24 Hours In A Day
Apparently some right-wingers are unhappy with a kinder, gentler Jack Bauer. In this season's premiere of 24, protagonist Bauer appears before a Congressional committee to discuss torture:
"It's better that everything comes out in the open," Bauer says, echoing Democrat demands for greater transparency over US counter-terrorist tactics. "We've done so many things in the name of protecting this country, we've created two worlds. Ours and the people's we've promised to protect. They deserve to hear the truth and decide how far they want to let us go."
I don't watch 24, so I wouldn't have heard about this otherwise. Still, it's my understanding each season lasts 24 episodes, and who knows what's coming next? Whatever Jack may be saying or thinking now may be tested. What counts here is not where the show starts, but where it ends up.
posted by LAGuy @ 12:45 AM
14 Comments:
Is it your suggestion that, as long as it ends up validating torture, everything will be okay?
My point, and I thought I was clear, was that no one should draw any conclusion about 24, or indeed, any dramatic work of art, until it's over.
It was clear.
I was actually curious about your position on the torture question, LAGuy. You have referenced it several times on this blog without committing. Commenting on rightwingers giving 24 a chance to come out differently than they currently anticipate is another tease on the question. Care to state your position?
I can't think the 24 producers will develop a line that will piss off and alienate that portion of the country which thinks its a good show.
I think torture should be illegal.
And waterboarding was considered torture for purposes of us hanging Japanese officers post-WWII.
QED?
Wait a minute. So we could hang them but we couldn't waterboard them first? Wow.
What scruples we have.
Who's watching the watchmen?
You notice how torture and the death penalty never apply to the people who get to decide to use them. How about if these penalties and tactics were applicable to gross acts of official corruption. [I know it wouldn't work- the corrupt would just use it on their corrupt competitors]
VG, I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. That the death penalty violates the 8th Amendment? Was I unclear about the facts:
1. Japanese military officers waterboarded captured US fliers
2. US-run war crimes tribunals considered that evidence of torture by those officers and hanged them as war criminals
Apparently, I misread your post. I didn't realize you were referring to crimes by Japanese officers which justified our hanging them. I thought you were talking about what we could or could not do with them once we captured them.
Ok, thanks. Anyone care to make an argument for why this precedent should not control?
Waterboarding isn't even a hard question -- it's really quintessential torture. Some other techniques may seem more questionable -- e.g. sleep deprivation. It seems obvious, in the end, that any time you try to get someone to talk by inflicting physical discomfort to the point where they want to talk to get it to stop -- that is torture. Certainly, to keep someone from breathing is one of the basics. I think this principle applies to sleep deprivation; keeping people naked and/or cold; etc. These things are just much worse than they seem if you haven't had to do them. (If they weren't, of course, people wouldn't talk to get them to stop.)
Psychological discomfort may be a more difficult question. But when you're drowning someone, that's torture.
It's not quintessential torture. I'd say by most definitions it's not even torture, which almost always (maybe no need for almost) inflicts serious physical injuries on the tortured.
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