National Review is Pro-Torture
The National Review, on the most transparently consequentialist grounds, endorses torture, while pretending not to. This is what they have to say about waterboarding:
“Waterboarding is an extremely rough interrogation tactic in which a detainee is tied down and made to fear imminent drowning. It treads close to the legal line of torture. It does not, however, appear to cross that line — at least not clearly. “Torture” is a special legal designation, reserved for especially sadistic forms of abuse, practices so heinous they stand apart, even from other cruelties, as meriting extraordinary condemnation. Though highly unpleasant, it is doubtful that waterboarding involves the type of severe, prolonged anguish required before a tactic meets the legal threshold of torture.”
This denial may help them sleep a little better at night (I’m sure the Gestapo said the same things about their “Verschärfte Vernehmung“, loosely translated as “enhanced interrogation techniques”) but it doesn’t make what is going on any less evil. I linked recently to a post by Malcolm Nance, a former SERE master instructor and chief of training. Nance dispels any lingering doubt whatsoever over whether or not waterboarding is torture. It is not simulated drowning; it is real drowning simulating death (as Judge Evan Wallach puts it). And of course, this ancient form of abuse has always been categorized as torture, at least until the ascent of the Bush administration. As noted by a recent Commonweal editorial, retired Rear Admiral John D. Huston stated that:
“Other than perhaps the rack and thumbscrews, waterboarding is the most iconic example of torture in history. It has been repudiated for centuries.”
As noted by NPR, waterboarding was first documented in the 14th century, and was designed explicitly to extract confessions (how little has changed). What made waterboarding so attractive was that it left no marks, as it was not permitted to injure the body or bring about death during the “interrogation”. No marks, no torture, right? It seems that the National Review has been similarly deceived in the modern day. Waterboarding was perfected by Dutch traders in the 17th century, but was increasingly seen as morally repugnant during the 18th century. But it never went away, turning up among the Japanese in World War II, U.S. troops in the Philippines, the French in Algeria, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and the military dictatorships in Chile and Argentina.
There is no doubt that the US has long regarded waterboarding as torture. In the words of Judge Evan Wallach, the US government “has not only condemned the use of water torture but has severely punished those who applied it.” The NPR article points out that US soldiers serving in Vietnam were court-martialed for using the water torture; this was also true during the 1898 Spanish-American war. It documents the case of Yukio Asano, a Japanese officer sentenced to 15 years hard labor for employing this practice. More generally, as Judge Wallach notes:
“After Japan surrendered, the United States organized and participated in the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, generally called the TokyoWar Crimes Trials. Leading members of Japan’s military and government elite were charged, among their many other crimes, with torturing Allied military personnel and civilians. The principal proof upon which their torture convictions were based was conduct that we would now call waterboarding.”
Let’s get back to the National Review. As noted, their defense is purely consequentialist:
“Since 9/11, the CIA has operated a special interrogation program for high-value enemy detainees such as Khalid Sheik Mohammed, mastermind of the suicide-hijackings that killed nearly 3,000 Americans and took the nation to war. For these most hardened terrorists, interrogation techniques have reportedly included waterboarding. The yield, according to the Bush administration, has been singularly valuable intelligence, enabling the government to thwart other plots and save a great many lives.”
This is not the first time the National Review has endorsed torture. Last year, it declared the Supreme Court ruling in Hamden v. Rumsfeld– which applied Geneva Convention protections to Al Qaeda suspects– to be “execrable” (because it threatened to put the CIA interrogation program “out of business” ) and supported a deal to preserve the “life-saving CIA-interrogation program.” Waterboarding was then seen as a “controversial but highly effective technique”. It ends this first editorial with boundless cynicism:
“The whole world has now seen the administration supposedly bow to McCain’s desire to ‘preserve’ our Geneva obligations, but the CIA program will continue anyway. That’s not such a bad outcome.”
Let’s get this straight. The National Review is supporting an action that the Church deems intrinsically evil. Does that mean Catholics should simply throw the magazine in the trash? Many publications and pundits defend intrinsically evil actions (most notably abortion) and yet can offer credible commentary on other topics. But these other groups do not claim to have a Catholic influence, as is the case with the National Review. While not an explicitly Catholic outfit, it has a tendency of playing up its Catholicity. I’ve even seen Catholic blogs linking to it! We must make it clear, once and for all, that the National Review is simply not a Catholic publication. When William F. Buckley rebuked Catholic social teaching on economics, while pretty odious, at least this was not a case of dissenting from a non-negotiable teaching. That has changed with his successors.
I know there are some on the editorial board (Ponnuru, for example) who seem to take their duties as Catholics seriously. What do they think of these editorials? Let me be blunt: the National Review is about as Catholic as Catholics for a Free Choice or Phyllis Schlafly– all have embraced non-negotiables (torture, abortion, and the use of nuclear weapons on non-combatants, respectively). I, for one, would like this magazine to “cease and desist” using Catholic labels to sell its product.
Comments are closed.
Torture would be a very odd non-negtiable item for the Church to insist on considering the history of the Church in this area. For those interested in examining Church teaching as to torture over the ages, Father Harrison has done yeoman work and the links below are to two of his articles.
http://www.rtforum.org/lt/lt118.html
http://www.rtforum.org/lt/lt119.html
Unless it is done to our soldiers, of course.
Never knew they claimed roots in catholicism. Interesting. Beyond National Review’s absurdity, don’t you know that when an activity is deemed legal by the anointed (the Anglos and their descendants, ofcourse), it must be.
I, for one, would like this magazine to “cease and desist” using Catholic labels to sell its product.
Yes! Cardinal Egan should command them to stop calling themselves the National Catholic Review and instead just call themselves National Review.
Oh, wait…
I think it’s a pretty big exaggeration to call National Review “Catholic” and claim it advertises itself as such.
And “arewak,” you might want to check the names of the editorial board of NR.
Arewak – Buckley, before founding NR, wrote a book back in (I think) the 1950′s called “God and Man at Yale” where he detailed, among other things, anti-Catholic bias at Yale University.
‘It treads close to the legal line of torture.’
Reminds me of Bill Clinton’s definition of ‘sex with that woman’.
Wow, an entire post based on a false premise. I simply love this line:
I’ve even seen Catholic blogs linking to it!
Well blow me down! Catholics have linked to it! Clearly this signifies that NR is a Catholic publication, or at least claims to be, based on this linkage. So does that mean all the things that you link to, MM, are ipsp facto “Catholic?” What strange, strange, logic.
It may not be an explicitly “Catholic” publication, but it has claimed a Catholic ethos (to one degree or another) since the time of Buckley.
In my experience, the supposed “Catholic” nature of National Review is something brought up almost exclusively by its critics.
Somebody needs to make a rigorous examination of waterboarding as mock execution.
I’ve even seen Catholic blogs linking to it! We must make it clear, once and for all, that the National Review is simply not a Catholic publication.
I’m sure the Jewish folks at National Review would appreciate such a clarification.
No doubt NR’s protestant editor, Rich Lowry, would also be surprised to learn of its Catholic affiliation.
NR has indisputably Catholic roots. (see Living It Up at National Review, for some of the more amusing side of it.) That said, NR has gone quite a ways from its original roots. For that matter, so has conservatism. I’ve not had a chance to read it, but the most recent issue has some articles that will probably bear out as indicators. For example, an assessment of Atlas Shrugged 50 years after Whittaker Chambers glorious takedown of Randian thought. Also, a proposed path forward for political conservatism.
Today’s National Review Online features an article by Deroy Murdock, who says, quite seriously: “While the White House must beware not to inform our enemies what to expect if captured, today’s clueless anti-waterboarding rhetoric merits this tactic’s vigorous defense. Waterboarding is something of which every American should be proud. Waterboarding makes tight-lipped terrorists talk.”
We should be proud of waterboarding!
Sick.
Non sequitur.
Your personal definitions of what constitues torture aside, NR is not a Catholic publication and does not use “Catholic labels to sell its product.” To suggest so is simply factually inaccurate. Maybe 1/3 of its writers are Catholics. My favorite, John Derbyshire, is an agnostic. And even the Catholics have somewhat frequent disagreements among themselves. As a subscriber, sometimes I disagree. So what??
Just because Buckley and most of the early backers were Catholics doesn’t mean much for today. But it’s good they have Ponneru – he is a Catholic who seems to take his faith seriously and has important things to say.
but it has claimed a Catholic ethos (to one degree or another) since the time of Buckley.
Really, where?
One of the things that you do quite often is ascribe opinions and words to other people that they’ve never spoken. This would be one of those times.
“My personal definition of what constitutes torture”. What are you trying to say here, Jonathan? If you want to say that waterbaording is right, and that the US can do whatever it bloody well likes, then just come out and say it.
THe National Review has had a Catholic ethos since the time of Buckley, albeit a highly selective Catholic ethos. It diverged from the Church on economics and on the issue of nuclear weapons in particular (I won’t even mention its support for racism in the past, another non-negotiable, as it seems to have repented that one… I think!). And now torture joins the list. This is a secular magazine that regularly includes columns on religious matters by people like Novak, Weigel, Rutler, Neuhaus etc. Some of its main contributors (I’m thinking of Lopez and Ponnuru) are steeped in Catholicism. So, no, this is not First Things or Crisis, but sometimes the overlap is stark.
No, I am not saying that waterboarding is right. I am saying that the definition of torture is up for debate, which it is. There are those on the left – I’ve argued with them – who say that the detention and isolation of homocidal jihadists in G. Bay is torture, and that sleep deprivation is torture, and that loud pop or rap music is torture. I disagree, and I’ll also happy condemn torture.
But the fact remains that the definition of torture is up for debate. And you’ve yet to offer your detailed definition, which I’ve asked for more than once. That would be useful to have, especially as you seem committed to post on this topic at least once a day, and often in a “gotcha! crazy and hypocritical conservatives!!!” manner.
A Catholic “ethos.” Okay. So even though they don’t claim to follow Catholic social teaching as editorial policy, and even though they publish diverse views in every issue and in every one of their 5 or so blogs, and even though a solid majority of their contributers are not Catholic, you want to condemn them as if they claim to follow Catholic thought. Got it.
THe National Review has had a Catholic ethos since the time of Buckley, albeit a highly selective Catholic ethos.
This is a secular magazine that regularly includes columns on religious matters by people like Novak, Weigel, Rutler, Neuhaus etc.
Sooooo . . . .it’s a Catholic magazine that’s not really a really a Catholic magazine but it’s got Catholic writers even though it’s a secular magazine.
Uh huh.
You know, you could have just criticized the editorial on its own merit (or lack thereof) and that would have been fine. This completely ridiculous side-argument about the “Catholicness” of NR has obliterated whatever point it was you were trying to make.
Kinda striking that all of the talk so far has focused on whether or not NR is Catholic. How trivial. What about the meat: the alarming position that NR is supporting? All that seems to be of import is that, Catholic or not, many conservative Catholics take their cues from it, and here we have adherence to an utterly unacceptable moral position. Whether or not we all throw our hands up and admit that it was never really Catholic in nature, the point is that Catholics should be distancing themselves from the National Review and even have an obligation to criticize the dangerously flawed moral reasoning that seems to be flourishing there with regard to this issue.
Pax Christi,
Kinda striking that all of the talk so far has focused on whether or not NR is Catholic.
Blame the guy who wrote the post and made that the focus of it.
“denis ambrose” , I did.
X-Cathedra makes a good point. Think of it this way: let’s say the New Republic or the Nation writes an editorial in defense of abortion. Would anybody really care? Would it be even worthwhile to wrote a blog post against it? Probably not. But many Catholics do indeed listen very closely to National Review– it was almost the publication of the “Church in opposition” in the 1980s (before First Things came on the scene), when so many Catholics on the right are angry about the peace pastoral and the economic justice pastoral. So, it does have a rather unique niche, meaning that when it takes a strong position on a non-negotiable, it’s worth addressing.
First off, Jonathan, I wish you wouldn’t ingest very piece of vile propanga fed to you by the Bush administration. “Homicidal jihadsists in G. Bay”. Give me a break. For your information, most of the men held in that place were not captured on any battlefield– they were handed over handed by reward-seeking Pakistanis and Afghan warlords and by villagers of highly doubtful reliability. Fewer than 20 percent aer even associated with Al Qaeda. See here: http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2006/02/whos_in_gitmo.html.
And your attempsts to play down mental toture is nothing short of disgusting. If you paid any attention to what the experts were saying, you would be well aware that psychological torture is harder for victims to overcome. It scars them for life– which is why the Church condemns both physical and mental toture, and attempts to coerce the spirit. Just look at the case of Jose Padilla, locked up without charge or access to a lawyer for three and a half years, who is suffering from a severe post-traumatic stress disorder– his lawyer said he was treated as a “piece of furniture” (and that there should tell everything you need to know about why it is gravely evil, instead of appealing for some lawyerly definition). This is a result of the stuff you seem to think is OK– sensory deprivation, extreme cold, stress positions, sleep deprivation. You need to stand with the Church on this one, not the Republican party magisterium.
We know who is in G. Bay. It’s (mostly) public information. Not a single one of those individuals deserve to be set free. And if I’ve ingested “vile proganga” then go ahead and give us some names of the wrongly accused.
So no detailed definition then. Too bad – but maybe I’ll keep asking.
And as far as Padilla or any other would-be engager of homocide for the sake of jihad, tell me why they should be believed ahead of U.S. officials – because the U.S. government is always inclined toward torture and doing evil in the world? I place very, very, very little merit in the word of sick people with much to gain by claiming this abuse or that abuse (there’s a long history of crying wolf since 2002, from Korans in the toilet to supposed conversions to Christianity). One need not defend every aspect of the “Bush regime” to recognize this.
If not a single one of the people in Gitmo deserves to be set free, then why have so many of them already been set free? Why is the Bush administration trying to set free more of them?
Jonathan,
If you’re skeptical about the claims of some of the ex-detainees, I can understand that. But what about Sean Baker, the solder who briefly posed as a detainee as part of a training drill? He was beaten so badly he had to be discharged from the army. Is he an example of a sick person with much to gain by claiming abuse?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spc._Sean_Baker
Blackadder,
That’s the nature of enemy combatants. I acknowledge some deserve to be set free. But all long-term detainees are there for very good reasons. It is necessary IMO to take seriously the threat those individuals pose, and viewing those at G. Bay as victims first does not serve this purpose.
I am not familiar with the Barker case.
And this is not a blind defense of all U.S. government action. But neither should we be so ready and eager to condemn actions against (legitimate, in my view) Islamist threats. My point is 1). take those threats seriously. 2) Don’t believe all claims of abuse. 3) Investigate and punish wrongful actions 4). Be prudent in judgements until facts start to emerge. This is a topic with a whole lot more heat than light.
For that matter, what about the FBI agents who reported detainee abuse at Gitmo? Sick people?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14936-2004Dec20.html
To amend an earlier comment, I was referring to those who have been through the comprehensive review process and were deemed a legitimate security threat. I have no problem trusting the government on the necessity of longer-term holdings:
http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/detainees/detainee_list.pdf
Jonathan,
It’s hard for me to square this:
“We know who is in G. Bay. It’s (mostly) public information. Not a single one of those individuals deserve to be set free.”
with this:
“I acknowledge some deserve to be set free.”
You say that “all long-term detainees are there for very good reasons.” How do you know this? Because the U.S. government says so? Didn’t they say the same about the people they already released? If they release some more people tomorrow, will you say “Okay, so those people deserved to be set free, but everyone *else* who’s there deserves to be there. This time I mean it!”?
Blackadder,
We can trade news stories or information all day long, even as I won’t condone abuse and as I’m sure you’ll acknowledge the threat.
And yes, the sick people comment is I think accurate. Read through a bit on who has been captured:
http://www.defenselink.mil/pdf/detaineebiographies1.pdf
I wrote too quickly. Those who are being kept long-term after the review processes absoutely deserve to be there. Most of these records seem to be public information.
I don’t share your faith in the infallibility of the comprehensive review process. They are conducted in secret and with few procedural safeguards, not conditions that make for reliability. Further, in the one case we do know something about, it turns out that a) the evidence against the detainee was largely non-existent, and b) the government lied and said it had evidence when it did not:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A3868-2005Mar26?language=printer
Fair enough. But how rare are the exceptions and how firm is the rule (of properity), and are there consequences for breaking rules?
One need not have “faith in the infallibility of the comprehensive review process” to recognize how difficult these circumstances are and appreciate the efforts. The threat is not a joke, but I think we can agree incorrect actions should be condemned.
Jonathan,
I don’t know. It’s possible that the comprehensive reviews are generally quite good, and it’s just a fluke that the one we know something about turns out to have been a sham. It’s also possible that Gitmo detainees are generally well treated, and it’s just a fluke that the one guy who got abused happened to really be a soldier. Doesn’t seem very likely, though.