Is "Smacky Face" Torture?

I have a huge amount of respect for Jonah Goldberg. His views are insightful, well articulated and often iconoclastic. He is not afraid of taking unpopular positions. But on the subject of torture and its definitions, he punts.

In today's NR Online he writes:

"THE SIPOWICZ RULE [Jonah Goldberg]
In the abstract I guess I've been more sympathetic to torture under very specific circumstances. Indeed, I still don't think anyone can deny that there are obvious hypotheticals where no sane person would oppose using torture. But I guess, at the end of the day, I'm in Derb's camp. If those hypotheticals are ever translated into reality -- God forbid -- nobody's going to care about the Geneva Convention. If we know there's a nuclear bomb en route to an American city and we have someone in custody we know has information on how to intercept that bomb, my guess is we'll get that information no matter what the missives and memos from the White House say. And anyone who thinks that's a bad thing is a fool in my book."

Except I am not at all sure that under these circumstances someone would be willing to sacrifice themselves and break the rules and save thousands. In fact, we have stark evidence of the opposite. Remember the FBI field agents who wanted to examine the computer of one of the 9/11 terrorists before 9/11? The rules said no. Headquarters said no. The computer was not examined. The Twin Towers fell on 9/11 and 3000 died.

We're not actors in a video, finding out that a nuke is on the way, we have 12 hours to find it. and one of the bad guys in custody. How handy! Our military and police are real people, not incarnations of Dirty Harry. This is real life and the victims are not going to get up after the director yells: "cut."

Here's a Rule about Rules: if you have a rule, assume it's going to be followed. If you don't want it followed, don't make a rule.

That said, short of those incandescently clear cases I think torture should be ruled out. But as I've written several times and as Andy McCarthy perfectly summarized yesterday, I think applying the Geneva Convention to al Qaeda detainees is batty.

Moreover, I have no problem with playing a little smacky-face with prisoners. Think about it. The standard being put forward by Sullivan and others on all this would rule the tactics of Detective Andy Sipowicz on NYPD Blue unacceptable. For years, Sipowicz has been smacking suspects around in order to force them to confess. He threatens to "beat their balls off" every other show.

It is beyond me why this should be considered beyond the pale for terrorists

But that's the issue being debated. What is torture? The International Red Cross apparently claims that verbal threats are virtual torture. If yelling is torture, Smacky-face will definitely be defined as torture by the anti-Bush anti-Iraq contingent. So is sleep deprivation, unusual positions, and playing music. So despite being against torture, Jonah comes out for torture, at least as the Left defines it ... today. Tomorrow, if we are attacked and it turns out that "smacky face" could have prevented it, torture will be approved ... retroactively.

There is an excellent analysis HERE and see the link to Steven Den Beste.