Torturing Over Torture in Obamaland: What The Pundits Are Missing; The Zelikow Memo

Summary: Members of the Obama administration and the DC punditry should read Philip Zelikow’s recent blog at Foreign Policy magazine. He reminds us that the question over torture isn’t whether Obamaland botched its handling or the effectiveness of the interrogation techniques, but the morality and consequences of prusuing a policy torture. This is not to suggest morality of the day should override laws, but rather when pursuing a policy it may be sometimes best to ask ‘ought we be doing this?’ before asking ‘how can we do this?’. Sometimes seeking out covert justifications for a decision open more troublesome dillemas.

It’s been a tough week for the Obama administration. Pundits have almost universally failing marks to Obamaland’s handling of the torture issue. Either he’s being too soft (not going after the interrogators and failing to fess up to the intelligence gained by Bush era enhanced interrogation techniques) or he’s being too hard (chasing after lawyers who were doing what they could to defend American security).

And the pundits don’t stop there. How President Barack Obama aired the issue has brought stiff rebukes. Only releasing some memos has opened the White House to charges that it’s cherry picking. And it hasn’t helped that in a draft memo CIA Director Dennis Blair admitted enhanced interrogation techniques worked, only to have it deleted upon official release.

So not only are the wing-nuts on both sides unhappy, the press has caught the White House not being transparent on a tier-one issue—analogous to catching a teenager with their pants down at the school dance.

Now none of this is surprising: the torture issue is thorny, and there was no ‘perfect’ solution for Obama come to. This becomes painfully obvious when one sees conservatives (read Dick Cheney) sensing the torture issue as the wedge issue to revitalize Republican Party (particularly if there is another terrorist attack on America or its allies).

Listening on torture: Philip Zelikow's recent Foreign Policy article offers some valuable, if indirect, advice to the administration. Before deciding on how to deal with torture, we must first analyze the moral and practical consequences to permitting enhanced interrogation techniques. In calling for a moral analysis of torture, Zelikow implicitly highlights the value of frank and open discussion. While Americans know Obama is against torture, it might be worth reminding them why.

But this all overlooks a basic point: yes, torture can work. But does that mean only torture works, and how is American society impacted by water-boarding terrorists? By bypassing this valuable discussion (or simply trying to recycle news-cycles), the media has flooded the public with talking points & juvenile discussions over who’s up & who’s down.

Absent in this high-minded prattle has been serious analysis of this vital moral and national security issue.

And that is why Philip Zelikow’s recent blog entry on Foreign Policy is so important. There Zelikow reveals his authorship of a dissenting memo towards the Bush administration’s legal reasoning on enhanced interrogation techniques. Boilded down he brings these crucial points to the debate over torture:

1)      Water-boarding misses the point: “Before getting to water-boarding, the captive had already been stripped naked, shackled to ceiling chains keeping him standing so he cannot fall asleep for extended periods, hosed periodically with cold water, slapped around, jammed into boxes, etc. etc. Sleep deprivation is most important.” 

2)      The CIA techniques being used were “proscribed by current case-law” (i.e. illegal) 

3)      In legally justifying their policies the Bush White House did not claim a right only to torture non-citizen terrorists, but had to argue that US citizens could be tortured with compelling national security concerns. Or as he states much more brutally, “Americans in any town of this country could constitutionally be hung from the ceiling naked, sleep deprived, water-boarded, and all the rest — if the alleged national security justification was compelling.” 

4)      Upon distrubing his memo, Zelikow soon discovered that the White House attempted to gather and destroy all copies

Zelikow shows exactly how America got into this torture mess—by the Bush administration actively avoiding a moral discussion over the role of torture in national security, and instead giving life to truly dangerous legal interpretations. As such he reminds us that the discussion over whether or not truly dangerous terrorists cannot be separated from the larger question torture in American society.

The Bush administration, for reasons of national security, did a profound disservice by avoiding a frank discussion on torture. When weighing that against Obama’s decision to curtail torture and messy delivery, recent Obama administration criticisms come across toothless and swallow.

But Zelikow—who’s “rough guess is that physical coercion can break people faster, with some tradeoff in degraded and less reliable results”—demands we bring the discussion back to morality. By avoiding this discussion the Bush administration pushed covert and pernicious legal justifications whose reverberations may have done caused more problems that they solved.

The lesson for Obamaland? Have the discussion. Hold a presidential press conference.

Update 5:12 pm: Next Wedneday–coincidently his 100th day in office–Barack Obama will hold his third presidential press conference.