The Monday Message Board has a lively discussion of the Habib case, and I thought I’d make my own observations. Based on the evidence I’ve seen, I’m fairly confident of three things
* Habib was up to something connected with Islamic militants in Afghanistan
* After his arrest he was tortured (in Pakistan and Egypt) and subject to cruel and degrading treatment (in Guantanamo Bay)
* The Australian government knew about and approved Habib’s treatment[1].
A lot of participants in the debate seem to assume that, if you accept the first point, the second and third don’t really matter. I would have hoped that this kind of position didn’t need to be refuted, but that’s apparently not the case, so I’ll try.
Update A lengthy comments thread already, but it’s interesting that no-one, as far as I can see has disagreed with my factual conclusions. If there are people out there who think that Habib is an innocent bystander they haven’t shown up here. And, although there are plenty of commenters willing to defend torture, no-one, it seems, is willing to put their name (or handle) to a claim that the government is telling the truth.
First, torture is evil.
Second, whether or not Habib was guilty as insinuated (he’s never been charged), if you approve of torture you approve of torturing innocents because this will inevitably happen. In fact, it already has.
Third, Habib’s own case illustrates the point that torture doesn’t work, and is counterproductive. The Americans had him (and many of his alleged accomplices) for three years and still couldn’t pin anything on him. If he was a terrorist to start with, he’s a hardened terrorist now. If he was a noisy malcontent, he and all his friends have a lot more reason to be noisy and malcontented, and some will probably go further.
fn1. Of course, with the kind of definitional legerdemain that characterises this government, no evidence could possibly prove this claim. In matters of this kind, things are now set up so that everyone knows and nobody knows.
John Quiggin 
And fourthly(to assist the good professor’s moral clarity here), IF the first three points are obvious to all generally, then a Beazley led Labor Opposition, now takes the same substantive position as the Howard Govt does to all of this. Well apart from some semantics over ‘interrogation’ vs ‘interviews’ and believing that ‘some’ of our troops should return from Iraq to be better deployed in our SE Asian back-yard presumably. Where and what for is anyone’s guess, now that our troops engaged in tsunami relief efforts are coming home.
Oh, and we might add that if Beasley thinks ‘some’ torture or simply cruel treatment being bandied about here is good enough to prepare our troops in the event of capture, then presumably he believes the same treatment is good enough for captives of war, like Habib and Hicks. Just for moral clarity you all understand.
Exceptionally well put, John, and displaying a very nice moral clarity, as W might say.
The next logical question for Mark to answer himself it seems is, would such moral clarity allow him in all conscience to vote Beazley Labor from here on, or rather like John, does his only moral path lie with the Greens, or perhaps the Democrats?
Calling torture, or anything for that matter “evil” is highly subjective. I would contend that it definately has acceptable uses.
Nic – such as?
I would suggest that you fail in your refutation JQ.
I don’t think that the Australian government and it’s agencies are hinting obliquely about Habib.
Further if you are Howard you don’t have to be charged, being guilty of “sleight of hand� is sufficient proof of guilt of something, whereas habib’s misrepresenting of facts leaves him innocent of other than being up to something!
Had him for three years and couldn’t “pin� anything on him. Interesting terminology, they were trying to frame him? Why? Or is it that you know that Habib told them nothing of value or you consider that not to be relevant? It might be that your argument would be stronger if you stated what it is that you seem to be saying, this is not a war.
If he was a noisy malcontent, he and all his friends have a lot more reason to be noisy and malcontented, and some will probably go further. I see my argument that it will not be the fault of Habib (or his friends apparently) if he now succeeds in killing Australians because we were mean to him is already being advanced. I wonder how you know that terrorism is caused by the misdeeds of others rather than a fanatical belief in the right to kill in order to impose one’s morality on others, or at least in the case of Habib and friends, or his new friends. Old ones don’t seem that keen.
This is an interesting argument. I know that I would approve of torture to save the life of someone close to me and I suspect that most Australians would also approve. So torture becomes not an evil but an act that is right or wrong in virtue of the value of it’s consequences. Your position is that some actions are right or wrong in virtue of something other than the value of their consequences. Therefore you are left with the position that there are certain values that according to deep, widespread moral belief, should be respected by individuals in their own individual behaviour and not be promoted, or in your position allowed, period. Thus for you there is no option such as torture to save say your child You are entitled to your view. However despite your claim that “torture “ is evil others may be of the view that consequences have some moral weight in any act and I challenge you to demonstrate why I may not be entitled to that view. Or that you never hold to it about any act by an individual or a state.
If you concede my right and the belief of many Australians to hold to the view that the use of torture has some value in terms of it’s consequences then you are left with, torture doesn’t work. But it seems to me that just leads to, the act is right or wrong according to the value of its consequences.
Can’t say I am persuaded by your reference to why it doesn’t work
You also suggest some kind of slippery slope I think. That is if you allow torture then you allow for the torture of innocents, it is inevitable. Thus you must not tolerate torture, or inhuman and degrading treatment. If you have a criminal legal system and gaols then innocents will go to gaol, it is inevitable. Thus as gaol may be described at the very least as inhuman and degrading then one cannot tolerate goals.
You would have hoped that this position didn’t need to be refuted, morality is as you and your friends decide it is.
I don’t think I can usefully engage in debate with someone who supports torture. Certainly I’m not going to argue about the subtle nuances of my post.
I
Ros,
That last post was torture, but at least you attempted to make one point somewhat clear: torture is evil in your view if it has negative consequences:
“So torture becomes not an evil but an act that is right or wrong in virtue of the value of it’s consequences.”
So if a man is locked up for three years illegally, is tortured and then released without being charged with any crime, then the torture inflicted upon him must be evil, yes?
Glad we cleared that up.
Fair enough JQ. So I can be sure that Alan Dershowitz is not on your xmas list. How would you go with a fellow Australian academic, Julie Clarke, law deakin. Though as she is game to say yes there are situations where torture is justified she is probably used to other academics refusing to talk to her. And again off the top of my head, Britain’s Appeals court ruled last year that evidence obtained by torture is acceptable in british law courts, so I guess they are not on your xmas list either.
On the issue of torture, clearly the events in Iraq cannot be condoned, and are not just the result of some bad individuals but systematic of a wider problem, and have and will cause the deaths of many foreign and Iraqi troops and civilian personnel. However, John cops out when he describes all torture as evil etc. In the extreme event (which is becoming ever more likely) that security forces hold a suspect who has knowledge of the whereabouts of a nuclear device or other WMD, the vast majority of the population (including those who strongly oppose torture) would quite rightly expect security forces to do anything necessary (including executing innocent relatives in front of them) to obtain the necessary information. To not acknowledge this is to pass on all moral responsibility to those faced with the dilemma whether to torture or not.
A more complex issue beyond torture, is what do we need to do as a society to both ensure that security forces do not exceed their authority, which history shows they often do, and also provide ourselves with the tools to fight Islamic fascism, which is a far greater threat than the vast majority of liberal minded individual are willing to concede. By refusing to acknowledge this fact and engage with the issue of terrorism seriously, they have already allowed conservatives to dominate the debate.
Could someone define “torture” for me in the context of this thread? I suspect I’d find any form of incarceration “cruel, degrading and inhumane ” if it was applied to me personally. And had I been incarcerated at Guantanamo I would obviously – regardless of circumstance – invoke a torture narrative upon my release as a matter of course. Where is the advantage in “thanking” one’s jailers? Where “truth” lies in all of this is clearly a matter of perspective. If you don’t accept the War on Terror thesis then obviously everything that flows from it is deeply suspect – including the detention of individuals suspected of engagement therein. If you do, then you presumably see incarceration and interrogation as essential aspects of military engagement. I don’t think that any rational person could sustain a case for beatings, deliberate maiming or physical injury or the calculated infliction of pain, regardless of circumstances. But what of psychological pressure? Prolonged interrogation?
Interesting michael, if i recall properly Julie clarke spoke of a german police chief who made the conscious decision to blow his job by ordering the torture of an individual to try and save a child’s life. To some he would be a hero, to john evil and not a matter that he would debate.
our hypocrisy on these matters is interesting. As I understand it there is legislation in Queensland now that could allow for court ordered ceasarians on women considered to be living in a way that threatens their unborn child. Some might view this as equating pretty close to state sanctioned torture. WA courts just ruled that an adolescent Christian scientist could be forced to have blood transfusions when and if the need arose as part of his treatment despite his protestations. perhaps the decision was made that these act would be right by virtue of the value of their consequences.
Zyodor I would suggest that all acts have negative and positive consequences, so no it does not follow that I am of the view that Habib ‘s treatment was evil because he didn’t get charged. Consequentialism informs our laws, but I don’t see it as limited to the parameter “charged”
Observa, Ros,
We create our own reality in the ordinary course of our daily lives, all the more so for today’s smart new Republicans and rightists who brag about doing just that.
Your reality sees torture as a nuanced kinda thing to be engaged in by your friends. Nobody could possibly tell you that you weren’t choosing, consciously, the world in which you will live, and neither shall I.
Also, like John, I won’t engage you in your chosen reality; you’ve had your say and now I’ve had mine.
Ros,
What were the positive consequences of Habib’s illegal incarceration by a foreign government and (alleged) torture?
could go on Fyodor but will acquiese to Nicolo’s polite request to say no more.
Ros,
It’s obvious that Nicolo made no such request, so I’ll repeat my question:
“What were the positive consequences of Habib’s illegal incarceration by a foreign government and (alleged) torture?”
Ros apparently believes ‘terrorist suspects’ are guitly until they can prove their innocence but for the rest of us plebs we can be innocent until proven guilty.
What happens when you kill someone on the basis of the tortured statement and it turns out false as it usually is.
Ros there has been a huge change in police attiudes since DNA came on the scene as a lot of coppers found out guilty people who had not been charged actually were innocent.
Funny about that.
Michael,
what was perpetrated in the Iraqi gaols was merely what the Israelis had done for years to Palestinians as anyone who has read Amnesty International reports could report.
Michael, so if the authorities thought (mistakenly, of course) you had a nuclear weapon hidden somewhere, it’d be OK for them to torture you and execute your relatives in front of you?
Not very likely, but they’ve made mistakes before. And they’ve fitted up innocent people before, too.
It should be remembered that torture was a common instrument of jurisprudence in both Europe and Asia up until about the 17th century.
It wasn’t abandoned because of some great moral awakening. It was abandoned because it was found to be ineffective because it produced too many false confessions.
” Ros there has been a huge change in police attiudes since DNA came on the scene as a lot of coppers found out guilty people who had not been charged actually were innocent.”
And conversely of course Homer, with DNA evidence, a lot of people who might once have got off are now more likely to be charged. Swings and roundabouts.
Dave, etc. I have made clear that I would only support torture in a ticking bomb situation. The problem with torture in a situation such as where the police felt they needed to do it do save a child’s life is not that it is necessary immoral if it did result in a child life being saved but that history shows very clearly that Police and other authorities would use it indiscriminately including when under pressure to close a case or simply to get good results and earn a promotion. But back to the ticking bomb, I would suggest opponents are being somewhat hypocritical here. If a nuke was going to destroy a city where they lived within the next day or two if every effort was not made to extract information on its whereabouts, then I have no doubt you would at least hope that the authorities would resort to torture even if you condemned it afterwards – a bit like Tibetan Buddhists who eat meat but condemn those who kill animals.
I’ve posted previously on the ticking bomb problem and the particular case in Germany where a threat of torture was used to extract info from a kidnapper.
Exceptional cases like this aren’t particularly useful in considering the practice of routinely torturing people who’ve been arrested on suspicion of criminal or terrorist activity.
For what it’s worth, we now know just precisely how to use torture effectively. That is, how to filter out the noise of false confessions and get meaningful signal.
It does help that torture isn’t only usful for information but as part of a larger repertoire of state control.
I have no intention of clarifying those remarks further just here, since it would make matters more widely known in the wrong way.
The wrong way is to show how to do them, the right way is to show what’s going on or could go on, so you can avoid it.
John, they are useful in that they make explicit the rules of the game and make people consider the issues, rather than relying on as at the present individuals within the system to step into a large grey area and know when to act or not to act. Incidentally, police use psychological torture as a matter of course – eg if you don’t inform on your friends you will go to jail and end up being gang raped and possibly end up with Aids. Furthermore, I am not sure what you mean by exceptional cases – I would have thought that the current situation was exceptional in that Mutually Assured Destruction and other constraints on the use of WMDs no longer apply when religious extremists are willing to sacrifice their lives in the hope of receiving reward in the after life. Sometime in the next 10 years a WMD will be used in Sydney, or Paris or New York or some other city. The consequences for the future of our Multicultural societies will I think be frightening, not least in the violation of civil liberties that will result and the retribution which will be dealt to ethnic minorities. Consequently, while I do not trust the likes of Bush or Rumsfeld to set the rules by which security forces function, I do not think it is unreasonable demand that security forces be given additional powers to deal with the situation, albeit ones that are governed by very strict explicit rules of operation and overseen by independent organisations – although hopefully not ones stocked by individuals who think that Tony Blair et al are a bigger threat to human progress than Islamic fascists and other opponents of liberal democracy.
Geoff,
in my own clumsy ill edicated way I was trying to make the point that police used to believe some people were guilty of crimes. When DNA came along they found out they weren’t.
In other words I prefer evidence to circumstances
A point that is being missed is that to allow torture of a ‘terrorist’ applies as a justification after the fact, and as a result there is a very real risk that ‘innocents’ will be tortured. Let’s say that an Australian is found running around Afghanistan with the Taliban. We don’t actually know what they are doing there, but we assume they are involved in something fishy. Torture them a little and they confess to training as a terrorist. Ergo, torturing them was okay. The problems is that we don’t know that they are a terrorist until after we have tortured them. And all of this assumes that confessions made under torture are actually accurate and true. Let’s assume Habib was in Afghanistan at the relevant time and in the company of Taliban/al-Qaeda, but was only doing so for business reasons. We assume he is a terrorist and torture him and find out that this is the case (ie he was there for business). Torture is not justifiable in this instance. Assume he was training as a terrorist and we extract a confession, then it is being argued that torture is justifiable. Problem is that we cannot *know* in advance what the situation is.
Comment by Fyodor — 22/2/2005 @ 10:01 am makes a tendentious assumption:
……
Perhaps, given the dodgy human rights records of Egypt & Pakistan, the practice of outsourcing terrorist perps and suspects to foreign jurisdictions is unworthy. But I am not convinced that the incarceration & interrogation by foreign govts of Australian citizens suspected of engaging in terrorist acts of mass-murder, in multipe jurisdictions, is necessarily illegal.
AUS citizens are forever being arrested, locked up, interrogated and then set free in foreign countries. Sometimes with, and sometimes without, the approval of the home country.
AUS has, relative to the US state, a military alliance and a shared jurisprudential tradition. I cant see, setting aside the moot question of Habib’s torture, that it was a miscarriage of justice to hand Habib over to Gitmo.
Remember that jihadist perps or suspects are potential combatants. It is fair to hold them for an extended period of time if authorities have a reasonable suspicion that they may be about to take up arms.
If the suspects and perps are subsequently released without charge then lifes like that. Lots of people who are arrested & detained are not formally charged or convicted. Does that mean that the practice of arrest & detention without immediate charge is always illegal?
We are fighting a Global War on Terrorism. So our Wets will do everything possible to deny the global scale, terrorist source and martial nature of this fight.
PS: Speaking of unaswered questions: does Fyodor still buy Habib’s story about going to Pakistan for the non-militant purpose of setting up a cleaning business? And does Fyodor still think that Habib is a credible source given his deceits over welfare payments?
The Wets – given their chronic pandering to Balkanising sectional interests, opposition to profiling of terror suspects, institutionalisation of immigration rorts, unconditional welfare disbursements to malcontents and general over-lawyering – have a lot to answer for in this war.
Naturally enough when you cuddle up to blokes like Habib and Hicks for years and accuse your govt of lies and all sorts of nasties, you are up manure creek when it becomes patently obvious that you’ve backed a loser. The answer of course for any lawyer worth his salt, is to immediately deflect the argument to high points of law. We see the same wriggle with those who have used deconstructionist arguments to nail their opponents and then want to semantically turn the debate to a literal interpretation (interview vs interrogate)when they can’t convince Joe Public their cause was just or honest.(Pop over to Gary Sauer Thompson’s at Public Opinion for my take on this)
Habib’s circumstance is now a classic case of backing a loser for those that have and so now they move on to a higher moral plane, than we mere mortals. Yes they have a point about legal and moral principles generally, but in the final analysis we have to defer to the highest court in the land. The court of public opinion, which is the best jury we can ever have in an open democratic society. That is of course what Beazley has recognised, as he drags Labor away from the stupid fringes of society. He is of course a decent honest bloke, who will like us all, be prepared to be watchful that individuals are not oppressed by our very fluid legal system and high-handed use of power that could go with it.
This discussion reminded me of a short essay by Ariel Dorfman published on the 8th of May 2004 in the Guardian (and in The Australian too) entitled: Are There Times When We Have to Accept Torture? Good read here. The essay ends:
I have met several people that were tortured under Pinochet’s regime and I would say: no, I am not that scared to justify what these people suffered. I wasn’t then and I am not now.
A lot of nonsense is prated in defence of the Gitmo atrocity. A completely spurious argument has it that the victims of Gitmo somehow do not come under the protections of Article 4 of the Geneva Conventions because of their status of “illegal combatants” and/or because of their general islamicist naughtiness.
There may be such a category as “illegal combatant”. And Article 5 of the Geneva Conventions provides the mechanism for such a determination:
“Article 5
“The present Convention shall apply to the persons referred to in Article 4 from the time they fall into the power of the enemy and until their final release and repatriation.
“Should any doubt arise as to whether persons, having committed a belligerent act and having fallen into the hands of the enemy, belong to any of the categories enumerated in Article 4, such persons shall enjoy the protection of the present Convention until such time as their status has been determined by a competent tribunal.”
The world is still waiting for the convening of that competent tribunal… In the meantime, the United States Government is breaking international law, and by refusing to protest aboutthe treatment of Australian nationals under that illegal regime, the Australian Government are accomplices after, and worse, before the fact.
Is it any wonder that Gitmo apologists who piously aver to its compliance with the Geneva Conventions never seem to have read beyond Article 4?
Jack,
He goes there to ‘buy’ a cleaning company.
In Pakistan where corruption is rife you only make money, a lot of money, by who you know not what you know.
Im think this is quite likely.
Remember in Pakistan and close countries a cleaning business is a perfect front to launder money.
It has a lot of cash flow and remember why you got this busienss in the first place.
In other words you owe someone.
You either turn a blindeye to this or do it because you believe in it.
This is far more likely to be the story than Habib training to murder someone given his background.
Comment by observa — 22/2/2005 @ 11:47 am
“…but in the final analysis we have to defer to the highest court in the land. The court of public opinion…”
Public opinion is no monolith. Each opinion – widely differing as they are – on this page is part of that ‘thing’ called public opinion. It’s a mistake to brush aside moral and legal arguments as views of those who backed a loser. Such arguments are simply part of the public opinion which you wish to defer to.
Homer you are assuming that I agree with the Europeans that terrorism is a criminal offence. I don’t I believe it is an act of war. Also the fact of DNA doesn’t alter the fact that the innocent will go to gaol. To start with the judiciary and certainly juries struggle with probabilities. An infamous case where an English taxi driver was convicted for a, about a 1 in 400,00 probability, despite the fact that he had something like 12 independent witnesses who placed him elsewhere. It is not the police’s job to rule on guilt or innocence that is down to the courts for criminal matters. Currently in NSW Industrial courts management is presumed guilty and required to prove their innocence if a worker dies or is injured. Further double jeopardy doesn’t apply.
Zyodor, the only way I can think to put this is to relate an ABC interviewer attacking with glee a scientist who had been invited to discuss the calesci ? virus and it’s early escape. In response to a question which required him to make the statement that of course there was a probability that it would escape, but a low one. She crowed you call that a small probability, it escaped.
So will the value of the consequences of the act (torture) be such that it has value sufficient to make it right. It is clear that you consider that torture is wrong as an act whatever the value of its consequences so it makes no difference to you what may or may not be gained by the cruel and degrading treatment of Habib in G or his torture in Egypt .
Rather you require me to agree that Habib was locked up for three years illegally, tortured and then released without being charged with any crime, and that whatever the value of using “inhuman and degrading treatment� or torture the act is wrong.
It may be that for me as an individual I couldn’t do it. Just as I couldn’t shoot a child soldier or despite the fact that I am intellectually persuaded by Peter Singer’s argument for infanticide I couldn’t kill a baby. However I do not allow myself the luxury of requiring others to protect me, for example to kill others for my safety, including a child soldier, if you can’t bear the torture scenario, but not face up to the reality of what that entails. Dershowitz’s position is as I understand it that the ticking bomb is a real issue and that it is therefore necessary to legislate to ensure that a judge makes the decision and that it is a ticking bomb. Again to not face up to this as a reality is not acceptable to me. It is not unreasonable to ask whether you would OK with being the victim of a ticking bomb because we as a society failed to confront the problem and thus offered the best protection to all who play a part in it, the perpetrators and the victims and those who are charged with avoiding the ticking bomb. Would it be OK for a ASIO agent for example to refuse to torture but organise to get his/her family out, knowing that to advise the public was not an option.
However as you insist that I tell what I don’t know, what heavy set men over fifty who spoke English in Pakistan (and later morphed into an Australian diplomat) or US interrogators found out and what value that information was and will be. I can’t. Maybe authorities will get sufficiently pissed off that they will let us know. Habib isn’t going to tell us, for a range of reasons.
With regard to Prof Q’s argument about the efficacy of torture (leaving aside for the moment the moral dimension:)
Can anyone name an example of a regime of whom it can be asserted that the systematic use of torture made a decisive contribution to its long-term security or viability?
Bear in mind that there are many regimes of whom the opposite is true – the use of torture hastened their demise by helping to erode their moral legitimacy. Examples: Chile, Argentina, the apartheid regime in Sth Africa, East Germany to name just a few.
A related question would be how the use of torture affects the peculiar mindset of radical Islam, with its elevation of suffering and martyrdom as rewards in themselves.
With regard to the “ticking bomb” argument: Michael Koubi, the chief investigator for Shin Bet was interviewed in the 20 November 2004 issue of New Scientist on this topic and others.
Koubi, who has confronted thi problem in its most literal sense on numerous occasions, is emphatic that torture is neither necessary or effective.
While some of Shin Bet’s techniques are coercive and have been criticised (e.g. the use of sensory deprivation and sleep deprivation) they stop well short of techniques used by the US post 9/11 such as waterboarding.
tim g — 22/2/2005 @ 12:54 pm treads dangerous utilitarian ground in his rhetorical query on torture’s efficacy as a security measure:
……….
Rome.
Jack & Observa,
The US Supreme Court ruled last year in Rasul vs. Bush that incarceration at GTMO without access to the US judicial system was illegal. Katz’s comments regarding the Geneva Convention are also spot on. The whole charade is illegal under US and international law, let alone the implications for our government’s complicity in the abuse of our citizens.
It’s the last point that I find remarkable about the RWDBs’ defence of Habib and Hicks’ detention: this should be a clear-cut issue of national sovereignty and protection of Australian citizens. Why the f@ck are we allowing foreigners to abuse our citizens in such a flagrantly illegal manner? Imagine the outcry if Indonesia tried this crap.
“Remember that jihadist perps or suspects are potential combatants. It is fair to hold them for an extended period of time if authorities have a reasonable suspicion that they may be about to take up arms.”
No, Jack, it’s not fair. It’s patently unjust to hold someone convicted of no crime in indefinite detention simply because you think they might become a combatant.
“If the suspects and perps are subsequently released without charge then lifes like that. Lots of people who are arrested & detained are not formally charged or convicted. Does that mean that the practice of arrest & detention without immediate charge is always illegal?”
For three years, with no legal redress? That’s a ridiculous argument, even for you.
“PS: Speaking of unaswered questions: does Fyodor still buy Habib’s story about going to Pakistan for the non-militant purpose of setting up a cleaning business? And does Fyodor still think that Habib is a credible source given his deceits over welfare payments?”
The questions were not answered because they were not put to me. Seeing as you’ve just asked them, my answers are: a) no, I have no idea what he was doing in Pakistan; b) I don’t consider him utterly credible because he has not been forthcoming with his whole story. The “deceits” over his welfare payments are a beat-up, and irrelevant to the GTMO issue.
Habib could be incapable of telling the truth and it wouldn’t matter a jot. We don’t even have to hear Habib’s story to know his rights have been violated and that a miscarriage of justice has taken place.
“Public opinion is no monolith. Each opinion – widely differing as they are – on this page is part of that ‘thing’ called public opinion. It’s a mistake to brush aside moral and legal arguments as views of those who backed a loser”
Well that’s true Dave, but sometimes you can question the marbles and by inference the weight of the arguments of those that lack considerable foresight, (due to blind prejudice?) in these matters. You can fool some of the people some of the time, even if it’s only yourself. Perhaps an example to elucidate here.
If I as a business type, had stood up and defended Rodney Adler in public against ‘nasty’ innuendoes, lies and attacks by bodies like the ACCC, in spite of much opinion to the contrary, where would I be now? I could have trotted out all the right moral indignations like ‘innocent until proven guilty’, victimisation, etc, ever since the demise of HIH, until such time as it was patently obvious that he was. If I then turned around and said yes but!!!…. Although he’s a lousy businessman, he’s still a good financial adviser and deserves to be treated as such, I might have to accept that many would be rolling about the floor with laughter, irrespective of whether they were anti-business types or not.
So it is with Habib. A typical example was our learned Prof of Psych, Tennant, who professed to be an expert on Habib’s condition. Now I must confess on watching the interview with him on TV, that he appeared very eager to back up Habib’s torture claims, on what I would consider some fairly tendentious grounds. You have to bear in mind here, that the Observa has witnessed diametrically opposed medical opinions about a ‘mediterranean back’ in a Workcover claim, depending upon which party, employer or union, hired the expert quack. And that was a medical condition. Now did Tennant qualify his very enthusiastic diagnosis with phrases like ‘symptoms could be consistent with exposure to torture’? Not on your nellie, he didn’t and the observa was somewhat skeptical of our learned shrink. Next day I discover that same learned prof has been sacked by Habib and Hopper, for a gross and inexplicable breach of patient confidentiality. Yes but!!!…. He’s still a good diagnostic shrink cry the usual suspects and in any case we’ve got Habib’s word for it and he’ll explain where a disability pensioner got the money to travel and do international business deals and George Bush is a liar and……
AND Hitler, Stalin, Saddam, Uday, Qsay, Pol Pot, Kim Jongil, Mugabe, Castro, Guevera, Osama, Zarquawi, Hicks, etc, etc have never been tried and found guilty in a court of law to this day and so……
And you wonder why the Beazer is sending out for a change of pants for Labor?
Ros,
You said yourself that “… torture becomes not an evil but an act that is right or wrong in virtue of the value of it’s consequences.”
Since you didn’t deny that Habib was tortured, I put the hypothetical to you: what good came of it that outweighed the damage done to him?
Your response is pitiful: whoever interrogated him extracted useful information. Or not. You don’t know. It doesn’t really matter to you, does it? The bottom-line is that you trust the government only to torture the bad guys and never make mistakes. JQ was right: you are a waste of time.
No need to get nasty Fyodor. I attempted to address your question as to whether any good came of the question of Habib and torture. I am a bit offended that you demanded repeatedly that I respond so that you could call me names. I will not make the mistake of responding to a request from you again. If JQ wants to call me a waste of space allow him to do so himself perhaps, or are you privy to private correspondence with JQ. Whatever.
Ros,
I apologise for being nasty, though I didn’t call you names.
BTW, JQ had no input into my comment – I was referring to his earlier statement that “I don’t think I can usefully engage in debate with someone who supports torture.”
I should have agreed with him rather than waste my time. I didn’t say you were a “waste of space”.
Fyodor declares that the The US Supreme Court ruled last year in Rasul vs. Bush that incarceration at GTMO without access to the US judicial system was illegal.
The Supreme Court did not say that rather that the US Federal courts “have jurisdiction to consider challenges to the legality of the detentions of foreign nationals captured abroad in connection with hostilities and incarcerated at Guantánamo Bay”.
However on 19 January 2005, a US District Judge for the District of Columbia handed down a decision
“Judge Leon agreed that there was “no viable legal theory” by which he could issue writs of habeas corpus to these detainees held in these circumstances.”
John,
If you cannot usefully engage in debate with someone who supports torture then this thread would be remarkably one-sided. The debate has to be possible because without debate it is not possible to prove them wrong, a task I would regard as important to the survival of liberal democracy.
There are always people who are going to try to justify this sort of abuse to seek the easy, short-term, answer to problems, whether terrorism, paedophilia or some other morally repugnant crime. It is the same reflex that leads to vigilantism.
Ultimately, the only way to stop these sorts of activities is the old, tried and true two-pronged strategy – remove the reasons for the criminal activity to reduce or stop new perpetrators coming along and strong and humane enforcement of the law against the existing perpetrators.
If the enforcement of the existing laws is, however, inhumane and capricious, in their mind at least, this justifies their criminal actions to the existing perpetrators and provides sympathy for them among the general population – reducing or removing the effectiveness of the long-term strategy and re-inducing the cycle of violence.
To me at least, this argument has to be made again and again because the human tendency is always to seek the easy answer without thought for the long-term consequences.
Fyodor, Ros, Observa, Pr Q et al
Enought. This argument has gone round and round in circles going nowhere owing to a disingenuousness on certain parties.
It is getting bogged down in idiotic technicalities and ideologic hair-splitting. Time for some socio-political realism. I quote, from memory, Dr Knopfelmacher who, apropos a similar dispute, remarked:
In this context it implies martial realism rather than judicial idealism. We are at war with Terrorists and we are in miliatary alliance with the US. This would not seem to be a terribly difficult proposition but our Wets seem to be inexhaustively creative in their ways of avoiding its implications.
Sociological realism is also indicated. The text of this dispute is the traditional state power v citizen rights (Blah X 3). No one in the Coalition of the Willling is talking about reinstituting the Spanish Inquisition, Fyodor’s overheated speculations notwithstanding.
The sub-text of the furor over Habib, the 800 lb gorilla which squats in the comments thread, is whether or not Euro societies can integrate Muslims in large numbers without major security concerns. This is not a socio-biological axiom. Just look at the current debate in the USE over whether to let in dear old semi-secular, semii-liberal Turkey. And look at the other debate simmering about Islamic urban enclaves that have sprung up in major Euro cities and do not exactly appear to be melting into the pot.
This “ethnic question” is a major reason behind the rise of “Far Right” parties in Europe. But our Euro elites have made things worse, not better, with their well-intentioned but wrong-headed approach to settlement & citizenship. So their action has brough a reaction. Amazing.
My personal opinion is that Islamic immigration and integration is possible providing the idiotic reign of over-lawyering, ethnic-pandering, multi-culturalising political rackets is brought to an ignominious end. Thankfully, going by Beazley’s tough-minded comments, this moment seems to be at hand. The unapologetic stance of the govt. has probably helped.
In the case of Habib we have an almost text book example of how the Wet program has brought itself undone. This fellow, evidently no rocket scientist, was allowed into the country & granted citizenship on the grounds that he would be a good citizen. He took a foreign-born wife who he drags around in antideluvian mufti, preached sectarian extremism, went on welfare and then rorted it, spent time harassing persons at military installations and then wound up in Central Asia hanging out with jihadists plotting to massacre thousands of civilians.
What a triumph of Wet social engineering!
Now apparently he had been put through the military judical ringer and he is not a happy camper. Well I am sorry if he got worked over by his native interrogators. I hope this practice is discontinued. It reflects badly on us and does no good.
But I am not sorry that he has been languishing in Gitmo at the Ministers, or Secretaries, pleasure. It might have given him the opportunity to rue his ways.
Perhaps our Wets will follow his example and do some way-rueing themeselves. It was at the pleasure of a more soggy immigration Minister that this unsuitable person, with a volatile temper and an intense devotion to radical Islam, was let into the country in the first place. He should not have been given citizenship with this appalllingly uncivil attitude.
At least the security agencies should have placed him under greater surveillance and constraint. Alas, like the 911 attackers, he was given a free pass by our Wet administrators.
The general public hear this sort of thing and roll their eyes because they are sick of the farce. This is the reason for its relative indifference to the occasional judicial irregularities, malpractices and misadventures of the Bush/Howard axis. And this applies to persons like Hicks, or Jihad Jack, who appear to go troppo from the other direction, so to speak.
But none of our dearly beloved Wets are prepared to face these unpleasant facts. This is because their own institutional complicity in the source of this mess would become apparent and the very shaky house of cards that their ideology is based on would come tumbling down.
Jack S, in answer to my question about regimes that have enhanced their security through the use of torture, suggested Rome.
I hadn’t realised that things had gotten so bad under Berlusconi.
On a more serious note, I was thinking more in contemporary terms, where the modern awareness of universal human rights means that torture is more commonly seen as aberrant, rather than just part of standard law enforcement practice as it was under Caligula and co.
Also, I think the “ticking bomb” scenario is an interesting debate but not especially realistic, especially as it pertains to jihadists. Imagine if, in spite of themselves, American intelligence had managed to apprehend one of the 9/11 hijackers on September 10, and had resorted to some form of torture as they interrogated him. Remember that these guys could be heard shrieking in ecstasy as the planes struck the twin towers. What form of torture do you imagine could have broken through that kind of fanatical mindset? It seems just as likely to me that, to a culture that celebrates death and suffering as honourable rites of passage, being tortured by the enemy serves to reinforce the belief system (and hence the resistance) rather than break it down.
Andrew, while I certainly agree with your point on people taking the easy way out, and I am certainly concerned where the slippery slope will end re torture, many critics of Bush et al are also taking the easy way out by a) viewing Islamic fascism as if it was a typical law and order issue b) massively underestimating the degree to which fascist tendencies are present in the Muslim world, c) being more concerned about the likes of Hicks and Habib than you are about the victims of Islamic aggression (including very very large numbers of women in Muslim communities in the west and our liberal equivalents in the non-western world who most liberals don’t appear to give a flying f…. about), C) greatly underestimate the threat posed by WMDs, especially, at the present time, Nuclear weapons. Oh and talking about taking the easy way out what the heck do you think Europeans are up to in trying desperately not to offend Islamic extremists by not support intervention in Iraq, pulling out of Iraq (the Spanish), blaming Israel for just about ever problem in the world (a large number of people across a broad left to right spectrum), and by repeatedly backing down in the face of their demands and not taking action against extremists (those who preach violence in Mosques in the west, and so called moderate Islamic organisations who support (the vast majority of them) terrorism. Personally I despise the fact that I end up taking Howard et al sides in arguments such as those over Iraq but given a choice between these reactionaries and the neo-Neville Chamberlain’s of the world I will take the lesser of the two evils.
Jack,
I happen to largely agree with your sentiments on immigration – if not the way you put it. However, this is not about immigration. To me, this thread is about what we are willing to accept in terms of Government power. If we are willing to accept that an individual, a citizen (whether we believe they should be or not), can be held against their will without proper (or any) judicial oversight by any government without our government raising a protest then we are tacitly accepting that our government can hold any citizen of this country without proper judicial oversight. If we accept that then we are no better than those we seek to defeat.
If we accept this because a person is a Muslim, then next we might accept it because they are a Jew and then because they are gay and then because they are retarded…
Ros,
What did you think “legality of the detentions” concerns? The supreme court affirmed that the detainees in GTMO had the right to due process – which had been denied to them – which they are now pursuing.
You conveniently ignored Judge Green’s ruling from the same circuit, 14 days after Judge Leon’s (they were handling different cases on the same issue). Note also that Judge Leon was a G.W. Bush appointee from 2002.