Like most commentators, I’ve made some correct predictions about Iraq and some incorrect ones. In my case, I’ve mostly erred on the side of pessimism, which I think is appropriate with regard to war – more disasters have been caused by excessive eagerness to go to war than by excessive reluctance. This prediction, made about a week into the Iraq war, seemed a bit over the top in the subsequent months, during which very little evidence emerged to support it. In retrospect, however, it turns out to be almost[1] entirely accurate.
Given the increasing frequency of references to Northern Ireland and Guantanamo Bay it’s reasonable to assume that torture of prisoners classed as ‘terrorist suspects’ will begin within the next few weeks, if it hasn’t started already. This will be denied with great vehemence, then, when it comes out, defended as an inevitable response to Saddam’s evil methods.
fn1. To be fair, while the response of the Bush Administration has been pretty much as expected (I forgot to mention the standard intermediate step of blaming it all on ‘a few bad apples’), and plenty of right-wing commentators have treated the whole thing as good dirty fun, some supporters of the war have been genuinely horrified. Sgt Stryker, (following correspondent BruceR) makes the same suggestion as I have previously, to “level Abu Ghraib, as the Bastille of the modern world that it is, send any prisoners worth keeping to other facilities, release the rest, and then offer substantial recompense for Iraqis, one and all, who claim to have been wrongfully imprisoned/abused in custody while there” . Sgt Stryker also proposes dissolving the army units involved.
John Quiggin 
Q
Its dreadfully sad that a stupid set of commanders and leaders have allowed such revolting things to happen. It indicates that (too many?)key people just didnt know what they were doing.
“more disasters have been caused by excessive eagerness to go to war than by excessive reluctance”
I think that goes to the heart of much of the disagreement over Iraq and war more generally. There isn’t any objective way to determine if it is correct so no wonder so many people disagree with each other. I would have thought the excessive reluctance of the US to enter WWII would have cost more lives than all their acts of excessive eagerness of the 20th century combined. I don’t know.
It’s an interesting question though.
‘You hold a terrorist who knows the location of a defusable bomb which, if exploded, will kill x million people. Do you have the right to torture him/her to find the bomb?’
As a utilitarian I thought yes (the Economist mag in posing this recently said no, on the grounds that it caused injury to the torturer and opened gates to averse response actions).
A rationale for the recent terrible actions in Iraq will be sought as a positive answer to this question. ‘We were softening them up in order to…..”. Partly this is evasiveness but worth thinking about.
It’s an interesting ethical dilemma, Harry, but surely irrelevant in this case. According to reports, many of those being held in Abu Ghraib were guilty of, as someone put it, driving a car while being an Iraqi. There may have been people who had actively resisted the occupation, but probably no terrorists capable of killing millions.
warbo is right. there was probably absolutely no “reason” to torture these prisoners, and it doesnt seem like they were trying to get information, just to humiliate and abuse them.
as a supporter of the war, i think the conduct of the US army in this respect is completely unacceptable. it was apparently for no reason, it was from a position of huge power against an almost defenseless population, and does nothing for the legitimacy of the US military’s role in Iraq.
bush himself condemned the actions of the prison guards: “It’s a stain on our country’s honor and our country’s reputation,”
so your analysis’ last point is completely incorrect.
FYI: “The new American commander for detention facilities in Iraq say there are no immediate plans to close the notorious Abu Ghraib prison.”
Really how much is the information worth that the Americans are getting? In the short term it may stop a bombing or two, but in the long term those each of those images are going create dozens of more bombers.
I asked:
‘You hold a terrorist who knows the location of a defusable bomb which, if exploded, will kill x million people. Do you have the right to torture him/her to find the bomb?’
Warbo, c8to and I think Blair all said that torture was inappropriate in Iraqi prisons because x (the ‘reward’) wasn’t big enough. The implication is: if x was bigger torture would be OK. Taken to its absurd conclusion what is the critically large value of x?
This issue was also analysed in yesterday’s Australian by Ariel Dorfman, ‘Paradise’s price is torture’. (AD attributes the original question to Dostoevsky’s, The Brothers Karamazov).
AD calls this ‘the dirty question’ that underlies the ‘universal protestations of disgust’ that greeted the release of photos of the torture in Iraq. I agree its a dirty question but not sure about the ‘underlies’ bit. Maybe its just that cost/benefit utilitarianism is an ugly setting for answering this question.
It is an impossible dilemma, I think, but partly artificial because you don’t really know the quality of the information you are seeking and don’t yet have.
In the end I don’t know what I’d do in a real situation of that kind. In part because I don’t know the exact situation or what sort of shape I’d be in. I also don’t know whether I could actually administer torture, even if I were convinced it was necessary.
Furthermore, how can you be sure that torture will actually work? There may be non-torture strategies that have just as good a chance.
Gee,those bad apples get around don’t they?
We have had them in the west australian and victorian police forces and now they pop up again in the US army.
Any sign of rotten fruit in the Whitehouse yet?