No beating around the Bush
At last some straight talking about the “special relationship” from George W Bush. He has told The Times it doesn’t matter what people in England think of him now, and it didn’t matter then, when he was President. His interview contains a typically blunt defence of torture (although he doesn’t regard waterboarding as torture) as having saved British lives, preventing attacks on Heathrow airport and Canary Wharf.
Who knows whether that is true? Perhaps it doesn’t matter. Because President Bush (for that is the title he keeps until he dies) has revealed his article of faith that what we regard as torture works : it is the basic dilemma you might hear around any table, at any bar or even television studio. If you know you can prevent an attack can you justify torture? If you can justify the pre-emptive killing of a suicide bomber, and few people would oppose that, then why not his/her torture? Coming the day after that moving testimony at the 7/7 Inquest when we saw Daniel Biddle, who had his legs blown off, and lost one eye and his spleen in the Edgware Road bomb the dilemma is all the more acute. If you could prevent Daniel’s suffering by waterboarding the man who detonated the bomb and killed himself in any case would you?
UPDATE : Well here’s how one other 7/7 survivor – Rachel North - feels about the issue
Some people, if twitter is anything to go by, think the proposition above is an almost irresponsible one to throw out there again. Obviously, I profoundly disagree. Apart from the fact that the point of this blog is in part to challenge and make anyone reading it think about and test their beliefs what do you think has happened to the people who conducted what Britain defines as torture for the United States? Or to the British agents who visited Guantanamo (and possibly other CIA sites around the world) when suspects were being held and questioned? Or to the people who absolutely supported the actions and arguments of the Bush/Rumsfeld/Cheney ideology?
They haven’t gone away, or changed their minds just because Barack Obama is in the White House. George Bush’s fascinating interview with James Harding in The Times makes that abundantly clear. And what the Tea Party movement tells us is that there is every chance the believers could be back in power within years. In any case there are plenty of other regimes with whom we routinely deal and share intelligence who still use at least questionable and at worst appalling methods.
Whether Saudi Arabia, or Pakistan there are lots of human rights questions organisations like Amnesty would like to pose. Even a democracy like India with liberal traditions is often accused of human rights violations in places like Kashmir (which they, like the others, deny). But the argument used to justify torture will always endure because somewhere somebody like George Bush will believe it works. And their own sense of humanity will not be enough to stop them giving it a try because like George Bush they will believe they are serving a greater good. That’s why we should always keep testing what we really think about it as individuals.
There are 22 comments on this post
Surely there’s enough evidence by now to indicate that torture is ineffectual. People will say anything under duress in order to make it stop – including as many lies as it takes to make the pain/discomfort go away.
I make no comment on waterboarding as like President Bush, I’m not a lawyer either. But the evidence says that if you aim for information under this sort of duress you’re as likely to get false information as actual facts. The ethical question needn’t bother anyone – in practical terms it’s a dodgy method.
Why waterboard a terrorist? If there’s evidence he/she is planning an attack, then arrest, charge and ultimately try them based on that evidence.
From what I understand, waterboarding is used to get information out of suspected terrorists. And I understand that information is almost completely useless – unusable in a court, and often so factually incorrect as to not be worth acting on.
To return to the question you pose:
“If you could prevent Daniel’s suffering by waterboarding the man who detonated the bomb and killed himself in any case would you?”
If I am able to waterboard this man, then clearly I have already arrested and detained him, which neutralises the threat from him. So why waterboard him?
Because he might be able to give you information about other plans or people. I’m not saying it’s justified or right, but I would have thought that was fairly obvious.
Would I?
No I wouldn’t.
Not because I don’t care about the victims.
Not because I care about the perpetrators.
It’s because I care about the people who are falsely accused and have no way out.
It’s because I think the practice itself is evil.
It’s because performing, accepting, or otherwise allowing evil acts makes one responsible FOR the evil act.
If you could prevent the deaths of millions by drowning Hitler at birth would you?
So, who’s going to say no?
I’m surprised to see C4 news using such crude emotional crow-bars.
Well there is nothing subtle or finessed about either torture or terrorism. You have to go to the sharp end of the argument to test it – if that’s means an emotional crowbar then so be it.
Obviously there is nothing subtle about torture, but seeing that it is the gross manifestation of a mechanism seemingly subtle and unapparent at first, driving such behavior is the beginning of unlocking the underpinning fulcrum that organizes and perpetuates the vicious cycle of gross reactionary and defensive violent behavior, separating and alienating us from one another and thereby further perpetuating suffering – for what else is suffering ultimately than separation?
What we need is more refined understanding not more crowbars.
In a systemic approach the perspective is holistic. It would be nice to see C4 take a more enlightened approach and help viewers by investigating root causes not the interplay and justifications of one side over another that is ego and politics…
thank you
p.s. I trust c4 is not engaging in censorship but a post of mine earlier has still not appeared?
I’m sure C4 doesn’t now also censor
No censorship – just a question of when the replies were read and cleared
But it’s a false dilemma – where two alternative statements are held to be the only possible options, when in reality there are more options.
I’m now equally surprised that C4 News, in taking on the argument between these two extremes, argues that that we haveto choose between them.
“If you could prevent the deaths of millions by drowning Hitler at birth would you?”
How would you KNOW what Hitler would become, at the time of his birth? Many sane, decent people could not see what he was, as late as 1935.
That is indeed what I was driving at… It’s a fallacy anyway – a false dilemma, as I pointed out later ^^^
Yes, the Jack Bauer of 24 dilemma… *sigh*
Its convenient to reduce these arguments to ‘us’ vs ‘them’
Is Bush is peace-loving, freedom-loving humanitarian?
What I’ve come to see is that the mind can justify anything – yes, anything. So, pre-emptive strikes are now also ok because they were about to get us.
Where and when do we take responsibility for our part?
Has the USA and for that matter Britain ever asked itself what effect its foreign policy in the middle-east has not to speak of the wider World?
Yes, violence begets violence and that is what 9/11 and 7/7 mirrors back to us, and we need to acknowledge ours and stop simply calling others terrorists.
So, how to break the cycle of violence and retribution? guantanomo, water-boarding?
Perhaps we should all start with Honesty.
It really wasn’t that long ago and Tony Blair actually said: ” Saddam Hussain is a stabilizing influence in the middle east…”
Bush is not about protecting citizens but protecting self-vested interests like any other corporate entity and we see that that is working less and less on our planet.
In the mid 80′s a song by Sting made a deep impression that stuck with me: “the russians love their children too” – yes, remember when the evil one’s were the russians?! lol
Maybe what will protect ALL Human Beings, and not just some (with firepower and money) is when we realize that we are all part of one human race, living on one planet with finite resources. Could the way forward be to speak less and listen more? Could we utilize our power to create – to create efficient, common sense, sustaining win-win solutions – not to destroy, divide, conquer?
True leadership is about following and serving the people. Anything less is abuse of power and bullying tactic. Bush appears to be a smug unimaginative bully at that.
We have evolved now to a point where it only works if it works for everyone and everything; fairtrade is just one example of the feeling that we can only be truly ok if everyone else is ok too. Hence we frown upon clothes made in sweatshops etc… We need a politics that reflects that. Such a politic wouldn’t be politics…
‘If you know you can prevent an attack can you justify torture?’
Straw man. Torture doesn’t work and is immoral. In case you didn’t get it the first time – TORTURE DOESN’T WORK so the rest of the OP is emotive rubbish.
President Bush says in one sentence that he felt sick when he found out the intelligence on Irag was wrong.
He then goes onto say that water boarding “saved” the UK?
How do we know it saved the UK? If the intelligence on Iraq was wrong then maybe his intelligence on water boarding saving the UK was wrong. I assume it was the same intelligence organization(s) with the same people in place who generated both reports.
Ok – let’s go to the sharp end. If snowboarding a suspected terrorist so you could learn about his & his accomplices’ plans would prevent you/your family/your loved ones being killed in a terrorist attack, would you condone it or not? I suspect many of us are content to make easy moral judgements from a position of safety and comfort. the chances of us being caught up ina terrorist attack are minimal, so we don’t need to ask ourselves the question I posed at the beginning. I don’t consider torture to be good & the end certainly doesn’t always justifies the means. But I can conceive of some ends that justify questionable means. The problem is the people who take such decisions have, to my mind, often questionable morality & fail to distinguish routine form seriously important ends.
The problems are the mistakes. The innocent who don’t know anything and are tortured, then perhaps make false assertions to stop the suffering.
As Chris says there is no benefit to waterboarding him/her or is there? This ficticious man might have far more information which needs to be extracted.
I abhor torture though and always have.As a child I couldn’t bare to read history books about forms of torture or go into dungeons in castles. The barbarism to me is just so alien…. but there again all types of violence to me is abhorrent, including the emotional and psychological . I have been called soft and need to harden up, but quite frankly , why should I perpetuate this mindset?
To look at events in retrospect doesn’t account for perceptions at a particular time , with current evidence which needs to be acted upon..as in the Iraq war. Difficult decisions need to be open and discussed.Opening up arguments and evidence often lays arguments and agressive plans flat.
If a relative is dying, but could be saved by a kidney is it then okay to go out and harvest from involuntary people. Is it okay to go out and torture someone that knows about a man that left a pub to drive home with too many in them, where the odds are (in comparison with risks due to terrorism) that the drunk driver will kill someone innocent. Is it okay to torture someone because a terrorist has kidnapped someone you care for and will kill them if you do not act? Is it okay to do murder, abuse, cheat, or do anything you want to to save a life? No.
You have to live life on a case by case basis. So hear is a final counter-case; would you water-board a police officer to find out the contact number necessary to save John Charles de Menezes?
There are some things that we should never do, because they don’t work, because they are all about feeding the human face behind every hollywood monster (both supernatural and super-insane). Torture doesn’t work, something that the UK supposedly recognises and, shamefully, this realisation came from experience, from finding out that at best torturing someone will only confirm what you already know or at worst lead to innocent people admitting to anything you want and the murders/bombers laughing their asses off and carrying-on regardless.
so you are sitting hands bound in a room with a couple of seriously beefy dudes staring in your direction. they ask you to tell them all you know or else.
you make the choice to tell them all you know, thinking that will stop the “or else” from happening. you breathe a sigh of relief as you finally finish telling them all you know.
then they torture you to check that you told them the truth.
or beause they simply enjoy their job ugh!!
Bush has admitted he gave the go ahead to torture people so lets have him up in court on charges. I know if I had done it I would be in prison by now.
For those who defend torture, let us hope that they never have the cheek to critize those states where it is reportedly practised on a regular basis.
If it becomes good enough for us, then we must automatically accept that it is perfectly acceptable in any country, under any regime, when the leaders of that country see a threat. Mouthing off nonsense that we would be doing it for the ‘right’ reasons, and they for the ‘wrong’ ones is abusing our position and the moral high-ground we claim.
George bush defending waterboarding is a joke after world war two the amercians hanged japenese soildiers for the same crime.and if george bush was about then it seams to me. he would have been shouting the loudest for there death. as for saving lives by getting information about upcoming terrorist threats that maybe true but the hypocrisy of it all futhers the extremists cause and will surley cause more attacks and more deaths in long wrong the message from george bush was do as we say not as we do. you learn as a child to rebel against that kind of hypocrisy makes it easier for exremists terriosts to recruit mad bombers who believe theyre fighting a noble cause.if the japenese soilders were crimnals then so is george bush and should be punished not by hanging. but maybe the 15years hard labour the other japenese soldiers got for waterboarding would be fair.ps japenese soldiers had bigger bombs to be worring about than the amercians have. considering there big bombs killed 105,000 civillians and problay double that in cats and dogs for all you animal lovers.