Asymmetrical Information

This should be fun. Discussions on the nature of evil by people (not you, Jane) who aren't troubled by Abu Ghraib, the torture memos, or (as Kleiman recently noted) the government's apparent position that whether or not behavior constitutes torture depends on how bad you think the person you are "behaving" on is.

I look forward to next week's installment: "even if might doesn't make right, doesn't the US's military primacy demonstrate that might is evidence of right?" Or perhaps, "If it's OK to indefinitely detain people without counsel or hearings in the face of 20 guys with boxcutters, doesn't the fact that more American's weren't 'disappeared' during the primarily Democrat-led Cold War proof that Democrats really were soft on communism?"

Perhaps it is possible to be troubled by Abu Ghraib, the torture memos etc, but to be more troubled by the prospect of sitting on one's hands, lest they be dirtied in the slightest.

"[B]ut to be more troubled by the prospect of sitting on one's hands, lest they be dirtied in the slightest."

WTF could this possibly mean? Given that I know precisely zero Democrats who opposed the invasion of Afghanistan, and you know a similar small number, I take it you mean something like, "the Arabs don't take any response seriously until you've had one of their teenage boys (from a country that had not attacked and was not a threat, no less) raped in your house. That's what doing something means."

Now tell me again about good and evil, big daddy.

Sounds like the number of Democrats Tim knows who were opposed to the invasion of Afghanistan is roughly equal to the number of Republicans I know who aren't troubled by Abu Ghraib. How any of this disqualifies anyone from detecting evil in Saddam's mass graves is anyone's guess.

"Sounds like the number of Democrats Tim knows who were opposed to the invasion of Afghanistan is roughly equal to the number of Republicans I know who aren't troubled by Abu Ghraib."

Except that a Democrat who ran for President while opposing the war in Afghanistan wouldn't get double digits in the primaries. You can use Kucinich (I don't know what his actual position on Afghanistan was) as proxy here, I'd bet.

OTOH, your boy called the SecDef ultimately accountable for Abu Ghraib the best SecDef ever (and he's apparently the only Cabinet member that gets to stay) and is presently promoting the guy who signed off on the torture memos to our top law enforcement position. There's also this bit of pleasant argument today: "U.S. military panels reviewing the detention of foreigners as enemy combatants are allowed to use evidence gained by torture in deciding whether to keep them imprisoned." (from CT). And, as foreseeable as all this was, Republicans fairly bathed Bush's toes with their tongues on Nov. 2.

"How any of this disqualifies anyone from detecting evil in Saddam's mass graves is anyone's guess."

It doesn't, I suppose. As far as I can tell (honestly), there is certainly nothing internally inconsistent about saying, "Torture is cool, but mass graves are wrong." Mass graves are clearly very different from torture, I agree (honestly). I'm not sure (honestly - not sure) how credible such arguments are considered by people who didn't vote for Bush (meaning both Dems and the rest of the world). I suspect arguments on this basis that seek credibility are either (a) ghastly, or (b) tortuous. Which is why I said, "This should be fun."

But it's your world for at least the next two years, so (I've just realized) it's worth hearing your arguments. To get started: "Torture (A) is fine, but mass graves (B) are evil. And the point along the road from A to B at which we must definitively stop is...." I should be clear; I absolutely believe Republicans are against mass graves. And I'm (honestly) interested in your answer to where we stop between A and B.

Well, let's see...the parties immediately responsible for Abu Gharib (highly inappropriate, but not exactly The Rack or the use of meathooks on testicles) were taken to court for it. Exactly what hat were you hanging on this, again?

We don't stop between A and B, Tim. We stop short of A. And that's the answer whether we're talking about my personal view of the moral oughts or about official US policy (the odd ideas of some DoJ lawyers about whether the President would have the authority to move us beyond A if it suited him being quite beside the point).

If I'm understanding your next-to-last paragraph rightly, you're telling us that if the people who didn't vote for Bush think ill enough of the person making an argument, they lose all interest in whether or not the argument is true. I believe you (honestly).

Paul:

1. If we are not going to torture anyone, I'm not sure why the government needs to assert that it can use evidence gained through torture to justify detention. Are you saying that despite that claim, we never torture (nor do we plan to torture) prisoners for information? Is this a case where you think the worry is about accidental torture? (And isn't that specifically what the "specific intent" requirement (cf. below) was originally about)? If it is a silly mistake by a junior person, don't you think the govt. could clear it up fairly quickly by just pulling that arugment back publically?

2. I wasn't saying we're uninterested in the argument. In fact, I set up a lower bar for Bush supporters than you have. I only want the arugment to be credible; I don't insist that it be true. I acknowledged that such a credible argument (re: torture OK, mass graves out) could exist. But I don't know precisely what that rule would be. So I asked you.

I'd think it would be fairly uncontroversial to say that, from the outside, it is easier to believe in an inchoate rule that bans both torture and mass graves (with mass graves being immeasurably worse) than an inchoate rule that allows for torture but not for mass graves. A pro-torture/anti-mass-graves rule could easily exist (they are very different); I was just asking for the shape of said rule. (One example might be what I take to be Anony's position - that whatever the gov't meant by "torture" in its position before the court, it didn't mean "real torture." Again, that might be true, but everyone who wasn't a Bush backer might feel more comfortable if they new precisely where the "real torture" that we won't engage in starts).

To the extent that your answer is the same as in #1 - we don't do torture - does your notion of torture follow roughly the lines drawn by Yoo in the torture memos? (E.g., if the "active behavor" (I don't know the proper word here) knows his act will cause serious pain, but doesn't have the specific intent to cause serious pain, it's not torture).

3. The "honest" inserts were inserted b/c (given the misunderstanding in the "best blog" thread) I wanted to pre-acknowledge agreement along certain lines I assumed you might take and to forestall you from thinking I was being snide in that paragraph. No such luck, I guess.

Tim said: "I know precisely zero Democrats who opposed the invasion of Afghanistan."

Paul said: "the number of Democrats Tim knows who were opposed to the invasion of Afghanistan is roughly equal to the number of Republicans I know who aren't troubled by Abu Ghraib."

In other words, Paul knows ("roughly") "zero" Republicans "who aren't troubled by Abu Ghraib."

Really? Surely you know that Rush Limbaugh said Abu Ghraib was "exactly" like a college fraternity prank; "it looks just like anything you'd see Madonna, or Britney Spears do on stage ... this is something that you can see on stage at Lincoln Center from an NEA grant."

Rush sounds anything but troubled. And given his totemic status, I think his words represent a fairly valid indicator of widespread sentiment. Paul, can you offer any reassuring counterexample, something to suggest that Rush's attitude isn't, in fact, highly representative of what Bush supporters believe?

As another handy example: Mouse (above) described Abu Ghraib as "highly inappropriate." That's the kind of phrase that pops into my head if I, say, see someone smoking on the subway. I'm not sure "highly inappropriate" even rises to the level of "troubled."

Mouse also said "the parties immediately responsible ... were taken to court." Yes. And the parties _ultimately_ responsible were reelected (sic), reappointed and promoted (Dubya, Rummy and Gonzalez). In other words, these folks don't stand behind the troops, they hide behind them, and to great popular acclaim. Please explain how this demonstrates that virtually all Republicans are indeed "troubled" by Abu Ghraib. Unless "troubled" is one of those great doublespeak words, like "freedom" amd "democracy."

I wasn't saying we're uninterested in the argument. In fact, I set up a lower bar for Bush supporters than you have.

At the top of the thread you certainly seemed interested only in who was making the argument. But now that you're turning in the direction of civility I'm willing to take your word for it. Still baffling is your continued assumption that I'm actually interested in advancing such an argument (that torture is OK and mass graves bad). There's also the question of what you'd do with it once I'd advanced it, since I (or the Republican official of your choice) could hold a totally worthless and inconsistent argument in favor of torture and still be right about the mass graves. If yoking these two separate questions together is not (or is no longer) for ad-hominem purposes, what purpose is it for?

I don't know quite what to make of the news story Kieran Healy linked to. Neither the reporter nor Healy nor you appears to regard the plaintiffs' claims that they were actually tortured as being of any intrinsic importance; they only matter to the extent they give us an opportunity for tea-leaf reading about government policy in this area. My own guess-- and the information in the story is pretty scanty even for a guess-- is that what we're looking at is a law enforcer's typical allergy to the exclusion of evidence in general, and inferring anything about even the lawyer's own attitude towards torture is going to be pretty shaky.

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