General David Petraeus
(Photo by Joshua Treadwell)
Many on the left have a bevy of reasons for objecting to David Petraeus's being nominated to head the Central Intelligence Agency. Not the least of which is that neo-conservatives such as
Max Boot think it would be a good
appointment.
However, conservatives are not all lining up behind the general. As Adam Serwer writes:
[F]or Marc Thiessen, Petraeus’ appointment to the CIA is a cause for worry, because of his outspoken opposition to torture:
Thanks to Obama the CIA is out of the interrogation business, so there is no immediate impact on U.S. interrogation policy (or lack thereof). But that is also the problem. Appointing a CIA director with such restrictive views on interrogation does not bode well for the chances of much-needed improvements in our detention and interrogation policy.
When Thiessen says that the Obama administration has no “interrogation policy” what he means is that it doesn’t torture people. For him, the two are basically synonymous.
While Thiessen offers the obligatory praise for the general's military acumen and leadership in Iraq and Afghanistan, he goes on to point out that Petraeus said in 2009 the U.S. violated the Geneva Conventions and should instead have lived up to "the agreements we have made in the international justice arena, and to practice those." That's not how Thiessen sees it:
In fact, as I make clear in my book Courting Disaster, the United States did not violate the Geneva Conventions. When Petraeus declares that CIA officials did so, he is effectively calling them war criminals. That is not encouraging to the men and women he may be about to lead.
Of course, his statements are in line with those made by Attorney General Eric Holder and President Obama, each of whom has leveled similar accusations. Current CIA director Leon Panetta was also a critic of CIA interrogations before taking the helm of the agency. But once he arrived at Langley, while not backing off his prior opposition to the program, Panetta became a strong defender of the agency’s interrogators—vigorously opposing the release of the Justice Department memos detailing the CIA’s interrogation techniques, and fighting Holder’s decision to re-open criminal investigations into their conduct, overriding the considered opinions of career prosecutors who declined to prosecute them. In light of Petraeus’s unfortunate comments, CIA officials have a right to wonder: will they have a similarly vigorous advocate in their new director?
Panetta's stance, of course, has been one of the reasons some on the left have no love for him, either as CIA chief or in his new role as Secretary of Defense. Petraeus's stance at the Company will not likely deviate from Panetta's on this matter. Thiessen's suggestion the general might call for prosecution of top-level CIA operatives who were involved in interrogations backed by tortuous legal opinions would be encouraging if it weren't so friggin' laughable. About as big a chance as Panetta pushing for the prosecution of Donald Rumsfeld. Whether you think it's a good idea or a bad one, it ain't gonna happen.
No matter how many times it's explained that torture not only is morally reprehensible, but also creates new enemies and fails to produce reliable intelligence, we can count on Thiessen and his ilk to call some version of it a necessary weapon in democracy's arsenal. Even with presidental decrees making torture anathema, as long as those who actually order torture—or give it a wink and a nod—are not called to account for their actions, we can be assured it will still be used sometime, somewhere under a dubious redefinition of what it actually is.