politburo diktat 2.0

Bill from INDC wrote:

And through much of modern history, in countries considered civilized, including Western nations in world war II, non-uniformed personnel were summarily executed as spies.

Posted 29 May 2007 at 10:15 pm ¶

R.L.Page wrote:

So, Bill, shall I take it that you consider torture to be a progressive trend ?

Posted 29 May 2007 at 10:47 pm ¶

Bill from INDC wrote:

Oh, and further clarifying the historical comparison: civilized countries executed fighters sans uniform when the Geneva conventions were in full effect.

By such a relevant comparison in era, we’d be sending all wounding insurgents to the “Euphrates Hospital,” instead of giving them brain surgery, as one insurgent was in Fallujah.

This is not to say that humane treatment overall balances out unrelated dehumanizing policies, rather to point out that non-contextual nazi comparisons are … non-contextual. I mean the British weren’t nazis, right?

Posted 29 May 2007 at 11:42 pm ¶

Alon Levy wrote:

As for the treatment of non-uniformed fighters, comparisons to conventional wars are inappropriate. If the US enters a shooting war with China, and a Chinese agent is caught in the US out of uniform, there will be little protest with executing him. But due to the nature of guerrilla warfare, the side fighting conventionally must assume the other side is always out of uniform.

Instead, the appropriate comparison is then to previous anti-insurgent campaigns, such as the Malayan Emergency, and Peru’s campaign against Shining Path. When the Peruvian government caught the leader of Shining Path, it threw him in prison for life. Only recently there was a story about his and his (also imprisoned) second-in-command’s plans to marry; when they do, they’ll even be entitled to conjugal visits.

Posted 29 May 2007 at 11:50 pm ¶

Bill from INDC wrote:

Uncivil? Not at all. Indeed, it was a model of civil, but pointed disagreement.

Phew!

Posted 30 May 2007 at 12:04 am ¶

DavidC wrote:

I would only like to say that doing a ‘bad’ thing for a ‘good’ reason does not make the ‘bad thing’ a ‘good thing.’

But it may be necessary or useful. Bad things are done for good reasons all the time, and are widely accepted. For example, the government forcibly extracts money from its citizens through taxation in order to fund government for the greater good of all. Numerous safety and other regulations restrict personal freedom, but for good reasons.

And if you do physical harm to a man who is unable to defend himself, you are a coward.

This is laughable. I guess in your world all armored vehicle crews who wipe out infantry with no anti-armor weapons must be cowards. Pilots who drop bombs on units who have no way to attack them back are cowards, etc. War is about capitalizing on advantages, not about fair fights. Catching the enemy in a situation where they are effectively helpless is a good thing.

Making sweeping statements such as yours merely devalues the meaning of the word coward, much like defining every unpleasant interrogation tactic as torture renders the word torture meaningless.

Posted 30 May 2007 at 8:06 am ¶

Bill from INDC wrote:

Here’s what’s ironic:

Alon Levy says (with contradictory intent):

As for the treatment of non-uniformed fighters, comparisons to conventional wars are inappropriate.

And I generally agree, which was the point of my mention of the British et al shooting non-uniformed officers. It diminished the original Nazi comparison of the post. Context is everything.

Which also makes RL Page’s comment …

Bill, be here now.

.. ironic, because that was my point as well. As for this …

And if you do physical harm to a man who is unable to defend himself, you are a coward.

… no disagreement, within established bounds of what constitutes physical harm to someone unable to defend himself.

A laser guided bomb dropping on an insurgent house meets these general qualifications.

As for this …

I would only like to say that doing a ‘bad’ thing for a ‘good’ reason does not make the ‘bad thing’ a ‘good thing.’

… so vague as to be lose meaning. We kill people with incendiary munitions for plenty of good reasons, for example. DavidC expands on this point.

As for the Commissar’s request for cites, etc., I’ll do some research. But I’ll stress that I’m not so much arguing in favor of waterboarding, etc, than I am against the assumption that many of the EIT constitute torture. The NYT article, while relevant, was frustrating in how vague it was.

Without an outlined, specific framework for what we define as acceptable and unacceptable, both this debate (on both sides) and the anti-torture legislation - are so darn lacking in detail, that I’ve seen.

Posted 30 May 2007 at 10:33 am ¶

DavidC wrote:

Can you guys cite some actual experts who favor torture, EIT, ‘tough’ techniques, etc.?

Here’s a few excerpts from an interesting BBC article interviewing professional torturers link

torture has been a common tactic for interrogation, and its former practitioners say it was one of the most effective.

For example:

During Algeria’s fight for independence in the 1950s, French Resistance fighter Paul Aussaresses felt it was his duty to inflict electric shocks on Arab nationalists.

Like many former torturers, he still believes it is the most effective way to gather intelligence in a so called “ticking bomb” case. He claims to have stopped Algerian bomb makers from killing French civilians by extracting confessions though electric shocks and suffocation with a water saturated towel. They were methods he’d adapted from the Nazis.

And

many who’ve practised torture say … Torture, they say, is the fastest and most reliable means of forcing prisoners to divulge information.

And

Gideon Nieuwoudt, one of South Africa’s most notorious torturers, used a range of techniques on his ANC victims and retains a philosophical perspective.

“It’s like a piano: you make use of the black notes and the white notes to make a sweet melody,” he says.

He has no doubt the beatings he inflicted on detainees forced them to talk: “The people will never give you anything without torture, that I can assure you.”

And from another South African torturer:

“There are all these movies about Rambo and stuff where they put electricity on his bodies and he’s not talking. That’s bullshit. There is no-one in the world; I haven’t yet seen one guy that don’t talk. I can take anyone on and make them talk, that’s no problem.”

As usual, the main question is, what kind of information are they getting? How much is simply the terrified prisoner telling the torturer what he wants to hear to make the pain stop? But there is nothing to say they aren’t getting real information either. It depends on the individual circumstances and what they are looking for. Some information can be confirmed by other means.

Posted 30 May 2007 at 2:52 pm ¶