Backing the baby up on torture

We've already gotten some letters from some very disgruntled readers re: Quentin Hardy's profile of Boalt professor and torture advocate John Yoo.

Okay, I didn't really mean to be that to be quite such a low blow -- and you all tell me if I'm way off base. But much as I'm perplexed by the fundamental argument that a little torture is the price everyone else pays for our freedom, I think the article does raise some really fascinating questions. I can't help but acknowledge that own lefty feelings about, say, gun control (namely that the term "right to bear arms" was born before automatic weapons were a twinkle in anyone's eye and is completely inappropriate in today's context) are not in principle so different from Yoo's -- that the Geneva Conventions were not written with an enemy like al-Qaeda in mind. And it would be pretty dense of me to not see that parallel.

And I also sit back and wonder about comparisons with Truman's decision to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the argument being that hundreds of thousands of lives were saved from a land war by forcing a quick end to the war in the Pacific. In effect that's Yoo's argument, that torture of a few will save more lives in the end. According to the article, Yoo believes that "violent interrogation...is far less violent than the killing of as many as 50,000 innocents in Iraq." (Is that a tip of the hat to political correctness? That he says innocents in Iraq?)

But when I get going thinking about torture, here's where my naive little brain gets stuck: How can one person deliberately cause pain -- extreme pain -- to another, no matter what the circumstances? And what sort of person does that? I find myself posing the question: If I had the choice between killing someone quickly and torturing them, which would I find easier to do? Killing quickly. Not that this is something I stay awake dreaming about, but all other things being equal (!), the idea of inflicting immense physical pain over on someone over the course of hours/days/weeks/years somehow bothers me more than the idea of killing them in five seconds. And that fundamental issue -- what in us, or in some people, is able to torture -- seems to me to be lost in the debate.

I found myself wondering the other night (with the utmost respect, really, I don't mean to pick on John Yoo): Would Yoo recant his beliefs if he were tortured? Could he himself inflict torture just because he believes it's an appropriate policy? Can only certain people be the bad guys, or can anyone in the right circumstances?

On that note, I leave you.

Fire away.

--Meghan aka "Pollyanna"

Comments

[Anthony St. John]

hedera, the fact is that the 16 to 25 year old Generation Next is already at grave risk for far too many reasons.

Generation Next must be skeptical of and question everything older generations tell them more than ever before because our education system has failed to educate enough of them properly, our government has failed to protect their future, science and religion have failed to protect humanity, older generations have consumed everything in sight leaving a legacy of lost opportunities and wasted resources that can never be replaced, and pollution of earth as documented in the Sep/Oct 2006 CALIFORNIA will give them an outrageously unacceptable quality of life.

If Generation Next doesn’t fight back aggressively today to take control of their own future, then their future is in grave jeopardy.

[hedera]

I learned an interesting thing about President Bush over the weekend. He was a star in one thing while he was at Yale: he was the strongest, most competitive player of Risk on the campus. Think about the game of Risk. Now think about the people running this country - the neoconservatives of the Project for a New American Century. These people are trying to play Risk with our lives.

There are two things wrong with the neocon point of view. One is that they believe hard power is all-important (Goekhan is right about that), and that America has more hard power than anybody and therefore SHOULD rule the world. They believe America SHOULD be "the world's policeman." The other is that they never admit they're wrong, and they never listen to anyone who disagrees with them, so they never have to confront conflicting evidence. If this sounds like some kind of mental disorder to you, you're right.

In 1650, Oliver Cromwell wrote to the synod of the Church of Scotland, saying, "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, consider it possible that you are mistaken." The Scottish Church declined, and so, unfortunately, do the neocons.

[Goekhan]

What amazes me most is the fact that a very important diplomacy tool is extremely overlooked by the Warmongers in Washinton. That is the undeniable and irresistable American softpower, which arguably enabled us to win the cold war against Warsaw Pact. A better employment of public affairs measures would have been much more instrumental than this ongoing chauvinistic display of manhood, that we have been taught to call Global War on Terrorism. US should have come up with wiser policies regarding the islamic world and should have paid more attention to the real needs of those peoples.
I am afraid Bush and his Co. created an athmosphere of hatred, which will continue to cause American lives.
Prof. Yoo is only an eloquent justifier of these low policies in my opinion. That he attributes some successes in combatting terrorism to torture and other harsh techniques is just funny, because we all sure know this level of success could have been reached without torturing many individuals, most of whom turned out to be innocent at the end and were released form Guantanamo silently.
Everybody needs a soulsearching regarding this topic. Try please to visualize that it is you sitting in a cell, tortured at will and worstly without even the smallest piece of information, why you are being kept in there.

[Anthony St. John '63]

Well stated posts hedera. Actually, the Bush administration is full of people who range from feckless and naïve (Bush obviously started out this way) to deranged (Cheney is obviously the Ventriloquist-in-Chief).

The saddest fact is that the root cause of America’s problems today is that far too many of our political, economic, social and education leaders are no longer willing to “mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor” as our founding fathers did.

American “leaders” from Washington to Berkeley have been recreating the same conditions that produced the Declaration of Independence: “Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury” even though “We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity.”

This explains the culture of the Powers That Be (PTB) in Washington and Berkeley that enable the likes of Yoo. They choose to ignore lessons learned from immigrants who came to America in the first place to get away from the PTBs in Europe who now appear to be role modes for Washington and Berkeley PTBs today.

[hedera]

I don't agree that the president has mental health problems; I think he's just stupid, and stubborn.

The issue with torture is its effect on the torturers. If we use the enemy's tools, we become the enemy.

The power junkies behind the Project for a New American Century believe that America should run the world; should establish an empire (which they, of course, are best suited to run). And you can't do that in a democracy; democracy is messy and inefficient. That's why they're trying to eliminate it. They can't have read any history: anyone with the smallest knowledge of the history of Rome knows this course is self-defeating.

It's perfectly true that there is a (growing) group of Islamic jihadists who hate us and all we stand for. The torture, and all the infringements of civil liberties, are supposed to help make us "safe" from these people. This is a complete delusion: there is no defense against a man who is willing to die in order to kill you. Furthermore, we're all going to die eventually: the probability of death is one. Is it worth betraying the principles that make this country different from the empires, from the dictatorships, to escape a fate that we will all meet eventually anyway? I'll end here with Benjamin Franklin: "They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security."

[cw]

What do government officials who are responsible for checks and balances do when their president is dysfunctional, has a mental health issue, clouding his ability to represent ALL citizens, the Constitution which he swore to protect and uphold; a leader who is a habitual pathological liar; a leader who goes against advice from professional military leaders on the ground who tell him his Vietnam strategy will not work; a leader who replaces all who disagree with him, military leaders who should know the path president chooses is illogical and US military is broken down and must be, should be pulled out of Afghanistan and Iraq.

If WE are still delusional about what the citizens of Afghanistan and Iraq want, trust this: they do not like US business privatization its not their way; they do not want US military bases, Starbucks, BurgerKings, Hertz and so on, on their soil; they will fight until the last child, woman, grandmother/father, man are dead, they are the indigenous people of their lands, their resources belong to ALL their people not private American, United Kingdom, German, or Japanese industries.

The real problem with Dr. Yoo theory is his belief power belongs to a single person, in this case an executive who may not be mentally capable of making a rational decision; a man who can not sit down to discuss issues. If you have not figured it out by now, Your leader has mental health problems, should not be in the office of the Presidency. Just an opinion from a citizen in a democratic free society if it still exist here in the United States.

[Richard Steinhardt]

Much of this misses the real legal issue with Yoo.
His radical doctrine has two prongs.

1. The President can unilaterally declare any situation a "War".

2. The President can then suspend the protections of the Consitution for American citizens.

If accepted this doctrine ends our system of government and the legal protections the founding fathers put in place for very good reasons.

I don't find Yoo's thinking scholarly or profound. It is not treason to suggest a simple legal route exists for an American President to become a dictator, but it is wrong to a degree that suggests Yoo has profoundly misunderstood our history and values.

[cw]

There is no justification for torture. Great logic, new type of terrorists.

Prehaps Dr Yoo should study US history in regards to the treatment of Native Americans, Africans and Mexicans Americans in this country who have been terrorized throughout American history; read Howard Zinn People History of United States. Perhaps Dr. Yoo should study the new US slavery system of torture, prisons.

I grew up in the forties Alabama I know who the terrorists truly are, then and today, they wear uniforms.

I am not threatened by Afghans or Iraqi people they have not harmed me nor has it been proven they have harmed US citizens.

Does Dr. Yoo think US CIA covert operations around the world since WWII or Truman's establishment of their organization are interviewing their targeted citizens.

WE do not know what happened 911 so please do not think all US citizens are soooo dumb believing in the 911 Commission Report. There was never an investigation of 911, read David Ray Griffin research. There has been a grand scale crime covered up by US government, military and those supporting Empire.

Is Dr. Yoo saying because indigenous citizens around the world are raising up to fight for their land, resources against US and UK aggressions, which is nothing more than same ole, same old imperialism formerly colonialism, terrorists or those who fight are different? No, they are the same people, indigenous people fighting to keep their land, resources.

Should indigenous people purchase uniforms to fight to keep their land? It would be nice so US military or those doing the slaughtering of indeginous people can be looked upon as a military unit rather than what they are civilians fighting to keep their land.

No justification for the Project for a New American Century action plan against humanity. Dr. Yoo has fully support this PNAC doctrine by his action.

He support the theories taught at the School of the Americas (now renamed) who use torture and murder against citizens, families, and the educated, indigenous populations.

[james marvel]

Torture in any form is immoral. John Yoo will pay for his sinful teaching in the afterlife.

[Gloria Law]

It's interesting to me that Prof. Yoo's face and arguments continue to turn up. Is the maligned struggling to convince others or just himself?

To use legal arguments and academic rhetoric just masks the simple truth.

No matter who the enemy is, if you succumb to atrocities you are no better than those you fight.

I recommend to you the story of the two pilots who chose to rescue Vietnamese women, childen and elderly during the My Lai massacre. War is a horrible thing and it is still possible to hold on to some semblance of humanity and morality.

[Tanya Burnett]

Understand this - the radical extreme islamic community in Iran and Iraq hate all Americans. They do not care if you are democrat or republican - to them you are an infadel, a heathen, a ungodly person. This is a war not a "police action", this is a war. Even before September 11, 2001 - they had declared Jihad - that is what this is. We need to stop acting like this has to do with politics...........it has to do with religious facists. This is my final answer - I agree with John Yoo's opinion.

[Denny Ah-Tye]

Torture is inhumane. To inflict physical pain to ellicit information is barbaric. It seems with all the medical science at our disposal regarding the functioning of the brain, there must be another means to trick the brain to release stored information - even if the person does not want to give it up.

Wasn't Timothy Leary in the 60's working on the effects of LSD on the brain at Stanford in conjunction with the military looking for a more effective replacement for Sodium Pentohal?

The full circle returns...

Denny Ah-Tye '70

[Dick Newick]

Torture.
I,m listening to John Mc Cain who has experienced torture, says it is wrong and does not produce the desired results. To have had good lawyer John Yoo misguiding President Bush on that subject is a sad outrage that will cost this country dearly.
Yoo's presence on the Bolt faculty does not enhance our university's stature.
Dick Newick '48

[Gary M]

Prof. Yoo seems very naive to believe the 911 "story"-- hook, line, and sinker, and then make policy on a false foundation. Has anyone even been charged yet in the anthrax affair either, no..because all leads go directly to the White House, (Valerie Phlame outing likewise).

[Zaheer Ali]

It is ironic that the son of immigrants from South Korea, people who fought to be free of secret detentions, torture, and authoritarian regimes would then advise the country the world looks to for leadership in freedom to engage in exactly those activities.

He is not worthy of even being spit upon.

[Anthony St. John '63]

What a lot of people don’t realize is that Professor Woo is just carrying on the Boalt Hall tradition of Earl Warren who participated in the exclusion, removal and internment of approximately 120,000 innocent American citizens of Japanese descent from 1942 through 1945. In 1988 President Ronald Reagan signed legislation characterizing Warren’s crimes against Americans as acts of “race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.”

Obviously we have another failure of political leadership today, and the war hysteria that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Yoo are promoting is being used to create and perpetuate supreme executive power of the Neocon presidency and autocracy by systematically attacking and reducing American civil liberties. Yoo is just taking the HUAC attacks against American civil liberties to the next level to undermine the "Constitution of the United States of America."

The "Declaration of Independence" must not have been on Yoo’s reading list, or that of another Yale graduate Bush for that matter, because they are recreating the conditions that existed on July 4, 1776 with a whole new version of King George v.21C. People should keep a copy on their desks for constant reference to historical parallels during the next two years of Bush-Cheney’s imperial presidency.

[Brad Sherman]

Torture is always wrong. It is immoral.

[Greg Keaton]

Aside from all the moral problems with the current torture policy, there are some very practical problems:

1) There is nothing to prevent innocent people from being tortured. Prisoners are presumed guilty until proven innocent, and are not given an opportunity to prove their innocence. This is the kind of tyranny that the Constitution was supposed to prevent.

2) We could get more information by treating all prisoners with respect. If the U.S. offered a humane, positive alternative to the Middle East bloodbath, then more people with information about terrorists would be willing to become informants. But this will only happen if people trust that they will not be mistreated while in American hands.

3) John Yoo's basic argument--that torture is o.k. because the ends justify the means--is at least as old as the Spanish Inquisition. As it turned out, sticking a red-hot poker up someone's rectum is not the best way to convince them to believe in an all-loving God. Similarly, subjecting people to "stress-positions" and other euphemestically named torture practices is not the best way to bring them around to a vision of freedom and human rights.

[Joseph Hubbard]

I think that those that are really confused are the Americans that believe that the Bush administration are to blame for the anti-American rhetoric. Some Americans today refuse to acknowledge that we are on top of the food chain. No matter how we try to appear politically correct there will always be those who try to take what we have. This country did not begin as an innocent discovery of land free for the taking. It was a manipulative and violent landgrab. Now that the country has evolved into a modern melting pot, some of us have forgotten that our nation has blood on its hands that have been washed away by time. Its easy to sit back and take the high road while there are still those who lost thousands of relatives during the early formation of the U.S.. I've read numerous elaborate writings that side-step justifying how Americans today have benefitted from this past. The answers always are rooted in the past and that is where we as a nation must look before judging the actions of any administration of the present and future. Many Americans have a very good and relatively secure life and this is the main catalyst for the eloquent 'cowardly' talk. Americans want the benefits of a ruthless and bloody past but don't want to continue fighting for it. They criticize any overt actions by the federal government to get tough with terrorist. In my opinion its because we are a melting pot of many cultures and there exist some who want to appear innocent. I think that all of the clever attacks on administration would cease if our nation's defense was severely weakened. I wonder if foreign soldiers stomping on our soil will listen to our intellectual theories of peace and political correctiveness. History has taught us that this is not the chance we want to take. Stop the cowardly agenda and start being Americans. The only conspiracy theories are created by manipulators like Olliver Stone just so he can laugh all the way to the bank. Enjoy your latte in your nice home, but remember we all owe it to those who gave their life for this country to do whatever it takes to keep this nation together. We also owe it to the ones we took it from also. be cheesed all you want but please don't think you know what is best for our nation's defense against those who use a different set of rules. Your clever comments mean nothing to those men and women who defend this country so you can run your mouths just to have a purpose in life.

[Robert J. Colmar]

Law professor John Yoo is an unabashed advocate for supreme executive authority—including the power to torture and detain military prisoners without charges. DOES HE HAVE A POINT?

Does he have a point? Yes, right at the top of his head. This is utterly ridiculous.

"Supreme executive power" is called a dictatorship! Hitler had supreme executive authority. Saddam Hussein had supreme executive authority. As far as I'm concerned Yoo is Coo Coo. Kim Jon Il has supreme executive authority.

There is nothing in the world that justifies such a state for a democracy---in fact what Yoo embraces is exactly antithetical to a democracy.

Yoo appears to be a man that comes with a ready made, buit-in, predisposition for totalitarianism and then he casts about to find a reason, any reason, to embrace it. Being a summa cum laude in law is an intellectual matter but I maintain that Yoo has been driven by an irrational personal emotional matter.

In my view his is not a valid legal argument but rather a personal pathology. He found the 9/11 tragedy upon which to hang his pathological needs.
Without diminishing the tragedy, it was, after all, no different IN KIND than the original attack on the World Trade Center, no different IN KIND from the government building that was blown up by an American citizen. There was no such call for an abrupt and drastic change for dictatorship as a result of those attacks---it would have been nonsensical to any rational being---tragic as any and all of those events were in terms of the extent of damage. These were crimes, not war.

9/11 was technically a crime ---Bush decided to call it a war, a "war on terrorism" but only for his personal convenience to extend his executive powers, not for reasons of justifiable legal reasons. Bush embraced the idea because it suited his and Cheney's evil grasp for power. And the Republican Congress was derelict in turning over to the president the unilateral power, as in a fascist state, to declare war which rightly belongs to, and only to, the Congress.

A particuarly major flaw in Yoo's argument is that:

On September 11, 2001, the fires of September 11 were for him as different from theory. He concluded that our nation's most potent institutions — those at work on the battlefield and as part of the legal system-—would have to move forcefully, too. And soon he acted.

"I saw that a small group can now attack us with the violence of a nation," says Yoo, a professor at Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law since 1993. "The Geneva Convention
never recognized this kind of enemy." Soon after September 11, Yoo advised the
president of the United States that it was time to rethink the rules of war. It was time for America to think about secret detention, secret courts, and extracting
information—even if it meant through torture.

This was a premise for Yoo that was totally flawed. He reasoned that "a small group can now attack us with the violence of a nation." Wrong!. Yoo's apparent inherent prediliction for being controlled blinded him to the open questions about whether such an attack could have been pulled off in the limited way in which he chose to imagine it to have been. He decided to be naive!

Whatever you want to think about "conspriacy theories" the complexity of that 9/11 event and the ensuing remarkable long string of incompetencies,errors, and strange events that had occured on that fateful morning strongly suggests that 9/11 could not have been pulled off without help from wlling hands internel to the United States---known communications to the White House from Russia and Saudia Arabia, among others, including George Tenet, of an oncoming attack, extremely unsual NORAD delays in the immediate interception of planes just a half dozen degree off-course, WTC building No. 7, a steel-framed building with a relatively small fire that collapsed without ever being hit---the first in the history of steel-structure buildings to collapse from a fire---this was a matter not so much of aninteligence "screw-up" as it was of "stand-down". Yoo missed those critical elemnts that may have been more overriding than the terrorists' primitive plan itself which could hardly have been carried to conclusion by itself.

There are many, many, very reasonable, rational, questions that remain unanswered. Pat Roberts, the chairman of the 9/11 inquiry committee had his political reasons for his continued delay and refusal to open the second phase of the 9/11 inquiry into what role the policy makers had in handling or manipulating the inelligence before 9/11. The first part blaming intelligence is a farce!

But Yoo didn't exercise the intellectual integrity to inquire into and understand that the 9/11 episode had many more aspects than the obvious simplistic aspect and that a hasty, if not irresponsible, decision was motivated by questionable motives. Had he known that the country was not as vulnerable to terrorists acting alone as he simplistically chosen to believe his legal outcome would surely have to have been not extreme as it is.

If he had the mature curiousity necessary, he might have concluded that increased secrecy and "supreme executive power" was anathema to a democracy and the worst possible direction for the country as we now see---we are far, far, from safer than ever before because we have even more enemies than ever and Bush has illegally assumed ever increasing executive powers. And the borders remain open, inspection of airline cargos are virtually non-existent, as are the US shipping ports. Yoo's "supreme executive powers" simply haven't worked. And from seemingly the best sources on the subject, torture DOES NOT produce meaningful intelligence---it simply makes sadistic animals out of ordinary men acting as captors.

In my view Yoo chose to take a simplistic, if not half-baked, view of 9/11 and foolishly didn't take into account all the factors bearing on 9/11 and, therefore, his conclusions are simplistic, unduly harsh, and irresponsible.

Robert J. Colmar
------------------
http://alumni.berkeley.edu/calmag/200611/hardy.asp

[Stephen Kaus]

Correction

Sorry Victor, Now I see that the names are at the bottom and I am really cheesed off at Joseph Hubbard.

Sorry.

[Stephen Kaus]

Victor

(You have me really confused, but I am responding to your second post, which seems to contradict your first.)

So anything goes as long as George Bush says so? No limits? How has that worked out so far?

Up until now, we all learned that the genius of the Founding Fathers is that we have a govenment by three branches. Yoo's theory justifies essentially eliminating two of those. This would be a very bad idea even if this administration had decent judgement, which they demonstrably do not.

These people have no right to change our whole system of government. Of course we need to be protected. I might even agree with some of the surveillance methods if they were approved by judges.

What I want to know is if anyone in the law school has disowned Yoo. I agree that he has a right to teach and should not be fired for his views. But that does not mean that others should not speak out. I would like Dean Edley, between asking for money, to say what he thinks of Yoo's work. My view is that he is an embarrassment to Boalt and to Cal.

[David O'Rear]

I live in Asia, where memories of WWII torture are passed on from generation to generation.

If the Dubious Administration hadn't abandon The War Against Terror (TWAT) by losing interest in Afghanistan, and deliberately mislead us into an unprovoked invasion of a sovereign nation (Iraq), their attempts at logic might be worth considering.

.

[Joseph Hubbard]

What is amazing to to me is the disrespect and distrust of the U.S. government. There seems to be a new age type of political correctiveness that is being used as justification for critizing our nation's interrogation techniques. Those who critcize torture seem to have forgotten or refuse to acknowledge that the events of 911 were facilitated by those who want only one thing from the United States: total destruction. I believe most Americans just want the events of 911 to just go away like turning a channel on an unpleasant movie while on the other hand criticizing the U.S. government for protecting its shores and people. All one has to do is put themselves in an eminent situation and if torture was the only way to save themselves or a loved one, would they extract the information by torture. One factor that may be causing this naive point of view is the belief that our nation must expose our intelligence gathering techniques in order to satify the media who then packages it like a easy to swallow pill or 'crisis' in order to promote their news selling agenda. I have witnessed many naive and unfounded attacks on the credibilty of the U.S. government but then I don't see anyone immigrating out of the U.S. in droves. Complaining is one thing but protecting the U.S. from terrorist attacks is the real thing. The is one thing that has been consistent with international politics: What countries can do they will do to each other. If someone out there knows where there is a better country to reside, please let us all know. In the meantime, enjoy your latte on the way home.

[Victor (Berkeley Haas MBA)]

Let's take another example. This time, let's swap Bush with Kim Il Jung and US with North Korea, again in the 6th paragraph of this article.

Here is how it now reads:

"Yoo's advice (he does not openly claim authorship of the still-classified and therefore secret document) to Kim Il Jung had a double effect. Captured opposition leaders have been broken at North Korean hands, either through fear, confusion, or violence. That has yielded information, Yoo insists, without furnishing hard data, that helped take down two-thirds of the group’s leadership, and adds: "Better than I would have thought." No less, still another net result is that North Korea is also seen as a torturer, a country that brings atrocities to the countries it claims to liberate (South Korea for example), and has done so on the sly, with disregard for its own Constitution."

You get my point: at the very least, we shouldn't use the same methods (including torture) that are used by the countries which are part of the "axis of evil."

Or else, we should accept the fact that we belong to that group.