Response to Mr. Cohen

In today's Washington Post, an editorial by Richard Cohen entitled "On Higher Ground, but Not Safer'" wherein he argues that Obama's announcement that we will not longer torture does not make us safer from terrorism. At the following link:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/27/AR2009042702692.html

My response:

Mr. Cohen obviously adheres to the view that radical Muslims are absolutely evil and only understand the argument of the club. Therefore our ceasing to torture will have no effect on their behavior. It will not make us safer.

Never mind that according to our most expert interrogators a good many of the young men who came to Iraq to kill Americans did so because of their outrage over the Abu Ghraib snapshots, that this evidence of torture radicalized them -- weaponized them, as it were. Never mind that. Mr. Cohen knows ceasing to torture won't make us safer.

Never mind that a good many of our potential allies have refused to work with us because of the sleaziness of Bush administration interrogation methods, and that this refusal on their part obviously makes us less secure overall. Ceasing to torture does not make us safer.

"If the threat of torture works -- if it has worked at least once -- then it follows that torture itself would work." Very logical, Mr. Cohen. Yes, torture always works. It always works to degrade and ultimately harm the people who authorize it and the public that countenances it. That's how it always works.

"They can't all be fools and knaves." Oh really? Why not?

The claim that the Clinton administration did nothing to provoke anger on the part of militant Muslims, therefore we can conclude that they will hate us and try to kill us no matter what we do -- this claim is so ludicrous as to stun one into not even attempting to answer it. I’ll ask one question and leave it at that: Did the Clinton administration continue the Reagan/Bush policy of supporting unconditionally the Israelis in their ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians?

"If Obama thinks the world will respond to his new torture policy, he is seriously misguided. Indeed, he has made things a bit easier for terrorists who now know what will not happen to them if they get caught."

Thank you, Mr. Cohen, for stating so clearly what many of us have thought from the start: that the Bush administration was using torture not as a tool of interrogation but as a weapon of terror -- sending the message to the rest of the world not to mess with us or else. Cohen here assumes we can terrify potential enemies into submission by threatening to torture them. Idiocy.

"The horror of Sept. 11 resides in me like a dormant pathogen. It took a long time before I could pass a New York fire station -- the memorials still fresh -- without tearing up. I vowed vengeance that day -- yes, good Old Testament-style vengeance -- and that ember glows within me still."

Thanks again, Mr. Cohen, for the confession. For confessing that torture appeals to you, not as a means of collecting intelligence, but as a means of revenge. Making the bastards pay. The same reason most people favor capital punishment. Lex talionis, the old eye-for-an-eye kind of justice.

Say, Mr. Cohen, have you ever heard of the Rule of Law?

It's clear that Mr. Cohen is in the camp of those who would oppose prosecution of the Bush torture crew. He probably sees the call for prosecution as purely partisan -- a get-even on the part of the Democrats. I'm sure that there are a great many Dems out there who would relish seeing Dubya and Dick get their comeuppance. Yet this is not a partisan issue; it is a question of, once again, the Rule of Law, of crime and punishment. Those who broke the law need to be brought to justice, period.

What if a Bush administration official had been filmed pouring gasoline on a ten-year-old child and setting him on fire? Would there be people who would characterize the demand that this criminal to be brought to justice a "partisan witch hunt"?

You can bet on it.