4 ms·

We generally try to uphold high moral standards even if they won't be reciprocated. Many of those conventions provide additional incentive of reciprocation, bu

We generally try to uphold high moral standards even if they won't be reciprocated. Many of those conventions provide additional incentive of reciprocation, but that's not the only relevant factor.

rayiner 12y ago
So you're saying we shouldn't engage in torture because it's "bad"? It's okay to blow these same people up in the battlefield, but god forbid we throw water on them and put them in a slightly cold room?
- mikeash 12y ago
  I'm much more comfortable with blowing up bad guys than with capturing them and subjecting them to a combined anal rape/feeding procedure. Does this surprise you? It shouldn't.
- reitanqild 12y ago
  Oh come on, be serious: Most of us would much rather prefer to be shot dead or blown up in a split second than being even slightly tortured and locked up indefinitely. If not it must be because we don't know what we are talking about.
  - waterlesscloud 12y ago
    I am extremely doubtful about your assertion that most people would rather be shot dead than locked up indefinitely. You're also making assumptions that people die instantly on the battlefield and in drone attacks. That's not the case. They can (and do) die in slow, lingering, painful ways in such cases.
    - reitanqild 12y ago
      I see. And I admit writing the wrong thing. My point is being locked up indefinitely and tortured again and again. Waiting for pain is also painful unless you are very mentally strong.
  - rayiner 12y ago
    Throwing water on someone and leaving them in a 59-degree room is worse than shooting them dead? Keeping someone awake until they hallucinate is worse than shooting them dead? Really? I can imagine torture that's worse than death. I don't think any of the things revealed in the article qualify. Which is precisely what I'm getting at. If you're not a pacifist and you think it's okay to kill people in war, I think you have to go to pretty tortured lengths to say that these enhanced interrogation techniques are unjustifiable in light of that. If you're a pacifist who doesn't think that killing is justifiable in the first place, that's a totally different thing.
    - reitanqild 12y ago
      Simulated drowning again and again over months and years and never being released (meaning it can happen again anytime) comes across as way worse than being shot dead to many of us, yes. Also, just being locked up with nothing to do can be painful in itself.
    - justin66 12y ago
      IIRC, Solzhenitsyn notes in one of the early volumes of The Gulag Archipelago that you can kill a guy by tossing him in a room and throwing cold water on him. I don't know what it is about hypothermia that doesn't seem serious until you experience it personally but that must be what's going on here. Reading Solzhenitsyn in the context of today's news might be worthwhile for people. If people can read all that, note the similarities between the NKVD's tactics and attitude toward the law and the CIA's, and walk away contentedly thinking to themselves "but our guys have good intentions and are a lot more selective!" we are hosed as a country.
    - 7952 12y ago
      What gives you the right to decide that for other people? Objectively having your genitals cut off is much less bad than dying. But I know plenty of men who would rather take a bullet than feel a knife sliding into them. The methods used by the CIA are exactly like this; and that is entirely by design. Why else would you do these things if not to cause massive psychological pain?
    - mikeash 12y ago
- lotharbot 12y ago
  the report included things significantly worse than the one you keep citing.
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  You're being disingenuous here. It's like the difference between a police officer shooting an armed criminal on the street (which may be a matter of necessity, though recent examples highlight just how problematic such a standard can be) and beating them up in jail when they're already in a custodial situation and thus present no threat to the public. It's true that is the scale of awful behavior, the CIA's program would rate something like 3 or 4 out of 10 - other regimes have engaged in things like pulling out people's fingernails, administering electric shocks, actually killing or raping family members rather than simply threatening to do so so, and worse - much worse. It's also true that atrocious actions by the US during the 'war on terror' are less bad than prior atrocities in previous conflicts like Vietnam or the Phillippine-American war of 1899-1902, a largely-forgotten conflict which would be considered genocidal by modern standards (and which is very much worth studying because it has so many similarities to the war on terror - gruesome murders by the rebels, widespread use of waterboarding by the US (then called the 'water cure'), subsequent political fallout and so on). But even when we look at these things from a purely utilitarian standpoint rather than an idealistic one, the fact is that it our ability to project soft power - that is, to promulgate our values internationally so as to further our interests - is severely impaired by our all-too-apparent willingness to abandon the standards we propound in the areas of human rights and so forth. I'm not too impressed by the authoritarian regime in Cuba, for example, but the fact that we have a mini-Gulag in Guantanamo Bay makes it impossible for the US to criticize that regime in any meaningful fashion - even when it does the same or worse, it can fall back on a Tu quoque argument, and while that's a logical fallacy it's nevertheless a very effective one. On a more serious level, it has severely blunted our ability (along with that of the UK and other coalition countries, albeit to a lesser extent) to put pressure on North Korea over that country's appalling human rights record. The basic problem for the US is this: we don't necessarily aspire to hegemony, but a de facto hegemony is the best guarantor of our long-term interests. We can't impose that by force, or want to, but we can get close by exercising soft economic and ideological power backed up with the availability of force against those who directly threaten our interests. At times the world is too messy and we'd like to take our ball and go home - let everyone else think what they like, the US land mass and economy is large enough for us to function as an autarky in an unconnected world. But the reality of a global technological world is that oceans no longer serve as impassable moats; disengagement and indifference to the emergence of other hegemonic powers would sooner or later result in disadvantage.

We generally try to uphold high moral standards even if they won't be reciprocated. Many of those conventions provide additional incentive of reciprocation, but that's not the only relevant factor.

rayiner 12y ago

So you're saying we shouldn't engage in torture because it's "bad"? It's okay to blow these same people up in the battlefield, but god forbid we throw water on them and put them in a slightly cold room?

mikeash 12y ago
I'm much more comfortable with blowing up bad guys than with capturing them and subjecting them to a combined anal rape/feeding procedure. Does this surprise you? It shouldn't.
reitanqild 12y ago
Oh come on, be serious: Most of us would much rather prefer to be shot dead or blown up in a split second than being even slightly tortured and locked up indefinitely. If not it must be because we don't know what we are talking about.
- waterlesscloud 12y ago
  I am extremely doubtful about your assertion that most people would rather be shot dead than locked up indefinitely. You're also making assumptions that people die instantly on the battlefield and in drone attacks. That's not the case. They can (and do) die in slow, lingering, painful ways in such cases.
  - reitanqild 12y ago
    I see. And I admit writing the wrong thing. My point is being locked up indefinitely and tortured again and again. Waiting for pain is also painful unless you are very mentally strong.
- rayiner 12y ago
  Throwing water on someone and leaving them in a 59-degree room is worse than shooting them dead? Keeping someone awake until they hallucinate is worse than shooting them dead? Really? I can imagine torture that's worse than death. I don't think any of the things revealed in the article qualify. Which is precisely what I'm getting at. If you're not a pacifist and you think it's okay to kill people in war, I think you have to go to pretty tortured lengths to say that these enhanced interrogation techniques are unjustifiable in light of that. If you're a pacifist who doesn't think that killing is justifiable in the first place, that's a totally different thing.
  - reitanqild 12y ago
    Simulated drowning again and again over months and years and never being released (meaning it can happen again anytime) comes across as way worse than being shot dead to many of us, yes. Also, just being locked up with nothing to do can be painful in itself.
  - justin66 12y ago
    IIRC, Solzhenitsyn notes in one of the early volumes of The Gulag Archipelago that you can kill a guy by tossing him in a room and throwing cold water on him. I don't know what it is about hypothermia that doesn't seem serious until you experience it personally but that must be what's going on here. Reading Solzhenitsyn in the context of today's news might be worthwhile for people. If people can read all that, note the similarities between the NKVD's tactics and attitude toward the law and the CIA's, and walk away contentedly thinking to themselves "but our guys have good intentions and are a lot more selective!" we are hosed as a country.
  - 7952 12y ago
    What gives you the right to decide that for other people? Objectively having your genitals cut off is much less bad than dying. But I know plenty of men who would rather take a bullet than feel a knife sliding into them. The methods used by the CIA are exactly like this; and that is entirely by design. Why else would you do these things if not to cause massive psychological pain?
  - mikeash 12y ago
lotharbot 12y ago
the report included things significantly worse than the one you keep citing.
anigbrowl 12y ago
You're being disingenuous here. It's like the difference between a police officer shooting an armed criminal on the street (which may be a matter of necessity, though recent examples highlight just how problematic such a standard can be) and beating them up in jail when they're already in a custodial situation and thus present no threat to the public. It's true that is the scale of awful behavior, the CIA's program would rate something like 3 or 4 out of 10 - other regimes have engaged in things like pulling out people's fingernails, administering electric shocks, actually killing or raping family members rather than simply threatening to do so so, and worse - much worse. It's also true that atrocious actions by the US during the 'war on terror' are less bad than prior atrocities in previous conflicts like Vietnam or the Phillippine-American war of 1899-1902, a largely-forgotten conflict which would be considered genocidal by modern standards (and which is very much worth studying because it has so many similarities to the war on terror - gruesome murders by the rebels, widespread use of waterboarding by the US (then called the 'water cure'), subsequent political fallout and so on). But even when we look at these things from a purely utilitarian standpoint rather than an idealistic one, the fact is that it our ability to project soft power - that is, to promulgate our values internationally so as to further our interests - is severely impaired by our all-too-apparent willingness to abandon the standards we propound in the areas of human rights and so forth. I'm not too impressed by the authoritarian regime in Cuba, for example, but the fact that we have a mini-Gulag in Guantanamo Bay makes it impossible for the US to criticize that regime in any meaningful fashion - even when it does the same or worse, it can fall back on a Tu quoque argument, and while that's a logical fallacy it's nevertheless a very effective one. On a more serious level, it has severely blunted our ability (along with that of the UK and other coalition countries, albeit to a lesser extent) to put pressure on North Korea over that country's appalling human rights record. The basic problem for the US is this: we don't necessarily aspire to hegemony, but a de facto hegemony is the best guarantor of our long-term interests. We can't impose that by force, or want to, but we can get close by exercising soft economic and ideological power backed up with the availability of force against those who directly threaten our interests. At times the world is too messy and we'd like to take our ball and go home - let everyone else think what they like, the US land mass and economy is large enough for us to function as an autarky in an unconnected world. But the reality of a global technological world is that oceans no longer serve as impassable moats; disengagement and indifference to the emergence of other hegemonic powers would sooner or later result in disadvantage.