In their efforts to undermine the war against Islamist terrorism, the Left is convincing more people that we torture the enemy.
How do they do this despite our constant denials? By defining harsh measures as torture:
The left has succeeded, through a relentless media campaign (is there any other kind?) in obscuring this distinction. According to the latest criteria, torture is anything unpleasant that occurs to a prisoner while in American custody. (Overseas it's different. It's very, very difficult -- almost impossible, in fact -- for any developing or left-of-center regime to commit torture, no matter what they do to their prisoners. Unless, as in the rendition uproar, the U.S. is somehow involved.)
This campaign had its start with Abu Ghraib. According to the media narrative, the prisoners abused were "tortured". In truth, they suffered no such thing -- they were humiliated, which is something completely different. The backwoods types overseeing them did exactly what backwoods types will do when under inadequate supervision. (The commanding officer, Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, was said never to have set foot in the actual prison). This might well have progressed to something resembling actual torture over time, as they grew bored and sought more excitement. But they were discovered before that could happen.
Quite right. What happened at Abu Ghraib was wrong. But it was not torture. It was not even violent. And we punished the guilty.
But if naked prisoner pyramids were torture, slapping some jihadi and turning up the air conditioning is surely ultra torture or something.
We should not torture except in extraordinary circumstances. I've long argued that routine torture of random people swept up in order to fish for information is not effective. Completely innocent people will confess to killing Trotsky to stop the pain and will finger imaginary cell members who helped. But given the stakes of the war and the desire of our enemies to kill us in large numbers, I cannot rule out torture in all cases if we have a specific individual who we are pretty sure has information we have to get in order to save thousands or even millions of lives. Torture will work on someone who knows something but isn't talking.
In the vast majority of cases that fall short of that atomic bomb scenario, I have no problem with being mean with our enemies that we capture in order to get them to talk.
I just wish we were having a torture debate. We are not. We are having a debate over whether we can fight our enemies--about whether we must treat stone cold killers like house guests.
