Jonah, this dovetails with a thought experiment I’ve been pushing for a while now, in rebuttal to the claim that waterboarding (as it was administered by the CIA on three top al-Qaeda detainees) is torture. If you gave every inmate serving, say, two years or less in prison the option of being waterboarded or completing his sentence, what would he choose? I’d be stunned if fewer than 95 percent chose waterboarding.
With all due respect (and I mean that, since I agree with your larger point), that's an inaccurate comparison for an obvious reason: even if you agree that waterboarding isn't torture, no one is suggesting that waterboarding is used as *punishment*, i.e. as a substitute for indefinite detention.
Surely, both domestic prisoners and detained terrorists would largely choose waterboarding over a prison sentence. But how many would choose waterboarding AND a prison sentence? Zero percent, surely.
Which, again, is the issue with waterboarding.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDave is right. There are probably a lot of people who would choose any of a variety of forms of torture rather than serve years behind bars. Doesn't mean it isn't torture. If this is how Mr. McCarthy thinks, he should strive to think more logically and reasonably.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI think this is a good point. I'd also add that I think such "torture" would be more beneficial to society than short to medium term prison sentences. When we send somebody to jail for short periods of time, all we do is screw up their lives and make them more likely to be criminals in the future. I had a student who is going through a court ordered drug rehab. She missed a counseling appointment (her fault), but the punishment was that she went to jail for 2 weeks. So now we have a formerly A student failing her economics class (and probably others as well). I would have preferred she get a quick caning or waterboarding and be sent on her way. And I think she would have too.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI honestly can't follow the logic here. Is McCarthy saying that waterboarding isn't torture because (he guesses) people would choose it over a long period of incarceration? That doesn't make sense at all. How many prisoners would be willing to have a fingernail ripped out to get out of jail early? Does that mean that ripping out fingernails isn't torture? What about being branded? What about having a finger broken? Heck, if the prison sentence is long enough, people will do almost anything to get out of it; they'll even choose experiences that would meet almost any commonsense definition of torture. McCarthy's argument makes a nonsense of the plain meanings of words, and it's really freaking creepy to boot.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseUmm, well, he did say "two years or less."
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDang it, you said it better than I said it!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI like the idea of putting them in stocks and allowing us the opportunity to throw rotten cabbages and tomatoes, etc. at them.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOkay, someone has to say it. The reality of the situation is incarceration doesn't only serve as a means of punishment/deterrent for criminals, it also keeps folks off the streets who are just going to commit more crimes. I realize that we overeducated types tend to fall into the trap that most people can be easily rehabilitated. The fact is that they cannot. The average person who commits petty crimes and gets caught is going to continue to do so once back on the streets. Wouldn't it be far better for society, then, if we kept them locked up, and thus unable to terrorize the public? If the problem is overcrowding, there's an answer to that too. End the drug war. It's none of the state's business if people want to destroy themselves with drugs, and making drugs legal would both prevent a lot of first-time offenders from ending up in jail (and thus being introduced to a life of crime), and would remove a lot of the other crime associated with moving and selling drugs.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAnother problem is that unless you have been waterboarded, you're making an uninformed decision. Say you're right and over 95% of them take the waterboarding and the realease. Then afterward, almost to a man, they express extreme regret for their decision and say if they'd know how bad waterboarding was they would have just taken the time.
Note of course that this is what they'd say whether it was true or not!
And Lorraine's objection is even more basic and true. If someone wouild trade a foot to get out of life in prison, would that mean cutting off feet wasn't torture?
Of course, we do something eerily similar in allowing chemically castrated sex offenders paroles that fully functional rapists aren't eligible for. But as distrurbing as that is, at least the point isn't castration as vengeance but as deterrence. No one would ever claim that waterboarding a terrorist would make it impossible for him to terrorize again!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseNo the ultimate deterrent is a Seal wielded HK416, 5.56mm to the ol' noggin.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis is a little inappropriate. The very definition of torture implies LACK of choice. Furthermore, the whole point of such "enhanced interrogation techniques" is to push people to the point that they just can't take it anymore. Waterboarded once? Maybe. Twice? Sure. But to have to endure waterboarding for hours might cross the line from "unpleasant but doable" to "why would anyone ever choose to do this?"
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHow many would choose ice cream AND a prison sentence?
Do they even teach logic anymore?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhen it comes to violent criminals, if the primary goal of prisons is to separate deranged individuals from the law-abiding population - with the thinking that rehab efforts are mostly futile - then instead of expensive high-tech jails staffed by legions of guards, what about old-fashioned island exile?
Pick an small atoll a couple of hundred miles from anywhere, put up some cheap housing (or not), let the criminals roam free and airdrop in survival rations from time to time along with a few fish hooks. It'll immediately become a chaos of warring gangs and be a very unpleasant place to live, but that's just another deterrent.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThat would work fine, but what happens if the President's plane crashes on the island that holds all the prisoners?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI'm thinking Ceti Alpha V myself (although I wouldn't recommend it for the genetically engineered inclined).
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOr we could make certain thigns less illegal? Put more hard labor programs, where instead of being locked in a gym 24 hours a day, they would be out building roads, learning the value of hard work. What would the lash teach them? Don't get caught? That someone wants to hurt them? What they need to learn is hard work and to take responsibility for their own actions.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis is dumb. I think you'd find most people would submit to a single instance of all sorts of torture rather than give away two years of their life. The only thing that this thought experiment tells us is that Andrew McCarthy apparently believes that torture isn't torture unless you'd rather spend two years in prison than experience it. I suspect most people would elect to be shot (provided it was only a flesh wound) rather than spend two years in prison, and shooting people for information is torture too. This is spectacularly stupid.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis is stupid on stilts. By telling an inmate you will serve two less years if waterboarded you're admitting the waterboarding will stop before death. I doubt that our interrogators made that clear to prisoners at the time.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMr McCarthy,
I've read your articles over the years with an open mind on this issue, and generally have respected your views as informed by a high intelligence and obvious, deep expertise. Regardless of one's views on the issue, most intelligent and conscientious people will agree that, if and when it's justified, waterboarding is nonetheless a horrible procedure that requires the highest possible danger to society for it to be warranted in good conscience by any public official in a democracy. It's not the subject of jokes, or fit punishment for felons.
I know that blog posts often misfire, and bloggers occasionally post random thoughts that, in retrospect, they wish they hadn't published.
I'm hoping that this frivolous, ugly and appallingly stupid post of yours fits that category, and that you will show respect for your readers, and salvage respect for your views, by retracting it.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMcCarthy has said a lot of crazy things in his deranged need to defend waterboarding but this is one of the most illogical.
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