies under martial law.

Torture is pretty clear: anything beyond what is taught and endured in SERE training is torture (or sadistic degradation) and must be banned. Otherwise, the use of true torture (SERE training falling below that threshold) risks producing false confessions or misinformation from prisoners, so it should be very, very restricted in interrogation practice.

Posted by MarkG | July 12, 2008 11:52 PM

in Harry Potter's universe, these people were called Death Eaters

Posted by cleek | July 13, 2008 12:33 AM

MarkG just outed himself as an animal. A rabid, worthless animal whose existence threatens the United States of America.

SERE training isn't torture because it is done by your friends. It is done knowing that these people will not intentionally kill you. SERE training simulates torture but falls short because you know this is merely a training exercise.

When done on someone without the ability to tell you to stop it is torture. Anyone who says differently is unfit to hold elective office, unfit to vote, and unfit even to participate in polite society.

By the way, without intending to do so, MarkG has condemned waterboarding and other SERE trained methods as torture. Why? Because it goes beyond the SERE training he mentions - far beyond because, as I mentioned, the victim of such torture is unable to halt the process when said victim has had enough.

Worse, scumbags like MarkG act as if this torture was only done to the "ununiformed terrorists in 'Allah's Army.'" We know for a fact that at least one in three of the victims in Cuba are there without any evidence that they are "ununiformed terrorists in 'Allah's Army.'"

It is a sign of just how debased our discourse has become when a sick fuck like MarkG exclaims his agreement with a gonzo racist in supporting the torture of innocents and none of us are surprised.

Posted by Circus Freak | July 13, 2008 1:00 AM

Hack seems to be getting even more bizarre as his ostracism for being a convict guilty of felonies continues.

Now he feels so alienated he relates more to Islamoid terrorists than Americans.
Lately he has begun deranged threats against other posters and the blog host, MY, who the social leper sent a pile of creepy, threatening, and downright wierd e-mails to. Hack may love Muslim terrorists as "change agents" justified in ripping the evil America a new one, but he would make a pretty rotten sniper in service of the enemy, since the .45 is not a sniper's round, but a close-quartes bullet that drops like a rock with distance.

Well, Chris is the kind of Ku Klux Klan member who likes to burn "niggers" to death after gouging out their testicles

No, no, Hack! That is what Jesse Jackson wants to do to Obama!

a .45 hollow point in the right quarter of the forehead - the police sniper's target

so it's better to poison people like that with something quick

Not to worry with Richard Steven Hack. He is losing it enough in recent months that he is bound to slip up and threaten some Fed Official, someone local - then the cops get to hear about it and happily foist Hack off on the Feds again for another bout of "Anal Sex Fanatics Gone Wild!!" at Club Fed.

Posted by chris ford | July 13, 2008 1:13 AM

"happily foist Hack off on the Feds again for another bout of "Anal Sex Fanatics Gone Wild!!" at Club Fed."

You were masturbating as you wrote that, weren't you, you racist piece of shit?

Posted by brewmn | July 13, 2008 2:46 AM

A weak post not up to Atlantic blogger standards. The header references Party and the text makes an unsupport assertion about conservatives. So the Party, Republican one assumes, and conservatives are the same? They 'like' torture. And you know this on the basis of a t-shirt ad on a website? You can make a compelling case that he current Bush/Cheney regime embraces torture but not from this evidence and the rest is thin gruel.

Posted by cwb | July 13, 2008 7:34 AM

Too Many Steves,

What do you expect me to say? That the deliberate infliction of pain or death on another human being is always wrong? Sorry, no. I'm not a Buddhist, nor a Quaker.

My beliefs about the legitimacy of physical coercion or punishment are in line with those of St. Augustine, who suggested that coercion can be legitimate if it has both the good of the victim and of any relevant third parties at heart. This leads me both to support (in some cases) corporal and capital punishment for punitive purposes, and to oppose them for interrogative or exemplary purposes. Interrogative torture isn't the same as corporal punishment because the victim hasn't been convicted of any crime, and because it is conducted solely for getting something out of the victim rather than for the purpose of his own correction. Also of course mild corporal punishment does not typically risk serious injury or death, unlike something like waterboarding.

By the way, Moe, in that other thread you said that the IRA would have been within their rights to assassinate Maggie Thatcher for her crimes against the Catholics of Ulster. Not that I want to defend that nasty b---h, but if you believe that death can be an appropriate retribution for political crimes, then surely you must also accept that corporal punishment (which is of lesser gravity than death) can be an appropriate retribution for common crimes.

Posted by Hector | July 13, 2008 12:02 PM

I think you're missing the fundamental principal that drive modern conservative politics, one that trumps all other considerations (e.g. tax rates, 2nd Amendment, etc...).

That principal is to *always* do or say that which would have the greatest tendency to piss off Jane Fonda. All else is secondary.

Hereafter known as the "FU Jane School of Conservatism"

Posted by ibc | July 13, 2008 12:41 PM

Hector - Interrogative torture isn't the same as corporal punishment because the victim hasn't been convicted of any crime, and because it is conducted solely for getting something out of the victim rather than for the purpose of his own correction.

Rolls eyes at the attempt to justify mild physical punishment of enemy combat "for his own correction", the notion of enemy as "victims", the notion that it is wrong to "get something from a lethal Jihadi for your side's benefot" without a proper conviction in a court for a crime.

Whoops, so anyone attempting to attempting to administer terminal corporal punishment by CNS shutdown or exsanguination by passing a high velocity object through said Islamoid head-chopper without a criminal conviction is wrong?? Even when it is to permanently correct behavior like shooting AK-47s, planting IEDs, chopping off villagers heads.
Wrong by St Augustine's teachings?

My beliefs about the legitimacy of physical coercion or punishment are in line with those of St. Augustine, who suggested that coercion can be legitimate if it has both the good of the victim and of any relevant third parties at heart.

ST Augustine would be flipping in his grave at such numbnuts theory. You confuse "victim" with terrorist, you confuse terrorist with his civilian victims. You confuse warfare by armed men as crime. You may wish to revisit and struggle to understand the concept of Just War, which Augustine invented, and which of course has been eradicated along with all the Christians from the land St Augustine was born in - present day Algeria.

Also of course mild corporal punishment does not typically risk serious injury or death, unlike something like waterboarding.

I hate to break it to you, Hector, but war is all about the supreme effort to put your enemy, who is not usually criminal, at grave risk of serious injury or death without any criminal conviction first.

Posted by Chris Ford | July 13, 2008 12:42 PM

Circus Freak writes: "It is a sign of just how debased our discourse has become when a sick fuck like MarkG exclaims his agreement with a gonzo racist in supporting the torture of innocents and none of us are surprised."

Well put, and very true. True filth like MarkG and chris ford are more of a danger to the US than Al Qaeda is.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | July 13, 2008 12:49 PM

Hector writes: "By the way, Moe, in that other thread you said that the IRA would have been within their rights to assassinate Maggie Thatcher for her crimes against the Catholics of Ulster. Not that I want to defend that nasty b---h, but if you believe that death can be an appropriate retribution for political crimes, then surely you must also accept that corporal punishment (which is of lesser gravity than death) can be an appropriate retribution for common crimes."

This doesn't follow, Hector. I was distinguishing between ordinary citizens and combatants under what amounts to wartime conditions. I would also say that if the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto had been able to assassinate Hitler somehow while they were being walled off that they were justified.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | July 13, 2008 12:55 PM

Chris Ford,

Um, I'm _defending_ corporal punishment against the liberals in this thread, in case you didn't noticed. Torture is something else entirely. I believe there is an important moral distinction between whipping as a _punishment_ of those _convicted_ of a crime and whipping as an _interrogatory tool_ of those _accused_ of a crime. This is an important and relevant distinction made by many moralists including a great number in the Christian tradition. See here for a survey of the view of Augustine and other Christian moralists on punitive and interrogative torture.

http://www.rtforum.org/lt/lt119.html

By the way, to be morally licit an action has to be justifiable _in principle_ and _by nature_, not just in terms of the good that you seek to attain by it.

I'm not sure what Islamist atrocities and the persecution of Christians in Algeria has to do with this, unless you're arguing that the only way to fight the Islamic Jihad is for us to become as barbaric as our enemies.

Posted by Hector | July 13, 2008 1:48 PM

Let's be clear here. It is definitely not true that "If you are a conservative, you like torture." Nor that being a Republican means you are in favor of torture, for that matter.

What is true is "If you are a Bush (Cheney?) fan, you like torture." Not the same thing at all. Any true conservative will tell you that Bush (in all his policies, not just on torture) is nothing like a conservative.

Posted by wj | July 13, 2008 2:45 PM

wj writes: "Any true conservative will tell you that Bush (in all his policies, not just on torture) is nothing like a conservative."

Yes, but that's just because they're conservatives and so have an infinite capacity for lying to themselves. Dumbya was the darling of the conservative movement up until the point where it became clear that his presidency was a disaster of historical proportions. That's when the "conservatism never fails!" horseshit kicked in and a few conservatives started to deny he was one of them... and then a few more, and then a few more.

But he's still relatively popular among Repiglicans, because they suck.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | July 13, 2008 4:03 PM

Any true conservative will tell you that Bush (in all his policies, not just on torture) is nothing like a conservative.

Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot weren't really Communists, either.

Posted by rea | July 13, 2008 6:56 PM

Me threaten a Fed? Oh, no, that's more along the lines of ranting nutcase Ford. I've said repeatedly here that sooner or later he's going to shoot a cop who gives him a ticket, or his wife, or some neighbor. He's the classic out of control ranting nutcase who ends up in the papers. Typical Ku Klux Klan.

Me, I'm the "quiet type" that ends up in the papers. But I've "been there, done that, got the T-shirt". Ford has the sheet and the white hood.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | July 13, 2008 7:16 PM

RSHack writes: "Ford has the sheet and the white hood."

And even when he's wearing them the other fuckheads in his klaven can spot him easily, because he's the one who always reeks of piss.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | July 13, 2008 9:04 PM

“I'm not sure what Islamist atrocities and the persecution of Christians in Algeria has to do with this, unless you're arguing that the only way to fight the Islamic Jihad is for us to become as barbaric as our enemies.”

Yes Hector, that’s basically what he’s arguing. That’s actually the underling point of just about every post he does here. “You’ve got to fight fire with fire and all that”. A perfect example of the moral bankruptcy of certain segments of conservative thought today. And he backs this view up with historical points that are more often than not absolutely nonsensical.

When you say that you are willing to torture in order to save American lives, what you are really saying is that you’re willing to torture in order to possibly save American lives. Because of course the real world does not operate like some ‘24’-style fantasy. Put aside the very real fact that sizable numbers of those we have detained (and tortured) are completely innocent. Even those who are guilty of something, even guilty of concrete connections to terrorist entities, may not have access to any information that could save a single American life.

And it is an objective fact that torture only produces reliable information when the person being torture not only (A) knows something but (B) you know he knows something and (C) the “something” is a specific piece of information. This is he tired, old “ticking tome bomb scenario, a scenario that doesn’t really prove itself in the real word. Anything less than this and you can never be sure if the one being tortured is just making stuff up in order to stop the torture. This is pretty much what happened with Al-Libbi and his supposed info about Saddam’s phantom connections with A.Q.

So basically, at this point, the logic de-evolves into something even more perverse. You aren’t torturing to save American lives or even torturing to possibly save American lives. You are torturing just on the off chance that you might get a piece of information that might one day somehow save a life in someway. There is only slightly difference between such motivations and the motivations of the torturers in Stalinist Russia. (There torture was mainly a way to CYA; to show you’ve done everything you can to protect Mother Russia. This is opposed to speaking the truth, that the country’s intelligence failures largely steamed from Stalin’s habit of having anyone too talent killed or exiled before they could pose a threat to him.)

The morality has been completely wrung out of the thought process. There is no downside, if innocent people get tortured and murdered, who cares? There is no cost, only benefit. Brutality against innocents doesn’t factor in and after all, can a Muslim really be innocent anyway?

Anything that might help safeguard America is not only smart, it’s justified. It’s not American lives vs. Terrorists. It’s American lives vs. Non-American lives. And only American lives count. That’s a legitimate, if not psychotic view. I think the rest of the world might have a reaction to that. And as 1945 was a long time ago and as the rest of the world as long ceased to be in ruins, I think we might take notice of their reaction.

Posted by Raindog | July 14, 2008 12:51 PM

Holy war crimes Batman! What a lovely pageant of rationalizations and disingenuous bullshit from a bunch of crypto-fascist sleazeballs. No wonder "conservatism" is so popular these days. Keep on winning hearts and minds people. And if that doesn't work out, get a hood, some electrical wire, and someone who can really point at genitalia.

Posted by Arch Stanton | July 14, 2008 3:39 PM

The conservatives who write to defend issues like this do themselves no favors, but instead reveal clearly their utter amorality, inhumanity, complete lack of soul, contempt for law, undisguised racism, total misunderstanding, ignorance (or apathy) towards the religion they claim to live by and also show us all how people with really little bitty dicks act.

Posted by opeluboy | July 14, 2008 5:59 PM

And it is an objective fact that torture only produces reliable information when the person being torture not only (A) knows something but (B) you know he knows something and (C) the “something” is a specific piece of information.

(B) is nonsense and (A) and (C) are trivial. Obviously, a prisoner can only provide you with information he actually has knowledge of, and it has to be "specific" information to be useful. So what?

This is he tired, old “ticking tome bomb scenario, a scenario that doesn’t really prove itself in the real word.

"Doesn't really prove itself." What's that supposed to mean? If you're claiming the ticking time bomb scenario simply could not happen, you're going to have to produce an argument to support that claim. The claim is absurd on its face.

You aren’t torturing to save American lives or even torturing to possibly save American lives.

On the contrary, in the ticking time bomb scenario that's exactly what you're doing.

Posted by Mixner | July 14, 2008 6:21 PM

Except in the minds of the exceptionally stupid, there is no ticking time bomb scenario.

Posted by Not as stupid as Mixner | July 15, 2008 1:56 AM

The Aztecs and other American civilizations like them were economically BASED on torture, the Holocaust constituted a German economic system based on torture. The inquizition was an economic system based on torture Torture is not only embraced by civilizations, it becomes the central piller of the economy. In every one of these cases and in tens of thousands of otheres it is ALWAYS preceeded by TOTAL ECONOMIC RUIN!!!!!, the Aztecs were so weakened by their sadistic tendencies they were conqored by a few Spainards, the Germans were conqoured, the European economy suffered totasl coplapse and famin thanks to the inquisition. When a society embraces torture it is inevitably a sign that it is WEAK and about to COLAPSE, Weakest of all are the individuals whos sadism finds political justification, these individuals are pathetically lost.

Posted by bill wesley | July 17, 2008 12:44 PM

In both Islam and Christianity God himself tortures his enimies in an eternal torture chamber prepaired by him called hell, the Devil does not rule hell, he is its chief victim. If God himself feels compelled to use torture why can't we? Both religions depict horrendouse holocasts as holy, so its no surprise to me our history is a history of blood. Think of it, no mortal can torture forever, the victim eventually dies, but God is depicted as NEVER growing tired of inflicting suffering. No sin is immortal, so why is the punishment immortal? To my way of thinking this portrays God as INFINITLY unjust, and as infinitly cruel,but then we are told this is a God of love and we are his children. Well in the anchient world it may have been OK for a father to torture disobedient children to death, sacrifice them, or sell them in to slavery (the bible condones this) but today I find it hard to justify. We constitute such a twisted population who confuse hate with love and mercy with cruelty. The inquisitores said "we do this because we love you, we are saving your immortal soul at the expense of your mearly mortal body, the Natzis said "we do this because we love Germany, we are saving its immortal soul at the expense of its mearly mortal infrastructure, the Aztecs said "we sacrifice you because the Gods admire you and we bless you by sending you to them. Americas ETHICS are what made us STRONG, our abandonment of ethics means our empire is dying. It is commo0n decency which makes a nation strong and it is common srelfishness whicn brings it down every time.

Posted by bill | July 17, 2008 1:17 PM