May 18, 2004  #01Political Satire/Commentary where satire is always commentary but commentary isn't always satire 
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Prisoners:  Humiliation, Mistreatment, Abuse, Torture; Geneva Conventions; Morality, Iraqi Prisoners, American prisoners, Hostages, Arabs, Muslims, Terrorism, Interrogation, Beheading, Nick Berg, Daniel Pearle, Abu-Ghraib; Lebanon, Somalia, Iran, PLO, Hammas, Islamic Jihad, al Qaeda, Ansar al Islam, Baathists, Ends Justifying Means; Means Justifying Ends.·

    Is humane treatment of prisoners always a moral imperative?   Can there exist morally compelling justification for inhumane treatment?  Does not a moral society have an obligation to draw and enforce such moral distinctions?  Alan M. Dershowitz, a self-described liberal, an ACLU member and Harvard Law Professor, presents analyses of such issues in his book, Why Terrorism Works: Understanding the Threat, Responding to the Challenge.

    If one having custody of a prisoner were to have reasonable grounds to believe:  (a) the prisoner possesses information which, if revealed, could enable authorities to prevent detonation of a nuclear bomb in a city and (b) such prisoner is such a fanatical supporter of, and/or participant in, plans to detonate such bomb that one could not reasonably expect to elicit such information without inhumane interrogation, could such custodian/interrogator morally refrain from such inhumane interrogation?  Would not such compelling moral end justify what would otherwise be immoral means?

    One's willingness to find moral justification for inhumane treatment of a prisoner varies inversely in proportion to the extent to which one perceives one's self, one's family, one's comrades or one's country to be at risk of mortal danger preventable by information possessed by a prisoner one perceives to be a fanatical supporter of those posing such dangers.  Knowledge that the natural human tendency of a custodian/interrogator suspecting the possibility of such information being possessed by a prisoner obliges moral societies to impose restraints to minimize the risks of facile rationalizations for inhumane treatment absent moral justification.

    For example, if interrogators of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed were to have acquired information to foil a plot for detonation of a "dirty" bomb (to spread radioactive material in one of our cities) by repeatedly holding his head under water until fear of drowning persuaded him to divulge such information, the compellingly moral goal of such interrogation ought to be deemed morally sufficient to justify what otherwise would be deemed immorally inhumane treatment.  In contrast, if such treatment were to be routinely applied to prisoners in the absence of reasonable grounds for believing it to be morally justified to do so, then the same means would be immorally inhumane.

    What about treatment that is humiliating but not inhumane?  The Geneva Convention proscribes public humiliation of prisoners but certainly does not proscribe hurting their feelings and does not per se proscribe private humiliation.  If privately forcing a male prisoner to wear women's apparel were to "humiliate" him into divulging information that could save innocent lives, how could that be deemed "immoral"?  What about sleep deprivation?  If one were to reasonably believe a prisoner possessed information such that its divulgence could save innocent lives, should not such prisoner's unwillingness to volunteer such information be deemed morally sufficient to deprive him of a good night's sleep if fatigue could be deemed reasonably likely to induce him to reveal such information?

    What about the argument that any deviation by the United States from the most restrictive interpretation of limitations under the Geneva Convention would increase the risks that our adversaries would abuse and/or torture American military personnel or citizens captured by them?  Islamic and/or Arab fanatics' torture of American prisoners in Lebanon in the 1970's and 1980's, in the Persian Gulf War, in Somalia, and at the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom, and the savagely barbaric beheading of Daniel Pearle destroy such argument.  

    This brings one to an issue at hand.  Relatives of prisoners mistreated at Abu-Ghraib, Arab/Islamic "leaders," and Western opponents of Operation Iraqi Freedom have speciously and morally irresponsibly attempted to portray the barbarically savage sawing-off of Nick Berg's head as being a "cycle of violence response" to inhumane treatment of some of the prisoners at Abu-Ghraib.  Such argument could be deemed logical (yet morally reprehensible) only if one were to view Arabs and Muslims as being too intellectually immature to draw moral distinctions readily discernible to young children.  Yet, the fact that some relatives of some of those prisoners are demanding the "death penalty" for American military personnel who subjected them to non-lethal "humiliation" provides startling evidence of why so few in the Arab/Muslim communities have seen fit to unequivocally and forcefully condemn the savage murder of Nick Berg:  Too many Islamic and Arab cultures consider beheading a suitable penalty for a variety of non-violent offenses such as adultery, "blasphemy," "teaching" Christianity, etc.

    Does this mean war against such barbaric fanaticism is hopeless?  The post-World-War-II evolution of  modern, democratic, human-rights-respecting Japan provides an unequivocal "no" as the answer to this question.  The degree of violence we had to inflict on Japan to enable this evolution to occur demonstrates why critics of Operation Iraqi Freedom ought to be praising our restraint while condemning our excesses as exceptions to the rule rather than propagandistically characterizing such excesses as though they were the rule rather than exceptions.

--Jim Wrenn, Editor@PoliSat.Com.

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