Just to make things clear. The United States now has a policy, referred to euphemistically as simply “rendition,” of flying terror suspects to foreign countries to torture them.
Even though it doesn’t work.
Many of the countries in which the torture is carried out are in Eastern Europe. Indeed, we have adopted a great deal of the old apparatus of Soviet imperialism.
It is often the case that the people being tortured are completely innocent.
“They picked up the wrong people, who had no information. In many, many cases there was only some vague association” with terrorism, one CIA officer said.”
There was a time, not too long ago, when we thought we had evolved beyond such behavior. Apparently not.
“Even in normal situations within one’s country, where the police have enough time and freedom to investigate a case, it is many a time not clear whether those who are caught are actually the culprits.”
I agree. This is why all reasonable observers among us realize that the errors simply can happen in every situation. I claim that errors are infrequent, and the fact that everything in the real world is imperfect does not mean that no one should do anything.
Concerning Hegel and Nietzsche – well, yes. Everyone in the real world is either dead; or a parasite being protected by someone else; or facing various threats and monsters. If you take Hegel and Nietzsche literally, then: yes, everyone is a monster. Darwin would take it as a definition of life.
For me it is important that there are many very different degrees of monsters, and this quantitative difference definitely matters to me. It probably does not matter to most of you.
“This isn’t a get-out clause for the US – it doesn’t constitute ‘having our fingers crossed’ while ratifying the Convention.”
Of course it is. It is a smart attitude of the U.S. that protect sovereignity of the United States and the priority of the basic U.S. laws. For example, if the U.S. constitution said that the citizens should be guaranteed a full protection against the foreign terrorists by the government, it would definitely make the whole UN convention irrelevant.
I think that these issues are rather important and the comments about saving time are pseudoarguments meant to annihilate inconvenient voices. Every citizen – regardless of her or his profession – who cares about these things has to sacrifice some time (during the weekend, in this case).
LM wrote:
“… all reasonable observers among us realize that the errors simply can happen in every situation. I claim that errors are infrequent… ”
But, since the prisons are secret, none of us can have any way of knowing. Furthermore, the lack of basic oversight suggests that, when there are errors, there will be no mechanism to correct them. And finally, since the people running the prisons know that there’s no public oversight, they have little or no incentive to prevent errors or to quickly deal with them when they arise.
“… if the U.S. constitution said that the citizens should be guaranteed a full protection against the foreign terrorists by the government, it would definitely make the whole UN convention irrelevant.”
That may be so (although even this is debatable – “full protection against terrorists” doesn’t entail “unlimited freedom of detention and torture”). But, unless I’m mistaken, the Constitution doesn’t prohibit legislation against torture, so your point seems to be moot.
Now, the Constitution could (in principle) be amended to include such a prohibition – an amendment that says “No legislation, internal or external, may be passed which limits the powers of the President to conduct warfare in any way he sees fit”. But such a move would have the immediate effect of withdrawing from the Convention anyway – so no ‘loophole’ like the above footnote would be required.
The above footnote, as I understand it, says “We agree with the spirit of the Convention, but the freedoms expressed in the Constitution might have to trump some of the details”. Declaring open season on secret detention and torture isn’t ‘wriggling out of a detail’ – it’s just an outright abandonment of the essence of the Convention itself.
“And finally, since the people running the prisons know that there’s no public oversight, they have little or no incentive to prevent errors or to quickly deal with them when they arise.”
Well, given the fact that the German citizen who has claimed to be an innocent victim of these policies has been described in 460 news sources listed by Google and many others, let me assume that your statement that there’s no public oversight was just a joke.
Another reference for those who are interested, the issues of torture and terror are very old ones in Israel, and one can find the same range of emotions and arguments. In 1999 the Israeli supreme court made the following decision as providing guidlines for (but not outlawing) torture:
http://elyon1.court.gov.il/files_eng/94/000/051/a09/94051000.a09.htm
One argument for having guidelines had been that in their absence simple soldiers bear unfair share of the responsibility when something goes wrong, while their commanders, and all the civilian leaders, are nowhere to be found. I believe this is another point of similarity.
A single german citizen is very different from the large number of innocent Iraqis which anecdotal evidence indicates were randomly rounded up and subjected to torture.
Also, I still haven’t heard a reason why these prisions should be secret.
bittergradstudent:
Yes and this in turn generates support for terrorism. The world has become a very dangerous place thanks to Bush.
Thanks for the correction, Lubos. In my ignorance, I had thought there might be a problem that we needed to be concerned about. But as you point out, at least one person (out of, er, some n>1) has received some public attention from the media. I now recognise that by any reasonable standards, that clearly counts as “public oversight”, and I apologise for misrepresenting the situation.
Here’s what Senator Arlen Specter said on the floor of the Senate earlier this year (during a debate on habeaus corpus for detainees:
What Specter and the other Senators on his committee were doing is what is known as oversight.
http://web.amnesty.org/library/eng-usa/reports
The links here are useful.
Those of you who are hearing of this kind of conduct for the first time from the Bush administration might be interested to know of a case in progress since last Spring, where the CIA carried off a suspect to Egypt where the suspect says that he was tortured. The suspect was under surveillance by Italian police at the time he was whisked away. A judge in Milan has charged all of the CIA agents involved in that operation. This story has been big news in Italy for the last 5 months. More on the story can be found here:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9276.htm
As Haelfix notes,
“‘Torture’ is often defined differently by different people so it tends to be hard to figure out exactly what people are talking about.”
But isn’t that one of the things a public court system can handle, ie interpret and set public references (precedent’s)?
The idea of distributing rulemaking and decisions to lowest possible levels (like the US Constitution and lower) is practical and efficient, but there are also positive effects of standards (like UN conventions) such as visibility and predictability.
Arun quotes Arlen Specter:
Arun – I think you mean to say “What Specter and the other Senators on his committee were trying to do, and being prevented from properly doing is what is known as oversight.”
Honestly, how can you quote the above sentences to us, and take them as evidence that the system is working? Doesn’t effective oversight generally require that those in charge recognise and submit to the monitoring process, rather than trying to impede it?
Logopetria, you are right in that what Specter et. al. were thwarted from doing is what is called oversight. But where did I claim the system is working? It is quite evident that it is not. If you go and look at the debate that I quoted from , you will find that one reason Arlen Specter voted for retaining the right of habeaus corpus for detainees (even though army prisoners of war never had such a right) is because of this inability to make sure that the rules are indeed being followed regarding treatment of prisoners. Specter also noted that the Congress has mostly failed to act; the only vigilance has been exercised by the courts.
You should hardly complain about what I wrote after your #32.
Does anyone know any blogs about physics that purposefully avoids posts about politics and making fences?
Plenty on the blogroll. Bye!
(#39) I tend to be less interested in those scientists that are not involved in the activities of their social, cultural and political environments.
MobyDikc:
Politics is a physical phenomena too. 🙂
Sean: And good riddance to MD! At the root of power is technology; at the root of technology is science; at the root of science is the scientist. What sort of idiot savant could do science and be unconcerned with the implications of his/her work? Most of us admirers of Einstein appreciate his efforts to understand the meaning of his life’s work as his efforts to understand the nature of the world.
In any case, nobody’s forced to participate in any particular thread. There’s plenty of good science stuff on your blog. Keep up the good work.
Arun:
I took your comment to be a counterargument to the claim that there was no oversight. Apologies for misunderstanding.
I also assumed that the sarcasm in my comment #32 would be obvious. I’ll try to make it more obvious next time I’m trying to insult Lubos!
So now Rice and the Bush regime are backpedaling saying we shouldn’t do this. Hopefully they are getting the message that this is just not how we do things in the United States of America or for that matter the entire civilized world.
Lubos wrote:
“Dear Moshe, indeed, I would also recommend us and you in particular to save your energy for other things and avoid comments about questions that you have no idea about – such as war strategy.”
Lubos can you please review your military/intellegence service background for us so we can understand how you came to be such an expert on these matters?
Elliot
Elliot, how many times do you have to be told? String theory is the Theory Of Everything. Hence, its proph… sorry about that, I mean its practitioners are by definition Experts On Everything. 😉
Lubos:
I’m more concerned about innocent people being wrongly branded as terrorists. Even with all the checks and balances of the justice system, innocent people are put behind bars in the US. This happens in other countries too, but in the US this isn’t considered to be a big deal.
People say that the judicial system did work if a man on death row is freed after 20 years on death row after DNA evidence proved him innocent. In France the justice minister ordered an investigation after convictions for pedophelia were overturned on appeal after 4 years.
If a prosecutor can get away with this in a normal court:
http://members.shaw.ca/imaginarycrimes/smith&allen.htm
”Prosecutor Jonathan Rosenbaum told the jury that the children hadn’t identified Allen at the line up because they were paralyzed with fear. One mother testified that when her little boy saw Allen, he started crying and ran from the viewing room. The video tape of the lineup, which was not shown to the jury, proves her testimony was false — her son didn’t cry or run from the room, but rather seemed to be having a good time.”
then what do you think will happen if there is no court at all?