Condoning torture

Condone is a peculiar word. It looks like a verb, a word of action, but more often than not, one condones something by doing nothing.

We rightly abhor torture. We do not condone it. We oppose its use (although one feels that some in the government oppose it on the ground of lack of effectiveness rather than because of any moral scruples.

The Lords will soon decide whether to allow evidence extracted by torture in court. An earlier hearing by the Court of Appeal found that it was admissible so long as it was not done with our knowledge and we did not condone it.

But if we allow it in our courts, we are without question condoning it. We are nodding to the torturers and saying, it's okay for you to do it, just not for us. We are saying do it but don't tell us about it.

Terrorism poses a threat to us. It's particularly frightening to have enemies who do not see civilians as bystanders who might be damaged in the pursuit of their goals but as the targets of their actions. They are painted as implacable enemies, who want to destroy our "freedom" but of course this is worse than an exaggeration. They have political goals (which may not be acceptable to us).

But there are many threats to our lives in this life. Some we barely even care about. You're still many, many times more likely to be killed on the roads than by a bomb.

And the notion of an implacable enemy who is trying to destroy us is nothing new. We faced one in 1939. We threw our human decency down the pan then too. We murdered countless thousands of Germans and more Japanese. We argued that we had to destroy their warmaking power but we know that we also terrorised them. There were no factories in the city centre of Dresden. We wanted them to taste our resolve. We wanted them to know we could outhate them.

We should not condone torture. It's despicable. And we should throw out evidence acquired by torture without a second glance. Let's make our stand against those who want to hurt us but let's not become worse than them and let's not pretend that we are fighting a noble cause just because we're letting someone else do the dirty work.

***

There's worse. There's nothing to add to Simon Jenkins' masterly arsekicking, except to note that I personally could be convicted under Clarke's new act.

How's that? I have many times expressed the opinion that the 9/11 attacks had cause, although I deplore their commission (just as I do the expression of violence against civilians in any form). Saying something has cause does not mean you think the cause justifies it, I should point out, only that you think that it was not simply the act of spiteful madman who hate Americans, and perhaps that you can understand that a demonstrative attack against New York is not necessarily demented but an effective weapon in a war that has continued for some time. It should go without saying that there is little difference between the destruction of the World Trade Center and the destruction of Hiroshima, for instance, except that one was perpetrated by murderers on behalf of a state, the other by murderers on behalf of an ideology (or a people, a cause, depending on how you like at it). Both had the intention of causing terror among the populations they were aimed at; both were committed in pursuit of ultimately political goals.

I have also noted that the 7/7 attacks had, in part, the intent of persuading the UK to leave Iraq. I firmly believe that that were we not occupying southern Iraq, London would not have been bombed.

Now I doubt that many Islamist nutters read this blog, but if one does, and if he says, I felt that it was worthwhile pursuing this plan to persuade the UK to leave Iraq by bombing civilians because bloggers have expressed the view that that is our aim, and that encourages me in that those bloggers understand our purpose, while the government denies it, well, am I not in breach of the act? And if said nutter lists some blogs that have expressed the views in question -- no more than suggesting that that is the aim of the nutters, remember -- I can be jailed for five years because of it.

Alarmist? Maybe. But every time the government passes repressive legislation, we say "they'll use it in a way they claim it wasn't intended, to harass activists, to lock up political opponents, to crack down on unpopular views", we are told we're just being alarmist. And it happens.

posted by Dr Zen @ 10:54 am