(0 comments)I am just so royally pissed off about the Office of Professional Responsibility’s granting of a get-out-of-disbarment-free card for the Torture Lawyers that I can’t even write a cogent post on it.
But I can pass this along, which is an excerpt from an OPR investigator interview with one of the authors of the Torture Memos:
At the core of the legal arguments were the views of Yoo, strongly backed by David Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney’s legal counsel, that the president’s wartime powers were essentially unlimited and included the authority to override laws passed by Congress, such as a statute banning the use of torture. Pressed on his views in an interview with OPR investigators, Yoo was asked:
“What about ordering a village of resistants to be massacred? … Is that a power that the president could legally—”
“Yeah,” Yoo replied, according to a partial transcript included in the report. “Although, let me say this: So, certainly, that would fall within the commander-in-chief’s power over tactical decisions.”
“To order a village of civilians to be [exterminated]?” the OPR investigator asked again.
“Sure,” said Yoo.
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DOWN THE VINE
Syndication
As awful as war is--and as unlikely as this is to be needed in modern asymmetrical warfare--precedents like Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the more conventional civilian bombing campaigns over Europe and Japan are proof enough that commanders had such authority at one time.
So for the president to no longer have this legal authority during wartime would mean there must be an international treaty that prohibits it, like the Geneva Conventions. Do they?
This would be unexpected, as it would essentially mean nuclear weapons could never be used on civilian populations, rendering most cold war MAD scenarios illegal under international law. Is that the case?
I see the crux of the Yoo/Cheney issue to be the approval and implementation of torture which is prohibited by the Geneva Conventions and must result in prosecution for war criminals. I don't know what the technicalities are regarding the lawyers that Cheney instructed, but Sully just posted "And a judicial investigation into Cheney's war crimes has been opened by the same judge who charged Pinochet with war crimes"…this I find encouraging. Cheney has clearly and arrogantly admitted to flagrantly breaking this law and takes full credit for this travesty….insane. And regarding your specific inquiry, compare General Colin Powell's responses to questions such as this, to Yoo's cavalier "sure, why not?" In form and essence, this shit stinks and "3 hots and a cot" await these criminals.
Sorry I'm not clear on how that addresses my inquiry…but I certainly agree that torture is the important issue.
This mass killing civilians in war looks like a sideshow to me, and one where Yoo may be correct as far as the law is concerned. (of course I hope not, but wishing won't make it so…)
It's pretty simple. Deliberately targeting civilians is a war crime.
e.g.:
The BBC has discovered evidence that Georgia may have committed war crimes in its attack on its breakaway region of South Ossetia in August.
Eyewitnesses have described how its tanks fired directly into an apartment block, and how civilians were shot at as they tried to escape the fighting.
Research by the international investigative organisation Human Rights Watch also points to indiscriminate use of force by the Georgian military, and the possible deliberate targeting of civilians.
Indiscriminate use of force is a violation of the Geneva Conventions, and serious violations are considered to be war crimes.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7692751.stm
So it seems you have to established that a village of resistants is:
a) Composed of all civilians, with no valid targets in the area (which could be infrastructure)
OR, b) Only composed of some civilians, but these are being deliberately targeted
It seems you're assuming that "massacred" and "exterminated" is referring to methodically combing through the village and indiscriminately killing civilians one by one. It's not at all clear that Yoo is talking about such a thing, so you're probably getting all outraged over a straw man.
I'd also like to add that this is a situation where I really feel like I'm playing a devil's advocate. War is terrible enough under ordinary circumstances, and Yoo's defense of torture is truly despicable. But I think the reality of his positions are bad enough, and I'm not inclined to build up a more outrageous one out of straw.
..also, I can't help thinking of:
"No! Alderaan is peaceful! We have no weapons, you can't possibly…"
"You would prefer another target, a military target? Then name the system! I grow tired of asking this so it will be the last time: Where is the rebel base?"
your devil's advocacy on this is really unbecoming
I'd suggest manufacturing outrage over straw positions is unbecoming….
But alas, in today's discourse it's more like par for the course.
what is that supposed to mean? he was testifying to OPR investigators
and yes, if decrying the fact that he once also said that the prez could order the testicles of a suspects child crushed in order to incentivize cooperation is "manufacturing outrage" over "straw positions" then i'm happy to do it and you're just being a tetchy sophist
Decrying that would be something else. What I said is:
Essentially you're assuming Yoo approves of indiscriminately killing civilians, but this is not clear. Perhaps he does hold such an extreme position--his testimony to OPR investigators would not be inconsistent with such an outrageous view. But it also doesn't demonstrate that he does.
If we're going to have a reasonable discussion, the principle of charity applies--even for someone like Yoo who holds other positions we deplore.
i'm not getting back into the main topic here but I did want to point out why I mentioned a few times yesterday that your principle of charity is a bit overactive. See this description from http://fishbowl.pastiche.org/2009/10/20/the_princ… :
Beyond straight argument, the principle of charity can provide a nice set of assumptions that help streamline interactions with other human beings.
1. Assume intelligence. The person you are talking to has a brain, and knows how to use it.
2. Assume honesty. The person you are talking to honestly believes what they are saying.
3. Assume diligence. The person you are talking to, when given a task, will approach it with rigour and attempt to complete it to the best of their ability.
You could be wrong on any of these, that's why they're called assumptions. Ultimately, however, you're better off assuming the best and then adjusting your behaviour if you are proven wrong than you are starting off believing people are stupid, dishonest and lazy.
See that bold bit? The principle of charity is only particularly useful when you are faced with someone for whom you have not already developed the proper context. For example, If you actually have sufficient cause to know that someone is a racist anti-semite, you needn't apply the principle of charity to his comments about Jews. The principle only requires that you make assumptions when you don't have actual conclusions to substitute for the assumptions.
As a result, when one has sufficient basis on which to believe that John Yoo generally believes that the executive is imbued with 100% unreviewable autonomy, one no longer has any civil obligation to grant him a charitable interpretation when discussing executive power.
N'est-ce pas?
You're right that the aspects of charity described above (those three assumptions) does not apply here, as they are for cases when the speaker actually has a visible flaw in their reasoning.
What I termed principle of charity may be the more general concept of not making unwarranted assumptions about your opponent's argument just because you don't like them.
For Yoo's statements here are not flawed (which would be necessary to trigger the narrower principle of charity you cite). Rather, they leave unspecified some things you care (and should care) about.
Consider two propositions:
(a) The president has the legal authority to order a village of resistants to be massacred, because they are resistants (population pacification).
(b) The president has the legal authority to order a village of civilians to be [exterminated], regardless of other factors (e.g. bona fide strategic militray value, per Geneva)
To the best of my understanding, the non-italic portion he actually said is correct as a matter of law.
The italics are not things Yoo said, but rather assumptions you're making to be outraged about.
Perhaps. But not making unwarranted assumptions about his position is something he's entitled to regardless of the more specific principle of charity that doesn't apply here.
Law and human attitude. Even if laws of war permit/accept civilian casualties when unavoidable, most distinguished military leaders consider this most unfortunate, as well as casualties to our own military personnel. War/death is chillingly real to those who have actually fought and this is what I'm meaning in referring to Powell as an example, who has repeatedly shown humility, even wisdom, and an attitude of very conservative use of military power and risking human life (excluding obvious mistake at UN/Iraq). Remember Vietnam, the US officer who must have gone nuts, and ordered the massacre of an entire village…he was prosecuted. As is the case for so many many war crimes, now and then, all over the world. The rules of war. Whether Yoo skirts out due to a legal technicality or not, from what I've read/seen, including blog post, his attitude makes my skin crawl, but Cheney is an admitted war criminal, based on the rules of war, and he, like other war criminals must be held accountable to help stop this insanity on our planet.
Well that officer violated his rules of engagement, as well as (I assume) relevant U.S. military codes and Geneva. Meanwhile during the same war there were B52s who killed many civilians, but weren't found to be violating any law.
Yoo's job was to provide legal advice on the law, not a moralizing attitude. And yes I think he should at the very least be disbarred for his legally absurd justifications for interrogations that were plainly torture.
But his statements about the president having the authority to strike a village of resistant civilians during war may be correct as a matter of law. I wouldn't jump to any definite conclusion on this question before reading an array of legal opinions.
(and yes I know LG is a lawyer, but that's why I say "array"…in particular, I'd be interested in the opinions of lawyers who aren't quite so prejudiced against Yoo….say, at volokh.com for instance)
Feel free to go look up the Geneva Conventions yourself. No need to take it from someone like me who is "so prejudiced" against Yoo. (chuckle)
Sully today: "So, in plain English, the Justice Department's internal watchdog found that John Yoo intentionally decided not to provide independent legal judgment to the president on the question of what was legal with respect to interrogation, that he did so knowing that the law unambiguously prohibited what he said was legal, and did so with the purpose of providing a golden shield for war crimes. Whatever Margolis said, and however much the MSM refuses to provide the facts of this report, that means that Yoo is a war criminal who deliberately distorted the plain and unambiguous meaning of the law to enable war crimes. It means that under Geneva and the Nuremberg rules, he must some day be prosecuted, if not by this country then by another signatory to Geneva, or Geneva no longer has any force at all."
*nod* I agree with this.