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TORTURED BY COMPROMISE
Suzanne Fields
Washington Times, DC
Oct 15 2007
Washington is awash in debates where politics collides with
principle. Politics is the art of compromise, but players are loathe
to admit compromise, or even to concede any ground at all. The
pols agree with the late Vince Lombardi, the famous football coach:
"Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing."
But politics, which "ain't beanbag," ain't football, either, though
the candidates fumble, flip and flop like a ham-handed halfback,
backing, filling and shaving meanings. We see compromises all about
us. Uncompromising politicians are usually called rigid ideologues,
but that's not quite accurate. Rigid ideologues rarely win, but they
often influence the politics of the winners.
It's the influence, not the ideology (or the theology) that certain
religious conservatives seek with their threat to form an ineffectual
third party over the abortion issue. They say they want a candidate
closer to their view and they're willing to lose with Aloysius Q.
Nobody rather than win with Rudy Giuliani or someone like him, even
though Rudy or someone like him would give them everything else they
want, maybe even the judges who question the way abortion rights are
determined. When they finally focus on the enormous impact of what
they're doing on many other issues they hold dear, maybe they'll drop
the third-party fantasy. Or maybe they won't. There's fog over the
crystal ball this morning.
Sometimes debate pits domestic politics against foreign policy
interests. Congressmen with a significant Armenian constituency have
for years been pushing for a congressional resolution to label as
"genocide" the massacre of a million and a half Armenians by the
Turks of the Ottoman Empire 90 years ago. Last week they succeeded,
getting a strongly symbolic but essentially meaningless resolution
endorsed by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Like so much else debated in Washington, the politicians are not
debating what happened way back when, but taking care to appease
a domestic constituency. Both President Bush and Defense Secretary
Robert Gates argue that the resolution is likely to anger the Turks,
jeopardizing the use of Turkish airfields and supply routes in
support of U.S. soldiers in Iraq. Both George H.W. Bush and Bill
Clinton, sensitive to the importance of Turkey to the United States,
declined to use the word "genocide" to describe the great suffering
of the Armenians. This time, however, the "principled" congressional
grandstanders trumped the security of American soldiers in Iraq with
a feel-good resolution of non-binding sentiment. Not necessarily good.
No debate over when and whether to compromise produces as much sound
and fury (mostly sound) as how to define "torture." The word covers
a multitude of sins, but we all argue over where to put the line
separating the allowable from the forbidden. The president insists that
"this government does not torture people," and the approved techniques
must be "tough, safe and necessary." It's not clear what's tough,
safe and necessary, and what isn't.
Jane Mayer, writing in the New Yorker magazine, reports that the
fictional television show "24," in which torture is a staple used
by a government counterterrorist unit to save millions of lives
from destruction by nuclear explosives or virulent biologicals,
has softened Americans, including policymakers, to accept torture in
certain circumstances. Senior members of the Bush administration watch
it regularly. (So do I.) A television show does not reality make,
but it can provoke debate.
When a civil liberties lawyer type on the show stops Jack Bauer, the
lead character, from doing what is "necessary" to extract information
from a terrorist with crucial knowledge about a nuclear warhead
about to explode, killing millions, a weak president orders the
agent's arrest. Viewers must ask themselves which side of this debate
they support. Torture is not glamorized; the protagonist is often
psychologically tortured himself by what he does. Kiefer Sutherland,
who portrays the agent, has in real life been arrested for drunk
driving. Is this the result of stress on the actor's conscience? Some
critics say so.
"24" uses the image of a ticking time bomb to illustrate plot
structure; the program's creator explains this fantasy as wish
fulfillment. "Every American wishes we had someone out there neatly
taking care of business, " says Joel Surnow, executive producer of
the show. Someone asked him whether he would depict "waterboarding,"
an interrogation technique lending the illusion of drowning, to induce
testimony. Yes, he replied, and added wryly, "But only with bottled
water - this is Hollywood."
Few in Washington have such a sense of humor about what they say and
do, and what the pols sanction in real life with millions of lives
at stake is no laughing matter. We elect our politicians to make the
hard decisions for us, but we don't re-elect them when they compromise
too little - or too much.
Suzanne Fields
Washington Times, DC
Oct 15 2007
Washington is awash in debates where politics collides with
principle. Politics is the art of compromise, but players are loathe
to admit compromise, or even to concede any ground at all. The
pols agree with the late Vince Lombardi, the famous football coach:
"Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing."
But politics, which "ain't beanbag," ain't football, either, though
the candidates fumble, flip and flop like a ham-handed halfback,
backing, filling and shaving meanings. We see compromises all about
us. Uncompromising politicians are usually called rigid ideologues,
but that's not quite accurate. Rigid ideologues rarely win, but they
often influence the politics of the winners.
It's the influence, not the ideology (or the theology) that certain
religious conservatives seek with their threat to form an ineffectual
third party over the abortion issue. They say they want a candidate
closer to their view and they're willing to lose with Aloysius Q.
Nobody rather than win with Rudy Giuliani or someone like him, even
though Rudy or someone like him would give them everything else they
want, maybe even the judges who question the way abortion rights are
determined. When they finally focus on the enormous impact of what
they're doing on many other issues they hold dear, maybe they'll drop
the third-party fantasy. Or maybe they won't. There's fog over the
crystal ball this morning.
Sometimes debate pits domestic politics against foreign policy
interests. Congressmen with a significant Armenian constituency have
for years been pushing for a congressional resolution to label as
"genocide" the massacre of a million and a half Armenians by the
Turks of the Ottoman Empire 90 years ago. Last week they succeeded,
getting a strongly symbolic but essentially meaningless resolution
endorsed by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Like so much else debated in Washington, the politicians are not
debating what happened way back when, but taking care to appease
a domestic constituency. Both President Bush and Defense Secretary
Robert Gates argue that the resolution is likely to anger the Turks,
jeopardizing the use of Turkish airfields and supply routes in
support of U.S. soldiers in Iraq. Both George H.W. Bush and Bill
Clinton, sensitive to the importance of Turkey to the United States,
declined to use the word "genocide" to describe the great suffering
of the Armenians. This time, however, the "principled" congressional
grandstanders trumped the security of American soldiers in Iraq with
a feel-good resolution of non-binding sentiment. Not necessarily good.
No debate over when and whether to compromise produces as much sound
and fury (mostly sound) as how to define "torture." The word covers
a multitude of sins, but we all argue over where to put the line
separating the allowable from the forbidden. The president insists that
"this government does not torture people," and the approved techniques
must be "tough, safe and necessary." It's not clear what's tough,
safe and necessary, and what isn't.
Jane Mayer, writing in the New Yorker magazine, reports that the
fictional television show "24," in which torture is a staple used
by a government counterterrorist unit to save millions of lives
from destruction by nuclear explosives or virulent biologicals,
has softened Americans, including policymakers, to accept torture in
certain circumstances. Senior members of the Bush administration watch
it regularly. (So do I.) A television show does not reality make,
but it can provoke debate.
When a civil liberties lawyer type on the show stops Jack Bauer, the
lead character, from doing what is "necessary" to extract information
from a terrorist with crucial knowledge about a nuclear warhead
about to explode, killing millions, a weak president orders the
agent's arrest. Viewers must ask themselves which side of this debate
they support. Torture is not glamorized; the protagonist is often
psychologically tortured himself by what he does. Kiefer Sutherland,
who portrays the agent, has in real life been arrested for drunk
driving. Is this the result of stress on the actor's conscience? Some
critics say so.
"24" uses the image of a ticking time bomb to illustrate plot
structure; the program's creator explains this fantasy as wish
fulfillment. "Every American wishes we had someone out there neatly
taking care of business, " says Joel Surnow, executive producer of
the show. Someone asked him whether he would depict "waterboarding,"
an interrogation technique lending the illusion of drowning, to induce
testimony. Yes, he replied, and added wryly, "But only with bottled
water - this is Hollywood."
Few in Washington have such a sense of humor about what they say and
do, and what the pols sanction in real life with millions of lives
at stake is no laughing matter. We elect our politicians to make the
hard decisions for us, but we don't re-elect them when they compromise
too little - or too much.