Tortured Reasoning
I came upon Ross Douthat’s muddled post on torture via this link:
http://lefarkins.blogspot.com/2008/12/torture-and-mitigation.html#links
Douthat writes:
But to my knowledge, nobody’s written something that captures the sheer muddiness that surrounds my own thinking (such as it is) on the issue.
That muddiness may reflect moral and/or intellectual confusion on my part, since the grounds for straightforward outrage are pretty obvious.
http://rossdouthat.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/12/thinking_about_torture.php
Glenn Greenwald dismembers and discards Douhat’s thinking in the following link.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/12/17/douthat/index.html
But, for my money, there is something missing from the critique. The major point is that Douthat himself hit it right on the head. This muddiness is indeed a symptom of intellectual confusion, if not flat-out bankruptcy; further, it reflects the kind of moral deficiency that seems to characterize modern conservatism. Those who defend torture hide behind 1) the presumed urgency and desperation of difficult war-time decisions, 2) comparisons to other morally questionable actions, such as the bombing of Hiroshima, 3) characterizing harsh interrogation techniques as “torture lite,” and 4) information-gathering doomsday scenarios that have virtually no relationship to real world events - the plot lines of “24” not withstanding. The practical truth is, torture is far more effective as an instrument of terror than it is as a meaningful interrogation technique. The uglier psychological truth is that for the Torquemada wannabe, torture is its own reward.
Douthat goes on to say: “Given this reality, whence my uncertainty about how to think about the issue? Basically, it stems from the following thought: That while the Bush Administration’s policies clearly failed a just-war test, they didn’t fail it in quite so new a way as some of their critics suppose …” So the torture can be defended from its critics because the just-war test was failed in ways that are old and traditional? Is Douthat’s moral failing justifiable because it’s wrapped in nostalgia?
I actually have a little (but only a little) sympathy for Douthat: he seems to be making a good faith effort to deal with the muddiness of his morality and thinking. But, this is a swamp of his own creation; and there is an easy way out. The bridge to intellectual honesty and moral clarity is founded on a frank and thorough repudiation of the Bush administration, and all that it stands for. It has violated every principle that America has cherished - freedom, equality, opportunity, separation of church and state, separation of powers, and our position as a role model for other aspiring democracies.
But Douthat, and all the other right-wing apologists for Bush and his Republican cronies, cannot find their way out. They persist in their vain efforts to justify the actions of this depraved administration. And why? Simply because these criminals are Republicans and call themselves conservatives. The roots of Douthat’s moral and intellectual failings are sunk deep in the slime of purblind partisanship - never mind the obvious grounds for straightforward outrage.
Can you imagine for even one second that any Republican or right-wing spokesperson would feel the same way about these same actions had they been undertaken by any real or imagined Democratic President?
Of all the players in the Bush administration, the one who I think is a serious believer that torture is justified and effective is Richard Cheney. There is good reason to believe that Cheney is genuinely sincere when he states that what this administration has done is right, proper, and for the good of the country. In other words, Cheney is a mad man. G. W. Bush, on the other hand, might just be venial and evil enough to like torture for its own sake.
(Revised and expanded, 12/27/08)
