'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

There is one good, pragmatic reason for not tolerating torture of prisoners, Helena: the opposition might decide to torture your people who fall prisoner. They might do that anyway, of course, but you stand a better chance of attracting moral outrage if you yourself are squeaky clean.
Regards
JB
Sydney

Helena,

I entirely agree with you that we should have a "zero tolerance" policy on torture, but I fear that I am less sanguine about significance of the poll results.

I find it deeply troublen that, despite the negative moral associations with the word "torture", that 35% of the respondants would be willing to admit that they found it acceptable. I suspect that a considerably larger number would tacitly accept such practices despite their squeamishness about admitting it in public.

JB-- you're completely right. It is the "reciprocal" aspect of the Geneva Conventions etc that make them so compelling for most members of the US armed forces. I know that many people in the regular forces are deeply, deeply troubled by all the abuses that have been going on, for that precise reason. (Additionally, the lack of basic unit discipline that was evident in Abu G has been very troubling to many military folks, too.)

Jeff-- you may be right in the point you make in yr last sentence there. But call me a pessimist if you want, I was very pleasantly surprised to see what people told the poll-taker on nearly all these questions. I'd feared the answers might be much more discouraging...

In addition, I think these poll results can be used in an attempt to help persuade members of all relevant branches of the national government that they would not be going out on a total political limb if they declared and adhered to a "zero tolerance" policy; and that is certainly a benefit with a crowd of folks whose favorite thing to do with their fingers is hold 'em up to the wind...

I'm looking at these figures from the WaPo poll and comparing them in my mind's eye with figures on expressed public attittudes toward the death penalty. These ones look much more encouraging!

Have you read any of Tony Duff's work on the philosophy of punishment? I'm rather a fan of his. He makes some excellent observations about the need for political leaders to exercize vision and leadership on such issues, otherwise everyone just falls to the lowest common denominator... He also points out that public attitudes in Britain to the d.p. remained in favor quite a long time after Parliament, thank God, had abolished it.

I enjoy and admire your blog, but I think that you greatly over-rate the significance of polls, just like the folks at Kos who brandish every single poll that shows Bush in a bad light. Remember that 80% of Americans claim to believe in angels, if asked do you believe in angels and the Bible, whereas the number is 30% when asked do you believe in angels and medieval superstitions?
Every nation wants to think of themselves as the salt of the earth, the chosen people whom God will use to teach others a lesson. Now, people from Guatemala, Belize and Panama aren't dangerous because their countries are always being stepped on. Our people keep hearing how free we are, that we have the best science and medicine in the world (in my opinion, that's completely false- the power of simplistic religion in our culture means that we have to import scientists), how we are the most honest. In the abstract most Americans are against violence, torture and pollution. When told, "this is war" we lean toward Trent Lott's ideas that we have to get tough with some people who don’t respond to anything except the iron fist.
I’d say that our domestic Prisons and race are our Achilles heel. We have too many people in prison, most are non-white and it's too expensive, taking money away from education, healthcare, etc.. Some Iraq prison abusers came from US prison staffs. Many domestic prisoners emerge as hate-filled masters of crime. This applies to all races. Whites join organizations like the Aryan brotherhood. The more people in prison, the harsher their treatment, the more racial hatred, the more crime and the sooner that The Turner Diaries become a work of non-fiction.

Why do people accept George W. Bush as a Christian when he acts like a deceitful warlord? Jesus never said, "Beat others who may be criminals". Jesus said help the Samaritan, the man of another race. Our prison abusers say in effect, “it’s our right to punish the untermenschen, violence is the only thing that they understand”

Well, I don't know what the polls are really telling us, Helena. I wouldn't count on that cohort of good Americans really having the courage to stand up and say no when it's needed. Some percentage of them would, of course, but not all and perhaps not even most.

What I find unsettling about the Dershowitzian justification of torture is this idea of 'doing what it takes'. Whatever 'it' is and whatever taking 'it' might mean. I mean, to me, it's like looking at the Great Flood as torture. Poor ole God. He had to do what it took to get rid of all the bad 'uns and the evildoers. And hey! Look how it turned out! Just hunkydory and wunnerful. And you know what? We can do the same sort of thing, just once, mind you, and we promise we won't never ever do it again. Because we're doing it the first time to bring you whatever it is that it takes to bring you.

Uh huh.

Whatever the poll figures may or may not mean, I think Helena has raised a good question: aren't we better off if people are at least paying lip service to morality? Or is Dershowitz actually doing a service by at least putting the quesion on the table where we can talk abut it openly? It seems to me that a case could be made for either perspective.

Re: Duff. I haven't read anything by him except the entry he wrote on "Legal Punishment" for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/legal-punishment/

Duff's concept of moral leadership has a certain resonnance with the idea of witnessing?

Perhaps "lip service" should be seen,not as hypocrisy, but as a kind of moral half-way house, a fragile and tentative response to moral leadership. Or maybe it could be either, depending on whether we are progressing or backsliding...

On the other hand, I will confess to having a certain problem with the idea of punishment as communication. I can see that legal punishment is frequently staged as a form of "shaming" (as Goffman would call it) and that this is unquestionably intended to leave a subjective social "impression" on the recipient, which could be characterized as a form of "simplex" or one-way communication. But I am a little uncomfortable wiith the argument that 'hard treatment' either "makes the communication more effective" or "assists the process of repentance and reform".

In any case, punishment existed long before Duff dreamed up his justification for it. Which makes me wonder whether we really need a philosophy of punishment. Whether, in short, such a philosophy will make the world a better place?

Jerff-- you say: Perhaps "lip service" should be seen,not as hypocrisy, but as a kind of moral half-way house, a fragile and tentative response to moral leadership. Or maybe it could be either, depending on whether we are progressing or backsliding...

I think that's a great analysis!

Also: I am a little uncomfortable wiith the argument that 'hard treatment' either "makes the communication more effective" or "assists the process of repentance and reform".

In any case, punishment existed long before Duff dreamed up his justification for it. Which makes me wonder whether we really need a philosophy of punishment. Whether, in short, such a philosophy will make the world a better place?

I agree w/ the first half of that. Though mind you, Duff's account of the "communication" involved in a criminal-justice proceeding has a lot to do, too, with the procedure involved in the proceeding, with the punishment itself almost as an afterthought.

Personally, I find it very hard to find any "philosophy" of punishment at all that works except for "incapacititaion of those of whom we have a pressing, valid reason to believe that they could cause society future harm". Sometimes, that incapacitation can be achieved by other means. It's the challenge of "defanging" the people whom we know to have potnential to do evil. Other things than "punishment" can certainly be considered as a way to achieve this...

Btw, all wars have a strong "justice" element in their motivation/jyustification, and often, withihn that, an overtly "punitive" aspect.

I like the "incapacitation" argument. And I recognize that my suggestion that we don't "need" a philosophy of punishment was simplistic.

Carl Schmitt held that one of the triumphs of the ius publicum Europaeum was to counter the natural tendency to see one's enemy as a criminal. A tendency which had its roots, arguably, in imperialist racial conquest in the nineteenth century and which was later imported into continental European politics with the propoganda diabolizing the enemy in the first world war.

This appears to have been at the heart of Schmitt's rejection of the terms of the treaty of Versailles, which he saw as an move to cast Germany permanently into the role of the criminel. (Of course this played beautifully into the "Dolchstoss" accusations of the nazis - and yet it is interesting to note that contemporary historians more or less concurr with Schmitt on this specific issue.) Also, his argument against the League of Nations, as I recall, turned on the same reasoning. Once you have a League of Nations, any nation disrupting the peace is, by definition, criminal.

Ironically, the Bush administration has resurrected the criminality argument - NOT in the context of the United Nations - but in that of a global "Empire of the willing", as illustrated by their consistent confusion of the rhetoric of a "war on terrorism" with the notion of a "police action" against criminal elements unworthy of Geneva Convention (or any other) protections.

(Not to open the thorny question, here, of what connection, if any, there may be between a person's ideas, his or her political activities, and the use to which the ideas have been put. The question, in short, of Wagner, Heidegger, Nietzsche, Schmitt, etc. )

I feel compelled to add* that the comment above was not intended as a personal endorsement of Schmitt's theories. Rather, I find it ironic that a thinker who has had so much influence on neo-conservatist political philosophy should have so accurately described a phenomenon that, quite perversely, came into being, not as a result of the "League of Nations" that Schmitt reviled, but out of the aspirations to hegemonic aspirations of a state whose leaders whole-heartedly embraced Schmitt's political vision.

*I tend to be hesitant to endorse too hastily the political philosophy of confirmed nazis. Some of Schmitt's ideas are highly suggestive, but I am wary of their possible side-effects. Une verité peut en cacher une autre.