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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Archives Revels Classifieds Real Estate Menu Guide Wedding Weather Subscribe Contact Us November 17, 2005 Commentary Torture without death for terrorists Rob Asghar Vice President Dick Cheney is half-right in his insistence that the United States should impose restrictions on how it treats suspected terrorists. How would we describe the vice president and his aides? Passionately pro-torture? Giddy about Guantanamo? They would deny that, but they do feel there’s no point in limiting one’s options. A State Department official recently described Cheney’s camp to The Washington Post as a “shrinking island” amid administration peers who believe it’s time to take a McCainesque stance in ensuring humane treatment of detainees. But both camps within the administration miss the larger point. Bear in mind that both camps not long ago preached that a wave of American toughness — pre-emption, bombing, detainments, Patriot Acts, nasty glares, halitosis — would soften up the planet. Both camps ridiculed the notion that a combination of Cold War-style containment policies, proactive intelligence and measured ruthlessness could do the job in a manner that is more effective, efficient and consistent with American principles. They asserted the full privileges of empire — albeit for purposes not entirely selfish — and they are only now confessing that the results were a bigger mess than they had anticipated. In an ideal world, we should rule out torture. But an ideal world does not harbor terrorists or even jaywalkers, so we are forced to pick between unpleasant compromises of our highest values. Should we send out “arrogant armies” (author James M. Perry’s term for misadventuring militaries who bite off more than they can chew) to and fro to knock out unfriendly regimes and occupy cranky citizenries? Should we hunker down in our homes and never venture out? Or should we torture an al-Qaida operative so that he spills the beans about his organization’s operations and goals? Frankly, the only sensible option above is the last one. It is nasty, but it is less nasty than other methods. For reasons that would require the explanation of psychiatrists, not pundits, Americans have spent most of the past four years re-glorifying military excursions, even ones in which civilians are killed. War is hell? Hell, too many Americans think war is heaven. Yet they oddly rule out torture as uncivilized. It is a hypocrisy that is not merely loathsome, but dangerous. It is impossible even to determine which allies will be threats to you tomorrow (Bush Senior’s cronies should know this, given how they helped create Saddam to serve as a threat to Iran). Do the moral calculus, and it becomes obvious that there must be more cost-efficient and life-efficient options than what we’ve been pursuing. Somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 Iraqis have lost their lives, and their survivors do not appear grateful. We are $220 billion poorer, and tens of thousands of American families have been affected by a loved one’s death or injury. Have the results been worth it? A better way would be a more low-key way, much like the policing approach of John Kerry that drew so much snickering from Republicans. This policing approach is hardly wimpy: We should promise massive retaliation if we’re struck by a state (good, old-fashioned containment) and promise torture without death to terrorists who work across national boundaries. In an earlier day, Soviet citizens and diplomats traveled the world free of harassment or threat because those godless communists could put the fear of God in others. They were “Machiavelli in motion,” terrifyingly effective in protecting their interests. Are terrorists “enemies of freedom?” To an extent, yes — but that misreads their motivations. Terrorists are a cancerous parody of freedom, driven by an anarchic and nihilistic desire to use their freedom to destroy themselves and others. If they truly hated freedom, they would stick around to cramp the civil liberties of others, to boss around family members, to throw their weight around the Palestinian PTA or to build their own fascist state. Their last, destructive gasp of freedom isn’t intended to condemn our freedom, but to scare us into voluntary renouncing it in favor of an illusion of security. We won’t scare these terrorists off by threatening to make them meet their maker — but we can put fear in them by promising torture without end, and we may get better intelligence in the process. Coming out in favor of torture seems akin in our day to coming out in favor of ethnic cleansing. But that says less about enduring morality than about moral fashions. Torture is not the worst sin we have committed lately. Let us not dismiss it out of hand. 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