Testicles

Our country is spinning out of control -- morally, that is. Hitting the skids. Going down the tubes. Going to hell. Rotting. I can't find the right language. But it's bad, folks. Really bad. These are dark times. I'm not exaggerating for the sake of a blog.

Yesterday, John Yoo and David Addington, the nation's architects for torture, were given several chances, testifying in front of the House Judiciary Committee, to condemn the very idea of torturing the children of detainees as a way of extracting information.

In several public fora heretofore, Yoo has insisted that no law -- neither domestic nor international -- prevents the president from authorizing the crushing of a child's testicles or the raping of an infant as a way of exerting pressure upon a terrorist suspect.

On December 1, 2005, Yoo notoriously contended in a public debate that the legality of crushing a child's testicles "depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that." Yesterday John Conyers tried to ask Yoo point-blank about that claim in that 2005 debate, namely whether Yoo still believes "that the President can order that a suspect's child be tortured in gruesome fashion."

Yoo's hemming and hawing around the question -- and his inability or refusal to say simply no, no, no -- spoke volumes. Addington evaded the question by telling committee members to consult their own in-house lawyers about such "legal opinions" and then refused to talk further about torture because "al Qaeda may watch C-SPAN."

Yoo and Addington could have answered the question forthrightly and then clarified that they were presenting extremely narrow legal reasoning and then quickly qualified that they personally and professionally considered child-torture a moral abomination, beyond the pale of any hypothetical national security scenario. But they did not.

Which leads us to wonder: To what horrific practices, exactly, did their legal-clearance give the green light? How far were they willing to go to encourage and to protect CIA field-operatives? What "enhanced interrogation practices" did they expressly forbid when the Bush administration authorized extraordinary (look-the-other-way) rendition to secret prisons in rogue countries?

What were the moral limits, if any, to their national security calculations? When they met dozens of times in the White House from 2002-2003 to discuss acceptable torture methods, did Cheney, Ashcroft, Powell, Rumsfeld, Tenet, and Rice take child-torture (or the threat thereof) off the table? It's a simple yes or no question: Did the United States of America permit (or fail to proscribe) child-torture in any way?

Philosophy professors, in introductory ethics classes, easily dispense with utilitarian logic as a stand-alone means of assessing the propriety of social practice. Sure, strapping infant babies to front car bumpers would drastically reduce the number of overall automobile fatalities, but we as a people just wouldn't subject infant babies to that risk and to that indignity, even if the expected benefits far outweighed the costs.

Torture advocates justify their cruel position through a perverse utilitarian calculus: If there is (i.e., might be) a ticking time bomb, extracting information through violent measures is acceptable because it prevents the possible destruction of many more lives. Yet if you start to think that way, the logic is slippery, escalating, and limitless: If it is okay to torture a detainee, then what's the big deal with torturing his child, if it achieves the same national security end? Why stop at one child? Why not level an entire village? And so on.

René Girard has called this violently spiraling kind of thinking "mimetic rivalry." It becomes a vicious race to the bottom with your enemy. In attempting to prevent a calamity, in matching wits with your despicable opponent, you suspend or abandon certain restraining principles, and in the process, you yourself become a moral monster. But at that point you can't simply blame the enemy for what you've become.

David Addington may be right that al Qaeda watches him on C-SPAN. What he fails to realize is that they are gleefully laughing at him. And us.

Comments

[jds0000]

Your dislike of utilitarianism when it comes to torture does not seem consistent with your other beliefs. You're arguing that it impermissible to do something immoral for the "greater good." But that argument is wrong, because even if utilitarianism isn't the only measure of policy, it can not be rejected entirely.

Take taxation. Stealing is wrong. But when the government holds a figurative gun to the collective heads of its citizens and demands money for the "greater good," you don't seem to take issue.

Take the criminal justice system. It would be immoral if someone were to lock you in his basement. Should it be impermissible for the law to imprison you if you commit a crime?

Take war itself. How many drafted soldiers were killed in WWII for the greater good? In the Civil War? How many young men were killed after being forced against their will to fight in the Continental Army against the British in the Revolutionary War? Perhaps Rwandan lives would have been saved if the US had intervened during the genocide, but in order to do so we would have undoubtedly shot militiamen who were forced into their task. Is all war impermissible, then, because in order to fight a war one must do terrible things for a cause?

If you're going to reject "utilitarian calculus" when it suits your beliefs, you should be prepared to take that road all the way.

[Geoffreys]

Let try to summarize your argument as I followed it: If one does not take issue with taxation or condemn every war that ever happened ever ever ever, then one must not condemn torturing a child in front of their parents. Did I get that right?

[jds0000]

Actually you got it wrong. I have nothing against condemning torture, and Seery's right to do so, and I also have nothing against arresting people, taxing people, or going to war. He gets it wrong when he says that one can never use the "greater good" as an excuse to do something immoral. It wasn't me, but Seery, who declared that utilitarian logic can be easily dismissed, and he didn't specify that this iron law was true "only for torture, not anything else." I believe that taxes, criminal justice, and war can be used to make the world a better place, and I fully support them (no blank checks, of course). But the same anti-utilitarian argument that Seery uses against torture can easily be used against all three. So, to me, that's a sign that the argument needs a bit more nuance than Seery has provided.

In a nutshell:

If you oppose torture, you should come up with a better or more thoughtful argument (there are plenty) than that "utilitarian calculus doesn't work," because, in many cases, utilitarian calculus works perfectly well.

-JDS

[flanardiente]

One man steals a loaf of bread and some lunchmeat. Another man steals a lot of money from a bank. The bank robber usually does harder time than the shoplifter. The ability to discern the difference between these two similar but radically different acts is the basis of morality. Mr jdsooo apparently lacks this ability. Or maybe he's a sophomore studying philosophy at some underfunded community college and has suddenly had a flash that "killing a guy in a war's no different from, you know, just murdering a man in his own house! I mean, it's same thing, right? Wow!" I hope he's the latter, because he might even grow up someday. In the meantime, he shouldn't interrupt when the grown ups are talking.

[MsLiz]

Jinks, you owe me a coke. I thought "sophomore" also.

[jds0000]

Sorry Flan, you misunderstood my argument (I wrote it fast and, in retrospect, I can see that it was poorly worded, because it sounds like I'm advocating something I'm not).

Seery, I'm sure, opposes torture for many reasons, but the reason he advanced here was this:

If something serves a "greater good," but would be immoral in any other circumstance, it is immoral and indefensible, and will lead to a "slippery slope" of evil.

I argued that this was a bad reason to oppose torture, because the same logic applies equally well to taxes, war, and the criminal justice system. Obviously there's a difference between taxing someone and torturing a suspect's son. But the difference can not be derived from Seery's wholesale rejection of "utilitarian calculus." In fact, that calculus does a pretty decent job of explaining why taxes are okay and torture is not--taxes don't hurt people that much, and they do a lot of good, whereas torture hurts people a lot, and it doesn't do much good.

Lastly, a suggestion--if you're going to spend the majority of your comment on personal attacks, it might not be wise to close by commending yourself on your own maturity.

[Lemeritus]

Unless the bank robber's name is Mozilo, of course -- in which case, stealing a load of bread and lunchmeat will get you 100x the sentence of robbing a bank.

[iamaperson]

Republican politicians have lost any moral vestige and any sense of human decency to govern anyone let alone run for public office. Why? Because it is a Republican politician indeed a Republican president Bush who sought accepted the legal opinion of a Republican lawyer who declared that it is legal for and indeed that the president has the power to order the torture of anyone including children. In fact this lawyer John Yoo author of the torture memo said that it is ok to crush the testicles of children. And Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rove, Feith and Addington all signed up and agreed to it.

What sick mind would even consider torture of children? Indeed what sociopath or degenerate mind can even go so low as to consider a child's genitals as an object of torture? This type of thinking came from a Republican lawyer and what is reprehensible is that a Republican President Bush continues to use this as justification for torture conducted to people both foreign and American citizens.

Yes these immoral Republicans hare committed crimes against humanity and ought to be persecuted and sent to prison. Right now a vote for McCain is a vote to continue Bush's policy where its ok to torture anyone including children and in anyway including crushing their testicles.

[karela]

I would so much rather take my chances of being blown up than to live in a country that even contemplates the viability of torturing a child to save me.

[Lemeritus]

It seem to me, karela, that from your decision springs the very idea of "civilization". Well said.

[lovethesinner]

I thought the most revealing part of the testimony was when John Conyers asked Yoo if the President could bury a man alive to extract information.

Yoo was so busy maneuvering his testimony he didn't think about the fact that the torture, in that case, would be pointless since the method would render the subject DEAD.

Makes you wonder what the purpose of interrogation really is, in these circumstances.

Is it really just an excuse for imprisonment without a trial?

[nivek]

Any five minutes of the testimony given during the House Judiciary Committee, including Iowa Rep.Steve King R biting open the scars of September 11, 2001should be sufficient to convince a rational mind, what the Bush administration has done is criminal.

[ncwoodland]

I have long thought that David Addington, John Yoo, Carl Rove, Grover Norquist and so many others of their ilk are soulless droids, despicable people, led by the most despicable of all leaders. Dick Cheney brought these people in to counsel all the dolts put in charge of every department in our government, and we can see just what they have wrought. The end of this evil administration cannot come soon enough.

[slg]

You might also ask what kind of people vote for a Party that employs sociopaths to carry out its policies?

[mosh]

Or what kind of people would vote for a party would allow these programs to go unchecked, (i.e. the democrats)? Because that's who I voted for in the last election and look what they've done - worse than nothing. If they are not going to move to hold these criminals to account they have done worse than nothing - they are now complicit in their crimes.

None of us has the comfort of ignorance any more; we are all complicit from this day forward.

[westwind]

I don't have the ability to describe or explain people like Addington or Yoo. I watched some YouTube clips of their "testimony" yesterday, and simply couldn't believe the depths to which humans can sink. If I was a party to the kinds of depravity that they have been, and continued to defend it or deny it as they do, I think I would develop cancerous tumors that would leave me stone dead in six months. Addington and Yoo look to be in exceedingly robust health, corpulent even, and that just leaves me feeling even more mystified.

[mosh]

Why are you surprised - history is filled with barbarity of the ugliest kind - are you surprised because this is the United States of America and it can't happen here?

What is shocking in all of this is that Pelosi has unilaterally and prospectively pulled impeachment off the table and telegraphed to this administration and the world that they are above the rule of law. That's what's despicable. One can only conclude that Pelosi is complicit (what else can account for this gross dereliction of duty) and should be impeached herself.

The committee has held its hearings - this vulgarity is plastered all over YouTube - so now what? What will the committee do? The terrorists are laughing? I think not. The only people laughing are Bush and his cronies.

[Titonwan]

Good post Mosh. These criminals that have hijacked the whitehouse need severe punishment. Let it be a lesson to all that come forward.