Hilzoy: Approving Torture: Better Late Than Never?

Obsidian Wings: Approving Torture: Better Late Than Never?: On the one hand, I wanted to write about it. On the other, I wasn't sure what to say. It doesn't particularly surprise me to learn that Cheney et al signed off on torture, and I do not, myself, regard the fact that they signed off on specific interrogation plans, as opposed to general policies allowing plans like those, as all that significant. (It might be significant legally, but not morally. Policy makers have an obligation to consider the specific ways in which policies they approve might be implemented.) The one minor surprise was how big a role Rice seems to have played, both as the chair of these meetings and in particular decisions ("This is your baby. Go do it.")

On the third hand, while I can toss off little posts about, say, Michael Medved's silly article while I'm here in Pakistan (read article, stop laughing, run searches on "Guantanamo" etc., publish results), I'm really not in a position to write anything that requires genuine reflection. And this clearly does. Members of this administration, at the most senior levels, have approved of torture. This might not be news, but I think it is never, never a good idea to lose one's capacity to be outraged by it.

One of the great dangers of the Bush administration is that it will permanently alter our sense of what is possible or acceptable. You can see an analog of this when people say things like: Bush won't be able to do X, or: he will have to do Y, where these statements do not refer to physical necessity or impossibility. (E.g., if memory serves, when the surge began, some Republicans said: if it doesn't work, Bush will have to withdraw.) The sense in which people who say such things think that Bush "has to" or "can't" do something or other is just that there are certain things we do not believe that any President would do, and others we think he must do. There are lines we assume he would never cross.

But this administration does not recognize the existence of any such lines. They do not "have to" withdraw just because none of their plans have worked, the army is breaking, and the war has next to no popular support. They would "have to" withdraw only if someone put a gun to their collective heads and forced them to. They do not "have to" obey the law or the Constitution: they will only if they are literally compelled to. Likewise, they do not "have to" respect even the most basic principles of decency and humanity, even when obligated to do so by US law and treaties we have signed, which are, according to the Constitution, the law of the land. Neither moral suasion nor legal obligation seem to matter to them. The only sense in which they "have to" do anything is the sense involving physical necessity.

It would be a catastrophe if we lost our sense that there are certain things that our government just cannot do, where "cannot" means something more than physical impossibility. Imagine the possibilities: we normally think that the President "cannot" just shoot his political opponents. But surely in one sense he can, at least if he's a decent shot. Maybe he couldn't do it without being thrown in jail. But that's not right: surely in one sense he "can" bribe the judges, suborn perjury, impose martial law, or do something else to get himself off the hook. Do we really want to go down this road? I don't.

The Bush administration threatens us with the catastrophe of losing our sense that there are things the government cannot do every time they do one of those things. I never, ever want to go along with their redefinition of what is possible, which is why I refuse to stop being outraged when something like this happens. (It's also why saying: hey, why are you still surprised? is beside the point. I'm not.)

But I really couldn't think what I could say that would do justice to this, sitting on the other side of the world, and trying to do my thinking in tiny snatches of time. So all I'll say is: it is an outrage, and we should never lose sight of that fact, or become inured to it.