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Jon on John, Stewart on Yoo
Jan 13th, 2010 | 60 responses
Jon Stewart apparently felt the sting of critics of his Monday night interview (here and here) of John Yoo, who authored many of the Bush administration’s torture memos while serving as deputy assistant attorney general in the Bush administration’s Office of Legal Counsel.
In the opening to last night’s show, Stewart essentially cops to the critique, “I was going to nail him… It was like interviewing sand… He got me. You know, I’ll bounce back. I’ve certainly done worse.”
Kevin Drum says Stewart was woefully unprepared:
Yoo’s argument was, plainly, about what counts as torture. Stewart didn’t get that — or pretended not to get that, I’m not sure which — and that led him to continually act surprised by perfectly ordinary statements from Yoo. [...]
The real problem with interviewing Yoo is this: once you start arguing about the legal basis of the president’s wartime powers you’ve pretty much lost the game. That’s a subject that’s genuinely complex, and a guy like Stewart will never win an argument about that with a guy like Yoo. He’ll just toss out yet another precedent and plow on.
The debate really needed to be about the fundamentals: Stewart needed to graphically describe all the things that were done — multiple waterboardings, sleep deprivation, head slamming, stress positions, etc. — and get Yoo to defend those as permissible. And when he retreated into legalisms, he should have asked Yoo whether he, personally, agreed with his own legal position. That’s a fair question for an author on a book tour.
Adam Serwer at The Prospect details the mistakes:
Stewart allowed Yoo to claim that Abu Zubayda was the “number 3 in al-Qaeda,” a claim which is factually untrue. Yoo claimed that his memos allowed the government to “go up to the line” of what was torture, but in practice with Zubayda and others the line was crossed repeatedly. The experiences of the detainees who were shackled, in stress positions, had their head thrown into walls, and were doused with cold water were far different than the sanitized, clinical descriptions in the memos. He never asked Yoo whether he thought Zubayda being stuffed in a box to the point that his gunshot wounds reopened was “well beyond the line.” Stewart allowed Yoo to claim the U.S. had never really considered what is and isn’t torture, despite the fact that the U.S. statute against torture was very clearly violated by Yoo’s recommendations and that waterboarding had been prosecuted as a crime as recently as 1983.
Stewart never confronted Yoo on the question of how the torture regime, reverse engineered from training meant to help soldiers resist torture, could possibly not be torture. Stewart never even contested the idea that torture was effective, despite the high-profile declaration of FBI Interrogator Ali Soufan that he personally extracted all of the useful information from Zubayda prior to his being tortured. When Stewart asked Yoo whether the president could electrify someone’s testicles, Yoo knew how to answer the question — having previously implied that it would be okay for the president to order a child’s testicles crushed because, “it depends on why the president thinks he needs to do that.” This time he shook his head. No, no, never something so barbaric.
Stewart allowed Yoo to maintain the illusion that he was a good faith actor simply doing his job, rather than someone who had deliberately distorted the facts in order to justify the unjustifiable. After being outmaneuvered for nearly 30 minutes, Stewart grudgingly admitted that he was “not very equipped to handle the discussion.” It was a sobering reminder that for years, a mostly pliant press has allowed a comedian to do a reporters’ job. Yesterday, we were reminded how inadequate a solution that really is.
Serwer points to Spencer Ackerman for more. Ezra Klein called it a predictable shuddering disappointment:
[H]is guests come armed to rebut, and they have more experience defending themselves than Stewart has attacking them. At this point, Stewart is doing more harm than good by giving people whom he thinks are liars and frauds a platform on his show.
Andrew Sullivan has a bit of a different take:
[Yoo's] conservative defense of an executive branch with no limits to its powers at home or abroad is, well, as gob-smacking as it always has been. It is not, of course, a conservative argument at all. In its implications – in a war defined as unending and an executive defined as all-powerful – are proto-fascist: Jacksonianism with a waterboard.
I came away from the exchange, wondering if Yoo just isn’t that smart, as well as shockingly ignorant of history, and morality. Maybe he was off his game.
60 Responses to “Jon on John, Stewart on Yoo”
D Duck doesn't think he did.”
Dduck has no idea; Yoo is a lawyer. I just don't like too much BS going in one direction, it tends to not properly fertilize the fields.
Good point DDuck12 and it was not my intent but it was close.”
So what do you call that tactic of putting Mother Theresa in with Axis Sally, since they both made nice speeches. It is an insult to put put Yoo in the same Pinocchio category as Clinton (male or female).
Hmm I think the problem is that to me what Clinton did was a lawyer trick. Not a liar trick, therefore I see this as a classic lawyer tactic and see them as equivalent. Bringing up the name Clinton was specifically done to find a person that someone on the opposing side could understand what I mean by lawyerly word parsing version of lying. If I was debating to someone leaning left I would have likely chosen Libby or someone from the last administration that I also do not think was pulling a liar trick but a lawyer trick, “I do not recall” for instance. I am trying to avoid using Bush but I am starting to see the name Clinton seems to hold just as many problems. Yoo's was different in that instead of speaking word parses he went in search of them to ensure the legality of what the administration desired to do. I can't really think of an equivalent on the left, I know they exist I just can't think of a good comparison at this time and therefore went with Clinton. Maybe the arguments that were used to win Roe V Wade? I do not know a good deal about the arguments made on that case but it may have been a better though rather obscure comparison. In lawyers defense our legal code is written in word parse friendly language to allow for this kind of thing.
I'm just pulling your leg. I was just curious about what associating two things in a debate to lower the one to the level of the lower, was called. Having lost every argument (ahem, debate) with my wife, I thought I should know the name of this tactic.
It would usually be called moral relativism but when comparing people maybe people relativism? You still made a good point, for some using Clinton as an example may immediately close their mind to anything I have to say which is not what I was trying to accomplish.
I just didn't want you to seem too much like KK.
Reading back through your comments, which I often do when I think a conversation has swerved horribly off course and I am unsure why, I am now convinced you were for the most part debating the legal issue and I was debating the torture/morality issue and did not catch the distinction at that time. Later you veered into the torture area but from my reading I think you were doing so with an eye to explaining the legal argument not the moral/ethical or even societal ramifications of torture which is the only time I consider such an act “torture apologisim” and I apologize for my misunderstanding if I am correct. In a legal debate the word parse is EVERYTHING as well as re-defining the terms in the smallest ways possible, so again if that was the intent you would have been 100% right on course when I came in from the side debating a totally different issue and blasted away. I am used to Sophist's or chomskyites debating that way (sometimes lawyers) when not debating the legal issues and despise that avenue but in legal debates it is the only correct avenue.
First, your accusation that race is a factor is laughable. You are the one who is seeing race in this conversation, and who is projecting your own racial attitudes.
Second, this is my main point: Yoo acted forthrightly. You might disagree with his recommendations, but there is little evidence that his recommendations were nefariously or criminally motivated. Such evidence for nefarious motive which does exist is highly speculative. When you get down to the nitty gritty of “extreme”, “intense”, “acute”, “agony”, and “of the damned”, when you get to the very heart of the matter, forthright people absolutely will have differing opinions. And that's what you guys don't see. You don't see that forthright persons can disagree about fundamental definitions of torture. In this comment thread, everyone seems forthright, and several of us have fundamental disagreements about the definition of torture. In fact, if there are 10 people in this comment thread, and we studied the subject for a month, all 10 of us might have some definitional disagreements with every other person in the group. Almost no two people would define every instance of the torture line in the exact same way. There are numerous issues and circumstances to be considered. The subject is not easy peasy and delineated by clear and bright lines. When you really get your hands into it: it's messy and it's difficult.
Third, laws for U.S. Citizens are different from laws for illegal combatants. Even laws for uniformed soldiers are different from laws for illegal combatants.
Fourth, emotional appeals, et al have nothing to do with Yoo. Yoo was not tasked with making the call to use or to not use any techniques. Yoo was merely trying to shed light on a difficult issue. Anger about any techniques which were or were not used is properly directed at GWB.
Fifth, no one is a torture proponent. Unfair characterization.
Sixth, if my 22 year old son were, for instance, Osama's driver, I would pray that GWB's administration captured my son – as opposed to, for instance, well, any other intelligence service in the world. If GWB's administration thought my son ought be the 4th person to be waterboarded, then waterboard him: I would have confidence that my son likely deserved it. Plus, it's not the worst thing in the world. We waterboard our own troops. We actually drown Navy Seals during their training, then revive them. I don't have the same perspective about waterboarding as you guys seem to have.
Seventh, I do believe in Hell, but I am redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ, and am not going to Hell. Separately from Hell, b/c that's not an issue for me: I do ask God to come into my heart, and to help me see and address these issues as forthrightly and ethically and virtuously and wisely as possible. Sappy, syrupy, sugary sweet embrace of monsters is not virtuous. It is stupidity, and it's an ethical abomination. Failing to protect your family and your nation is not virtuous. It's stupidity, ethical abomination, morally contemptible. We all have to declare ourselves. We don't get to keep clean and pristine hands. Inaction is action. When the Fort Hood shootings happened, I looked at my hands, and you ought have looked at yours, also. My hands were not pristine and clean. No one's hands ever were. Thinking so was pretty, yet was fantasy.
This is my main point: Yoo acted forthrightly. You might disagree with his recommendations, but there is little evidence that his recommendations were nefariously motivated. Such evidence for nefarious motive which does exist is highly speculative.
When you get down to the nitty gritty of “extreme”, “intense”, “acute”, “agony”, and “of the damned”, when you get to the very heart of the matter, forthright people absolutely will have differing opinions. And that's what you guys don't see. You don't see that forthright persons can disagree about fundamental definitions of torture. You believe your opinion is so clearly righteous that Yoo clearly must agree with your opinion. Nothing about the torture question is easy. There are multiple nuances to be considered. Questions cannot be well and fully considered from arm's length. A person must get their hands deep into it. And, when you get deep into it, you realize that reasonable, forthright persons can disagree in many places.
I don't know what you are talking about in the “rational motive” section.
I apologize for mischaracterizing you re Yoo acting illegally.
I don't care what they call waterboarding in Nam or in the Seals – I don't think either terminology is germane to the moral and legal lines which John Yoo researched and attempted to delineate.
Thanks for the last comment. You are correct that I am not interested in “debating the moral/ethical or even societal ramifications of torture.” I am saying it's likely that Yoo – even if he got torture answers which you believe are the wrong answers – nevertheless likely acted in morally forthright fashion. I don't believe Yoo merely acted in legal fashion. I suspect Yoo also acted out of virtuous/ethical/moral motivation. Those who demonize Yoo believe that Yoo is a liar who believes waterboarding is torture and is using legalisms and parsing to legally justify torture. I'm saying: the question of what is and is not torture is not easy and brightly delineated. Forthright persons can disagree. There's a much stronger case that Yoo forthrightly believes waterboarding is not torture; there is a highly speculative case that Yoo is an evil hypocrite who believes waterboarding is torture, yet nevertheless made a legal case in favor of waterboarding.