Rhetoric Meets Reality on Guantanamo

I am really looking forward to seeing how Obama deals with the hot-button issues that "anti-war" activists raged about over the last few years. One of those is the issue of Guantanamo Bay:

Obama reviewing how to close Guantanamo: aide

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Barack Obama's presidential transition team said Tuesday it was working though the complicated issues involved in his campaign pledge to close the Guantanamo Bay "war on terror" camp in Cuba.

The Democratic president-elect is already under fierce pressure from human rights groups to close the controversial high-security facility but faces a legal minefield in deciding where to house inmates and how to try them.

"Senator Obama has said that he intends to close the facility at Guantanamo, that's a complicated matter," said his transition co-chair John Podesta.

It's a complicated matter? You don't say. In the superficial debate over Guantanamo, most seemed to be under the impression that the solution was simple: just close it so that we can regain our "moral standing" in the world. But the real debate should have included a discussion about the alternative, and very few people ever went there. That's because there is no good alternative, as I expect you'll discover when Obama finally decides what to about the 250 prisoners held there. The anti-war crowd was united in its desire to close the prison, but they'll surely be divided over the alternative, once it is fleshed out. I'm looking forward to the discussion.

In a related matter, I can hardly wait to see what the Obama administration comes up with on the issue of CIA interrogation techniques. According to the superficial analysis offered by those who think like Code Pink activists, it's all very simple: just refuse to torture detainees, and you can do that by simply outlawing waterboarding. Once that's done, we'll have regained our "moral standing" in the world. Then we can once again walk around "with our heads held high."

Because of its symbolic force, Obama will undoubtedly remove waterboarding from the CIA's bag of interrogation techniques. But my question is and always has been this: what is the harshest interrogation technique that will be allowed for rare use on high-level al Qaeda detainees who are thought to have information about impending mass-casualty attacks on civilians? That is the question that anti-torture activists (and Democrats in general) almost never address. To me, a technique like waterboarding should be allowed under such circumstances. As I see it, it is downright silly to call it "torture" because it passes my non-torture test, which is that we use it on our own soldiers during training. We'd never do with actual torture techniques, like drilling through hands and cutting off fingers. Thus, waterboarding is very harsh -- in the area between gentle interrogation and torture -- but calling it torture is like calling Bush "Hitler" (i.e., it's a stretch).

What's your torture test? When does an interrogation technique cross the line and become torture? That's the question I want Obama to answer, but, like Democrats everywhere, he will never do so (because it would expose the logical problem with his "anti-torture" stance and would take all of the fun out the I-am-holier-than-thou discussion). Thus, I have to wait to see what interrogation techniques are actually approved to see where he stands on this matter. Will he approve interrogation techniques that are one iota less harsh than waterboarding? One iota less harsh than that? Where, exactly, is he going to draw the line? The day that the harshest interrogation is specified is the day that human rights activists will accuse Obama of condoning torture because no matter where he draws the line, there will be those who believe that it should be placed at an even gentler point on the scale.

Interrogation techniques come in degrees of harshness, not pre-categorized into "torture" and "not torture." That being the case, you simply have to draw the line. Unless, that is, you are an out-of-power Democrat scoring cheap political points against a Republican president who drew the line and then asked Congress to draw the line elsewhere if they did not like his decision. At the time, Democrats were not very enthusiastic about doing that. It was just too much fun accusing Bush of condoning torture. Now the Democrats themselves have to draw the line, and I can hardly wait to see what they decide to do.