Noemie Emery: Torture, Sophistry and the Road to Perdition

Noemi Emery is, apparently, not a person who cares to understand the other side in an argument. She is not interested in teasing out the strong points on the opposing side, not interested in discovering what insights might motivate her interlocutors. This may be, in part, because she apparently believes that those who disagree with her are evil and insane. Ostensibly focusing on Jon Stewart's (soon disavowed) suggestion that dropping the atomic bomb was a war crime--but in fact taking aim at all of those who think that torture may not be just swell, she writes:

This is a window into what has emerged as a curious mindset, which seems to believe that a) America’s leaders owe more to the enemy than they do to their allies and people, b) that one can wage war in a fastidious manner, deterring or defeating bloodthirsty people without resorting to ugliness, and c), that anything done by Americans to win a war, end a war, or forestall an attack on the country and the people is wrong.

As you can see, Ms. Emery has approximately the same relationship with the facts that the Bush/Cheney administration had. She is, that is, not on friendly terms with them. Let's take these elements of our alleged mindset one at a time:

a) America’s leaders owe more to the enemy than they do to their allies and people

Of course no one believes this. To insist that prisoners (roughly: prisoners of war) have the minimal human rights recognized by all civilized nations and guaranteed to them by our Constitution and treaties (including some signed by the very Gipper) is in no way to assert or suggest that "America's leaders owe more to the enemy than they do to their allies and people." Currently, the most common position among sensible people is that the Bush administration erred by being too eager to use "techniques" that were too brutal and insufficiently effective. To insist that prisoners be afforded minimal rights is hardly to value their lives about ours; in fact, nothing could be farther from the truth. Ms. Emery's distortion here is blatant and shameful.

b) ...one can wage war in a fastidious manner, deterring or defeating bloodthirsty people without resorting to ugliness

Ah, yes..."ugliness," is it? How about we dispense with the terminological soft-pedaling, Ms. Emery? We're not talking about "ugliness." We're talking about torture. We're talking about strapping prisoners down and drowning them (for technically, it is drowning). We are talking about putting America in the same moral category as Pol Pot, Papa Doc and Pinochet (the latter rather a hero on the right, so mentioning him here may not carry the appropriate dialectical weight, unfortunately.). We're talking about moral crimes, not aesthetic ones. We're not talking about tacky drapes. We're not talking about red wine with fish. (Though our friends on the right seem to think that our only moral obligations have to do with keeping our pee-pees in our pants...so, again, it's not clear how much agreement we can take for granted here....) If Ms. Emery genuinely believes what she's written here, then I think I may have identified the source of her confusion: a weak grasp of the distinction between the moral and the aesthetic.

Though, turning to the more substantive part of her absurd claim: as it turns out, one can defeat and deter bloodthirsty people without resorting to torture. That, you see, is the American way. We've defeated and deterred enemies at least as bloodthirsty--and incomparably more dangerous--than these before. And we've done so without becoming like them ourselves. You've heard of Hitler? You've heard of Stalin? Perhaps this is the source of Ms. Emery's confusion: ignorance of history.

c) ...anything done by Americans to win a war, end a war, or forestall an attack on the country and the people is wrong.

And here we descend from the merely idiotic to the genuinely sickening. Yes, here it is: a genuine instance of what I've always thought was a caricature of conservatives: an actual claim that liberals hate America and want to see it destroyed. Read it again. Turns that we believe, you and I, that anything that aims at (i) winning a war, or at (ii) ending a war, or at (iii) forestalling an attack on the country is wrong. Well, you got me. That is what I believe, and it was only a matter of time before I was found out. In fact, truth be told, the only time I think torture would be justified is if it were required in order to destroy America. Then I myself would do it, of course. With relish. And with NPR playing in the background.

So to summarize: to object to torturing prisoners is believe that it is wrong to do anything that might end a war. If you think we ought not strap people down and drown them, then you yearn to help al Qaeda to kill innocent Americans; you love OBL and want to have ten thousand of his babies.

If Ms. Emery actually believes any of this--any of it--then she has a really, really major screw loose.

But, of course, it's difficult to believe that any even vaguely sane person could believe this drivel. It is the sheerest madness, and can be dismissed without a second thought.

Later on in her little essay, Ms. Emery manages to touch on some serious issues, though not seriously. The springboard for the screed, again, is the fact that Stewart suggested that Truman might be a war criminal--a claim he made in the heat of the moment and for which he sincerely and contritely apologized the next night. But this is that to which conservatism has been reduced--grasping at something that is approximately one step up from a slip of the tongue...and by a man who is, for all his wit, essentially an entertainer. A man who's program, as he has himself pointed out, used to come on after a show about puppets making prank phone calls. One incautious remark by a comedian is what Ms. Emery has to balance the scales against a concerted, seven year program of torture orchestrated by the president of the United States. One comment on late night television, immediately disavowed; that is Ms. Emery's "window" into her opponents' mindset...

As for the question of the morality of dropping the atomic bombs--well it is a very, very difficult one. If you have never worried that President Truman might have made a terrible mistake, then you have never thought seriously about the issue.It is said that Curtis LeMay thought that, had we lost the war, he would have been tried as a war criminal for the incendiary raids. But this, of course, shows that General LeMay was just another America-hating, bleeding-heart knee-jerk liberal crypto-jihadist. Why did Old Iron Pants hate America so much, one wonders?

I myself have defended Truman's decision to drop the bomb many times. At other times, I've been convinced it was the darkest decision in our nation's history. I have sometimes thought the decision was evil. I have more often thought otherwise. Currently, my position goes like this: I don't know. Ms. Emery, of course, thinks the question is an easy one, that only a fool could think it difficult. Apparently everything is black and white from where she stands. For those of us who wrestle with the question, it's hard not to envy the peace of mind that must bring. She might be a fool, but she probably sleeps well at night.

Her final attempt to address something like a serious issue turns on a quote from Michael Kinsley, who writes:

“There is another group [beyond Bush and his lawyers] that stood by and did nothing while Americans grabbed people off the streets of foreign countries, took them to other foreign countries...and tortured them until they said whatever our government wanted to hear....Millions of people...knew that torture was going on, and voted for Bush anyway...62 million of us voted to reelect George W. Bush in 2004.”

And Emery:

At times, the logic deployed in the debate about “torture” borders on torture itself. ...Michael Kinsley brand[s] us all as a nation of criminals for standing by idly as innocent people are randomly plucked off the street.

'Criminals' is not Kinsley's term, mind you. It's a word Emery puts in his mouth. But, sadly, the word may very well be apt. In fact, that is one way to put our very worry.

Emery, consistent with her M.O., acts as if--and perhaps even believes that-- the suggestion is absurd. But there is, of course, nothing "tortured" about Kinsley's logic. He merely makes the obvious point, points us to the obvious question: if I knowingly stand by while you torture prisoners--and, in fact, I vote to keep you in power so that you can torture more, how ought one to judge me? What does that make me?

America is, it seems, always right in Emery's eyes; it is, apparently, absurd to suggest that something we did to make ourselves safer could have been wrong. This is an axiom shared by extreme nationalists across the world and throughout history. My country right or wrong...and it doesn't particularly matter which country it might be.

The view, of course, is despicable.

She ends her extended ad hominem with the following particularly impassioned nonsense:

Once upon a time, literate and intelligent people understood the difference between attack and defense, assault and pre-emption, and the use of force to conquer, destroy, enslave, or cause pain to large numbers of innocents; and the use of force deployed on aggressors to deflect or prevent the slaughter of thousands, to reverse an invasion, or to end a war others began. Once upon a time, they understood that presidents don’t have the luxury of indulging their qualms at the expense of their countrymen.

Once upon a time, American presidents believed that their first job was protecting the country and people...

Rather: once upon a time, literate and intelligent people--and the better American presidents--realized that there are some things we must not do, even when self-preservation is on the line. The realized that certain things are beneath us. Once upon a time, such people recognized that our principles are our soul, and that to abandon them is to abandon that soul. And that all the hyperbolic nonsense in the world about self-defense won't change that.

But let me be clear: I have argued--and I am certain that I am right--that, should we have to make a choice between torturing, say, Kalid Sheik Mohammed and allowing millions of Americans to die, then we must choose the former course of action. There are conceivable circumstances--so-called "ticking time-bomb cases"--in which torture is not only permissible, it is obligatory. The crucial point, however is that we have not a shred of evidence that our actual circumstances even approximated such a hypothetical one. Being scared, and being in danger, and not knowing...these are difficult circumstances, but utterly different than those in a ticking time-bomb case. One difference between noble people and others is that the former do not panic and mistakenly convince themselves that a merely dangerous situation is a ticking time-bomb situation. Another difference is: the former do not write extended bits of sophistry defending such mistakes.

Ms. Emery, blinded by spittle-flecked partisanship, attributes every kind of vice and moral derangement to those of us with the temerity to question her heroes. She pretends we are idiots; she pretends we are villains; she pretends that our moral outlook is almost inconceivably distorted. In fact, however, it is we who are being clear-eyed and level-headed; it is we who are standing up for American principles--Constitutional principles that apply to all men, not just Americans. That, at any rate, is the American theory of such things. Our view is the view that is supported by the reasons and by the evidence. And here is what the evidence indicates: It seems that the previous administration captured people without due regard for whether they were guilty. It seems that it held them without affording them sufficient opportunities to prove their innocence. It seems that it tortured them. This--prima facie, at any rate--was immoral, illegal, and ineffective, in descending order of importance. Methods were used which had been specifically engineered not to discover the truth, but, rather, to force the victims to say whatever their tormentors wanted to hear. And the "information" thus obtained seems to have been used, among other things, to fabricate the links between al Qaeda and Iraq that were cynically and dishonestly used to deceive Americans into supporting the greatest strategic blunder in the nation's history.

In response to this evidence--overwhelming almost to the point of absurdity--our position is that an inquiry is needed, that the truth must be discovered. This seems like a fairly radical understatement of the matter.

Emery's position is, apparently, that one must be deranged, evil and objectively pro-terrorist to even suggest that our country might have done something wrong. Presumably we are also deranged to think that this overwhelming evidence gives even the slightest reason in favor of conducting an investigation. The truth, you see, is clear. America--when guided by Republicans, at least--cannot do wrong. It is foolish to even wonder whether it might. That the Bush administration acted rightly is an axiom. It is not even something that can be questioned--no matter what the evidence might say. The point, you see, is to never look back, never think about what we have done, never even consider the possibility that we might have erred. To do so is to risk admitting that we might be imperfect, to risk learning unpleasant truths, to risk learning from our mistakes. Better to simply define all our past actions as correct, and to mindlessly use them as the yardsticks by which all our future actions should be judged. Best not to look back objectively, for we might not like what we see.

The deep irrationalism of Ms. Emery's position is almost a thing of beauty in it's terrible, twisted way. There is almost a kind of sublimity in it. It is clear, simple, elegant. It is a wide, clean, mindless road that leads strait to the bowels of perdition.

[Cliff May links to Emery--presumably approvingly--here.]