Drones Or Waterboarding?
By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK
I hesitate to disagree with the consensus among the leading conservative talk show hosts and Fox News commentators about the Senate Intelligence Committee Report on enhanced interrogation techniques. Why do I hesitate? My fear is that readers will think I am disagreeing just to make a point, engaging in an effort to puff up my image as an “independent thinker” who does not march in lockstep with those on my side of the political spectrum.
That syndrome exists. I would argue, for example, that there was a rush to judgment by conservative commentators to condemn the grand jury that refused to indict New York City police officer Daniel Pantaleo in the death of Eric Garner. Garner was the black man who resisted the police when they tried to arrest him for selling loose cigarettes. My impression is that the conservative commentators were eager to demonstrate that they would be willing to condemn a white policeman when the evidence calls for it, because they had spent the previous week defending the white police officer who shot Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.
Am I saying that the facts of Eric Garner’s death were not as central to Bill O’Reilly’s and Megyn Kelly’s criticism of the New York grand jury as the Fox News commentators’ determination to demonstrate their lack of racial bias? I don’t know if I would go that far. The Fox commentators’ judgment may have been clouded by their emotions. It is not my position that it is self-evident that Pantaleo did nothing wrong when he grabbed Eric Garner around the neck and pulled him to the ground. That can be debated.
My point is only that there is no reason to conclude that the New York grand jury acted irresponsibly when it decided there was insufficient evidence to charge Pantaleo with behaving criminally. I have yet to hear a critic of Pantaleo come up with a suggestion for a better way of effecting the arrest.
They say Pantaleo used an illegal “chokehold.” OK. But it looked to me like a headlock — which is permitted for the police in such situations. I can see the New York grand jury coming to the same conclusion. Should the police have shrugged and walked away when Garner refused to be handcuffed? A police force cannot operate that way. Beyond that, I would bet the ranch that there have been thousands of men resisting arrest who have been taken to the ground in the same manner as Garner without serious injury.
The bottom line: It is entirely within reason to disagree with the New York grand jury, but not to hold that they came to a preposterous or indefensible conclusion. The Fox News commentators seemed unwilling to give them the benefit of the doubt, as I think they would in a less politically charged atmosphere.
But I drift. The issue at hand is the conservative pundits’ position on drones and enhanced interrogation techniques. The line that could be heard on Rush Limbaugh and all over Fox News was that the critics of the CIA’s interrogation methods employed during George W. Bush’s time in office were being hypocritical and partisan, because they were silent about — or even applauded — the Obama administration’s use of drones to kill suspected terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan.
What you heard from Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and the panelists on Fox’s The Five was one version or another of the following: “How can anyone who defends Obama’s drone attacks get so bent out of shape over waterboarding or slapping around a suspected terrorist? Or depriving him of sleep, or playing loud music for hours on end? No one gets permanently harmed from those practices, while a drone attack kills. And not only the suspected terrorists. It often results in the deaths of many innocent civilians who are with the terrorist when the drone hits.”
Sorry. On most issues, I side with the leading conservative gurus. But this logic fails. I am not saying that enhanced interrogation is always wrong. Certain of the CIA’s tactics that came to light in Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s report can be defended, others cannot. But it is not true that drone attacks are always more morally objectionable than these interrogation methods are. It depends on the drone attack and the enhanced interrogation technique in question.
Here is where the dividing line should be drawn: The pain and indignity inflicted upon the captured terrorist during enhanced interrogation is intentional, deliberate, and calculated, whereas during a drone attack some of the deaths are unintended. Those who plan and conduct drone attacks should be judged in the same way that we judge those who plan and conduct aerial bombing of an enemy during war. They are expected to take all reasonable precautions to avoid civilian casualties.
What constitutes “reasonable” is, of course, subject to debate. The moral theologians who condemn nuclear war and carpet bombing do not — usually — condemn bombing attacks against military bases and weapons depots, even when there is the possibility that nearby schools and hospitals will be accidentally hit during the attacks.
This is the concept of “collateral damage.” The loss of innocent civilian lives during aerial bombing is held to be morally acceptable by the theologians as long as a sincere effort was made to prevent it from taking place. This is what makes nuclear war and carpet bombing so problematic for Catholic theologians. When these tactics are employed, no plausible argument can be advanced that an effort was made to avoid civilian casualties. They are part of the process. Indeed, in many scenarios these deaths are intended as a way to demoralize the enemy.
Drone attacks need to be judged by the same standard. A drone attack against a suspected terrorist while he is driving from one safe house to another can be defended, even if there is a chance that there will be civilians on the road that day. An attack against him while he is visiting one of his children at school would be a different matter. In my opinion, the attack against him in a school building would cross the line. There are no such calculations to be made when enhanced interrogation is employed. There is no issue of collateral damage. Every element of fear, pain, and suffering is intended.
I repeat: That in itself does not make enhanced interrogation immoral. Subjecting a captured terrorist to loud music, the loss of sleep, and even an occasional slap seems within bounds to me. Waterboarding is another matter; I go back and forth on that one. But its morality does not hinge upon any comparison to the deaths resulting from our drone attacks.
