Cliff may turns up with a rehearsed and utterly disingenuous argument. And, when he argues that it's ridiculous to expect anyone to abide by the Geneva Conventions when it comes to terrorists, Jon Stewart does well to remind him that those are actually the rules America signed up to.
Cliff May insists that this is simply an argument about where to draw the line. Stewart says that he draws the line where America has drawn the line for 200 years.
And that's the insanity of the current Republican position, they no longer even sound like Americans.
What Stewart is talking about is how the US should treat prisoners. Chris Orr
covers this point:
...when a group of combatants are badly outnumbered, or surrounded, or otherwise very, very unlikely to win a conflict, they have a considerable incentive to surrender--but only if they believe they will subsequently be treated with mercy. That is why individuals, and nations, surrender. If, by contrast, a group of combatants believes that, by surrendering, they are only making themselves vulnerable to further harm--specifically torture and/or death--they have no incentive at all to stop fighting.
Tags:
atomic bomb, cliff may, daily show, foundation for defense of democracy, hiroshima, interrogation, jon stewart, khalid sheikh mohammed, terrorism, torture, truman
6 comments:
There three things we can do in this situation:
We can abide by the agreements we have signed and the laws we have passed.
We can say that we are no longer going to abide by our agreements, and repeal laws.
We can just ignore our laws and treaties and do what we want.
For every complex problem, as the wise man once said, there is a simple solution, that is wrong.
Amen, SP. The US has led the world by accepting certain universal truths and enunciating them better than anyone else on the globe. We should remember that it was Ronald Reagan who signed the US up to to the UN Convention Against Torture, so it was hardly the work of some weak kneed Liberal.
Torture is wrong and this is so obvious that it is a universal truth. The Republican party, under Bush and Cheney, appear to have veered so far away from the political norm that they are now willing to argue for what all of us know is unacceptable.
This is honestly why I feel there will have to be prosecutions.
Until there is, these nutters will continue to argue - blatantly and publicly - that war crimes should be committed.
Nice try but no cigar. Both were offering their opinions. A clear minded observer can agree with either, but factually May had him easily beaten.
Geneva conventions correspond to uniformed soldiers. Do you realize that the Geneva convention allows for firing squads to be applied in these cases? Even if you discard this statement, May's reference to Holder who doesn't abide by said conventions viz al-Qaida should leave you wondering if your Republican inferences are off the mark.
May at least established a logical framework in the debate by demarcating lines and trying to understand Stewart's position. Any time Stewart felt cornered by practical annoyances, he waxed theoretical and pontificated on the virtues of the American value system that existed for 200 years. That behavior, never mind even the insanely stupid position, was so childish it made him many time more disingenuous as he kept rudely claiming his guest to be.
At the risk of denigrating your views, you may want to consider the arrogance of statements like "obvious" and "universal truth". It leads to dangerous thought patterns since any dissenters in what they believe the "universal truth" is are subject to punishment. I have no claim to any other than perhaps our only hope is reason. Even then, reasonable people cannot be made to agree at every intellectual inflection point.
Try considering, just for a moment, that there are people of all value systems and perspectives that are capable of honest conviction in their views. I am no less capable of holding cynicism for those in power, but a cynical world inevitably collapses, and what fun would that be?
At the risk of denigrating your views, you may want to consider the arrogance of statements like "obvious" and "universal truth".I used the phrase "universal truth" when stating that torture is wrong. Are you seriously thinking that torture is not?
All that people like myself are saying is that Ronald Reagan agreed that the US would accept the UN Convention Against Torture as law. He wasn't exactly an old Leftie. And it says something about how extreme the current Republican party are that we can even find ourselves debating the merits of torture.
Are you seriously thinking that torture is not?To answer your question directly, no. However, unless we want to go back and forth in philosophical ping pong, I will leave the topic alone by saying that as a practical matter and as a policy matter, I would prefer to live in a world that need not torture. I am not against smacking someone around if it can be shown the person has actionable intelligence. I am not so queasy when it comes to physical discomfort and see the vast part of western society as continuously and neurotically obsessing about some sacrosanctness of the "physical" domain of people as inviolable but their mental health perfectly violable. That is, it's fine to ruin someone's life but one must not physically harm them. I see no great distinction in many cases.
This is not my advocacy for violence or to see more physically harsh treatment of suspected terrorists/criminals. I am more interested in whether there are results in a justifiable context. The current context of the past 10 years are ok by me. We have not devolved if we compare with tactics of Vietnam, WWII, Korea, Central America, etc.
May, by the way, asserted that he was against torture. His goal was to find out what the U.S.'s definition was. His operating definition made his set of allowable tactics within Stewart's definition of torture as well as the Geneva Convention's. Your point, along with Stewart, was that since the U.S. signed up for that definition, it was acting in breach of international law. To that, May countered by stating that those rules apply to uniformed combatants.
I personally have very little respect for the current state of international law, both from the domestic (U.S. for me) and non U.S. sides. The former will act when it needs to in its interests, the international community be damned. The latter will squabble and fail to provide any enforceable policy.
The reality is that power, physical and economic power, is still the dominant currency. This will not change, and no international laws will do a damn thing to change it, no matter how high minded we believe them to be. Our choice is to understand that force, come to terms with it, and even stop resenting each other for it. The real challenge is then keeping ourselves from self-annihilation when we disagree on how to temper it.
Regards,
Marc
May, by the way, asserted that he was against torture. His goal was to find out what the U.S.'s definition was. His operating definition made his set of allowable tactics within Stewart's definition of torture as well as the Geneva Convention's. Your point, along with Stewart, was that since the U.S. signed up for that definition, it was acting in breach of international law. To that, May countered by stating that those rules apply to uniformed combatants.I thought May's point rather irrelevant as Geneva is not the only Convention which the US has agreed to abide by. The US has also agreed to abide by the United Nations Convention against torture, which made no reference to prisoners clothing or uniform and simply spoke of "persons".
And I agree that what we are arguing are definitions of torture - although I think we should talk of the international definition rather than an "American" one - but I seriously find it hard to believe that there can be any definition which does not include walling and waterboarding and chaining someone to a chair for three weeks whilst pelting them with constant blaring music, which is what the International Committee for the Red Cross described.
I personally have very little respect for the current state of international law, both from the domestic (U.S. for me) and non U.S. sides. The former will act when it needs to in its interests, the international community be damned. The latter will squabble and fail to provide any enforceable policy.Well, the Republicans certainly believe in international law as it pertains to intellectual property rights, fishing rights, the laws of the Sea etc, and every other international law one can think of with the notable exception of the right to wage war without UN approval.
This is because the Republicans believe that they can basically do what they want and no-one can stop them. Of course, as the recent debate over torture shows, the Democrats - the US party who claim to respect international law - are simply too bloody spineless to hold the Republicans to the laws which your nation has agreed to be bound by.
Obama may state that "the US is a nation of laws" but, under international law, it is the obligation of his party to prosecute fellow citizens who have broken international law.
I know that Bush and his cohorts believe that international law can be ignored at will because the US is so strong, but, in reality, your Congress should by now have already started hearings into this. It is the word of your nation which has been broken, Bush should not get away with that.
He is not the first criminal to believe that he could flout the law, but it is only through good men enforcing the law that lessons are dealt to these people. Congress should investigate Bush, Cheney, Yoo, Bybee and Bradberry and, if criminality is found, they should prosecute them. That's the only way to restore the US's standing in the world. If that doesn't happen then Obama can talk as much as he likes about "the US being a nation of laws", but, for all the reasons you state, it simply won't be true.
The reality is that power, physical and economic power, is still the dominant currency. This will not change, and no international laws will do a damn thing to change it, no matter how high minded we believe them to be.That perfectly illustrates the Republican mindset on this matter. It's remarkably short sighted, if for no other reason than the US won't always be on top of the pile with China possibly overtaking the US within decades.
The US of my childhood led by example. Sure there was Vietnam and other forays into South American politics that it would have been wiser to avoid but, overall, the rest of the world did regard you as the good guys.
I am genuinely shocked - not that the US tortured people - but that intelligent Americans, like yourself, seem so casual about it.
Perhaps you all really do believe in American exceptionalism.
Maybe the America which held Nixon to account for a much smaller crime really has gone.
Clinton summed up America at her best when he stated, "We lead by the power of our example rather than by the example of our power".
We're about to find out if that is still true. I, personally, doubt it.
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