Some seem to think that Eugene Robinson trumped Liz Cheney yesterday on Morning Joe, but I think she thrashed him (in TV terms) – perhaps not surprising, given that she was apparently allowed to engage him in an unscheduled debate. Still, even given all this, Robinson gave an astonishingly flat-footed performance. It’s kind of infuriating to look at parts of the exchange; rather like watching glib idiot David Brooks debate the pitiful dumbass Mark Shields. I almost find myself shouting at the screen, something like "If you can’t do better than that, stay off the goddamn TV!"
I’d like to offer some talking points to Mr. Robinson and anyone who finds himself or herself debating the torture issue with Cheney’s defenders.
Morning Joe
First let’s see, how not to do it. Yesterday’s most egregious exchange started like this:
Liz: So if you knew that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed had information about an imminent threat on [sic] the United States, information that would result [sic] in the death of your family members, the death of people you care about and love, and that if he were waterboarded you would be able to get that information and prevent the attack – you wouldn’t do it? You would let him got ahead and launch the attack?
Eugene: Well, how would I know that? How would I know that?
It’s worth noting here that this formulation betrays quintessential right-wing mindset. For years they have preferred dealing in paranoid fantasy rather than reality or even likelihood. This scenario is cut out of the same cloth as the infamous debate question by the hacktacular Bernard Shaw, "Governor, if Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?" It’s also akin to the NRA fantasy: "Suppose someone was breaking into your house in the night – wouldn’t you want a gun then?" Never mind that, for instance, you’re vastly more likely to walk in on the guy who’s stealing your gun (with unforeseen consequences) than you are to defend yourself with it, such scenarios are pure appeal to melodrama, and they’re very potent with the postliterate couch potatoes of these United States.
It’s also worth noting that Liz Cheney’s Jack Bauer scenario is, like most fascist propaganda, composed of equal parts nonsense (How doesn "information" kill; how can Mohammed "launch the attack" from captivity?) and falsehood. Its mention of "people you care about and love" is pure appeal to irrational emotion, and also, again, a small reminder that her cause is noble – defense of her beloved father. Still, nothing like what she conjures up has happened in the history of the universe, nor is it likely to. The terrorists do not have, back in their world headquarters, big books of master or five-year plans, which the top officers could hand over, if only sufficiently motivated. Their plots are a much more ad hoc, and compartmentalized than Cheney seems to believe. So, a captive’s narrow bit of information is probably obselete before you can get it out of him. So too, Robinson’s objection (How would we know who and when to torture?) here is correct. If, for instance, we were to have captured a 9/11 plotter ahead of time (which is to say, if Condi Rice, et al., had done their jobs properly) we wouldn’t have known what they knew, wouldn’t have known to torture it out of them. So is Ms. Cheney proposing that we waterboard everyone we pick up on the off chance they’ll know of a terror plot? Even if we were to do so, how would we know that the "information" our victims offered up was reliable? Contrary to what Liz Cheney says, there is no evidence that we got anything of value from the people we did torture, and quite a bit of evidence to the contrary.
But even if Robinson’s objection here was correct it was rather ineffective. He laughed at her example, but he then took it seriously. He should have skewered it. He might have asked, "Liz, do you believe in the Easter Bunny too?" Or answered, "As long as we’re in fantasyland here: I’d sprinkle the prisoner with Fountain of Truth, then he’d have to talk."
Instead he asks a good, but mild question which Liz Cheney would not ever answer. Predictably she ignores it and A., condescends ("Gene..."); B., blatantly bullshits: "Gene, that’s exactly the situation these people were in."
At this point a deft speaker would have offered up some truth, "That’s a preposterous lie." Or perhaps "There’s not a shred of evidence to support that claim."
Instead Robinson goes all fuzzy liberal on us: "But, but...no you don’t have to make that choice. You don’t have to choose to do something illegal...."
By conceding the validity of Cheney’s scenario and claim, Robinson has made his otherwise sensible response absurd. It’s absurd and, of course, untrue to suggest that mere illegality is much of a deterrence, or even properly a factor in many ethical decisions today. After all, oral sex is illegal in a lot of places. It’s illegal, but not wrong, not monstrous – as torture is.
In Cheney’s preposterous scenario (and only in the preposterous scenario), the sensible thing to do is to torture. Once one has granted the possibility of the scenario (which one shouldn’t), the right answer becomes, "If ever I find myself in the Jack Bauer Ticking Bomb situation, I will torture, and trust that a jury of my peers, when the truth is laid out at my trial, finds my acts justifiable in the unprecedented and extreme circumstance. If they don’t, then I will have sacrificed for the people and country I love. But in the meantime, for all time, I want laws against torture enforced."
Write that on you arm Mr. Robinson. If you find yourself in a torture debate or a Ticking Bomb Situation, it will be handy to remember.