Is freedom a security threat?
In an article about new war-time powers to be given to British police, Prime Minister Tony Blair is quoted as saying:
“We have chosen as a society to put the civil liberties of the suspect, even if a foreign national, first. I happen to believe this is misguided and wrong,” he wrote. Britons had decided that, except in very limited ways, the threat to public safety from extremism did not justify radical changes to the law, he said. “Their right to traditional civil liberties comes first. I believe this is a dangerous misjudgement,” he added.
If the measures are passed, it’s unlikely Blair’s power grab will stop with foreign nationals. To believe it will would require trusting a politician – who has every incentive to break that trust. The mentality of giving up freedom to preserve security needs better justification, given the low risk from terrorism. Non-state terrorist groups are not as deadly as a nuclear armed Soviet Union, a Nazi Germany or a fascist Italy.
It is an exaggeration to say that Western democracies are turning into fascist states. However, reduced civil liberties are likely to become accepted as the norm (just like water restrictions or strict gun laws). We have already seen from the unconstitutional detention of thousands of Japanese-Americans during World War II, precisely where this slippery slope leads. We have also seen from the recent Supreme Court cases of Hamdi and Padilla the eagerness of the Bush administration to overturn the constitutional protections afforded to American citizens.
Republican Congressman Ron Paul expresses it well. America is now, in his view, a ‘nation of pre-emptive war, secret military tribunals, torture, rejection of habeas corpus, warrantless searches, undue government secrecy, extraordinary renditions, and uncontrollable spying on the American people’.
But the incentives are always the same, whether one is speaking of the British, the Americans, or our own Australian government. Politicians are after power, and it takes extraordinary naiviety to ignore history and believe they truly care for the well-being of individuals.
Meanwhile, the importance of discrete police work has been neglected. Those responsible for September 11 - the incident that began the present trend towards draconian legislation - still remain at large! Instead the US, UK and Australia are spending billions of dollars engaged in nation building. Have the policies worked? Apparently what’s important is that we’ve liberated the Iraqis and Afghanis. Yes… but are we any safer? No one seems to care.
What people forget is that Western civilisation has faced greater challenges, such as the passing on of nuclear secrets, without compromising its commitment to due process. So why are we voluntarily giving away our freedoms?
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Sukrit, the human being is an emotional creature. We do stupid shit all the time because of them. I believe that reason we’re giving them away is we’re looking for the easy solution to our fear.
I’m a bit of a pessimist on our current moral and political situation in the West. I feel we are possibly on the downward side of a cycle turning away from reason and a positive secular morality to……..well, I don’t know what. I don’t feel it’s unreasonable to liken it to the downfall of the 400 year old Roman Republic, moving to the autocracies of the Roman Empire, before the onset of the European Dark Ages.
Then we come back up peaking at the Enlightenment, 17th century England and the creation of the United States.
After the peak comes the downward turn. Now we’re confused again and free nations are losing their moral fibre. We have the rise of Islamofascism and nations with a spotted history of democracy and individualism rising fast, the most significant being China. Nationalism is on the rise in Russia. I think the UK is declining fast, reflected in your quote (which I think characterises English thinking quite well), and Europe will cease to have significant influence within my lifetime.
Saving graces might be technology, especially when it creates wealth and brings people together through things like the internet, and the rise of democracies like India. I actually see the continuing influence and military might of the US as important, for at least the next couple of generations.
And of course, people like libertarians, secular humanists and rationalists winning the battle of ideas.
…with a rifle in one hand, and a book on the other.
Maybe. So long as the book is Locke, Hayek or Popper.
American Libertarian Republicans believe that the electoral woes of the Republican Party are more to do with big government and the erosion of liberty than with the Iraq war.
While some of this could be caused by the general support for that war among them, they feel betrayed by their party, and feel that only a return to the principles of libertarianism by the party as a whole will save it from an electoral chainsaw massacre next year.
I feel that at this stage the spirit of liberty is alive and well at activist grass roots level, however the populations of the traditionally free countries are being conditioned to accept the real threat that Sukrit has has done a great job of detailing.
We are going to have to argue this case loudly in every medium available to us.
Reduced civil liberties represent fighting defensively.
If you aren’t going to aim your offensive efforts at the regime leadership then your efforts are largely wasted and of course you will need defensive measures. That ought to be obvious.
Totally agree Graeme. We should be on the front foot and defending liberty, not on the back foot and curtailing our liberty.
Mark/Graeme – your logic is perverse. The logical end-point is that, unless a nation’s foreign policy is based upon destroying ‘unfriendly’ regimes pre-emptively before they pose a threat, we should all offer ourselves as slaves to the government this very instant. The national ID card? Bring it on. Warrantless searches? It’s obvious the police need to go through our things at whim, since the military isn’t taking care of Iran yet.
I note you haven’t given any specific examples. Please explain how the following (against citizens and non-citizens alike) is necessary to protect freedom or democracy:
- torture
- indefinite detention (suspension of habeas corpus)
- mock trials (military commissions not authorised by the American constitution, which were struck down by the Supreme Court in Hamdan)
- illegal wiretapping
All of these things are happening, as I will demonstrate in future posts.
Everyone who supports current US foreign policy is supporting flagrant breaches of the American constitution. If that’s what you support, then please clarify.
No you misunderstand me Sukrit, we both want the same thing.
Bombing a real terrorist enabling regime is much preferable to wasting money on a national ID card to spy on millions of non terrorist sympathising citizens.
What people forget is that Western civilisation has faced greater challenges, such as the passing on of nuclear secrets, without compromising its commitment to due process. So why are we voluntarily giving away our freedoms?
If you disregard history there is a tendency to think everything is happening for the first time. Thus, while the points (if not the examples) in both this post and John’s are valid, they each suffer from a lack of context. That, in my view, leads to overly pessimistic conclusions.
Freedom in the 20th Century faced challenges that were every bit as big as these. There were wars, communism, the cold war and genocide, each of them used as justification for loss of freedom.
Nonetheless, the people of the former Soviet Union, eastern Europe, China, India and Latin America now enjoy substantially greater economic and civil freedom than was the case as little as 30 years ago. To a large extent that’s due to the example of the US, an undeniable force for freedom. Just ask the eastern Europeans – they were among the first to offer support to overthrow Saddam in Iraq. They know what freedom really means, because they know what it’s like to be without it.
The challenges now are to ensure the same thing happens in the Moslem world. Perhaps even Africa might achieve something similar.
I don’t think anyone would claim the US is perfect, and heaven knows Australia is far from it, but I also don’t think that means the sky is falling.
The US does not engage in legally sanctioned torture unless you define torture quite loosely. Indefinite detention at Guantanamo Bay is a blight, there’s no doubt, but what do you do with people who are trying to kill you? A quick trip out the door of a helicopter at 500 feet is what many of them deserve. The Supreme Court performed as it was intended when it stopped the first military commissions – it applied the constitution. Illegal wiretapping is obviously undesirable (not to mention illegal), but the same thing would be quite legal in almost all other countries including Australia.
Finally, think about the people you know who believe it’s up to the government to fix things that are not right. They outnumber those who accept responsibility themselves by about 10 to 1. So is it any wonder we get governments that claim to be acting in our best interests by removing some our freedom? The miracle is that it’s not any worse.
Most of us misunderstand the heaviest weapon in our arsenal. Liberty and the knowledge of liberty are the greatest threats to oppressive regimes. The greatest fear they have is that their people will discover it, cherish it and work toward it. Only death will extinguish the spark once it is lit.
This is why communism, and fascism had such hatred of the free world, this is why they aimed their propaganda inward as much as outward, this is why islamofascism sneers at our values and claims moral superiority over us. The rhetoric of their of their religious leaders is proven false by their constant claims to have been humiliated so much over the centuries. If they were as good as they claim to be, they would have advanced and been respected.
The free world has constantly advanced, the above have collapsed or not advanced in any other way than conquest. Our greatest threat to communism was liberty, they had to build walls and guard their borders to stop their people getting out.
To restrict the liberties of our people in the face of threats is the ultimate in stupidity, the reason we are where we are, at the top of the heap is because we are free. The answer to oppression is not to oppress our own people, after all if we are oppressed too then what is the point of resisting alien oppression apart from xenophobia, – “Our oppression is better than theirs, foreign bastards”.
Good post, Jim. Pretty much sums up exactly how I feel.
The greatest weapon in our battle against communism was liberty and the courage to fight for it.
There is no point campaigning for a deregulated economy if there is no economy to deregulate.
Pommy,
I don’t really understand that last comment.
If the economy has been shut down by regulation then there is every point to a campaign for deregulation. Some of the weakest economies in the world remain weak because of regulation that arguably effects next to nobody. Regulation can be like an electric fence that hems people into inaction. The electric fence effects nobody because it defines a boundary that nobody ever crosses, and yet it effects everybody for precisely that same reason. In a significant way coercion is much more silent and insidious than violence.
Perhaps I have interpreted your comment incorrectly.
Regards,
Terje.
True Pommy;
The point is though, the courage to fight for it is increased by the starkness of the contrast between liberty and oppression, with a corresponding reduction as the two move closer together. At parity all that remains to be fought over is Nationalism.
In WW2 the west fought the Axis Powers to retain their freedom. Russia on the other hand fought them over nationalism, while a significant number of Russians reportedly joined the Germans, accepting them as the lesser of two evils.
The actual erosion of freedoms in the USA probably began with the first income tax. Then Congress wanted to legislate morality, and sprang Prohibition on the country. They repealed Prohibition because it didn’t seem to work, NOT because the Supreme Court threw it out as unconstitutional.
Ever since, they’ve had various ‘Wars’ to increase central power, like the ‘War on Poverty’, and the ‘War on Drugs’. The ‘War on Terror’ is simply added to the list.
All things seek to expand, if they can. Businesses seek more money. Governments exist in the realm of power, and so seek more power. We should never be surprised at this. When Jefferson said, ‘The price of freedom is eternal vigilance’, he didn’t just mean other countries’ governments, but also his own.
Actually I think he was referring specifically to his own.
And yes. The War on Drugs is a war that’s probably going worse than the War on Terror. Penn and Teller’s Bullshit did a brilliant coverage of it.
As for the article itself: “Those who would sacrifice freedom for temporary security deserve neither.” – Benjamin Franklin
It’s funny, I used to LIKE Britain’s stand on terrorism. They basically denied it existed. IRA Terrorists were charged as criminals. They were charged with murder. With extortion. With drug running, smuggling, weapons violation. Tax evasion. They were NEVER charged with terrorism, to depoliticise their “cause”, to take away martyrdom and make it clear that a murder is a murder. That they’re being charged not for protesting against the government or civil disobedience, but for terrible crimes against their fellow man.
Now we have moved in the opposite direction. I hate all the terror laws. Too much suspicion, and no actual crimes. When associating with “undesirables” can become a crime in itself, something has gone horribly wrong.
Meeting with fundamentalist islamic groups should be entirely legal, a right protected by our society. But the instant you harm or attempt to harm another human being, the full weight of the law should decend on you with the utmost fury.
What about if there is ‘warrant worthy’ evidence that someone is about to ‘harm or attempt to harm another human being’ but nothing has been done yet?
Or does ‘attempt to harm’ include planning and holding meetings for the purpose of eventually harming another person?
Simple. You just do what the constitution permits you to do. You hold them until the end of active hostilities (as per the Geneva Convention) and set up a modified criminal trial – to ensure classified info doesn’t get out – in a federal court, before a real judge, not a panel appointed by the Secretary of Defence. Some of the legal argument here.
They tried al-Qaeda members in the 1990s through normal criminal trials. Bush consciously chose to breach the Constitution by setting up military commissions and suspending habeas corpus (which is constitutionally only able to be suspended during a time of invasion or rebellion). Congress passed the Military Commissions Act setting up new mock trials which tried David Hicks; many constitutional lawyers expect this will also be declared unconstitutional very soon too, thus negating Hicks’ guilty plea.
P.S. When I argue he ‘breached’ the constitution, that’s my personal (strict/formal) interpretation, not necessarily what the judges have said. The majority in Hamdan said something slightly different.
However, something where there should be little ambiguity is Article I, where Congress is given the power to ‘declare war’. Most American wars since WWII have in this respect been in breach of the American constitution. It started with President Truman, who sent troops into Korea without congressional authorisation. Nixon even conducted his own privately financed operation outside of Congressional scrutiny (Cambodia). Reagan did something similar (Iran-Contra affair). Lots of people died. Billions were spent. Civil liberties were reduced.
I don’t think these are just legal technicalities. Rather it’s very convenient for the President, who can use authorisation for the use of “force” falling short of “war” to exploit legal ambiguities to oust the Geneva Conventions in order to torture, among other things. Congress very rarely officially declares war (less than 10 times in history). It never officially declared war against the Iraqi government either.
Agreed. You follow the law. You try them for the crimes they may have committed, without fear or favour. You try them AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE. That can be hard with long running and poorly defined military action. Can you imagine a POW from the early days of the War on Drugs? They’d be so old by now. Not to mention still stoned.
And yes, Michael, that’s the core of the problem. To what degree is “intent” a crime. Thinking it? Saying it? Planning? Preparation?
I’m not going to pretend to have an answer there. Part of me wants to say that unless someone is caught with a C4 backpack or a gun in their hand they shouldn’t be convicted. But rationality says that any significant degree of planning is equally culpable, but with greater public safety if attended earlier.
The movie Minority Report began to ask some very interesting questions, whereby people were (under the information of psychics) able to be arrested for crimes they were ABOUT to commit.
Unfortunately the fascinating ethical question was lost under Tom Cruise action scenes.
Matt
‘Meeting’ with fundamentalist groups tends to lead to planning of terror attacks.
Message to all would-be terrorists from the Libertarian Party – we are happy to allow you to communicate, plan tactics and discuss effective strategies. You are at liberty to do this without surveillance.
However, should you try to enact your plans, we will come down on you like a ton of bricks.
I sense a flaw in the plan.
Pommy – Why not just lock up the fundamentalists and the would-be-terrorists? Wouldn’t that be more expedient?
The US does not engage in legally sanctioned torture unless you define torture quite loosely
It’s worth thinking about why the Pentagon refuses to tell us what interrogation methods are approved? Why the big secret? And why does the Military Commissions Act specifically oust the Geneva Conventions and strip ‘unlawful combatants’ of habeas corpus in a federal court?
Clearly, it’s legally sanctioned because it’s left to executive discretion. Governments don’t quarantine their activities from judicial scrutiny unless they are planning on doing something sinister and it’s not very libertarian to support a foreign policy that is directly linked with human rights abuses, in my (humble!) view.
What if you had a convicted terrorist (under the US terrorism laws) and it was believed beyond reasonable doubt that he had knowledge of an impending attack like 9/11. But of he course his isn’t going to spill the beans on his buddies and give up the most significant project of his life, and forgo his last attack on the evil West. Would torture be justified in this instance?
No. But i would like to think that the security apparatus in this country are watching the known fundamentalist activists.
Wouldn’t you?
I’d like to think our security agencies are on the job (while not violating our civil rights).
However, I don’t think I’d let 3000 people die because I wasn’t going to torture someone who had already forgone their rights as a civilised person.
Pommy – Matt said that having a meeting with fundamenatlist groups should be legal. After some contemplation you new seem to agree.
Michael – I might be inclined to say yes but ultimately it is the wrong question. The right question is whether torture would be effective in that instance and whether giving governments the power to decide when torture will be effective is a good idea. I answer no on both these counts.
This is a common view, Terje. I think, while it’s not entirely wrong, it’s limited and not correct for every situation. I don’t believe that we should just limit government power per se to prevent the damage that government can do, but rather government should be employed (by the people) to do those few functions that government does best. I don’t believe we should limit law to prevent the abuse that someone exercising that law incorrectly might do, but rather we should write good law.
Terje, if you can’t blindly trust the government that you are paying for, what hope is there?
Let’s not give up on our pollies just yet! They could still win the war on terror, though not in our lifetime! Look at how well they fought the war on drugs! (Ignore the defeatists voices of the dissidents!)
Such people, who are doing it for the kiddies of tomorrow, can be trusted to torture people correctly. Would you really feel safe under a government that couldn’t torture criminals? Of course not! Just don’t get caught jaywalking, and you’ll have nothing to fear!
Michael – you’re arguing that police should effectively have the power to determine guilt. Either that or you’re okay with the prospect of innocent people being tortured because it might prove useful. I think your trying to justify the institutionalisation of something (torture) that has never been successfully institutionalised. Unless we have different ideas about what defines a successful society.
p.s. Base on history there is much evidence that torturing unconvicted criminal suspects is one of the functions that governments do with far more efficiency than most of us would manage on our own. I still wish to see them limited in this regard.
Where’d you get that from Terje? I’m not suggesting detectives torture you as part of their initial questioning. Nor am I advocating that anything of this nature would be done without a warrant, hence the police aren’t deciding anything of the sort in any circumstances. In fact, I’m probably not advocating that it could be done without someone having a conviction of a serious enough nature, and then a further warrant. What I am saying is that with due process there is a moral case for having it.
However, I’m not even necessarily saying that we should have it, due to the benefits not being high enough to cover the cost or drafting, maintaining and enforcing the law.
The reason why it’s worth mentioning is that 1. the position that we should just limit the use of government power to prevent it being abused (with no other rationale) is wrong, and 2. there seems to be an unfounded view by some libertarians that rights come from . Rights come from rational people in a civilised society. Step out of the society and you have no rights. If the 9/11 conspirators or Ted Bundy etc were in jail it wouldn’t make a hoot of moral difference if they weren’t afforded basic human rights. We just do it because we have standards and don’t like the thought of acting like animals.
With regards to the ‘efficiency’ argument, make the government more transparent and the process more accountable.
“You are at liberty to do this without surveillance.”
Actually, that’s really not what I said. I said you shouldn’t be arrested, not you shouldn’t be watched. On the econtrary, people whose activities and politics form a potential threat SHOULD be watched and investigated. But not arrested on the basis of differing ideologies. Personally I don’t like islamic fundamentalists. I think they’re bad. But the fact that I don’t like them is no reason to hold them to different laws than others. Innocent until proven guilty. At the very least a crime should be committed. “Being a terrorist” isn’t a crime. Murder is a crime. Attempted murder is a crime. Conspiracy to commit murder is a crime.
As for torture… I’m not sure where I stand on that one. I think there’s a differnce between entrenched and routine degradation of foreign nationals for no reason and the requirement to extract military intelligence in extreme circumstances during wartime.
I don’t like it, but I’m not there… Yes, it’s illegal. Yes, it SHOULD be illegal.
The issue of torture (or coercion) is not a black and white one. Is harsh language torture? How much force does it take to make a “forced confession”?
Matt
In that case we agree.
Torture is a hard one. Its surely tempting to potentially save innocent lives but i wonder whether that justs brings us down to their level.
We have to feel good about ourselves and our values after all.
Matt – that last comment was mine
Terje – no change of mind. Happy for them to meet, so long as someone’s listening – that’s the key part.
I’m with Matt, conspiracy to commit a crime IS a crime, we don’t need any specific anti-terrorism anti-liberty legislation, and neither do the Americans. What we need is good police work and precision special forces operations to take out terrorists planning operations in other countries aimed at us. Invading and occupying foreign nations in the name of liberty makes no sense and is counter-productive, creating a fog of war that has allowed AQ to fade away and reorganise and given Iran centre stage. Occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan must have been like manna to the mullahs, “The infidel is coming to us, allah akbar”, they must have thought. How the Pentagon couldn’t have foreseen Iranian involvement in supplying Shia insurgents in Iraq is beyond comprehension.
Fellas,
We are getting into too many hypotheticals here. Its time to set some ground rules.
Matt, I like your post at 17, and I propose the following: -
• That the only form of war that the government may declare be defined as, An actual armed conflict against the armed forces of another nation offering hostility against the nation, or an ally.
• In the case of civil war, only a direct threat to our nation will apply.
• Any other form of attack shall be a criminal offence.
• Persons captured in war should be held in accordance with the Geneva Conventions.
• Armed civilians or irregular forces shall be accorded the same rights as uniformed soldiers.
• All laws passed on the pretext of semantic, or rhetorical ‘wars’, be abolished.
• All charges laid against persons, must be in relation to real victims, or potential victims in cases relating to conspiracy, or attempted crimes.
• No charges may be laid on the basis of association.
• Security forces may watch the activities of people suspected of planning a crime, including the use of undercover operatives to infiltrate groups etc. however wire – tapping or intrusive methods must be approved in accordance with due process.
• Questioning of suspects may not include physical or electronic violence.
• Prisoners and POWs shall be afforded basic human rights. These shall be: -
(1) Adequate food,
(2) Shelter
(3) Clothing
(4) Sanitary facilities.
(5) Nothing else.
Abuse of prisoners, torture etc. degrades not only the prisoner, but us as well.
Abuse of prisoners, torture etc. degrades not only the prisoner, but us as well.
What if it brings about a net benefit such as information that wins the war, or saves lives of your own troops or civilians?
I’ll throw in some more one liners:
If it saves one life it’s worth it.
It takes a bigger man to walk away.
Because it’s the law.
Throw away lines mean nothing without a rational basis behind them.
P/s The above is offered for refinement by you and is meant to form the basis of a set of principles.
Michael, talk of prisoners having information that can successfully be extracted using torture to prevent imminent disasters are meaningless. Ticking bomb scenarios are for TV shows like 24.
Sorry Michael,
I have had a splinter taken out of my eye today and the anesthetic has worn off, I hurried things a bit. The rational basis is the activities at Abu Grahib, although there could be some conjecture as to whether the torture degraded the jailors, or the degredation of the jailors caused the torture.
Whichever it is, those photos are the best recruiting posters the other side will get, at least I hope so.
Remember Michael, It takes a bigger man to walk away.
“Mark/Graeme – your logic is perverse. The logical end-point is that, unless a nation’s foreign policy is based upon destroying ‘unfriendly’ regimes pre-emptively before they pose a threat, we should all offer ourselves as slaves to the government this very instant. ”
This is the fantasy of autonomous international terrorism.
9/11 was an act of war by a regime or regimes against the United States and it killed Australians too.
Likewise with the murders in Bali.
Where does this theory of unassisted terrorist organisations come from?
Its a bad theory and has nothing going for it.
We know the history here. Nassar decided that he could slip under our threshold for war by using terrorist cutouts to kill people.
The idea has taken hold. Its never happened in opposition to the will of the regimes. It is a thing brought into existence by regimes. And it is an act of war by regimes.
We’ve got to hit back.
I’m not being perverse. You are just pretending that this isn’t a regime problem.
Jim – Hope your eye is OK and I think I can say we all wish you a speedy recovery which is pain free as possible.
Brendan – I’m not saying the nuances of using torture to extract information are straight forward. Or even overly beneficial in the broad scheme of things. I’m always amazed that innocent people will confess to crimes they didn’t do without torture, let alone with it. But another thing that amazes me is high level criminals so willingly turning over on their business partners to cut themselves a better sentencing deal. I think it would be naive to say that it would never be beneficial to be able to put a criminal/terrorist in a situation where they had a lot to lose. And I’m not saying it’s a particularly taseful proposition either.
I’m simply arguing from first principles that it’s not morally wrong, and that people who argue that there is absolutely no net benefit to add under any circumstances from the use of torture are really clutching at straws to try to be seen on the high moral ground.
Michael,thanks.
Watching four corners tonight made me wish that some of you were watching it too, It was on torture. I missed the start but some Roman general felt that it didn’t work as the strong would resist , while the weak would say anything to stop the pain.
Apparently some of the most unreliable intelligence the Americans have used came trom torture, including some of the stuff used to justify the Iraq invasion. At the same time an FBI guy said that he got good results by courtious treatment.
This is not why I oppose it however.
I maintain that the reason we in the west are at the top of the heap is not because of who we are, but because of what we are.
We are the inheritors of a political/ethical/economic system which is the closest thing that such a system can get to a realistic reflection of human nature. Since reaching its philosophical peak after the end of war of Independence, it has declined somewhat in its application, but the system is so good that even in decline its material benefits have advanced.
The threat comes on the other hand from confused people who essentially work as a theocracy. Even outside the Islamic Republics, they rely on religious leaders to make many of their decisions for them. The movers and shakers in their society are the radicals, who pursue a dictatorial theocracy.
I would rate these people as more extreme than the Inquisition. Torture and brutality are part of their makeup. They are a society that essentially has not advanced in a thousand years, and appear to blame everyone else rather than look inwards for rectification.
To finalise, I make the point that we will not win by going away from our moral and ethical values that got us where we are. We can only jeapodise our own position, by allowing our authorities to do to them what we wouldn’t have them do to us.
If we allow this it will be a short step to doing it to our own dissidents, then further.
We have to maintain our values and apply them to everyone. We cannot win by allowing the state the same sort of standards that our opposition have, otherwise we will end up with a society not much different to them.
Well said Jim — an excellent comment. Deserving of it’s own blog post (if you have the time).
I’ll look at it tomorrow John.
Regards, Jim.
Jim – I think that the notion that these societies have not advanced is simply untrue. The fact that women vote in nearly all the Islamic states is indicative of this. Things are not ideal but the modern world and modern ideas have encroached.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women's_suffrage#Women.27s_suffrage_denied_or_conditioned
I think Islamic facism and the likes of the Islamic revolution in Iran is in many ways a backlash that came about at least in part as a response to the encroachment of modernism. It also seems reasonably inevitable to me that these societies will ultimately be overcome by the memes of modernism. They are already keeping and integrating some of them.
However the ferment for change needs to come primarily from within the Islamic culture. External pressure can help but often it merely creates a sense of group solidarity.
We can only jeapodise our own position, by allowing our authorities to do to them what we wouldn’t have them do to us.
Everytime we we go to war our authorities ‘do to them what we wouldn’t have them do to us’. Everytime we use government provided or sanctioned force for anything we have the ‘authorities’ ‘do to them what we wouldn’t have them do to us’. That doesn’t make the use of that force immoral.
Violence is a reality of our condition. It’s the value system behind it that makes it moral or immoral. Their use of torture is immoral because it is justified through theocratic beliefs. Our use of any force whatsoever, including torture if we so chose, is moral because it is the defence of a liberal democracy. That is the only moral use of any force.
I must admit it is a good post, but I still think you are wrong! What I’ve got most out of it is this:
Since reaching its philosophical peak after the end of war of Independence, it has declined somewhat in its application, but the system is so good that even in decline its material benefits have advanced.
I agree our philosophical system is slipping. But a number of things are keeping the good times rolling, such as capitalism, and freedom promoting creativity that has allowed technology to be created that also helps to keep the wheel of good fortune spinning. But if we lose our moral way these things will follow in time. I’m sure you agree with this. But this is precisely why we can’t fall back to unfounded but nice statements against the use of a particularly unpleasant kind of violence. It’s got to be a rational basis, not a feel-good basis.
I think this is where it fails:
We have to maintain our values and apply them to everyone. We cannot win by allowing the state the same sort of standards that our opposition have, otherwise we will end up with a society not much different to them.
We don’t allow the state the same sort of standards the opposition has. This statement is not an argument against the use of force, although you are holding it up as such. The standards you are referring to are those of a liberal, democratic, individualist based, open society. That’s the standards both we, and the sate we employ, have that our enemies don’t. Any use of force in support of these standards is morally right. Any use of force outside of them is morally wrong.
Why is torture in support of a liberal democracy different to some other form of violence you approve of, in support of a liberal democracy? If you’re going to say that torture and liberal democracies are mutually exclusive then you are going to have to provide a real argument on why this is the case.
Michael – the question in your last paragraph is a good one. For the sake of argument I’m happy to say that we can put torture on the table as a moral option to be considered for use in the defence of liberal democracy. After all we accept war and war hurts innocent people.
My opposition to torture is based on the following grounds:-
1. I do not believe torture is effective in illiciting the truth. The first thing the torturer says is “tell us what we want to know”. And next thing the victim does tell them what they want to know, irrespective of whether what they want to know is accurate or otherwise.
2. In many (but not all) conceivable instances it is not proportional to the threat.
3. Institutionalising it with the necessary safe guards seems unlikely to succeed.
4. It is bad for moral on our side. As in it does not feel right.
You said that these things have got to involve a rational basis and not merely a feel good basis. But the rational basis must incorporate the feelings involved. For example in the army it may on first iteration seem expedient and rational to leave injured comrads behind. However they generally don’t because it creates a very negative effect on the troops that are still able bodied. So feelings suddenly become a rational consideration.
I agree with pretty much everything you’ve said. It’s difficult to use and repulsive. The cost/benefit ratio probably doesn’t add up. That’s why we shouldn’t have it. As rational libertarians we shouldn’t try to argue against torture on some higher morality, because we’re only being hyprocritical when we support other forms of state sanctioned violence, and we put out confusing arguments to others about where rights come from. The arguments against torture are pragmatic ones, not moral ones.
I’ve done with this one, thanks for a good argument.
We should be able to use both arguments- moral AND pragmatic.
Morally, we wouldn’t want to live in societies where the governments used torture, either on their own citizens or foreigners. Rightly or wrongly, people will follow the lead of the governing powers, and start to become immune to casual cruelty. (I’m basing this on history, where people have always tended to ‘do as the romans do’, or to follow court fashions, etc.)
Pragmatically, torture might sometimes yield useful information, but it encourages ‘the other side’ to do the same,; and the overall yield is low. In WW2, the best interrogator of the Germans, I read years ago, was someone who didn’t torture his prisoners, but talked to them, and they started revealing more than they would have under torture.
So, Michael Sutcliffe, you can use both types of argument!
Terje;
Any change within a culture, must ultimately come from within that culture, even geocide will leave the survivors in most cases clinging to the old beliefs, I agree.
Modern ideas have encroached, I agree. They are however resisted and this is I believe why as a culture they have certainly not had any significant advances in a long time.
Michael;
Torture is not the same as fighting an enemy force for the simple reason that for a person to be tortured he has to be your captive and is therefore no longer a combatant.
I am now working on the post, I was not entirely happy with the ending. This relates back to the problem I mentioned earlier, and I probably should have held it until I was feeling better.
If he’s not a combatant, Jim, how dare you deny his freedom and put him in jail! Fascist Oppressor!
Non combatants choose not to initiate violence according to their own free will, not because steel bars prevent them or a guard will shoot them if they do.
I did say no longer a combatant, maybe only because of capture but the old movie cliche still applies,”For you ze vor is over Englander”.
We have met the enemy and he is us. (Walt Kelly).
It was interesting to visit north-east India in the past month (which DFAT strongly advises against visiting!) and see first-hand the police/military state that Assam has become. Police have special powers of search & seizure, there is an army jawan posted practically every kilometre, minor government officials travel with security escorts, at least one bomb goes off every week (including one just near my uncle’s house) and travelling public transport – not that you’d want to travel on the pathetic state run companies – is like taking a daily gamble with your life.
The United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) has progressed from a voluntary resistance organisation to a criminal organisation in nexus with local politicians. Despite harsh security measures which have taken away huge amounts of individual freedom (the very thing security is supposed to be defending, right?) the situation has worsened.
Perverse logic such as that displayed by Graeme Bird in comments would probably argue that infringing civil liberties is a ‘defensive’ measure brought about by lack of offense. Hence the Assam government should deploy even more forces, and pass even more legislation granting even more powers to police – and then we should all wait for the inevitable human rights abuses against vulnerable villagers. Of course, such logic is highly stupid. But you have to go to a Third World country and read local papers and experience intimidation by security forces & government to believe it.
Indeed, human rights abuses routinely occur in Jammu & Kashmir, another Indian state where ‘special’ security measures have been taken. It does not matter that these are Indian soldiers not well versed in Western liberal thought. Similar abuses would occur if they were Australians or Americans. For example, the Victoria Police LEAP database has routinely been abused, an indication of the kind of privacy abuse that awaits Australians if a National ID card ever came into existence. Unlike the Australian tendency to cut down tall poppies, India seems to have a culture of glorifying authority figures. This definitely doesn’t help.
I think we in Australia have a lot to learn from the Third World. There is ample evidence in these countries that big government is destructive to social fabric, that propping up massive loss-making public sector companies with government subsidies results in extreme difficulty for the average citizen who needs to pull strings to get any work out of a bureaucrat, and importantly, that the freedom-security relationship should be resolved firmly in favour of freedom. Visit a Third World country (preferably India, as it has the world’s largest number of poor – even more than African nations, I believe) to understand precisely why government doesn’t work.
I suggest all those interested in combating the practically non-existent terrorist threat in Australia with anything other than normal criminal charges and due process – including bans on torture – look at the end point of their recommendations, as they have been put into practice in India and have failed dismally.
Good comment Sukrit.
One aspect about India that you did not mention is the lack of recourse available to those whose rights are abused. The judicial system, I understand, is so overwhelmed by cases and procedures that it is virtually impotent. The media is cowed and unable to expose abuses. Without denying the fact that rights have been eroded by legislation, infringement of rights contrary to law also goes unpunished.
The Haneef case shows the importance of recourse. The evidence is assembled by the AFP, the decision to lay (and now review) charges made by the Commonwealth DPP, but the decision to revoke the visa is made by the Minister. The first two are ultimately subject to judicial review, the last is not in any practical sense.