Comments on: Hitchens and Torture in Britain: What Took Place During the War?

By: Mike_K

Mike_K — Wed, 13 May 2009 14:03:16 +0000

#26, In 1977, on a visit to London, my wife and I did the tour of Commons that was available on Saturday mornings until the IRA blew up the Home Secretary in the garage. We were standing in a long line that stretched far beyond Westminster Abbey across the street. A tall man came along the line and asked us if we spoke English. When we answered yes, he said “Come with me.” He took us to the door at the head of the line and said , “Wait here.” Every few minutes, he would reappear with another couple. We finally figured out that he was collecting the English speakers from the line. He was a guide, a retired policeman. Eventually, he explained that he was collecting the English speakers to avoid the Germans, who at the time, were apparently a major component of the tourists who wanted to see Parliament. It was a wonderful tour; he had been assigned to Parliament during the war. I was also struck by his persisting hostility to the Germans 22 years after the war ended.

That generation is almost gone but I doubt many changed their minds or worried about torture. The concept that avoiding harsh interrogation of the terrorists would somehow protect our own captured soldiers is ludicrous. The German POW camps had a low mortality rate; the Japanese a high mortality rate. The mortality rate of captured US soldiers in this war has been 100% with a rare exception or two.

By: Nino

Nino — Sat, 09 May 2009 20:05:01 +0000

Hitchens refers to himself as a polemicist which means that parsing his sentences looking for truth is a waste of time. He’s basically a hack attack dog for some ideology–democratic socialist seems to fit him best.

By: nyomythus

nyomythus — Sat, 09 May 2009 18:01:41 +0000

Apparently, here we DON’T have another. Hitchens does mention the ”ticking bomb” scenario.

By: briinn

briinn — Sat, 09 May 2009 17:19:29 +0000

So by avoiding any mention of The Cage, which I assume Hitchens must know about, he gives the impression that under immense pressure and the most dangerous conditions…

In this case poor Hitchen’s reveals how deeply flawed his atheistic beliefs have mired his ability to reason. Trying to make something good out of something bad.

What is immediately clear to me is that any society with the will to survive during war, eventually resorts to some forms of torture to gain an advantage over the enemy. To believe otherwise is laughable at best and foolish at worst. I also cannot imagine any society printing pamphlets on the torture methods du jour and passing them out to inform the populous at large while giving the enemy a look-see as well.

Hitchen’s enjoys sharing his naïve view of the goodness of mankind which has a blindsiding effect on him. For instance, his stance on anything Christian: He manages to leave the impression of a seething cauldron of hate as he yowls about the evils of Christianity all the while resembling a lunatic. The saying comes to mind, “To rage against the machine (Christ).” I find Hitchen’s pitiable.

By: D. Grant Chee

D. Grant Chee — Sat, 09 May 2009 04:00:19 +0000

” Torture light ” was a term someone used in an earlier post. Excellent choice of words.
We are stumbling toward a war where torture will be common place and only the tortured will whine. Soldiers will resort to war; a
chaotic hell where the tactic known as ” Take no prisoners ” is the kindest form of torture. Israel is currently the only civilized nation on earth facing what is coming for the rest. Only my opinion. Vet.

By: Class Clown

Class Clown — Fri, 08 May 2009 12:16:54 +0000

Wow,

Some people can’t even read an essay. This had nothing to do with discrediting Churchill, and everything to do with discrediting Hitchens.

Hitchens is the sort of guy that is often insightful right up until you run into one of his blind spots. His biggest one is Christianity, which he hates so deeply that he turns into a raging lunatic every time the topic comes up. Apparently, here we have another.

By: Edward Norden

Edward Norden — Fri, 08 May 2009 04:53:55 +0000

Anybody as cordially despised by the Nation and the Guardian as Hitchens is can’t be all bad. That said, he has a ways to go before serious readers need to always take him seriously. This effort on “torture,” Churchill and the Brits is a case on point. Ron does well to bring up the Cage, which Hitchens ignores and which Churchill had to know about. Even more important, Hitchens leaves out the vital fact that the Brits early on cracked the German Enigma encryption machine with their Ultra program. They and the U.S . fought the Nazis like a poker player who has a confederate with a mirror behind his opponent. There was little any captured German could tell which Ultra couldn’t. How vast the difference between that situation and the one faced with al Qaeda especially right after 9/11 as NSA’s eavesdropping satellites notwithstanding we groped in the dark against the clock to learn how the Islamofascists were organized. And so Hitchens’s analogy is false, as he himself must know. As for British “humaneness,” it would come as news to the civilians of Hamburg or Dresden, whose incineration Churchill greenlighted, not to mention the Irish who fell into the hands of the Black and Tans on the 20s, the Palestinians the hands of British military intelligence in the 30s, the Zionists the hands of the C.I.D. in the 40s and the Mau Mau in the 50s. A former Brit, Hitchens must know what “a dozen or two of the best” means. That’s how things were done in a great and relatively civilized empire, the one which Churchil strove above all things to save. When Obama resorts to Churchill as he did, we forgive him—it isn’t a politician’s job to tell the truth, far less put it in context. But Hitchens styles himself an intellectual. Why does he sometimes choose dishonesty? Can it be that he’s still not cured of his youthful infatuation with Lev Bronstein?

By: bbb

bbb — Fri, 08 May 2009 04:38:53 +0000

#10, #26 Muster of Poppets: Here again we have the cultural divide. In my book, being tough on Nazi spies (up to and including execution) — and keeping his mouth shut about it — RAISES my estimation of Churchill. Only in the Leftist bizarro world would it be a compliment to say that the leader of a country was a spineless wimp who was clueless about abuses performed by underlings, and who would have blabbed it all to the news media of the day if he had known.

And this is a big problem with Obama and the Leftist oligarchy. They have NO CLUE what it takes to defend this country. You need look no further than the F-22 cancellation to find proof of that.

BTW I’m not sure what the “lie” you’re referring to is. Churchill never said “We don’t torture”. That was Obama lying, not Churchill.

BBB

By: Self-hating Boomer

Self-hating Boomer — Fri, 08 May 2009 03:08:07 +0000

The logical fallacy that Hitchens is stepping right into is conflating the effectiveness of torture with its moral defensibility. These are two totally separate and unrelated questions, and since he can’t win the moral argument, he cuts a few corners and tries to claim that the non-violent methods are always more effective.

This is kind of analogous to the profiling argument. Racial/ethnic/religious profiling usually doesn’t get as good results at picking a terrorist out of a crowd as behavioral profiling. That’s why El Al primarily uses behavioral profiling. But don’t think they don’t notice what nationality and religion that you appear to be. But regardless, effectiveness is a completely separate question from whether or not it’s an acceptable practice.

By: Malcolm Coote

Malcolm Coote — Fri, 08 May 2009 00:57:52 +0000

If these interrogations took place during and after WWII, then not only Prime Minister Churchill would have been aware of them but also Prime Minister Atlee who replaced Churchill in 1945.