The New York Times Says ‘Torture’–112 Years Later
The New York Times would like you to believe it got its balls back. It hasn’t.
Executive Editor Dean Baquet wrote yesterday that the Grey Lady will henceforth use the word, “torture,” to describe the waterboarding of suspected terrorists. The blogger Andrew Sullivan, who has been vocally critical of the Times‘ unwillingness to use plain English when reporting on Central Intelligence Agency maltreatment of terror suspects, declared “victory” at The Daily Dish while rightfully dismissing Baquet’s lame attempt at justifying the Times’ journalistic cowardice by claiming “when the first revelations emerged a decade ago, the situation was murky.”
Baquet’s decision to have the Times “recalibrate its language” is hardly a courageous one. Surely, it can’t be a coincidence that his decision comes only after President Obama acknowledged plainly that “we tortured some folks” — and even then it took the Times an entire week to follow the President’s lead. The Times in 2014 has nearly as much journalistic integrity and courage as it had in 1902, when its editorial board wasn’t nearly so coy about using the word, “torture.”
During the American war in the Philippines from 1899-1902, waterboarding — or, as it was then called, the “water cure” — was frequently used against Philippine insurgents, suspected insurgents, and suspected insurgent sympathizers, including Philippine government officials.
Troops of the 35th Volunteer Infantry Regiment demonstrate the “water cure,” Philippines, 1901 (National Archives)
In 1902, the Senate Committee on the Philippines, chaired by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge (R-MA), held hearings into the use of the water cure torture by U.S. Army personnel during the insurgency as part of a series of courts-martial of officers who supervised it, including Brigadier General Jacob Smith, who, as Paul Kramer reported in The New Yorker, issued a notorious “kill and burn” order.
Debate turned on points that would be very familiar to anyone who has followed the post-9/11 torture debate. On one side, apologists for the “water cure” claimed it wasn’t torture, didn’t hurt the victims, and in any case was absolutely necessary because the Philippine insurgents didn’t fight fair, they tortured our troops, and they had information we absolutely had to have to “save lives.” Republican jingoes — ideological ancestors to today’s torture apologists like failed Republican Senate candidate Liz Cheney — also claimed that accusing the U.S. Army of “torture” unfairly “besmirched” its reputation.
On the other side of the debate, opponents claimed the torture elicited unreliable testimony and was in any case absolutely at odds with America’s values, Secretary of War Elihu Root quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle for April 16, 1902, that “great as the provocation has been in dealing with foes who habitually resort to treachery, murder and torture against our men, nothing can justify or will be held to justify the use of torture or inhuman conduct of any kind on the part of the American army.”
Troops waterboarding a suspected insurgent, 1901 (Ohio State University Rare Books & Manuscripts Library)
Throughout the post-9/11 era, the New York Times has been a compliant lapdog for the government. The passage of time will never erase the ignominy of Judith Miller‘s pimping of Bush administration lies about Iraq’s phantom weapons of mass destruction program, for example — “reporting” that perfectly captured the Times‘ infatuation with official sources and alleged scoops.
In the grand scheme of things, then, Baquet’s road-to-Damascus moment should be taken with no little amount of salt and deserves little more than a tepid two cheers. Over a century before, the Times had no qualms about calling torture “torture.” Baquet’s “recalibration” of language bespeaks a dilettantism that the Times had no use for in 1902:
Several correspondents have been writing to us lately about the “water cure” in the Philippines. The employment of that torture, for any purpose whatever, even by native scouts in the employ of the United States, we need not say that The Times deprecates and condemns. … In spite of all the provocations to, and of all the excuses for the use of the water cure, or of any other form of torture applied even to savage prisoners of war, we do not defend but condemn it.
That doesn’t leave much room for interpretation. In 2014, by contrast, the Times still isn’t nearly so sure it’s got the guts to do this. At the Washington Post, media critic Erik Wemple says we should “file this one in the ‘about time’ folder.” Not so fast. Baquet’s not taking any chances on jeopardizing the Times’ cozy relationship with officialdom. Sure, they’re going to use the word, “torture,” but only when “we know for sure that interrogators inflicted pain on a prisoner in an effort to get information.”
Given the probability that the Times will know “for sure” that torture causes pain in anything like real time is infinitely low, if not zero, it’s highly unlikely the Grey Lady will be blazing any new journalistic trails any time soon.
Click here for reuse options!Copyright 2014 Liberaland
By: Russ Burgos
Interested in foreign affairs, global conflict, and political narratives and discourses
9 responses to The New York Times Says ‘Torture’–112 Years Later
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Cosmic_Surfer August 8th, 2014 at 18:23
We have been using torture methods since our inception…It is only recently the people cared to actually admit it to themselves and even then we don’t care enough to demand it to stop (yes, Obama too)
burqa August 8th, 2014 at 20:44
Cosmic_Surfer: “We have been using torture methods since our inception”
Wrong.
I have done extensive research on prisoner interrogation and our Founding Fathers declared at the outset that we would fight in a manner that was as morally just as our cause.
I have the quotes, if you want to debate. George Washington, Sam Adams, the Continental Congress and others repeatedly insisted prisoners we captured be treated humanely, and not the way the British treated Americans they captured.
Cosmic_Surfer August 8th, 2014 at 21:12
Tell that to the men, wiomen and children enslaved by their “masters”: as they were beaten to death, starved and worked until the dropped; or watch their husbands, wives or children sold off or forced to act as sexual surrogate or breeding stock for their owner(including your founding fathers). Or, the native Americans forced cross country on trail of tears – both of them Or the natives scalped alive by soldiers and settlers – or women and children raped and impaled on swords; displaced after lands seized and homes destroyed (by your founding fathers)..
Torture doesn’t just mean gentile white guys in uniforms but then I look at all humanity as being equal not just those calling themselves Americans as they declare war on other white Europeans.
Any use of pain in order to manipulate is torture whether it is isolation or waterboarding; rape or sodomy; beatings or watching your family die a slow painful death…
Ah exceptionalism – it limits one to see only themselves
Cosmic_Surfer August 8th, 2014 at 18:23
We have been using torture methods since our inception…It is only recently the people cared to actually admit it to themselves and even then we don’t care enough to demand it to stop (yes, Obama too)
burqa August 8th, 2014 at 20:44
Cosmic_Surfer: “We have been using torture methods since our inception”
Wrong.
I have done extensive research on prisoner interrogation and our Founding Fathers declared at the outset that we would fight in a manner that was as morally just as our cause.
I have the quotes, if you want to debate. George Washington, Sam Adams, the Continental Congress and others repeatedly insisted prisoners we captured be treated humanely, and not the way the British treated Americans they captured.
Cosmic_Surfer August 8th, 2014 at 21:12
Tell that to the men, wiomen and children enslaved by their “masters”: as they were beaten to death, starved and worked until the dropped; or watch their husbands, wives or children sold off or forced to act as sexual surrogate or breeding stock for their owner(including your founding fathers). Or, the native Americans forced cross country on trail of tears – both of them. Or the natives scalped alive by soldiers and settlers – or women and children raped and impaled on swords; displaced after lands seized and homes destroyed (by your founding fathers)..
Torture doesn’t just mean gentile white guys in uniforms but then I look at all humanity as being equal not just those calling themselves Americans as they declare war on other white Europeans.
Any use of pain in order to manipulate is torture whether it is isolation or waterboarding; rape or sodomy; beatings or watching your family die a slow painful death…
Ah exceptionalism – it limits one to see only themselves
Jake August 8th, 2014 at 19:03
Lets face it America was built on torture, murder and rape. And at least one of our political parties has not moved on from that mentality.
burqa August 8th, 2014 at 20:40
No, it wasn’t “built on torture, murder and rape.”
The Times is being disingenuous.
Waterboarding was always considered torture. It only “became murky” when people listened to Republicans who denied the past, denied our laws and refused to be honest.
To those of us who have known Americans held prisoner by the Japanese, Ko-reans or the Vietnamese, there has never been any murkiness about it.
(To add a pedantic note, the Philippine Insurrection lasted about a dozen years and the fighting was extremely brutal at times.)
burqa August 8th, 2014 at 20:40
No, it wasn’t “built on torture, murder and rape.”
The Times is being disingenuous.
Waterboarding was always considered torture. It only “became murky” when people listened to Republicans who denied the past, denied our laws and refused to be honest.
To those of us who have known Americans held prisoner by the Japanese, Ko-reans or the Vietnamese, there has never been any murkiness about it.
(To add a pedantic note, the Philippine Insurrection lasted about a dozen years and the fighting was extremely brutal at times.)