Sully rightly eviscerates Marc Ambinder for this:
An American CIA interrogator whose techniques yield valuable information is much less reprehensible than a Gestapo torturer whose techniques resulted in the death of Jews or gypsies. Doesn’t mean the CIA guy was right, but it’s still hard to disagree with that sentence.
When you have to compare yourself to the Gestapo to make yourself look good….
I suppose I should see it as a sign of progress that a newly minted Villager is against torturing gypsies to death.
bayville
Remember in Stalig 17 when the American sergeants were appalled one of their colleagues was being “tortured” via sleep depravation?
Our culture has changed a little since that Billy Wilder movie, eh?
scav
excuse me while I cower on the floor whimpering here. to even think the comparison made anyone look good … or that it would be hard to disagree with …
mclaren
Reminiscent of the rallying cry during the Reagan maladministration to defend prospective cabinet members: “Hasn’t been indicted!”
We should carve a new motto on the Statue of LIberty. AMERICA: NOT QUITE AS BAD AS THE KHMER ROUGE
The Moar You Know
Horseshit. At least have the balls to admit that you’re no different from any other torturing scumbag (we’ve had them as fellow humans for millenia) if you’re going to torture another human being.
cleek
CIA: not quite as bad as Hitler!
they can put that on a banner and hang it in their space at the next campus job fair they do.
Keith G
I just read that. Also in his most recent post, Sully goes after Cohen.
beltane
It is a disgrace that someone with such a cursory knowledge of twentieth century history was allowed to graduate high school. It is a tragedy that he is allowed to hold himself out as an authority on said history.
Ponder this: A single terrorist act was enough to plunge our chattering class into outright barbarism. What would happen if this country was subject to something like the blitzkrieg as the British were?
El Cid
What? The surrendertariat is already planning our defeat at the hands of the gypsy menace by ruling out valuable life-ending interrogation techniques simply because some stinky hippies don’t like what the Gestapo did?
Pfffft.
It’ll take many, many days of Joe Klein praising the military and the ‘clandestine services’ for our security to be strengthened against the radical premature anti-Gestapocrats.
jibeaux
You know why it’s hard to disagree with that sentence? Because “CIA interrogators whose techniques yield valuable information” are using tested non-torture interrogation techniques.
Those using torture are a) not the ones with the valuable information and b) torturers.
Zifnab25
The only reason torturing gypsies is consider “not ok” by Ambinder’s standards is because the pro-gypsy torture faction has not purchased enough ad space or funded enough lobbyists to justify his support.
Get FreedomWorks behind gypsy torture and watch his opinion change.
Sentient Puddle
@Top:
Funny that. Might be hyperbole, but Sully then says:
Of course, we are talking about the guys who set up their own incredibly lax standards of what kind of interrogation methods they could use, and then went beyond them anyways. So maybe not hyperbole.
Xenos
Again, like with Cohen below, there is a baldly stated principle which is absolute garbage, which is there for the sole purpose of poisoning the debate.
Why would a particular CIA interrogator be more or less reprehensible than a particular Gestapo interrogator, excuse me, torturer. What is with the switch in terms from ‘interrogator’ to ‘torturer’? I feel insulted to be subjected to this sophomoric ‘Rhetoric for Dummies’ presentation. What, you think I too stupid to notice a false comparison that explicitly uses dissimilar categories.
This is what bugs me here – the blatant manipulation, the propagandistic program, the contempt for the reader. As I noted in my comment to Ambinder when this article came out over the weekend, this straining to come up with a valid exception is belied by the fact that, in practice, the exception will quickly swallow the rule. Lo and behold, it has, as a matter of historical fact.
This was obvious when Dershowitz broke the taboo on arguing for legally permissible torture back in September 2001, and it is no less obvious today.
Keith
I’m curious if any of the supporters of these methods of “interrogation” would support them as methods of punishment (which they really are) instead, and whether such justification would be that said methods are either not cruel/unusual or that foreigners don’t get the benefit of that provision.
Ann B. Nonymous
Neither Jews nor gypsies have represented an existential threat to the Republic in the past, and one hopes that they will not in the future.
But should they ever return to the thieving, usurious, back-stabbing ways they left behind in the Old World, the United States will not be afraid to use these validated, time-tested techniques on them.
I trust the American position is clear.
Jay B.
An American CIA interrogator whose techniques yield valuable information is much less reprehensible than a Gestapo torturer whose techniques resulted in the death of Jews or gypsies.
Why? What if it ended up that the Jew had knowledge of some plot against Germans? What if, indeed, said Jew knew of a ticking time bomb set to blow up a parade podium where Der Fuhrer was scheduled to watch some Hitler Youth march by? Why should the Gestapo sit idly by while a bunch of kids get blown to hell? They’re just KIDS for fucksake! What if one of them, sniff, was yours? Wouldn’t you want the Gestapo to torture the fuck out of that Jew?
mgordon1
What if those Jews and gypsies had information on a ticking time bomb?
ellaesther
Holy fuck. I got nuthin’.
The Gestapo? You’re really gonna go there? The motherfucking Gestapo?
ellaesther = speechless.
The Grand Panjandrum
Cheney/Palin 2012: The Mayans were right.
DougJ
Cheney/Palin 2012: The Mayans were right.
Did you make that up? I love it.
Michael
I want CIA and military torturers to be on a public registry. I think that’s some deeply fucked up shit, and want to be able to quickly have it addressed when neighborhood pets and kids start disappearing.
shelley matheis
Torturing gypsys? Did someone finally have enough of all that violin music?
Stefan
An American CIA interrogator whose techniques yield valuable information is much less reprehensible than a Gestapo torturer whose techniques resulted in the death of Jews or gypsies. Doesn’t mean the CIA guy was right, but it’s still hard to disagree with that sentence.
Of course, one could also easily write that a German Gestapo interrogator whose techniques yield valuable information about French resistance terrorists that saves German lives is much less reprehensible than a American torturer whose techniques resulted in the death of Muslims or Arabs. Doesn’t mean the Gestapo guy was right, but it’s still hard to disagree with that sentence…..
PeakVT
A warblogger whose entirely wrong rantings nobody really payed attention to is much less reprehensible than a Villager whose hackish output resulted in thousands of Americans supporting bad policies. Doesn’t mean the blogger was right, but it’s still hard to disagree with that sentence.
Cerberus
So his standard for morality is based on the idea that of and it’s a IF we got actionable intelligence unreproducible by other means, that our actions will edge out those of history’s most potent metaphor for monsters in the Western world on a slim technicality.
Ok, so we set up a gas chamber/shower in the middle of Kansas to dispose of communists, traitors, jews, feminists, and gays. But we killed exactly 3 less jews than the nazis. I think anyone can agree that this would be less reprehensible. Now let’s keep the showers going and see if we can get even closer to absolutely parallel.
The Grand Panjandrum
@DougJ: Nope. Got it from Moody Loner on Twitter. Also sent out:
Death we can!
PGE
Does he say what he thinks of interrogators whose techniques resulted in the death of Arabs and didn’t result in “valuable information”? Are they less reprehensible than the Gestapo?
someguy
I think we suggest this as a winning campaign slogan for the Republicans in 2010.
“Republicans: Probably Not As Bad as the Gestapo!”
Though given the Republican party’s role as the American home of anti-semitism, that would hardly be a credible ad campaign.
KG
But what is comparing the CIA to the Gestapo going to do for morale at the agency?
A Mom Anon
@The Grand Panjandrum:
That is fucking hysterical,I totally giggled.
Stefan
An American CIA interrogator whose techniques yield valuable information is much less reprehensible than a Gestapo torturer whose techniques resulted in the death of Jews or gypsies. Doesn’t mean the CIA guy was right, but it’s still hard to disagree with that sentence.
What about an American CIA torturer whose techniques result in the deaths of Muslims or Arabs compared to a Gestapo interrogator whose techniques yield valuable information? More or less reprehensible?
Leelee for Obama
@The Grand Panjandrum: I remember watching the show about the Mayan Stone Calendar that predicts the end of the world im 2012, and thinking to myself, in 2006, “I don’t think that long, surely not”. After Obama was nominated and elected, I began to subscribe to the less Apocalyptic interpretation of “Major Change” in 2012. I’m still there, kinda, but I have to say that these last few months of non-stop, high-octane crazy make me vacillate some.
On a different note: ‘Member when Obama didn’t spank the Turks about the Armenian Genocide awhile back? Because the two governments were planning on talks? Well, guess what, Kids? They’re talking-got this from Ambinder, so he’s good for something. One commenter said what I keep saying-Barack plays long-ball. Seems he’s also gonna release exactly what he wants in the HCR Bill next week so the Deal can get done good and proper.
Cerberus
@Stefan:
Yeah, they were just trying to break the back of those commie french bastards, I mean, gain actionable intelligence of treasonous plots against proper German citizens at their most critical times of need. Torturing that gypper was necessary and certainly not as bad as the shit the Americans were doing. I mean, at least the Germans were under constant bombardment by terrorists in both the conquered countries and their own, Americans got hit once nearly 8 years ago and still feel twitchy.
On another note, in Denmark, there are a couple of occupation museums that among other things show the Resistance terrorism efforts and those who collaborated with the nazis. In the occupied nation, the nazis basically recruited all the teabagger types with rants about murderous commies and it was commie leftists with similar problems in organization to today’s leftist organizations just trying the best they could to find something economically important and hope they didn’t kill too many people. Very interesting overall.
Stefan
Doesn’t mean the CIA guy was right, but it’s still hard to disagree with that sentence.
From “shining city on a hill” to “not as bad as the Gestapo” in just under 400 years. Not bad.
Anyone else notice how the further downhill we get the faster we’re picking up speed?
Keith G
Tom Ridge has been on Talk of the Nation. His book title is The Test of Our Time: America Under Siege.
I wonder if that title means what he thinks it means.
Leelee for Obama
@Stefan: It the slippery blood and shit that makes that happen.
shelley matheis
DBrown
For clariety, the Gestapo were just harmless children compared to the SS (Schutzstaffel). Those MF’ers not only ran the death camps (how many tens of million civilians were killed?) but had vactions by murdering murdering whole towns (non-Jews) and as time permitted large numbers of enemy POWs (US, too) much like normal people will shoot targets at ranges … those were the worst monsters of the german forces.
Jay B.
On the positive side, I know at least understand why for years the right was disgusted by “moral relevance”. In some cases (though not all or even many) it’s really and truly fucking disgusting!
BDeevDad
Ambinder is denying he said what he said.
Then this:
Ripley
Cheney/Palin 2012: It’s mourning in America!
bloodstar
Actually I think Sully kinda misquoted Ambinder on this one, go read Ambinder, He’s all over the map but I don’t get the impression he’s trying to justify torture at all, in fact he’s pointing out why people are more accepting of torture for ‘good’ reasons and then explains how we have to fight that perception:
Zifnab
@DBrown: So at least we’re not as bad as the SS.
Oh, no, wait. What’s that about Blackwater in Iraq? Alright, alright. Regroup. At least we’re not as bad as the Bolsheviks during Lenin’s coup in Russia. Yeah! 9 million dead? That should give us some leg room.
bloodstar
@bloodstar: Now mind you, following up, I think that Ambinder should have been clearer that he was talking about how people would argue about the moral relativism of torture.
Wile E. Quixote
@Marc Ambinder
Where’s Eli Roth to go medieval on this slimy little shitsucker with a baseball bat when you need him. At the very least have Brad Pitt carve a swastika in the middle of his forehead so that everyone knows what he is.
freelancer
Total TBogg/DougJ Bait:
Shorter Former NRO Contributor Jim Manzi subbing for Sully:
Al Gore wants to turn us into fat commies like him, too.
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/09/the-socialism-implicit-in-the-social-cost-of-carbon.html
Warren Terra
So, is Sullivan back? Is he worth reading? After the whole meta-birther episode was rapidly followed by an interminable series of stunt-doubles who ranged from the soporifically anodyne to the objecitonably execrable, I quit reading him and I haven’t visited his blog in about a month …
JK
Once someone invokes the Nazis, I no longer feel compelled to refrain from criticizing that person’s physical appearance.
In addition to being an increasingly useless tool, Marc Ambinder is a fat, ugly slob.
Rudi
Via AS, the torture did yield some small information, but where is the evidence that anything was stopped as in the sadomasochistic fantasy Fox’s “24”. A ticking time bomb will still go off after the CIA dissected the rantings of KSM.
tamied
@bloodstar: People might argue about the moral relativism of torture, but they’d be wrong. There is no relativity to it. Torture is wrong. Period.
Warren Terra
@ Wile E. Quixote, #44
Heck, where’s Vidal Sassoon when we need him?
(There was a terrific radio documentary on the 43 group, including the young Vidal Sassoon, on the BBC awhile back)
DougJ
So, is Sullivan back?
Sort of. The torture stuff flushed him out of his spider hole.
Thomas Levenson
The Atlantic is dead. I’m sure the magazine still publishes some good articles — I was just going through a big pile of “Best American” science books and turned up a lot of stuff there from the last few years published there. Decades ago, back in the days of its Boston gentility, I even published a couple of pieces in it, written for the legendary editor Dr. No — Michael Curtis.
But I can’t subscribe now…why should I? The stuff on their “voices” pages, written by people who are described as the political editor (Ambers) or the economics editor (McArdle!) wavers between the hopeless and the vile — but that’s not the real problem. The real problem is the fact of the children’s crusade they’ve got running over there. Ambers and McMegan and the rising cub Conor F. and former embarassment Ross Douthat are simply out of their depth in the fields they purport to cover.* For whatever reasons — and I’m not going to impute any — they don’t actually know very much, and they don’t do what real magazine writer-reporters used to do, which is get out into the world to test their presuppositions against a series of actual stories.
All of which means that as an occasional journalist and professional reader, I know that I can’t trust anything they write even if the flaw is not as blindingly, horribly obvious as in this case. I simply don’t believe a word they say. If Ambers were to tell me that the sun rose in the east this morning, I’d call a second source for confirmation.
I think the Atlantic’s owner is pleased with the results; certainly he gets attention and he has a young and hungry crew of trained seals to pump out the bilge. But it is an eat-your-seed-corn strategy. The good folks that survive there — Fallows, Coates, and with epic fails, Sully, are not successful because they write for the Atlantic; the reverse is true. If/when they get a better offer and or can’t stand the failure by association….
Thomas Levenson
@Warren Terra: Memory lane: back in the early eighties, I once spent three days with Vidal touring around Japan for a profile in People magazine. It was my only byline ever in that magazine, and I got stern talking to from my boss, the Time Inc., Tokyo Bureau Chief. It seems that I spent too much time talking politics with Vidal – his absolute love — and not enough time hair and fashion.
He was a much richer man than the hairdresser he played in his own adverts. And yes, while he could indeed make you look fabulous (and really did know hair — you should have seen him in the sumo wrestlers dressing room studying the way that formal hairstyle was put together) there is no doubt that the London eastie kid with IDF training could put a world of hurt on fools as needed. One of my absolute favorite celebrity-encounters, all in all — no richer-than-thou b.s. and a love of conversation with anyone.
Funny — I haven’t thought about him for years.
Warren Terra
@ Thomas Levenson, #51
I wrote a similar, if less temperate screed decrying the collapse of The Atlantic in a Balloon-Juice comment a month or so ago. My Atlantic subscription is still current, and I think some of their long-form articles are still good (although frankly I can no longer remember the last one that was), and I still love me some James Fallows – but I don’t think I’ll be renewing when the time comes.
JGabriel
Marc Ambinder:
Only if you’re a coward so afraid to have his patriotism questioned that he’d justify torture first.
.
JGabriel
cleek:
The
DemocratsNazis were worse!.
Tsulagi
Well now there’s the convincing case for American exceptionalism. If you can squint seeing a sliver of daylight between us and the Gestapo, those Saddam rape and torture rooms wingers talked about, or just some good old times religion burning heretics alive at the stake during the Middle Ages….break out the foam fingers…USA! USA!
Thomas Levenson
@Warren Terra: I remember that. It seems pretty temperate to me — and informed by much more direct encounters with the print beast than I’ve tolerated for some time.
mike
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Any time someone says anything the least bit positive about Andrew Sullivan, make them read this.
Charles Murray responds to my small riposte to him on the question of torture. I should say I am second to few in admiring Murray’s work. I risked my entire career to bring his brilliant book, The Bell Curve, into the bounds of respectable conversation because I believe his intellectual honesty is self-evident, even if you believe he is wrong about everything.
Note the weaselly phrasing, making it seem as if Sully might disagree with the unambiguously racist idea that black folk are genetically inferior.
The Bell Curve effectively invalidates everything else Sully does. Glenn Greenwald is wrong to link to him. This is a bright line in the sand.
http://firemeganmcardle.blogspot.com/2009/08/fire-sully-too.html
Maus
“I suppose I should see it as a sign of progress that a newly minted Villager is against torturing gypsies to death.”
No they aren’t. If the Gypsies held national security related matters secret, the villagers would be 100% for torturing them and their children to death, along with bombing their encampments, wedding parties, while stopped at a border checkpoint, etc. Anything and everything is justifiable through their lens. But yeah, the Nathzees were bad, so we’re not like them.
LanceThruster
Is there a particular name for the corrollary when the Nazi comparison is apt (I’m thinking of how often the propaganda methods of “Mein Kampf” are faithfully employed in today’s world).
Though this was quite informative I don’t think I saw it here:
How to post about Nazis and get away with it – the Godwin’s Law FAQ
GlenInBrooklyn
When you have to compare yourself to the Gestapo to make yourself look good….
Happening more often, recently…
Wile E. Quixote
@Thomas Levenson
I think that those of us who are disgusted by the vile rag the Atlantic has become should let the few useful writers that are still there, and I’m not sure I include Andrew Sullivan in that group any more, that we’re not renewing our subscriptions because the rest of the magazine is garbage. Let James Fallows know that we think he’s great and would love to read him somewhere else, but that we have no use for wading through and paying for the low quality garbage produced by pathetic, sycophantic lightweights such as McMegan McArdle, Marc Ambinder or crap like the Jeffrey Goldhill article that leads this month’s issue for what few nuggets of quality remain.
tim
Oh John…you just can’t quit Sully, can you?
What is this fatal attraction really all about?
tim
Oops, sorry, John.
It’s DougJ who just can’t quit Andy’s “power glute” blogging this evening, though you are just as often drawn to Sully’s much-compromised and discredited Atlantic-sized internet orifice.
What’s that about?