Christopher Hitchens once again shows physical courage far beyond mine.
Several folks have pointed to Hitchens’ recounting of his experience as a volunteer target for waterboarding. There is a lively discussion in the comments at Ann Althouse’s blog.
I have been a great fan of Hitchens ever since he turned tables on Sid Blumenthal. I even got all the way through Love, Poverty, and War, and though he still can’t quite shake his youthful infatuation with Trotsky and his opposition to the Viet Nam war, he is a man of formidable intellect and acuity. As far as I know, he is still the only journalist to visit all three members of the “Axis of Evil”.
Despite the selective publicizing of juicy quotes from this essay, it is a very nuanced piece of work. Like waterboarding itself, it appears to me that Hitchens lands in a gray area, somewhere between shaken and damaged. He’s willing to admit that there are worse things than waterboarding. And after a few minutes recovering from his first panic, he even volunteered for a second go. But as the title of the essay says, “Believe me, it’s torture”.
There are a number of ways to frame the dilemma that American torture represents. Some have advocated applying the strictures of the Geneva Convention to all detainees, that is, the questioning stops after “name, rank, and serial number” (which, in the case of Al Qaeda, boils down to “name”). At the other end of the spectrum, some contemplate the nuclear scenario, with imminent, massive, loss of life, ostensibly preventable by suitably harsh interrogation, and tell us they are willing to countenance even graver methods than waterboarding. Others counter that coerced information is unreliable. Still others point to the U.S. prosecution of war crimes against foreigners who used water torture in various forms against our soldiers, and claims that this makes our soldiers prosecutable under the same provisions.
My first observation is that it is probably deleterious to apply the Third Geneva Convention to all comers. The Convention is explicitly and thoughtfully constructed to provide incentives for contracting parties to adhere to certain standards of warfare, not just POW administration, such as the wearing of uniforms, the open carrying of arms, and general adherence to the laws of warfare laid out in the other conventions. Now, it should go without saying that Al Qaeda rejects such Western niceties. They are probably not swayed by incentives of application or suspension of the Geneva Convention in any case. But I think it is important to maintain the principle that those incentives represent, that the idealistic treatment of prisoners of war is a reward, and not an entitlement.
Personally, I have no trouble endorsing the position that folks who join Al Qaeda need to be brought around to the view that joining Al Qaeda was the worst mistake of their lives. The day that Al Qaeda renounces barbarism and attacks against civilians, I will reconsider.
Regarding the efficacy of torture, it strikes me that simple questioning over drinks or card games also has no guarantee of generating reliable intelligence. It could be argued that torture bypasses some of the rational calculation of the prisoner, and thus conceivably generates more reliable information than less severe methods. The opposite view is that the individual concerned for his life will invent information to please his captors. Ultimately I’m not convinced either way. Our soldiers will do what they think necessary. Sometimes it works.
I am less convinced of the argument of hypocrisy. The case of Yukio Asano, convicted in 1947 by a war crimes tribunal, is often cited by waterboarding opponents. Does Asano’s case really parallel those who interrogated Khalid Sheik Mohammed? Waterboarding interrogation was part of the indictment. In his case, he was interrogating soldiers who were clearly covered by the Geneva Convention, unlike KSM. Waterboarding was cited as part of a larger pattern of abuse, which included burning with cigarettes and beating with a club. One can invent scenarios in which we might forgive Asano his sadism, for example, if he believed his captives held secrets that would have prevented the incineration of hundreds of thousands of his fellow countrymen. But American attacks on Japanese civilians were not on trial in 1947. So one is still left with an uneasy feeling of inconsistency in matters too grave to be left to lawyers.
So how viable is the nuclear scenario? The essential weakness of this argument is its apparent strength — given the prospective death of millions, what behavior would not be allowed? Could we torture American civilians? Could we chop off fingers and toes? Grind up pets? Execute loved ones? I have to say that this reductio ad absurdum is problematic at best, even if it does surface the seriousness of the threat.
If you’ve read this far, you are probably getting the idea that there are no neat answers. But I have to thank Christopher Hitchens for once again throwing himself in harm’s way for the general good. Interestingly, his experiences echo the perils of Kari Byron, the bustiest Mythbuster, who underwent the “Chinese water torture” (not waterboarding) in the name of science. It didn’t end well, unless you enjoy seeing beautiful geeky redheads strapped to a table, crying. But that’s a post for another day.
[h/t Instapundit]