Chris Wallace Shows Us All that Slippery Slope

[paft.livejournal.com]

Chris Wallace on Fox News:

I’m not asking why it was okay to shoot Osama bin Laden…What I am second-guess is, if that’s okay, why can’t you do waterboarding, why can’t you do enhanced interrogation…

So now the argument is that if we’re going to shoot people, we might as well torture them. Apparently Wallace can’t see the difference between shooting someone in a firefight and systematically torturing a naked, bound prisoner. This moral difference is one that has been recognized for decades in the civilized world – people who waterboarded captured combatants in the past have been tried and convicted for it -- but apparently it’s lost on him.

This is why some of us have reservations about targeted assassinations without trials, even targeted assassinations against someone like bin Laden. It’s not because we feel sorry for bin Laden. It’s because of people like Wallace. Give them in inch in that direction, and they'll clamor for a mile the next day. Remove one human rights barrier, and it doesn’t matter how many assurances you get about it only being this once, about it only being done in very specific circumstances, about it never, EVER being abused… A day later the Chris Wallaces of the world will point to where the barrier once stood, assert out there's no barrier anymore, and ask why we all don't go just a little further.

Honest. Just this once! Just a few inches! Cross their hearts and hope to die...

Crossposted from Thoughtcrimes

Comments

Picking nits

[ed-rex.livejournal.com]

Apparently Wallace can’t see the difference between shooting someone in a firefight and systematically torturing a naked, bound prisoner.

bin Laden was executed, he wasn't killed in any firefight (http://www.cbc.ca/m/rich/world/story/2011/05/06/osama-bin-laden-raid-firefight.html).

Re: Picking nits

[paft.livejournal.com]

Which is another looming reason for having strong reservations about it.

[udoswald.livejournal.com]

That argument is akin to saying "I don't see why if we can arrest them we can't take them into an alley and beat them with hoses until they give up their accomplices". It's comparing apples to oranges. Even if you buy the argument that he was "executed" (which I don't), it's a far cry from torture and was carried out in very different circumstances. For one, the SEALs had a very real reason to be afraid bin Laden would do something to them, interrogators at Gitmo have no such reasonable fear towards those they torture.

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

between shooting someone in a firefight

We didn't shoot him in a firefight. We blew his head off as he was standing in his bedroom, in his pajamas, while he was probably shouting the Arabic equivalent of "Don't shoot! I am unarmed!!"

If we can do that, and if we can drop J-DAM's on people driving their SUV's through the Yemeni desert on the off chance they are Al Qaeda sympathizers, if we can expand extra-judicial killing, indefinite detention and keep Guantanamo open for business, then I think flinching at water boarding or other even more anodyne methods of "enhanced interrogation" is pretty silly. Where is the outrage at that? Other than Noam Chomsky no one is willing to say that, when it comes to the GWOT, the Obama Administration might as well be staffed by the Bush Administration, including Lord Darth Cheney himself.

[udoswald.livejournal.com]

while he was probably shouting the Arabic equivalent of "Don't shoot! I am unarmed!!"

You cannot possibly know that and, since you cannot possibly know that, it seems intended to be inflammatory and nothing else. There is no evidence he was planning on surrendering. Quite to the contrary, they're saying he retreated to his bedroom where weapons were located. The laws of war are clear that unless he was actively surrendering, it was not unlawful to shoot him since he is a combatant and an enemy commander.

Bin Laden had made it very clear in his tapes released during the last 10 years that he was not going to go peacefully. He often boasted of being strapped with explosives. This would have made it very difficult even if he had claimed to be surrendering for the SEALs to ascertain whether he was serious or just trying to draw them into a trap.

I, for one, would have no problem with them shooting him if they thought his surrender was designed as a ruse. The last thing we need to do is lose brave American soldiers to protect the life of a slime like bin Laden.

This isn't Joe Blow, this is Osama bin Fucking Laden.

[squidb0i.livejournal.com]

He could easily have been holding a vial of anthrax or had a claymore strapped to his chest, and you don't know in that situation until he uses it. He complies or you cap him. Period.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Wasn't there a point a while back where Republicans complained first that Obama was too soft on terrorists and then that he was killing too many of them? At some point all that criticism loses any power to make someone give a damn about it. Yes, Obama's plans for the GWOT are more the same than not with Bush's. This is a regular point of criticism against him by progressive members of this community. Your point is?

[paedraggaidin.livejournal.com]

Agree 100% with this.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

You are right.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

Yesterday (or was it two days ago?) I was listening to Rachel Maddow interview Meghan McCain about gun rights. And McCain's argument against all sorts of common sense restriction on gun ownerships is precisely the slippery slope and if you give them an inch they will take a mile.

It's funny to now see it from the left so soon after seeing it from the right.

Slippery slopes should be de-oiled and have sandpaper put down on them.

[paft.livejournal.com]

Except, you see, Chris Wallace just illustrated my point.

[dreadfulpenny81.livejournal.com]

You wanna talk about the moral differences between waterboarding and shooting someone in a fire fight? I really don't think you're one to discuss the moral implications of anything when you spew garbage like this:

Honest. Just this once! Just a few inches! Cross their hearts and hope to die...

Enough already! This is the second time you've posted and made thinly veiled threats/implications that those who disagree with your point of view should harm themselves. Frankly, I really think one of the mods needs to step in and say something about that.

Considering that other countries wouldn't think twice before torturing one of our soldiers, I'd say that's a game-changer. Gee, PAFT, at least we're not cutting off people's heads and filming it for their families.

[paft.livejournal.com]

paft: Honest. Just this once! Just a few inches! Cross their hearts and hope to die...

mvl: Enough already! This is the second time you've posted and made thinly veiled threats/implications that those who disagree with your point of view should harm themselves.

????

What in the name of the Twelve Apostles are you talking about? Where in this message have I made "thinly veiled threats/implications" that people who disagree with me should harm themselves?

mvl: Considering that other countries wouldn't think twice before torturing one of our soldiers, I'd say that's a game-changer.

It's not, and anyone who understands ethical behavior knows it is not.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

Considering that other countries wouldn't think twice before torturing one of our soldiers, I'd say that's a game-changer

You realise you cede the moral high ground when you start basing the right/wrong of an act on whether or not other people do it. Your folks should have taught you this when you were 4.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

No, we're merely pursuing a type of torture that means we owe families of some Nazi and Imperial Japanese generals several decades' worth of wrongful death money. Completely an improvement, that.

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

There's a difference between taking out someone who is guilty of a great deal of crimes against humanity and torturing someone simply labeled as an 'enemy combatant' with no evidence for that reasoning.

The confession from the torture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed would be completely inadmissible in a court of law anywhere in this country, why is it admissible abroad? We want to bring freedom to these people, then we have to start treating them like human beings.

[whoasksfinds.livejournal.com]

torturing someone simply labeled as an 'enemy combatant' with no evidence for that reasoning.

you're still under the impression that we waterboarded people without any evidence for them being enemy combatants? if so, you're wrong.

We want to bring freedom to these people, then we have to start treating them like human beings.

we don't want to bring freedom to al qaeda leaders. we want to know where their friends are hiding and how best to kill them.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

As usual, you're not understanding the argument. The point is that if we are going to support the immoral act of assassination (not a firefight) then we have no basis to not support the immoral act of torture, since torture doesn't kill anyone and thus is "less bad" than assassination.

Remove one human rights barrier, and it doesn’t matter how many assurances you get about it only being this once, about it only being done in very specific circumstances, about it never, EVER being abused… A day later the Chris Wallaces of the world will point to where the barrier once stood, assert out there's no barrier anymore, and ask why we all don't go just a little further.

The problem is that the "assassination barrier" is the one well beyond the "torture barrier".

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

"as usual" just have to have the extra insult in there don't ya.

[reflaxion.livejournal.com]

Slippery slopes are horseshit.

</thread>

[paft.livejournal.com]

Apparently they aren't in every case, because Wallace is providing a working demonstration of one.

[whoasksfinds.livejournal.com]

we dropped atomic weapons on two japanese cities in WWII, and yet somehow we didn't turn into the nazi's.

next.

[paft.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure what connection you imagine this comment of yours has to the OP.

As horrible as the bombing was, it did not break international law and we did not use it as a rationale for institutionalizing torture.

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

Actually it's the converse. We wouldn't be talking about the righteousness of shooting OBL if we hadn't already had people argue prior that it was inhumane and a human rights violation to not give battlefield terrorists full Miranda rights upon capture.

Re: Keep in mind I'm against waterboarding

[paft.livejournal.com]

No. I'm not going "play pretend." What makes a cause "just" is an adherence to human rights. The minute a "cause" embraces torture, it ceases to be just.

I've heard this crap so many times before. I heard it about the Mai Lai Massacre. I heard it about the grotesque torture of leftists in Chile. I heard it about the rape and murder of nuns in El Salvador. I heard it about Abu Ghraib. I've heard it used to justify pretty much every atrocity from burying children alive to raping accused felons with baseball bats.

And I can tell you that most of the soldiers I've known who saw combat considered the rules of war and the Geneva conventions damned important -- especially those veterans I've known who ended up as prisoners of war. They considered the difference between being shot at and bombed and being stripped naked and tortured for several hours pretty significant.

[jerseycajun.livejournal.com]

From where we sit today, where we've made war without actually declaring it for neigh on 10 years, every death caused is no less an assassination than Osama's.

That said, then why only now are we asking these questions? Sure, waterboarding has been debated endlessly (and I'm against all of these "enhanced interrogation techniques", for the record) but the question of assassination is only being brought up in the aftermath to this one (albeit prominent) death when there is little to separate his death in kind from all the other lives taken in pursuit of our goals.

Now at last perhaps we can bring political pressure to bear so as to really end these 'adventures'.

[paft.livejournal.com]

I've been hearing these rationalizations for torture and asking these questions since the 1960s.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Seems to me this post conflates two issues which are related, but rather separate by comparison to how you'd put them together.

[devil-ad-vocate.livejournal.com]

The Roman Catholic Church once thought it was OK to torture people to convert them. Then they decided that wasn't the way to spread Christianity. The U.S. also has morally binding principles; torture is not included. A country either stands for what it says it believes... or it doesn't.