Another reason why I’m not a libertarian

Terrorism is the number one cause of waterboarding.

Over at my favorite libertarian haunt — Reason magazine’s blog Hit & Run — Matt Welch links to a piece by respected righty Jeff Jacoby in a post titled “The case against waterboarding never rested primarily on its usefulness. It rested on its wrongfulness.” (The title is actually a quote pulled from Jacoby’s piece, titled “Ends don’t justify the means” over at the Boston Globe.)

One of the things that always bothered me about the libertarian (and left) argument against waterboarding is the fact that they often seek refuge in the assertion that it’s an ineffective means of getting information from detainees despite the fact that, as Jacoby asserts and Welch is keen to point out, that’s not the point.  If the usefulness of waterboarding was never the primary case against it, then why do they incessantly bring it up?  Why is it that you can’t watch or listen to a debate without that case being made by its detractors?

Well, that’s generally because those who make that argument have been cornered in their primary argument against waterboarding as torture, and it makes a convenient escape hatch.  Typically, that occurs when the discussion comes to the point where degrees of right and wrong and the definition of torture itself come into play.  It goes something like this:

PRO: Waterboarding is a useful, effective tool that leads to information that is crucial to saving American lives in the war on terror.

CON: Waterboarding is torture, no matter how effective it is.  We shouldn’t engage in it because it lowers us to the level of our enemies, and because it is a basic violation of human rights.

PRO: Our own pilots and special operations forces are subjected to it during their training as a means of preparing them to resist its use by enemies in order to extract information from them.  How can that be torture, if we subject our own soldiers to it?

CON: It’s different when you know it’s going to be done to you.  People who are prepared to be subjected to it know it’s going to end before they die. [Ed. - Punctuation corrected.]

PRO: In the instances where it’s been used, it’s been used on people who are very aware of its utility, to the point where their training includes resistance against it, as well as the instruction to maintain the presence of mind to memorize the names of their interrogators so that they can repeat them to judges when they make the torture allegations they’re encouraged to make in the event they’re captured.

CON: It doesn’t produce reliable answers.  People will say anything just to make it stop.

So, why is there this seemingly inevitable retreat to the effectiveness argument whenever the discussion comes up?  And, why is there precious little argument (outside the Chomskyite fever swamps) among absolutists that the killing of bin Laden, if you stipulate that the information that led to his death was extracted as a result of the use of waterboarding, was wrongful?  We don’t see this sort of reluctance when it comes to advocating the overturning of criminal convictions based on wrongfully obtained evidence, after all.

The problem with the left-libertarian position is in its refusal to accept the existence of a relative scale when it comes to coercive treatment.  And, yet, those who oppose the use of waterboarding as torture seem to accept the existence of a relative scale when it comes to the degree of outrage they’re able to muster based on whom it was used against, and the results it produced.  For instance, if you use waterboarding to thwart an attack on Los Angeles, there is no end to the keening and caterwauling, and someone needs to go to prison.

If, however, the use of waterboarding produced information that led to the ventilation of Usama bin Laden’s skull — well, it’s a great day for America, but it was still wrong to do it.  By the way: Hooray, America! USA! USA! So it seems, oddly enough, that if waterboarding results in the saving of lives, it’s an irredeemable outrage and a crime against humanity.  But, if it results in the summary killing of an individual who has managed to achieve sufficient infamy — well, we can hold off on the prosecutions and recriminations for a while, and perhaps don the sack cloth and ash for a day or two.

The left-libertarians’ absolutist position on coercion, high-minded though it may be, doesn’t comport with reality.  It refuses to countenance the difference between waterboarding a detainee and taking a power drill to the kneecap of a hostage, even though one clearly exists.  Still, at the same time, the intensity of outrage expressed by those who oppose its use seems to at least recognize the difference in degree of inhumanity between waterboarding and orchestrating the flying of jumbo jets into skyscrapers.  Otherwise, it would seem that the usual suspects would be equally up in arms over the means of acquisition of the information that led to the death of the man who orchestrated the attacks.

The very lack of sympathy for bin Laden is an implicit recognition that, indeed, there are worse things in the world than waterboarding.  So, it seems that the left-libertarian position doesn’t really seem to be grounded in a blanket, across-the-board opposition to human coercion, but rather in the explicit recognition of its justifiability.  They all know deep-down, that what bin Laden and al Qaeda have done and continue to do is far worse than the waterboarding any one of them may have had to endure if captured.  And, yet, their absolute opposition to coercion forbids them to explicitly recognize it.

Some, of course, maintain a more pragmatic position in opposing the use of waterboarding, citing the notion that by using it, America gives a green light to its enemies to use similar (or far worse) techniques against our own military personnel.  They see it as a capitulation to the mindset of our enemies, a surrender of the moral high ground, and basically a signal to anyone who manages to lay hands on a member of America’s armed forces that anything goes.  All of this, of course, fails to recognize the reality that our enemies — particularly in this case — have never needed or wanted a pretext upon which to engage in far more harsh and tortuous treatment of our military personnel, or non-combatant civilians for that matter.

Waterboarding no more serves as a justification for our enemies to engage in torture than having antlers serves as a justification for jackals to beset an antelope.  They will take down whatever happens to be the easiest takedown, and the presence of antlers is merely something to watch out for and avoid if possible.  And the occupation of the moral high ground is utterly meaningless to people who reject your notion of morality.  Again, you might as well chide the jackals for not picking on someone their own size.

In short, Welch’s piece and the Jacoby piece it uses as a springboard amounts to less an argument against waterboarding than a restating of their opposition and an exhibition of shame for being associated with its use by way of citizenship.  A sense of squeamishness at the thought of waterboarding against another human being is natural and understandable.  It is clearly not a pleasant thing to experience, or anything that I would want inflicted upon me or anyone I care about.

At the same time, there are far, far worse things that can be done to people for far worse reasons, and most of those things and the reasons for doing them have been done by the enemy long before the first detainee was waterboarded.  If you want to convince me that the use of waterboarding has increased the likelihood of the mistreatment of our personnel, you’ll first have to explain why they’ve been doing far more evil things all along.  Then, you’ll need to convince me why it is that I’m able to see a distinction between waterboarding and blow-torching, but those who would use waterboarding as a pretext for blow-torching are excused from such morality exercises.

Of course, there’s little point in trying to change the minds of the folks over at Reason when it comes to the difference between enhanced interrogation methods and torture.  It’s a first principle for declared libertarians that coercion in any form, and for any reason, is wrong.  And that’s a perfectly legitimate (if incorrect) position to hold.

But, it would be nice if lefties, libertarians, and left-libertarians could dial down the sanctimony just a smidge.  After all, even if their words fail to make it explicit, their behavior at least recognizes that there’s a spectrum of coercion just as there’s a spectrum of evil.  It doesn’t seem too much to ask that they acknowledge that waterboarding occupies a fairly moderate place on the broad spectrum of coercion, while al Qaeda occupies an extreme position on the spectrum of evil.  And it doesn’t seem too much to ask that they acknowledge that the use of moderate coercion, distasteful as it may be, isn’t too great a price to pay in ridding the world of an extreme evil.

UPDATE: A big welcome to Matt Welch’s readers from Hit & Run, and many thanks for taking the time to click over.  I’d jump into addressing the Welch/McCain point right now, but I’ve just found out about an emergent illness in the family that I need to attend to.  I do hope to address it a little later this evening, however, and hope you’ll consider bookmarking The Damn Dirty RINO and checking back at your nearest convenience.