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Torture For Thee, But Not For Me
Glenn Greenwald was on NPR yesterday to talk about their policy of refusing to call torture by its proper name, and while he was waiting to go on he listened to NPR's ombudsman explaining their policy:
She also said — when the host asked about the recent example I cited of NPR's calling what was done to a reporter in Gambia "torture" (at the 20:20 mark) — that NPR will use the word "torture" to describe what other governments do because they do it merely to sadistically inflict pain on people while the U.S. did it for a noble reason: to obtain information about Terrorist attacks. That's really what she said: that when the U.S. did it (as opposed to Evil countries), it was for a good reason.
Jeez, that Glenn. Always exaggerating. For the record, here's what she actually said about NPR's piece on Gambia:
In that case, these were strictly tactics to torture him, to punish him, versus in the United States, and the way that it's used, these are tactics used to get information. The Gambian journalist was in jail for his beliefs.
Wow. She really did say that, didn't she? When other people do it for other reasons, it's torture. When we do it for our reasons, it's not.
You don't usually find people willing to say this quite so baldly. Congratulations, Alicia Shepard.
I listened to her defense of
I listened to her defense of NPR's refusal to call torture torture and had to admire her ability to spread bullshit without cracking up.
NPR
There was a time when NPR was a voice of reason. How many years will it take to rid NPR of the Bush era mistakes?
Nothing to do with Bush
I think it has far more to do with how out of touch NPR has become.
They started off as basically college community funded radio with salaries to match. Now they have anchors earning $300,000. What the fuck do those assholes do you justify $300,000?
No one at NPR is hungry anymore. No one wants to do excellent journalism. They want to do excellent RADIO, just like Rush Limbaugh, and their motives are just like any villager, be interesting, get your name in the news, look very well produced, who gives a shit about journalism?
Fire anyone at NPR who has been there more than 10 years or earns more than $150,000.
No one at NPR is hungry
Thanks for encapsulating so well why I have problems with NPR. Listening to NPR, you can find people that still do old fashioned "radio shows," Garrison Keillor's "Prairie Home Companion" storytelling has a devoted following, and you can always find a long, nasal-voiced "radio essay" being read. NPR somehow got it in their heads that their mission was to preserve the "art of radio" by supporting these hard-to-find radio programming formats. That's nice and everything, but that's more for a few devoted niche fans of old-timey folkarts. The journalism is sadly missing, and they should instead think about supporting *that* lost art.
National Torture Radio
NTR, National Torture Radio, a publicly financed institution that depends on listeners like you to rationalize sadism.
I'm really dumbfounded that
I'm really dumbfounded that NPR could have an ombudsman (who's job it is to be the voice of the listeners!) who could say such things. There are probably a lot of journalists who have grown up during the Bush years and think the way they did things was normal. But it really gets down to the role of the press. We want the truth and we can handle it. We don't want apologizers/advocates/stenographers. Find out the truth and call out the liars and cheats. Protect our interests, not the people in power who get carried away with that power. Why should I give one more dime to NPR? Why should any individual? I'm looking elsewhere for my news and opinion and I am not alone. Times are changing. NPR 's time may have passed. Lisa Shepard is certainly not making them look very good at this point.
No, that was NOT what she said.
She said they did it to obtain information, versus simply to punish; there's a difference. I don't condone it for either reason, and I don't know what other context is not reflected here, but, here, she said nothing about it being for a more "noble" purpose.
Difference without
Difference without distinction. Torture is torture.
what she's not saying
No, that's not what she said, but it's not exactly a stretch for Greenwald to characterize the position in such a way, particularly in light of the fact that torture proponents defend the practice with ticking timebomb analogies, which is a way of imparting nobility to a criminal act.
In any event, you touch on the biggest point here. NPR's position, as stated by the ombudsman in her interview, is that it's not their position to use words that have become politically charged, because they display some sort of bias. This is, of course, absolutely ridiculous, not only because the word in question here has a very precise meaning spelled out in international treaties -- treaties to which we are repeated signatories -- but because it strips countless words from the vocabularies of reporters. (Her example of the difficulties surrounding the use of the word "reform" has to be heard to be believed.) NPR's policy allows the government to dictate the terms of the debate. You don't need censorship when you can get the media to censor themselves. If it hasn't happened already, I think we can look forward to some sort of statement in which she clarifies (to use another euphemism) her remarks. Her rationalizations were simply atrocious.
What does this mean? Isn't
What does this mean? Isn't obtaining information a more noble purpose than punishing? What exactly is the distinction supposed to be here? She is justifying NPR's use of terminology based upon an apparent difference in ends, not means. Isn't that correct? And if it is, how is it different from what Glenn and/or Kevin are saying?
Neutrality issues
The ombudsman here is stuck with a major dilemma: there *is* no neutral middle term possible (by using "torture" you've made a strongly ideological statement, but by using any term other than "torture," you've also made a strongly ideological statement), and she has a vested interest in alienating no-one. Over the past decade or so, I've seen at least two attempts by local conservatives to get rid of PBS and NPR in my area, and I wouldn't be surprised if that sort of thing happens frequently. She may think that she has to make a show of using a neutral term to insulate NPR from accusations of bias. But again....that's just not possible here. There's no middle to exclude.
And adopting a position based on the intentions of the people doing the waterboarding, etc. simply makes the problem worse. We don't accept the torture of humans even if the torturer truly believes that the pain will exorcise demons from the victim, and we don't accept it even if the torturer can provide proof that the torture will produce valuable medical knowledge (I used "humans" because I know there are animal-rights issues here, but I'm dodging them; witness the bravery!). The ombudsman point can only indicate that NPR does not approve of sadists -- but it's willing to grant a pass to sadism.
Mind you
The idea that they were actually trying to get information has been roundly and soundly refuted.
Rather, it has become clear that they were trying to force people to saying certain things regardless of whether those things were actually true.
Hence...
...the need to torture. Amazing the things people will tell you when they think you are going to kill them. And, at least one hundred detainees were correct in that assumption.
If that many detainees die in custody, where does Ms. Shepard get the temerity to question the Gambians motives?
Torture Them
The sad thing is that by now Ms Shepard knows she's full of shit and can't back away from it.
Torture worked as advertised
Torture worked as advertised in the US? Really? FBI agent Ali Soufan challenged the ENTIRE BASIS of the torture program in his testimony. A real journalist would have the guts to question authority and find out who is telling the truth. Sadly it seems NPR prefers to accept the notion that powerful US officials always act in good faith. Such an authoritarian stance makes NPR more like a propaganda outfit than a source of objective journalism.
It's pretty obvious that both the Bush and Obama administrations have embraced the concept of defining deviance down. It's now to the point where torture is considered by some to be a "tough, safe, effective and legal" interrogation method. NPR evidently believes if some corrupt OLC laywers and politicians pretend that torture isn't torture then they have put forth a legitimate view. This is nonsense.
Here is a great quote that IMO says it all:
When my son was only four or five
When my son was only four or five--which puts this story about 20 years ago--he told me, on the way to his preschool, that he was going to tell all the other kids about "National Puppet Radio." Out of the mouths of babes. . . .
Why we did it
I think it's also quite possible Bushies treated people badly, so it would enrage Islamic people around the world. George needed an enemy for his war.
However, we really don't know for certain. We only learned recently of how McNamara probably deceived LBJ on the Gulf of Tonkin, so it might take a while for the public to find out all the sins of the Bush era.
Amazed
This parsing and dicing of definition by NPR is insane.
Would it be theft if my a stranger steals from me, and it would mere misappropriation of property if I were to do the same onto someone else?
I have just called NPR that I will no longer support them in their annual membership drive until and unless they revisit this silly policy of theirs. I want my money back!
Thanks for your commentary
Thanks for your commentary on this issue. I sent the following to Alicia Shepard.
Ms. Shepard:
Recently, you gave an interview on a Seattle NPR station defending NPR’s policy of not using the term “torture” to describe the treatment of detainees in U.S. custody. During the interview, you were asked about an apparent double standard—why is NPR willing to describe the mistreatment a Gambian reporter arrested by his government as “torture” but is unwilling to use the same term to describe the treatment of detainees held under the Bush Administration? You said the following:
“In that case [Gambia], these were strictly tactics to torture him, to punish him, versus in the United States, and the way that it's used, these are tactics used to get information. The Gambian journalist was in jail for his beliefs.”
That’s a remarkable statement. Are you saying that motives—and not practices—determine what is torture and what is not? If an NPR reporter is arrested, waterboarded, slammed against a plywood wall, stuffed into a coffin-sized box containing live insects, the criteria for determining whether or not this was torture are the intentions of the captors? If these captors are trying, in your words, “to punish” the reporter for her beliefs, then their actions qualify as torture? But if they are simply trying for what they deem good reasons to get information—about, say, a source protected by the journalist—then their tactics are not considered “torture”?
Following your logic, “torture” can only be committed by people of bad faith, with bad intentions. People with “good” motives, cannot by definition torture because their intentions absolve them. Governments with “good” motives can beat their prisoners, subject them to stress positions, terrorize them with dogs, or waterboard them because they are simply trying to “get information.” According to news reports, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times. I wonder if he had much new information beyond, say, session 10, or 50, or 100, or 150. Still, this was not torture—according to you and NPR—because the United States, as you say, was simply trying to “get information.”
I suppose this simplifies things. We need not bother ourselves with existing laws or standards when we can simply look to the motives of the people carrying out the beatings. Your position does leave me with a few questions, however, which I hope you might answer:
1) Does your standard for determining torture—the motives of the captors—apply to all governments, or just to the U.S.? Shall we also consider the motives of North Korea, Saudi Arabia, or Iran in their treatment of political prisoners? Perhaps these governments also waterboard or otherwise degrade human beings in an honest effort to obtain information they deem necessary. Are these governments practicing torture?
2) Who determines the morality of the motives? Who decides, in other words, which are good waterboardings, and which are bad? You and NPR seem to be saying that existing standards, such Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, count for less than the intentions of those doing the waterboarding. But who makes that call? The governments themselves, as in the U.S. example? The victims? (We can guess how they would vote.) A disinterested party—the NPR Ombudsman, perhaps?
3) If we agree that waterboarding, done for the right reasons, i.e., to “get information” is not torture, then what other actions do we condone if done for the right reasons? Pulling out fingernails? Electric shocks? Sexual assault? If the criteria for defining torture comes down to motive, are all practices on the table, so to speak? Are some off limits? How do we decide?
4) Finally, what do we do about history? Waterboarding was considered torture when it was practiced during the Spanish Inquisition by the archbishops, in World War II by the Japanese, and in Tuol Sleng prison by the Khmer Rouge. Do we still regard all these as torture? How can we be sure? Maybe the archbishops of the Spanish Inquisition really needed to “get information” from some of those heretics.
While we may never be able to unravel such historical tangles, we may be sure of one thing. History will render a judgment. The judgment may not be absolute, may not unconditional, but chances are it will be pretty clear. Time and distance have a way of exposing people and institutions for what they were. My last question for you, then: When the history of this controversy is written, are you comfortable with how your actions will be judged?
I sincerely hope you will return to this issue, Ms. Shepard. You can hardly consider it settled.
While I agree with the
While I agree with the condemnation of Ms. Shepard's silly logic that attempts to construe identically criminal and barbaric actions as somehow different, and less evil if they are undertaken to get information as opposed to punishing someone for their beliefs, it brings another question to my mind. If, as I think the majority of the commenters here agree, intentions in no way mitigate a crime, and torture is torture no matter who commits it, where or for what purpose, then what about hate crimes? If intentions cannot mitigate the criminality of an action, how can they exacerbate it? Why should we have protected classes in our society whose lives are deemed more valuable, more worthy of exacting retributive justice in their defense? If you reject her distinction, so must you reject the notion that a crime is more terrible because it was motivated by some kind of crimethink, some bigoted ideology unpopular and unacceptable to most people, as opposed to specific rage at a particular person, or even simple jealousy or desire for another's property. I ask because I suspect those laws are much more popular with this audience than are CIA torture sites, but the underlying principle employed in their defense is the very same as the one Ms. Shepard uses in her remarks.