Kate Phillips: A Post-Script on Churchill, Obama and Torture
Given that the definitions and practices of brutal interrogation methods, past and present, remain part of our modern-day debate, it seems worthwhile to revisit the remarks President Obama made during his “100 Days” news conference about Winston Churchill’s views on torture and gather some of the discussion that has ensued since then.
To recap, journalists and bloggers spent the days after Mr. Obama’s news conference dissecting his remarks, and countering them with evidence uncovered this past decade in Britain about the treatment of Nazi soldiers and others in London and elsewhere, some 60 years ago. We contacted Carlo D’Este, a military historian and biographer, who wrote “Warlord: A Life of Winston Churchill at War, 1874-1945.” iIn the wake of Mr. Obama’s comments, he offered his insights on Churchill’s personal experiences and leanings. We’ll get back to his take after setting up a little of the recent back-and-forth.
First, let’s go to Mr. Obama’s comments, as he discussed his rationale for releasing the legal opinions of the Bush administration that were the underlying reasoning for their methods used to interrogate terrorist suspects.
Mr. Obama said:
“I was struck by an article that I was reading the other day talking about the fact that the British, during World War II, when London was being bombed to smithereens, had 200 or so detainees. And Churchill said, “we don’t torture,” when the — the entire British — all of the British people were being subjected to unimaginable risk and threat. And — and — and the reason was that Churchill understood, you start taking shortcuts, and over time, that corrodes what’s — what’s best in a people.”
The White House press office initially wasn’t sure which article the president referenced, but at the end of the week seemed to agree that it was one by Andrew Sullivan at TheAtlantic.com. (Several bloggers and writers and Web sites also cited Mr. Sullivan’s piece.)
But what Mr. Sullivan actually wrote is this: “As Britain’s very survival hung in the balance, as women and children were being killed on a daily basis and London turned into rubble, Churchill nonetheless knew that embracing torture was the equivalent of surrender to the barbarism he was fighting.”
In a hypothetical sense, that may cover an arc of positioning, from Mr. Obama’s emphatic characterization of a Churchillian belief that “we don’t torture” to the wartime leader’s not “embracing torture,” spanning public pronouncements and what would appear to be evidence of a private, personal abhorrence despite institutional practice.
It would seem, from many accounts, that Mr. Obama misspoke. It remains unclear whether Churchill ever uttered the words “we don’t torture,” but no citation has surfaced among biographers or historians that we’ve seen so far....
Churchill’s imprisonment and other war experiences undoubtedly influenced his thinking during wartime in London, said Mr. D’Este, the biographer, in an interview. But where Churchill might have come down on torture remains a bit of a mystery, and Mr. D’Este said he found no evidence during his research that the topic was discussed (although there were debates about the use of poison gas).
In addition, Richard M. Langworth, another historian and Churchill biographer, also searched through digital records of the wartime leader’s words. He wrote last week: “The nearest I could come to his sentiments refers not to terrorists but to prison inmates. In 1938, responding to a constituent who urged him to help end the use of the ‘cat o’nine tails’ in prisons, Churchill wrote: ‘The use of instruments of torture can never be regarded by any decent person as synonymous with justice.’ ” (ABC’s Jake Tapper also revisited the Churchillian references in another post on Monday night.)
In reference to approving brutal interrogation techniques, Mr. D’Este said: “It’s hard to define what he would or wouldn’t have done. But my whole sense of it was that he would have rejected the notion. … I think his military background, his soldiering and everything would have given us a better sense of that, and the fact that he had sort of, been there done that.”
Churchill, he noted, “just had a better sense of war and what it was all about.”
The historian also mentioned Churchill’s searing experiences at the battle of Ondurman, (in the Sudan in 1898), when he rode over the area where thousands were dead and dying, some trying to crawl to the Nile River for water. Churchill wrote dispatches that were published back home and recounted his horror in the book “The River War.” To read those dispatches, Mr. D’Este said, was to understand “he made it very clear, he wrote that ‘I’m not squeamish, but I have seen acts of great barbarity and am thoroughly sickened of human blood.’ ”
“That was torture of another kind,” the historian added, “but torture at its worst capacity.”...
Read entire article at Caucus blog at the NYT website
To recap, journalists and bloggers spent the days after Mr. Obama’s news conference dissecting his remarks, and countering them with evidence uncovered this past decade in Britain about the treatment of Nazi soldiers and others in London and elsewhere, some 60 years ago. We contacted Carlo D’Este, a military historian and biographer, who wrote “Warlord: A Life of Winston Churchill at War, 1874-1945.” iIn the wake of Mr. Obama’s comments, he offered his insights on Churchill’s personal experiences and leanings. We’ll get back to his take after setting up a little of the recent back-and-forth.
First, let’s go to Mr. Obama’s comments, as he discussed his rationale for releasing the legal opinions of the Bush administration that were the underlying reasoning for their methods used to interrogate terrorist suspects.
Mr. Obama said:
“I was struck by an article that I was reading the other day talking about the fact that the British, during World War II, when London was being bombed to smithereens, had 200 or so detainees. And Churchill said, “we don’t torture,” when the — the entire British — all of the British people were being subjected to unimaginable risk and threat. And — and — and the reason was that Churchill understood, you start taking shortcuts, and over time, that corrodes what’s — what’s best in a people.”
The White House press office initially wasn’t sure which article the president referenced, but at the end of the week seemed to agree that it was one by Andrew Sullivan at TheAtlantic.com. (Several bloggers and writers and Web sites also cited Mr. Sullivan’s piece.)
But what Mr. Sullivan actually wrote is this: “As Britain’s very survival hung in the balance, as women and children were being killed on a daily basis and London turned into rubble, Churchill nonetheless knew that embracing torture was the equivalent of surrender to the barbarism he was fighting.”
In a hypothetical sense, that may cover an arc of positioning, from Mr. Obama’s emphatic characterization of a Churchillian belief that “we don’t torture” to the wartime leader’s not “embracing torture,” spanning public pronouncements and what would appear to be evidence of a private, personal abhorrence despite institutional practice.
It would seem, from many accounts, that Mr. Obama misspoke. It remains unclear whether Churchill ever uttered the words “we don’t torture,” but no citation has surfaced among biographers or historians that we’ve seen so far....
Churchill’s imprisonment and other war experiences undoubtedly influenced his thinking during wartime in London, said Mr. D’Este, the biographer, in an interview. But where Churchill might have come down on torture remains a bit of a mystery, and Mr. D’Este said he found no evidence during his research that the topic was discussed (although there were debates about the use of poison gas).
In addition, Richard M. Langworth, another historian and Churchill biographer, also searched through digital records of the wartime leader’s words. He wrote last week: “The nearest I could come to his sentiments refers not to terrorists but to prison inmates. In 1938, responding to a constituent who urged him to help end the use of the ‘cat o’nine tails’ in prisons, Churchill wrote: ‘The use of instruments of torture can never be regarded by any decent person as synonymous with justice.’ ” (ABC’s Jake Tapper also revisited the Churchillian references in another post on Monday night.)
In reference to approving brutal interrogation techniques, Mr. D’Este said: “It’s hard to define what he would or wouldn’t have done. But my whole sense of it was that he would have rejected the notion. … I think his military background, his soldiering and everything would have given us a better sense of that, and the fact that he had sort of, been there done that.”
Churchill, he noted, “just had a better sense of war and what it was all about.”
The historian also mentioned Churchill’s searing experiences at the battle of Ondurman, (in the Sudan in 1898), when he rode over the area where thousands were dead and dying, some trying to crawl to the Nile River for water. Churchill wrote dispatches that were published back home and recounted his horror in the book “The River War.” To read those dispatches, Mr. D’Este said, was to understand “he made it very clear, he wrote that ‘I’m not squeamish, but I have seen acts of great barbarity and am thoroughly sickened of human blood.’ ”
“That was torture of another kind,” the historian added, “but torture at its worst capacity.”...