Exceptions don't prove the rule

Marty Peretz writes:

Torture is a repugnant practice, and especially so if it becomes a habit.  It may have become that, although I don't know.  No one outside the alleged practitioners does.  But, believe me, I'm not trying to shrug the matter off.  Andrew Sullivan has persuaded me of its centrality to a humane society.

So far so sort of good. Then, alas, he concludes:

One last point.  The two prisoners the tapes of whose questioning were destroyed by the C.I.A. were certifiable monsters: Abu Zubaydah, an Al Qaeda planner of the 9/11 atrocity, and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the mastermind of the Aden bombing of the USS Cole in 2000.  It's a bit strange that such monstrous men should evoke so much concern.

But torture isn't justified by the monstrousness or guilt of those being tortured. It is easy  -or at least it should be - to oppose the torture of the innocent but it should be just as important  - and necessary - to oppose the torture of the guilty too. So, no, it's not strange that the mistreatment of fellows as unpleasant as Abu Zubaydeh should be a cause for so much concern. That Mr Peretz thinks it is fosters the suspicion that he's not as exercised by torture as he claims. Perhaps that's an uncharitable judgment but his conclusion seems to suggest that, well, they had it coming didn't they so who are they to complain?

Meanwhile, Andrew posts this withering verdict:

"Whoever imagined that you would hear from the United States and from Britain the same arguments for detention without trial that were used by the apartheid government," - Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Comments

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"Abu Zubaydah" is almost certainly insane. Though given the US government has destroyed the tapes of his interrogation it would be difficult to tell.

As a scottish tory, I've to go with the balance of probability and acknowldege that the US has certainly been torturing people who are incapable of defending themselves in a court of law.

Christ, i'm one of the very very few supporters the US has left over here and even i am finding it impossible to even vaguely defend the US anymore.