THE PLANK OCTOBER 1, 2007
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On "Meet the Press" yesterday, Bill Clinton invoked the show "24" to delineate his (and Hillary's) views on torture and the ticking time bomb scenario. I have no problem with putting the issue into easy-to-understand terms, although it was a bit odd when Clinton actually seemed to cite the show's plot twists in defense of his position (see bolded passage at end):
You know, there's a one in a million chance that you might be alone somewhere, and you're Jack Bauer on "24." That's the Jack Bauer example, right? It happens every season with Jack Bauer, but to-in the real world it doesn't happen very much. If you have a policy which legitimizes this, it's a slippery slope and you get in the kind of trouble we've been in here with Abu Ghraib, with Guantanamo, with lots of other examples.
And I'm not even sure what I said is right now. I think what happens is the honest truth is that Tim Russert, Bill Clinton, people filming this show, if we were the Jack Bauer person and it was six hours to the bomb or whatever, you don't know what you would do, and you have to-but I think what our policy ought to be is to be uncompromisingly opposed to terror-I mean to torture, and that if you're the Jack Bauer person, you'll do whatever you do and you should be prepared to take the consequences. And I think the consequences will be imposed based on what turns out to be the truth....
MR. RUSSERT: But, but not heavy formal exception.
MR. CLINTON: Yeah, I don't think you should now. The more I think about it, and the more I have seen that, if you have any kind of formal exception, people just drive a truck through it, and they'll say "Well, I thought it was covered by the exception." I think, I think it's better not to have one. And if you happen to be the actor in that moment which, as far as I know, has not occurred in my experience or President Bush's experience since we've been really dealing with this terror, but I-you actually had the Jack Bauer moment, we call it, I think you should be prepared to live with the consequences. And yet, ironically, if you look at the show, every time they get the president to approve something, the president gets in trouble, the country gets in trouble. And when Bauer goes out there on his own and is prepared to live with the consequences, it always seems to work better.
Clinton's position makes sense to me, although one hopes he's pretty clear-eyed about what we can conclude from how things work out in any given scenario on a television show....
--Michael Crowley
10 comments
say really dumb things, sometimes. So Laura tells George all the time. My guess is Clinton is watching too much television. Retirement sucks.
- purcellneil
October 1, 2007 at 9:56am
Is that the Third Way?
- stgla
October 1, 2007 at 9:57am
Pretty much my position, no formal support or orthodoxy, and anyone who chooses to exceed the rules lives by the choices he makes. For instance, a jury trial of a guy who tortured the nuke location in time to save NYC would probably not be found guilty, if the prosecutor decided to prosecute in the first place. However, the guy who tortured someone who didn't actually know anything or if there wasn't really a bomb would have a much more difficult time. Any 'permissive policy' on torture allows this second group of guys to get off. I've said it before: a policy to respect human rights WILL sometimes lead to deaths in the US. Some would call those deaths unnecessary, but in reality, people have died for rights given to our criminals all the time. The guy who 'got off scott free' and killed again, etc. It is the choice we've made to prevent crimes against innocents.
- dbhuff
October 1, 2007 at 10:55am
the president gets in trouble, the country gets in trouble Interesting choice of words. Nothing about harm to national interests, moral compromise, unintended consequences but a teenager-ish locution about getting caught with one's, er, hand in the cookie jar. Why is anyone looking to this man to help us navigate complex moral and political issues?
- teplukhin2you
October 1, 2007 at 10:59am
"Nothing about harm to national interests, moral compromise, unintended consequences ..." Clinton's a little tongue-tied here, so I can't presume to guess if this is what he's thinking: but people who invoke the "ticking bomb" scenario don't have time for such "quaint" niceties. "24" is the latest and most popular validation of the ticking-bomb case for torture, and so it's not completely illogical to try to undermine it on its own terms.
- frippo
October 1, 2007 at 11:30am
I dunno, fripp. He could have said that bad things happen, or maybe used a locution like "come to grief" or "blowback"-- OK, maybe not blowback. But to anyone over the age of 40 the rarely-employed "in trouble" euphemism usually suggests distress brought on by hanky panky of some sort. Esp when it trips off the tongue of the First Alley Cat.
- teplukhin2you
October 1, 2007 at 12:47pm
I don't have any trouble translating "the president gets in trouble, the country gets in trouble" as a bad outcome. Willie's right, as usual. Torture needs to be against the rules. You break the rules if you're willing to take responsibility for doing so. If the judgment is justified as determined by a reasonable evaluation of jury or prosecutor, okay. But you don't set the policy by the one in a million scenario.
- Robert Powell
October 1, 2007 at 2:17pm
It is not the judge of a criminal jury to determine whether or not a person was justified in breaking the law. It is their job to determine whether the law was broken. The only reason you can get off on (for example) homocide charges by entering a self-defense plea is because self-defense is on the books as a legal defense against homocide. It's not a case of the judge and jury agreeing that self-defense is reasonable - it's a case of the law saying self-defense is reasonable. What you folks are arguing is that there should be no legal defense against torture charges - not even "I felt it was the right thing to do considering the circumstances and I am prepared to defend that position." If we're a country of laws, then there should be a law specifying where and when torture is reasonable. If we're not a country of laws, then the hypothetical Jack Bauers will be faced with prison time or presidential pardons - or, worse, judges and juries that aren't interested at all in what the law says, and instead go with their own personal definitions of right and wrong. That's frightening, because it means we won't be a country of laws. Certainly, creating legal loopholes for torture will allow the proverbial truck to be driven through those loopholes. I think the problem is that we've stretched the definition of torture so much that there's all kinds of interrogation that doesn't involve Jack Bauer electrocuting your testicles that is being included in the debate. It shouldn't be. Agreeing from the outset that playing loud music and depriving a captured source of sleep is not torture will go a long way towards getting a torture ban implemented, because then we could ban the real torture: raping of their families, applying thumb screws, tossing them into shredders or vats of acid - you know, the kind of stuff Saddam did. :)
- phargle
October 1, 2007 at 2:34pm
As much as some jurists try to deny it, its pretty hard to get around the idea of jury nullification. It's been around since the beginning of the country.
- pjsmmjd
October 1, 2007 at 3:14pm
phargle is right--the court determines guilt or innocence. But it also determines just punishment, which leaves a lot of leeway in addition to the pardon option. Bottom line, torture is and should be against the law. Laws aren't made to cover million-to-one exceptions, but the norm.
- Robert Powell
October 2, 2007 at 8:31am